Headhunters Read online

  Fontaine waved his companions into motion, spreading out around Skater’s position.

  Skater knew they hadn’t seen the pistol, but he’d be properly fragged over if he used it because of the noise it would make.

  “Jack,” Archangel called over the headset. “I just intercepted an incoming for the funeral house telecom. Coleman January is now enroute from a crash-and-dash out on Eye-Five. He’s DOA and arriving via DocWagon.”

  Skater’s mind reeled at the news. The Johnson had said nothing about Coleman January coming in as a fresh corpse, delivered to the funeral home by a DocWagon emergency services vehicle. That put the run in a whole new light, and increased the danger quotient by an unknown amount. He wondered who’d aced January and how deep that might put his team into drek. While his thoughts raced, the troll thriller with the monofilament whip lashed out at the air-conditioning unit. In trained hands, the molecule-thin whip could carve a man to pieces.

  Sparks leapt in all directions as the whip sliced through the heavy piece of machinery and came spitting light at Skater’s face.

  2

  Skater leaped backward, utilizing the max potential from his boosted reflexes. The monofilament whip sliced close enough to lay open a thin line along his left cheek. Warm blood ran over his face while a cold thrill raced down his back, making him instinctively flinch away.

  He’d lost his right eye in the biz with Conrad MacKenzie a few months ago. The Yamatetsu cybereye he’d gotten as a replacement weeks after that was top of the line, but it wasn’t part of him. Raised by his grandfather in the Salish-Shidhe Council Lands around the Seattle sprawl, Skater still maintained a lot of the old ways of his Amerind upbringing despite his life as a shadowrunner. And the old ways said that the body was sacred, shouldn’t be littered up with tech garbage.

  “You jump like a fragging grasshopper,” Wynn grunted, “but it ain’t gonna save your hoop.” He whirled the glowing monofilament whip again, cracking it toward Skater.

  Leaping back again and seeing the other two Dark Angels closing in on him, Skater knew he was running out of rooftop. He landed lithely on his feet as the whip whistled by only a meter away. The edge of the building was less than half of that, leaving him little room to maneuver.

  The whip sheared through a brick exhaust flume in a shower of sparks that lit up the sudden cloud of brick dust. The scar of the cut was visible even in the moonlight.

  “He’s got a gun,” Hector, the human thriller, called out as he crouched behind a chunk of a rooftop maintenance autodroid waiting to cycle through its work schedule.

  “Yeah,” Wynn said, drawing the whip back for another attack, “but I don’t see him using it.” He took another step forward, feinting with his weapon and sneering. “Maybe he’s out of bullets. Or maybe he just don’t have the guts to use it.”

  “Your mistake,” Skater said in a harsh voice. “And your last chance to slot and run before you get a one-way ticket to slab city.”

  “Chill talk,” the troll said, grinning, “for a guy all out of places to go.” He raised a chartreuse-dyed eyebrow that was as thick and woolly as a caterpillar. “Fontaine?”

  “Yeah,” the elf thriller called back. He closed in as well, but stayed behind the big troll.

  “How many pieces do you want your smoothie in?”

  “Bite-size,” Fontaine said with a cold and mirthless smile.

  Skater holstered the Predator. He’d use it when there were no other options. Killing, even in self-defense, didn’t come easy to him. Taking a deep breath, he focused on the two meters-plus of troll destruction facing him, trying not to be distracted by the back of his mind wanting to know about Coleman January’s arrival—how the body they were supposed to boost must have been planned by the Johnson as a fresh kill the whole time. And what their part in the biz was actually supposed to be. Puzzles and logistical problems had always fascinated him, as long as his hoop wasn’t on the line.

  Another thing to consider was that DocWagon services didn’t come cheaply. DocWagon provided better on-site emergency medical care than any other paramedical facility going, including going in armed and dangerous onto a battlefield or street fight where a client had gone down either accidentally or on purpose.

  Then Wynn’s whip lashed out again and Skater was in full sync, going with the boosted reflexes and years of shucking dirt in the shadows. He leaped to the right, clambering atop a makeup air vent near the roof’s edge. For just a moment, the rush of air being sucked out of the building coiled all around him and blunted some of the traffic noise coming from the sprawl.

  A siren keened in South Twenty-first Street below, drawing Fontaine’s attention. “There’s a DocWagon down there that looks shot all to drek.” The flashing red lights strobed the darkness, casting a ruby pallor behind Fontaine.

  The whip cut into the make-up air vent, the near-molecule thin cutting edge slashing through the heavy metal.

  Skater stepped toward the troll without warning and leaped high into the air. The whip cut the air where he’d been. Before Wynn could recover, Skater landed beside him, already moving into an explosive kata. An expertly administered heel-stamp to the side of the troll’s knee shattered bone with loud snaps. The joint hadn’t been designed to take that kind of abuse, even on trolls.

  “Oh bloody frag!” Wynn groaned. He tried to bring the monofilament whip back around, moving gracelessly on the injured leg.

  Shifting, Skater parried the troll’s arm as it came back at him. He didn’t try to stop it, just let it roll over him. Strength for strength, he was no match for the meta and he knew it.

  The whip cut a ragged edge over his head, as much a danger to Wynn as it was Skater. Monofilament whips were notorious for whacking off almost as many pieces from a wielder as they did from their intended target, unless the user was an expert. Wynn wasn’t.

  The shadowrunner reached out and caught the whip wrist, slid along the huge hands, and grabbed the troll’s thumb in his fist. He moved again, using his weight, leverage and strength, and broke the thumb.

  “You fragging son of a slitch!” Wynn cried out.

  “Hector!” Fontaine yelled, moving in.

  The human was slow to react, and the elf didn’t appear any too eager to come face-to-face with Skater on his own.

  Wynn raked out his free hand, fingers and blunt nails digging for Skater’s face. The troll’s broad, ugly features were knotted up in pain. Crimson-studded silver earrings dangled from the scarred, triangular flaps of gristle that passed for ears on the huge shaggy head. His horns were engraved with intricate patterns and filled in with synthamber that glowed with inner fire.

  Skater yanked again on the broken thumb, feeling the two ends of the bone grate. It didn’t feel like it had broken cleanly, which meant a lot more hurt for the thriller.

  The troll’s scream of pain echoed across the rooftop, baring his huge yellowed teeth and the thick lower canines that jutted up like tusks. Beneath the facial warts, moles, and scars, Wynn’s face paled into a death mask. “Fontaine, get over here!”

  Fontaine spit out a foul barrage of curses as he moved in cautiously from the left. Both knives moved in tandem, the wicked edges splintering moonlight.

  Ducking under Wynn’s free arm, Skater released his hold on the broken thumb and moved into the troll again. One enemy down for certain would give him more time with the others—if he needed it.

  Wynn floundered, trying to stump away on his injured leg and nearly falling over for his trouble. Skater curled the fingers of his right hand tight against themselves, then rammed the heel of his palm into the troll’s broad nose with all his weight behind the blow.

  Blood spurted as the cartilage broke under the impact. The pain and the force of the blow dropped Wynn to his knees heavily enough to shake the rooftop.

  Before the troll fell, Skater was already moving to face Fontaine.

  The thriller leader appeared uncertain, despite the way he wove an intricate dance of steel in front of h
im with the knives. “What are you—injun?” he demanded. “You into wetwork? Some kind of repairman filling a contract?”

  “I’m a professional, ditbrain, and I’m getting hosed off because you haven’t picked up that little clue yet and beat feet.” Skater kept shifting, mirroring the elf’s movements, letting Fontaine know he was no stranger to bladework. “I don’t frag around with krill-filler. I’ll toss you right back into the drekheap you crawled out of.”

  Fontaine was a good-looking elf, possessing all the qualities of his type, the slender and lighter build, the high-boned face, and the almond-shaped eyes. His henna-shaded hair stood out against his almost bone-white skin, held back by a yellow headband stitched with elven runes. His ponytail, decorated with expensive tiger’s-eye combs, whipped around his head. Though slightly taller than Skater, he went five or ten kilos lighter.

  “You don’t scare me,” Fontaine retorted. “Coming out here in my shadows to play. This is sacred turf for the Dark Angels, browncone, and you’re messing where you don’t belong.”

  “Hector,” Wynn called, “help me, chummer. I’m hurting bad.” The whip lay beside him. He kept one hand over his broken nose and used the other to try to keep his balance.

  Hector decided he had better things to do. He lowered his stun baton and switched off, showing empty hands a second later.

  Without warning, Fontaine lunged forward, intending to disembowel Skater.

  But Skater wasn’t there when the elf arrived. A small sidestep, only enough to clear the blade, then Skater lifted an elbow into the elf’s face, putting all his weight behind it.

  Fontaine sailed backward and landed on his hoop, dazed. One of the knives dropped to the tar roof.

  Skater stepped forward, resting one boot on the wrist of the hand holding the elf's remaining knife. He squatted and slid the Cougar Fine Blade from his boot top. The fear was still moving in him, not so much because of the thrillers as for the other events of the run. Thrillers were an everyday threat in the world, and a chummer could run into trouble with them even if he wasn’t working the mean streets. The arrival of Coleman January’s body at Shastakovich’s Funeral Home across the street bothered Skater most because he couldn’t be sure what it meant. If January had been dead for some time, just sitting on a slab, Skater wouldn’t have felt as threatened as he did now. But the man had rolled onto the scene in a DocWagon van that looked like it had been through some heavy drek. And January was only minutes dead, with who knew what closing up the distance behind him.

  “Please,” Fontaine whined, the almond eyes glittering with tears.

  Knowing he had an audience in the other two Dark Angels, Skater spoke loud enough for all of them to hear. He grabbed a handful of Fontaine’s fine hair and bent his face close to the elf’s. The thriller’s breath smelled like soured wine gone near to vinegar. The Cougar Fine Blade was only a centimeter from Fontaine’s aquiline nose.

  “If you bother me again,” Skater said, “I’m going to take one of your pointy little ears as a door prize.” He tugged an ear meaningfully. “I know a granny-woman from the Nootka tribes near Spokane who would give me a little bounty for an elven ear to work a mojo with.”

  “Don’t take my ear,” Fontaine put his free hand over the threatened part of his anatomy.

  “Then breeze,” Skater said, “and don’t fragging look back. Scan me?”

  Fontaine nodded.

  Skater got off him and backed away. He drew the Predator again as Fontaine got to his feet, jerked the slide back, and popped the top round off the magazine into the air. He caught it deftly in his palm. The movement was enough to let the thrillers know the gun was primed for action. The hard look he gave them let them understand he was willing to use it.

  All three flinched when the slide snapped back into place. Hector helped Wynn limp off, the troll’s immense bulk looking like it was about to crush the smaller human. Fontaine paused to get his other knife, then slid it into hiding inside his black synthleather jacket. He kept looking back, trying to make sure Skater knew he wasn’t running, but moving toward the rooftop door at a quick gait all the same.

  After they were gone, Skater jogged across the rooftop and dropped into position on the side of the building overlooking Ainsworth Street in front of the Mariah. He took out the low-light binox again, and accessed the commlink. “Duran.”

  “You back already?” the ork said sarcastically from his position down on the street.

  Skater let the tone roll off him. When they were in the shadows, running on adrenaline, and treading on potential minefields, they all had quirks. But they’d pulled together as a unit for the last three years, become tighter than ever after the ReGEN biz. “Scan me in.”

  The DocWagon unit in front of the Mariah Building was one of the lightly armored vehicles usually issued to a Standard Response Team. Their responsibilities included minor fender-benders on the highways and byways of their assigned sector, and calls for help from clients in non-crisis intervention situations. DocWagon also had High Threat Response teams that went into full-blown skirmishes in armored trucks that could have doubled as military tanks. A client paid the nuyen for the service, though. January had evidently lived in a privileged environment.

  The DocWagon in Skater’s view looked like it had been through hell. The bulletproof glass in the right-rear quarter panel had taken a direct hit from something violent and nasty. Although it hadn’t allowed penetration, the window was warped and sticking out of its molding, spider-webbed so badly by fractures that visibility was nil. Black scorch marks covered the rest of the vehicle, glossing over some of the tears across its metallic hide. Broken support struts showed where the rear bumper had once been, but gave no indication as to where it might be now.

  “DocWagon brought Coleman January in as meat,” Duran replied. “Road pizza from out on Eye-Five.”

  Interstate 5 was a little over a klick to the south. “How?”

  “Elvis is using a directional microphone from his position to pick up what the SRT team is saying and is relaying the signal on to Archangel, but most of it is worth nada. All we’ve heard mentioned so far is that January was the victim of a crash-and-dash. No witnesses. Guy who arrived on the scene popped January’s DocWagon wristband, jobbed the dispatcher the PIN, and told them the guy was probably geeked.”

  The wristband was often a life-saver, Skater knew. A DocWagon subscriber or someone near him or her could set it off and the signal would go through to the dispatcher immediately, reading off the wearer’s vital signs and location.

  “By the time the SRT guys arrived,” Duran went on, “a half-dozen Spike Wheels had already gotten there and were stripping what they could from January and the car he was driving.” The Spike Wheels were troll go-gangers who operated along south Intercity 5. They were hard to control, riding juiced-up hogs and carrying major ordnance. Some of them had ties to the yakuza and Mafia, and on occasion worked as transport for personnel and material.

  “Was January human or meta?” Skater asked.

  “Human. The Spike Wheels got hot over interference by the DocWagon guys and tried to scare them off. Even went so far as to trot out a M79B1 light anti-tank weapon.”

  “That’s a lot of bang-bang for picking over what was left of road kill,” Wheeler put in.

  “I should think it would be interesting to find out who was piloting the other vehicle,” came Cullen Trey’s disembodied voice over the commlink. “Or am I the only one being paranoid here?”

  Skater tapped the binox, increasing the magnification. The SRT driver was an ork rigger with an exposed datajack linking him to the console of his vehicle by fiber-optic cable. Prowling the perimeters of the truck, he accessed the damage done to his rig, no doubt already preparing the report he’d have to file with DocWagon.

  Moving the binox to the back of the truck, Skater discovered that the rear doors were open and the cargo hold was empty except for another ork wadding up a batch of bloody sheets and stuffing them into a surg
ical waste-recycling bag clearly labeled with international biohazard symbols. “Where’s January’s body?” Skater asked.

  “They took it inside a few minutes ago.”

  “They who?”

  “People from the funeral home.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “They had on Shastakovich uniforms, kid,” Duran said. “Lettered real neat across the back.”

  “Of course,” Trey interjected coolly, “it is possible that those uniforms were borrowed, and those people don’t work for the funeral home at all. That body could be gone in minutes.”

  Wheeler laughed. “Worried about your bottom line, chummer?”

  “Archangel checked them out,” Duran said. “She sleazed her way into the funeral home employee files. The two people who picked up the body both ID’d as employees.” Trey sounded slightly miffed. “If someone was willing to pay us for that body, and pay us rather handsomely for such a short investment of our time, you have to consider the fact that another party might be just as willing to pay someone else.” The ork rigger pulled the wire out of his head and sent it zipping back into the truck console. Then he crawled under the vehicle and started working to get a tire from under it.

  “I want to know how January got to be road pizza so conveniently near two a.m.,” Skater said. It was 1:49:07 a.m. now. His main concern at the moment was whether his team might be implicated in the murder. A freshly geeked Coleman January had never been on the menu for the run, and mere proximity could make them suspect. Still, the balance of their nuyen might still be waiting if they carried through on their end of the deal. And Skater didn’t like walking away from runs he’d given his word on. It was bad for biz. His rep was nuyen in the bank. “Archangel?”

  “She’s tripping through the Matrix, kid,” Duran said, “already looking for the DocWagon report that got turned in live. And she’s keeping an eye peeled for the body inside Shastakovich’s at the same time. Speaking of time, we’re running thin here. January’s just turned into a corpse. Even if it’s a simple crash-and-dash fatality, somebody’s gonna be along to investigate and file all the right reports. The Knight Errant shift change is gonna get in our way if we wait much longer. You get the deciding vote. Do we do the biz, or do we yank the chain?” Skater watched the two DocWagon employees. After the tire was successfully changed, they’d probably beat it on out of there, go back to patrolling their sector, and chalk the experience with the Spike Wheels up to another bad night on the job. He shifted the binox to the front doors of the Mariah Building. The heavy maglocks looked invulnerable.