Lone Wolf (33 page)
Argent shrugs again. “Face it,” he says quietly, “there are some missions where a shadow team’s the only way to go. But for big-time destabilization, or staging a coup, or something like that, you need the milspec weaponry and the military communications channels and force coordination.” Again, what the runner’s telling me makes perfect fragging sense. And again, it disturbs the drek out of me. “Are you saying this ...”—I reach for the name—. . this Schrage . . . Are you telling me he’s got a platoon of regulars he’s hiring out to any takers?”
“Not to just any takers,” Argent corrects. “He’d be very selective about whose cred he takes. Probably not for any moral or ethical reasons, but I’m sure ability to pay’s a big criterion. And also whether he can do it without getting made.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” I growl impatiently, “whatever. So, does he have that platoon?”
“Not that Peg could find out,” the runner replies. “There are about sixty names officially assigned to Seattle ML, but I don’t think they’ve got the same special training background as the guys in DeeCee. I’d guess most of them are managerial or clerical ..He pauses, visibly shifting to another train of thought. “Maybe you can confirm that, Wolf."
"How?”
“Recognize some names, maybe. I’ll get Peg to run off a list.” And, just as abruptly, he switches back. “So the answer’s no, he doesn’t seem to have the same kind of force together, not yet.” He shrugs. “Maybe it takes more than a year to organize a private army.”
“No,” I say quietly. Argent looks at me questioningly. “No,” I repeat, a little louder, but still more to myself than to him, “I don’t think that’s it.”
“Maybe he’s not going the same route,” I say, thinking out loud, the ideas as new to me as they are to Argent. It’s like I’m listening to another part of myself, deep down in my subconscious, that’s already worked out a lot of this drek, and now I’m just repeating it to the shadowrunner. It’s a weird, schizoid feeling, and I hope my subconscious isn’t going to make a fragging habit of it.
“What do you mean, Wolf?” the big runner presses.
“I’m not quite sure,” I admit. “But if I wanted to set up some kind of fragging army—and keep it secret from the general public—I sure as frag wouldn’t want to do it in Seattle. Much too small, priyatel, let me tell you.’’ Sounds funny talking about the sprawl as small, but for drek like this it is.
Argent shakes his head. “Doesn’t scan,” he announces. “Other corps have got private armies in and around the plex and it doesn’t slot anybody up or cramp their style.”
“It's different. Argent,” I insist. “This is Lone Star.”
“Which we all know is oh-so-different from all the other megacorps,” he almost sneers.
“No, it’s not different,” I concede, and it grinds me to do it. “But for frag’s sake, does Jane Q. Public on the streets of Bellevue see the Star as different from MCT or Fuchi? You bet your hoop she does, chummer. The Star’s the cops. MCT’s a megacorp. There’s a big fragging difference in the way they’re perceived, the way they’re treated by the news media . . . everything.” I glare at him, and he gets the kicker that I’m not about to articulate in words: That’s the way I always saw it, priyatel, and I was in a better position to scan the truth than your general-purpose civilian. But did I see the truth? Uh-uh.
He doesn’t move for a few seconds. Nothing. Not even a blink. Then he nods unwillingly. He scans the logic of what I’m telling him, but seems unwilling to accept it. He doesn’t like who I am or what I represent any more than I like him. I’d rather gargle with toxic waste than accept anything he says without a struggle, so why should he be any different? “Lone Star does it in DeeCee and Atlanta,” he points out, but his heart’s not in it.
“Yeah, well, that’s DeeCee and that’s Atlanta,” I fire back immediately. “They’re both national capitals, with all that implies. More corporate presence than Seattle, with more private armies. Who’s going to pay much attention to just one more private outfit?”
Then a new thought hits me. “Also, ML’s supposed to be
liaison with the national military, right? If there’s already a major military presence, and ML’s in tight with it, it’s hard to spot the distinction, neh? Who’s going to notice an extra platoon at a full-blown army base? Only the real higher-ups know that Zebra Platoon—or whatever the frag—is actually on the Star’s payroll. But what have they got for camouflage here in Seattle? The fragging Metroplex Guard. Yeah, right.”
Argent’s nodding slowly. If I keep hitting him with enough arguments, he’s got to go along. Then yet another idea strikes. “And maybe Schrage and his little chummers don’t need a fully geared-out platoon,” I point out. “Clients who want that heavy a hammer can hire it out of DeeCee. Maybe Schrage is after clients who want something a little less blatant. Still military, but not regular ordnance.”
Argent gets it too. “Bioweapons?”
“It’s a possibility,” I say, even though I’m convinced it’s more than that. “Let’s say Schrage wants to expand his repertoire with this retrovirus. Maybe some client’s asking for the capability, or maybe he’s going to use it as a big selling point in next year’s marketing campaign—it doesn’t really matter. He approaches Nova Vita Cybernetics, which just happens to have a jim-dandy little number for sale. On the Tir side of things, friend Timothy Telestrian’s got this big proxy fight thing going on, and cutting a major deal with the Star would earn him big credit and big face.” I shrug. “Who knows, maybe he’s thinking of putting pressure on the Star after the fact, to help him out directly with daddy James . . .
“Problem is,” I go on, “the ‘bug’ hasn't gone through field testing yet ... or maybe Schrage isn’t into taking NVC’s word about what it’s supposed to do. So some NVC reps and Schrage himself—this has got to be much too big to leave to drones—make contact with the Cutters under some cover story, and they’ve got their field test.” I look at Argent. “How does that scan?”
“It scans all too well, omae,” he says softly.
“Did Peg happen to find out whether ML’s got any major clients on the go at the moment?” I ask, and the sudden look in the runner’s optics answers that one clearly. “Tsimshian.” He speaks the word flatly, coldly. “Peg says Military
Liaison-Seattle cut a deal with some outfit in Kitimat. The
Tsimshian capital.”
“When?”
“Two months back.” Argent smiles grimly. “The timeframe’s about right, isn’t it? Two weeks of research to find a good bioweapons supplier, two weeks of negotiation, then about a month for the field test.”
“What’s the deal?”
The runner snorts. “Peg’s good, but she’s not that good. Trust me, omae, the grim and gritty details are buried so deep no decker’s going to lay mitts on them.” He shrugs. “If I were Schrage, I'd have all that secret drek on an isolated machine, not part of the Matrix. You know, Tempest-shielded so you can’t even get it through induction or influence-scanning or anything.”
“Any guesses? You probably know more about the background than me. You’ve been in Seattle longer.”
He chuckles. “All my life, chummer. The sprawl’s my home. I was born here, and when it’s time to die, it’s as good a place as any.” He’s silent for a moment, and I can see him getting his thoughts in order. “The Tsimshian nation’s just basically bad news,” he says finally. “Intertribal squabbles tearing it up, the Haida and Kwakiutl underclass against the Tsimshian and Tlingit power bloc. Maybe it’s the national government wanting to finish off the ‘Haida problem’ once and for all. Or maybe it’s the Haida National Front wanting to geek the government. Or maybe it’s not tribally motivated at all.
“Tsimshian seceded from the NAN Sovereign Tribal Council in . . . what was it? Twenty thirty-five . . . ?”
“Twenty thirty-seven,” I amend.
“Whatever. Since the secession, Tsimshian and Salish-Shidhe have been
this close
to border wars on a dozen occasions, mainly over some major ore deposits and industrial facilities that are just close enough to the border to be in what you could call ‘disputed territory.’ Maybe Kitimat figures it’s high time to settle things with the S-S Council.” He shrugs eloquently. “As I said, chummer, Tsirnshian’s bad news. You need a fragging menu to find out who’s on their hate list for the day.”
Just fragging wonderful.
Argent’s looking at me with his steady, ironic gaze, like he’s waiting for me to figure something out.
The realization finally comes. “Yeah,” I growl. “It’s all speculation because we don’t know for sure that NVC created the bug. It could be that Schrage cut a deal with NVC for something innocent like implant technology. And we don’t know for fragging sure that Schrage had anything to do with the Cutters getting hit by the bug. But how else can you scan it?”
“That’s almost beside the point, isn’t it?” Argent says quietly. “I could tell you I’m all the way, one hundred percent gonzo convinced, but what the frag? What difference does it make?” He gives a single bark of humorless laughter. “It’s not like we can take our suspicions to Lone Star and have the cops look into it.”
“So what the frag do we do about it?” I snap.
Argent’s humorless grin fades into that cold poker-face I’ve seen too many times, and I think I know what his answer’s going to be. “Why should I want to do anything about it? Corps frag people over all the time. Why should I get bent out of shape about one more case?”
Frag, I fragging knew it! He’s a fragging shadowrunner, and there’s no credit in this for him. The familiar rage against runners has been keeping a low profile for the past few days, but now it starts twisting and writhing in my chest again. I draw breath to say something poisonous ...
Which is just what the cybered-up fragger is waiting for, of course. Before I can get out a word, he says, “But I’m curious about what NVC’s up to. Curious enough to maybe hum on down the Columbia River to Pillar Rock and have a little look-see.” I stare at him, and he gives me an innocent, drek-eating smile in response. “Want to come along?”
Frag that Argent anyway! The miserable son of a slitch must have known what was going through my mind, what I was thinking about him. And he fragging let me think it, let me get all morally superior and deeply into hating the ground he walks on.
And then, just when I was ready to tear his fragging head off, he basically said, “Hey, I want to do the right thing too, chummer,” and let me know he was just yanking my chain. Lousy son of a slitch.
In no time at all he’s got our transportation arranged and all that drek, and we're in the car heading for Sea-Tac. Meanwhile I’ve been getting more and more cranked up, while doing my fragging best not to show it.
I don't care if the runner knows I’m slotted off, priyatel. It's me who’s bothered. Argent was yanking my chain to make a point, feeding me a line that matched perfectly with my preconception of shadowrunners, the one I’ve picked up from cop talk and what I heard in the Academy . . . and, yes, that I’d probably sucked up from the fragging trideo. Fragging Argent knew that, and decided to make me eat my cherished ideas. By playing perfectly in synch with them, then doing a high-speed one-eighty and taking off in the opposite direction. And of course what I’m supposed to learn from this is that shadowrunners aren't the mercenary, empty-hearted slots I always believed them to be. I hate being proved wrong even at the best of times, and definitely not by some holier-than-thou scumbag like Argent.
And that’s why I’m sitting, fuming, in the passenger seat of the Westwind as Argent tools west, then south, through the southern end of downtown toward the part of Sea-Tac airport where private planes are kept. I start getting the creeps as we pull up to the guarded security gate that leads to the plane-owners’ parking lot, but Argent doesn’t show the slightest sign of tension.
The sec-guard’s eyes glint unnaturally in the watery afternoon sunlight, and I see the fiber-optic cable running from his datajack to the ‘puter pack on his belt. As he looks at us, our images are being transferred from his cybereyes to that pack, and probably relayed from there to some analysis/recognition system in a nearby building. The best outcome is that neither of us match up with the database of people authorized to use this gate. The worst, of course, is that my image triggers all kinds of watchdogs, and then things just kind of slide downhill from there.
I might as well have saved my stress for something that mattered—like the impending flight, for example. The sec-guard scans the two of us, focuses his eyes on infinity for a moment, then nods to Argent with a lot more respect than he’d shown a moment ago. “Head right on through, sir,” he says. “You know where to park.”