Night's Pawn (26 page)

Chase waved him off. "Don't apologize to me. Apologize to her. She doesn't like to be late to a meeting."

The dwarf nodded. "Of course, excuse me," he said as he hurried off. To hide the smile on his face, Chase turned to look at the otter, who'd been joined by another. He watched them dance and play with each other, occasionally bouncing off the glass wall, much to the concern of the patrons nearest them. They obviously knew nothing of the history of the Gray Line restaurant and the fact that the glass wall was not merely a simple window, but was actually made of hardened ballistic plastic. In a botched holdup a few years back, a stray shot had created a flood of water that claimed twelve lives. The owner had vowed that history would not repeat itself.

Only a slight rustling announced her presence. When Chase turned back to the table, she was already seated opposite him. Leaning back in her chair with her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her glossy black leather jacket, she gave him a grin. "There's a reason, you know," she said, "why I like to pick the meeting place."

Chase had suggested the restaurant; he was fond of its interesting menu of elven and Salish cuisine. He suspected that Janey was familiar with it, too, and had chosen her clothing to protest his veto of The Big Rhino, an ork eatery with a raucous atmosphere a few blocks away.

Her leather jacket was stylish, with lots of straps and buckles and had probably been custom-made in Hong Kong. The black jeans probably hadn't been tailored, but they fit like they were. Chase knew that her black, knee-high boots with their delicate silver filigree and chrome spike heels were. None of these should have barred her entrance, however, so Chase figured it must have been the red silk and lace brassiere revealed by her open jacket. Janey was staring at him, wide grin intact, daring him to say something. Beyond her, Chase could see the maitre d' apparently explaining the situation to an elven woman Chase took to be one of the managers. The woman didn't seem pleased, but it was also obvious she would not cause any more of a scene.

Chase's gaze wandered back to Janey. "Nice jacket," he said. "Is it new, or did you let an old one out?"

"No, I've always had it. You just never noticed before."

"Damn unlikely," he said.

She shrugged. "So what kinda drek are you gonna take me swimming in this time?"

Chase picked up one of the electronic menu pads and flipped it toward her. She grabbed it from the air a few centimeters from his fingers. "Drek?" he said. "Oh, nothing serious. Just standard fare."

She tipped her tousled blonde head back and laughed. "Jesus fraggin' Christ, you
have
gone corp. The last six suits I did deals with said the same thing."

"Did you believe them?"

"Oh, yeah, just like I believe the elections aren't as fixed as my cat."

"Good. Well, order something that'll take the kitchen a while to cook. What I've got for you is a long tale of soured relationships, runaway teens, love-crazed rock bands, murder, magic, assassinations, butthole politics, terrorism, Fuchi Industrial Electronics, and a possible corporate civil war."

Janey didn't even bat an eye. "You're right," she said. "Standard fare."

Chase's elven dish of
se'-shepetra
was excellent, even with the duck being a little gamier than he liked. Janey wasn't as fond of her baked
ahal'eaish
and salmon, but she wasn't complaining. After leaving the restaurant they walked cross-town, and uphill, eventually turning north toward Denny Park and the safehouse where Chase had hidden Cara.

Chase was observing the city, noting the subtle and not so changes since his last visit a few years back. Janey's attention was inward, mulling over the story he'd told her.

"Fuchi should be all over you," she said.

"I know. I didn't ask Shiva directly, but I assume he'd have told me if there was any word out about Fuchi looking for Cara or me." Then, again, Chase thought, maybe not.

"Shiva?" she asked. "Is he, or she, a decker? I'm not familiar with the name."

"Sorry, that's a part of the story I skimmed over. He's a decker of sorts, works out of the data haven in Denver. Old friend of mine. He, um, checked into things after the decker I'd been working with got burned in the Fuchi system here in town."

"Do you know which one?"

"Which system?"

She nodded, and Chase shook his head. "No, not a clue."

"Jack mentioned that he thought something had happened, or was happening, at Fuchi. Their systems design network is apparently on continual alert."

"Samantha Villiers, Cara's mother, runs the design shop."

"Didn't she get promoted?" Janey asked.

"To head of Fuchi Northwest, but she's still managing design."

Walking on, Chase spotted an elf watching them from the seat of a big, black motorcycle down a block to their left. Janey noticed the bike and Chase's attention at the same time. "Chummer of yours?" she asked.

Chase nodded. "Kind of. The Ancients are protecting Cara."

"The Ancients? You've got to be kidding."

"They owed me a small favor. Plus, I'm paying them," Chase said.

Janey was staring at him. "I'm surprised. There've been problems with the Ancients. I'd have thought their entire leadership had turned over since you were last in town."

"It did, but there were enough who remembered."

They walked another block, Janey lost once more in thought before she said, "Look, I'm in, but under two conditions. First, you take me to see Cara Villiers."

"Already doing that. We're halfway there."

"Second. We get more help."

Chase grinned. "That's why I called you, Janey."

The house on Dexter, just north of the monorail, was old and getting shabby. The moment they'd entered the Denny Park area, Janey had begun to show the same hyperactive tendencies Chase remembered from the last time they'd met. Her gaze darted over every part of the street as they moved deeper into the elven district and he felt the attention of the whole neighborhood centering on them. A block short of their destination, an elven girl rode up and paralleled them in the street. That meant that the local people had relaxed. The word must have gone out that the Ancients said the intruders were all right.

They reached the house, where two elves sat lounging on the front steps. Their green and black gang colors were barely noticeable, but Chase imagined they'd show up like a beacon if the neighborhood was wrong.

Inside, he and Janey were met by a tall, platinum-blond elf with short-cropped hair and dark green and black riding leathers. As they entered he was speaking in hushed tones with another, smaller elf whose face had a look of concern. The taller elf turned toward them.

"Janey," said Chase, gesturing toward the tall elf, "this is Falchion. He is a lieutenant, I suppose you could say. Janey's going to be working for me."

Falchion gave a slight grin. "Janey Zane. Well, well, it all just gets bigger and bigger."

Janey said nothing, only nodding to the elf in greeting. Chase suddenly wondered if there was more behind her reaction than just professional detachment.

He turned his attention back to the elf. "Is there some problem?"

Falchion snorted. "Fraggin' right there is. Step in here." He pointed to one of the side rooms. When they entered, Chase figured it must once have served as a living room, but it was now empty and bare except for a few unlabeled crates.

Janey was last in and closing the door when the elf began to speak. "You lied to us, Church. You didn't tell us Fuchi was involved."

Chase sighed. "I don't know for a fact that they are."

"Bulldrek," snapped Falchion. "That's the Big Man's daughter. They gotta be involved."

Chase matched his gaze. "Have you heard anything about her?"

"No, but that don't mean—"

"No word at all? Nothing on the streets?"

"No, frag it, but you shoulda—"

"If Fuchi wanted her, the word would be out, wouldn't it? Somewhere, somehow, the word would be out and the Ancients would hear."

"Don't push it, Church."

"I'm not. I'm serious," said Chase. "I'll tell you what. You tell your people to keep an ear to the wires and the nanosec they hear
anything
about Fuchi and her, I pull her out."

Falchion looked at him and was about to answer, but Janey cut him off. "I'm surprised to hear the Ancients are worried about a corp."

Both Chase and the elf turned to look at her. She had her hands back in her pockets and seemed casual, but Chase sensed a tenseness.

"You don't know drek about us, chica," said Falchion. "Don't try to guess what we're about or doing. These are tricky times."

Janey looked about to retort, but Chase cut her off. "Do we have a deal?" he asked the elf.

Falchion nodded. "Deal."

"Good," said Chase. He turned, but Janey turned faster and moved through the door ahead of him.

"One other thing, Church," said Falchion to his back.

Chase stopped and turned slightly.

"You know the girl's a chiphead, right?"

Chase turned his head fully around. "Yeah, I know."

The elf grinned. "Good, 'cause we're gonna have to charge you more for having to clean up her puke all the fraggin' time."

Chase nodded. "If you need to, bring in a doc you can trust. She needs to be clean in a few days."

The elf snorted. "You're dreaming, chummer. I don't know drek about it, but I've seen others who had it the way she does, and they don't ever get clean."

Something was blaring on the trideo in Cara's room, but Chase had no idea what it was and suspected Cara didn't either. He looked at her, wondering briefly if she'd gotten caught in one of Seattle's all-too-common flash-rains, but knew the elves would never have let her out. It was sweat that had drenched her.

She was sitting too close to one of the room's speakers, and Chase had to call out to her twice before she twitched in recognition. He could see that her face was swollen from crying.

"Cara," Chase said. "Are you all right?" It was the stupid, obvious thing to say.

She didn't answer, but her gaze strayed to Janey and a look of contempt slid across her expression. Her eyes hardened and she turned away.

"We're going to start tracking your mother to set up a meeting, Cara," Chase said. "You're going to have to get yourself together for that."

He saw her tense, and her left arm twitched in that odd way he'd noticed before. It had become more pronounced as they'd driven to Seattle and Cara was without the sim-chips left behind in Denver.

She shuddered slightly, then looked at him full in the face. The old fear was back in her eyes, but he saw something else, too: growing control. "I'll… I'll be ready."

"Good," he said. "It should be only a few more days."

She nodded.

"Need anything?" he asked.

Cara looked away without answering. He watched her for a few moments until the sun suddenly broke through the overcast sky sending a thin shaft of itself into the room. Cara shivered and moved slightly to bask in its feeble warmth.

22

A few days passed.

They were gathered in the spacious, nearly bare loft Chase had rented for use as their base of operations. Cara, still suffering painful withdrawal from her chip addiction, was asleep in one of the adjoining rooms. Dancing Flame, a teammate of Janey's whom Chase had never met before, had used magic to induce in her what the Amerindian shaman hoped would be a healing sleep. Cara did seem to be improving, but the psycho-physiological war going on inside her body was taking its toll on her health. Dancing had told Chase that he feared Cara's acceptance of the cyberware in her body had helped the chip addiction gain its foothold and was making it harder for her to shake it off. Chase accepted that and trusted the shaman. He'd shared a life with someone of that point of view for years before she was torn from him.

What he found harder to accept was the amount of cyberware Cara actually had. For someone who had shown such fear of enhancements as a child, Cara Villiers had grown into a woman who welcomed the modifications. He knew about and had seen the datajack, assuming it to be the simple neural interface port that more and more average people were having installed for convenience.

Liam Bough, another of Janey's teammates and a passing acquaintance of Chase himself, had looked Cara over when the elven gang had delivered her. Bough, so familiar with cyberware from personal experience, recognized the jack as a more sophisticated design able to handle higher rates of data flow with less system loss. For a chiphead, it was the difference between a sedan and a sports car.

Chase was less surprised to learn that she also had supplemental neural-trigger circuits that could be used to command a music system such as a keyboard or guitar. That made sense. The fact that Cara's left eye was artificial, but had no enhancements that made it more than normal, did not. Nor did the fact that Bough's cursory examination indicated that the long bone of her left forearm had been replaced. Bough suggested that perhaps she'd been in an accident. Chase was simply surprised. Cara had never said anything about it.