Shadowrun: Streets of Blood Part 13

"This bungled run," Serrin broke in. "When was it?" Something she'd said had his mind fretting.

In her urgency to explain, to prove herself trustworthy, Rani had forgotten all about the elf. She smiled in delight as she played her trump card. "You know already. After all, you were there too."

"What?"

"I saw you. Imran and I were running from troopers and a huge fire thing-"

"Fire elemental, yes." Serrin looked confused.

"Fire thing, it was coming after us. I saw you, and then it disappeared. We managed to get to our car and get away. The others weren't so lucky."

The girl was sitting forward on the edge of the armchair. Her gaze was fixed directly on the elf and her shoulders were hunched forward, the power of her ork muscles very apparent.

Of course, Geraint realized. Strength; here she is. He addressed himself to the mage.

"Serrin, do you remember that I said someone else was going to be a part of this?"

The elf struggled to remember. So much had happened to him since Geraint had foretold the struggle to come. But then, as if a storm-gray cloud had lifted from him, he perked up, and smiled. Yes, he remembered.

Rani, though, looked confused, not understanding Geraint's inference.

"Rani, I don't know how much of what I'm going to tell you now will make sense. We're still trying to sort it all ourselves. But it seems to me an amazing coincidence that Serrin's magic saved your skin last week and then you rescued us last night. I suppose in some sense that makes us quits."

She smiled sadly. That was what Smeng had said, and she had lost him. She didn't want to lose the excitement of being with these people, such different people in this different world.

"But I still feel we owe you an explanation," Geraint went on, "as far as we've actually got one. You've told us enough about yourself. Now it's our turn."

As the conversation unfolded, they began to realize that two different strands of events had been affecting their lives.

On the one hand, there were the murders, the living Ripper in the here and now of London, 2054. Geraint thought this affected only the three of them, so he kept his explanations short, deliberately eliminating any details of the brutal, gory scenes he and Francesca had witnessed. When he got to the fourth name, though, Rani's expression changed. Before, she'd been simply attentive. At the mention of Catherine Eddowes, she grew upset and then angry.

"I knew her, a little. She used to come into Beigel's Bake in the mornings, always had coffee and two cheese bagels. When I was little my dad used to tell me not to go near her because she was a bad woman. Because of what he said I was afraid of her, but when I got old enough to go down to the markets with my brother sometimes she used to buy me coffee and a treat. She didn't change after I, um, after I changed, you know? She was kind to me. Plenty of people weren't." Rani s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably in her chair, reliving some painful memories of late childhood.

"I saw her only a few weeks ago. She'd been knocked about, had a bad black eye and a bruise covering half her forearm. She looked miserable, and for the first time I could see she was getting old. Now some b.a.s.t.a.r.d's cut her up." She held her head in her hands for a few moments, then sat upright and rea.s.serted her presence and strength. "I want to help find out who's doing this. I live in the East End. I know the patch and the people. I could help you."

"You probably can, Rani," Geraint replied. "I hope so. But in the meantime, we still have to figure out what we're going to do next."

Then they talked of the other business, less straightforward, difficult to comprehend. In some way, they had all been drawn into set-ups of one kind or another. Serrin couldn't figure out what had been going on with his employment, Francesca had blundered into something vicious in the Matrix, and Rani had been part of the most obvious set-up job of all. They had chased their tails thinking about this one before, and they still couldn't work out what, if anything, had been behind each of their misfortunes. But when Rani began talking about the man Pers.h.i.+nkin for the second time, the crucial detail she had omitted first time around gave them something extra.

"So the fat man with the jewel in the tooth and his thin accomplice disappeared into the limo and-"

"What? Say that again." Serrin couldn't believe what he had just heard her say. He grabbed the table for support and leaned forward toward her.

Rani was not sure what she was supposed to reiterate. "Two of them, the fat one and the thin one, they got-"

"No, no!" he snapped impatiently. "What did you say about the fat guy?"

"Well, um, he was losing his hair. . . . and he had a jewel in his tooth. Sorry, that's all I was told."

"I don't suppose you got to hear which one?"

"Which what?"

It was becoming a comedy of errors, Serrin shouting, Rani confused, Geraint and Francesca totally bewildered. Finally, though, they heard her say that the fat man had a jewel fixed in a front tooth.

Serrin sat back with an expression as black as thunder. "Frag me with a baseball bat. That's fragging Smith!" Geraint looked pained. "Please, Serrin, you're not in Seattle now, and there are ladies present. Watch your language."

The elf wasn't bothered about his language. Now he was suspicious as h.e.l.l. "Smith. Smith and Jones, right. You know, the men who hired me? Smith was a fat guy, balding, chiphead, and he had a small ruby set in his right front tooth. Couldn't miss the d.a.m.n thing."

Excited, Rani confirmed him. "Yes! Yes! Smeng, the ork who told me about them. He said these men were users-the fat man shook a lot, he said."

Serrin was nodding. "Didn't he, though? Well, my friends, this is getting interesting."

"So the same people hired Rani for a fake decoy run and-" Francesca said, trying to get a handle on the situation.

"More than that. Geraint, do you remember, I told you that security was actually looking right at them when they popped up? I bet you a thousand sterling to a bra.s.s b.u.t.ton that Smith and Jones tipped off Fuchi. Maybe they were Fuchi."

"No, no, wait." Francesca stopped him from getting carried away. "How about this? Smith and Jones, we think, hired Rani and her family for a sucker run. They also hired you, but they didn't hire you to hit this guy-what's his name, Kuranita?"

Serrin nodded, his excitement diminished. "Yes, that's a real problem. They didn't actually hire us to do that." The connection seemed to be failing. Francesca reestablished it.

"No, but they did change your instructions. They specifically told you to attend the Cambridge seminar in the Crescent Hotel. Maybe they knew you would see Kuranita, or at least hoped you would. Then they hoped you'd try to make a hit on him. Rani and her people were a decoy for you. They hoped you'd get a shot."

Serrin and Geraint looked across at each other.

"I think she's got something," the Welshman said with a frown, trying not to contemplate what it meant.

"But they would only expect me to do that if they knew my past pretty well. I didn't exactly broadcast what I found out about him," Serrin replied thoughtfully.

"Still, someone might have noticed your inquiries. A really good corp, for one. Then you'd become an unpaid hitman."

They pondered that for a while, until Geraint hit upon some objections to this explanation. "Two difficulties, although one isn't insoluble. First, they couldn't have been certain that Serrin would definitely see Kuranita."

"They'd have had contingencies for that, surely. They'd have fed him the information somehow," Francesca said.

"Yes, I know. Which is why I say this problem isn't insoluble." Geraint paused for a moment to give what he was about to say an extra emphasis.

"Unfortunately, it doesn't make sense. We're suggesting that an unknown corp spends a fair bit to track down a fullish past history on Serrin, then lays a trap based on his maybe seeing Kuranita, and then maybe taking a shot at him, with a hired decoy to make sure the shot gets fired from an unexpected place. Right?"

"That sounds like it," Serrin agreed.

"So, with all this money and time and effort, and too many maybes, why the h.e.l.l don't they just spend the same money and get some real a.s.sa.s.sins in? Let's face it, we're hardly expert hitmen, are we?"

That silenced them all for a while. It seemed an impossible confusion. Geraint, though, decided to do something while the others pursued their own thoughts.

"I think there's one thing I can work on right now. We've had murders on November the eighth, fifteenth, and twenty-second. Okay, so the first half of the double event was on the twenty-first, but it still looks to me as if the twenty-ninth is a fair bet for number five-if there's going to be a number five. And I really do think that there will. So excuse me while I begin to track down Mary Kelly. I'm afraid that we're going to come up with a fair few Mary Kellys. So I'll make a start." He walked to the cyberdeck.

Geraint sat absorbed in his frame programming as the others checked for any relevant reports on the trid news. Newstext had an item on mage warfare in the East End, two killed, but nothing on Catherine Eddowes. Serrin and Francesca were puzzled by that.

"They wouldn't get baggies involved if there was any chance of keeping it quiet," Rani explained. "The pimps there handle any trouble themselves. They'd have barricaded the front doors and turned all the lights out as soon as they heard sirens. Customers wouldn't like getting ID'd by the baggies either. They'd have cleared it all up themselves. Probably even sold her corpse to the meatmen."

Serrin didn't want to know any details about the meatmen. He remembered the trolls and their trays from the night before. "We can hardly go back and interrogate the orks about what they've seen," he said. "Not after what I did to them. On the other hand, maybe Rani could ..."

They sat staring at the screen as Geraint hunched over his desk. The first fall of snow was dropping on those parts of London not covered by the ragged remnants of the disastrous city dome, destroyed by a corrosive years ago. On the street it turned swiftly into gray-and brown-slicked filth, but against the penthouse windows the soft flakes hung for a second, almost white, before they melted. Serrin went to turn the central heating up a notch or two. He was s.h.i.+vering again.

Sunday, November 22, 2054. Noon. London. They're going to try very hard to find Mary Kelly. They'll find a whole bunch of them, but there's only one who matters.

The monster's head is beginning to fill with that Mary Kelly. He sees her picture, watches the hologram, begins to understand that she is a s.h.i.+eld for the woman he hates and fears. Why, these are her clothes! He lifts the linen and cotton in his hands and wads them up in his balled fists. They have her scent on them, cheap floral perfume, and her woman's smell. He watches the holograms dance; she is a skilled wh.o.r.e herself. The mania begins to burn in his brain, and his hands shred the clothing as the moans and groans fill his head. He is swiftly restrained, but the anger and hatred rage within him, his fear and terror.

The smiling man in the suit watches the vidscan.

Four down, one to go.

23.

Plans were beginning to form as dusk fell. They had decided from the outset not to contact the Metropolitan Police; their own role in the events surrounding Catherine Eddowes' slaying made that impossible. Geraint needed time to a.n.a.lyze data on the fifty-four Mary Kellys he'd discovered in the capital. The programs wouldn't take longer than seconds to run. It was the programming that was going to take time. Before then, he would have to deal with his troublesome leg, and that meant a trip out of town.

There was another reason for that, too. Francesca had come up with the link to the British-based corporation, Transys Neuronet. It was into TN's London system that she had pursued the bizarre, murderous persona that had nearly killed her, and though she didn't want to meet the thing again she certainly wanted to find out more about it. Furthermore, Transys was the only corp with a facility of any size and importance in Cambridge that Serrin had not been paid to check out. They hadn't much more than suspicion, but it was enough to try some determined system invasion. Geraint and Francesca planned to deck into TN's London system for a start.

"They may have a file on any of us, and if they do, it would be d.a.m.n good to read it. Maybe they hired you, Serrin, and you, Rani, for the Fuchi attack. Why they didn't get decent a.s.sa.s.sins in, I don't know. Neither do."

I know what it was Francesca followed into their system. But I know enough to feel that it's got to be worth a look. It's going to be very dangerous, so one decker may not be enough." Geraint paused for a moment's thought.

"Francesca and I need to get out of town to penetrate their system," he continued. "But first we have to get in and a.n.a.lyze the structure, just have a look round, find where the personnel files are, the surveillance files, what they may have. You can bet your boots they'll have trace and report IC to check where we come from. Rani, that means that if we enter their Matrix system, they have ways of finding out who we are."

He did his best to explain matters to the ork, who wasn't following any of this too easily. In all her life the most complicated deal she'd ever seen was a decker using puny Italian demitech to rip off a Radio Shack. And when she'd asked that decker questions, he'd told her to mind her own business. In words of very few syllables.

"So, we have to disguise our decks. That means a little reconfiguring. The Lord Protector's Office makes sure licensed decks have very identifiable internal ID codes. We have to change that by fooling around a little with the licenses, like putting fake plates on a car." Rani grinned, getting the gist immediately. "And we have to operate somewhere else. Oxford should do it. I can get my leg fixed there, too, no questions asked. Old college friend of mine."

"Which college?" Francesca asked perkily.

"Didn't I ever tell you?" he asked. She shook her head. "Peterhouse. My father's doing, I'm afraid."

"I seem to remember someone telling me the only way to get in there was if you were Catholic, or gay, or both." He frowned at her. "Not these days. h.e.l.l, they've even started admitting women."

Francesca let the jibe pa.s.s. Oxford and Cambridge were said to be great centers of learning, but the twenty-first century hadn't changed them much. She knew that from dating their chinless upper-cla.s.s graduates.

"That may get us somewhere. At the same time, I can put the Kellys through the mincer." Geraint winced the moment the words were out, regretting the unfortunate expression. "If we get someone who looks plausible, we can give the police an anonymous tip.

"Something else. Serrin, your visa runs out at the end of the month, doesn't it?"

"Yep, 'fraid so."

"Wouldn't you like to go abroad for a couple of days? Look, I know it sounds weird, but here's the form. You want an extension to the visa, it takes six months for the Aliens section to get around to even considering it. No chance.

"However, due to one of those weird technicalities that makes British justice the envy of the world, the powers that be will automatically add the days to your visa if you come up with an amazingly good excuse for disappearing abroad, like an illness or death in your family. Maximum of seven extra days. If you make it three, it'll give us the extra time we need. After all, we're expecting another killing on the thirtieth. If you have to fly off on that date it's going to make anything we plan very difficult. Could you get a friend over the Pond to fax notification of a serious family illness to you? "

Serrin was bewildered, but he wasn't the first person to be startled by the intricacies of British immigration law. "Yeah, sure. For how long?"

"Say you go tomorrow, get back Wednesday evening? That'll give us enough time out of town and a margin of time after the thirtieth."

Suddenly, an old recollection stirred at the back of Serrin's mind. He'd thought at once of Manhattan, visiting acquaintances, maybe testing the waters for work when this madcap chase was over. He thought of a contact, then he remembered something about a crazy. He began to mentally plan a schedule for his time.

"Yeah, it's a good idea. I might even be able to get something for us over there. There are always people I can talk to." His face betrayed concentration as he chewed at his lower lip.

"Now, Rani." The n.o.ble turned to face her, realizing she'd been left out of things so far. "We'd like to find these men, Smith and Jones, the sc.u.m who've made fools out of Serrin here and cost your people their lives." He was aware that he had no leads on them, and that troubled him, but he needed to appeal to a common ground. "Can you do some things for us? I can give you money and some equipment if you need it."

"I've got a gun, and ammunition for it, and a good knife. I'm fast, I got wired reflexes. My brother paid for them, to protect me." She was almost a.s.serting her selfesteem; he smiled and made it clear her competence wasn't in doubt. "Wish I had the Predator, though. Shouldn't have sold it, really." Then she had a flash of insight.

"Hey! You know, they gave my brother a gun, a Predator Mark II, and some armor-piercing ammo. Hard to get, a weapon like that. I sold it to Mohinder-he's street samurai. Hard man. Needed to get information from him. That was before I met the Undercity people and everything."

Serrin's eyes glinted. "Predator Mark II? They're not easy to get outside of corporate contacts. They all have IDs in the barrel mechanism and in internal nanochips. At least, the export models do."

Francesca leaped on that. "You mean, if we could get the thing back we might be able to check the ID? Find out where it comes from?"

"Maybe." Serrin was unsure. "Good corporate guys might be able to dosh the ID around, erase the barrel marker, maybe alter the chip. But if we had it in our hands, we could check it out, at the very least."

"Reckon you could buy it back, Rani?" Geraint's voice was urgent. "I can give you money."

She balked at the thought of trying to persuade Mohinder to part with the weapon so soon after selling it to him. But, what the heck, if she offered him double what she'd sold it for, it would be a big profit in a short time.

"I can try. He gave me fifteen hundred for it, though. He'd want a lot more to part with it again."

"Not a problem. As I said, I can give you what you need. Also, maybe you could check out the area where Catherine Eddowes was killed. Look for anything, anything at all. Maybe pay some kids to do some sniffing around. Can you do that?" Her nod said money could buy that, too.

"And, last thing. In a week's time we might be in a place where a fifth murder's going to be committed. We might need every advantage we can get. That means, for a start, muscle and firepower. Last night we ran up against an automatic weapon and a combat mage. Next time, who knows? What about those brothers you've mentioned? Can you get street samurai, spies, people we can trust? Again, I can pay. We're going to need them."

Rani realized that getting the gun back from Mohinder could be easier than she thought. Especially if these people only wanted to check the ID. Pay Mohinder enough and he can have half of Spitalfields out on the street. She nodded determinedly at Geraint.

"Great. And for us, I'll set wheels in motion. Weapons and armor are no problem. Surveillance equipment I can rustle up. Slap patches are a little low, so I think I might renew my acquaintance with Edward while I'm in Oxford."

He p.r.o.nounced the name with a curious emphasis, deliberately inviting Francesca's puzzled query.

"Oh, Edward? Professor of biochemistry and neurobiotics. Boy genius. He's the man I talk to when I have a need for high-grade drugs."

The Indian girl had never seen so much money in one place in her life. She was astonished that he trusted her with it, and said so.