Nyx Smith - Fade to Black

Rico took another long, slow drag of his cheroot. It didn't help. It didn't keep the acid out of his voice. "Maybe you'd like to go to the Carib. Sit under a palm tree. Maybe I should go to Camden or Atlantic City. Play some fragging keno. Wait for the axe to fall."

Surikov looked confused. "I'm sorry, I don't-"

"Mass Intertech belongs to Kuze Nihon. They're almost as big as Fuchi I.E. They're a little slotted off at us right now. You're talking about skanking Fuchi, too. You better have a damn good reason."

Surikov said, "Prometheus Engineering."

Rico had heard the name before. Prometheus was major league. It had a seat on the Corporate Advisory Board that ran Manhattan. It also had a 100-story tower like a DNA spiral on Manhattan's west side, which came with a double-A security from NYPD, Inc. "What about it?" Rico growled.

"Take me to Prometheus," Surikov blurted. "Make any kind of arrangement that suits you and your comrades. Demand some payment. A finder's fee, perhaps. Their director of research should leap at the chance to get me on her staff. She runs a very enlightened program. She understands the importance of basic scientific inquiry. Her researchers have free reign."

"And what about your wife?"'

"We could take her too. We would have to, in fact."

Rico nodded slowly, taking another deep drag off his cheroot. Surikov's only problem was that he was insane. "Maybe you'll tell us where we can find your wife. Maybe you'll help us bust her out."

Surikov didn't get the joke.

Dok sat very still, almost motionless.

Rico turned and walked out.

A quick scan of the virtual bars that served as the bulletin boards and rumor pools of the Newark telecommunications grid, the underground grid, yielded Piper some news.

Hours after their run on Maas Intertech, systems throughout the megaplex were still on active alert.

Half the ramjammers on-line were whooping it up, delighted by the certainty that someone had cut pure ice, pulled off something big. The other half, those with biz to conduct and runs of their own to make, were less than thrilled.

Vaux Hall Pirate News yielded two particularly cogent details: heavily armed Daisaka Security forces were cruising the streets of Newark, and a full description of Thorvin's van, including registration tags, had gone out over the regional law enforcement networks. Piper thought that important news, but not threatening, at least not necessarily.

Newark was not like other towns. Omni Police Services had learned that lesson. Daisaka Security would soon find out for itself, if it didn't already know. Its forces would inevitably discover a whole legion of petty monarchs who considered various sections of the plex to be their private kingdoms. Triad bosses, gangers, yakuza, the maf-none looked kindly on intruders.

Little Asia, Sector 6, was itself a patchwork of competing elements, and the competition often grew fierce. Each element had soldiers to back its claims. All had access to the most menacing of weapons. Daisaka would inevitably find itself facing the prospect of armed conflict, little wars for control, and that was good, for it would keep Daisaka busy.

As for the description of the van… Thorvin was downstairs at this very moment repainting the van and changing the registration tags. This particular van had a number of separate identities, all duly integrated into the appropriate state databases.

Piper smiled and jacked out.

The room around her returned, four blank white walls with a Samsung office telecom, an armchair, and the re-diner beneath her. The telecom had two lines: a hard line into the local telecommunications grid plus a line to the satellite dish concealed on the roof. Her modified Excalibur cyberdeck lay across her lap.

Rico sat in the armchair, taking on his cheroot and looking dissatisfied. Piper took her slim-stemmed pipe from her belt pouch, packed in some tobacco, and lit up.

"What's the scan?" Rico asked in a voice like a low growl.

Piper gave him a quick summary of what she'd picked up, then said, "You look unhappy, jefe."

"We're fragged."

"Why?"

"Surikov doesn't wanna go home."

"Why not?"

"He says he don't like Fuchi Multitronics any more than Maas Intertech. He thinks he'll be more welcome at Prometheus Engineering. Thinks he'll be free to do things his way."

"Corps and freedom are mutually exclusive."

"The slag don't see it that way."

Piper shrugged. "We have our down payment Our expenses are covered. Let Surikov fend for himself."

"We're responsible."

"No one's responsible for a corporate but other corporates."

"The slag's a scientist."

"That makes him nothing more than a sophisticated form of product designer. He's a suit. We owe him nothing."

"We busted him out, querida."

"Yes, and that was a favor."

"A slag like him won't never cut a deal on his own. He's a babe in the fragging woods.".

"Then let's give him to L. Kahn and be done with it."

"He doesn't wanna go."

"I don't care what he wants."

People who lived the life defined by the corps deserved the same ruthless brand of indifference the corps accorded the rest of society. The corps had proved that a thousand times over: defiling the Earth, poisoning people, wrecking whole economies, condemning entire nations of people to lives of poverty, disease, and abject misery-whatever suited corporate objectives.

A wise man once said, "Let us drink the blood of the enemies of humanity." Foremost among those enemies, in Piper's view, were the corps. Not even the treacherous swine of Tir Taimgire equaled the corps, in terms of sheer villainy. Elves at least had some respect for the Earth.

"You're talking like a real killer," Rico said.

"I should weep and sympathize?"

"I know you better than that."

"We'll be shagged if we don't turn Surikov over. Fuchi has long arms. They'll find us and kill us. Or use us as test subjects in their biotech labs."

"There's worse things to die for than a man's freedom."

"Jefe, I don't want to die for a damn suit."

"What about honor?"

"I don't want to talk about honor."

"We took a man's life in our hands. You're saying we should just walk away."

"I'm saying we should complete our contract."

"And the hell with honor."

"We agreed to turn Surikov over."

"We didn't agree to a snatch. And that's what we're doing if we make Surikov go back to Fuchi. 'Cause that's where he's probably going if we give him to L. Kahn. We're forcing him against his will."

Piper leaned her head back against the cushions of the recliner. Her lover's code of conduct, his honor, his morals, would get them killed one day. She'd known that for a long time. She accepted it because acceptance was part of love and she could not help loving Rico. She had always hoped to someday subvert him, take some of the self-righteous shine out of his moral code, if only for the sake of survival, but her influence in that regard had been negligible. It was a testament to Rico's wit and savvy and his ability as a leader that they'd been able to stay alive as long as they had, despite his code. "Talk to me, chica."

"I should give up everything for a suit?"

"I ain't asking you to give up anything. If you want out-"

That made her angry. Rico knew better than to talk like that. "Where you go I go," she said sharply. "If you want to get yourself killed, then I'm dead too." Rico smiled. "You got cojones, corazon." Love talk at a moment like this. It twisted her insides.

It made the hidden truth that only she and Rico knew ride up to the forefront of her thoughts on a tide of foaming emotion. The money she earned from runs like this gave her the means to fight the real fight, the war against the corps, the war to save the Earth before it was totally destroyed. She could face the prospect of death in that cause-had already done so and would do it again, and willingly-but to risk dying for something as despicable as a suit, a man like Surikov, whose life work only made the corps more money, that was almost too much to bear.