Nyx Smith - Fade to Black

Shank wondered about that.

The Willow Brook Mall lay just across the Passaic River, putting it just beyond the border where Sector 20 of the Newark plex met the western extent of the Patterson-Passaic sprawl.

The mall had three strategic aspects: it attracted slags from the plex as well as burbies from the corporate out-lands, it straddled the confluence of several transitways and limited-access highways, and its parking fields went on forever.

At two a.m., Field 17D in the northwest quad was deserted but for a few scattered sedans and one black Toyota Elite limousine. Rico scanned the limo from a distance, checking the registration tags. Elites were as common as water, even in the Newark plex, but this wasn't L. Kahn's limo. Same model, different year.

"Think we'll make it?" Shank asked.

The time for worrying was over. "Ask me later."

"Nice answer, boss."

Shank put the Renault-Fiat Eurovan in gear and drove ahead. The rest of the team was in Thorvin's van, parked a safe distance away. They would stay out of sight, parked among other vehicles, until certain preliminaries had been satisfied.

Rico keyed his headset, and said, "We're moving."

Thorvin acknowledged.

Shank steered the Eurovan into field 17D and brought them to a halt about two spaces away from the waiting Elite. A few moments passed, then the rear door of the limo opened and a suit got out. He didn't look like nothing special, average height and build, medium age, dark gray suit and gloves to go with it. Standard corporate style. The style made the slag a real Johnson, anonymous, the perfect front man for a corp. You might see him a thousand times a day on the street, but you'd never remember him because nothing about him was at all memorable.

A second suit appeared, standing up on the far side of the limo. This was no Johnson. Rather, it was the suit's security man, a prime cutter.

Rico got out and met the suit midway between the van and the limo, pausing about two steps away, near enough that they'd both be in trouble if anybody got stupid. They hooked each other over. The suit motioned very briefly with one hand, glancing toward Rico's hip. He spoke with a voice as bland as his looks. "Mall security might spot that shooter of yours."

"We ain't gonna be here that long."

The suit nodded vaguely. "You have the merchandise, I presume?"

"You got the juice?"

The suit slowly drew open one side of his suit jacket, revealing the heavy automatic bolstered under his shoulder as well as the plastipak of certified credsticks in his inside breast pocket. "The price as agreed in certified sticks."

"I wanna check 'em."

"First I see what I'm buying."

"You see, but you don't touch until I check the sticks."

The suit nodded, letting his jacket swing closed, and said simply, "Agreed."

Minor points, but even minors points counted here. In this game, nobody trusted nobody and even a little slip could push the panic button and bring out the shooters. Rico didn't mind letting the slag see Surikov. He could "see" him from five or ten meters away. He'd be unlikely to try anything, if he had anything in mind, till the range narrowed a bit. Step by step, slow and careful-that was the game plan, the accepted procedure.

Rico keyed his headset. "Ready."

Thorvin acknowledged.

Momentarily, the van came rolling up. Thorvin stopped it, according to plan, on the far side of the Renault-Fiat Eurovan from where Rico stood with the suit. When Filly and Dok emerged with Surikov, they stepped out in front of the Eurovan just far enough to show Surikov's face.

"You're very careful," the suit remarked.

"It pays," Rico replied.

"Once you've checked the credsticks, I want a DNA and retina scan."

"My man checks your equipment."

"That's fine."

Checking the suit's credsticks didn't take long. Rico had a portable verifier on his belt, not a stock model. Piper and Thorvin had put the unit together. Piper said the unit's integral chipware would detect phony bank encoding to a very high degree of certainty. That was good enough for Rico. He slotted the sticks one by one into the unit, waited for a pair of soft beeps, then passed them back to the suit. The sticks passed inspection.

Another slag emerged from the Toyota Elite. The suit introduced him as a technical aide. The aide showed Rico the pack of scanners he intended to use on Surikov. Rico motioned Dok over. Dok checked the scanners with gear of his own.

"Standard equipment," he concluded.

"Your man goes with my man," Rico said to the suit, "checks the merchandise, reports to you, then we make the swap."

"Agreed."

The final check took about a minute. The aide returned and gave the suit a nod. "Bring me the merchandise and then you get the sticks," the suit said.

"Right."

Here was the moment that counted. Rico took a quick look around. The suit's cutter hadn't changed position. The parking field around them looked clear. Thorvin wasn't giving any alerts based on readings from his own equipment or anything Bandit had to say. The assumption, then, was that everything looked chill. Rico motioned for Dok and Filly to bring Surikov forward. Their steps, scuffing against the pavement, seemed really loud. They moved slowly, at a measured pace. Seconds stretched out long.

"That's close enough," the suit said, lifting a hand toward Surikov, palm out. Then the slag's forearm jerked and something like a shotgun roared, and Rico realized the sleazebag had a cybergun implanted in his arm.

That explained the gloves. The glove on the right hand covered the firing port. The glove vanished with the roar of the cybergun and a flaring red tongue of fire.

As the roar began to fade, Rico had the Predator from his hip holster gripped in his hand and coming up, coming on-line, and putting a red targeting indicator on the suit's face.

In the background, on the far side of the limo, the suit's cutter was moving.

This time, Rico realized, the game was for keeps.

Bandit discerned nothing of any interest on or around the parking field or for a kilometer or more in any direction. The spells he used uncovered no imminent threats, no enemies. The only thing that really seemed to merit his attention was the suit's limousine.

In astral space, the distance between Thorvin's van and the limo was negligible. Bandit crossed it in practically no time at all. Getting further than that was another matter. The limo at first seemed like an ordinary car, but that wasn't quite true. Something about it was wrong, out of character for a car. Several minutes of probing brought Bandit an answer. The limo was protected by a powerful ward. He hadn't realized this before because the ward was masked, hidden, deliberately concealed. This was very unusual. Concealing a ward was difficult. It suggested to him that someone or something of great value must be inside the limo. Unraveling the ward would be a worthy challenge.

Before he could finish, however, he assensed the violence erupting around him on the physical plane, and gained a sudden insight as to the reason for the limo's astral ward.

He returned to his physical body, looked toward Thorvin, and said, "I think there's a mage in that car."

"What CAR?" Thorvin shouted over the roar of gunfire.

"The limousine."

The blast of the cybergun caught Dok completely off-guard. He saw the suit lift a hand palm-out, then that hand disappeared behind a flaring of fiery red. The blast assaulted his ears. He caught himself in mid-stride, saw Rico's gun coming up and felt Surikov falling, pulling him off-balance.

Dok tightened his hold on Surikov's arm, but it was pointless. The man dropped like meat, collapsing onto his back. Dok staggered, men caught his balance, looking down in time to see the results of the suit's single shot unfolding. The blast from the cybergun had shredded Surikov's neck. He was dead or close to it. Dok began bending toward the man and opened his mouth to shout, but too late. It happened too fast. Surikov's eyes quivered like gelatin, then began boiling. A dark, viscous fluid began trickling from his ears. Steam swirled. The man's face began collapsing in on itself. Dok knew exactly what was happening. He'd seen effects like this before. Not every cortex bomb was designed for explosive force. Some were rigged with white phosphorous or burn-gel. They might be keyed to life signs, or to a remote, and they left nothing behind but a puddle of simmering goop.