Mel Odom - Preying for keeps

Skater ran a careful hand through his hair. The wound he'd taken the previous night had been tended but was still sore. He walked back to the office set against the wall to his left.

The amphibian bobbed in a channel of water that cut through the heart of the warehouse while plascrete shoulders on both sides held parking areas and spaces for heavy equipment According to Wheeler, the place had once been used for marine salvage and was now operated as a front for black-market goods moving through UCAS. The dwarf had earned the right to use the warehouse, bul be didn't tell any stories about why.

The building smelled of diesel fuel and machine oil, with only faint wafts from the sea-scent of the Sound. The windows were all whole, but had been painted black, giving the place a run-down appearance that belied the expansive security system it housed.

Cullen Trey sat inside the office watching the quartet of sec-cameras with overlapping fields of view. He was dressed casually, but Skater knew it was a casualness that wasn't casually afforded. The mage still looked out of place in front of the three-year-old calendar sporting holopics from a trid-action series about three scantily clad women fighting crime with big guns and deadly magic. The show had a cult audience and stayed in syndication despite repeated vicious slams by critics. August showed a bare-breasted Jolie wrestling a hellbender in a swampy bayou. Standing all around her in their boats were Gulf pirates holding automatic weapons and watching her struggle with lust-filled eyes.

A trid turned to twenty-four-hours news was showing footage from a grisly piece of biz that had happened in the Renton Mall. Evidently a mother who'd been stricken with the mysterious laughing death disease had gone mad and attacked her own children. The woman had been ill and displayed symptoms now associated with the disease: yellowing of the skin, reddening of the eyes, loss of motor coordination, and dementia. Somehow, she'd got herself out of bed and followed her two children to the Mall where she'd severely mauled them both before sec-guards put her down in a blaze of gunfire. Unconfirmed reports said she had recently been treated by Doc Wagon and, despite lack of definitive proof, reporters were starting to refer to the diseased people as "DocWackos." Lone Star had not released any report on their findings as to the cause of the disease, stating only that it was a virus.

Skater listened intently as the aroma of fresh soykaf filled the small room.

"Ready?" Trey asked. Before him, an arrangement of charms, bracelets, and rings lay on piece of silk embroidered with what Skater assumed to be some kind of arcane symbols. The mage touched them as he watched the screens, then began placing them on his person.

"Ready." Skater turned away from the trid and poured himself a cup from the kaf-maker tucked neatly into the corner under three shelves of mechanical reference manuals.

"She hasn't contacted you?" Trey asked.

Skater shook his head. There was only one she the mage could have been referring to.

Trey finished the last of his preparations. "I really thought she'd be here to see this thing through."

"She's got her reasons for not wanting to go."

"True. But we're operating under a death sentence here. Could it really be any worse?"

Skater remembered the fear he'd seen in Archangel's eyes. "Yeah, I think maybe it could." He checked the time. "It's almost eight. Let's button up here."

Less than ten minutes later, he and Trey had shut down the office, leaving up the bare-bones security systems. Wheeler was already in the cockpit warming the engine, and Elvis and Duran stood beside the door.

They loaded into the plane with no attempt at small talk. They'd all been tense since making the decision to hit NuGene, but the various tasks each one had assumed to prepare for the operation had kept them from taking it out on each other. A few hours of rest had helped, too.

Skater had heard snatches from Kestrel overnight and throughout the day that everyone looking for them- McKenzie, the elves, and the yakuza-was heated up to almost a fever pitch. The net was drawing tighter around Seattle.

Skater cast the mooring line loose and pulled himself up into the co-pilot's seat, adjusting to the rocking movement of the amphibian on the water. "Get us out of here," he told Wheeler.

The dwarf nodded. He sealed himself off in the plastic rigger's cocoon to totally immerse himself in the plane's operations. From now on, Skater knew, all communication with Wheeler would have to be through the aircraft's radio headsets. Sluggish at first, the plane gained speed, pushing toward the double doors. A press of a button on the control panel to bounce an IR signal off a servo mounted at the front of the warehouse made the doors slide sideways.

The waterway cut through fifty meters of plascrete and led directly into Puget Sound. Night lay like a cloak over the sprawl.

As the Fiat-Fokker passed the double doors. Skater spotted the figure standing there. "Hold it," he told Wheeler over the amphibian's com.

The dwarf cut the engine immediately, but the plane continued on across the water surface a few meters more.

Even without his low-light enhancement, Skater recognized Archangel in the dark.

She wore black synthdenim jeans and a black turtleneck under a gray trench coat. She held the straps of a heavy backpack tight in one white-knuckled fist. Tense anger darkened her features.

Skater popped the door and threw it back. He stood up so she could clearly see him.

"You're going through with this then?" she demanded.

"No choice," Skater said. Her hesitation probably lasted only an instant, but he felt the weight of it and knew she did too.

"Damn you. Jack, if we get caught." Her voice was hard and fierce, and he knew she meant every word of it. She stepped forward and offered her hand.

Skater took it and pulled her aboard. Even before she could get to her seat. Wheeler had pushed the throttle forward. In seconds, the Fiat-Fokker powered out onto the lake, then rose quickly into the black sky, cutting through the heavy cloud cover.

How much time before we make the border?" Archangel asked.

Skater checked the time. They'd been in the air-in silence-for almost twenty minutes, getting up to altitude and speed. "Couple hours, give or take ten minutes. We're going in slow, looping back in from the Pacific. If everything works out, we'll meet up with an approaching storm front and should be able to use that for cover part of the way in."

"And after that?" she asked.

Skater looked at her. "After that, we're black-market arms dealers making a border run. We meet up with resistance, and we take the fall."

"Losing the plane?"

"We have to in order to make it look good. We'll go down near the Willamette River north of the city and just over the Wall, well beyond the river lock. Once in the river, we've got two undersea sleds and scuba gear. With all the action we'll stir up in the area, both land and sea, we should be clear before the first shock troops arrive. It's about five kilometers into Portland."

"They're going to be looking for bodies," Archangel said.

"Yepper," Duran said. He held up two thick fingers. "And they'll find them. Me and Elvis did a little recruiting while these guys were putting together the ordnance packages. We were gonna find us a street doc to sell us a coupla bodies, but then we tripped over a pair of Halloweeners all nice and geeked in some turf action." He twitched his lips back to show his fangs.

"Do they have believable histories if the Border Patrol does a check on them?" Archangel reached into her backpack and brought out her deck and a portable telecom. She handed the ork the datacord to jack the deck into the plane's computer.