Striper Assassin (9 page)

13

It promises to be a nasty little piece of work, and naturally Dana hasn’t stopped mouthing about it since they got started.

“I’m not a killer,” she says for the ten millionth time. “I’m not going to just walk in and start killing people.”

“Why not?” Mickey jokes. “Sounds like fun.”

“It’s
wrong!
” Dana exclaims.

“Who says so?” Dog Bite demands. “We got ourselves a contract, woman! There ain’t nothing wrong with that!”

“That’s not what I’m saying!”

“We don’t know who these chummers be! They deserve to get smoked! Somebody’s payin’ to get ’em smoked! It don’t get any righter than that!”

“Dog Bite, you’re not even
listening
…”

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong! You got your brain screwed in wrong!”

Sitting in the passenger seat of the van. Hammer lights a final Millennium Red, takes a deep drag, and checks his watch. It’s a couple minutes past twenty-two hundred hours. Any time now.

The corpse in the driver’s seat shifts position. His name’s Axle. He’s got cyberoptics for eyes and black-wired jacks stuck into the side of his skull. He can pilot the van without even putting a hand on the wheel. That won’t be necessary tonight, though. Axle’s the rigger so he does the driving, but this job won’t require much of his special skill. This one is pure rock and roll.

“Alley’s still clear,” Axle murmurs.

The alley is about nine blocks away, well within the hell zone of northeast Philly. Axle can see it because he’s got a floater in the air, an Aerodesign LDSD-23, which is like a helium balloon with a sensor pod slung underneath. The alley Axle is watching is important because it provides the only access to the place they plan to visit tonight. Hammer isn’t worried about possible witnesses. There are no witnesses north of Spring Garden Street and Center City. Just gangs, crazies, thriller chillers, and bikers. Hammer simply prefers no one to get in the way. It would be inconvenient.

The argument in the back of the van starts to get loud. The problem is less Dana than Mickey. They all know about Dana, what sets her off. She and Dog Bite can go at it all day and night yet never take it beyond just butting heads. But once Mickey gets involved, things get out of hand. Mickey just doesn’t care. Not about anything. That really sets Dana to mouthing.

Hammer turns in his seat, looks back, snaps the slide on his Ingram smartgun. The metallic clacking snares their attention. “Showtime.”

Dana gives him a look of profound appeal. Hammer takes it calmly, as calmly as the last drag of his smoke.

“Hammer,” she says.

“Just do your bit. That’s all.”

The look in her eyes turns to resignation.

Axle rolls the van ahead.

Northeast Philly, more than any other part of the city, remembers the Night of Rage when humans and meta-humans met in the streets and set the night to burning. Even after fifteen years the scars are still plain. Block after block of two-and three-story row houses bear gaping wounds, seared and cauterized by fire, many with roofs and whole walls reduced to crumbling masonry, charred timber, and ash. Debris from fallen buildings and mounds of festering garbage flow from the alleys into the streets. Incinerated autos squat along the curbs. The only streetlights are the steel-can fires of derelicts.

Against this background of devastation, tonight’s little job seems like a mere drop of rain.

Clean Sweep, it’s called.

Headlights off, the van turns down a broad alley. The entrance to the target site is just ten meters down, the black metal door of the building on the right. They all put on night-vision goggles with heads-up displays and wire-framed headsets with full ear coverage to guard against interference. All except Dana. The mage doesn’t need that kind of protection.

They pile out. Axle keeps the van running in case they should have to stage a quick extraction. Hammer motions Mickey and Dog Bite to the left of the black metal door and takes the right side for himself. Dana steps up, standing directly in front of the door.

She lifts her hands before her face as if to pray, then begins doing things with her fingers, linking them together, folding, unfolding, forming pyramids, triangles, circles, complex knottings that rush from one configuration to the next. She calls it the emblemology of power, these finger-signs she makes. Hammer doesn’t much care about that. All he knows or cares about is that whatever she does, however she does it, it works.

The dark space between Dana and the door begins to blur and waver like hot summer air shimmering above a road. The door takes on a waxy sheen. The sheen begins to run, flowing, cascading down like a shower of water, only the water is the substance of the door. The next moment there is no door, just a puddle of something black and wet oozing into the alley.

Dana sways, visibly draws a deep breath, then thrusts her hair back from her face. Turning things to ooze costs her a lot. What remains for her to do is far less taxing.

Hammer points at the dark opening of the doorway.

Dana nods, makes more finger-signs.

The music, the flaring lights, the calamitous babble of voices—screaming, shouting, swearing—begins at once. Hammer can’t see or hear any of it thanks to the goggles and headset, but he knows what it’s like. A thousand high-intensity lights all flashing and glaring into your eyes. A thousand maniacs screaming into your head. You can’t think, you can’t fight, you can’t tell what the frag’s going on. Hammer gestures with the Ingram smartgun. Mickey darts into the doorway and the darkness beyond. Hammer follows. Dog Bite and Dana bring up the rear.

The doorway leads into a corridor that immediately turns and ends at a stairway, heading down. Three razorguys with heavy artillery—heavy-caliber SMGs—stagger around on the stairs and in the corridor at the bottom of the stairs. A few quick bursts from Mickey’s AK-97 SMG and Hammer’s smartgun take care of them.

The passage at the bottom of the stairs leads past two doors, both on the right. Dog Bite and Mickey take the first one; Hammer takes the other. The doors aren’t even locked. Hammer enters a room outfitted like a bedroom. A pair of hot, red-tinted bodies twist and writhe on the bed, hands uplifted as if to cover their ears. Even as Hammer opens fire, one of the two bodies slips from the end of the bed and staggers around like a machine with blown circuits, before jerking spasmodically and falling. A pair of quick bursts is all it takes.

“One clear,” Hammer says.

A gasp of static, then Dog Bite replies, “Two clear. We’re all clear. Check this out.”

Hammer lowers his goggles. A long rectangular pane in the wall opposite the foot of the bed gives a view into the other room. Hammer tries the communicating door, which lets him into some kind of control room, now showing the generous damage of automatic weapons fire. Three more bodies lay sprawled amid the debris. The focus of the room is the long gray console that runs along the wall beneath the large window. It looks like the kind of equipment used for professional music recordings, only this isn’t a recording studio and the console isn’t just for sound.

“Look at this skiz,” Dog Bite says. “Man oh man, we could make some fine change selling this stuff.”

Hammer takes a look. What Dog Bite says is true. The case in Dog Bite’s hand contains about twenty silicon chips, and plenty more are scattered about. Sex-chip BTL always sells. Like the name promises, it
is
better than real-life sex in some ways. No mess, no fuss, no need for a cooperative partner or partners.

Hammer wonders why their Mr. Johnson wanted some dinky BTL lab in northeast Philly wasted, along with everyone in it.

Who knows?

“Set the charges,” Hammer says. “Torch all of it.”

Dog Bite looks at him. “You sure?”

“We got a contract.”

“Who’s to know?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Hey! Stupid’s my middle name!”

Mickey starts to laugh; Dog Bite, too. Hammer’s heard the joke too often to be amused.

Five minutes later. Dog Bite’s explosives go off. Axle spots the flames by remote. The entire building is soon engulfed. Mr. Johnson should be pleased.

14

The night rumbles with the sounds of traffic and the massed machinery of more than a million human beings.

Neon flickers, chrome gleams.

Voices echo through the alley.

Tikki waits in the shadows, a niche of brick and mortar that smells of piss and rancid liquor. A motorcycle buzzes past, one of those shiny aerodyne machines with sleek plastic cowlings, colored like the blood of prey. And this is one of the fastest, a Rapier. It comes to a halt nearby, just off to her right, engine whining, winding down. Tikki pulls the Kang heavy automatic pistol from under her jacket and steps from her hiding place.

Just a few paces up the alley is a basement-level bar called Numero Uno. Signs advertising beer and other attractions wink and flash above the stairs leading down to the entrance. It’s a gathering place for losers, fools who imagine themselves immune to injury and death. Most of them come on cycles, which is why Tikki is here now. She walks toward the newly arrived Rapier, the Kang held back behind her right hip.

As she approaches, the big hairy ork in synthleather and studs dismounts the Rapier, turning toward her with a smile. The teeth protruding like tusks from his lower jaw give the smile a feral look. “Hoi, biff,” he grunts.

Tikki sneers. She hasn’t even opened her mouth and already the ork is showing her an attitude. Orks do that a lot, behaving like they can do anything they please just because they’re big and strong. Tikki finds that irritating. It’s not only a challenge to her—her power, her position—but a challenge against Nature, the balance of power among the many predators populating the human domain. A threat she has to meet.

She brings up the Kang, points it at the ork’s face, then extends her other hand, palm-up. “Keys,” she growls. “Now.”

The ork frowns and stares, then grunts, “You gotta be skeekin’ me, geek.”

She never skeeks. “Last chance.”

The ork sneers, opens his mouth.

Tikki drops her arm and squeezes the trigger. The Kang blams. A tongue of flame strokes the shadowed air. The ork howls and falls to one knee, his face contorted with pain. He’s got a hole in his right boot, a big bloody hole, but that couldn’t be helped. That was a necessary part of the lesson. Tikki won’t be taken lightly, not by anyone. When she says something, she expects people to listen, orks included.

“Keys.”

The ork shouts and curses and hands her the keys. He’s also saying what he’s going to do to her, how she’s going to regret shooting him. Tikki doesn’t like that. It’s a bad attitude grown worse. She swings the Kang like a club against the side of his head, the impact telegraphing up her arm almost to the elbow. That’s how she knows that the blow would have laid most humans out cold. The ork’s a little too tough for that. His head jerks over sideways and he sways toward the ground, but he catches himself on one arm. Tikki swings the Kang again.

This time, the ork goes down.

Tikki points the Kang’s muzzle at his head, finger tightening on the trigger, then hesitates when she sees him going slack. A part of her wants to finish the job, dust the ork, blow his head clean off, but another, calmer part of her is saying there’s no need. For a moment, she could go either way. The one thing she’s sure of is that Adama would laugh, even call her a fool, for leaving the ork alive. That she could not stand.

Abruptly, she points the Kang and makes it roar four times in quick succession. What’s left of the ork is sufficiently dead to satisfy anyone, and that is as it should be.

That’s good, very good, she decides.

She thrusts the ork back with a shove of her foot and pulls the bike upright. Tikki knows about bikes and is well-practiced in their use. They are very handy implements.

Too bad her mother couldn’t stand them.

Couldn’t abide the noise.

Noise is part of the machine, intrinsic. The greater the noise, the greater the bike. She jerks the Rapier’s throttle, sets the engine to wailing, the rear tire to spinning, shrieking, and with one foot planted on the ground she whips the bike around in a quick half circle. A flashy but effective way to quickly reverse direction. Tikki drops her weight onto the cushioned synthleather seat, and the cycle screams, sending her hurtling up the alley and out to the street.

Traffic around Center City is dense and sluggish. Cars and trucks jam the streets. Scooters and bicycles flood the curb lanes. Tikki winds her way through the press, wrenching the throttle on full, setting the Rapier to screaming, only to jerk the brakes and make the rear tire shriek.

The siren from a Minuteman patrol cruiser wails out, and a cop waves at her through the cruiser’s window, but there’s no way a full-sized vehicle can pursue her through the crush.

She veers around a corner.

Minutes later, she’s into the underground, the sublevel parking garage beneath KFK plaza. The platinum towers above provide office space for the Philadelphia branch of the city’s leading yakuza clan, the Honjowara-gumi.

Tikki’s biz tonight involves that very group—that is, a particular member of that group.