Striper Assassin (21 page)

How does the biff know where Striper is? Anyone’s guess. How does she know what Hammer wants? That much is obvious. Word travels. When it’s worth money, word travels fast. Hammer steals a glance toward the rooftops, attentive to anything that sounds like approaching rotorcraft, then he looks back at the biff. “What’s it gonna cost?”

“Two fine.”

Hammer grunts. Two thousand nuyen? A lot of coin to spend on some raunchy slot who might be stroking his chain. “Maybe I’ll just beat it out of you.”

The biff smiles. “I don’t think so, lover.”

“No?”

The biff puts two fingers into her mouth, and blows, whistling like Hammer has rarely heard. The sound is loud and shrill and slices through the alley, faintly echoing. A sputtery rumbling arises. Out beyond the end of the alley, over on the other side of the street, five cycles glide into view, coming to an easy halt. The riders wear black synthleather and at least one of them has a submachine gun slung from the shoulder.

Hammer tenses, but hesitates to pull the trigger. The biff smiles and says, “Don’t get excited, hon. They’re just friends, you
ka?
Just watching out for a girl.”

“I don’t like surprises,” Hammer growls.

“Me neither. That’s why I come with my friends. You interested in transacting, baby?”

“One fine.”

The biff laughs, leans toward him just like a ho, showing off her cleavage. “One point five,” she coos.

“I said one.”

They settle on twelve hundred nuyen.

Of course, the slitch will regret it if it turns out she’s playing skanky games.

Hammer will make very sure of that.

27

The room is dark. Twenty trideo screens gleam from the right-hand wall. Adama sits opposite the screens in his ornate wooden chair. Beside him rises the gleaming black marble stand supporting a huge gemstone, like a diamond, about the size of a man’s fist. Tikki waits in her natural form, lying on the floor nearby.

A red-haired female hangs splayed, spread-eagled, from the metal rack in the center of the room. Her body glows with the orange and red-tinted light of the trid screens. Each time she screams, her voice becomes a chorus of shrill echoes that bounce around the room. With each new scream, Adama grins, and the radiance of that grin seems to set the giant white gemstone to sparkling brilliantly.

None of that has anything to do with magic, Tikki knows. Adama dislikes magic just as much as she does.

The torture goes on long. Adama gives precise instructions. The instrument of his will, a black-clad elf named Sticks, seems well-suited for the harrowing of prey. The elf turns again and again to the shiny stainless-steel instruments laid out on a nearby table, selects an instrument with care, and applies it to Adama’s chosen one.

His
Leandra.

Blood pools on the gleaming onyx floor. The flesh of the chosen one comes to resemble the torn and bloody carrion of an animal freshly taken. Tikki’s mouth begins to water. As the moment of death approaches, the prey gasps and shudders and moans.

“Yes!”
Adama exclaims.

His eyes gleam.

The stink of death wafts into the air. With it comes the potent aroma of Adama’s pleasure, swelling to dominate the air. It is a pleasure beyond the ordinary. There is nothing sexual about it, yet it smells like ecstasy, an ecstasy combining elation, exhilaration, and exultation all into one. To Tikki, it is as if Adama finds some special significance in the moment of his chosen one’s death, as if it is a defining moment. This is a thing she understands well. The day she made her first kill, full in her mother’s eyes, she felt a kind of ecstasy, too. Every kill since that first reminds her of who and what she is, and the role that is hers to play. She finds it curious that Adama should kill without ever touching his prey, but she well understands his pleasure. That is why she feels such an affinity for him. Perhaps that alone makes him seem more familiar than most other humans.

Sticks turns away from the body, looking toward Adama. The elf’s only interest here is money. He was offered a certain sum to harrow the prey. There is something amusing in that. When prey turns against prey it has no eyes for the hunter. A human might call it denial, or acute myopia. Tikki considers it stupid.

Very stupid.

“She’s dead,” Stick says, unnecessarily. “That it?”

Smiling broadly, Adama nods, just slightly, and says, “Yes. That is it. That is everything.”

“Then I’ll take my pay.”

“Will you?”

“My money. Remember?”

“Oh, yes,” Adama says. “I remember. Money. You expect me to pay you now.”

“Look, chummer, don’t frag with me.”

“Frag with you? Would I do that?”

“I
want
my money!”

Tikki grumbles. The sound rises from far back in her throat, deep and resonant, carrying throughout the room. Her fangs glisten, briefly bared. She gazes steadily at the elf. Sticks suddenly seems to become aware that she is something more than a fixture in black and red fur. She is three hundred fifty kilos of prime, meat-eating predator and could easily crush the head of a man, or an elf, between her jaws.

Sticks shifts back a step, eyes widening. His scent fills with a mix of fearful emotions, uncertainty, anxiety, a subtle sort of panic.

Adama chuckles. “Yes, your money. How would you like it? In gold? Or perhaps in chips or drugs. Or weapons. Automatic weapons. Machine guns.”

The elf blurts angrily, “Just credsticks, dammit!”

Tikki grumbles again, but this time the sound is more like a rumbling growl: menacing, foreboding. Sticks takes another step backward, looking at her, looking at Adama. The smell of fear rises stronger into the air. Adama smiles broadly. “Credsticks. Yes. I have many of those.”

“Enough of the skanky games already!”

“You must do something before I pay you.”

“Dammit!
What?”

“The tigress feels left out.” With a brief gesture, Adama indicates Tikki. “She is a passionate creature. Hot-blooded. Strong. You must play a little game with her.”

“Are you
whacked?
�

“Whacked? Indeed, no.” Adama smiles quite contentedly. “You must let the tigress kiss you.”

“What?
�

Tikki rises to all fours, and the elf’s smell swells with fear. “She wants to kiss you,” Adama says.

“Keep it away from me!” Sticks shouts.

It…? Tikki grumbles disconsolately and steps toward the center of the room. Sticks snatches up one of the gleaming stainless-steel knives from the table beside him and hurls it at Tikki’s face. She swats the knife out of the air. The blade scratches her paw, but the minor discomfort is mere and gone in an instant. She bares her fangs and
roars.

Sticks’ eyes go wide, his smell turns acid with fear.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Adama says, laughing. “That’s bad. Very bad. The tigress doesn’t like that.”

Prey should never turn on the hunter.

It is wrong.

Tikki advances. The elf shouts at Adama and darts around to the distant side of the table, snatching up another knife, two or three, a handful of knives. Tikki doesn’t care about that. She puts her head to the edge of the table. With a quick snap of her head, the table flips onto its side. The gleaming instruments crash to the floor. The elf jumps back. Tikki swats at the table with a paw and sends it skidding across the floor to crash against the wall. The elf shouts, smelling like panic, and frantically throws the knives. Tikki waits for him to finish, then advances. What little injuries the knives inflict scab over, heal and vanish even as the last knife clangs to the floor.

She backs the elf into a corner.

“NO!” the elf shrieks. “YOU FRAGGER!”

Adama chuckles. “Don’t take it personally,” he says. “It’s just business. I cannot risk allowing you to compromise my security. The tigress I can trust. We have an arrangement, you might say. But you?” Adama chuckles. “I’m sure you understand my position.”

Terror floods the air anew.

Tikki bounds up onto her hind legs, just briefly, and drives her forelegs against the elf’s chest. It’s like swatting flies or monkeys. She need hardly exert herself at all, yet the force of the blow drives the elf back off his feet, slams him into the wall, and drops him to the floor. She has several times his mass and strength, and a speed and agility to equal any human, or any elf. She lets him stagger to his feet. She has time, time to do this right. Prey is best when taken on the run, possessed with terror for the hunter, heart pounding, blood thundering hot and rich through its veins. That is when the kill is truly a kill. That is when the meat tastes sweetest.

Adama begins to laugh softly.

The hunter in him understands.

28

The creature rises out of the darkness with eyes like fire and huge gnashing fangs and slashing claws, roaring like all the demons of hell combined into one malevolent form. There is no escaping it. The monster is filled with anger and hate and a primitive ruthlessness that exceeds all human comprehension. It comes roaring through the darkness, closer and closer, growing larger, growing huge, possessed by the will to maim and kill and destroy.

Ohara screams and becomes suddenly aware of the subdued red glow of his bedroom, of lying in his bed, gripping the sheets, drenched in rank sweat, his hands shaking, his heart pounding wildly. He’s been dreaming again. He knows too well the exegesis of the monster, the embodiment of the horror that haunts him still, not only when he sleeps. He’s been living with it since Seattle, going on three years. Will it never end?

As he struggles to catch his breath, he notices the biffs, Christie and Crystal, sprawled beside him on the bed. Christie moans and shifts, then lies still. The other one doesn’t even stir. They’re laxed out on dorphs. Ohara tried candy like that once. It sent him into what doctors described as a schizo-paranoid episode that lasted for most of three days.

Ohara reaches over to the shelf sweeping away from the head of the bed, and fumbles for his bottle of Dalium tranx. Dry-swallows a pair of capsules, the dosage his doctor prescribed.

The pills help slow his pounding heart, but leave him wide-awake and anxious. He takes a shower, then wraps himself in a satin and cashmere robe and steps into his study. Reddish panels in the ceiling cast a subdued light. Heavy black drapes cover the windows. He sits behind his curving, semi-circular desk and slots
The Power Master
into the datajack behind his right ear. A little track-loop BTL helps him regain his composure. Provides a very minor emotive boost. Once his hands cease quivering, he switches on his desktop comp, brings up his planning portfolio, and reviews the files there for the nth time.

Making a success of Exotech is just a starting point. Gaining control of the board of Exotech’s parent, Kono-Furata-Ko, is only a first step. He has plans, long-range plans, strategic objectives, secret objectives shared with no one. He has his eyes on the real power blocs, the titanic multinationals controlling automated orbital factories and other stations. That’s where the future lies. That’s where the real power will arise, power enough to manipulate the entire global infrastructure, the whole of the human race.

The possibilities are endless. A railgun equipped to launch bits of spaceborne debris like asteroids could subjugate the entire planet. He’s studied the data carefully. A sufficiently large rock fired at the Earth could strike with the impact of a nuclear weapon. That’s one possibility. The massive orbital production of designer chemicals such as his two biffs constantly abuse could just as easily turn humanity into a race of slaves.

The telecom bleeps.

Ohara touches the pickup key, audio only, so he will be heard but not seen. The small screen on the desktop displays the number of the calling telecom, then adds a chest-up view of Ohara’s chief of staff, Enoshi Ken.

“What now?” Ohara snaps impatiently.

“Please excuse this interruption, sir,” says Enoshi. “I know the hour is very late. But I thought you should know. There has been a terrible incident.”

“A
what?”

“Mister Thomas Harris is dead.”

“What?
�

Enoshi briefly bows his head. “Mister Harris was killed along with his wife and a number of personal friends—”

“Impossible!” Ohara interrupts.

“Please excuse me, sir, but this information has been confirmed. Lieutenant Kirkland of the police has only just left my residence. He brought the information personally.”

“What…?
What did you tell him?
�

“Naturally, sir, I thanked him for his diligence, and assured him that the corporation would cooperate fully with the ongoing investigation.”

“That’s all?
That’s all you said?”

“Sir, there was nothing that I
could
tell him.”

And there’s nothing that he can say now, over a telecom line. The police might be listening in. Ohara realizes that he’ll have to cut this short, before Enoshi gives something away. Before anything else goes wrong.