Who Hunts the Hunter (6 page)

“Not bad,” he says, then turns toward the dummy."Chest shots’re okay, but the head shot’s dead on. I guess you gotta be good to make Commando One.”

“Say what?”

Art turns and looks at him, nodding."Sure, kid. You wanna play dumb, that’s fine. Null sweat. We’ll pretend you never heard of Commando One. You were never in the UCAS Marines, First Division. You weren’t first in on that little dustup in Morocco. You didn’t see your CO’s intestines blown out and that’s got nothing to do with you coming back to the plex and joining a peaceable organization like the D.W.W.M. If that’s how you want it, that’s fine.”

Brian says, slowly, “Who the frag are you?”

“You ask too many questions.”

“You’re not Water Department.”

“Oh, no?” Art steps up real close, close enough for Brian to smell his spearmint-flavored breath. His eyes get very intense, his expression like granite. If this is his imitation of a Marine drill instructor, it ain’t half-bad."Lemme ask you something,” he says, quietly."Why do you think you’re here?”

“I got no idea.”

Art stares, then says, “I’ll tell you a little story, kid. There’s maybe twenty million people in this megaplex, Jersey included. What do you think those people depend on more than anything else just to survive? What do you think would happen if some nasty little Sixth World virus got into the water supply? Do you have any concept of how fast this whole plex could go down the drain?”

This is unreal. Brian wonders if he’s hallucinating. No one outside the military knows about his involvement with Commando One, or Morocco, or any of the rest. Art must have some heavyweight federal connections, and yet with all that talk about water .. .

“What are you talking about?”

“You heard me.”

“So what’re you telling me? You’re running some kind of security op to protect the water supply?”

“We do what we have to do, kid.”

Brian holds back a sudden flaring of temper. Enough with the “kid” squat, already! He’ll be fragging thirty next week."What’d you mean ‘we’? Who is ‘we’?”

“You. Me. Anybody the Department needs.”

“The
Water
Department?”

Art nods."D.W.W.M.”

“And you’re looping me in.”

“Yeah.”

“To do what?”

“Whatever’s necessary.”

“This is novacrap.”

Art stares at him a few moments, then says, “How does triple time and a half sound to you?”

Brian gapes."You ain’t serious.”

“I’m damn serious.”

“Nobody gets pay like that.”

“Maybe you think the lives of twenty million people aren’t worth a few extra nuyen.”

“I can’t believe the Water Department—”

“Kid, you don’t know the half of it.”

“And maybe I don’t wanna know—”

“Good. You ask too many damn questions.”

Art turns and heads down the hall toward the back of the building. The lighting panels overhead light up before him and fall dark to his rear. Brian considers making a break for the door, but wonders if he’d live to see the street.

“You coming?” Art asks from the distant end of the hall.

"I’m thinking about it,” Brian replies. Triple time and a half? That’s tempting even if Art is lu-lu.

“Don’t think too long, kid.”

“There ain’t nothing in the union contract about squat like this.”

Art nods."You’re right. Forget it, kid. It’s not your job. I’m sure there must be some other slag with your qualifications somewhere in the Department. Lose yourself. I’m not gonna trust my life to some candy-ass punk who can’t hack it—”

“Now wait one fragging second!”

“Kid, you either got balls or you don’t.”

“Who the frag do you think you’re—!” Brian begins, so hot he thinks he might pop, but then Art steps through a doorway and out of sight. The lighting panels above wink out and the hallway goes dark.

Fragging great.

7

Churning storm clouds turn the day into twilight. Sweat washes the blood from her fur and then freezes. The cold crisp air burns her throat and lungs, but the burning soon subsides. Her limbs ache with fatigue, but the aches fade as well. Tikki lopes and runs. The trail is clear before her—the scents, the signs in the snow—drawing her onward. She will never stop, never pause, till she has her cub again and the elves have been repaid.

The trail of the elves’ ACV follows the old road through the forest, around the foot of a mountain, upslope and down, through dense copses of woods and across half-frozen rivers of broken rock. Every running step, every breath, every current of air slipping past her nose and ruffling her thick fur reminds her of the winters of eastern Siberia and Manchuria. She and her mother once traveled for weeks in search of prey, constantly on the move, testing the air, watching the ground for signs, battling other creatures to prove their right to the prey they hunted. That was when she learned of the strength nature had granted her, that she could push herself to the point of exhaustion again and again, and still continue the hunt.

Now, she plows over a snowbank two meters tall and suddenly descends to the point where the snow-covered track through the forest meets a narrow, icy strip of pavement called the Road to Nowhere.

The locals gave it that name, but Tikki knows that every road goes somewhere, and she’s seen and smelled and heard enough to know what goes on. In the summer, the Road to Nowhere leads directly north to the border between the United Canadian and American States and the Republic of Quebec. The runners who ride this road in every kind of armed and armored vehicle carry cyberware and chips and simsense rigs into Quebec. Such things are taxed very heavily there, enough to make smuggling a lucrative trade. In the night, when the air grows still and hearths glow with heat and liquor paints the air, she has heard two-legs boasting of the fortunes to be made along the Road to Nowhere.

Two kilometers further on stands the last waystation on the Road: a rickety wooden structure that might once have been a barn or a home, but now serves as a watering hole, an oasis amid the trees and snow.

A dog begins barking as Tikki approaches, but she knows the dog is chained to a small house at the rear of the tavern and poses no threat. A soft rumble of warning rises out of her throat and the beast abruptly goes silent, smelling like fear.

Between the tavern and the ice-covered road wait a collection of vehicles, a Sikorsky-Bell Red Ranger, small and swift and heavily armed, a Chrysler-Nissan G12A, and others, vans, pickups, all with custom mounts and oversized tires. Among them sits a boxy Mostrans KVP-14T Air-Cushion Vehicle. It has a weapons pod over the cab. Tikki slips through the shadows to the side of the vehicle and sniffs at the cargo door. At first, she isn’t sure what she’s smelling, but then something changes in the air and she catches the scent of her cub. The scent comes from inside the truck, she’s sure of it. But it’s old. Her cub was here, but now it’s gone. Gone where? She glances around, sniffs the air, then waits.

Darker clouds boil across the sky. Lightning flashes in the distance. The door at the front of the tavern creaks open and bangs shut. A male approaches, a human male, clad in natural fibers and odd bits of jewelry and smelling of alcohol. A large knife and a sawed-off shotgun hang from the belts slashing across his hips. He slips on the hard-packed snow in front of the tavern and staggers drunkenly. He pulls open the driver’s door of the Mostrans. Tikki steps out from the vehicle’s rear.

“Hoi.”

The male jerks as if startled, and grunts, and turns to look at her. She is in her human guise now, and she is nude. She steps nearer. A faint sheen of melted ice gleams from her skin. The male stares at her, then smiles. He says something in some unknown tongue, then switches to English, oddly accented."Where you come from?”

“Looking for friends.”

“Here I am.”

Tikki shakes her head."Elves.”

“Don’t need no fragging elves.”

The ploy is not working, Tikki realizes, and that is very aggravating. It’s what she gets for trying to get subtle. She’s seen this kind of thing work in practically every actionvid she’s ever watched: the female offers her body, the male gives the female whatever she wants. Yet this stupid fragging two-leg male sees her nude and thinks only of sex—right here, right now. She smells it in his scent. And she’s too short of time to try and take the tease any further.

She hurls herself at him, using her hands like bludgeons, slamming into his face and head, only her hands are massive paws and her arms are covered with fur, and she’s driving him down, down, into the snow.

The male’s struggles grow frantic. Words of fear burst from his mouth. Tikki straddles his chest and pins his arms and leans down till her face is just a breath away from his. As she speaks, fangs gleam from among her teeth. She feels a sudden urge to seize his neck in her jaws and squeeze the life out of him, but she resists."The elves are where?”

The male stammers, straining to squirm away. His eyes are huge with terror."Don’t know! Headed south ..

That is no news. Two-legs on the Road to Nowhere head in only two directions and she already knows the elves did not go north."Their names.”

“T-Tang ...
called
one
Tang
!”

Streetname. Assumed name. Runner? corporate? criminal? what? “There were three.”

“Don’t know the slitches’ names!”

Then Tang is the name of the male."They paid you how?”

“Cred. Credstick.”

“Give it.”

“My pocket!”

Tikki tugs and tears. A credstick falls into the snow. She snatches it up, then lowers her face to the male’s face, breath rumbling in her throat. She can feel the fur coming out on her face, her fangs lengthening, her arms and shoulders swelling with power."The elves used your truck,” she growls in a voice inhumanly deep."What did they tell you?"

"Hunting ... going hunting!”

“Hunting what?”

“Moose! I don’t know!”

That is a lie, but it does not smell like a lie. The male is too scared to lie, so the elves must have told him lies. No animal would wait while a hunter stalked near in a noisy ACV. Except a cub too young and too weak to run. Or a cub who thought to hide.

Tikki drives one paw across the male’s face, hitting hard enough to hurt. That is the payment the male deserves for helping the elves. He slumps, unconscious. Lucky to be alive. Tikki stands.

The credstick in her hand gleams softly. It looks like a certified credstick. Such sticks may be used by anyone. Unlike normal credsticks, they carry no electronic codes to identify the bearer. They do, however, carry codes that identify the bank or corp that issued them, and that may lead her to the elf called Tang and the two females.

Tikki considers the male at her feet, and the Mostrans ACV, dismisses both and walks to the door of the tavern. A cloud smelling of two-leg sweat, stale beer, and cigarettes meets her nose long before she puts out a hand and pushes inside.

The main room is small and rustic and, like the outside, seems made of wood. The music keening quietly from the neon-stroked box in the corner is nearly a decade behind the mode. The two-legged humans seated on stools at the bar and at tables scattered around are dressed in ragged natural fibers and cheap plastiwear. One or two wear feathers and other ornaments suggestive of Amerinds.

Beside the door is a payfone. Tikki turns to that, slots the credstick from her friend outside, and keys a telecom code. The other end rings once. The voice that answers is like two voices, one male, one female, speaking in synch.

“Your number?”

Tikki keys in a number. This is a previously established code that ID’s her as the owner of an account possessing much nuyen. As the next several moments pass, Tikki watches the payfone’s small viewscreen. The normal calling screen is gradually replaced by a stylized face, a sort of cartoon animation, far too large to fit on the screen. Only the eyes are visible. They seem to glare.

“This is Oracle,” the voice says.

“I want a trace.”

“Identify.”

“The credstick in this telecom. Who bought it? Where are they now? Everything.”

“Scanning.”

A few seconds pass.

“Report in five hours.”

The call ends. Tikki hangs up and turns from the wall. The neon-stroked box in the corner has fallen silent. Every two-leg in the room is gazing at her. Several are showing their teeth, smiling. She realizes why as a female steps toward her, pointing at her front."Wuss,” the female says, “you look like you’re missing something.”

Tikki nods understanding."Give me your clothes.”

The female frowns and stares, then throws back her head and laughs. This is not to show amusement. It is to show ridicule, disdain, dominance. Tikki seizes the female’s throat, jerks her around in a half-circle, and flings her against the wall.

“Give me your clothes.”

Everything changes. The female blubbers incoherently, cowering, slumping to the floor. A large male rises from a nearby table and comes toward Tikki from the left. He smells like anger and makes a fist and that is a mistake. Before he can strike, Tikki drives the heel of her foot into his chest, then lunges, smashing her head into his jaw.