Striper Assassin Read online

  Of course, there are nuances to the terrain, special dangers and other distinctions, most of them rather minor, but the careful predator learns the differences with every breath, every glance, every snatch of sound.

  Also, Tikki has good contacts who provide her with the most essential information.

  Her fixer in Chiba steers her to the right people.

  As the express roars through the dark, dank tunnels under the earth, a uniformed Minuteman cop strolls up the aisle to the end of the last car of the train. That’s where Tikki stands, leaning against the car’s rear wall. Her eyes take in the cop’s every movement. Her nose discerns nothing unusual, no hint of either excitement or alarm, though the slag strolls right up to her, looking her over. It’s easy to guess the cause for his interest. It’s highly unlikely that he has spotted the Kang heavy automatic concealed at the small of her back. Rather, it’s probably a question of image.

  Tikki is tall for a female, tall and lean. Her eyes are covered with black Toshiba mirrorshades, and her face is a carefully painted mask of crimson red, striped with black. Her close-cropped hair, including the wispy tuft floating down over her left brow, is tinted to match her face. She wears gleaming blood-red leather—jacket, mesh blouse, slacks, fingerless gloves—all “striped” by the studded bands at her neck, wrists, waist, and on her supple boots.

  All the studs are brushed steel. Tikki has sometimes worn gold studs in the past, but never anything silver. Silver is retro-skag. She hates it.

  “ID?” the cop says, facing her from a step away.

  Tikki lifts her special card right up in front of his face. A squeeze of one corner displays her City of Philadelphia. Inc., weapons permit and official bodyguard ID in alternating sequence. The cop doesn’t react except to move his eyes like he’s reading, then to compare the picture to her face. She could put a monofilament sword straight into his gut right now and he wouldn’t even notice till he felt the first searing rush of pain.

  Amateurs and fools are everywhere. Her primal heart urges her to lash out, take this prey, an easy kill, but she resists.

  Some other night, perhaps.

  The train squeals to a halt in the bowels of the Thirtieth Street transit center. Tikki follows the suits out onto the grim gray platforms and joins the herds moving slowly toward the escalators.

  The suits all wear the colors of their corporate affiliations pinned to their lapels, just like yakuza or ordinary street gangs. Only the corporate gangs have names like Cigna Universal, Renraku, ITT-Rand, SmithKliner, Fuchi, or Aztechnology, each with its special area of influence and interest. The only difference between the corp gangs and the street gangs is the texture of the violence they do and the number of bodies they leave lying around. None really obey the law. Rather, they exert themselves to evade the law, evade capture, evade punishment.

  Tikki often wonders why humans bother making laws at all. At best, laws provide unnecessary complications. To her, the only laws that really matter are the ones governing survival, the struggle between predator and prey, and the balance between the thousand species of animals walking the planet. Nature’s laws.

  The herds ascending the escalators are about half white and half black, brown, or tan. Asians account for a far less significant share of the population here than in other cities, but their power and influence is ubiquitous, obvious at a glance. Trogs and other metahumans maintain a low profile. The Night of Rage still simmers. The slogans of the Alamos 20,000 and various other anti-meta policlubs cover the sides of the trains, the platforms, and concrete columns like so much spattered gore.

  Tikki has no problem with racially motivated hate and violence. It keeps the herds looking in every direction but the one from which she’s coming.

  She rides up to the ground-level concourse.

  Meters-tall trideo screens climb the walls, flaring and buzzing with adverts. The herds of suits spread out to fill the wide floor. Subways, buses, and commuter rail lines all converge here in the Thirtieth Street transit center. Like the Market East station downtown, it is a main hub for suits sluicing between Center City plazas and their secured corporate enclaves out in the burbs. Minuteman patrol cops and the more heavily armed and armored Flash Point Enforcement officers keep a close scan on the mobs pouring ceaselessly through the accessways. The salary men must be protected or else the city’s corporate patrons will take their minions to safer quarters.

  Tikki is stopped twice for ID checks. That’s nothing more than she expected.

  Clusters of telecom stands turn the broad floor of the concourse into an enormous pinball game, breaking the rivers of hustling salarymen into hundreds of individual streams. Tikki steps up to one of the stands and puts a wad of chewing gum over the telecom’s visual pickup. When the time on the telecom’s display shows 20:05:00, she thrusts a certified credstick into the chrome port. Her fingertips tingle, the telecom bleeps. The words “Enter Telecom Code” wink on and off, on and off. Tikki leans toward the display like a near-sighted geezer, interposing her head between the screen and anyone who might try to look over her shoulder. She taps at the keys. Three times she enters the code, and three times she hears sounds like a telecom bleeping at the other end of the line, followed immediately by a return of call tone. She is into and through several secured telecom systems that quickly. Midway along she lifts a Fuchi MemoMan recorder to the telecom’s audio pickup. The corder spits out a rapid-fire electronic melody that gets her past a specially coded protocol barrier.

  The telecom’s display goes blank, jet-black. A male answers, in Japanese. Tikki’s Japanese isn’t fabulous, but she gets by.

  “Who’s this?” he asks.

  “Two guesses,” Tikki murmurs.

  Her reply is enough for a voiceprint analysis that clears her call through the final barrier. Call tone returns. Tikki taps in a final number. A new voice, also male, comes on the line. It is a computer-synthesized simulation of the voice of her Chiba fixer. The agent’s name, translated from the Japanese, means Black Mist. He makes connections for her worldwide and performs other services, all for a fee.

  “Yes?”

  “Anything?” Tikki asks.

  A moment’s pause, then, “Several inquiries.”

  The phrasing there is important. The use of any descriptives, such as “several interesting inquiries”, would mean trouble had arisen. The words as stated mean simply that two or more inquiries for Tikki’s services have been received. She isn’t interested, not right now. She’s made a good connection here in Philly and intends to play it out.

  “What else?”

  “Nothing.”

  That’s the end of the call. Tikki hits the Disconnect key. Her credstick is docked and released. Her only reason for making the call was to find out what else Black Mist might have to tell her about the main matter he’s checking out for her. His info led her here to Philly. She needs to know more, but for the moment can do nothing but wait.

  Somewhere in the city is a man she’s going to kill, with extreme malice, just as soon as he turns up.

  It’s more than personal.

  It’s a fact waiting to happen.

  6

  The night outside the transit center is a flickering, flashing, flaring, neon, phosphorous, halogen, multi-chrome fantasy. Skyswimmers with giant trid screens fill the sky. Adstands with reverberating audio tracks line the sidewalks. Salarymen bustle along in every direction. A seething ocean of automobiles, taxis, and buses hums and snarls and roars. Emergency vehicles with glaring strobes and squealing sirens add a touch of frantic pandemonium to the ambiance of mass confusion.

  An unbroken line of limos, mostly Toyota Elites, waits at curbside. The limo Tikki wants is a Mitsubishi Nightsky, sleek and black and gleaming like rainwater on wax. The double-sized door to the rear passenger compartment swings open as she approaches. Bending low, she climbs right in. The door thumps shut behind her.

  The environmental seals close with a soft gush of air.

  The compartment i
s spacious and rich. Plush synthleather seats like compact sofas face each other across a fully equipped center console replete with trideo, telecom, and refrigerated bar. The trid glows with “Suerte y Muerte”, the gladiator games broadcast from Aztlan. A glass of Suntory beer sits on the bar, freshly poured. Beside the beer lies a pack of slim Sumatran cigarros. Tikki takes the rear-facing seat, glances at the trid and the beer and the cigars, then at the man in the seat facing her.

  “All is well?” he inquires.

  Tikki nods.

  The man’s name is Adama Ho. At least that’s what he says. His look is Anglo, which proves nothing. He has short, thinning hair, deep-set eyes, and a neatly trimmed black mustache and beard that cover his upper lip and jawline but leave his cheeks mostly bare. In his midnight black suit, silk shirt and tie, he looks urbane and elegant.

  Tikki takes nothing for granted. Some of the most dangerous men she has ever met were both soft-spoken and polite, even when confronted by the most vicious of street punks.

  The Anglo look is pure deceit, she’s sure of it, probably the result of body-shop alterations. Instinct is her only evidence for that, but there’s also his fluent Mandarin, which he speaks like a native. Tikki knows about Mandarin. It’s the tongue of China’s ruling Han majority and the only way to speak it the way Adama does is to learn it growing up. That’s exactly how she learned it.

  Mandarin just happens to be the primary language of the Triads. That coincidence alone demands caution.

  Tikki knows about Triads, too.

  Very dangerous.

  “Then Ryokai Naoshi is no longer a problem.”

  To this, Tikki says nothing. She meets Adama’s gaze, evenly, all the answer she need give. As she has already indicated, all is well. She would not be sitting here in the man’s luxurious limo had she not completed her job. Adama should know that. Even if he hasn’t already heard of Ryokai’s assassination via other sources, which she seriously doubts, he should presume that her work is complete.

  Momentarily, Adama forms a smile, a broad smile, clearly visible despite the thick mustache and neatly trimmed beard. Dimples form in his cheeks.

  “Good. Very good,” he says quietly. “Feel free to smoke.”

  A hand formed into the likeness of a blade points to the bar. The limo is armored against attack, the doors secured, so Tikki decides to accept her employer’s generous offer to indulge herself. She opens the pack of Lonjas and draws out one long, slim cigarro. The leaf is the color of café au lait and promises to yield a mild, tangy smoke. Adama draws a golden lighter from the vest of his chic black suit and offers her a flame. She accepts. Adama’s hand catches her eye, not for the first time. He wears a heavy gold ring with a large reddish stone. His nails are long for a male’s and finely manicured. He is nothing if not meticulously groomed.

  As Tikki takes a first drag, the climate controls kick in with a soft gush of air. The smoke is everything she expected. Adama passes her a certified credstick for the hit on the yakuza boss Ryokai Naoshi.

  Tikki nods and slips the stick into a pocket.

  “Satisfactory?” Adama inquires.

  She nods. Very satisfactory.

  Adama lights one of his big, thick soberanos, Honduran leaf, to judge by the scent. Tikki tastes her Suntory. For beer, it isn’t bad. Cider is her drink of choice, but she likes a little variety now and then. She glances at the blood sport on the trid and suppresses her recurring feelings of amazement.

  Tikki is used to deference, respectful treatment, even from major syndicate leaders. In the steel and concrete world of humans, she is a specialist, a technician. She rates special consideration, her skills always in demand. She can usually name her price or simply walk away if the terms of a job don’t suit her. Yet her experience with Adama is unique. At times, his manner is so casual, so familiar, that an objective observer might wonder if something intimate, something owing to gender distinctions, might possibly exist between them.

  “You’ve finished your personal business?” Adama asks.

  Tikki nods again.

  The question comes quietly and casually and Tikki gives only the necessary response. She has certain strategies for survival. Never give away more than necessary, never give away something valuable for nothing. What Adama knows of her personal business tonight is that she had something to do. That is all he needs to know. She has hired on with him in the dual capacity of assassin and sometime bodyguard. That does not endow him with the right to know her every move. Neither does it grant him twenty-four-hour access.

  “Good, very good,” Adama says, still smiling. He takes a long drag on his soberano, gently blows the aromatic smoke away. The smoke billows and curls and vanishes into a ventilation port. “I’m in the mood for some entertainment. I’d like you to come along.”

  “I’m on the clock,” Tikki says.

  “Naturally.” He seems almost amused to say so. His smile broadens to the point of a grin. “Any suggestions?”

  Tikki looks at him quizzically. “Why ask me?”

  “You are a creature of the night, are you not?” says Adama, still smiling, looking at her as if making a quiet little joke. Tikki is used to his little jokes. They don’t come all that frequently, but when they do they always slide near the truth. In another man, she might consider that dangerous. Adama, though, is not just any man. “Go ahead,” he says. “Make a suggestion.”

  Tikki smiles vaguely, wryly. Where to go? Never the same place twice—that is the warning of instinct. “Someplace new.”

  Adama nods, just slightly, approvingly, and keys the limo’s intercom. “Club Penumbra.”

  “Yes, sir,” replies the voice of the chauffeur.

  Adama smiles contentedly as the limo glides smoothly away from the curb, turning in the direction of Center City, just minutes away.

  The club is on Tenth just north of Chinatown. Its real name is Penumbra East, alluding to the original Club Penumbra, which is located in Seattle. The crowd waiting on line at the front door extends halfway down the block toward Girard Street; in places the line is four and five deep.

  The limo swings in and stops at curbside. Scanning for trouble, Tikki steps out first. Adama follows. Together they cross the sidewalk toward the club entrance. Doormen single Tikki out with their eyes and move as if to block her, possibly to conduct a search. Her red-and black-striped face paint and bodyleather might be taken for Penumbra style, but the studs and spikes are definitely not.

  Adama motions the doormen back with a mere flick of the fingers. “No need,” he says, smiling. “No need.”

  Credsticks discreetly change hands.

  The doormen bow and scrape and usher them inside.

  A hostess in black synthleather and glowing neon strips waits in the dark interior. “Welcome to Penumbra East,” she says. “May I have your names, please?”

  “Fuchi,” Adama says, smiling. He glances sideways at Tikki as if to share a private joke. “Mister Fuchi.”

  Adama brushes briefly at his lapel, directing the eyes of the hostess to a pin bearing the corporate colors of Fuchi I.E., the multinational electronics giant. Obviously impressed, the hostess draws a quick breath. She looks surprised, off guard, and suddenly smells very anxious.

  Adama smiles.

  “Of course,” he explains, “you might say I’m traveling incognito tonight. Wakarimasu-ka?”

  “Yes of course,” the hostess says breathlessly. “Mister Fuchi. Wakarimasu.” She nods, she bows, she understands completely.

  “Good,” Adama says amicably. “Very good.”

  “May I show you to a table, Fuchi-sama?”

  “Domo arigato,” Adama says, smiling, nodding faintly.

  “Do itashimashite,” the hostess replies, bowing deeply.

  Tikki refrains from any sort of comment. This business regarding Fuchi I.E. is a farce. Adama is no more a patriarch of Fuchi I.E. than is the fawning hostess. What he is, Tikki suspects, is a ranking Triad official, probably a Red Pole, or 426, in char
ge of enforcement. Certain things he has said in private suggest ties with the Green Circle Gang, a particularly vicious arm of the infamous 999 Society, controlled by Silicon Ma out of Hong Kong. This is interesting because Tikki’s mother once did some work for Silicon Ma himself. Perhaps the crime lord recommended Tikki to Adama…

  As a rule. Triads rarely hire outside help—the average gang boasts thousands of members—but there are always exceptions. The one thing Tikki does know is that her assassination of Ryokai Naoshi in the parking garage, as ordered by Adama, would suit the Green Circle Gang’s style just fine.

  If a Triad gang was intending to move into Philly, hitting the yakuza would be a good way to start. The Philadelphia-Camden sprawl is a kind of three-way split. Northern Philadelphia is the fractured territory, the Zone, constantly battled over by gangs: go-gangs and thrill gangs, ordinary street gangs, fleeting associations of skells and scum, humans and trogs, even elves. Strictly amateur stuff. South Philly belongs to the Sicilian mob. The mob does some serious biz down there, but the yakuza rule the sweetest territory, the casino sprawl over on the Camden side of the Delaware River.

  All of the above have interests downtown. Even the Korean Seoulpa Rings have interests downtown.

  If Tikki were to choose the target for a new prime player, she would definitely go for the yaks. Go for the money, the real nuyen. By far the most interesting game.

  Perhaps Adama is here to scout the territory. Perhaps the Green Circle Gang is already here, but undercover. There are many possibilities, most of them basically irrelevant as far as Tikki is concerned, except as interesting speculation. No one Tikki’s talked to lately has heard of any Triads coming to Philly, but that’s not surprising. It’s a big city, a big world, and crime lords like Silicon Ma aren’t in the habit of advertising their plans. Ma in particular would be much more likely to butcher anyone stupid enough to give anything away.