black market. He’d asked about
it discreetly on Shadowland, and
almost got kicked from the thread
for spamming. That made finding
a dragon claw about as rare
as seeing a Sasquatch before
the Awakening. Yankee’s brain
churned with questions.
PAST SALVAGE 74
They reached the vault and returned the box. Shinigami didn’t speak again until they were cruising down Alaskan Way inside Yankee’s Dynamit.
Both men were lost in thought. Yankee was trying to remember what he’d read about dragons and their claws. He’d kept a stray cat once as a kid. It was a half feral little beast with striped fur. The thing tore out one of its claws during a scuffle and it never grew back. Yankee wondered if dragons were the same way. There was something else, too. He couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a reason that claw had ended up jammed into a torn off section of an airliner wing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Shinigami broke the silence. “You ever spend any real time on the wa-ter, Yankee?”
Yankee shook his head.
“The first thing I learned about being a pirate is drek breaks down faster on the water.”
“You’re talking about boats?”
“I’m talking about everything, omae. For boats, there is a point where the cost and effort of making repairs outweighs the value of the vessel.
We say those ships are past salvage.” He coughed and bundled his still-wet hair into a ponytail. A row of bronze datajack ports dotted the side of the pirate’s head. “It’s the same with the cyber. The guys in my crew have been talking about Bioware. Its not the type of thing that’s gonna rust, y’know?”
Yankee scanned his friend for a long moment before returning his focus to the road. Without the beard, Shinigami appeared to be a man in his late thirties. Even that was ten years past the truth. “You think about what you’ll do with the cred you make off this deal?”
“I may buy my own boat and start my own crew. No more working for bottom feeders and so-called captains. Or I could build a house on the beach and fill it with ladies. What do you think about that? I bet you’d finally come visit me then, neh?
“I think you should get out of the biz. I had that kind of nuyen, I’d hop a plane to New York, catch a ball game, and then get lost somewhere nobody could find me.”
Yankee felt his commlink buzz. A message from his fixer pulsed in his inbox. He checked it quickly and said, “We’re on. The buyers Brightmore set up all agreed to the location and the terms. He’s still offering to be on hand to run the negotiation.”
“I don’t trust the elf, omae. I trust you. That’s why I cut you in on the deal.”
Yankee ogled Shinigami’s rented suit a fourth time and considered an-other reason why the pirate cut him in on the deal.
t
There aren’t more than a dozen public places in Seattle where they pat you down on the way in. Yankee chose the one with the most children. The Se-attle Aquarium billed itself as family friendly, which meant weapon sniff-ers at every entrance. Wolverine Security officsniff-ers patrolled the building in regular circuits, but the beating heart of the security mechanism was an extensive CCTV system. The Aquarium took security very seriously. They had to. Some of the specimens here couldn’t be found anywhere else in the UCAS.
Yankee and Shinigami stowed their weapons in a row of lockers in an alcove outside the main entrance. Now Yankee stood with his client be-tween the Pacific Coral Reef and Ocean Oddities exhibits, just two busi-nessmen gnawing cafeteria soy dogs as they watched the fish swim by.
A small platoon of children pushed out white noise in their identical blue and white tee shirts—a corp-sponsored after school program, judging by the Yamatetsu symbol scrawled across their backs. This spot in partic-ular was a hit for the kids. The ‘A Closer Look’ hands on exhibit gave the kids a chance to play with microscopes and coral samples. Twenty nuy-en bought off a tenuy-enage worker to swap out coral samples at one the half dozen stations for the claw shavings. From where the two men stood they could make eye contact with anyone coming into the room and direct them to the right sample.
Their meeting was set for 6 p.m. Yankee’s watch showed all fives when the first customer arrived. The man’s bespoke suit and brusk manner sig-naled he wasn’t here to admire sea life. He muscled past children, his eyes scanning the room. Shinigami nudged Yankee. “You think that’s him?”
“How about you go say hoi and find out?”
Shinigami looked wounded. “That’s where your skills come in, omae.
The way we handle people on the water has more to do with steel than words.”
Yankee made eye contact with the buyer. He looked Eastern Europe-an—German or maybe Russian. Brightmore never mentioned Russians.
The man’s weathered face and gray-streaked blond hair gave the impres-sion he’d been in the corporate biz a long time. Yankee glanced towards the microscope and nodded. The man nodded back, a tight, forced salutary
gesture, and then went to the microscope. A moment later he tensed up, shook his head violently, and stormed out of the room.
Shinigami said, “That how this biz supposed to go?”
“No,” Yankee said, “Not at all.” Watching the European leave, he felt compelled to head for the entrance and try to find a way to slip his Colt American L36 past security. Yankee patted his suit jacket reflexively, search-ing for a cigarette. Realizsearch-ing he couldn’t smoke here, he sighed. Eventually he’d have to figure out a better way to tamp down his stress.
The after school children were filtering out, replaced by mothers with strollers and young wage-slave couples fresh from their day jobs. Yankee still managed to blend, but Shinigami’s nervousness drew the eye of a se-curity officer more than once.
“Relax, chummer. I thought this place would make you feel at home.”
“I’m trying, but that first guy, the way he walked away, that makes me nervous.”
It made Yankee nervous as well, and for an instant he considered calling in Seta for magical support or even that gun-happy ganger kid, Riser, but the thought of splitting his cut two additional ways left a sour taste in his mouth. He shook off the feeling and noticed another suit enter the room.
This one, an elf with short brown hair, had the same air of corporate supe-riority about him as the first bidder.
Shinigami coughed out a laugh. “Just like Caleb to offer a bid to one of his own, neh?”
The elf found Yankee quickly and followed the runner’s gestures towards the microscope set up. This bidder gave the claw a more thorough examination than the first. Once he’d seen enough, he used a pair of tweezers to grab a small chunk of shavings. He pulled out a sample jar, dropped the piece into it, and waited.
Yankee couldn’t quite make out the results from his vantage point so he shifted over, skirting a pair of lovers ogling a school of Awakened African Cichlids.
The elf held the sample container down near his waist and out of sight of the security officer stationed by the food court. He turned so his back stayed to the camera. An identical sample container appeared in his other hand. Each was filled with a brackish black fluid that slithered more than shifted when he shook it.
Apparently satisfied by the results, he put both jars in his pocket, pulled out a commlink, and typed in a few digits. Yankee’s commlink bleeped a satisfied chirp seconds later. The runner nodded at the elf, then walked back to Shinigami and handed him the PDA.
“First bid is in.”
“Drek.” Shinigami whistled under his breath.
“Not quite what you expected?” Yankee didn’t know the going rate for dragon claws. He didn’t even know how you could move such a thing on the black market. He’d asked about it discreetly on Shadowland, and almost got kicked from the thread for spamming. That made finding a dragon claw about as rare as seeing a Sasquatch before the Awakening. Yankee’s brain churned with questions.
“More. We’re going to be rich off of this, omae!”
The second bid flared his eyes the same way the first had. It belonged to a young Asian whose long sleeves nearly hid the tattoos winding around his wrists and up his arms. Yankee worked with a runner, Kai-Lin, who put in time with the Yakuza. The ink was unmistakable.
“So, it comes down to corporate buyers vs. private collectors. You know which way you want to go?”
Shinigami exhaled slowly as he checked his watch. “Depends on what the last buyer is willing to offer.”
The last buyer turned out to be a woman in a power suit. She was fair-skinned with raven black hair cut into a professional looking bob. Once she’d sampled the product, she broke protocol and walked up to Yankee with her bid. Yankee’s eyes automatically went to the elf, who had start-ed to get up to object. Yankee’s stare forcstart-ed him back down. The runner turned back to the woman and smiled. The woman returned his smile and purred, “You can call me Ms. Johnson. My organization is willing to do whatever is required to obtain the artifact.”
“All you need to do is make the highest offer.”
She did by a large margin. He turned back to Shinigami and passed on the offer. The pirate nodded gleefully. Yankee thanked the woman and ad-vised her to wait in the food court with the others.
“What do you think?” Shinigami said.
“She’s definitely corporate. Probably Megacorporate. Atlantean, or an-other one of those outfits.” He was watching the elf now. The man paced back and forth, looking as nervous as Shinigami looked when they first arrived.
“What about the Japanese guy?”
“Yakuza. You’d be dealing with a private collector. If he likes the product enough, you might even win repeat business off this deal.”
Shinigami made a low half-groan that made Yankee think he was mull-ing it over, but the pirate was still watchmull-ing the corporate woman. They made eye contact, and she flashed that joy girl smile.
PAST SALVAGE 76
“I want her offer.”
“I think you should give it to the elf.”
“Why? His bid is way below hers.”
“He’s nervous, and nervous people have a habit of doing stupid drek.”
Shinigami considered this for a moment, his eyes flitting between the brunette and the elf before he said, “Screw him. Give her the claw.”
Yankee nodded with a sigh. He walked towards the gift shop and all three bidders rose at once to follow him. The runner only made eye con-tact with the brunette. He winked and she grinned, glancing her condo-lences to the other bidders.
They met in the gift shop. She looped her arm in his and whispered,
“How do you want to handle delivery?”
Yankee played along. He gave her the name of a nightclub in Downtown Seattle and told her to meet him there the following evening. Shinigami followed behind the laughing couple looking more disturbed than a man who was about to be rich should be.
Ms. Johnson leaned into Yankee and kissed him softly on the cheek. She turned back to wink at Shinigami and left. They watched the others leave as well. The elf glared nakedly at them. His eyes were red-rimmed, and his face contorted into a snarl. Yankee thought for a second that he might scream.
“Be ready for trouble.” Yankee whispered to his companion. The two men lingered in the gift shop a few minutes more. Yankee bought a key-chain and chatted up the clerk while Shinigami kept watching the hallway leading outside. They retrieved Yankee’s briefcase from the locker room by the exit and quickly secured their weapons.
Shinigami said, “You think the elf will try something?”
“I think he had a lot more at stake in this deal than the others. Is there something you aren’t telling me?”
Shinigami shook his head, and the two men crossed through the en-trance into the wet Seattle night. Rain misted the air. The lights of the Seattle skyline turned the clouds into a purple mess that reminded Yankee of cough syrup. The Aquarium pushed up against pier 59 and a four-lane street that didn’t offer parking. When they saw the black Step-Van parked a few yards from the entrance, they knew it meant trouble.
Yankee said, “They’ll have someone on foot too, in case we lose the ve-hicle.”
“So what does that mean?”
“It means you should have sold to the fragging elf.”
Alaskan Way was still crowded enough that the van couldn’t ride up
alongside them without making a scene, so the two men kept walking.
They crossed the road and headed up a one-way street where the van couldn’t follow. As soon as Yankee heard it speed off, he broke into a sprint.
Shinigami gasped and started after him. Their foot tail revealed themselves an instant later. There were two men in identical black long coats that practically screamed corporate security.
Yankee dashed up a side street, Shinigami wheezing desperately behind him. He cut into an alley a block later. Shinigami slumped against a graf-fiti-covered wall. His hands clenched his knees as if letting go meant top-pling over for good.
“They won’t be far behind. Can you make it?”
“Frag that. They want to come for me, let them.” Shinigami pushed himself up off the wall and pulled out an Ares Crusader Machine Pistol. He dropped into a crouch and stared at the mouth of the alley.
“This isn’t how we do things on land, chummer.”
“Well, it is tonight.”
They heard tires screech and the Step-Van filled the mouth of the alley.
A third man, the driver, joined the two men who’d been chasing them on foot. They threw open the front doors and hunkered down behind them.
Yankee scanned the far end of the alley. He could make it there on foot before the corp team could catch up to him, but he wasn’t so sure about his friend.
Shinigami read his mind. The pirate cut loose a burst at the van’s front window. Bullets drilled into the ballistic glass. “Start moving, I’ll cover you!”
Yankee took one step and immediately felt dizzy. Yankee turned towards the far end of the alley. Something didn’t feel right. The air behind them shimmered and something blurred the empty space. He concentrated until he squinted and through half open eyes he saw the shimmer resolve itself, first as shape then as a man. Yankee took another step and tried to raise his pistol. His stomach clenched up like a fist was squeezing it from the inside.
His head swam and he tasted sour bile on his tongue.
“Mage…” The words died on his lips.
t
Yankee woke up with his own gun pointed at his head. The man holding it was blond-haired, with a rounded, eastern European jawline.
He scanned the room quickly, trying to get a bearing on his situation.
His hands were zip tied behind his back. There were four men. The three
he’d seen at the ambush were holding flashlights on him, and the man with his gun was the Russian who’d walked out of the Aquarium without bid-ding. They stood in a narrow room with a low ceiling.
“Who are you?” Yankee didn’t care, but he felt like he’d been asleep for hours. He guessed the question might buy him a few seconds to clear his head figure out what to do next.
“Where is the claw?” The man wasn’t Russian after all. His accent was definitely German. His English had the flawless diction only top end lin-guasofts could provide.
“You didn’t bid for it, so we sold it to someone else.”
The German’s sigh echoed hollowly off the walls. “You did not enter the building with the claw, therefore your business with the young lady is in-complete.”
Yankee still couldn’t see Shinigami, but his low light eyes began to re-solve more of his surroundings. His heart sank as he realized he was in a shipping container. He exhaled and bit back the urge for a cigarette.
The German handed Yankee’s pistol to one of the corporate men. He folded his arms and said, “Perhaps we should start over. You have some-thing in your possession that belongs to my employer.”
The German seemed to be waiting on Yankee to respond, so the runner nodded.
“We are both businessmen, Mr. Yankee. I believe we can conduct this like any other transaction. You will deliver the claw to us, and we will re-turn your friend to you intact.”
“I’ll need guarantees for my friend and myself.”
They set a location for the meet, after which two of the thugs led Yan-kee to the container door and shoved him through it. He found himself on the docks, only a few blocks away from the seaport. It had been hours.
Dawn was starting to push through the cloud cover. The bank opened at 9 a.m. Yankee had enough time to clean himself up and change his suit before heading there.
t
By 9:45, Yankee was back outside of the Aquarium holding a suede-cov-ered box. A black Step-Van drove up, and the German and several of his guards stepped out. Two of the corporate thugs opened the box. The Ger-man stared at the claw and smiled. He clasped Yankee’s hand and shook it. Then he and his men climbed back into the Step-Van and drove off.
Moments later a second Step-Van rolled to a stop and Shinigami climbed out the back seat. The pirate turned and spat a few curses in the direction of his captors as they shut the door and sped off.
Yankee grinned broadly and extended his hand. “And here I thought it was cats that have nine lives. Good to have you back, chummer.”
Shinigami slapped the runner’s hand away. “Where’s my claw, omae?”
“I turned it over to the German.”
“Why the frag would you do that!” Shinigami screamed.
Yankee’s smile crumbled, leaving a stony expression in its place. The street was nearly empty, but he lowered his voice anyway. “There wasn’t
Yankee’s smile crumbled, leaving a stony expression in its place. The street was nearly empty, but he lowered his voice anyway. “There wasn’t