business for themselves; but the idea had always seemed a little too far off the beam to be truthful. Saxon had never believed anyone could run alone out there in the thick for too long, not without backup. 'Tyrants…
That name doesn't exactly have the ring of righteousness to it.'
'I beg to differ,' said the other man. 'The true meaning of the word stems from the Greek turannos. It was only later the name gathered its negative connotations… In its original form, the term describes those who take power by their own means, instead of being awarded it through birthright or elective. That is what we do, Mr. Saxon. We take power from those who abuse it. We restore the balance.'
'Out of the goodness of your heart?'
'Belltower's failures cost you the lives of the men and women in your unit,' Namir said, his tone becoming grave. 'Are you really ready to go back to them, knowing that? Be honest with me, Mr. Saxon. Are you ever going to trust your employers again?'
Saxon closed his eyes, and for a second he saw the ghosts. 'I have a responsibility. I signed a contract…'
'One that is near to ending.' Namir made a dismissive gesture. 'We can deal with that. If only a piece of paper is stopping you, believe me, I can make that go away.' When Saxon didn't answer, he got up and straightened his fatigue jacket. 'This offer won't come again,' he said. 'And if you decide to go looking for us after the fact, I warn you… there will be consequences.'
Saxon looked down at his hands, one scarred flesh, the other scratched steel. Everything Namir had said about trust, about Belltower-all of it was as if he had plucked the thoughts straight from his mind. Each day that had passed here, each day he sat surrounded by his ghosts, every passing hour was eroding something deep inside him, and in its place it left only a cold hollow. That, and a slow-burning, directionless desire to claim a blood cost back from the people who had murdered Kano, Duarte, and the others.
'We can give you what you need, Ben,' said Namir. 'The Tyrants help their own.'
When Saxon said the next words, they seemed to come from a very great distance. 'I'm in.'
CHAPTER THREE
Pier 86-New York City-United States of America
Kelso pulled the black microfleece hoodie tighter over her head, grimacing into the cold wind sweeping in from the Hudson River, her nerves ringing like struck chimes. She moved like she had purpose, ignoring the urge to look over her shoulder, negotiating the debris and cargo containers placed across the width of the pier in what seemed a casual fashion; in fact, the junk had been arranged to provide bottlenecks to stop anyone from rushing the big ship moored at the 86 from the shore. In the bleak light of the evening, the vessel was a wall of gray steel curving up and over her head, frozen there like a wave cast in metal. Chains of fairy lights hung down from rusting gantries, flapping in the breeze, and while the upper deck was mostly dark, she could hear the sounds of people running around up there, and the occasional crunch of metal on metal. They had a regulation-size basketball court made of scrap iron and chain link on the deck-she'd seen it in the distance as she crossed the bridge over 12th Avenue-and there was a game on, lit by bio-lume sticks and fires burning in oil drums.
Ahead she glimpsed the name of the venerable old vessel. Image patterning software in her Sarif optics picked out the letters defaced but still standing clear of the go-ganger tags painted over them: Intrepid.
Anna kept walking, approaching the covered gantry that extended up into the hull. Once upon a time, this old warship had sailed the world, projecting American sea power in the Pacific, Cuba, and Vietnam; fate and rich men had saved her from becoming a billion razor blades, and for a while the aging aircraft carrier had stood at dock, hosting stories of old wars, even serving her nation once again when the towers came down.
But that was almost thirty years dead and gone, and recession and stock crashes had sent the old warhorse into darkness. The relic planes that had once stood on her decks were gone, sold off to collectors, and the ship itself had been left to rust. But like so many things, the people at the fringes of the city had found a use for her.
Anna had paid enough bribes to get the word of the day that let her on board. From the aft of the hangar deck, the sounds of a hammer-speed
DJ resonated down the echoing hull. Between here and there, the place they called 'the wet market' blossomed like a multicolored fungus, dozens of makeshift stalls selling pirated datasofts, old tech, and recovered cyberware alongside oil-can cook plates crackling with hot fat and pungent foods from India, the Caribbean, or the African Federation. There was no law at the 86, but the New York Police Department tended to let things lie, providing that the residents kept themselves to themselves and made sure that any bodies washed up inside New Jersey's jurisdiction.
Anna skirted past the marketplace and found a corroded set of ladders that led up to the next level. The corridor she emerged in was gloomy. It smelled of rust and seawater. Following lines of peeling lume tape, she ascended again and emerged somewhere near the bow. A large section of the forward deck had been cut away and in its place there were a couple of jury-rigged geo-domes made of smart fabric. The sea smell gave way to the faint whiff of ozone and battery acid.
Inside the dome there was a parade of cowboy electronics; server frames modified like hot rods, chugging gasoline generators and fat trunks of cable snaking from fans of solar panels or military-issue satellite antennae. Monitors and holoscreens lit the space with cold blue illumination, and here and there, faces rendered ghost-white glanced up at her from laptops or gamer pits.
'Kel.' She turned sharply at the sound of her cover name and saw Denny walking toward her. So dark- skinned as to seem almost coal-black, he was a short and stocky hacker with a shorn skull and an unkempt soul patch on his narrow chin. He had mirrored Kusanagi optics that gave his eyes the look of steel spheres. Following a few steps behind was a tall, rail-thin woman inside a doublet a size too large for her. She had thumbless spider-hands the color of old terra-cotta.
Anna gave Denny a nod from beneath her hood, watching the woman's face grow more sour the closer she got. In better light it was difficult to be sure how old the taller woman was. Interface sockets glittered in the half- light, making a line over her right temple.
'This is Kel,' Denny was saying. 'She's in the market for some intelligence.'
He was going to go on, but his companion waved him into silence. 'I am getting a distinct taste of blue in my mouth,' she hissed. 'You bring a cop on the boat? Are you an idiot?'
'Widow-'
'What?' Anna gave her a disgusted look, then glared at Denny. 'This again? I thought me and you had gone through all that who-the-fuck are-you crap already.' Kelso had targeted Denny through some files she'd skimmed from a contact at the DOJ, and worked him to get under this cover as 'Kel,' an out-of-towner looking to buy some information. She turned away. 'Forget it. I don't have time for this.'
'Kel, wait.' Denny turned to Widow and glared at her. 'She's clean. I ran her jacket. Not even a touch of blue.'
Widow folded her thin arms. 'Then she's definitely a cop.'
Anna put on an angry snarl that wasn't all fake. 'Who the hell is this skinny bitch and why am I listening to her talk? Didn't we have a deal,
Denny?'
'You know who I am?' Widow snapped back. 'Go-Five, that's who I am. I'll rip your life open in ten seconds. Zero everything you ever owned!'
Go-Five meant GO5, also known as the Gang of Five. They were a collective of hacker guns-for-hire well known by the FBI's cybercrime division, with a lengthy rap sheet packed with all kinds of interesting digital larceny. The other interesting thing about them was that the Gang of Five were all faceless ghosts, which made it easy for someone to wear their name and reputation with little fear of being proven a liar.
'Bullshit,' Anna retorted. 'Go-Five are all Koreans, everyone knows that.'
Widow snorted, and it was then that Kelso knew she had her on the line. The hacker community was driven by rep, and any one of them was only as good as their last score. Studying Widow in the actinic glow of the screens, Anna saw a woman trying to hide her age, running hard to keep up and not quite making it. She was
