Chapter 23 - The Sale

Smokey's and Thunder's people had arrived and were ready to deal. I jacked into my Deck and hit Pusan before they knew what was happening. Before the Ice even knew I was there I had destroyed most of it. I pulled copies of everything that their R&D section was working on and the progress they had made up to that point. The Ice that I encountered was nothing for my Attack program and I overcame it with ease. As I was leaving I even fed a small virus into the memory that deleted every third word in the R&D file. That wouldn't stop them but it would slow them down. I made it look like an internal accident which would keep them from looking outside for the problem.

After I got out I placed each project onto a separate chip. There was no reason to let everyone know about the other projects. Jojo drove me to the meeting at the Seattle Sheraton Hotel. Money can be used to protect you as well as buy nice things. With the security they had inside the Hotel we could relax a bit plus the buyers would feel safer, less chance of a double cross.

I walked into the room and Smokey introduced me to the four different Evaluators and informed me of their specialties. I placed the correct credsticks for the fees that she had quoted on the table in front of them and gave each of them a chip. They fed them into chip readers and went to work.

While they were doing that Smokey and I had a cup of soykaf and helped ourselves to some of the finger food she had ordered up. "This should handle expenses and your fee as fixer," I said passing her a credstick.

"I wasn't charging you for this and you know that."

"Yeah, but we got to keep it professional. If something comes back on this you can always say it was strictly biz. You just got some Evaluators together for a Johnson."

It surprised me how little time it took them to go over the material and give me a price on it. It also surprised me how much they had rated the material. Two of them said that they should have charged their normal percentage rates instead of a flat fee. Passing out the credsticks to each of them our biz was completed. I got a business card from each of them as I had more biz to conduct later and they seemed interested.

I then took the elevator up three floors to the room where Thunder was waiting with the buyers. Two were his people, two were Blake's, two were Cain's and three were Dane's.

"Ladies and Gentlemen thank you for coming on such short notice. I know that this will figure into the price you will be offering on my goods but don't let it influence you too much. You can use the chip readers that we have provided for you to see what you will be bidding on. I will give you several minutes to look over the merchandise before we open the bids."

I had another cup of soykaf and used the facilities before rejoining them. The bidding got interesting and it was amazing the amounts that they were talking about. When the final bids were in I went over the terms of the sales.

"You have twenty-four hours to complete the deal or I will go to the next highest bidder. If you took advantage of the facilities here as we suggested you have an open letter of credit on file with the Hotel and can conclude the biz today. Thank you for your time and money," I said as I ushered them out. Now we waited.

Within a matter of minutes one Bidder was back with the credsticks to take possession of the Simsense chips. As he was leaving another showed up to do the same thing with some of the military data. It took less than two hours for all of the buyers to return with the necessary number of credsticks to conclude the transfer of the chips. As each of them left we passed the credsticks off to someone else so that we never had any money in the room with us. When the sales had been completed I broke the remaining chips so that they couldn't be used.

A large nondescript van pulled up as we were leaving the Hotel and we immediately jumped inside. We were soon mixed up in the evening traffic rush to get home while Blake used one of the drones to check our backside. It didn't look like we were being followed as we made our way back towards the warehouse we had used to question Sun. When we got there I took the bag with all the money long enough to remove a gold credstick.

Giving it to Thunder I said, "Here's your fee for your contacts. One of them made a purchase and I told you that you'd get a percentage."

Blake then gave him two more. "You and your crew are paid in full for your services. I don't like the deal we made and I want to renegotiate before we go any further." Thunder looked dumb struck until he continued. "I don't think you're charging enough. You haven't done much to earn your fees so far but from here on out it's going to get sticky. We're making more on this than we anticipated and so are willing to pay more for our protection. Bring in some more people as we have more on watch and get ready to do some moving around."

"Youse had me worried fo a minute dere. I got six more people at da utter place now."

"Seriously, Thunder. You might want to look at upgrading some of your equipment and having a larger supply of ammunition on hand. Much larger and some heavier weaponry. It could get bad."

As he nodded we went to the other cars and left heading back for the first warehouse. Thunder was going to drive around a while and then go visit some people at Ork Under, the Orkish underground city. When he returned he wouldn't be in that van. It was one he had 'borrowed' strictly for this job.

Back at our base I got on one of the telecoms and contacted my broker. "Loren? This is Brian, I want to sell 5,000 shares of Pusan Industrial. Put the money into my account to cover the purchase later. I'm betting there's going to be some downward movement on that company... Yeah, I know it's more than I've traded in the past but I got a strong feeling. Besides with you holding the money it's covered, right? Talk to you later." Using money to keep score I wanted our score as large as possible.

With that done I went into the break room to see what was new on the gang war. It had gotten so bad that the media people had a scoreboard behind them. Listed were the numbers killed and wounded from the three major gangs and also Lone Star. There was a recorded interview with Chief William J. Loudon of Lone Star Security. He stated that all leaves and days off had been cancelled and that his men were now working twelve hour shifts in order to increase the numbers of patrolmen on the streets. He also read a statement from Governor Schultz that stated the National Guard was on standby to move in to assist if things heated up to the point they were needed. He was warning citizens to take extra precautions with their safety if they had to venture out on the streets.

"Lot o' street punks gitten hired ta help wid dis thin. Lots o' money ta be made out dere. Lots o' people gitten dead, too." said one of the guys watching. "Shore am glad we ain't out dere."

"Don't get too comfortable, we might be," I said. "This thing could blow up in our faces. If it does then you're going to earn every bit of the money you're being paid."