Skater tried not to react. His grandfather had always insisted a new life awaited after the physical one was spent. He hoped it was so, and he hoped Shiva wasn't looking in on him as he helped cut up what remained of her.

Tallow switched on the laser saw and opened up the corpse's chest, then used a chest spreader that looked like a praying mantis to pull it apart. He talked [o himself as he listed the organs that appeared to be in good shape. There wasn't much blood, and Skater was glad of it. By morning, what had once been Shiva would be scattered over the city as black-market organs and bone.

"So how'd Romeo happen to lose his fair Juliet?" Tallow lifted the undamaged heart from the chest cavity. He plopped it into a freon-chilled chamber that had come from the vault as well.

Face hard, tight with the effort to bottle up all the emotions of the moment as well as from memories of the past. Skater said, "She was afraid I'd end up on your table some night."

Duran leaned in, intimidating with his size and black synthleather. "More chopping," he said, "and less fragging yap."

'I don't know exactly what I snatched, but it was well-guarded," Archangel told them, seated in the rented room deep in the Ork Underground a couple of hours later. "I downloaded everything I could, but I still don't know what I got."

Skater stood behind Wheeler Iron-Nerve and beside Elvis, scanning the monitor as Archangel scrolled through the files. Figures and symbols raced across the screen, moving vertically and horizontally in random colors.

"It's coded." Skater said.

Archangel nodded. "If I had more time, maybe I'd be able to break it."

"The one thing we don't have is time," Duran muttered. He stood in one comer, dark and brooding, arms folded across his broad chest. "The yaks are combing the streets looking for the team that hit the Sapphire Seahawk tonight."