Mainline (16 page)

Obray charged into the hallway. His men were trading fire around the corner with Edini's rearguard. A blue-green bolt of coherent energy speared one of the Customs renegades; he went down with a cry and his companion retreated. The way into the terminal's service corridors was free.

The Commander thumbed his comlink to the cargo-pad security team. Before he could explain the situation, an excited voice chattered over the device.

"Sir! The
Delos
is lifting!"

Obray clenched the comlink. "Lifting?! How can that be?"

"Don't know—it's at about three hundred, four hundred meters and heading northwest. Picking up speed."

"Who's aboard?"

"Unknown—there was no one left after we cleared and scanned the ship!"

"Then you missed something. Clear this channel—no, wait. Karuu has escaped custody and Customs Chief Edini is aiding him. They may be heading your way, or to the
Savu.
I want all local Customs off guard detail until we sort this out, only IntSec and Port Authority in place. Repeat: Karuu and Edini are fugitives. Stop them if you see them."

"Acknowledged."

Obray gestured his aides to follow, and headed for the Port Master's operations center.

"Master Swimmer Sharptooth,
do you hear me?"

FlashMan's synthesized voice issued from submerged speakers in the
Delos'
cargo hold. Sharptooth's answering chitter was converted by his voicelink translator into Common.

"Who speaks?" the otter-shaped Vernoi native asked. "You are not my partner."

"Who is your partner?"

"Edesz."

FlashMan searched his memory of Lish's briefing, recalled "Edesz"—a water-breathing R'debh native who had trained for weeks on Vernoi, learning from the handlers how to work with cyberbeasts in ocean waters.

"Edesz awaits you in the ocean below, as agreed,''
he reassured the alien. Edesz and others were supposed to open the main cargo airlock—or, when submerged, waterlock—releasing the Vernoi handlers and their borgbeasts into the Selmun ocean.
"However, there's a problem,"
FlashMan explained.
"We're arriving earlier than expected. There may be no R'debhi waiting to release you from the hold.''

"When will we be freed? We need to roam. All of us."

"You'll be free as soon as this container is submerged. If you'll help me, we can open the cargo hold from inside, and then you
can
go."

"Will Edesz and the others be there?"

FlashMan had no information on this, and made his best guess.
"Not right away. They're not expecting you this soon. If you follow the slope of the shelf into deep water, they can find you there."

"Very well," said Master Swimmer Sharptooth. He gave a whistling summons to his fellow handlers. "Tell us what to do."

From the Port Master's office, a ground search was set under way for Karuu and Edini. The Holdout's flight was the best admission of guilt that Commander Obray could ask for: two coded calls directed the waiting strike teams of agents, not to Lish's premises, but to the Dorleoni Holdout's businesses, where a major search-and-seizure operation began.

Captain Verana assumed command of planetary Customs, deploying her ground units in backup positions around the starport, and putting orbital forces on high alert. Bendinabi Air Control tracked the progress of the pirated Peryton freighter, and reported its approach to Avelar Island.

Hails to the pilot went unanswered.

"Shall we shoot it down, sir?" Verana asked.

"Not yet," replied Obray. He studied the massive freighter on a satellite monitor as it navigated northward at an altitude of 2,000 meters. Sensors showed no one aboard, which left only one way the freighter could be piloted in this manner....

Port Master Hevrik anticipated his thoughts. "If the
Delos
is drone-controlled, we can't cut her off over inhabited terrain. Look where she is." He stabbed a finger at the status board, tracking the ship's position. "We've got inhabited shelf and surface land all along her present path of travel."

Obray locked eyes with Hevrik, then nodded sharply. "Air Control," he reactivated the comlink. "Relay subspace data to me here, this com channel. I want frequency, point of origin— good. Keep it coming."

He punched a new number on Hevrik's console. "Systems Control," came the familiar voice.

"Commander Obray, Selmun-trio-four. I'm ordering a net scramble on this subspace channel, patching freq and origin through to you now." His fingers hit key sequences while he talked. "When rigger control is assumed, inform me this channel."

"Acknowledged. Dispatching now."

Obray turned to Hevrik. "Now we'll see how far that bastard gets."

Alia Lanzig sat
on the waterfront dais with other speakers, waiting to extend greetings and welcome to the exhibitors gathered at Avelar Island. The crowd was restive. The spread of food and drink was a lot more appealing than speeches from politicos, and the Councilor planned to keep her talk brief.

The Trade Fair committee had chosen a site even wetdome-dwelling Councilors could enjoy. The lagoon beside the small-boat marina was the perfect setting for this crowd. Peaceful green waters lapped shady terraces, a pleasant spot for land- and water-dwellers alike.

Unfortunately, the idyllic setting did little to ease Councilor Lanzig, who was bothered by the energy screen unit Yavobo had insisted she wear to this gathering. She had omitted the ballistic mesh jacket, wearing only her quilted overtunic, like a guilty child hiding the body armor in a closet drawer so the alien would not notice it left in her room. The screen unit she grudgingly wore, certain that every eye noticed the small powerpack at her belt. Alia didn't want to appear paranoid, but with her bodyguard looming nearby she had little choice in the matter.

She made the best of things that she could, affixing a diplomat's smile to her face. Her eyes wandered the horizon, waiting for her turn at the podium, when she glimpsed an airborne dot moving through the offshore haze. The dot resolved itself into the surrealistically large framework of a Peryton-class freighter, and Councilor Lanzig smiled contentedly.

Soon the Free Ocean faction would be struggling to keep their shipping lanes open. They wouldn't have the leisure to grasp for new routes, new encroachments—

A round of ragged applause signaled her introduction. Alia stood and approached the rostrum, unable to take her eyes from the freighter, drawing steadily nearer. There was something strange about its arrival now, at this moment. It was early. Definitely early.

Distracted, Alia did not notice Yavobo hovering not far behind her. Nor did she notice the tall brunette with the zanned hair and the green semi-cellophane dress who stood amid terraced planters overlooking the reception area.

Yavobo did. He had been systematically scanning high places and sheltered places, then every face in the crowd, looking for her. Her wounds were not fatal, and he fully expected to see her here with a weapon in hand. Her threat about a time patch did not ring quite true, somehow, and though he hunted for one, it had been a cursory search at best. No. This keshun-cub would want a confrontation, would want eye-contact with her prey. He was sure of it.

And there she stood, almost at the limit of weapons range. The warrior straightened, cursed himself for not spotting her sooner.

It didn't matter to Reva. She saw him, unmistakable on the speakers' platform, never straying far from Lanzig's side. That's convenient, she thought. Stay close to her, and my job becomes a lot easier. Because for this one, special hit, I don't mind doing things the good old-fashioned way. Shaped charge, minimum bystander injury, and a very big bang. Right beneath your feet, asshole, a two-for-one special. No IDP at all, Yavobo. Fooled you.

She squelched her lingering nervousness, born of a promise to herself not to switch Timelines. There would be no shifting off

Mainline after this, no walking away in unnoticed shadows paralleling the present moment.

No problem, she thought. I'm good enough.

When he spotted her, their eyes met, and the small hairs at the back of her neck stood up. She had worn the dress for him, so there would be no mistaking her across the intervening distance. The alien should know without a doubt who it was who killed him.

Reva waved a hand casually. Yavobo whirled and started to move. In that moment, the assassin pushed the button of the detonator in her hand. The charge beneath the speakers' podium exploded in a gout of flame and plaspanel shreds.

She walked away through gathering crowds as she had so often before. This time the uproar behind her felt more compelling, the moment not buffered by her timesense as it carried her through safe Lines. She fought the urge to go back, inspect the damage, verify the kills.

Vidnews was fine for that. It would even give her a replay if she wanted.

Most netrunners who
worked for Internal Security were once criminals themselves. All had been smart enough to take the Emperor's reprieve and sign on to work for the Bugs for a while.

Obray's scramble team was no exception. The trio assembled at the junction where FlashMan had first paused to get his bearings: Captain Brace, a rated pilot with chip-enhanced flight reflexes; Zippo, a young datarunner up on decryption and interference protocols; Nomad, experienced in offensive and defensive countermeasures, netrunning in person on Selmun III. His dirtside location gave him nanoseconds of advantage in offensive combat. Their virtual selves were near-uniform, each a glowing blue wireframe figure, health and status readable at a glance by the condition and color of its frame. It was Security's standard Datacop representation, showing allies at a glance.

Zippo, with the rebellion of the young, threw in a program enhancement. His figure became a blocky raster image, squat and low, looking like a blue bulldog. "The better to hound our target," he quipped to Captain Brace's stern gaze.

Brace let the non-uniform look pass. For now-—"

"After you, Nomad."

The Nomad construct, taller and skinnier than the Captain, approached a data gateway. He tasted the flow of electrons, picked the stream coursing to the right subspace transmitter, and leapt into it, his substance melting into the torrent of data as soon as it touched. Zippo and the Captain followed.

They reassembled before a virtual door, closed and sealed with caulking around the edge. The door was a piece of program code intended to divert access from the subspace frequency it guarded.

Nomad motioned Zippo forward. While he interacted with the virtual reality of the Net matrix, his cybercircuits on another level analyzed the code, wrote a counter program, ran it in the satellite to unblock access. From Zippo's bulldog point of view, he sniffed, nosed the door, grew a wire lead from his paw that probed the lock. "It's open now," he reported.

Nomad grabbed the latch and pushed.

A booby trap exploded with a bang and a cloud of virtual smoke. The bang did minor damage to Nomad, bleaching the blue on his wire-frame hand to a nearly green hue. The smoke was sucked past a keyboard and through the floor, down the tunnel of flickering light where subspace tied satellite to the
Delos Varte
below.

FlashMan raised up his lightning-pointed head, with its crown of leads and wires. Deep inside the neural jack in the ship's control panel, the acrid smell of smoke came to him, borne blitz-fast through the subspace channel from far overhead.

"Shit.''
He spoke so intensely the words echoed through speakers in the freighter's empty corridors.
"Company."

Bystanders pulled Yavobo
out of the blood-tinged waters of the lagoon. To their surprise the lanky alien was not only mostly intact, he was still breathing. The mesh armor under his water-insulating bodysuit had saved his life.

When medics arrived he was rushed into the autodoc in the care van. The missing fingers and half a foot could be regenerated; flesh wounds and burns would be repaired by medical machinery.

"You're very lucky, sir," a medic reassured him while pulling plaspanel shrapnel from his wounds. "You'll be fine in a day or so, and you should have those limbs back in a few weeks."

Yavobo heard nothing through burst eardrums. Although he fought the painkillers that lulled tortured limbs to sleep, he was too injured to resist the autodoc ministrations for long. The Aztrakhani fell into restless slumber and dreamed of vengeance.

Alia Lanzig was not so fortunate. A screen unit is worthless against the destructive kinetic energy of an explosion. Her end came so rapidly she never realized that simple fact, and never had second thoughts about the neglected wardrobe Yavobo had set out for her.

Vask saw the wave of Reva's hand, the explosion saw the tall woman turn and walk coolly away from the scene of destruction. He turned from shattered platform to vanishing assassin. For that was what she was, he suddenly realized. She was not another Holdout, in spite of her smuggler's stories. She was a killer, plain and simple, and deadly efficient at her job.

He followed with uncertain steps. Could he find out anything vital at the crime scene right now? No, not with the uproar that reigned there at the moment. He had caught the moment on his sound and vid cybersystems, anyway.