Mainline (54 page)

"Turds, Karuu. What am I supposed to do with you now?"

His prisoner had no answer.

Reva drove a
skimmer through the wrought-iron gates
of
Adahn's high-walled retreat. The gates were fancy scrollwork, archaic in appearance, in keeping with the tradition
of
Bekavra's
feudal principalities and grand fortified homes. The real security came from force fields and screen technology, roving security bots on the grounds—things that would be unseen and undetected until engaged.

She felt her heart beat more rapidly and her hands became damp where they gripped the steering yoke. Never before had she approached a job so openly. It felt unnatural to drive through an unguarded entrance, felt dangerously exposed to know that her face was known, and that sight recognition had opened the portal to her.

She swept along the tree-shaded drive, a nervous edge keeping her too wound up—a state that could hurt her reaction time, she knew. Reva compelled herself to center before she neared the residence. Made herself breathe, just so; rehearsed plan of action, just so.

"Hope you're ready, Fixer," she murmured, the merest whisper, to the ghostly presence by her side. Knowing he couldn't hear, but comforted by the sense that he was there.

The assassin pulled up before the broad steps and castle-like facade of Adahn's home. The edifice loomed, quarried granite faced with cream-colored marble; high, narrow windows of real beveled glass, solid, imposing—an ancient structure that could withstand direct physical assault and, at some times in its history, had.

Reva wished again she had seen plans for this estate, but knew that once she stepped between the Lines, this physical layout was not as limiting to her as its owner would expect. She got out of the skimmer as thick-paneled doors swung open at the top of the steps. No human was in sight, no alien servant or mecho drone. She ascended, a slender figure in somber black bodysuit, ready for any threat or surprise.

True to Janus' word, there were no guards in sight, no obvious security. Reva let her perceptions split, watched the neighboring Nows splinter into visible reality around her. In none of those Lines did unwelcome company lurk—at least not in this stretch of hallway. She glimpsed ahead some moments in time and saw no surprises awaiting her.

A service mecho rolled out of a side room a moment later. "Follow me, please," it said, and rolled along ahead of her.

Reva alternated back and forth between Line-spanning vision and her ordinary sight as she walked that broad marbled floor. She glanced at then ignored closed doorways and side passages; moved past sideboards, paintings, sonic sculptures, tapestries— the exhibition of wealth and history was noted and dismissed as inconsequential. Her real goal lay ahead, somewhere: the spider in the middle of his web, orchestrating far events and murders from within this nerve center.

At the end of the great hall was a wide bronze-embossed door. The mecho pulled it open, stood aside for Reva to enter.

A white-carpeted expanse of room lay beyond, sudden floor-muffling change from the cold marble beneath her feet. She approached slowly, looking ahead along the Lines as she lingered in the doorway. She was distracted from her examination of Nows by something in this room, something jarring to the senses, and she halted just inside the door to try to identify it.

Then she had it. Lighter spots on the walls, slight disturbances in the nap of the carpet—this room had been furnished and decorated not too long ago. That realization came as her Line sight demanded her attention: moments from now, Harric would blossom large on a wall com screen. Then shortly ahead of that—

—what she saw made her gasp.

A red and black mottled figure, knife in hand, striding toward her from the far end of the room.

The chill that prickled every hair on her body slammed her solidly back into the limited vista of Realtime. Reva spun about, adrenaline-charged, ready to dart from this vicious trap, and her shoulder slammed into the door that had closed silently mere centimeters behind her. The blue nimbus of a security screen lit the edges of the portal, locking it into its frame.

A com screen set into the far wall glowed to life. Adahn Harric leered crudely down at her, his face looming grotesquely huge.

"So kind of you to join us, Reva." He smiled, a sneer edged by a too-sensuous lip. "I'm afraid there's been a change of plans. I won't be able to meet you in person today. I will be glad to watch you die, though."

Fear clutched Reva by the throat.

"Oh, look!" Harric said, casting an artful glance to one side. "Here comes an acquaintance of yours now." The crime boss smiled a poison-sweet smile at her. "I'll let him say good-bye for me."

She tore her eyes away from Adahn's snake-like stare, turned her head toward the sound of an opening door.

Red and black skin. Long fangs bared. Rust-stained knife in hand. The alien was here, in Mainline, and she'd seen him in all the Lines around her.

Yavobo strode toward her, ready for the kill.

A
panther
o
f
faceted black obsidian stalked the virtual hallway, wicked head lowered, snarling at the scent of intruders. FlashMan laid a steadying hand on Nomad, who was gathering himself to leave. "Wait."

A gun appeared in his hand, pulled magically from a sim-fold. The weapon belched, and something roared from its barrel. Nomad did a double take. It was FlashMan rushing forward, or the image of him, one jagged lightning figure racing to confront the ravening beast. The sim that was not-Flash met the ICE, battled it, succumbed to it. The glassine creature ripped a clump of energy from the chest area of the inert sim-form. The Flash clone shorted out, vanishing in virtual smoke.

The panther pawed the ground, looked casually about. The intruder scent had been accounted for and dispatched. The ICE was satisfied, and padded elsewhere on its system patrol.

The real FlashMan stood by his official companion, a finger to his lips until the sim-panther was past and out of sight. "Clone and conceal," he offered under his breath. "A sim as decoy; a little virtual confusion to hide our data trace."

The ICE would have felled the real decker with a heart attack. Nomad looked at the independent with new respect. "Interesting program."

"Wrote it myself." Flash glanced about, made sure the corridor was empty. "Welcome to level-five security. Adahn's home cy-bersystems. If you want to look around, now's the time, before the cat comes back this way."

Nomad deferred to FlashMan's instincts, and followed close in the footsteps of the independent decker. The pair ran a swift re-connoiter of in-house command systems, down corridors and piggyback on data streams, until a red-barred tunnel mouth caught FlashMan's eye and slowed him up. "What do you think's in there?" he mused out loud.

"It's alarmed." Nomad pointed out the telltales at the edges of the security lockout.

"Not for long," Flash said. "Let's see.. . ."

The netrunners ducked around the edges of the fading lockout grid. Flash, in the lead, was the first to let out a low whistle.

"Home base," he said. "We're in his command center." The cybercenter linked security, communications, Net interface. On a dais, a fiber bundle ascended to virtual heaven, the direct link to something physical—a deck, perhaps, or command console of some sort. FlashMan cavorted beside the construct, then stopped, grinning at his companion. "We're top of the heap here. So what did you want to snoop?"

He began tapping randomly into data streams, flicking from secure channel to channel.

"Stop that," Nomad warned. "You'll alert someone to intruders."

"Pffft." The decker shook his spiky head. "Not by random sampling, that looks like the integrity routines that do the same thing. Only if we sit on one—whoa. What's this?"

He nudged electrons, redirecting video and sound feed to a quickly crafted virtual monitor.

"What in the hells are you up to?" Nomad demanded angrily. "Come on. This'll bring ICE or deckers for certain."

"Save it," FlashMan snapped. "What's wrong with this picture?"

Together they saw the image that Adahn Harric watched on his wall monitor: a woman clad in form-fitting black, an Aztrakhani alien closing on her.

The figures moved in the syrup-slow pace of organics not in synch with the accelerated perceptions of the Net. Gradually, Reva blinked. She seemed to coil herself, to lean a fraction away from the door. Yavobo hefted the knife in his hand, too slow to be a threat, too boringly slow to keep FlashMan's attention.

Or Nomad's. "Let's get out of here," he ordered.

"I don't think so," Flash retorted. "That's my client."

Nomad studied the vid for a moment, then looked back the way they had come. "That ICE'll be down our throats in no time."

"Then lock us in," Flash said distractedly as data leads grew from his jagged head, tapping into the fiberbundles that led to the outside world. "We can let ourselves out later."

Nomad considered ordering Flash unplugged, then decided he wasn't ready to face the killer ICE on his own. He turned grudgingly and trotted off to secure the tunnel entry.

His retreat was unwitnessed by FlashMan, who floundered in the sea of new information he had tapped into. Finally he caught the rhythm and rose from subterranean processes to the instruction layers that gave it all purpose. Then understanding came, and he cursed himself for the milliseconds he had already wasted.

It was time to issue some orders of his own.

Cornered by the
bounty hunter.

The shock of it echoed through Reva. Even in health, un-wounded, she was not his match for strength, for reflexes. Not his equal in plain fighting skill. If she once became injured, he would soon have her dead.

She'd already seen that much in the Lines around her.

Her only hope was to put Yavobo out of the fight immediately, with one powerful, unexpected blow. She reached for the Sun-dragon, the supercharged blast tube concealed along her right forearm. As the deadly cylinder came into her fingers, the warrior leapt—from an unexpected distance, farther than a human would have tried. His abrupt motion forced her to react or be pinned and knifed against the door.

The reality of combat drove hesitation from her, and fine-tuned reflexes carried her away from the wall in a sideways spring. She had faced bloody death before. She would not let the look of bloodlust in Yavobo's eyes distract from what she must do.

Her dodge was anticipated and the warrior twisted in mid-air, to land where Reva had stood, facing into the center of the empty room. He ran after her, three, four darting steps. The assassin fell back before him. His oncoming rush left no time to aim and fire the Sundragon. She feinted to one side, dodged to the other, and slipped past her attacker.

His blade nicked her right arm as she darted by, a split second too late to do serious damage. But the blooding elated the warrior and he yelled, a ululating victory cry, and paused to brandish his weapon.

Reva fired the blast cylinder at her enemy.

The Sundragon erupted with a crackling blaze of coherent light, energy bolt sizzling through space where Yavobo to all rights should be—but he was not. Impossibly fast, he dropped to the floor and rolled to one side, out of the path of the weapon's beam.

The bolt seared through Harric's monitor, vaporizing screen and plascrete, leaving a hole the size of two fists in the wall. The energy discharge ended somewhere beyond, and Reva heard muffled outcries from that direction.

Yavobo sprang to his feet, glared at the offending Sundragon in her hand, and gave another bloodcurdling cry. Reva knew that its only charge was expended. She threw it at him, hoping for a moment's worth of distraction. He batted it aside as she pulled vibroblade from her other sleeve.

Before she could set herself, or plan where to maneuver, he was upon her.

Yavobo startled Vask nearly as badly as he had the assassin. The agent's concentration wavered, his phase-shifted body slipping precariously downscale toward solidity. Willpower alone returned him to his complex energy state. He watched in anxious suspense as the antagonists engaged in a flurry of attack and pursuit, silent shadow play between ghost-soft figures of blue-gray light.

The Sundragon's discharge was a color-shifted explosion of near-white energies and trailing blue sparkles. As the bolt missed the deadly alien, Vask knew that Adahn no longer mattered. It would be the end of Reva if he could not help in some way. He hated to reveal his presence so soon, but Yavobo's answering charge stripped his options from him.

He positioned himself near the alien and let his concentration relax, the energies of his structure cascading back down to a natural harmonic, condensing his form from spectral energy into molecular solid. Ozone from the Sundragon discharge assaulted his nostrils. He wore the loose street clothes he had favored on R'debh, and from within the jacket near his chest—close enough to shift with him—he pulled a blast pistol.

The alien hulked large before him, not yet aware of his danger. He dodged Reva's vibroblade, trying to press her back against the wall of the room. Vask raised the pistol at point-blank range, and set finger to firing stud.