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So why was he letting her stroll away?

It was shock that held his feet in place, shock as he reconciled the puzzle pieces he had picked up about Reva with the person she really was. This woman who had saved his life, who harbored a prickliness that seemed to cover a strange sensitivity—she was all this, and a ruthless killer, too.

The pieces fit. Her skill at kria hunting. Her fight with Yavobo, who could probably have slain most other opponents out of hand. Her knowledge of time patches, and other things hinted, not said....

Something tugged at the back of his mind, snippets of briefings and a criminal profile he'd read a few months before. Something that reminded him of Reva.

He let the assassin go, and took himself to a secluded corner where he could cease the distracting drain of using his blindspot ability. Sitting in the shade of a tree fern, he relaxed, head in hands, and rolled back mental pictures of briefings, reports, ready-room bull sessions. . ..

There, it came in bits and pieces. His mnemonic disciplines served him well, offering up the scattered segments he had not put together in any kind of association. Until now.

There have been a series of assassinations, Killer unknown. Perpetrator does not show up on surveillance sensors, and leaves no psi trace. High-tech devices are used to commit the murders: lDPs, coolsuit turbochargers, lethal bio-injection. Death is usually made to appear accidental. Victims are political figures or related to organized crime—assassinations that fit this pattern have been identified as far back as four years, with a high likelihood of sharing same perpetrator. ... No leads. If you find suspect matching this profile, contact Calyx IntSec HQ, Special Investigator Kye. . . .

A chill went over Vask. Reva left no psitrace. Used high-tech devices. Had just killed a political figure.

Vent the contraband investigation. That didn't matter anymore. If she was the mystery assassin, half the Ministry of Internal Security believed she didn't exist, and the other half believed she was impossible to catch.

Suddenly Vask was very anxious to uplink his video log to Systems Control, and review the results on his comp.

He fidgeted, hoping to catch the next tube train, and then gave up the lengthy wait. He grabbed an air cab instead. If he was on the case he thought he was, he could easily justify the expense later.

Ground crew emerged
from a subterranean power bay near the
Savu.
The gargantuan freighter was inert on the pad, her Captain in heated exchange with a Security agent on the ground.

The techs approached the deck gantry and the Security man who stood there.

"Pardon me, sir," one said. "We're here to pull the batteries."

Agent Jorris turned angrily toward this new problem. "What's that? Batteries?"

"Yes, sir. Port Master said pull the power to the ignition circuits so they can't lift out of here. He wants this ship grounded."

"Batteries. Right." Jorris stabbed a finger at Natic. "See, Captain? No need for you to stick around. You can come back with me, now."

"Oh, no!" the ground tech spoke quickly. "We need the Captain to help us."

"Help you? Why?"

"She needs to override the phase lockout," the tech said matter-of-factly, "and maintain pulse alignment from engineering when we pull the tachyon leads."

It was only technobabble, but Jorris was no spacefarer, and hardly knew a warp coil from a vacc patch. He scowled. "Go ahead, then. As soon as this ship is grounded, you're with me, Captain."

Natic boarded the deck elevator with the ground-crew-that-was-not. Workers came aboard the broad-floored lift, pushing a gravsled, carrying lead extractors. Two muscled a heavy cable box along. One lifted power couplings off the last gravsled, then fumbled his load and spilled the equipment at Agent Jorris' feet.

The diversion nearly served to keep all eyes from the rest of the crew—but not quite. One of the Port guards watched idly, noted the fat man struggling with the cable box. Something about his movement was familiar.. ..

The guard normally worked the terminal, and knew the Customs Chief on sight. "That's Edini!" he shouted, and pulled his blaster.

Edinin dropped his end of the cable box, jarring Daribi's grip, leaving Karuu to spill out ingloriously onto the ground. The Chief dashed for the elevator, fishing for the blaster concealed inside a cargo pocket of his coveralls.

Startled by the shouts, his men abandoned him. One punched the lift button, and the heavy cargo doors swung ever so slowly shut. Blaster fire assailed their position; men snatched weapons concealed on the gravsled, and returned fire while Captain Natic dove for cover. Edini stumbled, then dove to the ground, taken down by one of Agent Jorris' well-aimed blaster bolts.

Karuu sprawled on the plascrete, ionizing charges crackling through the air over his head. Now,
this
was a diversion. The Dorleoni bounced to his feet.

"Come on, Boss!" Daribi said, running back the way they had come. He shouldered into Jorris, sending the Security man staggering to the ground. Of one accord, Islander and Holdout jumped

into the waiting skimmer. Daribi punched the power, and the speeder shot off across the pad.

Wild blaster fire followed them about the same time a concussion grenade detonated inside the elevator cage. "Edini's dead," Jorris reported to Commander Obray. "Karuu and one accomplice fleeing eastward across the field in stolen skimmer."

Security forces rushed to intercept.

Karuu ducked down in the seat, the wind of their passage ruffling his body fur unpleasantly. He risked a peek forward, saw the woven mesh of the starport perimeter fence rushing toward them.

"We can not push through that," he squeaked.

"Not going to."

A blaster bolt from pursuing skimmers crackled through the air, range too long yet to be a hazard. Overhead a Customs patrol ship began a rapid downward spiral, anticipating their heading and closing on it.

"What are you doing?"

"Hang on!" The skimmer gave a leap, angled sharply upward, and rocketed for the top of the ten-meter-tall retaining fence.

A skimmer is a ground effect vehicle, but speed, momentum, and a sharp-enough angular adjustment could make it airborne. Not long, not far, but just enough to count.

They cleared the perimeter fence by so little, Karuu thought he felt gravpads scrape the top. They plunged to the ground on the other side and continued their high-speed run to the sea beyond.

The Dorleoni felt faint. "What now?" he choked out.

A crash came from the fence behind, a pursuer either trying their trick or failing to swerve aside quickly enough. The derevin chief didn't look back. The Customs flitter was closing overhead, and the edge of Bendinabi Field lay before them.

"Get ready to jump, Boss."

"What!"

"Jump. See that?"

Karuu peered forward, saw the sea cliff approaching, and slammed his eyes shut. "Edge."

"Water's deep below, we'll be alright."

Their intention to go over the cliff was apparent to the Customs ship. The vessel settled down, trying to block their route and force them to turn aside.

"Are you crazy?" squalled Karuu. "You are trying to kill us!"

Daribi shook his mane of wind-whipped hair. "I'm trying to save us. Get ready." He locked the throttle and, steering with one hand, began to pull his feet up onto the seat.

"Don't worry. You can swim." Daribi continued straight ahead, not swerving or turning aside from the Customs flitter. It loomed suddenly large before them.

"I hate this water," Karuu forced out miserably. His eyes were open again, fixed on the rapidly expanding wall of an atmosphere ship's hull. He tensed for impact and cursed his unkindly fate.

At the last possible moment the Customs vessel eased up a little to avoid the disastrous collision. The skimmer shot beneath it and over the edge of the cliff, sailing far out before it began its downward plunge.

Daribi held Karuu's webbed paw and the pair jumped clear, flailing and falling in a timeless moment into the green waters below. While he fell, between one long scream and another, the Holdout finally realized why the wild man had chosen this route for them to follow.

Offshore floated a sprawling, thick mat of woven reeds, an artificial island of the type that old R'debh natives called home.

"Are your handlers
on the pressure valves, Master Sharptooth?"

There were no humans outside to work the cargo airlock so borgbeasts could swim clear. FlashMan knew the only option now was to remove the entire end of the Peryton's cargo container. Sharptooth and his companions were preparing to do so.

The end seal could be opened underwater, if pressure was equal on both sides. As soon as they were submerged, it would be. "We are standing by," the Vernoi assured him, his otterine fellows in position by the eight massive pressure seal clamps that secured the end of the container.

Flash turned his attention elsewhere. The Bugrunners were giving him trouble upstairs, hammering out dissonant music on his virtual keyboard, trying to interrupt the data flow that carried his cyber consciousness from physical body to ship's rigger jack.

Already he had had to split his attention and send a second sprite-self back upstairs, to play a countermelody that bolstered the subspace channel and kept his link with the body strong.

Not every decker could do that, split his consciousness and be in two places at once. It took a specialized deck and custom programming, and a lot of practice. FlashMan cavorted in a tiny circle inside the rigger jack, and prepared to split again.

Soon the Bugs would be getting nasty. If they couldn't interrupt his subspace channel, they would use countermeasures to fight him inside the ship's cybernet. Like opening a door with a grenade, it would be messy and might hurt him.

It was time to change the rules a little.

While part of his mind considered his problem, the rest of FlashMan handled the space freighter on reflex so intuitive it seemed unthinking. The
Delos Varte
lost altitude, touched water, settled only 100 meters until the container jarred against the bottom on the Avelar Shelf. The lifting framework of the vessel remained above the water. With a fraction of his attention FlashMan compensated for wave action, and kept the ship balanced and steady, its cargo fully submerged.

While the ship was settling, he split his consciousness again, and a lightning-shaped sprite-self secured an alternate route back to the FlashMan's cyberdeck. The second sim dissolved as the netrunner focused all his attention within the
Delos Varte.

"Cycling power, now,''
he announced to Master Sharptooth. The Vernoi floated by the locks as hydraulics eased clamps back. The handlers swam in excited circles, then gathered near the pressure seal valves.

Captain Brace paused, listening to a change in subspace harmonics. "He's doing something with the ship. We can't waste time." He tapped the bulldog on the head. "Backtrace. Try to locate his source."

Zippo nodded and snuffled off, moving upstream along data pathways, seeking the trickle of electrons that kept the intruder tied to the body.

Brace turned back to the floor-that-was-not, a tunnel mouth dropping down into the
Delos'
subspace receiver. "I think... data sharks," he mused, and reached into his virtual utility belt to pull out a handful of cherry-bomb-sized capsules. He tossed them onto the tunnel mouth, where they flowed like quicksilver, then solidified into many-toothed, crawly creatures vaguely fishlike in form. In a distant cyberdeck, a Borer program ran, creating data dropouts in the FlashMan's secure channel. In the Net, data sharks snapped and gnawed, and holes appeared in the fabric of the subspace tunnel.

The going was slow, but it was going. The sharks ate their way into the mouth of the conduit, and then down. Nomad followed and Brace came after, floating through the patchy data stream behind them.

FlashMan grabbed his pointy head and yowled. It felt like someone was pouring acid on his synapses. It was hard to keep in touch with the body, and hard to focus on the ship. Time to bail out of this channel.

As quickly as possible Flash split his consciousness and sent a sprite-self racing ahead, using his back-door route to the inert body that housed the netrunner's brain. With a sprite there to serve as stepping-stone, Flash withdrew his focus from the satellite comnet, and turned instead to a route through vidphone lines.

The Bulldog's trail disappeared, and Zippo howled in frustration.

The encryption scheme on the subspace channel vanished; data sharks blinked out of existence as the need for them fled. Captain Brace plunged after Nomad through the cleared frequency, free of data or netrunner presence except for their own.

A moment later the deckers were in a round white room, with a single door leading out of it. It was the passage to the rigger jack, the only exit this particular channel could reach. Nomad marched up to it, and pulled the door open.

When FlashMan was distracted, hydraulics quit pushing and locking clamps bound in place. When his attention came back on line, machined parts grudgingly gave way. It remained for the Vernoi to vent the pressure seals, and then the massive endplate of the container should fall away.