Mainline (24 page)

The Vernoi continued. "And I fear something is wrong. Wee'ska is not well. When the time came, she could not charge."

Sharptooth looked toward Brightfang's life-friend, the female borgbeast who lingered shyly at the edges of the chasm. She was smart enough to sense her failure, and hung back, reluctant to join the others. Her hide seemed mottled, the slick black skin appearing roughened and patchy even from tens of meters away.

"Is she ill?" the Vernoi leader inquired.

Brightfang rolled a quarter of the way over and then rolled back, body language showing uncertainty. "I do not know, Master Swimmer. If so, it is nothing I have seen at home. But she is not herself, that I can say."

Again, the other handlers sculled nervously. Several other borgbeasts moved more slowly, charged less aggressively, than before. Each Vernoi hoped it was a temporary problem, an adjustment to alien waters and alien diet. No one had confessed the shortcoming, until now.

Sharptooth swam to inspect Wee'ska, and saw foreboding signs in the condition of her skin and her lackluster eyes. Such a patch had already appeared on his own borgbeast. He had dismissed it as reaction to the bio-rich seawater of R'debh.

Perhaps he had been wrong.

He studied his companions and saw that neither they nor their life-friends were ready for another assault on the humans' shipping. The condition of the borgbeasts was of paramount importance, more vital even than the nagging tiredness that was beginning to plague the handlers.

"I shall talk to Edesz about this," Sharptooth reassured his podmates. "Let us seek him out now. We all need time to rest, and surely he will be able to help."

The Vernoi agreed, and left the Bennap Run for the deep dome where they could find the Gambru League terrorists.

Reva slipped through
Amasl's entry port in the same -way that she had many weeks before: as a nondescript local traveler, nothing on her except her credmeter and a change of mass-market clothing. The brine-rich scent of R'debh's sea air filled her nostrils. In a perverse way, she was glad to be back home. Now, at least, she could resolve matters with Lish once and for all.

All the way back to R'debh she had rehearsed various overtures, practiced what she would say, then discarded each approach as juvenile and inappropriate.

Face it, Reva. You're no good at making up to people. Never wanted to do it before.

With no experience in that kind of interaction, she would have to rely on her wits and common sense. Nervous anticipation clutched her stomach and she fought off the kind of butterflies she had never been plagued with for such a simple thing as impersonal execution.

Salvaging a friendship was going to be much harder than she thought.

She slowed her rented skimmer as she neared Comax Shipping, startled by the burned-out shell of Lairdome 7. A heartbeat later, Now split into echoes of itself, a panorama of possibilities quickly scanned for dangerous upcoming moments.

Then she gave a small laugh. That was a pointless exercise. No more would she map out an exit from the moment, not until she'd cleared things up with the Holdout. It was too easy to lose track of one Mainline that way. She shifted back to Realtime, collected herself, and eased the skimmer forward.

The Skiffjammer who emerged from an observation post was expected, a shadow she had seen in the near-future. "Tell me where I can find Lish," she demanded of the guard.. "I have business with her."

Soon enough she was escorted to the Holdout's villa, ushered into a comfortably appointed room off the foyer. There they left her. Guards posted in the hall made it clear that Reva was to await the Holdout's pleasure in this chamber.

Spotting Vask in the hallway cut short her growing anger at this treatment. The Fixer stopped inside the door, clad in a soiled j gray work jumper, a torque socket and static bands hanging carelessly out of one cargo pocket. His dark hair was rumpled, but his grin was as broad as ever.

"Why am I left sitting here, and what in the Deep is happening with Lish's business?" Reva blurted.

Vask, unruffled by her greeting, filled her in on the streetwar with the Islanders, how the combat had progressed from the waterfront and now revolved around the besieged headquarters of the enemy derevin.

"So how does that explain why I'm waiting on Lish? Does she j even know I'm here?"

Vask spread his hands. "She's on the Net. I'm not sure—"

"You mean those 'Jammers didn't tell her I'm here because they don't want to interrupt her?" Incredulity raised her normally husky voice a half-octave. "Beldy shit. I'm announcing myself, right now."

The assassin surged to her feet and headed for the door. Vask rushed close behind, waving guards back to their posts. Half directing Reva, half following her, Kastlin took the assassin through the living area and into the office wing of the villa.

Reva glowered at Lish's door panel as if it were responsible for barring her from the dreaded, anticipated meeting with the Holdout. "You stay here," she warned Vask with a brusque aside. The Fixer, hovering solicitously, took a step away. Reva gathered herself, and walked in on the woman she had thought of as friend.

"This afternoon surface
freighters of Lovana Shipping Corporation were sunk in the Bennap Run,"
the message began. "
Like others of their kind, they carried surface-made goods at monopoly prices to water-breathers who can, and do, manufacture most of these items for themselves.''

Freighters. Shipping. Sunk. Context recognition programs identified the message and sent an alarm-frequency pulse into the cybernet. FlashMan was jolted by that alarm. He launched himself after the neon-pulsing pink trail that blitzed along the data feed of the terrorist message, in search of its source.

"No longer will we pay extortionist prices for the goods we need to live. No longer will we support the shipping monopolies of surface interests. Until interdome trade is approved and fully legal, no surface enterprise will be permitted to keep water-breathers at their mercy..."

The diatribe continued, extending the transmission time for precious nanoseconds. Flash chased electrons down the yellow spiral corridor of a tightbeam relay.

When the alarm sounded, Nomad welcomed it, and awaited the personal nudge that would direct him to the burst of the terrorist's transmission.

That nudge didn't happen. He heard the alarm down a distant corridor in the data net, and took an intuitive leap to land in a newsnet junction where the pulsing pink neon trace marked the terrorist's data trail.

What's going on? he wondered, just as a lightning-formed sim blurred past. The backtrace vanished as the data-jacker raced by.

Nomad threw himself after in close pursuit.

Through the spiral corridors of tightbeam transmitters, down the fuzzy highway of a broadband frequency, Nomad raced behind the FlashMan. The wire-framed decker recognized the simfigure from the
Delos Varte
hijacking.

I'm gonna get you, he vowed, and put on an extraordinary burst of speed that moved him a little closer to the FlashMan.

Abruptly the funhouse complex of an encrypted relay system hove into sight ahead of them. FlashMan blitzed into the mirrored complex. Nomad tried to follow, but by the time his decryption programs were online, the League transmission was no longer there to trace. There was nothing but dead air, and the lightning-shaped renegade had given him the slip again.

Cold rage threatened to overcome Nomad, a decker not used to one-upsmanship. Working as an independent on R'debh, he had beaten all the local talent. Who was this newcomer, who twice had slipped through his fingers?

Angered, it took a while to realize where he stood—but when he did, a thin-lined grin split his blue wire-frame face.

This was the relay nexus for the Embari Dome complex. Any transmission that passed through here could only have originated among those domes.

Nomad waved a triumphant fist at the faceted walls of the relay. One dome or fifty to search, it made no difference. Finally, they knew where to start looking.

The Gambru League's days are numbered, the decker thought. And so, my spiky friend, are yours.

It was too
much to bear, the incessant noise, the long-range moan of alien intruders. For a time the ghost-ray phased out of the sea waters of R'debh, later to return and find the assault on his senses more abrasive than before. There were more sounds now, more distress—and something new. Pain, a silent groan, an ephemeral discord of the self. From the aliens?

The waters spoke not of a challenge, but of death. Something morbid flavored the currents.

The ray phased into his semisolid form and floated out of his deepwater grotto. The time for listening to ocean whispers was past. Now was time to see for himself what was amiss in the sea.

Staying to ravines and deep chasms, the Sea Father of R'debh moved slowly toward the source of the sounds.

The data-trace faded
as FlashMan ascertained which Embari com unit had transmitted the message. He deciphered its point-of-origin code, and hopped a tightbeam to Kesic Dome.

His hunch checked out. The video pickup on the target com unit came to life for a brief moment, activated by the Flash inside the system interface. Edesz was there alright, watching the League message rebroadcast on a screen across the room.

Home,
the FlashMan congratulated himself,
and just a-waiting on a vidcall. I'll see if I can't arrange that.

Reluctantly, Lish had decided to unload wines and exotic foods she had saved up for the storm season festivals, a quarter-year away. The money brought in by luxury items was needed for essential day-to-day expenses. Medcare for wounded Skiffjammers. More ammo. Replacement armor. She hated to spend the brief infusion of cash for such transient benefits, but had no choice. It was called staying afloat. If anything, the Holdout had to seem capable of business as usual, or every debt she owed would be called due immediately, and the quietly observing Scrip-man would be the first to pounce.

She had just concluded terms of delivery with an Avelar wholesaler when the FlashMan's telltale white noise severed her connection.

"Dammit, Flash!" she barked into the com unit. "Don't interrupt my calls like that. I need to finish talking to that man!"

"Would you rather talk to him, or talk to Edesz?"
the netrunner asked sardonically.

Lish's breath caught in her throat. "Edesz?" It was not unexpected, but it was happening sooner than she was ready for. But this was a talk she'd rehearsed and prepared for. "Put him on," she agreed.

A moment later, Edesz' face filled the vidscreen on her console.

The water-breather wore a distracted look, giving more attention to his newsnet telecast than to his vidcall. His age was indeterminate, all the cues Lish knew to expect erased by his sea-adaptation. Edesz lacked eyelashes and hair and had only the finest of fuzz where an air-breather's eyebrows would be. His ears were small and tucked; his neck gills were closed in the airdome of his corns room, but pink striations marked the flaps that would flare when he was submerged in water. The edges of his protective eye membranes showed when he blinked, as he did when he saw Lish.

"What is it?" the Gambru League leader asked automatically, at the same time that he realized the woman he spoke with was not one of his friends or contacts. His eyes narrowed suspiciously; that expression remained wholly human. "Who are you?" he demanded. "How'd you get this code?"

Lish returned his gaze coolly. With a Shaydo gambler's poise, she said, "This is Shiran Gabrieya Lish. We haven't met, though we've done business."

"You!" Astonishment was clear to read on his pale face, his nictitating eyelids flicking down, then up in a reflex of surprise.

"Yes, me. You owe me money. You don't want to do that." Her declaration was flatly confident, sounding much like the FlashMan's initial threat to her.

Edesz' thin-haired brows furrowed deeply. "I don't owe you a thing."

"You took delivery of a cargo. You're using it. You owe. I expect payment—"

"Sea Father take you!" he interrupted. "You had a deal with Alia Lanzig. Leave me out of it."

"Alia's not around to deal with anymore, Edesz. Hadn't you heard?'' She shook her head, as if over a misbehaving student.

"I'm not talking with you," he snapped. His hand reached out and the vidscreen went blank.

Before Lish could take a breath, the screen came to life again. Edesz' image, half turned away, whirled back in consternation. "How—?"

"You're talking with me right now." Lish followed up FlashMan's silent assist with a harsh glare at the terrorist. She stabbed a finger at the water-breather. "You pay up, or I give you to Internal Security. They're hunting for you now, you know."

The man opened his mouth, shut it. A sly look came over his face. "If the Bugs get me, they get my datachips, too. Like the ones recording your agreement with Lanzig to import borgbeasts. You won't get paid, and you'll be put away along with me."

Lish gripped the armrests of her chair. Was it true? Was it a bluff? Could FlashMan verify, to see if Edesz really had such information stored in his comp somewhere? Before she could lose the initiative or stall for time, a status window lit on her console, and a text message from the FlashMan scrolled past on the screen.