Mainline (15 page)

"What about the crewmen?" the Port Master asked.

"Detain for questioning."

That mollified Hevrik, who conferred with his security forces.

Lish made to leave, and Edini reached out to stop her.

"Is there a purpose to this?" she bridled. "I have nothing to do with this ugly affair."

"We'll see about that—"

She turned to the Internal Security officer, whose stylized red armband on his uniform jacket indicated his lower-caste status. He was Kenushi, the Authorator class, about midlevel in Sa'adani hierarchy: high enough to hold responsible office, low enough to be impressed by a Rus'karfa bloodline.

"Sir," she spoke boldly. "If you know my name, you know my House. Do you plan on detaining a Shiran Trader without grounds to do so?"

Internal Security taught their people to ignore caste, so that a suspect's bloodline should not unnecessarily affect their investigations, but such indoctrination was not always enough to counter a lifetime of habit and perception. Commander Obray seemed about to oblige her, until he looked at her jawline where the missing Rus'karfa battleslash should be. His question was apparent in his eyes.

Lish colored slightly. "Would you like to see my identification?" she offered, distantly polite. Her infraction was self-evident once she claimed her rank. But as she had hoped, Internal Security had bigger concerns than enforcing caste law today.

"That won't be necessary, Domna," Obray declined. He took in her haughty, offended stance, and the casteless, blustering CAS Sector Customs man next to her.

"Let her go," he said.

Edini flushed red and tightened his grasp on her arm.

Obray fixed him with a look, and the Chief pulled back his hand as if burned. "We have a big operation staged for today," the Security officer reprimanded him. "Even if some intelligence was in error, we can still proceed with our clean-up mission. Let's make sure we direct our attentions to the right target, shall we?''

The Customs Chief stood speechless. While he fumed, the Commander bowed to Lish.

"We'll be in touch, Domna."

The Holdout dipped her head, almost regally. "I will be glad to speak with
you,
Commander. Perhaps we can leave inappropriate parties out of it, shall we?" She cast a disdainful glance at Edini, and swept past as if leaving a House Arleon audience chamber.

It wasn't until she nearly reached the terminal entrance that her nervous stomach made itself felt, and Lish had to seek out a public fresher. Afterward, she stood for a while on the viewing terrace that overlooked Bendinabi Field. High on the flight structure of the loaded Peryton freighter she finally discerned the faint shimmer of a force screen on the main crew entrance. The ship was secure, then, and holding for Obray's return investigation.

Nodding to herself, she entered a com booth, punched a number, and in her haste apparently entered the wrong code. A disconnect tone came back to her. She waved her hand at the uncooperative unit in disgust, and went on her way—that last small performance intended for tails or security spyeyes that might be observing her.

In fact, Lish was perfectly content with the disconnect tone. She took the magtube out to Lairdome 7, suppressing her joy all the way there. By time she walked into Comax Shipping her face ached, but she had succeeded in looking like the victim of an unpleasant brush with authorities. Until she did a victory dance in the privacy of her office.

Security agents marched
Karuu down the concourse past
whis
pering onlookers. The mortified alien could barely put one foot in front of the other. Never had he been arrested, not once in
all
his years on R'debh, or before. Now the Bugs were ready to
flay
the importer of unlicensed bioforms and catch themselves a
juicy
unscrupulous high-rolling Holdout, and here he was, trussed
up
and ready to roast. They'd crack his private files open and
see
more than they could imagine about his operations, and then
he
would be dead, dead, dead—

Dorleoni cannot sweat, like humans, when they are nervous. They pant like dogs. Karuu breathed through his mouth in short huffing gasps as he was led to a holding chamber reserved for starport security.

Obray joined him a short while later. All Karuu could do was deny; all the evidence the Commander pulled up showed that he was lying. It made the Holdout desperate enough to take an awful gamble.

He leaned earnestly across the narrow interrogation room table. "See here, Commander. You are so doubting of my truthful word, I volunteer for this: use drugs on me, or use one of your mind-readers. You will discover I say the truth."

That seemed to give Obray pause. Drugs and mind-probes weren't reliable with nonhumans. It gave him the chance to appear innocent and yet not give anything of import away.

He could see those considerations turning over behind the Security officer's eyes. Obray favored his prisoner with a tight smile. "We'll see."

He left the room, and left Karuu to squirm.

FlashMan cost 100k
a day, plus expenses—enough to break Lish, if she needed him for more than a few days' work. As it was, she was in the hole, out on short-term loans to a Scripman to finance Flash's services.

It was a big game of Shaydo: certain wealth or certain bankruptcy. Or, in this line of work, probably something worse than bankruptcy. It was worth it to pay for the best.

A few nanoseconds after Lish's call, he collected his virtual self and joined a data stream flowing at light speed into the orbital comnet. There he jumped into a high-frequency burst that put his electrons in a satellite handling subspace communications over Amasl.

The netrunner reassembled his consciousness into a virtual entity, a construct that mimicked an animated bolt of white lightning. The representation pleased him. In this sim-form he tripped some circuits and locked open a secure channel on a narrow beam planetward.

FlashMan jumped into that channel by entering a virtual room in the net matrix, and sealing the door behind him. In the center of the featureless chamber was a keyboard. Playing it like an organist, Flash pounded out a code, a rhythm, a series of subspace notes. Music swirled about the room, became visible light, became data stream in his virtual analog of consciousness.

An encrypted message transmitted on tight beam to the
Delos Varte.
On board, a subspace radio with an independent power cell responded to the transmission, and locked a com channel open to receive it.

As this happened, the artificial intelligence that monitored sub-space communications noted the unexpected transmission. FlashMan split his spark of consciousness in two: a diminutive lightning-man ran to the door of the chamber, engaged the data policeman who appeared there in confusing doubletalk and what amounted to minor programming. The AI concluded it had heard only white noise, a low-priority anomaly, and went away. Relieved, Flash's second spark sealed the virtual room's door shut once again.

As FlashMan merged back into one consciousness, the floor dropped out of the chamber. The netrunner and his keyboard floated atop another tunnel of white light, this one pouring down to the
Delos
where subspace radio linked satellite/sender and ship/ receiver. The decker played more chords, changing the tune he sent to the ship's waiting systems. The data stream pulsed, color going from white to the crisp blue of program instructions.

In the flight deck control panel, energy shunted from the sub-space power cell to a physical relay. It tripped, activating the rigger jack that interfaced with the ship's cybernetic controls. FlashMan's simulacrum leapt down the subspace channel, to reassemble inside the jack. The lightning-spark grew leads and wires from its virtual head, and the rigger connection was complete.

FlashMan maintained the data stream. Lish had provided the shipboard jack. She also sprang for the 300k worth of add-on chips the netrunner wore slotted into his brain: they lent him the temporary know-how to remotely pilot and engineer the giant freighter.

With ship's sensors for eyes and ears, and ship's systems for hands, FlashMan reached out with a flicker of attention and dogged the airlocks shut. No unwanted visitors would force their way past the security screen and come aboard while he was preparing to lift. Item by item he went through the internal checklist, getting systems flight ready. In less than an hour, the internal preparations were complete. Only then did he risk the external ones—the obvious things that would alert everyone near the landing pad that the ship was taking off.

Things like disengaging the service umbilicals, and running up power on the repulsor pads. The
Delos Varte
lifted, snapping uncleared cables and nearly dinging a landing gantry. Guards fired uselessly at the mighty ship while FlashMan chided himself for overcorrecting against wind drift. He wasn't listening through external speakers, or he would have heard the screams and curses as the impounded ship rose into the sky.

Obray was grave
as he spoke with Captain Shiran. "I'll be blunt with you," he said. "You're hauling a cargo that violates too many Imperial regulations to count. You can be fined and have your flight certificate pulled for any one of these crimes."

Devin heard that with growing concern. He'd known nothing of this.

"The environmental endangerment charges carry criminal penalties," Obray continued. "The shipper is in serious trouble, and you are, too, if you had knowledge of these violations."

Devin was troubled by this turn of events, but all he could do was tell what he knew, and that was very little. He considered the simple room he was in, sure to hold concealed spyeyes and be recording his every word and gesture. The diplomatic approach was best. "I'll cooperate, Commander. I've nothing to hide."

"I'm pleased to hear that, Captain. What's your story?"

It was not a "story," a fabrication, and Devin resented the implication. He'd signed on for the freight run through the Free Traders' job pool on Corvus, and said as much. Recorded briefing, a capsule contract handled through the Net, no acquaintance with the owner. It was a not-uncommon arrangement.

"Where did you pick up the cargo?" Commander Obray asked.

"I didn't," Devin explained. The ship was already in orbital dock, fully loaded and awaiting a crew. The contract briefing said the owner was paying a bonus for "quick and discreet"—the common spacer phrase for things a little on the shady side, where no questions asked assured no problems were encountered.

"Come now, Captain. Am I supposed to believe you took on megatons of cargo and had no curiosity about it? Especially one requiring 'quick and discreet' handling?"

"Of course I was curious." Devin frowned. "So I did what most captains do. I read the manifest. It said 'aqualogy,' heading for a trade show. I work waterworlds from inside a ship—I wasn't going to take a dip in the container module to check it out. I left the cargo secured, which is standard practice, and shipped for Selmun."

Obray glowered, but ignorance was no crime, and the Security officer seemed to know he had no real hold on the spacer. More questions and a few acerbic comments made it clear that this was one contract Devin wouldn't be completing any time soon.

The spacer was disgruntled. Loss of delivery bonus, maybe an official note of suspicion on his record—

He could not discuss these things with Obray, who was distracted in that instant by the sizzle of an energy bolt against the door and the sound of a body hitting the hall floor.

The Security man surged to his feet as the door opened, reaching for the service blaster under his jacket.

"Karuu is gone!" his aide shouted. "Edini's on the run with him!"

"Stop!" exclaimed a Security man. The entourage of Customs men and short, furred Dorleoni receded farther down the hallway.

"Stop!" he ordered again, pulling his blaster. "Or I'll shoot!"

There was a brief exchange of fire, and the Security agent went down. Edini and his men ducked around a corner and into a service tunnel while the Imperials were in turmoil.

"Hi, Boss," Daribi greeted Karuu inside the passageway, and hurried the group down a branching corridor.

Loyalty! The Islander had not deserted him after all, and it seemed he had rounded up reinforcements as well. With the chance of freedom in his grasp, the Holdout felt despair slipping away. He talked to the Customs Chief trotting along heavily beside him.

"Where are we going?" the Dorleoni asked the human.

"To the
Savu.
My boys are on it. I told your Captain Natic to have systems on standby. If we move fast, surprise will get us out of here before anyone can respond. We have to try it. We're dead if we stay here."

"Why are you running, too?"

"Beldy spines," Edini growled, "do you think I'm a free man after they inspect your records? They'll find your payoffs and if they don't shoot me just for fun, then I'm on D'rgul along with you! Better to get out of here now, while we're free to run."

Karuu could not refute that. He let himself be swept along, down service lifts and mech corridors, into the network of maintenance tunnels beneath Bendinabi Field. The hidden service routes were traversed mainly by mechos and programmed grav-sleds. They hopped a sled destined for the large-cargo, area, and journeyed into the warrens beneath the starport.