Mainline (39 page)

The water-breather glanced at a woman who flanked him; she nodded in turn. "Alright," he said.

"Good. You can take a look in atmosphere."

Edesz agreed. The sea-spider headed for the nearest vehicle
lock.
Smuggler and terrorist started that way, flanked by a few escorts each.

Reva was swimming that short distance when her alertness yelled into the sudden conviction that something was not right.

A quick look around gave no hint what might be wrong. The Leaguers were staying put, and 'Jammers had given no sign of alarm. Tourists drifted about the area, and shopped at kiosks.

Time to look through the Lines, she told herself.

She sought that centered place where Now would split into its

close-related moments. She reached it almost at once—and in
haled
sharply within her breather.

This was not the way things should look at all, and the oddness of the vision halted her in mid-kick, leaving her to slow and float for a moment in the water.

Where events should be overlaid like kaleidoscopic fractals, one possibility atop or near the other, now all was a confusing blur. A figure that she knew was Lish fuzzed into what could be Gambru Leaguer, and then into some unknown tourist, a confusing metamorphosis: it showed too much displacement to reflect a parallel Line, and the figure was too indistinct to be certain of identity. It was not just perplexing, it was
wrong,
a vision her Lineshifting had never bestowed on her before. She couldn't tell what lay in the next moment, let alone down the Line.

Vask's hand on her arm centered her again in Realtime. "Are you alright?" he asked on a privacy channel.

"Something's wrong," she blurted, but could not bring herself to say more. How to explain the Lines to the Fixer, the chaos of the near-futures she had seen? What did it mean?

"What's wrong?" Kastlin echoed her thoughts. "What do you mean?''

The vision was profoundly unsettling. And in this moment Reva had neither time to explore it, nor understanding of what she had seen, so Vask's questions bothered her like fingers probing a fresh wound. She jerked her arm from his grasp, kicked away from his solicitations. "Don't know," she growled. "Keep your eyes open, will you? Something's not right, that's all."

Edesz hovered as his companion examined stasis box and datapad. A murmured conference took place, and the Gambru Leaguer finally turned back to Lish.

"Acceptable," he said. "Here." He held out a credit chit.

Lish took it. She examined the black and gold hologram on the small rectangle as Edesz ordered his fellows to reload the container on board the spider. The Holdout interrupted him.

"What do you mean by this?" She flourished the plastic between two fingers. "A bank transfer marker? That's not part of our deal."

Edesz faced the smuggler. "Sure it is. Ten million, on account. Any bank will verify and honor that marker and transfer the funds to you. You know that."

"Those weren't the terms," Lish said, anger creeping into her voice. Levay moved closer to the smuggler's side; Reva and Vask stood ready on the other. The Fixer licked his lips nervously, but the women stared at Edesz with deadly focus.

The water-breather didn't like their attention, either, and his nictitating eyelids flicked down in a reflex of guarded caution. "Our terms were cash. That's cash."

"Not until it's been run through a bank, it isn't. I don't like banks, Edesz. I wanted transferable credits, something to put
in
my meter on the spot."

The terrorist dissembled, allowed himself an apologetic smile. "Then I'm sorry, Domna. That wasn't explicitly clear according to our earlier conversation. You wanted 10 mil; you have 10 mil. I can take it back, if you like, and we can do this some other time."

Damn the man, Lish thought. He doesn't want to wait on this any more than I do. My time with the Scripman's up, and I can't ask something ruining this exchange.

She held the transfer marker for another breath, then flicked it with one nail and put it into a breast pocket. "Alright. But you leave here first. I'm watching you all the way."

The water-breather inclined his head agreeably, then reaffixed his breather mask. A Gambru Leaguer stepped inside the sea-spider. Edesz and the vehicle led the way through the airlock and nut to the fire spout attraction.

Reva's feeling of something not right clamored stronger than before. On edge, she looked about the plaza for the source of the subconscious alarm.

All seemed normal enough. The sea-spider and ten Leaguers started back toward the thermals, the most direct route out of the Park. Edesz seemed in conference with his fellows near the center of the plaza. Tourists wandered by, closer than they had before.

Tourists ... She looked again, and didn't like what she saw. There were too many full-coverage masks. They paid too much attention to the group around Lish, direct looks, now some direct movement.

Reva grabbed the Holdout's arm, not knowing what she was going to do. What was this? Another derevin? Law enforcement? This was not the kind of attack she'd been prepared for, expecting instead some shot in the dark targeting only Lish.

" Trouble," she said on Com 2. Lish looked her way; Vask and Levay heard the news as well. As she spoke some Skiffjammers had started to spread out, to haze off approaching tourists. From mid-plaza, Edesz and his friends kicked toward Lish, swimming back in a leisurely manner that quickly picked up speed. Every combat reaction she had was screaming. "You're out of here, now," she barked, pulling Lish back toward the airlock. Levay, get us cover."

Trusting Reva's instinct for danger, the Holdout turned her back on the plaza and activated her adrenal boosters. Her kicks became more powerful and she easily kept pace with the assassin. The pair arrowed toward the lock they had left minutes before, and the relative safety beyond it.

Get the nanotech safely away, and get the money back from Lish.

The plan was that simple, and Edesz cursed as the Holdout flitted like a sand midge away from his approaching forces. The time for subtlety was past. The terrorist gave a cry on the sonic translator, the amplified voder tone easily reaching the Leaguers near souvenir shops and the reserves in the lava grottos. His mail escort came on with him, enclosing their leader in a fast swimming wedge intended to punch through the screen of Skiffjammers.

The Holdout's swimming was amazingly strong for an airbreather who had seemed clumsy in the water only minutes
be
fore. He couldn't risk letting her escape. Edesz gave another long and whistling call, this one to the borgbeasts so close by the edge of the Park.

As he did so, he became aware that the tourists were armed and interfering in the League's attack. Amazement gave way to anger at Lish's additional treachery, and he called again to the borgbeasts, an exhortation to speed and violence. No matter if tho ring dome must be destroyed to get her. Get her he would.

Chaos erupted in the plaza. As Obray ordered promenade team to head Lish off at the vehicle lock, Commandos closed with
the
escaping spider. Sea-adapted R'debhi poured from the lava grottos, taking some of the laser-armed Commandos unprepared, stripping their breathers and fleeing with them before the operatives could react.

The greater fight surged before the fire spouts, where Skiffjammers fought terrorists. Concealed cyberweapons came into play, and the ocean pinked with blood-tinge from dead or dying seadwellers. In other places the bodies of air-breathers hung motionless, drowned by the R'debhi tactic of stripping breathers. A handful of belligerents floated helplessly near the souvenir booths, arms and legs confined with static bonds, the victims of successful arrests by officers who had returned to the fray.

With an effort Obray restrained himself from issuing orders and second-guessing his field commanders. His lieutenants could handle the situation in the plaza.

Then the Security officer made the mistake of gazing out, toward and past the fire spouts. A movement there caught his eye. He stared, then made an unprofessional gurgling sound into the com link, followed by an inarticulate stutter that went ignored by his troops. For the longest moment of his life, it seemed Obray Paros was the only one aware of impending doom. The knowledge choked the words in his throat and turned his bowels to witter.

The borgbeasts were upon them.

Reva heard Edesz' eerie voder call, heard the cacophony of grunts and voder voices and thrashing limbs behind them that carried so clearly through the water. Her sea-tuned ears could pick out the sounds, and she knew better than to slow herself by glancing back. They were halfway to the lock, now, and Lish was close beside her. Reva kept on with single-minded intent and barely legistered the sudden movement in the upper left corner of her Held of vision, a place obscured by the frame of her breather mask. Then that sixth sense that had cried foul for the last half hour shrieked an alarm and she glanced up. Someone in a black bodysuit had moved out of concealment behind barnacle ferns, shifting down from the ridge-face, closing on their position.

She saw the lanky build of the swimmer, then noticed the speargun, highlighted for a bizarre moment in the chance beam of a glowspot. She noticed the red and black mottled hands that held it, and recognition hit her like a physical blow. Lish kicked past her as the assassin's limbs froze and a gasp tore loose from her throat.

Yavobo.

You're dead!
she wanted to scream at him, her brain refusing to accept the apparition she saw before her. She had seen him blown to bits along with Alia Lanzig, right before she left Selmun III -

Left and never followed up on news of the hit. Sick realization washed over her. She had come close to death at the alien's hands and wanted to put the frightful memory from her. She had never discussed Yavobo with those who might have known of his survival, and in her concern over killing and then saving Lish, his fate had no longer seemed relevant. The alien was dead, or so she had thought.. ..

The smuggler slowed, wondering what was wrong, and turned belatedly to follow Reva's stare. The assassin saw Yavobo take swift aim, knew she was defenseless; unmoving, the Aztrakhani had her as good as dead in the water. Helpless again before the killer, she felt the gut-sinking feeling she had hoped never to live through again.

And then the muzzle of the speargun tracked the least bit ahead of her, and a new realization struck like the kick of a vecna.
 

It was Lish he was after.

The assassin kicked back into action as Yavobo squeezed the trigger. The gas-propelled spear quarrel flew through the water, streamlined and wickedly barbed, heading well aimed and true for Lish's torso. With a scream of rage that carried through her com link and nearly deafened those sharing the privacy channel. Reva surged ahead and shoved Lish to the side and down. It might be enough, to get her out of the path, might be—

It was. The quarrel passed just over the smuggler's ribs and sliced a ragged tear in Reva's right forearm. Yavobo cocked the magazine-loaded gun, and took aim again.

"Keep going!" Reva shouted at Lish, waving toward the all lock, ignoring the oozing blood that fogged the water around
 her 
injured arm. The wound stung fiercely, aggravated by the salt and organics in the thick R'debh water. Reva centered herself with steely determination and headed straight for Adahn's unexpected killer. To approach straight on would block his aim from Lish and leave Reva the perfect target for his quarrels. She had no doubt the alien would be overjoyed to take her out on the way to hitting the smuggler. But that was the one way she could get near, near enough to kill him with the flechette plate.

She struggled against the harsh distraction of adrenaline, trying to center and
go,
before it was too late. She sped toward Yavobo disregarding all her own rules, and then she cast herself between the Lines, shimmering and vanishing from sight uncaring of what witnesses might be looking on.

Yavobo warred with himself for a critical moment. Here came his Blood Oath-sworn enemy, right into the death his stolen speargun carried. Beyond her was the fleeing target, whom he had vowed to slay before he had his vengeance with Reva.

Hut Reva should be slain with the knife, the one he had sworn his vow on. The woman came on toward him, once more the bravest of thin-skins, and the most foolhardy. Yavobo could not shoot his sworn antagonist in this way, not like a butcher killing a skigrat. That was reserved for the unscrupulous smuggler. His eyes sought the Holdout, noted she was closer to the airlock; looking back, he glimpsed another swimmer approaching from beyond Reva, a man in a gray bodysuit trying to flank him to one side.

His growl was heard only in his own ears. Yavobo prepared to fire again at Lish, his line-of-sight no longer passing through the assassin's body, when suddenly Reva faded to transparency and disappeared from view.

The effect was chilling, like the haunting of a soul-stealer on a moonlit dune. Yavobo blinked and his finger jerked in startlement; the readied quarrel hissed from the barrel and sped unhindered through the water where the woman had been a heartbeat before.

He spun about, badly disconcerted, searching for the assassin. instead he saw the man who had been flanking him. The swimmer had stopped, floated unmoving in the water, like an injured freeling playing dead. Did he think that would keep him safe from
 the 
hunter? It was a poor ruse, with the stream of air bubbles from his breather exhaust betraying that he lived. Was this a disdistinction so Reva could trick him?