Mainline (5 page)

He tore the breather from his face, gasped in clean ocean air with a near-claustrophobic joy, then sculled in circles and tried to get his bearings. The closest shore was at least 100 klicks to the northeast. The only habitations nearby were either too deep to dive to or so far away that Yavobo could not see their dome lights during his ascent. There was no safe haven for him to go to.

Aztrakhani are not noted swimmers. Alone on the darkening sea, only the warrior's iron will kept panic in check. After another few minutes of treading water, he loosened his flotation belt, recinching it around his chest and under his arms. In that position he could breathe without treading water, an action that would drain his reserves of energy in very little time. Able to think beyond the moment, then, Yavobo drifted with the waves.

The water did not seem too chill, and his leathery skin that protected him from loss of moisture in the desert in some ways now served like the insulating bodysuits the thin-skinned humans wore on this waterworld. The wind was hardly blowing and no storm was brewing, so he was not in outright danger from the elements. He looked to the northeast, where Amasl and safety awaited, somewhere over the curve of the horizon.

His chances of getting there were slim. But better to be striving than to surrender to a fate handed out by nature or an ocean predator. As long as the glow of sunset remained in the west, he could mark his direction. He faced where the distant port must lie, and began to swim with measured, powerful strokes in that direction.

As long as he could swim, he had a fighting chance. But when the sky fell black and overcast hid the few remaining stars from sight, Yavobo had to stop lest he waste his strength moving in circles. Frustration set in, and panic, quickly subdued, and a growing anger. Anger at himself, that he had overlooked whatever ploy had struck down Albek Murs, whom he had vowed to protect. Anger at whatever person had thrust him into this precarious situation, where even a mighty warrior was helpless against the elemental force of the sea, and only chance and the smiling gods could help him.

Most of all, anger that he was forced to terminate a contract he could no longer honor—no, had failed to fulfill—and thus was bound to repay blood-debt to some thin-skin with no understanding of integrity and principle.

If he knew who had carried out this attack, Yavobo would declare clan-feud, and hunt him down like the skigrat he was. At first it seemed futile rage, but as the hours wore on, the notion became more and more appealing. Why not? he asked himself. I am a hunter of sentients, after all. I have had no personal enemy in a long time. Perhaps it is time to renew the power of
shkei-ko,
of blood oath and feudhunt fulfilled.

Razor-keen incisors showed in a vicious grin. He vowed his revenge to his personal gods and family totem. He forbore to slice the feud-mark on his forearm, not while he was in strange waters where unknown predators might smell his blood, but the Aztrakhani warrior swore he would take that final step as soon as he knew he would live, and be able to fulfill his oath.

For a day and a half the Aztrakhani drifted with the currents, swimming when he could, resting when the unfamiliar exertion cramped even his hardened muscles. On the second night, a strong briny smell hung heavy in the air. A large body bumped against his legs and he started out of a tired haze, pulling knees up to his chest. But no fangs sank into him, no tentacles dragged him down: he extended legs again and another scaly side nudged him in passing. It was too dark to see the waters, but a splash now and then interrupted the monotonous bobbing of the waves.

It must be a school of fish, he conjectured. As long as they're not hungry, I should be alright.

Unable to do anything about it if he was wrong, he returned to his exhausted doze. And that is why he did not notice the distant running lights draw nearer, or sense the thrum of pulse engines in the water. Yavobo awoke before dawn when fishy bodies collided with his once more. He tried to move his legs aside again, but couldn't.

He was caught in the net of an apaku trawler, snaring the run of spawning fish off the coast before they could dash ashore and expire.

He laughed in exultation, a rasping bark unnoted by fishermen amid the grind of winches hoisting netting. When he was dumped to the deck under bright worklights, sprawling among the thrashing apaku nearly half his own size, Yavobo slithered to the edge like a monster from the deep and found his feet with a triumphant shout. He rose from the deck, red and black skin wrinkled and waterlogged, scales glistening along his legs and flank, with breather mask at waist and flotation belt around his chest. The trawler crew gaped at the sight, and fell back from their strange catch.

Yavobo drew his knife with a flourish, and they fell back another step. Apaku flopped around his feet as he slashed the blade across his forearm, then brandished the bloody weapon and shouted an oath in his own tongue.

"By Blood Oath and Clan, I swear vengeance for this wrong that was done! This blade shall not drink again, but it be for that cause!"

Yavobo sheathed his knife without cleaning it, and laughed at the uncertain harpooner who stood portside, spear-rifle held in a threatening pose.

The Aztrakhani strode forward from the mess of fish and nets and demanded in passable R'debhi, "Let me talk with your Captain."

Reva picked through the oddments on her sidetable, bits and pieces collected in the last couple of days. A ticket tab for the holoshow, an empty ampule from Kovar's Sensorium, a wrinkled flimsy with the Murs lost-at-sea newsblurb. A stranger's personal comp number that she didn't plan on calling. An address chit.

A blue, triangular chit with a Des'lin address on it.

She turned it over in her fingers, tapped it with a violet-hued nail. Tyree Longhouse.

Reva toyed with the chit, and reckoned local time. It had taken a while to set up the hit on Murs, and it was now just into the start of apaku season, when the game fish rushed the island shallows to spawn. Just starting the last month of summer, that was.

Lish would be on Des'lin, then, if she'd stuck to her plans. Reva needed to start thinking about Lanzig, niece of the late departed Advisor, and the main reason she was back on Selmun III She already had some ideas about how to approach this project. Maybe the Holdout would be worth talking to, see if she had some more specialty items that were hard to find—

Dolophant dung, Reva interrupted herself. At least be honest about it. That woman is making the wrong moves, and she's going to get in trouble over it, sooner or later, Karuu or no Karuu Maybe I can give her a tip or two on the Holdout business....____

The thought gave her pause. Why care? Why get involved? It's not like they were friends or anything. That was one kind of] entanglement Reva found easy to avoid. Even when she had wanted one, friends were too easy to lose when you crossed Lines. Her talent had taught her isolation early on, and relationships had slipped through her grasp as quickly as she could change the moment she called Now.

Still, there was something perversely likable about the smuggler. Here, in this Mainline, she reminded Reva of a younger version of herself: with an overconfidence that spoke of underlying arrogance, the kind that put you out on a limb without even knowing it. The assassin shook her head and studied the address chit in her hand. Lish wasn't a kid, wet behind the ears, but she wasn't as well set up to be a Selmun smuggler as she might think.

It was a sure bet the Holdout wouldn't want to hear that kind of thing from a stranger. Reva paused on the verge of tossing the chit.

Then again, a new business connection couldn't hurt. It would require social niceties ... use of someone's house pass demands some kind of politeness in return. The semblance of friendship, if not its substance, to make dealings a littie smoother.

She smiled to herself. She could play that game, if she wanted to. She had a mood, a demeanor, for every occasion. And it would be amusing, maybe truly useful, to turn this casual invitation into a reliable connection.

What the hell. She hadn't seen Des'lin in forever.

She pocketed the chit and punched out on the hotel room comp.

Reva traveled mostly
on commercial transport. The next hop to Des'lin was the morning commuter run, outbound to the hunting lodges on Selmun IV and the crystal mines on V. She boarded the shuttle, resigned to the company of complacent vacationers and combine executives checking on fur trapping investments.

It was a routine journey she could sleep through, and did.

Three hours later saw her past Customs' cursory check for in-system passengers. She emerged into the nearly empty concourse of Freebay's small starport, unchanged since her last trip through had taken her off Des'lin and away from the Selmun star for the first time. She found the ground travel agent in the place she expected, and leaned on the counter.

"I need to go to Baneks Cape. What's the best way there?"

The agent looked up from a terminal at the unexpected customer. "The Cape?" she repeated. "Either ground car or monorail, Domna. Rail would be faster. The storm season is on us already. Though you look prepared for it."

Reva gave a false smile out of reflex to the small talk, and brushed one hand down the fur-lined kria-leather coat she'd bought for this journey. She knew all too well just what season gripped northern Des'lin at this time, and though her garment was chosen for its suggestion of local style, it offered real protection against what could be deadly cold. There was nothing warmer than kria-fur on this iceball, she knew. She had killed and worn her share of them before.

"Rail, then." She bought a one-way ticket and studied the tourist map the woman handed back with the ticket tab. The monorail line was new to her, and now that she had the topography in hand, she saw where one spur led to Baneks Cape, a narrow, curving peninsula on the west coast of the larger of the two inland seas. Ponds, they seemed, after R'debh, but the weather upon them could be just as fierce, and from the shore, she knew, the waters looked just as vast.

There were no slidewalks in Freebay's backwards terminal, part of the contrary Des'lini pride in doing things the frontier way. She strolled down a long hall toward the monorail platform, wondering as she went if Lish would be home for this unexpected

visit. Though that's no real concern, thought Reva, because this isn't just an address marker I have. It's a house pass. She's either deathly naive or has very good instincts about whom to trust.

She was shaking her head over that when an odd sensation came over her and she did her best not to halt in mid-stride. Every hair raised itself along her neck and spine, and a cold wave of anxiety forced an involuntary shudder. Reva walked as casually as she could to a vendbot and turned sideways in the hall, pretending to examine its selection of refreshments.

A quick glance showed the hall behind her was empty, and just one person walked the passage ahead. Then what had given her that uncanny feeling? It seemed like it should herald danger, so stark and primeval it was. Her skin prickled beneath her clothes where every small hair had risen with electric chill.

There, in the mecho's chromed dispenser arm, she thought she saw the reflection of a moving figure. Her eyes darted that way, not moving her head, and saw nothing. She tried to slip into timetrance, but the eeriness she felt hindered her.

"May I assist with your selection, Domna?"

The vendbot's programmed query startled her again, and she, moved away with two swift steps. The mecho trundled slowly back to the main concourse, and Reva stood with her back against the wall, forcing herself by will alone to center and search the Timelines for danger.

A moment later Now shattered into its parallel parts, and she surveyed the hall again. It was a disappointingly empty space, filled with the shadows of one or two passengers who could have been late or might be early. Ghosts of chance, not real for her on this Mainline, and certainly no threat.

Reva slipped out of trance, and shook her head. The incident disturbed her more than she cared for. Anything would that I can't explain, she told herself. I don't trust what I can't explain. That gets you killed.

She glanced once more around the hall, then continued to the monorail platform, doing her best to shake off the feeling the uncanny disruption had given her.

On the vendbot's dispenser arm, a reflection moved again across polished chrome, and vanished in Reva's direction.

Adahn sighed and
ran his hands through graying hair, a look he kept for the added air of authority it gave him. A com light blinked insistently on the desk console before him. Even after three years as a Tribune of the Red Hand crime cartel, the MazeRat derevin and their affiliates occupied too much of his attention. There was no one to turn it over to, no one he trusted to manage the street muscle the way he wanted it run. While waiting for someone to distinguish himself in the lower ranks, he got to take calls like this one. Karuu, on subspace from Selmun III.

"A fine good day to you, Mr. Harric," the Dorleoni's voice bubbled with native cheerfulness, filling the privacy speaker in Adahn's inner ear. The gang boss wasn't lulled by it. Dorleoni always sounded cheerful, even when they were slitting your throat.

Adahn seldom let his face be seen by associates, so the vidlink was one-way only. "Karuu. You have a problem?"