Mainline (51 page)

"Mined out, mostly abandoned. We should be able to shelter on one while the work is done."

"You better take a seat then." He swiveled back around in his chair. "Prepare for transition to real space," he told the crew through his headset.

The
Fortune
slowed and dropped out of warp.

The problem with
a stolen ship is that you can't fly it through Customs. Yavobo made his landing accordingly—in one long, erratically swooping path, from warp through local space to brown, mountain-wrinkled globe, shearing wildly through Bekav-ran traffic patterns, his angle of attack in the atmosphere dangerously steep and swift. A few random settings on the screen controls let the hull heat dangerously; with com systems offline the violent approach of the
Faroukhan
made the yacht seem a distressed ship with all the flight characteristics of an incoming meteor.

That guided meteor swept high over the central Bekavran plains, then low over the Harcavenian peaks, to vanish into a sheltering system of ravines. Minutes later, the ship's resting place was marked by a brilliant blossom of orange-white light. To observing eyes the string of events looked like the wreck and ruin of an already-damaged ship.

To Yavobo, sheltering in another ravine a half-klick away, the self-destruct he had initiated seemed suitable camouflage for his return to Bekavra.

Before investigators could close on the smoking wreckage, the bounty hunter was far away, heading toward the city of Harcave-nia in the sheltering dusk of twilight.

A
triple chime
sounded. The tone startled Janus, and he looked around from where he orchestrated data flows in the net. He shifted to a private place where he could respond to the summons, a personal call code that only one associate had ever used.

"Janus here," he said.

"This is—" the Dorleoni began.

"I can see. I'm amazed to see you making a local call."

Karuu eyed the com screen. "I am all-damn lucky to be anywhere alive and free right now. Local is best place for that, I am thinking. Safest, anyway." "Hm. Are you being followed?"

The Dorleoni barked. "I was escorted nicely away from our R'debh hellhole by one of our Customs collaborators, for a large and unreasonable fee, I am noting. No following, no. I am first mentally tortured by Gerick, then hunted by Bugs, impoverished by turncoats, finally packed here like smuggled cargo—but no, I am not followed. I am calling in to see how you can help me, to make right all these wrongs."

Janus absorbed Karuu's fractured tale. "I'll have to think about this," he responded slowly.

"What is to thinking?" Anger stressed Karuu's voice.

"You're in deep shit for abandoning us on Selmun III."

Karuu spluttered. "Abandon—? I am not—"

"If Adahn learns you're here, you're dead."

The Dorleoni took a half-step back, mouthed words that wouldn't come. "How so, dead?" he finally squeaked. "I am a good, loyal, hardworking Holdout—"

"—who let MazeRats get taken by Security, who saved his own hide, who's hotter than a Kashtani whore and brought his much-wanted butt right back home to sit on Mr. Harric's doorstep. The same doorstep Bugs are sniffing at right now."

The smuggler looked quashed. "Security is here, too?" His squeak was higher than before.

"As I said. Dead."

Karuu stared listlessly at the com unit; then a thought jogged him into action and he looked around, over his shoulders. "Are you—? You would perhaps be sending muscle to collect me. I am going, I think." He reached out toward the console

"Wait! I'm not sending anyone. I said Adahn's unhappy with you. Not me."

The Holdout's eyes glistened. "You are offering me assistance, then?"

Janus paused. He saw a resource where his boss saw only a problem. It might be a resource worth keeping, against a rainy day. "I'll help you out, Karuu. I think we can work together."

The reprieve made a slow impression. It took a while for Janus to recognize a Dorleoni smile.
 j

"Glad I am to hear you are a reasonable man," Karuu said. "Happy to be working with you, my friend."

"Don't get too happy," Janus cautioned. "Let's see what I can do for you, first."

"Am happily awaiting to see that, too. What are you wishing me to do, then?"

The decker pursed his lips. "Stay out of sight for an hour, then call me back. I'll have something lined up by then." A game plan; a way to take advantage of the Holdout's reappearance. Or if not, he could set Karuu up, hand him over to Adahn, and curry favor at a time when Harric's goodwill was exceptionally thin.

That would bear consideration.

Janus ended the call, but before he could mull over possibilities, Adahn was on another channel in voice-only mode. His disembodied speech filled the cyber-air like the voice of a god. "Do you have our financial records offline yet?" he demanded.

"Almost. Another hour."

"Make it faster. Bugs have cracked level-three security and taken two defensive deckers down."

Janus looked up. "I didn't know they were so close," he said.

"They weren't. It's a random probe, I think. They got lucky. They probably don't realize how near they are to the heart of Red Hand data yet. You damn well better make sure there's none for them to find."

"Almost done," he repeated.

"Good. Then get over to my office when that's finished. Ya-vobo is back."

"Will do." Janus acknowledged the order before he digested the knowledge. Yavobo, here. He who had warned of Reva's imminent arrival. She was not yet sighted, though teams of MazeRats stood by to move on the
Fortune
when it appeared.

Harric barked a last curt demand. "Anything new I should know about?"

Janus nearly laughed. Like the fact that Karuu is back, he thought, and hiding from you? Like the fact that your operation is collapsing around you, and you can't seem to stop it?

He coughed in the physical body, a reflex before finding his cybervoice. "No, Boss. Everything's the same."

Adahn let the com link fall silent.

The assassin who
occupied Janus' thoughts strode long-legged under a canopy of green trailing hiana leaves. She followed a walkway through a city park, patches of smog-hazed sunlight playing now and then on her white tunic-dress and offworld jewelry. Her hair was black, her style Bekavran eclectic. Now that she was away from crowds, she abandoned the leisurely saunter locals preferred, and walked with purpose toward a secluded pocket of greenery.

Vask awaited her there, looking as comfortable in his new high-collared gray tunic as he had in his R'debhi street garb. That was promising, she thought. Like herself, the Fixer could mix easily into a local setting. He would need that ability, to cut the deals she expected of him.

She sat beside him on a shaded bench. "Well?"

Kastlin gave a small shake of his head. "No buyers. I can't get a nod from anyone."

Reva felt a surge of anger. "Of course there are buyers," she said sharply. "Information is always worth something to someone. Where haven't you looked?"

Kastlin bristled. "It's not my looking that's at fault. It's the street situation here. A few days isn't long enough to crack it. There aren't any takers."

"What the hell are you telling me?" she fumed. "That you can't find anyone on this dirtball who wants a piece of Adahn Harric?"

"His organization is better connected than we knew. The small players stay clear of the Red Hand, and the big ones won't deal with outsiders like us."

Her words were sarcastic with disbelief. "We can hand someone the keys to his operations and they're still saying no?"

"That's how it looks. No one trusts us or the goods we say we can deliver. They think it's a setup."

She stood, eyes flashing, and walked a few paces away. "How are we supposed to feed a big fish to the scavenge-rays if the rays aren't interested? This is fucking ridiculous." She glared back at Kastlin, whose Fixer talents had failed her, then turned her scowl on the smog-yellowed greenery around her.

Their ship's new identity as the freighter
Westen
had gotten them safely onplanet; FlashMan was making great inroads into Harric's private cybernet. In the right hands, the netrunner's snooped information could lay the crime boss low, leaving his operations vulnerable to infiltration, to raids, to outright takeover or destruction. That would be a satisfying prelude to her final confrontation with the man. She wanted to visit him first with powerlessness and ruination, even fear. She wanted this derevin-grown lordling to know that he was the target, for a change; to know what it was like to live under siege, to constantly watch his back, as Lish had, and to fail anyway, in the end, as Lish had... .

Without a buyer for FlashMan's gleanings, she could offer the crime boss only death. Her fantasy of a slow and crushing revenge on Harric was unraveling before it had even begun.

"Actually ..." Vask broke the silence tentatively. "There might be one taker."

Reva put hands on hips. "Why didn't you mention this before?"

He sighed. "This other party, they'd want the goods quickly. Everything possible, within a few days. If we do a rush job like that, Harric will know where he's been raided, where he's vulnerable."

Reva considered the offer. "Who are these buyers?"

"An offworld interest. They'll use it to shut him down."

She looked across treetops to the hazy residential hills where Harric's secure estate was nestled. Perhaps it was the best she could hope for. After all, they didn't have weeks or months to do this in. Yavobo was on her backtrail somewhere. Better to finish Adahn and get far away from here, as swiftly as she could.

Her anger drained from her as her grand scheme collapsed. It left her with the kind of choice she always came back to: when and how to remove an unwanted person from the world. She had formed different resolutions about that kind of thing when Lish had died, but new codes of behavior were hard to adopt while Adahn Harric drew air and her friend did not.

I can live up to those promises later, she told herself. When all this is behind me.

She inclined her head to the Fixer. "Tell your contacts yes. When Flash is back, we'll plan this systems raid. And after that, I'll see to Harric."

Vask watched the assassin's lithe figure pass from sight. Then he closed his eyes and leaned back on the park bench, at war with himself.

Back on R'debh, Systems Control had passed on a message from Obray.
"We'll be on Bekavra. Rejoin us there when you can."
Kastlin had accepted that order blithely enough; at the time, he didn't know Bekavra would be his own next stop. Apparently there was no standing order for him to arrest Reva in this Time-line, for Control had relayed no reprimand or update request from his team commander.

Yet when he came in contact with Security again, Obray would want a debriefing, and if Kastlin was to be honest in what he reported, his duty was painfully clear.

He would have to prevent Reva's next hit, or arrest her after it was done.

I'm not sure I can do that, he confessed to himself. Or that I'll even try.

Never before had he been caught in such a bind between personal involvement and duty. The friction between the two put his gut in acid turmoil.
"She gave me the slip,"
he could say,
"but look, here's the way into the Red Hand cartel, the toehold you need to break that case wide open. ..."

It would take Harric down, and he could redeem himself with the data he provided. In the furor, Reva could do her work, and then fade away, as she had in the past....

He knew as he imagined it that she would not. He'd become some kind of touchstone for her, a nugget of solid reality that transferred between Lines as she did. She looked at him differently these days. He knew with a sinking feeling that the assassin would stick around.

And sooner or later, that he would have to take action on that.

"You said you
would help me to find her."

Adahn nestled deeper into his thick-padded chair, marshaling a semblance of patience. "We will," he repeated. "We'll put out a call for her services on the Net. When she answers, Janus will arrange a meeting. Then it's your show."

The alien sitting across from him made a small negation, the overhead light shifting across angular planes of cheek and brow. "That is not
finding
her," Yavobo declared. "That is hoping she will respond. If she does not, you have rendered me no aid."

Harric rolled his eyes, unconcerned whether the Aztrakhani understood and took offense at the expression. The loss of Selmun operations was a ruinous blow, and now the blue wire-frames of Internal Security agents had been spied in the local Net. His systems had been infiltrated two days running—already the senior

Tribunes of the Red Hand were asking uncomfortable questions.

Meanwhile all Yavobo could do was yammer for this assassin, as if she came and went at Harric's orders.

"I don't know where she is," Adahn said, "and right now I don't care—"