Mainline (9 page)

The Holdout, though sobered, wasn't about to back down. Satisfied, Reva headed for the gate, followed closely by her newly wary companion.

From inside the gun shop, Vask watched them go, and waited a good quarter-hour before he followed.

Yavobo
's
new requirement
was not something that his ordinary weapons supplier had an answer for. Nor the next. Nor the next.

It was near the end of his three-day stay before he worked his way up the ladder far enough to talk with Spots, a bartender and frontman for the biggest smuggler on Selmun III.

Spots took his nickname from the scaly specks on his skin, a vestige of the water-breathing mutation that had not run its full course in the R'debh native. In the subdued light of the Tidepool, his disfigurement could almost be overlooked.

"There might be something like you're looking for," he replied to Yavobo's question. "For a little referral fee ..."

Yavobo pushed his credmeter across the bar, watched while Spots tapped in a modest figure, agreed to it, and thumbed the transfer plate.

"One of our competitors handles that kind of merchandise. There's a thing called a time patch, can do the type of damage you're looking for."

"Who do I see?"

"Lairdome 7, the cryopack place. Ask about the hex-pack special. That'll get you in to the right person."

Yavobo thanked the local and left, with plenty of time to seek out Lairdome 7 before his shuttle left dock. Unfortunately, the dome was dark and the cryocase shop staffed only by mechos. "Lish is expected back by month-end," was all they could tell him.

A hunter is patient. Two weeks, and then he would return.

Karuu had heard
enough. First, Reva and her need for time patches. Then some other local inquiries—the few he had heard about, which always meant there was more interest among customers than actually reached his ears—and now another serious buyer, slipping through his fingers.

The distribution deal with the new Holdout was intended to give him an in to her operations. Well, he had that now, and had heard the rumors of something big coming down, as soon as Lish was back in town. Maybe he should cash in and get rid of this competitor, like Adahn suggested. If he couldn't compete, why keep her around?

Why, indeed?

He punched up a number that lit his com unit with a holovid of native fishermen engaged in bloody sacrificial ritual. The vid faded and revealed the bronzed face of Daribi, the chief of his derevin called the Islanders. The metallic sheen of his artificial tan lent him a surreal mien, but the bone through his nose was real, as were the facial tattoos that gave him the distinctive Islander look.

"Find the boat-boys who work for Lish," Karuu ordered the chief, jovial small talk dropping abruptly from his conversation. "On the sly, no obvious pressure. Make it casual: friendly drinks, share some euphorics—you know what I mean."

"What are we looking for?" the derevin leader asked.

"Big cargo drop is coming along soon. Find out everything you can. Her movements, the timing, everything."

Daribi nodded.

"Contact me, direct, as soon as you are knowing things. And make it fast."

"Right, Boss." The Islander acknowledged his orders and the screen went blank.

Karuu pondered what he had set in motion. First he would learn more, then take decisive action, and then he would again be secure in his position among Selmun Holdouts.

With that plan in mind, Karuu started to leave his desk, then hesitated, and called up Janus instead. Karuu was going to need a bit of help with the Imperials, and Adahn's lieutenant, who had so kindly offered, was going to provide it.

The guidepack
was a small shoulder-mount unit, worn in the same spot where Reva and Lish had placed their ammo reserves. The device was an artificially intelligent construct, a brain in a box consisting of neural net, voice and sensor chips, a data library, and a variety of narrator personalities to chose from. Vask punched up the neutral docent tone, got the guide in place on one shoulder, slung the standard tourist-issue Berka 408 dart rifle on the other, and started into the preserve.

When he set foot inside the gate, the tour guide stirred to life.

"Is this your first visit to Keshnavar, sir?'' it asked.

"Hmm," Vask replied distractedly, surveying the trails ahead of him to see which way the two women had gone.

The tour guide was used to ambiguous answers from humans. "May I suggest the Yeskaya Nature Walk for your first excursion, sir? It is mildly invigorating, gives an overview of the six different terrain and vegetation systems contained within the preserve, and, of course, I will be happy to comment on the nature and habits of wildlife we might encounter—"

"Quiet," Vask commanded. "Guide, answer queries only."

"Certainly, sir," the unit responded, and lapsed into dutiful silence.

He saw two hikers on a path through the brown-needled yeskaya trees, an elderly couple pausing every now and then to record vistas with a hand-held holocam. A few other strollers, singly or in small groups, could be glimpsed on other trails and one distant hillside. Vask saw no one walking eastward across virgin snow, into the rougher terrain where lodge staff said the hunting was best. And nowhere could he detect so much as a footstep straying from the snow-cleared nature paths.

"Idiot," he blurted out loud.

"Sir?" queried the tour guide, which Kastlin automatically ignored.

Intent on approaching the women in what would seem a casual manner, Vask had paid little attention to the implications of air-shoes. He had never worn them before. They made snowwalking easier and incidentally eliminated tracks to discourage stalking predators.

They also discouraged stalking Security agents.

Heads on a spike, he thought, look at that. Not a damn mark anywhere, except my own, and I'm not using the liftpads right now.

He trotted along, studying the snow edge to each side of the trail to confirm his suspicion. Nowhere was there compacted snow or a footprint, only the clean, sharp line where snowbots had dissolved precipitation and sucked it away from the trail's edge.

Anyone stepping off the path in an airshoe as good as vanished.

Vask had waited too long, and now it seemed he had lost his quarry. Unless they bumped tree branches and knocked snow down, disturbing the groundcover that way. Alright. That was something worth looking for.

"Guide,'' he addressed the shoulder pack. "Give me a map of the preserve."

The unit extruded a projection bar forward of Vask's shoulder, then displayed a holographic topo-view of the resort.

"Mark my location." A blinking red dot obligingly appeared near the trailhead at the game preserve entrance.

"Can you track other guests?"

"Only if they have requested that their location be monitored and are carrying the correct type of homing transponder with them. Some persons with health conditions or—"

"Never mind. Are you monitoring anyone right now?"

"No, sir."

The screen remained in mid-air, depicting nearly 5,000 square kilometers of wilderness, with only a small portion covered by groomed trails. "Show me where the best hunting is," he ordered.

An eastward section of the map lit up in blue shading. "The best places to make a catch with an acceptable degree of risk can be approached along these trails. To reach the first trail..."

Vask let the unit drone on while he considered the map. Reva and Lish weren't equipped like people looking for an "acceptable degree of risk." He doubted they had followed this resort-planned agenda. Neither could they have gone far in only a quarter of an hour.

"Guide," he interrupted the travelogue. "What's the best place for an experienced hunter to go after challenging game?"

The contours of colored space changed on the map. Sections previously undesignated were now lit. The safe "tourist" region was not among them.

That's better, Vask thought. "What's the best way to get there from here? Draw me a route to follow."

The guide seemed to hesitate before responding to his question. It undoubtedly had him pegged as a novice hunter, which he was. But Vask didn't plan to go hunting, just socializing. If he got too far out, he'd turn back and follow his alternative plan, to catch the women in the lodge that evening when they came back in from the preserve.

"Route?" he prompted.

The tour guide marked a path for him in green, and showed how he must move from his present position.

"That's fine. Keep that map on display, will you?"

"If you wish, sir."

The unit sounded reluctant to encourage his unconventional jaunt, but comply it did. Vask switched on his airshoes, and stepped over the path's edge onto a virgin blanket of snow. With spongy steps he headed in the direction it seemed his quarry must have gone, forging ahead into potentially dangerous wilderness. The snow behind him held no trace of his passage.

Lish held the dart rifle awkwardly, not accustomed to its weight or feel. Reva showed her the best way to brace its bulk with the sling, and to walk a little to the side and rear. With both their guns angled correctly, the two motion sensors covered a 180-degree arc ahead of them.

"You haven't hunted much, have you?" Reva observed as they moved eastward.

"Not on shipboard. And I've been too busy with my work in the last few years to get out much."

"Ever spearfish on R'debh?"

"Not that, either."

"You mind killing things?" the assassin wondered aloud.

Lish shrugged. "When I was young I was in House Arleon's military academy. I wasn't thinking about it then, though I guess that was getting ready to kill people. Got kicked out for fighting. Maybe if there'd been things to hunt I would've left my classmates alone."

"You don't seem like the kind to start things."

"What makes you say that?"

"You just don't."

"You're right. I was small for my age. And Shiran, too, in a dirtsider school. That was incentive enough for others to start things. I just finished them."

They walked jn silence for a while, skirting yeskaya stands and keeping to the high ground near the ridge crests.

"How about you?" Lish followed up.

"Me?"

"Yeah. Did you fight when you were a kid?"

A spasm of guilt ripped through Reva, and she bit back the

truthful answers that almost slipped out. No, she shouted in her head, I didn't fight when I was a kid, though I should have! Instead, I crippled a friend with an angry thought. I killed my mother and my brother, or left them as good as dead someplace very far away from here. I don't dare fight in anger, because I can't tell who I'll hurt or where I'll end up. Leave my heart out of it, though, do it in cold blood—oh, yes, I can fight that way—

"Reva?"

"What?" Her tone was harsher than she intended, and she realized it right away. "Sorry," she apologized, trying to brush it off. "I don't like to talk about... about my childhood."

"Never mind, then."

They hiked in silence past leafless red-claw brush, and paused while Reva got her bearings. "Down there, I think." She pointed to a partially wooded valley running to the northwest where two ridges drew closer together. "That looks less brushy, more like a place for deska to graze. Where you find deska, you'll find the kria who hunt them."

"Can I ask about your hunting?" Lish asked tentatively. "How do you know so much about this? That looks like any other mountain slope to me."

Contrite over her earlier response, Reva smiled to show the question was not offensive. "I lived here with the Vudesh for a while," she offered. "In the north, where the kria run free and the winter is longer."

"Whatever for?" Lish was astonished. She couldn't imagine giving up civilized comforts to huddle with unwashed tribesmen in their primitive, poorly built longhouses.

Reva looked at her friend. "Because they know how to live," she explained, "and I needed to learn that at the time."

The truth of it was rather different, but Reva wasn't sharing all her secrets. "Let's head on that way," she changed the subject, "and I'll show you what a fight squaller is for."

When Reva was
eighteen, her father had retired from his work in the deep domes, and took a post teaching aqualogy on Chorb.

"I'm not going with you," she had declared. "I have too much going on here."

"The hell you're not," Jerrik flared. "You come with me, or I'll have the police shut you down."

She was astonished, and furious. Angrily he confessed to spying on his daughter, to ferreting out her clandestine smuggling activities. Though he didn't know the half of it—her contact with the techrunner Karuu, the selling of cyberware to blackwire shops—he knew enough that he could get her arrested. What the competition hadn't yet pulled off, her own father threatened to do gladly: turn her over to the Grinds.