Karuu studied the pilot as he aligned the armed scout's flight path with the orbital insert pattern on the instruments. Days in the shipboard autodoc had restored Yavobo's condition admirably, though that time spent locked in his cabin had been wearing on Karuu. And the bounty hunter's mood remained indecipherable: the red- and black-skinned alien had an angular visage difficult for the smuggler to read. Karuu was used to human faces, furless and mobile, easily betraying emotions and intent. Yavobo, with leathery skin and the merciless eyes of a predator, was unreadable, and resolute in what he was about to do.
The Dorleoni heaved a sigh, and resigned himself to fate. He was well and truly dragooned into the bounty hunter's strategy, and fully believed Yavobo's threat to drug him unconscious if he continued to protest.
If worse comes to worst, he reassured himself, I can always get a message to Adahn. I'm sure of it.
That thought made him fidget, too. The crime boss would not be happy that Karuu knew where to find him. His address was not something he gave out to business associates, and it had been only the smuggler's insatiable curiosity—and urge to have something on everyone—that had prompted him to research Adahn's number. Netrunners had made several tries before they pinned down the destination of that call code, and one had died in the effort.
Yet surely his arrival would not be unwelcome, the Dorleoni comforted himself. By now Adahn must have heard of the fiasco on Selmun III, and would be wondering where his most profitable Holdout had gotten to. He could not be too angry, when he found out Karuu was alive and his secrets were safe.
The smuggler kept that reassurance in the forefront of his mind as Yavobo docked at the Bekavra orbital station. By the time inspectors boarded the scout, Karuu was secured in the galley/ lounge area, wearing his static bonds with an expression of dread j that was not feigned.
"So you're a bounty hunter?" the port inspector asked Yavobo, reviewing his datapad.
The alien grunted, and waited for the inspection to proceed.
"What'd he do?" The Customs man made a cursory check of storage lockers, glancing at Karuu as if the Dorleoni were cargo.'
"Wanted for smuggling." Yavobo measured his words, yielding the minimum possible.
The official reassessed harmless-looking Karuu, continued into the small, empty cargo bay, and out again as rapidly. A bounty hunter who arrested smugglers was not likely to be smuggling himself; the inspector dismissed the Deathclaw as a vessel warranting serious inspection.
The Port Authority officer thumb-printed the datapad and associated landing permits. "Do you need arrangements for an escort, or a holding cell?" The man glanced back at Karuu.
"No."
"Here you are, then." The inspector handed back the datapad. "If you change your mind, the Ministry of Justice in Peshtano issues any licenses you'll need. With your record, you shouldn't have a problem getting one."
Yavobo inclined his head, saw the inspectors silently to the airlock. When they had gone, he lost no time in gaining clearance and departing the orbital dock.
"Well?" asked Karuu. "Aren't you going to release me?"
His heart sank as Yavobo refused to look at him. "Stay there. We will soon be on the ground. You remain my prisoner until we are out of the port area and well into the city."
That's what Karuu was afraid of. He sat, slumped, and struggled to belt his webbing in place with bound wrists. The Aztra-khani offered no help.
Play it your way, my friend, Karuu thought. You won't be so in charge of things once Adahn gets his hooks in you.
His bristling mustache turned up at the ends.
We'll see how you like things then.
"Salutations, Mr. Harric. It is I, your long-lost associate." Friend? Servant? Karuu had agonized over the right choice of words, though it was too late to make a difference to the agitated stream that poured from his mouth. "I am in touch once more, as you see. I have much to tell, and am desirous to be telling. What should I be doing, as you wish?"
Karuu wrung his webbed fingers below the line of sight of the vid pickup. The viewscreen remained blank, as it always did during his calls to this number. After Adahn's initial greeting and the Dorleoni's burst of words, there was silence on the channel. The Holdout shifted weight from one flipper foot to the other, awaiting acknowledgment from his master.
"Where are you calling from?" Suspicion tinged Adahn's slow words.
"Um ..." The Holdout swallowed. "We're near Belitcia. In a park north of the river."
"We?"
Damn. How to explain the bounty hunter?
"The person who helped me get away is—"
"Save it until we see each other." Adahn's voice was cold, decisive. "You're in Vordenya Park, are you?"
"That may be the—" Karuu looked to Yavobo, outside the com booth, who nodded when he heard the name. "That is where we are, yes. By the waterfall pond."
"Stay there. I'll have someone pick you up. Look for a secure skimmer."
"Secure?" Karuu wasn't certain what he meant by that.
"Armored. Screen-shielded."
"Ah. Secure."
"Within the hour. Don't move."
"No, sir." The blank screen stayed blank, and Karuu could tell by the click of the resetting link that Adahn had disconnected. He leaned half out of the booth, looked up at the towering bounty hunter. "A ride is on the way."
Yavobo crossed his arms on his chest. "Good," he said. Blocking Karuu inside the com booth, he faced the road approaching the pond and settled down to wait.
LVII
The bulldog queried the Net, and the record of Behr's investments spread itself in the air before them. It was obvious that the Governor-General made hefty returns on his money.
Captain Brace looked more closely, ran a calculation in his cyberdeck. "Something's not right, Zip," the agent said. "He beats the market."
"Sure he does. Wish I could invest like that."
"No. I mean, he beats it. The chances of earning dividends like that in the last two months alone are 727,800 to 1. More or less."
The bulldog snuffled at the graphed payouts. "How?"
"Exactly. Let's look at the stock companies and megacorps involved, and their performance records."
That produced a revealing graph. The bulldog craned his neck upward to study it. "They don't match."
"Astute, my stubby friend," Brace agreed. "They don't. When Lovana Shipping loses money in a quarter, Behr gets a dividend check as if their stock had gone through the roof. The same with most of these other firms."
"They're all shipping or manufacturing concerns," Zippo noted.
The decker let the graphics fade away, and nudged the bulldog. "How about this? I'll do background checks on these companies."
"And I can ... what?"
"This series of deposits." He refreshed the virtual display once more. "Do a pattern analysis on it. Obviously it's not tied to stock performance. Maybe it matches something else."
Zippo snuffled his agreement. The two parted ways, each armed with high-level security overrides, each taking a different path that led farther into the labyrinth of global finances.
LVIII
A subsurface convoy escorted freighters east through little-used Bennap Run. Scouts swept surrounding waters and sensor scans pulsed the ocean, checking for the approach of Gambru League marauders. It was not a question of when they would strike, just where.
The convoy came upon the "where" of it momentarily. Four large-profile leviathans were clearly outlined on sensor screens, surging upwards from the cold-water chasm at the edge of Bennap Shelf. The submarine security force hired by Lovana Shipping reported their readings. Surface freighters began evasive maneuvers, a broken, randomly zigzagging pattern, while submerged craft fanned out in the direction of the approaching attackers.
The borgbeasts were distracted by the hydroskiffs, and paused to plunge after their gadfly opponents in short, powerful underwater lunges. The skiffs evaded, firing explosive missile rounds at point-blank
range.
The beasts, tipped off by sensor devices inside their AI-enhanced craniums, avoided the rounds. Jamming circuits radiated countermeasure distortions at high intensity in the nearby area. Missiles skewed off-course or exploded prematurely; skiff sensors picked up ghost images and spurious readings.
The borgbeasts retreated, drawing off some of the Lovana security vessels. Other skiffs remained with the convoy they guarded, confused by false sensor images, unable to halt the three other leviathans that emerged from warm-water thermals and sped toward the evading freighters. Two ships sank outright; one listed and went under by time the alien life-forms retreated. It was another victory for the Gambru League, another nose-thumbing at the would-be protectors of surface shipping.
Master Swimmer Sharptooth gathered with his podmates in the Bennap chasm. The seven who participated in the attack regrouped there, the joy of battle gleaming in the leviathans' small, intelligent eyes. The Vernoi swam away from their companion beasts, and gathered together for a mid-ocean conference.
"Where were you, Swimmer Brightfang?" Sharptooth addressed a laggard figure in the whistles and clicks of their water-borne language. "Four were to strike the airships. Two vessels escaped us, because of your delay."
Brightfang swam to the edges of the group, hung listlessly in cloudy green water. "I know not why we delayed, my life-friend and I," the Vernoi confessed. "I am tired, so tired ... I don't know why." The others sculled uneasily. They were all tired, more than they should be, but it was not their way to admit weakness, to be a burden on the pod. Brightfang spoke truth for all.
The Vernoi continued. "And I fear something is wrong. Wee'ska is not well. When the time came, she could not charge."
Sharptooth looked toward Brightfang's life-friend, the female borgbeast who lingered shyly at the edges of the chasm. She was smart enough to sense her failure, and hung back, reluctant to join the others. Her hide seemed mottled, the slick black skin appearing roughened and patchy even from tens of meters away.
"Is she ill?" the Vernoi leader inquired.
Brightfang rolled a quarter of the way over and then rolled back, body language showing uncertainty. "I do not know, Master Swimmer. If so, it is nothing I have seen at home. But she is not herself, that I can say."
Again, the other handlers sculled nervously. Several other borgbeasts moved more slowly, charged less aggressively, than before. Each Vernoi hoped it was a temporary problem, an adjustment to alien waters and alien diet. No one had confessed the shortcoming, until now.
Sharptooth swam to inspect Wee'ska, and saw foreboding signs in the condition of her skin and her lackluster eyes. Such a patch had already appeared on his own borgbeast. He had dismissed it as reaction to the bio-rich seawater of R'debh.
Perhaps he had been wrong.
He studied his companions and saw that neither they nor their life-friends were ready for another assault on the humans' shipping. The condition of the borgbeasts was of paramount importance, more vital even than the nagging tiredness that was beginning to plague the handlers.
"I shall talk to Edesz about this," Sharptooth reassured his podmates. "Let us seek him out now. We all need time to rest, and surely he will be able to help."
The Vernoi agreed, and left the Bennap Run for the deep dome where they could find the Gambru League terrorists.
LIX
Reva slipped through Amasl's entry port in the same -way that she had many weeks before: as a nondescript local traveler, nothing on her except her credmeter and a change of mass-market clothing. The brine-rich scent of R'debh's sea air filled her nostrils. In a perverse way, she was glad to be back home. Now, at least, she could resolve matters with Lish once and for all.
All the way back to R'debh she had rehearsed various overtures, practiced what she would say, then discarded each approach as juvenile and inappropriate.
Face it, Reva. You're no good at making up to people. Never wanted to do it before.
With no experience in that kind of interaction, she would have to rely on her wits and common sense. Nervous anticipation clutched her stomach and she fought off the kind of butterflies she had never been plagued with for such a simple thing as impersonal execution.
Salvaging a friendship was going to be much harder than she thought.
She slowed her rented skimmer as she neared Comax Shipping, startled by the burned-out shell of Lairdome 7. A heartbeat later, Now split into echoes of itself, a panorama of possibilities quickly scanned for dangerous upcoming moments.
Then she gave a small laugh. That was a pointless exercise. No more would she map out an exit from the moment, not until she'd cleared things up with the Holdout. It was too easy to lose track of one Mainline that way. She shifted back to Realtime, collected herself, and eased the skimmer forward.
The Skiffjammer who emerged from an observation post was expected, a shadow she had seen in the near-future. "Tell me where I can find Lish," she demanded of the guard.. "I have business with her."
Soon enough she was escorted to the Holdout's villa, ushered into a comfortably appointed room off the foyer. There they left her. Guards posted in the hall made it clear that Reva was to await the Holdout's pleasure in this chamber.
Spotting Vask in the hallway cut short her growing anger at this treatment. The Fixer stopped inside the door, clad in a soiled j gray work jumper, a torque socket and static bands hanging carelessly out of one cargo pocket. His dark hair was rumpled, but his grin was as broad as ever.
"Why am I left sitting here, and what in the Deep is happening with Lish's business?" Reva blurted.
Vask, unruffled by her greeting, filled her in on the streetwar with the Islanders, how the combat had progressed from the waterfront and now revolved around the besieged headquarters of the enemy derevin.
"So how does that explain why I'm waiting on Lish? Does she j even know I'm here?"
Vask spread his hands. "She's on the Net. I'm not sure—"
"You mean those 'Jammers didn't tell her I'm here because they don't want to interrupt her?" Incredulity raised her normally husky voice a half-octave. "Beldy shit. I'm announcing myself, right now."
The assassin surged to her feet and headed for the door. Vask rushed close behind, waving guards back to their posts. Half directing Reva, half following her, Kastlin took the assassin through the living area and into the office wing of the villa.
Reva glowered at Lish's door panel as if it were responsible for barring her from the dreaded, anticipated meeting with the Holdout. "You stay here," she warned Vask with a brusque aside. The Fixer, hovering solicitously, took a step away. Reva gathered herself, and walked in on the woman she had thought of as friend.
LX
"This afternoon surface freighters of Lovana Shipping Corporation were sunk in the Bennap Run," the message began. "Like others of their kind, they carried surface-made goods at monopoly prices to water-breathers who can, and do, manufacture most of these items for themselves.''
Freighters. Shipping. Sunk. Context recognition programs identified the message and sent an alarm-frequency pulse into the cybernet. FlashMan was jolted by that alarm. He launched himself after the neon-pulsing pink trail that blitzed along the data feed of the terrorist message, in search of its source.
"No longer will we pay extortionist prices for the goods we need to live. No longer will we support the shipping monopolies of surface interests. Until interdome trade is approved and fully legal, no surface enterprise will be permitted to keep water-breathers at their mercy..."
The diatribe continued, extending the transmission time for precious nanoseconds. Flash chased electrons down the yellow spiral corridor of a tightbeam relay.
When the alarm sounded, Nomad welcomed it, and awaited the personal nudge that would direct him to the burst of the terrorist's transmission.
That nudge didn't happen. He heard the alarm down a distant corridor in the data net, and took an intuitive leap to land in a newsnet junction where the pulsing pink neon trace
marked the terrorist's data trail.
What's going on? he wondered, just as a lightning-formed sim blurred past. The backtrace vanished as the data-jacker raced by.
Nomad threw himself after in close pursuit.
Through the spiral corridors of tightbeam transmitters, down the fuzzy highway of a broadband frequency, Nomad raced behind the FlashMan. The wire-framed decker recognized the simfigure from the Delos Varte hijacking.
I'm gonna get you, he vowed, and put on an extraordinary burst of speed that moved him a little closer to the FlashMan.
Abruptly the funhouse complex of an encrypted relay system hove into sight ahead of them. FlashMan blitzed into the mirrored complex. Nomad tried to follow, but by the time his decryption programs were online, the League transmission was no longer there to trace. There was nothing but dead air, and the lightning-shaped renegade had given him the slip again.
Cold rage threatened to overcome Nomad, a decker not used to one-upsmanship. Working as an independent on R'debh, he had beaten all the local talent. Who was this newcomer, who twice had slipped through his fingers?
Angered, it took a while to realize where he stood—but when he did, a thin-lined grin split his blue wire-frame face.
This was the relay nexus for the Embari Dome complex. Any transmission that passed through here could only have originated among those domes.
Nomad waved a triumphant fist at the faceted walls of the relay. One dome or fifty to search, it made no difference. Finally, they knew where to start looking.
The Gambru League's days are numbered, the decker thought. And so, my spiky friend, are yours.
LXI
It was too much to bear, the incessant noise, the long-range moan of alien intruders. For a time the ghost-ray phased out of the sea waters of R'debh, later to return and find the assault on his senses more abrasive than before. There were more sounds now, more distress—and something new. Pain, a silent groan, an ephemeral discord of the self. From the aliens?
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