The miniature Lanzig leaned forward, pressed some keys on her console, not visible in the recording. "Encryption routines," FlashMan muttered. "Decoded for you on this segment. "
Lanzig leaned back and continued. "The borgbeasts have a fatal flaw. For that matter, so do their handlers. Namely, natives of Vernoi cannot digest the foodstuffs in the oceans of R'debh. They lack a particular enzyme required to absorb nutrients from this food. They'll eat, they'll feel full, but they will in fact be starving to death, unless and until this enzyme is introduced into their systems. Once this adaptation is made, they can flourish and survive in our seas. I haven't mentioned this to anyone else, because Edesz and his friends will want to have sole control over the beasts. They may think they do, but they won't." A smug smile played about Lanzig's mouth. "The Camisq know what enzyme is lacking and can manufacture it with self-replicating nanotech. They're waiting back on Tion for the order, should I choose to issue it. I haven't done so yet. I'll wait and see how things go first."
The holovid faded to black, and in the silence that followed, Reva heard Lish inhale and hold her breath.
"You stay like that, you're going to explode," she remarked over her shoulder. "Thank you, FlashMan. I owe you a dinner for that one."
"You're too kind." Flash sounded both flattered and unhappy at the extortion that had brought him to share his data. "Well— I'm off for now.''
"Wait. The order codes and Camisq contacts?"
"Already downlinked and in your console."
"Thanks, Flash," Lish spoke in a rush of breath.
The netrunner was already offline. Reva swiveled in the chair and was pleased to see the sudden difference in Lish's face. Gone was the shadow that had dogged her demeanor since she first learned of Lanzig's death. The information about the borgbeasts could turn this all around.
"This is invaluable, Reva." Her eyes glowed brightly as she reached out and grasped her friend's shoulder, concern over roi'tas forgotten in her exhilaration. "Thank—"
"Don't say it." The assassin held up a hand to ward off the gratitude.
Lish squeezed her shoulder instead. "Well. You know what I mean."
The smuggler spun away and crossed to the door in a few strides. "Bring Devin from Akatnu Field," she told a Skiffjam-mer in the hall. "When he's here, have Vask join us." The sergeant saluted, and Lish closed the door.
"Now we'll get some things done around here!" she said, and grinned triumphantly at Reva.
LXVI
"A run to Tion?" Devin pondered out loud. "That's about three, four days, if you stay off the shipping lanes. More space hazard that way, though."
"Can you do it?" Lish asked.
"Yes." Devin blew air through his lips. "But we've got our work cut out for us. I'll need more help at the ship."
"You've got it."
"There's one other thing," Reva spoke up. "How you gonna pay for this? The Camisq will want a credit dump, and that was a big price they quoted Lanzig."
Lish blushed. "I was coming to that. I was hoping you, any of you, could pitch in on this. You know once we have the nanotech we as good as have our payoff. But I'm a little short...."
"No need to explain," Devin brushed her embarrassment aside. "How much is this going to cost?"
"One hundred."
Eyebrows went up around the table. "I've got lk you can have," offered Vask. "It's not much, I know, but it's a start."
"Eight k," offered Devin. "It's all I have."
"Beldy spines," said Reva, scowling around the table. "Keep your small change. I'll front you, Lish."
The announcement caught the smuggler short, caused her to cough nervously. Enough was enough. She began to shake her head in automatic refusal. "You already—"
"Forget it," the assassin cut her off. "I'm in this far, aren't I? I guess I'll get it back, one way or another."
Lish saw the stubbornness in Reva's hazel eyes, and warred with herself over a yes or no. In the gift and acceptance of such aid, Lish became indebted to her far beyond the sum of money involved. Their casual ties became more formal, a bond of honor and obligation that bred countless intricacies in Sa'adani relationships—
But we're not in Sa'adani space, Lish reminded herself. And I need the money.
Plain need again overrode personal reservations, and the Holdout finally nodded her agreement. Reva brushed off her mumbled appreciation, and transferred credits from her meter again, this time directly to Lish's account.
The party broke up. Devin and Vask went back to the ship, four Skiffjammers in tow.. Reva was shown to a room, and Lish went to bed early, finally allowing herself to relax after days burdened by ever-present worries.
In the light by the bedside, behind a locked door, Reva pulled out her credmeter once again. The portable device held her fortune, for she who moved Timelines away from banks and institutions trusted only the cash or credit she could carry on her.
She studied her balance and grimaced. Five hundred CR. Not 5,000, but 500. That wasn't enough for a decent hotel suite, or a ticket offworld.
"You're broke, idiot." She scolded herself for being so loose with her funds, then thought better of it. Lish needed the help, and she was the only one who could offer it.
Besides, it was only money. There's always more where that came from, she thought, putting the credmeter away. Guess it's time to take another job.
LXVII
In the morning, Reva made a quick run into Amasl in her rented skimmer. She went to a starport com booth, punched in a special call code and waited for the subspace connect.
"Reva?" a man said. "This is unexpected."
"Janus." She acknowledged her invisible connection. "I'm back on the market. Have anything for me?"
"Ah... yes, we might. Can you hold for a moment?"
"Yes."
"Disconnect, please, and I'll call you right back."
She complied, knowing that Janus would reroute his call through encrypted relays outside the public comnet. A few moments later, the booth received an incoming call.
"Yes?" she said to the blank vidscreen.
"Kamisku Benulu?" queried a woman's synthesized voice.
"Benulu gesku," Reva replied in Ganandi. A moment later, Janus was back on the line.
"Special terms with this job," he said. "One week turnaround, no longer. Double fee, cash advance, as per your terms. Still interested?"
Cash advance. "I'll take it."
"Good. This is on Selmun III as well. Ready to downlink?"
"Ready."
"Dossier follows."
She waited for the subspace dump to finish. Then she opaqued and soundproofed the booth, and hit the playback.
Janus' voice filled the cubicle.
"Target," he said, beginning the standard narrative. "Shiran Gabrieya Lish. Last known business address: Comax Shipping, Lairdome 7, Amasl. Shiran is a Holdout, operating from ..."
The words blurred together behind the ringing in her ears. Janus' briefing droned on, and Reva heard not a word of it.
I warned her, she thought. I warned her about Adahn, and now it comes home at last.
I can't do this.
She looked at the credmeter in her hand, her fee doubled and paid in advance. Exactly what she required for fast and efficient work. She'd already said yes, and taken the money. She had one week, Janus had said.
One week in which to kill her friend.
THREE
LXVIII
"You're certain they're worse?" Edesz faced the lead Vernoi in mote-speckled depths, unhappy with the handler's news.
Master Swimmer Sharptooth gave a body-long undulation in response. "Yes. Our life-friends are worse. As are we."
"We—?"
"Us Vernoi."
Edesz frowned. If the handlers should die before the beasts, there would be no one to control the leviathans. If the borgbeasts should die first, there would be no more war against the Free Ocean Trade monopolies.
Either situation was intolerable. Damn L
ish. What had she done to his borgbeasts?
"Very well, Master Swimmer," Edesz conceded to the Vernoi. "Two strikes will be sufficient this week."
"And the help you offered?" Sharptooth prompted the human.
"It's on the way. Today I make arrangements for its delivery."
Sharptooth trilled. The ambiguous tone was ignored by the sonic translator, but Edesz recognized it from his Vernoi training. It was a signal denoting thankfulness, and he offered the proper verbal trill in response. It was a poor imitation of the Vernoi sound, but the least that Sharptooth's gratitude deserved.
Lish was glad to take Edesz' call.
"I see you know something I don't about my borgbeasts," he said coldly. "I'll buy that cure from you, but I need it within the next two weeks."
It took all of her self-control to keep her expression blank. She hadn't even placed the order with the Camisq yet.
"I'm not sure I can meet that deadline," she said noncommittally.
The terrorist curled a lip. "I don't know if they'll live any longer than that. You started this, now you finish it. I want the fix for this problem as fast as you can get it to me. How fast is that, Lish?"
How fast could the Camisq produce the nanotech fix? That was the real question. "Give me a little time, and I'll call you back on this," she said.
"When?"
"Today. Maybe tonight. Let me talk to some people."
"As you say. You have my code." He frowned by way of farewell, and broke the connection.
Lish sat for a time, closing her eyes on the elation inside, and planning what she had to do next. After a while she pulled up the Camisq contact information taken from Alia Lanzig's files. She buzzed a certain cybernet frequency, and waited until the FlashMan hummed in her headset's earpiece.
"What's up?"
"Can you scramble this call for me, and the response when it comes back?"
Flash surveyed the ready-to-transmit message in the Holdout's com unit and the Tion address packets attached to it. ' 'Sure thing. Sit tight. I'll send it when the relays are ready."
Lish watched her com board. A few minutes later, the message was transmitted, seemingly by itself.
Then she could only wait, while hours crawled by.
LXIX
Reva stayed far too long in the starport com booth, wracked with indecision. On the third pass of a security bot, she left the terminal, and called the Evriness villa.
She left a message on the house comp, unwilling to talk to Lish. Her target.
"I'll be gone for a few days," she had said, "but keep my room free. I'll be back."
From the starport she headed straight for Amasl's wildest holo-shops and lost herself as hurriedly as she could in programmed dreams and illusions.
Illusions were safe enough; if she forgot herself, and struck out in anger, no one died, no one was hurt. But take enough drugs and you don't necessarily know the difference between dream state and real. There were blurred images of sun-filled street corners, of being drenched in the warm rain of an afternoon thundershower. Holo-program or memory? Real experience or illusion? There were the sex clubs that she liked to visit, full of willing men and luscious women, but they all seemed blond and slender with pretty yet careworn faces, and Reva left each one just before a kiss could lead to something more. And there was a red- and black-skinned figure, far across the room, who sought her but never saw her in the crowd, the silk-draped, semi-celluloid-clad crowd that laughed and partied with her, and shared her bed, and shared her wine, and left her, finally——alone. Alone and hungover in a way drug-dreams rarely left you. Her nose was stuffy, and a hand pressed to her face came away wet. The moisture was clear, and salty.
She'd been crying.
Aching, she uncurled from the ball she was in, rolled over and tried to figure where she was. This was no holoshop. It was someone's divey back-room apartment, or a public dorm lived in by a long-term renter. A bodysuit was thrown on the floor, of ambiguous cut. Who lived here? Man? Woman?
Reva didn't wait to find out. Her own clothes were the worse for wear and still on her back. She left, palming the door open, not bothering to search out the room's inhabitant. Gray corridors led out to gray overcast streets. Twilight and an incoming storm front washed the color from everything. Whether it was morning or evening was beyond her ability to figure. She stood, swaying, wondering where to go to now.
And how to get there. What did I do with the car? she worried, then dismissed that care. It hardly mattered. Call the rental service, say it was stolen. Leave it to them.
Then she had an idea. Seeking out a com booth, she sat inside, collapsing against the backrest, and called Evriness again. A glimpse of her reflection in the vidscreen prompted her to leave the call dark; Lish answered, and Reva talked while combing fingers through her tangled hair.
"Say. Would you mind having some 'Jammers pick me up? I, um ... I need a ride."
It felt funny to say that. Reva never asked for anything, not a ride, not a meal, not so much as a borrowed jacket.
You do what you have to, she excused it to herself, then sat, dozing, until an escort of Skiffjammers retrieved her from the com booth and whisked her out to the Highlands villa and Lish.
The smuggler, waiting on a callback from Tion, didn't notice her disheveled condition. Vask, returned from Akatnu Field, did a double take, then backed down from the single deadly glare directed his way. The assassin found her room, reported a missing air car to the agency, then tumbled into bed and welcome oblivion in a place she knew it was safe to rest.
Rest, but not forget. Anxiety punched her awake, rousing her from groggy dream to headache-filled consciousness in just a few heartbeats. The shuttered windows, secure against attack, opened at her spoken command, and daylight streamed into the room. It was some time after midday.
Reva ordered a bodysuit from the valet bot and put herself together in the fresher. Afterward she moved to the dining room, where she forced herself to eat a sparse meal of apaku and reis. In moods like this she preferred solitude, but she couldn't get a hit done that way, either. She resigned herself to appearing to be part of the normal household until this contract was out of the way.
Vask found her picking at fish bones. "How are you?" he asked, slipping into the chair across from her.
She made an effort to smooth the scowl from her face, an expression that came too naturally now. Worse, it betrayed how she really felt. She put on a mask of neutral friendliness and prepared to play the game of putting the target at ease. As long as the Fixer was so close to Lish, he was part of that game, too.
"I'm fine," she said, shoving her plate aside. "How are you?"
As soon as the trite words were out of her mouth she kicked herself. Since when do you talk like that? By the Deep, you're jittery as a kid with a kelp-crawler. Who cares how Vask is, anyway?
The Fixer took the question at face value, though, and was busy answering her. "I'm great, now that I don't have to work on the Kestren anymore. I was getting in their way, I guess. A bunch of spacers and me ... not a good mix." He shrugged, ran his hands over his jacket and undertunic. "I like these clothes better, anyway."
She put a false smile on her lips. Vask's garb was unremarkable, usually the same monotonous streetwear of gray-green and black, plain in style and functionality—the better, it seemed, to blend in with backstreeters and alley-crawlers. Reva was the one clothes mattered to; her friends could all see that. Yet here she was in a standard-cut bodysuit of charcoal gray, as obscure as she could order for the bump-and-run work she might have to do. Would have to do, she corrected herself, sometime soon.
Six days, by her count, before the week was up. Adahn's contract was in standard Imperial timecount, of course. She'd lost four days already, on a drugged-out revel that had washed no tension from her body and given her no peace of mind. Ten days to a week. Lost four. Leaves six.
"What was that?" Something Vask said interrupted her obsessive countdown of time and days.
&n
bsp; "Lish said join her when you're up. She wants to talk with you about the payoff arrangements with Edesz."
"Is that right." Her stomach gave a nauseating roll, and she regretted eating. Lish wanted to see her. Alone, in her office.
"I'll come with you," Vask offered.
"No." She said it too sharply, and he seemed hurt. "I have to see her alone." She stood hastily, nearly upsetting her chair, and slammed it angrily back in place against the table.
"Later," Kastlin murmured. Reva gestured good-bye, and strode the long hallways to Lish's office, steeling herself to her purpose.
Vask watched her clumsy departure, and heeded the uncomfortable foreboding in the back of his mind. Reva's natural movements were graceful and deft. What's eating her? he wondered. I think this needs looking into.
Retiring to his room, Kastlin locked the door and attached an additional Security lockout limpet to the magplate. He couldn't risk a visitor discovering his unaccountable absence. For he would shortly be unaccountably gone.
He sat down, relaxed, and began the process that would carry him out of the body and out of the physical plane entirely. Soon the room slid toward shades of gray and bluish translucence; when he stood, he had sideslipped into an unphased state, and was ready to move unseen through Lish's villa.
The Holdout's door was closed. The polite thing would be to scratch on it, or tap the voiceplate and announce herself. Reva faced the panel like it was an enemy, and eschewed the polite thing. She took several deep breaths, palmed the doorplate with an abrupt motion, and slipped inside.
Lish sat at her desk, engrossed in a game of castle-stones against the computer. It offered good lessons in strategy and tactics, skills she was honing these days. Her back was slightly to the door. She didn't notice it slide open, then shut, or hear the assassin's gentle tread upon the carpet.
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