Mainline

by Deborah Christian

  xc

  Devin triggered the crew alert with barely a conscious thought, recognizing from personal experience what sensors had just detected.

  It was a stelloid, one of the several denizens of warped space: a creature like a small sun, of fusioning plasma and unlikely energy frequencies, casting off twisted harmonics barely traceable in the other-space of warp.

  There was no question it was some kind of intelligent life-form. She miniature suns acted with motivation and cunning to satisfy one clear need: hunger. Some preferred mass, to be converted into energy, and so favored the substances of hulls or the organics concealed within. Others were drawn to the radiant discharge of warp engine or worse, the resonant crystal reactions dimly perceived within the drives themselves.

  There was no communicating with such a creature, too alien to understand, too vastly different from organic sentience to reason with. Sometimes they could be bribed with jettisoned reactive crystals, lured off from the fleeing tidbit that a warp-driven ship represented. Other times they must be beaten off, jabbed with unpleasant spikes of energy delivered at distance by ship's guns or missiles.

  The alarm roused Eklun, who ran from crew unit to transport outtake, from there a leaping step into the gunner's bounce tube. A moment later he was in Gunnery One, overhead and to the rear of the flight deck. The sergeant strapped into the gunner's couch and freed the gimbal lock of the laser turret.

  Warp space hugged the gun turret like glistening streaks of oil on dirty water, an unclean aurora that twisted the gut if you looked at it too long. Eklun kept eyes averted while he donned his com helmet and flipped down the warp visor to compensate his vision.

  The impossible void beyond the turret smoothed into a multilayered gray abyss for the gunner. He powered up his weapons module. "Gun One online," he spoke into the headset, jacking into the fire-rigger system with one hand.

  "Stand by." It was all Devin had to say for long minutes to come.

  The Fortune turned her heading away from the energy predator, but the miniature star continued to close. The warp creature ra-diated in the visible yellow spectrum, looking for all the world like a smaller version of the sunny primary they had just left behind at Tion.

  Devin poured power to the engines, but still it drew closer.

  Captain and crew had no choice then but to wait in strained silence until the stelloid came in close range—necessary for the outmoded guns they mounted. Eklun's low-power laser fired a spear of energy, a brilliant ruby beam aimed at the core of the aggressor. One laser burst; a second; a third. The miniature sun seemed to recoil, then came on stronger than before. It dropped behind the Fortune, directly in its drive trail, and out of the line of fire from manned or automated guns. Before the ship could maneuver to bring weapons to bear, the stelloid attacked.

  It looked a massive energy discharge, plasma flaring and lighning coruscating over the aft shields, ionizing the hull beneath. It attacked again, and the freighter shuddered, taking another hit against the energy screen that protected it. One aft shield failed completely. The creature darted in to discharge against the exposed hull, as close as it could get to the resonant crystals in Drive Two.

  The Captain sensed the stelloid's closing movement. If its next attack damaged the integrity of Drive One, Zay would die in vacuum. With crippled engines, they would be at the stelloid's mercy.

  Their alternative was to drop out of warp abruptly, that hazardous maneuver every spacer hated to contemplate. It could take days, even weeks, to reorient, repair damage, and return to R'debh. Far too late to help Lish.

  The yellow stelloid made the decision for them, vaporizing the hull protecting Drive Two's warp reactor. The engines staggered in mid-reaction as drive crystals shattered. The ship's warp bubble shrank to half its volume, rocking the Fortune with a sudden half warp, half real-space shift that threatened to tear the vessel apart.

  The stelloid vanished as the freighter was jerked sidelong through one of the interstices of the dimensional space around her.

  Alarms screamed and safeties shut systems down. Warp failure seemed imminent, but the gray twisting swirls of other-space remained on the viewscreen, and the clamor of systems status told Devin why. They had one crippled engine keeping them in warp, though the reaction creating that bubble was dangerously erratic. There was a hot-list of systems damage; subspace communications were down, and maneuver control was reduced to a minimum.

  If they cut that drive to drop into normal space, there would he phase-shift effects from the erratic warp field that the weakened hull could not withstand.

  "Lords of Ice," Devin muttered. Unthinking, his voice carried over crew headsets.

  They were running on one engine in a ship that could not call for help. The hull could not handle the transition to real space, and the drive could not keep them adequately on course. Every spacer's nightmare had come true for Devin and his small crew.

  The Fortune was stranded in warp.

  XCI

  His appearance was distinctive, and he had been there with murderous intent once before. Yavobo would not approach Comax Shipping directly, for he had no doubt that Lish had improved her security. The Skiffjammers he had seen on his last visit had assured him of that.

  What other changes had she made? Where did she live? What "were her movements?

  They were simple questions, straightforward ones the bounty hunter had to answer before he could eliminate the Holdout who stood between him and Reva. The difficulty was that he could not risk detection. Tipping his hand, giving a hint that he was stalking Lish or planned to infiltrate the Lairdome—that would be the mistake of an unblooded hunter.

  It was a problem he had dealt with many times before—almost every time he had hunted a quarry, in fact. His tactics this time were similar. He observed at night, from a distance, from rooftops and neighboring domes, and once from an air car skirting the harbor. But he had no time or desire to make the leisurely stalk he would normally pursue. The sooner the honorless smuggler was out of the way, the sooner Yavobo could fulfill his Blood Oath. He chose, then to take a shortcut, the simplest and quickest way he knew of discovering information.

  Through a MazeRat he rented a room not far from the harbor, close to boat shelters and tenements. Again through intermediaries, he bought certain basic supplies, and prepared his retread Then, initial observations made, he selected his target and moved ahead with his plan. In the darkness of an overcast night, the Aztrakhani stalked a perimeter guard.

  The desert-born fighter leapt upon the thin-skin from behind. The tactical jammer at his belt blocked the guard's com link and his weight bore the Skiffjammer to the ground. The Aztrakhani's strength was great enough to keep him there, long arms giving superior leverage for the neck squeeze that sank the man into" unconsciousness.

  Humans had such vulnerable areas on their anatomy, Yavobo observed. It was amazing they survived in combat at all. Discarding the man's blastrifle and quickly slicing off his equipment webbing, he slung the body over his shoulder and ran off into the waterfront alleys. Into a waiting car, then into the storage shed next to the rented room, and the thing was done.

  The warrior had his subject for interrogation.

  The Aztrakhani secured his captive to a framework he had constructed of steeloy rods. It bore little resemblance to the Tree of Truth, though its function was the same. Not knowing what his prisoner's cybersystems might be capable of, Yavobo removed the obvious ones just to be on the safe side—a quick and crude surgery done with the blooded knife he had sworn to use solely in service to his Oath.

  With the excision of a cyber-eye, a weapons finger, and two rigger jacks, the former guard was bleeding and moaning even though unconscious. The bounty hunter applied synthflesh and a trauma patch to the head injuries, then administered a hopper to revive the prisoner.

  The questioning took very little time. The thin-skin was as cowardly as most of his kind, and Yavobo's skilled interrogation gained him all he needed to know. Arti
ficial though it might be, his self-built Tree of Truth had served its purpose well. At the end he was disappointed to slay the Skiffjammer, until the man groveled and asked for death.

  Scornful, are the thin-skins, the warrior reflected. You do not beg for mercy; you do not beg for death.

  He replaced the bloody knife in his thigh sheath, and contemplated all that he had learned. Too well protected, his quarry was, In her new trade fortress among the warehouses.

  The warrior's eyes gleamed. Well protected though Lish seemed, the flaw in the smuggler's security was a great and obvious one. She planned to come out from behind her walls, and then she would be exposed. On the streets they would be alert enough, her derevin continuing their normal guard routine, but underwater—

  That is where I will have her, thought Yavobo. They expect trouble from these terrorists they will be meeting with, and that Ik who they will be watching for. They will not be on guard against me.

  The Aztrakhani laughed, a rasping bark from deep within his chest. The Skiffjammers were on alert for the upcoming meeting In Rinoco Park. There would be no need for Yavobo to risk himself against security bots and perimeter alarms, after all. His dislike of R'debh's sea could be put aside, and for the last time he would wear a breather and a buoybelt. It was clear that Reva was working with the Holdout now; with luck, she would be there, too.

  He would strike like a dune-vipe. His oaths would be fulfilled, and he would have his vengeance. And underwater, he would not be plagued by spineless pleas for mercy or for death.

  XCII

  The report of the missing guard sent Reva out into the streets that night. Levay could analyze security procedures and order all the search sweeps she liked; the assassin was after immediate answers, and had her own way of getting them.

  A patrol line, an intelligent perimeter, security bots, and ready squads—none of those precautions had prevented a single attack against a single guard. The missing 'Jammer, called Borser, had even been in line-of-sight to one of the neighboring guardposts, where his fellow sentry confessed that her com link had fuzzed j out of frequency.

  It's starting, thought Reva. I don't know who it is, but that's a probe if there ever was one.

  Some of the Kipper's crew were out there in the streets right now, kids squatting in loading dock doorways wrapped against the fog that would roll in before dawn, sucking glow-tokes to build an inner heat against the chill of the night. Maybe they had seen something. She went to find them, blending into the shadows j in her black bodysuit, wearing night-eyes, special contacts that diffused ambient light so her night vision was improved without need of optical headgear or implant.

  She checked the Lines now and then, and stayed in the shadows, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. She did the rounds and heard the news.

  "I thought there was someone on the roof," said one street rat. "I might be wrong, though. Could've been a shrike, nesting for the night."

  "There was a car, went by twice," reported another. "No, I didn't see the driver."

  "I heard running," said the next. "Sounded like hazers." He meant rock-throwing taunters, hassling derevin who looked so occupied they couldn't give chase.

  That sounded promising. "Did you hear them throw anything? Or call out?" the assassin asked.

  The kid shook his head and hunched into his thermal blanket. Sitting with knees drawn up in a corner of the alley, he looked like a twelve-year-old derelict settling in to an uncomfortable night's sleep.

  She looked and questioned for some hours more. Whoever had snagged Borser had done so unobserved, and faded away without a trace.

  The assassin returned unwillingly tq Lairdome 5, unease gnawing at the back of her mind.

  XCIII

  Nothing was worth the extortionate price Lish was demanding to cure the borgbeasts. She was trying to bankrupt the Gambru League—and that was robbery its leader could not permit to happen. So his afternoon swim with Sharptooth and life-friend up the Rinoco Baffles was a welcome experiment, to see how closely the beasts could approach Rinoco Park without detection. When the Leaguers met the smuggler in the underwater amusement |park, Edesz planned to have reinforcements within easy calling distance.

  "The water is shallow," Master Swimmer Sharptooth observed, whistling his concern through the sonic translator.

  The average depth in watery Rinoco Park was a little less than twenty meters, and the borgbeasts would be cramped for adequate maneuvering room.

  "Can you do it?" Edesz asked the Vernoi.

  Sharptooth crooned to his life-friend, and the trio drifted over the ridge toward the waterpark beyond. On the shelfland the ocean was cloudy with plankton and silt; visibility was poor, and there was little threat of waterland visitors detecting the leviathan's approach. The borgbeast nosed around, and sent some kind of sonar pulse through the water, a sounding that Edesz could detect on his skin but not hear even with the aid of the translator. The leviathan finally clicked to its handler, and Sharptooth interpreted.

  "My life-friend says yes, we can do it. Two must stay off the deeper shelf; they are too large to enter the park safely. The rest can navigate these narrows if we handlers are nearby to help direct them."

  With those magnificent creatures at his disposal, Edesz did not care what reinforcements Lish brought with her. The borgbeasts wouId be on call to chase or devour or overwhelm any who got in their way.

  XCIV

  Zay and Eklun stared at the destruction in D2.

  The wall of engineering consoles was missing. The maneuver engines and power support that lay beyond were gone as well. In their place were heaps of melted duralloy, charred tendrils of plasteel, bits of shattered ceramic lattice. Beyond that...

  It was hard to look beyond that. A blue-black light filled the room, something strongly UV, a radiance that clawed at the nerves until you wanted to blink it away through watering eyes. You could nearly feel it on your teeth. It illuminated nothing while glaring blindingly off every surface.

  The faceplates on the spacers' helmets filtered mere UV, but even the warp visors they lowered were not enough to remove the sensation of invisible irritation stabbing through the eyes and into the brain behind. Eklun tried to make out the slagged engine, but it blurred into a heap of debris, and past that a twisting color-splashed void that defied the eye to look directly at it. Like the colors and patterns seen when the hands press hard against the eyes, but with a sickly gleam to them, and the fascination of a glow-arc or laser—"don't look at that; you'll blind yourself" it carried the self-destructive urge to look, to dare the impossible, to see what it was really like in that moment before you did go blind—

  Eklun tore his eyes away. He knew the risks, and so did Zay. He had to punch her twice on the arm before she followed suit,

  They switched on their suit lights and went to the maintenance airlock, fetching laser cutter and toolkit. In the wreck of the control area, the two bent their heads downward and followed standard procedure—throwing attention into one thing at a time, the SureGrip floor matting underfoot, the next meter of deck spat -Best was to concentrate on something within the compass of your own arms or legs; when you saw pieces of your body, too, stayed conscious of self, and that made it easier to resist the verse siren call of destruction that the beyond whispered with light, its fascinating, oppressing colors... .

  "Eklun. Zay. Talk to me," said the Captain. "I haven't heard a word from you. What's going on?"

  They both gave a guilty start. Constant talk, another standard procedure.

  "Sorry, sir," said the engineer. "We're walking where the power conduits used to be. Maneuver engine is a puddle."

  They skirted near-vaporized floor plates, halting beside the dur-alloy-sheathed reactor. Ion exciters and flux gates were reduced lo char by the energy discharge. A hatch plate recessed into the casing covered the resonant crystals precisely braced within. The hatch bowed at the aft end, where it and a good third of the reactor shell had neared meltdown temperatures.

 
; "We'll have to cut this out," Zay said. "Two hours, maybe longer." Slow and careful going through insulating layers, to avoid nicking any displaced prisms in the core.

  "Go to it, then," Devin said. "And keep talking to each other. I'm listening, but leave me offline unless you need me."

  Eklun unlimbered the laser cutter and they began.

  Satisfied that his crew was safe and their salvage work well under way, Devin returned to the problem that demanded most of his cyber capacity and all of his unwired attention.

  On what heading lay Selmun III?

  There was no telling where the warp flicker had left them in relative space. Once blinded to a known starting point, further course alterations were as likely to take a ship away from her goal as closer to it. Every hour they spent pushing ahead in warp might be one light-year of travel they'd have to make up later.

  Devin fine-tuned sensor systems until he had a single long, very narrow sensor probe, extending half again as far as normal long range would permit. He pointed the probe to the rear of the Fortune, and swept it in a calculated arc across the void. Slowly, he smiled. As he had known it would, a warbling cycle tone native lo the warp dimension filled his senses. In a moment, computers eliminated the background noise and the sensors relayed nothing at all.

  That's perfect, thought Shiran. Now to see if we can find anything worth hearing.

  He initiated an automated routine, sweeping the sky in a pattern of overlapping arcs that, over a period of hours, would encompass every degree of space that englobed them. If a space lane was anywhere within two days of travel, the long probe should pick up the distinctive tone of a navigation buoy, log its bearing, and alert Devin.

  All we need is one beacon, he encouraged himself. That, and a couple of drive crystals, and we're on our way.