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.
CXXVIII
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 b
lithely 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.
CXXIX
"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—"
"You should care," the alien said. "You are her next target."
Adahn's heavy brows drew together. "Yeah, you said that before, and she hasn't shown."
Yavobo's lips twitched, a briefly mocking smile, and it spurred Harric to anger. "I don't think you have anything to go on at all," he snarled. "That's why you're so damn anxious for me to find her, isn't it? Because you can't do it yourself."
The bounty hunter stood swiftly. His stance was taut and threatening.
"One last time: will you find this assassin for me, as you promised?"
Harric's jaw jutted. "I told you what we'll do for you."
"I cannot wait longer for your assistance." Yavobo's face was expressionless, his words flat.
Adahn curled a lip. "Then you're on your own."
The warrior remained poised for a long moment, balanced on the edge of violence. Then a silent decision was made and his tension broke, replaced by a chilling resolve that could be read in his eyes.
"Place your call," he said to Janus, standing silently behind his boss. "You can leave a message for me at my ship."
Without another word or a glance at Adahn, the red and black figure left the office.
Harric shifted in his chair, easing stress he had collected in his shoulders. He swiveled about to face his lieutenant. "Imperious son of a bitch. No rush with that call to Reva. She won't answer it anyway, once she knows it's from us."
"Maybe she will," Janus offered quietly.
"Yeah, and maybe she won't. Maybe she's not anywhere near here."
"What if he's right?"
That thought dredged up concerns Adahn didn't have time for right now. Concerns that wouldn't retreat obediently into the background, either.
"Vecna turds," he said in disgust. "Shake some MazeRats up.
Have them search again, and make sure everyone has a copy of that flatpix Yavobo left us."
"If she's onplanet, she's lying low," Janus noted.
"If our boys look hard enough, they'll find her. Get them started."
cxxx
Smoke curled from the muzzle of the impossibly large handgun gripped in a lightning-jagged hand. FlashMan grinned at his weapon of choice, then looked to the charred sim-form sprawled in the data gate before him. Flash shook his head. That man needed better equipment.
He air-holstered the virtual gun by his side. It lingered for a moment, then faded into nothingness. It would be in his hand with a thought when needed again. He stepped around the form of his enemy, a decker who would gladly have killed him outright, instead of merely stunning his victim.
Now there was nothing between Flash and the exit from Harric's third-level systems. His route lay just ahead, a glitch in a status reporting program that he had expanded into a trapdoor between levels. He grinned more widely and did a brief jig outside his personal egress. Then he slipped into the jimmied routine and cavorted out the other side—and nearly into the arms of a gangly blue wire-framed figure he knew from Selmun III.
The two netrunners froze, both startled beyond response by each other's unexpected appearance. Flash was the first to unfreeze and, true to his name, darted off, directly away from the Security hack, as fast as neurons could carry him.
Nomad collected himself a nanosecond later, and sped after.
For pure brute force, Security netrunners had Flash outgunned any day. His only hope lay in evasion. He did his best, taking unexpected corners, until one dodge sent him racing down a curving passageway. Too late he recalled the glowing static screen ahead of him: coarse but effective broadband protection against intrusive viruses and unauthorized netrunners. It filled the hall with lurid electric yellow, its field potential strong enough to tug at the lightning spikes on his sim-form.
He skidded to a halt. In the body he began to thumb the emergency disconnect on his deck, though he risked death or brainburn that way, too—when choice was taken from him. Nomad slammed into him, sliding them both along the floor, then trapping him in place with a restraint field that locked out most of his cyberdeck circuits and immobilized his virtual limbs.
"You ICE-sucking, loose-wired data weasel!" Flash erupted. "Can't you see we're too close to this static? If you're gonna fry me, at least do it in a nice quiet place where I don't have data blackouts from the signal noise!"
Nomad looked up, his crude wire-form features concealing whatever reaction he felt to the looming, crackling hazard. Instead of towing his captive to a safe distance, the Security agent sat right down beside the discomforted FlashMan.
"Fancy meeting you here," he said dryly. "I remember you. Do you remember me?"
"Can't say that I do."
Nomad grabbed Flash's spiky leg, slid the lightning-shaped figure closer to the screen field.
"Hey! Stop that!"
"Remember me now?"
Flash pulled a face. "You must be that kind gentleman who tried to toast me on the Delos Varte. Would that be you?"
Nomad smiled. "You do remember. My associates aren't with me this moment, but you have me, at least. I must say, I'm surprised to find you here. You're a very busy little terrorist."
"Ha. Bugs deserve their reputation for intelligence, I see."
"Do you work for Harric?"
"Double ha. Check your neuro links."
Nomad wagged a blue finger in reprimand. "No need to be insulting. We're just going to have a little chat. We can have it here, or I can lock you down and wait until we trace and retrieve your body."
FlashMan's head jerked. "You can't do that. If you leave me here, some roving ICE could get me. That's as g
ood as murder."
Nomad stood. "Your work on R'debh amounted to murder, too, though I don't suppose you'd count that. Take your chances, terrorist."
The netrunner nudged his prisoner with one foot, and a blue glow bled from that spot, elongating to a single thin line flowing back to Flash's cyberdeck.
There was a time to be glib, and a time for flight. Both had passed the decker by. He heaved a sigh, resigned to unpleasant reality, and called out to the Bug's retreating form.
"Hey, wait a minute!"
The Security netrunner regarded his captive.
"Look, I've never murdered anyone. You've got me wrong with this terrorist confusion of yours. Let's talk, maybe I can clear you up on some things."
"Maybe you can."
"Could you just get us out of this subsystem first? There's too much ICE around here. And stop that deck trace. That's an invasion of privacy."
Nomad returned to hunker by his side. "In case you haven't figured it out, you have no more privacy. You're under arrest." He looked around. "But maybe a criminal's personal network isn't the best place to have our talk in. Let's go."
Nomad hoisted FlashMan's hindered figure into his arms. Before the interrupted deck trace faded, they had left Harric's system.
CXXXI
"So, how late is he?" Devin asked Reva.
"Two hours, now."
"Maybe he thought you were supposed to meet in Harca-venia."
"Come on, Devin," she said curtly. "He knows to conference through ship's systems only. It's the only place we're certain of secure comms on this end."
The spacer nodded, casting absently about the crew lounge. They'd had that discussion right here, strategizing about their movements and contacts. Agreeing to use the freighter as one base of operations, secure and anonymous among the other Mershon-class freighters at Peshtano starport. It was discomforting to think something serious may have delayed their netrunner.
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