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Sobrani nerve-fighting techniques were deadly, but tailored to a certain physiognomy. Yavobo did not share that design—yet being humanoid, his structure and central nervous system had much in common with that of the scorned thin-skins. His eyes widened, his muscle tone loosened, and he stood swaying, virtually senseless, while Reva wriggled from his grasp and limped hurriedly away.

Beyond the Lairdome entrance on the land side were intruder alarms and slidewalks. Ways to call the Grinds or escape her pursuer. She was heading for that door, uncertain what to do on the other side, when Vask strolled into the Comax Shipping warehouse.

Reva had never been really glad to see the Fixer before. Shock appeared on his face as he registered her condition. Her hasty words cut off his questions.

"You carry a gun, don't you? A needier? Is that all? It'll have to do. Come on." She turned to lead the way back to Yavobo.

"Wait! What's—"

The Aztrakhani saved the need for further questions. What would have laid a human low had bought Reva only a short respite. The alien, regaining his senses, followed his quarry out of the cryocase area and now strode purposefully across the darkened warehouse floor. Between the lingering twilight and the office glowrods, there was enough illumination to make out his imposing form.

Reva staggered, then stumbled to her knees. "Shoot him, Vask. Don't let him get near. He's incredibly strong."

The Fixer hesitated, and Yavobo came inexorably onward, knife in hand, intent on the assassin half down on the floor.

"Hold it right there," Kastlin ordered, readying his needle gun.

Yavobo came on.

"That's it, friend." Kastlin braced and aimed the needier with two hands, and fired a burst of three closely spaced shots. To Reva's surprise, the silent, slender projectiles arced blue as they struck their target, peppering the tall alien's chest. She looked up at Vask, revising her opinion of the Fixer. Those were electro-charged needles, illegal for general use, and capable of doing greater damage to the target than the standard puncturing rounds. Vask fired again, one well-placed needle spearing Yavobo's wrist. The knife dropped from suddenly-lax fingers, and hung dangling from its wrist cord.

Yavobo looked at Reva's friend and growled low in his throat, a primal sound eerily unnatural in a sentient being. "My fight is with you, woman, no one else. I will meet you again another time. You and I, alone."

He turned, and moved rapidly toward the docking ramp that gave into the ocean.

"Freeze!" Vask ordered. "You're not going anywhere!"

The alien kept walking, his back turned contemptuously to the man's needier. Vask took aim, and pulled the trigger. Hits peppered Yavobo's back, but as before, they had little visible effect. A moment later a splash came from the docking ramp.

Smooth green phosphorescence curled over the ripples where the bounty hunter had plunged into the sea. Vask took a halfhearted step in that direction.

"I think we better help Lish," Reva called to the Fixer. "Au-todoc's fine for me, but her—I think you better call the medics."

As much as cyberscience had learned with thorough neuronic mapping, brain tissue injuries could play havoc with a patient's system. So while Reva was out of the autodoc by midnight, feeling mean enough to pick a fight and get thrown out of her favorite holoden, Lish passed the evening unconscious in a real hospital, with real humans supplementing the medibot care she received in the Head Trauma unit.

Vask stood guard during Reva's recovery, puppy-dogging her steps before, during, and after her raucous sojourn in Gaspar's Holo Heaven. He lived to tell about it, too, in spite of her threats, and asked in the predawn hours if she would like to go visit Lish. Reva snarled about that, too, but finally took a detox pill and sobered up enough to go along to the hospital. By then the Holdout was drugged but conscious, tended by a medibot, and setting her own visiting hours. She admitted her callers.

Seeing Lish surrounded by healing devices brought back an image of blood and bone fragments and a crumpled form lying near death on her account. Reva swallowed past a sudden uncomfortable lump, and had to clear her throat before she could speak.

"You're looking a lot better," she said.

The smuggler's voice was soft, hard to hear. "They say I was in shock, and going fast. Thanks, to both of you."

Again, saved lives. Reva avoided that loaded subject; she nodded instead toward the crystalline half-globe that covered Lish's head in the blue glow of an aseptic field. "What's that?"

"That wallop I took against the wall crushed bone, and that destroyed some tissue. They grafted on some gray matter from the tissue bank, took a synaptic dump from the old stuff. This is monitoring the healing process now. Can't accelerate the brain quite as fast as they do a finger." She waved her little finger, the compound fracture autodoc-healed and as good as new. "What was that trouble all about, anyway? Do you know?"

Assassin and Fixer sat by the bedside, conscious of the nearby medibot monitoring instruments and voices in the room. "Seems like your visitor had it in for one of your special customers," Reva said circumspectly. "Remember the last big thing I bought from you?"

The Holdout nodded her understanding.

"So I had some words with him about it. I don't think he'll be back to bother you, Lish. It was me he was after."

"You? Why?"

"Let's say he didn't like how I used that last special purchase."

"He tried to kill you for it," Vask remarked.

"Had a little knife fight," Reva explained to Lish's questioning look. "The Fixer helped me out on that one. Thanks, by the way," she tossed off—her first, and only, acknowledgment of the aid he had rendered.

"Don't mention it," Kastlin dismissed the remark, "but what are you going to do when your visitor comes back?"

"Yeah," Lish agreed. "That's what I want to know."

Reva's face changed, her eyes gone hard. "He won't be back. I'm taking care of him tomorrow—or, I should say, today."

"Don't do anything hasty," the Holdout cautioned.

"I had something planned anyway," Reva said. She spoke curtly, uneasy about discussing her work. "It should be easy to make my friend part of it, instead of just a bystander. He won't be a problem afterward."

"You know who that alien is?" Vask asked with amazement.

She continued to play it close. "Knew of him. Tonight was our first meeting. I expect later today will be our last. Lish, in case I'm wrong about him coming back-—will you keep out of sight until I take care of this problem? One day should be all I need."

The Holdout shook her head, a limited movement within the healing globe. "I'll be out of here by midmorning. I have something going on, too, so I won't be around for a day or so myself. Don't worry about me." She turned to Vask. "By the way—did you ever find out about my netrunner?"

"Um ... the netrunner?" Vask switched mental gears. "Your guy met some bad neurons in the Net. He got ICEd trying to access a certain established businessperson's shipping registries."

Reva started. She looked at Lish and mouthed the name
Karuu?

The Holdout gave the smallest nod, an affirmative. "Do you know if he was found out and backtraced? Or was it a routine defense program?"

The dead hire was not the first decker to run afoul of Interactive Counter-Espionage programs in the cybernet, and wouldn't be the last, but his end had been particularly ugly. Vask omitted the details. "That target is aware of only low-level probes from casual Net travelers. It was a defense program that fried him, not an offensive decker protecting assets."

"You're certain?"

"Positive."

Lish relaxed visibly; a moment later, her eyes fluttered closed. Accelerated healing or no, it was clear that she was exhausted, and needed to sleep. Leaving her on that reassuring note, that her dataprobes had not been traced back to her, they said goodnight and left the hospital behind.

"Say." Vask stopped Reva near the slidewalk. "You know that special thing you bought from Lish?"

Reva's eyes were uninviting. "What of it?"

"I think I can guess what that might be—"

"Don't bother."

"No, Reva—I mean, if that's what you're using, and you're going to use one again, I can help."

"Help? Trying to drum up more business, Vask?" Mercenary motivation she could understand, even if the prying irritated her.

He gave a too-casual shrug. "I know how to put one together. Can get you a lab to work in if you want to do it yourself. Whatever."

He looked up at her hopefully, a Fixer bidding for more work.

Reva's hard eyes softened. "Thanks for the offer, but I've got this taken care of already. Maybe later, yes?"

"Oh. Later. Sure.

"I'll give you a good price!" he added reflexively.

"I'm sure of it," she agreed, and waved good-bye as the slide-walk carried her away.

The
Savu,
a
huge Peryton-class freighter, eased onto one of the large-cargo pads at Bendinabi Field. R'debh's number-two star-port served only freight traffic many klicks north of Amasl's urban sprawl. Karuu was on the pad with Daribi to watch the ponderous cargo carrier settle to the ground.

One of the largest designs capable of landing on a planet, the Peryton was a skeletal structure with a spine and traction arms that resembled ribs or gripping fingers placed at intervals down its length. When loaded with a bulk container module, the arms would hold the cargo firmly in place against the flight structure. Massive glowpads fore and aft marked the powerful repulsors that enabled heavy cargo lifts through gravity wells. The
Savu
was empty, though, and as she set down her skeletal fingers boxed nothing but air.

The Captain was Celia Natic, a mercenary out of Chorb who worked wet worlds and water drops. "Down and secured," she reported over the Port Authority channel. Karuu monitored that traffic from a com booth at the edge of the docking area.

The usual contingent drove out to the ship, a Port Authority and a Customs official on their way to check the vessel's papers and manifest. The inspection was quick. Customs had no interest in empty container vessels, and Karuu had paid well—very well-to ensure that today's activities would not be derailed by misplaced zeal.

When the port authorities were gone, the Holdout punched up the Custom Chief's private code. Walvert Edini came online, a beefy career bureaucrat who maintained his well-fed appearance largely with the help of Karuu's "gratuities" for "assistance" with complex shipping matters.

"Can't talk now!" he said in a hurried undertone. "Internal Security is walking through the door."

Karuu was oblivious to the man's nervousness. "You have everything in order?" he asked.

"Of course—"

"Security makes the arrest, and you confiscate the cargo, that is certain?"

For the fourth time that day, the aggravated Customs Chief assured Karuu that it was so. "And you can transport for us, like agreed. Later."

The com went dark.

"That was impolite," Karuu said to the screen. But perhaps understandable. Today's coup would be the biggest of the Holdout's career, and one of the richest of Edini's. The Customs Chief had to placate Security. Naturally he would be a little nervous.

"Daribi." The bronze-skinned Islander glanced around. "You have a boat-boy on hand, like I asked? One who knows the seaways from the air?"

"Like you ordered."

"Is good." Karuu washed his hands together. "We have best-ever deal, then. As soon as Lish's cargo is impounded, we are contracted by Customs to haul it to their holding yards. We have only heavy hauler capable of taking that cargo container. This is convenient, no?" The Holdout beamed at the Peryton.

"If this cargo ends up in Customs' hands after all, why the boat-boy?" Daribi asked gruffly.

Karuu cocked one furred eyebrow at his underling. "Who says Customs keeps their claws on this? Is simple, my primitive friend. Cargo is perishable, so needs seawater circulation after a while. Customs must store this in their wetdocks at far edge of Obai Shelf. They are not checking container contents too closely until after cargo is in their holding yards.

"To get there, we are navigating by eyeball and buoy trace over the Bennap Run, a little-used seaway. That is why boat-boy, to help pilot with dead reckoning."

The Dorleoni grew effusive. "On the way we see distressed seamen in skiff. Peryton sinks into ocean to help them out. Some borgbeasts are released then, to our water-breathing friends beneath the surface. Once seamen are rescued, we go on to Customs wetdocks with same cargo module, only a lighter load."

Karuu slapped a flipper-shaped foot on the plascrete, a mark of the alien's excitement. "Later, depending who gives best price for it, unknown terrorists can break remaining cargo free. Borgbeasts are powerful enough and follow directions—they can push right through the perimeter fence at the holding yards, and are out into free ocean.

"If Customs must save face, I pay indemnity for faulty cargo grips or some such that made it easy for thieves to work havoc."