Mainline (30 page)

"You think it's worth the risk of leaving her free on the streets?"

"I'm pretty sure of it, yes. Her connections are offworld." Kastlin quirked a smile. "She thinks of me as almost a friend— or maybe as a friendly dog. I want to develop this contact, get more into her confidence. I think we can land something big with this one if you let me work the case for a while."

Obray agreed. It was a standard kind of request from a psionicist who could pick his own assignments, and had the street experience to judge what was worth going after. "Good work, by the way, tying Lish in to the terrorists," he added. "She
'd
more slippery than Karuu proved to be, and the Gambru League—well, they're a headache in their own right. I'll put a commendation in your file, Kastlin."

Debriefing at a close, the Mutate stood. "Thank you, sir." He did his best to appear grateful but barely managed to disguise his unease.

It was simpler when the bad guys were really bad. This felt like setting up a friend. And Reva would be next.

Vask was glad to shift out of the physical, and leave the Security offices behind.

The Islanders were
on the run.

Their dockside hangouts were firebombed or shot to pieces, their waterfront enterprises closed by Security crackdowns or Skiffjammer raids. A paltry tenth remained of the hundred-strong force that had once anchored Karuu's waterfront action.

Daribi led a ragged retreat to Indero Island, his ancestral home and a haven for his fellows. The reed island lay north of Amasl's lee harbor, close by rocky tidepools Indero held harvest-claim to. The Islanders limped to the refuge aboard windfloats and paddle-boards, a few on float-skis in a motley twilight migration.

Daribi took his fellows below the surface of the thick-woven island, into the damp sublayers where chambers were burrowed, for sleeping, living, storage purposes. They had their wounds tended to, ate, and fell asleep. Tomorrow would be soon enough to worry about the future of the derevin.

A guard was posted, and the Islander chief joined his fellows in exhausted slumber.

The night passed uneventfully. Guards noticed nothing untoward until a hollow-sounding pop echoed off the surface of the water in the early morning light. A streamer of orange smoke began to pour from a canister wedged deep into a layer of reeds. A guard shouted the alarm, but before Daribi could be roused, the enemy derevin was upon them.

Riding float-skis and skimming just above the surface of the swell, Skiffjammers homed in on the smoke that marked their attack zone. While they were moderate-sized specks approaching from shore, high-explosive warheads arrowed into the thick weave of the Indero Island mat and discharged, blowing large segments of the reed-pack to shreds and catching the surrounding edges on fire. As they drew closer they launched canisters of fluorogel. The projectiles landed on the raft-like surface that remained, tearing through reed curtains and matting; where they burst, everything the incendiary touched ignited and burned with napalm-like fury.

The smell of chemical smoke and explosives hung thick in the air. Skiffjammers maneuvered on float-skis, circling the burning, sinking debris like sharks, picking off survivors and bronze-skinned Islanders with laser fire. When the strike teams were certain there were no survivors left above or below the waters, they left the ruins of the island. Grinds would be converging on the scene by a roundabout route, hoping to avoid the derevin, which was better armed than they were.

Levay ordered the pullout from her command skiff. She regretted the civilian deaths, but Daribi should have known that in a streetwar, any place he took refuge was fair game for an attack. At least she'd have good news for Domna Shiran. She could return to the waterfront, and all would be business as usual.

At Akatnu
Field, the
Kestren'
s systems were powered down. Enough air circulated to lighten the cloud of incense originating in the galley, and to draw off the smoke from the waxberry candles, but little else was in service. Lish followed the spicy scent of duskthorn into the interior of the ship, and stopped at the threshold of another world.

There was no disguising the crew unit of the freighter, but Devin's preparations had gone far to create the illusion of a modest Lahaj temple. Cloth of flowing yellow draped food station, fresher, and the console of environmental controls, hiding their technological intrusion away from sight. The pull-down comp table held censer and a bowl of shredded duskthorn. Galley table had become silk-concealed altar. An inscribed wooden tablet held pride of place amid the offerings of flowers and fruit, with statuary arrayed to each side. Water and wine stood before the tablet, with white candles illuminating all.

The flickering tapers gave the chamber a warm and primitive air. Devin saw Lish enter and stepped silently into the room from his adjoining cabin. He came and took her hand with a reassuring smile. She looked from him to the modest wonders that had transformed the compartment.

"It's magical," she breathed, and squeezed her clanmate's hand.

She felt like a small child again. The altar looked much like the one her parents had brought her to on her coming of age, and again when she had left their ship to live and work aboard the old
Jacklamb.
The inscribed tablet would hold a list of names of Teskal Devin's most honored ancestors; inside might be a data-chip recording biographies and more personal anecdotes, as her parents had concealed inside the ancestral tablet for the Gabrieya sept. The colors of yellow and white were the tokens of Ashani the Protector, the only possible choice for patron of the
merios.

The narcotic smoke of the burning duskthorn was the crowning touch, something restricted to ceremonies performed only by adult Shirani on rare and sacred occasions. Lish had left her clan before sampling those various rites of passage; the pungent scent brought home both the thrill of doing a forbidden thing, and a consciousness of joining the ranks of the adults of her clan for the first time.

Painfully aware of her feeling of vulnerability, she left it to Devin to lead the way, as befitted his role as ship's Captain. She followed his motions, beginning with ritual purification with sprinkled water, then a sharing of wine, and a time of chanting the prayers and mantras taught by the Lahaj, priest-disciples of the lau-zim philosophy. It had been years since she had chanted, or given any thought to Sa'adani spirituality. Her initial awkwardness gradually gave way to remembered routine, and she found herself caught up in the ritual of
merids.

Return to ancient customs came with unnerving ease to Lish, who had thought herself freed of the traditional ways of her birth-clan. Joining Devin was to step back in time, to a line of continuity that bound her ancestors to her own earlier life. She found herself stripping before her kinsman without self-consciousness, as he did before her, helping each other to dress in the white robes signifying pure intentions and new beginnings. Devin faced the altar, drawing his clanmate down to kneel with him before it. Putting hands together, they bowed formally from the waist to the deities memorialized there, icons glowing in the candlelight, tokens of forces greater than man.

The figurines followed conventional forms. Devin's were of classic design, of minute carving and intricately detailed workmanship. The first was a wingless dragon of gold, twining sinuously back upon itself, every scale catching the light of the candles. The second was a miniature shelter of thatching worked in delicately carved ivory, symbol of the means to survive in a harsh environment. The third was a glittering figurine of milky white and translucent crystal, cut in the shape of a woman in windblown robes, hair piled ornately upon her head.

Devin touched the god-statues, invoking one after the other. Lish echoed him in the blessing-refrain she had learned as a child.

"Windlord's flight," spoke Devin, raising the dragon.

"Usembo's might," she recited the affirmation.

"In brave one's sight—" He clasped the shelter.

"Korbato's night."

"Protector's right." He lifted the goddess.

"Ashani's light."

Devin dropped more duskthorn into the censer, and a fresh waft of smoke coiled upward from the bowl. In the shadows of the room, Lish imagined she could see the invoked spirits gathering to watch over them: Usembo, dragon lord of winds and bringer of good fortune; Korbato, patron of spacefarers, a hardy godling who aided survival against the elements; and Ashani the Protector, who kept people safe from dangers natural or man-made. They were beings she had dismissed in her cynical youth, but now, in the dark, with the drugged smoke of the incense in her nostrils, it was easy to believe in them once more.

She followed Devin then on a chanting sojourn throughout the ship, bearing candles and incense to bring the light of Ashani into every corner of the vessel that would be new-created that night. Forward to the flight deck they went, through the holds, the gun turrets, then aft to Engineering and back again, stopping in every cubby and byway along the way.

As they went, it became a game, like the spice hunt held to celebrate the name-day of Shirani children. Who would be the first to reach the next compartment, to open the next hatchway? There was a somber moment of invocation to the Protector, a sedate chant, and then the puckish rush to cast open every locker and accessway they encountered.
Merios
was intended to fill a vessel with joy and light, to signify happy new beginnings. The procession to dispel darkness became an uplifting and joyful celebration, the pace accelerating until they nearly raced each other back to the altar at the end of it all. There the chants concluded with a prayerful shout and a growing sense of joy. Devin shared out more wine, and Lish could not tell if the muzziness of her head was from the drink or the duskthorn smoke. No matter; both were welcome, and her spirit was lightened. Anything seemed possible now.

Setting down the wine, Devin fetched a small plaque from beneath the ancestor tablet on the altar. It was a besk, an icon of blessing and christening and good wishes combined. One like it was carried on every Shiran-owned ship.

This one was platinum, a handspan long, two fingers wide; it bore the calligraphic symbols for the deities invoked this night, the new name of the freighter, and a short prayer for safe voyages and the happiness of the crew. Lish watched as Devin purified the besk in smoke and water and flame, and asked his ancestors' blessings upon it. Then she helped him affix it over the door of his cabin, in the place where the Captain's sleep could be watched over by the gods of travelers and spacefarers.

Fortune,
he had renamed the ship. She knew he meant that in the sense of good luck, not greed, and smiled at his undemanding nature.

She was still smiling when he put his arms around her and kissed her. Then he bent down to kiss the hollow of her neck, and for a moment she was conscious of his caste mark laser-scribed on his jaw, and the absence of her own. Trying to disown all this, she recalled, that's why I had it removed. Was it so bad with the Traders after all?

Then his embrace carried her away, and she spared no more thoughts to the past.

Much later she thought of her kinsmen and parents and all her clanmates who had shared a time like this with their partner. Unlike those other Shirani, she would not be traveling with Devin aboard the
Fortune.
It was for that reason alone, she thought, that tears came to her eyes as she lay afterward in his arms.

He brushed her tears away without remarking on them, and for that she was glad.

Zippo snuffled through
red data packets, the product of a decryption run, and recognized the name associated with every packet he found. Barking in sudden excitement, the agent ran his simself to the nearest external com link, and bayed his news to Commander Obray.

Translated through the matrix, the words came in the clear to the Security officer.

"It's Karuu!" Zippo almost shouted his discovery. "We can trace every transaction right back to him. Every offworld transfer was authorized by him or one of his agents."

"Where's this money now?" the Commander asked.

"We can't say, yet," the bulldog reported. "We need to investigate more."

"Do it. We're talking about enough money to finance a small world with."

"We're on it, Commander."

The decker left the com link and Obray considered all that money funneled offworld. That was the trail to follow, right there.

He was on to something big, he knew—and who better to investigate a hitherto unsuspected multiworld conspiracy?

Juro's teeth, he thought, I want to ask that Holdout some questions.

That prompted Obray. to do what Internal Security rarely did. He posted a reward for information leading to Karuu's arrest, and made it a figure at the very outside of his generous budgetary limits.

Someone somewhere knew about the fugitive smuggler. And Obray was going to find that person, one way or another.

The intimate mood
lingered into the morning, as Lish helped Devin put the
Fortune
to rights. When they sat down to breakfa: in the galley, Devin swept her hand up and kissed her fingers. "I want to thank you," he said. "There's no one
I
would rather
have
shared
merios
with than you."