Mainline (40 page)

That was likely. Yavobo kicked off strongly, moving to close the distance toward Lish. There was no reason to linger near dead-lures and ghosts. His mission here had one goal. He would deal Willi his personal enemy later.

Lish was at the airlock now, and the bounty hunter took aim
Willi
a newly loaded quarrel. Then a swelling wave of displaced water slammed into him and he tumbled out of control toward the lava ridge that had so recently offered him concealment.

It took
Vask a moment to recognize Yavobo; as he did, his
options
collapsed into a very narrow spectrum of choice. He couldn't help Lish; she was nearly to safety and destined for arrival. Reva was the one to watch out for now. She was wounded and directly in the killer's line of fire.

In the moment that she charged ahead, Vask watched her suicidal action with disbelief. A second later the dissolution of her form told him all he needed to know. She was invisible for the moment, shifted into a different energy state. Should he sideslip as well and try to help?

If he didn't, Yavobo could kill him out of hand, a defenseless target in the water. If he did, he would be betraying somethin of his nature to Reva.

He hung there, taking the time to control his breathing preparatory to an energy shift, searching for the concentration that would let him go, yet reluctant to make the change and reveal his abilities to the assassin. Then, as Yavobo started abruptly after Lish, Vask felt a weird and uncomfortable tingling, of electric potential, all over his body. It stiffened his muscles and held him suspended in mid-water for a moment.

When the unseen surge of water tossed the bounty hunter toward the ridge, Vask barely noticed. He was losing consciousnes of his surroundings, his senses thrust
elsewhere,
into that inner dimension that permits the trance state and energy shifts, and beyond his body at the same time. The Psionicist had a fleeting impression of an all-encompassing awareness, something larger and vast that saw through dimensions as easily as through space. It was a perspective he felt he should be able to grasp, but could not.

Frustrated, he shrank back within the limits of his own mind and was impelled to enter the shifted state in a spontaneous up scale pulse of energies over which he had no control. His consciousness followed after, an unwilling tagalong, entering what ought to be a sideslip but seemed like something more.

He quailed at the new sensations and his lack of control over them, and felt a fearful confusion he had never known during his mastery of the psionic arts. In the foggy surroundings, every molecule of water aglow with an unaccustomed greenish light, sought a landmark, any sign of familiarity—and there, close was Reva. Not a blurred figure, as he had seen her before, clear and distinct and near at hand.

He willed himself to move toward her as she twisted about searching for her bearings. When she saw him her eyes went w and she kicked backward, holding out hands to fend him off. Then her hands went to her head and in the soundless space of si slipped energy, he saw her face distort in an anguished scream, the more horrible for all its silence.

The borgbeasts came rapidly, giant flukes driving them through and over the kelp gardens that lay beyond the fire spouts. The smallest of the beasts came the fastest, skirting the flickering fire jets, charging into the plaza. The orderly chaos of a skirmish and mass arrest turned into havoc.

The slab-browed leviathan slammed heartily into a bunch of struggling bodies, squashing undercover officers and Skiffjammers alike into a mash of paste against the side of the ring dome. Souvenir kiosks shattered and compacted in the creature's driving charge. Obray heard the groan of stressed dome supports giving beneath the hammer-headed attack. A handful of Security agents struggled to escape the wreckage of the beast's first attack, but the creature came after them, picking first one man, then a woman out of the fleeing figures and chomping them down in two bites.

The small beings riding fins resolved themselves into otter-like sea creatures. The handlers called back and forth to the terrorists, whistling and clicking through sonic amplifiers. The area had grown suddenly too small with two borgbeasts nosed into it, and two more circling about overhead.

A broad black-skinned hide swept past, right in front of Obray's nose, and the Commander dove back into the safety of the grotto command post. Captain Survek was wiped off the ridge by the giant's scaling flank, and ground into the lava face nearby.

When the borgbeast's side had cleared the ridge, an even stranger sight met the Commander's eyes. Something indescribably huge had joined them, hovering in the water, a hard-to-distinguish form that dwarfed fire spouts and plaza and borgbeasts alike. It was ... made of water? Seen through the water? The thing enveloped the smallest of the borgbeasts in its substance, killer beast visible, the ghost-creature barely seen at all, and all about the plaza small bodies were whipped away like leaves through the wind as its insubstantial wings swept downward. A great swell shoved Obray tumbling back into the grotto.

Edesz raced below and behind the smuggler and her small escort. Attack, he had urged the beasts, and counted on the handlers to help direct the action. He glanced over at crushed shops and shattered humans, taken out with one blow. When he turned back, he saw Lish swimming alone, and one companion barely moving in the water. The third, the woman who had body-signed, was nowhere to be seen.

A borgbeast skimmed the face of the nearby ridge; Edesz assumed it had snatched the woman up and stunned the unmoving swimmer. He had wanted the leviathans to hunt the smuggler, and could still call this one back, to chase Lish—but now there seemed little point, with her so near the airlock, and himself so close behind. Well, then, let them simply crush the League's enemies and ensure the terrorists' escape. Edesz would recover his fortune himself.

Intent on his goal, he was taken unawares by the Sea Father's wave, which tossed him uncontrollably toward the ring dome. He didn't see the panic in the borgbeasts, although he heard their sudden outcries of fear; two of the creatures drove toward open water, one propelling itself from the plaza with a sudden hard flex of its fluke. Massive flesh slammed against the ground in a careless fillip, flattening the sea-spider and the Leaguers and Commandos who fought around it.

The nanotech that would have let beasts and handlers survive in the oceans of R'debh leaked out of its pulverized containers blending harmlessly and unremarked with the bio-rich waters of the sea. Ignorant of disaster, Edesz righted himself and push on to the airlock where Lish, thrown against the dome wall the wave, floated stunned and motionless before him.

Reva was proud of that shift, so hard to do under pressure, letting herself slip between the Lines where she could not be traced. The electrical tingle was new, though, and disturbing, and it grew a discomforting level as she settled into the state where she could navigate the fragments of Now. Her self-congratulations faded then, spent too soon on something that had gone wrong.

The jumbled, distorted Lines she had seen earlier were around her. Before her was a ridge, and no ridge, and an welling of lava from the crust; to one side, mining domes instead of the Park's airdome, overlaid by virgin seabed. The Lines chaotic, and she was lost.

She did not see Yavobo anywhere. The feeling of disorientation grew worse as she glimpsed realities that did not exist as understood time—the work of the alien phase-shifter, bending and warping the fabric of dimensions to its own ends. Images flickered: people swimming, suggestions of sea-creatures that had never lived in the ocean she knew. The tingling was unbearable now, a slow electrocution, and involuntary nerve twitches plucked at her muscles. Then she turned, and saw a ghost but not a ghost, a solid form she recognized immediately from Realtime. Vask.

Vask in the flesh. Kastlin, substantial, and caught with her here between the Lines.

It was an impossibility, and she shied away from his touch, scared and hopeful at the same time. If he was real, there must be a way out of this maze of fractured realities that she had never been trapped in before. She wished she could talk in this space that didn't carry sound, but of a sudden it no longer mattered. There was a final surge of energy as the ghost-ray responded to the siren call of death, and vanished from the oceans of R'debh. Black light and stabbing pain burst out behind her eyes, between her ears. She screamed, not hearing herself, wishing for an unconsciousness that would not come.

And then it was gone.

As if some master switch had been turned off, the pain ceased, the tangled Lines were gone, and Reva was left adrift in the ocean like a spratling washed up in the surf. She was breathing hard, a race run against destruction, and she wasn't so sure she had won.
Vask
was beside her. Had she imagined seeing him
there,
between the Lines?

For all the agony, she didn't hurt now, nowhere a feeling of pain, even the wound in her arm was numb, the bleeding lessened. Confident euphoria filled her.

Feels like endorphins, she thought, like a good MCP trip. With a nightmarish program overlay....

"Reva."

It was Kastlin's voice in the com link, sounding alien and dis-distant to her ears. She ignored him and cast about, remembering Yavobo, remembering a pursuit... . Where was he? "Reva," the Fixer spoke more harshly now. "There." He lapped her arm and pointed; she followed the finger to the airlock, Lish's destination, and saw the smuggler moving groggily, to one side by the dome wall. A lone figure closing with her. Edesz.

And Yavobo? She saw the alien emerging from barnacle ferns that clung to the ridge face.

"Take Edesz," she told the Fixer. "I'll get Yavobo."

Lish shook her head to clear it, and blew her breather mask dry
j
of the water that had leaked inside. She looked about her, disoriented, remembering her intent to flee; saw the assassin swimming away and Vask coming toward her.

And Edesz.

She kicked toward the airlock, adrenal boosters still flooding her system but the impact that had stunned her hard to recover from. Her movements were a far cry from the darting agility she could display on land. She shoved her palm against the cycle pad and the outer airlock door pulled itself slowly open, a lock suited for the broad dimensions of vehicles, not intended for use by single humans. She looked over her shoulder to see Edesz nearly upon her, and Vask not far behind him.

The lock slid open far enough to admit her to the water-filled compartment. She had one hand on the moving frame and was pulling herself inside when the terrorist caught up with her. Edesz] sank his fingers into her loose blond hair and jerked her back by the head, stripping her breather with the other hand so it slid up, off her face and over his arm. It stayed there where she could not reclaim it to use. She felt the man pull her back, farther into the sea and away from the promise of oxygen that the lock offered. The water burned her eyes and she struggled to strike out at her attacker. Edesz was bigger and had better muscles for swimming, webbed feet and fingers for maneuvering in the ocean. He kept her at arm's length and continued to pull her into the deep by her hair.

Then Lish felt herself yanked to the side, and the water-breather suddenly released his hold. Vask, it must be him, she thought and swam in barely controlled panic to the airlock. The door was fully open now; she palmed the cycle pad a second time, and watched the large hatchway track slowly, inexorably closed. Her lungs were burning, the effort of holding her breath in an oxygen starved body excruciating. She could barely see beyond the door j of the lock to where the two men fought; shadowy figures rolling, curling about each other in the water. How do you drown a waterbreather? she thought giddily. Objects fell drifting to the seafloor—breathers?—and as the lock came near to closing, only] wide enough for a man, two hands with webbed fingers grasped the frame in front of her.

She would have shrieked if she had had breath to spare. Edesz pulled himself through and launched himself upon her, trying to strangle the smuggler, to make her gasp out the last of her air. Blood pounded in her ears as her efforts to escape spun her about. Then she felt an arm around her waist pulling her back and out the airlock, a nearly sideways squeeze for her through the narrowing gap in the door.

Edesz wouldn't let go, and she tried to loosen his grip around her neck with weakening fingers. He was partway out the lock, tugged through as Vask pulled her. The terrorist seemed to realize Ills imminent danger in the same moment that Lish saw what to do. The water-breather relinquished his grip, tried to slip back Inside the airlock where all of his body from the shoulders down remained.

The Holdout didn't let go.

With the manic grip of a drowning woman—and that was closer to fact than she knew—she clenched the terrorist's wrists
In
an iron hold, running on the last of the chemical soup from her udrenal boosters. Edesz pulled back, but Vask's firm embrace and a fin shoe planted on the lock frame kept Lish outside the danger zone of the sealing airlock door.

Not so for the leader of the Gambru League. The lock caught him in the upper chest, crushed ribs with an audible snap, and pinned Edesz in a deadly embrace as he jammed open the locking mechanism with his unresisting body. Lish released his arms as Ills muscles went slack. Vask had recovered her breather from the ocean floor and slipped it back over her head. The emergency air boost from the filter pump purged the mask of water for her. She could breathe again.