Mainline (52 page)

"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."

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 good 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.

"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.

"Even so," Devin reflected, "that doesn't seem like a reason to rush ahead with things."

"Two hours can be an eternity in the Net."

"I know. I'm rigged."

She waved aside the obvious. "FlashMan's never this late. Something has gone wrong, and that makes it contingency time." She paused. She wished she could talk to Vask, but without

Flash's intervention she refused to entrust sensitive conversation to their ordinary com link. There was no telling where Harric had his ears in this Net. Talk had to be face to face, or not at all.

Even face to face, Devin didn't seem to be getting the gravity of their situation. "Look," she said seriously, "when things go wrong, you either get out completely or move ahead swiftly, before the opposition expects you to move. Flash out of touch means just that: something has gone seriously wrong. Now: either we leave this for a deal gone bad, and lift out of here right away, or we move, quickly, while we have the initiative."

"Isn't that premature?"

Her expression soured. "I wish it were. Trust me on this. When you lose your netrunner you have bigger problems than you know. If he's not dead, he's being made to talk, and that means even bigger troubles for us."

"That may be, but that's no reason to jump in Harric's direction, much as I'd like to. We don't have the estate layout, security breakdown, nothing. How do you expect to get into his compound?"

"I can do it." Her confidence on that point was unassailable. She could use the Lines as she always had, moving between moments, dodging surveillance and opposition.

"Then I'm coming with you," Devin said.

She shook her head. "You're not trained for this."

"No, but I'm not a bystander, either. I want to help." The big man locked eyes with her. "She was my partner," he added softly. "I didn't bring you here because I like ferrying people around subsectors. I'm here because I want to stop this man."

"You can't help in this kind of work. Stay here. Handle our comms; keep our data safe. Be ready to get us out of here on short notice."

"I can watch your back. I want to go," he repeated stubbornly.

"Not with me, you're not."

"Juro's teeth," he flared, "you can't leave me here. I'll come if I want to."

Not knowing what to say, she said nothing. She merely shook her head, and walked away to her cabin.

"Damn you, Reva!"

His angry shout echoed down the corridors. 'Jammers looked up from their duties.

The assassin didn't respond at all.

FlashMan lay near-paralyzed,
dropped like so much baggage upon the virtual floor of IntSec's secure program sector. The white wire-frame sitting cross-legged beside him was complex enough to show disdain in its expression. Flash didn't think that was a good sign.

"So you're the independent I've heard about," the officer said.

"Hi there."

"No terrorist connections, you claim."

"That's what I claim."

The sim-form of Commander Obray frowned down upon the captive. "Don't suppose you can offer us any concrete proof of that, hm?"

"I don't have too many character references you'd believe, no."

The Security commander poked a finger at the blue deck trace flowing from the lightning-shaped sim. "We have a pair of babysitters with your body now. When you unjack, we can get any kind of truth we like from you. One of them's a Mutate."

"A mind-reader?" FlashMan lifted his spiky head from the floor. "Suit yourself, Mr. Bug. That won't get you into Red Hand systems any quicker."

The officer cocked his head. "What does that matter to you?"

The Flash giggled. "I've been running circles around your deckers for two days now. Your boy only caught me because he found the doorways I made into second-level security. And you weren't there because you were looking for me. You want into Harric's systems. I can get you there."

"Why should I let you run point for a Security operation? I want you out of the way, my illicit friend."

Flash rolled his head from side to side. "Bad idea. You need me. Tell me what you're after; I've probably already found it."

"We can take care of our own business. Now—who are you working for?"

Flash exaggeratedly clamped his lips together.

"Don't make this more difficult on yourself," the Security man cautioned him. "If we need to, we'll unjack you ourselves, and start the quiz in person."

He knew they could do that, in spite of the hazard an abrupt disconnect presented to the netrunner's mind and body. Flash was appalled at the situation he had landed in. He was not free to go, yet not free to betray his clients.

"Man," he whined, "you know I can't talk. It's worth my neck if I do."

Amusement quirked the framing of Obray's sim-face. "No one can get to you where we'll be putting you away."

Put away? Out of touch with cyberdecks and Net systems, away from the virtual challenges and joys upon which he'd built his fame and career? The thought had barely occurred to him before, but he knew Security could toss him in a small cell in chains if they wanted, and no one would lift a finger to prevent it. He couldn't let himself be cut off from cybersystems if there was any way around it.

"Wait a minute," he wheedled. "Let me finish delivery to my client, then I'll help you out. Get you into Harric's systems. Take you back to Selmun, even, show your deckers my system traces. They can verify I wasn't trafficking with terrorists. After that, whatever you want—"