Part 23 (1/2)
She moved up and took Doetzier's harness, tossing it to Kurvan. Before Kurvan had unsealed more than two seams, the other scantech stopped and turned around. ”Wait a minute.”
”What?” Narbon said sharply.
”Got another one,” he said. ”Looks live to me.”
Kurvan's eyes narrowed and he looked at the first scantech. ”You said the biochips were in the harness,” he said flatly. The other man shrugged. ”They scanned out.”
The second tech looked back at his readings. ”I've got another set on the scans,” he insisted. He jerked an e-wrap from Bowdie's age-splotched harness and tossed it to Narbon. Warily, the woman unwrapped the package. The thin, small square unfolded and was dropped to the floor. What was left was a thin, gold-toned case.
Nitpicker looked at Doetzier, then Bowdie. Both men stayed silent, but their muscles were tense, and Bowdie's haunted eyes flickered as if he were watching a grave open and stretch out to swallow his body. Kurvan gave them both a long look, then looked down at the power strip taken from Doetzier. He slit the long strip open with the edge of his fingernail. Inside, like a bar of gold in a web of weather cloth, another flat case was visible. He eased the case out of the packing, web and opened it carefully. Inside the box, the row of tiny chips lay quietly like eggs. He looked up slowly.
Narbon opened the case in her hand; inside was a second set. She held them out for him to see.
”Two sets.” His eyes flicked from Doetzier to Bowdie and back. ”Which one is real?”
One of the scantechs examined the two cases. ”These are real,” he said of the ones that came from Bowdie. ”They scan out clear.”
”Verify,” Kurvan said shortly.
The other man took a reading, then nodded. ”I agree.” He handed the case to Kurvan.
The blackjack eyed the slim gold case. The smile that grew across his cheeks was almost dreamlike. He closed the case and rubbed it between his palms. Then he slid it into the pocket of his blunter. He ran his fingers on the other flat box and watched Doetzier with an almost absent expression. ”And these?”
”Decoys,” Narbon said slowly, reading the handscanner over the man's shoulder. ”Good ones. Worth fifty, maybe sixty thousand credits on their own.”
”Decoys,” Kurvan repeated. ”To draw us out. And the real ones to slip into the stake while we were then distracted.” He eyed Doetzier's flat expression. ”You didn't know about the real ones either, did you? You were as much in the dark as I.”
Doetzier did not bother to answer.
”Two sets of biochips, and we lose just one jack.” Kurvan closed the box and tucked it into his other pocket. He surveyed the silent group, counting the freepicks. ”Is this all of them outside the tunnels?” he asked the woman beside him.
”As far as we know.” Narbon jerked her head to indicate the outside. ”Four of the grunts made a run for it. We got them back, and J'Avatzan is out hunting for anyone we missed.” She nodded at his expression. ”A bios.h.i.+eld can fool a scanner, but not that one's nose.”
”And the ones in the tunnels?”
”Cut off behind a rockfall and locked out of the node by their links. Even after we take the jam off the node, it'll take them a week to dig out.”
He nodded.
”Kill them now?” Narbon asked in a low voice. ”We've got the chips. We can set the full jam on the node anytime. And with the whole net down, it will be three or four hours before anyone checks on this stake, and by then, you'll be a light-jump away.”
”No,” he returned, still studying the meres. ”Their IDs are flagged in the node banks the moment they die. It's easier to hide a traceline for a ghost than the ED of a corpse. And if one of them is a s.h.i.+eld, he'll be linked differently than the rest of them-connected somehow to his backup. It'll take me a while to figure out how they're doing it-how to block it or work around it.”
”So keep them alive till we leave.”
He nodded. 'Till then, yes.”
Nitpicker's black-colored eyes burned with his words. Her jaw was white, and her weight was still poised on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet without seeming to be there at all. Kurvan smiled at her like a shark. ”You're clever,” he said softly. ”And dangerous.” He motioned almost imperceptibly with his chin. A zek stepped forward. His long arms swung the b.u.t.t of his flexor in a single, chopping motion. The pilot crumpled to the floor.
'Take a hint,” Kurvan told the others. He walked away with Narbon.
The sickening thud echoed into Tsia's brain with the drumming of the rain. Her biogate was thick with the sense of the cats, and she could not focus through her eyes. She tried to think, but her brain whirled with Kurvan's soft words and the snarls that bounced from one side of her skull to the other. Her throat moved convulsively. She felt the sweat soak her skin beneath her s.h.i.+rt and realized that there was fire heating the flesh over her ribs.
Fear cut through the din of snarls, and she moved her head a fraction. A wave of relief flooded her with an almost nausea-like response. One finger, then another twitched. She had seen the laze, the flash of light. Then her chest had exploded with fire. She moved her arm, slowly-a s.h.i.+ft, an edging motion of mere millimeters. She didn't flinch from the flames that circled the hole in her blunter. Her mind was still not focused, and images whirled with the tiny crackling that burned on her blunter. Fire... Memories flooded over her thoughts as the pain began to recede. She saw her first view of the firepit. Glistening bodies, swaying in the orange light. And her mother's hair, auburn and glinting as if it, too, were made of flames...
Her body automatically sweated to form a vapor barrier against the lick of fire. Like a drop of water in a hot pan, her sweat did not evaporate, but beaded and hissed beneath the flames. She could feel its stickiness washed with the cleansing rain. Her mind saw not the circle of fire on her chest, but the heat like waves of color... The world blurred. She blinked. Ruka's hair brushed across her chin. Smoke scent filled her mouth, and she realized that she was smelling herself through the cougar's nose, not her own. Ruka, she whispered through her gate. It was the voice of blackjack that answered.
”... me to stay behind?” Narbon's low voice floated out into the rain. The woman was somewhere near the doorway, out of Tsia's sight. ”Use the hisser on them once you've got away?”
”G.o.d, no,” Kurvan returned sharply, his voice equally low. ”Each deke has a chemical signature. It could be traced back to the seller, and then tracked forward to us.”
”How long do you want to wait before the node logs their deaths?”
”J'Avatzan wants at least one hour; I prefer to have two or three...”
The cougar growled. Tsia tried to blink. Even with the light, she could barely see. The narrow yellow rectangle of the partly open door was surrounded by drab, gray morning. The chill that came through from the tarmac made her feel as if she lay on ice. Her nerves tingled: it was neither weariness nor pain.
She smelled cat.
Ruka bristled. The cat scent, alien and dangerous, was strong and close. Ruka snarled, and Tsia felt her hair, wet as it was, p.r.i.c.kle and rise on her neck. She reached through her gate, but she couldn't connect with the foreign mind, except to send a mental snarl. Whatever feline crept on the edge of her senses, it was not one with whom she could speak.
Ruka backed away, and Tsia made a tiny sound. There was a sharpening in her gate-as if a hunter saw its prey. She froze. She closed herself down, stilled her thoughts, quieted her breathing. She was nothing, she thought. She was the downed branch that lay on the tarmac. She was the shrub that stretched its roots toward the hub. Her heartbeat was insignificant. Her mind was primitive and thin...
She waited.
Rain dripped into her ears. Sound widened and dulled with the water blocking the ca.n.a.ls, but she did not move.
Finally, like a reaver that tentatively peeks from its dike, she tested the feel of her gate. The scent of cat was still strong, but no longer as sharp as a blade, and Ruka had stopped growling. Had the threat subsided? Or was it merely waiting, like a patient adder, for her to give herself away?
The wind softened as she waited, and Narbon's voice floated again to her ears. ”... keep them? We've got no stasis tubes, and I can't spend my time watching them. I've got to clear our traces from the scannet and get rid of all the weapons.”
”There's got to be a secure storeroom or an empty chemical vat.”
”All the vats are full, and the storerooms have control pads-there's no guarantee that they couldn't jury-rig a fix to the node from there.” The woman paused. ”There is the reclamation pit. It's twenty meters deep, and the walls are muddy, rough, and overhung like a dreambar drunk. Take out the pumps and pull up the lift-you couldn't buy a better prison.”
”Pumps?” Kurvan questioned.
”Between the rain and the seeps we haven't yet plugged, the water flows into the pit pretty fast. What about the guide?”
”Use the hisser on her now, or leave her till you do the others. One ID dot-I can hide that in an accident log for a while. The rest of them-will they all fit in the pit?”
”With room for a few more if we find them.”
”Good. By the time the pit fills enough to float them, we'll be done in here. And if they drown as we're leaving, they'll just save us the effort...”
The words burned in Tsia's nerves. She tried to keep from twitching, but the returning awareness was like a fire that seared her flesh from the inside out, not at all Like the gentle heat of her disintegrating blunter. Her fingers, then her forearms, then her shoulders began to s.h.i.+ver.
Help me, she sent to the cub. Pull me from the light.