Cataract. Part 23

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.

Words-images, she sent. Teeth in her blunter, pulling. Fangs caught in cloth and dragging her body Like prey. Something tested her shoulder, then the sharp canines bit down. She felt the pull of the fabric, the sudden exposure of her midriff to the rain. Rough ground sc.r.a.ped beneath her. Like chalk on stone, her skin grated as Ruka dragged her on the tarmac. Inch by inch, through a puddle that, in spite of her sweat, chilled her even more; her waist, then her thighs, then her knees moved away from the doorway.

The fire in her jacket was drowned out by rain, so that only wet smoke and sweat was left to sting in Tsia's nose. She could feel her chest now, and the heartbeat against her ribs. Her muscles tingled and shuddered as if thousands of tiny waves of nerve signals washed back and forth.

"... they're smart, and they'll be desperate." Narbon's uneasiness floated more faintly on the air. "What if they link back into the node through their temple links before we jam it completely? They could have manual corns-and Ayara only knows what the s.h.i.+eld has on him."

"Once you're done searching him and everyone else, they'd better have nothing but their blunters. As for using the node, it would take a genius to get through my webs," Kurvan replied. "I locked them out individually. There's no way they can image the node before or after it's jammed. The only thing that concerns me is the water rising enough so that they could climb or swim out of the pit..."

Tsia s.h.i.+fted, and bit her lip at the needles that shot up her arm. She forced herself to shove against the ground. Her shoulders moved a handspan before her arms trembled and collapsed. Ruka growled and pawed at her side. Her jacket smelled like ashes; the stealth cloth, seared in a wide hole, exposed her burned-through s.h.i.+rt and sweat-flushed skin.

"... use an r-con to lock their nervous system in place? We've got that remote-con unit we used on Interference. Could set it for a broadband projection. That would affect all of them through their temple links. None of them would be able to move their heads to blink, let alone swim or climb."

"And an r-con is as good as a guard," Kurvan returned thoughtfully. "Not even an Ixia can fight a field on high with more than one or two muscles at a time. And humans can't do anything in an r-con field without a shunt..."

It was easier this time, to force her arm to her chest. As if the blood began to circulate again, her fingers shuddered. Her eyes began to focus while wind blew the rain into her ears. Ruka crouched with his own ears flat, and his growling kept time to the thoughts that began to chum again in her head. Kurvan and Narbon-they were close enough for Ruka to hear. Could they see through the crack in the door that Tsia's body had moved? A stab of fear triggered her legs to gather and roll her to her side. She pushed herself to her knees, shuddered, and fell limply forward.

"... how long to adjust the r-con to widebrand broadcast?"

"Ten minutes. There's something else. As the water rises, they'll get pretty chilled. That one, and that one there, might go into shock. And with the weight of their boots and harnesses..."

"So they bob a bit," he returned coldly. "Don't worry. They're tough; they won't drown that easily. We'll have plenty of time to clear the stake. Just make sure you do the scannets first." Like troughs of numbness with waves of pain, Kurvan's hushed voice washed over her. "And start clearing the logs immediately..."

Tsia pushed herself back up on her arms. A ma.s.sive hammer of pain pounded her chest, and her muscles seemed to spasm... The groan that tried to force its way out between her clenched teeth was a low keening sound. She was sore as if she'd been hit by a skimmer at full speed. She fingered the char-crinkled edges of the hole in her blunter. Her bios.h.i.+eld was gone; the pocket where it had been now was nonexistent. Decker's laze-it had hit her bios.h.i.+eld, she realized; not her flesh at all. It was the bios.h.i.+eld disk that had taken the full brant of the particle beam. And when the s.h.i.+eld had fried, it had spiked and jolted her nerves. Her flesh was neither burned nor split; her muscles were just stunned.

She dragged herself another meter toward the corner of the hut. Then her shoulders wobbled and she dropped back to the tarmac. She stopped, her head hung between her arms. Spatters of rain splashed up from the puddles into her wincing eyes. She shook her head slowly like a cat. Eyes gleaming, Ruka got to his feet and paced away. Tsia staggered up, half-bent, to her feet, wobbled back down to her knees, and forced herself up again. She took two steps after the cat. The skimmers, she thought. She had to stop blackjack from using the s.h.i.+ps. And she had to contact the node.

She made it several meters before she fell again. This time, some part of her brain noted almost proudly that she did not hit the tarmac so hard. She was up again almost before her knees registered the shock. The cougar looked back. Tsia motioned him on. If the blackjack weapons could harm a biological, they could kill him as easily as her.

Go now, she told him through her gate. She built and projected an image of shrub brush and the game trails in the leaves. You must leave. And get as far away as you can. She built another image, of a mother cat and her cubs. Please-go back to the coast. Now!

There was a sound behind her, and she froze. It was that other cat-that elusive scent rising through her gate, not her nose. Abruptly, she shut herself off from her gate, then realized that the visual shadow on the other side of the tarmac was real-that the creature that moved near the shrub brush she had just indicated to Ruka was large and hungry to her blurred eyes. The focus of its interest seeped through her clamped-down biogate. A hunter, intent, and without her flexor Tsia was helpless as a choicer before the lifer boards. The cat-thing hesitated as it came abreast of her, but its head was turned to the forest. She closed herself into a pocket of thought. With a hiss, it moved slowly into the brush.

Tsia waited scant seconds. Then, silently, she ran the other way until she stumbled around the corner of the sprawling hub. The skimmer pad-what side was it on? She cursed as she tripped over a cracked seam in the deck; then the scent of the skimmers. .h.i.t her through the biogate.

"Ruka," she breathed. She looked back. The tawny shape of the cat was invisible, but she could feel him already slinking back across the landing pad, ignoring her order to flee. She hesitated. There were no shouts behind her, but something seemed to sharpen in her gate. Abruptly, she accepted his help.

In an instant, the metaplas skimmer scents were immediate and clear. Quickly, she turned to hef right, eased around a line of vats and past the storage huts. The wide s.p.a.ce that opened out was clear of everything but the three sleek shapes. Tsia broke into a run.

A p.r.i.c.kling of the hairs along her neck... A widening of her eyes... The catspeak swelled in her head. She snarled in return. The sharpness subsided, but remained like an eye in a window, peering into her mind, listening to the growls she projected through her gate.

She ran faster as the feeling in her feet returned. She almost barreled into the first skimmer before she slowed down enough to feel for the maintenance hatch. There-along the sides. Her nails scrabbled along the smooth sail slats. The line-where was it? Her nose was sharp, but her cat-fed eyes, blurred through the gate, could not distinguish details. Frantically, she ran her hands over the s.h.i.+p. She could feel its skin, pocked with the tiny marks of age, but the seams of the sail slots disguised the seams of the hatch.

Hurry, Ruka snarled.

The hunter was close. She could feel it. And the humans behind that hunter... She had no time to finish the thought. Her nails finally caught in the finger slots of the panel; she jerked the hatch off and reached recklessly inside. She yanked the first thing that came to hand, and a heavy coil snaked out, dripping a thin and viscous, brown-black fluid. She ripped the cable free and stabbed her hands back in, only to tear her flesh on the sharp edges of the honeycomb board in which the datacubes were set.

The sudden pain sharpened her mind, and she stopped, staring at the distance to the forest. It was a hundred yards across the deck to the edge of the wind-whipped woods. How much could she carry from here to there? And how much time was there before that feline hunter found her or blackjack searched her out? She glanced down at Ruka, who stayed crouched beneath the landing leg, then back at the trees. Ruka had dragged her on the deck; would he do the same with the tubing?

At her feet, he pawed at the coil.

Yes! The exultation rose in her throat like a scream.

He took it distastefully in his teeth.

To the forest, Tsia sent urgently, unable to hide her joy.

He was gone, the end of the coil dragging on the ground to his side, then between his legs like a heavy snake. Her blurred vision of the s.h.i.+p disappeared. Yanking, pounding... A section of the data honeycomb cracked, and a dozen slots broke, spilling the cubes out at her feet. She wrenched at a sensor box and it came free; she threw it as far as she could toward the brush. Another beside it, she yanked out, ignoring the danger codes on its side.

She felt the presence of another cat-a small feline this time. A watercat watching curiously from a hollow in its fallen tree, its nose filled with forest smells: wet leaves, mud, shapers, and deer... Help me, she urged through the gate. Hide the box that smells like this- She projected the scent that clung to the metaplas cover. The watercat hesitated. Tsia caught its pause and projected, as strongly as she could, an image that no creature, animal or not, could mistake: A vast expanse of ground that burned. The smell of rot and death. The weakness that strikes and collapses the limbs... Avoid this, she sent. Help me- The catspeak seemed to snarl louder. The watercat slunk out of its hollow. It could smell the box faintly compared to Ruka-its nose was not as sensitive. It edged around the shaper den and took a moment to find the case, half-buried in the mud. Then it mouthed the awkward shape, dropped it, and took it up once again. A moment later, its feet padded soundlessly through the forest as it stole the sensor case away. It would come back for the other, Tsia knew. The projection had caught it strongly. And Ruka...

She dropped to her knees and scrabbled on the tarmac to gather up the cubes. How many had she torn out? How many had she missed? She left blood on the rough surface and did not care; the rain would dilute it soon. When Ruka appeared again at her side, she held the cubes in her cupped hands and tucked them inside his gums, along the edges of his mouth. He snarled at the sensation.

"I know it hurts," she pleaded, "but hold them in your mouth. Spit them out in the forest, as far as you can get .."

His jaws stretched and his lips curled with irritation. The rasp of his tongue caught on the edges of her torn fingers.

Hurry, she told him in her mind. Go!

In a single movement, he whirled and leaped away. She stared after him and felt the distance disappear beneath his feet. Exultation filled her again, and her lips stretched into a feral grin. It was working- He was doing it for her- She felt the whip of leaves, the brush of gra.s.ses along his shoulders as he s.h.i.+fted through the brush at speed. Felt the sharp edges of the octagonal shapes that bit into his gums- There was a vibration along the tarmac-a sound that traveled through metaplas before it did the air. Quickly, she eased the panel shut. Her sight was clear again without the cat. She opened her biogate to feel Ruka's feet, and the sense of that hunter swept in... Close, it searched for her with a menacing intent. Puzzled, it paused, as if it expected feline thoughts and found something else instead.

Her eyes darting from one side of the tarmac to the other, Tsia ran, half-crouched, to the second s.h.i.+p on the deck. The feeling was back in her arms and legs, and her muscles were stronger, but tension made her shake so much that she couldn't grip the slots of the hatches. She cursed and pried at the bays. When one finally came open, she tore at the cabling inside. Ruka slunk back across the tarmac like a piece of solid wind. He took the gear this time without snarling, and loped away. A watercat appeared warily, edging up, then s.n.a.t.c.hing a sensor box Tsia slid across the deck toward his forefeet. Two minutes, and another watercat to help, and she clicked shut the bay and tried to catch her breath.

Daya, why was it so hard to breathe? She opened herself to the cats and let the fierceness of her joy almost choke her. That they did this for her-that they understood... She called Ruka to return. There was only one s.h.i.+p left to strip, and it would take two minutes-no more.

She slid along the second s.h.i.+p till she felt the slight outward taper of one of the aft vents. She could almost smell the hunter now in her mind. And there was something else in the wind, too-a scent almost as familiar as her own sweat smell. A scent that spoke of packing crates and flowers... Her nostrils flared; her tongue tasted the storm on her lips. She darted across the deck to the third skimmer--the transport-and halted abruptly as she reached the side. It was larger than the other skimmers, and the maintenance bays were farther overhead. How- She hesitated, glanced back toward the other s.h.i.+ps, and judged the distance up to the bays. She prepared herself to jump. Then the tarmac lights came on.

Instinctively, Tsia ducked below the transport hull. Her eyes flinched and slitted against the brightness. Half-crouched, she dodged around the landing leg, seeking some kind of shadow, and skidded to a halt as her eyes registered the point of blue-purple-white light that held itself on her chest. The woman who held the laze was as stonelike for an instant as Tsia.

Dark brown hair, green eyes. Even in the yellow light of the landing pad, Tsia could see the woman's coloring against her s.p.a.ce-tanned skin. Slender as Tsia, but shorter by an inch, the woman was dressed in the same cream-and-brown freepick jumpsuit as the other blackjacks. She stared at Tsia with cold, shocked eyes.

Tsia could not move. "Shjams," she breathed.

The other woman's eyes were almost blank.

"Shjams," Tsia repeated.

The green eyes seemed suddenly haunted. 'Tsia?"

Tsia's eyes blurred, and she blinked to clear them. The brown hair she stared at was thinner and shorter, but the same color as she had last seen it, six years ago. But the green eyes, once so filled with sharp thoughts and laughter, were now shuttered and shallow. The two women stared at each other. The lights

cast them both in sharp relief. The rain that caught in Tsia's hair dripped down the scars along her cheek; the rain that struck Shjams clung like tears to her hair.

"You-" Tsia still had not moved. "Here."

"Here."

Light glistened off the water on their clothes, their hair, their faces. In Tsia's mind, the cat feet crawled