Cataract. Part 22

Tsia stifled a cough. " 'Bact-stabber' fit a lot better."

Decker's lips twitched again, as if he heard them, and Wren turned cold, black-colored eyes to the man. His blunt hands fingered his flexor un.o.btrusively. Decker didn't seem to notice; his gaze was on Nitpicker. Laz continued to look around the room as if weighing the presence of the meres against some schedule he held in his mind.

"What can you do right away?" Laz asked. His voice was curt, his message clear: It would be more trouble to accept help than do without it at all.

Nitpicker was watching Decker, but she answered, "We can begin setting up a scannet, but it won't be active until we get the rest of our gear replaced."

"You were supposed to arrive with all of it ready to go," the man retorted.

She shrugged. 'Things come up."

"Things go down," Wren muttered.

Nitpicker shot him a sharp look, but Tsia shuddered at that moment, and both meres flicked their gazes

to her. Outside, Ruka had nosed up to the filter field, and his nose, too close to the field, had been jolted.

Tsia rubbed at her own nostrils, then began to pace unconsciously.

"Guides," Decker snorted with disdain.

Laz's gaze sharpened. "We didn't contract for a guide."

Nitpicker gave him a speculative look. "You got one anyway." She shrugged at his look. "Merc guild picks up the tab whenever their skills aren't used."

Laz twisted and eyed Tsia so minutely that she halted in her tracks and turned her head to watch him as steadily as he gazed at her. "Sorry," he said shortly, as he realized he was staring. Then, abruptly, he asked, "Can you call your link to you?"

Tsia's eyes narrowed. "Why do you ask?"

He shrugged. "I always wanted to know that about guides."

She stared at him a few seconds more. The energy of his biofield projected more intensely than Wren's,

and it distracted her attention from his words. "Some links," she said finally, "call you to them, not the

other way around."

He nodded shortly. Then, as if he had filed that information away to use some other time, he turned back to Nitpicker. "Which of you are the nodies?"

Nitpicker pointed at Kurvan, then indicated Tsia. "He's the nodie. She's a terrain artist, but might be

some help anyway."

"All right." He began to walk toward Kurvan, beckoning for Tsia to follow. Obediently, she fell into step and stopped beside Doetzier. There was no sign that he was setting up the system to program the biochips he carried, and she frowned slightly and gave his screens a sharp look. He glanced up at her ex pression, then turned deliberately back to his work. In the meantime, Laz gestured at the panels. "It's like

a jam. Can't get anything on the node, but I'd swear it isn't down completely."

Tsia nodded absently. "I've had flashes of the node through my temple links all day."

"Exactly." He glanced at Doetzier and noted that one of the screens had become inactive once again. "You done with that?" he asked curtly.

Doetzier opened his mouth to answer, but Laz was already leaning across and punching in sequences manually. Tsia watched Doetzier like a cat. She could still feel the points of light in his biofield. It was like learning to see the color red, she thought. Once she figured out how to distinguish the tiny lights from a general biofield, it was as obvious as laze beams in the dark. Not like that turpentine scent, which she smelled again. Or the foreign cat smell that clung to this room. She glanced at Laz, then at the other freepicks. Kurvan's hands, and the smell of sponge mucus on Decker or Mina or Laz...

Something in Tsia's gate sharpened her eyes. Tension seemed to grow in the room. She fingered her flexor and slid it un.o.btrusively from her harness. Laz didn't notice. She cast a glance at Decker, where he still spoke with Nitpicker. Decker's hands-their muscles were taut even though they hung at his sides. The cat claws in her head seemed to sharpen. Kur-van... Decker... The turpentinic scents that matched... Her body balanced itself on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet. More freepicks approached from outside. Her shoulders itched, and her scalp p.r.i.c.kled.

"Kurvan," Doetzier called over his shoulder, a little too sharply. "Are you finished with the manual link?"

There was no answer, and Doetzier glanced back. He stilled. Tsia, jumpy as a cat, half whirled before she looked, her flexor pulled from her harness in a single fluid motion. Instantly, a laze cut across the sleeve of her arm, burning the air and her blunter with a crackling, hissing sound. She froze.

Decker had a laze on Nitpicker. The two freepicks-or blackjack-at the inner door had shoved Mina aside, and their laze weapons were trained, one on Bow/die, and the other one on Striker and Doetzier. A second later, three freepicks burst in from the outside. In the sudden silence, the rain dripped from weather cloth in sloppy splats to the floor.

"Zeks," Tsia whispered, unaware that she had spoken.

They motioned for Striker to move away from Doetzier, and the woman slowly complied. They gestured for Bowdie to join Tsia and Doetzier, and with his lips thinly pressed together, the tall, bowlegged mere slowly moved as they directed. His biofield was almost as hot as Kurvan's, and the sparks of his energy felt like tiny stars, as if he was firing himself up to fight.

"Feather, step away." Kurvan's voice was soft. One of his palms was closed; the other was loose, as if it held a weapon they could not see. Doetzier's biofield snapped into a wall so thick that through it she could barely sense his life force. She hesitated. Without glancing back, she stepped forward, as if it were she Kurvan wanted, not Bowdie or Doetzier.

Kurvan smiled. It was not a nice expression, and Tsia s.h.i.+vered. A chill seemed to emanate from his body. His left palm opened, and in it was a shape she recognized: a breaker. Its slight curvature was dotted around the edges with tiny b.u.mps, and she raised her eyes to his face.

"Ever seen something like this, Feather? No?"

Cat claws sharpened themselves on her scalp. Her fingers clenched like a paw over her flexor, and her hand slid into her custom grip. Kurvan's breaker followed her movement. She stilled.

"This," he said, indicating the disk in his palm, "is a distance-focused breaker. The three-oh-nine-this model here-is effective on people, biologicals, even certain types of equipment up to eight meters away." He shrugged his right hand, and a short, collapsible laze slid down Ms sleeve into Ms hand. He snapped it out so that both halves clicked together. Its point began warming up the instant its power bar connected with its projector. "And this"-he gestured with the laser gun-"is not a laze like you carry, or a dirtside parlas like Bowdie's, but a zek parlas-a blackjack weapon. You might not have seen one before. I don't expect you've been skyside"-he smiled unpleasantly-"and they aren't licensed for landside use. That's because they don't distinguish between humans and biologicals. I'm telling you this so that you understand that this little toy"-he hefted it in his palm-"will burn you no matter what heartbeat your bios.h.i.+eld projects."

Tsia watched him while the s.h.i.+vers grew in her muscles. Part fear, part eagerness, they set her heart to a fast, hard rhythm against her ribs. She barely understood, in some back part of her mind, that she was taking that pulse from Ruka. "You want the biochips," she forced herself to say. Behind her, she felt, more than heard, Doetzier and Bowdie s.h.i.+ft.

"Of course." He gestured with the laze. "Now, move away from the others."

"You can laze them if you want," Tsia said flatly. "It's all the same to me. As for the chips, they're not here, but off-site. And without the node to locate their IDs, your scans will never read them."

Bowdie clenched his fists. "I should have killed you, Feather, when I had the chance-"

From the side, Nitpicker cursed and glared at the guide. "G.o.ddammit, Bowdie, shut her up!"

"Quiet," Decker snarled.

Kurvan eyed Nitpicker, then Tsia with disdain. "Pathetically predictable. You," he said to Tsia, "have never touched a chip in your life. Decker told me an hour ago by beacon that the chips were being carried by someone in this group, and I've watched you, Tsia-guide. The chips haven't once been in your hands."

He took a half step forward, and her heart beat harder against her ribs. She wondered that he didn't hear it -it was deafening her with its loudness, and the closer the laze came, the harder it seemed to pound. Two of the other freepicks-no, blackjack, she corrected with narrowed eyes-moved up to stand on either side. Laz edged away from the points of their weapons. His long-fingered hands twitched nervously. One of the zeks jerked his laze up, and Laz, without being touched, crumpled awkwardly and soundlessly to the floor, where he wrapped his arms around his body and tried to huddle into a ball.

Doetzier did not glance down. "Feather's telling the truth," he said calmly. "Couldn't you tell-when you broke my arm- that I no longer had the chips?"

Mina stared from one mere to the other. "Why did he break yo-"

"Shut up," snapped one of the zeks. Mina subsided, but her eyes flashed, and Tsia could almost feel the glints of fury that darkened her gaze.

Kurvan eyed Tsia. "So he gave them to you, and you hid them off-site."

The cat feet clawed at her brain, and her shrug was almost a writhe. "I took them while you, Wren, and Striker checked out the hub room. The chips are out beyond the edge of the tarmac."

"I see. And I'm now supposed to negotiate with you to find out where they are?"

She shrugged again. "It's up to you. They're s.h.i.+elded. If you haven't found them by now, you'll never find them on your own."

He regarded her for a moment, then smiled at Bowdie and Doetzier. "It seems," he said softly, "I have no further use for you." He indicated Tsia with a tiny motion of his laze. "Step away please." Slowly, she obeyed. He raised the laze and pointed the blue-glowing end at the two meres behind her. Then he fired.

Bowdie and Striker and Doetizer flung themselves to the side; Tsia threw herself in front of Doetzier. The beam missed them all. For an instant, it clung to the panel behind her. The sizzle burned only air. Nitpicker had lunged, then cried out as Decker's particle laze, with its greener, hotter beam, caught her across the shoulder. Wren got only a half step. He froze with the point of another blue-tipped laze aimed right at his face.

Tsia rolled to a half crouch, and Doetzier got slowly to his feet. Bowdie was half kneeling and half standing under the point of another laze. The room, with its frozen figures and overbright tableau, was like a frame from an old flick. Ten blackjack, six meres, two freepicks... Only their tension moved. Only eyes flicked from side to side.

Mina seemed to start as if from a dream. A low cry broke from her throat, and she scambled to her feet to run from the room. She took two steps before the b.u.t.t of a flexor struck her cheek and threw her back against the wall. Crouching like an animal, one hand to her face and the other clenched at her side, she stared up at the zeks. After a moment, the man reached down and hauled her by the arm. He shoved her toward the other meres.

"Weapons on the floor," Kurvan directed. "You know the drill."

Slowly, flexors dropped. The short hilts of rasers followed. A parlas from Bowdie's harness, its greenish barrel distinct among the flexors, lay beneath Nitpicker's image-guided dart gun. Kurvan watched the weapons drop with satisfaction. He eyed Mina for a moment, then met Striker's black gaze with a challenge in the depths of his own. "Should give you some satisfaction," he murmured, "to watch a lifer die."

"Descendant of a lifer," Striker corrected harshly.

"Does it matter?" Kurvan prodded deliberately. "It didn't seem to on the trail, when you were lecturing so thoroughly on the evils of the gangs."

Striker eyed him like a cat. "Everything matters," she returned. Her voice was soft with threat. "Everything is important. That's what the lifers forgot. And that's what I now live for."

"Or die for?" He smiled nastily. "Move." He gestured curtly. "That way."

Nitpicker got another blow to her temple; Wren got one to his kidneys. The scent of burning fabric clung to the air and choked in Tsia's nose. Cat scent, sponge scent... Kurvan and Decker matched. Memories triggered: the odors were from offworld. When the Ixia team up with blackjack... The feline snarling that surged through her biogate almost deafened her ears.

"That one," Kurvan pointed at Doetzier. "That one and those two." He indicated Wren and Bowdie and Striker. "Scan them. Not her-" He shook his head as one of them grabbed Tsia's arm. "She's the guide; she won't have them-her tech rating is too low."

Decker gestured at Nitpicker. "What about the pilot?"

"Too high a profile."

A cat crawled close in Tsia's gate, and a heavier, larger feline seemed to press in on her mind. She glanced instinctively toward the outer doors, then forced her eyes forward. One door was shut tight against the storm, where the first three miners had come in; but the other was cracked-unlatched. The line of sodden gray that edged along the doorframe was broken for an instant. A tawny shape flicked past. Tsia did not look again. She opened her gate as wide as she could, and the creeping paws that curled around her mind became a double set of feet. Ruka's-all four of them-large and wide on the ground, soggy with the water; and the others-different, bigger, and only two, with off-white claws tucked into alien wrists and elbow joints. Tsia bunked. Her mind's eye blurred. Her hands clenched like claws. No one but Nitpicker noticed.

"The case," Kurvan said calmly to Doetzier. "Bring it out."

Doetzier did not move. Nor did the others. No one spoke. Nitpicker seemed to tense. The snarl that grew in Tsia's throat became audible. One of the zeks jerked his flexor to slam her in the ribs, but her balance was poised, and her muscles taut with the reflexes of the cougar. There was a single blur of motion. The flexor slammed in. Her hand caught the spiked point and yanked it to the side as her foot snapped through his knee. The cracking sound was completely drowned by the shriek that broke from the man's throat. Tsia was already leaping away.

Nitpicker threw herself toward one blackjack; Wren dove at another. Bowdie and Striker split as a laze burned the air between them. Blue-white beams seared cloth and flesh, but if there were screams, Tsia didn't hear them. She pounced on a zek as his laze pierced her blunter. The heat of the beam, broken up by the stealth cloth, blistered her side as it pa.s.sed under her arm, but her sweat had already beaded. She didn't even gasp.

On the other side of the group, Doetzier jumped behind a zek as a beam burned across the floor in a sparking arc. The blackjack woman screamed; the beam caught her across the inner thigh and hip. Kurvan, cursing, tackled Doetzier over the other zek who fell in the way. Like frenzied beasts, the three crashed to the floor in the middle of the weapons pile. Kurvan lost his grip on the breaker. The disk, the flexors, the rasers- everything went spinning across the floor.

A blackjack grabbed Tsia, and she screamed. The sound was inhuman. For an instant, the man froze. She jerked free and backhanded him as hard as she could. Her other hand hooked a vicious punch back across his temple. His foot came down on a flexor; he staggered back. She grabbed his laze before it fell. The beam flashed up in her grip; his hand lunged forward to retake it and was burned across the wrist in a smoking, fat-popping line of blackened flesh.

Tsia lunged back to her feet. And into the arms of a zek whose mouth spewed harsh, foul air and whose eyes were as wild and b.e.s.t.i.a.l as hers. Like a sack of rags, she was flung to the ground in a perfect rolling hiplock. The laze flew out of her grip, but she clenched her hands instinctively as she tumbled. The blackjack, caught by his collar, came down in a flip, his shoulders. .h.i.tting the floor with a smack, and his head tucked to keep from cracking back.

There was no sound in her ears. There was no snarling in her throat. Her mind was suddenly, coldly, silent with the sense of her hands like paws, tearing at the man who drove his fist into her ribs, her gut, her hip--whatever he could reach. She rolled, her hands up in front of her face. Her elbows smashed his jaw. A flexor cut across her calf, searing through her boot, and she yowled as the heat caught her flesh for the barest instant. Her knee wrenched, and instinctively she twisted with it until she jammed it in his groin. His eyes widened. She did not wait for the rest of his reaction. Instead, her hands stabbed viciously into his gut with stiffened fingers. She left him curled and retching on the floor as she scrambled back to her feet.

A surge of energy hit her biogate, and someone cried out horribly. The breaker, she recognized. She glared like a cornered cat. Her eyes could not distinguish bodies; only movement in the room. Her tongue did not taste sweat, but the scent of burning flesh. Someone jerked her back by the collar, and she twisted and ducked right into the hot beam of a laze. The beam missed and flashed on her hip, and in a fraction of a second burned away the weather cloth as if it were silk. She gasped. White fire burst in her mind as the air crisped next to her skin.

The laze flashed again. Instinctively, like the tensing of nerves before a cat actually leaps, she saw the movement in her gate. She lunged before she thought; her hands struck down in a long curve. Something hard slapped her palms. Bones-like brittle gla.s.s. Skin-hot and sweating. She jerked; they snapped. The laze flew out and darkened as it inactivated with the loss of the blackjack's grip.

Tsia scrambled for the flexor that lay on the floor. It was hers-Nitpicker's; the colors of the custom hilt seemed to sear themselves into her eyes. Behind her, a woman lunged for the round, flat disk of the breaker. The breaker found the blackjack's hand. The jack twisted as she fell. The disk came up. Tsia flung herself back toward the door. Her shoulder hit and flung it open; her flexor flew out into the rain. But the edge of the sonic blast tingled across her outflung arm, missing by a breath.

Decker, from the side, heard the door and whipped around. The hot point of his laze flashed. A burning blow staggered Tsia so that she crumpled back into the rain. Her eyes widened. He fired again, and instinctively the sweat welled up from her pores. The beam of light hit and seared through her blunter, coming out the other side, but missing flesh as she twisted. Decker ran forward. Smoke clouded her face. Her throat membranes closed as if she danced in a firepit. The beam hit again, but this time it exploded through her body hike a shock wave. She could not cry out. Her shoulders, then her head hit the ground like rags. The force of the blast threw her clear of the door and left it slowly swinging shut so that her body lay like a broken doll, while the rain beat against her face, and her blunter smoldered and burned.

Decker ran toward her, shoving through the door, then saw the red edge of fire that glowed in the wide hole in her jacket. In the gray gloom, the flame charred her s.h.i.+rt to blackness and curled across her skin. He cast a single glance at her face. Her neck was twisted on the tarmac. Her eyes were open to the morning rain. He turned his back on her body. He never saw the tawny shadow that clung to the side of the hub.

"You, and you, over there," he snapped at Wren and Bowdie. Another blackjack picked up the flexor that Wren had kicked away. Wren slipped a supporting arm around Bowdie's torso, but the woman named Narbon yanked him away by the arm, shoving him hard across the room. Both meres' eyes were cold with lethal intent.

Kurvan cursed as he saw Tsia's body in the doorway that Decker held open. "G.o.ddammit!" He gestured sharply. Decker shrugged and stepped back inside, his hand keeping the door from shutting.

Doetzier eyed the blackjack without expression. The cast on his arm was blackened in two spots from a laze that had fired right against it. His left cheek was darkening with a bruise, and the swelling had already half closed his left eye. Bowdie was shoved into place behind him, supported by Nitpicker on one side. The man's left hand pressed against his ribs where blood seeped through his fingers. The pilot was in no better shape: her face was pinched with pain, but her eyes burned as they followed Kurvan's movements.

Wren merely watched with that cold, speculative gaze as the pile of weapons on the far table grew. On the other side of Laz, Mina was breathing harshly-trying to keep herself from screaming-while Striker, in front of her, lay on the floor, raised up on one elbow with her left leg clutched in one hand. Thirty seconds-perhaps more-pa.s.sed with no noise but Mi-na's breathing and a murmured discussion between Kurvan and Decker. Then the sound of feet marched in one of the corridors, and Bishop, the heavyset freepick, was shoved into the room in front of another blackjack. Bishop glanced at Laz, then Mina. He took in Doetzier's arm and Bowdie's b.l.o.o.d.y fingers. He eyed the body that lay outside in the rain, then turned to face Kurvan with a tightened jaw and set expression in his eyes. "The scannet this morning," he said slowly. "And Hanson two days ago-her death was not an accident."

"No," Decker said from the side. "And neither is this."

One of the blackjacks. .h.i.t Bishop in the kidney, then the gut with the b.u.t.t of her flexor. With strangled cry, the man went to his knees. They dragged him over and dumped him beside Laz.

Decker motioned sharply at Nitpicker and Bowdie, and the two meres separated slowly. "No finning," he snapped. "Lace your fingers together and place your hands on your heads. All of you," he snarled as Bowdie raised only one hand.

Slowly, his face whitening as his muscles stretched across his abdomen, Bowdie complied. He hissed only once at the pain. The skin across his cheeks was stretched so tight that the b.u.mps on his nose were white.

Narbon glanced toward Kurvan, who nodded. The woman motioned sharply at the four meres who stood together. "Scan them," she ordered her zeks.

The tiny hum of the handscanners filled the silence thickly. A moment pa.s.sed, then another, and then the scantech testing Doetzier looked up. "Got them," he said shortly. "Here. In the harness. Probably in the power strip."

Narbon almost smiled. She motioned for them to strip the drab harness from Doetzier, and they did so roughly. Doetzier did not resist. The scanners began to trigger their gear off, but she stopped them before Kurvan could. "Do them all," she said flatly. "I want them all clear."