Cataract Tara K. Harper

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With her arms outstretched, she looked like a sleepwalker in the ship. As if that physical motion
some-how increased the sensitivity of her biogate, she let her hands trace the walls and cubbyholes.
The pilot's area& The main or aft cabin& The storage boxes in back? She could feel them close those
other energy points like stars in a moonless night. But where? Her fingers thrust clothing and blunters
aside and tore open panels, only to thrust them closed again. Urgency grew with every second so that
she whirled in the cabin and ran toward the rear. What shielding would be thick enough to conceal those
points of light? Kurvan had said that, with the right scan equipment, it would be easy to find the chips.
Fifty thousand credits and Daya knew how much work in those bait chips, but Doetzier had simply had
them sealed within his harness.
Tsia halted. She turned back to the clothing. Six sets of weather cloth; six pairs of boots. Four blunters,
fully equipped with bioshields in their pockets. Three e-suits one that could not belong to a human.
Scanners and corns and hand units for freepick tasks& And four harnesses. She grabbed the straps and
tore the seals apart. E-wraps, slimchims, medkits, enbees& Nothing like that second flattened case. But
the points of light were almost under her fingers. She could feel them as close as her own feet. There was
no pulse in their presence, but each point was like a tiny piece of fire that touched her through her gate.
Hurry, Ruka snarled. He projected the scent of humans strongly through the gate.
/ am, she snapped in return. She knew they would find her. There was no space on the landing pad that
wasn't filled with human scent. She threw the harnesses aside and stood for a moment with her arms
clenched around herself. The hard flat-ness of Doetzier's bioshield pressed against her bicep. Slowly, she
became motionless. Why not? she thought, staring at the pile of clothes. What better place to hide a set
of biochips than in the one thing that could not be burned?
It took only a moment to check her theory out. It took a mo-ment more to open up her flexor and
disable its controls, then those of the three scanners she had found. She called Ruka to the hatch and
explained what she wanted. And then explained it again. Ruka didn't like it. She didn't blame him. She
would not have liked it herself. But in the end, he agreed. And two minutes later, the cougar dropped
from the skimmer with a heavy limp and slunk away in the rain.
24
Tsia was halfway out the hatch when her thigh pocket brushed against her hand. The sharp edges of the
safety cubes within scraped against her wrist, and she froze. She had forgot-ten about the cubes.
Dormant without a honeycomb, they had not triggered the scans of the blackjack who had checked her
before, at the pit. She still had them, but if they searched her again, coming out of the skimmer, with
datacubes in her pockets&
She opened her gate and felt the presence of other beings. The hunter it was coming, and even at its
distance, it was sharp and clear in her gate. The dull shadows of two humans grew much closer to the
ship. She looked wildly around. She had to get rid of the cubes. If they found the safeties on her person,
they'd search the ship for damage. If they found Nitpicker's sabotage, they'd try the other ships too, and
find the broken honeycombs. And missing sensor boxes and torn-out tubing&
There were access panels all over the ship, and Tsia did not bother to climb all the way back in. Instead,
she hung on the lip of the hatch and jerked open the nearest bay. It was a con-figuration bay, and inside
were amber, white, and blue honey-combs. All of them had empty slots. White-controls; those would
activate the moment the ship was powered up. Blue those were sensors, and the zeks would use those
as they lifted. But amber& The yellow shade denoted weapons.
Blackjack would not need those until they reached the skyside quarantine fields and had to ran from the
Shields.
Quickly, Tsia dropped the safeties in the slots. A second later, she snapped the panel shut. She almost
lost her balance, and in her grab for a hold, caught her fingers in one of the har-nesses, which came out of
the hatch with her as she landed heavily on the deck.
The beam of the laze, which missed her arm, seared the har-ness in her hands and froze her like a breath
in an ice storm. For a moment, nothing moved not air, not rain, not time. Then, slowly, she turned
around. Wicht had his laze pointed at her. Something burst in her head, and she snarled and leaped. The
beam of light bent away between her arm and her side. Like a gravdiver, she tackled the zek and threw
him to the ground. His head cracked back on the tarmac. In an instant, Tsia leaped to her feet. But she
didn't run. She stood as still as if dead. It was not the tip of the second laze jammed into her gut that
stopped her. It was not the sense of foreboding that swamped her like a lake. It was not the eager hunger
that seemed to grow in her gate, as if that distant foreign scent was locked on her like a breaker.
It was Shjams.
Rain ran down the woman's face in pale, smooth runnels. Wind tore long strands from the braids of hair [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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