Read Online Mainline by Deborah Christian - Free Book Online Page A

to be Karuu, she answered herself.
    That left her with a lot to think about besides the game, and it took longer than she expected to decimate the Holdout's forces.
    When Lish's queen was finally made to retire, Reva looked up from the board.
    "Say," she asked, "want to go hunting?"
    Not right then, of course, but after the blizzard cleared in several days. The kria would be out, easily tracked atop the fresh snow. The challenge lay in their ability to anticipate the human's move; who would become hunter and who the hunted was never a foregone conclusion.
    Lish agreed. She had wanted to try the sport for years.
    "Great," Reva said. "We can go to the reserve and rent guns there." The hunting would not be as good as in the wilds, but it would be a little safer—the oldest and most ferocious of the female cats were culled from the hunting herds before tourists and offworlders were permitted inside.
    Kria were challenging enough, culled or not. The assassin remembered the lessons in survival that she had learned in the hunt; that was what Lish needed, something to bring home the unpredictability of people and events around her, and teach her to respond in kind.
    Even if the Holdout didn't learn that in one or two object lessons, at least it would be a start. And for the time being, Reva promised herself that she wouldn't switch Timelines. She would take on whatever she encountered right here in Mainline, exactly as she had in that long-ago training period with the Vudesh. It was a lesson she could use reminding of, too.

XX
    Vask was out of the longhouse and back inside his snow-shrouded crawler before the second game of castle-stones was through. He felt a tremble in arms and legs at closer and closer intervals, and that was no state to sideslip in. By the time he checked in to his resort hotel he knew he'd cut it close. Shaking, he palmed the room door, then had to reset the door lock twice before he got it right. With leaden, palsied limbs and blearing eyes, he punched up a scramble code on the comnet.
    "Systems Control," came the cryptic voice-only ID. It was one of Internal. Security's com centers, networking agent traffic through twelve systems and numerous sublight relays. Vask didn't know its precise location, and didn't care. It was what Control could do for him that mattered.
    "This is Kastlin, code Selmun-niner-three. Got a dump for you, cross-ref Tyree Longhouse. Debrief later." He fumbled with the console probe for far too long before securing it in his wrist jack, a dumb neural interface wired only for data transfers to or from the recording devices in his head. He pressed on a tooth in a certain way with his tongue, and the uplink began.
    "Need some arrangements, Control." Vask was not normally terse, but exhaustion was about to slam down on him and end this conversation. He fought the slur in his words. "When you monitor coms from Tyree Longhouse, let me know when they book into a resort for kria hunting. Book me same place and message me about it."
    The datadump was done. He tugged the jack from his wrist with an effort. "New news in that uplink," he added. "We got a line on the Holdout. Shiran Traders, House Arleon."
    "Acknowledged, Selmun-niner-three.''
    Vask didn't sign off. He barely managed to tap the disconnect before passing out in his chair.

XXI
    Alia Lanzig 's profile and activities were common knowledge, easily tracked on newsnet and library files. It was not hard for Yavobo to discover that she was the only surviving blood kin of Albek Murs. But when he journeyed to Bolan Dome, she refused his services, and erupted at his persistence.
    "I tell you again, sir, I have no need for a bodyguard!"
    "Then I will sleep upon your doorstep," Yavobo assured the Councilor, "and follow where you go, with or without your permission. If you go places where I am not permitted to follow, then I will find ways in, or wait for you outside like a faithful keshun. For I must protect you, and serve you, and that is all