Blue Shift: Backyard Starship #5

J. N. Chaney

1

“YOU KNOW, I could get used to this sort of mission,” I said, leaning back in the Fafnir’s self-contouring pilot’s couch. Legs stretched, I glanced at the tactical overlay that depicted the situation around the ship out to the effective limits of the passive scanners, with a smaller, closer volume swept by the active ones. Anything Netty, the Fafnir’s AI, considered relevant would be displayed and constantly updated, including ships, rocks, bits of debris, other celestial bodies—and threats. Whatever she assessed as a potential menace would be highlighted in bright red and painted both onto the display between the pilot and copilot’s seats, and directly onto the canopy. Right now, the tactical situation around the Fafnir was just how I liked it—boring. Perry leaned into my field of view from where he perched behind and between the seats. “Be honest now, Van. Would you really like a career of flying around space on peaceful missions, visiting other cultures and ingratiating yourself to them by returning stolen artifacts—” He stopped and cocked his head. “Come to think of it, that does sound pretty sweet.”

I smiled at him. “Right?”

We were closing in on the second planet orbiting Luyten’s Star, an unusually hot and active red dwarf star a little over twelve light-years from Earth. The planet, Luyten-b, better known as Ajax, had actually been known to Earthly astronomers for some time as the closest exoplanet orbiting within its star’s habitable zone. In 2018, a recurring music festival

called Sónar had actually funded a project to transmit a radio message to Ajax, consisting of both mathematical and musical data. The transmission reached about a third of that distance and was a popular bit of a moving tourist attraction in known space. Since it traveled at the speed of light, it was easy to find it, intercept it, and listen in to it. There was a kind of bemused indulgence given to the transmission; it was as much an artifact as information. Of course, to the good people who had earnestly assembled and sent the message in hopes of receiving a reply sometime around 2042, it had been an almost forlorn call into the void, hoping for an answer. They had no idea that the people living on Ajax, a humanoid race known as the Daren-thal, were well aware the message was on its way. Apparently, they didn’t intend to worry about it until it arrived, not wanting to spoil the surprise. Which left me stuck in a weird place of knowing the truth about it all but withholding that truth from my fellow humans. It was for the best, Perry insisted. “There’s a way to introduce a technically advanced, nuclear-armed, and, let’s face it, unduly aggressive species into the space community. And just dumping the reality of it on them all at once ain’t it.”

“Sounds like there’s some hard experience talking there,” I observed. “Yeah, it’s happened in the past and hasn’t gone well at all. Doing it according to certain procedures is one of the few things that all the major powers in known space agree on.”

Whatever. Right now, I had a job to do, a pretty cushy one, and I intended to enjoy it to the fullest. “Netty, can you try and raise Rovan?

I want to give him our ETA,” I said. “One moment.”

Rovan was my contact here on Ajax. He was employed by his peoples’

cultural affairs shop and was a specialist in archiving and analyzing historical data, particularly ancient artifacts. He was also the person responsible for recovering them should they wander away from his homeworld. The illicit trade in stolen cultural artifacts didn’t only afflict Earth but was an ongoing problem across known space. Netty announced that she had Rovan on the comm and switched the center display to an image of him—or, more correctly, his face, framed against a lurid purple sky. He reminded me of the Grinch in that old

cartoon, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but even leaner and more angular. “Peacemaker Tudor, I presume,” he said. Although he wasn’t doing anything I could recognize as panting, I still got the impression I’d caught him in the midst of doing something demanding, like working out at the gym. “Please, call me Van. I just wanted to let you know that we’re about an hour out.”

“Excellent. I’m really looking forward to recovering that piece you’re carrying.”

I glanced back. The item, an intricately carved wooden sculpture almost three meters long, had been carefully wrapped and then placed aboard the Fafnir in the only way it would fit—laid out along the galley floor. We all had to step carefully, particularly Icky with her enormous feet. The last thing I wanted to do was hand over an artifact that had been broken because someone had accidentally stepped on it while making a sandwich or three. I nodded to Rovan. “And I’m looking forward to returning it to you. I’ve had some experience with my own cultural history being looted, so I feel for you.” I omitted the fact that I’d done some of that looting, replacing two of the Vanguard satellites orbiting Earth with skillful forgeries made by the Starsmith, Linulla. But hey, omelets and eggs, am I right?

“It was a devastating loss when it was stolen from our Cultural Center in Brunus—oh, five years ago, now. It’s our oldest known artifact, dating back nearly sixteen thousand years.”

I nodded again. “Okay, well, I just wanted to let you know we’re arriving shortly, and—”

“Can you do me a favor and land out here to pick me up and take me back to Brunus with you?”

“Uh—where’s out here?”

In answer, Rovan swung the imager around, revealing rolling grasslands varying from dark purplish gray to almost black in every direction. Well, everywhere except for the brief image of some lean, predatory beast festooned with spines and a gaping mouth full of many, many teeth. “Holy shit. What was that?”

Rovan reappeared. “That?

Oh, you must mean Rovan-ir.” In the camera’s image, a long, narrow muzzle pushed closer, filling the lens area with a toothy grin crowded with long, sharp fangs. “He’s my—” The next word didn’t translate. “Sorry, the best description would be my life-bound companion. All Daren-thal males are bonded to a hunterloper when they come of age. It’s a part of our culture almost as old as that artifact you’re carrying.”

Rovan-ir chose that moment to try and seize the imager from Rovan, giving me a brief and terrifying view straight down the creature’s throat. I heard Rovan admonish him and pull the imager back. “Sorry, he likes to grab things and run. Fond of the chase, he is. It’s a game to him.”

“So he’s… a dog.”

Torina appeared and pushed past Perry to get into the pilot’s seat. “What a beautiful creature.”

I glanced at her, raising an eyebrow. To me, it looked like a hairless Afghan or Borzoi, or maybe a greyhound but with a crest of spines around his neck and running down the ridge of his back—in other words, not cuddly, let alone beautiful. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to say that, so I just smiled. “He is. He’s a stunning companion. Truly breathtaking.”

“That sounded practiced,” Perry muttered. I feathered the comm channel to hit mute for a moment.“Used it at a party once when a guy showed us a picture of his son. Ugliest kid I’ve ever seen, and I’ve got two cousins who look like barbecued trolls.”

Perry winked. “Good move. You’re a natural diplomat, boss.”

We arranged with Ajax traffic control to proceed directly to a rendezvous point with Rovan out in the middle of nowhere. Apparently, he and his… dog… had been hunting, an annual ritual intended to help them bond. “Is that the point of your, ah, time out in the field?

To bond?” I asked Rovan. His nod was enthusiastic.“That’s exactly why. I can’t wait for you to meet Rovan-ir. He’s a real sweetheart.”

I pasted a polite smile on my face again. “Looking forward to it. As I said, he’s breathtaking.”

EXCEPT ROVAN-IR DID TURN out to be a gentle and surprisingly intelligent creature, and, once I was in his presence, yes, he actually was breathtaking. He reminded me of my neighbor’s Great Dane—huge and formidable, but also noble and warm. As Rovan coaxed him aboard, I held out my hand for him to sniff, since all I knew about dogs was that they wanted to smell you. He did, then opened his mouth and closed it around my hand. I tensed as the sharp points of his teeth dimpled my flesh. “Uh—”

Rovan uttered a hissing rumble deep in his narrow chest, what seemed to be his version of laughter. “He’s telling you that he accepts you—that he could savage you but chooses not to.”

“Oh. Well, thank you, Rovan-ir, for not doing that.”

The beast released my hand, then repeated the little ritual with Torina. He turned to Icky, who just glowered back at the hunterloper. “Icky, go ahead, make a new friend,” I said. “Thanks, but… we Wu’tzur don’t really get along with animals.”

“We Wu’tzur or you-in-particular Wu’tzur?”

She sighed. “Okay, fine. I’m afraid of the damned things.” She spun on Perry, who was standing nearby. “That doesn’t include smart-assed metallic birds, by the way.”

“What?

I wasn’t going to say anything about how laughable it is that someone your size and bulk is afraid of cute little animals.”

“Listen, you—”

I stepped between them. “Before you two make a scene and maybe cause a diplomatic incident, let’s just get ourselves settled to fly, okay?”

We lifted, and Netty set course for Brunus, the largest of the Daren-thal cities on Ajax. I’d read up on these people before arriving, so I knew they obviously weren’t unaware of the realities of known space. In fact, they were capable of spaceflight but for the most part chose not to leave their homeworld. They lived a strange sort of hybrid existence, happily making full use of the latest tech while also living a relatively primitive lifestyle. The hunting ritual in which Rovan had been engaged with his fearsome beast was just one example of a culture firmly tied to their natural environment. “I understand that you don’t really do politics, either,” I said, offering Rovan a cup of tea brewed from herbs native to Ajax that we’d acquired on our way here. I took a seat in the galley beside Torina, across from Rovan. The Daren-thal cultural scholar had been forced to kind of fold himself into the available space, him being nearly a head taller than me. Rovan-ir lay on the deck beside him. The creature was an alien one called a hunterloper, but to me it was very much just a big dog, right down to its resting posture. The only doggy attribute missing was a tongue hanging out as it panted. Rovan paused a moment, then shook his head slowly from side to side. “That’s the correct no gesture among humans, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“Good. I’m always interested in expanding my cultural horizons—

sometimes I get too immersed in mine. Anyway, no, we don’t practice politics as they’re generally understood elsewhere. My people mostly lack personal ambition. Our focus has always been on the collective good, so we select people by random draw to function as our governing body.”

I frowned at that. “Really?

What happens if you draft someone who doesn’t want the job?”

“That’s… not really a consideration. It’s an honored social obligation to fulfill a term as a provost representing a district. The term lasts for exactly three years, and then the provost is discharged and a new one is selected as a replacement. One person can never serve more than a single term in their life.”

I sat back. Huh. It sounded almost idyllic—no professional politicians, no scheming or backbiting or shitty political infighting. I was sure there was a catch somewhere, but I wasn’t about to start probing the niceties of another race’s ways to try and find flaws. “That is who we’ll be dining with, in fact—this provost represents the Brunus district. He’s as anxious as I am to see the artifact you’re returning,”

Rovan said, gesturing at the long, wrapped bundle on the deck nearby. He turned back to me. “I do have to ask, though, how it is that a Peacemaker came to deliver this to us. Surely you have more urgent jobs than acting as what amounts to a courier.”

I chuckled. “Oh, believe me, we do. More than we could possibly complete during an entire career, or at least that’s how it feels sometimes. But we just finished a particularly tense operation, and the Masters of the Peacemaker Guild saw this as sort of a—”

“Vacation?”

This time, I laughed. “Yeah, in a way.”

Just as I hadn’t wanted to delve into the minutiae of Rovan’s social structure, I had no particular desire to get into the details of how I’d ended up here, which included two topics I found distasteful—politics and personal ambition. CARTER YOST, my lazyass cousin, was a hero. According to the public record, he’d concocted a cunning scheme that had severely bloodied a dangerous criminal enterprise of top-end assassins known as the Cabal. Then, allegedly, Carter nabbed a Nesit who went by the name Trux, ended a major crime ring, and did it all on his own. Naturally, none of that was true. But Carter was, as my Gramps said, dipped in lucky, and it was expeditious for me—and the Guild—to give credit where it wasn’t due. Namely, the carcass of one Carter Yost, who was a petulant, scheming, lazy, whiny sonofabitch who didn’t deserve to have his name on a ship’s roster, let alone be considered an asset to the Peacemakers. But I’m not bitter. Torina swept in at the end of the affair, actually saving the day, so to speak, and we could have all gone on our respectable merry ways, but since Carter was involved, that wasn’t going to happen. Despite being dipped in lucky, he also attracted flies, and now, I was being summoned to meet Master Yotov, which could be anything but good. Quiet and unassuming, Yotov belonged to a race with the psychic talent of insidiously persuading almost everyone she met to see her, her motives, and her actions in the best possible light. A formidable talent, it had made her the single most powerful person in the Peacemaker Guild. I met her with this in mind, determined not to fall under her almost literal spell. And I’d needed every scrap of willpower I had, since she had specifically invited me and me alone, without Perry or Torina to back me up. When I warily settled into her expansive office in the Keel, the innermost hub of Anvil Dark reserved for the Masters, she got straight to the point. “So, Peacemaker Tudor, I wanted to congratulate you on your successful mission against the Cabal.”

Her praise rang in my ears like a song, making me feel unaccountably good about myself and pleased with her approval. Which was, of course, a lie, or at least a truth that really only existed in my mind, planted there by the sinister subtlety of her psionic influence. It took effort to work past it, so much so that I could see even a strong-willed person eventually giving in. “I’m sorry, Master Yotov. There must be some mistake. That was Carter’s operation.”

She waved a hand. “Please, you’re insulting both my intelligence and your own. Your cousin is a moron. This was your operation, and you gave him credit for it. Why is that, I wonder?”

I instantly felt bad for doing that, insulting her intelligence, and almost fell over myself to apologize—but caught myself. Damn, this is hard. “Okay, you got me. It was the price I had to pay to get him to help. I needed his ship and someone to fly it.”

Yotov spent a moment giving me an appraising look. “I see. So it had nothing to do with using him to deflect the inevitable retribution from the Cabal away from yourself?

Or even ingratiating yourself with someone you know is very close to the Masters?”

Again, her words lulled me into a place where I’d probably have confessed to those very things. Which, when I thought about it, might be a mild downside of her psionic manipulation. At what point were you simply influencing people into saying the things you wanted to hear?

I blinked. Every time she stopped talking, I felt like I was wafting along on a pleasant dream, one I didn’t want to end. I took a deep breath and shoved apart the mental fog. “I think you’re giving me too much credit for being devious, Master.”

“Do you?”

No, I take it back, you’re absolutely right—

“I—do, yes. I don’t deny that not being the one in the Cabal’s sights is kind of nice, but I didn’t set out to shove Carter into them instead. That was just… a fringe benefit.”

Yotov actually laughed, a bright, clear sound, like wind chimes. “Van—

may I call you Van?” Without waiting for me to answer, she went on. “Van, I like you. I genuinely do. You are a worthy bearer of your grandfather’s legacy. I think you have the potential to do great things in and for this Guild.”

She stopped and gave me another of those appraising looks, as though sizing me up. I had to fight back an urge to squirm, wondering if that penetrating stare was its own sort of psionic thing and she was… probing me or something. She finally just nodded, as though she’d come to a decision. “Van, I think it’s time for you to advance within the Guild. I could use someone with your talents in a more senior capacity.”

I blinked. “I—um, okay, but—”

My words fumbled to a complete halt, but Yotov smiled and waved a dismissive hand. “I will make the necessary arrangements. In the meantime, I appreciate you sharing this time with me today.”

I sat for a moment, staring stupidly, then abruptly stood up. “Yes. Thank you. I—yes,” I said, then turned and hurried out. On the way, I twisted around the certainty that she’d meant it, that she wanted to promote me. Was that real, or was it just what she wanted me to believe?

HARD ON THE heels of that came this cushy job, delivering this stolen and now-recovered historical artifact to the Daren-thal. It was a compensated flight from Anvil Dark and back, with some goodwill-schmoozing thrown in. Rovan confirmed that we were cleared to overfly Brunus and land at the diplomatic spaceport on the rocky coast, overlooking a vast sweep of restless, wine-dark ocean. From there, a silent, elegant tramway would take us to the provost’s unremarkable estate. The estate was the main governmental building not only for Brunus itself, but also for the whole of Ajax. True to Daren-thali disinterest in politics, it seemed to combine all of the functions of White House, Capital Building, Supreme Court, and most government offices into one structure the size of a smallish community center. Its one bit of flourish was its position atop a cliff overlooking the sea, giving it a spectacular view of—

Okay, the relatively dim sunlight rendered everything in shades of red or purple, turning the ocean into a horror show of maroon waves tossing beneath a ruddy sky full of scudding magenta clouds. It gave off a definite Mordor vibe, full of menace and atmospheric dread. Dolorous flying

animals like seagulls cried overhead, their songs high, keening, and sad as they wheeled on air currents only they could detect. A group of Daren-thal arrived to retrieve the artifact and carry it back to the provost’s estate. Two of them had hunterlopers, more of the enormous not-dogs. As they carefully extracted the piece through the airlock, Rovan spoke briefly on a comm, then turned to me. “The reception feast is ready, so if you are as well, then we can proceed.” He gestured at the nearby terminal and the tramway that would take us up to the provost’s estate. I glanced down at myself, clad in my b-suit. “I don’t think this is really formal-feast-appropriate attire.”

Rovan uttered the hissing rumble of a laugh and waved a dismissive hand. “We don’t really recognize any attire as being formal or not. We just… wear what we choose to wear.”

I glanced at Torina, who shrugged, but then I turned back to Icky. “I think you should at least wear pants.”

“What?

Why?”

“Because—” Torina started, then turned back to me. “What exactly is the correct answer to the question of why I should wear pants?”

“Unless you’re debating whether to wear pants, shorts, a skirt, or something like that, there isn’t a correct answer, because—well, it’s pants.”

Icky scowled and turned back to the airlock. “Pants. I’m gonna be mistaken for a diplomat, just watch.”

Perry swiveled his head to follow her as she clomped past him. “Yes, that’s what currently stops people from thinking you’re a diplomat—the lack of pants.”

“Stop being judgy, bird.”

Perry turned to Torina and me. “Actually, I’d kind of like to see Icky in a skirt. Frilly and gingham, if you please.”

Torina snorted. Icky swung back around with a glare hotter than the dim sun, daring anyone to say anything else. I gave Perry an admonishing look. “Perry, leave Icky alone, or I swear I’m loading everyone back onto the Fafnir. I’ll turn this ship around and take you right back to Anvil Dark without supper.”

I heard Rovan laugh again and offered him a shrug. “Kids.”

“OKAY, this is the most relaxed culture I’ve ever seen,” Torina said as we took in the small assembly on the veranda overlooking the scary ocean. “Even more relaxed than the space hippies?” I asked, peering into the drink I’d been offered. It was murky and dark and had a vaguely bitter, earthy smell. “They work too hard at being relaxed. To these people, it just comes naturally. Like a default setting.”

I nodded and tried a sip of my drink. It was quite good, in a coffee sort of way, going from smooth to acrid to sweet all in the span of a few sips. It was called plinkiv in Daren-thali, which roughly translated to simple brew. But Torina was right. The Daren-thali had to be some of the most laid-back people in known space. It showed in their casual approach to governance, the way they eschewed formality and just accepted people behaving much as they wanted, and even in their idea of a feast, which consisted of people sitting or standing around, grazing from what amounted to a buffet table. It had already been underway when we arrived and seemed to have no actual structure at all. Rovan did introduce us to the provost, a woman named Stirvan. She was nearing the end of her term as provost, apparently, whereupon she’d return to her regular job as a farmer. We made small talk, she thanked us quite sincerely for returning her people’s stolen artifact, and that was it. “I guess the formal part of the evening is over,” I said, watching her walk away. “You know, I’ve been to more stuffy, formal events than I can count, starting when I was a little girl, and this one’s been the best,” Torina said, nibbling on something that resembled a square of berry crumble. “No worrying about which fork to use when, where to put my elbows, when it was permissible to leave the table—”

She smiled around at the milling crowd for a while. “Yup, this sort of formality I could get used to.”

Icky lumbered up to us. “I hate wearing pants.”

“Icky, you look gorgeous,” I said. “Bullshit. Also, everyone keeps asking me what I am, like they’ve never seen a Wu’tzur before.”

“Most of these people haven’t ever been off this planet, much less mingled with aliens much. So no, they probably haven’t seen a Wu’tzur before,” I replied, then I looked for and found Perry. He was easily the most social of the four of us, standing on the buffet table engrossed in a conversation with three Daren-thali. Icky sighed. “So how much longer—” She stopped, then pointed toward the sea. “What’s that, coming this way?”

“It looks like a ship, a small one,” Torina said. I saw the black dot rapidly grow into a tapered, arrowhead shape. I couldn’t make out any markings, but the wan, crimson light didn’t help much. “That thing looks like it’s coming straight at us,” Icky said. I stared, marking the trajectory in my vision. “Yeah, it does. Netty, what can you tell us about that ship approaching us?”

“What ship?”

I cursed. If Netty couldn’t detect it, then something was wrong. It must be stealthed, and heavily, and heavily stealthed ships weren’t normally intended for benevolent purposes. I hurried toward Rovan, then thought

“screw it” and drew a breath to shout at everyone to take cover. Before I could, though, the ship abruptly pulled up. At the same time, a single snap, like a whipcrack, sliced apart the air. A small explosion of food erupted from the banquet table, and something clacked against the floor a meter or so to my right, striking sparks and gouging chunks of clattering debris from the broad tiles underfoot. In a staccato like hard rain, some of the spalled rock rattled against my b-suit. I gaped for a second, wondering what the hell had just happened—

Then the provost, Stirvan, pitched backward against the dining table and slumped to the floor, motionless. From the blood quickly pooling around her, I could tell she was very much dead. 2

I BRACED myself for panic and pandemonium, but the Daren-thali response to this abrupt act of egregious violence was as subdued as the rest of their lifestyle. They hurried to take cover, but in a calm, orderly manner. It was weird. Had this been a party full of humans just crashed by a spaceship dealing focused death, I’d be surrounded by chaos and screams of people scrambling for safety. But I didn’t bother wasting time dwelling on it and called for Netty. “Netty, can you come and pick us up off this veranda?”

“There will be some hazard from the thrusters, unless I keep them from directing their exhaust onto the veranda itself and only straight down, toward the water. That’s going to keep the airlock about two meters from the edge of the veranda.” As she spoke, I could hear the thrusters spooling up in the background, both over the comm and from the diplomatic spaceport only a klick away. “Do it. We’ll figure out how to cross.”

I rounded up Icky, Perry, and Torina. None of us were armed, and while Torina and I wore our b-suits, Icky wore—well, pants. We weren’t exactly kitted out for fighting. I saw Rovan and called to him. He hurried over, Rovan-ir hard on his heels, looking alert and ready to savage something. As long as it wasn’t us, I didn’t care, although it did kind of confirm what I’d suspected—the hunterlopers were sensitive to the emotions of their pair-bonded Daren-thal

males, maybe even acting as an emotional sink. It certainly would explain part of how the aliens seemed so damned chill all the time. “Stirvan is dead,” he said, crouching next to me. “Yeah, I—I’m sorry. Our ship is on the way, and we’re going after that bastard. If your planetary defense systems have any data to share that might help us—”

But Rovan just shook his head. “Our planetary defense is mostly the goodwill of others. We go out of our way to be offensive to no one, remain studiously neutral, and do nothing provocative. It helps that our planet doesn’t have any resources that are particularly in demand.”

I shook my head in disbelief. From what I’d seen and experienced in known space, I couldn’t fathom a race choosing to lean on the beneficence of others to protect themselves. But, hey, whatever works—

Or worked, considering what had just happened. “Yeah, you may want to rethink that—” I said, but the shrieking thunder of the Fafnir, borne aloft on her thrusters and rising over the veranda, cut me off. “That’s our ride!

Once we know what’s going on, we’ll let you know,” I shouted, then I took off and raced for the edge of the balcony. I slammed to a halt. Yikes. The gap looked like a lot more than two meters. And considering the gap plunged almost thirty meters into murky surf sloshing around rocks, a simple misstep could mean—

Well, a b-suit wasn’t going to do much but keep the corpse in one piece. Perry sailed across the gap with ease, but glancing at Torina—and especially Icky, who wasn’t what I’d call lithe or graceful at the best of times—I shook my head. “Netty, this isn’t going to work!

We need a gangplank!”

“Excellent idea, inhibited only by the fact we don’t have a gangplank. If you’re willing to risk minor damage to the Fafnir and the veranda, I could rest the stern on the edge—”

“Do it!”

Netty deftly swung the Fafnir’s stern toward us, cutting the aft thrusters just before their down blast touched the veranda and spilled in all directions as a gale of hot, ionized gas. The stern sank and landed on the veranda with a crunch. The stone balustrade collapsed under the weight, becoming pulverized stone. I shot Rovan, who was still crouching further back in the

hall, an apologetic look. He responded with a shrug so bland I could have been telling him about the weather. But the airlock was now easily accessible. As soon as we’d clambered in, Netty sealed the airlock, lifted the Fafnir, and slid her a few hundred meters away from the balcony, before accelerating after the murderous stranger. Icky growled in anger, and I heard tearing fabric. “Now I’m ready to fight.”

I flicked my eyes to Torina, who drew a finger across her neck. “No chance. Unlike the big girl, I don’t need to be naked to brawl.”

“Can’t blame me for trying. Netty, step on it. Weapons free.”

AS I SLID into the pilot’s seat and Torina into the copilot’s, Netty pitched the nose up and steepened the Fafnir’s climb. We faced an agonizing wait to light the fusion drive and climb to orbit, but interstellar regulations specified a minimum safe altitude of fifteen thousand meters before pouring incandescent drive plasma into our wake. As soon as we hit the mark, Netty lit the drive, and we surged forward, the Mach number spooling up fast and the sky darkening ahead of us. A few moments later, we exited the atmosphere of Ajax and climbed toward orbit. As we climbed, I had Netty play back all of the scanner data from a few minutes before the attack, right until we boarded the ship. Sure enough, there were no signals at all, aside from a blurred visual record that didn’t tell us much more than we already knew from being in the line of fire. I blew out an exasperated sigh. “Can you at least take a guess as to what type of ship that is, Netty?”

“It’s a non-standard design, of class three or maybe four. It’s clearly a spacecraft, but it also has aerodynamic surfaces suggesting it’s capable of atmospheric flight.”

“That’s it?”

“It apparently has a gun of some sort.”

“Yeah, the projectile smacking off the floor right beside me kind of gave that away.”

“Who or whatever they are, they have some pretty spiffy stealth tech,”

Perry said. I glanced at him. “Spiffy?”

“Okay, some pretty cool stealth tech.”

I studied the tactical overlay. It showed exactly nothing, aside from a solitary, inbound freighter. And our scanners showed that it perfectly matched its transponder data, so it was what it seemed to be. Of course, that didn’t preclude it having something to do with what amounted to—

“An assassination,” I said. Torina looked up from the weapons panel, which she’d been tapping away at to bring everything on line and into safe mode. “You think it’s the Cabal?”

“Well, a super-stealthed, fast, and nimble little ship that appeared, killed someone, and disappeared?

Sound like any other assassinations you know about?”

“Your father.”

“Yeah.”

“You know, Van, handing over credit for taking out a Cabal ship and putting one of their principal members behind bars to your cousin was clever—some would even say Machiavellian,” Perry said. “Machiavellian?”

“Yeah, Niccolò Machiavelli. He wrote The Prince—”

“I know who Machiavelli is, Perry.”

“All I’m saying is that you might have put a big juicy target on your cousin while deflecting attention from yourself. You know—Machiavellian

—”

“Perry, what’s your point?”

“The Cabal might have seen right through that. It’s not that hard to figure out your cousin is an imbecile and could never have come up with that whole scheme on his own.”

“So why did they kill the provost, Stirvan, then?”

“They missed?”

I curled my lip. “Maybe. But, I mean, I was right there, as visible as she was.”

Icky poked her head into the back of the cockpit. “Maybe it was a message. You mess with us, and we’re going to make you worry about the safety of everyone around you.”

I glanced from Icky, to Torina, to Perry. Their only reply was an uncomfortable silence. Shit. Icky might be right. If the Cabal wanted to torture me by forcing me to consider if my presence was going to get someone innocent killed, they couldn’t have come up with a better way. But Perry raised a wing. “Before we start down Sinister Conjecture Avenue, why don’t we try to get some hard evidence?

This might not have anything to do with you, Van, or us generally. Maybe someone had a reason to assassinate the Daren-thal provost in a very public way.”

I sighed. “You’re right, but it’s not going to stop me from second-guessing the hell out of myself.”

WE MADE orbit but had nowhere to go from there. The ship simply hadn’t left any usable traces of its arrival or departure, so we had nothing to follow. I could only clench my teeth in frustration. “Netty, if there’s anything you haven’t tried, try it now,” I snapped. “I’ve tried everything I can, Van, I’m sorry. I just have no data to work from—”

She cut herself off. “Netty?”

“Something just occluded several stars, ahead of us and to the right. I’m putting the data on the overlay now.”

Netty also put a visual, collected by the Fafnir’s visible-light imager, on the center-console display. It showed stars, and—that was it. But then one of the stars vanished, and then reappeared. A few seconds later, two more briefly winked out. “There’s something in a higher orbit,” she said. I leaned forward. “Good. Netty, full power on the active scanners. Light that whatever-it-is the hell up. Torina, stand by to do some shooting.”

I watched the overlay. Nothing changed. “The object simply doesn’t return any type of scanner signal.”

Icky, who’d jammed herself back into the jump seat behind us rather than sprawl out at the panel set up in the crew hab, gave an impressed grunt. “That is some damned fine stealth tech,” she said. “Yeah, it is,” I agreed, brooding over the otherwise blank tactical overlay. Without scanner returns, we could only do things like targeting weapons by eye. Fortunately, Torina had a knack for doing just that—she could hit a ten-meter rock up to five klicks away with the rail gun about half the time, as long as the relative motion wasn’t too great. But hitting half the time or less wasn’t a winning strategy. More to the point, who had come here with this degree of stealth tech, and why?

Had the target been the provost, or someone else?

Had it been me?

I silently cursed the Cabal with a string of profanities that would have made an internet comments section wince. With one well-aimed shot they’d shoved me into a place where I was second-guessing my second-guesses. I gritted my teeth and made the call. “Netty, let’s overtake that thing. I want to know what it is.”

“I’ll try.”

I blinked. Netty had never responded with an I’ll try before. Of course, she also hadn’t tried chasing something that was functionally invisible before, either. “TWO MINUTES TO INTERCEPT—I THINK,” Netty said. “Van, I have a question. Once we catch up to this thing, what then?”

Perry asked. “We’ll look at it. I mean, it isn’t actually invisible, is it?

It’s blocking out the stars,” I replied. “What I want to know is what they’re doing with the heat. That’s one thing that you can’t just hide, or at least not for long,” Icky put in. I nodded. It was a good question, just one of many I hoped that at least getting a glimpse of the thing would help unravel—

A warning chime cut me off. We’d just been illuminated by targeting scanners. I opened my mouth to call for immediate evasion, but something smacked hard into the Fafnir somewhere above us. Whatever it was triggered the reactive armor with a deep resonant chiming sound echoing through the ship. Torina loosed a curse. “I’ve got three or four different sources for those targeting scanners, and they keep moving around,” she snapped. The overlay confirmed what she was seeing on her targeting display. Once the thing lit us with its scanners, we should have been able to see the source like a lighthouse in the dark. Instead, we got several responses, all of them bouncing erratically around. “This thing is pumping out serious electronic counter-measures. I’m trying to clean it up, but it’s staying a step ahead of me,” Netty said, her normally unflappable tone decidedly flapped. I thought fast. “Netty, are we still closing on it?”

“Yes. Intercept in one—”

Another round slammed into the Fafnir, seemingly right in front of my face. A small, cracked star shape now scarred the canopy. “Torina, fire the glitter!”

“Van, those aren’t laser hits—”

“Do it!”

I was running on instinct, a vague idea of a concept of a plan accumulating in my mind. Torina didn’t hesitate and fired the glitter caster, which enveloped us in a slowly expanding bubble of shimmering chaff. She was right, it was primarily a defense against laser weapons, but it should throw off the enemy’s targeting at least a little. Plus, I was hoping it would have an effect the bad guys didn’t expect. “Van, we’re getting awfully close. Do you want to at least open fire and try to hit it?” Torina asked. “Not yet. I want to make sure that when we do shoot, it’ll be a precise, crippling shot. Use the point-defense only. Hold off on the rail gun unless things go wrong.”

I kept my eyes glued to the display as I spoke. I could feel her uncertainty and was about to explain, but the lead edge of the glitter enclosed the whatever-it-was. And left a hole. Torina didn’t hesitate. “Got it,” she said, and fired the upper point-defense battery, a single shot only. The round slammed through our opponent with a flash, and it suddenly became visible, its scanner return clear. I frowned, puzzled. “That’s not what killed the provost.”

It wasn’t. That craft had been a sleek delta-shape. This was a small cylinder only a meter in diameter, with blunt, rounded ends. Netty spoke up. “It’s a satellite. That’s a standard B-class hull. You can buy them off-the-shelf.”

“Not tricked out like this one was,” I noted, studying the scanner data. “Whatever you did to it, Torina, you knocked it completely off-line,”

Perry noted. “Yeah, damned fine shooting. You must have put that round either right through its power supply or its distribution system.”

She waved airily. “Yes. Of course I did. Just as I meant to.”

I glanced at her. “So it all went according to plan?”

“Absolutely. That wasn’t a fluke at all. We’ll go with that.”

KEEPING A CAREFUL WATCH ON IT, we slowly nudged the Fafnir closer. But the strange satellite remained dark and silent, so we finally maneuvered into a position where we could grapple it with the Fafnir’s cargo winch and snug it up against the hull. I considered bringing it aboard, but Icky had a better idea. “I know tech pretty well, but I admit I don’t know about stealth systems. That engineer, though, the one who used to be a stooge for your grandfather

—”

“Zenophir?

And I think informant is a much less insulting term.”

“Yeah. That’s her. Anyway, I talked to her while she was upgrading our point-defense systems, and she seemed to know a lot about practically everything. Let’s bring it to her.”

“That’s actually a good idea, Icky. Let’s do that. I’d kind of like to keep her engaged anyway.”

After informing the Daren-thal authorities about what had happened, we departed Ajax and made our way to Zenophir’s home. We found her still living where my grandfather had exiled her as a plea deal, with everything pretty much unchanged. “I kind of expected you’d be, ah, off to the city,” I noted, stepping out of the Fafnir to greet her. She shrugged. “I’m used to this place now. And I’m not a big fan of other people anyway. Give me machines any day. Less mess, more order.”

Icky dismounted, nodding. “See, she gets it!

Machines are great. They’re not all whiny and emotional like people.”

Perry jumped out of the airlock, bobbing his head in enthusiastic agreement. “Been saying this for a century. We really are the best. Why, if you’ll note my feather structure is exceptionally polished today—”

“Easy, Romeo. Let’s dial it back a notch,” I cautioned. Perry flicked his wings into place with a small sigh. “Beauty is so undervalued.”

“I’ll make a note of your magnificence in the ship’s log. Now, shall we address that?”

I pointed at the damaged satellite, which we’d gently lowered and released about fifty meters away. “Zenophir, I’d like to tap into your expertise,” I said. “That unit is associated with an assassination. An atmospheric fighter of a design I’ve never seen came out of the clouds, fired a small-caliber round, and executed a planetary official in less time than it took me to tell you the story. When we went orbital, we found that satellite, and it’s got stealth at the absolute edge of our technical expertise.”

“Mind if I take a look?” Zenophir asked, eyes focused on the object. “I’d love nothing more. It’s why we’re here.”

We wandered over to look at the thing. It was unremarkable, just a cylinder three meters long and a little more than one in diameter. Both ends were enclosed with hemispherical covers, probably to protect scanner transceivers and other gear. A neat hole had been drilled through it from Torina’s shot, the edges scorched from residual heat. “Doesn’t look like much, does it?” Zenophir said, frowning at the mysterious device. “Not really. But it still managed a couple of serious hits on us—

including one pretty much right in front of my face,” I replied, gesturing back at the Fafnir’s damaged canopy. “Huh. Whatever it was shooting with must be retractable, probably to help with the stealth… ” Zenophir said, then her voice trailed off and I realized we’d lost her in the engineering challenge before her. Torina and I left Icky with her, the two of them readying tools and discussing how to start investigating the thing, then we spent some time luxuriating in the surrounding, rugged scenery. We even put together a bit of a picnic lunch

and settled down to relax for, well, who knew how long?

It was a hell of a puzzler—

Which made it all the more remarkable that barely fifteen minutes later, Zenophir called us back. She’d found something, whatever it was prompting her to shout a warning. “Brace yourself, because this is not pretty.”

I JUST STARED. Torina finally spoke, her voice low and quiet. “What the hell is that?”

“Biological. Beyond that—” Zenophir shook her head. “Not my area of expertise.”

Biological indeed. While most of the interior of the satellite was a maze of components and cabling connecting them, almost none of it familiar to me, several components seemed to incorporate, well, flesh. There was no other way of describing it. I glanced at Torina and Perry. “Any ideas what’s going on here?”

Torina just shook her head. I could see the same creeping dread on her face that I knew I had on mine. Whatever this was, it wasn’t going to be good. “They look like bundles of nerve fibers mostly surrounded by other tissue, including blood vessels, and all of it sheathed in some sort of translucent membrane,” Perry said. I turned to him. “Meaning?”

“I… have no idea. That’s what it looks like, but whatever its intended purpose is, I don’t know.”

But Zenophir, staring at the bizarre and admittedly somewhat disgusting innards of the satellite, shook her head again. “Nerve fibers. That implies the ability to feel. And if… whatever the hell this is can feel, then maybe it can feel pain.”

“Van, our forensic gear on the Fafnir should be at least able to identify species of origin for this… material,” Perry said. I nodded. “Do it.”

I turned to Torina, Icky, and Zenophir. “To quote some philosopher, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Torina crossed her arms. “Yeah, and it’s only getting worse.”

After taking a ‘biopsy’ with his beak—gross—Perry retired to the Fafnir and analyzed the sample. He returned with a verdict in less than ten minutes. “There are two genetic profiles present in that, um, stuff. One is Schegith. The other doesn’t match anything we have on file.”

“A chimera,” I said. I felt the blank looks swivel onto me. “Sorry. There’s a mythical Earthly creature called a chimera that’s part lion, part snake, and—uh—”

“Part goat, but the actual critters involved do vary,” Perry offered. “Right. Anyway, the point is that it’s several creatures combined into one. I’ve also heard it used to describe humans who have two distinct genetic profiles. It’s rare, but it’s a thing.”

“Yeah, well, this didn’t happen naturally,” Torina said, looking somewhere between stricken and sick. I glared into the repulsive interior of the satellite, knowing exactly how she felt. There was anger, too. A lot of it, simmering up inside me, making me ball my fists. “No, it did not. Which means that somewhere out there, someone is playing god.”

3

WE LEFT the satellite with Zenophir so she could keep working on it. The unpleasantness of the organic material incorporated into it aside, it contained tech we needed to unravel. For instance, how did it so effectively stealth itself?

How did it deal with waste heat?

And what, exactly, was it armed with?

As a precaution, I informed Schegith herself of our finding but asked her to withhold judgment until we knew exactly what was going on. The mere fact that it contained evidence of Schegith genetic material didn’t mean it had been harvested from one of her people, after all. It might have been grown in a lab. “This one will assume the worst, as I’m sure you understand, Van Tudor,” she said, her tone darkly ominous. “I completely understand. I’m hoping you can help us out, though. If your cousin is available, can we persuade him to come and park himself in high orbit over Zenophir’s home planet?

I can’t help thinking that whoever owns that damned satellite might want to come looking for it.”

“This one agrees. Moreover, this one will ask this one’s cousin to assist in the investigation,”

“Even better. Thanks, Schegith.”

As I signed off, we’d reached orbit. Our original intent had been to leave Ajax once their stolen artifact had been delivered and head to Earth to spend some time off in Iowa. And on the Iowa, where Icky wanted to get busy installing some upgraded scanners and another laser mount that her

father had acquired on the cheap. But that was all going to have to wait because we needed to get back to Anvil Dark. I wanted to ensure the Masters knew about our find so that the knowledge wasn’t held solely by our happy little band of Peacemakers. If nothing else, it meant it couldn’t die with us, if it ever came to that. I’D ONLY JUST FINISHED FILING my report, right after docking at Anvil Dark, when Netty announced an incoming message. It was from Master Yotov. She wanted to see me. “Ooh, someone’s getting called in to the Principal,” Perry said. I shot him a bemused glance. “I guess you know all about that, having gone to school and—oh, wait. No you haven’t, being an alien AI construct and all.”

“I can read.”

Torina was more sober about it. “She has seemed to develop an inordinate interest in you, Van.”

“Yeah, I know. I can’t imagine that’s good, but I’m also not seeing how it’s bad—at least, not yet.”

“Well, if she considers you a threat, she might be wanting to keep you close, where she can watch what you’re up to.”

“Or, alternatively, she recognizes a skilled and dedicated Peacemaker who stands to advance the cause of the Guild, and she wants to be part of that,” Perry offered. Torina and I both gave him a yeah, right smirk, but he just shook his head. “I’m being serious. In the short time you’ve been a Peacemaker, you’ve accomplished a lot, Van. More than many Peacemakers will manage to wring out of an entire career. That’s especially true since most of the Peacemakers she regularly deals with are armchair pilots—they don’t want to fly around investigating and solving crimes and stuff but just hang around here and try to entrench themselves ever more deeply into the politics.”

I shrugged. “Well, either way, I guess I’m off to see her. I’ll leave you guys here to help Icky install another new canopy.”

That was annoying, in more ways than one. Replacing the two reactive-ablative armor blocks that cooked off from the first satellite hit was expensive, but not unreasonable. But a whole new canopy was another thing entirely. That kind of cost would tap us out, leaving lunch money and little else. Still, the payoff from the delivery of the stolen Daren-thal artifact, and the bounty we’d collect for seizing the illegal satellite, would almost cover it, so we weren’t out of pocket for much. I resisted being in too buoyant a mood, though, as I made my way to Yotov’s office. Although I didn’t know it for certain, I couldn’t help thinking that it might just make me more vulnerable to Yotov’s psionic shenanigans. So I deliberately tried to focus on the sinister implications of the satellite and its ominous biological components, whatever they were. Her personal AI assistant admitted me when I arrived, and I once more found myself in Yotov’s palatial suite, all tasteful and understated décor. “I have just finished reading your report on the mission you completed,”

she said, which made me feel inordinately pleased. So her psionic influence started up right out of the gate. I was beginning to wonder if she could even actually control it, or if it was just an ongoing, unconscious thing. Maybe she simply couldn’t turn it off. I nodded, acknowledging her statement. “That was fast. I only just filed it.”

“Yes, well, when you reported the attack on the Daren-thal and the death of their dignitary, my interest was definitely piqued. Tell me about this satellite you recovered.”

I gave her everything I had. As I’d already decided, I wanted to make sure this was widely known, to avoid having it somehow covered up. There was too much of that going around. I’d been just as candid in my report, which was now on formal record with the Guild, and had sent courtesy copies to Lunzy, Sil, Alic, and K’losk. Admittedly, I had an ulterior motive, too. If, as I feared, at least some of these people might be implicated in the bigger scheme, then I also wanted the bad guys to know what we knew. While I spoke, she was politely interested, but when I used the term nervous tissue, Yotov sat up, her body gone rigid with interest. “Nerve tissue?

As in, organic?”

“Yes. Organic, alive, and capable of transmitting information. Or pain. Have you ever seen anything like this, Master Yotov?”

She didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she stood and walked toward a strange little device on a side table. It resembled one of those intricate little machines that modeled the Solar System. I remembered one from high school, a device that you could crank and have all the planets and moons and things make their actual, proportional movements in relation to one another, albeit on a grossly compressed time and distance scale. She contemplated it for a moment, then turned back to me. “This is monstrous. A whole new category of crime. We have laws that deal with it—Crimes Against Order, they’re called.”

I stared, trying to recall what I knew about them. Aside from their existence, though, it wasn’t much. Mainly that they were just intended to respond to really, really bad things. Things that apparently hadn’t happened in known space in recent memory, at least. “Genocide is one of them. Use of certain agents against populations and biospheres is another.”

“Like the nano-plague that they’re still cleaning up on Helso, my Second’s homeworld,” I offered. I had to bite down a rising anger, but not just my own. Yotov was broadcasting her own anger at me as she spoke, which told me something important. No matter what sort of side-hustles she might be embroiled in, they were small in scale, especially compared to some of the things I’d already seen—and ended, often with extreme prejudice. In other words, regardless of what else she might be doing for a few bonds here and there, this crime echoed across known space in a way that left Yotov genuinely, personally angry. Her rage infected me and in seconds, I found myself sharing her anger in a common bond that was both psionic and born of cold logic. In that moment, I could see a definite downside to constantly tweaking the emotions of everyone around you. You’d need an iron control to use it judiciously and with an eye to the future, rather than purely for short-term gain. It was no wonder relatively few Ligurites ever left their homeworld—

it must be utterly exhausting to keep such a tight grip on your own feelings. For a moment I felt sorry for Yotov, doubly so when I watched her rein her surging anger in and stow it in some deep, cloistered place within her core. I hope she had an outlet for all the shit she must be constantly

suppressing, because in her place, I’d be a quivering wreck of bottled-up anger. She finally answered my observation about the nano-plague on Helso. “That’s getting close, and it’s still very illegal, but our legal scholars have concluded that even that doesn’t meet the threshold for a Crime Against Order.”

“So what do you intend to do, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Yotov stared at the small planetarium device again for a moment, then turned to me. “I am going to ask the Masters to convene to discuss this matter. I need you to remain here, at Anvil Dark, until we have a resolution on how to proceed.”

Well, considering you control the Masters’ Table, that should take about two minutes—I thought but certainly didn’t say. She went on. “You’ve been at the forefront of this case, Peacemaker Tudor. Given its new profile and complexity, and the necessity of deploying significant resources to investigate and prosecute a Crime Against Order, that’s no longer appropriate.”

I nodded, because what she proposed was the most reasonable solution at that moment. It probably was time for the matter to be handed over to someone like Lunzy, or maybe Alic. Or maybe Yotov intended to handle it herself. In any case, I hoped I could at least remain in a supporting role, so I could see it through to the end, even if a more minor player—

She went on. “Accordingly, I am going to propose to the Masters that you be promoted to Myrmidon and be formally recorded as the Lead Investigator.”

It took me a stunned moment to parse what she’d just said. “Me?

A Myrmidon?”

“I alluded to your being promoted last time we spoke, so I believe you were due anyway. This evidence only heightens the need to ensure the Peacemaker leading the case has the stature and authority to do so properly.”

She held up a hand. “There is, however, one key piece of screening you have to pass through. I will make arrangements for you to be interviewed by a cartographer as soon as one is available.”

“Uh—a cartographer?” The screening for a major promotion—one that actually skipped an intervening rank level—involved proving I could read a map?

Ligurite psionics were apparently broadcast only—Yotov couldn’t receive my thoughts. But the look on my face was enough, it seemed, for her to give the equivalent of a smile and wave a dismissive hand. “It’s an ancient Guild term to describe a Peacemaker who specializes in literally mapping the characters and mental states of other Peacemakers. They were formed in response to events that happened shortly after the time of the Guild’s formation, as an agent of the Galactic Knights.”

Depending on who you talked to, the Galactic Knights were the mysterious parent organization of the Peacemaker Guild that no longer existed in anything but a ceremonial sense. The GK held a role not unlike the modern British Royal Family— or, if you believed some of the more strident Peacemakers, a more active role, like a shadow government with real influence among our guild. I was intrigued. “What events were those?”

“The archives regarding that time are sealed and locked away in a secure location, only to be opened under very specific circumstances. We Masters know where they are but not how to access them. That knowledge will supposedly become available should it ever be truly needed.”

“That’s very cloak-and-dagger, conspiracy-theory-ish.”

Yotov shrugged. “These rules predate me by hundreds of years,” she said, returning to her enormous desk. “Frankly, I consider them to be nothing more than a Guild—what is the term your grandfather used?

Ah, yes. An urban legend.”

She placed her hands on the desk. “Now then, Peacemaker Tudor, you’ll be informed as to the time and place of your meeting with the cartographer. As I said, do not plan to leave Anvil Dark for several days.”

I nodded and took my leave of her, feeling a little shell-shocked. The Master I’d assumed would be out to get me instead wanted to promote me, and two steps, at that. And revealing, in the process, something that was obviously a well-kept secret within the Guild. Which led to two further lines of mystified thinking. Was I now a member of Team Yotov?

Was this her way of buying and keeping my loyalty?

Or had she deliberately exposed me to the resentment of Peacemakers I was getting ready to outrank?

Neither was an appealing thought, and the satisfied pride I’d felt while sitting in front of Yotov quickly drained away. “HOW’S MY HAIR?” I asked Torina. “It looks fine. I doubt the cartographer is going to judge you based on your looks.”

Perry muttered something that might have been, Good thing, too, but just returned a blank look when I swiveled my glare onto him. “Did you want something, Van?”

I rolled my eyes at him. “Nice. And after everything I do for you—”

“Like what?

And if you mention fulfilling my life’s purpose again, I’m gonna adopt a surly attitude,” Perry countered. “We already have an Icky,” I said evenly. “That is, as you say, hurtful but fair.”

“Peacemaker Tudor, the cartographer is ready for you,” a smooth feminine voice said over my comm. It was the cartographer’s AI personal assistant who’d greeted us when we arrived at her office. “We can stick around, Van, if you want us to,” Perry said. I shook my head as I stood, pulling myself out of the remarkably comfortable chair in the elegant foyer. “I think I can handle a job interview all on my own, thanks.” But I looked him and Torina both in the eye. “And by thanks, I really mean thanks. I wouldn’t be standing here right now if it weren’t for you guys.”

“In my case, literally. You’d be wearing overalls, chewing on a stalk of grass, and drawling on to your farming buddies about how it looks like rain, ayup,” Perry said. “Perry, do I look like the overalls and stalk-of grass kind of guy to you?”

“Hey, it’s what your grandfather said he’d have been doing if he hadn’t become a Peacemaker.”

“My grandfather, the spec ops soldier.”

“He wasn’t always a spec ops soldier, Van. He had a life before he became a Peacemaker.”

I opened my mouth but closed it again. He had, although it was a life I realized I didn’t know much about—particularly since I had no idea when he’d actually lived it, thanks to the time-dilating effects of twist travel. But now was not the time. I sent Perry and Torina on their way, insisting I was okay with their immediate moral support, and entered the

cartographer’s office. THE CARTOGRAPHER, a Gajur named Sussbrid, immediately reminded me of the former and late Master Yewlo. It could have been Yewlo, in fact, since I could discern no visible distinction between them. The Gajur apparently relied heavily on scent to identify individuals, so it didn’t matter to them, but I found it a trifle unnerving. Also unnerving was the monocle she wore, upon which I could see barely perceptible flickers of what must be information being projected right in front of her. Presumably it was about me—although I supposed she might have been binge-watching something and really didn’t want to take a break from—

“Peacemaker Tudor, are you alright?”

“Oh… please, call me Van.”

She studied me. “Alright, I notice you didn’t answer my question, Van.”

“What?

Oh, yes—I’m fine. Sorry, it’s just that I’ve only known one other Gajur, and that was Master Yewlo.”

“Who you helped bring to justice.”

“Well, I’m not sure about that. Yewlo died, but whether that was the right punishment—” I shrugged. “So it bothers you that Yewlo died.”

I stared for a moment, then glanced at the chair across from her. “Should I sit down?”

“If you’d prefer it, certainly. I’d appreciate any immediate sensation or thoughts. Often, the first impressions are the most critical.”

I chewed on that, then locked eyes with Sussbrid. “I wish Torina and Perry were here. I’m a long way from home, and I’m not entirely comfortable with this.”

“While I appreciate your candor, you still haven’t answered my question,” she countered, leaning on her desk. Aside from a terminal, it was barren. In fact, the whole room was devoid of anything except her, her desk, and a single piece of abstract sculpture sitting on a small plinth in the corner. “You mean, am I feeling alright?”

“Yes.”

I shrugged. “I suppose. About as well as can be expected, I guess.”

“And how well should we expect that to be?”

“Can I assume that this is all part of this test?”

“It’s interesting that you use the word test.”

I sighed. “Okay. I’ve got rather limited experience with the services of a therapist, but I know the drill. So why don’t you just ask me the questions you need to, and I’ll answer as evasively as I can within the required parameters of whatever this is, because my nature and inexperience with your field make me defensive. Is that honest enough?

Or...too much?”

She sat back and steepled her scaly fingers. Okay, maybe she was a touch more of a pale blue than Yewlo had been. And I saw more faint flickers on her monocle, shapes and colors dashing past in a fugitive gleam. I didn’t like it. The monocle felt like an intrusion, or an advantage, and I didn’t understand what it was—and thus, I trusted the moment even less. “What is it about this that makes you impatient, Van?

Aren’t you concerned that you need to get this right so that I will confirm your promotion?”

I curled my lip. I didn’t want to be disrespectful, but part of the reason I’d never spent time with a therapist was because I wasn’t convinced it really did any good. Oh, sure, having someone to simply listen could be worthwhile, I supposed. But the times I might have actually needed the help

—like when I washed out of the Army, or after pursuing online criminals involved in some especially vile shit—I couldn’t bring myself to believe it would do anything for me. It just seemed so… self-indulgent. So I decided to answer truthfully. “Okay, I actually don’t, no. Maybe it’s because I failed to thrive in the only other super-hierarchical organization I’ve even been involved in—the Army, back on Earth. And maybe it’s because, since then, I’ve lived my life without a lot of structure in it. I’ve been my own boss, more or less, and I’ve never really had subordinates, at least until I took over my ship. So maybe the rank doesn’t really matter much to me.”

“Is that all?”

I drummed my fingers on the arm of my chair. What the hell. “Honestly, no, it’s not. Master Yotov has ordered me to stick around Anvil Dark until an unspecified time, waiting for some sort of decision about—something, this whole Crimes Against Order thing. In the meantime, I’ve got a contact working on that horrific satellite we

discovered, but she’s by herself in a remote place on a remote world, and there are bad guys out there that would probably love to put a stop to her. And I’ve arranged some protection for her from another contact, but that’s just a favor, and not one I want to presume upon for too long.”

“And thus, you feel like this is all a waste of your time.”

“I—” I stopped and was about to shake my head, and then deliver some bland, acceptable answer that would probably be a lie. But as soon as she said the phrase waste of time, I knew she was right. That wasn’t close to what I was feeling. It was exactly how I felt. “Candidly?

Yeah, I do. I know the Guild needs to do its thing, but seriously, the bad guys are out there”—I swept a hand vaguely to my right

—“and I doubt they’re taking time for interviews and meetings and dealing with promotions. We’ve had a hell of time getting this much lead on this case, and every hour we spend here is an hour we’re not trying to run these bastards down.”

“And what happens when you do run them down, Van?

If they are every bit as evil as you expect them to be?

Or worse?

What then?”

“Then they pay for their crimes.”

“How?”

I narrowed my eyes at her, then smiled. “You’re waiting for me to say I’m going to kill them.”

She surprised me by actually making a rare, declarative statement. “No, I’m waiting for you to answer the question with a truthful answer.”

I stared at her for a moment, but between the alienness of her generally reptilian face and the fact she was clearly a consummate professional, I couldn’t tell anything about what she might be thinking. So I shrugged. “Alright. The truth is, yeah, I hope they fight back and do everything they can to avoid being taken into custody so that I can kill them. I hope that, when I finally encounter whoever’s behind it all, I get to carve them up with my Moonsword. And it doesn’t bother me to say any of that, so there.”

“You hope they fight back. You hope you get to carve up their ringleader.”

“I—uh, yeah. That’s right. I do.”

“And what if they don’t do what you hope?

What if they simply surrender themselves to you and begin what could be a long and tortuous path through the judicial system?

A path potentially influenced by corruption and without a certain outcome?”

I blinked, a little surprised by her overt reference to corruption. “Well, I—”

She held up a hand. “Please, Van, when you answer this question, don’t tell me what you think I want to hear. Tell me the truth.”

I exhaled, slowly, then spoke. “Fine. I’ll be more than a little pissed. These bastards are doing some of the most horrifying things imaginable to other people, just to enslave their personalities in vacuum cleaners and mining diggers and make a quick buck from it. And now it seems they’ve graduated to playing around with their victims’ organic parts, too, because they weren’t making enough money from the suffering they were already causing. So if I’m being honest, yeah, there’s a good chance I’ll just execute some summary judgment right on the spot.”

I crossed my legs, staring down at the floor as I sifted emotions that were far from noble. “Like I once told Perry, I don’t have it in me to murder anyone, but I have decided I’m okay with killing someone if it needs to be done. And if that disqualifies me from this promotion, fine. Just tell Master Yotov to appoint someone else to run this case, and I’ll happily work for them.”

A long moment passed in silence as Sussbrid considered my words, and then she did something I didn’t expect. She smiled, her lips cracking in a toothy reptilian grin.“This takes me back.”

“It—what?”

She leaned forward again, her shoulders bunched with repressed laughter. “Quick history lesson, if you’ll indulge me. I once worked with a Peacemaker Initiate named Mark Tudor. He’d only just been inducted into the Guild, and I was assigned to mentor him. Many years ago, now, he sat in a chair much like that one, aboard my Dragon, and told me how he hoped the baddest of the bad guys, as he put it, would give him justification to carry out a summary execution. Apparently, he saw many, many things in his life that convinced him that some people were fundamentally bad. It all seemed to stem from an especially traumatic conflict he’d been involved in on your homeworld. A Great War, he called it?”

“It was anything but great. It was the first truly mechanized war on my planet. An absolute horror show of death.”

Sussbrid blew out a breath in disgust. “Too many races use technology to kill before any other purpose. It seems to be a common flaw among the

so-called intelligent species. How many dead?”

“More than thirty million,” I said. Sussbrid tilted her head, eyes narrowed. “You came of age quickly, then. In a sense, your people are lucky to have survived that war. And any others. Not all races have such—restraint. But, that war, as you know it, produced the man your grandfather came to be. In the time I knew him, Mark did many things. He taught me how to play poker. How to sing something called bluegrass music. He told me that bluegrass was songs that make you want to cry, with music that makes you want to dance. I never understood until he played, and sang, and then he taught me, the last person you would associate with the sounds of Appalachia, how to make the music mine. Oh, and he showed me, with great care, how to make a perfect grilled cheese sandwich, with mayo, not butter. Let me tell you, finding a source for Duke’s mayonnaise was a true wonder of interstellar logistics. He also taught me how to remain a good person in the face of enormous loss. One thing he never did, though, not even when he finally confronted those baddest of the bad guys, was kill someone without cause, without simply having no other alternative.”

As soon as she’d said bluegrass music, I thought of Gramps singing Christmas carols with us, his high, clear voice ringing out as he strummed a battered guitar. I could hear—no, I could feel how close he was in my memory, his face lit up with joy as he led us all in a stumbling performance of songs from a century before. I smelled the Christmas tree and heard the pop of pine logs in the fire, all relics of a place and time that could never be again. Damn. My vision went blurry with tears, and my throat grew tight. Sussbrid gave me an earnest look. “I miss him, too.”

I nodded but said nothing. “When I look at you, Van, I see your grandfather. But not just your grandfather. You aren’t his reincarnation, you are very much your own person. You are made from the same stock as he was, though like successive layers of stone built up into something more over the years. You are—well, I am not entirely sure just who you are, yet, but I don’t think you know that either. At least, not entirely. I hope that one way you will differ from him is that you won’t refuse promotions and advancements, because in doing so he denied the Guild the full benefit of Mark Tudor, and believe me, that was someone we very much needed. And still need.”

She leaned back. “I am fully of the opinion that you should be promoted in accordance with Master Yotov’s intent. I hope you accept it, I really do.”

I rubbed at my face, clearing the weight of memory that was a mix of joy and loss. It didn’t surprise me that Gramps hadn’t accepted any promotions. He was just that sort of guy, the one who did the things he believed needed to be done—not for him, but because it was just the right thing to do. But I was a realist and got what Sussbrid was saying. If I could be of more value to the Guild as a Myrmidon, or whatever rank they gave me, then it was the right thing to do. “Thank you. If I am offered the promotion, I’ll accept it.”

“Good. I hope you’re ready for what comes next.”

“Some sort of ceremony?”

“Well, yes, but that’s not what I meant. I mean, what comes next for you as a Peacemaker.”

I gave her a quizzical look. “What do you mean?

What comes next for me as a Peacemaker?”

Sussbrid managed a wistful grin, which was no small feat with her reptilian features. “For many of us— too many of us?

The end. So do me a favor and stick around, okay?

The longer you’re here, the more good you can do. I think that’s something Mark would appreciate.”

I stood, feeling a slow smile creep across my face. For Gramps, for me

—for Torina and Perry and my crew and the guild, I would do my damndest to stick around. Before I said a word, Sussbrid’s grin widened as she sensed my decision. “Ma’am, sticking around is exactly what I plan on doing.”

“And?

Anything else?” Her grin turned sly. I looked up to the ceiling, avoiding her gaze. “I wouldn’t say no to a few bonds here and there.”

Sussbrid’s snort caught her by surprise. “Now you really sound like Mark. Welcome to your new rank, Van. You’ve earned it.”

4

THE CEREMONY OF INVESTITURE, during which I was promoted to Myrmidon, was a low-key affair conducted at the Masters’ Table, their expansive hall in the Keel where they conducted formal meetings and events. Six of the seven Masters attended, one of them being off of Anvil Dark on business of their own. Otherwise, it was just me and my crew, and a handful of Peacemakers I kind of recognized but didn’t really know, who worked for the Masters directly on special projects. In my experience, someone assigned to a special project was being parked for some reason, usually to keep them out of the way. Sussbrid, the cartographer, was also present, standing alone in the back. Yotov herself performed the actual ceremony, which had overtones of some medieval resplendence, the sort of chivalry and knights in shining armor bullshit I know that, on Earth at least, was all mostly just mythology. But it still managed a sort of gothic gravitas, a weighty sense of something important happening, encapsulated in a ritual that felt old. It reminded me of a visit I’d made to an old cathedral in Arras, France, which had survived both World Wars but still bore the scars of the fighting that had engulfed it. Beneath the shrapnel and bullet scars had lingered a ponderous feeling of time and significance. The old building had been through a lot over many, many years but still carried itself with a dignified sense of purpose. When the ceremony ended and I had my new Myrmidon rank insignia in hand, each of the Masters congratulated me. Yotov offered surprisingly warm wishes, which her psionic aura of course made me appreciate way

more deeply than I actually should have. But she ended her goodwill on a somber note. “Now the work continues, harder than ever. I’m sure you’ll be up to it.”

I couldn’t quite decide if that last sentence had been a statement or a question. Probably some of each. As we were leaving to return to the Fafnir, I saw Sussbrid still standing and watching. Icky was desperate to take me out for a celebratory drink—

mainly because she wanted to down a celebratory drink—but I motioned for her and the others to wait and walked over to the cartographer. “Did you come to accept my congratulations as well, Van?” she asked. In the dim light, the slight play of things flashing across her enigmatic monocle stood out more clearly against her eye. It made for a somewhat sinister thing to watch. “I… don’t really expect anything in particular, actually. It’s just that you’re standing here, and—” I frowned and put my hands on my hips. “Why do I feel like you’re still testing me?”

She bared her teeth slightly, a faint smile. “It’s the universe itself that’s testing us, Van. It tests us always, and in the only ways that matter.”

I thanked her and walked away to join my crew. “What did she say?” Torina asked as we left the hall. “That the only person I need to worry about confronting is myself.”

We walked on for a few paces. “Either that, or that the universe is out to get me.”

I HADN’T WANTED to go for any celebratory drinks, mainly because I knew that while most people would be happy for me to be promoted, more than a few wouldn’t. I’d been a Peacemaker Adherent, one step up from an Ordinary Peacemaker. That hadn’t been a promotion, though, just an appointment that happened almost automatically one year into service with the Guild. You had to screw up in some major way to not be invested as an Adherent, and it usually meant you were soon to be released from Guild service. The next actual rank should have been Peacemaker Companion, but Yotov had skipped me over that right to Myrmidon. It put me in the top quarter of Peacemakers rank-wise, which meant I’d also leapt over the

heads of dozens and dozens of others, many of whom had more time in the Guild than I had. But my crew had insisted on stopping by The Black Hole for a drink, and I couldn’t dodge other Peacemakers from now on, just in case they’d decided to resent the hell out of me. So I steeled myself, walked into the bar, and braced myself for some sort of crowd-sourced reaction. And I got one, but it wasn’t the one I’d expected. I walked right into a ragged chorus of cheers. I stopped, then kind of waved around the room. “Wow. I didn’t expect this many people to be glad for me,” I said to the others, loud enough to cut through the hubbub. Okay, maybe I was projecting my own feelings of guilt onto everyone else—

But Perry yanked me back down to the proverbial earth. “Actually, Van, they’re cheering because, when a Peacemaker’s promoted, they have to buy a round for everyone in The Black Hole.”

I did a quick estimate of the crowd and sighed. “Well, shit.”

THANKFULLY, Yotov had an immediate assignment for me that would get us away from Anvil Dark as soon as we were ready to depart. We were to retrieve the stealthed satellite from Zenophir, along with her data and conclusions, then transport it to a planet orbiting the binary star system Zeta Herculis. At more than thirty light-years from Earth, the system was near the edge of known space. It was also home to two sparsely inhabited Earth-like planets that had first been settled less than a hundred years earlier. Neither of those were our destination. We were to bring the satellite to a facility orbiting a gas supergiant, a sort of hot ‘Super Jupiter’ hovering just shy of brown dwarf territory. “Ponte Alus Kyr,” I said aloud as we accelerated away from Anvil Dark toward Zenophir’s planet, our first stop. “Why have I never heard of this place before?”

“There are probably lots of places you’ve never heard of before, Van,”

Perry said. I turned to him and smiled. “Oh, Perry. Somehow, you manage to make obvious things sound even more condescending than they would on their own.”

“I’m a people person.”

“Anyway, what the hell is Ponte Alus Kyr, aside from some sort of medical facility?

That’s all the mission briefing note from Yotov’s AI aide said about it.”

“That’s because it’s actually a secret medical facility operated by a consortium of private and governmental agencies. And secret facilities are secret,” Perry replied. “Okay, the connection between our satellite and this place is becoming a little clearer. How about making it, you know, actually clear?”

“Hey, I only got the download shortly before we left, so don’t shoot the messenger bird here. It’s a facility that specializes in research and development in the field of synthetic life.”

“Synthetic life like—AI?” Torina asked. “No, actual organic life, but the synthetic sort. Remember the Flesh Merchants on Spindrift?

They’re actually a front for Ponte Alus Kyr, a way for them to get some real-world data on their creations.”

“Okay, you hear that?

That’s the sound of my own, non-synthetic skin crawling. I mean, that is so ripe for all sorts of abuse,” I said. But Torina gave me an oh, really?

look. “Those Flesh Merchants have provided, what, a dozen physical bodies now for stolen people we’ve recovered?”

I had to just roll with that one. “Okay, fair point. But it still makes me damned uncomfortable.”

“Besides, Van—how do you know that you’re not actually synthetic and all your memories are just implanted in you, like the ones you received during your initiation on Crossroads?” Perry asked. I shrugged. “I’ll start worrying about that when I start finding origami unicorns lying around.”

WE ARRIVED to find Zenophir had collected a trove of information on the non-organic parts of the satellite. She’d studiously left those organic bits

alone. “Which was as creepy as hell, I might add. I couldn’t help feeling that the damned thing was watching me. That’s why I worked on it out here,”

she said, leading us to a small outbuilding nestled among a stand of trees with jet-black trunks and golden leaves. I peered into the satellite as Zenophir replaced the last of the access panels. The fleshy organic parts were still pinkish, apparently moist and—

“Is that bit there pulsing?” I asked, pointing at one especially fat bundle of whatever the hell it was. She glared at me. “Yes, it is, thank you very much. This stuff isn’t just alive, it’s—well, alive. Imagine how fun it’s been to work out here alone with that damned thing throbbing away on my workbench.”

“Sounds like the setup for a horror movie.”

“Holy shit!”

We all turned to Icky’s exclamation. She hadn’t been interested in the disgusting organic stuff, but she had been poring over Zenophir’s conclusions. She turned to Zenophir, looking stunned and pointing at the terminal glowing on a side table. “Is this right?

The thing is using its own heat for power?”

Zenophir nodded. “So it appears. And it’s stupidly efficient at it, too. It captures its own heat and recycles it back into its power system, with minimal loss.”

“But—how?”

I nodded. “Yeah, that sounds suspiciously like a perpetual motion machine.”

But Zenophir shook her head. “Far from it. There is a continuous loss because nothing’s one hundred percent perfect. But it’s so small it only raises the temperature of the thing a fraction of a degree Kelvin while operating.”

“Way below the operating threshold of our scanners,” Perry put in. “Exactly. It’s honestly amazing. And I have absolutely no idea how it works.”

I looked from the strange device to her. “You don’t recognize the tech?”

“Recognize it?

I don’t even understand it. There are some sealed components in there I’ve scanned but haven’t dared to try opening so I don’t break them. This is either brand-new, absolutely bleeding-edge tech

right out of some lab, or it’s alien tech someone has found, in which case it could be very, very old.”

It turned out the satellite’s ability to recycle its own thermal waste energy wasn’t its only trick. It possessed a more compact and efficient stealth system than any that were, as far as Zenophir knew, available even on the black market, and it had been coated with something that absorbed incoming energy and turned that into heat, which it then used to power itself, the stealth system included. In short, it was almost perfectly covert and based on tech that no one—not Zenophir, Icky, or even Perry and Netty

—even knew existed. “It was kind of irresponsible to leave it in orbit around Ajax then, where we could find it, and not equip it to self-destruct or something,” Torina said. “We shouldn’t have found it, though. It was just a fluke that Netty noticed those stars being blotted out—”

“Luck?

Luck?

I constantly scan and analyze a spherical volume of space around the Fafnir, across the EM spectrum, literally terabytes of data every few seconds, so I’ll have you know—”

“I’m sorry, Netty. I’m sorry,” I said, holding up my hands in surrender. “You’re right. It was not luck. It was your skill and dedication as an AI that brought about this break in the case.”

“And we love you for it,” Torina added. I gave an enthusiastic nod. “That, and the whole keeping us alive in space thing. In case I’ve never mentioned it, that’s nice, too.”

Icky glanced up from the satellite. “Are you guys apologizing to your ship?”

“Oh, and I’ve never heard you talking away to systems as you work on them,” Torina shot back. Perry uttered a distinct sort of derision. “Talking implies the communication of information. With Icky, it’s mostly threats and profanity.”

“Yeah, so?

It’s still communicating. It’s communicating the fact I’m gonna break something if it doesn’t behave,” she replied, glowering at Perry. He turned to me. “Van, this is a hostile workplace.”

I nodded and looked at Icky. “Don’t make me get HR involved, Icky, or you’ll—”

“I’ll what?”

I smiled. “Be filling out forms in triplicate. I’m sure Bester back on Anvil Dark can provide me with a small mountain of them.”

She shuddered. “I’ll shut up now.”

I gave Torina and Perry a triumphant glance. “Bureaucracy as a threat. I love it.”

As we loaded the satellite into the Fafnir, I spoke to Schegith’s cousin, still aboard his personal battlecruiser in geosynchronous orbit. Zenophir had shared data with him, and he’d had his own people use their limited resources to try and delve into the organic component of the satellite. All they’d been able to determine was that it was alive, insofar as it was taking air and nutrients in, expelling waste products—which were also recycled—

and reproducing sufficiently to keep itself going. Its true purpose remained inscrutable, although we could reasonably assume it had something to do with controlling the satellite. It seemed like a needless complication because a simple AI could probably do that just as well, if not better. That hinted at some other, deeper purpose, which was where data gave way to speculation, most of it kind of repulsive and all of it grim. “There is one other matter. This one observed several similar ships, or one ship several times, entering and leaving this system. They never came closer than several light-minutes, but this one ensured to use active scanners at full power to proclaim our presence here,” Schegith’s cousin said. I looked at Torina, while Icky and Zenophir finished loading up the satellite and getting it strapped securely into place. Instead of just strapping it on the Fafnir’s exterior, like we had when bringing it here, we’d brought along a nifty external cargo module that attached to one of the ship’s two open hard points. It would be more secure and better protect the strange object while we made the trip to Zeta Herculis. More to the point, it kept it out of the interior of my ship, thank you very much. If I was going to carry a living passenger, they’d pay their own way and make some conversation. And, if I was being honest with myself, I had a bad feeling that went beyond a simple hunch. OUT OF AN ABUNDANCE OF CAUTION, we accepted Schegith’s cousin’s offer to accompany us to Zeta Herculis, the formidable firepower of the big

battlecruiser likely being enough to deter all but the strongest or most suicidal of enemies. The ship or ships he’d observed popping in and out of the system might have nothing to do with us or the satellite, of course. But something told me that they did, that someone was nosing around hoping to get their satellite back. But it also made me worry about Zenophir, who’d be on her own since we were gone. I couldn’t help thinking that someone might show up who wanted to know what she knew and had told us. But she’d brushed my concerns away. “I’m not defenseless,” she’d said as she took me into the cellar beneath her house. Among a bunch of stuff obviously in storage, a low, oblong device squatted, a single red light glowing on a panel atop it. “What is it?” I asked, peering through the cool, slightly musty gloom at it. “A thermonuclear bomb.”

“A—holy shit, a what?”

“A fusion bomb, about one megaton yield. If anyone shows up that’s going to be a problem, that is my fail-safe.”

I gaped. “A nuke?

Really?

That’s your fail-safe?”

“Pretty good one, don’t you think?”

I could only shake my head. Zenophir explained how she was old and had no desire to leave the remote little homestead that had been her jail for years now. She made it clear that she’d rather vanish in a puff of ionized vapor than submit to someone else ever again. “Your grandfather got away with it because of who he was and what he did for me. That’s the only free pass I’m giving out.”

As we finally lifted the Fafnir and started climbing toward orbit, Torina asked me about Zenophir. “Do you think she’s going to be okay here all on her own?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I think she’ll be just fine.”

THE TWIST to Zeta Herculis cost us another eight days of subjective time because of the distance we had to— traverse wasn’t really the right word. Anyway, it meant that a week passed in normal space during the instant we were twisting. A week, just gone. Except, of course, it wasn’t gone at all, at least from my perspective. I could only shake my head. These were relativistic effects that Earthly physics probably didn’t even yet contemplate, at least in the most abstract of ways. It also made me wonder, yet again, just how old Gramps really was. I put it aside for now. We received clearance from Ponte Alus Kyr to start our final approach. Schegith’s cousin bid us farewell once we were in range of the station’s strangely formidable firepower. “This one wishes you well. Should you have need of this one again, you have but to ask.”

I smiled appreciatively at the image of Schegith’s cousin. “I appreciate that, but I think you’ve more than paid us back by now.”

“This one disagrees. You effectively saved this one’s race from extinction. This one will continue assisting you for as long as you require.”

“It was my honor, and your friendship continues to be one of my greatest assets,” I said, signing off and turning to Torina. “Not that long ago, I’d have never even considered that some of my closest friends would be giant slugs. Strange world, huh?”

She smiled. “And there’s a lot more of that strange world yet to be discovered.”

“Yeah. I know. And that’s what worries me.”

We docked at the expansive station known as Ponte Alus Kyr, orbiting several thousand klicks above the turbulent cloud tops of the huge gas giant. We were met at our airlock by a human—sort of. She was of middle height, slender, with cropped dark hair and cheekbones that hinted of the Russian steppes. And, there seemed to be some kind of bulbous growth coming from the back of her head and her spine, which brought me up short. She smiled. “I’m Hoshi Onwyn. And it appears that you’ve already noticed my partner, Cibilax.” Her smile broadened. “Don’t worry, he jumps out to most people like that. He says hello, by the way.”

“I… am confused,” I said, shaking my head. She laughed. “Let’s try this again. I’m Hoshi Onwyn, Principal Director of Ponte Alus Kyr. Cibilax is a Krali’on, a species that can only leave their homeworld as a symbiote attached to another life-form.”

“Ah. I see. Well, then, it’s very nice to meet you—er, both of you.”

Torina seemed as surprised as I was, but Perry, upon seeing Hoshi, didn’t seem surprised at all. “Hey, it’s a Krali’on. I don’t suppose you happen to know Trethixan, do you?

He was half of a Peacemaker who just retired.”

“Cibilax wants you to know that if he had eyes he’d roll them at the idea that he somehow knows every other Krali’on,” Hoshi said, her eyes twinkling. “Yeah, Perry. What a faux pas,” I said. Icky didn’t pay much attention at all. Her concern was the satellite, which she desperately wanted to get at so she could learn its technological secrets. But the Guild had been explicit that priority for its examination went to Ponte Alus Kyr because of the potential implications regarding Crimes Against Order. And since this was an assigned Guild mission, for which they were paying, I wasn’t going to argue. “The sooner they finish with this thing, the sooner I can start digging into it,” she muttered, barely giving Hoshi and her strange partner a passing glance and a nod. While a Ponte Alus Kyr technical crew unloaded the satellite under Icky’s critical gaze, Torina, Perry, and I accompanied Hoshi on a tour of the station. She prefaced it by saying that sections were sealed and inaccessible to us, some because of environmental conditions like toxic or corrosive atmospheres, and others for security reasons. “We have many streams of research going on here, some of which the consortium that owns and operates the station don’t want revealed,” she said. “Sounds ominous,” I noted, giving her a look that made dead certain I was, in fact, making a note of the situation. She shrugged, but it was forced, as she recognized a warning note in my tone. As we walked, she offered nothing further, and I didn’t pry. My searching look served to alert her further that I might appear pleasant, but it was just that—an appearance. I’d had my fill of evil subterfuge under the guise of science, and if my attitude alarmed the tech, good. Still, the fact that this facility, which apparently specialized in fiddling with synthetic life, had some sections with a black ops vibe—let’s just say it made me uncomfortable enough to plan a future visit, just to make sure

things were more lawful than not. Was it a Crime Against Order if a large corporation or a government agency was doing it?

If not, why not?

I shook the thought away. I wasn’t here to pass judgment on the place, but I damned sure wouldn’t forget about it. “Ordinarily, we don’t take on outside projects,” Hoshi said, showing us a big, bright compartment full of identical machines. They were 3D printers that used biological material as their medium. We stopped in front of one machine that seemed to be steadily building up what looked like a human foot, virtually one cell at a time. “But your Master Yotov apparently knows people in high places, so we were directed to give you whatever assistance we can.” Hoshi glanced at me. “Cibilax wonders how you came across tech that sounds on the face of it like things we’ve only got in the early experimental stages.” She smiled. “So do I.”

I gave her a brief overview of our case, finishing with the reason we’d come here. “So far, everything we encountered was living things being stripped down to their basic data, then jammed onto a chip. This is something new, kind of the flipside of that—living material being integrated into a machine. Different kind of prison, but still an utter violation of everything we stand for.” I shrugged. “Honestly, we’re not even sure if the two cases are really related. I think they are, but that’s just a gut feeling, not something based on hard evidence.”

“We’ll do our best to help you answer that.”

“For which I’m sure you’re being paid handsomely,” Perry noted. Hoshi gave him a bland look. “Of course.”

She opened her mouth to say something else, but a soft ping cut her off. She touched a comm on her belt. “Director, there’s a ship inbound from one of the inner planets. They’ve declared an emergency and are asking for our assistance.”

I glanced at Torina. “We arrive, and then this happens right after?”

Hoshi nodded. “Tell them to come no closer than thirty light-seconds, and get them to explain their emergency.”

“Understood.”

We waited. Icky caught up to us, escorted by one of the technical crew. “Okay, they’ve got the satellite and are getting to work—what?

What’s going on?”

I raised a hand. “Not sure. Let’s just stand by to get back to the Fafnir

—”

“Director, the ship is carrying several Eykinao. They were on their way to Tau Ceti when one of them developed medical complications and now needs immediate assistance.”

“Can you confirm any of that?”

“Eykinao authorities on the inner planet corroborate it, yes.”

“Fine. Clear them to dock. I’ll meet them at the airlock,” Hoshi said, then turned to us. “You’re probably not familiar with the Eykinao. They’re a race native to the innermost of the two habitable planets in this system—very insular, to the point of xenophobia. If they’re looking for help, then they must need it badly.”

I nodded but couldn’t shake the feeling that this might still somehow be connected to our arrival here. It was just too coincidental. “Mind if we tag along?

I’d like to meet these Ek—Eki—”

“Eykinao.”

“Right, that.”

“By all means,” Hoshi said and led the way back toward the docking concourse. Torina fell in beside me. “You suspect something.”

I glanced at her and nodded. “I always suspect something. I think it’s just a good way of keeping yourself alive.”

5

I HAD SEEN MANY ALIENS, from the crablike Starsmith Linulla to the four-armed simian hulk that was Icky, to the oversized slugs that were the Schegith. None of it prepared me, though, for the Eykinao. Imagine a fire hydrant. Now imagine that fire hydrant is covered in grayish-purple scales, sporting two rings of disturbing eyes, and from each of the protruding fittings where the hoses would hook up there extended a mass of small, wriggling tentacles. They looked like a cross between some alien species from Doctor Who and one of H. P. Lovecraft’s ancient races of cosmic monstrosities. For added fun, the one in medical distress was apparently pregnant, marked by a bulbous swelling on her back filled with yellowish fluid holding a multitude of small, grayish blobs, presumably her young. Besides the female, two more of the squat, lumpy aliens had exited the ship. They immediately launched into an animated tirade, wriggling their tentacles as they urgently chattered on, completely drowning one another out. Hoshi raised her hands. “Please, one at a time.” She pointed at the most animated alien. “What’s going on?”

“L’ksal is in distress. As you can see, she is with young. It is her desire to give birth at—”

The next word was untranslated, but as the alien went on, I got the sense it was a pilgrimage of sorts, to some location of great importance to their race. I had no idea how an insular people who didn’t like leaving their

homeworld could end up with a holy site in some other star system, but I chalked it up to the general weirdness of our galaxy. After two more sentences of babbled explanation, the female, apparently named L’ksal, suddenly keeled over. I was standing closest, so I caught her. For a moment, because of the way she’d fallen, I stood cradling her like some old Hollywood leading man sweeping a woman off her feet in the clinches of passion and oddly—

Intimate. Unbidden, I blurted, “Hello, darling.”

L’ksal responded by sneezing with three nostrils that covered me like the spume of a breaching whale. Rapid-fire apologies followed as I stood, holding the Eykinao and dripping with something unsavory. “No time for romance, handsome,” Hoshi said, voice crackling with authority. She lifted L’ksal from my arms with ease, and I stepped back, casting around for a towel. Or a car wash. As Hoshi and the techs bustled her off for immediate treatment—top-notch treatment, too, since there were few facilities in known space that could rival Ponte Alus Kyr for its expertise in alien physiologies—the other two Eykinao kept on chattering away. Hoshi herded them after the female, nodding and making thoughtful noises along the way. I told Icky and Perry to see to the satellite and offer whatever assistance the Ponte Alus Kyr people needed. Then I turned to Torina and gestured for us to follow the noisy little group around Hoshi. “Van, this really isn’t any of our business, is it?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s what I want to find out. Again, we show up here, and then these aliens show up right after—”

“You’re elevating paranoia to an artform.”

“I’ll make it my own personal religion if I have to, as long as it keeps us alive.”

A few paces on, she glanced at me sidelong. “That was very sweet, by the way.”

“What was?”

“The way you caught that female when she toppled over. You two looked like you were having a moment.”

“Ah, well, better to have loved and lost and all that, right?”

Icky rolled her eyes, then gave a derisive snort. “Snot bubbles ain’t romantic, Van. Humans are so weird.”

“CIBILAX IS superb at listening when people speak,” Hoshi said to me, quietly, as her people bustled about the female Eykinao. “It’s part of our little gig together. He mostly just listens while I talk to people.”

“Okay. I get the sense you’re telling me this for a reason.”

“I am, since you happen to be here with all your investigative skills. These Eykinao are keeping something from us.”

I glanced at Torina with an I told you so look. “You think they’re up to something, maybe related to that satellite, don’t you?”

“I—what?

No, I don’t think that at all.”

“Oh. Okay, what then?”

“There’s something about her pregnancy they’re trying to avoid saying. Cibilax believes it’s something the Eykinao are almost desperately trying to not say. And that’s fine, except that if it’s something we need to know to help her—” She shrugged. “We’re pretty cutting edge here, but our knowledge of this race is still quite limited.”

I looked at Torina again, but she just shrugged. I turned back to Hoshi. “Okay, we’ll give it a try, I guess.”

Torina and I made our casual way to the two Eykinao who now stood to one side, waving their fronds at one another and—talking furtively, I guess. “Hey, guys. How are you holding up?”

They turned to me. “Holding up?”

“Yes. Holding up. Getting on. How are you doing?”

“We are fine. It is L’ksal that is in distress.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I get that. But emergencies are stressful, so I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay.”

They wiggled their tentacles at one another for a moment, which might have been another aspect of their communicating amongst themselves. “We are fine,” one of them finally said. I raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure?

Because you’re not coming across as fine.”

“We are not concerned about any aspect of L’ksal’s fertility.”

“Hmm. Her fertility?

That’s oddly specific.”

“Nonetheless, there is nothing I can divulge regarding it.”

Now it was Torina’s turn to lift an eyebrow at them. “Nothing you can divulge?

That makes it seem like something is preventing it.”

The two Eykinao again turned to one another and began an intense conversation about— something. And that something concerned me. What was going on here?

I decided to throw a little fuel on the fire. “Full disclosure—we are here as part of an investigation into some major crimes, and you’ve just happened to arrive in the middle of it. Now, I’m a naturally inquisitive guy, so put that together with the fact that you feel you can’t tell us something, and—” I shrugged. “You can see how that would tweak our curiosity.”

“It isn’t relevant to your investigation—”

I held up a hand, forgetting that the gesture probably meant little to these aliens, or might have some other, possibly insulting meaning. But I just pushed on. “With respect, that’s the problem. The only ones who can really decide what’s relevant to our investigation are us.”

“We are not permitted to speak about—” one of them began, but the other one made a sharp hissing sound of warning and took over speaking. “It is nothing of relevance to you.”

I made a show of sighing. “See, this is where I have to stop being plain old Van and become Peacemaker Van Tudor. You have arrived unexpectedly at the same time we’re involved in a sensitive investigation into major crimes with interstellar implications. You clearly have something motivating you beyond concern for your pregnant—uh, individual. You could be here to interfere with said investigation—”

“We—!”

“—and might even be doing so on the say-so of the very parties we’re investigating. That means that you are now persons of interest in that investigation.”

“We have no interest in your investigation!”

“Convince me.”

I knew I had a point and was well within the purview of my jurisdiction to ask questions of the Eykinao. If they told me to take my questions and pound sand, there really wasn’t much I could do. I could try to get a subpoena out of Anvil Dark, but that would eat up valuable time on a case that was, at the moment, flimsy at best. So, it was a bluff, yes. But it was really the only arrow in my quiver, and now that I’d shot it, I’d have to just live with the result either way. In

any case, all I really wanted to know was if these people were a threat to our case. “We… are forbidden to speak of it.”

“Oh. So it’s something cultural, then.”

“It—yes. Yes, that is it.”

Hoshi, who’d been standing nearby and listening, spoke up. “That’s not entirely true, though, is it?” She gestured at the hump on her back. “Cibilax here is an excellent judge of truth and falsehood, and you’re not really giving us the first, are you?”

“We are not obligated—”

“Perhaps not to Peacemaker Tudor here, but you are obligated to us. We’ve agreed to treat your pregnant companion and ensure she remains healthy and well. So you’ll have to excuse me for sharing the Peacemaker’s concerns about you hiding something that obviously relates to this case.”

I gave Hoshi an appreciative glance. The two Eykinao furiously waved their tentacles at one another for a moment, then seemed to sag a little. “When we say we aren’t permitted to speak of it, we mean legally, we aren’t permitted. We are contractually obligated to not do so.”

I narrowed my eyes. “I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make me feel any more comfortable about this. Allow me to again emphasize that we’re investigating something pretty serious, and you’re pushing me to take more direct action, including arresting you so we can question you—”

“That is not necessary. Please, our nondisclosure agreement cannot be violated!

It is a matter of the greatest importance to our people—”

“No.”

It was the other Eykinao who’d spoken, and there was a note of command to the voice. “No. That is enough. The time has come to confront this.”

The other one hissed and frantically wiggled at his companion, but he just went on. “Our people have an extraordinarily low birth rate. Pregnancies are extremely rare, and the few that are successfully taken to term depend on a fertility treatment provided to our people. The nondisclosure agreement pertains to that.”

I crossed my arms. Hoshi actually walked over and joined Torina and I, while her techs and medical staff continued attending to the pregnant alien. “I hate not knowing who I’m talking to. You are—?”

“My identity is Burikum. This is Kalikum.”

“Alright, Burikum. What sort of fertility treatment is covered by an NDA?

Who’s providing it to you?”

The two Eykinao hesitated, then Burikum went on. “We began to die out a little more than two centuries ago, to the point that only one in a hundred or so females would get pregnant in any given year, and then only give birth to sixty or so young. It meant our race was on a rapid decline and would eventually die out. About seventy years ago, though, an off-world medical therapy corporation called Ingano showed up with a fertility treatment that brought the number of pregnancies each year to about one in fifty, and with sixty young born at a time, our race was on a slow increase.”

“They promised us everything,” Kalikum muttured. “What is this treatment, exactly?” Hoshi asked. “It is proprietary. Ingano personnel administer it, but we are not privy to its specific formulation because it constitutes a trade secret. We have sought to license its production, but even offering the most generous terms, Ingano has refused. They claim that giving us the formulation would risk compromising a number of pharmaceuticals they are producing or developing.”

I looked at Hoshi and Torina, who both just shook their heads. I got it. This was shady as hell. This Ingano Corporation might have brought the Eykinao back from the brink, but only just barely. And now they had them suspended there, right on the brink, holding the only lifeline stopping them from tumbling over it and into the abyss. “That doesn’t sound even remotely ethical,” Torina said. Hoshi nodded. “No, it doesn’t. We have lots of projects here that are proprietary, but none of them are involved in any therapeutic applications, and most of them are strictly experimental. We have to provide our data to all of our stakeholders before we can move anything from research and development to production.”

She turned back to the Eykinao. “Wait, they haven’t even given your government access to the data about this… treatment, whatever it is?

So your people can at least evaluate it?”

“They have not.”

I nodded and touched my comm. “Perry, dig up everything you can on a corporation called Ingano.”

“Okay. They are—huh,” he replied. “What?”

“The Ingano Corporation has been under investigation for practices ranging from theft of intellectual property to money laundering for at least twenty years. No charges or convictions, though.”

I glanced at the Eykinao. “There you go, that’s your benefactors.”

Perry went on. “Peacemaker intel further postulates a connection between Ingano and a splinter faction of the Salt Thieves, known as The Fade. But nothing was ever proven. Anyway, the case has been dormant for nearly five years now. There just weren’t enough leads to keep pursuing it, so the Guild moved on to other things.”

“Perry, pull everything you can find about them. Every name, date, place, time, allegation, everything.”

Kalikum, the more reticent of the two Eykinao, waved his tentacles frantically. “We don’t want to anger Ingano or cause them to cease helping us—!”

But Burikum cut him off. “No. It is time for this to be addressed. Many of us know this isn’t right, but those who are willing to speak out against it are a minority, and our voices are mostly silenced. Ingano is manipulating this situation to its advantage by keeping us poised just short of the brink of disaster.”

Burikum turned to me—I think, though it was hard to tell for sure. “We have made every attempt at obtaining details about the treatment. We have attempted to reverse-engineer it, based on its biochemical effects in our females. That only led to loss of life. And we cannot afford to lose anyone. You see that, do you not?

We are… tired. We are being washed away by the years, and no one else cares.”

I shook my head. “I care. We care.” I looked at Torina. “We need to find someone from the Ingano Corporation and ask them some pointed questions.”

“That is doable. One of their ships is currently on our homeworld,”

Burikum said. “You mean here?

In this system?”

“Yes. They are administering the fertility treatments in our southern hive, or were when we departed. They have been there for several days and will likely be leaving soon—”

“Netty, do the preflight, please. Perry, you and Icky get back to the ship. While our friends here are investigating that satellite, we’re going to go and do some investigating of our own.”

“FOR ALL WE KNOW, this treatment is what’s keeping their birth rate down,”

I said in response to a rather spirited debate aboard the Fafnir regarding how much we could, or even should have to do with the Eykinao and Ingano Corporation. “Our focus should be that satellite. That’s our case, not chasing down some corporation,” Icky grouched. She’d been all set to tuck into studying the satellite in detail, since she hadn’t been able to do so when we’d left it with Zenophir. Now, we’d again pulled her away from it, leaving her palpably frustrated. But Torina was on my side. “I’m sorry, but as someone whose homeworld was ravaged by corporate greed, I’m all for chasing these bastards down.”

“You’re assuming they’ve done something illegal, and we currently have no evidence of that,” Perry countered. “Maybe not, but it’s as unethical and immoral as hell.”

“But not illegal.”

“Look—” Torina began, but I cut them all off. “Folks, I don’t often do this, but I’m pulling out my spiffy new Myrmidon rank and telling you that we’re going to go look into this. Maybe we don’t have evidence of anything illegal, but we also have this going on in the very same system where we’ve just brought a key piece of evidence in what most definitely is our primary case.”

“Van, any connection between this and our case is tenuous at best—”

Perry started, but I again cut him off. “Tenuous isn’t nonexistent, though, is it?”

He finally relented. “You’re the boss.”

Icky muttered something darkly under her breath, but I ignored it. One of the few things I’d really retained from the Army was the fact that if the troops were bitching, then everything was fine. If they were dead silent, then something was wrong. But I’d also learned there came a time when everyone just had to shut up either way and get on with the plan. “Van, there’s a ship in orbit around the innermost planet. At this range, details are scant, but it would appear to be a class six or seven fast courier freighter,” Netty said. “That’s it?

That’s the only ship in orbit?”

“The outermost of the two planets is the most heavily populated, but the Eykinao live exclusively on the inner one. If you’re interested in traffic enroute to and departing from the other planet, I can list them—”

“No, Netty, that’s fine. Put us on whatever course is most likely to intercept them if they choose to run in some random direction.”

She did, and we waited. The other ship made no move to break orbit. That presented us with another problem. If we didn’t begin to decelerate soon, then we’d flash past the planet and that ship would be able to then take off in almost any other direction, and we’d likely never be able to catch up to them. But if we did start decelerating, then the chances of them being able to break orbit and flee increased with each passing moment of velocity loss. When it came to maneuvering spaceships, the rules were fairly immutable, as the likes of Newton and Kepler made so clear. It effectively made this a game of chicken, except one in which our opponent had forewarning of our intended move and could act accordingly. So, if we couldn’t change the laws of physics and motion, then we needed to try and change our opponent’s behavior. “Netty, I want to direct a comm broadcast, full spectrum, maximum power, right at that ship.”

“What do you have in mind?” Torina asked. “I’m going to offer some incentive to our friends out there. Oh, and bring the weapons online. Light up the targeting scanners, too.”

“Van, adopting a hostile stance without clear provocation isn’t exactly according to the regs,” Perry said. I kept my gaze on the tactical overlay. “Did my grandfather ever break the regs?”

“Are you really going to justify breaking the rules by saying your grandfather did it, too?”

“So that’s a yes?”

Perry shook his head. “Never mind.”

“The channel is ready,” Netty reported. “Good.” I activated it. “Unknown ship, this is Peacemaker Van Tudor. My transponder is broadcasting my credentials. Be advised that you are intruding on an investigation into the commission of major crimes, potentially including Crimes Against Order. Be further advised that we will be boarding you in order to conduct an inspection of your vessel and everyone and everything aboard it.”

The response was immediate and obviously outraged. “You can’t just go making demands like that—”

“I just did.”

“What is this investigation?

And what evidence do you have that it even remotely concerns our presence here?”

I smiled. I’d been waiting for this very question. “I’m sorry, but that’s a proprietary matter. I could inform you of the details, but only if you’re prepared to sign a non-disclosure agreement—”

The channel closed. “Yeah, I thought that’d get your attention,” I muttered, then went on anyway, even to apparently dead air. “If you do not comply, you will be interfering with an investigation and potentially withholding evidence. We will respond accordingly, up to and including the use of lethal force.”

I heard Perry make a slight strangled sound, but he didn’t say anything. Icky, though, leaned forward. “Lethal force?

See, now we’re talking!”

“THEY’RE BREAKING ORBIT,” Netty announced only minutes before we’d have to start decelerating to intercept them in orbit. Perry shook his head sadly. “If they’d just have kept their heads, they might have gotten away with it, too—”

I’d counted on them not wanting to risk search and seizure, or, for that matter, any interference into what I was now convinced was an especially vile sort of scam. Clearly, Ingano Corporation—or, more likely, the Salt Thieves breakaways called The Fade—had made the Eykinao absolutely dependent on them to maintain a stable birth rate. But it hadn’t addressed

the reason for their declining birth rate, and I wouldn’t put it past these sorts of scumbags to have done something to cause it to decline—something introduced into the water or air, for instance. They were like the worst kind of drug dealers, doing everything they could to get their customers hooked and then keep them there, draining away their money. And their hope. But that sort wasn’t the bravest of criminals, either, so with a Peacemaker suddenly nosing around, they decided that discretion was the better part of what passed for valor. Unfortunately, it would probably throw the Eykinao situation into chaos, but there were lots of other options out there—including one of the foremost biomedical research facilities in known space literally just a couple of light-hours away. They’d have to overcome their xenophobic shyness and try to get some real help for whatever was happening to them. Torina had apparently been thinking along the same lines. “Van, we’re not breaking some rule about not interfering with another race, are we?”

“I hope not. However, let’s consult our expert, shall we?

Perry?”

“The Eykinao are not a pre-superluminal travel race, so no, non-interference regulations don’t apply to them.”

“And there you go,” I said to Torina. “We’re not only legal, but we’re also helpful.”

“I’ve always said you were magnanimous, boss,” Perry said. “Are you angling for a raise?” I asked. “Maybe.”

“Good technique. Carry on, then,” I said with a half-smile, my eyes going back to the screens. We flew on, rapidly gaining ground on the other ship. It really would have been smartest for them to just sit in orbit and then react to whatever we did, but they’d committed now. Still, I was surprised to see just how quickly they were accelerating. “That is one hell of a fast fast freighter,” I noted. “It is. It’s acceleration is considerably greater than any registered ship of that class,” Netty agreed. “Implying it’s not registered?”

“That transponder is only broadcasting standard navigational data. No identifying information.”

In many systems, that was illegal. Nav and ID were the minimums in busy systems like Tau Ceti or around bustling stations like Spindrift and

Crossroads. In less well-regulated systems, though, the rules were looser. Technically, interstellar commerce regulations required nav and ID

everywhere, but that was kind of like weed back home in the states—

technically, it was illegal across the country, but it didn’t see much enforcement in places that had legalized it. “It may not be illegal, but it’s shady as hell.”

“Well, that and the running away,” Perry put in. “Good point.”

I watched as our projected trajectory—and more importantly, the effective range of our weapons—changed on the tactical overlay. Our maneuver cone, the greatest volume of space through which we could maneuver the Fafnir given her performance specs, still encompassed our quarry’s. It was going to be closer than I’d thought, though. They must have one hell of a big engine. If they’d broken orbit even a few minutes earlier, they might have been able to slip away. This presumed there were no more surprises, of course. But all we could do for the moment was sit and watch as our trajectories slowly converged in the inexorable slowness of stellar battle. The weapons were fast. The decisions, faster. The distances made war into a business of boredom spiked with momentary chaos. “You never see this part of a space battle in a movie,” I said, biting off yet another impatient sigh. “You know, the part where nothing happens and everyone just sits and stares at screens as they slowly change.”

“That’d be boring to watch, don’tcha think?” Icky asked, climbing into the cockpit. “Yes, it would. Boring, but still stressful as hell.” I did allow myself a sigh. “I hate this part.”

“Well, you’ll be happy to know I tweaked one of the fuel injectors just now, so we should get another half-percent or so of drive efficiency out of her,” Icky said. I glanced back at her. “You were fiddling with the drive while we’re chasing a bad guy?”

Icky’s reply sounded a little aggrieved, even a bit wounded. “Well, yeah. We don’t run the drive at full power very often, so I don’t get a chance to see how well it runs flat-out. Why, Van, are you doubting my abilities here?”

I shook my head. “No, of course not. Sorry, Icky. I just get antsy at times like this.”

Torina looked up from the weapons panel at me. “Why do I get the sense you’re not handling this as well as you normally do?”

I shot her a sideways glance and shrugged. But I could feel her still watching me, and now Icky and Perry joined in. Even Netty seemed to be paying attention. I surrendered. “All right, fine. If you must know, it’s that incident with the escape pod, the one that shot us with that unexpected rail gun and nearly ended our careers right there and then. It keeps coming back to me, a little more every time we end up in one of these imminent-battle things. It—” I shrugged again. I felt the others exchange glances in a moment of awkward, lingering silence. I felt like I’d just confessed to some cardinal sin and was waiting for the priest to declare my penance—and that’s quite a trick, considering I’m not even Catholic. Torina, though, rescued me from the uncomfortable moment. “For me, it’s when we have to go boarding another ship. Those last few moments, while we’re closing—” She shook her head. “I feel like I’m sitting on a bomb the whole time, one with a timer set to random. I mean, so many things can go wrong—”

Icky chimed in. “It’s cranky machinery for me. I don’t mean ordinary, run-of-the-mill cranky, a reactor that’s gotta be tuned or a drive running kind of rough. I mean machinery that’s in bad shape—running really badly, or damaged, like after a battle. I know how many ways that stuff can kill you, and I can—I don’t know, almost feel it, right down to my toes, that this could all go wrong so fast—”

“You guys and your silly emotions,” Perry said. We all glared at him. “Must be nice to never be afraid of anything,” I said. “If my risk assessment protocols cross certain thresholds, my core programming can enforce drastic changes to my processing priorities. Does that count?”

We all glanced at one another, then answered simultaneously. “No.”

“ONE MINUTE until effective missile range, two for the lasers, and about five for the mass driver,” Netty announced. I nodded. “Okay. Torina, let’s open fire as soon as we can. See if we can convince these guys—”

A bright flash pulsed against the stars, then died. I gasped and braced myself for whatever the hell it was to hit—

But we just sailed serenely on. “Netty, what happened?”

“Do you want the technical explanation, or the simple one?”

“Netty—”

“The simple one, then. They exploded.”

“They—what?”

“They exploded. Blew up. Went poof. Totally kapow—”

“Okay, I get it. Shit. You mean the ship’s gone?”

“Actually, no. That seems to have been an uncontained reactor or drive failure, but only a partial one, then the safeties kicked in quick enough to save the bulk of the ship.”

Icky gave a grim nod. “See what I mean?

Everyone forgets we’re riding around with a continuous thermonuclear explosion strapped to our butts.”

The other ship’s acceleration had dropped to zero, necessitating some hard braking, followed by some backtracking and then another bout of matching velocity to finally get close enough for a detailed look. The Fade ship—I was sure it was a Fade ship—was in one piece, but a gaping hole had been blown in her aft section. The blast had flung debris in an expanding cone, sending fragments of hull plating and structural members on a long trip toward the galactic core. “They weren’t staying on top of their maintenance, I guess,” I offered. But Icky shook her head. “Nah. See the way the top of their aft section bulges slightly?

That’s deliberate. They put an oversized engine in there but probably didn’t upgrade the power plant, and it got overstressed. Just a little wobble in the magnetic containment can go really bad really fast. See what happens when you cheap out on stuff?”

Netty confirmed that the other ship’s power levels were near zero, just a flicker of internal energy that was probably emergency batteries. Netty could only detect a small amount of atmospheric gas in the vicinity, so her internal safety systems must have sealed off their engineering section in time to prevent a total decompression. “They’ve got atmosphere and heat over there, so they might still be alive,” I said. “Assuming they weren’t fried by the neutron burst when that reactor failed, yeah, they could be,” Icky replied. Torina slumped back in her chair and groaned. “Meaning now it’s time for my least favorite part, isn’t it?

The boarding thing.”

I gave her an apologetic look. “Sorry, Torina. You can blame it on those guys.”

She sighed and unstrapped. “Oh, believe me, I will.”

WE DIDN’T ATTEMPT to dock, despite the presence of a universal adapter. Instead, Torina, Icky, and I made the crossing on tethers. We gained entry easily enough and pushed into the ship, weapons raised, ready for a fight. But just as my least favorite part of these sorts of confrontations fizzled when their reactor blew, so too did Torina’s. A pulse of incandescent plasma had pulsed through the ship before the blast doors could seal, and anyone not killed outright by it had been slain by the intense burst of neutron radiation. It had literally fried their brains, like an electromagnetic pulse could destroy electronics. I grimaced at a twisted, blackened corpse just outside the bridge. “Helluva way to go.”

Icky returned a non-committal grunt. “Eh, they were dead before they knew what hit them. Anyway, I want to go back and see how that reactor failed.”

And she was off, pulling herself with all four hands rearward along the main gangway. Without power, there wasn’t any gravity, which led me to note that while she might lumber around normally, in no-g Icky was pretty graceful. It was probably because she’d started working in no-g environments while she was still just a kid, living alone with her dad aboard his refurbished battleship, the Nemesis. I carried on into the bridge—although, given that it wasn’t much larger than the Fafnir’s control space, cockpit was probably more accurate. Before I could start poking at the systems to see what I could learn, though, Torina called me over the comm. “Van, you come back here. I found… something.”

I glanced at what remained of whoever had been sitting in the pilot’s seat, then turned quickly away. “Yeah, this is the old ‘you’d better come look at this’ cliché, isn’t it?

Can’t you just tell me what you found?”

“Actually… no, I can’t. I have no idea what it is.”

“Oh. Alright, then, I’m on my way.”

I found her three compartments back from the cockpit, on the ship’s starboard side. She hung in space in what seemed to have been a crew cabin, warily watching—

A projector?

That was my first thought, but a second look suggested something more like a planetarium. As a kid, I’d been taken to visit the Adler Planetarium on a couple of trips with my grandfather to Chicago, and I had fond memories of the quiet darkness beneath the big copper dome. The Zeiss projector, a big bulbous thing looming in the middle of the huge space beneath the dome, had utterly fascinated me. It could project stars, planets, other celestial bodies, words, and images, painting all of it on the inside of the dome. This seemed similar, projecting images on the bulkhead, but they were choppy and erratic. I could only make out fragments, like brief glimpses of photographs. They gave me the impression of all being mundane, unremarkable scenes that could have been recorded by anyone back on Earth walking along a quiet street. But one image, one that lasted a full couple of seconds, was what caught both Torina and me. It was a monochrome sky, the perspective seemingly that of someone lying on the ground. And the sound, along with that view, was one noise. A bloodcurdling scream. The scream of a dying soul. WE SEIZED THE STRANGE DEVICE, bracing ourselves for it to be something truly horrifying. For now, though, we just bundled it into the Fafnir’s secure hold, then pulled away from the Fade ship—we were convinced it was a Fade ship, even though we had no specific evidence for it—and put some distance between us and it. We’d scoured it thoroughly, but the information

it had coughed up had been pretty thin. Its crew consisted of two humans, a Nesit, and two beings we couldn’t ID. Its computers and their data storage had been auto-scrubbed, probably a fail-safe when the containment failure triggered. Any residual data that might have survived was subsequently wiped away by the neutron burst and EMP that accompanied the disaster. We took anything that might seem useful anyway, including the ravaged data stores, and some medical supplies that we hoped included samples of the fertility treatment being administered to the Eykinao. I glared at the screen, the ship sitting dead center of our scans. “Netty, all weapons free. Pound that thing into slag.”

“My pleasure, boss.”

The Fafnir cut loose with lasers in a sustained burst, slashing through the target with hideous efficiency, and in a little over four seconds, the Fade armor gave in as the ship collapsed in a bright point of expanding gases. “Done,” Netty said with satisfaction. I paused, then said, “Good. Set course for Ponte Alus Kyr.”

“What do you think was happening back there?

With that ship?

It had to be about more than just pushing some sketchy fertility treatment,” Torina said. I shook my head, letting some of the lingering anger drain away. “No idea, beyond it being a crime. Actually, multiple crimes.” I thought about the strange device, and the faint scream it played over a monochrome sky. “And my gut tells me that they’re bad enough that it might just push the Fade to the top of our most-wanted list.”

6

HOSHI GAVE ME A GRAVE HEADSHAKE. “I’m sorry, Peacemaker Tudor—”

“Please, call me Van.”

“Okay, Van, I’m sorry, but we really can’t do anything with the identity currently residing inside that machine. It’s… incoherent. Damaged beyond repair. It really is just fragments of what amounts to memories, but they’re not connected to anything. Not to one another, and not to some core identity.”

“Damn them—I mean, thanks for trying.”

“There is one bit of good news. Well, to the extent that news about this sort of thing can be good, anyway. We have been able to dig out the identity of this person. She is—was—human, a woman named Catherine Quinn.”

“What happened to her?

Can we at least get anything that might help us with this cursed case?”

Hoshi sighed. “If I had to guess, I’d say that machine you found, the one that contained what was left of her, was intended to play back her memories. That includes the moment of her death.”

Silence fell around us as the reality of what we found came into the light. I looked around Hoshi’s lab. I wanted to break something. I wanted to hurt someone. It took me a moment and a supreme investment of willpower, but I finally found my voice again. “Thank you, Hoshi. Can you bundle up everything you’ve got and give it to Perry?”

“I will. Oh, and that includes her DNA profile.”

“It does?”

Hoshi nodded. “Her DNA profile was included in the surviving data. We’ve hived it off into a separate file. It might help you track her down, and bring some sort of closure to anyone who might be missing her.”

I nodded tightly. “Thanks.”

We decided to bring the machine containing whatever remained of the person who had been Catherine Quinn back to Anvil Dark so that Steve—

I caught myself. Steve was no longer in charge of the technical investigation shop, having died during an operation that at least somewhat redeemed him for being a mole for the bad guys, leaking information from the Guild for years. The new boss there was a fussy human woman named Natalia, who seemed to only have two states of being: grumpy and grumpier. Regardless, we’d have Natalia’s people examine it in more detail, along with the other bits and pieces we’d retrieved from the Fade ship. The strange satellite we left with Hoshi since her people had only just started investigating it. She promised me that as soon as they learned anything about it, she’d pass it on. It was going to have to do. I still wanted to hit someone but decided it would be more profitable to go back to Anvil Dark and see about running down and rounding up some bad guys instead. “Van?” Torina said, using that single word to ask many questions. “Sorry. I’ll—”

She touched my arm. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

Her smile was somewhere between sweet and bitter. “Apologize for this anger. It tells me what I know to be true. You’re on the right side, and you’re going to do something about it.”

ANVIL DARK HAD FINALLY CALMED down, settling into a new normal, one in which Master Yotov pretty much called the shots. So far, though, she hadn’t taken advantage of it in any noticeable way, at least. In fact, the Guild seemed to be humming along more smoothly than it had, with some

bureaucratic protocols being dropped and the overall machinery of process grinding along with fewer bumps and bruises. I still had deep misgivings about having one person invested with so much power in an organization as expansive and potentially powerful as the Peacemakers Guild. But I couldn’t really argue with improvements and overall success, either. Perry and I handed over the evil machine containing the last dregs of Catherine Quinn to Natalia, who accepted it and thumbed the evidence receipt in her usual dour way. I was happy to wait for her report, but something she said as I was about to turn and leave her lab caught me. “Now that we have two of these things, maybe we can figure out how they work.”

I stopped. “Two of them?

Wait, you’ve got another one of these?”

She frowned at me. “We do. One was brought in about two weeks ago by Peacemaker Okena. She seized it from… a yacht, I think. One that had been implicated in smuggling antiquities. She arrested the owners of the yacht, a married couple, human.” Her glower hardened. “This is all on record, Peacemaker Tudor. You shouldn’t need me to explain it to you.”

I shrugged but made it aggressive. “And I wouldn’t if I’d known about it in the first place. How did no one connect another stolen identity to the case we’ve been working on for months?”

“Before you go casting around aspersions, Peacemaker, the other example of this device we have in lockup is inoperative. We didn’t know what it did, so we had no reason to inform you.”

“Fine. Okena, you said?

I’ll pull her report.”

“You do that,” she said and brusquely turned away. I missed Steve, but I couldn’t let Natalia leave without setting some boundaries. “Natalia?”

She turned, her brow furrowed in low anger. “What?”

“Courtesy.”

“Courtesy?” Her brow furrowed further, this time in confusion. Good. “Yes. It’s what we, as professionals, give each other. It’s what makes us work as a system, so that whatever crime we’re chasing down can be rooted out and ended. It starts here, with us, acting in tandem. Not as antagonists. Does that make sense?”

“It does.”

“Excellent. I can’t tell you how happy I am to work with you, especially after what happened to Steve.” I smiled broadly, and Natalia paused in her move to turn away. “I, ah, am too, Peacemaker.”

Perry flicked his wings, beak open in mirth. “Good help is hard to find. Welcome aboard, Natalia.”

TORINA LOOKED up from a data slate as I entered the docking hangar where the Fafnir was undergoing one of its regular maintenance regimens. I was mindful—very much so—of Icky’s comments regarding flying around with a thermonuclear explosion happening just a few meters away, so I was happy to not try and skimp on maintenance. Some Peacemakers did, pocketing money they should have been reinvesting in their ships and blowing it on frivolous stuff. This was inevitably followed by them bitching when those same ships broke down and suddenly required far more expensive repairs. “I was just reviewing the list of maintenance tasks,” she said, nodding toward the Fafnir. Several techs and their AI assistants poked around inside access panels and plugged things into data ports. “They’re about half done. How’d it go with—Natalia, right?”

“I miss Steve.”

“He was a turncoat, feeding information to the criminals, Van.”

I spread my arms. “And yet.”

Perry appeared. He wheeled around the Fafnir and swooped in to land on a hand cart nearby. “We made a veiled threat. Really good start to my day, if I’m being honest. Van, I pulled that report from Peacemaker Okena you asked about and sent it to Netty.”

“What’s the gist?”

“That a racing yacht, the Shimmer, showed up in a scan of an alleged meeting on the edge of the Epsilon Eridani system, where some stolen antiquities were being traded. Okena hunted it down and seized it, and arrested the owners, who also happened to be the crew—a married couple, Jules and Mitzy Steiner.”

“Jules and Mitzy?

And they owned a yacht?”

“Right?

You guys pretty much played them that time we scammed The Pathway Unburdened on Halcyon, except these were the real deal. A couple of rich brats with, as your grandfather used to put it, more dollars than sense.”

I smiled. “Yeah, he accused me of that a few times. I remember once that I bought a new computer, a sweet gaming rig—man, it was totally tricked out, high-end GPU, solid-state hard drives, and those were only just hitting the market, an LED kit to light it up. Aw, yeah, she was a sweet piece of hardware—”

Perry cut me off. “What are you, fifteen?”

Torina crossed her arms. “We’re not usually the ones telling you to focus, Van, but… focus.”

“Sorry. It just kinda took me back. Anyway, Perry, you were saying?”

“That Jules and Mitzy were taken into custody, and a few modest artifacts were seized from their ship, nothing especially valuable. And, there was one of those machines, like we found on that Fade ship. But it had been damaged beyond repair and didn’t operate at all. Mitzy and Jules claimed that they just thought it was another artifact, but the fact it bore some damage consistent with impacts from a thousand-year-old stone sculpture from Arminsu-el—that’s where the space hippies come from—suggested they might not be telling the whole truth.”

“They beat the thing with an ancient stone sculpture until it stopped working?”

“Not very elegant, I know. But it worked. The machine got cataloged into evidence, Natalia’s people hemmed and hawed over it for a while, then they gave up and stuck it into lockup.”

“So where are Jules and Mitzy now?” Torina asked. “Oh, they’re here on Anvil Dark.”

I was surprised. I’d have expected their case to have been disposed of and them to have been shipped off to The Hole to serve an appropriate sentence. Perpetrators didn’t normally spend long on Anvil Dark—in that sense, it was more like a police station with temporary holding cells, not a jail or prison. Of course, you get the justice you can afford is another of those universal laws, so their money might have had something to say about it, too. “Can we see them?”

“Sure. I can take you to them right now.”

I glanced at Torina, who just shrugged back. “I’m just standing here watching things get checked off a list. I’m sure Netty can do it just as well.”

Netty abruptly spoke up. “Maybe even better.”

“PERRY, what did I say about overdramatizing stuff?” I said, scowling at the door. He’d brought us to Anvil Dark’s morgue. “You could have just told us they were dead, Perry,” Torina said flatly. “I could have, but you’d have wanted to come here and talk to the doc anyway.”

But something wasn’t right. I hadn’t read Okena’s report in detail, but I surely would have noticed something about the alleged perpetrators of a case dying in Peacemaker custody. Or would I?

“Perry, why didn’t this get written up by Okena?” I asked as we carried on into the morgue. “You’d think a little detail like, we arrested these people and, oops, they both died in custody would warrant at least a mention.”

“If you look at the very end of the report, you’ll notice it refers to Appendix A. If you try to access Appendix A, though, it returns a warning that the record is sealed and accessible only with the authorization of a Master.”

“I guess having people die in custody isn’t something the Guild wants widely advertised,” Torina offered. We stopped at a reception counter. “So how did you find out they were dead?” I asked. “Oh, whenever there’s an Appendix A, and it’s a sealed record, it’s usually something like that. My first guess was that they’d just bought their way into some loophole and had been released, but dead is always a good number two.”

“Do people actually die frequently enough that there needs to be a process for it?”

“Do they die in custody frequently?

No, not frequently.”

I turned back to the counter. Another door stood behind it, labeled AUTHORIZED AND MORGUE PERSONNEL ONLY. I glanced around the counter. “They need a bell here or something.”

A new voice spoke, seemingly out of the air. I twitched in alarm. “Apologies, Peacemaker Tudor. Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“That’s… okay. Whoever you are and, well, wherever you are.”

I assumed the speaker was watching us on some sort of imager and speaking from somewhere else, but Perry looked straight at the counter when he spoke. “Got another one, Marcus.”

“I know, it never gets old, am I right?”

“Perry, who the hell are you talking to?”

“Marcus.”

I glowered. “Perry—”

“Seriously, Marcus. He’s right in front of you.”

I turned. “Where?

Oh, wait. Is he invisible?

Like, from an invisible species?” Now wasn’t that a chilling thought for a crime fighter, a whole race of invisible people. “No, he’s not invisible. Sheesh. He’s right there,” Perry said, jabbing a wing at the counter. “He’s… furniture?”

“Furniture implies something strictly utilitarian, but in a casual sort of way. I prefer fixture. It has a certain sense of reliability and purpose to it, don’t you think?”

“You’re a counter,” I said. “And you’re a human being, but I’d still prefer to call you Peacemaker Tudor.”

“He prefers Van,” Torina said, waving her hand as if she was powerless to stop my adherence to old customs like names. I just shook my head. “Sure, an artificially intelligent piece of furn—er, fixture. Why not?”

“Why not indeed?

Since a counter implies someone staffing it, why not make the counter itself the staff?” Marcus replied. I had no answer to that, mainly because why not make the counter itself the staff was not a question I’d ever spent much time contemplating. I steeled myself for the oddness of it all. “I’d like to see some bodies. Wait, that sounds wrong—”

“Not really. People like to look at dead things. Bit of a hobby, you might say,” Marcus replied. “Ahh. Well, not a hobby for me, at least not yet. Maybe when I’m old and bored. For now, I’d like to see the Steiners. They’re a critical part of our case.”

“Unfortunately, Peacemaker Tudor—”

“Torina’s right. Call me Van.”

“Okay, Van, I’m afraid I can’t release any information related to that case.”

“But it’s related to my case,” I countered. “And not any case, I might add. We’ve got a device that exploits the dying memories of murder victims. It’s a Crime Against Order, or Life, and the Steiners had the second example of this horrific tech. It was on their yacht.”

“I understand, Van, but I’m afraid a Masters’ Seal is quite explicit.”

I gave a theatrical sigh. “So I guess I need to contact my old friend Yotov and get it unsealed.”

“And if you do, I’ll certainly provide access to that file. However—”

I gave the counter a look. “However, what?”

“There is a piece of information retrieved from the deceased that, strictly speaking, has nothing to do with the circumstances or manner of their death,” Marcus said. “At this point, Marcus, I’ll take anything.”

“The male deceased had a comm device implanted in his right ear canal. It was apparently designed to wipe itself upon cessation of his vital functions, but the device was damaged during his death.”

“In his ear canal, and it was damaged when he died?

That’s not a pretty picture,” Torina said. “Indeed. Anyway, after it was removed during the postmortem, it was scanned, and some data was recovered from it. I’ll transfer it to Perry because, as I said, it technically doesn’t fall under the restriction of the Seal. Perry, you know what I want in return.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

I looked from one to the other. “What?

What does Marcus here want from you?”

“Compensation.”

“Yeah, duh. What sort of compensation?

What sort of compensation does a fixture even need?” I persisted. If Perry was making deals on my

behalf, I wanted to know what was at stake. “Polish?

Maybe a little wax?” Torina muttered, snickering. “The only type of compensation that matters to AIs, Van. In fact, we use it as a sort of currency amongst ourselves.”

“Uh—okay. Still doesn’t answer the question.”

“Experiences, Van. I’m going to compensate Marcus with things I’ve experienced.”

WE TURNED the last corner before the Fafnir’s docking bay. When we caught up to Perry, who flew ahead of us in short hops, I resumed our sporadic conversation. “You guys have an entire economy based on experiences?”

“Yeah. I mean, what else is really of value to an AI, right?

We don’t need money, food, fine wine, or anything physical, for that matter, aside from power and hardware. But we each only get to experience things from our own perspective, and for a person like Marcus, that’s pretty much the morgue lobby, twenty-four seven. So, I download some of my more interesting memories to him, and he gives us—well, what he gave us.”

“Which is?” I prompted. “Cusp. Weird term, and frankly, that makes me nervous. I don’t like new things when it comes to crime, boss. That’s usually a bad sign,” Perry said. I was fascinated at the whole concept of this weird little virtual economy where the currency was memories, but Perry’s mention of what we’d gotten in return shifted me back to the case. “Cusp?

Like the edge of something?” I asked. “Yeah. Just the term, whatever that means.”

“I’ve scoured every database I can access, and a few that I shouldn’t be able to, and I’ve found eleven thousand, four hundred and six references to Cusp,” Netty added. Torina snorted. “How do you want to work through them, Van?

Alphabetically?”

“Netty, can we narrow that down a little?” I asked as we reentered the docking bay. The techs had just finished and were packing away their tools. One of them, a rotund alien with the most incredibly sad face, saw us and strolled over with a data pad. “Your scheduled maintenance is complete. Can I get someone to sign off on it?”

Torina immediately spoke up. “I’ll take care of this, Van,” she said, then turned to the tech. “So, let’s go check out all the work you’ve done, shall we?”

“But… we’ve got another job—”

“Then we should start right away, shouldn’t we?” she said, leading the tech back toward the Fafnir. “Frankly, Van, I suspect that of those eleven thousand-odd references, you can discount virtually all of them. The vast majority are just mundane usage of the word—you know, something is on the cusp of something,”

Netty went on. “So we’ve gone from over eleven thousand to none?

There isn’t even one reference that would be worth following up?”

“Now now, I didn’t say that. The word cusp is used in the name of six registered vessels. It’s also the name of a restaurant on Sunward in the Procyon system—you know, one of those ones that don’t give their prices up front?”

“Ahh. Exactly the kind of place Jules and Muffy—”

“Mitzy,” Perry corrected. “Sorry, where Jules and Mitzy might very well dine.”

“It is, sure. Except the data from that implant recovered from Jules Steiner was encrypted, as in military-grade. It took days to break it, apparently—”

“Whaddya mean, amateur mechanic?

That supposed to be some sort of joke?”

Perry and I spun towards Icky’s bellow. She loomed over the tech who’d brought us the sign-off on the work, apparently reacting to something he’d said. His incredibly sad face got even sadder, but tinged with the kind of fear that a huge, enraged Wut’zur can create by yelling. And leaning forward. And yelling some more. Icky really was a master at losing her cool. “I just meant that the drive and power plant are out of spec. Someone who isn’t a qualified professional has obviously been—”

“What?

Not qualified?

” Icky boomed anew, her voice rattling the tools in a nearby tray. I sized up the situation, noting the terrified look on the hapless tech’s face. Casting my eyes to the stars, I stood tall, adopted a look of command authority, and stepped forward with a purposeful stride..

“Icky, please, don’t break the technical staff—"

7

I DECIDED to shelve any pursuit of the mysterious Cusp for now. Running down all of the possible leads Netty had uncovered would take us in about ten different directions and probably take weeks. Instead, I decided to go right to the source and contacted Peacemaker Okena. She’d arrested the Steiners, and seized their ship and its contents, including that cursed machine. If the seal on the records was just intended to preserve the pride and honor of the Guild by hiding prisoners’ deaths, then she should be able to give me details, even if off-the-record. Fortunately, she was on Anvil Dark and readily agreed to a request for a meeting. We met aboard her ship, which, like the Fafnir, was configured somewhere between a basic Dragonet and a full Dragon-class vessel. Okena was a Gajur, the same race as the former Master Yewlo and the cartographer Sussbrid. She greeted Perry and me, Torina having stayed to try and mediate between Icky and the technical crew bickering over which of her upgrades to the Fafnir were legitimate or not. “I understand you’re looking for more information about the Steiner case,” Okena said, gesturing us to seats at her galley table. “I am,” I replied, then went on to explain the connection, the enigmatic machine that connected the Steiners to the Fade, both of them to some third agent, or maybe some of each. “The machine I retrieved was inoperable. It had been sabotaged,” she said. “I know. But they’re clearly the same essential device, with only slight differences. It’s not the machine I’m specifically interested in, though. It’s what happened to the Steiners.”

“They died.”

“I… figured that, yeah, them being in the morgue and all. I was hoping you could fill in the details, since the record is sealed. But, being another Peacemaker hoping for some help in an investigation that’s caught the attention of Master Yotov, I was hoping you could go off-the-record and tell me what happened.”

Perry’s voice hummed in my ear bug. Name-dropping Yotov?

I’m impressed. You’re moving into the big leagues of shitty Guild politics here, Van. I didn’t react or respond, but I did think , whatever works. “They were killed by an assassin while being transported to a holding facility on Outward, on Procyon.”

Perry scoffed. “The Paradise Palace.”

I looked at him. “The what?”

“It’s a minimum-security facility, as in, it’s a luxury hotel you can’t check out of. It’s no coincidence it’s located in the same system as one of the main offices of The Quiet Room. They operate it.”

“The Quiet Room—the main interstellar bank—also operates prisons?”

“Just this one, at least as far as we know.”

“Let me guess, the guests are all white-collar criminals.”

“Like I said, you get the justice you can afford.”

I turned back to Okena. “What happened?”

She gave her version of a shrug. “We disembarked from my ship—I was transporting them—and we were passing through the terminal to enter the facility’s secure reception—”

“A plush hotel lobby with a door that locks behind you,” Perry muttered. “—and it was in that brief time, the maybe thirty or forty seconds it would have taken to cross through the public terminal, that the assassin struck. He appeared out of the crowd, shot both of the Steiners, and then shot himself.”

“So… a murder-suicide, then. Charming. Who was the assassin?”

“We have no idea. Human, but there aren’t any DNA, fingerprint, retinal or other matches in existing databases. The implication is that he might

have come from Earth, since there are still billions of humans there that certainly aren’t listed in any extraterrestrial archives.”

“So this guy, who might have been from Earth and hadn’t managed to previously get ID’d in any database, appears there, at that specific time, kills the Steiners and then himself.”

Okena shrugged again. “I realize it sounds unlikely, which is why I’d have to assume it was a setup. That assassin was absolutely fixed on killing the Steiners, suggesting he was drugged or controlled in some way.”

I looked down at the table for a moment, then back up. “Wait. Are you saying some ordinary guy from Earth might have been turned into a suicidal assassin?”

“No, I’m not saying that. I’m just saying what I said. He was probably from Earth, probably under the influence of drugs, and probably working on someone else’s behalf.”

“We can’t rule out the possibility that they might have been killed for reasons that have nothing to do with our case, Van,” Perry said. Okena nodded. “That’s true. There’s no reason to automatically assume that their deaths were related to your case.”

I laced my fingers together and rested my hands on the table, paused a moment, then nodded. “That’s a good point, yeah.” I started to stand. “Well, anyway, thanks for your time—”

I stopped. “Oh, by the way, what do you know about Cusp?”

She stared back at me for an instant, then shook her head. “Nothing. Should I?”

“Eh, just a word that came up during my investigation. We’re trying to figure out the significance of it, if any. Anyway, thanks again for your time.”

We left and headed back to the Fafnir. “I know bullshit when I hear it,” Perry said once we’d rounded a few turns. “Yeah. She leapt on your point about the Steiners’ deaths not being related to our case just a little too quickly. And she hesitated a little too long when I asked her about Cusp.”

We walked on a bit. I ruminated on what had just happened and finally nodded. “She’s lying, but I don’t know why.”

A few more paces. “Netty, can you—”

“Put a trace on Okena’s ship?

Already done.”

“You know, I sometimes forget that you’re listening to us.”

“I know. Remember when you and Torina were in the kitchen of your farmhouse in Iowa during our last trip there?

You had your comm active.”

“Oh. Uh—sorry?”

“You biologicals and your—physicality.”

“Physicality. I’ve never heard it called that before—” I stopped. “Netty, Perry told me that you AIs wheel and deal using things you’ve experienced as currency. That doesn’t include—?”

“No, of course not. Believe it or not, your—physicality—isn’t worth much.”

“Not worth much?

Okay, hang on a second here—”

“Van, are you trying to convince Netty that that particular experience is valuable enough that it is worth trading?”

“Netty, never mind.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

OKENA LEFT Anvil Dark the following day, which was good, because it took us that long to get the dispute between Icky and the Anvil Dark maintenance crew sorted out. They argued that Icky shouldn’t be making unapproved changes to the Fafnir’s systems that put them out of spec, and she countered with what amounted to tough shit. Ultimately, it came down to my decision. The Guild provides some subsidies to Peacemakers for routine maintenance of their ships, but any damage done by something operating outside of its specs would be exempted. I saw their point, but not only was I reluctant to not take Icky’s side—she was part of my crew, after all—I also decided that having improved performance out in the wild black yonder was better than lesser performance that didn’t violate warranty coverage, or whatever it was. And then the tech tried to sell me extended coverage, for a low annual subscription price. I declined, and we readied the Fafnir for departure just in time. We left Anvil Dark about an hour after Okena, on the same general heading. Her

flight plan had her twisting to everyone’s favorite system for clandestine meetings, Wolf 424.

The largely unregulated system and its many mining operations made such meetings relatively easy and discreet. “Wonder who she’s going to meet with,” Torina said as we got underway. “Could be anyone—an informant, another Peacemaker, a lover—”

I shot him a glance. “Really, Perry?

I thought you AIs were put off by physicality.”

“Hey, it may do nothing for me, but it’s still a thing.”

I felt Torina looking at me. “Physicality?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

We flew on, watching as Okena twisted away. Assuming she had, indeed, traveled to Wolf 424, if we twisted after her, we might end up landing almost on top of her, which might be hard to explain. However, since we had no idea where on the system’s margin she’d twisted, the odds of that happening were astronomically small. Still, I had Netty power us down as much as possible, so that when we twisted in, we shouldn’t immediately come up on anyone’s scanners. We hoped. That disconcerting gut wrench that accompanied a twist came and went, and I immediately pored over the scanners. Using passive scanners only, the display filled gradually, as data sluiced in from further and further away at the speed of light. The active scanners incorporated a twist effect to make their information almost instantaneous, at least out to several light hours. But as the name advertised, they were active and could be detected. So we might have to wait, potentially a while—

Or Okena might have her transponder active, which also incorporated a twist effect. Her signal popped up onto the display about an hour and a half away. That was pretty damned good since, without knowing her precise destination coordinates, we could only try to get close. “Okay, Netty, let’s start a nice, low-power, easy approach—” I started, but she cut me off. “Van, Okena’s transponder has switched to warning mode.”

I turned back to the display. Sure enough, Okena’s transponder was now broadcasting a warning signal, which was distinct from a distress call. The latter was a plea for someone to come and help. The former, though, meant

stay away, there’s something dangerous here. And space battles were at the top of that something dangerous list. “Netty, figure out another twist to bring us to within, say, five light seconds of her ship.”

Netty complied, Torina unlimbering the weapons and running their pre-fire tests. Icky clambered into her station at the front of the galley, where she had more room to spread out than the cockpit jump seat allowed, and where she and Waldo could quickly respond to problems. Perry remained serenely in his place, providing moral support. We twisted again. And landed almost on top of another ship. ACTUALLY, we were almost a hundred klicks away, but in celestial terms, that was right on top. Okena and two other ships had been engaged in a firefight, and she was breaking off, trailing debris. But she’d hammered one of the other ships hard, apparently disabling it. The third ship, the one closest to us, had started a high-energy burn that was obviously intended to pursue Okena. Moreover, they’d lit her up with their targeting scanners, and that was all I needed to see. “Torina—!”

“On it,” she said coolly, manually activating our targeting scanners and illuminating the ship now chasing after Okena. A couple hundred klicks might sound like a long way, but again, in astronomical terms, we were practically touching the other ship. It also took only a few seconds for rail gun slugs to cover that distance, as Torina demonstrated by punching two cleanly into it. Its drive died, and it just coasted, a thin plume of frozen atmosphere forming a wake behind it. I accelerated the Fafnir and closed in. At some point, Okena had twisted away, leaving one more ship still in the fight. Torina loosed a pair of missiles at it, and it responded with a flurry of poorly aimed laser shots back at us. Before it could twist away, the missiles both detonated, bracketing it with their blasts and showering it with shrapnel. Like its two fellows, it went dark, knocked out of the fight. “Well, that was fun,” Torina said, but she kept her eyes locked on the display, ready to deal with any new threats. A few seconds later, the ship we’d rail-gunned exploded. Torina grimaced. “Ouch. I tried to just disable them, honest.”

“I believe you,” I said, veering the Fafnir slightly to avoid the debris from the destroyed ship. We reached the next ship, the one Okena had damaged—it was still intact and appeared only to have lost power. Keeping a wary eye on it, we scanned the hell out of the third vessel, the target of our missiles. It had apparently only been made out of tissue paper and spit, though, because the twin blasts had reduced it to pretty much a misshapen lump of scrap. I didn’t have faith in its antimatter fuel containment holding out for long, so we stayed away. “You were savage today, woman,” Icky said, poking her head into the cockpit. Torina shrugged. “I really wasn’t trying to be.”

Perry cut in. “They were attacking a Peacemaker. The use of lethal force was justified. Just sayin’.”

That left the closest ship, the damaged-but-intact one. We matched velocity with it, then closed in to board. Torina sighed and unstrapped. “Have I mentioned I hate this part?”

Icky scoffed. “Just gun down a few more bad guys. It’ll make you feel better.”

I WINCED as a slug clanged off the bulkhead beside me, and ducked back. Whoever had the slugger had us choked into the rear of the ship, unable to move forward without exposing ourselves to fire. Torina and I had our opponent just as pinned down, but it left us in a stalemate. All we could do was take potshots at one another, while continuing to demand that our opposition stand down and surrender. We got no reply except more slugs. “How much ammo does this idiot have?” Torina muttered over the comm, leaning around the corner and firing a burst from her own slugger, then ducking back as the return fire snapped back at her. “At least that much,” I said, taking my own shot—and taking more fire in return. “Okay, make it at least that much.”

We’d left Perry aboard the Fafnir, but we might need him for his dazzle effect, whereby he radiated noise across the EM spectrum, flooding the UV, visible light, infrared, and even radio-frequency bands with a cacophony intended to blind and confuse an opponent. But that was also risky for Perry, since the targets normally started just shooting wildly, meaning that although he probably wouldn’t be hit, he might. So it was a last resort, particularly since we had an ace up our sleeve. Or, actually, all four of our sleeves, because Icky had discerned that the external access panel for the ship’s electronics bay had been blown off, meaning she could reach the interior access and enter the ship that way. And she did, just as I was summoning the courage to take another shot or two. A sudden shout and two gunshots slashed through the thinning air, which was leaking through cracks and rents in the hull. Icky bellowed loud enough that it hurt over the comm, then I heard a loud crack, followed by silence. Cursing, I peeked around the corner where I’d been sheltering, saw nothing, and charged, switching The Drop for the Moonsword. I heard Torina following right behind me. I slammed to a halt to find Icky standing over a—human, I think, although with his helmet crushed in on one side and the resulting explosion of his head against the visor, it was hard to be sure. Icky hefted her sledgehammer. “Finally get to put a notch in the handle,” she said, grinning at me through her visor. It made her look utterly terrifying. “Okay, Icky, you do you,” I said, sheathing the Moonsword. “Perry, you guys can dock now. We’ve secured this tub.”

“On our way.”

As the Fafnir docked, we checked out the cockpit. To our delight, everything hadn’t been wiped from the data stores. In fact, it seemed that, for whatever reason, the crew hadn’t even tried to delete anything. It left us with the opposite problem to the one we normally faced—too much information, instead of nowhere near enough. Perry appeared and immediately plugged into a standard data port. For the next few seconds, he remained silent, scanning the contents of the ship’s archives. “It looks like Okena showed up, but as though she wasn’t expecting a fight. These guys managed to land a couple of hits, then she returned fire and fled, which is about when we showed up,” he said. “Okay. I guess it makes sense to run from people shooting at you, but what was she doing here in the first place?”

“No idea. All their log records is that they were to be here at a particular time—”

He cut off. I waited. “Oh.”

I frowned at him. “Oh?”

“Yeah. Oh. These guys were definitely here specifically to take out a Peacemaker. When it turned out to be Okena, they apparently got flustered and flubbed their attack.”

I let out a slow breath. “I’m not going to like where this is going, am I?”

“Here, I’ll show you,” Perry said and lit up a terminal with a document. Torina, Icky, and I all peered at it. Torina spoke first. “Oh.”

Icky was next. “Yikes.”

I nodded to both of them. “Yeah.”

Perry had displayed an encrypted document, specifying a bounty of 1.3

million bonds for anyone who could prove that they had killed Mark Tudor, my grandfather. However, his name had been conspicuously X’d out, and a new one put over top of it. It was mine. “IT LOOKS like this kill contract was originally created years ago, while your grandfather was still an active Peacemaker. As near as I can tell, it was effectively reactivated only three days ago, with your name subbed in,”

Perry said as I settled back into the Fafnir’s pilot’s seat. “Reactivated by whom?

For that matter, who put out the damned contract in the first place?” I snapped. “No idea to your first question, and likely The Stillness for the second. But your grandfather did cross other bad guys, so it might have been someone else.”

“And there’s no record of where this thing came from?”

“Oh, it came from a site on a shady-as-hell comm net, sort of the interstellar equivalent of the dark web on Earth. And while it might be called a contract, it doesn’t do regular contract things, like specifying who all the parties are and how to contact them. You’ll note the lack of whereases and heretofores and parties of the first parts.”

I sat back. I heard Icky and Torina stowing the data modules in the Fafnir’s secure storage and just waited for them to finish up. There wasn’t much else worth salvaging from the crippled ship, so we decided we’d just finish off the two that hadn’t yet blown themselves apart and return to Anvil Dark. “Whoever these guys were, they were expecting me to show up for this meeting,” I said. “That’s how it looks, yeah,” Perry agreed. Which left a bunch of ominous questions, like, why had Okena come to this meeting?

What had she been expecting to happen?

Why hadn’t I been enticed into coming here instead if I was the target?

“One point three million bonds. That somehow doesn’t sound like much,” I said. Torina pushed past me to sit in the copilot’s seat. “There there, Van. You’re worth a lot more than that. If I ever put out a contract on you, I’ll make sure it’s worth at least twice that.”

I blew her a kiss. “I’ve never felt more special.”

“Altering the existing contract on your grandfather in such an obvious way was a message. They could have just replaced his name with yours, but it was quite deliberate to leave his in place, crossed out,” Netty said. “The question is, what is that message?” Torina said, strapping in. “That we’re going to hold you responsible for our grievances against your grandfather, I guess,” I offered. “Actually, Van, you’re right—that 1.3 million is a lot, but it’s not a lot for killing a Peacemaker, which is very much a capital crime. I think the relatively low sum is also a message,” Perry said. I nodded. “Yeah, a contemptuous one.”

“Do you think they wanted you to find this?” Torina asked. I thought about it but had to shake my head. “Nah. There were too many things that had to be left to chance. More likely these guys, whoever they were, got the contract off this celestial dark web and concocted a plan to cash in on it. But the meeting somehow got fouled and Okena showed up

instead, and these guys just weren’t smart enough to wipe anything before they were, you know, blown to bits.” I glanced at Icky. “Or had their heads caved in.”

“Already put the notch in my handle,” she said, grinning. “You’re really enjoying that, aren’t you?

Maybe a little too much?

I mean, you did literally beat a man to death.”

“Yeah, Van, you’re right. Next time, I’ll just wait for him to run out of ammo and hope none of you get killed in the process.”

I sighed. “Point taken. Sorry, Icky. Maybe just—a little less glee in the wake of mortal combat going forward, huh?”

She inclined her head. “Fine. Can I still keep the notches?”

“Sure. Wait, notches?”

Icky blinked. “I’m not only friendly, but I’m also an optimist.”

Torina’s brows went skyward at that. “You’re a ball of sunshine, Icky.”

Icky preened. “See?

Told you.”

“Okay, now that we’ve established Icky as a source of joy and killing blows, let’s make some slag, shall we?” I said. We separated, backed away, then destroyed both of the remaining ships with laser bombardments, each target collapsing inward with a spectacular bloom of light. I spoke the order. “To Anvil Dark, Netty, and burn all the fuel you want.”

AT LEAST, returning to Anvil Dark had been the plan, but as soon as we twisted into Gamma Crucis, the station’s home system, we received a targeted message with me as the specific addressee, sent by none other than Lunzy. “Van, per Master Yotov’s orders, you’re to proceed to Spindrift. When you arrive in the system, make contact on the comm channel I’m sending along with this message. Master Yotov has decided to fund the final upgrade of your ship to Dragon-class, something the Guild has contracted out to a couple of shipyards. One of them is at Spindrift, and they’ll be waiting for you with the requisite upgrade modules.” She curled her lip. “Somebody’s been bringing apples to the teacher.”

She ended on a smile, and her message terminated. I sat back. “Well.”

“What was that crack about apples?” Icky asked. “Uh, old Earth thing, about how students try to suck up to teachers by bringing them apples and stuff.”

“She thinks you’re sucking up to Yotov?”

I shrugged, but Torina answered. “No, she probably doesn’t. But there are others who might.” She turned to me. “Van, why do you think Yotov’s trying so hard to associate you with her?

Is it to give you credibility and clout—or to undermine you?”

I shrugged again. “That, my dear, is a very good question. But I’m not going to turn down hundreds of thousands of bonds worth of upgrades done for free.”

“As long as we don’t get there and find it’s all been done on liens. That’ll be a definite red flag,” Perry put in. “Yeah. Beware Greeks bearing gifts and all that, right?”

I felt Torina and Icky both look at me. “You know what, guys?

Just make a list of all the Earthly references and things I say that you don’t get, and we’ll do them all at once, weekly, okay?”

8

“THIS STUFF IS all paid for?

It’s all free and clear, with no liens?” I asked. The shipyard’s project manager, an AI-driven robot apparently named Torque, made an affirmative sound. “We received the stuff from Anvil Dark a day or so ago, all prepaid, no liens. Once we get it installed, it’s all yours.”

“Huh.”

I looked out across the shipyard from the big module that served as its hub. Located in a Lagrange point a few million klicks from Spindrift itself, it was a sprawling affair of smaller modules connected by spindly arrangements of struts and gantries, snaking cableways, and conduits. I could see three ships in various stages of upgrade or completion, including one huge bulk carrier that was actually being assembled nearby. By comparison, the Fafnir, berthed alongside, looked inconsequentially tiny. I scanned the upgrade list. Netty, Icky, and Perry had already scrutinized it and declared it more than satisfactory, but as the Fafnir’s registered master, the final go-no-go decision was mine. I had no reason to hesitate. The upgrades would not only make the Fafnir much more potent, but they would also make her far more livable. The upgrades called for the addition of an entirely new crew habitat module, an expanded cockpit, a full cargo module with hard points for add-on containers, six more hard points for weapons upgrades, and an additional engineering module that would expand her fuel capacity and provide more system redundancy. I had to check carefully, though, to make sure her length didn’t exceed the size of the barn in Iowa. The automatic digger

we’d deployed there had finished its job, expanding the work pit for accessing the underside of the ship in anticipation of her eventual upgrade to a Dragon. It would suck to try to land the Fafnir there, only to find out she was just a few centimeters too long. But her new length was fine, being nearly a meter shorter than the available space. That meant this was as much as we could upgrade her and still use the barn, at least without rebuilding it. I hesitated anyway. I couldn’t believe that Yotov had decided to bankroll this upgrade out of the goodness of her heart. And, yet, it at least appeared that that was exactly what she’d done. The official line in the Guild authorization document that justified the expenditure said, in effect, this guy is doing good and important work and needs a more capable ship to keep doing it—but was that all it was?

Or did she want something in return?

There had to be some sort of catch, but it must be a pretty “soft” one. If there’d been liens on all these upgrades, even for parts of their value, that would mean she wanted to retain leverage over me. But this really came across as a gift for doing good work, which made it almost impossible to turn down. I sighed. Yotov was a clever and subtle—even insidious—player, which made her far more dangerous than the sorts of guys who’d wanted to claim that bounty on me only a couple of days ago. It was easy to fight back against them. How did you fight back against generous favors?

To hell with it. I could stand here second-guessing, and second-guessing my second-guessing all day. I thumbed the authorization, and the robotic project manager gave me an actual thumbs-up. “We’ll get to work on this right away. It’s going to take about three or four days to complete all the work. Were you planning on staying here?

We do have transient accommodations, although they’re rather austere. We also have a three-times-daily shuttle to Spindrift.”

“Well, Icky, my engineer, has already made it clear that she’s sticking around, probably to look over your shoulder and get in your way. Please, just do your best to humor her.”

Torque actually laughed. “That’s no problem. We have a whole system for handling nosy engineers who want to babysit their ships.”

“Not your first instance of this, huh?”

“No, it is not.”

We ended up with Torina, Perry, and me making the trip to Spindrift to spend a few days there, being low-key and taking what amounted to a break. As we left, Netty spoke up. “Before I go under the knife, just know that I love you guys,” she said. I glanced at Torina. “Really?

Under the knife?”

“Well, I am going to be taken apart and reassembled.”

“I think you’ll be fine, Netty.”

“Of course I will, Van. I’m a machine. Still, a little concern would go a long way.”

I threw myself against the bulkhead, arms splayed out in a hug. “We love you too, Netty. Don’t worry, you’ll pull through.” I stepped back. “There, how was that?”

“Delivered with a hint of insincerity, if you ask me.”

I HAVE TO ADMIT, Spindrift was not a place I’d normally choose to vacation. The station was crowded, dirty, noisy, and riddled with crime. “Reminds you of Iowa?” Perry asked me, slyly. “What?” I asked, bewildered. He waved a wing in an airy gesture. “The crime. You said your farm was so boring it was criminal, and this is criminal, so, you know. Same thing, right?”

“Bird. I was exaggerating. This is as unlike Iowa, and Elkader, and Pony Hollow as you can get.”

Perry allowed me a mechanical sniff. “Huh. Then I apologize to everyone in Pony Hollow.”

“I’ll tell them at the next town meeting,” I said, as Perry snickered. We moved along, and from the time we disembarked from the shipyard’s shuttle until we reached our accommodations in the least skanky hotel aboard Spindrift, I saw at least a half-dozen petty crimes going down. I ignored them. For one, the Cloaks, Spindrift’s breathtakingly corrupt security force, had jurisdiction. I technically did, too, but that leads to the second fact—I wasn’t here to be a Peacemaker trying to counter pickpocketing and minor scuffles that only technically constituted assaults. As soon as I did, I’d blow my cover, and I’d have a Peacemaker sign on my

back for the rest of my stay. And, considering that someone out there was willing to pay 1.3 million bonds to put a bullet or knife through that sign, it just wasn’t worth it. We’d just reached our rooms, though, and had only started the distasteful process of finding out exactly what grime lived where, when I got a call on the comm. It was a dedicated and encrypted Peacemaker channel. I glanced at Torina, who’d been studying a drinking glass with a critical frown. She shrugged. “Peacemaker Tudor here.”

“Van Tudor, it’s Sussbrid.”

I just stared for a second. Sussbrid?

Who the hell—?

Oh. Right. The cartographer who’d recommended my promotion to Myrmidon. What did she want?

“Oh. Hi there. What can I do for you?”

“Meet with me.”

“Uh, sorry, but my ship is in pieces and I’m kind of stuck on Spindrift.”

“I know. Go to docking port nineteen-alpha-one. You’ll meet a workboat there that will bring you to me.”

I glanced again at Torina and Perry, but they both just returned shrugs. “Sure, I can do that. Mind if I ask what this is about?”

“Information that pertains to your case. Information I think you’ll find quite valuable.”

I gestured for the others to follow me back toward the door to our supposed luxury suite. “We are on our way.”

THE WORKBOAT, which was piloted by an AI, was another shuttle. Operated by an AI and normally used to ferry passengers between Spindrift and ships that couldn’t or didn’t want to dock, it was apparently also available for charter services. It took us in the direction of a big bulk-gas carrier, a massive contraption consisting of a dozen huge spheres held together by a web of gantries, an enormous drive stuck on one end, and the crew hab and control module on the other. I assumed we were going to dock with it—

which would be odd, because why would Sussbrid be aboard the expansive cargo ship?

It made me uneasy, particularly since I’d only brought the Moonsword under my coat. Torina had a small hand slugger concealed inside her own coat, and we had Perry, and—that was it. Torina must have noticed me tensing up and gave a quick nod. “Yeah, maybe we accepted this jaunt a little too quickly.”

I said nothing and narrowed my eyes at the workboat’s emergency panel. Since it didn’t require a pilot, the only thing available was a basic set of maneuvering controls and nav instruments. It was intended for a passenger to take over in an emergency, if the AI somehow became disabled. But there was no override, so you couldn’t just take over. I readied myself for trouble. If this was a setup, then whoever was behind it had masterfully social-engineered me into completely dropping my guard. “Perry, can you somehow access this thing’s systems, give us control if we need it—?”

“We won’t.”

“What?”

“We won’t need it.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I’ve just been talking to this thing’s AI. Pretty cool guy, by the way, for someone who spends his time flying around Spindrift. Anyway, I persuaded him to let us in on where he’s taking us.”

“And where would that be?”

Perry pointed a wing at the display above the emergency panel. “Right there.”

At first, I just saw the roughly midships section of the gas carrier ahead of us that was slowly looming closer. We were on the far side of it relative to Spindrift, so the station wasn’t visible, and neither was the system’s star, so we were plunged into the big ship’s shadow. I was about to ask Perry what I was looking at when Torina leaned forward. “That’s another ship. See, right there, tucked in between those two big spheres?”

I peered at where she’d indicated, and yes, I saw it. A small, sleek ship of a design I’d never seen before sat discretely amid the struts and spars that held the gas carrier together. “That’s a Wyvern,” Perry said. I frowned. Wyvern. I’d heard the name a few times around the Guild, but as far as I knew, Peacemakers didn’t use the Wyvern anymore. “I thought those things were all taken out of service. Weren’t they…

poorly designed or something?” I asked. “Yes and no. They emphasize speed and maneuverability over armor, but they also skimped on crew space and ergonomics, so they’re not really suited for flights of more than a day or two duration. They were all repurposed,” Perry replied. “Repurposed into what?”

“Do you remember the Righteous Fury?”

“Yeah, the Peacemaker Guild’s battlecruiser that wants to pretend it’s a police boat.”

“And failing at it,” Torina put in, smiling wryly. “The remaining Wyverns were repurposed as auxiliaries, carried aboard the Fury for miscellaneous duties suited to small ships, close protection of the ship, armed excursions, that sort of thing.”

“So, fighters. And the Fury is their carrier. It’s like my dad and his Super Hornet flying off the Truman.”

“Well, yes, but don’t call them that. The Fury is a comprehensive enforcement vessel and the Wyverns are its auxiliary craft. You gotta stick to the approved scripts or you make people nervous.”

“Because the Peacemakers aren’t supposed to have a battlecruiser loaded with fighters.”

“That’s right. The Guild isn’t a military organization.”

I watched as we sidled up to the Wyvern. The Righteous Fury was presented as just a bigger gunboat that the Guild can use to enforce the peace—a thin lie, if it worked as a lie at all. But the fact it carried a wing of

—auxiliary vessels, apparently, but fighters by any other name—suggested that it might be more than that. My father had always told me that aircraft carriers were for projecting power. You didn’t keep them close to your own shores, you kept them close to the other guy’s, making him respond to you. It suddenly struck me that the Fury was part of something bigger—

something that I could sense but couldn’t see. I wondered how much whatever it might be was implicated in our case—

“Van?

You okay?”

I turned to Torina. “What?”

“You suddenly got this really concerned look and went all distant. Something wrong?”

The workboat clunked against the Wyvern, and the docking adapter locked and sealed. “I’m not sure. Stay tuned to this channel for updates, though.”

I DIDN’T HAVE time to brood over shadowy hints of vast, conspiratorial schemes, however. Sussbrid was waiting for us. She beckoned us into a space even smaller than the Fafnir’s galley had been, and that apparently served several functions—sleeping, eating, storage, and common space all in one. It was a crew hab about the same size as the bathroom in my old apartment in Atlanta. Wait. Bathroom. Surely it wasn’t part of this space, too—

But it wasn’t. I saw a small booth, just big enough for personal issues, that also apparently acted as shower. “Is there any reason we couldn’t meet aboard the workboat?” I asked Sussbrid after introducing Torina. She already knew Perry. “I mean, it’s not exactly roomy either, but we wouldn’t have to get quite so friendly over there.”

“There’s a very good reason. The workboat isn’t guaranteed to be secure. This ship is,” Sussbrid replied. “Why are you still flying this thing, anyway?

A Peacemaker of your stature must be able to get a Dragon, or at least a Dragonet if you want one,” Torina said. “I suppose. But I prefer old Slick here.”

I gave her a bemused glance; I could clearly see something flickering on the strange monocle she wore. “Slick?”

“That was his name when I took her over from my mentor, Hugo Groshenko.”

“Oh. Groshenko was your mentor. Good to know. But, still, you’d have thought he’d have named it something Russian.”

“Slick was apparently someone he knew back on Earth. He never explained any further, and I never asked.”

“You said his name, not her name. Aren’t ships always referred to as she, the feminine?” Torina asked. “Ah, yes. This comes up a great deal. I don’t pretend to understand all the rules of Earthly languages such as Russian, but Groshenko insisted that he was the correct pronoun, so who am I to argue?

Anyway, I did not ask you to come here to discuss the gender of ship names.”

“So I gathered. I can’t help but notice that you’ve also gone to great lengths to conceal this little meeting. Does the crew of this gas carrier know that you’re nestled halfway into their ship’s structure?”

“I paid them for the privilege, so I would think so. And as for the issue of secrecy—well, that would seem to bring us quite nicely to the point, wouldn’t it?” Sussbrid replied. She produced a plain data module, one that could have come from any trashy kiosk on the Spindrift concourse. “This contains information I believe you’re seeking.”

I looked from it to Sussbrid. “What information would that be?”

She handed it to me. “This is everything the Peacemaker Guild knows about Cusp.”

I SAT BACK ONCE we’d reviewed the data Sussbrid had given us. “That’s everything?” I asked. “Everything that I could find. And I have considerable access, so if there is anything else, it’s being kept somewhere… non-standard.”

“That means hidden,” Perry said. “Thank you, bird.”

“My pleasure, boss,” Perry said, looking smug. I turned back to Sussbrid. “It’s—fragmentary.”

“That’s because what we know is fragmentary. We aren’t even sure exactly what Cusp is—a place, a person, an object, an AI, we just don’t know.”

The information hadn’t been as revelatory as I’d first hoped, but it still helped fill in the picture. It was essentially a list of five different identities, parts of which were found by Peacemakers on several different substrates, the generic term for the hardware used to host and run them. No matter its

form, though, it was this substrate that required osmium to operate correctly, although it still wasn’t clear why. It had something to do with the specific properties of that metal, but what it was, no one had yet figured out. Except for the bad guys, of course. But we, the good guys, could only speculate about why osmium was so crucial to making this work. Still, it provided a hard lead—osmium was something physical, so it had to come from somewhere, then be carried by something to somewhere else. That meant it left a trail to follow. Of course, that lead right now took us back to Pluto, where the instance of Netty aboard the Iowa could confirm that the mining operation was still going on there. More to the point, that enigmatic battlecruiser was still hanging around there, too. Someone on the other side had apparently also realized that the osmium supply might be their greatest vulnerability and wanted to protect it. I pressed my lips together. I wanted to get at that operation on Pluto, but in order to do so, we needed more firepower, and the willingness to use it. The Iowa was still grossly underarmed, and the other two capital ships that had helped us previously, the ones belonging to Icky’s father and Schegith’s cousin, were problematic. It was one thing to ask them to support us against ships the size of the Fafnir, but quite another to expect them to go into battle with a heavily armed warship—

“Huh…”

The others glanced at me, and Torina smiled. “He’s doing it again.”

“Doing what?” Sussbrid asked. “Starting to have an idea.”

Sussbrid returned a bemused look. “Starting to have an idea?”

Torina nodded. “It’s how Van works. He has brilliant ideas, but in increments, a little bit at a time.”

“I prefer the term methodical,” I said, then decided to move on. The best way to prevent my brilliant ideas from going anywhere was to actually think about them. When it came to being creative, my subconscious mind was the expert. I was content to let it simmer away, like a stew in a crockpot. “Anyway, this is better than nothing, but—” I stopped. “Oh, did some more of that idea click into place?” Sussbrid asked, but I shook my head. “No.” I pointed at the screen. “The Peacemakers involved in these five files related to Cusp. See?

Okena’s name appears in two of them.”

“Actually, it gets even better. Since we apparently suspect Okena now, then you might be interested to know that two Peacemakers each involved in the other three cases have worked with her on at least another dozen cases.”

I turned to Sussbrid. “What do you know about Okena?”

She raised a blue-scaled hand and touched her chin. “Okena.” I saw data flash on her monocle. “Oh, yes. Okena. A steady performer, reliable, delivers consistent results.”

“Wow. That is the most underwhelming assessment of someone I’ve heard in a long time. You could have been describing—I don’t know, some old farm horse.”

Sussbrid shrugged. “She is unremarkable. She has solved numerous, relatively small cases on her own, and has contributed to solving some bigger and more complex ones. Her performance assessments rate her as slightly above average. She is by no means incompetent, but she likewise isn’t… anything to write home about?

Is that correct?”

I smiled. “You got that from my grandfather, didn’t you?”

“Among more than a few other witticisms, yes. Anyway, you believe that she might be involved in this Cusp matter somehow?”

“I think she knows more about it than she was letting on. And there’s the issue of a contract we found. My grandfather’s name was on it—a kill contract—and mine was inserted, but his wasn’t erased,” I said. “A message,” Sussbrid concluded. “How much are you worth?”

“One point three million bonds.”

“Another message. High enough to be serious, but not enough to start a war. I’ll pull her records and find out where she was going. What star?”

Sussbrid asked. “Wolf 424,” Torina said. “I’ll dig into it.”

I sat back and crossed my arms. “I have a question.”

Sussbrid tilted her head, grinning. “Why am I helping you.”

“You did kind of come out of nowhere. And, as far as I know, you’re a cartographer, charting the minds and motivations of others, not a field operative.”

“I am also a Peacemaker, Van, who happens to be dedicated to doing what is right. I learned that from Groshenko, and yes, from your grandfather. I consider them both role models.”

Her grin turned to a conspiratorial smile. “You also came highly recommended by Lunzemor Nyatt, whom I happen to consider not just a colleague, but a close friend.”

“Where is Lunzy, anyway?

We haven’t heard from her in a while.”

“You’re not the only one to chase down major cases, Van, or make long twists.”

She left it at that, in a way that suggested I didn’t need to, and probably didn’t even want to know any more. I left it, and moved on to a final question. “Does Yotov know you’re here?” I asked. Sussbrid placed a hand on her chest in a very human gesture. “She does not.”

“So… you don’t trust her?”

She shrugged. “When you spend much of your life peering into other peoples’ feelings and motivations, you come to realize how complex, nuanced, and sometimes unpleasant they are. I don’t trust anyone, until they’ve earned it. And that includes Masters.”

“But you trust Van,” Torina noted. Sussbrid looked at me as she answered. “Ah, well, Mark Tudor’s grandson is a special case. And if that wasn’t enough, Groshenko explicitly told me I could trust you, and I trust him. And if even that wasn’t enough

—”

She leaned forward. “I’ve done some peering into that mind of his, and I like what I found there.”

“I appreciate that,” I said to her. But she leaned back again. “You may now, but I think you’ll come to regret being a good and honest man, Van Tudor. Life is always so much easier for the bad guys.”

9

WE TOOK the workboat back to Spindrift, mimicking having flown out to the gas carrier and back. Perry confirmed that the AI pilot wouldn’t say anything about our trip, although he had to sweeten the deal by offering a copy of my very first view of the Fafnir, that rainy night in Iowa so long ago. “I’m not sure I like having what amounts to videos of me being traded around like loose change,” I said as we disembarked back into Spindrift. “Why not?

It’s hilarious, Van. You should see the look on your face when I turn those lights on. In fact, I can play it for you if you’d like, once we get to a terminal—”

“That’s fine, Perry. I was there, remember?”

We returned to an almost-skanky suite on one of the upper levels, the rooms filled with a mix of tattered charm and the occasional dust bunny. After Perry did a sweep for bugs or listening devices—and, yes, I was starting to give into my lingering sense of paranoia—we settled down to decide on our next move. “We’ve got two choices, the way I see it. Either we go back to Pluto and try to bust open that illegal mining operation, or we start digging into Okena.”

“Well, even upgraded to a full Dragon-class and loaded with all the armaments we can get our hands on, we’d still be no match for that attack cruiser,” Perry said. “Agreed. So Pluto’s out, at least for now. That leaves Okena. Perry, once Netty’s back online, we need to do some discreet digging around her personnel file,” I said. “Way ahead of you, boss. I downloaded it before we left Anvil Dark, just in case we needed it. Which, lo and behold, we do.”

Torina gave him a narrow-eyed look. “You downloaded her personnel file?

How did you get your hands on it?”

“Remember Max?

The receptionist in the Keel with the many arms?”

I did remember. Max was a hybrid creature composed of several distinct individuals who nonetheless shared a mind. It gave him an unparalleled ability to multitask, making him the perfect administrative assistant as long as you didn’t have to buy him gloves. If that need arose, you’d go bankrupt. “What about him?”

“He owed me a favor. So, I asked him to pull her file, which means that it will show in the audit log as having been accessed by him. And it’s not unusual for Max to pull personnel files for all kinds of reasons.”

“What sort of favor?” I asked. “I hope it didn’t involve another snippet of my life.” I mean, seriously, the idea of these AIs swapping things they’d experienced as a sort of barter system creeped me out. But Perry shook his head. “Not this time, no. Your grandfather and I helped out a member of Max’s family, so he told us that if we ever needed help and he could provide it, just to ask. So I did.”

“Good of him, to honor a promise made to Van’s grandfather,” Torina noted, pulling off a boot, then experimentally putting her foot on the suite’s carpet and lifting it again to inspect her sole. “And, there it is. My sock is now noticeably dirtier. Yuck.”

She stuck her boot back on. “I think I might head back to the shipyard and stay there. It may be austere, but it’s got to be cleaner than this.”

I looked around and sighed. The dreary little suite had begun draining away my energy, too. Everything was sepia, like an old, faded photograph. Even the air seemed tired. “Yeah, let’s do that. Before we do, though, let’s take a look at Okena’s record. Perry, you’re on.”

“SHE’S BEAUTIFUL,” I said, stopping to admire the Fafnir squatting on the shipyard’s inspection pad. Beautiful—and paid for. She’d gained five meters in length. Technically, it should have been eight, but because of the size constraint posed by the barn, the shipyard had had to reposition some components, taking things that should have added length and having them add girth instead. As a result, she was a little chunkier than most Dragons, but she also seemed a little more menacing for it. She now squatted on three pairs of landing struts instead of two, which somehow made her seem even bigger. “Come and check out the interior,” Icky said, sounding like a new parent showing off their child to someone. Torina and I exchanged a smile and followed her along the pressurized accessway leading to her airlock. It was like stepping into a different ship. The engineering bay was now large enough for two or three people to enter without stooping or being crushed against one another. Her crew habitat now had four compartments, a pair stacked to port and another pair to starboard. They were likewise big enough to feel less like repurposed broom closets and more like actual rooms. Her galley and common space had been expanded, although not as much as on, say, Lunzy’s ship, with its little sitting room and built-in fireplace. It was here that we’d skimped on the extra length, sacrificing extra crew space for a new cargo module. It still left me with more than enough space to resume practicing Innsu, the knife-fighting martial art native to Torina’s homeworld. I’d let it languish these past few months and was determined to hone it back to the edge I’d once managed. We climbed into the cockpit. Or, actually, we walked into the cockpit and sat down. What had previously felt like the cockpit of a fighter with tandem seats jammed in side by side was now more like the control space of an airliner, complete with an actual engineer’s workstation. The latter had, according to a hushed conversation with the AI project manager, actually been the most complex and time-consuming part of the job. That surprised me—it sure seemed pretty straightforward—but I got the answer just by asking why. “Icrul, your engineer. She was very, ah, particular.”

“You mean demanding.”

“Well, that, and fussy. She made us move the power-monitor panel four times until she liked it—and each time, we had to wire it up so she could see if she liked it or not.”

“I have standards, okay?” Icky shouted back at us. I smiled. “I forgot how good her hearing is,” I said. “You always do!” she bellowed. It took us almost four hours to work through the checklist and sign off on each component, and then another two to take her for a check ride. She definitely wasn’t the same ship I’d discovered on a rainy Iowa night in the barn—and yet, deep down inside, she was. She handled much the same, a testament to her new power plant and how well the yard had balanced her components around her center of mass. And most of the instruments were familiar ones, having been removed from her old cockpit. Even more comforting, the seat in which I’d now spent so many hours, uneventfully flying along and bored, or else jammed on the edge in some nail-biting space battle, had been ported over, too. “The yard supervisor has one last item he wants me to run past you,” the project manager said, handing over a data slate in one mechanical appendage. “He figures you’ll probably be in the market to upgrade your firepower and is offering a deal on a particle cannon taken off a wrecked Arc of Vengeance privateer cutter that we recently scrapped. It’s a potent weapon at short ranges, but past a few hundred kilometers of range its performance fizzles out badly.”

I glanced at the price, which was doable, and ran it past Torina and the others. Torina was all for it. “A new gun to shoot?

I’m in,” Torina enthused. Icky raised a fuss about her not being well versed on particle cannon tech, but I could see the sudden light of interest in her eyes, because now she had one to play with. Perry and Netty were both more practical. “Compared to other weapon systems, particle cannons are still in their infancy. They take a lot of maintenance and have to be completely retuned after every four or five shots,” Netty noted. “They’re pretty blunt instruments, too. They’re either ship killers or completely useless,” Perry added. I finally decided to buy it and have it installed onto an open hard point anyway. I didn’t mind having another weapon option available. Besides, how could I, a sci-fi buff, pass up something called a particle cannon?

We went through our final sign-offs, but not before the shipyard tried to sell me on discounted maintenance packages to protect my investment. I glanced at the others, and they all shook their heads. Yeah, I didn’t buy the extended warranty on printers or microwaves, either. “I’ll pass on that for the moment,” I told the tech, whose expression switched from predatory to hopeful. “So, you’re saying there’s a chance?” he oozed. I rolled my eyes. Even in space, the hustlers never slept. TORINA STRETCHED out her legs and sighed. “Oh my. This is nice. I’m surprised I survived the old cockpit without becoming a hunchback.”

Icky offered a similar sentiment, sprawling in every direction at her new engineering workstation without smacking her hands or feet into anything

—like the back of my seat. “Yup, this is more like it. I grew up on a battleship, so I got used to lots of space.” She stifled a belch, then scratched at her arm, making a skritching noise. “Glad to see you’re going through this difficult transition with flying colors,” I remarked. Icky, oblivious as ever, merely grinned. “What can I say?

I’m adaptable.”

Even Perry was happy, Torina having bought him a present—a perch manufactured by the shipyard out of some spare bits of alloy cutoffs. It was mounted on the back of my seat and could fold out of the way when he wasn’t using it. He no longer had to cling to the back of one of the seats, or onto the back of the center console, his usual spot. “I’d forgotten how much nicer it is to fly around in a Dragon,” he said. I tossed him a bemused glance. “Really?”

“No, of course not. I don’t forget anything. But it seems like the appropriately appreciative thing to say, doesn’t it?”

“And I am going to appear to be appropriately pleased that you approve.”

Torina pulled her feet in and sat back up. “Which leaves only one question—where the hell are we going?”

Indeed, we’d taken the Fafnir to a point about a thousand klicks from the spaceport, rendering it down to a bright dot. We couldn’t twist from

here, but until we decided on a destination, we couldn’t really head for a twist point, either. But I’d been thinking it over, reasoning we had several options. We could try to regain contact with Okena and see what she was up to. We could return to Anvil Dark and see if Natalia, Steve’s replacement, had anything new to tell us. We could return to Sol and see if we could learn anything new about the illegal osmium mining operation chewing away at Pluto. But I’d already pretty much settled on a different option. “Remember how we went and visited the families of our two dead Masters?”

“You mean the one family living in abject, crushing poverty, and the other that had been killed by their own son or brother and pretty much freeze-dried into beef jerky?” Perry asked. “You make it sound so bleak.”

“What about those things isn’t bleak?”

“Good point. Anyway, I think we should do the same thing with our friend Okena. Knowing where she comes from might give us some insight into where she is in her life now, and where she’s likely to go from here.”

Okena’s family lived on Sunward, the innermost habitable planet in the Procyon system. Coming back to Procyon felt like old home week, since it had been one of my very first destinations after learning that Earth was very much a little fish in a big interstellar pond. It was where I’d picked up my first mission, retrieving a misappropriated, high-tech 3D printer from a would-be seditionist and rebel on behalf of The Quiet Room, whose main public branch was located here. It had also been where I first met Torina. I’d never been to Sunward, though. Its orbit skirted the inner edge of the habitable “Goldilocks” zone around Procyon, so it was a generally hot, dry world, reminiscent of certain desert planets portrayed in popular sci-fi. But it was also well-developed, its population nearly six billion, mostly clustered in the higher latitudes near the poles. The equatorial zone was far more sparsely inhabited, being much like Death Valley in the US or the Australian Outback. And the people who did dwell there generally only did so because they had to—they were involved in mining operations, for example, or conducting research. Or, as in the case of Okena’s family, they were just tolerant of hot, arid conditions and were able to pick up large swathes of land for cheap. I again studied Okena’s file as we twisted in to Procyon and started our approach to Sunward. Her family had actually immigrated to Sunward from her race’s homeworld in the Tau Ceti system. That had been four or five generations prior, and they’d made both a name and a fortune for themselves in the meantime. They bred creatures called Huro’nt, essentially four-meter-long crocodiles with a bony ridge of plates and spines down their backs. They also had much longer legs, each of which had not one knee but two. Watching a video of one in action, its literal double-jointedness made the thing phenomenally agile, which is probably why they were most bred for what amounted to bullfighting—a sport called Huro’nt’cha-ken in Okena’s native tongue. A lot of the videos showed practitioners, the “matadors” of the sport, known as Ik-gen-Huro’nt, getting flung aside, stomped, gored, or, in one especially memorable scene, virtually bitten in half by the monstrous creatures. “Blood sports are popular,” Torina had replied when I grimaced and fired a brief rant at what amounts to violence porn as entertainment. “Yeah, I know they are. I guess I always just hoped that advanced, spacefaring races would be more enlightened than we bloodthirsty humans.”

Perry started to utter an uproarious laugh, but I cut him off with a raised finger. “Notice I said that I hoped that. Deep down inside, I knew it would be the same shit.” I glanced at the still image of a Huro’nt with a—Nesit, I thought, though it was hard to tell—clenched in its mouth like a dog with a chew toy. “Well, okay, different shit, but still just as shitty.”

But it turned out that even blood sports wax and wane in popularity, and Huro’nt fights had faded in popularity. Part of the problem was the mortality rate among its practitioners. Once you’d churned through the crazies and adrenaline junkies who saw it as fun, you then had to dip into the more grimly determined who were just willing to try it. And once you’d gone through them, you didn’t have much left. Unlike bullfighting back on Earth, fighting Huro’nt wasn’t really an equal contest. The monsters were fast, agile, well-protected, and vicious as hell. They sported something potentially lethal from nearly every part of their body. It was pretty clear the attraction wasn’t the contest between fighter and monster, it was watching said fighter get ripped apart by said monster. All of which had put Okena’s family on a trajectory from wealthy and influential scions to faded has-beens. Torina even pointed out how literally

true that was, pointing at an entry in Okena’s file. “See that?

Her family is classified, by their social structure, as Favored of Eight.” She held up a data slate. “Here’s an article written about them about ten years ago. They were noted as being Favored of Two back then.”

I shrugged. “Okay. Meaning?”

Perry answered. “In ten years, they’ve gone from the second rung of their society’s top social tier to the eighth. There are eleven, and if you drop off the tier further than that, you go into what amounts to an entirely different—and lower—caste.”

This time I nodded. “Yeah, there’s some powerful motivation there to restore lost glory, isn’t there?”

“By any means necessary,” Torina agreed. “Yeah. So who wants to go see some giant, man-eating lizards?”

Icky turned from her console. “Man-eating?

Sweet, count me in, especially if they fight back.”

“Uh, Icky, what part of man-eating don’t you get?” I asked. “Oh, I get it. But I’m not a man, am I?”

“I’ll definitely grant you that, Icky. Now, let’s go pick that fight.”

ONLY THE TWO polar regions of the planet, above a certain latitude, were considered controlled airspace and required a flight plan. As long as we deorbited within twenty degrees of latitude from the equator in either direction, we only had to keep our transponder on so the planetary air-traffic control system could see us. Accordingly, we made our fiery plunge into the atmosphere, the incandescent gases being shunted around the Fafnir by its displacement field, the same thing that hid it in the barn. We assumed atmospheric flight and coasted the rest of the way to our destination beneath a hard, pale-blue sky framing the whitish glare of Procyon A. Procyon B, the companion white dwarf, was a tiny spot of light nearby. I couldn’t see a single cloud anywhere, out to the horizon in any direction. “Okena’s homestead is three hundred klicks ahead. Have you thought about how you’re going to explain dropping in to see her family, by the way?

Word will no doubt get back to her,” Netty said. I nodded. “Yeah, I have. We’re here to investigate the attempt on her life at Wolf 424.

After all, the attempted assassination of a Peacemaker is a big deal.” I glanced at Torina. “It’s an even bigger deal when you find out you were the target, but they don’t need to know that.”

We swept over a broad, flat steppe covered by an ocean of pale greenish-yellow grass and scrubby clumps of bush. I think we saw one watercourse of note, a meandering channel carrying a trickle of water that was no deeper than my knee. As we closed on Okena’s family home, the ground started to break up, outcroppings of dun-gray rock thrusting up through the prairie in knuckled ridges and humped, craggy hills. A moment later, a small compound of buildings crept into view. “I guess this is the place,” I said, letting Netty handle the landing. I wanted us to land close enough that we didn’t have too far to walk—and so that her family didn’t have too much time to react to our arrival. But I also didn’t want to land so close that we damaged anything with the Fafnir’s thrusters. Netty artfully put us down about four hundred meters from the wall enclosing the cluster of buildings, then powered down the engines. Silence reigned, except for the keening of an alien prairie wind. “Please remember to take all of your belongings from the overhead bins,” Netty said, and I grinned. Icky just looked blank. “Netty, what the hell are you talking about?”

I shook my head at her as I unbuckled. “Oh, how I wish I could bring you aboard a flight on Earth, Icky. I would love to see what airport security made of you.”

“As long as she wasn’t carrying more than a hundred milliliters of fluids or any sharp objects, she’d be fine,” Perry offered. “Yeah, that’d be what caught their attention—if she was carrying a pair of scissors.”

Icky just rolled her eyes, and we disembarked, stepping into the dry, furnace heat of Sunward. WE WERE MET BY A GAJUR, a dour, taciturn member of what tended to be a dour, taciturn race. The Gajur were noted for their careful deliberation and

methodical actions, but this one, named Traskew, was a particular study in the word aloof. “Okena?

She’s my niece. What about her?” he asked us, peering through the gate he’d cracked open. He made no move to admit us to the compound. “There was an attempt on her life, and I’m following up on it,” I said, which was technically true, I just wasn’t following up in the way it implied. The Gajur stared at us for a moment, like we were door-to-door salespeople peddling steak knives or timeshares. “Well, she’s not here,” he finally said, and I nodded. “I know. But I’m not here to see her. I’m here to see her family, to see if we can figure out why someone attempted to kill your niece?”

Another long stare. Finally, he cracked the gate open. “You’d better come in.”

We did, Perry, Torina, and I. We left Icky with the Fafnir, reasoning she’d just come across as intimidating—plus, it gave us some backup. The interior of the compound screamed things like fading glory and diminishing fortunes. The buildings were big and elaborate, with wide verandas and gabled roofs. But look a little closer and you could see the wear, the faded trim, sun-blistered walls, and loose roof tiles. It also seemed pretty empty, a couple of the buildings looking entirely unused. Off to our left was a second compound within a compound, obviously decked out as an arena, complete with an admittance booth. Judging from the dust, it hadn’t been used in some time. There was a desperate sense of impending failure at every turn, right down the squeal of a rusted door somewhere, moving back and forth in the bullying wind. Torina spoke as we followed Traskew, keeping her voice to a murmur. “What is it with these Gajur and their hard luck?

Yewlo’s family lived in squalor, and this one’s on its way there.”

But I nodded in the direction of a building off to our right. A sleek, glistening ship, a small yacht, squatted on landing struts amid a series of blast walls. “Does that look like squalor to you?”

“No, it does not.”

That’s a Whipping Star class racing yacht. Those are hand built to order and cost stupid money Perry said via our ear bugs. Oh, and whether a coincidence or not, the same type of ship Okena seized the Steiners from. I nodded. That was interesting. I didn’t think it was actually the Steiners’ yacht, which was impounded by the Guild. But I wasn’t sure and made a note to check into it. If nothing else, it was another of many little circumstantial connections that currently constituted most of our case. Even if it was the Steiners’ yacht, though, we saw evidence of recent money elsewhere in the compound. The main house, for instance, had clearly been recently renovated, standing in stark contrast to the buildings around it. A pair of glistening new ground vehicles was parked beside it, their balloon tires barely even tinged by the ubiquitous dust. And I caught a spiffy new comm array behind the house, surrounded by a metal-mesh fence. It was a big, complex setup, which seemed considerable overkill for the likely communications needs of a single household. There was definitely money here, but it sure wasn’t coming from Huro’nt fights. So, where was it coming from?

THE GATE CLOSED behind us with a resounding thump, and we started the few hundred meters back to the Fafnir. “Well, that didn’t amount to much,” Torina said. I walked on a few paces, then shook my head. “I’m not so sure.”

“Her family basically told us she’s a big girl and can look after herself and then gave us the bum’s rush to the door, Van.”

“They did, but I didn’t get the sense it was because they didn’t actually want to see us. More the other way around—there was something they didn’t want us to see.”

“You mean the yacht?

The twist-comm array?

The brand new fusion generator out back?

All that fancy art?” Perry asked. “Yeah, they’re getting money from somewhere. And that Huro’nt fighting ring has more dust on it than I’ve got under my bed back in Iowa, so it’s not coming from that—”

“Uh-oh.”

Torina was no longer beside me. I stopped and found her standing a few paces back, staring into the distance. “Uh-oh what?’

“Uh-oh that,” she said, pointing. I followed her gaze. “Well, shit.”

Speaking of Huro’nt, a small herd of them had emerged from some scrub, seen us, and now loped our way, jaws gaping. 10

“OKAY, THAT’S TERRIFYING,” I said, glancing at the Fafnir. We were still a couple of hundred meters away, far too far to make a break for it. The big lizards were charging at us like a small cluster of express trains and would run us down well short of the ship. “Van, do you guys see those big monsters coming at you?” Icky asked over the comm. “Yeah, they caught our eye, thanks, Icky.” I glanced at Torina and Perry. “Any ideas?”

“Well, I can fly,” Perry said, then did just that, flinging himself into the air. I scowled at him and turned to Torina. She just gave a tense shrug. “Use the Fafnir’s point-defense guns—and, like, sometime in the next fifteen seconds or so would be nice.”

Shit. I really didn’t want to kill the creatures if we could avoid it. I had no idea how many there were, if they might be endangered—nothing except that they were big and scary. I opened my mouth but then noticed that the Fafnir’s exhaust bells were pointed out across kilometers of flat, barren steppe. “Netty, can you give us a burst from the drive?

Just enough to put on a show?”

“It’s going to be loud.”

I gripped The Drop but didn’t draw it. The Huro’nt were starting to loom, their teeth looking awfully big and sharp. If this didn’t work, we’d have to kill them—or try, anyway. “Do it!” I said, jamming my fingers into my ears, closing my eyes, and looking away. Torina did the same. A second later, a dazzling flash leaked into my eyes, while something walloped me hard enough to suck the air out of my lungs. I wobbled, trying to straighten and see if it had worked, or if the creatures were still rushing at us headlong. They weren’t, thankfully. A couple of them milled around, bellowing, while the remainder hightailed it back towards the scrub. We turned and raced for the Fafnir. My comm said, “Mmmmm mmm mmmm?”

“What?”

“Mm. Mmmm mm mmmm mmm mmm!”

“I can’t hear you!” I shouted. Damn, had I managed to deafen myself?

Icky stepped out of the open airlock. “Mmoo muys mmmay?”

I stumbled aside, letting Torina and Perry enter, then clambered in after them. I glanced back as Netty sealed the outer door, catching a glimpse of the last two Huro’nt racing after their fellows. They’d apparently decided discretion was the better part of hunger and gone off to find something less thunderously incandescent to chow down on. “At irked!” Icky said, and I nodded. My ears still rang like I’d just spent the night partying at a techno rave in Milan—because I’d once spent a night partying at a techno rave in Milan, and my ears afterward had been filled with the same pervasive, shrill whine, every sound rendered muffled and dull. “Let’s get ready to lift,” I said, and Icky winced. “Damn, Van, you don’t gotta shout!”

NETTY WAS RUNNING the preflight checklist when Perry spoke up— in my ear bug. Van, can you hear me?

“Yes, I can—”

Van, you’re shouting. I dialed my voice back to what I thought was a mutter. “This better?”

Much. Anyway, before we lift, I thought you’d want to know I noticed something on that rocky ridgeline straight ahead of the ship, about three klicks away. I glanced out the cockpit at the indicated ridge. “What about it?”

There’s a canyon opening at about our eleven o’clock. And there’s a power source operating in it. I could make out more and more of the incidental noises of the cockpit, so my deafness was, indeed, temporary. I had a headache now, though, and something that felt like a slight sunburn on the left side of my face and the back of my left hand. Torina saw me noticing this and nodded. “We got flash burned,” she said, distinctly, but as though she was talking through cotton wool. “Not a good idea to be outside when the drive lights, especially inside an atmosphere. And that was just a tenth of a second burst,” Netty put in. “I’ll keep—”

Van, your inside voice, Perry said. I sighed. “I’ll keep that in mind. Anyway, Perry, what’s this power source?”

“No idea. Why don’t we go check?” Perry said aloud. I could hear him, if he sounded a bit off to my punished ears. I started to nod but caught myself and looked back at Okena’s family compound. “Actually, I’ve got a better idea.”

I STUDIED the imagery Perry was sending back, idly musing how nice it was to lounge in the Fafnir’s pilot’s seat and not be scrambling over rocks and worry about attacks by toothy monsters. “I should have thought of this long ago,” I said, stretching out my legs. “It’s like having our very own drone. Hell, from now on, I could visit alien planets and never even have to put on pants.”

Perry’s voice hummed out of the comm. “First, please wear pants anyway. Second, did you just call me a drone?”

“What?

No, of course not.”

“Sorry—breaking up—what—?”

“I’m sorry I called you a drone, Perry. What I should have said is that it’s like having our very own charming, intelligent, and blisteringly handsome drone. Like Cary Grant with wings.”

“That’s better, and I’ve always thought I would look good in tweed. Anyway, I’m over the site now.”

We’d made a big show of lifting the Fafnir, and flying away, and climbing toward orbit until we were below the horizon relative to Okena’s family compound. We’d then wheeled back in a broad arc, losing altitude until we raced across the flat plain only fifty meters or so up. We only got away with it because of the lack of rigid traffic control in the region. It did give us a few exhilarating minutes sweeping across the prairie, the ground a blur beneath us as we rose and fell, nap-of-the-earth style, over small undulations in the terrain. We finally settled down on the far side of the ridge from the compound and dispatched Perry on a discreet reconnaissance flight. He now circled over a notch in the rocks, a narrow canyon that had been eroded out of a natural shear zone in the rough landscape. It slashed like a lightning bolt halfway through the ridge, zigzagging back and forth for nearly two hundred meters before petering out. At its widest, it was about fifty meters from wall to wall, and about thirty meters deep. Perry descended until he circled right over this isolated space, capturing imagery from its bottom. “Are those bones?” Torina asked. “I nodded. Yeah, they sure are. Lots of them. Perry, can you—”

“Get closer?

Sure, but there isn’t enough space in there for me to stay properly airborne. I’m going to have to land. You know, amid the bones strewn about. Some of which are clearly snapped and broken. By something. Probably something big—”

“Just a quick look, okay?”

A theatrical sigh wafted from the speaker. “The things I do—”

He dove into the space, landed on a rock, and turned, scanning a full three hundred and sixty degrees. “That’s more than just bones,” I said, pointing at the display. Torina and Icky both just nodded. About five meters from where Perry had landed sprawled the remains of—of something humanoid was all I could say for sure. It was a torso, most of one leg, and part of one arm. The rest was simply gone. “Van, there’s more of that in here. I see a couple of corpses that were obviously Huro’nt, but most of the remains here are humanoid.”

“Looks like Okena’s family found an alternative revenue stream when their Huro’nt fighting business dried up,” Torina said, her voice tight. “It gets better,” Perry put in. “And by better, I mean much worse. That power source is right up there,” he said, focusing the view on a device mounted high up on the canyon wall. It was an imager. Okena’s family was bringing people here to fight Huro’nt. And they were recording it. But the clincher came when Perry turned back and switched to low-light, showing us the canyon back toward the compound. About ten meters away, it narrowed to a chokepoint about five meters across. A stout wall had been built across it, pierced by a heavy gate. An imager had been mounted atop it as well. “Oh. Oh shit,” I said, pointing. “Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse. This isn’t just Huro’nt fighting. The people who did that were at least doing it willingly—stupidly, but willingly. But these people, the ones fighting here—”

I stopped, stunned, but Torina finished for me. “They’re being forced to do it. They’re being thrown into this ring with a Huro’nt and the gate locked behind them.”

PERRY WAS able to discern that imagers were sending their data to a central receiver, which was then relaying it to somewhere else. The only logical place, given the range, was the nearby compound. And that brought me back to that elaborate comm array fenced off behind the house. Were they using that to send the imagery off-world?

If so, to where?

Netty had been making her own observations. “While you guys were looking at the horror show in that canyon, I decided to check out anything that might be in geosynchronous orbit above us.”

“And?” I asked. “And there’s nothing there. At least, not until I started putting together data from a variety of public sources. Procyon’s a busy system, and

Sunward’s a busy planet, at least around its poles. There’s lots of imagery and traffic control data covering the whole volume of space around it.”

“At the risk of repeating myself—and?”

“And, this.”

The image on the master display in the center of the panel switched not to other imagery, but to a simulation. It depicted a nondescript region of space. “I’ve assembled this from fourteen different data sources. Now, watch what happens when I slew the view along an equatorial orbital plane. Pay particular attention to the stars I’ve highlighted,” Netty said. We did. A set of data at the bottom of the screen began to change, depicting azimuth, inclination, and other data. As it did, the four highlighted stars winked out and then reappeared in succession. “Huh. There’s something up there,” I said. “Maybe another of those stealthed-up creep-show satellites like the one we found before,” Icky said. The correct answer to Icky was, indeed, maybe, because we didn’t know it for sure, did we?

But it didn’t matter. I knew that was exactly what this was. WE DECIDED to try a different approach with this satellite. Rather than attempting to grab it outright and risk damaging it—or us—I decided to fall back on a tried and true method. With Netty and Perry’s help, we hacked our way into the satellite. It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it might be. We assumed that Okena’s family wouldn’t just broadcast their horror show via omnidirectional signal, and, sure enough, we detected a narrow comm beam linking the satellite to the comm array in the compound. Perry, flying at several thousand meters so he should be invisible from the ground, detected and discreetly tapped it. It was just a carrier signal, punctuated by regular handshakes between the array and the satellite every thirty seconds. “So they’re not transmitting anything now,” I said. “Stands to reason. There’s no show going on right now,” Perry replied. While Torina kept her situational awareness firmly fixed outside the Fafnir, I put my head together with Netty, Perry, and Icky. We concocted a scheme to tap into one of the imagers in the canyon, then follow its comms back to the array and up to the satellite. Our hope was that we could trick the system into accepting it as a regular feed. It required Perry to function as our tap, fiddling his way into the imager with an actual hardware connection, then relaying our traffic through him. If there was any risk, it was mainly being discovered, whereupon I figured we were high enough on both the moral and legal high ground to keep the advantage. Once Perry was hooked up, we made the connection. I spent the next hour or so gingerly feeling my way into the system, helped by the formidable processing power of both Netty and Perry. I finally sat back in the galley seat and stared with satisfaction at the data slate I’d been using as a terminal. “I’m in,” I said, then flashed a grin. “As a hacker, I’ve always wanted to say that.”

“Say what?” Icky asked. I repeated it in a tight, intense voice. “I’m in.”

Icky stared back at me as though I’d started to speak in tongues. I sighed. The first time that I, an experienced hacker, had been able to use the classic hacker line, and it was wasted. I allowed myself three seconds of nerd mourning, then moved on. “So you’re in. And?” Icky asked. “Let’s find out.” I turned back to the slate and started feeling my way around the satellite’s software architecture. I had no idea if it, like the previous one we’d found, contained organic components or what precise role they played in the thing’s operations. So I just decided to ignore it and treat it like any other computer. Data appeared on the screen. “Ah—nope, that’s operating system stuff. So’s that. And—ah, what do have we here?” I said, opening an archive. A video began to play. It had been recorded in the canyon. I stared. The video suddenly terminated, and for a few seconds I watched the screen in stunned horror. Then reality caught up and I turned my attention back to the satellite. It took only a few more seconds for me to realize the awful truth. “Shit!”

“What’s wrong?” Icky asked. “The satellite just terminated comms. I think it probably wiped itself, too. Damn it.”

“So you got nothing?”

I tapped at the data slate. Yes, the few of seconds of video I had retrieved was still there. I sat back and rubbed my eyes, feeling soiled. Not dirty. Soiled. “No, no. I got something. Kind of wish I hadn’t, though.”

“I DO NOT NEED to see that again, thanks,” Torina said. Icky was more direct. “Why don’t we just lift and vaporize that damned compound, along with everyone in it?”

“Don’t tempt me, Icky.”

She stiffened. “No. Wait. Better idea. Let’s just smash up the walls and buildings, and leave them with no protection from those roving packs of Hur-whatevers. Or—no, even better, let’s round them up and take them all to that canyon and do that to them!”

“Icky’s bloodlust aside, Van, what do you want to do about this?” Torina asked. I crossed my arms and leaned back in my seat. “What I want to do is let Icky handle this.”

Icky nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, please!”

“Hold that thought for now, Icky,” I said, then turned back to the video. I’d watched it three times now. It was only four seconds of imagery, but it seemed to last far longer. It showed a Daren-thal being dismembered by a Huro’nt, while the Daren-thal’s dog-like, bonded hunting mate fought furiously but fruitlessly to stop it. I didn’t want to watch it a fourth time. I wanted to do just as Icky said and make those vile excuses for people in that compound pay, and pay dearly. But a more sober part of me hesitated. I’d spent an hour with Netty and Perry hacking the comm system, not only because I didn’t want to make any mistakes. I’d invested a lot of that time and effort into covering our tracks. To anything but a detailed forensic inspection, it should seem to Okena’s family that they’d simply

suffered a systems failure. The satellite might be more of a problem, since I still wasn’t entirely sure of its capabilities. But, if we’d managed to avoid implicating ourselves in this, at least for now, then we might manage to get some more useful intelligence. To that end, Perry placed a monitor, a device similar to the one we’d used to spy on Emil Hoffsinger in his suburban Chicago home, atop the ridgeline looking down on the compound. It was an excellent view and also gave us good coverage across all but the extreme ends of the EM spectrum. Of course, if we were outed to Okena’s family, they’d no doubt have to

—run, or something, but that didn’t honestly break my heart. The idea of them fleeing while casting fearful glances behind them made me smile a grim, hard smile. Perry interrupted my dark reverie. “Van, can I show you something on that video?”

I sat up, frowning. “That implies me watching it again.”

“Sorry, but I think this is important.”

I took a breath. “Fine, go ahead.”

The horrific imagery once more played out on the galley display. But it froze about halfway through, then zoomed in on the Daren-thal, specifically his head. “Do you see that?

That thing protruding from the back of his neck?”

Perry said. I leaned in. So did Torina and Icky. “Yeah. What is that?” I asked. “I don’t remember seeing anything like it on any of the Daren-thal when we were visiting them,” Torina put in, shaking her head. But Icky nodded. “I know what it is. It’s a data tap. Never seen one stuck in the back of someone’s neck before, though.”

Perry’s claws clattered slightly as he shifted on the galley side table. “I think that’s the answer. It’s a data tap, but it’s built into something that’s stuck into the Daren-thal’s brain stem.”

I stood up, because I suddenly had to pace. “So they’re stealing memories again?

Like with the chipped people?”

Icky asked. I shook my head as I walked one way, then the other. I couldn’t sit still. “Oh, no. No, worse than that. They’re stealing the last moments of

someone’s life. They’re stealing terror. They’re stealing—death. And people—”

I stopped. I didn’t even want to say it. But I didn’t have to, because Perry finished my sentence for me. “Are paying not just to see it, but to live it, over and over again.”

11

WE DIDN’T KNOW MUCH for certain, meaning we were leaning on a lot of horrified speculation. But one thing that was certain was that the Daren-thal weren’t native to Sunward in the Procyon system, but to Epsilon Indi and the planet called Ajax. And Perry’s imagery from the canyon—which I was perfectly content to leave to his far more dispassionate scrutiny—showed the remains of at least six more Daren-thal and their bonded hunting creatures. Whether this was via some sort of enticement, they were being kidnapped and brought there forcefully, or some other way, we weren’t sure. The only logical course, then, was, to go to the source and find out. And that was why we’d landed the Fafnir at the base of a towering cliff that soared over the rolling grasslands of Ajax. We’d arranged a meeting with Rovan, the Daren-thal antiquities expert and the only member of his race I knew well enough to reasonably trust. He now sat in the galley, Rovan-ir, his “dog,” outside with Icky. The two of them got along famously, Icky throwing a rock and Rovan-ir tearing after it and fetching it. The fact that the creature left teeth marks in the rock told me even more about its ferocity than its fearsome appearance. But it still wasn’t enough to save its Daren-thal hunting partner in the video. Rovan said nothing after the video had played. Torina, Perry, and I just waited in silence. Finally, he looked up at me. “I want to see it again.”

I nodded, and we played it again. And again. And two more times after that. I made a point of not watching and saw Torina doing the same. “Alright,” Rovan said, then went silent again. I looked at him. “My apologies, Van, that was difficult to watch.”

“Yeah. I sure as hell don’t need to see it again.”

“Did you recognize whoever it was?” Perry asked. Rovan actually gave a thin smile. “There are over a billion Daren-thal here on Ajax, and thousands more off-world. So, no, I don’t recognize him.”

“I thought your people weren’t into spaceflight,” I said. “Oh, we’ve got no objections to traveling in space, we just aren’t especially interested in doing it as anything other than passengers. All I can say is that, having watched his fighting style, he’s probably from one of the southern clans, most likely the Mrtka-ar, or maybe the Gntal-ar.”

He looked at the blank screen, then back to me. “Have you arrested these people yet?”

“No. I’ve got a data bug watching them, and I’ve put out some discreet feelers to Anvil Dark and a few other places to see what other information I can tease out about them. The trouble is that one of their family members is another Peacemaker, so I want to proceed really carefully.” I leaned a little closer. “Rest assured, though, that these people will face justice. They’re already in custody, in fact, they just don’t know it yet.”

Rovan nodded. “That’s the correct way to proceed, of course, so that you can gather as much information about their network and perhaps help many more people. But it still shows admirable restraint. Under Daren-thal law, they would likely be stranded.”

“Stranded?”

“Dropped alone and naked into a region of the northern continent home to a whole suite of predators and other hazards, including toxic volcanic swamps.”

“There’s three words you don’t want to hear together,” Torina muttered. “Especially if preceded by you have entered… ” Perry added. Rovan nodded. “If they survive for twenty-seven day cycles, they are judged to have fulfilled their debt to our society and are thereafter free.”

“Has anyone managed that?” I asked. “Yes—twice in our recorded history, out of several thousand strandings. Both were particularly accomplished hunters.”

“Well, if they weren’t when they went into that, they sure as hell were when they got out of it,” I said, then held up a finger. “Anyway, hold that thought. If it comes to it, I think that might not be a bad punishment for these scumbags.”

“But you have to catch them first,” Rovan said. “Yeah, that’s usually the way it works. We catch them and then we punish them. But it’s the catching that’s the hard part.”

Icky poked her head in through the open airlock. “Two things. First, I’ve been listening in on you guys—”

“Icky’s got fantastic hearing. Keep that in mind,” I said to Rovan. “Damned right. Anyway, what you guys need is bait, something to lure those assholes to wherever you want them. I mean, they want skilled hunters, right?

And second—”

She shoved an arm through the door, displaying some fragments of rock. “Can we find anything harder for your big ol’ puppy to chew on out here?

This rock’s pretty much just gravel.”

“It puts a whole new meaning to the does your dog bite?

question, doesn’t it?” I said, shaking my head. “Oh, he does. Of course, he also chews on rocks to sharpen his teeth. Otherwise, they get long and dull,” Rovan replied. Torina smiled faintly but quickly went serious again. “You know, the bait thing isn’t a bad idea. Someone is moving Daren-thal from somewhere to Sunward, after all. I doubt that Okena’s family are doing it themselves.”

I nodded. “It’s a good point. Rovan, where would the best Daren-thal hunters be?

Here, or on some other planet or planets?”

“Oh, here, certainly. Those of my people who leave Ajax generally do so to pursue other things. They might hunt from time to time, but they’re not dedicated to it. In fact, most Daren-thal males that live off-world aren’t even bonded with a hunting partner like Rovan-ir out there.” He said that last bit the way someone might describe a good friend who’s decided to join a nudist colony—he was still fond of them but just didn’t get it. “So that means the Daren-thal that are being seized and taken to Sunward are likely coming from here. Interesting.”

“If you’re suggesting that you’d like me to be bait, I’d be happy to. Anything to help put a stop to these people,” Rovan said, his voice hard and

flat. But I shook my head. “Thanks, but I’m not going to risk someone who’s not even a member of my crew. But tell me this—do non-Daren-thal, offworlders, come here to hunt?”

“They do, yes. We have a bit of a tourism industry based around it, in fact.” He smiled. “It’s all prepackaged, of course, but we do get some very serious hunters who just want to test themselves against Ajax’s fauna.”

Perry cut in. “Van, are you going to say that you want to use yourself as bait for the evil criminals stealing Rovan’s people?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, that’s a great idea, but it does have a flaw, the fact that you are not exactly a legendary hunter.”

“What?

I used to shoot gophers that were digging around in the cornfields.”

“I suspect that our perpetrators are going to be looking for someone a little more… exciting, maybe, than a guy who shot defenseless rodents with a.22 caliber rifle when he was fifteen.”

“I don’t have to be a great hunter, I just have to play one on TV,” I shot back. Rovan frowned. “What’s TV?”

“A dreary wasteland of dumb, mostly, unless you want to save money on car insurance or buy yourself a squooshy blanket with built-in arms,”

Perry replied. I shook my head. “Suffice to say it's an entertainment medium back on Earth that certain mechanical birds spent way too much time watching.”

“You try sitting in a drafty old barn for days at a time—”

“I think we’re straying from the point,” I cut in. “And that point is that I don’t have to be a great hunter, our bad guys just have to think that I am. And I’m hoping you can help with that,” I went on, looking at Rovan. He gave a thoughtful nod. “We could certainly spread the word that we’ve got a supremely skilled human hunter on Ajax, seeking a true challenge, we’re honored to have him here, that sort of thing. We’d need some sort of background information to make sure we make it sound authentic.”

“We can provide that, sure. Perry, I’ll let you cook up something suitable. Oh, and by the way, Perry, I have a role I’d like you to play in this, too.”

Rovan grinned. “Do I detect an upcoming bonding between you and Perry out under the stars, where the air is clean and imminent death is falling from above?”

“Well, except for the imminent death part, yeah.”

“If my feathers get damaged by some interstellar mind thief, I’m going on strike,” Perry muttered. I glanced at him with a raised eyebrow. “On strike?

Really?

Aren’t you compelled to help me by the Guild Charter?”

Now Torina grinned. “Is this like your last threat, Perry?

When you scratched the new galley table and Van said your talons needed buffing?

As I recall, that one involved nearly nine minutes of refusing to talk to him.”

“It was eleven minutes. And a half, you… scalawag.”

“Scalawag?

You get a new thesaurus installed?”

I sighed at Rovan. “Sometimes I think we spend a little too much time together in close quarters.”

“All the more reason for you to spend time under the great sky, with shiver grass for your bed and all the stars above,” he replied. Icky reappeared. “A question. Is this like camping?

Because camping sucks.”

“Yes, Icky, it is. But this time, if you fall asleep, you wake up in someone’s home theater, dying over and over again,” I said. “See, told you camping sucks.”

PERRY LANDED on the far side of the fire. “Van, I’m impervious to the elements. I can sense heat and cold, but only as temperature values. I’m also waterproof.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked him. “Because you’re huddled beside a fire desperately trying to warm up and dry yourself off and, gotta be honest here, boss, failing miserably.”

I shot Perry a glare but said nothing. Unfortunately, he was right. This was our fourth night on the Ajax plains, and while the first two had been pleasant enough, the next it had rained. And the rain had continued all through the day, only stopping as the sun once more set. And then, of

course, it got cold. The result was me huddled as close as I could get to the fire without actually bursting into flames. “So what would you suggest?” I asked him. “Get your b-suit?

I mean, it’ll keep you warm in an Iowa blizzard.”

“That’s awfully folksy of you, Perry.”

“I just upgraded my folksy subroutine.”

I glanced back at the tent. It was a traditional Daren-thal design, made of supple leather derived from one of the native creatures, a wild ox-like thing called a donjikur. It was remarkably light and compact but still reasonably windproof and snug inside. Rovan had taught me how to use it, just as he’d taught me how to braid the ubiquitous shiver grass into tight bundles and use them as both kindling and fuel. I also had a long spear-like weapon with a curved and hooked blade and a short, broad-bladed knife about the size of a Bowie. They were both traditional Daren-thal weapons, but I had them mainly for show. My apparent hunting expertise otherwise came from Rovan, who, along with Rovan-ir and Icky, had set up in a cave at the base of a ridgeline about five klicks away. Perry fed him imagery, and he, in turn, directed me on how to look like I wasn’t just hunting, I was doing it skillfully. I glanced up, in the swirling pale cloud of my own breath. Somewhere up there, thousands of klicks above me, my b-suit sat with Torina in the Fafnir, the ship powered down to silent running in a geosynchronous orbit as top cover. I had originally planned to wear the b-suit under my outer clothes but decided against it. I was supposed to be an off-world big-game hunter, after all, and had to assume the bad guys would spend at least some time watching a potential target. Me revealing a Peacemaker b-suit while changing my clothes wouldn’t do much to enhance our deception. Speaking of deception, I had Perry do the hourly check on Rovan, Torina, and our backup, another Daren-thal hunting party lurking somewhere to the northwest of us. Rovan had described them as Wardens, specialized hunters employed by the Daren-thal to maintain order on the plains—essentially conservation officers with a hint of special forces mixed in. They were all male Daren-thal, paired up with their own ferocious versions of Rovan-ir. Which was all very well and fine, but without any bad guys, all this amounted to was me playing pretend hunter while getting wet, cold, and grumpy. “Cheer up, boss. Maybe tonight we’ll be visited by murderous human traffickers intent on recording your violent, painful death for paid entertainment.”

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better,” I said, but I did glance down at the Daren-thali harness Rovan had given me. I had brought along two old friends, The Drop and the Moonsword. I’d hung the former from the harness, while the hilt of the latter protruded from the top of my backpack. It meant I didn’t have to rely on the Daren-thal weapons for my only protection, although I found I could use the Bowie-like knife in a passable Innsu-style. “Van, how are you doing?” Torina asked over the comm, using a directional beam from the Fafnir. “Why, I’m doing great, of course. Don’t you remember all the times I went on and on about how much I wanted to sleep in a damp tent in the cold, on an open, windy plain?”

“The struggle is real. My sheets got wrinkled last night, so I had to actually get right out of bed to straighten them.”

“You suffer for the cause, woman. You truly do.”

She laughed. I finally decided to call it a night. Tomorrow, we’d need to decide if we were going to keep this little charade going, or if it was time to pack it in and think of something else. Right now, I was leaning decidedly toward something else, as long as it didn’t involve grass and sky. I crawled partway into the tent and glanced back at Perry. “You’re on, bird.”

“I’m always on, Van.”

“I—yeah, I know—oh, never mind.”

VAN, we’ve got company. The voice in my ear bug snapped me awake with a startled gasp. I sat up and immediately shoved my head against the inside of the tent. “Gimme a minute, Sarge, just gotta grab my kit—”

Sarge?

Well, that’s a little insulting. You should be hallucinating that I’m a Commissioned Officer. I’m thinking Major. The voice resolved into Perry’s. I blinked and shook my head, trying to clear away the damp cotton wool stuffed into my head. “What sort of company?

Where?” I asked, my voice a dry rasp. I fumbled for my water bottle. A ship, probably a class two or three workboat, landed about a klick and a half away. No transponder. I’m making out three people in b-suits coming this way, really stealthy-like. Adrenaline chased away the last dregs of what had apparently been a deathly deep sleep. I yanked my feet out of my sleeping bag and sat for a moment, literally shuddering with cold. I found my boots and, after a couple of tries, managed to get them fastened on my feet. I finally dragged myself out of the tent and grabbed my harness. I also drew the Moonsword from my pack. “Perry, where are you?” I whispered. Flying about six hundred meters south of you. These guys haven’t seen me yet. They’re closing in on you from the southwest and—yeah, they are damned stealthy, whoever they are. “Did you say they’re wearing b-suits?

They’re Peacemakers?”

No, not Peacemaker-style b-suits. These are more off-the-shelf. Very popular with mercenaries and similar sorts—oh. “What?”

Two more have just dismounted from the ship. They’re following the first three but seem to be hanging back. “Reserves.”

Probably, yeah. I pulled out a data slate that I’d stored in a pouch on my harness and tapped it to bring up the local map. Perry had already painted the locations of the three bad guys onto it, a trio of red icons strung along a line about fifty meters across. The fact they weren’t keeping a close group suggested that each one of them had the means to take me alive. I had to be extra careful, then, not to lose situational awareness regarding any of them. At the same time, though, I couldn’t present myself as such a troublesome target that they just gave up and left, either. I wanted to take at least one of these bastards alive. “Rovan,” I started, but his voice hummed back at me instantly. “Here. Rovan-ir and I are on our way, through that low ground I mentioned earlier. I’ve alerted the Wardens, too. It’s going to take time to

get to you. Can you hold out at least twenty minutes?”

I studied the screen. I had maybe five minutes before the baddies arrived, but I had to assume they had some advanced weaponry, so they could probably actually engage me with accurate fire in just two, maybe three. Assuming they didn’t just want to kill me—something I couldn’t entirely rule out—they probably needed to get in pretty close. And, if they assumed I was a great hunter, they’d also assume they’d probably not be able to take me completely by surprise. It would make sense, then, for me to do this. Gripping the Moonsword, I turned and ran. “Torina, are you plugged into what’s—”

“I am. Van, I’m coming down.”

“No!

Stick to the plan!

I need you up there to take care of the spaceship side of things,” I said, pounding along as fast as I dared. The ubiquitous shiver grass concealed humps and holes in the ground, and I’d already taken a couple of bad spills during my daytime pretend hunts. The last thing I needed now was a broken ankle—

Van, they’re after you, and gaining. Whoever they are, they’re fast, Perry said. I stopped to catch my breath and fumbled in a pouch for my night-vision goggles—really little more cumbersome than regular glasses, compared to the bulkier, heavier devices I’d used during my stint in the Army. The problem was that they still tended to flatten everything, diminishing my depth perception. I missed my b-suit and its visor’s much better night-vision tech. I hesitated before putting them on. They’d also wipe away my night vision, all without really telling me more than I already knew. Breath wisping whitely in the cold night air, I studied the slate. I still had three after me, and two behind them, albeit still hanging back. My brain had finally sputtered into high gear, enough to know that this wasn’t right. I couldn’t believe that these guys had come all this way, going through so much trouble to just chase their quarry on foot. They must know Rovan and the Wardens weren’t too far away, likely assuming they were other hunting parties. But given time, I could rendezvous with either of them—so they probably weren’t going to give me that time. “Perry, I need you to go scout to the south of me, the direction I’m heading.”

I’ll lose contact with these guys if I do that. “I don’t care. If I’m right, I suspect those guys are the beaters, and they’re trying to drive me right into the hands of some catchers. So I know what the beaters are doing. Where are the catchers?”

On my way. I crouched and resumed moving, albeit at a slower pace. Every direction looked the same, just flat grassland extending to a dark horizon. The only exception was the southwest, where that ridge of sheer, largely insurmountable rock frowned across the plains. Any direction except that one and the one behind me might lead to safety—or to capture. Got ’em. Two hundred meters to your current ten o’clock, Van. I looked at the slate. Sure enough, there were two more bad guys slowly advancing on me. Which meant I was caught between two groups of them, with nowhere to run. EXCEPT THAT WASN’T QUITE true. I’d assumed that, if and when they showed up, they’d want to do a classic envelopment, pushing me toward one group of bad guys with another. They’d left me only one way to go, which was to the southwest, directly into the same rocky ridgeline where Rovan and Icky had been sheltering. The broken, rocky ground and forbidding cliffs were effectively impassable without specialized gear, expertise, and most importantly, time. They’d be happy to let me run that way and box myself in. Of course, since I had to assume they knew that Rovan and the Wardens weren’t far away, I also had to assume that they were prepared to fight. I hoped they’d never heard of Cannae. Van, I’ve climbed to a thousand meters to get the big picture. If you don’t do something fast, the two creeping up on you from the west are going to be on top of you in about two minutes. “Got it,” I said and started to the southwest. That was the most direct route away from both groups of bad guys, and—

Van!

Right ahead of you!

Something popped up from the grass maybe twenty meters away—a humanoid figure hunched in the unmistakable posture of someone aiming a rifle. I DOVE for cover as something snapped overhead and thrashed into the grass behind me. I glanced back and saw the grass I’d just been traversing was matted down by sticky, glistening strands of something that vaguely resembled thick cobwebs. Oof. Some sort of capture device, similar to ones used by the Guild. Some Peacemakers swore by them, while others thought they were just too unreliable because they could leave a target still able to shoot back. And speaking of shooting back, I raised The Drop and double-tapped a couple of slugs in the general direction of my would-be hunter, then I raced south but veered again to the southwest. “Perry, how the hell did you not see that guy?”

No idea. Somehow, he had no thermal signature. “Don’t like that.”

Same, boss. Thermal was the surest way of seeing something in the dark, assuming it gave off heat. But if these guys could somehow suppress their thermal signature, it meant I might be surrounded by them and not even know it. I glanced back and saw the one that had almost snagged me racing after me. I snapped back another couple of shots from The Drop—

And he went down, hard. I hadn’t even been aiming, so it had just been a fluke. But, hey, if I’ve got people trying to capture me and record my horrific, agonized death as a canned experience-for-sale, I’ll take a fluke. “Perry, where are the bad guys now?

The ones you can see, at least?”

Two closing in from your four o’clock, three from your eight. Of course. They were herding me toward the ridgeline, but in such a way that if I tried to change direction, one group or the other would cut me off. So I just kept running. FIVE HUNDRED METERS MORE, and a new enemy hit the field—my knee, the same one that had washed me out of the Army. Every footfall ignited a jolt of pain, forcing me to limp. It slowed me, leading to Perry warning me with increasing urgency that they were now barely a hundred meters behind me. “I… know… yeah,” I gasped. “Where’s… Rovan?”

About five hundred meters to your left. Damn this leg to hell and back. Five hundred meters was still a long way. Maybe too long. I had to contemplate making a stand, or else I risked being run down. I stumbled on for a few more meters, then ducked down and sucked in air, The Drop ready. I kept the Moonsword in my left hand. At the last moment, I decided to stick on my night-vision goggles, willing to accept the distorted depth perception in return for being able to actually see stuff. It wasn’t a pretty picture. I had two coming straight at me, two more now moving to flank me from the right, and one slowly approaching from my left, ready to cut me off if I rabbited that way. I took a sight picture and fired. I missed. An amused part of me briefly wondered if I should fire blindly and count on another fluke. But the bigger part of me, the part that didn’t want to get turned into Huro’nt chow on Sunward, leapt backward. Sure enough, two gouts of the gluey sludge splatted into the grass where I’d been crouching. I kept backpedaling, firing twice more—

Then I caught my heel in something and pitched over backward, before landing in the grass with an oomph of expelled breath. Frantically, I fought to regain my feet, but two figures appeared, towering over me, their faces rendered to glittering, crystalline lenses of some sort of sophisticated sensor rig. I desperately tried to raise The Drop, but I’d pinned it partly under me when I fell. “Perry!”

No answer. The two figures moved in, weapons raised, about to shoot. Then something slammed into both of them like a streaking meteor. A burst of feral snarls and sharp barking sounds erupted from the grass, which thrashed about. A second later, an agonized scream sliced apart the night. I levered myself to my knees just in time to see Rovan-ir’s head rise above the grass, a severed arm dangling from his maw. Huh. Apparently, if you could bite through rock, you could also bite through a b-suit. The next minute or so was a confusion of shouts, shots, howls, and cries. Rovan had appeared, wielding his spear blade in a shimmering blur, cutting and decapitating one of the bad guys in spectacular showers of blood. I saw Icky barrel into combat from my right. She took a hit, but it barely slowed her as she slammed into the second guy who’d been trying to flank me from the right, grabbing him in two hands. In a blur, she landed her sledge on his skull with a third hand, the crack of his end echoing across the prairie like a curse. He went instantly still. The survivors broke and ran—but not far. The Wardens had closed in behind them, cutting them off. And each of them had a bonded hunting partner—essentially another version of Rovan-ir. I couldn’t see what was happening, but I could hear it, and the hideous sounds filled my senses in a way that made me intensely thankful the Rovan-ir were on our side as the beasts tore and fed. Speaking of monsters, Rovan-ir appeared out of nowhere, right in front of me. I yelped, thinking he might have been whipped into some sort of bloodlust and now I was about to feel those rock-grinding teeth. But he just turned and, tongue lolling, stood at my side. “Who’s a… good boy?” I gasped. Rovan-ir turned to me, his expression very much, why, I’m a good boy, thank you very much. I petted his scaly neck. He was a very good boy, indeed. 12

“PERRY, YOU NEED A HAND?” I asked. His amber eyes peered back at me from the gooey mess that had partly enveloped him. “Stow it, if you please. I’m not at my best.”

I knelt beside him and tugged experimentally at the goop but just ended up with a dollop stuck to my fingers. “There must be a way of getting this stuff off. What happened, anyway?”

“I dove heroically into battle from on high, attempting to save your sorry self from those miscreant assholes. And what did I get for my self-sacrificing bravery?

I got slimed.”

Rovan and Rovan-ir, Icky, and the Wardens were checking the bodies and looking for any more baddies that might be lurking in the grass. Icky stomped over, two of her hands holding small cylinders. She saw Perry and grinned. “Ewww, you’re covered in gunk.”

“Just get me out of this, okay?”

“Relax, bird. I took these off two of the dead guys—including the one I got to bash over the head. That was sweet. See, he was trying to run, but I was able—"

As she told the story, she bent down and sprayed the contents of the two cans onto Perry, quickly turning the gooey sludge into a viscous liquid. I nodded along as she spoke but turned my attention upward as Icky freed Perry from his sticky bondage. “Torina, what happened to that workboat?”

“Stand by. Netty and I are working on it now.”

Rovan stalked up to us, Rovan-ir at his side. “We’ve brought all the bodies together just over there. And we can’t find any more of these”—his next word didn’t translate—“out there anywhere, so that seems to be all of them.”

“That was a profanity, wasn’t it?”

“A very special one, reserved for very special occasions, yes. It deals with the subject's lineage.”

“Yeah, that seems to be a common theme in interstellar swear words,” I said and looked around. I had to admit, seeing six Daren-thal around me, each with one of those big hunting companions, was damned impressive—

and by impressive, I meant terrifying. And by terrifying, I meant terrifying for someone else. Right now, I felt safer than I had in days. Rovan-ir had taken down two of my pursuers himself with utterly no warning, and there were five more of the creatures standing watch around me. “Van, that workboat has vanished,” Torina said. “Vanished?

How could it?”

“No idea. Netty supposes a stealth system like the ones we’ve seen installed in those satellites.”

Icky stood from helping Perry. “Holy shit. I mean, that’s high-end technology to be sticking on a punky little class two workboat.”

I returned a morose nod. “Yeah, which means that unless we can get something useful off of these dead guys, we’ve hit a dead end.”

Netty spoke up. “Not quite, Van. The workboat broadcasted a comm signal right before it vanished. A few seconds later, another comm message was sent from a class nineteen diplomatic ship on the same channel.”

“Class nineteen?

Is that a little on the huge side for a diplomatic vessel?”

“It’s a surplus and repurposed commercial passenger liner, registered to Plenty.”

I frowned at the horizon, which was finally lightening toward dawn. “Plenty. That’s another one of those skeezy platforms, like Spindrift or Halcyon, right?”

“Actually, it’s beyond skeezy. It’s downright dangerous. Peacemakers generally only go there in force, and then only when they specifically have to,” Netty replied. Perry, who was shaking himself to cast off the last of the dissolved sludge, cut in. “Spindrift and Halcyon, and even Crossroads, are generally pretty open places that tend to attract a lot of scummy criminals. Plenty is more about truly serious organized crime. The trouble is that the place is almost completely opaque, and, frankly, everyone in the Guild is leery of it. Your grandfather had a case lead there his third year as a Peacemaker, but it was so dangerous he asked for help. He got none.”

“No one volunteered?”

“No one even acknowledged the request.”

Icky’s grin shone in the darkness as she hefted her sledgehammer. “I think I’m gonna like this place.”

ROVAN SPOKE TO THE WARDENS, who then each waved and loped off into the growing dawn. I called out my thanks after them. “Now, I suppose I’d better call our Provost and see if they can tell us anything about that ship that brought these—what’s your term?

Assholes?

It sounds appropriate. Anyway, the ship that brought them here—”

Netty cut him off. “That might be unwise. That ship had no transponder, which means it circumvented your regular space-traffic control measures. We know it was stealthed, but it would have been detectable as it deorbited prior to landing because of the atmospheric disturbance it would have caused. That is one signature that no stealth system can suppress and must have been detected as a primary return on your planetary scanners.”

I nodded at that. “Which means that someone in your traffic control shop was either grossly negligent or, probably more likely, paid or otherwise encouraged to look the other way.”

Rovan’s face hardened, and Rovan-ir uttered a low, menacing growl. “A corrupt official in our midst.”

“Some sort of mole, anyway,” I agreed. “Then we’ll find whoever it was and give them a chance to be the third individual in history who survives being stranded.”

I glanced at Rovan-ir. “I don’t think much of their chances, if the fauna’s anything like your friend here.”

“Like Rovan-ir?

Oh, no. It’s much, much worse.”

He said it with such predatory glee, too, that for a moment I felt sorry for the poor bastard when they got caught. But only for a moment. “THEY WERE JUST MERCENARIES,” Torina said as I settled into the Fafnir’s pilot’s seat. I held up a hand. “Just give me a second,” I said, leaning back and closing my eyes with a contented sigh. “Had enough camping?”

“More than enough, thanks,” I said, smiling as the seat conformed to me. “Told you it sucks,” Icky concluded. I opened my eyes and sat up. “Anyway, yeah, mercenaries. At least, that’s how it appears. Perry matched the ones with intact and recognizable faces to some entries in our database of known mercenaries, so they at least were guns-for-hire. I can’t help thinking they were on someone’s payroll, though. They were just a little too good at an especially vile but pretty specialized job.”

I turned to Perry, who Icky had cleaned of the last residue of the gluey mess that had engulfed him. “Perry, let’s get hold of Groshenko and see if he knows anything about this. He’s part of that world now.”

And apparently still alive, despite being told that he had a relatively short time to live. I wondered if he now regretted retiring from his position as a Master of the Guild. Except, no, he probably didn’t. Like my grandfather, he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who was really cut out for what amounted to a desk job. “Will do, boss,” Perry replied. “Okay, so Rovan is going to work at ferreting out whoever’s the mole in their planetary defenses, so that leaves us to head for Plenty, I guess—”

“Actually, Van, hold that thought. We’ve just got a twist comm from a Peacemaker in distress a couple of systems away. She’s calling for any other Peacemakers to come help her.”

I glanced at the display. Peacemaker—

“Lucky?

That’s her name?”

“Her real name is Klonao,” Netty said. “Oh. Wait. I’ve heard that name. She’s a real vet, isn’t she?”

“Thirty years as a Peacemaker, yes. Lucky’s just a nickname, but it’s the one that tends to stick. It’s also the name of her ship, the Lucky.”

“Hey, she’s Wu’tzur. We gotta help a cousin of mine,” Icky said. I told Netty to break orbit and plot the fastest possible trip to Lucky’s location and help her out. Then I glanced back at Icky. “Lucky is your cousin?”

“Ugh. I hope this isn’t another Carter Yost situation,” Torina said. But Icky just scoffed. “She’s not actually my cousin, at least as far as I know. It was a figure of speech, sheesh.”

“Well, whoever’s cousin she is, we’re going to give her a hand,” I said as we accelerated away from Ajax. Perry nodded. “We’ll have plenty of time for other things. Get it?

Plenty of time for—”

“Don’t bother, Perry. We get it.”

Torina gave me a wicked grin. “I’ll say it, then. We’ll have plenty of time for Plenty!”

I stared. So did Icky. Torina shrugged and turned to Perry. “Sorry, bird. Tough crowd.”

SPACE BATTLES TEND to go one of two ways. They’re either long, drawn out affairs of careful maneuvering, seeking a position of advantage, or brief, sharp orgies of violence that are over in seconds. This was going to be one of the latter. I knew it as soon as we’d twisted in to the system Lucky was broadcasting her calls for help from. We’d twisted as close as we could, but Lucky had been on her way to a refueling depot, a robotic platform orbiting a gas giant. Small, AI-powered skimmers scooped up the huge planet’s gaseous atmosphere and brought it back to the platform to be refined into fusion fuel. But she’d been waylaid while en route and was fighting a running battle against a much bigger ship, a class fourteen frigate-style ship

—

“The ship belongs to whom, exactly?” I asked. “Well, the transponder’s saying it’s a medical ship, but that’s obviously bullshit. The closest match is to an Eridani frigate involved in an accident a few years ago that was decommissioned afterward and supposedly sent to be scrapped,” Netty said. “Holy shit do a lot of these old warships end up in private hands. You’d think that would be discouraged,” I said, eyeing the tactical overlay. “Oh, it’s discouraged like crazy. Sometimes, it’s even accompanied by some tut-tuts and finger waggling. And if it’s an especially egregious case, someone might actually file a Statement of Concern with the Guild,” Perry replied. “What the hell is a Statement of Concern?”

“A written submission from a, well, concerned party, alerting the Guild to the fact that there might be activities of questionable legality underway.”

“So… a complaint.”

“No, a complaint is an accusation of specific wrongdoing.”

“So what the hell’s the point of this Statement of Concern thing?

Does it trigger the Guild to do anything?”

“Yes, to be concerned.”

“And?”

“And to create something that everyone knows is bullshit but at least appears to be useful, like politicians and the pockets on women’s pants.”

“Great.”

“Pockets on dresses are different, though,” Icky chimed in. “Totally. Makes all the difference,” Torina agreed. “Dresses?” I asked, my voice oozing derision. “You like dresses but not pants?”

Icky managed to look wounded. “I’m not some kind of maniac. Again, sheesh.”

“If nothing else, I’ve confirmed one thing today. Regardless of species, I don’t—”

“Understand women?

Archaic but true, boss. I’m with you,” Perry finished for me. I reached out and tapped his wing, then cut my eyes back to the screens. The tactical overlay didn’t offer much of a warm fuzzy either. Because of the gas giant, we couldn’t twist any closer. It meant that our transit time, including accelerating and decelerating again to even get into a position to help Lucky, was going to take over five hours. And considering she was

desperately trying to claw her way out of the big planet’s gravity well, the bigger and considerably more powerful class fourteen hot on her tail and slowly gaining, she’d be lucky to last another two. “Is there anyone closer who could help her?”

“There’s a Seven Stars League fast freighter gassing up at the fuel depot,” Netty replied. “Fat lot of good they’re going to do.”

“Maybe we could ask them to file a Statement of Concern,” Torina cooed. “Unfortunately, that might be the only thing that anyone can do here,” I groused. The last thing I wanted to do was just sit here and watch another Peacemaker die. And we couldn’t very well just turn around and leave, either. But thanks to the immutable laws of physics, we had no other options. All we could do was burn hard until we reached the midpoint of our course, then flip and burn again, bleeding off all that excess velocity. If we didn’t, we’d get to the battle in maybe thirty minutes but just flash right past at some horrific speed and be long gone. But—

“Hmm.”

“Here we go again,” Torina muttered, and Perry nodded. “Ten bonds says he’s planning something that’s going to have a slim chance of success but will also put all of us in mortal danger,” he said. I shot him a glance. “You’re reading my mind, bird.” I turned back to the panel. “Netty, if we just kept accelerating at full power, how long would it take us to reach the battle?”

“About twenty-three minutes. But reaching the battle is going to consist of whipping past it at a measurable fraction of light speed. We might manage to get back in a day or so—and we’ll have to, because we’ll need to refuel from that depot.”

“Van, if you’re considering flying past that frigate out there at a bazillion klicks a second, I hope you’re not expecting me to actually be able to hit anything. I’m good but not that good,” Torina said. I nodded but pressed on with the idea anyway, thrashing out options while Netty started us on an intercept course. We could rule out the mass drivers. It would be many, many times easier trying to hit a telephone pole with a pellet gun fired from a Formula One race car. Like the Fafnir herself, missiles would just zip past without a hope of being able to maneuver. And

even at full power, our lasers wouldn’t illuminate the target ship long enough to land more than a relative handful of photons on it. I sighed. “So that’s it then—”

“Uh, boss?

Aren’t you forgetting something?” Icky said, pointing a finger at the weapons panel, at one of the status indicators. PARTICLE CANNON – STAND-BY MODE

I blinked. “Oh. Right. We have one of those. It’s not going to be any more effective than the lasers, though, right?”

Perry cocked his head. “Actually, Van, it fires an intense stream of magnetically accelerated protons. They’re massive as particles go, and they already do their damage by imparting their kinetic energy to the target—

each on a very small scale, but it’s a whole lot of them doing it.”

Icky had been hammering away on a data slate. She held it up triumphantly. “Yes, even if we hit as much as point-one of light-speed, the particle cannon’ll deliver one hell of a punch if we start firing it well short and just keep up a continuous fire until we’ve passed.”

Netty spoke up. “So let me get this straight—you want to accelerate at full power the whole way there, and then pass close enough to that target ship to be within the particle cannon’s exceedingly short range?”

“Yeah, that about sums it up. Why, is there a problem?”

“Is there—?” Netty stopped, then started again, her tone a restrained one. “A problem?

No, Van, not at all. Oh, by the way, the next time you’re planetside, how about standing back a couple of hundred meters from a tree and firing The Drop so its projectile passes within, say, two or three centimeters of it without hitting it.”

“We have faith in you, Netty.”

“I’m so glad.”

TO SAY that this was going to be tight was a superluminal understatement. At the velocity we envisioned, we would be in particle cannon range of the ship pursuing Lucky for something on the order of a fiftieth of a second. We

could go even faster, even creep up into percentages of light speed, but Netty pointed out we’d start experiencing relativistic effects that could introduce all sorts of additional problems and uncertainties. All of which meant we were going to rely on Netty and Perry to control the ship and fire the particle cannon. We mere organic life-forms simply didn’t have the reaction times to even attempt it. Or, as Perry put it—

“Given that the particle cannon can only deliver a few seconds of sustained fire, the reaction window is probably smaller than the time it’ll take information from your eyes to even reach your brain.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I asked Perry. “What, lording what to you are superhuman abilities over your frail, biological forms?

No, I don’t enjoy it at all.”

Netty cut in. “I finally have an ID on the ship attacking Lucky. It took some digging through our intelligence databases and cross-referencing a bunch of stuff, but it’s almost certain to belong to the Salt Thieves.”

I smirked. “Ah, my old friends. Our paths cross again.”

“Very, very briefly,” Perry put in. We watched as the running battle drew ever closer on the overlay. Without our twist-enabled active scanners, we’d have no way of doing this. But it also meant we’d had to illuminate the apparent Salt Thieves ship, so they knew we were on our way. About ten minutes before intercept, the comm chimed with an incoming message. It was Lucky. A Wu’tzer, her simian face appeared on the display. She was an older, slightly more haggard version of Icky. “I appreciate the help, Peacemaker Tudor, but I think you’re going to overshoot a little—”

She stopped, wincing. At the same time, an explosion blossomed on the overlay. “One of their missiles. They keep lobbing them at us—almost a hundred thousand bonds worth now,” she said. “You must have something they really want,” I replied. “Or something they don’t want anyone else to have,” Torina put in. Lucky shrugged. “If we do, I’ll be damned if I know what it is. We’ve tried calling them, and aside from a nasty, two-word reply I won’t bother repeating, we just got dead air back.” She tilted her head. “Anyway, do you have a plan, Tudor, or are you literally just passing through—as in, really, really fast?”

I hesitated. She’d contacted us on a standard Peacemaker channel, using the Guild’s similarly standard level of encryption. I had no idea if it was truly secure or not. Moreover, I didn’t know Lucky, other than by reputation. And we’d run into enough Peacemakers, including two Masters, who turned out to be rotten with corruption. I wasn’t sure how much I could really trust her. “We’ve got a plan, yeah,” I finally replied, nodding. “I’m going to leave it at that.”

Lucky shrugged. “Hey, if it helps take some of the heat off, I’m all for it. Lucky out—hopefully not for good.”

“Seven minutes to intercept, Van,” Netty said. I nodded. For the moment, Torina, Icky, and I were just passengers, literally only along for the ride. The next few minutes would be up to the AIs. We watched intently as the distance rapidly diminished. I saw the particle cannon switch from stand-by mode to active— weapons hold. That meant it would power up, do its self-diagnostics, and then await targeting information, but not fire until it was cleared to weapons free. I left the discretion for all of this up to Perry and Netty. “Van, the Salt Thieves have fired a spread of three missiles at us. If we happen to hit one of them—” Netty said but didn’t go any further. “We get to see E equals MC2 in action, I know.”

“And from inside the equation at that,” Perry added. There was nothing we could do. Our chances of actually impacting one of the Salt Thieves’ missiles was very, very small—have I mentioned how big space is?—but it wasn’t zero. All we could do was hope for the best. “I think they’re getting nervous. They’ve fired three more missiles,”

Netty said. “Those guys have got the bonds to burn, don’t they?” I muttered. “It’s amazing how important money isn’t when you think you might be staring death in the face,” Torina replied, giving a sage nod. With each passing second now, my tension ratcheted up another notch. My stomach knotted down, provoking a tight flutter deep in my gut. I wasn’t used to having literally nothing to do in the immediate run-up to a battle, and it sucked. “Two minutes,” Netty said. “How long until we intercept those missiles?” I asked. “Two minutes, less about five seconds. Even at full burn, they’re barely moving compared to us.”

Icky, who’d been sitting silently at her engineering panel, sighed. “You know, bird, it’s times like this I envy you and your lack of feelings.”

Perry glanced back at her and said something very odd. “What makes you think I lack feelings?”

A question like that would ordinarily have provoked some interesting discussion about the nature of artificial intelligence, free will, and all that. Right now, though, it just fluttered off into unimportance. There was only one existential question at the moment. Would we even still exist in another minute or so?

TWENTY SECONDS. Perry switched the particle cannon to weapons free, meaning they were free to shoot at anything not positively identified as friendly. I braced myself. Ten seconds. Five. I winced—

The particle cannon fired, and kept firing. At the same time, the Fafnir rolled slightly. A few seconds later, the cannon cycled itself to a stop and switched to recuperation mode. “And, we’re done.”

Torina looked around. “Still in one piece. That’s a promising sign.”

I grunted assent and nodded, but now that we’d survived this insane stunt, I wanted to know if we’d actually accomplished anything with it. I glanced at the overlay, which showed us already pulling away from the gas giant. Netty flipped the Fafnir around and began a full-power braking burn. The comm chimed. “Well, that was damned clever, Tudor. Guess I owe you a drink,” Lucky said. The display switched to imagery from her ship, which showed the Salt Thieves’ frigate spalling debris from her underside. We must have raked her bottom with the particle cannon whose collimated beam would have shredded and probably even vaporized some of her hull plating. “Yeah, we bought that particle gun thing on a whim when we were upgraded to a Dragon. I was starting to feel some buyer’s remorse, but not anymore.”

We continued decelerating. It was going to take us effectively a whole day to make the turnaround, reach Lucky, and match velocity with her. To her credit and our gratitude, she declared that she’d wait for us to get back before claiming any salvage or prize money. As it turned out, though, the Salt Thieves weren’t quite out of the fight yet. They managed to get underway and start maneuvering their vessel, apparently trying to make a break for it. There was nothing we could do about it, but Lucky was happy to slam a couple of missiles through their engineering section. They then launched an escape pod, an obviously twist-capable one, so Lucky had to shoot it before it climbed far enough out of the gas giant’s gravity to run. When we finally made it back, we found Lucky working some damage control on her ship while maintaining a careful vigil over the wrecked frigate and its escape pod. “That frigate’s decompressed, and I think she’s sprung a serious radiation leak from her engineering section. Basically, the ship’s a no-go zone,” Lucky said. “How about the escape pod?”

“Well, now, that’s more interesting. It contained two Salt Thieves, both injured. One of them died just a short while ago. We think the other one’s going to pull through, so we’ll be transporting him back to Anvil Dark. But I don’t think it’s the Salt Thieves that are going to interest you, Tudor.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Along with the two Salt Thieves aboard that pod, we found ninety thousand bonds and eight kilos of osmium. Word is that you’re interested in anyone mining or carrying osmium, so I figured this would pique your interest.”

“Yes, consider it piqued.” I turned to Torina and Perry. “Why would the Salt Thieves be carting around osmium?”

They exchanged a look, then both turned back to me. “Van, uh—do you really have to ask?” Perry started, but I held up a hand. “Yeah, okay, rhetorical and all that. I know that osmium has other uses, but I was kind of getting to it being a strange coincidence.”

“But also no coincidence at all,” Torina said, and I nodded back at her. “I’m sure it’s not. We need to strip their data stores, or what’s left of them.” I turned to Perry, smiling. “You’re pretty radiation proof, right?”

He uttered a very convincing sigh. “A bird’s work is never done.”

13

WE WEREN’T able to retrieve much from the Salt Thieves’ ship. Their computers were essentially junk before the battle. What we did retrieve, though, was enlightening. “Someone has put out a bounty on Peacemakers in general,” Perry announced. I stared at the fragmentary data he’d managed to glean from their archives. It included a chunk of what was clearly a contract specifying a standing bounty on Peacemakers. And it blamed me. Torina narrowed her eyes at it. “Ouch.”

“Yeah. Ouch for sure.”

“If you think you’ve got Yotov’s goodwill, you should probably plan to cash in on it,” Perry said. Icky, though, was outraged. “Blaming us?

What the hell?” She turned to me, her face a mask of fury. “There’s still one of those bastards alive on Lucky’s ship. Let me go and ask him some pointed questions—”

“Icky, relax. Lucky’s already ID’d him, and he’s at most a minor minion. He was probably just promised a share of the bounty, and that’s all he knew,” I said. “Still, this is one hell of a way to drive a wedge between you and the rest of the Guild,” Perry said. I gave a nod, but Torina had a thoughtful look. “Actually, this isn’t entirely a bad thing.”

I raised my eyebrows at her. “Really?

And how so?

Because it seems to me that putting a price on Peacemakers’ heads and blaming it on me is pretty bad no matter how you look at it.”

“Because, Van, it smacks of desperation. Whoever’s behind this—”

“Probably the Cabal, or The Stillness via the Cabal,” Netty offered. “Or the Salt Thieves themselves, or the Arc of Vengeance, or the Sorcerers—” Perry rambled on, but Torina cut him off. “Sure, it could be any of them. Hell, it could be all of them. But let’s face it, whoever it is, they’re making a desperate throw of the dice here. And in doing it, they’ve put every Peacemaker on high alert, meaning everyone’s going to be watching very carefully for anything out of the ordinary. They’ve also exposed themselves some—”

“Oh my,” Perry said, but Torina pinched his beak closed with her fingers. “Mind out of the gutter, bird. Anyway, they’ve had to publish this bounty, and they’re going to have to pay it out if anyone claims it, and every one of those instances is another where they can screw up and get caught.”

My own face had gone thoughtful as Torina had spoken. I finally nodded back at her. “We’re getting close to something.”

“We are,” she replied. “Uncomfortably close.”

“Hold that thought,” I said and called up Lucky. She came on the comm almost immediately. “So here’s what I’m thinking. We’ll split the bonds, but you take an extra ten thousand since you, ah, saved my ass. As for the osmium, I’m going to presume it’s evidence and that you’ll be seizing it. But if you sell any of it—”

“I’m not going to, but if I do, you’ll get half of it, Lucky. In the meantime—”

I went on to describe the bounty we’d found that had been plastered on the head of every Peacemaker. I was curious what her reaction would be to it. Would she be angry?

Worried?

Outraged?

Angry at me?”

What I hadn’t expected was for her to laugh. “So that makes—oh, hell, it has to be almost two million bonds on my head right now. I’m actually kind of flattered.”

“You have other contracts out on you?”

“Oh, Tudor, you are new to this, aren’t you?

Come on, you must have at least one contract out there in your name.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I do. I don't mean to preen—”

“Yes you do.”

“Okay, maybe a little,” I admitted, “but yes, there’s a fat contract out on me that was accidentally applied to Okena.” I waggled one hand, looking at it with an appreciative glance. “Never thought I’d be worth quite that much per kilo, but here we are.”

“See?

There you go. If you don’t have a half-dozen bounties on you by the time you’re a Myrmidon, you’re not doing it right.”

I smiled and shook my head. “Now I’m a little disappointed. I am a Myrmidon, and I’ve only got one. Or two, if you count this new one on Peacemakers overall.”

“That you know of.”

“Uh—right, good point. That I know of.”

“Tudor, the galaxy hates us Peacemakers. Local law enforcement resents us, criminals despise us for getting in the way of their fun, and everyone just sees us as grumpy old cops. And as for the bad guys, the only thing they hate more than a Peacemaker is an honest Peacemaker, one who’s not corrupt and can’t just be bought. We’re the real interstellar buzzkills, as far as they’re concerned.”

“So I should just roll with the hate.”

“Nah, you should embrace it. Hate and fear go hand in hand, and the more people are afraid of us, the more effective we are in our jobs.” She shrugged. “If it makes you feel any better, your grandfather probably had more bounties and contracts and prices on his head than any other Peacemaker in history. Those Stillness assholes especially hated his guts, but only because they were genuinely afraid of him. He had no price. He just did his job, and it drove them crazy.”

“Thanks, Lucky. That does help—I guess.”

She leaned into the display. “Piece of advice. You’ve probably had your Moonsword upgraded, what, once now?

Twice?”

“Twice.”

“Why don’t you go see Linulla and show him some of that osmium, see if he can use it for your next upgrade. He’s a wizard when it comes to metallurgy, so if anyone could take advantage of it, it’d be him.”

“That’s not a bad idea. I could stand to spend a couple of days at Starsmith, I think.”

“Uh, Van, isn’t that kind of risky?

Isn’t Starsmith kind of an obvious place to go looking for you?” Icky asked. But Lucky just laughed. “Oh, Starsmith is fine. It’s probably the safest place in known space, in fact.”

I thought about the sparsely populated, unremarkable planet. I couldn’t even recall seeing any planetary defenses around it. “Really?

Starsmith?

What makes it safer than, say, Anvil Dark?”

“Ask Linulla. Tell him Lucky said it was okay to tell you.”

With that, she signed off. I turned to Perry. “Do you know what she was talking about?”

“Honestly, no idea. I’ve been to Starsmith a bunch of times, and I know it’s considered neutral territory, but there’s no sign it’s some kind of fortress.”

“Ah, well, a mystery then. Netty, please set a course for Starsmith, and step on it!”

“I will, just as soon as we gas up.”

I deflated a bit. “Oh. Yeah. Gas. Probably a good idea.” I cleared my throat. “Netty, please set a course for the fuel depot, and choose a reasonable pace.”

“The kind that saves money?”

“That’s the speed. Like we’re clipping coupons.”

Icky leaned forward. “What’s a coupon?”

“A code to save money, and something for people to argue about in long lines at stores. Netty, kick it,” I said, then turned to Icky. “Now, if you’re using a coupon, make sure it’s expired, so you can start an immediate argument with the store employee.”

Icky rubbed all four hands together. “I already like coupons.”

DESPITE LUCKY’S casual dismissal of the threat of a standing bounty on Peacemakers, I found myself increasingly uneasy in the following days. Part of it was for me and my crew. This wasn’t the first time I’d been the target of some particular attention from the baddies. I’d once helped a

government enact sanctions against some key players in a second government, all wealthy, powerful, and ruthless men and women who weren’t noted for their forgiving nature at the best of times. I’d ended up with what amounted to a bounty on my head—or, rather, my online persona’s head. I’d simply shed that identity and crafted another one, leaving the bad guys chasing a digital ghost. Still, I’d found myself at least quickly glancing over my shoulder for a few weeks. I had succeeded in ferreting out nearly seven billion dollars in illicit funds in various tax havens and other places, after all. And once all of it had been seized, frozen, or otherwise blocked from crossing certain international borders, all the anonymizing and VPNs and end-to-end encryption in the world didn’t guarantee my true identity wouldn’t get ferreted out in turn. But this was different. This wasn’t anonymous. These rewards weren’t being placed on some throwaway screen name, they were being tagged to Van Tudor the Peacemaker. And despite Lucky’s insistences to the contrary, I couldn’t imagine that every other Peacemaker out there would see it her way. All it took was one to decide they didn’t want the bounty hanging over them and reveal details of my location or movements or whatever in exchange for a “Get Out Of Being Assassinated Free” card. If someone I’d trusted as much as Steve could turn out to be compromised, who else might be?

Could I even trust Lucky?

“You’re starting to smoke up the cockpit, you’re thinking so hard, Van,”

Icky said, climbing in the front crew hab. Torina was catching a few hours of sleep as we transited to Starsmith, while Perry focused on decrypting and cleaning up the last pieces of the Salt Thieves’ data. It left me alone with my thoughts—and Netty, of course. And she was great, but her main concern was operating the Fafnir. I’d discussed the whole situation briefly with her, but she hadn’t been able to offer any real insights I didn’t already have. “As long as it's just my brain throwing smoke and not one of the Fafnir’s systems, that’s fine.”

She settled into the copilot’s seat. “Guess you’re worried about the bad guys, huh?”

“I’m always worried about the bad guys, Icky.”

“You gonna be careful about them, keeping your eyes open, letting your crew help as much as we can?”

“Well, yeah, of course—”

“You gonna let them stop you from doing the stuff you think you need to do?”

“I—no, certainly not.”

She shrugged. “So what’s to worry about?

You seem to have it all covered.”

“I—uh—”

It was as far as I got. I really had no way to refute her, because she was right. In two simple sentences and her own blunt, down-to-earth way, she’d neatly encapsulated not just the problem, but the solution—keep your eyes open, rely on your crew, get on with the job. I offered her a grateful smile. “Thanks, Icky. That actually helps me a lot. Have you ever considered getting into counseling?”

“Counseling?

Oh, yeah, sure. I know I grew up with welding burns and bits of insulation in my mouth from stripping wires with my teeth, but it’s always been my dream to help others. You know, listen patiently, gently talk them through their problems…”

“A simple no would have been sufficient.”

She snickered. “Hey, ask stupid questions—”

“Get sassy answers. Got it,” I said, tilting my head to her before settling into a companionable silence. We flew on, and Icky busied herself with some esoteric aspect of the drive and its performance, probably to the tune of a tenth or so of a percent. It didn’t matter. As far as Icky was concerned, that tenth of a percent was owed to her by reality and she was going to claim it. It was this sort of nearly obsessive attention to mechanical detail that made her such a damned good engineer and member of the Fafnir’s crew. Except she was more than that, wasn’t she?

She was also a rock of stability, someone I could trust implicitly, someone whose frank attitude was so refreshing in a galaxy of duplicity, deception, and treachery. She was my friend. With a penchant for violence, too, but a true friend nonetheless. The last hour of the flight to Starsmith passed in almost complete silence. Icky muttered something and returned to her own engineering workstation to keep futzing away at her tenth of a percent. I stretched out in the Fafnir’s pilot’s seat and luxuriated in the solid reassurance of her presence literally at my back. And, for the first time in a long time, I truly relaxed. I GASPED when I was jangled awake by Torina. I’d relaxed so much I’d fallen asleep. Torina clicked her tongue. “Sleeping on duty. Perry, what’s the penalty for that?”

She unfolded his perch and sat in the copilot’s seat, making room for him. “Sleeping on duty?

That would be death by hanging.”

Torina blinked. “What?

I figured maybe a reprimand, scrubbing the bulkheads, something like that. I mean—holy shit.’

“Hey, thirteen hundred standard years ago it was written right into the Guild Charter. Per Article Seven, To desert the ship or their quarters in battle, or to be found asleep upon their assigned watch, is punishable with death or marooning. ”

“Wow. Harsh.”

“Can I opt for the marooning instead?” I asked. “I don’t think the list of punishments is meant to be a menu, Van, and you just order what you want,” Perry replied. “When was the last time a Peacemaker was executed for sleeping on the job?”

“Sixty-seven years ago.”

I shot him a sharp glance. “Yikes. That recent?

Really?”

“He fell asleep during the critical moment of an operation, resulting in three other Peacemakers being killed,” Perry replied, then leaned toward me in a conspiratorial way. “Actually, word is that he had two members of a mentally conjoined race on board, and the three of them—”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“See, because two of them were always acting in perfect unison—”

“I get it, Perry, thank you.”

“Just what we need—a horndog mechanical bird,” Torina muttered. I looked at the others. “So are you guys going to turn me in, arrange for my execution for shameful dereliction of duty?”

Torina smiled an evil smile. “That depends.”

“On what?”

“On whoever gets to claim the Captain’s quarters on the Iowa.”

“You have two officers’ staterooms, so you’ve already got more space than I do!”

“But it’s not the Captain’s quarters.”

I puffed out an exaggerated sigh. “Fine.”

“Great. Now he’s going to be grumpy for the rest of the trip,” Perry said. We made planetfall at Starsmith and were immediately cleared to land at the forge Linulla shared with several other artisans. As we descended into the chop of the upper atmosphere, I was reminded of the whole Starsmith is the safest place in the galaxy thing. Netty and Perry adamantly refused to discuss it, the topic apparently being locked behind a Guild edict to never discuss it. But I saw no planetary defenses to speak of, nor did I see anything else in the system to hint at some vast, latent power. I made a mental note to ask Linulla about what protected the system, because I’m more of a show me, don’t tell me kind of guy. If there was some slumbering might lurking out there, I’d like to know what it was. I’m curious like that. But for now, I kept my eyes and ears open. Eventually, Linulla would speak. And I would be ready to listen. 14

LINULLA PLUCKED THE SMALL, somewhat coarse ingot from my hand. I wasn’t really that keen having what amounted to a gigantic lobster claw closing on things only millimeters from my tender, yielding flesh, but this was Linulla. He was nothing if not supremely dextrous, which kind of went with the job of Starsmith. He held it up, and it gleamed blue-gray in the harsh lights of the forge. “Osmium. Interesting. This is hard to come by.”

“Tell me about it,” I replied. “We got this by legal means, but I’ll be candid, Linulla, osmium is being used for some really shitty things.”

“Do I want to know this, Van?

Or perhaps more importantly, can you tell me?

Without breaking your code, or orders?”

“I trust you, friend. People of all races are being murdered, and the osmium is a critical component of stealing their memories. I won’t go into detail about what’s happening beyond that, save to say it’s a crime of the highest order. With that being said, I think you understand the properties of osmium far better than I do. A fellow Peacemaker, Lucky, said I should bring a bit of it to you to see if you can find it of use.”

He held it up and turned it slowly. “High-grade, minimal impurities. This has been thoroughly refined.” His gaze shifted back to me—I think. It was hard to tell when his eyes were essentially just glittering black orbs. “Where did you find this?”

“Aboard a Salt Thieves’ ship. I’m not sure that it’s linked to our case, but I’d be awfully surprised if it wasn’t.”

“Indeed. Osmium is one of the rarest metals in nature. And finding this much, refined to this purity, is quite the feat, even with our levels of technology in mining and metallurgy. It’s the sort of purity you’d need for the application of identity chips. I really can’t imagine it being intended for anything else.”

“Well, we don’t have a hard link between the Salt Thieves and our identity-theft ring, but yeah, considering we found eight kilos of this stuff

—”

“Eight kilograms?

Of osmium?

That’s worth a small fortune.”

“It’s also evidence, which brings me back to Lucky’s suggestion. Technically, I should be putting all eight kilos of this into evidence, but if there’s some edge this osmium can give me—well, it’s a dangerous galaxy out there, Linulla.”

“Indeed. And I can make use of osmium, yes, but for an upgrade to your Moonsword that would normally occur only after two intermediate ones.”

He stared at the ingot. “It’s not essential to do those first, but it is customary.”

“I’m okay with not being customary, if it helps keep me alive.”

“Well, this will certainly do that. I will need… three days. Perhaps four. Can you return then?”

“Uh… can we just hang out here and wait?”

I felt Linulla’s gaze shift from the ingot to me. “I have no objection, but

—are you sure?

Starsmith isn’t the most exciting vacation spot in known space.”

“Maybe not, but it’s familiar. And I love your kids—”

“Excellent, then you’ll be happy to help keep them entertained during your stay.”

“Sure, I’m certain Torina and Icky will be happy indeed to do that.”

“I notice they’re not here.”

“Exactly.”

I started to turn away, then stopped and turned back. “Linulla, Lucky told me that Starsmith is probably the safest place in known space.”

“That’s probably true, yes.”

“But how?

I don’t see any planetary defenses, fortifications, weapons, nothing. Does it have something to do with you being declared neutral?” I asked. “Well, that does help, yes. But our main defense is Matterforge.”

“Matterforge.”

“That’s right.”

“Uh, what’s a Matterforge?”

Linulla gave me a beady-eyed stare—the only one he could give me, actually. Then he made a follow-me gesture with one of his smaller claws. “Matterforge is notoriously reclusive, so we generally leave it alone. However, you’ve proven to be not just a good customer, but also a friend. So, I think an introduction is in order.”

And with that, Linulla turned away and started for an exit across his workroom. Bemused, I followed, listening to the staccato sounds of his claws as we went to meet someone. Or some thing. LINULLA TOOK me to a small room off of what I assumed was a warehouse. The main area was a huge, cavernous space, quiet and gloomy, filled with shelves stacked with stuff—ingots, inscrutable pieces of machinery, things that looked like half-finished projects, mysterious boxes and cases. It was all fascinating, and I’d have loved to spend time here just finding out what everything was, but Linulla led me inexorably to the small side chamber, truncating any investigation on my part. The space was cramped, and contained more shelves laden with smaller items, books and data modules, and more of the ubiquitous ingots. But one wall was clear of anything at all, making room for a twist-comm terminal. It seemed like the standard sort, but it was plugged into a separate device that I didn’t immediately recognize. Linulla touched a claw to a control. “Matterforge, do you have a moment?”

I have many moments, both in the past and in the future yet to be. The voice was male, rich and resonant, and clearly synthesized. Linulla turned an eye stalk to me. “Matterforge tends to be quite literal.”

He turned back to the terminal. “I have someone with whom I would like to acquaint you.”

For what purpose?

“For no purpose other than an opportunity to experience a new aspect of reality.”

I am open to such purposes. Who is this individual?

Linulla turned to me. I stared for a second, then turned to the terminal. “Oh, uh—hi. My name’s Van Tudor. I’m a Peacemaker, from Earth.”

I acknowledge your existence, Van Tudor Peacemaker from Earth. I glanced at Linulla, an eyebrow raised. Had that been a greeting?

Or had I offended this Matterforge in some way?

I acknowledge your existence seemed… tepid. But Linulla waved a claw. “Perhaps Van would have more context to this conversation if you were to show yourself to him.”

And this will be a worthwhile investment of my time?

“You said it yourself, that you have many moments—as in all of them. You are essentially immortal after all, so you have literally nothing to lose.”

Just because I am unending does not imply I enjoy wasting my time. “Indulge me.”

Very well. Linulla touched a control and activated a display. It showed an image of a star, but up close. Loops and whorls and prominences of star stuff leapt from its roiling surface, some material being flung into space and vanishing, the rest plunging back into the restless plasma of what amounted to a vast, unending thermonuclear explosion. I glanced at Linulla. “Uh—okay.”

“There,” Linulla said, pointing at the display with a claw. Another streamer of plasma had extruded itself from the star’s surface. This one, though, stretched until it must have been hundreds of thousands of kilometers long. Then it stayed there, a spike of white-hot gas shimmering against the blackness of space. “Van, allow me to introduce you to Matterforge.”

I LOOKED up from my coffee, across the Fafnir’s galley table. “Yes, in the star.”

Torina and Icky both stared flatly back. “Van, no one can live inside a star,” Torina said. “Okay, not actually in it, but on its surface. That’s apparently its natural habitat.”

“Okay, Van, what are you cooking up here?

Some kind of elaborate joke?”

I turned to Perry. “Bird, help me out here.”

“That information is locked—”

“Oh, for—Perry, Linulla spilled it to me. I saw Matterforge. Prior knowledge has got to circumvent whatever data lock you have on that stuff.”

Perry cocked his head. “Actually, you’re right. Okay, so what Van is telling you is true. Matterforge is a being of unknown origin, unknown capabilities, unknown nature, and unknown purpose. It lives on the surface of a star and uses it as a sort of matter forge. It literally manufactures elements as it sees fit, including some very heavy ones that are normally just short-lived affairs that almost instantly collapse into lighter elements and radiation upon their formation. Somehow, Matterforge is able to make them metastable—that is, stable under conditions they normally wouldn’t be.”

The others just stared. I smiled. “I’m sure that’s the look I had on my face, too. Anyway, according to Linulla, Matterforge, whatever it is, is the reason Starsmith is here to begin with. It turns out that Matterforge creates elements that the Starsmiths use in their work, and in return, they provide it with experiences it would otherwise never have.”

“It’s also the reason that Starsmith is the best protected place in known space. Matterforge has boundless control over limited amounts of the star’s substance. But those limited amounts are still in the peta-ton range. And there’s no ship, or fleet, for that matter, that can withstand a bombardment from peta-tons of incandescent plasma.”

Netty cut in. “About one hundred and fifty years ago, an offshoot of the Seven Stars League attempted to annex Starsmith, ostensibly to put it under their protection. In reality, they just wanted to control and tax it, of course. The Starsmiths themselves jointly told them to take a hike, whereupon they sent a flotilla of ships to enforce their will.”

“Ten ships, the biggest a battlecruiser, were reduced to clouds of glowing gas in the same instant. That was the last time anyone tried anything aggressive at all toward Starsmith. The details aren’t widely known, just that something is protecting this system—something especially badass,” Perry said. Torina shook her head. “Amazing. And I’m not even new to space travel and alien life. But this Matterforge, it—” She stopped and shook her head again. “I know. It kind of puts a new spin on the whole idea of what life actually is, doesn’t it?” I said, my voice soft with wonder. “However, Matterforge seems like a nice enough—uh, guy?

Not that something like gender really seems all that relevant when you’re talking about an ineffable energy being living on the surface of a star.”

“I already like him,” Icky said. “Why?

You haven’t even met him,” Torina protested. Icky shook her head. “Don’t need to. I already know he doesn’t like pants.”

THE REVELATION about Matterforge was more than enough to gobsmack me for the duration of our visit. I talked to it twice more, both times telling it stories about the things I’d experienced in my life. But it wasn’t interested in the big stuff, space battles or running down vile criminals as a Peacemaker. It wasn’t even especially interested in my career as a shadowy hacker, prowling cyberspace and hunting bad guys. It wanted, instead, to hear about the little things. It is through a knowledge of such mundane things that one can come to truly understand a people. Such small things give texture and personal meaning to their existence. For instance, what is the most physically painful thing that has happened to you. I thought about it, then nodded. “That would probably be when I stepped on a four-sided die in bare feet, in the dark. That hurt like a sonofabitch.”

Tell me about it. So I had the mind-bendingly wonderful experience of telling an immortal star being about the time I stomped my foot down on an errant die from a Dungeons and Dragons session, how much it had hurt, and how it had left a permanent dent in my foot. Matterforge got that story, and a brief history of cursing as well, as I ran down the list of terms I used while hopping around in agony. Did you leave the infernal device on your floor again, Van Tudor?

“I did not. I learned my lesson, Matterforge.”

A wise choice, he said, and I swore I caught the hint of laughter despite his voice being generated by circuits. It was surreal, and we parted as acquaintances, with a promise to continue our discussions again. But meeting Matterforge wasn’t the only unexpected thing to happen at Starsmith. The second was the sudden arrival of Zenophir. I gaped as she came aboard the Fafnir. “Zenophir, you’re… here.”

She looked around. “So it would appear.”

“I thought you had no intention of ever leaving your home.”

“I didn’t, mainly because I’d come to accept I never could. I was intent on honoring your grandfather’s deal with me. But then you came along and nullified that, and—well, it took a while, but I guess I came to realize that I could leave if I wanted to. And then, not long after that, I wanted to. There’s a lot of universe out there I still haven’t seen. So I made a couple of inquiries and found out you were here, on Starsmith.” She shrugged. “And here we are, having this conversation.”

That made me a little uneasy. “How did you find out we were here, though?

We weren’t exactly advertising it.”

“Because of the price on your head?”

“That’s got a lot to do with it, yeah.”

She waved a dismissive hand. “I happen to be old friends with Lucky. She said you’d be here.”

I nodded. That at least made some sense and made me feel a little less vulnerable. But it just led to another question. “Okay, why are you here?

Why did you come looking for us?”

She looked nervous for a moment, then waved a hand. “To be honest, I’d like to join your crew. Are you hiring?”

APPARENTLY, Zenophir still believed she owed Gramps and was determined to make good on it through me. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to have another skilled engineer on board whose expertise meshed with Icky’s quite nicely. Icky’s forte was a ship’s structure and critical systems, like power plant and drives. Zenophir’s strengths lay in more delicate components, electronics, flight control systems, and above all, weapons. Moreover, with the Fafnir upgraded to a Dragon, we certainly had the room for her. However. “Why do I get the sense you don’t quite trust her?” Torina asked me as we took a walk away from the Fafnir in our b-suits. The landscape around us was barren, just dusty plains of rock sprawled amid towering ridges and spires of rock. The periodic bursts of radiation from the star, Struve 2398, had progressively scoured the surface of the planet to bare stone. I wondered how much Matterforge had to do with that, but if it wasn’t an issue for the people like Linulla that lived here, then who was I to complain?

“I’m not sure I quite trust anyone who isn’t you, Icky, Perry, or Netty. I mean, when everyone’s out to get you, paranoia’s just smart thinking, isn’t it?”

“Your grandfather certainly seemed to trust her.”

“True.” We walked on in silence for a moment. I glanced up, into the dark sky. The planet, technically Struve 2398-b, had almost no atmosphere left. Like everything else that wasn’t rock, the floods of hard radiation from the star had, over time, ripped it away. What remained was a wispy-thin veil of gas that barely managed a purplish hue toward the horizon. It was a rare accent of color on a world denuded by the awesome power of a star. A star with a living being on board. “But he trusted her some years ago now,” I went on. “And a lot can happen in some years.”

“Van, do you remember the philosophy of this place, of the Starsmith?”

Torina asked me. “Yeah. The nearer the hand, the deadlier the strike. ”

“That can mean more than just keep your enemies close and all that. Sometimes, the near hand helps you deliver that deadly strike,” she said. I glanced at her. I could see her eyes peering back from the reflections on her visor. “Do you trust her?”

Torina didn’t answer immediately, and we just walked on a few paces. “I do,” she finally said. “Your grandfather trusted her, and I trust you, and you trust your grandfather, so—I trust her, too.”

“That’s a real trust chain.”

“Maybe, but it feels right, at least to me.”

This time I stayed silent, pondering it. In her own way, Torina was every bit as grounded and sensible as Icky, wasn’t she?

She just packaged it better. I finally stopped and turned back toward the Fafnir, and the entrance to the Starsmiths’ complex nearby her. “Okay, then. But my decision isn’t based purely on trust. It’s also on something else, something I consider almost as critical. It’s about you.”

“Me?

What about me?”

“I trust you, sure, but I also admire you. Your character. Your core,” I admitted. Torina was silent for a moment, then she put a hand on my shoulder, the pressure gentle through our suits. “Same. It’s a good word, isn’t it?

Admire?”

“It’ll have to do for now, but yeah. It’s good. So, based on all of that, let’s head back and welcome our newest crewmember, shall we?”

IT TOOK us a while to find Zenophir. When we did, we discovered her locked in a ferocious battle, desperately fighting for her life. Icky had rushed to her aid, but now she was pinned down by heavy fire, too. Torina and I stopped beside Linulla. I glanced at him, raising my voice over the shouts and shrieks erupting from the storeroom, the same one we’d passed through to get to the terminal connected to Matterforge. “What the hell’s going on—?”

I yelped and jumped back as an incandescent energy beam swept across the three of us. “A firefight that I think your friends are in the process of losing,” he said. I could see Zenophir and Icky sheltering behind a stack of crates and snapping out occasionally with almost random shots from snub-nosed beam

weapons at their attackers. And their attackers, Linulla’s children, happily fired back, filling the room with crisscrossed beams of light. Torina put her hand out and intersected one. It glowed brightly on her palm for a second, then swept away. “Ouch!”

I shot her a worried look. “You okay?”

She grinned. “Oh yeah. Didn’t actually feel a thing.”

Linulla’s kids capered and cavorted around, brandishing their beam weapons wildly and firing shots all over the place—at Zenophir and Icky, at one another, occasionally at us. Linulla offered us each a set of goggles. “Here, you’d better put these on. Conoku eyes aren’t particularly vulnerable to intense light, but yours probably are—”

“Hey, I hit you!” Icky shouted. The reply could have come from any Earthly ten-year-old. “Nuh-uh!”

“Uh-huh!”

I shook my head. Torina laughed. “Icky, you play nice!” she shouted. “These kids are cheating!

I hit—that one, I think.”

“No, it was me!”

Icky gave a triumphant shout. “Aha!

So you admit you were hit!”

Linulla’s—son or daughter, I had no idea which—made a strangled sound and slumped dramatically, claws scraping at the floor. Icky didn’t have much time to savor her victory, though. Two of Linulla’s kids uttered ferocious yells and charged, bombarding Icky with shots. Zenophir slapped her arm and pointed upward, to another couple of young Conoku who’d scuttled up a towering shelving unit. From their lofty perch, they opened up a withering fire on Icky and Zenophir. “No fair, we said no climbing!” Icky shouted at them. The ferocious battle raged on a little longer, then petered out as Linulla’s children either started to flag or just lost interest. Linulla moved in, bellowing at his kids that it was time for their next session of tutoring to begin and that one of his apprentice Starsmiths was waiting for them. “And you will not like what M’nalicka does to the last one who shows up at his forge!”

That galvanized the whole brood, bringing them scuttling toward the door, a small avalanche of chitinous claws and frantic hurry. Torina and I dodged out of the way just in time to avoid being bowled over. Icky and Zenophir extracted themselves from their makeshift fort. While Icky returned the boxes and crates to the shelves, I beckoned Zenophir over. “Welcome aboard the Fafnir, Zenophir,” I said, sticking out my hand. She glanced at it, her walrus face pinched momentarily in confusion, then brightened. “Oh, right, that human thing about briefly gripping each other’s appendages. Your grandfather was especially fond of it,” she replied, taking my hand and shaking it. “Well, it’s meant to be a gesture of goodwill and respect.”

“I appreciate that. I appreciate you finally deciding to trust me even more.”

“I—what?

Trust you?

Of course I trust you—”

“But you didn’t. Admit it. And I don’t blame you for being wary. It’s a hostile and damned uncaring universe.”

I smiled. “Perry told me the same thing, right after I met him and learned about—” I gestured around. “Well, all of this.”

“You certainly have a way with kids, especially considering I don’t think you’ve had much experience with them—have you?” Torina asked. “Almost none. I haven’t had a chance to decide whether I like kids or not, either.”

I caught just a hint of something in Zenophir’s words—regret, maybe?

Like Icky, circumstances had decreed that she’d spent most of her life alone. Unlike Icky, though, Zenophir wasn’t young. Did she miss the things she’d never done, the path not taken?

But then, didn’t we all?

Linulla broke me out of my reverie. “Anyway, Van, I’ve finished doing some analysis, and I can use that osmium for an upgrade. Like I said, it’s unorthodox, but the customs around forging a Peacemaker’s blade are your Guild’s concern, not really mine. So if you’re okay with it, then I’ll proceed.”

“Uh, sure—although, what does this next upgrade do?” I mean, I’d like to know what I was paying for. But Linulla just shook his head. “This is one I think you’ll need to see in action to truly appreciate.”

“What if he doesn’t like it, though?” Icky said, having just joined us. But Linulla didn’t even hesitate. “He will.”

WE SPENT two more days lounging around Starsmith, splitting our time between the Fafnir and getting Zenophir settled in, and the forge, which mostly meant goofing around with Linulla’s kids. I had to admit, for such an unruly, restless gang of little Conoku, they were surprisingly diligent in applying themselves to their studies. Each had already begun to walk a particular path of forging, some more interested in weapons, others in armor, and some in metallurgy generally. When they weren’t applying themselves to their studies, though, they erupted into happy pandemonium, often centered on Icky. “She’s basically one of them, you know. A big kid herself,” Torina said as we watched her wrestling with three or four young Conoku. I knew she’d meant it in an offhanded way, but I actually found it a little touching. Given her past, in some ways she really was still a kid. A heavily muscled, three hundred pound kid with four arms, but still a kid. In fact, I’d already noticed a touch of bonding between Zenophir and Icky, with a hint of something maternal. If bringing Zenophir into the team gave them both something they were missing, then so much the better. Near the end of that second day, Linulla called me into his workroom and offered me the Moonsword. The blade was unchanged in size, but it had been reformed into more cutlass than xiphos, the elegant sweep of it balanced to perfection in my hand. But the color—that was the true change, the mark of Linulla’s efforts. What had been a reddish hue overlaying the bright metal was now combined with a blue element, subtly blending to give my blade a violet cast that flickered in and out of my perception like a ghost. I swung it a few times, and it seemed no lighter and didn’t behave any differently. “Uh, Linulla, I don’t—” I started, then stopped. He had a handgun raised, aimed directly at me. A FLICKER OF PANIC—HAD Linulla betrayed me?

Was he out for the bounty on my head?

Instead of shooting, though, he simply gestured with the gun. “Raise the sword, Van, like you’re going to come at me with it.”

I stared, blinked, then nodded. “Ah. Okay.” So I did. Linulla fired. The beam flashed into existence, and I saw it was one of the harmless toy lasers his kids had employed in their firefight with Icky and Zenophir. The beam made a perfectly straight line to a point about a meter in front of me. But then it curved and arced away to my right. Again, I stared and blinked. “What the hell?”

“Move the blade around,” Linulla said. I did, and the beam deflected more to the right, then above me, then off to my left, depending on how I held the Moonsword. But at no time did the beam actually touch me. Linulla put the weapon down, then picked up another, heftier one. “This one is an actual weapon, a laser bolt of Nesit design. If it hits you, it will hurt,” he said, raising and aiming it. My knuckles whitened around the Moonsword’s hilt, but before I could ask any questions or raise any objections to being shot at by something genuinely harmful, Linulla fired. Again, the beam deflected and struck the wall to my right with a flash and a loud snap. Linulla didn’t keep the beam activated this time and lowered the weapon. “What do you think?”

“What do I think?

I think this is magic, that’s what. The blade will do this to any incoming fire?”

“No, only effectively massless fire, so lasers and similar beam weapons mainly. It will provide good protection against things like particle beams and plasma blasts as well, though those won’t likely be one hundred percent deflected. But some is better than none.”

I studied the blade. “Well I’ll be damned. Like gravity.”

“Except that gravity can also kill. This?

This saves.” He shrugged. “Well, as long as you don’t deflect the beam into someone or something you didn’t intend, of course. You may want to take one of these toy lasers and practice that.”

I nodded. “I am—impressed is an understatement.”

“The osmium incorporated into the new matrix overlay is what makes it possible. As I’ve said, this is normally a later upgrade, and it’s usually done with ruthenium. It’s cheaper, but not quite as effective and also more

laborious, because ruthenium’s quite inert and difficult to work with. So you have a premium upgrade there, Van.”

I sheathed the blade and happily made payment to Linulla, in part with a few more ounces of osmium. We then rounded up the gang and bid our farewells. Icky, I noticed, seemed the most wistful as we said goodbye. “You’re going to miss the kids, aren’t you?” I asked her. She shot me a glare. “What?

No. They cheat at stuff all the time, so they suck,” she huffed, then turned and stalked off toward the Fafnir. Zenophir was gentler about her goodbye to the kids. She pulled a section of her soft sleeve-armor off and handed it to one of Linulla’s brood. “When I come back, show me what you’ve made out of that. I’m trusting you with a part of my protective gear now.”

The kids immediately began to shout, clamor, and thrash, all demanding to be the one to work on the piece. Linulla gave Zenophir a grateful look. “That will mean a great deal to them,” he said. Torina smiled at their antics. “If they don’t turn on one another first.”

“You’re a parent?” Linulla asked. Zenophir paused, then answered, slowly. “I was.”

Linulla nodded sadly and left it at that. I traded a look with Torina. That explained a lot. 15

I WATCHED AS STRUVE 2398, the star that was generally known as Starsmith, dwindled behind us. I was keen to see if I could discern any evidence of the enigmatic being called Matterforge, but there was none. “What the hell would you do on the surface of a star for fun?” Icky asked. “I suspect that Matterforge, whatever the hell it is, has its own ideas of what constitutes fun,” I replied. Still, I tried to imagine what Matterforge’s existence must be like, dwelling on the surface of a vast thermonuclear explosion, surrounded by prominences and flares and eddies of gas heated to stellar temperatures. To the extent that I even could imagine that, I had absolutely no idea what a being living in such a literal hell would do to pass the time. Of course, it probably wondered the same things about us. I switched the view ahead. “Okay, so I guess we should pick a destination. I think we want to go to this Plenty place, but maybe a stop at Anvil Dark would be a good idea—”

“Funny you should mention our destination, Van, because there’s an incoming comm message about that very thing,” Netty cut in. I glanced at the comm panel. “The Quiet Room?” I looked over at Torina. “Haven’t talked to Dayna in a while.”

“It isn’t Dayna, actually. The message is from a different party, an

‘executive’ of unspecified title, but apparently fairly senior. His name is Emil Trosk, and he’s asking to speak to you specifically.”

“Huh. Okay, then, put him on.”

The comm lit with the image of a portly human, male, probably early fifties. He had an avuncular thing going on, immediately making me think of, ah, an uncle, the type who hangs out around the fringes of family gatherings drinking and spouting off mildly funny witticisms. “Peacemaker Tudor, I’m Emil Trosk, Director of the Special Projects Executive for The Quiet Room.”

“Please, call me Van. What can I do for you—Emil?

May I call you that?”

“By all means, of course. As for what you can do for me, I would like to invite you to come to Procyon for a meeting. I have a business proposition for you I think you’ll appreciate.”

I paused, narrowing my eyes at the display. The Quiet Room had given me my first paying jobs, one of which introduced me to Torina. On the other hand, I was keenly aware that the further we got from Starsmith and its protective aegis of Matterforge, the more vulnerable we became. “What sort of business proposition?” I asked. “A simple delivery. However, it will be quite a lucrative one for you.”

“One moment.” I paused the comm and turned to the others. “What do you guys think?”

“The Quiet Room has a sterling reputation as far as the Guild is concerned. Peacemakers often compete for their jobs,” Perry said. “The only question I have is, why us?

Or more specifically, why you, Van?” Torina asked. I nodded. “It’s a good question.”

“Ask him,” Zenophir said, and I glanced back at her, a little surprised. I wasn’t used to having her on board, so the new voice made me twitch a bit. But it was sensible advice, so I shrugged, turned back to the comm and asked that very question. Trosk smiled beatifically. “Because The Quiet Room keeps track of Peacemakers so that we know which ones we can trust, and which of those we can trust with particularly sensitive tasks. You’re one of the latter. We need to ensure that this particular shipment gets to where it needs to go, does so on time, and does so safely. Our risk assessment determined that we needed a Peacemaker on our short list. And you’re that Peacemaker.” Trosk waved a hand. “Of course, I understand that you’re a very busy man, so if you’re not available, we do have options—”

“No, no. That’s fine. This sounds like just the mission we need to help shake out a newly expanded ship and crew. We’ll be at Procyon in—”

A time appeared on the display, helpfully put there by Netty. “—in about a day.”

“I look forward to meeting you,” Trosk said, then signed off. I stared at the screen, now empty except for the Peacemaker logo. “I still haven’t decided if he passes the smell test.”

“You could look at it as a compliment. You’ve graduated from Dayna, who’s a middle manager, to someone higher up the food chain,” Torina said. “There is that. Okay, then, Netty, you know what to do.”

“Next stop Procyon,” she declared and readied the Fafnir to twist. “THE GUILD HAS A SUBSTATION ON SPINDRIFT?” I asked Perry as we headed back to the Fafnir. I carried a case sealed with what amounted to a diplomatic seal, which we’d been contracted to deliver to the Spindrift substation—the one I’d never heard of. “Not to my knowledge, but since Master Yotov sort of took control of things, anything is possible. And the Guild does operate temporary pop-up stations to support specific ops,” he replied. “So that’s an—I don’t know?”

“It’s a, yes, it’s plausible, and in line with Guild practice. But I can’t speak to this specific case, sorry.”

I glanced down at the case. “We don’t even know what it contains, aside from money.”

“I got the impression of a lot of money, actually, which would explain the secrecy and security, and the desire to have someone trustworthy transport it,” Torina said. I grunted my acknowledgement but just walked on. We’d met Trosk in the same facility maintained by The Quiet Room on one of Outward’s moons as we had met Dayna Jasskin, my original contact with the bank. We’d been ushered into a different part of the facility, though, one that had less of a customer-service feel to it and more one of a secure location. Many of the doors had biometric locks, the rooms beyond them identified only by numbers, no nameplates. We also passed through a

couple of internal security doors, which could probably be slammed shut in an instant. Trosk had proven amicable, if a little evasive. “All I can tell you is that this delivery is on behalf of your Guild and that it’s essential that it be made as soon and securely as possible. For this, you’ll be compensated for your costs, plus thirty-eight thousand, seven hundred and seventy-five bonds.”

“That’s a really specific amount,” I’d noted, as we reached the elevator that would take us to the landing pad on the moon’s surface above us. “Sounds like something either really precisely calculated—or else the remaining funds in some account,” Perry replied. I nodded again. Everything about this job seemed right. So why did it feel like something was just ever so slightly wrong?

WE DEPARTED The Quiet Room and started our journey to Spindrift. About an hour out, I had Netty cut the drive. “It is now going to take us about three months to reach our twist point. I assume you have a reason for shutting the drive down,” Netty said. “Sure do. I want to move that case we’re carrying to the external cargo pod.”

I felt Torina, Icky, and Zenophir all turn my way with curious gazes. Perry voiced the question. “Why?”

“I—don’t know. Because it just feels like the right thing to do.”

“You’re the boss,” Perry replied, but I could tell that the current zeitgeist of the Fafnir was one of concern that I might be getting paranoid. And maybe I was. But knowing that the mysterious sealed case was stashed outside the Fafnir’s hull would let me rest easier during our two-day transit to Spindrift. “I would point out that the external cargo pod isn’t heated or pressurized,” Netty informed me. “It’s money, right?

Bonds shouldn’t care about getting a little cold,” I returned, unstrapping. In moments, I was suited and floating outside in the vast dark, covering the two-meter distance with far less concern than my first—or second, or even fifth—EVA. “Netty, send the open command,” I said, and the pod opened silently to a width of a half meter, then stopped. “Good. Object inside. Close it up.”

“Closing. Watch your fingies, Van.”

“Fingies?”

“I’m trying out a new subroutine in which I incorporate language from human friendships in order to foster a sense of camaraderie and well-being. Tomorrow, I will begin calling all use of the sanitary facility going potty, based on my exhaustive research.”

“Netty?”

“Yes, boss?”

“Please don’t do that.”

There was a pause, then a light snickering over the comms. “Netty, did Icky put you up to this?” I asked. Again, a pause, and then Icky’s voice boomed in my ear. “You ruin everything.”

I cycled through the lock, and Torina was there, hands raised in a helpless gesture. “Don’t blame me. I tried to tell her not to, you know.”

“Make poop jokes?”

Torina cut her eyes at Icky, who was doing her best to look innocent, a difficult feat considering she filled about a third of my vision, but it was Perry who stepped in to throw everyone under the bus. Lifting a wing, he adopted a dignified stance. “I’d like it known that any and all jokes of this nature are far too crass for me.”

I sighed but couldn’t help a grin. “So you’re guilty too.”

Perry’s beak fell open. “Of course. Fire the engines?”

“All ahead full. And watch your fingies. We’re gonna go fast.”

“ACCORDING TO TROSK, the drop point is on the upper concourse, at the far end,” I said. I’d brought Torina with me, while Perry maintained his distance as usual, watching over us from above. We nudged our way through the usual crowd, weaving a slalom path among the tacky kiosks and passing storefronts that tried to entice us inside with holographic advertising. Much of it was at least somewhat risqué, and a few instances were downright shocking. “Those aren’t real,” Torina said, glancing back at the advertisement that had just beckoned me to try some pleasures beyond imagining, in this universe or any other—which was one hell of a claim, actually. I smirked at her. “Uh, Torina, she’s a hologram, so of course those aren’t real.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

I laughed. A few paces along, she pointed at the case. “It still has frost on it. Are you sure you don’t want to let it warm up?”

“Haven’t you heard of cold, hard cash?”

“We need to work on your material, but it was just hanging there.”

“The case, or the joke?” I asked. “Both.”

“Fair. I’ll work on it. Perry, you see anything?”

I see lots of things, Van. “Not helpful, bird.”

Nothing out of the ordinary. I scoped out the space being used for the Guild’s pop-up substation. As advertised, it was a cartographer’s shop, supposedly specializing in rare star charts and maps. I looked at Torina sidelong. “How rare could a map of the stars be?

I mean, it’s kind of obvious where they all are, right?”

She shrugged while dodging a fat Yonnox wheeling a cart laden with heaped electronic gizmos. “It’s not so much the stars as the planets, and moons, and asteroids, and—you get the idea.”

I had to agree, as it made sense. Maps detailing the locations and motions of celestial bodies certainly could be valuable, because as long as you had a point in space, a time associated with that point, and a few other parameters, you could track down almost anything by just plugging the data into a nav system. And Perry confirmed it was a pre-existing business, but that was apparently Guild practice, too, and that also made sense. Striking a discreet deal with an existing vendor was far less likely to arouse suspicions than starting up something new, which would just attract attention. Old business was quiet business. And quiet was good. We took a lift to the second level, which was quieter by far than the first. Another minute or so of walking took us to the cartographer’s shop, which was called See Where The Stars Live. I had to smile at that. It was clever, although anyone not familiar with Hollywood might not get it. We entered, surprising a Nesit behind the counter. He stared at us, seemingly on the verge of saying something, a twitch in his muscles giving him a nervous energy that set my senses into high alert. I pulled open my duster coat, revealing my Peacemaker b-suit. “I’m here with a delivery.”

“Oh, you’re—here. Um, excellent—”

“Excuse us for a moment, urgent call coming in,” I said, stepping back out of the shop. Torina followed, looking mystified. She looked even more mystified when I broke into a headlong run. “PERRY, WHERE’S THE NEAREST AIRLOCK?”

What?

Why?

Van—

“Perry, nearest airlock now!”

Uh, straight ahead, two corridors on your right, then about twenty-five meters along on the left. It’s an emergency airlock—

“Good!

Tell the Cloaks or whoever to evacuate everyone from this part of the station!”

I pounded along, my legs pumping like pistons fueled by dread. I heard Torina behind me, shouting, and glanced back. But she was too far back to shout an explanation, and I wasn’t about to stop. I reached the second corner, and an alarm blared, a mechanical voice annunciating the need to evacuate section alpha two of the station. I saw only a few people, and they were all running. Good. I reached the airlock and hit the emergency cycle switch. I opened the inner door and tossed the case inside. For obvious safety reasons, it wasn’t possible to open both the inner and outer doors at the same time, so it would take time to cycle the lock completely. I turned and ran back the way I’d come. I almost collided with Torina at the corner and turned her the other way. “Go!”

We hurried around the corner, just as a heavy thud rocked the station, making the deck jump under my feet. A sudden gale erupted, blowing back down the corridor we’d just exited and pulling a thick, pale fog in its wake. Then a new alarm sounded, a blast door slammed shut over the corridor, and the decompression abruptly stopped. I slumped against the wall, sucking in air. Torina stared at me wide-eyed. “A bomb?”

I nodded. “I knew something didn’t feel quite right about all this.”

“VAN, you’ve got a horseshoe up your butt,” Perry said, landing just outside the cartographer’s shop. “Hold that thought,” I said, drawing the Moonsword and striding back into the storefront. Torina pulled her own sidearm and followed, then immediately dodged to the right with the weapon aimed. There was no one behind the counter. Perry sailed into the shop, landed on the counter, then leapt through an open door behind it. Torina and I followed right behind. “Mmmphh!”

I glanced down. A man, a human, looking to be in at least his late sixties and missing an arm, was sprawled on the floor, his remaining wrist and ankles held fast by something similar to zip ties. We cut him free, and he scrambled to his feet, gasping. “What the hell is going on?

Who are you people?

Who—”

I held up a finger. “I’m a Peacemaker, Van Tudor. This is Torina, my second. Who are you?”

“Malcolm Hearn. This is my shop.”

Perry landed on the counter nearby. “That checks out. Spindrift has this compartment registered to a Malcolm Hearn. Oh, and I’m Perry, the one Van forgot to introduce.”

“Sorry, yes, this is Perry, my combat AI, who does not need to get his feathers in a ruffle. What happened?”

While Torina and Perry confirmed that this was, indeed, the Malcolm Hearn who legitimately leased this space, he recounted what had happened after a desperate trip to the lavatory. Not that it amounted to much. Two people—a Nesit and a Gajur—entered his shop, drew a gun, tied him up, and left him in the back room. He then lay there for pretty much a day, his captors coming and going several times but not saying anything useful that he was able to overhear. Then we showed up, and the Nesit fled immediately after. By then, the Cloaks had arrived and were demanding entrance to exert their jurisdiction. I confirmed with Perry that, being the subject of the bomb, I could claim jurisdiction instead and call for another Peacemaker to conduct the investigation. I did the first, but I’d take care of my own investigating, thanks, since this was so obviously part of our bigger case. And speaking of cases—

“I knew there was something off about that damned case Trosk gave us,” I snapped, reaching for the comm to get Netty to open a comm channel to The Quiet Room. But Torina intercepted me. “While you were questioning Mister Hearn over there, I got a call through to Dayna and explained what happened. Needless to say, The Quiet Room is in an uproar.”

“How much of an uproar?

What are they doing about it?”

“They say they’ll get back to us in due course.”

“Wow. I’m… underwhelmed.”

She lifted her brows. “For The Quiet Room, that is an uproar.”

“They’re not called The Frantic Room, are they?” Perry asked. “A fair point,” I admitted, then turned as the Cloaks entered, full of bustling energy and stern authority. Which I counteracted with one gesture. “Stand still,” I said. The three Cloaks looked curious, then concerned, then pissed, all in a cycle that took less than ten seconds. Their leader opened his mouth, and I held up a hand, the other opening my coat to expose my b-suit and general air of Peacemaker authority. I wasn’t above being an asshole to get some degree of control, and fast. “This is my jurisdiction as of now. A powerful bomb just blew a hole in Spindrift, as you might have noticed, and we’re going to launch an investigation this second.”

“Absolutely not, badge. You’re not going to—”

“Turn this place inside out for the next month, ruin every side hustle you’ve got, and seize your accounts?

You bet your ass I’m going to do

exactly that, and more, if you don’t assist us. Starting now,” I said, my voice like iron. “Ranting isn’t gonna do shit,” he said, and the other two Cloaks winced. Clearly, they understood my voice wasn’t raised for effect. “Listen carefully,” I interjected. “You are going to go and retrieve every second of imagery that might even be remotely relevant to this case, and you’re going to send it to my ship, the Fafnir. And if it takes more than an hour for you to do it, then I’m going to decide that all of the imagery and data and—I don’t know, the cleaning schedules for your restrooms need to be seized, hauled back to Anvil Dark, and scrutinized for every single last crime. And then I’m going to hold the Cloaks directly responsible for allowing this shit to happen and see if I can figure out how to tie it all to an even bigger investigation I’m running. By the time I’m done building the case, I’ll have you, your families, and your pets brought up on charges.”

I smiled, or came as close to doing so as I could considering how pissed I was. “Now that was a rant.”

The Cloak in charge obviously decided the path of least resistance was just giving me what I wanted. He hurried off to arrange for the imagery-dump, while Torina, Perry, and I finished processing the cartographer’s shop. It offered us nothing more of any use, though, aside from a multitude of imprints from various alien digits that Perry would try to sort out. We would have a list of persons who’d been in the store, and little more. But it was a start. “SO WHAT WAS THE PLAN, anyway?

They’d set the bomb to go off—when, exactly?

En route to Spindrift?

So then why didn’t it?” I asked, looking around the galley table. It had become our new hangout, now that the galley was expansive enough to make it seem more like a room and less like a telephone booth. “To answer your second question, I suspect the fact you put the thing into that unheated pod was responsible. It probably never occurred to them to use anything but fairly cheap electronics for the detonator, and the cold just seized them up,” Zenophir replied. “So it could have gone off at any time.”

“If you hadn’t stuck in the deep-freeze?

Yeah, probably.”

“Yikes.”

We sat in silence for a moment, each of us digesting that. The bomb had probably been meant to detonate either shortly before we docked at Spindrift or, if the bad guys were feeling especially bloodthirsty and wanting to make a big splash about killing me, immediately afterward. The Nesit and his Gajur companion—both of whom had vanished—must have been there to give an air of legitimacy to the scheme should we decide to check up on the drop location. What clearly wasn’t supposed to happen was for me to walk into the place with their frosty, undetonated bomb. Icky scowled. “So we were just saved from being blown up by dumb luck.”

“And Van’s growing paranoia,” Torina noted. I gave her a cool look back. “Paranoia that no longer seems so unreasonable, does it?”

Torina smiled ruefully and shrugged. “No, you’ve got a point, and the point saved our lives. I guess involving The Quiet Room lulled me into thinking this was automatically legitimate. But the fact they were able to infiltrate The Quiet Room—” She shook her head. “That’s not good.”

“No, it isn’t,” I agreed. We’d heard back from Dayna about Trosk, who’d apparently been seconded to The Quiet Room from an independent bank based in the Barnard’s Star system. Like the Nesit-Gajur duo on Spindrift, he also disappeared. “So why such a specific amount of money for this job?

I mean, thirty-eight thousand, seven hundred and seventy-five bonds?

Why not just thirty-nine thousand, or round it up to an even forty?” Zenophir mused. But I knew why. “Because it was enough money to make the job worthwhile, but as Perry noted, it also sounded like an amount specifically allocated for the payout, authorized by some bean counter on Anvil Dark. The bastards knew that making it such a specific amount would actually make it less suspicious.”

I leaned back. “Okay, I’m officially tired of reacting. It’s time to take the fight to the bad guys, where they live.”

“What do you have in mind?” Torina asked. I sat up. “First, we go back to Anvil Dark. I have some people I want to talk to there—Natalia, to see what her lab has come up with regarding any of the stuff we’ve given them, and maybe even Master Yotov.”

“Yotov?

Why?”

“Because it’s time for a little test of her true loyalties. If she’s just small-c corrupt and intent on feathering her own nest—”

“Bird references for the win!” Perry put in. “Yeah, I did it for you, Perry. Anyway, I can live with that. But if she’s in league with the other side—well, I can’t live with that, and she shouldn’t be able to, either.”

16

I TILTED MY HEAD, taking in the likenesses of Torina and me that had appeared on the wall of the corridor leading to the Masters’ sanctum in Anvil Dark’s central hub, the Keel. They did a good job with Torina, perfectly capturing her essence—tall, slender, and lithe, high cheekbones beneath grey eyes, long dark hair flowing over her shoulders. She’d actually taken to wearing her hair shorter, tied up, but the AI had captured her beautifully. Me, not so much. Okay, I guess it’s a truism that no one other than narcissists really like pictures of themselves. As a Myrmidon, my portrait and that of my second were displayed here, and that was fine. I just wish they’d made me look less… dour. It was definitely me—over six feet, medium build, short, dark hair, green eyes, clean-shaven. I’d lost weight and put on some muscle since becoming a Peacemaker, so I was probably more fit than any other time in my life, except for maybe my stint in the army. But the AI had depicted me with a concerned frown creasing my face, as though I’d just spotted something behind the viewer that made me unhappy. “I don’t really look that grumpy, do I?” I asked. Torina put her hands on her hips. “Most of the time, no.”

“So, some of the time I do?”

“Well, yes. Like shortly after that bomb detonated on Spindrift. You looked beyond grumpy and into mild anger just then.”

I crossed my arms. “Nearly being atomized gives me the right to be disgruntled, I think.”

“Not denying it. But, hey, at least you don’t have to put up with that,”

she said, waving a hand at another Peacemaker Myrmidon just down the corridor. I looked at the picture, an insectoid alien likely of the late Steve’s race. I studied it for a second, then turned to Torina. “I don’t get it. What’s wrong with it?

I don’t know that Peacemaker personally, of course, but—”

“Not the Peacemaker, his second. Or seconds, in this case.”

Sure enough, there were three images displayed below the Peacemaker’s, two of them with black borders. “Ah. Gotcha.” I looked back at my picture. “Yeah, I see what you mean. Putting more pictures of seconds underneath me would throw off the symmetry.”

Torina stuck out her tongue at me, as dignified officers do. I laughed, and we carried on into the Keel. We stopped at the reception desk, manned as always by Max, the three-aliens-in-one administrative assistant to the Masters. “Hey, Max. We have an appointment with—”

“Master Yotov, yes. You can go in, but in ten minutes she’s got another meeting, and I’m not going to let her get out of it.”

I smiled and nodded. “Understood.”

“Max has to be the only person on Anvil Dark that can order even Yotov around,” Torina said. I nodded. “That’s true of good administrative assistants everywhere. Their bosses might be the executives, but they’re the ones who really run the show.”

Yotov greeted us and invited us to sit down. “Now then, Peacemaker Tudor, I understand you were involved in an incident on Spindrift. Is that what this is about?”

She was genuinely concerned and really wanted to help me—is what I immediately thought, before remembering her subtle psychic influence making everything she said sound more reasonable. I sank mental teeth hard into my determination and pressed on. I’d considered different ways of approaching this but decided that the direct method would be the easiest

and the one least likely to be manipulated by her psionic aura of sweet reason. “Indirectly, yes. More specifically, it’s about a question I have for you.”

“Which is?”

“If I can trust you or not.”

I felt Torina stiffen. I’d told her I was going to be a little blunt. Sometime between now and then, a little blunt had become a lot blunt. But I was tired of playing a game of poker in which no one ever revealed their hand, only offering the occasional glimpse of a card or two, then drawing new ones. It was time for at least some of the players to put their cards on the table, starting with the ones who were supposed to have my back. For her part, Yotov simply watched me with a mild, almost appraising look. I waited. I’d come this far and wasn’t about to let the silent treatment break my resolve. Finally, she placed her hands flat on her desk. “No, you cannot trust me, Peacemaker Tudor. Not implicitly, at least.”

Now I stared. I exchanged a glance with Torina, but she’d just sat back to see how this played out, from her perspective probably like watching a slow-motion train wreck. “I can’t,” I finally said, a combination question and statement. “No, of course not. You can’t trust anyone implicitly, Tudor—well, except people like Ms. Milon here, but that sort of real trust is hard earned, isn’t it?

And even then, betrayal by good and loyal friends isn’t unheard of, is it?”

“Okay, so… you’re telling me to not trust you, another Peacemaker, and a Master yet—”

“I am not telling you to distrust me, which I see as different than saying you shouldn’t trust me. The former implies there’s some sort of… intent. Some attempt to obfuscate or deceive, and that you should be wary of me for that reason.”

“Uh, I think the latter kind of implies the same thing.”

But Yotov shook her head. “I disagree. The latter implies that you can never be truly certain of my motives, or ever really count on me to support you when you might happen to expect it.”

I held up a hand. “Okay, I’ll concede the semantics and agree with that. It’s still not good. You’re telling me I can’t count on you to have my back.”

“Well, of course you can’t count on that. What if you’re wrong about something?

What if you do something illegal, or unethical?

Would you really expect me to stand behind you in such circumstances?”

“No, no, of course not, but that’s not what I mean—”

“I realize that. So what I’m telling you, Tudor, is that you’re taking far too narrow a view here. You are doing good work, yes. Important work. It happens to be work I believe in, which is why I supported your promotion to Myrmidon and took the added step of paying to have your ship upgraded to Dragon-class.”

She lifted her fingers and steepled them, making her look more villainous whether she meant it to or not. “But you are only one Peacemaker, and the case you are pursuing is only one of many involving the Guild. There may be times when, for reasons I can’t even divulge, I will not support you. I may even appear to turn on you. If I do those things, though, it is because the greater good—a tiresome term, I know, but still apt

—demands it.”

Torina cleared her throat. “I have a question, one that Van is circling but can’t seem to quite land on—”

“Am I corrupt?

Have I taken advantage of my position to further my own interests?

Could I even somehow be implicated in the admittedly egregious case you’re pursuing?”

Torina slowly closed her mouth, then shrugged. “Yeah, that about sums it up.”

I gave her a look that was probably some combination of appalled, impressed, and deeply grateful. But I turned back to Yotov to see how she answered it. “I admit that I am ambitious, yes. And I admit that I have taken opportunities to derive value from my position. But I have also reinvested that value back into my ultimate goal.”

“Which is?” I asked. She gestured around. “Why, this, of course. From my initiation as a Peacemaker, I saw that the Guild was rotting as an institution—rotting from the inside out. Corruption is rife, and the Masters, who should be the exemplars of what it means to be a Peacemaker, were the most corrupt of all

—as you have seen, twice.”

She sighed. “And even Masters who hadn’t fallen to corruption, like Groshenko, had essentially given up. From my perspective, the Peacemaker

Guild had—decades, maybe, before it finally collapsed altogether, riven by internal conflict?” She shook her head. “No. Something had to be done. The Guild desperately needs a new, cohesive purpose. There was a moment that I thought that might happen, but it passed. So, it has taken me years, but I am now in a position to see to it myself.”

“I—see. So you’re saying yes, you are, or have been corrupt, but you had good reasons for it,” I said. “If it will make you feel better, I will disclose my accounts to you, which will show that every bond I’ve managed to accrue from the Guild, honestly or otherwise, I’ve put right back into this Guild, in one form or another.” She smiled a thin smile. “Seating myself at the Masters’ Table and ensuring I had the support I needed to do the things I needed to do was a very expensive proposition.”

“You said there’d been a moment when you thought reforms might happen. When was that?” Torina asked. Yotov turned to me. “When your grandfather was offered one of those seats at the Masters’ Table. Mark Tudor was an exemplar of what a Peacemaker should be. Moreover, he commanded the respect of most of the Guild and was a natural leader. He was more capable than I am of motivating others to follow him.” That thin smile again. “And that is a remarkable achievement.”

“But he turned it down,” I said. “He did. I, and many other Peacemakers, were devastated. I deeply respect and admire your grandfather, but he had an opportunity to make real, desperately needed change, and he squandered it. I was so disappointed and will never forgive him for that.” She offered a small shrug. “But his refusal was when I made my decision, that I would ascend to the top of this Guild and effect the necessary change. I only hope that I’ll be able to do so in time.”

“In time for what?”

“That, Peacemaker Tudor, is an excellent question. There is something out there, something amorphous, and insidious, and infinitely patient. Something dangerous. I can… feel it. The case you’re pursuing is part of it. And whatever it is, it will threaten the existence of the Guild and quite likely the stability of known space as a whole.”

She leaned forward. “And I intend to be ready for it. And if that means, Tudor, that I must turn my back on you, to perpetrate to you what seems to

be a betrayal, I will. I will make any sacrifice in the name of this Guild.”

I gave her a level stare. “Does that include yourself?”

“Of course it does, Tudor. Everyone is, in the end, expendable.”

“PREFLIGHT CHECKLIST COMPLETE. We’re ready to leave whenever you are, boss,” Netty said. I gave an absent nod. I’d had Netty plot us a course to Plenty, the place supposedly not just a den of iniquity like Dregs or Spindrift, but pretty much the place iniquity came from. Regardless, I still had Yotov on my mind. I turned to Torina. “Do you believe her?”

“Yotov?”

“Yeah.”

Torina looked thoughtful for a moment, then shrugged. “I think so. Everything she said about her motivations made sense, and fit with the actions she’s taken.”

“You think so?”

She shrugged again. “Who can say for sure—about anyone, as she even said?

And at least she didn’t claim to be all sweetness and purity. That, I would not have believed.”

“I know. It was kind of the perfect answer, wasn’t it?”

“If it helps, Yotov’s career as a Peacemaker has been pretty much exemplary. Her name has come up around the edges of a few more suspect things, sure. For instance, she signed on behalf of the Guild for that shady terraforming operation involving Icky’s mother,” Perry said. “Ex-mother, thank you very much,” Icky growled. “Fine, ex-mother. But there’s no evidence that she’s actually derived any personal benefit from it, aside from accruing power for herself, of course.”

“Which she freely admitted,” Torina said. I sighed. “Okay, so I guess I feel… better about her?

Certainly not what I’d call good, but definitely better.”

Zenophir, who’d taken over the spare jump seat at the back of the cockpit, spoke up. “Sometimes, Van, feeling better about something than you previously did is as good as it gets,” she said, stretching out her legs. There was room to do that, now, even from the jump seat. “Yeah, I hear you. Anyway, Netty, let’s fly.”

The docking adapter released with a clunk, and Netty backed the Fafnir slowly away from Anvil Dark with brief, gentle puffs of thrusters. I resolved to put Yotov out of my mind but found myself still brooding over her when the drive lit and we started our trek to Plenty. Trust, I decided, was proving to be the rarest element out here among the stars. PLENTY WAS WEIRD. Okay, most of it was standard stuff, myriad modules locked together forming an expansive orbital platform nearly three klicks across. That actually made it bigger than both Spindrift and Crossroads. But its central hub was what amounted to a massive fan, a device originally intended as a means of pulling gas from the upper atmosphere of the gas giant it orbited. The initial plan, it seemed, had been to build a station that could periodically skim the cloud tops and suck vast quantities of gas, then process it into fuel, some of which it then burned to boost itself back into a higher orbit. This would be repeated as the refined fuel was depleted. It was clever—maybe too clever. The complicated orbital gymnastics were dangerous, and the platform never lived up to its hype. It was eventually sold, and sold again, and sold yet again, until almost three hundred years later it was now owned by a hodgepodge of interests, most of them criminal. It now occupied an awkward place in known space, little more than sixteen light-years from Earth, but still an otherwise wild west, frontier kind of setting. And despite its star being a welcoming, main-sequence orange type, there were no habitable planets and, really, no reason to come here. Unless you were looking for, or to cause, trouble, that is. “What I don’t get is how this place gets to claim it’s a sovereign entity and has diplomatic recognition from basically everybody, even the big

players like Tau Ceti and the Seven Stars League,” I said, staring at the image of the station ahead. “Oh, that’s easy. It’s owing to the persuasive power of vast sums of money,” Perry replied. Zenophir leaned forward. “I remember hearing that the so-called diplomatic envoys from here showed up as a deputation to the Seven Stars League Council and opened negotiations by giving every councilor a gift in the form of a small yacht.”

I blinked at that. “Holy shit. Whatever business they do here must be good.”

But Torina scoffed. “What a waste. My home, Van Maanen’s Star, is nominally a protectorate of the League. I’m quite familiar with their enthusiastic corruption, so I think they could have bought them off with something less… ostentatious.”

“You get a yacht, and you get a yacht, everybody gets yachts!” I said, glancing around. I got blank stares back and just smiled. “Okay, I didn’t expect you guys to get that one. Well, except for Perry, who seems to have been watching a lot of Earthly TV in his downtime.”

Perry shook his head. “Sorry, Van. I’ve got your back on most things, but this time you’re on your own. I eschew daytime television. I have standards.”

“Guess that rules out the soaps.”

“I don’t like soap either,” Icky agreed. “I—I know. Or pants. Different definition. Netty, do we have a clear path?”

“Copy that. Plenty is busy,” Netty said, and it was. There were a dozen or so ships maneuvering around the station, and another half-dozen docked. I didn’t see our class 19 diplomatic ship, but none of the other ships were of particular interest to us, not ringing any significant alarm bells in terms of outstanding warrants or subpoenas. Better still, none of them seemed particularly interested in us, either, despite clearly being a Guild Dragon-class ship. We’d gone back and forth about whether to try and come here incognito but settled on not bothering. At this point, we had to assume our movements were likely being watched, so any subterfuge probably wouldn’t hold up anyway. Besides, I didn’t want to hide from these people—whoever these people were. It might amp up the risk factor, but I finally decided we’d come here

in our full Peacemaker splendor. Our one concession to keeping something up our sleeve was one of the ships I saw parked a hundred klicks or so away from Plenty. It was the Nemesis, the old battleship that Icky’s father had refurbished. Thanks to his reclusive lifestyle, he was largely unknown by anyone not close to him, so he made for a perfect backup for us. Moreover, he despised criminals and criminality, so for the cost of his fuel, he was happy to be here for us as a well-armed ace in the hole. We pretended, though, that the Nemesis was just another ship among many, and followed the traffic-control AI’s instructions as we approached, closed, and finally docked. I unstrapped. “Okay, everyone remember where we parked. And I mean that, because if we need to bug out of here, I really don’t want to have to wait for stragglers.”

“What if the straggler is you, Van?” Zenophir asked, a mischievous smile on her face. “In that case, don’t you dare leave without me. If I take a vacation, it won’t be here.”

PLENTY no longer did its hair-raising dives and atmospheric skimming, but the gas giant still played a central role in the station’s life, and not just as the thing it orbited around. It was, in fact, the basis of one of the most important sources of revenue—legitimate revenue, anyway—for the station. Tourism. I stared at the poster splashed across a display that virtually blocked our view into the main concourse. It showed a humanoid figure in something that looked like a wing suit, sailing among towering clouds and leaving a trail of whoosh behind it. A pair of fearsome-looking creatures—massive, translucent, delta-winged things—seemed to be in hot pursuit. There was no ground visible, only a headline that blared Most of our clients survive!

I shook my head in confusion at the grim message. “So let me get this straight. People come here, put on these goofy suits, and dive down into the upper atmosphere of that gas giant?”

“They do. In fact, the person we’re here to meet is involved in it—”

Perry said, but a voice cut him off. “And that person would be me!”

I turned to find myself facing a nondescript alien. And by nondescript, I meant just that. He had the general form of a humanoid, bipedal, bilateral symmetry, the whole deal. But he resembled a mannequin, his features smooth and almost idealized in that blank, bland way of a department store dummy. “And you are?”

“Fonsecur, at your service,” he said, lifting his mouth into a smile. It was an unnerving thing to watch, that smile making me think of how someone might draw a smile onto a blank face. Torina and Icky both had the same puzzled and slightly put-off expression I probably had, but Zenophir grinned. “You’re a Mimic,” she said. “Well, that’s not what we call ourselves, but it’ll do.”

We all looked at Zenophir, and she shrugged. “Mimics aren’t very common, I know. I’ve only met one other, many years ago aboard an Eridani-registered tramp freighter. We ended up on the same engineering watch. His name was—uh—Trescuo?

Trasco?

Something like that, anyway

—”

“Trescuo, sure, I know him,” Fonsecur said. “Of course, there are only a couple thousand of us in existence, so it’s not really surprising I know of him.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of your people before.”

“We keep a low profile. And we don’t have a homeworld, or not something you’d recognize as one, anyway.”

“They’re shifters,” Zenophir said. “Shifters?”

“Yeah. Mimics are able to assume whatever shape they want. That’s a damned handy trait for an engineer, I’ll tell you. With Trescuo around, there weren’t any nooks or crannies that were out of reach.”

“Before you start thinking that we’re some insidious threat that can duplicate anyone we want—and I know that’s what you’re thinking right now—”

I shook my head. “No, no, I—”

“Please, I’m a retired Peacemaker, remember?

I can read an expression or two.”

I smiled. “Okay, you got me. That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

“Then you’ll be happy to know that we suck at mimicking specific things. I can appear human, but this is as good as it gets. I could try to mimic you—”

Fonsecur concentrated for a moment, and his features shifted. I found myself face to face with—

Okay, not me. He looked like someone trying to look like someone trying to look like me and failing. Miserably. “Not very convincing, is it?” he asked, making a smile again. Torina sidled over to him. “I don’t know, I think this is pretty good. Maybe even an improvement—”

“Hilarious, dear,” I said as Fonsecur changed back to his generic form. “Anyway, you’ve come all the way to the asshole of the universe that is Plenty. I assume you’re chasing a case,” he said. We started walking, following him along the concourse. Like on Spindrift and Dregs, we attracted a lot of wary attention. Unlike those places, though, I saw no fearful turning away, no sudden scramble to conceal some illicit deal or just avoid eye contact with the Peacemaker. What I did see was a legion of sullen stares, some of them edging toward outright hostility. A few people bristled and looked like they might have something to say about it if I held their eye contact. I did my best to not flinch or look away, but it was like walking into a hot, dry wind and not ducking my head or blinking or wincing at the occasional gusts. I glanced at the others. Torina looked around with a cool, almost detached regard, helped by the fact that a lot of the hostile glares I received became something different when they brushed against Torina. Different, but no more pleasant and probably less so. Zenophir, on the other hand, didn’t seem interested to begin with and just plodded along, apparently lost in her own thoughts. And Icky—

Well, Icky got exactly the sort of looks you’d expect to be directed at a hundred and fifty kilos of four-armed muscle, two of those arms being as big around as my thighs. And, in true Icky fashion, she seemed to be enjoying it—returning someone’s gaze and leering into it, hard, until they looked away. Then she’d sniff or giggle a bit and do it again. I sighed and tried to catch her eye, to get her to back off. Eventually, she’d try and stare down the wrong person and—

I nearly slammed into someone but dodged aside just in time to turn it into a solid brush. The person, a hefty Yonnox who looked as though he’d

been working out, shoved a hostile glower into my face. “Watch where you’re going, asshole.”

I held up my hands. “My apologies, I was—”

“You need to learn to be more careful. You know, so you don’t get hurt

—”

I could feel Icky starting to loom behind me, which meant this was going to spiral out of control in about three seconds. But something interposed itself between the Yonnox and me. It was Fonsecur, or at least part of him. He’d extruded a portion of himself like a tentacle, shaping it into a smiling face. “Problem, Bethrix?”

The Yonnox looked at him, his face losing a touch of its hardness. “Oh. Fonsecur. These people with you?”

“They are. This is my good friend Van Tudor. He’s a Peacemaker, like I used to be. And this is his crew. Van, this is Bethrix, a fixture in the Fatal Ribbon and sometimes troublemaker. But not today, am I right?”

I watched as a weird mix of emotions played across the Yonnox’s face

—doubt, anger, resentment, and… embarrassment?

“Yeah. I mean no. I mean—yeah, not today. As long as your friends here know to mind their manners.”

“Again, I apologize for not watching where you were going,” I said. Bethrix glowered a moment longer as my statement sank in, then muttered something and turned away. We resumed our own way, following Fonsecur. “What’s his game?” I asked. “Just one of the many, many little power plays that make up life on Plenty,” he replied. Zenophir sniffed. “Many, many power plays?

You just described life.”

Fonsecur laughed. “I like you. Bitter and cynical is my type.”

“Flattered, but all due respect, I’m out of the relationship business. Besides, I prefer my partners a little less… amorphous.”

I almost winced at that, thinking Zenophir had just managed to insult Fonsecur, but he just laughed again. “That’s because you haven’t experienced what it’s like to be with a Mimic. You’ll never get bored, as monogamous behavior is effectively impossible with us.”

“Can you take the shape of a desk?” Torina asked. “Of course. Why, got a friend who’s single?”

“Maybe. Not very, ah, mobile, though,” Torina answered. “Furniture rarely is, and before you ask, that’s not even close to the weirdest question I’ve gotten,” Fonsecur admitted. “Good. I like knowing the universe is spicier than I imagine,” Torina said. “You have no idea,” Fonsecur said with a laugh. “We’re here.”

Right above you, boss. Air duct, Perry said in my ear. Gotcha. We’d reached Fonsecur’s storefront, a compartment emblazoned with big, splashy pictures similar to the poster we’d seen upon entering the concourse. As soon as we looked at them, they came to life, depicting people in elaborate wing suits sailing effortlessly among the roiling cloud tops, the sky above darkening and purpling upward from the horizon until it was black and filled with stars directly above. More of the menacing delta-winged shapes raced around. Occasionally, two—and it was always two—

of them would apparently see or sense a wing-suited figure and come tearing after them with predatory intent. It looked terrifying, but in a very cool way. I’d once watched bungee jumping off a bridge in southern Germany, a short drive from Munich, and it was just like that. I was utterly mesmerized watching the jumpers plunge into a river valley off a bridge, stop just short of the water, then spring back up and fall again, over and over. I wanted to try it, but as soon as I thought that, my toes would start digging into my shoes, determined to hang onto solid earth. “People do that?” Torina asked as we entered Fonsecur’s shop. “Oh, they certainly do. I don’t, though. I run whale-watching expeditions.”

“Uh—whale watching?

As in whales, as in terrestrial aquatic mammals-type whales?” Perry asked. “No, that’s just the name I use for it, courtesy of one of my early human customers. They explained how whale watching worked on Earth, and it struck me this is just the same. I own two skimmers, ships intended to dive into the upper reaches of Good’s atmosphere.”

I held up a hand. “Wait. The gas giant is called Good?

So together they’re—?”

“Good and Plenty, that’s right. I think that’s from Earth, too.”

“Yeah, it is. I’ve got a box of them back in a cupboard in Iowa. I think it’s been there at least ten years. Still probably perfectly edible, though.”

Zenophir was studying one of the moving posters. “Not going to lie, this looks stupidly dangerous,” she said, sneering at the image. “Oh, it is, very,” Fonsecur replied. “One in nine Windrunners—that’s what those flying suits and the people that use them are both called—ends up seriously injured, and roughly one in sixty gets eaten.”

We all turned at that. “Eaten?

By what, the whales?” I asked. “Mostly. There’s a few things lurking deeper in the atmosphere that are happy to snap up some protein as well, but we don’t have more than glimpses of them.”

I reconsidered my comparison of this stupidly dangerous sport, as Zenophir so aptly labeled it, to bungee jumping. Compared to diving into the upper atmosphere of a gas giant, the air around you a toxic stew of methane, ammonia, and other caustic gases, nothing beneath you but more air and, apparently, unseen horrors waiting to eat you—

Bungee jumping suddenly seemed pretty tame. Fonsecur filled us in on Plenty, telling us the things we absolutely needed to know. “The Fatal Ribbon is the name given to the sprawling mercantile concourse, larger even than that of Spindrift. It’s nearly a kilometer long, curving along one of Plenty’s three main levels.”

“Let me guess. That’s where both business and crime occurs?” I asked. “It’s almost like you’ve visited before,” Fonsecur said with a sly, plasticine grin. “The rest of the station is given over to living quarters, a few smaller markets that are absolute no-go zones, and a lot of empty space.”

“Is it really all empty space, though?” I asked Fonsecur. He replied with a reasonable attempt at a shrug. “No, probably not. Or at least some of it’s in use. But I sure as hell don’t go in there, and I strongly recommend you don’t, either.”

But Icky raised a hand. “I just saw you scare off that asshole Yonnox back in that Famous Ribbon—”

“Fatal Ribbon,” Fonsecur corrected. “Famous, Fatal, whatever. Anyway, you scared off that guy just by smiling in his general direction. Seems to me that you’ve kind of got the run of this place, haven’t you?”

“Hardly. I know some things about some people, and I’ve done some things for people, enough that I do my own business here pretty much unmolested. But that doesn’t translate into me having the run of the place. Not even close, actually.”

“But they all know you’re a retired Peacemaker, right?”

“Oh, certainly. And I made sure to review every report and file the Guild had on this place, so when I arrived here, I was already armed, as it were. Now then, I don’t mind helping a fellow Peacemaker—within reason, of course. With that, let’s get to the heart of the matter. What can I do for you, Van?”

“I’ll keep it brief. We were baited into carrying a bomb, which went off on Spindrift. There’s a connection between the bomb and that class 19

diplomatic ship registered here, at Plenty, and I’m intensely curious about finding some answers. My crew was at risk, a lot of innocents were at risk, and the bank was compromised.”

“And you’re pissed, too,” Fonsecur added. “That is an apt assessment. I’ll start with some… pointed questions of that ship’s crew, and we can go from there.”

Fonsecur approximated a frown. “They can just claim diplomatic immunity, though.”

Perry spoke up, having entered the office behind us. “That would protect them from being prosecuted, but not questioned or charged.”

“Besides, there’s a certain Nesit I’d like to talk to, and since he was pretending to be a shopkeeper, the one he’d kidnapped, I think he loses his diplomatic immunity, doesn’t he?

He committed a crime while using a false identity, after all,” I said. I got a series of impressed looks. “You’ve been doing your homework, Van,” Perry added. “Like I keep telling you guys, I’m not just another pretty face.”

“Well, I think I can find out where that ship is, since it isn’t here, and when it’s likely to return. That’s about all I can guarantee, though.”

“Thank you. It’s more guarantee than I expected,” I said, and Fonsecur almost smiled. THE CLASS 19, a ship named the Outreach, was away from Plenty on a mission to another orbital facility at a nearby Lagrange point. At least, that’s what a dockhand Fonsecur considered a reliable source told us after we paid the requisite bribe. Called something that roughly translated to Cornucopia, it was a separate platform used by most legitimate commercial traffic into and out of the system. The not-so-good people of Plenty had to eat, after all, so they had to import much of their food and many other items and commodities that the station couldn’t itself provide. Cornucopia acted as a trans-shipment point, which was awkward and inefficient, since cargos had to be unloaded there and then loaded again to be brought to Plenty itself. But for a system that had few laws other than those of the jungle, one of the inviolate ones was apparently not attacking, harassing, or otherwise interfering with commercial traffic, either in- or outbound. The penalties for doing so were severe, as in being blown out of space by other ships in the system. Plenty had a sort of gentlemen’s agreement with the rest of known space—if you’re heading to or from Cornucopia, you were hands-off; if you were heading to or from Plenty itself, it was game on, and best of luck to you and your crew. It left us with a day to kill. My first instinct was just to return to the Fafnir and wait there, but I thought to hell with that. It would amount to hiding, and hiding was a win I didn’t want to give the bad guys. Instead, I decided to count on the others to watch my back and one another’s, and that included Perry, who sailed surreptitiously along overhead, our own top-cover. So arranged, we decided to spend most of the day touring the Fatal Ribbon. The market provided an endless array of novel experiences, including some virtual reality of a distinctly adult nature. I only had to glimpse the demonstration of the fully, um, immersive experience that awaited within, before shaking my head. “No thanks. I like my women with a bit more substance,” I said, waving off the virtual vendor who tried to coax me into the establishment. We carried on, then realized we’d lost Icky. A moment of panic slammed me and I turned, raising the alarm for the others. But we found her just a few meters back, watching the VR

demonstration I’d studiously avoided. Bemused, we walked back. “Icky?” I asked. She glanced at me but pointed at the imagery, which had become pretty explicit. “Is that how it works?”

“How what works—oh.” I turned to Torina, who just grinned. “I think maybe it’s time for that little talk. After all, we don’t want her just picking it up in the streets,” she said, then raised arched eyebrows at the antics of the virtual demonstrators. “Literally, in this case.”

“Okay, when I signed up to be Peacemaker, I do not recall anything in the contract about explaining the, uh, birds and bees to aliens.”

“Birds and bees?”

“A euphemism— duh.”

“Oh. On Helso, it’s the call of nature.”

I smirked. “We use that too but for something different.” I looked back at Icky. “Anyway, uh—”

“Oh, for—” Zenophir said, pushing past us. “Are you two actually adults?”

She stepped beside Icky and began talking, explaining the nature of reproduction. I eavesdropped, fascinated by Zenophir’s ability to take something that was a hell of a lot of fun and turn into something as dull as an insurance seminar. It was an aspect of alien life I’d kind of skirted, not because I was a prude, but because I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know how other species reproduced. Or, at least, the ones that reproduced sexually. The ones that split or budded or did any number of non-sexual things were fine, but given the nature of some of the species that did reproduce sexually—

Yeah, there were some things humans were not meant to know. We carried on, Zenophir hanging back and continuing to explain things to Icky. And Icky periodically responded, sometimes with a burst of laughter, sometimes with a surprised sound, and sometimes with some variation of ewww. Eventually, they fell silent. I kept my attention roving around the crowds surrounding us but glanced back, then cursed. “Now what?”

Icky and Zenophir had both stopped several storefronts back and were deep in an animated discussion about whatever they were looking at. “We are supposed to be shopping, Van,” Torina said. “Yeah, but not for virtual groin-grinding.” I started back. “Would you guys please stop—oh.”

It turned out they weren’t absorbed by another virtual display of titillation. Or maybe they were, but a different sort of titillation. The shop that had snagged them sold tools, a huge variety of them, but all were apparently bendable, and some were even steerable, so you could wiggle them into tight places otherwise unreachable. “I thought you guys had been sidetracked by something alluring, but I didn’t think it’d be tools.”

Icky glanced up from a spanner that could have been made from cooked spaghetti. “What, that sex stuff?

Nah. That’s dumb. I mean, what’s the point?”

I looked at Zenophir, who shrugged. “I hadn’t finished explaining stuff to her. But these tools—I can think of a dozen times, easy, when I’d have given my nose for a torque wrench that bends itself around corners.” Her eyes narrowed. “You know, Van, we could really use some of these. They’d make work on the Fafnir a lot easier.”

“If they’re being sold here, on Plenty, aren’t they probably stolen?”

“And?”

I sighed. I was starting to see Yotov’s point. I’d already bribed a dockhand to give me information I wanted. Moreover, it wasn’t the first time I’d traded money for information. And the utility of these tools was clear, so if they kept the Fafnir flying and fit for battle, wasn’t that a good use for them, even if they had been stolen?

Weren’t these the same sorts of things I’d labeled corruption when talking about Yotov, only writ smaller?

At what point did paying for something make that dour transition from greasing the slides to actual corruption?

“Oh, what the hell. Get two for the ship, one for each of you, and keep it under five hundred bonds—”

I fell silent, because I was suddenly talking to Icky’s and Zenophir’s backs as they hurried into the shop, chattering away excitedly. Perry landed on a power junction nearby. “Another sex shop?”

I nodded. “As far as they’re concerned, yeah, it kind of is.”

WE HAD a few tense encounters as we toured the Fatal Ribbon, including a standoff with a pair of Gajur who apparently had a hate-on for

Peacemakers. We defused that one when Perry made a low pass overhead, his alloy talons flashing past their faces just centimeters away. “I got air cover, boys, and lots of it,” I said, and the two Gajur withdrew, muttering darkly. When we reached the Fafnir, Torina glanced back up the docking ramp. “I don’t know, it wasn’t as bad as it was made out to be.”

“That’s because we didn’t leave the Fatal Ribbon. Despite its name, it’s still the most public part of Plenty. If you’d prefer something way more dangerous, a water-reclamation AI told me there’s another market called Watchyerback on the far side of the middle ring. He says you can get anything there, emphasis on anything.”

“Watch Your Back?”

“No, all one word, Watchyerback, just like that,” Perry said. I gave him a thoughtful stare. “That’d be an interesting place to check out. For instance, I wonder if there’s anyone there selling osmium. Or identity chips. Or identity chips with identities loaded on them.”

“Well, sure, but let me emphasize the far more dangerous part. The water AI figures a Peacemaker might get a dozen paces into the place before being gunned down.”

“Only a dozen paces?

Okay, let’s put that one on the could-do list.”

WE ENDED up making one more pass through the Fatal Ribbon while waiting for the diplomatic ship, now inbound, to reach Plenty. The dock worker we’d bribed had been dead on about the time of arrival, but he had no idea where the ship would dock. We let Netty keep an eye on that while we went to grab something to eat. I had an ulterior motive though. If we were somewhere about halfway along the circumference of the Fatal Ribbon when our target did finally dock, we’d save ourselves a lot of time getting to it. I really didn’t want the diplomats aboard it to vanish into the crowd before we could at least identify them. Fonsecur had recommended several different places to eat, but we ended up picking one close to the tool emporium where Icky and Zenophir had bought their fancy bendy tools. That was mostly because of Icky, who

desperately wanted to take Torina and me to see the place, apparently her new favorite shop in all of known space. “You should see what they have in here, Van,” Icky said. I glanced around as we stood in the middle of the shop, surrounded by racks and shelves of tools. “I’m kind of seeing it right now, Icky. Tools. Lots and lots of tools.”

Torina picked up a fine manipulator, intended to conduct delicate tasks that would otherwise be just out of reach. It slid onto her hand like a glove, and as she moved her fingers, the little prongs on the manipulator moved accordingly, with knuckles and everything. “Not that I’ve ever been a tool aficionado, but this is really quite cool.” She used it to grip the shaft of a spanner. “I even get some touch feedback through it.”

“It’s fully guaranteed for your first year of use, and you can extend that warranty period for one low fee,” a mechanical voice intoned. I turned to see the shopkeeper lurking nearby, an even more insectoid-looking alien than Steve had been. It resembled a walking-stick type bug, except it was two meters tall and had eight limbs, so it was more like a spider. It wore goggles, and a translator hung around its neck, the source of the flat, mechanical monotone. It also wore bright blue shoes on the six of its limbs, apparently intended for propulsion, and by bright blue, I mean an almost incandescent blue, their material slightly fuzzy. I pointed down. “Don’t you step on my blue suede shoes.”

The alien turned to me. “Ah, you have similar footwear?”

I smiled. “Nah, that was just me being—” I smiled more and shook my head. “Never mind. It was just thinking of a song by a famous singer—and dancer—from my home planet.”

“Hey, those look like the sorta shoes a dancer would wear, now that you mention it,” Icky said. She’d been gazing around the way a kid does in a toy department right after the Christmas stock has been put on the shelves, but now the shopkeeper had her full attention. “Do you dance?”

“I’ve been known to bust a move or two.”

I turned to Torina. “Bust a move?

That’s Earth slang. How far does Earthly culture manage to filter across known space?”

“Ah, at least sixteen light-years, I’d say,” she replied, taking off the manipulator and placing it back on its display. I shook my head in wonder. Voyager 2 would pass within two lightyears of Ross 248, the location of Crossroads, in about forty thousand years. Bust a move had already beat it there. “See?

I have the heart of a dancer. It’s only natural I’d see the same in someone else,” Icky said and flung herself into a brief burst of gyrations that were technically dancing, I guess. “Actually, I don’t have a heart, but a circulatory system that relies on peristalsis. But I do have a lot of killer moves,” the shopkeeper said and began to wiggle and jerk as though having a seizure. Icky laughed and clapped. “Damn fine moves, sister!” she proclaimed, then joined in, the two of them twisting and writhing to music apparently only they could hear. “Now there’s something you don’t see everyday,” Zenophir said, stepping up beside me. I grinned. “Yeah, that’s for sure. They’re having a ball.”

“What?

No, I mean the sale price on those plasma flow testers over there. Cheapest I’ve ever seen ’em. You know, Van—”

“Go ahead, Zeno. If we need one, we need one,” I replied without taking my eyes off Icky and her dance partner. It truly was something you didn’t see every day, a shaggy, four-armed ape-like hulk trading dance moves with a gigantic, anthropomorphic walking stick decked out in blue suede shoes. Strangely, despite having gazed upon alien stars and planets light-years from Sol, despite everything I’d seen, the antics of Icky and the shopkeeper perfectly recaptured for me a sense of wonder I was starting to lose. I just stood and watched, laughing at their display of joyous abandon. Even in a galaxy filled with danger, there was joy. And in that moment, it sank in that what I—what we were doing—was worth it. The pain and frustration and danger, all of it. It was worth it for moments like this, where Icky could dance with an alien insect while we tapped our feet in a rhythm so universal, no one missed a beat. Eventually, they ran out of steam. While the two chattered excitedly away to one another, Zenophir lined up three more tools to purchase, and the shopkeeper threw in a freebie for Icky, saying that she’d earned it. We left feeling buoyant and headed for the little restaurant nearby. Torina leaned close to me. “I don’t know about you, but I thought the bug was going to die. Or break apart.”

“You and me both,” I said but found myself still grinning. It was easy to get mired in the shitty, corrupt malfeasance that seemed to permeate known

space and lose sight of what I’d just seen—two strangers, not even from the same species, dancing like there was nobody watching. 17

“THANK YOU, sir. Your total is one hundred and two bonds,” our robotic waiter said. I fished out payment, while Icky, Torina, and Zenophir finished up the last of their meals. Perry perched on an empty chair. Netty had just informed us that the diplomatic ship was on its final approach to dock and only half an hour out. Once we knew which port it was assigned to, we’d head that way. Perry would take point, flying there immediately to at least ID whoever disembarked, in case we got delayed. The robotic waiter took my payment—then sat there. I frowned at it. “Wait. Are you waiting for a tip?”

Perry sighed. “I’ll handle this, Van,” he said, hopping down to the floor and extending a wing. “Ten enough?” he said. The waiter extended a—something, a deployable data probe, I guess. I caught a faint spark as power surged across the touch. “Thank you very kindly,” the waiter said, then rolled away. “Perry, what the hell was that?” I asked. “I hope it’s not more memories of things I might not want in the public domain,” Torina muttered. But Perry shook his head. “For a tip?

Not likely. I just transferred ten standard units of power to him, which means he can go an extra couple of hours without recharging, which is an extra couple of hours of collecting his own experiences.”

Again, I had to marvel at the intricacies of this strange AI society that was embedded in the broader one. It made me again wonder what really went on among these intelligences who all had flawless memories and could think and communicate at speeds that organic life-forms couldn’t even contemplate. And they were everywhere, too—in nearly every ship, every aircraft and ground vehicle, every life support system, every waste reclamator and water purifier. Come to think of it, it was actually a little unnerving. The rise of our robot overlords was a popular and amusing meme back on Earth. But how much of a meme was it, really?

“Van, I have an update on that so-called diplomatic vessel,” Netty said. “Go ahead.”

“It came to a stop about fifty klicks short of Plenty and has now rendezvoused with a class 8 workboat. I suspect that—”

I was already standing, pushing away the last bits of my meal. “That our persons of interest are about to scram, yeah. Netty, do the preflight and inform traffic control. We’ll be launching as soon as we’re back at the Fafnir.”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, we don’t have departure clearance?” I snapped at the comm. “Sorry, but we can’t currently clear you to depart. It’s, you know, traffic,” the bored voice came back. “Netty, release the docking clamps.”

“I can’t, Van. Or I can, but the station has to release theirs too, or we’re stuck.”

I had to talk through clenched teeth. “Hey, Plenty Traffic Control, you’ve got one minute to release those damned clamps, then I’m going to go and cut them off with something known as a Moonsword. And before you ask, I won’t be gentle. Do I have your attention?”

“If you do that, you’d be committing—”

“Please say crime. Please say I’d be committing a crime. Because if we’re looking for crimes, I can find lots of them—including interfering in a

Peacemaker’s investigation. And since you’re the voice on the comm, you’ll be the one I come looking for.”

“Hey, I’m just following procedures—”

“Which you are now going to adapt to this new situation.” I turned to Torina but kept the comm open. “Torina, you take the helm. I’m going to shear away some docking clamps.”

I unstrapped and actually got as far as the back of the cockpit before Traffic Control finally caved. “Oh, look—there’s a window open in the pattern right now. Docking clamps released as requested.”

I returned to my seat. “Thank you so much. You’ve been very helpful.”

“Whatever.”

“Somebody ratted us out. That’s why our bad guys boarded another ship and tried to skedaddle,” Zenophir said. But Torina spoke up. “Van, have you considered that this might be a decoy, and our persons of interest are still aboard the diplomatic ship?”

“I have,” I said, tapping at the comm. “Fonsecur, you there?”

“As requested, watching the docking port where our diplomats are about to arrive. I’ll capture images of whoever disembarks and forward them to you.”

“Thank you, sir. I owe you one.”

“Yes, you do.’

I grinned. “See?

Had it covered.”

“As long as Fonsecur doesn’t get himself on the wrong side of these guys,” Icky said. Perry, though, just gave an offhanded shrug. “He’s probably a junction box or something. There are perks to being able to change your shape to pretty much anything you want. Well, except a convincing humanoid, because he’s right, when it comes to that he sucks.”

“He must have been awfully good at stakeouts,” Zenophir put in. We backed away from Plenty, spun the Fafnir around, and, as soon as we could, lit the drive and tore off after the class 8 workboat. It had a significant head start, but if it was kitted out as a regular class 8, the Fafnir had a major performance edge. We rapidly closed the range. “I’m half-expecting them to kick in some uber drive and sail away from us,” I muttered. I guess I was finding it hard to believe we might actually come to grips with some of our most sought-after miscreants. Of course,

overtaking them wasn’t enough. We also had to take at least one of them alive, or whatever they knew would die with them. Again. “Van, I think that class 8 is going to try and slingshot around the fifth planet in this system, that gas giant ahead of us and to port,” Netty said. “Meaning?”

“Meaning that they’ll gain a significant speed boost and reopen the range on us. If we follow them, we’ll be boosted as well, but it might buy them enough time to get to a decent twist point.”

We all frowned over the speculative trajectories Netty painted onto the tactical overlay. It was probably their best chance to get away from us, even if it was a bit of a longshot. It also left me torn. Sure enough, Fonsecur had forwarded us images of four individuals, two humans, a Gajur, and a reptilian alien from a species called the Thunt. All of them had disembarked from the class 19, decked out as average crew. But any of them might be our guys, and if we spent the next few hours running down this class 8, it would give them ample time to scatter and get away. “What do you think, guys?

Keep chasing this class 8 and risk finding it’s a red herring, or let it and whoever’s aboard it escape and try to round up the people we do know came off that class 19?” I asked at large. “Oh, well, when you put it that way, I have absolutely no idea,”

Zenophir said. “I think we should stick with the plan. Fonsecur’s an old Peacemaker, he’ll know what to do at that end,” Torina said. Perry and Netty both agreed. Icky was all for going back to Plenty, but I suspected she just wanted to spend more time with her new friend, Blue. The alien’s real name was unpronounceable with any mouth parts but was quite happy for Icky to call her Blue. I turned back to the panel. “Okay, then. Onward we go. Netty, calculate whatever you need to calculate to have us intercept those assholes out there before they can get away.”

THE BAD GUYS MADE A MISTAKE. They clearly wanted to whip their workboat around the lonely gas giant as closely as possible to gain the maximum possible gravitational slingshot effect and steal a small bit of angular momentum from the big planet. Unfortunately, they hadn’t realized that this particular planet was surrounded by a diffuse cloud of gas, mostly helium escaping from even its fearsome gravity. The result was friction as they plowed through what amounted to the upper reaches of the planet’s atmosphere. And the end result was nothing like the velocity boost they’d clearly counted on. Our catching them before they could twist away was now all but inevitable. “To be fair, though, we probably would have done the same thing,”

Netty said as I had her adjust our course to pass a little further away from the gas giant, enough to clear the invisible envelope of gas surrounding it. “And we can learn from their mistake,” I said, nodding with satisfaction at the projected trajectories. We’d be in effective missile range in a little over ten minutes, laser range a couple of minutes later, followed at roughly four minute intervals by the mass driver and the particle cannon. In short, we were bringing the entire armory with us and there wasn’t shit they could do. Just the way I liked it. I checked the workboat’s transponder ID, but it was just broadcasting a nondescript registration number and essential navigation data, the bare minimum. It seemed to be real enough, checking out against our registry databases, but it still didn’t tell us anything. I finally hit the comm and did a general broadcast aimed specifically at the workboat, starting with credentials. “Unknown ship, cut your engines and prepare to be boarded, in accordance with applicable interstellar laws.”

“Go to hell.”

I sat back. “Rude.”

“They’ve fired a missile at us, Van. And now a second one. And now they’re decelerating,” Netty reported. “Looks like they want to fight.” I sighed. “Why can’t this ever be easy?”

“Because that would take all the fun out of it?” Zenophir said, heading back to her station in the rear. She would monitor our weapons and effect damage control as needed, while Icky concentrated on power plant, propulsion, and general ship systems. “Ah. Right. The fun. I knew there had to be a reason,” I replied. “Van, if we get to within—I’m going to say two-thirds of maximum mass-driver range, I think I can disable them,” Torina said. She’d been poring over something on her own side of the instrument panel, which I now saw was a schematic of the workboat. “Do I detect that you’ve got a taste for precision weaponry now?”

She shrugged. “One of the upgrades to Dragon-class was a better fire control system.” She gestured to her weapons screen. “Put it together with those improved scanners we picked up a while ago, and I think I can knock the drive bell right off their stern.”

I gave her an appreciative look. “That would be nice. It’s hard to question a corpse—especially if said corpse has been reduced to a cloud of charged particles.”

We closed in rapidly, leaving Netty to swat down the incoming missiles with the point-defenses, then weathered shot after shot from the workboat’s single laser. It still packed a punch, searing away one of the starboard attitude thruster arrays and detonating two of the REAB, reactive-ablative armor plates. Netty smoothly compensated for the missing thruster assembly, and we continued our steady advance, taking a couple of more minor hits from the workboat’s laser. They’d started burning hard again, trying to break off, but it was futile and even they had to know it. The physics simply weren’t on their side. “Okay, just about,” Torina muttered, her eyes glued to her weapons console. We waited. Another REAB plate blew, hit by another laser strike. I bit my tongue, even though each of those plates cost nearly two thousand bonds. This was turning out to be a costly battle, but if we took these guys alive because of it, I’d consider it money well spent. “About twenty seconds,” Torina said. Her finger hovered over the firing trigger. We waited. I braced myself for more laser hits from the workboat, but they’d apparently decided—too late—that running was better than fighting, so their shooting became more sporadic. A few more seconds, then without any preamble, Torina touched the trigger. A heavy shock whumped through the Fafnir’s bones, the recoil from the mass driver that now extended most the length of her belly. A second later, a brilliant flash swallowed the stern of the workboat. When it

cleared, half of her drive bell was gone, the other half still glowing along shattered edges. Torina sat back. “There. I’ll leave the mopping up to you guys,” she said, stretching out and closing her eyes. I rolled my own eyes at her as I reactivated the comm. “Unknown vessel, how about now you give up and prepare to be boarded?”

No sooner had I said it than two small objects departed the workboat. A few seconds later, its drive lit once more, but only briefly before the safeties kicked in and shut it down again. Without an intact drive bell, the fusion exhaust not only threatened to melt the workboat’s stern, but it also bombarded it with neutrons. I zoomed the imager onto the two objects that had been dumped overboard. They were—

Bodies. “Looks like we just witnessed a murder,” Torina said, sitting up. “And just when I thought these guys couldn’t get any more despicable,”

Zenophir called from her place behind the cockpit. With her drive cut, our problem was no longer overtaking the workboat, it was overshooting the workboat. We had to flip the Fafnir and burn the drive like hell to match velocity, then close in to board, and what had been a suspicious vessel was now a crime scene. “I’m losing my good mood,” I growled as we closed in. “Good mood?

From what?” Perry asked. “Our food. It was excellent.”

“Is that why you made the noises?

Sort of like—Netty, help me out here?”

“Breeding sounds. He makes breeding sounds, especially if there are carbs. Our fearless captain seems to enjoy carbs,” Netty reported with annoying cheer. “Breeding sounds?

Why, I’ll have you—actually, stow that. We’re back in business.”

At nearly point-blank range, Torina picked off the workboat’s laser and point-defense batteries with successive mass-driver shots. It launched missiles via a partly recessed launcher slung under its bow, making it a far harder target to hit without seriously damaging the ship. Netty was pretty sure that the limited magazine capacity meant that its tubes were likely

empty. Words like pretty sure and likely didn’t thrill me, though, so we pondered how to approach the crippled ship. Zenophir had the answer, a simple and elegant one. “There’s an old saying, grab ’em by the balls and hang on,” she said. I gave her a quizzical frown. “First of all, on behalf of all species that possess balls or their equivalent, ouch. Secondly, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Missiles don’t arm until they’ve traveled a minimum safe distance from their launcher. It’s a hardware safety that can’t be hacked remotely, so that your enemy can’t cause your own missiles to blow up in your face. That means digging into the guts of both missile and launcher and doing some reconfiguring.” She jabbed a stubby finger towards the other ship. “And not only are they not likely to have the expertise, but that launcher setup also probably doesn’t even give internal access to the magazine.”

“Ah, so we snuggle up nice and close—which, I might point out, is a much less cringy way of putting it than your, ah, ball reference,” I said. Her walrus face lifted in a grin. “Maybe, but it was worth the look on your face.”

We eased the Fafnir to within a hundred meters or so of the workboat, matching velocity to come to a relative stop. “It’s the part you hate,” I said to Torina. “Yeah, yeah, I know,” she said, starting to unstrap. But Zenophir cleared her throat, and we all stopped what we were doing to hear her out. “Torina’s Second, so if you’re going, Van, then you should leave her here. Either that or you stay and she leads the boarding party. You both shouldn’t go, though. This is about managing potential loss, not valor.”

I opened my mouth to raise a protest, but no protest came to me because it was, frankly, a good point. The Fafnir was now a big enough operation that one of us should stay back. If we both got ourselves killed, it would throw Icky and Zenophir out of a job and the Fafnir would revert to Guild property. “Okay, then. Torina, you get to sit this one out.”

“Van, just because they bother me doesn’t mean I’m not going to do boarding missions.”

I smiled at her as I clambered out of my seat. “Wouldn’t dream of it, my dear. We’ll alternate, so you get the next one.”

“That’s better—I think.”

Icky leaned in. “You blew it, Torina. Had a chance to avoid these things and you had to open your mouth.”

“I’m happy to sit out all future boarding missions,” Perry said. “That workboat’s going to be tight, so you can sit out this one—

emphasis on this one,” I said. “What, so now I’m not wanted?”

I tapped Perry’s head. “You’re determined to just be contrary, aren’t you?”

“Am not.”

I had no problem bringing Icky, but Zenophir made me pause. I knew nothing about her combat capabilities or, conversely, her diplomatic acumen to do things like negotiating surrenders. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but she wasn’t exactly young. She must have caught my doubtful looks as we suited up. She grinned, reached into a satchel she’d grabbed from her cabin, and extracted something from it. It was the most badass-looking weapon I’d ever seen. It was the size of a submachine gun but light enough to wield with one hand. The base of the pistol grip was a menacing spike, while a wickedly sharp blade extended from beneath its barrel. A small boxy sight could flip up from the side of the weapon’s receiver, sit on top, and replace the iron sights. “Say hello to Spike. He’s a custom-made rig, fires a 2 mm EM

cartridge, spits out a projectile at nearly two thousand meters per second, has a monofilament-edged blade, has a low-light and thermal sight with a predictive AI built in and”—she tapped the spike protruding from the pistol grip—“his crown jewel, a tungsten carbide spike reinforced with spiral carbon filaments of my own design. I’ve managed to get the cross-section at the tip down to just a few tens of thousands of atoms, but I’m working on reducing that even farther.”

I drew The Drop and gave it a look. “Now I feel inadequate.”

“There will be no slander of The Drop in my presence, if you please. That was one of my favorite designs, although I’ve kind of progressed since.”

“You invented The Drop?”

“Invented and built, yeah, for your grandfather. It was payment for a favor he did me.”

“What sort of favor?”

Zenophir returned a coy look. “That’s… between your grandfather and me.”

“Oh.” Her look told me to drop it, so I did. “Anyway, I think it’s about time to take The Drop here and do some tweaks, bring it up to date. I’ll dig into that once we’re finished with this little jaunt.”

I smiled. “I’ll do that, yeah.” And with that, Zenophir had blown away any doubts I had about her in a boarding action, or any sort of close-quarters battle, for that matter. She was tough, competent, and exuded a sense of hard purpose. She reminded me of my first squad leader back in my army days, once I’d finished basic training and was posted to an operational unit. A grizzled old Sergeant, he’d seen action in both Gulf Wars and Afghanistan, and was a stony pillar of switched-on, competent skill. He’d unloaded some of the worst ass chewings I’d ever had on me, but I couldn’t remember him ever raising his voice to do it. Some NCOs screamed in your face over the tiniest things. This old Sergeant had just talked earnestly, while staring you hard in the eyes. It always left me feeling like I’d let him down and made me determined to do better. “Okay, folks, let’s go pay our friends over there a visit, shall we?” I said, snapping my helmet into place and heading for the airlock. As I did, my gaze fell on the weapons locker. On impulse, I opened it and grabbed a weapon I’d never used before, outside of some test shots. It had been aboard the Fafnir since day one, but I’d never seen a lot of use for it—that is, until I had them used against me on Ajax during my faux-hunting expedition. Inspired to try it, I grabbed the glue gun, loaded it, and slung it on my harness. The Drop’s underslung beam weapon could stun a target, but it wasn’t reliable and didn’t work at all on some species. And I was going to take someone alive, damn it. 18

“AND I THOUGHT Spike’s blade was sharp. By all the stars, I need to spend some time with Linulla,” Zenophir said, her voice tinged with awe. Holding the stanchion with my left hand, I took another swipe with the Moonsword in my right. It neatly sliced away a sliver of docking clamp, exposing the joint between airlock door and hull beneath. The blade was so sharp I felt almost no rebound from the cut, which made me more than wary of where I swung the thing, hoping I wouldn’t swing it into myself. I finished carving away the docking clamp, then braced myself. “Okay, guys, watch out for decompression debris,” I cautioned, then sliced into the outer airlock door and slashed out a chunk. Sure enough, the airlock was pressurized, but we stayed clear and the blast of air that erupted, blowing out the piece of door like a missile, vented harmlessly into space. We broke our way in, then depressurized the interior of the workboat with another strategically placed cut. Zenophir tossed in a stun bomb. I hacked away the rest of the door in the wake of the blast, then sheathed the Moonsword and reached for The Drop. At the last second, so armed, I pushed into the ship’s interior. Icky and Zenophir followed, weapons at the ready. Icky immediately turned and headed for the rear of the boat and its engineering bay. I pushed forward, the glue gun ready. Zenophir backed me up with Spike, her wicked several-weapons-in-one. We passed through the crew hab and found it spattered with gore. “Suspect I know where those two who got tossed out the airlock met their demise—”

Something sailed into the hab from the cockpit—a grenade. Without even thinking, I banged out a round from the glue gun at it. It smacked the grenade against the deck and stuck it there. At the same time, I dove forward into the cockpit. I didn’t see what Zenophir did. Behind me, the grenade detonated with a gelatinous thud. In front of me, I saw the stunned face of a Yonnox under a glittering visor, frantically trying to raise a slug gun into my face. Again, I didn’t hesitate, firing another round from the glue gun at point-blank range. It splatted against the Yonnox and stuck him to the center console, his slug gun glued to his chest. Zenophir pushed in beside me and aimed Spike at the Yonnox. He tried struggling, but every movement just let the goo ooze more firmly around him, sticking him ever more firmly into place. He finally gave up, legs dangling with the occasional comical twitch. I hefted the glue gun. “Effective, if a touch slow.”

Zenophir nodded. “It can be better, though. Just turn me loose on it.”

I smiled at her and turned to the Yonnox. “Now then, I think some introductions are in order. Zenophir, I’d like to introduce you to Stock Bad Guy Number One. Stock Bad Guy Number One, this is my associate Zenophir.”

“And Zenophir is old and cranky and is just dying for you to be an asshole,” she said, waving Spike menacingly in the Yonnox’s face. The Yonnox spat a curse. Zenophir just shook her head, but her eyes were hard and flat. “Now, is that any way to talk to a lady?”

“I’M A DIPLOMAT!” the Yonnox shouted as we pushed him into the Fafnir’s tiny holding cell, yet another perk of upgrading to a Dragon-class. “I have immunity!”

“To what?

Decency?

An understanding of what’s right or wrong?”

Zenophir snapped, shoving him into the cell and slamming the door on his protests. Icky lumbered by, carrying a crate and a data module, both seized from the workboat. We’d already cleared the former, opening it to find it filled with a neat stack of thin, flexible sheets made of some flat, black material. The data module, in the meantime, had been stashed behind an access panel. We’d also found an identity chip plugged into the ship’s waste reclamator and liberated it as well. Icky plunked the crate on the galley table and we inspected the contents. There had to be hundreds of these thin, flexible sheets, each about the size of a small bath mat. Strangely, they felt cold to the touch. Moreover, as I turned one in my hands, it was simply black, with no reflections at all, as though it swallowed all light that touched it—

I stiffened. “Icky, could this be some kind of stealth material?”

“Yeah, it certainly could.”

“I think that’s exactly what it is,” Zenophir put in, poking her head between us. “In fact, I think that’s the stuff that was coating that satellite you guys brought me.”

“Well well. If we can prove it’s the same stuff, then we not only have our Yonnox diplomat”—I made air quotes—“back there lined up for two counts of murder, but we might even be able to link him to a bigger conspiracy. After all, both of those satellites we found were involved in the commission of a crime.”

Torina had appeared from the cockpit and was musing over one of the stealth sheets. “When we’re done with him, we should extradite him to the Daren-thal. He can take a whirl at their Stranding thing.”

I raised a finger. “Hold that thought. That’s a great lever to keep in reserve.”

Perry took over evaluating the data module, while we plugged the identity chip into Waldo Two. At once, a clipped, almost professional voice erupted from his speaker. “I’m not stuck in that damned waste replicator anymore, so you’ve either rescued me, or you’re my new owners.”

“Oh—no, definitely not your owners. I’m Van Tudor, a Peacemaker,” I said and introduced the others. “And to whom do I have the pleasure—?”

“My name is Rolis. And since you probably can’t tell, I’m a Gajur—or was. Now I appear to be a disembodied consciousness loaded onto some sort of chip, am I right?”

I didn’t bother keeping the surprise out of my voice. “You are. You were apparently operating the waste reclamator aboard the workboat we stopped and seized. And now you’re, well, plugged into our maintenance bot, Waldo Two, and damned fast in terms of mental recovery.”

“Well, that explains why I can see you,” Rolis said as Waldo Two’s imager focused on me. “I’ll tell you, this is way better than the reclamator. I’ve been to children’s name day parties that were more exciting.”

Torina shook her head. “We’ve retrieved several people now who are—

ah, in your position. You’re definitely taking it better than they did.”

“Yeah, I can see that. I’ve got to be honest, though, this isn’t that bad.”

I blinked, more surprised than ever. “Really?”

“Yeah. The way I see it is, I died, right?

When those assholes took me, they killed me, didn’t they?”

“They—did, yes.”

“So that means my debts, my obligations, they’re all gone. It’s like starting over fresh.”

I looked at Torina, who just shrugged back. “I guess it is, yeah.”

“Oh, you’re welcome, by the way,” Rolis said. “For what?”

“For fiddling with that workboat’s nav system. Whoever those bastards were, they forgot that the waste reclamator is connected to the other systems via the maintenance subsystem. It was just too easy to access their nav system, and once I sussed out their gravitational slingshot scheme, I nudged them a little too close to that gas giant.”

I grinned. “Which is what let us overtake them, right?

Well, thank you, that was—”

“Impressive,” Netty put in. “You clearly have a background in spaceflight.”

“You might say that. I design ships for a living, or at least I did. So I know the inner workings of a piddling little workboat pretty much by heart, which means I was the wrong guy for them to nab.”

I laughed. “From my perspective, Rolis, you were the perfect guy for them to nab.”

ROLIS POSED an unexpected but interesting conundrum. He had, like the others, been kidnapped, his consciousness stripped and copied onto a chip, and his body destroyed. Unlike the others, though, it didn’t just not particularly bother him, he seemed to welcome his existence. Torina and I left him deep in conversation with Icky and Zenophir, swapping brags and anecdotes, and retired to the cockpit. “I didn’t expect that,” I said. “What, someone who’s embraced their new existence?”

“Yeah. I don’t think it means much regarding our case—kidnapped and murdered is still kidnapped and murdered. But it seems that this guy has no particular desire to return to a physical existence. Which is pretty weird, when you think about it.”

“Really?

It’s weird to not have a physical body?” Netty put in. I smiled. “Okay, present company excluded. I mean, you were made this way, Netty.”

“So what if I wanted a body, like the other identities you’ve restored to a physical form?”

That left me gaping. “I—uh—is that even possible?”

“I don’t know. But it would be interesting to find out, don’t you think?”

Netty countered. “I… suppose, sure. Is that something you’d like us to do?”

Netty uttered a rare laugh. “No, I’ve got no real aspirations to an existence separate from the Fafnir. But it was an interesting question, wasn’t it?”

It was. But it also got into a sucking mire of ethical, legal and moral questions about the nature of AI, which were far, far bigger than I was. Perry hopped into the cockpit. “Confirmed. Those sheets in that crate are the same stealth material that coated those satellites. That data module contains their specs, their method of application, as well as schematics of the heat transfer system that shunts waste thermal energy back into power generation.”

“Holy shit.” I stood and headed back into the crew habitat, gesturing for Torina to follow. We joined Zenophir and Icky, who dug themselves out of what had become an eye-wateringly technical conversation when I asked them for a moment. “What’s up, boss?” Icky asked. I let Perry explain what he’d found. When he was done, Zenophir was staring in wonder. “I need to see those schematics,” she said. “Me too, I’d like to see them as well,” Rolis put in. I nodded. “Sure, but that’s not the big issue here. What is, is what do we do with that stuff?”

“Well, it was seized during the course of an authorized boarding expedition, so it’s evidence. That means you need to turn it over to the Guild,” Perry said, his tone matter-of-fact. “That’s one option,” I agreed. The others, as one, turned to stare at me. “There’s another option?”

Torina asked. I felt a slow grin spread across my face. “We’ve got the material, and the instructions on how to use it. So why don’t we?

Why don’t we use it to stealth up the Fafnir?”

TO SAY that a spirited debate followed would be putting it mildly. The bottom line was that Perry, backed up by Netty and Torina, insisted that the stealth material had to be handed in as evidence. But I’d taken a contrary position, at least for the sake of argument, inspired by none other than Master Yotov. “We wondered if she was corrupt and she admitted that she is. But her corruption, when you dig into it, is pretty clearly more of the doing end runs around the rules thing than actually setting out to further her own, personal interests. That doesn’t mean she’s above reproach, just to be clear. She’ll always be under scrutiny, at least in my mind. Doesn’t change the fact that a lot of her hustles benefit the guild overall,” I offered. “The greater good, Van?

Really?

Can’t you justify nearly anything under the guise of the greater good?”

“Just because you don’t like the concept doesn’t mean it isn’t valid,”

Zenophir added. She and Icky had come down on the pragmatic side of the debate. Both felt we should use as much of the stealth material as we needed to and turn in whatever remained as evidence. “How many space battles would be a lot easier and more likely to go our way if we have the Fafnir covered in that stuff?” Icky said. Zenophir nodded. “Space battles that are intended to run down the bad guys, I might add.”

“You already kinda cracked the door on all this when you helped yourself to a bit of the osmium to gussy up your sword, Van, didn’t you?”

Icky asked. I leaned back and rubbed my eyes. “So it’s a choice between doing the right thing, sticking that stuff into evidence, and hoping that someday it gets analyzed and reproduced so we good guys can use it, or doing the pragmatic, but you could even say sensible thing, and keeping it to apply to the Fafnir. The first changes very little in the short-term. The second stands to give us a serious advantage almost right away.” I sighed and looked at Perry. “How is it that the Guild let’s us keep shares in salvage and prize money for ships we seize but not something like this?” I asked him. “That dates from the Guild’s early days, when there were just fewer ships around. The Masters of the time recognized that it was more valuable overall to keep ships in use, carrying passengers and cargo and such, instead of parked in impound orbits,” he replied. “So… it was better for the greater good.”

“That’s right—” Perry said, then caught himself. “But this isn’t the same thing.”

I sat up. “Why not?”

“Because that was the decision made about ships early on, as I said—”

“So, tradition?

Doing something because we’ve always done it that way?

That doesn’t sound like a very rational or professional way of doing stuff, now does it?”

A moment passed in silence. I shook my head. “Everyone better stand back.”

I felt Torina tense. “Why?”

“Because this is the part where, caught in a fatal loop of logic, Perry eventually explodes.”

Zenophir shot me a look like I’d just said we should depressurize the ship for fun. “What the hell are you talking about, Van?”

Perry replied. “It’s a trope in Earthly entertainment media, that the super-advanced evil computer gets tricked into some contradictory loop,

gets stuck there, then blows up. It’s ridiculous, absolutely. But—actually, Van, you have a point.”

I made an impressed face but was curious how Perry had decided that. “How so?”

“Ships aren’t scarce or obscenely expensive anymore, so there really is no good reason to treat them differently from any other evidence. But we do. We also tend to seize money in the same way. It’s only things like this that get caught up in the rules of evidence.”

“So what are you saying?

That we should stop allowing Peacemakers to take ships as prizes, or realize any salvage or anything from them?”

“Yeah, that’ll go over well,” Zenophir muttered. But Perry shook his head. “No, because that wouldn’t be workable. The Peacemakers would have to be fundamentally restructured to make that work, and even then, it would slam headlong into over a thousand years of tradition—as Van alluded. Netty and I had misgivings about the osmium, but it worked. You used some to improve your own effectiveness as a Peacemaker, but turned the rest over as evidence.”

“So as long as some of this stealth material gets put into evidence, the same principle would apply to it that does to ships and prize money and that osmium,” Netty added. Torina sniffed with suspicion. “Am I the only one here who sees this as permission to just take stuff, ostensibly for this greater good that keeps coming up, whether that’s true or not?”

“Excuse me, may I speak?” a new voice said. We turned and saw that Waldo Two had slipped into place between Icky and Zenophir. “Go ahead, Rolis,” I said. “As someone who had been a victim of the same crime I gather you’re investigating, I say, just do it. Me, I’m not too bothered by this, but I’m sure that’s not everyone’s reaction to it when it happens to them.”

I thought about some of the broken minds we’d retrieved, and even had to put out of their digital misery. “It isn’t, no.”

“So if doing this will help you put a stop to this, then how would you explain to them that you’re not?”

We all looked around at each other. Even Torina shrugged. “Well, as Perry and Netty said, as long as we put enough into evidence to support the case—” She shrugged again. Everyone seemed to agree so far, but I had one more marker to put down. “I need you guys to promise me that the greater good doesn’t become our greater good. If it ever looks like we might be starting to feather our own nests—”

“Hah, and to repeat, hah,” Perry said, blandly. “Sorry, Perry. If it ever looks like we’re starting to do things only for personal gain, I need you guys to speak up about it.”

The others nodded, and our little meeting broke up. I leaned toward Torina. “Are you okay with this?”

She stared at her hands resting on the galley table. “No. I think it’s exactly the same thinking Yotov uses to give herself permission to grab power. And yes, I’m sure some of her motives are good, just like she says, but some of them are just self-interest.” She looked up at me. “But I’m a lot more not good with killing and enslaving people, so there you go.”

“Life is messy,” I said. She nodded

“Isn’t it just?”

THE QUALMS about this new ethical road we’d started down stuck with me regardless of how much sense it made. Frankly, I was probably actually more of Torina’s perspective than, say Icky’s or Zenophir’s bluntly pragmatic ones. But every time I measured that against what these bastards were doing to innocent people, my moral misgivings seemed far less important. Anyway, I pushed it aside so we could get down to the business of what we were going to do next. That led to another, very practical issue. “Where are we going to mount this stuff?” Zenophir asked. “Why not just use a hangar at Anvil Dark?

They’ve got all the tools and stuff we could possibly need,” Icky said. But I shook my head. “I don’t think Anvil Dark’s a good idea. Even if we’re willing to hold our noses and use most of this material on the Fafnir,

not everyone else in the Guild may be. I mean, we could have someone able to pull rank come along and try to grab it for themselves.”

“It is generally always easier to get forgiveness than permission,”

Zenophir agreed. Perry clicked his tongue. “To think so poorly of other Peacemakers. It’s too bad.”

“Are you denying that might happen?” I asked. “Oh, hell no. I was just saying how it’s too bad.”

It left one obvious choice. “Iowa—the state, with the farm, not our other ship.” I said, but turned to Zenophir and Icky. “Do you guys have everything you’d need to do the job there?”

Zenophir wobbled her head back and forth. “Based on those schematics, and considering what we’ve got aboard, probably. But we’ll confirm it and let you know if we need to make a stop along the way.”

I turned to Rolis. “How about you?

Is there somewhere we can drop you off, Rolis?

Mindful of the fact that although we’ve got your statement, you may need to testify down the road?”

“Not really. Besides, I’ve never been to Earth. I’ve heard it’s nice, if pretty primitive.”

I smiled. “Nice but primitive?

Yeah, that about sums it up. Although Iowa is a bit of a cultural haven, if I say so myself.”

Rolis beeped in surprise. “Really?

In what way.”

I stretched out, smiling. “Ever heard of something called wrestling?”

19

“IS THERE ANYTHING HERE BUT—WHAT did you call it?

Soybeans?”

I turned to Rolis with a grin. He, in the person of Waldo Two, stood on the back porch of the farmhouse, staring across the early autumn fields. Harvest was imminent, so the crops stood as tall and lush as they ever would—at least until the combine harvesters got at them. “Yes, lots. There’s wheat, sorghum, corn, flax—”

“All a similar multitude of green, stalky plants,” Torina said. “But green, stalky plants that all taste very different,” I said, sipping coffee. “And serve different purposes. And then there’s the hogs. And cattle. And chickens, too.”

“Do these… chickens ever attack?

Are they wild beasts?”

“Only the roosters, and if they attack the wrong farm wife, only once,” I answered. Rolis responded with a grave, whirring nod. “I see. Justice lives in Iowa, too, then.”

“You might say.” I said, with a laugh. The Fafnir was safely tucked away in the barn, Icky and Zenophir busy applying the stealth coating. They were trying to cover the hull as efficiently as possible, leaving enough of the stuff that we had some spares to patch battle damage, and still had some to also turn in as evidence and give the Guild to analyze. The biggest issue was the reactive armor, which, by definition, destroyed itself to do its job and would similarly destroy any coating applied over top of the REAB modules. Zenophir was sure she

could tweak the REAB so it only actually detonated when it was necessary to stop something from penetrating the hull. Still, the coating was ultimately going to be temporary on some parts of the ship, and we were just going to have to live with that. “Why not bring it to Linulla, see if he can duplicate it?” Icky had suggested. But I shook my head. “I’ve already asked him to do a few things that would be considered—um, ethically flexible. I don’t want to do that too often. We’ll just have to hope that the Guild can figure it out—or else send it to Linulla themselves, with the Peacemaker seal of approval.”

In the meantime, it grounded us in Iowa for at least two, and probably three days to get the coating applied. We were well into day two, and Zenophir had reported that she and Icky would finish up the bit that remained tomorrow. The two of them had left the barn and were coming to the house to give their progress report, whereupon they’d return to the Fafnir and stay there. The last thing we needed was someone noticing a four-armed ape or a walrus woman lumbering around the farm, shouting at groundhogs and fox squirrels like they were exotic beasts. “When the hell did you find the time to plant all those crops, Van?”

Zenophir asked, wiping her hands on a rag as she climbed the porch steps. “I didn’t. Miryam—”

“Who thinks I’m Italian,” Torina said, smiling. “Right. Miryam, who thinks Torina is Italian, leased out our fields to other farmers, in exchange for a cut of the revenue.”

“Smart thinking,” Zenophir replied, following Icky into the kitchen. Icky had already helped herself to an ice cream cone, her new favorite thing. The cones came from a box in the back of one of the cupboards and had been there for who knew how long. I wasn’t even sure if ice cream cones went bad, though, and Icky didn’t seem to care. “What’d you call this, Van?” she said, scooping a generous load of ice cream into a cone. “Vanilla.”

“It’s amazing.”

I turned to Zenophir to ask her for her best estimate for our departure time tomorrow, when something—actually, someone—caught my eye. It was Miryam, standing in the doorway to the kitchen, her car keys in her hand. ICKY, holding her ice cream cone, was the first to speak. “Um, Van. That lawyer lady is—”

“I know, Icky. I can see her.”

“Would you believe this is all a dream?” Zenophir asked. I did the only reasonable thing. Just waited. What else could I do?

Miryam was going to, I don’t know, freak out or faint or something, I was sure. Oh, and if she fainted—

I took an instinctive step toward her but slammed to a stop when she laughed. “Van, this was eventually going to happen,” Miryam said. “This—it—I— what?”

She laughed again and looked at Torina. “How’s Italy?”

“I… haven’t been back home for a while?” she said, ending on a sheepish shrug. I finally found some words that came together in the right order. “Miryam—you knew?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Van, I know everything that goes on around here. Like the time you hid that smut magazine in the barn, at the bottom of that locker full of electronic junk you kept out there.”

“What’s a smut magazine?” Icky asked. “A—cultural artifact. Zeno will explain it to you later.”

Zenophir shot me a glance. “What?”

I kept my focus on Miryam. “So you knew about Gramps.”

“Well, let’s see. I’m probably one of the few human beings that’s actually walked on Mars, so, yeah, I knew about your Grandfather,” she said. “You’ve been to Mars?”

“Briefly. Honestly, it’s just dust and rock, not very exciting, really.”

“So that time you were here, when—”

“When you were trying so hard to prevent me from seeing your alien friends here?”

“Well, yeah. Why didn’t you just say something?”

“Because, Van, it was hilarious, and kind of adorable, as well.”

“Why didn’t you just say something?” I asked her. “Because your grandfather asked me not to, at least until you were ready. And by ready, I mean that you were clearly intending to use the farm as a base. For all he and I knew, you might zip off from Earth and only rarely return, if ever. If that was the case, then I didn’t need to be involved. But it looks like you’ve established yourself here now and intend to keep coming back, so we’ve gone to plan B—and here I am,” she said, grinning. “So what happens now?”

“Well, I keep taking care of the farm, and you keep dispensing justice out there. Oh, a request, though?

If you ever get any stavosia, bring me some. I got a taste for it in the 90s, when Mark accidentally left it out one day. It was dee-licious.”

Torina nodded enthusiastically. “I know, right?

I love the stuff. I’ll make sure we bring you some—wait.” She cocked her head at Miryam. “You can understand me?”

“Why, yes, I speak Italian,” Miryam said, then waved a hand and pointed at her ear. “I’ve got my ear bug in this time. So I understand all of you, including—”

She gave Icky a once over. “You must be one of those Wu’tzur Mark used to talk about.”

“Yeah, I am. I’m Icky.”

“Well, Icky, you’re dripping ice cream all over the floor.”

THAT MIRYAM KNEW everything left me gobsmacked, so much so that sitting with her in the dining room, along with Torina, Zenophir, and Icky felt utterly surreal. Add Rolis, who’d invited himself along, and then Perry, and all I could do was sit and shake my head. “They killed your father,” Miryam said to me, quietly. I nodded. “Bastards. He was a good man.”

“Don’t worry. I am going to run down every one of those Fade sons of bitches if it’s the very last thing I do,” I said. “Good. No mercy for them, Van. None. They don’t deserve it.”

I shook my head again. This was Miryam, a warm and almost folksy presence in my life for as long as I could remember. And here she was

exhorting me to remorselessly hunt down some interstellar assassins. It was not a conversation I’d ever envisioned having with her. “So how are you doing, Perry?” Miryam asked. “Not bad. Still getting used to working with Van.”

“And me to you, Perry. I take it you two know one another?”

“Of course. Miryam and I go way back,” he replied. “And you didn’t see fit to tell me she was in on this?”

“Just like your grandfather asked her to keep quiet about it, he did the same with me.”

“What else aren’t you telling me?”

“Um—lots?

But isn’t that always true?

Torina, have you told Van absolutely everything about yourself?

Van, is there anything you haven’t told Torina?”

I sat back, unable to deny the point. “One thing I will tell you, Van, is that I’m not the only one in the circle of knowledge here on Earth. There are a few others, too, ready to help out if needed. I’m going to suggest that I don’t tell you who they are until it’s necessary, though, so they don’t get compromised.”

“Are you worried that they’ll, you know, talk?”

“And how would that go?

Hey, by the way, I know a guy who’s an intergalactic cop and keeps his spaceship in his barn. They could make a YouTube video about it, slide it right in there between Moon-landing hoaxers and flat-earthers,” Miryam replied, a tone of duh in her voice. We took Miryam out to the barn to see the Fafnir. Along the way, she glanced down at Rolis, who was scuttling along with us on mechanical legs. “So you were, what, actually killed and installed in that thing?” she asked him. “Actually, I was installed in a waste reclamator. This is a definite upgrade.”

“You don’t exactly sound too broken up about it.”

“Like I told Van and company, it gives me a chance to start over. I mean, what better way to fake your own death than to actually die?”

Miryam nodded. “Can’t argue with that. Nice way to, oh, say… escape debt, for example,” she said with a sly grin. Rolis gave an electronic snort of laughter. “I like the way you think. You’re an attorney, correct?”

“I am.”

“Mind if I keep your contact information?

Just in case any of my, ah, previous issues are revisited?” Rolis asked, his tone bland. Now it was Miryam’s turn to laugh. “Naturally. I’m not cheap, though, especially for off world work.”

Rolis acted offended as we arrived at the barn door. “Madam, I’m hurt that you would think me a bargain hunter.”

I looked down at Rolis, who managed to make the ’bot seem playful and devious just by the way it was standing. “I’ll remember that when the time comes for reimbursement. We here at the Fafnir do not accept coupons for services rendered, like saving a hustler from certain doom.”

“Noted. No coupons—”

“And no more chatter. Let’s see our girl,” Miryam said, ending the discussion as we stepped inside the barn. Immediately inside the door, Miryam smiled and brushed a hand along the Fafnir’s hull. “I like what you’ve done with her, Van. Hey, Netty, are you still in there somewhere?”

“Right here, Miryam. How are you?”

I stepped away as Miryam and Netty got caught up, and turned to Torina. “Well, this was unexpected.”

“But probably not a bad thing. You really do have someone watching your back here on Earth,” she told me, her eyes never leaving mine. I took a moment to examine the work that Icky and Zenophir had done. They’d gotten most of the ship covered with the stealth coating, less the scanner arrays, thrusters, and other operating parts of the ship. It wouldn’t be a perfect stealth effect as a result, but Netty and Zenophir estimated it would reduce the Fafnir’s general signature by something like eighty to ninety percent, depending on whether the weapons normally kept recessed, like the laser and point defense batteries, were deployed or not. “It means the difference between being detected at a million klicks, or closer to a third of that. It’s also going to make the Fafnir a lot harder for the bad guys to target, too,” Zenophir said. I pointed to the upper rear section of the Fafnir’s hull, still awaiting the stealth covering. “How long do you think that’s going to take?” I asked her. “Three or four hours. We should be ready to leave by the middle of your standard day tomorrow.”

“Okay, then. Miryam, you want to stay for dinner, get to know the gang?” I asked her. She grinned. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

AFTER MIRYAM HAD LEFT, and Icky, Zenophir, and Rolis had retired to the Fafnir for the night, Torina and I took a walk. Perry came with us, alternating between walking and flight. We reached the edge of the nearest cornfield. The stalks stood well over my head, the rows between them perfectly straight lanes of soil, midnight black, dwindling off into perspective. “Kind of unnerving, actually,” Torina said, eyeing the towering plants. But I shook my head. “Nah. I used to play in these cornfields all the time. That farm over there, the one you can just see past those trees?

They had two kids my age, a son and a daughter, and we used to romp around out here all the time. I mean, you haven’t played hide-and-seek until you’ve played it in a mature cornfield right before harvest.”

I gestured with my head. “Here. Let’s go for a walk among the rows.”

I led the way, Torina following. We were immediately immersed in gloom, darkness pooling ever more deeply among the stalks as the sun went down. The air was cool, damp, and redolent with the scents of cornstalks and fertilizer. It was the smell of my childhood. Torina stopped and looked around. “Okay, we’ve walked, what, fifty paces or so?

And I’m now completely lost.”

I immediately pointed. “The farm’s that way.”

She crossed her arms and looked back. “You sure about that?”

“One hundred percent.”

From off to our right, a voice filtered out of the corn. “I am the old gods, and you are my human sacrifices!”

I rolled my eyes. “Perry, cut it out.”

He hopped into view among the plants. “Hey, you’re the one who brought up that stupid computer is tricked into a death loop trope. Excuse me for dredging up some Children of the Corn.”

“It’s funny when I do it.”

“Yeah. Funny. Anyway, Van, just so you know, having the Fafnir partly enclosed in that stealth coating is having an odd effect.”

I frowned down at him, or at his amber eyes, actually, the rest of him blending into the gathering dusk amid the stalks. “What sort of odd effect?”

“Well, there are parts of the ship we can’t stealth up, and we know that. But it seems that having the coating asymmetrical, the way it is right now, actually makes the ship more noticeable—kind of, anyway. It’s strange. I’ve flown around the barn, and sometimes I can detect the ship clearly, and sometimes not at all, depending on my orientation relative to it. It seems to be a property of the material we just don’t quite understand.”

“Okay, this sounds like a problem.” I wondered if we were going to have to strip all the sheets off again, if it actually wasn’t working out. “Nah, probably not. Asymmetry in the stealth envelope seems to be the problem. Once Zeno and Icky finish applying it tomorrow, the effect should go away. It is something we’re going to want to watch, though, especially after we take battle damage.”

I looked at Torina. “This stealth coating might end up being more of a pain in the ass than we thought.”

“You can’t enjoy the view without climbing the mountain first,” she replied. “What?”

“My parents used to say that, usually to motivate me to get my chores done.”

“You had chores?”

“Yes, Van. I was expected to clean up all the spilled money lying around the house.” She grinned. “That’s actually how you envision people growing up rich, isn’t it?’

“Well, that, and mumbling around a silver spoon.”

It was her turn to look blank. I laughed. “Hey, you trot out your folksy interstellar witticisms, I trot out mine.”

“The point is that my parents made me work for what I got. This stealth coating is the same. We’ll need to live with it for a while to see if it’s going to do the job or not.” She looked around, taking in what was now almost complete darkness among the cornstalks. “By the way, do you actually know what direction we have to go to get back to the farm—?”

“That way,” I replied, pointing. We started to walk and, sure enough, a couple of minutes later we emerged onto the edge of the grassy swale

separating the cornfield from the house. Torina smiled and shook her head. “Not sure how you do that. I had no idea where we were in there. You’d think it wouldn’t be that hard, since everything’s in, you know, parallel rows.”

“Ah, but the trick isn’t one of direction, it’s psychological. People get flustered when they’re hemmed in by corn starting less than an arm’s length in what feels like all directions.”

She took a couple of steps closer. “So what you’re saying is you know your way around.”

“I eventually find what I’m looking for, yeah,” I replied, pushing closer to Torina in turn. A disgusted noise erupted from the corn behind us. “If you need me, I’ll be somewhere less romantic,” Perry said, launching himself into the air and vanishing into the night. “VAN, WAKE UP!”

I blinked. It was still dark. What the hell?

“I’ll be up soon, Gramps,” I muttered and closed my eyes again. “Van, the farm’s under attack!”

That slammed me bolt upright, blowing away the foggy understanding that it was a cold, dark winter morning in Iowa and I had a school bus to catch. I snatched at my clothes while turning to Perry. “What do you mean, under attack?”

He looked around my room. “Where’s Torina?”

“Do you mind?

And what the hell is this about an attack—?”

“A ship, a class 10.

It entered orbit and unloaded three small boats, probably shuttles. They’ll be here in a little under ten minutes. And I doubt it’s going to be a friendly visit.”

I yanked on my socks and grabbed my boots, then scooped up a heavy flannel shirt and an insulated vest. The Moonsword and The Drop sat on my desk, the same one in which I’d found that remote so long ago. I grabbed them, too. Then we rattled out of the farmhouse and headed for the barn, meeting Torina and Zenophir halfway. “Netty’s doing the preflight. Icky’s pulling away the scaffolding and stuff. We can lift in, like, five minutes,” Torina said. I looked up at the sky. “Van?”

“Yeah, I hear you.”

“Uh, Van, this really is a piss or get off the pot moment,” Zenophir said. I glanced at her. “You got that from Gramps, didn’t you?”

“I—what?

Yeah, sure, but that doesn’t matter right now—”

I held up a hand. “Torina, get everyone aboard and prepare to lift. But don’t until I tell you to.”

She took a step toward me. “What about you?”

I narrowed my eyes at the sky. “I’m going to run interference.”

“What?”

I ignored it. “Perry, could they have detected the Fafnir?”

“Inside the barn?

Not likely. The stealth system your grandfather installed is supposed to prevent it.”

“Could they have detected the ship because of that asymmetry thing with the stealth coating?”

“They… might have, yeah. It could be leaking a signal through the barn’s rig. But—”

Torina grabbed my arm. “Van, we have to go!”

I waved her off. “One more question. If they did detect some extraneous signal, how accurate would it be, Perry?”

“Well, based on the signal characteristics, and accounting for range, interference from the atmosphere and the Earth’s magnetic field, and—”

“Perry!”

“This is a rough estimate, Van, okay?

The circular error is probably several klicks, but that’ll diminish as they get closer—”

“Diminish by how much?”

“I don’t know, maybe one or two klicks?”

I glanced around. Assuming a klick and a half of uncertainty, it meant that the Fafnir could be hidden in any one of four or five different buildings

—or even underground. It meant that it would take the bad guys time to find her. I turned to Torina. “Like I said, I’m going to run interference. My guess is that these assholes, whoever they are, aren’t planning for a protracted

fight. If we launch the Fafnir now, we’ll basically be giving them what they want.”

“So what are you planning to do?”

I drew the Moonsword. “I’m going to make their lives more than a little miserable.”

Torina shook her head. “Van, no. Let’s just board the Fafnir and leave. If we have to fight them, it’s better to—”

“Do it in orbit?

Or while the Fafnir’s still climbing to orbit?

She’ll be the proverbial sitting duck.” I looked into her eyes. “Get everyone aboard and stand by to take off. If I can’t hold these bastards off, I’ll come running.”

“Van—!”

“This is my home, Torina. I’m not just going to run away and abandon it.”

I didn’t outright say that Torina had fought for her home and refused to give up, but I didn’t have to. “Fine,” she sighed. “We’ll be keeping the airlock open, though.”

“I know you will.”

She opened her mouth but closed it again, then wheeled away and hurried back to the barn. I could feel Zenophir looking at me in the gloom. “You are every bit as crazy as your grandfather was.” She touched my arm. “He’d be damned proud of you, Van,” she said, then followed Torina. “Okay, Perry, you too,” I said, gesturing at the barn. “No.”

“Perry—”

“Van, I’m your combat AI. This is what I do. If I’m not at your side, then I’m not doing my job.”

I stared into his amber gaze. It was probably just me projecting feelings into what amounted to emotionless scanner hardware, but I could swear they held a pleading light, like this was really important to Perry. I finally nodded. “What direction are they coming from?”

“Netty’s detecting them about twenty klicks out, coming from the east. They’ll be here in a little under two minutes.”

“Then let’s go get ready to say hello.”

THE TRUTH WAS, I was scared shitless. As we stopped at the edge of the cornfield and stared into the east, my gut felt like it was going to macrame itself into a sweater. But I dug deep and made myself stand my ground. Part of it was me hoping I could prevent them from finding the Fafnir in the first place. But a bigger part was just what I’d said to Torina and Zenophir. This is my home, damn it. Perry, wheeling a tight circle about a hundred meters above me, spoke in my ear bug. I see them, Van. Two klicks out, coming in nap-of-the-earth, more or less. “Just tell me when and where they land,” I replied, gripping the Moonsword so tightly my knuckles almost glowed white in the darkness. An agonizing twenty seconds or so ticked by. The worst-case scenario was them descending right onto the farm, as in right in the open space around the house. The Fafnir would pretty much have to launch then, but if I couldn’t get to the barn in time—

They’re grounding, Van. The nearest is about three hundred meters to the northeast. Two more about a hundred meters further back, and two more another hundred meters beyond that, roughly in a wedge. Five of them. Shit. And they’re dismounting. I count three guys from each, a total of fifteen, b-suits and mass drivers. “They’re dismounting in the corn?”

Yup. Okay, that let me breathe a slight sigh of relief. It gave me some space and time to work with. Now, I just had to convince these scumbags that this wasn’t going to be a quick snatch-and-grab. I wasn’t actually sure if they really cared whether they ended up being discovered by Earthly authorities in an alien invasion, but I had to hope they didn’t. For one, it would be an egregious violation of one of the few interstellar laws that were widely respected—non-interference in so-called transition races. It wasn’t out of some altruistic, prime directive sort of thing, but because the results could be unpredictable. In one infamous incident, a transition race had been cultivated by the Yonnox, resulting in a violent, xenophobic headache that caused enormous issues before wiping itself out. The other point was that Earth wasn’t powerless. Modern terrestrial weapons might not be as potent as those used across known space, but a

Javelin anti-tank missile could still do significant damage to a spaceship. If they ended up attracting the attention of the United States military, things could end up going very wrong. All of which was to say, as I plunged into the corn with the Moonsword held ready, that if I could harass, delay, and make their lives miserable, I might be able to deter them from sticking around. Could. Might. It was pretty much all I had to work with, though. Van, thermal signatures two hundred meters at your ten o’clock. I was slammed by a sudden sense of déjà vu. Hadn’t Perry and I done this just recently, on Ajax?

Playing cat and mouse with bad guys in the nighttime wilderness?

How the hell did I end up here again?

And this time without the backup I had from the Daren-thal?

But Perry’s words, and my memories of that night on Ajax, smacked me with the realization of a different problem, an old one. Namely, heat. The corn might provide me with cover, but it wouldn’t matter if they could see my thermal signature. “Perry, how hot can you get?” I hissed. What… are you asking me here, Van?

“Get your little electronic mind out of the gutter, bird. How much heat can you generate?”

If I push my power cells, I can get damned hot. It precludes me from doing much else, though. “Fine. Get down here, heat yourself up as much as you can and stay close.”

A pause, then Perry replied. Yeah, okay, I see where you’re going with this, Van. On my way. I gripped the Moonsword and listened. Sure enough, I heard the soft rustle of cornstalks in the distance. Almost time. 20

“HOLY SHIT, Perry—when you said pretty damned hot—”

I meant it. Perry stood about three meters in front of me, his tips and fringes glowing cherry red. He threw off as much heat as a good-sized bonfire, making me wince if I tried getting much closer to him. But it also meant that, in thermal, he’d appear as a huge, bright glow. For someone trying to find me, it would be like trying to peer around the glare of a floodlight. I hoped. Something snapped overhead. Again, to my right and high. Then overhead. Twice to my right, and then to my left. It was speculative fire, intended to make me keep my head down while the bad guys closed in. Each shot was the kind of harassment and interdiction rounds that were a waste of ammunition, and little more. I heard another snap, but this one wasn’t aimed at me, and it ended in a hollow, meaty thunk, which I immediately knew to be the sound of someone’s head blowing apart. That came from near the barn. Torina, probably, Perry said. I grunted and forced myself to concentrate on the swish and rustle of disturbed cornstalks. I don’t care how stealthy you are, you are not going to move through a mature cornfield silently—not unless you were prepared to spend a lot of time doing it. That fact had been the basis for our nighttime hide-and-seek games out here, among the corn. I figured the nearest was maybe ten meters away, drawing closer. More shots, but only a few my way, and more directed toward the farm. I heard return fire. Torina had apparently decided to bend my instructions and start some sniping. I was grateful and pissed about it at the same time. I had to hope she could tell who to shoot at and who not to, as in me. Corn rustled two rows away. One. I saw a figure at about the same time he saw me, from maybe a meter away. He raised his weapon, but I was already swinging the Moonsword. It struck him just above his waist on his left and neatly made it halfway to his right hip before I encountered any resistance at all. I felt a slight shudder in the blade that must have been his spine, then the blade erupted from his right side in a shower of gore. Whoever he was, he made no sound except maybe a taut gasp of surprise, then toppled, his legs to the right, his torso to the left with a heavy thud. I stared. Holy shit. I’d just cut someone literally in half. But I didn’t linger to admire my handiwork and immediately backpedaled, putting more rows of corn between me and the bad guys now closing in. Perry stuck with me. A fusillade of gunfire snapped past and above me. I ducked and moved to my right, following a row of corn for a count of ten stalks, then turned left, trying to flank the two still standing of these three. Shots roughly followed me as I moved. The bad guys had a general idea where I was, but Perry’s infrared extravaganza was putting them off. And now some shots went his way as our attackers started to realize what was happening and tried to strip away my thermal camouflage. I kept going left, then turned left again and doubled back. Based on the sounds of movement and gunfire, I should have one of them—two rows away, maybe three—

A round snapped past my face close enough to make my ears ring. I charged, bursting out of a row close enough to touch one of my b-suited assailants. Again, the Moonsword delivered its silent death, leaving him—

to borrow from Shakespeare— unseam'd from the nave to the chaps. I didn’t linger to dwell on the gruesome sight, though, and again backed up, away from the third man, wanting to break contact with him. But this guy was more aggressive and suddenly turned and came at me, slamming out shot after shot as he charged. I had no choice but to duck and keep falling back, which meant he was actually driving me away from the

farm now, deeper into the fields and toward the other bad guys lurking among the corn. I was being herded, and there was nothing I could do about it. PERRY ENDED this guy’s charge by abruptly flinging himself into his face. I heard a shriek as diamond-hard and now red-hot talons ripped into his flesh. He fired wildly, but I heard a metallic clack, and Perry went offline. Perry!

I closed, this time raising The Drop and hammering out rounds at the scumbag who’d just done who knew what to Perry. A single return shot snapped past, then silence. I pushed through the corn and found him down, dropped by a combination of Perry’s attack and a couple of my own lucky shots. He struggled to rise, and I drove the Moonsword, in my left hand, straight through him and stapled him to the ground as a final sigh rushed from his body. It was the sound of death. The sound of finality. It was a sound that I knew, somehow, would stay with me because I was many things, but a murderer wasn’t one of them. For the moment, though, I was a killer. I swept out the blade and looked for Perry. I couldn’t find him. My heart sank. I couldn’t even search for him, since I heard more bad guys now racing toward me. Biting back a vile curse, I started back toward the farmhouse, opening some distance between me and the guys coming after me. “Van, get down!”

The voice was Netty’s. I hesitated only briefly, then stopped and flattened myself down. Nothing happened. I heard a growing commotion as the bad guys closed in on me, so I braced myself to leap to my feet before I was overrun—

Something dark and massive swept overhead. A harsh rattle of automatic gunfire tore apart the night, followed by impacts somewhere behind me that I felt in my chest. Clods of dirt thumped down around me. Then it stopped. I levered myself up, but all I could see was corn. The gunfire resumed, further off, but even louder—single blasts, each a peal of thunder, followed

by heavy detonations. Then silence. I waited, gripping my weapons. “Van?

Are you okay?” It was Torina. “Yeah, I am. What’s going on?”

“How did you put it?

The cavalry arrived?”

“What?”

“Lucky’s here. She just dropped out of the sky, gunned down some of the bad guys, and took out three of their shuttles. The rest are bugging out in a bigger lander.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay. That’s great. Now, I need your help finding Perry.”

Torina paused. “Is he okay?”

I started pushing through the corn, dread fingers clutching at my heart. “I don’t know.”

I FINALLY FOUND Perry sprawled among the cornstalks, his wings flopped into the dirt. He was motionless and silent. I hurried to him, stepping over one of the fallen bad guys on the way. With barely a thought, I sliced off the bad guy’s head with the Moonsword to make sure he was dead. The tendons parted with a whisper, a small shock running up my arm from the blade’s winnowing strike. I felt a burst of dark satisfaction doing it, and for a moment, I felt a cold anger at being put in the position where killing wasn’t just necessary, it was crucial to my own survival. And to the survival of my friends. “Perry!”

No answer. I knelt beside him. “Perry, I—”

I wasn’t sure what to do. He’d taken a round right through his torso, which had blown a hole and exposed the ruins of intricate circuits. But he wasn’t bleeding, and he didn’t need to breathe, so regular first aid didn’t seem applicable. Of course, I had two skilled engineers, not to mention another—

“Netty!

Perry’s been shot and he’s down!

What do I do?”

“Bring him back to the Fafnir. If we can confirm that his memory, logic, and personality modules are still intact, then he just needs to be physically repaired.”

I reached down, grabbed him, and immediately recoiled. He was still hot enough to leave welts on my fingers. “I can’t move him!

He’s too hot—”

“Van, listen to me. Perry isn’t going to bleed out or slowly slip away. The essence of what is him is either intact or it isn’t,” Netty said. I heard movement rustling toward me, from the direction of the farm. Torina’s voice filtered through the corn stalks. “This way!”

It was two frustrating minutes of the Marco Polo game as Torina, Icky and I tried to find each other, calling back and forth among the swaying corn, each plant well more than two meters tall. We finally got close enough to touch, as Icky and Torina materialized out of the stalks like wraiths. Both were fully armored and armed to the teeth. Icky knelt beside Perry and immediately scooped him up. I opened my mouth to warn her about how hot he was, but she didn’t even flinch. “I’ll take him back to the Fafnir and get to work on him,” she said. Her voice was strained, tight even, as though she was—holding back tears, or the Wu’tzur equivalent?

I nodded, a little surprised, and stood to follow. But Torina stopped me. “Van, we’ve got an even bigger problem,” she said. “Than Perry?”

She nodded and pointed at the fallen attacker I’d just decapitated. “There are also three or four shuttles out there that Lucky wrecked with rail gun shots. You might not have noticed that because of all the explosions and stuff, right after those loud bursts from her point-defense guns that killed some more of these guys.”

I stared. “And?”

“And, Van, this isn’t Helso or Ajax or Sunward, where a battle between spaceships and aliens is just going to be shrugged off.”

I felt my mouth drop open as understanding finally caught up to my racing thoughts about Perry. If this were anywhere else inhabited, it would be a matter for the Guild and the local government to sort out. Here on Earth, though—

I shook my head. “They must have heard all that in Des Moines.”

“At minimum, it probably woke up your neighbors.”

Well, shit. Like it or not, it seemed that humanity was about to make first contact, and they were going to do it on my farm. EXCEPT IT TURNED out Gramps had planned for this, bless him. Netty had already put a call through to Miryam, which had apparently kickstarted a plan that had been in place all along. I was a little pissed that no one saw fit to tell me about it, but my ire could wait. About fifteen minutes after the call, Miryam showed up—with a police cruiser in tow. I tensed, but Miryam waved as she got out of her car. “Van, relax. Clinton here is part of the plan,” she said, hurrying for the door. Behind her lumbered Clinton Barnes, a bear of a man with whom I’d exchanged maybe a dozen words in my life. He was the county sheriff, a slab of grim, humorless meat apparently propelled by desire to see everyone he met locked up for something. I’d sometimes thought he conformed just a little too well to the pop culture image of a small-town USA sheriff, like he was deliberately putting it on. And I might have been right, because he grinned as he strode up the porch. “Mister Tudor, I understand you have an alien problem.”

“You—” I said, then glanced at Miryam. “He—”

She gave a thin smile. “Believe it or not, I was planning on coming back later today to fill you in on all the details of the things your grandfather set up. Clinton here is, frankly, most of them.”

“Your grandaddy pulled my chestnuts out of the fire in Vietnam more than once. I owe the man my life, oh, at least two times, and probably three,” he said. “Gramps?

But he wasn’t ever in Vietnam,” I replied. Clinton looked at Miryam, then winked and nodded. “Of course he wasn’t—in either of his day jobs.”

As we hurried around the house and toward the cornfield, Barnes explained that he’d gotten to know my grandfather when he was doing some spec ops work in Vietnam. Barnes had been involved in LRP, long-range patrols with the Rangers. Gramps had apparently accompanied him

on a couple of missions, accounting for one or two of his life-saving episodes. “The third?

Yeah, that was something. Once we’d gotten to know one another, your grandad gave me a radio frequency to use, right on the bottom band range of our PRC-25 radios, if I was ever in deep trouble. He said to say his name, Peacemaker Mark Tudor, just like that. I assumed it would bring him coming, all spec-ops’d up. Didn’t imagine it was going to bring him in a gawdamned spaceship. He drove off the bad guys in a flash. Gave our helos a chance to come in and extract us.” He grinned. “Ah, she was a thing of beauty, too. Could’ve been one of Heinlein’s ships, or Clarke’s.”

Despite the dire situation, I was mesmerized by Barnes’s story. “You’re a sci-fi fan?”

“Oh, hell yeah. From way back.” He leaned in with a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ve still got posters in my man cave downstairs from the classic movies. Includes my pride and joy, an original poster for Forbidden Planet I managed to get signed by Leslie Nielsen himself. Worth a fortune.”

Well, holy shit. Not that I’d ever thought about Clinton Barnes—well, at all, really—but to hear the guy was a bona fide sci-fi buff—

I could only shake my head. But as we reached the edge of the cornfield, I had to stop and ask him something. “I never once heard Gramps say a good word about you. He called you variations of asshole backwater bumpkin.” I braced myself for the reaction. Which was a belly laugh. “Oh, yeah. Mark and I agreed that we should be mutual haters, at least as far as anyone else was concerned. Keep as much public distance between us as possible. Truth was, he was over at my place drinkin’ hooch at least one, sometimes two nights a week, when he wasn’t”—he pointed straight up—“that is.”

I’d wondered what Gramps had seen in this man that convinced him to bring him into a cosmic circle of knowledge. I was starting to understand, but right now I was just relieved and happy. “So I’ve posted deputies about two klicks either direction up the road, cordoning off the area. I’ve sent a couple more ’round to your neighbors to tell them to stay indoors,” he said as we started into the corn. “Isn’t that just going to cause way more questions?” I asked. “Oh, damned right it is. And the answer is that it’s classified government business. And you may hear a rumor that an experimental

government plane crashed out here on your land, and that’s what all the fuss is.”

I shook my head again. It all seemed to be covered. We came upon the first body, the one I’d decapitated right before finding Perry. “You do that?”

I hesitated. But what was I going to do, deny that I had nothing to do with the headless alien corpse on my land?

So I just nodded. Barnes scratched his neck. “Well, that’s your jurisdiction, not mine,” he said and just ambled on. I turned to Torina and Miryam, who’d followed us and were chatting along the way. They smiled back at my stupefied reaction to all of this. We pushed on and finally reached a clearing beaten into the corn. “Okay, that’s gonna be a problem,” Barnes said. I could only nod. It was one of the shuttles Lucky had destroyed, squatting lopsided on its landing skids, the guts blown out of it. It had to weigh—five tons, maybe?

Even pushing ten?

It was one thing to clear away the bodies. But how the hell were we going to be able to get rid of three derelict spaceships grounded amid the corn?

WE CONSIDERED USING the biggest machine we had available, the tractor hunkered in a shed not far from the barn. But the tractor would have to beat its way through the corn to get to each of the shuttles, and then drag it to wherever we were going to take it. A generous estimate was probably at least a day, and maybe more, of hard and disruptive work. And we needed to get this done before daylight, in just over two hours time. At least we did have a where to take the shuttles. On the northern edge of my family’s property gaped The Sinkhole. It was, unsurprisingly, a literal sinkhole, a narrow, deep ravine cut right into the limestone bedrock by countless eons of trickling acidic water. It was about ten meters wide at its widest, and about fifty meters long, and was such a hazard that Gramps had paid to have it enclosed in a chain-link fence plastered with warning signs. If he hadn’t, the insurance company made it clear he’d lose his liability coverage. But the distance from the various derelict shuttles to The Sinkhole ranged from three hundred meters to nearly six hundred. There was only one way we could move all of this wreckage and dump it in the sinkhole before the sun came up. We had to use the Fafnir. It was a risk, and we had to hastily empty everything we could out of her to reduce her weight. Her gravity polarizers could only lift her a short distance, a few hundred meters, enough to clear the barn before the thrusters lit and steadily, albeit slowly pushed her up into orbit. Slinging the disabled shuttles would push the polarizers to the limit, so we lightened the Fafnir to reduce the load on them. What followed was one of the two most intense and exhausting hours of my life, and I include nearly everything I’d encountered in known space in that. We wrapped the Fafnir’s monofilament winch cable around the shuttle, then the ship would lift, pulling the shuttle high enough to clear the ground, before sliding across the field to The Sinkhole and releasing it. It had the advantage of not disturbing the crops any more than they already had been and also meant we didn’t have to take down the chain-link fence around The Sinkhole. And thanks to her stealth coating, even if not quite complete, she was virtually undetectable. The most anyone would see in the distance, in the dark, was movement—or so we hoped. When we’d dumped the bodies and the last of the shuttles into The Sinkhole, I did a look down with the Fafnir’s imager. A bit of debris protruded above the water that filled all but about five meters of the little chasm, but that was it. “And we’re sure there’s nothing down there that’s potentially dangerous, right?”

“The shuttles weren’t twist-capable, so they don’t carry antimatter. And the fuel for their reactors is helium-3, which is about as inert as it gets. The only concern might be the power cells, but as long as they weren’t damaged, they’d remain intact for decades certainly, and quite possibly centuries,” Netty said. I wiped away sweat. “If they weren’t damaged.”

“That’s right.”

It was just a risk we were going to have to take. But by taking it, we’d managed to clear all the evidence of the ferocious battle, aside from the scars in the cornfield. If our neighbors, once they got access to the field

again, asked about that, we’d already prepared a cover story, that I wasn’t allowed to talk about it, by governmental national security edict. The one flaw in the plan, it struck me once we’d returned the Fafnir to the barn, just as the sun was rising, was the military themselves. If word got back to them that they were supposedly recovering a crashed experimental aircraft, that would raise some questions, no?

“Your grandfather had that covered, too. He has an old friend in the Pentagon that I called who’s going to make sure the military just stays quiet about it,” Miryam said. “Okay, I find that a little hard to believe. Who in the Pentagon has that kind of power, aside from someone like the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?”

Miryam said nothing. “Oh. Huh. Alrighty, then,” I said and just left it at that. I was a little bemused by the fact that all those conspiracy theories about the government and military covering up aliens were actually true—just not in the way that their adherents could even begin to suspect. Clinton Barnes, who’d helped throughout, wiped his forehead and nodded as he headed for the door. I opened my mouth to thank him, but seriously—what sort of thank you was appropriate for someone who helped you cover up the evidence of an interstellar battle on your farm?

“No thanks necessary, Van. I’m happy to help. Hell, I wouldn’t be here to help if it weren’t for your grandfather.”

“Well, I guess the debt’s paid off now.”

But Barnes grinned. “Oh, hell no. You ever need me, you just call,” he said and ambled out the door. I turned to Miryam and glanced down at my grubby, sweaty clothes. “I need a shower.”

But she shook her head. “No, Van, right now, you need this,” she said, handing me a generous glass of bourbon. I offered her a tired smile. “You always did know how to make me feel better. Although it used to be ice cream.”

“Eh, ice cream, bourbon, it’s all the same. Different treats for different ages.”

“You must organize one hell of a kid’s birthday party—” I started, but yet another realization slammed into me. Perry. I had no idea if he was okay or not. I handed the bourbon back to Miryam. “Hold this for me for a few minutes. I need to check on Perry.”

She gave me a solemn nod. “I’ll be here for you, Van.”

“I know you will,” I replied. And then, on impulse, I leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “And I want to thank you for it.”

“Oh, by the way, say hi to Lucky for me.”

“You know her—?” I said, but then I shook my head and smiled. “Of course you do.”

I hurried off but didn’t want to, because I might just be hurrying toward bad news. 21

“HE’S OKAY?” I asked, almost sagging with relief. Icky and Zenophir had him sprawled on the Fafnir’s galley table, a grim sight that reminded me of a bird being dissected. Zenophir looked up from him and nodded. For some reason, she had a faint smile on her face. It was her own expression of relief, I guess. “He’s fine. His logic and personality modules were undamaged. One of his memory modules was blasted apart, but he regularly backs that up to the Fafnir’s archives, so we’ve been able to restore pretty much everything except for the last couple of minutes.”

I leaned in close, my nerves wound tight as I examined my friend. “Still looks like he’s in pretty rough shape.”

Icky grinned. “You have no idea.”

I gave her a puzzled look, but she just raised a finger with one hand, while touching a control with the other. “Hey, bird, you there?”

“What?”

The voice came not from Perry on the table, but from a speaker on the comm panel above the table. I frowned. “Perry?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Where… are you?”

Icky snickered. Zenophir smiled. “I am currently installed in the Fafnir’s galley management system. I, a top-of-the-line combat AI with decades of experience, have been relegated

to overseeing food preparation and—”

He paused, then sighed. “And waste management.”

I looked, dumbfounded, from the speaker to Icky and Zenophir. “Why did you guys put him in there?”

“Because Waldo Two’s currently inhabited by Rolis, and there are no other non-critical systems available on the ship for him,” Zenophir said. “So now he’s handling our poop!” Icky proclaimed, provoking a terse response from Perry. “Silence, you overgrown blue ruffian.”

Now I found myself starting to smile. “So, your current… um, accommodations aside, you’re okay, Perry?”

“No. I’m stuck in exactly the same situation as the stolen identities we’ve been rescuing. I mean, how is this not a crime?”

“Because it’s only while we get you repaired,” Zenophir said, then shrugged and put her tools down. “Which is going to have to happen back at Anvil Dark. I need parts that just aren’t available here.”

“Wait—you mean I’m stuck here until we get back to Anvil Dark?”

“Well, it’s either that, or we just take you offline completely,” Icky replied. She was still grinning, but I could tell that a big chunk of it was relief that he was okay—if currently inconvenienced. “So stick Rolis in here, and let me at least have Waldo Two!”

Rolis/Waldo, who’d been squatting nearby out of the way, spoke up. “I’ll understand if you need to do that, but I have to be honest, I’d rather not,” he said. “Well, you are a guest. Netty, is there nowhere else in the Fafnir we can put Perry?

I mean, he must be able to operate at least one critical system,” I said. “We can theoretically install him into any system. But that will take direct control of that system away from me, which could introduce slight delays and inaccuracies. And I’m not sure you want slight delays in things like smoothing out harmonics in the fusion reactor, or inaccuracies in doing nav calculations.”

“Weapons, maybe?”

“The only weapon with a dedicated AI is the point-defense battery, but it's specialized hardware, and Perry’s chips aren’t compatible,” Netty said. “And by the time we could rig up an adapter and get him set up in the point-defense, well, it’d be faster just to go to Anvil Dark,” Zenophir said. “We’ve already considered all these options, Van, and this is the only one that’s workable.”

I offered the speaker an apologetic shrug. “Sorry, Perry. Looks like it’s either this, or we take you offline.”

“I’ll reserve judgment on that.”

“In the meantime, bird, I’d like to talk about my menu choices with you,” Icky said. “There’s been a shocking lack of seasoning in my last few

—"

“Icky?”

“Yes, bird?”

“I want you to look something up in the reference library,” Perry said. “Um, sure?” Her bravado faltered a bit from Perry’s subtle tone of glee. “Look up the King’s food taster. You don’t have a food taster, do you, Ick?”

Icky looked down at the screen, where a definition pulsed in blue letters. When she lifted her eyes to me, she made a face. “You wouldn’t—”

“Mildly poison you so that I can make poop jokes at your expense until the stars burn out?

Of course not. We’re friends. And friends would never do such a crude thing. We’re not crude people, are we, Icky?” Perry’s voice intoned with eminent reason. Icky spread all four arms in a friendly wave. “We are certainly not. I, for one, would like to welcome you as our newest director of, ah, whatever dignified title you’re choosing for that job.”

Perry’s clicking laughter filled the ship. “Thank you, friend. So glad we reached this understanding.”

AS SOON AS Icky and Zenophir installed the last of the stealth coating, I said my goodbyes to Miryam, telling her I’d call her the next time we were—in town, was what I was going to say, but switched it to on Earth with a bit of a smile. She responded with a hug. “Take care of yourself up there, Van.”

“Always.”

As the Fafnir lifted, I turned my attention to another lingering question. “Lucky, you there?”

“Right here, Van. When are you guys lifting?”

“We already have,” I said, glancing out the canopy at the crop-scape of Iowa falling away beneath. The scars in the cornfield were obvious but could convincingly be attributed to impacting debris from a crashing aircraft, I supposed. “You have?

Huh, can’t see you at all. That stealth coating works really well.”

“Good to know. Anyway, Lucky, I’ve got a question.”

“How did I manage to show up in the nick of time?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve been following you, Van.”

I looked at Torina, then turned back to Lucky’s image on the comm. “Really?

Why?”

“Because I assumed the bad guys would run you down eventually. I figured that if I hung back and watched long enough, I’d catch them inbound. So I sat on the surface of that Moon of yours and just watched. When I saw those Fade assholes tearing in toward Earth, I decided to tail them. Sorry I didn’t get there sooner, though.”

“Point is you showed up when we needed you most. Thanks for that,” I said. “Why didn’t you stop the rest of their shuttles, though?

They were pretty much—” Torina turned to me. “Sorry, Earth expression, some sort of water bird, sitting—”

“Sitting ducks?”

“Yes, that.”

“Because I didn’t want to risk starting a drawn-out firefight here in the middle of whatever you call this continental mass. And as for the big shuttle, it looked twist capable, so I figured that shooting down something with a load of antimatter aboard—” Lucky just left it at that. I whistled low. A small antimatter explosion was potentially far, far more powerful than any nuclear weapon. It was one thing for that to happen hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away in a vacuum. But an explosion of many megatons, and maybe into the gigaton range whose ground zero was my family farm might raise a few eyebrows. Still, she’d confirmed from cross-referenced data and intercepted comms that this almost certainly had been the work of the Fade. They’d known I was from Earth and must have had someone or something

watching in case we gave ourselves away—which we had, when we partly installed the stealth coating. Netty and Perry had worked out the exact issue, that the asymmetry of the partial coating had created some weird resonance effect that actually increased the strength of scanner returns when viewed from certain geometries. “The good news is that it’s a function of the straight lines formed by the edges of the sheets of the coating. Irregular breaks in it don’t produce the effect. So as long as nobody blows perfectly rectangular holes in the Fafnir, damage to the coating won’t trigger it,” Netty said. Still, I brooded on it as we climbed to orbit, passing over some mounting thunderstorms that would probably drench Iowa later in the day. Even if the Fade still didn’t know that the Fafnir had been in the barn, it didn’t really matter if they knew where the farm was. In a single, jarring moment, I felt disconnected, almost adrift, the Fafnir herself being the only safe place in an endless expanse of stars. That wasn’t true, of course—the Undersea on Schegith’s home planet was another refuge, essentially inaccessible to anyone Schegith herself didn’t admit. And Starsmith, of course, protected by the unguessable might of the strange being called Matterforge, was another. I’d add Anvil Dark to the list, although there’d been enough leakage of bad guys into the place that I wasn’t one hundred percent sure of its security. “Van?”

I turned to Torina. “Hmm?”

“You’re thinking really hard about something.”

I nodded. “Yeah. The farm. The fact it’s not my safe haven anymore.”

Zenophir, who’d been having a whispered discussion with Icky in the back of the cockpit about some esoteric aspect of the Fafnir’s performance, cut in. “Van, let’s be blunt here. It was never really a safe haven.”

I turned back. “What do you mean?

Until yesterday, there wasn’t any threat.”

“Really?

No one knew you were from Earth?

That your Grandfather was from Earth as well?

Or was it the array of powerful defenses protecting your farm against an attack?”

“I—” I turned back and looked forward. “Shit. You’re right. Thinking the farm was secure was… an illusion, that’s it, wasn’t it?”

Zenophir leaned forward and put her hand on my shoulder. “In a way, last night was a good thing—”

“Excuse me, waste reclamation bird disagrees with you,” Perry put in. “Okay, for most of us, it was a good thing, at least in a way.” She turned back to me. “You’re ready for them now. Maybe we need to up-gun the Iowa and move her closer to Earth. Going toe to toe with a battlecruiser isn’t the Fade’s style. Anyway, the point is that, sure, maybe that security was an illusion. So now you can do the things that will give you real safety.”

“Going and kicking the Fade’s ass is a good start,” Icky said. “Okay, yeah, I get it—you guys are right. But I’m still worried about Miryam.”

“Van, considering how careful your grandfather obviously was about contingencies, do you really think he didn’t arrange for her to be protected in some way?” Torina asked. I had to smile at that. Gramps had been a canny old dog, hadn’t he?

Lucky came on the comm. “Van, before you head out of the system, let’s meet up somewhere handy. The far side of the Earth’s moon would work. I’ve got something for you.”

“Oh?

What’s that?”

“I’ll give it to you when you get here.”

I glanced around the cockpit but just got shrugs and expressions of why not?

“Okay, Lucky. Be right there.”

“YOUR GRANDFATHER WASN’T EXPLICIT about when I was supposed to give this to you. He just said, ‘Lucky, when you think he’s ready, that’s the time.’

And I think you’re ready,” Lucky said to me from across the Fafnir’s galley table. She held out a small disc, a military-grade encrypted data module. About the size of a silver dollar, they were reputedly almost indestructible. And they weren’t cheap. If Gramps had intended this for me, then it must be something of profound importance. “It’s a key, one that will unlock protected memory shared by both Netty and Perry.”

“Hey, reclamation bird, you there?” I asked. “We cannot get to Anvil Dark soon enough,” Perry muttered. The Fafnir had one data port of the right type, in the cockpit. I plugged in the chip, then waited. “Oh. Wow.” It was all Perry said. I stiffened. “Perry, what is it?”

“Lucky, you’re sure this is what Mark wanted?” Perry said, ignoring me. “He was pretty damned clear about it, yeah,” she replied. “Van, your grandfather left more than just this ship and his legacy as a Peacemaker. He left a plan—a plan for you to become a Master,” Perry said. I stared at the console. “What?”

“It’s all here. The first step is for you to clear out the Fade. A win that big will get you elevated to Third Veteran status. And that means you get a vote on the Council Deliberative, the body that deals with lesser matters of Guild business that don’t require direct involvement from the Masters.”

“Gaining Veteran status and joining the Council Deliberative is generally considered the first rung on the ladder to Master status,” Netty added. “You’ll actually have a hand in shaping Guild policy,” Lucky went on. I could only shake my head. “Me?

A Master?

Gramps didn’t even want the job.”

Lucky leaned on the table. “Which is probably why he wants you to take a shot at it. People generally believe that Mark simply didn’t want to be a Master, but it was more complicated than that. He was deeply conflicted over it and spent a long time agonizing over the decision. I don’t know the details, and I don’t think anyone alive does.”

She leaned back. “Knowing him as well as I did, though, I think the part of him that regretted turning down a seat at the Masters’ Table wanted to encourage you to do it instead.”

I stood and waved everyone off. “Sorry, folks, but I need time to digest this.”

“It’s a big decision,” Torina agreed. Zenophir was nodding as well. “Yeah, take your time with this one, Van. Although, wiping out the Fade isn’t a bad idea anyway.”

I couldn’t argue with that, but I needed something concrete to do now, something to give me time to let this percolate. “Zeno, you mentioned the Iowa. Let’s go pay her a visit and start thinking about how we can bring her the rest of the way back to life.”

LUCKY JOINED us in traveling to the Iowa, which remained parked near Orcus on the fringe of the Solar System. The illegal mining operation on Pluto was still underway as well, the battlecruiser we’d spied earlier lurking nearby. “I am going to see that annoying shitbox either seized or destroyed,” I said, meaning it as a vow. The attack on the farm had ignited a smoldering fire of anger and resentment in me that just didn’t seem to want to go out. The farm was my home. Earth was my home. And, yes, the Solar System was my home, and these assholes were perpetrating a home invasion. And if you invade someone’s home, and find them waiting for you with a shotgun, well, sucks to be you. We spent the next day poring over the Iowa’s schematics and checking out her hardware, particularly her weapon mounts. If we completely outfitted her the way her builders had intended, we needed to procure a half-dozen twin-linked laser batteries, just as many missile turrets, four mass-drivers, and another four point-defense batteries. On top of that, we needed to install them, then hook them all up to a fire control system which would normally be operated by at least eight dedicated crew. Icky insisted she could centralize it all, based on how she and her father had automated his ship, the Nemesis, but that entailed further cost, notably for a sophisticated military AI to help operate everything. “So big bucks,” I said, leaning back and luxuriating in the sheer amount of space on the Iowa’s bridge. The Fafnir, now a Dragon, was roomy, but it paled in comparison to the battlecruiser, whose normal crew complement was something nearing sixty personnel. “Well, it’s not like we need to buy it all right away. And I think I can get a line on at least some of this stuff at a good price,” Zenophir said. Lucky nodded. “I know where there’s a combat AI currently dormant and parked aboard a ship in storage.”

I looked at her. “So you’re suggesting we buy it, or—”

“Steal it?

Well, you could, but you’d be stealing from not the good guys, exactly, but a neutral party. Anyway, if you’re interested, leave it with me and I’ll see what we can work out.”

Icky waved a meaty hand. “It’s not just the cost. With just the four of us, it’s going to take forever to install and test all this stuff. What we need are some YardCraft.”

“Which are?” Torina asked. “Small, single-person ships that carry tools, robotic arms, and work on the hulls of big ships. My dad and I had two of them, but when the Nemesis was finished being outfitted, we sold one and kept the other for routine maintenance jobs.”

Zenophir spoke, but hesitantly. “I know where we can get them.”

I gave her a sidelong glance. “Why do I sense that where you can get them isn’t good?”

Zenophir sighed a deep sigh. “I’ve been reading about your culture, and how a mother’s guilt can be—”

“Smothering?

That’s not just Earth culture, I can assure you,” Torina put in. Zenophir nodded. “Yeah. Anyway, I own three of them. Or, rather, my family does, but we’re not using them, so… ”

Perry’s voice erupted from the overhead speaker. “So let’s go get ’em.”

I glanced at the speaker. “Hello, Perry. You’re here.”

“Yeah, Netty put me through. I hope that’s okay, or would you prefer me to go back to my day of—” He paused. “I’d rather not talk about it. Oh, incidentally, Icky, what the hell do you eat?”

Had it been any of the rest of us, we’d probably have been mortified at such a crass question. Icky, though, just grinned. “What can I say, I have a healthy appetite.”

“More like an unhealthy appetite. I mean, this last time—”

“Okay, okay, I think that’s as far as this conversation needs to go,” I cut in. “Sorry, Van, but this is what I do now, and I want to share it with the universe. Of course, if I were to be restored to actual me, I wouldn’t have to,” Perry replied. “Anvil Dark is our next stop, I promise. We need to take Rolis there, anyway. He’s agreed to give a full statement and testify as necessary.”

“Does he want a new body?” Torina asked. I shrugged. “He hasn’t decided yet, believe it or not. He’s really not all that troubled by his new reality.”

“Takes all types to make the galaxy spin, as my dad used to say,” Icky said. I turned back to Zenophir. “So, those YardCraft you mentioned—

She nodded. “Yeah. I hate like hell to do this, and I’m sure I’m going to end up regretting it, but for this worthy cause, I’ll call my mothers.” She said it with all the enthusiasm of someone standing in line at the DMV. “Your… mothers?

Plural?

How many mothers do you have?”

“Four, and two Exalted Mothers. So six in all.”

“Mother’s Day must be a big event on your homeworld.”

She gave me a blank look. “What the hell’s a Mother’s Day?”

I smiled. “Never mind. Anyway, your homeworld is, what, about thirty light-years away?

And I think I can feel the guilt from here.”

“Oh, you have no idea. Netty, can you set up a comm link to my home world, asking for channel V-Victory-Redeemed—and yes, that’s what the signal link is called. Ask for the Silver Hand family collective,” Zenophir said. “Do you want to do this in private?” I asked her, but she shook her head. “Nah. Just like Perry wants to share the misery, so do I.”

“Uh… thanks?”

“I have the link established—oh,” Netty said. “What’s wrong?” I asked her. “Based on the background and ambient noise at the other end, I seem to have interrupted an argument. Zeno, should we wait for a better time?”

“There isn’t a better time.” She sighed again. “Okay, put them on.”

The comm display lit with a group of P’nosk, all of them crowding in to peer at the screen on the other end. “Greet you as one, family—”

“Oh, look, it’s Zeno,” one of them said. Another pushed in. “So you didn’t die. See, we assumed you had, because you never called. I’m starting to wonder if you really were serving some sort of weird sentence or—”

“Or if you were just avoiding us because you’re ashamed of us or some such thing,” a third snapped. Zenophir grimaced and opened her mouth, but the barrage of incoming guilt didn’t relent. “Seriously, of all the ploys to avoid seeing us—”

“Where are our grandchildren?

We were promised grandchildren!” yet another bellowed. Zenophir spoke in a tone I associated with people waiting for a dentist appointment. “Mothers Sacred, I—look, can I come home?

I have need of some things, and—"

“Home?

You want to come home?” The deluge abruptly switched from a torrent of shame to one of matronly gushing. One of the older ones pushed through the others, who made way for her. “Yes, of course, come home, dear. We will talk then.”

“About why we don’t have little ones on which to dote,” one of her other mothers added in a petulant chirp. “Thank you, Mothers Sacred. I’ll send along details shortly. Right now, duty calls,” Zenophir said, reaching for the comm. “Wait!

Have you met anyone nice?

Who’s that human in the background, he’s quite attractive—”

Zenophir snapped the comm link closed, slumped back, and closed her eyes. “Does everyone understand what sort of sacrifice I’m making now?”

Torina nudged me with an elbow. “They think you’re kind of attractive, Van.”

“And I’d be flattered, if the rest of that wasn’t implicitly, so why don’t you and Zenophir hook up?” I quickly turned to Zeno. “Not that I’m saying it’s a bad thing—”

“Oh, for—Van, it’s very much a bad thing. Besides, you’re not my type

—or species.”

“That’s true,” I noted, nodding solemnly. Icky leaned close to Zenophir. “If it makes you feel any better, my mother was a murderous, psychopathic, narcissistic bitch.”

“Yes, Icky, that makes me feel much better,” Zeno replied, her voice flat. “Wow.”

We all looked at the overhead speaker. “Perry, you have something to say?”

“Just that, speaking as an inorganic entity—how the hell do you organics put up with that sort of mushy, gushy, messy family stuff?”

I shrugged. “It has good moments, too.”

Zenophir opened an eye. “Really?

When do those happen?”

22

“SO LET me get this straight. You’ve got six mothers and four fathers?” I asked Zenophir. Icky leaned in. “Yeah. How does that work, exactly?

Like, do they all get together in one room and—”

“It’s… not something we discuss outside our species, thank you,”

Zenophir said as we finished docking the Fafnir with one of at least twenty orbital platforms zipping around the P’nosk homeworld. They were, apparently, mostly retirement communities. P’nosk physiology was such that, as they aged, they quickly degraded and found it difficult to move around. The distant P’nosk ancestors had retreated into the voluminous oceans covering their planet and adopted a semi-aquatic existence, but that had been replaced with zero-g aboard orbital habitats. We’d been guided to the one housing Zenophir’s family. “So are your fathers here, too?” I asked her as the docking adapter locked down on the Fafnir. “No, they’re down on the surface working on a new deep wave generator project. My people are trying to reduce our dependence on helium-3, which we have to import, and use cheaper sources of energy like ocean currents,” she replied. “So are they… younger than your mothers?

And that’s why they’re not up here, too?” Torina asked as we unstrapped. Zenophir shook her head. “P’nosk males don’t develop the same sensitivity to gravity as they age.”

Torina shot me a glare. “Figures.”

“What do I have to do with this?” I shot back. “You’re male,” she replied, shrugging, and Icky high-fived her. “Sing it, sister!”

We disembarked and made our way into the station’s interior, centered on an expansive park filled with a riot of greenery and bubbling fountains. I stopped and looked around. “This is pretty damned nice, but… all this empty space, that has to be kept temperature-controlled and pressurized?

And all this water?

This must be an expensive place to run.”

Zenophir gestured for us to follow. “Not really. In fact, these plants process and recycle the air, while the fountains are the last step in cleaning the water, getting it nicely aerated. It means these habitats don’t have to rely strictly on mechanical systems to do it all, so it’s actually cheaper and more efficient in the long run.”

We ambled, or did our best imitation of it in the low-g, anyway, among the shrubs and trees and flowering vines, all of them distinctly browner than I was used to. Zenophir explained that a second chemical worked alongside chlorophyll in the plants’ metabolism, making them even more voracious converters of carbon dioxide into oxygen. By the time we’d reached the exit to the wing of the station where Zeno’s family lived, I had to admit to being sold on this more nature-oriented way of dealing with problems everyone else relied on technology to solve. I hadn’t realized that the P’nosk were, besides being well-hardened against radiation, also in tune with their natural environment. “The space hippies would love this,” Torina noted as the park fell away behind us and traversed a long corridor that could have been duplicated from any decent Earthly hotel. Zenophir glanced back. “You mean the Synergists?”

“Yes, that’s them. They’ve done some excellent work on my homeworld.”

“Yeah, well, they claim we stole some ideas from them, and vice versa. So we don’t have a great relationship with them.”

I leaned closer to Torina. “Trouble in paradise—literally.”

She grinned. We reached the apartment housing Zeno’s family. Before she touched the door, though, she turned to me. “Van, brace yourself.”

“For what?”

“For when they find out you’re Mark Tudor’s grandson.”

“Okay. Why?”

“Because they blame him for my sentence, which they’ve convinced themselves is the only reason I haven’t met someone nice, and someone else nice, and someone else nice—anyway, for not starting a family.”

“Oh.” I cocked my head at her. “I thought you once mentioned that you, well… um—”

“Had been a mother?’

“Yes.”

“That’s a long story. I’ll tell it to you sometime. But definitely not here, today.”

She turned and touched a pad beside the door. It immediately swung open, revealing a bevy of P’nosk faces all staring expectantly. “Zeno!”

The next few moments were a pandemonium of exclamations, hugs, observations that Zeno had both somehow lost and gained weight, and none-too-subtle digs at her marital and family status. When it subsided, she introduced us, leaving me for last. “And this is my new boss, Van Tudor.”

Six scowling faces abruptly swiveled and locked onto me like laser turrets. One of the younger ones stepped close enough to back me against a wall. “Tudor?

You mean the one that marooned you on that forsaken planet?”

she growled. “Nobody marooned me. And no, that was Mark Tudor. This is his grandson,” Zeno said. “Oh, so somebody out there has grandchildren, at least,” one of them muttered, shooting a quick look at Zeno before swinging her focus back to me. The oldest of Zeno’s mothers closed in. “Grandson, eh?

Well, if you think that absolves you of responsibility—”

“Hey, look, I worked out a deal with Zenophir about that, and here she is!” I said, trying to press myself against the wall and as far away as I could get from the opposing wall of hostility. “So you released her?

She can come home?”

“She can… do whatever she wants.”

“Which is to stay with Van and help him do work that I happen to think is important,” Zeno snapped, pushing her way in to stand beside me. “No, you must come home!

We know a Mother Brood seeking a fifth, and—”

“I said that I’m going to stay with Van, so I’m going to stay with Van, Sacred Mothers,” Zenophir said, her patience obviously getting threadbare. I braced myself. “But—”

“No!’

Zenophir’s single, shouted word brought everyone to a dead, silent stop. “Sacred Mothers, listen to me. I love you all, very deeply. And I’m sorry that I haven’t been better at expressing that to you. But what I’m doing with Van is important. It involves saving people’s lives from something horrible,” she said, then went on to briefly explain our case. She hesitated, faced each of her mothers in turn. “I’d like to believe that you think that’s important, too. I mean, imagine how the mothers and other loved ones of those poor people feel. Don’t you think it’s important to put a stop to it?”

A long moment of silence lingered. Then the oldest, apparently one of the Exalted Mothers and one who’d remained mostly silent until now, stepped forward. The others made way for her. She stopped in front of Zenophir and, for a moment, peered into her daughter’s eyes. I glanced at Torina and Icky, both standing back near the door to the apartment. Like me, they were spectators here and could only wait. Finally, the old P’nosk nodded, then reached up and touched Zeno’s cheek. “I see it, the importance of this to you.” She patted her cheek and nodded again. “If it is important to you, then it is important to me, as well.”

With that, she turned and tottered back to where she’d been standing. I still have no clear understanding of the dynamics of a P’nosk Mother-Brood, and not just how it worked genetically or reproductively. What was apparent, though, was that the pronouncement of the eldest that she was content was a signal to the others. They immediately backed away, opening space for us to enter the apartment. The hour or so that followed was completely free of any overt recrimination or demands for the grandchildren, but it was all still there, just pushed into the undertones. Still, when Zenophir finally asked if she

could borrow the family’s YardCraft, the little utility and construction vehicles we needed for the Iowa, her mothers all agreed. We left on cordial, if still slightly strained terms. We passed the walk back to the Fafnir in equally strained silence. Zenophir had fallen into a brooding quiet, into which none of us wanted to intrude. So we just strode on, bouncing a little in the low-g, until we were about halfway across the hub park and its riot of greenery. “Zenophir!”

We all turned to the shout. Two P’nosk hurried towards us. I glanced at Zeno to see if this was going to be a problem, but her face had lit with a happy smile. “Honored Fathers!”

“We had heard you were here and wanted to see you. Your Lesser Fathers couldn’t leave the deep-wave project, unfortunately. It has reached a point at which their presence is essential.”

Her other father spoke up. “So consider us to be here on their behalf, too. Although if you do have time to visit the surface, I’m sure they would be very happy to see you.”

“Zenophir, how have you been?” the other one asked. Torina, Icky, and I again found ourselves waiting on the fringes of a family reunion. I braced myself for more incoming acrimony about grandchildren, but there was none of that. When Zeno introduced us, her fathers just greeted us warmly. “Ahh, you’re Peacemaker Tudor. Zeno has told us a great deal about you,” one of them said. I grinned. “All good, I hope.”

Her father gave me a curious look. “No, of course not. I’m sorry, is it customary to hold Peacemakers above criticism?

I’m afraid we have scant experience with your profession—”

“Naturally, Zeno is free to criticize me all she wants,” I said, giving Zenophir a bemused look. Zeno shrugged. “I’m sorry, Van, but you do insist on keeping the Fafnir’s cabin quite cold and dry. Oh, and you sometimes chew with your mouth open.”

“You do, you know,” Torina said, leaning toward me. Icky gasped. “What’s wrong with that?

How else are you supposed to show someone you’re enjoying your food?”

Zeno held up a hand. “Anyway, we didn’t come here to criticize Van.”

She went on to explain what had transpired with her Mother-Brood. Her fathers listened attentively as we all took seats on benches around a small clear space in the expansive park. Yet again, we waited. This time, though, I saw both of her fathers casting quick glances in my direction and got the sense they were waiting to ask or tell me something. When she was done, her fathers both nodded. “Your Mother Brood will always favor more offspring. It is just how they are,” one of them said. The other nodded. “Don’t hold it against them. They genuinely do want what they believe is best for you.”

“Even if it’s not what I think is best for me,” Zeno muttered. Her fathers both nodded again. “Which puts you in the same position as every P’nosk female ever,” the first one said, then turned to me. “We wanted to see Zeno before she left, but we were hoping to speak to you, as well, Peacemaker. You see, we have a problem,” he said. “Oh?

What sort of problem?”

“Our family derives much of its income from a series of mining operations underway in the asteroid belt that fringes this system—mostly nickel, chromium, and cobalt, but a few other, more exotic metals as well.”

“I don’t suppose one of them would happen to be osmium, would it?” I asked. “Small amounts. Why?”

“Because osmium is key to the major case that Zeno mentioned, the one we’re investigating. Any mining operation that produces it may be implicated.”

“Ah. Well, we can’t speak to that—although it would, perhaps, explain why the mining consortium of which we are part owners has begun suffering significant losses from piracy.”

“Have your local law enforcement agencies looked into it?” Torina asked. “They have, but they lack the resources and spacecraft to be able to do much more than occasionally put on a show of force out in the Fringe Belt. And when they do, the pirates vanish until they’re gone.”

I nodded. “Yeah, of course they do.” I looked at the others. “This might be a good chance to see just how stealthy the Fafnir is.”

“I could kick pirate ass,” Icky said. Zenophir stood. “What are we waiting for?”

“In case anyone cares, I’m all for this, too,” Perry said over the comm. “But only as long as, after that, we head to Anvil Dark and restore me to an existence with at least a bit of dignity.”

“That’s a promise, Perry,” I said, then turned to Zeno’s fathers. “Looks like we’re heading out to your Fringe Belt. Any information you can provide to help narrow things down would be really helpful.”

They nodded enthusiastically. “We’ll send it along shortly.”

I stood. “Okay, gang, let’s go and, as Icky says, kick some pirate ass.”

“THIS SECTION of the asteroid belt is unusually dense. The average distance between objects is less than fifty thousand klicks,” Netty said. Despite having done this for some time now, distances in outer space still caught me by surprise. Fifty thousand kilometers, roughly twice the circumference of the Earth, sounded like a long way. It wasn’t, though, and meant Netty had to navigate with care, threading the Fafnir among the fragments of rocky debris. She figured that at least two planets must have collided out here during the system’s formation, leaving their debris concentrated in one part of the Fringe and trailing off into lonely, scattered bits along the Belt’s general orbit. But it was this dense part where most of the mineable ore was found, so it was here that the various mining operations were concentrated. But it was also the hunting ground for our pirates, who were apparently led by a P’nosk named Bironicus. He was known to both local authorities and the Guild as an activist and troublemaker, espousing various causes of an anarchic, counter-establishment bent. In other words, he was a shit-stirring tool, and his most recent shit-stirring was to prey on mining traffic plying the Fringe Belt. “He seems to prefer attacking robotic ships,” Perry said after reviewing his intelligence file. “And as far as the Guild knows, he does it with only two ships—one of which was last known to be registered to a shell company with a connection to the Salt Thieves.”

Icky growled. “Salt Thieves, Stillness, Fade, Sorcerers, Pathway—why the hell don’t these bad guys get their shit together and settle on one name?”

“Because the bad guys are as fractionated and disagreeable as everyone else in known space. They fight one another as much as they fight us,”

Perry said. Icky crossed her arms. “Well, I’m sticking with bad guys as a catch-all for everyone I wanna smash with my hammer.”

“Whatever floats your boat, Icky,” I said, watching as an icon popped onto the tactical overlay. It was one of the robot ore carriers, essentially an AI-controlled barge that cycled between the Fringe Belt and the inner system. The barge carried ore inward for processing, and supplies and equipment for the various mining operations outward. A blocky, ungainly ship about five times the size of the Fafnir, it was equipped with only two point-defense batteries. That fell woefully short of any sort of armament to deter would-be thieves. “It might help if they up-gunned these things,” Torina said, but Zeno, in the back of the cockpit, shook her head. “Can’t. P’nosk law restricts the sorts of weapons that can be placed under autonomous AI control,” she said. “Rude,” Perry put in. “Sorry, bird. I’ve got nothing against you and Netty, but my people aren’t quite so open to treating AI as anything more than, um, just machines.”

“I’ll say it again—rude.”

“Hear hear,” Netty put in. A new voice cut in—Rolis, who still inhabited Waldo Two. “Speaking as a sort of honorary AI, I quite agree with Perry and Netty.”

I glanced back at him. “An honorary AI?”

“Well, I’m not the real thing, am I?”

“I… don’t know, actually,” I said, shrugging. It seemed like a simple enough question, with a simple enough answer—no, he wasn’t an AI, he was a living person who’d been trapped on a computer chip. But if I didn’t know that, how would I be able to distinguish him from a purpose-built AI like Perry or Netty?

They’d all pass the Turing Test in much the same way, wouldn’t they?

Beneath the question’s apparently straightforward surface lurked a sucking bog of moral and ethical questions with no easy answers, so I backed away from it and put my attention back on the overlay. “Netty, how long until that freighter makes its closest approach to us?” I asked. “Thirty minutes, give or take.”

“And how hard would it be for us to match velocity with it?”

“Some thruster work and a couple of brief burns from the drive should do it.”

I drummed my fingers on the arm of the pilot’s seat. “How brief?”

“One of about ten seconds duration, and a second of about five. Why?”

“Because I have an idea. Netty, go ahead. Get us as close to that robotic ship as you can.”

“Care to share your idea with us?” Torina asked. “Remember that first time we entered your home system?

When we effectively hitched a ride with an inbound freighter to cover our approach to Helso?”

“I do.”

“Well, let’s try that again.”

23

WE SNUGGLED UP to the ore barge as close as we could, after contacting its operator on the comm and asking them to clear us to do so. It wasn’t so much that I wanted their permission as to have them inform the barge’s AI that we weren’t hostile, and not to open fire on us. Netty brought us to within about five meters of the bigger ship’s hull, where we coasted along with her, invisible. Or at least we hoped we were invisible. There were still parts of the Fafnir that we couldn’t cover with the stealth coating, like her scanner transceiver. But if the two satellites we encountered were any indication, our signature should have been reduced to nearly nothing. Well, except for heat, that is. We didn’t have the satellites’ ability to convert waste heat into useful energy and diminish our thermal signature as well. However, being almost close enough to the barge to touch it meant that the Fafnir should be lost in its considerable infrared glow. All we needed now were some bad guys. We stayed with the barge as it cleared the Fringe Belt, heading in-system. It was clear, though, that it was going to remain unmolested, so we discreetly broke off, made our way back into the Belt with the briefest possible burns from the drive—because it was hard to conceal hundreds of meters of fusion exhaust plume—then angled our course toward the next barge. “How many times do you want to do this?” Torina asked. I shrugged. “Until we get tired of it and figure we’ve burned enough fuel, I guess. Why, do you have something better to do?”

“Than make slow, tedious trips in and out of this asteroid belt?

The short answer is no, because it’s not only an inefficient use of resources, but it also has an interesting effect on my mental state.”

I proceeded with caution. “And, ah… what effect is that?”

Torina smiled sweetly. “You’re going to be very lonely for a very long time.”

“Noted, dear. I’ll keep our runs to the bare minimum, as I have no interest in being deprived of the majestic nature of your company.”

“Gross. Can you two get another ship for your weird mating chatter?

I already deal with enough byproduct as it is,” Perry complained. “Silence, bird, or I’ll begin composing sonnets about the color of her eyes,” I said. “I wish I’d just been vaporized. I think romance is worse than doom,”

Perry groused, then another barge came into range, and we made our move. Once again, we snuggled up to the barge. And, once again, nothing happened. As we neared the inner edge of the Fringe Belt, I was beginning to resign myself to this being a wild goose chase. We had no idea where Bironicus might be, if he was even in this part of the Belt, or if he was still in the Belt at all. For all we knew, he might have cleared out and gone somewhere else, or even died in an accident or some natural cause. I was musing over whether I wanted to make a third trip when Netty interrupted me. “Two ships just emerged from that big rock about a half-million klicks off to starboard. They’re on a converging course,” she said. We all sat up and peered at the overlay. Sure enough, two ships running without transponders were racing toward us. They weren’t big, a class 6 and a class 4, but if decently armed could give the Fafnir a run for her money in a fight. Of course, I was hoping it wouldn’t come to a fight, that they simply wouldn’t see us, at least until they were too close to avoid our fire. Whether or not that was true—well, we’d know soon enough. “Van, if we’re targeting manually instead of using the fire control scanners, then I can only reliably take on one of these guys,” Torina said, her fingers brushing across her weapons console, bringing the mass driver online. She slewed the target reticle onto the class 6, aiming for a point

about two thirds of the way from the bow. A hit there should minimize the chances of killing the crew, who’d likely be forward, or causing an uncontained power plant failure, which would be further aft. She glanced at me. “I won’t be able to switch targets fast enough to take them both out—not before they react, anyway.”

I nodded. “Perry, can you take this shot?”

“If I wasn’t literally in the shit, yes, I could, and easily. But not from my current abode, at least not without some rewiring to cross fire control and waste management. It’s almost like no one ever expected those systems to need to work together,” he complained. I turned to Zenophir and Icky. Zeno just shook her head. “No time.”

I nodded again and reached for my own weapons panel, a duplicate of Torina’s. “Okay then, I guess we’ll find out how good I am at this—”

“Excuse me,” a new voice said. It was Rolis, currently aka Waldo Two. “Kind of busy, Rolis—”

“I know. But I just wanted to point out that during my three years of compulsory military service, I was a gunner aboard a heavy cruiser. If you’ll give me the weapons controls, I think I’ve still got the touch.”

“Huh. Rolis, welcome back to gunnery command,” I said, then unstrapped to make room for him. “I’m temporarily deputizing you as a member of this crew. That should avoid any legal tussles about a civilian using lethal force and all that, right, Perry?”

“What?

Sorry, I’m busy processing the remains of breakfast—”

“We will go to Anvil Dark right after this and get you restored, I promise!”

“Yes, deputizing him will do the trick.”

Rolis clambered into the pilot’s seat and extended a manipulator over the controls. He hesitated a moment, and I wondered if I needed to take back over. But he finally tapped at the controls. “Sorry, just had to examine the layout. Torina, you’ve got the mass driver, so I’m going to use the laser,” he said, and Torina acknowledged. The two approaching craft were now only a few tens of thousands of klicks away. They hadn’t shown even a hint of reacting to us. Rolis took his cue from Torina, who was holding her fire until it was truly decisive. “They’re firing,” Netty announced. Sure enough, the two ships fired a quick barrage of small, high-speed missiles intended to swamp the barge’s point defenses. We could detect the incoming targeting scans from the two

attackers, but they found no purchase on the Fafnir and returned no echoes to the other ships. The barge’s point defenses opened up, ripping most of the incoming missiles apart. But most isn’t all, and the clunky ship’s point-defense batteries vanished in clouds of debris, one after another. “I’m impressed, very surgical,” Zeno said. I was starting to get nervous. The two ships were closing fast now that their target was, as far as they knew, unarmed. Any moment they’d be able to see the bits of the Fafnir that weren’t stealthed, or else detect our thermal signature as distinct from that of the barge. “Uh, Torina, any time now?” I warned. She didn’t answer. Instead, she tweaked the controls, nudging the targeting reticle in what seemed to me to be adjustments too small to matter. Rolis did the same. I bit back a curse. What the hell were they waiting for—?

Without preamble, Torina touched the trigger. A solid thump rattled the Fafnir as the mass driver flung its depleted uranium slug at an insane velocity, crossing the six hundred klick gap in seconds. A dazzling flash pulsed, briefly blanking out the target. Before I could react to that, Rolis fired the laser. Just as Torina had, he skewered the class 4 just aft of amidships, the laser searing a white-hot hole right through the hull. Torina sat back. “Done.”

I let out a breath and studied the overlay. Both ships had been clearly disabled, their power output dropping to—

“We have a problem,” Netty announced, truncating my thoughts. “What’s that?”

“That class 6.

It’s on an uncontrolled collision course with the barge, us, or both.” Even as she spoke, a hard thrum vibrated the Fafnir, as Netty fired the thrusters to move us clear and avoid the collision itself, or the debris and explosions therefrom. Now, I’m no AI, able to work out complex vector math in my head. But I didn’t have to in order to see that we weren’t going to make it. IRONICALLY, before her upgrade to a Dragon, the Fafnir was small and light enough that we probably would have had time to thrust out of the way. But her increased mass meant increased momentum, and the thrusters hadn’t been scaled up in power enough to fully compensate. So upgrading our ship to a standard intended to make her more survivable may just have doomed us. I opened my mouth to tell Netty to light the drive and hope that it would be enough to get us clear, without vaporizing and maybe detonating the barge while we were at it. Before I could say anything, though, Perry shouted out of the intercom. “Hang on!”

A second later, the Fafnir explosively decompressed. I yelped as the Fafnir’s cockpit suddenly became a howling gale—or I tried to, but my breath was sucked away. Giant hands seemed to lift me and drag me toward the crew hab. Icky caught me with two arms, using the other two to jam her helmet on. As the hurricane subsided, I flailed around through the sudden fog of frozen water vapor for my own helmet. After snatching it off its mount beside the pilot’s seat, I shoved my head into it and fumbled the locks that sealed it to the collar of my b-suit shut. By the time I had, the Fafnir had been completely emptied of atmosphere. I spun frantically around. Everyone was still here, the others being either still strapped in or, in the case of Rolis, with Waldo Two’s heavy manipulator clamped around one of the stanchions intended as a zero-g handhold. “Everyone alright?” I shouted. Even while the acknowledgements rattled in, I scanned the status board, assessing how badly we’d been hit. The pressure alarm flashed brilliant red, but the rest of the board was green—except for waste management?

I opened my mouth but went rigid, transfixed by the view out the canopy. The disabled class 6 sailed majestically through a maybe three-hundred-meter gap between us and the barge. The gap shimmered with glittering motes that danced, then parted as the class 6 threaded the needle, its hull so close I swore I could touch it as it flashed by. I shook myself free of the magnificently horrifying sight. “Netty, what happened?

Where were we hit?”

“We weren’t. Perry, over to you.”

“As usual, and even in this new form, the bird saves the day. When I realized a collision was imminent and the thrusters weren’t going to get us clear, I reacted by heroically opening all the valves in the waste management system and venting the Fafnir’s atmosphere through the dump port. The extra push was enough to throw us clear.”

I blinked. “Holy shit.”

“Quite literally,” Torina put in. I found myself chuckling, then laughing at the absurd brilliance of Perry’s solution. The others joined in. “Perry, you are brilliant,” I declared. “I know.”

Icky brayed with laughter of her own. “Hey, bird, since you’ve proven yourself so valuable where you are, maybe we should—"

“Stop. I know where you’re going with that, so don’t even.”

ONCE WE’D SORTED ourselves out and repressurized the Fafnir from her emergency air supply, we angled ourselves after the class 6, which was now several hundred kilometers away and still coasting without power. The class 4 had started to maneuver again, until Rolis took it out with another skillful laser shot. “You’re a dead-eye with that thing,” I said, smiling at him. “It’s why they made me a gunner, I guess. I sucked at every other aspect of being a soldier, though, so here I am, an engineer—er, well, the mind of an engineer, anyway.”

“Hey, I think, therefore I am, right?”

“I think, therefore I am. Huh. I like that. You’re a wise man, Van.”

“Wise enough to only steal from the best,” Perry put in. “Let’s preserve my mystique, bird. I’m building a reputation here.” I turned to Rolis. “But he’s right. I can’t take credit for that one. That belongs to one Mister Rene Descartes.”

We caught up to the class 6 and boarded her, then opened the outer lock with ease. That was, for the moment, the only easy part, as the inner lock was sealed and the negotiations began in earnest. “Access denied!” came a voice through the ship’s comms. Before I could say a word, Icky brandished her hammer, then got close to a camera just above the airlock door. Icky bellowed, as that seemed to be her only vocal setting, “If you make me wait more than ten seconds, I’m going to smash this ship apart like a glustronyut and when I reach you, I will—”

“What’s a glustronyut?” the same voice asked over the comm. That brought Icky up short, but she shrugged her massive shoulders and tapped her hammer on the airlock door. “It’s a small, angry food animal from my home world. We like to hunt them down and tear them apart so that—”

A blue light flashed over the airlock and it cycled in to reveal two frightened crew and the maverick Bironicus, who wore the P’nosk expression of disgusted irritation. “See?

I’m a born negotiator,” Icky crowed. “My thoughts exactly,” I agreed. “Round ’em up.”

“I do not recognize your lawful authority—!” he began, but I cut him off by raising the Moonsword, which captured his immediate attention. “You sure about that?

You don’t recognize the authority of this blade in the context of your lawful arrest?” I leaned in, smiling. “Accidents happen, Bironicus. We’re in a dangerous business.”

He dropped back to a simmer, grumbling the occasional curse but otherwise being remarkably compliant for a pirate. In a moment, we had him aboard the Fafnir, which was now equipped with an actual brig. It was cozy but effective. “What are you complaining about?

You’re the criminal here,” Icky said, jamming him into his cell. “I am not a pirate, I am a sovereign person who’s just as entitled to those minerals as anyone else!”

Zenophir gave him a cool look. “So invest in some mining equipment and get to it… you know, legally.”

“Legality is an artificial construct—”

“Yeah, yeah, tell it to the judge,” Zeno snapped and slammed the cell shut in his face. Since we had our man, and since the disabled class 4 still had a working life-support system, we handed them off to the local authorities for recovery. We brought Bironicus back to the P’nosk homeworld and handed

him over as well. It netted us a nice twenty-five thousand bond bounty, but more importantly, it ingratiated us to Zeno’s family. “You want the YardCraft, you can have the YardCraft,” her oldest mother declared. “On one condition, though,” a younger one cut in. I felt Zeno brace herself. “And that is?”

“That we get to come and visit this I-oh-wa of yours.”

It was my turn to stiffen. I had visions of this clutch of P’nosk ladies nosing about the farmhouse, wandering off around the property and attracting attention to themselves. And since I suspected the farm was going to be attracting some attention after our crashed experimental airplane incident, that was the last thing I wanted. Fortunately, they meant the ship, not the state. That, I was okay with. We had lots of room aboard the old battlecruiser, and thankfully it was parked several billion klicks from the farm. Zeno’s father’s gave us the shipping details for the three YardCraft, since the Fafnir couldn’t carry them and they had only the barest minimum of spaceflight capability themselves. With that all sorted out, and Bironicus transferred to the P’nosk authorities—amid a nearly hysterical tirade about being a sovereign person not subject to artificial laws—we returned to the Fafnir and prepared to get underway. I strapped into the pilot’s seat. Torina ran her finger along the top of the instrument panel as I did. “You know, decompressing the Fafnir is a great way to clean her interior out,” she said, a mischievous smile playing around her lips. I scowled. “Yeah, as long as we don’t do it through the waste management system—says the guy who was almost literally sucked into a toilet.”

24

NO SOONER HAD we docked at Anvil Dark than I received a quick and cryptic message from none other than Lunzemor Nyatt, Lunzy, our frequent associate up until some months ago. Our respective schedules simply hadn’t crossed paths, so it would be good to see her again. I only wish it wasn’t yet another clandestine meeting, one for which Lunzy urged us to not disembark from the Fafnir. When Lunzy came aboard, I shook my head at her. “We’re going to have to make this fast, Lunzy. I’ve got a bird installed in my toilet, and it's frantic about getting out.”

She stared at me. “What?”

I grinned and gave her the rundown on the attack on the farm and what had happened to Perry—who actually wasn’t installed in our toilet anymore but had been removed so he could be reinstalled in his own body. She nodded back at me. “Yeah, that was almost certainly The Fade that attacked you. And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“The Fade?”

“Yeah.”

We sealed the Fafnir and sat with Lunzy in the galley, our usual meeting spot. Zenophir made coffee—Gramps had introduced her to it and she loved the stuff—as we settled in. “Do you remember that vile fertility racket that The Fade were running on the Eykinao?” Lunzy asked. I nodded. “In fact, I do. Didn’t we break it up?”

“Not quite. The Eykinao themselves aren’t ready to give it up. So that’s an angle you’re going to have to remember.”

“Remember?

While we’re doing what?”

“Destroying The Fade.”

WHEN LUNZY WAS DONE, I sank back in my seat. “So you want us to take on The Fade?

And The Fade are a joint venture of the Salt Thieves and The Stillness?

Two vicious criminal organizations in one?”

She nodded. “They’ve pooled their resources in a sort of alliance. I’d be surprised if it lasts very long, because criminals just don’t make reliable allies, even for one another. But it seems to be going strong now, and it needs to be stopped.”

“I don’t think we disagree with that, Lunzy,” Torina said. “But it’s a little much to expect one Peacemaker, his ship and crew to do it.”

“Well, you wouldn’t be doing it alone, of course. When the time comes to strike a decisive blow, I think I can guarantee at least a half-dozen Peacemakers, yours truly included, will be at your side. That includes Alic, K’losk, Lucky, and a few others that have decided your star is worth hitching themselves to.”

I stared at my hands resting on the galley table. “We’ve also got the support of the Schegith, at least some of the Srall, and some of the Daren-thal, as well.”

“Plus my dad, with the Nemesis,” Icky put in. “There’s another ace in the hole, too. Hugo Groshenko has quietly offered the support of his mercenary company, if you need it,” Lunzy said. I looked up from my hands in surprise. “Groshenko?

But I thought he was, you know—”

“Dead?”

“Well, dying, anyway.”

She shrugged. “So did he. But whatever he had seems to have gone into remission. He’s been well enough to actually take over the company from its former leader when she went into remission as well—from, you know, living.”

“Not exactly a safe career path, being a mercenary,” Zeno said, nodding. So that meant we had the backing of about six Peacemakers and their ships, the Iowa, once we got her kitted out and armed, the Nemesis, possibly Schegith’s cousin and his freelance battlecruiser, and Groshenko’s mercenaries. The Srall and the Daren-thal were maybes, although neither were big spacefaring races so their support would likely be ground forces—

Ground forces. That implied a military operation, which implied battle and war. Was that what we were talking about here?

War?

But that’s what the attack on the farm had been, wasn’t it?

An effective declaration of war?

I sat up and nodded. “Okay then. Let’s do it—”

Lunzy cut me off by holding up a hand. “There’s one other wrinkle.”

I subsided again. “Isn’t there always.”

“That fertility scam has a legitimate component to it. The fertility compound itself is manufactured by a bona fide pharmaceutical company based in Tau Ceti. In and of itself, it’s a legal drug if used according to therapeutic guidelines.”

“But?”

“But, our bad guys aren’t paying much attention to what it says on the label, obviously. Still, though, the company, Drixis Pharmaceuticals, makes a lot of money from the compound and is going to take a very dim view of anything that sullies one of their flagship products,” Lunzy said. I frowned at her. “Where are you going with this, Lunzy?”

“Where I’m going with this is the reason I wanted to meet with you before you disembarked from the Fafnir and strolled into Anvil Dark. You see, one of the major shareholders in Drixis is one Ligurite named Yotov.”

“Ah.”

Netty, surprisingly, summed it up nicely. “That sound you just heard was the other shoe dropping.”

25

WE LEFT Perry in the capable hands of the combat AI techs, who tsk’d and tutted over Perry’s damaged form before declaring he could be fixed without too much trouble. And since he was technically a Guild asset, the cost of repairing him would be covered. Once we’d dropped him off, Torina and I headed for The Black Hole to pick up the latest rumors and innuendo. Icky and Zeno stayed with the Fafnir, busying themselves in yet more of their incessant tweaks to her systems. When it came to fussing over percentages, engineers were in a class by themselves. The Black Hole was crowded. Peacemakers, their Auxiliaries, and Anvil Dark staff all rubbed shoulders in the two-level compartment that made up about a third of the bar’s floor space. The remainder was divided up into several sealed environments, variously toxic, superheated, or lethally cold, depending on the race or races they were meant to accommodate. Those always seemed to be mostly empty, which seemed like an inefficient use of space to me. But Lunzy had once explained that the Peacemaker Charter actually specified it, which meant that whoever had long ago drafted it up had too much time on their hands, if they were writing specifications of a bar into the foundation document for an interstellar law enforcement organization. We found a spot at the bar and, for a while, just watched and listened. It was clear that since Yotov hadn’t turned out to be the tyrant everyone had worried she would be, the atmosphere of Anvil Dark had loosened up. Instead of huddled, furtive conversations, patrons were talking openly, laughing, and making no attempts to remain discreet. In fact, most were shouting at one another just to be heard over the clamor. I caught bits and pieces of conversations, but none of them were especially interesting. “Peacemaker Tudor?”

I turned and found myself face-to-face with Bester, the hulking alien that ran Anvil Dark’s library and historical archives. His presence here surprised me, because I’d never seen him outside of his own sedate little corner of Anvil Dark. “Bester!

What brings you to this den of iniquity?”

“Looking for you, actually.” He shot glances left and right. Okay, he might be here, but he wasn’t all that comfortable about it. “I have a proposition for you.”

“Will I have to give you my childhood catcher’s mitt or my first pair of baby shoes?”

“What?

Oh, no. Not in this case.”

I smiled. Bester’s people placed a great deal of emphasis on gathering treasured things from those they worked with, a strange form of price that was in some way significant to them. No one was really sure why they’d accept a dog-eared copy of some favorite book or a photo of a first crush as payment for goods or services. I’d heard speculation that they somehow fed off the psychic resonances of the objects, but that seemed to be blatant conjecture. Maybe they were just packrats. “Tell me about this proposition,” I said, gesturing to a nearby table that had opened up. Bester, Torina, and I managed to snag it before two other groups could muscle their way in. We got dirty looks, but I studiously ignored them. You snooze, you lose. “I understand that you’re about to undertake a major operation against The Fade,” Bester said. I stiffened. We’d only talked to Lunzy aboard the Fafnir just over half an hour ago. How the hell had Bester heard about it already?

And if he knew about it, then we had to assume that Yotov did, too. Bester shrugged at my obviously concerned look. “Don’t worry, it’s not really common knowledge. At least, not yet. I had a discreet chat with Lunzy, and she suggested I come and see you.”

“So what is it you’re looking for, Bester?” I asked. “As you take on The Fade, we’d be quite eager to obtain any data archives, modules, or other records you happen to seize. We have very little information about them, and I’d really like to flesh out our stocks. Everything would be kept sealed until the investigation was complete, of course.”

I exchanged a shrug with Torina. “Yeah, we can do that. Always happy to help out our back-office folks.”

“Excellent. We’ll pay you, of course, sixty-five thousand bonds per usable data unit, or a set price per page of hardcopy information.”

I whistled. “Wow, that’s quite generous.”

“Are you agreed?”

I nodded eagerly. That kind of money meant months of operating costs if not a year. Seeing my interest, Bester leaned in, eyes glinting with conspiracy. “Would you mind if I uploaded some numbers to your ship’s AI?”

“Uh… what kind of numbers?”

“Course data. A point of intersection where you, in your ship, could intercept these”—he hesitated. I was surprised to see that the normally docile, even gentle Archivist had gone hard with anger—“these vile criminals who don’t seem to mind preying on an entire race.”

“Well, yes, with pleasure. But how do you even have information like that?”

“Information is what I do, Van.”

Torina chuckled. “As long as you don’t have any deep, intimate personal information about me, I’m good with that.”

Bester stared at her. “You… don’t have any deep, intimate personal information about me, do you, Bester?”

He paused a moment, then answered gravely. “Of course not, Torina.”

She smiled, but I saw it wobbling around the edge. “Good. I’m glad.”

“Anyway, Bester, thanks for this. If we’re going after these assholes anyway, we might as well make some money at it, right?”

Bester gave me a knowing look. “Welcome to the Peacemakers, Van.”

“What?”

“You’ve finally learned the Guild’s core creed— we might as well make some money off it.”

He slapped me on the back in a comradely way, then stood and ambled away. The crowd parted for him, and he departed trailed by a parade of well wishes, Hello, Bester, and Bester, great to see you. “Everybody likes Bester,” I noted. “They do,” Torina said, looking at her drink but not picking it up. “He was just joking about that whole knowing stuff about me thing, right?”

“That’s what he said.”

“But not right away.”

I grinned. “Do you have deep, dark secrets, Torina?”

“We all have deep, dark secrets, Van.”

“Like the fact that you snore?”

“I do not!”

“WELL, I’m impressed. Bester said we’d find a ship on this course at this time, and there it is,” I said, pointing at the icon that had just flicked into being on the tactical overlay. “Class 2, configured as a racing yacht,” Netty announced, adding that information to the overlay. “That suggests a high sustained acceleration, probably considerably greater than ours.”

“Not much of a cargo ship,” Torina noted. I gave the icon a hard glare. “No, but it’s all you’d need to carry a shipment of fertility drugs, isn’t it?”

“In which case being small and fast makes sense,” Perry added. He was Perry once again, proudly avian instead of much less proudly scatological. But I did point out to him that his residence in the Fafnir’s waste reclamation system was what saved us from a no-doubt fatal collision with the ship we’d disabled. His reply was so… Perry, both hyper confident and impossible to deny. “Good point, Van. I guess I’m awesome no matter what guise I’m in.”

We also still had Rolis aboard, since we weren’t entirely sure what to do with him—mainly because he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do about his situation. In fact, he seemed quite content to keep scuttling about as Waldo Two, so much so that we’d just started calling the little maintenance bot Rolis. I had to admit, having Waldo Two suddenly become a qualified

structural engineer wasn’t a bad thing. It meant we now had three sources of somewhat different engineering expertise aboard, with enough overlap between them to give us a lot of redundancy. I tapped my chin. “Well, he hasn’t seen us, or he’d be tearing out of here like a bat out of hell,” I said. The yacht was inbound for the Eykinao homeworld, entering the system along a desolate trajectory. The bioscience research station Ponte Alus Kyr lay on the far side of the system’s star, meaning this ship could reach the Eykinao without having to pass anywhere near it. That, by itself, was suspicious, since this trajectory was hardly the most fuel- or time-efficient one to reach the Eykinao from anywhere else in known space. These guys had gone out of their way to approach from an awkward and unexpected direction. I know sneaky when I see it. Like just then. “I wonder how Bester knew about this ship, on this course, at this time,”

I mused. “Bester is known for having access to information no one else should. Once upon a time, it attracted the interest of the Guild’s intelligence shop, but they couldn’t figure it out, either. And his information has been so useful to the Guild over the years that everyone pretty much just accepts it now,” Perry said. “Well, he was dead right about this.”

“What did it cost you?” Perry asked. “Nothing.”

“Wow, he must like you. Maybe he’s trying to suck up before you’re promoted.”

I swung my full attention to Perry. “What?”

“Oh. I guess Bester didn’t tell you that,” Perry replied. “What do you mean, promoted?”

“Yeah. You’re being promoted to Third Veteran status sometime soon. Sorry, I assumed you knew.”

I looked at Torina. “My career’s going meteoric?”

She nodded. “It certainly is.”

“That’s a good thing, right?

Why do I get the feeling you guys don’t think this is a good thing?” Icky asked. Rolis spoke up from just outside the cockpit. “Because being promoted fast is one way for organizations to squash someone who’s performing a

little too well. I’ve seen it happen.”

“Why would you want to squash someone who’s performing well?

That doesn’t make any sense,” Icky replied in her painfully practical way. “No, Icky, you’re right, it doesn’t make sense. But your peers get resentful and sensitive about their own performance, and your superiors come to view you as a potential threat to their positions. Ideally, you promote people like that into static jobs, where they have no real power,”

Torina said. I glanced at her. “Sounds like Rolis isn’t the only one speaking from experience.”

She sighed. “No, he isn’t. But not mine. I’ve seen my parents do it.”

“Anyway, Van, you’re being promoted to Third Veteran status. Although, technically, that’s an appointment—your actual rank will remain Myrmidon. But a Third Veteran Myrmidon is a big step up,” Perry said. I curled my lip. “Yeah. Great. I wonder if I’ll eventually end up with a desk job.”

“Well, that’s the thing about the Guild. There are so few Peacemakers to go around that being stuck in a dedicated desk job is rare,” Perry replied. “You’re more likely to be given a bunch of minor, low-impact cases to supervise,” Netty agreed. My immediate reaction to that was, well, that would suck. But it struck me that if that was really what was going on here—that I’d been determined to be some sort of problem, and the Guild was going to just promote me out of the way—then knowing who was involved in that decision could be very instructive. In the meantime, we had more immediate concerns. “Okay, Netty, let’s intercept these guys. We’ll lean on our spiffy stealth tech to do it, so do any necessary drive burns where they’re least likely to see it, at least as much you can,” I said. “There’s an ice giant, roughly Neptune-sized, off to our starboard bow. If you’re willing to wait a few extra hours, we can circle it, burn like hell once we’re on the far side of it, and take advantage of the gravitational slingshot effect for an extra boost. We should intercept them at least an hour away from the Eykinao homeworld.”

“Sounds good to me, Netty. Let’s do it.”

I glanced around the cockpit. “Who knows how to play poker?”

“Poker?

What’s that?” Zeno asked. I grinned at her. “You’re a card shark, aren’t you?”

She batted her eyes. “Why, Van, I have no idea what you mean.”

WE BROKE up the game when Netty announced we were just over thirty minutes from intercepting our quarry. The big winner at that point wasn’t Zeno, though. It was Rolis. “I may have played a few games in the shipyard where I worked,” he said, Waldo Two’s manipulators happily scooping bonds and IOUs into an empty toolbox. I jabbed a finger at him. “This isn’t over, Rolis. I’m going to win it all back, mark my words.”

“Bring it. That’s what the last naked guy said, back in the yard.”

“Naked guy?” I asked. Rolis twitched an arm. “Yeah. He didn’t know when to quit, and he happened to be my size in clothing.”

We were still laughing as we settled in, but the laughter died and the atmosphere became one of business once we had. “How do you want to do this, Van?” Torina asked. “I’d advise against using missiles. This yacht might not be able to actually outrun them, but it may very well be able to accelerate enough to outlast their fuel supply,” Netty said. “Missiles are too blunt an instrument anyway. I want these bastards alive, so we need some more of that precision shooting,” I replied, glancing at Torina and Rolis. With Netty’s help, we chewed over the data, and even ran a couple of simulated attacks. This wasn’t the same as our last action, where we had an ore barge and its substantial heat signature to hide us. Netty judged it unlikely we’d get close enough for accurate mass driver or particle cannon shots before our thermal presence was detected by the yacht. We even tried finding a way to put the Fafnir between the yacht and the star, but the physics of it just didn’t work out. So neither of those weapons, which were relatively precise and suited for disabling another ship, would therefore work. In fact, the only one that really worked was a relatively long-ranged laser shot to hopefully disable the yacht, and just as hopefully not outright destroy it, followed by a hard deceleration to match course and speed. Every other approach we could think of had a good chance of ending with the yacht just outrunning us until they could twist away. But even using the laser offered only about a seventy percent chance of working. “Van, there is another approach,” Zenophir said, looking up from a data slate. “That we haven’t thought of yet?”

“Nope.”

“What’s that?”

She transferred her idea from her slate to the tactical overlay. “We fire a mass-driver slug from here, on this trajectory,” she said, pointing. I blinked at the range involved. “Uh, Zeno, we’ve kind of ruled out the mass driver. We’ll never get close enough to use it before they spot us.”

“Actually, we don’t have to. Yes, it’s outside the effective engagement range from the point of view of hitting specific parts of the target. But the slug itself just keeps going, and will hit as hard at a million klicks as it will at a thousand. That’s why volumes of space where there’s been a lot of fighting, say a major battle, are generally labeled navigational no-go areas for a while. It lets all the slugs and debris and spent missiles and stuff disperse.”

“Sure, but you’re talking about trying to hit a bullet with another bullet at long-range. Odds are you’re going to miss.”

She gave a sly smile. “Not if we can predict exactly where they’re going to be when the slug arrives.”

I turned to her. “How the hell would we do that?”

“I’ll show you,” she said and handed me the dataslate. WE WERE ACTUALLY GOING to fire twelve slugs, all timed slightly differently, in the hope that one of them would intercept the yacht. To do that, though, we had to be able to predict the exact position of the yacht when the slugs arrived, and to do that we had to know the exact course and speed it was going to follow. And this was where a little social engineering came into play. “Okay, so we’re only going to get one chance at this, and timing is everything. Perry, you’re set on the trigger?” I asked. “Locked and loaded.”

Perry had to be the gunner, because only he could interface directly with the fire control system and fire the various weapons with the split-second timing required. “And Netty, you’re standing by on, ah, pretty much everything else?”

“I am.”

I glanced back to see Torina and Icky suited up in the crew hab, weapons in hand, ready to go. I’d placed The Drop and the Moonsword on the galley table where I could snatch them from as I went by. Frankly, I wasn’t all that happy with the plan, because it was complicated, parts of it depending on previous parts being successful. But it also offered our highest chance of success, just over seventy-five percent. We simply had no other approach as likely to work. “Okay, then. Places, everyone,” I said. “One minute,” Netty announced. We waited, watching the overlay. In just under one minute, we’d activate the Fafnir’s active scanners at full power and light up the yacht like it had been caught in the beam of a searchlight. We anticipated that it would rabbit away, making a beeline for the closest possible twist point. Of course, they could try to get clever, but that’s where the second part of the plan came in. In tandem with the mass driver, Perry would launch three missiles, on trajectories that the yacht could easily escape—by heading for that specific twist point. So that gave us their most likely course. As for their speed, that was a function of acceleration, and that was why we’d fire twelve rail gun slugs. Netty reasoned that the yacht’s acceleration would fall into a fairly narrow range, so one of the slugs should have a good chance of intercepting the yacht. Rolis was able to refine that. “I’ve been looking over your passive scanner returns. That yacht was almost certainly made by Preluxis Corp., which means it’s likely powered by a Type C25-A9 high-performance drive.” Knowing that allowed us to look up the specs and narrow the likely acceleration down even more. We’d still fire a dozen slugs, though, because there was always some uncertainty. “We’re going to active scanners in fifteen seconds,” Netty said. I unstrapped and headed into the crew hab, snapping on my helmet and grabbing my weapons. Torina and Icky were already clambering into the Fafnir’s little escape pod. That was how we were going to board. “Going active now,” Netty announced. I pushed my way into the pod and sealed it behind me. We waited, watching the pod’s display, to which Netty had repeated the tactical situation. “There they go,” Torina said. Sure enough, the yacht suddenly rabbited away. As it did, three successive thumps shuddered the Fafnir, as Perry launched the missiles. A few seconds after that, the concussive thud of the mass driver rattled the ship, again and again, twelve times in all. “Okay, everything’s away. It’s all in Isaac Newton’s hands now,” Perry said. “Who the hell is Isaac Newton?” Icky asked. I frowned at her. “Haven’t we been through this already?”

“I dunno. You’re the one that keeps bringing up old friends, or whoever they are.”

We continued to wait. The barrage of mass-driver slugs, each too small to be detectable by anything but military grade scanners, would reach their rendezvous with either success or failure in about ten minutes. “Fifteen seconds,” Netty said, opening a window with a zoomed view of the yacht as it burned like crazy to get away. Sometimes time flies by. Sometimes it crawls. It was crawling now, because these last few seconds weren’t anything other than pure punishment

—

Our success was announced by a pulse of light that flared and died. A few seconds later, the yacht’s drive cut out, reducing her formidable acceleration to zero. At the same time, the Fafnir spun about, and the rumble of our own drive vibrated the escape pod. “Okay, Van, I’m launching you in fifteen seconds, so stand by,” Netty said. Another interminable wait. I opened my mouth to complain about it, but a sudden bang and a lurch proclaimed that we’d just separated from the Fafnir. All three of us peered at the pod’s limited scanner display. It was meant as a navigation aid only, not an actual tactical tool. But it was still enough to show that we were less than a hundred klicks from the yacht now. Torina took the pod’s controls and positioned us for a ten second burn, reducing our closing rate with the yacht to something like a jogging pace. The Fafnir flashed past it, and although I couldn’t see it, I knew that Perry and Rolis were disarming our quarry with the mass driver and particle cannon. It would suck to get this far, only to be shredded by a point-defense gun. A moment later, Torina’s fingers danced over the thruster controls, bringing us alongside and to a relative stop. She turned to me with a triumphant grin. “I love it when a plan comes together like that.”

“By which you mean we got lucky.”

She waved airily. “Such pessimistic terminology.”

“Fair enough. Okay, everyone, please return your seats to the upright position.”

Icky just stared at me. “By which I mean, open the hatch, Icky. We ain’t done yet.”

THANKS TO A HOLE punched neatly through the yacht by our mass-driver slug, it had been decompressed. While Icky banged around outside the airlock, I picked a point in the hull further forward and on the opposite side and sliced an opening with the Moonsword. This allowed Torina and me an opportunity to slip inside and creep to the airlock from the interior. And, sure enough, when we peeked around a corner, we saw three suited figures arrayed around it, waiting. We could feel the slight thuds of Icky’s distraction through our booted feet. “Okay, Icky, you can start coming in,” I said, pulling my head back and keeping my voice low—unnecessarily, since we were in vacuum and using our own encrypted comm channel. “On my way.” She’d already cross-wired the airlock controls through its outer panel, so she opened the outer door, triggering an alarm, which we didn’t hear, but also a light, which we did see. At the same time, Torina and I stepped around the corner. I had The Drop at the ready, the Moonsword in my off-hand. Torina brandished the glue gun with glee. There was something deeply satisfying about seeing a villainous scumbag fight—and lose—against glorified silly string. One of the figures saw us and started to turn, followed by the others. Torina fired, pumped the action, and fired again. The glue gun was essentially a grenade launcher, coughing out two fifty millimeter projectiles that detonated in showers of goo. We caught a bit of spatter from the backblast, but most of the sticky sludge splatted across the three figures, pinning them in place. One of them, though, still had a hand free and managed to snap out a laser pulse at me—

Which deflected and smacked into the overhead. At the same time, the inner airlock door slid open, and Icky strode in. The one who’d shot at me tried to aim at Icky, which was a mistake. She swung her sledgehammer in a vicious arc and buried it in the figure’s helmet. Gore erupted from the impact, spattered the bulkheads, and began to freeze. “Icky, woah, that’s enough, we’ve got the others!” I shouted, before she flew into a rage and killed all of our prisoners. She stopped with her sledgehammer raised. The other two figures released their weapons and gave up—not surprising, since they’d each had their late colleague’s nerve tissue speckling their visors. “That thing really works,” Torina said, gesturing at the Moonsword. I glanced at the laser impact. It had seared a deep scar into the alloy of the overhead. Handheld laser weapons packed a tremendous punch, at the cost of a low rate of fire as their accumulator recharged for the next shot. If that had hit, it probably would have gone straight through me. “Yeah. Remind me to give Linulla a tip the next time we’re at Starsmith.”

We moved in to take our prisoners into custody. Icky, though, pointed at one. “We know this asshole,” she announced. I peered into the visor of the one Icky had identified. Yes, we did know this asshole. “Peacemaker Okena—fancy meeting you here.”

26

“THERE HAVE BEEN twenty-two recorded instances in the history of the Guild of one Peacemaker stopping and arresting another in the commission of a crime. Actually, make that twenty-three now,” Perry said. I’d just gotten off the comm with Lunzy, informing her of this development. In fact, it was a huge deal, one with Guild-shaking implications. Every case that Okena had worked—every case even remotely bearing her fingerprints, in fact—was now suspect. The Guild now faced the prospect of reviewing all of those cases, and any connected with them. People may have been wrongfully charged and imprisoned, while actual wrongdoers may have walked. Moreover, like it or not, any Peacemaker with whom Okena had worked was now under suspicion as well. “This is going to trigger a response, Van. A big one. Stand by to make a bunch of statements and do a bunch of paperwork,” Lunzy said. “So my reward for running down a law-breaking Peacemaker is… more work?”

“Does that really surprise you?”

“Sadly, no. Feels on-brand, if I’m being honest.”

We signed off, and I sat back, rubbing my face. “Perry, I need every last clock cycle of yours focused on making sure everything we do here is by the book.”

“Already on it, Van. Netty and I have both been making detailed recordings of everything that’s been going on. And yes, if I see any toes starting to cross any lines, I’ll sing out.”

“Thank you.”

We’d docked with the yacht, which, aside from our mass driver hit and the hole I’d cut in the hull, was still intact. Zeno and Icky had inspected the damage from our slug and confirmed that luck had very much been with us. The yacht wasn’t a military vessel and still operated based on civilian flight safety protocols. One of those caused the drive to automatically shut down in the event of an explosive decompression, in case it had resulted from structural damage that could compromise the yacht’s hull integrity. There was a process for restarting the drive, but Okena and her minions had only just started into the checklist before we arrived. The simple fact that we got a hit at all was the lion’s share of our luck. Seventy-five percent chance of success means twenty-five of failure, which is damned high. And, on top of that, we hadn’t landed a hit that destroyed the relatively fragile yacht. I certainly wasn’t going to rush out and buy any lottery tickets. I know when not to go back to the well, and this was just one such moment. Once they’d sealed the holes and repressurized the yacht, Zeno and Icky found another of those strange devices that combined inorganic tech with living, organic components. “Cusp, we meet again… unfortunately,” I said. Zeno nodded. “I was hoping the last one we found was a one-off. But no such luck.”

Icky noticed something different about this one. Clipped to it was something that looked like a set of slender headphones, basically a slim, silvery half-circle with a small pad on either end. A fine cable connected it to the device. “What do you think this is?” she asked. I exchanged a glance with Zeno, who just nodded and said, “Yeah.”

I picked up the headphones-like device. This time, Zeno shook her head. “Van, don’t.”

I sighed. “We need to know what this is.”

“You have absolutely no idea what effect it’s going to have on you.”

Icky blinked. “Wait. Are you planning on trying to use this thing?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I am. I want to know. I—I have to know.”

“Van—” Zeno started, but I put a hand on her shoulder. “We might be able to learn something useful from this and act on it while the trail’s still hot. Once word leaks out of Anvil Dark that we’ve

arrested Okena—and word will leak out—it might be too late.”

We brought the Cusp device back to the Fafnir. With everyone present, and Perry and Netty recording, I sat in the galley and placed the headset on. It immediately conformed itself to my skull, pressing the two pads into either temple. “Van, this is beyond risky..

Let’s just take this thing back to Anvil Dark,” Torina said. “Guys, look. I know I’m taking a chance here. But we need to stop these assholes, and we need to do it now. I understand your concern, and believe me, I’m not anxious to do this. So if any of you detect even a hint of something going wrong, you yank that headset off—”

Torina yanked the headset off. I sighed and took it back from her. “Your objection is duly noted.” I put the headset back on. Zeno frowned at me. “Are you sure you want me to activate this thing?”

“No.”

“Well, at least you’re honest,” she said and switched on the Cusp. DURING MY MANY, many hours trolling the murky depths of the Earthly internet, I’d encountered more than a few truly vile things. A few times, they’d been things I’d been sent to look for, on behalf of various authorities paying me to do it. I’d stumbled on others only incidentally to other work I’d been doing and reported those, too. I’d come to learn that I had zero tolerance for exploitation and gratuitous suffering inflicted on others for the sake of entertainment. There were some lines that never should be crossed, by anyone, at any time, for any reason. All of that paled like a candle flame beside a forest fire against what I encountered during the thirty seconds or so I was linked to the Cusp. The Cusp wasn’t a device. It was an assault. A violation. It was every nightmare made real, distilled into a sensory overload, and ripe for the picking by my nervous system, which fizzed with horror as the echoes died away, one hideous second after another. I ripped off the headset and flung it against the bulkhead. “Van—” Torina started, but I just shook my head, my hands shaking like leaves in a November storm. “I need a minute.” I fought the urge to hawk and spit, and damn near failed, settling for working my lips together in a futile effort to rid my body, my senses—all of me of whatever had just happened. It turned out that as viscerally horrifying as some image or video viewed in 2D might be, there was utterly no comparing that to actually experiencing it—to living it. The others left me alone, at least until I felt a touch on my arm. I turned and found myself looking into Waldo Two’s imager. “Remember you’re not alone here, huh?” Rolis said. I was struck by the genuine, heartfelt concern in his voice, incongruously emerging from a machine. Rolis’s simple statement of companionship brought me back from the pitch dark of midnight I’d just been in, courtesy of the Cusp. I nodded and sat up, or to be more accurate, managed to wobble in place without spilling the contents of my stomach. How I managed that particular feat, I’ll never know. “Okay. Okay. I’m—” I took a shuddering breath. “I’ll be fine. Eventually. I hope.” I glanced around, eyes bleary and somehow bright. I saw everyone hovering on the edge of speaking, but no one knew what to say, or even how to begin asking me what the hell had just happened. I stood up, still unsteady as a fawn, but Torina put a caring hand on my arm, and just that touch did a world of good. “Boss?” Perry asked, the question more loaded than any weapon I’d ever seen. I answered slowly, and with as much care as I could manage. “Imagine your worst horror. Something that dances beyond the edge of the worst thing you possibly can. Now, push yourself to imagine someone doing that fear—that thing, that concept, or whatever—to the person you love the most. It is happening right there, in a way so real you can smell it, and it’s inescapable. It’s every emotion you fear shot into your senses and veins and eyes and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it because that goddamned thing is designed to do that. To create that kind of visceral horror, and—and—” I turned to the Cusp, again fighting the urge to spit, to kick, to crush it. “This thing is even worse than that.”

Torina touched my arm again, this time, her fingers feather-light, as if she feared I would fly away. “Van?”

I took another breath. “I’m… here. I hate saying this, hate knowing this

—you have no idea how I hate knowing this, but I know what this thing is all about now. And I also think I might know where this monstrosity was made. Netty, have you and Perry stripped and examined all of the yacht’s logs and charts and stuff?”

“We have. It was all essentially still intact for a change. Apparently our attack and the aftermath left them with no chance to destroy it.”

“That’s what they get for not upgrading the computers to more secure gear that includes auto-wipe. The off-the-shelf stuff they did have, probably the original equipment, was barely even encrypted,” Perry added. “Excellent. So, has this yacht recently been anywhere near a red dwarf star, at least one planet, probably like Mars, so a bit of an atmosphere but

—”

“Yes. A week ago, it twisted into the DX Cancri system, a red dwarf with one Mars-like planet,” Netty replied. “What’s there?”

“Nothing. It doesn’t even make a good navigational waypoint, because it’s not really on the way from anywhere to anywhere.”

“That’s it, then. Netty, plot a course to take us there,” I said, heading for the cockpit. “Uh, Van?” Torina asked, and I turned around. I found all of them standing, looking at me. I smiled, but I could tell it was a wan, flimsy thing. “I’m fine. Or, actually, I’m not fine at all, because no one who’s not a complete psychopath would be after that,” I said, pointing at the Cusp. “So, yeah, expect to hear me waking up from nightmares and maybe being a little distracted for the foreseeable future. But the best way for me to find peace is to put a stop to—”

I jabbed a finger at the Cusp machine. “To that.”

DX CANCRI WAS every bit as uninteresting as Netty had said. An ancient red dwarf flare star that occasionally brightened and faded again. Its sole companion was a barren, arid world surprisingly like Mars, right down to the ruddy brown tinge. It had about as much atmosphere as you’d find a few thousand meters above the peak of Mount Everest, and an average daytime temperature of about minus one hundred Celsius. You could survive on the surface with a thermal suit and breathing assistance, but there wouldn’t be much reason to. The whole planet seemed to be nothing—volcanic rock, gritty dust made from pulverized volcanic rock, and ice. The system had a desolate, almost forlorn feeling to it, a pervasive sense of ancient loneliness, both inarticulate and cold. Except it wasn’t truly empty, because a small platform orbited the planet known only as DX Cancri-B. Taking advantage of our stealth, we coasted in toward the mysterious orbital platform, slurping up data through our passive scanners. “It’s definitely active. Based on its thermal signature, it’s generating its own heat. And there are two ships in company with it, one docked, and one trailing about ten klicks behind it in the same orbit,” Netty said. I studied the overlay. “Both class four.”

“Or potentially three or five. At this distance, with passive scanners only, it’s hard to tell.”

“Van, I know you don’t want to talk about what you saw, but you must have seen this to know it was here, right?” Torina asked. I shook my head. “Nope. I had no idea what was here. All I knew is that what I saw—it happened on the surface of that planet.”

I could feel everyone wanting to know more. Eventually, I’d tell them. But not today. “Anyway, we clean this up starting here,” I went on. “Perry, a legal question—what action can we take knowing that The Fade are guilty of Crimes Against… Life, the Universe, and Everything?”

“Technically, you mean Crimes Against Order, per the Sirius Treaty governing interstellar legal standards, Article Two, Sections One through Five. Legally, if you have probable cause to believe they’ve committed Crimes Against Order and they resist your lawful authority, any actions you see fit to carry out your mission are deemed justified, as long as they don’t cause unnecessary suffering.”

“Necessary suffering is fine, though,” Icky muttered. “Okay, do we have probable cause?”

Perry’s reply was immediate. “Hell yeah.”

“Okay, then. Torina, bring the weapons online—all of them, but stay weapons tight until we’re ten minutes out, or we know they’ve detected us, whichever comes first.”

She nodded and got to work on the weapons console. “Zeno, stand by to do damage control. Rolis, if you’re going to hang out like this, I’m putting you to work. You work with Zeno.”

Waldo Two saluted. “Roger roger.”

“Perry, you and Netty record every last little detail of whatever happens here.”

They both acknowledged. “Uh, boss, how about me?” Icky asked, sounding a little perturbed that I hadn’t named her. I gave a smile that had nothing to do with humor. “I have a special job for you. Go back and bring that asshole Okena up here to watch. I want her to see exactly what kind of law we’re dispensing and how it’s supposed to be done.”

Icky’s face split in an ear-to-ear grin. “With pleasure!”

“Okay, Netty, let’s get after it. Light the drive, maximum acceleration. No active scanners until that ten minute mark, or we know they’ve spotted us.”

The familiar thrum of the fusion drive rumbled to life. “Here’s the scumbag of the hour,” Icky said, shoving Okena into the back of the cockpit. She was manacled, wrists and ankles, and Icky also kept one of her big hands on the back of her neck. “Please do something naughty, oh please,” she said to the disgraced Peacemaker. Okena ignored her. “Peacemaker Tudor, I demand that—”

I spun on her. “If you say another word, even one, then Icky, you are to break one of her arms.”

Icky gaped at me. “Seriously.”

“I’ve never been more serious, Icky. Do you understand me?”

She nodded. “Alright. Broken arm. Got it.”

I looked at Okena. “You are a piece of shit that I should just toss out the airlock, but even choking on freezing vacuum is too good for you. Now, you are going to stand there and watch as I start dismantling this evil little empire you’ve hooked yourself up to.”

I turned my back on her. Time passed. At the twenty minute mark, just before we started a braking burn, we were lit up with targeting scanners. I didn’t have to say a thing. Netty responded by activating our own systems, and Torina switched the weapons from tight to free. I heard a whir as both of the Fafnir’s point-defense batteries came to life. The comm chimed. I opened the channel. “Unknown ship, back off—”

I closed the channel again. The comm chimed a second time. Again, I opened the channel. “We have hostages on board,” the voice snapped. “Bullshit,” I replied and once more closed the channel. “Van, the ship in the platform’s trailing orbit is starting to maneuver.”

“Has it activated its targeting scanners?”

“It has.”

“Torina, destroy it.”

She glanced at me. “Are you sure?”

I nodded. “I want these people to see what justice is going to look like, the same way the waste of skin standing behind me is going to.”

Again, I could feel the tension in the cockpit. I knew that everyone was nonplussed at what must look like my casual willingness to deal death and destruction, but I didn’t care. This was, as far as I was concerned, the end of the beginning of this whole sordid affair. From now on, I was taking the war to the bad guys, starting right now. Torina loosed a trio of missiles, followed by repeated bursts from both laser batteries. The target ship desperately tried to break orbit, but her possible maneuver envelope was so small she didn’t have a chance. She did manage a few laser potshots our way, then vanished as two of our three missiles straddled her with detonations. What had been a ship was now just orbiting junk. The comm had been chiming throughout. I finally answered. This time, though, it was video as well as audio. I found myself looking at an Eykinao. “This is one of the civilians we have on board. Back off, Peacemaker, or we start killing—”

I snapped off the comm. “Netty, get me the central authority, whoever it is, on the Eykinao homeworld.”

The next few minutes passed in strained silence. I heard Okena draw a breath, like she was about to speak, but it collapsed into a strangled yelp when Icky squeezed her neck. While the station kept poking us with urgent comm messages, I put on the Eykinao contact Netty had reached. It turned out to be the head of their planetary security services. I got straight to the point, explaining where we were and what was going on. “So do you have anyone who might be here, aboard this facility?”

“We actually do. We sent a delegate to meet with these people to try and negotiate more favorable terms for the fertility treatment. The price has kept increasing, and is now almost unsustainable.”

“Shit. Okay, I can’t guarantee your delegate’s safety.”

“I understand. There was no negotiation in any case. We have accepted that we are going to have to find an alternative to our fertility issue, and we have begun reaching out to other parties for assistance.” The Eykinao hesitated. “We are a proud race. Too proud. It is time for us to swallow that pride. As for our delegate—”

Another moment of hesitation. “Peacemaker Tudor, you have heard stories of desperate defenders bringing fire down upon their own positions in a last-ditch effort to save others?”

I nodded. “I have.”

“I am telling you to do that now. Our delegate understood that their chances of surviving this effort were small. As the senior representative of a dying people, I urge you to attack and show no mercy. I will leave what happens next to you.”

The screen flicked off. Silence. Perry finally broke it. “Boss?

What do you want to do?”

I stared at the overlay. “Not what I want to do. What I have to do.”

I turned to the others. “I want everyone here to understand that what we do next is my decision and my responsibility. Netty, Torina, pick a fight with those bastards. I want them to shoot first.”

Neither said anything. Netty angled the Fafnir from a trajectory that would put her into orbit around the planet to one aimed at directly intersecting the station. Torina, meanwhile, trained every one of the Fafnir’s weapon systems onto it. If they didn’t shoot sometime in the next minute, I’d already decided to attack anyway. And if there was hell to pay afterward, so be it. I was in no mood for patient subtlety. Forty seconds later, the Fade platform fired a salvo of missiles at us, while the docked ship backed off and started to burn out of orbit. “Does that count as an unprovoked attack?” Zenophir asked. “In my learned legal opinion—sure,” Perry replied. “All I needed to hear,” I said. I knew we were treading on thin legal ice here and getting our feet wet, but again, I didn’t care. Moreover, the ice might be thin, but it was still ice. I’d already read the relevant stuff about Crimes Against Order and knew they allowed a lot of latitude as to what was considered necessary to stop it. We bored in. Our point defenses smacked aside two of the incoming missiles, while another failed to detonate. The fourth exploded close enough to spatter the hull with shrapnel, but nothing penetrated and none of the REAB modules fired. “They’re firing again,” Netty announced. The platform spat out more missiles and opened up with a twinned laser battery. This time, they landed a solid hit with the laser that gouged a furrow along the Fafnir’s flank, taking out a maneuvering thruster and an anti-collision sensor. With good shooting, we took out three of their four incoming missiles, while the last again detonated, triggering one of the REAB modules layering her engineering bay. “No hard damage yet, just bumps and bruises,” Zeno declared. Torina glanced at me. “Van, we’re well inside missile and laser range, do you—”

“Not yet. I want them to see it coming and know there’s nothing they can do about it.”

Okena unwisely chose that moment to speak up. “You bastard, you’re playing with them—” A yelp of pain cut her off. “A bit more and her arm snaps like a rusty ol’ strut. That what you want, boss?”

“Nah, I’m feeling generous. That’s a freebie. Next time, though.”

I left it at that. The station launched a third salvo of missiles, but Torina was able to back up the point-defense guns with the particle cannon and destroy all four

of them only seconds after they left the launchers. And a few seconds after that, the comm chimed. I glanced at it. “Van, you going to answer that?”

The chime pinged again. This time, Netty spoke up. “Van, that message is—”

“A glitch?

Yeah, I thought so. Thanks, Netty.”

I felt Okena shift behind me. She desperately wanted to speak out. But she even more desperately didn’t want a broken arm. Still, I turned to her. “You may speak to answer this question, and only this question. Are you aware of any reason whatsoever that I shouldn’t destroy that platform?

Other innocent parties about which we’re not aware, for instance?

And bear in mind that if you lie, I’ll consider you fully culpable in these Crimes Against Order and not just an accessory.”

Icky leaned in, putting her mouth beside Okena’s ear. “I think that means he’ll kill you,” she hissed. I locked gazes with Okena. She stared back defiantly for a moment but finally sagged and shook her head. “I do not.”

I turned to Torina. “Everything we’ve got, if you please.”

She nodded once, tightly, then her fingers rattled across the weapons panel. NONE of us had yet seen what the Fafnir’s destructive power looked like when unleashed all at once, onto a single target. It was dreadful. And wonderful. The lasers and particle cannon both hit as one, shredding chunks from the platform. The mass driver boomed, pumping out round after round that slammed into and punched completely through it in successive jets of debris. By the time the missiles arrived, the platform was already coming apart, their detonations finishing the job and blasting what remained to whirling fragments, some of them already plunging toward the thin atmosphere below. In less than ten seconds, the Fafnir’s weapons had reduced an orbital station probably two-thirds the length of a football field to a tumbling cloud

of wreckage. Silence, as we all sat just staring, awestruck. Rolis spoke first. “That was… something.”

We all nodded. “Van, those two ships are currently outbound. On our current course—”

“Can we catch them?”

“Yes. We have a velocity advantage they’ll never be able to overcome.”

I nodded. “Then I want them destroyed, too.”

“Van, what about evidence?” Torina asked, but I shook my head. “We’ve got enough evidence sitting right in the back, in that filthy, inhuman, hideous machine. That establishes probable cause and—”

I turned to her. “I’m making a point here, Torina.”

“You’re bringing the fight to them.”

“I am. If anyone has a problem with that, speak up. It doesn’t mean I’m going to change my mind, but I respect your opinions and I’ll listen to them.”

“I just have a comment, Van. We all want to punish these bastards. Let’s just not lose sight of what we’re out here to do—bring criminals to justice,”

Torina replied. I gestured out the window at the shattered remnants of the station. “What do you call that?”

“Vengeance.”

“Perry, the Guild recognizes that justice has a component of retribution to it, doesn’t it?”

“Along with deterrence and rehabilitation, yeah.”

“Well, today’s the day for the retribution part.” I glanced at Torina. “But that’s today. Not every day.”

“What did you see in there, Van?” she asked me, her voice quiet. I turned back to the expanding trail of debris, now falling away behind us. “You see that cloud of gas out there?

Expanding debris, sort of the last declaration of their miserable, criminal, shitty lives. Happened fast, right?

Boom, impact, and they’re dead, in a short, violent way. It was probably over in seconds.” I inhaled, then let the breath trickle out, slowly. “That method of their demise has one flaw. It’s far too quick. Actually, it’s got two flaws, because it didn’t hurt them anywhere near enough.”

Torina gave me a long, searching look, but I managed to lift the corners of my mouth, if only to let her know I was firmly tethered to the forces of good, no matter how savage my statement seemed. “You’re not like your grandfather,” Okena said, groaning as Icky started to bend her arm. I stopped her, though. “I’m not like lots of people. My father, for instance, who I happen to know the Fade murdered—a good man doing an honorable job.”

Icky leaned in again. “He’s definitely not like any other Peacemaker you know. And neither is his crew.”

27

WE TOOK one of the workboats that had tried to escape the station more or less intact, but it turned out to be carrying nothing of particular intelligence or evidentiary value. Our next logical move was a return to Anvil Dark, but after bashing it around, we decided to make a detour. “If you’ve enraged The Fade enough, they’re going to try and waylay us on the way back there,” Zeno said. “Yeah. Okay, so I’m thinking of going and spending a few days with Schegith,” I replied, nodding. “Van, why not Helso?” Torina asked. “Because the last thing I want to do is bring The Fade down on your family, Torina.”

But she brushed it aside. “The Governance Board of Helso finally badgered the Seven Stars League to get off their lazy asses and deploy some protection, including a squadron of light cruisers and some new orbital defense platforms. That whole bioplague thing made them look bad. My father tells me it actually prompted a couple of their other protectorate systems to talk about seceding if they didn’t start returning some value for the tithe revenue they pay.”

So, we settled on Helso. Icky, though, jerked a thumb at the back of the Fafnir. “What about our prisoners back there?”

“They can enjoy the lovely splendor of Helso from inside their cell.”

The trip to Helso was blessedly uneventful, giving us all some badly needed time to decompress. Unfortunately, it also gave me time to brood over the horror I’d experienced while hooked up to the Cusp machine, forcing me to keep myself busy doing anything to keep myself occupied. I joined Zeno and Rolis on a spacewalk to inspect the Fafnir’s damage, but even the yawning chasm of night couldn’t fully purge me of the lingering memories brought on by the Cusp. “This is stunning, experiencing hard vacuum like this,” Rolis said, scampering along the hull from stanchion to stanchion. It was this sort of thing Waldo Two had been designed for, and Rolis had become adept as his native AI at manipulating him and his limbs. We decided the damage was minor enough it could wait, and just rode out the rest of the trip to Helso. I carried the echoes of pain, and my crew did their best to carry me. I’D LET my Innsu skills degrade, as evidenced by Master Cataric’s handily beating me in nine bouts of ten. I was disappointed in myself, but he could immediately tell it was about more than simple skill-fade. And, in true Innsu fashion, he approached the matter obliquely. Instead of inscribing his own pattern in the sand after his last win, he handed the rake to me. “You do it, Van.”

“You won.”

“Thus, I get to choose, and I want you to do it.”

So I did. I raked a pattern into existence that turned out to be as confused and chaotic as I felt. I finally gave up and dropped the rake in disgust. “I’m just not engaging, sorry,” I said to Cataric. He nodded, bending down with a fluid grace, his fingers plucking the rake from the sand. “I can tell. And that means you are not properly into anything, Van. As long as you’re troubled by this inner turmoil of yours, you will never be completely focused on whatever you are trying to do. It will distort everything you put your hands on, leaving you in a kind of moral and intellectual twilight.”

I stared at him, processing his words. As usual, he was correct, and the choice for me would be simple, if in theory. How would I use what he told me now that I understood it to be true?

I had a problem. Master Cataric gave my problem a form. And now, I needed something else beyond a mere shape for my turmoil. I didn’t head back to Torina’s family estate. I returned to the Fafnir, to my cabin, and contacted Sussbrid, the Guild cartographer. I needed a guide to help me find my way back from the dark places I kept going. If anyone could be that guide, it would be her. Now, more than ever, I needed a map. OVER THE NEXT couple of days, I returned to Master Cataric and his Innsu practice twice, Torina coming along the second time. I was back to about a forty percent win rate, which wasn’t bad for someone who didn’t have the experience of Torina or Cataric, if I do say so myself. Part of it was just regaining muscle memory and relearning how to work around my weak knee. But part of it was a couple of sessions spent locked away in my cabin, on a comm link with Sussbrid. I’d only dealt with counseling once before, after a particularly odious job busting into an online ring of what my employer had originally thought were just money launderers. And they were, but when I scratched that surface I exposed a festering underbelly of depravity, including some material that forced me to log out and shut down my computer. I was happy to turn all the evidence I uncovered over to the appropriate authorities, which was a bit of therapy in itself. But I still needed some help dealing with the things I’d seen, trying to reconcile them with a world that was supposed to be at least partially civilized. Instead, I’d found barbarians not just at the gates, but already inside. Sussbrid’s skill as a therapist and counselor far exceeded that of the pleasant but rather bland woman I’d worked with back on Earth. She didn’t cure me, because things like the horror I’d experienced in the depths of the Cusp device couldn’t be cured, at least not without somehow being wiped from my memory. And Sussbrid offered just that. “We can, if you wish, excise memories that you don’t wish to deal with. I have to point out, though, that there may be side effects, including the unintended loss of other, only generally related memories.”

I thought about it and decided against it. “I don’t want to remember that shit, but I think I have to. I think I have to remember it so that I don’t lose sight of what this is about.”

Sussbrid nodded. “I think that’s a wise decision, Van. A difficult one, and a brave one, but a wise one.”

“Did my grandfather ever talk to you—you know, like this?

You, as his therapist?”

“I’m not supposed to discuss other cases. I will tell you that yes, he did, but leave it at that.”

“Fair enough. Still, it leaves me wondering—how many Peacemakers do you help?”

She smiled. “Between me and the other Cartographers, all of the good ones. Because they’re the ones who know they need help, from time to time at least, and come looking for it.”

I felt much better by the time we were winding down our visit to Helso. I could at least face the ghastly things I’d experienced and, while they were no less horrific, I could keep them framed in the context they deserved—

something I was going to end. I boarded the Fafnir and found everyone already there, plus one extra—

Torina’s father. He and Torina stood near the Cusp device on the galley table. Zeno, Icky, and Rolis were reviewing some aspect of the Fafnir’s flight performance on a data slate nearby. I offered him a smile. “Decided to throw off the shackles of the corporate world and join the Peacemaker’s Guild, travel known space, see the world?”

“Hmm, let me think about it—okay, I’ve thought about it, and no,” he replied, grinning. But it faded as he turned to the Cusp machine. “Torina told me about this damned thing, and I wanted to see it for myself. I also took the liberty of showing the schematic Zeno over there made to the head of R&D at a biotech firm I happen to know. I only told him that the machine can influence your thoughts, so he has no idea what sort of vile bullshit it contains.”

He pointed at a particular component on the schematic. “See this device, right here?

It's a specific type of data buffer that isn’t in use anymore because it has harmful effects on organic brains.”

I stiffened at that. “What sort of harmful effects?

Because I’ve used the damned thing.”

He nodded. “I know. Don’t use it again. This particular buffer does lasting damage to the parts of the brain associated with empathy and compassion.”

I tensed up another notch. “How much damage?”

“From one use?

Not very much. Hence my, ‘don’t use it again.’”

“So the more you use it—”

“The less capable you become of compassion.”

I thought about the cold fury that had gripped me, the utter lack of concern I had for the people who’d died in the destruction of the Fade’s orbital platform. How much of that had been my own outrage, and how much had been this infernal contraption’s insidious influence?

It was definitely something I had to discuss with Sussbrid. Torina’s lips pressed into a thin, hard line. “Using it turns you into a monster.”

“You mean more of a monster,” Zeno put in, looking up from whatever had her, Icky, and Rolis so absorbed. I turned to Icky. “Mind fetching me Okena, please and thank you, Ick.”

Icky saluted and stomped into the aft end of the ship, then retrieved Okena and pushed her into the galley. I pointed at the machine and repeated what Torina’s father had told me. “So that is the shit that you’ve been peddling,” I said, clenching my jaw. Okena, to my surprise, looked appalled. And I could tell it wasn’t an act. This was an aspect of the Cusp device she hadn’t known about, and the creeping horror dawning on her features told me everything I needed to know. Okena, who was guilty as sin, hadn’t understood she was shaking hands with the devil when she got on board with whoever originated the Cusp. “I didn’t know. I didn’t. That’s the truth. She said it was—” She abruptly cut herself off, her teeth coming together with an audible click. “She?

Who’s she?”

“I don’t know.”

I took a step toward her. “Now is not a good time to play dumb.”

Okena recoiled and banged straight into the wall of muscle that was Icky. Her mouth opened and closed a few times before she found her voice

again, helped in part by Icky’ massive hands resting lightly on Okena’s delicate neck. “I don’t know her name. All I know is that she’s Yotov’s benefactor—”

I took a stride right into her face. “Yotov?

As in Master Yotov?

She’s involved in this?”

Okena nodded. Her voice had collapsed into a dry whisper. “I don’t know the details. That was the point. No details. Keep things compartmentalized. Yotov just told me what to do. No explanations. And she was just acting for someone else. That’s—that’s all of it. Flawless operational security on their part. It was all siloed, broken up, and—"

“If you’re lying—”

“I’m not, but only because I have nothing to gain. I know you think I’m shit, and you might be right. But that changes nothing of reality. Even if you find her, this benefactor, you’ll never get close. Not a chance. You’ll be dead before you clear orbit.”

It took me a moment to find my own voice. “We’ll see about that. Icky, put her back in the holding cell, please,” I said, then turned to Torina’s father. “I hope this doesn’t sound rude, but—”

“You want me off your ship so you can go deal with this. Message received, loud and clear.” But he didn’t immediately turn to the airlock. Instead, he seemed to consider something for a moment, before finally making a decision. “Van, can I give you a piece of advice, for what it’s worth?”

I felt myself smile in actual thanks, because I respected the man enough to listen, even in this charged atmosphere. “Yes. Please do.”

“One of the surest ways to fail in business is to let your emotions run you. Emotions have their place, but leading you to good decisions usually isn’t one of them.”

He put his hand on my shoulder. “You’ve surrounded yourself with good people here, and I’m not just saying that because one of them is my daughter. Listen to them. And if they tell you you’re letting your feelings get in the way of your judgment, listen to them even harder.”

I nodded again. “I will. And, yeah, I think I needed to hear that. Thank you.”

He turned back to Torina and hugged her. “Don’t be any less willing to give Van a piece of your mind than you are your old man, okay?”

“You can both count on it.”

He disembarked, then we sealed up the ship and lifted. As the Fafnir climbed, I caught a glimpse of the little town near the Milon estate. I could briefly pick out Master Cataric’s Innsu dojo, a tiny island of serenity amid a universe of turmoil and strife. It vanished behind the clouds, and I yanked my attention back skyward. I wanted to be back down there, but I needed to be up here, on my way to confront Master Yotov, and in a moment of clarity I understood what Mister Milon had been telling me. Want and need might feel the same, but that’s where the similarity ended—with a feeling. With a final hard stare at the distant clouds, I cleared the sands of my mind, then began to focus on the most critical concept I would ever pursue. Justice. WE DIDN’T HEAD DIRECTLY BACK to Anvil Dark. We headed, instead, for Dregs, or rather a freelance shipyard in one of the planet’s Lagrange Points. It was the sort of place where a battle-damaged ship bearing laser scars and shrapnel hits could discreetly conduct repairs, albeit for an inflated price. That wasn’t a problem, because Torina also found a buyer for the salvage rights to the disabled yacht, which we’d temporarily placed into the custody of the Eykinao. It more than covered the cost of getting the Fafnir patched up, refueled, and fully rearmed with missiles and mass-driver slugs. While Zeno and Icky oversaw repairs, ably assisted by Rolis who knew the ins and outs of shipyards and the little scams they sometimes tried to run, I tried contacting Lunzy. Unfortunately, she was off on another mission, so I spoke to Sussbrid instead and asked her to meet us at a rendezvous on the edge of the Wolf 424 system. “I’ve got a pretty full schedule, Van. I’d have to postpone and reschedule a bunch of appointments.”

“I know. But I wouldn’t be asking you to do that if this weren’t that important. And by important, I mean urgent, vital, critical, imperative, and whatever other words the thesaurus has to add.”

She stared for a moment, her thoughts utterly opaque, then granted me a single nod. “Alright, I’ll meet you there in one standard day.”

That gave us time to finish up the Fafnir’s repairs and get her refueled and bombed back up, and still make the trip without needing to rush. That’s not to say we’d let our guard down. If anything, we were more on edge than we had been, and that might have been the problem. We were so focused on spotting obvious sources of trouble that we ended up overlooking one right in front of our faces. “NO CHANGE IN COURSE OR SPEED,” Netty said. We’d been watching a class ten fast freighter similar to several we’d encountered belonging to the Salt Thieves. It had slowly eased onto a converging course with the Fafnir for a while, but a half hour ago it had swung again, onto a parallel course that would see us passing them at a distance of nearly two million klicks. Given our relative velocities, it would take them hours to come about and chase after us, by which time we’d be long gone from the Dregs system. And it was a valid course for a ship arriving at Dregs to follow, taking them into the controlled-traffic zone on a straight shot into the spaceport. I settled back and shrugged. “Guess they have nothing to do with us after all.”

“Yeah, that’s the problem. Every ship is suspect until it isn’t. Doesn’t make for very relaxing flying, does it?” Torina said. I sighed, long and annoyed, because it was painfully true. Given the menace of the Fade, the Salt Thieves, and anyone else actively hunting us, combined with the looming reality of confronting Yotov, almost nowhere in known space felt safe. The only exceptions I could think of were Starsmith, thanks to the ominous oversight of the inscrutable being called Matterforge, and Null World, the Schegith home planet. Everywhere else, though, felt full of lurking danger—and that included the farm in Iowa, which I was finding especially hard to accept. The farm was my home. Had been my home most of my life. It had been my refuge from the bumps and bruises of life as a kid, of the nasty little reality show that was high school, and later, a harbor from the

uncertainties of an adult life in a big city. I’d always known it was there, my fallback, my soft landing, my safe place. But that had started to crack when I watched the gun-camera footage of my father’s death, and shattered and crumbled completely when those shuttles descended on the farm in the wee hours. I let brooding preoccupy me, because the sudden shrill blare of the tactical contact alarm nearly threw me out of the pilot’s seat. “Netty!

Report!” My eyes landed on the main displays. “We have missiles inbound, fifteen seconds out.” While she spoke, she took the initiative and switched the point-defenses into autonomous free-fire mode, their chattering vibration a counterpoint to the alarm. “Fifteen—what?

How?”

“Unknown. Three missiles down, three more incoming,” she said, then ended on the words no one traveling in any sort of vehicle ever wants to hear. “Brace for impact!”

I DIDN’T ACTUALLY REMEMBER the explosions that washed incandescent plasma across the Fafnir and slammed her hull with a rain of shrapnel. All I knew was that one instant, the alarms were blaring and Netty was declaring, Brace for impact!

and the next I was sitting in the cockpit surrounded by alarms and red lights. “Van, are you okay?” Torina shouted over the din. I looked down at myself. No holes in my b-suit, no blood—I turned back to her, nodded, and opened my mouth to ask what was going on. Then reality crashed back into my senses with the subtlety of an orbital impact. With a will, I drove my attention back to the master display. A bunch of systems were offline, including all of the weapons except the point-defenses and the particle cannon. The drive systems were showing a few yellow lights, but it seemed we could still maneuver. And we had atmospheric integrity—at least, we did in the cockpit. The display showed that aft of the blast door that had automatically slammed shut, the Fafnir had been depressurized. Torina and Perry both seemed okay. Glancing back, I saw Icky sitting at her panel, fingers flying as she rebooted systems and focused on ensuring fusion or antimatter containment—the two most critical systems on any ship—didn’t fail. Zeno and Rolis weren’t there, though, and must have been in the back, as were Okena and our other prisoners. The holding cell was still showing as pressurized, so I ignored them. “Zeno, are you okay back there?”

Nothing. “Zeno!

Can you hear me?”

Silence. “Netty, what’s going on back there?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve lost access to the internal imagers.”

“Van, I’ve got Rolis on the emergency comm channel,” Perry said. “Put him on. Rolis, can you hear me?”

“I can.”

“What’s going on back there?

Where’s Zenophir?”

“She’s here, and she’s hurt. She took a piece of shrapnel through the leg. Her suit sealed it up and she got her helmet on, so she’s alive, but—”

He left it at that. I swore. My first duty was to the ship because, in space, if you don’t have a ship, then no one survives. “Okay. Go check on the prisoners, make sure they’re—”

“Sorry, Van, kind of busy. The primary and backup main power buses were both severed. I’m using Waldo Two’s chassis to bridge the gap in the main bus, so if I let go, you’ll lose all power to everything forward of me.”

Icky turned. “That explains why I can’t get the power to stabilize up here. We’ve got enough juice to keep the instruments lit up, but if we try to reboot any of the weapons or the active scanners, we’ll fry Rolis.”

“Do what you have to do, Van,” Rolis said. “What?

No, I’m not going to—”

“Van, there could be more missiles inbound. You need to save the ship. Waldo Two’s chassis will handle the juice, even if I get wiped in the process.”

“Rolis—!”

“Van, I died once. Now I get to do it again. How many people get to say that?”

I looked at Torina, stricken. She returned the same look but nodded at the panel. “We have no weapons, Van, aside from the particle cannon and the point defenses, and no way to aim those by anything other than eye.”

“Van, every second we waste here might be one of our last,” Perry said. My first duty was to the ship. I took a breath. “Icky, trying powering everything—”

“Van, wait,” a voice croaked. It was Zenophir. “Zeno?

What—?”

“Shut… up. Busy,” she hissed. “Zeno, what are you—?” Rolis started, then he abruptly cut off. “Van, go. Power… up,” Zeno said, her voice the squeak of a rusty hinge. I had no idea what was happening back there. But I trusted Zeno, so I nodded to Icky. “Do it!”

She hammered away at her controls. Red lights turned yellow, and a few green. The weapons came back online, as did the active scanners. I breathed a silent thanks to Rolis. It was all I had time for, at least for now. “Four more missiles inbound. They were launched from that class ten that passed us, which is now burning to come about.”

“Bastards,” I snapped. “Torina—”

“On it.” She tapped at the controls, blasting one missile after another to fragments and vapor with the laser. I took the missile controls myself and fired a salvo at the class ten. They immediately flipped and burned at full power, breaking off. Apparently, they were okay with taking us on when we were helpless but had no stomach for an actual fight. “Netty, I want you to—”

“Lock in the specific signature of that ship?

Already done. Next time we encounter her, we’ll know it.”

“Make their code name Chickenshit Coward Commandos, but just triple-C for the purpose of brevity. We’re not going to waste data space on people in their condition,” I said. Netty and Perry both laughed as one, but it was Icky who spoke first, asking the question. “What condition is that?”

“They’re dead, whoever they are. They just don’t know it yet.”

28

ROLIS WAS ALIVE—OR still existed, anyway—thanks to Zeno. With her last strength, she’d yanked his personality chip out of Waldo Two, leaving the bot spanning the break in the power bus. It was a good thing she had, because all of Waldo Two’s internal components had been thoroughly fried and his manipulators had been welded to the bus. She was alive, too, but badly injured and in need of urgent medical care. We rushed the most urgent fixes to the ship, then powered on to our meeting with Sussbrid, who we caught before she left Anvil Dark. She agreed to bring a medical crash team with her, so we could get Zeno into the competent, caring hands she needed. “I think I’ve figured out what happened,” Perry said. “What?

You mean how those assholes were able to ambush us like that?”

“Yeah. It looks like they dumped some missiles out of the ship unpowered and essentially dormant, then activated them remotely when they were too close for us to properly deal with.”

“How come we didn’t detect them?” I asked, stress edging my voice with ice. “We’re not the only ones who use stealth, Van. Missiles are small, and without their drives running, pretty cold, too.”

I backed off. “Okay. My error, friend. Sorry.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Okena had also been hurt, her head slammed against the wall of the holding cell when the Fafnir momentarily lost attitude control and inertial dampening. The rest of us had been strapped in, but the prisoners hadn’t, so we were lucky they hadn’t been more critically banged up. When we met Sussbrid, the crash team came aboard and got right to work on both her and Zeno. Torina and I left them to work and joined Sussbrid in her ship. I explained the situation, including the accusation against Yotov, and answered occasional clarifying questions Sussbrid used to prove and understand the enormity of what we’d uncovered. For a moment, she said nothing. Finally, she gave a slow nod. “I see why you wanted to discuss this in person. I’m curious, though. How do you know you can trust me?” she asked. I shrugged. “I don’t. But I’ve come to realize I can’t distrust everyone who’s not part of the Fafnir’s crew. And if I do that, we’ll never accomplish anything, and the bad guys win. So I’ve got to take some risks, and one of them is deciding to trust certain people, if in a—let’s call it a limited fashion, shall we?”

“Limited?” Sussbrid asked. “It’s the most I can do, and no, it’s not a condemnation of your character. It’s the fact that we exist in a place where Yotov isn’t wholly good or bad, and that colors my judgment about everyone outside my crew while I feel my way forward in this political shitshow. I know there’s more at stake here than simple money, and I know I might look like a rube. I can assure you, that is merely how I appear,” I cautioned. “Well, I appreciate your vote of confidence. What do you intend to do?”

“Return to Anvil Dark and confront Yotov.”

Sussbrid quirked a brow. “Is your only evidence the testimony of a disgraced Peacemaker?”

“Unfortunately, yes. For what it’s worth, I believe her—but I realize that doesn’t constitute proof.”

“What happens when Yotov simply denies the accusation?”

I shrugged, palms up. I knew Sussbrid found my conclusion iffy, but I’d seen the expression on Okena’s face. There had been a mixture of fear, disgust, and even relief. She was telling the truth, but she hated it because her admission signaled the one thing Okena never wanted to confront. Her own defeat. “Van, may I offer a path forward on this?

A way to confront Yotov?”

Sussbrid asked. “I’m listening,” I said, my tone neutral. “Making an accusation is, in and of itself, something that has to go on the record. If you offer Yotov this information, you put her in the position of making a decision.”

“I know, and her decision will tell me more than any words she might spew. Believe me, I understand the value of watching and waiting. Sometimes, not making a decision is, in fact, a decision, and Yotov’s hand will be forced by me putting Okena’s sins into the public record.”

Sussbrid gave me a look of respect. “Ah.”

“Ah?”

“Ahh, as in—you’re as good a card player as your grandfather. I owe you an apology,” Sussbrid said. “No you don’t. I’m young. I seem brash. I have a sword and a gun and I like using both. Doesn’t mean I can’t see over the horizon, though.”

Sussbrid grinned. “I think you see well over the horizon, young Tudor. You’ve got a lot to do before you put Yotov under some uncomfortable scrutiny. Almost wish I was there to see it. It’s not her natural environment.”

“Being questioned?”

Sussbrid shook her head. “No. Being forced to choose a side.”

By then, the crash team had stabilized both Zeno and Okena, the former awake but groggy, the latter sedated and undergoing a nano-regenerative therapy to reknit her broken skull and take the pressure off her brain. In company with Sussbrid and the watchful protection of her ship’s formidable weapon systems, we twisted away from Wolf 424 and completed our interrupted journey to Anvil Dark, the weight of future decisions heavy on my mind. “You wanted this,” Torina murmured to me, both of us watching the display. “It’s only going to get trickier from here.”

“Not really,” I said, my tone light. Torina cocked her head, inviting an explanation. “You’re here. Having a moral compass helps keep things simple—I have to do what’s right, even if it sucks.”

Torina leaned her head on my shoulder, snickering. “I’ve never been called a compass before. You know, in your heart, you really are a

charmer.”

“GONE?

What do you mean she’s gone?” I asked Lunzy. She waved helplessly. “Yotov is gone. She left Anvil Dark without informing anyone, not even Max—who, incidentally, is having a very bad day trying to deal with the fallout of about a dozen canceled meetings Yotov was scheduled to have.”

Lunzy had met us at the Fafnir’s airlock, having hurried back to Anvil Dark at Sussbrid’s urgent request. I’d already apologized for dragging her back into the middle of an investigation of her own, but she’d brushed it off, saying, “An accusation like Okena’s goes right to the top of the to-do list.”

Which was why she was here, meeting us at the airlock where the Fafnir had docked. A crowd of at least a couple dozen other Peacemakers and Auxiliaries had gathered, anxious to learn more about the rumors—that we’d arrested Okena, and she’d apparently implicated at least one other Peacemaker in her statement. That left people understandably curious, but it also made me wonder how many of these people worried Okena might have implicated them. “Yotov’s not the only Peacemaker who’s disappeared, either,” Lunzy went on, pulling out a data slate. She brought up an image of a Nesit. “Peacemaker Derkos Filar has also gone missing. Again, no notice, no flight plan, and with a couple of meetings on his docket, including one dealing with an important case.”

“I know this bastard,” I said, gesturing for Torina to take a look. She nodded. “That was the Nesit on Spindrift, the one who took over the storefront where we were supposedly delivering some money, that turned out to be a bomb.”

I blew out an exasperated sigh. “So word gets out that we’ve arrested Okena, who’s made an accusation against Yotov. We come back to Anvil Dark and find Yotov’s in the wind, and so is this little asshole, who was definitely implicated in a plot to kill us. Anyone believe these things aren’t related?”

Lunzy and Torina shook their heads. So did Perry, but he also spoke up. “What I don’t get is why Yotov would run. It just makes her look as guilty as hell. She must have thought Okena had provided you with some proof—which means there’s proof to be had, somewhere.”

Torina suddenly stiffened. “It wasn’t Okena that scared her off, or not Okena alone. It was the Cusp device. She must have some reason to believe we can connect that to her.”

“And that was the reason we were ambushed on our way out from Dregs. That was a desperate attempt to kill us and Okena and destroy the Cusp machine all at once,” I said, finishing the train of thought. Sussbrid joined us, having had to dock some distance away from the Fafnir. I filled her in, keenly aware of the fact that we were still surrounded by other Peacemakers. They could overhear us, but I didn’t care. I wanted the ones who were in Yotov’s camp to know how she’d cut and run instead of facing Okena’s accusation. And I wanted the ones not in Yotov’s camp to hear the same thing. Yes, it was a deliberate effort on my part to sow dissent, but I didn’t want Yotov to slip back to Anvil Dark once we’d left and smoothly regain control so she could start building walls of doubt around herself. The more problematic and potentially unwelcoming Anvil Dark was for her, the better. Which left one big question. “Sussbrid, you’re an expert in reading people’s motives and the like. If you were Yotov, had been using a device that grinds away your ability to empathize, and were devoid of anything but hate, where would you go?”

Sussbrid didn’t hesitate. “For someone like Yotov, there’s only one answer—you seek a decisive advantage over your enemy. You make him hurt, and you do it in the most personal way possible.”

I nodded and turned back to the Fafnir, gesturing for Torina and Perry to follow. Zeno was going to have to sit this one out while recuperating on Anvil Dark. Lunzy and Sussbrid both assured me that she and Okena would be well-protected. They also took Rolis’s personality chip and promised to get it installed into a suitable chassis. “He’s a hero, so make it something good, if you can. He’s earned it,” I said, then turned for the airlock. I touched the comm, not even willing to wait the few seconds it would take to reboard the Fafnir. “Netty, do the preflight. We’re going to Iowa.”

WE DIDN’T LAND at the farm. Instead, we brought the Fafnir down to just a couple of hundred meters altitude, released Perry from the airlock, and let him fly ahead and scout the farm while we found a landing spot. We chose a fallow field close to a stand of bushy poplars, landed, and waited for full darkness. “Van, there was a ship here. It set down a few hundred meters from the farmhouse, then apparently lifted again,” Perry reported. He transmitted imagery back from his lofty vantage, including low-light visible and thermal. He descended low enough to get an oblique view into the house and registered two heat signatures, one warmer than the other. “Yotov and the Nesit, Filar?” Torina ventured. I curled my lip in doubt. “What, just sitting in the kitchen, waiting for us to show up and walk in?

After all this, that’s the best these two criminal geniuses could come up with?”

Once darkness settled in, we disembarked, fully suited, armored, and armed. That immediately presented a problem, though. “At this time of night, rural Iowa isn’t exactly hopping. But there’s still a good chance someone will see us while we’re walking, oh, three klicks?

A little more, maybe?” I said and turned to Icky. “And Torina and I might get away with the good old costume party excuse, but I’m sorry, you massive, four-armed beauty you, you will not.”

“So we need to bring the Fafnir closer to your farm,” Torina said. I’d already spotted an alternative, though. A couple of hundred meters away were the outbuildings of a farm. The fallow field told me that, for whatever reason, this farm wasn’t currently being worked, so there shouldn’t be anyone in or around them. “Let’s go see if we can bum a ride,”

I said. When we reached the end of the poplar copse, we could see the farmhouse. Like the outbuildings, it was dark and silent, aside from an exterior light. We crept into the first shed and found a combine harvester parked beside a tractor. “Would one of these do?” Icky asked. Despite the situation, I couldn’t help grinning. “Yes, the best way to deflect attention from a big, four-armed alien is to have said big, four-armed alien riding around in a combine harvester at night.” I turned for the exit. “No, what we need is—hello.”

Across the dirt yard squatted a pickup. It was an older model F150—a 1986, if I made my mark, and in a well-used but working state. Trucks like that were a fixture on farms, and along with a bench seat that could fit four people in a pinch—or two humans and one Icky—it had simple electronics. And no security systems whatsoever. I paused, hands on hips as I regarded the red and white truck. I’d never hotwired a car, but I liked my chances because of one reason. Icky. The truck was unlocked, fortunately, but the keys were nowhere to be seen, which led me to my next question. “Icky, is there any chance you can figure out the engineering and get this thing started?”

She gave me a look. “Internal combustion engine, right?”

I nodded. “Just show me where the starting system is.”

I pointed to the key slot on the steering column. Without preamble, Icky grabbed the plastic housing, squeezed it until it cracked apart, and pulled it free. About a minute later, she whispered that she had it figured out. “Dead simple. This is a hot lead from the battery, and this is—”

“Icky, I believe you. Let’s just get it started, okay?”

She shrugged, twisted together wires and touched another couple, and the engine coughed to life. I already had Torina standing by with the glue gun in case anyone came barreling out the house with a shotgun. I climbed into the driver’s seat, while we jammed Icky into the passenger’s side—all of it. Torina was left riding in the bed. As we were pulling out of the yard and onto the gravel road that would take us to my farm, I did see a light come on in one of the farmhouse’s upstairs windows. I gave it a half-hearted wave as I accelerated the truck down the road. “Sorry!

We’re not going far!”

Icky just grinned at me from about twelve inches away, her bulk filling the entire front seat. “Always wanted to be a hooligan!”

WE DITCHED the pickup about five hundred meters from the farm, mainly because the old Ford wasn’t exactly the quietest beast on the Prairies. Somewhere beneath my feet, a crack in the exhaust leaked a rumble like an idling Abrams tank. The sound wasn’t an unusual one at a distance, but it might attract some attention if we rolled right up into the driveway. I led the others along a ditch paralleling the road, Perry providing updates and confirming we didn’t have any ambushes waiting for us along the way. About fifty meters ahead, a drainage ditch from the property intersected it, so we followed that to the edge of the field, only a hundred meters or so from the sinkhole that held a trove of alien spaceship parts and corpses. “Van, you sure you know where we’re going?” Icky hissed. I glanced back at her. “Ten or so meters that way, then we’ll have the cover of the barn right to the edge of the yard behind the house.” I smiled. “You know how you know your dad’s ship, the Nemesis, so well?

That’s me when it comes to this farm.”

We made it to the corner of the barn. I peered at the house and saw a light on in the kitchen. “Perry, still two thermal signatures?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. His voice hummed in my ear bug. Yup. One is about three meters from the back door. The other is another meter farther, probably sitting at the kitchen table. I decided to keep it simple. I sent Icky, guided by Torina, around to the front of the house, taking the long way around through the edge of the cornfield, then back across the driveway into the front yard. Once they were ready, they’d bash in the front door. A few seconds later, I’d come in through the back. Perry kept flying top cover. Torina and Icky crept off into the darkness. I figured about fifteen minutes for them to get into position. As I waited, though, Perry spoke up. Van, there’s a car parked on the side of the laneway on the west side of the farm. I think it’s Miryam’s. Miryam. What was she doing here?

And why would she park so far away—?

“Shit. Torina, Icky, I think Miryam’s inside, which means one of those thermal signatures might be hers. When you break in, make sure you ID

your targets.”

“Understood.”

I waited, brooding over Miryam’s presence. She must have either been here when Yotov and Filar showed up, or arrived after they had. I assumed they hadn’t driven her car themselves, so they’d probably forced her to park it out of the way, then brought her back to the house. It made things much more complicated, because while one of those thermal blobs might be Miryam, if she were locked up down in the cellar, Perry wouldn’t be able to see her. Of course, there was another possibility, one that I didn't bear thinking about. But if they’d done anything to Miryam, I would personally kill them both, laws and interstellar treaties and protocols be damned. “Okay, Van, we’re in position,” Torina hissed. “Got it. On my way.”

I got up from my crouch but didn’t head directly for the house. Instead, I went around the back of the barn and the tractor shed beside it, then came at the back door from the direction of the adjacent farm. I made it to the bottom of the steps and crouched again. “Okay, go!”

A few seconds passed, then I heard Icky bellow, her hoarse shout punctuated by the racket of splintering wood and shattering glass. I rushed up the steps and yanked the door open. Miryam had been sitting at the kitchen table, but at the first sign of trouble, she wisely dropped and pushed herself beneath it for cover. A Nesit spun and faced the front door, a big boarding shotgun raised. I didn’t hesitate. I fired The Drop’s beamer, slamming a stun charge into the Nesit’s back. The boarding shotgun boomed, flechettes shredding the linoleum and almost catching Icky’s feet. I raced forward, sweeping out the Moonsword, and touched its point to the back of the Nesit’s head. Icky rolled him over, revealing it to be Filar. He gaped up at us stupidly, addled by the stun charge as a thin trail of drool fell from his open mouth. “Torina, take charge here and watch that door to the cellar. Icky, come with me.”

We swept the rest of the house, but there was no sign of Yotov, either upstairs or in the basement. We got back to the kitchen and found Filar sitting with his back to the refrigerator, Torina coolly covering him with her sidearm. The glue gun sat on the kitchen table beside her. “I told our friend here that it would be easier to clean up some of his blood than all the glue this thing shoots. We don’t want to mess up Van’s house, after all, do we?” she said. Miryam sat in the dining room, nursing a glass of bourbon. “Miryam, are you okay?”

“Yes, fine. Just a little rattled. I came by to pick up the mail and found those two—the Nesit and the one I didn’t recognize. She was a piece of work. Nicest, most reasonable person I’ve ever met. I just couldn’t say no to her.”

“Yeah, her name’s Yotov. She’s a Ligurite, and a Master—well, former Master, now—of the Peacemaker’s Guild.” I leaned a little closer. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Van, I spent nearly a year in Iraq as a legal policy advisor. I wore a flak jacket and took cover from rocket and mortar attacks every other day. I think I can handle this—especially with the moral support I’ve been getting from Jim Beam here.”

I smiled and gave her some time to finish up with Mister Beam, then returned to the kitchen. Filar had shrugged off most of the stun effect and was glowering up from the kitchen floor. Seeing him there, I had another of those strange, dislocated moments. How many times had I stood right where he was sitting, all teenaged acne and bottomless appetite, rooting around in that very same fridge for snacks?

And now a vaguely anthropomorphic otter blocked my way—

I shook my head to fling away the incongruent weirdness. “Filar, in case it isn’t apparent, you’re under arrest.”

“Yeah yeah. And so much for the contract on the prime mark.” He shook his own head. “All those bonds, and now they’re gonna be someone else’s to enjoy.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What?

Oh, you’re an afterthought, Tudor. The prime mark was the big contract. With that money, we could have—”

“Who’s we?”

Filar looked like he was about to clam up, so I drew the Moonsword with a soft hiss and knelt, putting the preternaturally sharp tip right in front of his eyes. “Filar, you were an accessory to a plot to kill Torina and me with that bomb on Spindrift. You then came here, to my home, threatening

people I care about so that you could ambush me in my own kitchen. So let me make this absolutely clear.”

I leaned in. “I do not care if you live or die. In fact, I’d prefer that you die. Only my sense of duty and honor are preventing me from just decapitating you, and yeah, the mess would suck, but I’d clean it up. If you don’t prove useful to me in the next ten seconds or so, honor and duty aren’t going to stop me anymore.”

I made sure to drive my gaze deep into his as I spoke. I was deadly serious. Maybe the lingering effects of the Cusp device were part of it, but most of it was just raw, primal outrage. He saw it and recognized it for what it was. “We, as in me and Yotov. My master, in fact and not just title. Me, and her, and the faction of the Guild who understands how life actually works.”

His head thunked back against the refrigerator door. “The only thing I’ve ever wanted is—”

“Her approval?” Perry put in, from where he’d perched on the back of a kitchen chair. Filar barked a bitter laugh. “What would you know about it?

You feel nothing. You aren’t a living thing. You can’t imagine what rewards she holds for those who would finally fulfill the longest open contract in history.”

His eyes went far away. “The money, yeah. But—more than that. Her favor. Her smile. She and I—” He stopped abruptly, cutting himself off with a look of alarm. Torina clicked her tongue. “Oh, my. It seems like Filar here was hoping for a lot more than just Yotov’s approval.”

Icky stuck out her tongue. “Yuck.”

“And now I sit here, beaten by the secondary mark,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “I think I know why your grandfather changed his name all those years ago. To spit in their eye. If he was going to be a mark, then he would own it,” Miryam said, coming into the kitchen with her now mostly empty glass. I nodded. “He took the word and made them say it every time he was around, just so they knew he was there. Alive. Free.”

“And a hell of a sense of humor, too.”

“You don’t think I’m just a pretty face, do you?” I asked her, but Icky answered. “Me, I don’t think that at all. The pretty part, anyway.” She pointed out the window, at the first hints of dawn in the eastern sky. “Have to admit, Iowa is pretty. I would—”

“I know where Yotov went,” I said, standing. “Miryam, want to go for a ride?”

“Uh—sure, today’s shot to hell anyway. Where to?”

“Iowa. But this one is a lot smaller.”

29

OUR STANDARD PRACTICE when leaving Earth was to accelerate directly sunward to try and mask our fusion exhaust, until we were unlikely to be spotted by some Earthly sensor. Someone must have realized that, though, because a lurking class seven workboat, hanging motionless and powered-down, tried to ambush us near Venus. It might have worked, too, if we weren’t ambush-shy thanks to the attack that had injured Zeno and running with active scanners banging away at full power. No Earthly sensors would detect them since they were twist shifted to eliminate lightspeed lag, so it wasn’t much of a risk. We caught the blip of our would-be attacker’s presence at long missile range, which spooked him into firing a salvo at us, then burning hard to escape by slingshotting around the Sun. That would have worked, too, had the Fafnir not been upgraded to a Dragon and had her drive obsessively fiddled and tweaked by Icky and Zeno. Our point defenses took down the missiles easily enough, and the chase was on. “I have to admit that when I dropped by to pick up the mail, I hadn’t expected to be paying a visit to the Sun,” Miryam said. She sat in the jump seat normally used by Zeno, watching events unfold with bright-eyed excitement. I was keenly aware of her presence on the Fafnir and wanted to avoid any serious fights. But I also wanted to keep her close until I knew for sure that Yotov was either in custody or had left the Solar System. Everyone in

my life was a legitimate target for someone with Yotov’s morals, and losing Miryam was something I would not allow. Ever. “Netty, how long until this asshole is in laser range?” I asked. “Not for nearly two hours. Our acceleration advantage is fairly thin.”

“Missiles are our best bet,” Torina said. I had to agree. We decided to hold fire until we were reasonably certain of a kill. I had an ulterior motive, though. “Perry, can you monitor his comm signals?”

“As long as they’re not directional and pointed away from us, sure.”

“Do it. I want a record of everything, even if it’s encrypted. We can decrypt it later.”

The chase wore on, around the Sun, skirting the edge of the corona, then snapping us like a cracking whip in the direction of Mars. I made repeated demands for our quarry to heave-to, but we were ignored. “We’re close enough for a decent missile salvo, Van,” Torina said. “Looks like he’s going to try to boost around Mars. He’s probably hoping we won’t keep following him forever.”

I nodded. “We won’t. Torina, fire at will.”

She hesitated. “What if Yotov’s on that ship?”

“She’s not. She orders ambushes to happen, she doesn’t do them herself.”

Torina gave me a questioning look and fired two salvos of three missiles. We watched them track closer, their acceleration far higher than the workboat’s. We took another salvo right back but were ready for it and shot down the incoming missiles before they posed a threat. A minute or so later, I watched with dark satisfaction as three of our missiles bracketed the other ship and detonated almost simultaneously. What was left of her fell into Mars’s gravity well, some to rain down on the Red Planet, some to land on the tiny moon Phobos. “If you wanted conspiracy theorists to go wild, then shiny ship debris on Phobos should do the trick,” Netty said. I nodded. “Clean up in aisle Mars.”

“Earth joke, right?” Torina asked. “More like a combined retail-warfare-astronomy joke. What, you don’t have food supermarkets on Helso?”

“Our food is delivered.”

“Of course it is.”

“Hey, I thought it was funny. I’ve always said, find your niche and dominate. Solid work, boss. Gonna kill in the local comedy clubs.”

“Your sarcasm is duly noted, Perry. Now, for my next performance, I think I’ll work on a ventriloquism act.”

“You’ll need a pupp—” Perry started, then saw the meaningful stare I’d leveled on him. “Oh.”

“Yes, I will, won’t I?

Now then, Netty, if you’d be so kind as to take us to our trusty battleship, we’ve got an appointment with evil.”

ALL WE FOUND when we reached the Iowa, though, was evidence of a recent skirmish. The automation that allowed the instance of Netty we’d copied to the battleship had done the trick, allowing her to drive Yotov away. Tumbling bits of debris showed that she’d scored some hits, too. “Actually, some of that debris is the Iowa’s comm array. I was wondering why the version of me installed in her hadn’t said anything about this,” Netty said. “Damn. Yotov’s probably going to go to ground somewhere. She’s going to be almost impossible to find.”

“Icky, bring Filar up here, would you?” I said. When the Nesit, firmly manacled, was brought into the cockpit, I turned to him. “I’m going to make you a deal. I’ll reduce the charges against you to two counts of accessory, one for the bomb thing and one for kidnapping Miryam. In return, you’re going to tell me where Yotov is most likely to be found.”

Filar opened his mouth, but I held up a finger. “If you refuse, or lie or lead us into a trap or anything like that, then I’m going to up the charge to accessory in Crimes Against Order and issue summary judgment, as in, Icky is going to space you, but not before breaking every bone in that weasel body of yours. Think carefully before you speak, because the next words out of your mouth will play a major role in shaping what remains of your life.”

At the mention of Crimes Against Order, Filar had flinched. He was a Peacemaker, so he knew the gravity of such a charge, and the latitude it

gave me to exercise my discretion. Was threatening to execute him if he didn’t give up Yotov sufficient grounds?

It didn’t matter. At least, it wouldn’t matter to him, being dead and all. Filar turned to Perry. “You got this all on record, right?”

“I’m sorry, I’m not a living thing, I don’t have feelings, remember?

Which means I don’t feel at all bad about telling you to pound sand.”

I gave Perry an impressed look. If that wasn’t genuinely exasperated spite, it was a flawless simulation of it. “Fine. The only other place I can suggest is Persuasion, a moon in the Ligurite home system. If she’s not there, then I honestly have no idea where in known space she would be,” Filar said. “Good choice. Icky, take him back to the holding cell. The final outcome of his case depends on whether or not he’s trying to screw us,” I said. “Look, I said she might be there, I don’t know for sure—”

“Relax, Filar. As long as this isn’t some sort of trick or trap, you’ll live to see the inside of a courtroom.” I nodded to Icky, who scruffed him and dragged him away. “A kidnapping, a hostage rescue, a space battle around the Sun that ends at Mars, and now a chase after a remorseless criminal mastermind across the stars—you really know how to show a girl a good time, Van,” Miryam said. I blinked. “Oh. Shit. Miryam. Netty, let’s turn back to Earth—”

“No, Van, don’t worry about me. You need to catch this Yotov character, and every minute counts.”

“Miryam, they’re going to find your car and declare you missing.”

“Are you familiar with Agatha Christie?”

I gaped into the sudden change of subject. “A… mystery writer. Yeah. Murder on the Orient Express, that sort of thing. Uh… why?”

“In 1926, she went missing for eleven days after a quarrel with her husband. She claimed to have no memory of that time, but there’s been an aura of mystique around it ever since. I could do with an aura of mystique, I think.”

“Wonder if she went for a ride on a spaceship?” Torina mused, smiling. “If she did, it wasn’t with your grandfather,” Perry put in. I glanced at him. “You were just a little too quick to say that, bird.” I shrugged. “Okay, what the hell. Netty, set a course to Persuasion, and don’t

spare the fusion horses.”

As the drive roared to life, I found myself shaking my head. “Persuasion. Great. A planet named after magical liars, filled with magical liars.”

But Torina returned a grim look. “It’s not magic, Van. Just bullshit, but with style.”

OF COURSE, knowing that Yotov might be on Persuasion was one thing. Finding her on a nearly Earth-sized moon with a population of over two billion was another altogether. We mulled over the options, but none of them seemed even remotely viable—until Miryam and her legal mind came up with a possible approach. She, Torina, and Perry had retired to the galley, while Icky, Netty, and I oversaw the flight. An hour later, they returned. “Van, we might have a way of leveraging the Ligurite government into giving up Yotov,” Perry said. “We’ve got leverage?”

“We do. Miryam, you’re on.”

She nodded. “So we were looking over the relevant laws and applicable treaties, and something jumped out at me. The interstellar law governing Crimes Against Order says”—she lifted a data slate—“that lawful and competent authorities as defined in section—blah, blah—suffice to say you’re a lawful authority.”

“I notice you dropped the competent.”

She smiled. “Anyway, lawful and competent authorities are authorized to undertake any measures, up to and including lethal force that authority deems necessary to investigate and terminate Crimes Against Order. Such measures must be supportable by the degree of need and appropriate evidence—blah, blah— and exclude those measures as specified in Annex A to Appendix—yada, yada.”

“Okay. And?”

“And, Annex A to Appendix Yada-Yada gives a laundry list of measures that you can’t take. They mostly consist of your own Crimes Against Order, but the important part is that they also include the action of seizing control

of governed territories, or the threat thereof. In other words, you can’t threaten to invade a place to go after these lawbreakers.”

“At the risk of sounding impatient, the point is?”

“The point, Van, is that that Annex has been ratified by most powers in known space. The notable exception is the Seven Stars League. They’ve never ratified that Annex, either because they don’t want to, for some reason, or because they just forgot, which is more likely. I mean, Crimes Against Order legislation doesn’t come up very often,” Perry said. “And that’s where I come in. I spoke to my father, who’s already told me that the Seven Stars League has been falling over themselves to make it up to Helso for the shitty protection that’s supposed to come with being a protectorate,” Torina said. I shook my head. “Guys, this is all very interesting—”

“Van, the Seven Stars League would love to grab Persuasion as another protectorate. For that matter, they’d love to grab the whole Ligurite home system. Do you see where that’s going?” Perry asked. I nodded, slowly at first, then more quickly. “Since the Seven Stars League never ratified that Annex, then they’re not bound by it. Which means—holy shit, we threaten Persuasion with invasion?”

“Hey, rhyme time!” Netty put in. “My father’s confirmed that, informally, if the Ligurites don’t cooperate, they’re prepared to go and blockade Persuasion and provide us with forces to find and seize Yotov,” Torina replied. “And then just never leave, for—reasons. I’m sure they’ll come up with something,” Miryam finished. I sat up and kissed Miryam on the cheek. “You’re brilliant. All of you guys are. Okay, so let’s contact whatever authority is in charge of Persuasion when we arrive and see how hard we can push this lever.”

MORE THAN ENOUGH, as it turned out. The Ligurites weren’t especially warlike, relying on their insidious powers of, ah, persuasion to achieve their ends. In the face of a police action by the Seven Stars League to find and arrest a Criminal Against Order, they folded almost immediately. Yotov might be influential among her people—she did carry the cachet of a

Peacemaker Guild-Master, after all—but she wasn’t influential enough to justify the risk of an invasion by the ambitious League. We were cleared to land at a spaceport that sprawled across the tops of several high-rise buildings, on the edge of a large city. The Persuasion authorities could only confirm that Yotov had property and at least two or three apartments here, but it was a place to start. It was going to take us hours, perhaps a couple of days to visit each place separately, but Perry took to wing and quickly scoped out all of them. The first two were a bust. He called us as he wheeled above the third, though. She’s there. Her and three others that I can see—another Nesit and two Yonnox. They’re on the balcony, using a portable comm array. “Bet that’s communicating with a stealthed satellite somewhere up in orbit, her own little comm network of evil?” I asked. No one took me up on it. “Okay, Miryam, for obvious reasons, you’re staying here with the Fafnir,” I said as we strapped on armor over our b-suits and gathered up our weapons. “Aw, this is the best part.”

“I appreciate that incisive legal mind of yours and would like it to stay in one piece.”

She put her hand on my arm. “Be careful, Van.”

“I always am,” I replied, hugging her. “After all, the life I save may be my own.”

SINCE WE WERE SURROUNDED by crowds of Ligurite citizens, we had to keep this simple and make it fast. Netty lifted and assumed high top-cover, about ten klicks up. We left Perry as our eye in the sky, while we made our way to the building housing Yotov and her accomplices, another high-rise at the equatorial end of the city. To make ourselves less conspicuous, we took a cab. “Where to—oh, wow, a Peacemaker. Something big going down?” the cab’s AI asked. “You know, I’ve taken a lot of cabs in my time, and one thing I’ve learned about them is that I’m not big into conversations with the driver,” I said. “Fine, keep your secrets, then.”

The cab allowed us to get to our target building’s entry level without incident or attracting any particular attention, but once we were inside, we’d stand out for sure. I had visions of Yotov spying us on some security imager and making a break for it, or mixing herself up amid the pedestrians in the street. I was in the midst of reluctantly deciding to leave either Icky or Torina here so they could block her if she tried to descend from her apartment above. But Icky just shook her head. “No need, Van,” she said. “Remember these?”

She reached into a pouch on her harness and extracted the two ID-obscuring pendants Torina and I had worn while pretending to be a couple of supercilious rich assholes. “I grabbed them in case they might come in handy.”

“Icky, you’ve earned your paycheck this week. We’ve only got two of them, though. Although, as good as they are, I’m not sure that even if we had a third, it would do much to hide a Wu’tzur.”

She pulled her lips back in a grin. “Doesn’t need to. You guys can take the elevator. I’ve got another way of getting up there, one no one’s gonna suspect.”

SHE’S five floors down now. I have to admit, that’s damned impressive, Perry said. Torina and I lurked in the corridor, around a corner from the front door to Yotov’s apartment. Icky—

Was climbing the building. On its exterior. I’d greeted her suggestion with horror, but she just shrugged. “My people were originally arboreal, Van. We’re built to climb things, and no Wu’tzur has a fear of heights or anything like that. It’s part of why no-g is no biggie for us. Hell, I could probably climb this building to the top before you could take the elevator up there and come back down.”

“Icky, it’s thirty stories!”

“And?”

I wasn’t happy about it, but I couldn’t deny that having Icky pop over the railing onto Yotov’s balcony was a move that even she wouldn’t be able to foresee. Three floors down, Perry said. Two. And she’s in place. I’ll say it now—wow. “Icky, can you hear us?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Okay, we’re going in.”

Our weapons held down at our sides, Torina and I hurried to the apartment door. I knocked. I heard movement inside, then a shout. That was all I needed. I swept up the Moonsword and carved the door open, the blade slicing through the alloy armor reinforcing it like a knife through cold butter—a little laborious, but not difficult at all. Commotion rose inside, followed by more shouts, then a gunshot. I kicked in the chunk I’d cut out of the door and found myself facing a Yonnox with a raised slug gun. Before he could shoot, though, Torina double-tapped him, shooting past me and leaving my ears ringing. I ignored it and jammed my way inside. Icky stood in the exit to the balcony. One of the Nesit was down, groaning around a broken leg. A Gajur lay motionless nearby. The other Yonnox banged out three shots at her, two slamming into her armor, the third blowing a small chunk out of one of her meaty biceps. I raised The Drop, but Icky, bellowing in rage and pain, swung her sledgehammer hard enough to bounce the Yonnox off the wall. “Where’s Yotov?” I shouted. Icky pointed at a corridor. “She went that way!” she growled, then fumbled in her harness for a first-aid spray. I gestured for Torina to follow me. Perry landed on the balcony and took control of the portable comm unit. We raced up the corridor and found a side door standing open that revealed stairs up. “Up?

Really?

Why would you go up in a building if you’re trying to escape?” Torina asked. “Because she might have a flier or even a ship up there. Netty, if you see anything launch from here—”

“I will call out.”

“Please,” I said and charged up the stairs. We made our way through a series of rooms and corridors, all presumably part of a multi-story apartment. As we navigated them, I worried that Yotov might yet escape. But we found a last set of stairs that led to a roof terrace overlooking the city on one side, and a glassed facility, a botanical roof garden or something similar. And there was Yotov. She was fleeing across a pedestrian walkway that arched over the roof garden, giving a spectacular view of the riot of plants spread out below. A doorway beckoned at the other end. I didn’t want to let her get through it. Frantically, I looked for inspiration for something other than just continuing to chase her. I saw it when I looked at the walkway. It was a suspension bridge, hung from a pair of stout cables. With Yotov about three quarters of the way across, I brandished the Moonsword, slashing at one cable and cutting it in two blows. The walkway immediately canted at a wild angle, ripples of destructive energy shaking the material in conflicting directions and speeds. “She’s gonna—” Torina said as I was moving to cut the other cable. But I didn’t have to. With a bitter cry, Yotov pitched over the railing and plunged three meters onto the glass roof. It shattered when she hit, and she plummeted through it, in the gardens below, a glittering shower of chaos falling all around her. I held the Moonsword aloft, then let it settle to my side, inert. “Huh. Sort of thought it would be—”

“More dramatic?

Yeah, me too,” Torina said, but there was no disappointment in her tone, only acceptance. “Shall we?”

I held out my arm in a moment of gallantry. “Let’s.”

ICKY AND PERRY rejoined us in the roof garden, where we found Yotov. She was alive but hurt. And, to add insult to injury, she’d fallen into a massive plant with gauzy, purplish leaves that had wrapped themselves around her

when she landed. A thick, cloying reek like dead fish hung in the air, and the bruised leaves wept a substance that looked distinctly like something you would see in a daycare after all the kids had a bout of the flu. I shook my head in disgust. “Better you than me, Yotov.”

Torina reached for her. “May I say—oh. Eww. Someone else can grab her.”

Icky inhaled deeply, then made a satisfied noise that brought everyone else up short. “I think it smells amazing. Better than that—what was that stuff you fed me that one time that almost killed me, Van?”

“You mean sauerkraut?

I’ll not have it slandered in my presence, thank you.”

“Speaking as someone who did a stint as the Fafnir’s waste reclamator, I heartily endorse Icky never eating sauerkraut or anything like it again. The results are… unnatural,” Perry said with complete certainty. Icky shot him a glare, then pulled a stinky leaf the size of an elephant’s ear away from Yotov’s face. A stream of mucosal plant goo dripped from Yotov’s face and fell with a ripe splat onto her chest. “To quote Torina, eww. Anyway, my dear Master, you can spare your breath. Your persuasion bullshit doesn’t work on me. And now, it’s time for jail.” She grinned. “Or worse.”

Yotov blinked at her. “What… could be worse?” she slurred. Icky shot me a sly glance. “Well, for one thing, you could have to eat sauerkraut.”

EPILOGUE

WE RETURNED Yotov to Anvil Dark, but hardly amid celebration. More than a few Peacemakers had hitched themselves to her star, reasoning she was the key to realizing their own ambitions. With her disgraced, they’d lost their patron and now suffered the ire and resentment of those Peacemakers who’d spurned her autocratic rule. I was mindful of what Filar, the Nesit, had said while sprawled on the kitchen floor. Me, and her, and the faction of the Guild who understands how life actually works. Yotov had riffed on the same thing as we’d loaded her into the Fafnir amid a swirl of local law enforcement and media. “I had high hopes for you, Tudor.”

I could feel her disappointment in me. But I made myself not care. “And now?”

She stopped in the airlock. Icky moved to drag her into the ship and the holding cell, but I stopped her with a gesture. “Do you really think that your Peacemaker credentials are going to bring order to known space, Tudor?

That anyone really gives a shit about the Guild?”

“That’s rich coming from someone guilty of Crimes Against Order.”

She shook her head. “Even now, you’re so charmingly dense. The only path to ultimate order is the one of strength and determination, not laws. The only people who respect those are the ones who’d never break them. As for the rest—they need to be brought to heel with force and fear. It’s the only thing that works—that will ever work.”

“You know, you’d fit right into any number of failed authoritarian dictatorships back on Earth. They always seem to claim that what they’re doing is for the greater good, too.”

“Pragmatism, not idealism, Tudor. It’s the only way.” She shook her head again. “I thought I sensed something of the pragmatist in you. But it turns out that you’re as naïve and foolish as your grandfather.”

I smiled at her. “That, Master Yotov, is the highest compliment you’ve ever paid me.”

She opened her mouth, but I just nodded to Icky. “Lock her up before I decide to heave her over that railing. And this time, you aren’t going to have a stinky plant to save you, you miserable, murderous bitch.”

Icky dragged her away. Torina crossed her arms. “I can’t help feeling that this is just the end of the beginning for us.”

But I shook my head. We’d already done that, bringing the battle to our foes. “Nope. Torina, my dear, this is the beginning of the end.”

ONCE WE’D FINISHED HANDING Yotov over to the Guild—specifically to the custody of one of the Masters that hadn’t been one of her lackeys—we went to The Black Hole. As soon as we stepped inside, conversation died. Half the place watched us with admiration and ill-concealed glee, the other half with smoldering resentment. “Wow, tough crowd,” Perry said. I stepped forward. “Okay, let’s do this. Yes, I arrested Yotov. Yes, she’s guilty of Crimes Against Order, and yes, her days in the Guild are over. To all of you who don’t like that—”

I looked around. “—all I can say is, tough shit. She’s gone. Deal with it.”

I let the silence linger. “In the meantime, I’m taking an active interest in any and all of the Fade’s victims and will begin making amends to the

families of those killed to feed those damned Cusp devices. I’m starting with the Daren-thal. If any of you want to help me with this, just say so.”

I crossed my arms. “One more thing, just so we’re clear. There’s a contract out for me—Mark Two, I guess—worth more than a million bonds. Now, I’m going to drop my weapons and let anyone who wants to collect take a free shot at me, right here and now. Because if you don’t get me now, then you had better look over your shoulder. Every. Single. Day. Not for myself, but because that contract was put out by the Fade, and that would mean you were in league with them.”

I looked from face to face. “And I am going to destroy the Fade, every last one of them.”

A Peacemaker I didn’t recognize, a spindly alien with blue skin textured like corduroy, stood and spoke in a voice like air escaping a tire. “Tudor, Master Yotov was this Guild’s best chance to actually accomplish something. You’ve doomed us to forever nibbling around the edges of things—”

Without warning, he snatched at his sidearm. Before he could draw it, though, a shot rang out and he crumpled. Horrified silence fell. Lucky, who’d been lurking in the crowd, hefted her weapon. “Anyone else feeling… Lucky?” She grinned. “I never get tired of saying that.”

Perry raised a wing. “If you’re going to keep making bad jokes, you can shoot me.”

Lucky laughed and holstered her weapon. “I’ll see myself out. Before I do, though, I just want to say this—that Van’s not the only one who’s going to be watching. I know I will.”

She swept the room with a menacing stare. “A lot of us will,” she said and stalked quietly out of the bar. WE MET Rovan at a remote hunting cabin. We’d already returned the chip from the first Cusp device we’d encountered to the Daren-thal authorities. As for the identity of whoever had been loaded into the second Cusp, we weren’t sure and may never know. The only way to learn would be to

activate it, and every time we did, that identity experienced their last moments of horror all over again. “So, all in all, a pretty good haul. True, it cost us a schism in the Peacemaker Guild, diplomatic tension between the Seven Stars League and the Ligurites, my own home planet being invaded—” I ended on a shrug. “Omelets and eggs, right?”

Rovan smiled. “I actually get that reference. Anyway, Van, thank you. Thank you on behalf of my people, on behalf of those who fell prey to those monsters, and for myself.” He gestured around at the cozy cabin. “It’s not much, but you and your crew are welcome to stay here as long as you like.”

“Well, Zenophir’s still recovering back on Anvil Dark, Miryam’s back on earth, Rolis is waiting for a new body, and Icky and Perry are back at the spaceport trying to make some repairs to the Fafnir we’ve been putting off. So it looks like it’s just Torina and me.”

Rovan gave a sly grin. “Well, that works out perfectly then, doesn’t it?”

He took his leave, his massive “dog” traipsing along beside him. Torina and I sat on a bench made of some rich purple wood on the porch. We chatted about everything and nothing, eventually and inevitably converging back on our crew. “I’ve been thinking about Zenophir. She was a parent once, and might be again. It’s all the more reason to make sure known space is somewhere children can thrive and grow without—”

She left it at that. I nodded. “We’ve already started. And who knows, if—and I’m just saying if—

well, others were to have a family—”

“Others?”

I shrugged. “Just taking a completely random example, say, the two of us.”

“Wow. Bold of you, Peacemaker. But do go on,” Torina replied, smiling as the sun began to set. “I’m just saying, that if, say, we did have a family, I know a grandmother or four who would be happy to babysit while we’re off fighting bad guys.”

Torina’s smile widened, then she leaned in and kissed me as the first stars winked into view in an alien sky. “Funny to think that these aren’t my stars,” I said, glancing up when we pulled apart. “Yes they are.”

“And how do you figure that, us being umpteen light-years from Iowa?”

She leaned back in. I smelled the mountain wind in her hair, and I forgot about the fear, and the pain, and all of the bad we’d faced—and would come to face. For the first time since I’d stuck on that damned Cusp device, I felt a sense of genuine peace, looking at her perfect bow of a mouth, her eyes gleaming with the fading sun. “You taught me something, Van Tudor of Iowa. Home isn’t a place. It’s a person. And it’s right here.”