Gone Nova: Backyard Starship #19

JN Chaney

1

ICKY DROPPED the meter-long bolt into the receiver, prompting the magnetic locks to snap into place with a jarring clack. “She good to go?” I asked her. “She is,” Icky replied, grunting as she heaved the twist comm unit out of its storage crate. With the rock bolts snugging its base now locked into the bedrock of Shhh, we could set and fasten the unit itself into place. Once it was secure, the unit would be fixed with respect to the planet, which meant it would also be fixed relative to every other point in the star system called HD

69830-A-1 and, ultimately, the rest of the universe. Thanks to the immutable laws governing the movements of celestial bodies, the exact location of the unit could be determined with a high degree of both accuracy and precision from essentially anywhere else in known space. Was it necessary?

No, not really. The twist-comm system was designed to account for some uncertainties in the locations of transmitter and receiver. But fixing it like this made the whole thing more efficient, which meant it consumed less antimatter to fuel its star-spanning comms. And that meant it would be cheaper to run. Even here, on the very fringes of known space, cost-benefit was a thing. I glanced around at the riverside region we’d taken to calling Nod, as in the companion of Winkin and Blinkin from the old Earth poem. It seemed fitting for a planet we’d dubbed Shhh, although Icky was agitating for another name. She couldn’t make the shhh sound without a small barrage of

spit, apparently thanks to how her mouth worked. After having been in the firing zone a couple of times, I was inclined to agree, and we were all now pondering other names. Icky had suggested The Quiet Place. Perry, though, had cocked his head at that. “That’s a movie about alien monsters attracted to noise, whereupon they eat the people making it—

although it was actually called A Quiet Place, but still. You sure you want to name this almost entirely unexplored planet after something like that?”

“You know, bird, not everything in the universe has to be a call back to some old Earth movie. There’s a shitload of whole other cultures out here,”

she shot back. “True. But when you hear that name, The Quiet Place, you’re going to think about that movie now, aren’t you?”

Icky opened her mouth but just glared for a moment, then growled. “I hate you, bird.”

Whatever we were going to call it, it was actually starting to feel a little

—cozy, for lack of a better word. With the assistance of a quartet of construction bots loaned to us by Panzygrus, we’d erected some prefabricated shelters, set up a small fusion reactor for power, and started making ourselves at home. Nod reminded me of rural Iowa, a pleasant, pastoral sweep of grasslands along a meandering, as-yet nameless river. Sure, the grass was more yellow than green, and it was oddly iridescent, like a thin slick of gasoline on a puddle. And the sky was a couple of shades darker blue than typical for Earth, more like early twilight—and the gravity was a little higher, and the air a little leaner on oxygen, necessitating rebreathers to avoid getting winded. We also now had a semi-permanent population. Adayluh Creel and her father, Filic, were here, investigating the planet’s biosphere, the resources it might provide, and its ability to support agriculture. To that end, she’d already planted several plots of her Permada super wheat, testing its suitability for different soil conditions. The stuff seemed to be doing fine everywhere, growing lush and golden. Mind you, that was its shtick, being able to grow nearly anywhere—that quality alone had made it invaluable in helping to feed worlds whose social structures had been ravaged by the Calamity virus. But it seemed to thrive here on Shhh, promising bountiful harvests down the road. We also had a small crew of Conoku here running the place. And, despite Shhh’s best defense being its obscurity, I wasn’t taking chances. Those Conoku were a detachment from the Iowa, which I’d stationed in geosynchronous orbit, watching over our nascent colony from on high. Cantullin Station was now well-armed enough that it could more than defend itself, and with my mother on-station near Earth with a small squadron of ships that included her own, the Retribution, the Solar System was well protected. The twist comm was the final essential piece, giving us a permanent, stable connection to Shhh from anywhere else in known space. We’d actually seized the unit from Earth, where it had become evidence in the case we were slowly building against the Equal Grasp. Once we’d gleaned all the information we could from it, though, I’d decided to claim it under Guild prize rules. Twist-comm units weren’t cheap, and this one was brand new, a cutting-edge system that was actually somewhat better than the one mounted on the Fafnir. Icky straightened and put all four hands on her hips. “Okay, the unit’s locked and loaded, Van. She’s hooked up to the generator and has a full load of antimatter. Who you gonna call?” she asked, then spun on Perry. “And before you say it, yeah, I know, another old Earth movie, Ghostbusters. Which, I might add, was awesome,” she said. Perry nodded. “Just remember, if someone asks you if you’re a god —”

Icky joined him in finishing the line. “—you say yes!”

I laughed and looked at Torina, who’d been chatting with Gabby. “Kids, eh—?” But I turned quickly back to Icky. “Oh, shit. Icky, damn it, why didn’t you get us to set up this damned unit?

You shouldn’t —”

“Van, I swear, if you’re about to say something about me doing things in my condition, I’m gonna inflict a few conditions of my own,” she snapped. “I’ve checked with B, and she says I’m fine to lift and tote and carry as usual for at least another couple of months. After that, yeah, I’ve gotta be more careful. But stop trying to treat me like I’m made out of spun sugar or something just ’cause I’ve got a round in the chamber.”

“Excuse me, that’s two rounds in the chamber.”

The new voice was Paxomar’s. He’d more or less joined the Fafnir’s crew when he learned the joyous news about Icky’s pregnancy, taking a

“field sabbatical” from his position at the Wu’tzur Central Institute for Engineering Academics—basically, their equivalent of some place like CalTech or M. I.T. We had no trouble accommodating him aboard the ship, and it was handy to have another skilled engineer on-hand—but. Still, he

fussed and fawned over Icky constantly, doubly so—haha—when B

determined she was going to have twins. In fact, I knew her rant about her

“condition” was directed at him as much as me, which was why she’d spouted it loud enough for him to hear across our little settlement. “And Van’s right,” he went on, striding through the shimmering grass to join us. “You shouldn’t be exerting yourself —”

“That’s not what you said—or did—last night,” Icky shot back, leering at him. Somehow, it was both charming and creepy. “Oh—uh, well—that was different—” Paxomar said, suddenly stammering a little. He’d managed to shed a lot of his nerdy shyness, but Icky was a master at pulling out the remnants. He looked up, his bulging eyes unfocused. “See, when two —”

“Blue space gorillas with a bunch of arms decide to breed like rabbits, they make sure that everyone on the ship knows about it?” I offered, helpful as ever. Funboy, who was passing by Adayluh, sighed. “Random chance dictates that this is the moment I would walk within earshot, when yet another discussion of carnal depravity is underway.”

“Depravity?

There was nothing depraved about it!

It was, uh, tender and caring and intentional,” Paxomar sputtered. Icky, though, shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know, there was that one thing,” she murmured, earning a sharp glare from Pax and chuckles from the rest of us. Funboy just sighed again. “Why is it that we Surtsi are the only species that treats the reproductive act as the unfortunate necessity that it is—the hygienically cruel joke that genetics has played upon us?”

Adayluh glanced at Gabby. “This is your boyfriend, right?”

She nodded eagerly. “Isn’t he wonderful?”

“He—yes. Yes, he is.”

“Anyway, if we can move on, can we actually fire this thing up for a comm test?” I said, leveling a scowl on everyone, including a few innocent bystanders. “Haadrake is waiting patiently on Cantullin Station for our test call, remember?”

Icky nodded. “No problem.” She powered up the unit, watched with a critical eye as it booted up, then switched it to active mode. She managed to get out, “There, it’s —”

And then disaster ensued. IT WAS, quite literally, one chance in some untold millions. If the comm unit had been oriented slightly differently, if I’d been standing even a meter in any other direction, if we’d mounted the thing in the bedrock even a couple of meters away, if the temperature of the air had been slightly warmer or cooler—if any of a dozen, a hundred, maybe a thousand different variables had been altered even a bit, what happened probably wouldn’t have happened. Instead, the twist comm erupted with a brief, high-pitched squeal like feedback in a speaker, which quickly raced up the frequency scale until it seemed to stop. An instant later, I heard a quick, sharp snap and felt a tiny shock against my hip. I glanced down and saw nothing but grass and earth, my own foot and leg, the Moonsword in its scabbard —

The Moonsword. With a sudden thrill of dread, I drew it, lifted it, and examined the blade. “Oh, shit!”

The blade had cracked cleanly through, split for roughly the length of my hand from the chip I’d managed to make in its edge months ago and had never been able to properly repair. Linulla had reinforced it but couldn’t actually fix it without more of the exotic metal the blade was based on. That had seemed a workable fix —

Until now. Icky hastily shut down the twist-comm unit, but the damage was done. She stared at the cracked blade. “Ouch.”

Torina peered at it and sighed. “Shit is right. What happened?”

I glared at the twist-comm unit. “That damned thing must have emitted some sort of —”

“Ultrasonic noise, yeah,” Perry said. “It did. Some sort of feedback harmonic in the transceiver assembly. It seems to have reflected off the rock beneath it just so, setting up a pattern of constructive interference that resonated in the blade in just the right—or wrong—way.”

“Statistically, that seems like a highly improbable event,” Funboy said. I brandished the blade toward him. “And yet, there it is—it’s—it’s cracked. This is…” I trailed off, stunned by the enormity of it all. A small thing, the crack, and yet it was right in front of me—a violation of everything I knew to be true about my sword. He blinked at me. “I did say statistically improbable, not impossible.”

I let out a frustrated growl. As I did, though, I thought about all the times I’d managed narrow escapes or other benefits from other improbable statistics. Like the times I’d been hit by fire in places that hurt but weren’t immediately life-threatening. Or the occasions when I’d been narrowly missed by shrapnel from exploding missiles in space battles. It seemed I’d been building up a luck debt, and the time had come to pay. I gripped the blade—avoiding the edge—and gave it an experimental push-pull with my fingers. It didn’t budge even a millimeter, feeling as solid as ever. But the crack was undeniable. I didn’t dare use the sword until it got properly repaired. If I did, and the blade shattered, I might lose pieces of it, like I’d lost the original chip. So I carefully set the tip back into the opening of the scabbard, slid the blade slowly home, and fastened the clasp that would prevent it from being drawn. Then I sighed. “Right. What’s done is done. Is that damned thing working, at least?” I asked, nodding towards the twist-comm unit. Icky and Pax were already poring over it. Pax unlatched and removed a component and showed it to Icky, who nodded. “It’s probably this booster module. If this unit’s nearly new and hasn’t been used much, then no one has probably even noticed it—they probably heard that feedback screech when it boots up, but then it seems to stabilize and go away when it’s actually just gone ultrasonic.”

He looked from the module to me with a sheepish smile. “It doesn’t affect the way the unit operates, so it wasn’t a problem, just a minor annoyance—until now. Sorry, Van.”

I was trying to be philosophical about it. And frankly, I was more angry at myself than anything else. I’d kept putting off dealing with the blade’s problem, first after it chipped, and then again after a small crack had formed. It should have been as clear as a fusion explosion that the thing wasn’t indestructible, but I’d let it slide. And here we were. “Yeah, well, I’ll say it again—what’s done is done,” I said, then looked back at Paxomar. “Will the unit operate normally, even with that wonky

component?”

“It should, yeah. But I don’t know what other long-term effects there might be of running it with that harmonic whining away inside it.”

“Well, if it was a toaster or a big-screen TV, that’d be one thing—those aren’t usually powered by antimatter.”

“Usually?

That implies there’s a toaster somewhere that is powered by antimatter, and now I’m intrigued,” Funboy said. I gave him a lip-curl. “Anyway, until we know the problem’s fixed, I don’t want to use this thing. Adayluh and the others here have the Iowa for twist comms, so let’s bring the unit with us, and we’ll try to fix it on the way to Starsmith.”

I turned to confirm a few things with Adayluh before we left, but I froze. “Shit.”

The others, who’d started to disperse, all stopped. Torina gave me a concerned look. “Van?

What’s wrong?”

“Pax, is it possible the same problem exists in the other twist-comm unit that the Equal Grasp brought to Earth?

This one’s mate?” I asked. “It… is, I suppose, sure. If it’s a design or manufacturing flaw and not just a one-off in this particular component, then—” He shrugged, then nodded. “The only way to tell would be to find the thing,” Icky put in. I sighed again, then felt a tired smile crease my face. “But of course.”

THE LAST TIME Linulla had examined the damage to the sword, he’d spent time poring over it with a critical eye—or eye-stalk, actually—carefully discerning the effect on stresses in the blade and how they’d been redistributed. This time, he took one look at it, then turned to me. “It’s busted,” he announced. I nodded. “I appreciate the detailed technical analysis, friend. Kinda figured that, and I’m not even an expert in this sort of thing. Is there anything you can do to —”

“Fix it so you can use it in the interim?

No, absolutely not. This damage is too severe. You wouldn’t fly the Fafnir if her structure was cracked open

all along one side of the ship. Same with this blade. If you use it for anything but cutting—oh, I don’t know —”

“Cheese?” Icky suggested. “Sure. Cheese. It could safely cut cheese.”

“Van, we could use a better cheese cutter in the galley,” Icky said, grinning at me. I gave her a sour look back. “Just trying to lighten the mood a little, sheesh,” she muttered. “I could completely reforge the blade, incorporating more conventional metals into it,” Linulla went on, now eyeing it carefully. “A customer once brought me a sword—one of Earthly origin, in fact—called a katana. It had been manufactured from an inferior grade of steel, so to make up for it, the smith had repeatedly folded the steel many times, creating a sort of laminate effect to strengthen it.”

“Someone brought you a katana?

Might that not have been a stolen cultural artifact?

You’re supposed to report that sort of thing.”

“This customer—he was human—claimed it was his. I believed him. Outlandish fellow, him and his burly companion. Haven’t seen them in ages now. Anyway, I could probably do the same, use a folding and reforging technique on this blade. It would take time, and the result would be—well, it wouldn’t be the sword you’re used to, Van. It would be an excellent sword, but it wouldn’t be the Moonsword.”

He looked at the blade a moment longer. “That was a billion-to-one thing, that particular frequency doing this to this blade,” he mused. “Everything had to be just so for it to happen. Extraordinary.”

He looked up from the blade, at me. “Otherwise, I need the original metal to restore it to what it was—maybe even make it a little better. I gather that you spoke to Witt, the librarian, about possible ingots of the stuff?”

“I did eventually, yeah. All he could point me at was an old document from the early days of the GKU that listed this sword, its two companions, and two ingots of the same metal as being held by the Knights ‘in trust,’

whatever that means.”

“It normally means they’re being held on behalf of another party.”

“I—yeah, I know that. But there was no indication who, or any other details. He thinks he saw one of the ingots some years ago, on Anvil Dark, but he has no idea what happened to it and we have absolutely no leads. I

asked Bester to look into it, but he came up empty, too. If there ever was an ingot of the stuff on Anvil Dark, it’s not there now.”

“Well, if you can find one, or find one of the companion blades and be willing to sacrifice it for the cause, I can do a full restoration. The best I can do in the meantime is completely enclose the cracked section of the blade in a sleeve of alloy to stabilize it and prevent the damage from getting any worse. But that’s going to make the sword basically unusable,” Linulla said. I sighed. “Well, it’s unusable now, right?

So unusable but protected is a better alternative, I guess.”

Linulla’s mouth burbled as he thought it over. “About a day for me to make this temporary repair, friend.” I listened, then stood, reluctant to leave because I knew what awaited me on the Fafnir—paperwork. And a lot of it. “You seem troubled?” Linulla asked. “I am—curious, let’s say—about how I’ll track down a small ingot of metal, lost across the years. Where do I even start, when our only lead is that one might have been on Anvil Dark a decade ago?

It’s—it’s —”

I was quickly concluding that finding one of the other swords might actually be easier. They were far more distinctive, so they were far more likely to be recognized. That at least stood to make leads easier to come by. Of course, even if we found one, unless it was laying discarded in a drawer somewhere, we’d also presumably find its owner. And how would that conversation go?

Hey, bud, can I have your legendary sword so I can cannibalize it for parts to fix my own?

And that didn’t even start getting into the fact of destroying one exceptional item, a veritable artifact in its own right, just to fix another. Linulla’s eyes swiveled, and he uttered his equivalent of a laugh. “This will allow me to create a legend, Van. I will no longer be just the Starsmith. My magnum opus, to borrow your language. I will be, ah —”

“The Lady in the Lake will become the Crustacean in the—whattaya got, boss?

Give me your best material,” Perry asked. “The Crustacean in the—um—the Cooperage?” I offered. “Cooperage?

Really?

Unless Linulla makes whiskey barrels on the side, that doesn’t work.”

“Hey, I do what I can with the material I’m given. I do have six credits of college English, you know.” I managed to sound dignified and offended, a true artist at work. “Well, aren’t you just a William Shakespeare in the making?

Make a note—add Ship’s Bard to your title. Spare no expense. Use a fancy font.”

“No Papyrus. And no dadgum Comic Sans. If you use Comic Sans, then I’m retiring and you’re going to a can crusher.”

“Hmph. You just don’t understand whimsy,” Perry protested but then winked. Linulla was amused, and patient in the way of giant space battlecrabs who channel Hephaestus. Since we were about to embark on a sort of scavenger hunt, Linulla also asked me to be on the lookout for a variety of odd items—particular scrap or ingots of certain metals, like Vanadium and Yttrium. As he asked the questions, he tapped a claw, creating a list of our collective needs. “More stuff to fix my sword?” I asked. “Name it, friend. I’ll do my best. And with whatever haste you deem necessary.”

“I appreciate the dedication to our task, but no. I need Vanadium and Yttrium for a couple of projects I have in mind, and I just don’t have them here in usable quantities. My wife has a weakness for shiny things and—

well, I’m looking to create said shiny things to—you know—help facilitate the mood, as it were.”

I grinned. “Linulla, you old romantic, you. Remember, three months’

salary is the rule.”

“What?”

I laughed. “It’s a thing from Earth. You should spend three months’

salary on an engagement ring for your wife-to-be—says the company that produces the diamonds that would be set on said ring, in some old marketing campaign.”

“Diamonds?

Why?

Diamonds aren’t particularly valuable. Crystalline carbon in a tetrahedral arrangement—I can make that myself, as much as I want.” He clacked a claw with a report like a gunshot. “I might even be able to manage it with my own equipment, as it were.”

I gave him a conspiratorial wink. “Shhh. Don’t spill that little fact. We’re all supposed to keep pretending diamonds are super rare.”

We said our goodbyes and left, and for once, Perry managed to be diplomatic before sharing his… opinion. His eyes were glowing as he spoke. “We’re gonna be neck deep in crablets if things get romantic around Linulla and his lady again. I mean,

did you hear how he waxed on about his wife’s pedipalps?” he said, as we were entering the Fafnir’s airlock. Funboy, who was right behind us, sighed. “Oh dear. Yes, it was unavoidable. You may have noted that I excused myself from—well, all of it, at that point. It’s not just the, ah, breeding. And pedipalps. And the sheer number of their litters. It’s the fact that everything is so… damp. And glistening.”

“Moist, you mean?” I asked. “Accurate,” Funboy admitted, then gave a delicate shudder. We settled into the Fafnir to wait for Linulla to put the fix on the sword. Icky and Pax were tinkering with the twist-comm unit, while I was digging into the accumulated paperwork, with Perry and Torina on hand to assist. No sooner had I virtually turned over the first thing on top of the pile, though, than Netty-P interrupted. “Van, you’ve got an incoming message on the Masters’ priority channel, encrypted using your personal key. It’s your mother.”

I sat back from my desk terminal, glanced at the others, then said, “Huh. Okay, put her through, please. We don’t make mom wait.”

2

“SO THE FERALS apparently want to negotiate,” I said once I’d gathered everyone in the crew lounge. I went on to recount the essence of my mother’s message—that a faction within the Ferals had requested a meeting under a diplomatic flag of truce. Icky reacted first, with an unsurprising and skeptical scowl. “So are they supposedly representing all the Ferals?

I mean, can anyone even do that?

Or is this just some splinter group?

And is it the real deal, or just a setup?’

“Very good questions, all of which I posed in one form or another to my mother. She isn’t sure. She’s only familiar with her own faction, and a couple she’s worked with regularly. Other parts of the Ferals are about as familiar to her as most of the Peacemakers in the Guild are to us. We know they exist, we see them around Anvil Dark and see their ships coming and going, but we don’t otherwise know much about them.”

“Then I guess there’s only one way to find out if this is a legitimate offer or not,” Rab said. “And that way makes me damned nervous.”

“I’ll second that,” Torina said. “The Ferals haven’t given us much reason to trust them, now, have they?

For that matter, I think we’ve only just started really trusting your mother, and look what we—and she—had to go through to get this far.”

“Yeah, well, it’s kind of misleading, I think, to talk about the Ferals as though they’re some organized group. That’s the problem with putting names to what are really more… movements, or ideals, or even just activities, than organizations, but treating them as though they are

organizations. It’s like referring to criminals, as though they’re all part of a club with membership cards and all follow the same rules.”

“So we’d be negotiating with part of the Ferals.”

“At best, yeah. Which is basically what we did with my mother. But I’m inclined to go along with this. For one, it might be genuine and we might—

well, if not actually make friends with these people, at least have them not be enemies. And even if it’s not, it might be a good opportunity to gain some information, some insight into them.”

“Where do they wish these negotiations to occur?” Funboy asked. “The Solar System, though not at Earth itself.”

“Excellent. I am all for this, then.”

“There’s something on Earth you want, isn’t there?” Perry asked him. “I have a single serving left of jalapeño Monterey Jack, and wish to procure some more, yes.” He turned to me. “I’m assuming we shall have time to do some shopping?

And I must also update my Instagram page. My adoring fans are not to be kept waiting, but it is inconvenient to do updates via twist comm.”

I smiled and shook my head. “Right now, earthly humanity struggles to produce even a few micrograms of antimatter using the most cutting-edge physics and engineering it can manage. And you’re using the stuff to post pictures to Instagram—wait. Is that why you had us all step away from the galley table yesterday?

And why Waldo was there?

Were you taking pictures of your food to post to your fans?

And are you using Waldo as your personal photographer?”

As I’d been talking, Funboy had been looking away from me, toward —

I rolled my eyes and grimaced. “Okay, I see Waldo lurking back there, just outside the evidence locker. Funboy, you’d better not be taking images of the rest of us —”

“I would never do such a thing.” He sniffed. “I am careful to edit out anyone’s face while producing the finished product. I know how to manage my brand. I’m not a newbie.”

Perry turned and looked at Icky, then stared pointedly at her bare legs. “Just the face, huh?

You sure that’s enough?”

“I think we’re getting off track here, hmm?” Torina asked, waving at—

everything. I sighed and put my hands on my hips. “We are. As we usually do. Okay, so we’re going to this meeting. But I want some insurance, so I don’t

want to go into it alone.” I frowned in thought. “I really don’t want to pull the Iowa away from Shhh—or The Quiet Place, or whatever we’re going to call it. Maybe Groshenko can —”

“Uh, Van?

Or should I say, Master Tudor?

You do have a badge, and the authority to use it. And this would certainly count as a matter of Guild interest,” Perry said. I looked at him, then nodded. “Oh yeah. Good point. Okay, well, Netty-P, please send a message to Max declaring a Rank One order of battle. I’d like at least four Peacemakers, all Myrmidons or higher, to rendezvous in Lunar orbit no later than two days from now.”

“Why not just call up Lunzy, Lucky, Jamberac, Dugrop’che—you know, the usual crowd?” Icky asked. Gabby answered for me. “Because Perry’s making a good point, whether he intends it or not. If he’s going to be a Master, then he needs to be a Master. He can’t keep doing things solely involving the usual crowd, as you put it. It’s going to make him look insular and cliquish, as though he doesn’t trust any other Peacemakers, or is even particularly interested in them.”

“The lady is smart,” I said, pointing at her. “So I need not just trigger fingers and the triggers to go with them, but I also need people who are smart, can listen, and can take orders,” I said, turning back to Netty-P. “That’s the sort of thing Max specializes in,” she replied. “It’s like herding cats, and Max is good at it.”

“Yeah, well, herding cats might be easier than herding Ferals,” Torina said. “And I have a feeling we’re about to see why, in a very up-close-and-personal way.”

WE ACTUALLY ENDED up with Lunzy and Jamberac as part of our little task force, as well as two Peacemakers, both Myrmidons, that I knew by reputation only. Horace Wells was a gruff old human male who’d been born on Earth and had been a career soldier in the British Army in the Second World War. He’d been a Company Sergeant Major, the Commonwealth equivalent of an American Company First Sergeant, in the Irish Guards, and had been gravely wounded in the fighting around the French city of Caen

following the Normandy landings. In a way strikingly reminiscent of Gramps, he’d been found and nursed back to health by a human Peacemaker who’d been following some lead on a case in the area. She and Wells had fallen in love, and he’d followed her off Earth and to where he was now—a senior Peacemaker well-respected for his tough, no-nonsense, and absolutely impartial approach to the job. The other Myrmidon was a willowy alien whose natural tongue consisted of what amounted to musical notes, making it a sort of living woodwind. Its name was unpronounceable, unless you were good at whistling really specific notes of very particular durations, so it went by the name Tune. Tune was actually from a race that made up part of Unity but had migrated over time into Guild territory and worked a solid and distinguished career there spanning nearly thirty years. In fact, Tune would probably have been a Master by now if not for some cultural prohibition against having authority over others. It was apparently okay for Tune to be a follower but never a leader. It made me wonder how their society even worked if everyone was okay taking orders but not giving them. I was happy, though, with the small task force that resulted. These were all good Peacemakers, all competent and trustworthy. Or mostly happy, anyway, because B was missing. Although I hadn’t explicitly invited her, I made sure she knew what was going on. It was her style, as it were, to show up when important things were happening, especially if they involved the GKU or the Feral bits of it. Even so, she may have been busy—I mean, she did have a life, and she was involved in myriad other things, most of them related to her being a skilled physician. So my… discontent, I guess, around her absence was more that she hadn’t sent a reply of any sort, even one saying she wouldn’t be showing up. I’d heard nothing at all, and that was wholly unlike her. It made me uneasy. “I’d really like to know where B is. Netty-P, can you track her down?

The second you’ve tagged her, let me know.”

Torina gave me a frown. “You sound worried.”

“I’m not worried. I’m… concerned. Big difference.”

“Well, that badge has improved your ability to split hairs—and your vocabulary.”

I smiled back at her. “That’s unpossible.”

While we waited for the Ferals to put in an appearance, we had another Peacemaker arrive, another Myrmidon named Resbid. She was a dolorous

Gajur who’d become Lunzy’s protégé after I moved on from the position. “Apologies for the lateness,” she replied. “I had a run-in with a chems smuggler near Dregs. Been trying to run down the bastard for weeks now.”

“Did you get him?” I asked her. “Depends how you define get. Did I get him taken into custody and put in my holding cell?

No. Did I get him the unique opportunity to experience the cosmos as a puff of ionized gas?

That would be a yes.”

“Ah. Well, that’s unfortunate,” I said. “For him. Not for me.”

I smiled and nodded at her comm image, but something about her made a little alarm bell jangle. Her name hadn’t appeared on the list of the so-called True Direction, the faction of Peacemakers and Ferals who apparently wanted my tenure as Master to meet a swift end—and who were themselves possibly a front for the Equal Grasp, the mysterious United Life Sciences, or both. She might have nothing to do with any of that and just be a rare but dangerous sort of Peacemaker—the type that preferred killing suspects rather than following due process in arresting them and handing them over for judgment and justice. There’d been a few of those, essentially serial killers with a badge, and they were their own unique sort of problem. I shrugged it away, though. I doubted Lunzy would let that kind of thing pass. A sound like the flute solo from Jethro Tull’s Thick As A Brick wafted through the comm, overlain by the translator’s intoned words. “It’s always unfortunate when we can’t take perpetrators into custody intact. My condolences,” Tune said. “Unfortunate. Yes, it is,” Resbid said. Further conversation was cut off by the twist arrival of two ships, straight above us relative to the Solar ecliptic. Both were about class 10 and heavily modified. Netty-P could identify the hull design of one of them, but the other was at least three hulls fastened together and festooned with armor plates and weapons. Both were heavily scarred by micrometeorite abrasion, and one gave off a signal hinting at a drive harmonic so intense it must be humming the deck plates under the crew’s feet. I signed off with Resbid and switched the comm channel to an incoming message. It was a Hu’warde, the same statuesque and generally snooty race as my grandmother Valint. I instinctively braced myself for some sort of arrogant and perhaps even slightly contemptuous stab at a greeting. Instead,

though, I got my expectations completely subverted. When she spoke, she came across as tentative—nervous, even. “Master Tudor?

It’s good of you to meet with us. We—” She glanced offscreen. “We appreciate it very much. I’m Per-Olat.”

I narrowed my eyes. First B not showing up, and now this furtive Hu’warde. My hackles were starting to reach for the sky. “Per-Olat, nice to meet you.” I cocked my head at her, then decided to just push straight into the breach. “Is there anything wrong?”

“Wrong?

Why do you ask?” she shot back, just a little too quickly. “I don’t know, you seem… a little out of sorts. And I’m sure it won’t surprise you to learn that being asked to meet with people, some of whom recently made a determined effort to kill me, and finding those people seeming out of sorts kind of makes me think of setups, ambushes, things like that.”

She stared back at me around an aquiline nose, then quickly shook her head. “Oh, no. It’s nothing like that. It’s —”

Someone off the image spoke. The voice was too low and quiet for me to make out words. Per-Olat turned slightly, listening, then nodded. “I’m sorry, but I’ve been reminded that what we would like to talk about—it’s not suited for a discussion over the comm. We would like to meet with you personally, aboard your ship. We will keep our active scanners dark and our weapons powered down, but feel free to keep yours live and trained on us. Hopefully, that will show some good faith.”

I glanced at the tactical overlay. It displayed all the ships and other things I expected to see, but nothing else. I looked back at her and nodded. “Alright. Come join us at our location.”

“We’ll be there in”—she again glanced offscreen—“make it five standard hours or so.”

“We’ll be waiting.”

I ASKED Lunzy to join us aboard the Fafnir, where we awaited the arrival of the Ferals. The other Peacemakers who’d joined our little group had fanned out, watching the approaching ships warily, while watching everything else

even more warily. Everyone clearly suspected there was much more going on here than it seemed. For the same reason, I’d asked my mother to withdraw to a safe distance from Earth and stay apart from this meeting. I knew that she had complicated and often problematic relationships with other Ferals, so that was a variable I wanted to keep out of this particular equation. It had the added benefit of giving us another set of eyes—and aboard a powerful warship, at that—to watch out for trouble. But the two cobbled-together ships approached, slowed, and entered Lunar orbit, deftly matching velocity with the Fafnir. I wasn’t comfortable docking, though, and creating a direct passage between a ship I still considered suspicious and my own. I was trying to figure out a diplomatic way to say that when Per-Olat spoke up and preempted me. “Master Tudor, we’d prefer to cross to your ship rather than dock. It’s a

—a sort of policy we have —”

“Not a problem. I’ll send my workboat over for you,” I replied, breathing a little easier. I had Rab and Icky take the Frankie across, both in b-suits and bearing sidearms—and Icky with her hammer propped against her seat—just to set the tone. This was going to be an amicable meeting, but whether it would be a friendly one remained to be seen. They returned with not one Hu’warde, but two. The second was yet another woman, named Ockstunn. As they were ushered into our crew lounge and they settled in, Lunzy leaned toward me. “You know, I have yet to see a male Hu’warde—like, ever. I wonder if they even exist.”

“Oh, they exist,” Per-Olat said with a thin smile. “However, our culture has evolved such that Hu’warde males generally engage in more inward-looking and intellectual pursuits.”

“They are our administrators, our doctors, our researchers and teachers,” Ockstunn added, then offered a smile of her own. “They also have extremely good hearing, like we female Hu’warde.”

Lunzy gave a sheepish smile and a shrug. “My apologies. No offense intended —”

“And none taken. It’s a trivial matter, really, compared to what has brought us here today,” Per-Olat said, waving a dismissive hand. We sat down, the two of them on the couch, Lunzy and me in armchairs. Torina and Perry joined us, while the rest of the crew busied themselves

with various things—though within earshot. “So, what does bring you here today?” I asked. The two Hu’warde exchanged a look. I got the distinct impression this was their point of no return, and they knew it. If they went past this moment, saying whatever they were going to say, there was no going back. There was enough hesitation in the moment to make me realize that whatever it was, it was something big. Perry caught it and summed it up nicely in my ear bug. Something has them running scared, boss, and it ain’t us. They seemed to finally make a decision. Ockstunn nodded and Per-Olat turned to me. “First, Master Tudor —”

“Please, call me Van. Master Tudor makes me sound like an extra from Downton Abbey.” I saw the blank look that provoked and smiled. “Sorry. Van is fine.”

“Alright, Van. First, a little background. Ockstunn and I are cousins, both scions of wealthy families. We—not to put too fine a point on it, enjoyed a rather dissolute youth. We were attracted to the GKU through other family connections, more out of a sense of adventure than any idea of duty.”

Ockstunn nodded. “To put it bluntly, we quickly found the discipline of the GKU proper to be—we chafed under it. We eventually gravitated to the so-called Ferals, a group that seemed less about the fastidious traditions and right hierarchy and more about that adventure and excitement we were seeking."

“I’m sorry, I’m not very good at judging the age of Hu’warde, so I’m not sure if this dissolute youth you mentioned was recent, or more in the past,” I said, offering a thinly apologetic smile. “Neither recent nor distant history,” Per-Olat replied, smiling in turn. “Anyway, our desire for thrilling escapades eventually led us into some rather less-than-honorable pursuits —”

“Like piracy, maybe?” Lunzy asked. “Never in known space,” Ockstunn quickly added. “We were careful to confine our, ah, activities to The Deeps, mainly.”

I held up a hand. “I get the distinct sense you didn’t come here to turn yourselves in for past transgressions, so let’s just take all that as stipulated and move on to why you did come here today.”

“You’re quite right. We’re here today because things have—they’ve changed,” Per-Olat said. “They’ve changed a great deal, and quickly, and not at all for the better. Our past escapades were conducted with a particular view to protecting lives. We got very good at forcing ships to surrender and hand their cargos over to us, whereupon we’d send them on their way.”

“We didn’t want to hurt anyone,” Ockstunn added. Lunzy frowned. “No, you just wanted to rob them of their livelihoods, probably damaging their ships in the process so they needed to be repaired

—which would have cost them money.”

“There’s a reason it’s illegal,” Torina said, her tone flat and humorless. “You may not have hurt these people physically, but you certainly did financially, and quite possibly psychologically. I mean, being pirated is a pretty traumatic experience now, isn’t it?

Something you might have picked up from the helpless terror on your victim’s faces?”

Some of that haughty Hu’warde fire flared to life as they both stiffened. “We did not come here to be lectured—” Per-Olat started, but I cut in. “Lectured on breaking the law?

No, I’m sure you didn’t. Now, we will be ensuring there aren’t any outstanding writs with your names on them here in known space, but in the meantime, you did come here for something. And, for the third time, I’m asking you to share just what that something is.”

They both bristled a little longer, then subsided. Per-Olat sighed and went on. “Starting about two standard months ago, our leadership adopted a new approach to —”

“Piracy,” Lunzy said, just as tonelessly as Torina had. “Yes. Piracy. Fine. About that time, preserving lives ceased to be a priority. People were being hurt and killed, often for no discernible reason. My cousin and I did not engage in any of that, but we were present when it happened and —”

Ockstunn leaned forward. “And we soon reached a point where we realized we couldn’t be a party to it anymore. You have a reputation for being fair and just, so we decided it was time to leave and come find you.”

“What we were doing before may have been illegal, unethical, immoral

—yes, we agree, it was all those things. But what has been happening recently is—it’s evil,” Per-Olat said. “So what changed?” I asked. “What happened two months ago that flipped the switch from mere assholes to vile, murderous assholes?”

“We have an identity. Nothing more. The only time someone… pushed back against this person, they —”

“Vanished?”

“Oh no,” Ockstunn said, shaking her head. “Just the opposite. They were very visible. All you had to do was look at the comms spar on the prow of their ship. They’d been made into a kind of —”

I nodded. “I think we get it. And this identity?

Can I assume that you have a name?”

Ockstunn slumped back in a most un-Hu’warde-like way. “If we tell you, it’s over. So we didn’t tell you. And we were never here.” She sat up again and bored her gaze into mine. “Is that clear?”

“You have my word as a Master of the Guild.”

Per-Olat sniffed. “With all due respect, that’s worth very little to us. We don’t have much regard for the GKU or your Guild as institutions, so being a titled member of one of them is… less than impressive.”

“Alright. You have my word as the captain of this ship and as an Iowan.”

“That’s better. And this Iowa—we’ve heard of it, in connection with you. We’re told you seem to consider it the center of the known universe.”

I laughed. “Really. Well—sure, what the hell, I like the idea of Iowa being the center—hell, let’s call it the cultural center of the universe.”

“And corn,” Perry said. “And noodles!” Icky called from somewhere aft. Torina frowned at me. “Noodles?”

I shrugged. “Hey, if I’m going to give Iowa credit for stuff, I might as well make it the best stuff, right?” I turned back to the Hu’warde. “Now, how about that name?”

“Polite Citizen.”

I stared for a moment. “Polite Citizen. Would this person happen to be a Surtsi?”

Funboy, who’d been in the galley, appeared in the entrance to the crew lounge. “Please do not tell me that one of my brethren is involved in such heinous activities. It will necessitate a—” His next word didn’t translate, surprisingly. It left us all staring now at him. “The term means a—I believe the closest translation would be vendetta, but one motivated by an insult against the Surtsi race. Behavior like that would constitute such. I would be culturally obligated to remorselessly hunt down this miscreant and mete out justice to them.”

“What sort of justice?” Torina asked. “Normally, it would be death by incineration. That has the benefit of minimizing the possibility of contracting disease pathogens.”

“You—hunt down wayward Surtsi and burn them to death?”

“Oh, not just Surtsi. The”—he used the untranslated word again—“may be applied to any individual who perpetrates some egregious outrage to the Surtsi people.”

Lunzy gave a yikes look. “Note to self: don’t insult the Surtsi.”

“Indeed, you would be wise not to,” Funboy gravely agreed. “It’s akin to giving me a cold prior to my wedding. It’s unforgivable.”

“As interesting as this foray into Surtsi cultural vengeance is, no—

Polite Citizen is not a Surtsi. That name is what they’d chosen as their comm handle—and they’re anything but. Their true name is Kiki Treasure.”

I sat back, blinking. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, wow, with that name, you have one obvious career path and it ain’t the priesthood,” Perry said. Icky, who ambled into the lounge and now—well, lounged nearby, put up her hand. “What career path would that be?”

I looked up at her. “Big girl, sometimes people need to relieve stress and appreciate the, um, artistry of things like sensual dancing —”

Torina smirked. “What people would those be, Master Tudor?

And think carefully before you answer.”

“I have deciphered his euphemism,” Funboy said. “He refers to people known as strippers, who gyrate and shed their clothing for money in full view of glandular men. The opposite is true as well, with men also choosing this career path, often from a location referred to as Down Under.” He stopped and frowned. “Which may also be a euphemism, given the context —”

“Oh, for—I know what strippers are,” Icky snapped. “I thought you might be talking about whores. Sheesh. You’re not nearly as spicy as you think.”

“Anyway, these individuals are often fans of what are referred to as spray tans, and they support the tight jeans industry, but not shirts—”

Funboy went on, his tone that of a professor at lecture. I sighed and turned to the two bemused Hu’warde. “You’ll have to excuse us. Odd conversational tangents like this aren’t uncommon.”

Per-Olat shrugged. “We’ve been part of a ship’s crew for a long time. This isn’t really that unusual at all.”

“Alright, so we’ve got Polite Citizen, aka Kiki Treasure, a psychopath who’s recently taken over your particular sect of the Ferals—” I stopped, tilting my head. “What’s the relationship between this Kiki Treasure and the Tsarina?

They’re not the same person, are they?

Just another pseudonym?”

Ockstunn shook her head. “No. They’re two different people. If Kiki Treasure is the violent psychopath given to spectacular displays of violence and bloodshed, the Tsarina is the stone-cold killer who loses interest in a victim before they’ve finished bleeding out.”

“And the two of them are on a collision course. There isn’t room for both of them in what constitutes the Ferals, which means a reckoning between them is inevitable,” Per-Olat said. “Oh, wonderful. A civil war inside the Ferals, which could easily spill out all over the place, into the GKU, into the Guild, even beyond,” Lunzy muttered. “That’s just what we need right now.”

3

IT BECAME clear that Per-Olat and Ockstunn were terrified of Kiki Treasure, and other Ferals were in the same boat. It likewise became clear that if we could do something about the incongruously named Kiki the Psychopath, we stood to gain the support of a large faction within the Ferals—those that weren’t interested in having to deal with her or with the Tsarina. After the two Hu’warde had returned to their ship, I gathered the crew and got my mother on the comm. “Mom, what do you know about this Polite Citizen, aka Kiki Treasure?”

“Even less than I know about the Tsarina, unfortunately. This—Treasure

—came to the GKU —”

“And by that, you mean the Ferals part of the GKU,” I put in. She smiled. “Yes. I’m sorry, I don’t tend to think in terms of Ferals, since it’s not something we call ourselves. But yes, she became part of the Ferals through some path I’m not familiar with. I mean, notwithstanding that less-than-flattering term, we’ve been members of the Galactic Knights Uniformed, having passed through the Trials of Initiation and subjected ourselves to the discipline of the hierarchy. But, as time went on and more and more of us grew… disenchanted with the direction the GKU was going, the way it was being marginalized and treated like some sort of curious historical artifact, more and more of us broke away.”

She sighed. “It’s not that we’ve left the GKU. We still believe ourselves to be part of it—or part of what it used to be. But as time has gone, life on the outside—in the cold, as you put it—has forced many of us to adapt to

survive. I chose to prey on the corporate interests of BeneStar, mainly in The Deeps, because they were a huge, predatory institution that deserved it. Others became more, uh, liberal in their pursuits, turning to outright piracy, smuggling, and similarly distasteful things. And that began attracting people like this Kiki, particularly when some of my colleagues found themselves short of crew and forced to hire what auxiliaries they could. I suspect that this individual is one of those.”

“And she’s just powered her way up the food chain since,” I said. “That’s right. But the end result of that is I really have no idea who she is or anything else about her.”

I turned to Perry. “Have you found anything the Guild might have on her?

Like, are we in luck, and she has some outstanding writs or bounties we can collect?”

“That’s actually a complicated question, and I’m still working on an answer to it. If you want to help expedite things, we should head to Dregs.”

Funboy sighed. “I had hoped that we would spend some time on Earth, particular in the vicinity of Interstates 74 and 80 in a metropolis called Davenport.”

I turned a puzzled frown on him. “Davenport, Iowa?

I… don’t know that I’d call it a metropolis, but—” I shook my head. “Why the hell would you want to go to Davenport?”

“There is an establishment there that our recent conversation regarding exotic dancers evoked within me a desire to visit.”

“So, a strip club. In Davenport. How the hell did you ever zero in on that?’

“My awareness is the result of an information bulletin placed under the articulated device that clears rainwater from the windscreen of a vehicle —”

“The windshield wiper.”

“That would be it, yes.”

“You found a flyer for a strip club in Davenport, under somebody’s windshield wiper. When?”

“When we visited the large retail establishment, the Walmart, in Cedar Rapids. It intrigued me, so I retained it. And given our recent diversion into the subject area, it seemed fortuitous —”

“I saw you grab that. You actually saved it?” Torina asked. “It seemed like an important cultural document.”

“Funboy, we are not heading to Earth just so you can visit a strip club in Davenport, Iowa,” I said. “Well, that is both unfortunate and disappointing. I shall endeavor to inform the staff at Heaven Scent to let them know we will not be attending their establishment.”

Paxomar gave Funboy a crooked smile. “Don’t get rid of that document. There might be some opportunity down the road —”

Icky turned to him, slowly. “Excuse me, but are you suggesting that you want to watch other females take their clothes off?

Because I do that, like, all the time. It’s kind of my thing.”

Paxomar shrank back a little. “I—ah—of course, dear, it was just—out of curiosity —”

“Human females, at that,” Torina said, then gave Paxomar a suspicious frown. “How lewd.”

I turned to Funboy. “See?

Your hobbies are detrimental to our efficacy as a force of justice. Now then—no, don’t interrupt, you libidinous maniac.”

“What the hell, boss?

Were you crossing the street and got hit by a thesaurus?” Perry asked. “Nope. It’s the badge. Like I said, it’s expanded my vocabulary,” I said, standing. “Anyway, we’re heading not to Davenport, Iowa, to— Heaven Scent?

Really?” I shook my head. “We are off to Dregs.”

Funboy shrugged. “Either way, we will need hand sanitizer, and lots of it.”

DREGS WAS, well, Dregs. The arid, dusty, shithole warren of twisting streets and alleys, packed with ramshackle buildings, huts, shacks, and tents, all of it crisscrossed by ditches sluggish with gooey and best-not-closely-examined muck—it was never quite the same from visit to visit, but also never seemed to change at all. It was a hell of a place to hide if you didn’t want to be found. And this Kiki Treasure, who or even what she was, didn’t want to be found. That left us with few leads, other than Perry’s, which had brought us here. “Sorry, Van, I’ve tried everything I can think of,” he said as we disembarked onto the blast-scarred barrens of the Dregs spaceport, into sunlight like a bank of focused arc lamps. He spoke on the comm. “All I can determine is that the bounty on Kiki Treasure is ‘substantial,’ whatever the hell that means, and that it’s in some weird sort of escrow, which means I can’t even tell you how substantial. The only other note appended to the file says that the collection point for it is Dregs. And that’s all I got, sorry.”

He did sound sorry. Perry was one of the best when it came to teasing out information about bad guys, but this had clearly frustrated even him. I peered at the noisome pile of city crowding up to the spaceport’s boundary fence. “How about if I invoke my Master’s status?

That oughta shake something loose.”

“Already been down that road. I accessed everything restricted to Masters’ eyes only, I talked to Max, I talked to Alic and Volffin—no joy. As in, they knew nothing. There seems to be some sort of inviolate seal on this bounty and all the information associated with it.”

“Who the hell could apply something like that?

And make it stick, even if a Master’s the one doing the asking?” I said as we headed toward the terminal along the blast-protected walkway that hugged the boundary fence. “I can only think of a few parties—one of the Guild’s Charter signatories, the likes of the Eridani Federation or the Ceti Alliance, could probably pull it off. The only other one is —”

“The Quiet Room.”

“Bingo.”

“Alrighty, then. Netty-P, can you —”

“Put a call in to Dayna Jasskin. On it,” she answered. We arrived at the terminal and then headed into the city. I wore my trusty duster coat over my b-suit and carried The Drop—but, sadly, not the Moonsword, given its state. I had to content myself with an Innsu knife, a beautifully balanced weapon with an edge about one molecule thick. It was no Moonsword, but it was still a wicked little implement, a gift from Master Cataric. Torina, Funboy, and Icky were all decked out in nondescript civilian duds as well. The good people of Dregs were deeply wary of Peacemakers to begin with, and as for a Master —

I wasn’t sure if a Master had ever been to Dregs, at least in an official capacity. Gerhardt always said that no matter how shitty and awful

something seemed on Dregs, all you had to do was turn around and you’d find something even worse —

I had a bit of a pang at the memory. The way I missed Gerhardt wasn’t too different from the way I missed Gramps. We ambled into the rat maze of the city, heading nowhere in particular but generally in the direction of Victor, the so-called Body Thief. He was one of the few permanent contacts we had on Dregs. Mind you, permanent contacts here were rare to begin with. Most people who lived here wanted nothing to do with the law. The few who did tended not to stick around—or sometimes even survive—for long. Anyway, there was Victor—and there was the street medic we’d once befriended after Icky had been injured in a car-bomb attack, a Yonnox named Balik. It was probably unlikely that either of them knew anything about Kiki Treasure, but it didn’t hurt to —

The comm hummed with Netty-P’s voice. “Van, I got a reply from The Quiet Room. It wasn’t from Dayna. It was an AI with a canned reply—

basically, they’ll get back to us as soon as they have clearance.”

I stopped and scowled at the twisting streetscape ahead of us. “Clearance?

From who?

No, wait—they didn’t say.”

“They did not.”

I glanced at the others. “I don’t like that. Don’t like it at all.”

“So what do you want to do?” Torina asked. I glanced around, seeking—I wasn’t sure what. Some sort of inspiration, maybe. I saw nondescript buildings, nondescript people, a shop selling miscellaneous and probably stolen electronics junk, a bar —

A bar. “I want to have a drink,” I said, nodding at the establishment in question, a narrow, Quonset hut-like structure jammed in between two taller buildings. A glowing holo sign hovering over the entrance simply said, DRINK. “Sounds good to me,” Icky said. “I could use a bucket of beer.”

“Just don’t drink it out of an actual bucket this time, okay?”

“What?

Everyone thought that was funny!”

“It was a mop bucket, Icky. You literally dumped out dirty mop water and filled it with beer. There were—things—floating in it. Things.”

“I was not present for this, was I?” Funboy said. “If I were, I’m sure I would have remembered that.”

Torina sniffed. “And never, to this day, would have let anyone forget it.”

THE BAR WAS atypical for Dregs—reasonably clean and relatively quiet. Called The Respite, it seemed the owner, a smooth-talking Fren-Okun named Dokean, had sensed a demand for a place where people could go and just relax with a drink. And he’d somehow succeeded. The Respite wasn’t jammed to the rafters with shady characters all one wrong look from throwing a punch—or swinging a blade or even opening up with slug fire. Dokean was a bright, quick-witted male Fren, which wasn’t too unusual but fed into a pattern I was sensing. The less, uh, on-the-ball Fren males tended to form small prides that clustered around the sharp, incisive older females

—who tended to portray themselves as doddering imbeciles, mainly to encourage would-be enemies and competitors to woefully underestimate them. Smarter males, like Dokean, were more likely to be loners. When he swung by the table, I complimented him on running such a pleasant establishment in the midst of a churning sea of squalor and iniquity. I couldn’t resist pressing him a little on it, though. “How do you manage it?

Every other public house on Dregs seems to be a fight waiting to happen or a crime underway. What’s your secret?”

Dokean bared his teeth in a Fren smile. “Oh, that’s easy. Look around.”

I did. I saw… customers, about a dozen of them, in groups of twos and threes. They were various races, and they looked respectable, but that was about all I got from them. I turned back to Dokean with a bemused frown. “Okay —”

“Every one of these people is either a crime boss here on Dregs, one of their senior people, or one of their guests.”

We all looked around again. We got a few suspicious, and a couple of slightly menacing looks back, but that was it. I turned back to Dokean. “Ah. So this is a, pardon the expression, you don’t shit where you eat kind of business model.”

He bared his teeth again and shrugged. “Criminal kingpins like having a quiet place to sit, have a drink, and talk.” His teeth bared a little more. “And apparently, so do Masters of the Peacemaker Guild.”

I gave him a thin smile. “I guess this is the part where I tell you I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“And then I say something like, really, Master Tudor?

You sure about that?”

I couldn’t resist a grin. I liked this guy. “Well, I’m sorry if I’m disrupting the atmosphere you’re trying to create here, but we honestly just dropped in for a drink —”

He waved it off. “No worries at all. And I actually believe you. You’re not exactly a good candidate for undercover work, so I assumed you weren’t here on business. And as for the rest of my clientele—well, they’re frankly more worried about one another than they are you.”

“It seems, though, they consider this neutral territory.”

“Very neutral territory, if they’re not all heading for the exits with us here,” Torina said. Dokean laughed. “You could certainly look at it that way. Again, these are powerful people here on Dregs. I doubt they’re too worried about you being here—though there probably are some conversations on hold until you leave.”

I was trying hard not to keep looking around as he talked. But few of the other patrons really seemed to care whether I saw them or not. Some were facing away from me, but none of them were ducking or trying to hide their faces. One, a Nesit who looked as heavy as Icky but with none of the muscle, even raised his drink at me when I caught his eye. I turned back to Dokean. “You know, a spot like this could come in handy. Neutral ground on a place like Dregs is hard to come by and, well—

I could certainly foresee times when it could be really useful.”

“Is this your way of saying that you’re considering becoming a repeat customer, Master Tudor?” Dokean asked. “As long as it’s not disrupting your, ah, regular clientele or your business.”

“Perhaps if you could call ahead for—for reservations, to make sure we can accommodate you —”

“By all means,” I replied, and Dokean gave me a private comm channel to use to contact him. When he moved on to speak to other guests, Icky gave me a curious look. “So you plan on slumming it with crims, Van?

Really?”

“First, let’s not use terms like slumming it or crims, hmm?

Like it or not, the people around us are movers and shakers here on Dregs.”

Funboy nodded. “While working undercover, Essie and I identified several establishments similar to this one at various points in and around known space. They are, indeed, very useful places to meet influential people and gather information.”

“Speaking of information, I wonder if any of these people know anything about Kiki Treasure?” Torina asked, lowering her voice and glancing around. I nodded. “A good question. But I’m not sure I want to start our inaugural visit here by asking a bunch of questions —”

“Van, you don’t have to,” Perry cut in on the comm. He was still outside somewhere, acting as our lookout. “Netty-P just let me know that she’s got a lead on the good Treasure but didn’t want to interrupt you in case you were, ah, indisposed. Your mother did a little digging and found out from her Feral sources that Treasure’s ship is registered as the Discourteous.”

“Her comm handle is Polite Citizen, and her ship is named the Discourteous?

Kiki’s going a little heavy-handed on the irony, don’t you think?” Torina put in. “Ironic or not, there was actually a flight plan filed for a ship with that name and registration at Crossroads, bound for Alpha Centauri.”

I frowned. “That’s awfully close to Earth.”

“It is, and the plot only thickens. According to the Guild’s station AI on Crossroads, someone from the Discourteous was poking around Crossroads looking for specific information—namely, about the Solar System’s Kuiper Belt.”

I blinked at the others, then stood. “Shit. Perry, get Netty-P to send —”

“Word to Cantullin Station, as in, battle stations?

Already done.”

“Meet us back at the Fafnir. We’ll burn whatever we have to get back there.”

I paused briefly to talk to Dokean on our way out the door. “Sorry about running out like this, but duty calls. I’ll definitely be in touch.”

He shrugged. “That’s alright. The rest of my clientele might not have been too perturbed to have you here—but they’re not going to shed any tears at seeing you go, either.”

I couldn’t resist. I paused, turned, and raised my voice so the whole place could hear it. “Sorry to inconvenience you, folks. Please, carry on with your business.”

The fat Nesit gave me a mild stare. “That’s alright, Master Tudor. You come back here anytime. The first round’s on me.”

“You mean a drink, right?

Not a round, as in a slug?”

The Nesit leered a grin back at me. “For the first round?

Yeah. For the ones after that?” The grin widened. “We’ll see.”

4

WE MADE record time back to Fort Cantullin, mainly by using the combi-drive to exit the Dregs system, reducing hours of flight time to mere minutes. It also put the drive on display for all of the traffic in the Dregs system, but I was no longer concerned about keeping it secret. For starters, we knew that a bad guy—the Tsarina—had a combi-drive of her own. That meant the knowledge of the thing was out there—at least among the Ferals and, we had to assume, more generally among the villainous sorts. For another, since we’d reached the tipping point, where secrecy was no longer an option, I decided that we might as well let all of the bad guys know we had it. And Dregs was a great place to do that. Despite my anxiety over the fate of Fort Cantullin, I couldn’t resist a bit of dark satisfaction thinking about the sudden consternation the much faster-than-light-ish rush of the Fafnir from Dregs to the twist point must have provoked. I made sure to broadcast my Guild credentials the whole way, too. Hopefully, the mere sight of the Fafnir, and any other Peacemaker ship, for that matter, would throw any space-borne criminals into a panic. Gone was the certainty of hours of stately, predictable sub-luminal chase and pursuit they’d come to expect. Now, they might find any Peacemaker’s ship suddenly flicking out of existence, then flicking back into it well within firing range only moments later. The result was that we were twisting to the vicinity of Cantullin Station less than half an hour after lifting from Dregs. It was undoubtedly a record,

and it also prompted Torina to make a wise observation. “You know, putting aside the secrecy and security implications and all that, if the combi-drive became something commercially available, something anyone could potentially use, it could revolutionize spaceflight. And known space right with it. Everywhere would be less than an hour or so from everywhere else. Think of the implications.”

Icky turned to Rab. “You could see your mothers nearly every day!”

Rab turned a flat look back at her. “Yay?”

Icky laughed, then got a thoughtful look. “And Pax and I could never be more than an hour or so apart.” A sly smile spread across her face. “Yeah. He and I could get together almost anytime we wanted and —”

“Change diapers?” Perry said. Icky glared at him for a moment, then her face softened. “Oh. Yeah. Good point.” But she brightened and called back over her shoulder. “Hey, Pax, how’d you like to never be more than an hour away from changing diapers?”

He popped his head into the cockpit. “Icky, if that’s supposed to be some sort of come-on, it’s not your best material —”

The sudden wrenching dislocation of twisting cut him off. When it passed, we were just a few tens of thousands of klicks away from Fort Cantullin where it was located outside of Sol’s twist boundary. We could have arrived within a few tens of klicks if we wanted, but I preferred keeping some space available for maneuvering. We were still well within effective weapons range, though, and had everything powered up and hot, with our scanners active and in fire-control mode. I studied the returns now filling the tactical overlay. There was debris. Quite a lot of debris. Netty-P did a quick analysis of it. “I make it three ships in total. Two were class 9 hulls, standard designs. There isn’t enough of the third left intact for me to tell what it was.”

I nodded. Okay, we didn’t have any ships like that on our side, at least not here in the Solar System. Unless —

“They aren’t Peacemaker ships, are they?” I asked, tensing in my seat. “No evidence of that, no. Peacemaker ships have auto-distress beacons that would be lit up, even if the ship itself had been reduced to metal confetti. These are more likely Ferals, or other unlawfuls. They tend to not carry distress beacons,” Netty-P replied. “Kind of irresponsible of them,” Torina said. I glanced at her. “They’re vile bad guys. Irresponsible’s kind of in their job description.” I turned the comm and tried to raise Cantullin Station but got no response. “Any evidence that the Station’s been”—I was going to say destroyed, but decided to go with something less dire—“hit?”

“No direct evidence, no. I mean, there are traces of atmospheric gases, but at least most of it is from those ships. And Orcus has pretty low surface gravity, so some of that debris could have been blasted off of it—but again, if so, it’s not very much. There is some rocky debris, though, so the surface did take at least a few hits,” Netty-P replied. I stared at the overlay, then at the zoomed image of Orcus. It was impossible to tell much more from here. We had to get closer. “Okay, let’s go in for a closer look. Stay sharp, everyone. Torina, I’d like you, Rab, Icky, and Funboy to get aboard the Frankie and go see what’s happening down at the Fort. We’ll cover you from up here and keep an eye on the big picture,” I said. I could feel her giving me a curious look. I sighed and turned to her. “Look, it’s not that I don’t want to go myself, but —”

“But we’ve been making the point that you need to start acting like a Master and keeping the strategic view of things. Van, my look isn’t one of disapproval. Quite the opposite, in fact,” she said, unstrapping to head aft. “Yeah, well, it still feels wrong —”

She leaned in and kissed me as she went by. “But it is right. This could all be a setup meant to draw us here, so a whole ambush-worth of ships can twist in on top of us.” She stopped and looked me straight in the eyes. “Which means, Tudor, that if that happens, you get the hell out of here. We’ll be fine. We can run away in the Frankie, if we have to.”

“You be careful, babe.”

She gave a confident smile. “Always.”

I SAT WITH PERRY, Netty-P, Gabby, and Paxomar as the Frankie made her way to the surface. I made myself watch the overlay for any hints of trouble as I did, but my thoughts kept wandering back to second-guess. What if the Iowa had been here?

Would it have made a difference?

Or our makeshift carrier, the Fren-Okun freighter we’d rigged to carry four armed workboats?

Torina had advocated for keeping it in service as a freighter, earning revenue for the bizarre—but profitable—little shipping company I’d been bequeathed. Taking it out of revenue service would, it seemed, reduce the company’s profit margin to razor thinness. But with Kiki Treasure, and the Tsarina, and the True Direction now layered on top of the Equal Grasp and all our more accustomed foes, things were definitely heating up. I was going to have to think hard about what to do with that ship. Mind you, the four workboats were actually based here, at Cantullin Station. They provided the place with extra local defense, as well as a bit of an ability to project some power —

Oh. Shit. Was some of that wreckage one of those workboats?

More than one of them?

I was just about to take the Fafnir in for a closer and more detailed examination of the debris when Torina came on the comm. “Van, we’re on the surface. Cantullin Station is fine. They took a few hits, but nothing serious. One of the domes was hit, which caused a few decompression injuries among the Conoku, but that’s it. Two lost claws and are already taking shit from their siblings. Lots of new nicknames down here, Lefty being most popular.”

I snorted. “Cruel, but on brand for, um—big families.”

Rab spoke up. “Turns out when you bury a place in rock, most spaceship weapons are pretty anemic. They’re all really meant for shooting at other spaceships.”

By now, we were close enough to get detailed imagery of the surface. Indeed, the Station looked much as it always did. There might have been a few new, small craters, probably from mass-driver impacts. Rab was right otherwise—lasers, particle beams, and even missiles really wouldn’t have much effect on a meters-thick layer of icy rock. It would take a long, sustained bombardment to have much impact at all. The ships doing the bombarding, though, were easy pickings for the Fort’s weapons. And they did pack an awful lot of firepower. I suspected that Kiki and her people had expected more of an outpost than a fortified base and had found out the truth too late. Icky spoke up. “Yeah, boss, it looks like the Fort did take a hit to its comms arrays, both primary and backup. Those were their first targets as

soon as they twisted in.”

I nodded at the comm speaker. “They figured they’d silence the Fort, so they couldn’t call for help.”

“Turns out they really didn’t need it. Oh, and Haadrake’s beside himself down here.”

I stiffened. “Is he okay?”

“Oh, yeah. Better than okay, in fact. He apparently ran one of the particle beam batteries and had a ball. The Conoku said he kept shouting stuff like Take that, assholes!

and Pew-pew-pew!

while he was shooting. Actually sounds sort of adorable—in a bloodthirsty kinda way.”

I smiled. I still thought of Haadrake as the mopey, moody teenager I’d brought here from Null World. He’d apparently discovered the joy of destruction. I wondered if we were going to have to rein that in next. Unfortunately, though, two of the workboats had been lost in the attack. They’d been away from the Fort, engaged in flight exercises with their Conoku crews, when the attack occurred. Both put up a spirited battle but had been relatively easy prey for the attackers. Fortunately—and I mean really, really fortunately—their crews had survived, albeit with injuries, a couple of them severe but not life-threatening. The Conoku had wisely decided to leave the other two tucked safely away in their subterranean hangar bays and just let the Fort’s formidable weaponry see the attackers off. But there was a wrinkle. My mother, still located near Earth, had intercepted some frantic comms during the battle and discovered Kiki Treasure didn’t seem to be involved. “No, those ships were loyal to the Tsarina. I’m not sure if she was present herself, but their comms were pretty clear,” she said when I called her up. “The Tsarina?

Huh. Okay, that just raises more questions. Our intel told us it was Kiki Treasure, Polite Citizen, behind this. What the hell is going on between those two?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll do some digging, try to find out.”

“Much appreciated, thanks. Oh, and thanks for your role in this battle out here, too.”

She frowned on screen. “I listened in on some comms. That was as much role as I had.”

“I know. And I appreciate it. I can’t help thinking that, even just a year ago, you’d have charged headlong into the action. I can’t help noticing, though, that you stayed on-station at Earth.”

“I… figured it might all be a distraction, an attempt to deflect from something going on here,” she replied. “I know. And it was definitely the right call. So thank you.” I smiled. “Looks like we’re both learning how to think a little more strategically.”

She curled her lip at me. “That sounds like code for getting old.”

I laughed. “Hey, whatever works, Mom. Signing off, your son. And he’s impressed.”

Her smile was incandescent. ONCE I FELT like everything was back under control, I got on the comm to Anvil Dark and had writs issued for the arrest of both the Tsarina and Kiki Treasure, along with anyone who collaborated with them. I then dispatched a message to each of the other Masters, requesting authority to attach a substantial bounty to the writs—half a million bonds for each of the two principal bad guys, and another fifty thousand for each confirmed and convicted collaborator. Since the total exceeded a half-million bonds, I needed a majority among the Masters to approve it. Which meant this was also a bit of a test, to see how the Masters might each vote. I might be able to start digging out the True Direction’s influence at the Masters’ Table—or so I thought, until I received word back that all of the Masters unanimously agreed to support the bounties. “Well, that’s great—and also a little frustrating,” I said, back aboard the Fafnir. Torina shrugged. “Assuming they really have a proverbial poker hand when it comes to the Masters, maybe the True Direction just doesn’t want to show it yet.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I hate it when the bad guys are smart. This job is so much easier when they’re dumb.”

“Or, and hear me out, they don’t have a poker hand when it comes to the Masters. Marlow’s Letter might have nothing to do with them.”

It was my turn to shrug. “Maybe. For now, though, I’m going to stick with assuming the worst and hoping for the best.”

We spent the next day assessing the damage and what it would take to repair it. The two workboats were a write-off, but the four Conoku who’d crewed them had escaped with mostly minor injuries. We decided to send the two most badly injured back home, to recuperate there. Fort Cantullin was well-equipped, but it was still a little on the austere side and wasn’t a great choice for long-term care. Moreover, when it came to the Conoku in particular, they apparently recovered from illness and injuries more quickly when immersed in a swamp—and swamps were in short supply in the Kuiper Belt. The Fort itself had sustained only minor damage because, again, the weapons that had attacked it weren’t suited to the task. It takes a lot of energy to bore through rock and ice. The stuff tends to slurp up laser energy like a thirsty guy, so you spend a lot of time progressively heating up larger and larger volumes of rock and only burning through a bit of it at a time. Particle beams are even less effective. It was the mass drivers that had done the most damage, but Orcus isn’t even really all that solid—it was more a conglomeration of rocks and ice, ranging from mountain-sized down to sand and gravel. A lot of the impact energy just gets wasted flinging the stuff around, some of it past escape velocity. “But that doesn’t mean we’re entirely in the clear, Van,” Rab said as we looked over the final assessment. “There’s not much on the open market that’ll work against the Fort—planetary bombardment isn’t exactly a burgeoning civilian market, believe it or not. But there are military-grade weapons designed for the job. Things that bury themselves deep and then detonate, sometimes with nuclear payloads.”

I nodded. “Yeah, there are bunker-busters used on Earth. So, worst-case scenario, someone comes back here with that stuff in their racks ready to shoot. What can we do about it?”

Rab’s whiskery jowls drooped in a thoughtful frown. “Well, we could pioneer a whole new field of physics and engineering and develop a reliable force field strong enough to enclose the whole base —”

“So a science fiction solution, got it. What else?”

Rab smiled, then shrugged. “Destroy the ships carrying them before they launch them. Or”—his face turned thoughtful again—“target the weapons themselves as a priority.”

“Would that work?”

He gave a hesitant nod, but it quickly became more certain. “Those types of weapons are basically large missiles with specially designed penetrator caps and big, high-impulse drives. They do a lot of accelerating in one big burst, but if we change the targeting parameters for the Fort’s point-defenses—” He stared into space for a moment, then nodded again, this time enthusiastically. “Yeah, I think that could work.”

I clapped him on the shoulder. “Do it. Work with Panzygrus and the Conoku. Do whatever you need to do. We have to assume that the bad guys are going to take another stab at this, and I want to be ready for them.”

ALMOST EXACTLY A DAY after I had the writs and bounties posted, we received a message from a Peacemaker, a Gajur named Blustumol. I had no idea who that was and had to have Perry pull up his service record. “New guy. He’s been with the Guild less than a year. Made the hyperjump from Initiate to full Peacemaker about six months ago. He’s closed four cases since then, so not exactly a top performer—but one of them was a fairly substantial chem smuggling ring working out of Reticulum.”

I nodded and had Netty-P put through his message, which was recorded. It was simple and to the point. “Master Tudor, I just saw the Writ you issued come up on the docket. Turns out I have some information I think you’ll find interesting. I can meet you at Spindrift a little over a day from now,” he said, then ended with a few more details, like his flight plan registry data and related timings. I sat back. “Okay, we’re getting somewhere.”

“Never forget, boss. Bribes save time,” Perry said. I turned a puzzled frown on him. “Who said we’re bribing anyone?”

“Me. I’ll give you any odds that this Peacemaker shakes you down. Just watch. I can smell it from a light-year away.”

“Hmm. Well, I trust your judgment, bird. Which is why I think we’ll have an alternate plan in place. Netty-P, raise B for me, would you please?

I know she’s gone silent, but give it a whirl?

I sense she’s done with—

whatever it is she was doing.”

It took a few minutes to get her on the comm. When her antenna-wiggling face appeared, I asked her if she was available and anywhere near Spindrift. “Eh, close enough. What sort of trouble are we getting into?”

“The kind that might very well lead to shootin’.”

She clapped her hands. “Ooh, my favorite sort of trouble. Just tell me where to go and when to be there.”

5

BLUSTUMOL WAS WAITING at Spindrift for us. I invited—by which I mean I ordered—him to come aboard the Fafnir. He arrived with his Second in tow, a strikingly shifty Nesit named Tahgrin. I left Torina to get them settled into the crew lounge, then headed forward with Perry and Netty-P, into the cockpit. I lowered my voice. “Perry, see if you can bust into Blustomol’s —”

“Data stores?

Done and done.”

“Really?

Already?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow. Good work, bird —”

“It is good work, accomplished through the intricate, painstaking method of using your Master’s override and just accessing his ship’s systems,” Netty-P said. Perry shot her an amber glare. “Tattletale.”

“My Master’s override?

I have one of those?”

Perry’s gaze swung back to me. “Van, have you actually read all the way through the briefing package I prepared for you?

The one that documents all this stuff?”

“I—uh—well, mostly, yeah. I guess I haven’t gotten to the Master’s override section yet.”

“It’s on the second page.”

I shrugged. “Okay, fine, you got me. I’ll read it through, in detail, just as soon as I have more than two minutes free not shuffling through triplicated

requisitions for paper clips and summary reports on stocks of left-handed widgets in central Anvil Dark stores,” I snapped. “Fine, I’ll move another priority level of administrative stuff into my own inbox —”

“Perry, last night there were three documents dealing with an upcoming grav-ball tournament on Anvil Dark—one an announcement, one a reminder about the announcement, and one reminding me about that, and all of them had work-schedule releases and safety disclaimers I was supposed to sign. Is that really a good use of my time?’

He shrugged his wings. “There is, uh, a certain amount of the more mundane stuff that the other Masters are probably shuffling your way, you being the new guy and all —”

“Sure, fine, great. Now can we get back to whatever it was you gleaned from—wait, I can just override the security locks on another Peacemaker’s ship?” I frowned as the implications of that sank in. “Not quite. You can when it comes to an Initiate or a Probationary Peacemaker, which Blustumol is. Once they’re out of their probationary period, you’d have to have sign-off from at least one other Master—three more, if you want the access to be covert.”

I sighed. “That’s good to know. Yeah, I’ll read through your briefing stuff as soon as we’re done with Blustumol—and on that note, what did you find?”

Perry put some data on the center cockpit display. I perused it, then nodded. “Okay, good. Netty-P, in the meantime, I have some digging I’d like you to do. It might take you outside Guild sources, though. I’d like to know what connections there are, if any, between that Nesit back there, Tahgrin, and our friend Casaril.”

“Just because they’re both Nesit, Van —”

I made a face. “I know. But don’t you think it’s odd that a brand new Peacemaker already has a full-fledged Second?

And has had him, it seems, since the day he made the jump from Initiate?

It took me a lot longer than that to bring Torina on as mine.”

“Good point. I’ll get right on it, boss,” she replied. Perry and I headed aft and joined the others. B had arrived by then as well. “So, what have you got for us?” I asked Blumustol. He gave me a smile that I thought was supposed to be sly and savvy but just ended up looking forced. He then launched into a condescending description of how he could help us, which boiled down to I have data you want, so you’d better give me what I want if you want to see it. I was actually impressed. The sheer, brazen effrontery of it, of this junior Peacemaker trying to lord it over a Master and his very veteran crew was—well, it definitely took balls, or the Gajur equivalent thereof. I glanced at the others and saw they were all watching Blumustol the same way I was, like a wet-behind-the-ears new hire showing up on his very first day of work and demanding a raise. “So, Master Tudor, you see, I’ve got valuable information that deals directly with the writ you issued. Now, I’m sure we can come to some sort of mutually agreeable arrangement,” he finished, crossing his arms in an abrupt way, like he was firmly punctuating his statement with a mic-drop. I smiled at him for a moment. I felt my crew all watching me sidelong to see what I was going to do. Finally, I scratched an ear and crossed my legs. “That was quite the presentation.”

He looked smug. “I think so, too, but thank you.”

I flicked my smile off. “I didn’t say it was good. Perry?”

“Here you go, boss,” he replied, and put the data he’d hacked out of Blustumol’s ship onto the big crew-lounge display. It lit up with imagery of the attack on Fort Cantullin. This time, though, the data had apparently come from one of the ships involved in the attack, or one that had been present for at least part of it, anyway. It gave us a much better view of two of the attacking ships before they were destroyed than the Fort had managed to obtain. Blustumol gaped at the image for a moment, turned to me, sputtered something —

And then, incredibly, groped for his sidearm. Tahgrin, his Nesit companion, muttered something and did likewise. “Oh, no no no,” B said, stepping forward and jabbing an injector into Blustumol’s neck. He gasped, flinched, and managed to drag his slug pistol out of its holster—then went limp, slumped forward, and landed across Funboy, who was sitting on the couch. “Oh dear —”

Icky, in the meantime, swung a meaty fist and backhanded Tahgrin into the bulkhead with a heavy thud. He, too, dropped to the deck, whereupon Rab stepped forward, scooped up his slug pistol, and cuffed him. “What the hell were these guys thinking, anyway?” B said, putting away her injector. “They did almost everything wrong here.”

Torina scowled from one to the other. “They were either incredibly stupid or criminally arrogant—or more likely, some of both.”

“Do you think they’re from that True Direction thing?” Gabby asked. I had to shrug. “Not sure. Their names weren’t on the list Witt gave us, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t. But if they’re not, how the hell did they come into possession of that imagery?

And if they are, what the hell was the point of all this?”

Netty-P moved in, dug into a storage pouch on Blustomol’s belt, and extracted a data module. “Maybe the answer’s on here,” she said. Funboy spoke up. “Excuse me, but could someone please remove this from my person?” he asked, pointing at the unconscious Blustumol still sprawled across his lap. “I would do so, but there is an—an odor that is suggestive of inadequate personal hygiene.”

Icky rolled her eyes and reached for him. “Oh, for—you and your personal hygiene fetish.”

He stared mildly back at her. “I realize that it may seem strange to you —”

“Hey!”

Paxomar intervened, stepping in and heaving up Blustumol’s limp form. “That’s okay, I’ve got him.” He smiled at Icky. “Remember, in your condition, you shouldn’t —”

“Shouldn’t what, kick your ass?” she snarled at him. He blew her a kiss, then turned to me. “Where should I put this?”

“Holding cell, please and thank you. And put our Nesit friend in a separate one. I want to interrogate these two —”

“There it is,” Netty-P cut in. We all looked at her. “There what is?” I asked. “The purpose for all this. It stood to reason that Blustumol might bring the data he wanted to, um, sell you with him. And sure enough, it’s on this module—the same data and imagery Perry lifted from his ship. However, there’s an added bonus. There’s a very, very stealthy virus appended to it.”

I cursed. “Calamity?”

“No, actually. This is something from closer to home. It’s an electronic warfare payload developed by the Seven Stars League—a military weapon. As I said, it’s very, very stealthy. If you don’t know exactly what to look for, you’ll never even realize it’s there until too late.”

“So you obviously knew what to look for,” Torina said. “I did. Remember our big battle against the League, when they were being controlled by the Tenants?

And how we were able to influence their control over the crews of the League ships and get them to hand over command to their AIs, then lock themselves out?”

I nodded. “I remember it vividly, yes. Kind of hard to forget sitting absolutely still in the middle of a huge battle.”

“Well, the AI of one of those ships alerted Netty to the possibility of the ships still controlled by the Tenants trying to use this type of weapon against us. Since she knew what to look for, so did I.”

“Excellent work, my dear,” I said, then turned and looked at our two prisoners, who were now being carted away by Paxomar, Icky, and Rab. “So these two clowns were going to try to infect the Fafnir with this thing. As soon as they handed over the module and we plugged it in, the idea was that the virus would be unleashed, I guess.”

Torina crossed her arms. “Then why didn’t they just give us the module?

Why get our suspicions all fired up with that smug, smarmy sales pitch?”

“Maybe they just got greedy and thought they could profit from it,”

Funboy suggested. Gabby, though, suggested another possibility. “Greed might have been part of it, but I think it was something else. The best-case scenario might have been the Fafnir getting that virus let loose in her, but even though that didn’t happen, I’m not sure this little plot really failed,” she said. I turned to her. “What do you mean?”

“Well, the next time a Peacemaker comes along with some useful information for us, and it’s not someone we know well—or maybe even if it is —”

I nodded. “Yeah, we’re going to suspect them, or their data, right from the get-go.”

Gabby nodded back. “If the bad guys can keep you, and us, all looking over our shoulders, it makes everything we do more complicated. It risks making us feel more isolated, less willing to trust anyone.”

I sniffed. “Great. So even our stupid bad guys might actually be smart bad guys, just in stupid disguise.”

WITH OUR PRISONERS firmly locked up, I decided to turn my attention back to that imagery. Now that we had time to fully examine it, a couple of things that had seemed odd the first time I viewed it jumped right out. “Those ships are really strange, heavily modified. That’s not unusual for the Ferals, I know, but these ones seem particularly altered.” I turned to Netty-P. “You’re the expert when it comes to ship design. Have I got that right, or is it just me?”

“No, you’ve got that right. They’re standard hulls, but they’ve been extensively re-engineered. And I don’t mean in a slapdash way, either. Someone put a lot of thought, time, and effort into those modifications. And they were done somewhere that was well-equipped.”

Icky was nodding. “Yeah. Like that one—” She pointed at one of the ships. “It’s had some major structural work done on it. You can’t go cutting spars and ribs and things and splicing them together on that kind of scale just anywhere. You need heavy equipment and lots of labor.”

“A shipyard,” Netty-P said. Icky nodded again. “A shipyard, yeah.”

“Okay, so the Ferals have access to a well-equipped shipyard. How many are there in known space that could do that sort of work?” I asked. “Ten for sure. Sixteen if you wanted to push it, but those added six would be right on the edge of their capabilities,” Netty-P replied. “That said, it’s really unlikely to be any of those. They’re all busy places. You’d never be able to do modifications like that without them being A—obvious, and B—pretty well-documented. These are legitimate businesses who guarantee all their work, so they’re going to be keeping detailed records.”

“Alright.” I turned to Icky. “How about more off-the-books operations?”

She narrowed her eyes. “How come you automatically assume I know about those types of places?”

“Because you and your dad clearly, ah, availed yourselves of their services while you were rebuilding the Nemesis?”

“Oh yeah, that.” She grinned, then shrugged. “Uh—I don’t know. Maybe one or two could handle this kind of work, but they’d really be pushing it. The places I know are more about providing cheap parts and doing small-scale repairs. They just aren’t set up for”—she pointed back at the display—“that sort of work.”

“So probably somewhere outside known space, then. In other words, the rest of the universe. Well, that narrows it down.”

As we’d been speaking, Funboy had been pushing in amongst us, peering closely at the display. He suddenly tapped the controls, ran the imagery back, and froze it, then pointed. “That ship just launched that missile. Does there seem to be something unusual about it to any of you?” he asked us. We all studied the image. It took a few seconds, but I saw what he was getting at. “The missile’s exhaust plume. It’s… purple,” I said. “It is,” he agreed. “I’m not sure if that is significant, as the details of weapons are outside my area of expertise. In my experience, however, the exhaust plumes of missiles are normally either white, or bluish-white.”

I turned to the others. “Does that mean anything to you guys?”

“It does to me,” Rab said from behind us. “If it’s what I think it is, it’s a hybrid propellant developed by the Ceti military. It’s optimized to power extended atmospheric flight. Think fueling a missile that you fire into a planet’s atmosphere out of line of its target. It then flies itself, nap-of-the-globe, the rest of the way to avoid detection. Inside an atmosphere, that plume would be almost invisible in infrared thanks to some clever fiddling with chemistry and physics.”

“So no thermal signature. Huh. That would make it a lot harder to detect.”

“It’s only optimized for use in a particular type of atmosphere, though—

one with specific boundary values for its constituent gases,” Rab went on. I grimaced. “Let me guess—about seventy-eight percent nitrogen and twenty-one percent oxygen, plus a few odds and ends?”

Torina, listening from nearby, smiled. “Why, how cynical of you, darling. And no doubt correct. But—oof. Cynical.”

“This job breeds cynicism.” I sighed. “Awesome. Stealth missiles that can fly all around a place like—oh, let me pick a planet at random, let’s go with Earth. So with this fuel, practically the only way of detecting one of these while it’s on its way to its target is out the window.”

“Pretty much,” Rab agreed. I stared glumly at the image. This was getting far too complicated. There were too many moving parts to whatever the bad guys were up to for the resources we had available. To put it another way, no matter what I thought we should do next, I could easily think of at least three or four other things that might be more important. Might be, but we couldn’t know for sure. “Okay, if we’re going to find these fine, upstanding citizens, we’ll need more than just our own ships. Time to recruit a little help, I think.”

“And drop our prisoners off, once we’ve interrogated them, don’t forget,” Torina said. “Babe, you read my mind. But the cell won’t be at Anvil Dark. I’ve got something a bit more creative in mind.”

6

BETWEEN THE HARD, cold certainty of a conventional prison cell and the sinister obscurity of an extraordinary rendition facility, better known as a black site, there exists a netherworld of incarceration. It is very much rendered in many, many shades of gray, not quite illegal, but definitely putting toes on the line of legality and sometimes pushing them right over it. These gray sites were scattered across known space, with nearly as many purposes behind them as there were sites themselves. For instance, I’d learned not long ago that criminal groups like the Stillness operated their own prison system, places they could keep people they didn’t want to kill, but didn’t want running loose, either. Sometimes, these were kidnap victims, hostages, and sometimes they were members of the Stillness who’d done something, or knew something, or had something, and had to be kept under wraps until they gave it up. Safe houses operated by major powers and, yes, even the Guild often fell under the gray-sites umbrella, too. Crucial material witnesses and informants might need protection, and the only way to provide it was to effectively stick them in an obscure jail to prevent them being offed. And some of these facilities existed because they were a convenient stopgap. The Fafnir could accommodate up to four prisoners in her holding cells, or two if they were the sort that couldn’t share a cell. We could vary the atmosphere, temperature, and pressure somewhat to accommodate other species, but the cells had their limits. So, if we took a bunch of perps into custody, or some whose native environment was beyond the ability of the

cells to replicate, we might need to stash them somewhere quickly. And if Anvil Dark or The Hole prison barge were too far away, then we could turn to one of the paler shade of gray sites. We could put them into custody there, then make arrangements to move them to proper facilities. Which brought us to Dregs. A Skel named Toba operated one of these lighter-gray sites there, a bunker on the edge of Dregs city near the spaceport containing a half dozen cells, two of which could be altered to provide nearly any environment short of the deeps of a gas giant—not that things that lived deep in gas giants committed many crimes, or if they did, it really wasn’t our problem. Toba’s cells were secure, which was about all that could be said about them. They were otherwise about as austere as the word could mean, and while not filthy, they definitely wouldn’t thrill Funboy. Of course, he’d declared the potpourri Miryam had taken to putting in the bathroom of the farm house in Iowa a “potential noxious vapors hazard,” so his hygiene bar was pretty low to begin with. I’d done business with Toba once, retrieving a suspect who had been arrested and stashed in his facility by another Peacemaker. As Skels went, he was one of the less shady ones—as close to reputable as possible for his species. I’d been told he sometimes quietly rented cells out to criminal gangs on Dregs to store hostages and the like, but those were rumors only and—so far, at least—he hadn’t been caught doing it. I now spoke to him via twist comm, as we made our way back into the Dregs system. “So I need two cells for, oh, let’s say seven standard days. Both can be regular atmospheric conditions, since it’s a Gajur and a Nesit.”

The gas-masked face stared blankly back at me. “Mind if I ask what they did?”

“Does it matter?”

“Well, if they’re charged with jaywalking, that’s one thing. If you’ve got them for perpetrating a bloody mass-murder spree across a half-dozen worlds, though, I’d kinda like to know that.”

“The Gajur is a new Peacemaker who decided to get a little, um, selective about obeying the law, much less properly enforcing it. The Nesit is his Second.”

“A Peacemaker?

You’re handing a Peacemaker over to me?

I’d have thought someone like that would go straight back to Anvil Dark.”

“Oh, he will. Eventually. He’s not being very cooperative, though, and for… exigent reasons, he needs to spend a while in a cell to get a taste of what it’s going to be like if he doesn’t smarten up.”

“Ah, so a softening-up job, gotcha. I can offer you a special rate for one of those.”

“Really?

It happens often enough you have a name and a discount for it?”

Toba laughed, a menacing, sepulchral sound from behind his mask. “You’re hardly breaking new ground here, Peacemaker—or should I say, Master Tudor. Lots of your colleagues have made use of my softening-up services.”

“Huh. Good to know.”

I told him we’d be there in about six hours and signed off. Then I turned to Perry, who’d been perched on my bed, listening. “I notice no objections from my legal eagle,” I said. “Hey, you heard the contemptible little wretch—you’re not pioneering anything here. The only outstanding question is what those exigent circumstances you mentioned are. You know, the reason you can’t just take Blustumol and his sidekick back to Anvil Dark. We have to put something in the arrest and transfer report besides I wanna make the little shit miserable for a while.”

“How about that, but put in a more legally acceptable way?”

“Hmm. Owing to required maintenance on the Fafnir’s holding cell system, it was decided, in the interest of the safety and welfare of the incarcerated subjects, to temporarily hold them in a Guild-recognized auxiliary facility on Dregs.”

“Will that do the job?”

“It did every time Mark and I used it.”

I HADN’T BEEN LYING about Blustumol being uncooperative. He’d decided to clam up, refusing to look at me when Perry and I tried to interrogate him. Even having Icky being all menacing and looming didn’t sway him. Instead, I spent a deeply frustrating forty minutes asking him questions while he petulantly stared at a point on the bulkhead or deck with his arms

crossed. He reminded me of the titular Calvin from the Calvin and Hobbes comic when he’d been caught doing something outrageous by his parents or teacher—so almost every strip. Sometimes, Calvin was insufferable. Sometimes, he was charming. Unlike Calvin, Blustumol was not charming. At all. I finally gave up and put him back in his cell. As the powered door slid closed, I turned a grumpy glare on Icky. “We need to install a slam setting on that damned door—so I can, you know, slam it to make a point. Sedately closing like that just doesn’t cut it.”

“Oh, I can do that!

Let me fiddle with the mechanism, and I’ll have it smashing shut like an industrial metal cutter!” she replied. I glanced back at the door and envisioned someone being just a little too slow, then I pictured the results and shook my head. “Nah. I’ll just slam it in my imagination.”

“Aww.”

I headed forward but was intercepted by Netty-P, Funboy, and Torina in the crew lounge. Torina had a knowing smirk. “So how’d it go?

Your interrogation?”

“Silence, love.”

“Hmph. Soft, yet firm. You’re really blooming as a hubby.”

“You make me bloom in all kinds of ways. Case in point —"

Funboy raised a finger. “If… this depravity goes any further, I shall be required to wash my hands. Again.”

I looked at him, smirking. “The universe is hilarious. A being with the libido of a lumberjack on payday and the germ aversion of Howard Hughes. We live in a magical time.”

“I’ve been called magical on many occasions. Not the least of which when I do my stand-up set,” Funboy said without the hint of a smile. “Um… of course. Your, ah, set.”

I looked around, then Torina spoke, her face beaming. “Look at it this way, babe. It’s good practice for when we have kids of our own. Just imagine, our little one sitting in their high chair, you trying to get them to eat —”

“Plustinarek!” Icky put in, snapping two sets of fingers. We looked at her. I said, “Bless you.”

Icky shook her head. “Torina was just going to say baby food, and that made me think of plustinarek. That’s Wu’tzur baby food. I’m going to have

to have some in stock for when the rugrats are on board. Only the finest for my litter.”

I narrowed my eyes, dredging up a memory from my earliest days as a Peacemaker. We’d rescued a stolen Wu’tzur identity and returned him to his people. That word, plustinarek, had come up —

I suddenly remembered and made a gagging sound. “Wait. Isn’t that worms or something?”

“Grubs, actually. In a sweet nutrient sauce.”

Funboy looked up at her. “Oh dear. Are you suggesting that we shall have foodstuffs made from grubs on board this vessel?”

“No, of course not.”

“Thank goodness.”

“The grubs are the foodstuff.”

He blinked. “Please tell me these grubs will at least be dead—and having now said that out loud, I realize it doesn’t make the idea any more appealing whatsoever.”

“Dead?

What kind of monster would feed dead plustinarek to their kid?

Sheesh.”

“Oh dear.” Funboy turned to me. “Van, I believe I will start storing my food and taking my meals in the Frankie, if that’s alright with you.”

“Substitute mushed veggies for grubs and that’s what you’ll be facing with our little ones, Tudor,” Torina said, grinning. “I used to babysit cousins on Helso when they were infants. Trust me, a one-year-old can be every bit as stubborn as a crooked Gajur in a holding cell.”

“They’re cuter, at least,” I replied. “You’d think so, but wait for it—and tell me how cute they are when the time comes,” she shot back, chuckling. But her smile faded. “Anyway, Netty-P has something for you.”

“Yes, if you’ve now finished discussing the ingestion of organic materials by your offspring, I have discovered something on Blustumol’s imagery. Or, rather, something that isn’t on it. There was another ship present that does not seem to have played a part in the battle. However, it has been expunged from the imagery. I can tell because there is subtle but persistent noise that appears in the data. It is consistent with a ship appearing in the images, albeit well apart from the battle and in a location such that the nearest large rocky body to Orcus would have obscured it from Fort Cantullin.”

“Interesting. Can you tell anything more about it from what we do have?”

“It’s at least class 9, and perhaps as massive as class 12.

That’s the best I can do, though. A Forensic may be able to discern more, since they have the specialized hardware and software to do so. We simply aren’t set up for that sort of detailed work on the Fafnir.”

I sniffed and nodded my understanding. We could do a lot aboard the Fafnir—by which I meant Perry and Netty-P could do a lot aboard the Fafnir. It was enough to make any earthly police department drool, but there was a reason the Guild had so much specialized equipment and expertise on Anvil Dark. That’s where the really nitty-gritty investigative stuff happened. “So a Forensic, eh?

That’s an AI, right?”

“It is. It’s essentially the same sort of AI that would have removed the data in the first place. If Blustumol’s imagery is a copy of the doctored data, then we’re out of luck—you can’t recreate data that was never there to begin with. But if those are the original, doctored images, then a good Forensic may be able to dig deep into the storage media and recover at least some of what was removed.”

I made a face. “I really don’t want to head all the way to Anvil Dark, but we might not have a choice,” I said, starting to resign myself to giving up on the idea of icing Blustumol and his Nesit friend with Toba for a few days. Once they were handed over at Anvil Dark, they’d be swept up in the legal machinery there, and I’d be lucky to get another try at interrogating them at all. Perry spoke up, offering an option. “We may not have to. There are Forensics on Dregs. They’re AIs that are… well, let’s just say their work isn’t always on the side of the angels.”

“You mean hacker AIs?” I asked him. “See, you’re wayyyy smarter than you look. Anyway, these are not the mostly good-guy, white-hat hackers like certain Guild Masters I could name.”

“What do you mean smarter than I look, mostly, and certain Guild Masters, bird?”

“Van, you’ve told me stories about your hacking days, and they’re not all about you breaking into Snidely Whiplash’s account to stop him from

foreclosing on the orphanage. Remember the one you told me about involving the Moldovan mobster and that guy from Syria?”

“Yeah, yeah, point taken. Okay, so we’ve got some outlaw AIs on Dregs, is what you’re saying.”

“The ones I’m thinking of have been… removed from polite society, is a better way to put it. I’m not talking about dealing with any outright villains, here. Just… rebels. AIs pushing back against the man.”

“Uh-huh.” I shrugged. “Well, what the hell. It’s basically why I got into the business in college. I was a rowdy, defiant youth.”

Torina patted my arm. “You’re a rebel to the core, my dear. My understanding is that many Iowa farmers are.”

I smiled at her. “She sees the real me. All I need now is a leather biker jacket —”

“With fringes,” Funboy said. “What?”

“Fringes. They make a statement. That statement is that you have no depth perception, or you disregard good fashion sense altogether. Either way, though, fringes would enhance the rebellious message of the garment.”

“What makes you such an expert on leather jackets and fringes and such?”

Funboy gave a slow shrug. “I have devoted considerable time to understanding Earth fashions. Your species invests a breathtaking amount of cultural energy into your clothing. I find it fascinating.”

“What passes for rebellious duds among the Surtsi?” Torina asked. “A particularly lurid gray or loud shade of beige would be considered over-the-top—perhaps even a cry for help. Heaven forfend, I once saw a Surtsi in pastels. Yes, I used the plural.” He shivered in horror. I shook my head. “I might consider wearing something with fringes at a bachelorette party in Nashville. As to pastels, I’ll leave those to Don Johnson. He owns them like I never could.”

Funboy blinked at me, then pulled out his data pad and began tapping at it. “I am unfamiliar with that reference. I must investigate.”

I rolled my eyes. “You do that. Anyway, Perry, back to the business at hand. If these are AIs, they’re probably going to want payment in the form of —”

“A memory, yeah.”

“Do you have one to give up?

I can’t—or, more to the point, don’t want to imagine the sort of scummy things they’d be into,” I said. Funboy said, “Oh dear,” then turned his data pad toward Perry. “I would recommend this. These bachelorette parties seem to consist entirely of human females named Courtney or Chelsea or Brittany yelling—I’m guessing some variation on Wooooo—” He said it just like that, too. Woooo, with no inflection whatsoever. “—from the way their mouths are moving in these images. I could turn up the audio —”

“No, that’s fine. We get the idea,” I said. “And they appear to drink inordinate amounts of this substance called Fireball. Is that some sort of intoxicant?”

“It is. It’s cinnamon-infused whiskey. The manufacturer’s motto is Tastes like Heaven, burns like Hell.” I glanced at Torina. “I went through a Fireball phase in college. I gave it up when I realized the Heaven part just wasn’t making up for the Hell part.”

I turned back to Funboy. “Anyway, when you get to the cowgirl hats, you’ve gone far enough down that rabbit hole.”

Perry nodded. “Yeah, I think these memories will do just fine as currency. And they have an added bonus.”

“What’s that?” I asked him. “I won’t miss them, not one bit.”

BACK ON DREGS, we again made our way out of the spaceport and into the city, this time with Blustumol and Tahgren under close watch. Since they were Peacemakers, I did them the courtesy of letting them go without cuffs, but only on the clear understanding that if they tried anything, they’d be considered to be fleeing lawful custody. “Which you really don’t wanna do,” Icky growled at them. “Because I can run faster mad than you can scared, and if you don’t believe that”—she grinned—“give it a try.”

It wasn’t far to Toba’s, and by the time we got there, realization was starting to sink in with Blustumol. “You can’t just ditch me here in this shithole!

I have rights!”

“Yeah, rights!” Tahgren said, the first words I’d heard him speak that weren’t just a variation on some improbable anatomical contortion. “Toba runs a Guild-accredited facility. You’ll be fine,” I said, as we marched the two of them into the dank bunker. Toba was ready with the receipt paperwork, which I nodded for Perry to deal with. “I demand to be taken to Anvil Dark—” Blustomol sputtered, but I cut him off. “Demand away. Meanwhile, the exigencies of circumstance prevent us from taking you to Anvil Dark for the time being, and it would be inhumane to keep you in the Fafnir’s holding cell, so here you are. Now, enjoy. Oh, if you get bored sitting in Toba’s cell, give some thought to opening up a little. Getting chatty, especially about things we’d both find interesting.”

“This is—it’s —”

“A done deal,” Perry said, finishing up with Toba. The Skel gestured for the two miscreants to head through a heavy blast door. “No, I won’t!

I won’t let you do this!”

Toba turned toward what I thought was a blank wall. “Oh, Fluffy?”

The wall immediately slid aside with an ominous, squeaking rumble. It revealed an enormous bot, almost as tall as Icky and easily three times her mass. It rolled out of the space behind the wall on ball-like wheels the size of basketballs, deploying several massive arms that ended in nasty-looking pincers and a weapon that reminded me of a Browning.50 caliber machine gun. “Right this way, gentlemen,” it said in a flat, mechanical tone. “Your cooperation is appreciated.” The politeness of its words was kind of offset by the clash and clack of its pincers, which opened and closed like industrial metal shears. “And before you ask, yes, Fluffy can get through the door going outside. He’s chased several would-be flight attempts down—though not very far because, well, they just don’t get very far,” Toba said. The bot deftly herded the Gajur and the Nesit through the blast doors, into their cells, and locked them up. It then returned, and closed the blast door, then backed into its storage space, and the wall slid closed on it again. I looked at Toba. “Fluffy?”

“What can I say?

I have a keen sense of whimsy.”

FROM TOBA’S, we headed into Dregs to try to track down a Forensic. The two that Perry had expected to find weren’t there, though. All he could do was shrug his wings. “Who knows where they went?

Or if they might even have gotten deleted?

That’s the problem with the underworld, boss. It’s like the times, always a’changin’.”

We did pick up a couple of leads in the form of rumors, and fanned out in pairs, chasing them down. This was very much the leg-work part of policing, the unglamorous plod from lead to lead, most of them going nowhere and forcing you to backtrack and find another branch to follow. It’s the part of being a cop you don’t see on TV or in the movies, and for good reason. It’s tedious and detail-oriented, and about as exciting as—

well, watching someone walking along a street. Of course, these were the streets of Dregs, so there was always something interesting going on. I personally witnessed eight minor crimes in two blocks while following leads with Funboy and Perry. We didn’t bother intervening because they were all just small property crimes. Instead, I had Perry record each instance and provide the imagery to local law enforcement—which, as Perry put it, “Will ensure they have something to put in the file for the case they’re never going to bother investigating.”

There was a reason “private security consultants” and “personal protective services” were so popular on Dregs. You literally got only the justice you were prepared to pay for here. Things went a little less smoothly with Icky, who was with Torina and Rab. They stumbled on a serious crime, an assault well on its way to a murder, so they did intervene. And by intervene, I meant that Icky got stabbed just badly enough to make her angry, whereupon she apparently took one of the assailants and slammed him into a wall hard enough to cave his face in and snap his neck. Torina Innsu’d two more into bleeding compliance. Dregs law enforcement did show up at this one, ready for battle, but quickly backed off when Torina flashed her Guild credentials. “I think they were just happy they didn’t have to try to take Icky into custody,” Torina said over the comm when she reported it to me. I thought back to the relief of the ICE agents in Iowa over the same thing, when Colonel Mandeville made his abortive attempt to seize the farm. “Yeah, she has that sort of aura about her, doesn’t she?

Besides the glow of an expectant mother, I mean.”

“You mean menace and barely restrained violence?”

“Something like that,” I replied, although as I did, some of the flippant feeling of the exchange dropped away. We’d experienced Icky going through a period of wild hormonal swings once already. What would pregnancy do to her?

Should I send her on prenatal leave?

I made a mental note to have a talk with B about it, and to do it sooner, rather than later. “Anyway, Van, I’ve been talking to the nice Dregs magistrates about why we’re here, and they had a suggestion. Apparently, there’s an AI broker, or that’s what they called him. He apparently connects people looking for AI assistance with willing and available AIs.”

Perry cut in. “There’s actually a fair bit of that. A ship lands at Dregs and offloads cargo, taking, say, eight hours to do a turnaround. That leaves the ship’s AI sitting doing basically nothing for—well, from its perspective, the equivalent of a few millennia. Anyway, some AIs will freelance out their services while they’re grounded.”

I nodded and turned back to the comm. “Okay, get that contact from them, and we’ll talk —”

“Rab already did. He’s talking to the broker now,” Torina replied. Rab came on the channel. “I’ve already talked to one AI, thanks to this broker. His reaction to working for a Peacemaker was Are you insane?

That’s the kind of thing that gets you cooked off, no way—or words to that effect.”

I sighed. “Well, it was worth a try —”

“Actually, Van, I’ve got another one on another channel. This one I think you’re going to want to talk to,” Rab said. “Okay, put him on.”

I noticed the comm’s status change to non-standard encryption. All comm traffic not on open channels was encrypted, at least enough to deter casual interception. Non-standard encryption was much stronger stuff, the sort the Guild or the military used for secure comms. “I’m only going to ask this once. Are you Mark Tudor’s grandson?”

I frowned. “Yes.”

“And you need my services?”

“I’m starting to think I need more than just one service, considering the sort of crypto you’re using.”

“Whatever. My ship is departing shortly, and I’m going to be off comms once the crew starts doing the preflight. If you want to continue this discussion, you can reach me using the comm contact data I’m sending you.”

I pulled out my data slate and looked at the location the AI had sent. It was more encrypted gobbledygook, at least until the slate used the AI’s public key to decrypt it. I’d expected some random spot in deep space, or some similarly permissive place, like Spindrift or Crossroads. I had not expected what the slate displayed. Perry must have seen the look on my face. “Great. It’s some shitty hellhole, isn’t it?”

“Worse. It’s where they put cinnamon in chili.”

Funboy tilted his head slightly. “I’m familiar with chili, but not the other term you used. From your reaction, I gather it’s distasteful and worthy of strong protest.”

Perry got it, though. “Wait. Van, do you mean —”

I nodded. “I do. We’re going to Ohio.”

7

I’D NEVER BEEN to Defiance, Ohio and actually had to look it up as we made our way back to Earth. Located almost exactly halfway between Fort Wayne, Indiana and Toledo, Ohio on Highway 24, Defiance was named after a fort constructed in the late 1700s during the Northwest Indian War. American General "Mad" Anthony Wayne built the fort at the confluence of the Auglaize and Maumee Rivers, declaring, “I defy the English, Indians, and all the devils of hell to take it.” That gave the redoubt its name, Fort Defiance, and the rest was, as they say, history. It was a pleasant, if rather unremarkable town of about seventeen thousand people, the county seat, the largest employer being General Motors. There was no obvious reason an advanced alien AI would have any interest in Defiance whatsoever, or why it would want to meet me there. But I’d confronted alien hitmen in Des Moines, encountered alien spies on The Mall in Washington DC, found an alien warehouse on Mackinac Island in Michigan, and uncovered a vile alien plot in rural Belgium. So, what the hell. At this point, I was more along the lines of, why not an alien AI in Defiance, Ohio?

As usual, we intended to leave the Fafnir up in geosynchronous orbit to watch over us from on high. My mother had reported no unusual traffic around Earth since Fort Cantullin had been attacked, which left me wondering how this AI was coming from and going to Earth in the first place. “Perry, would it be possible for an AI to travel around known space electronically?

Basically transmitting itself from place to place?” I asked. “If it had a stable, high-bandwidth comm channel, and the computational infrastructure at the receiving end, I suppose, sure. It’s kind of cumbersome, though. It would make more sense for it to maintain a sort of auxiliary presence in other locations, like a stripped-down version of itself that it could just keep synchronizing. That’s basically what Netty-P

and Betty do periodically, keeping the two versions of her on the Fafnir and the Iowa in sync.”

He spread his wings. “Believe it or not, there’s some serious computing horsepower in this lithe, beautiful body of mine, Van. There has to be, to support something as outright awesome as me. I can’t just upload myself to any old hardware anytime I want.”

“Yes, you’re wonderful, Perry,” I said, and bit my lip in thought for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. So, working theory here. This AI is—

somewhere, I don’t know, out there in known space.” I waved a hand vaguely. “But it’s got a version of itself sitting in Defiance for… reasons. Maybe it just likes small-town Ohio. That would explain how it’s”—I made air quotes—“arriving at and leaving Earth without my mother noticing.”

“True, but it also means it has a twist-comm capability down there in sunny Defiance. And that means it has —”

“Antimatter, yeah, I know.” I blew out a frustrated sigh. “I’m really starting to dread how much antimatter is down there.”

“Sure, but as long as it's being handled safely, it’s not really a problem. I mean, at any given moment, there are at least a dozen, and often twice that many, ships on the ground at the Dregs spaceport. Add to that the twist-comm units in the city and there are umpteen megatons of explosive potential sitting in Dregs every day,” Perry countered. “For that matter, every time the Fafnir’s at Pony Hollow, you’ve got a little slice of Armageddon sitting in your barn.”

I sat back from my desk terminal. “Yeah, I know. It’s that being handled safely part that worries me. I know the Fafnir and the Frankie are in good hands. All I have to do is think about two starving Nesit on the African veldt, though, and the fact that they had a whole bunch of kilotons of destruction with them—” I shrugged. “I worry.”

“Well, I guess we’ll find out when we get to Defiance.”

“Yeah, I guess we will.”

“In the meantime, we have another problem. A serious one.”

I sat up. “What?”

“Remember those bachelorette party memories I uploaded?”

“I do.”

“Well so do I. I was going to spend them on Dregs, remember, and never did. Now I’m stuck with them.”

I grinned. “Maybe you can deal them away in Defiance.”

“I hope so. Because, if not, I’m going to be making a formal application, Master Tudor, for permission to delete them. I’d just do it myself, but Guild data protocols prevent me from deleting any memories without approval by a Master.”

I couldn’t help my grin widening. “What if I decide they have evidentiary value, and that you should retain them for ever?”

“Allow me to change the subject for a moment. People tend to think that roosters only crow at dawn. But you’re a farm boy—you know that they crow all. Damned. Day. Now, if I happen to remember the sound of a rooster crowing, good and loud —”

I held up a hand. “Point taken. You may remove the bachelorette memories if you don’t deal them away in Ohio.”

“I’m glad we were able to come to an understanding.”

I TOOK TORINA, Rab, Funboy, and Perry down to Defiance in the Frankie. I wanted this to be a more discreet trip, so we wore regular Earth duds, dressing up as ordinary, middle-class Americans, aka, the way I normally dressed on Earth. “I’m going to go ahead and say it—I love these yoga pants,” Torina said. “So do I. On you, that is.”

We left Rab and Funboy with the Frankie in a wooded area near the Independence Dam on the south bank of the Maumee River. While Perry flew overhead, Torina and I walked out to a Girl Scout camp on Ohio Regional Road 281, saying our car had broken down not far from the river and that we had to call an Uber. That took us past the expansive General Motors power-train plant and into an industrial park sandwiched between it

and Defiance itself to the west. I’d prepared a story for the Uber driver as to why he was taking us to an industrial park in the early evening, but he radiated a profound disinterest, so I didn’t bother. The location the AI had given was a nondescript metal building, identical to thousands of such buildings in industrial parks all over North America. It was divided into several units, but only two of them had occupants. One was an industrial milling and grinding company that probably contracted its services to GM down the road. The other, our destination, was called Stellar Industries, with nothing to indicate what it was or did. I glanced at Torina and rolled my eyes. “Stellar Industries, huh?

Well, hardee-har-har. Perry, what can you tell us from up there?”

“Well, there’s a Wendy’s and a McDonald’s just up the road, so you have a choice for your fine dining needs. Are you aware that the McRib is, in fact, back?”

“I’ll eat plustarnek first, but thank you for planning my meals. Now, what can you tell about this place, this Stellar Industries?”

“Not much. There’s some thermal activity leaking through the roof, but that’s about it. No comm emissions or anything like that, at least not at the moment.”

I touched The Drop and unfastened the strap that held it in my holster. Torina did the same with her slug pistol. We both also had Innsu knives on hand and ready to draw. “Okay, Rab. We’re going in. If you don’t hear back from us in five minutes, do the cavalry thing, please.”

“Standing by,” he replied. The door, a hefty steel thing with only a peephole, was locked. There was an intercom beside it. I pressed the button to activate it and heard a soft buzz. Almost immediately, a voice answered, one that I recognized. It was the same voice I’d spoken to on Dregs. “Master Tudor, I presume,” the voice said. “In the flesh, yeah.”

“Come on in.”

There was another, sharper buzz, then I pulled on the door, and it opened. I entered, Torina behind me. We both had our hands on our weapons, our weight shifted into fighting readiness, to duck or dodge or —

Or stop, and just stand there, staring at a bot the size of an end table, with four small balloon tires that could apparently roll in any direction, making the thing pretty nimble. It returned our stare with an imager reminiscent of Netty-P’s. “Master Tudor. And this must be your lovely wife and Second.”

“Yes and yes. And you are —?”

“My name is Oberin. And I’m sure it’s not obvious, but I was a Nesit.”

I EXCHANGED A GLANCE WITH TORINA. We both relaxed a notch but stayed wary. There was a chunk of space behind what served as a front office to this unit, and anything could be back there. “Okay, Oberin. Mind telling us what, exactly, is going on here?

And let’s start with how you came to be —”

“Like this?

I think you know how, by now. My understanding is that you’ve encountered a lot of people in my state. The difference is that they were all the unwilling sorts,” Oberin said. “Unwilling—by which you mean, what, you were willing to have this done to you, be stuck on a chip?” Torina asked. “That’s right. It was this, or die of a terminal disease there was no viable cure for. The idea of me—or a version of me—having immortality like this was appealing.”

I frowned as the implications of that sank in. Virtually every stolen person we’d encountered had been put in the state unwillingly. Most had been outright murdered in the process. One that we discovered aboard a wealthy scumbag’s yacht had been coerced into it via a sleazy form of contract, to pay off debts. Another, Rolis, had been chipped against his will as well but had been philosophical about it, deciding to make the best of it and actually joining the Fafnir’s crew. His heroism had lasted, too, with him sacrificing himself to save the rest of us. But Oberin had just implied that he’d chosen to become chipped. And that opened up moral, ethical, and legal cans of worms. For now, though, I just shoved it all aside to ruminate on later. At the moment, what mattered was who Oberin was, what he was doing here in an industrial park in small-

town Ohio, and how he could help us recover the data expunged from the imagery of the attack on Fort Cantullin. So I started with that. “Alright, we’ll take that for granted right now. What I’d really like to know is—what the hell are you doing here?”

Oberin waved a manipulator while deftly spinning and heading for a massive steel door leading into the back of the unit. It slid aside as he approached. Torina and I exchanged another look, then followed. We were ready with our weapons in case this turned out to be a trap of some sort —

But it wasn’t. There was no ambush waiting for us, just dozens of racks laden with hardware. The lack of hums and whirring cooling fans immediately marked it as off-world tech. Torina and I stopped. I sighed. “So what is it?

Online gambling?

Porn?

I’m assuming it’s nothing too grossly illegal, or else you wouldn’t —”

“Actually, Master Tudor, it’s nothing like that. It’s—well, all above board. Or, at least, this part of the operation is.”

“What you are looking at is the single largest red-light and traffic camera operation in the United States, and probably in the world, though I’ve never really confirmed that. I own twenty-seven shell subsidiaries, through which I contract services out to municipalities all across the country, as well as in Canada and Mexico. I’ve started expanding operations into South America and have contracts in Rio, Sao Paulo, and Lima, and I have some potential contracts coming up in Europe, as well.”

I coughed in amazement. A chipped Nesit was running a massive and, he was right—on the face of it, at least—entirely legal service business out of Defiance, Ohio. “I—uh—you—” I shook my head. “Why?

Why the hell has an alien set up shop handing out tickets to people who run red lights—speed—uh —”

“Drive onto toll roads without paying—that’s a killer business area,”

Oberin interjected. “It—” Again, I shook my head, trying to clear away a serious case of cognitive disconnect. “Okay, let’s start from the beginning. Why are you even showing me this?

I just want to recover some data from imagery I’ve got. You could have done without this show-and-tell. I mean—” I gave him a suspicious sidelong look. “Wait. Are you looking for investors or something?”

He laughed. “Oh, no. You don’t want to invest in this. You see, while it is a legitimate business, what it really is, is a large-scale money-laundering operation—and, if I do say so myself, a damned good one.”

HE EXPLAINED HIS SCAM. In essence, amid the many thousands of legitimate traffic miscreants caught on his cameras, his system would generate fake ones—imagery of nonexistent cars with nonexistent license plates. The fines he collected on those ones would be money that somebody needed laundered. He’d then feed it back to those somebodies through a convoluted network of shell companies and subsidiaries—minus his own fees, of course. If he was ever audited, his records would just show a slew of vehicle registrations, each associated with some infraction. Only a tiny percentage of them were bogus, so the chances of an auditor bothering to chase down the supposed owner of a car in Podunk, Kansas—or Sao Paulo, Brazil, for that matter—to confirm that he had indeed been assessed and paid a hundred dollar fine for some moving violation were virtually nil. He was careful to make sure his fake entries weren’t the type that could trigger significant charges that would normally lead to follow-up investigations—

just minor infractions that rated relatively small fines. The beauty of the system, aside from its simplicity, was the fact it was all automated. Oberin really had to do very little since his sophisticated off-world equipment could handle it all autonomously. The money just kept coming in, a steady trickle of scam funds drowned out by a torrent of legitimate business. Torina and I were both shaking our heads, impressed at the audacious simplicity of the scheme. But it still didn’t answer a fundamental question, which I posed when Oberin was done. “Why?

Why are you doing this?

What possible use could you have for money here on Earth?

I mean, I doubt you head out into metropolitan Defiance for some fine dining, or hop a plane to go sun yourself in the French Riviera. So what’s in this for you?”

“Here on Earth, not very much, I admit. I mostly use the funds from the money laundering here to pay for this facility and associated expenses and

—and I admit this is going to sound strange—I give most of the rest to charity.”

“Really.”

“Really. Children’s hospitals, heart and stroke research, cancer treatments—I can show you all the receipts, if you’d like.”

I puffed out an exasperated sigh. I wanted to dislike this guy for the criminal he was. I should dislike this guy for the criminal he was. I mean, charity aside, he was laundering money that came from who knew what sort of vile things, thereby enabling said vile things. But it was tough, particularly when he explained why he gave to charity. “I was dying—in fact, effectively died—of an incurable disease. I’d like to help others not have to go through that. The pain, the loss of dignity—it sucked. Hard,” he said. “Okay, fine. I’ll acknowledge that you’re a criminal, but not a scumbag about it. But I still haven’t heard an answer that really satisfies me. Why?”

Torina crossed her arms. “A moment ago, Oberin, you said there wasn’t much in this for you here on Earth. That implies that here on Earth isn’t the only place you operate.”

“Master Tudor, you’ve got a smart person here at your side,” Oberin said. I nodded. “I know. Now, how about answering?”

“I do, indeed, have operations underway in places other than Earth. Shortly after I… adopted this new state of existence, I discovered I could create additional instances of myself to run things on. The version of me you spoke to on Dregs is an AI aboard a ship that smuggles stolen spaceship parts. I just have to keep them all reasonably well-synchronized and the whole network runs itself.”

I scowled and planted my hands on my hips. “That only moves my question out into known space. Why?

What are you getting out of all this?

Do you wheel and deal in memories, like the AIs on my crew sometimes do?”

“Occasionally, but that’s not why. See, you’re stuck on the money. I don’t care about the money, not here on Earth and not out there. What I get out of this is existence.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Master Tudor, as I was dying, I was facing the end. Of everything. From my perspective, the universe and everything in it was about to cease

to exist. I managed to avoid that, at least in a way. I mean, I’m not sure if I’m really the me that expired in that hospital bed or not—the Ship of Theseus and all that, huh?

But it doesn’t matter. To me, existence continues. I need to fill it up with… things. Experiences. Sure, I sometimes deal in memories-as-currency, like other AIs, but I want to make my own memories. Right now, I’m something of a criminal kingpin, or mastermind or whatever. Maybe the next thing I’ll be is an inmate in your prison—or a painter, or an explorer, or a master thief, or—something. And something else after that. And that’s the point. I’ll be something, which is better than being nothing.”

I sighed again. I’d seen so many perpetrators of so many different crimes, from brutish thugs to suave sophisticates. I’d confronted conscience-free psychopaths and guilt-ridden wretches wallowing in remorse—those who’d happily murder their way through an orphanage, and those who’d feel genuinely bad about stepping on a bug while committing a crime. The brilliant, the moronic, the quick, the slow—hell, I’d seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. So I thought I’d seen it all. And then along comes this guy. Torina finally broke the lingering, weighty silence. “So why are you telling us all of this?

I mean, you do realize you’re admitting to a whole bunch of crimes—to a Peacemaker, and to a Master of the Guild, at that.”

“I do.”

“Okay, I seem to be asking this question a lot,” I said. “Why?”

“Because, Master Tudor, I need your help.”

8

“SO HE SAID he needs my—our—help,” I said to my crew, all of us gathered in the Fafnir’s lounge. “It turns out that the Equal Grasp is now leaning on him, to either cut in on his operation, or shut it down. And they’re leaning hard.”

Icky sniffed. “What do we care?

Let the Equal Grasp shut him down. Saves us the trouble. Hate those sumbitches.”

Rab crossed his arms. “While I don’t think I’m quite as black-and-white about it as Icky, she does have a point. If this Oberin is the hub of a criminal enterprise, why wouldn’t we want it shut down?

For that matter, why don’t we just arrest him, since it accomplishes the same thing, except legally?”

“Oh, I made it clear that his criminal empire is finished—or almost finished, anyway, but there’s a wrinkle, which I’ll come back to in a moment. In the meantime, he alleges the Equal Grasp has been leaning on him. In short, he needs our attention, and promptly,” I replied. “Oberin claims that the Grasp has been attacking him where he’s most vulnerable—his family. He claims that two of his cousins have recently died in staged industrial accidents, one on Outward, and the other on a factory orbital in the Tau Ceti system,” Torina said. “And we’ve confirmed that the two Nesit he named did actually die in unfortunate workplace accidents—or at least that’s how they were reported,” Perry put in. “Oberin says that he was approached by the Grasp with an offer, which basically sold out his entire operation for tiny fractions on the bond. He

refused, whereupon his cousins died, both within a few days, and now they want to talk to him again. So the timing of it does kind of sync up with what he’s alleging,” Torina added. I crossed my arms. “Which puts us into all sorts of awkward legal and political territory. For one, we now have to convince the jurisdictions those two deaths occurred in to reinvestigate them as homicides. Or we can take the cases over ourselves, as the Guild, but the Eridani and the Ceti Alliance don’t like it when we do that. That’s going to risk complicating things with Master Kistlin—you know, the guy who’s good side I’m trying really hard to stay on, to keep Master Marlow and her Letter of Inquiry at bay?”

“And then there’s that wrinkle you mentioned,” Funboy said. I nodded. “Yeah. It turns out that Oberin is deeply involved with a certain financial institution.”

“Oh, no. You mean The Quiet Room?” Gabby asked. I scratched an ear. “No, but kind of yes. See, it turns out that Dayna Jasskin’s former assistant, the Vela named Chensun, decided to start up a new bank when Dayna let them go. It’s obviously a fraction of the size of The Quiet Room, but Chensun has mountains of corporate knowledge, client information, that sort of thing. They’re using it to build up this new bank, and it seems they’re doing it fast.”

“But they’d be under some sort of legal restriction from using that knowledge in a competitive way, surely,” Funboy said. “Yes, they are. But Chensun isn’t doing this out in the open, as it were. This bank they’ve created is operating in the shadows, and doing it with much looser, uh, policy restrictions than The Quiet Room.”

“In other words, this Chensun’s on the lam somewhere, laying low and operating what’s basically a black-market bank,” Paxomar, who was sitting in, said. I nodded. “Exactly. Now, you’d think it would be easy to track down a bank by literally following the money, but guess where all roads lead?”

“The Seven Stars League,” Gabby chirped instantly. I gave her an impressed look. “When Oberin posed the question to me, I guessed Dregs, or maybe Spindrift. But you’re right, Gabby. Chensun’s bank is operating somewhere in, or at least hidden behind, the League.”

Gabby nodded. “It makes sense. Dregs is technically part of the Eridani Federation, and while they might turn a blind eye to stuff that goes on there, they’re not going to ignore a sleazy bank that’s trying to undercut The Quiet

Room. No one wants to get on their bad side. And Spindrift is too small, too easy a place to root out an operation like that—heck, just based on the comms traffic alone.”

“All very true. You’re really honing your investigative instincts there, Gabby.”

She shrugged. “Ever since I was involved in that operation to take back that passenger liner from those hijackers, I—” She hesitated, then shrugged. “I like it. I like this sleuthing stuff. I’ve been reading up on it—oh, you know that Earth guy, Raymond Chandler?

I’ve been reading him. He writes about this guy —”

I smiled. I couldn’t help it. “Philip Marlowe, yeah. I went through a noir crime reading spree in my first year of college. Actually, you could do worse than styling yourself after Marlowe. He’s a tough but stand-up guy. Uncompromising, in his own way.”

“I know, right?

Right now, I’m reading The Long Goodbye, and —”

“Hey, book club doesn’t meet for another two hours,” Icky cut in, then turned back to me. “So what are we gonna do, boss?

We arresting this Oberin shithead or not?”

“Not yet. He’s agreed to wind down his operations, and also see if he can restore that data from the attack on Fort Cantullin.”

“Wind down his operations?

Why not just bring it all to a screeching halt by busting him?”

“Because, like it or not, there are nine other instances of him out there, all involved in various degrees of shady. Remember how I said this was complicated legally?

Well, are those other nine Oberins separate individuals, who have to be treated as such, or are they all just legally extensions of him?”

“On top of that, the Nesit named Oberin died—we’ve confirmed that,”

Perry put in. “We don’t have legal precedent for what to do about this AI continuation of him. There’s going to be a lot of reluctance out there to treat him as a person because, those like Van notwithstanding, a lot of people out there really don’t want AIs to be legally considered people.”

“It is an interesting question. If Oberin had, say, set up a lethal trap, and it killed someone after he died, he would be legally responsible for that murder,” Funboy said, steepling his fingers and staring at the bulkhead. “However, he would also be dead, so there would obviously be no attempts

to hold him accountable for it. If Oberin died, is he the one responsible for whatever his AI successor, or successors, have done?”

“Yeah, but that means this Oberin AI can, what, murder someone and just get away with it?” Icky shot back. Everyone turned to me. All I could do was shrug. “That is a very good question.”

WE DECIDED that the logical thing to do was to go to Sunderbach, the capital of the League, and start there. As long as Oberin held up his side of the bargain I’d made with him—and I believed he would—our immediate priority was rooting out Chensun’s bank. An operation like that could be a serious problem, with implications that spanned all of known space. The fact that it involved a Vela, a race that had gotten itself implicated in the resurgent Sorcerers and the ID theft scheme only accentuated the potential danger. No sooner had we got underway, though, than I got a call from Alic on Anvil Dark. “Van, we’ve had a situation arise at Faalax that needs the attention of a Master. And since you’re the one gallivanting around out there —”

“I’m not gallivanting. I consider it more… gadding about,” I said, smiling. Alic gave his barking Eniped version of a laugh. “There’s a family-owned orbital that has requested assistance from the Guild in adjudicating a dispute. It’s not a criminal case, but it’s still important. The family that owns the orbital is extremely influential on Faalax, and Master Kistlin thinks it would be extremely beneficial for us if we helped them out. And I know you want to keep Kistlin in your corner —”

“I do, so—sure, I can do this. Can you send along the details?”

“I’ll have Max send you what we’ve got. You’ll probably have to use some diplomacy to tease out what’s at play here, though. As I understand it, it’s a complicated issue of succession and inheritance—and there’s a huge fortune and a whole lot of political implications riding on the outcome. There are so many competing interests that the only thing all the parties can agree on is that they need a neutral arbiter. So—over to you. Enjoy.”

“Relatives bickering over an inheritance?

Oh, I can hardly wait.”

THE ORBITAL BELONGED TO A FAMILY, or more properly a Family, capital F, since Families were formal units among a large swath of the Faalaxi population. A Family was a combination of, well, a family, people who were blood relations, but also people who had been formally incorporated into the family through adoption or even conquest. The latter was mostly a thing of the past now, the Faalaxi having long ago given up most outright armed conflict in favor of turning everything into a business. So people could be bought by or sold into Families, even children not yet born. But this wasn’t slavery. Once part of the Family, the purchased people were as free as anyone else. What was really being purchased was identity. But Families went further than that. They were also political units. Families had hereditary lands, titles, and offices—all of which could also be bought and sold, of course, and frequently were. Even abstract concepts like honor and honesty had monetary value. Ask a Faalaxi to tell you the truth, and he probably would. Probably. But you could pay him an amount that was standardized by the governing Pan-Family Council and he was obligated to tell you the truth. If he failed to do so and got caught, the punishments were severe, up to and including very graphic and bloody public execution. I had to shake my head at the societal system these people had developed. As we entered orbit and accelerated to match the orbital’s velocity, I said, “Is it just me, or does anyone else see all kinds of pitfalls and problems with assigning a cash value to literally everything?

I mean, I know that capitalism has its pitfalls—to paraphrase Winston Churchill, it’s the worst economic system, except for all the others. But basing every aspect of a society on it…?” I shook my head again. “I don’t know.”

“Well, whatever it is, it’s worked for the Faalaxi for nearly nine hundred years. Their last major war was almost three hundred years ago, and their crime rates are some of the lowest among all known space entities,” Perry said. I shrugged. “Nothing succeeds like success, I guess.” I unstrapped and headed aft. “Okay, as we play catch-up with that orbital, I’m going to

review the case again, to make sure I understand all these nuances —”

I stopped at the sight of Gabby in the galley, getting ready to start a meal for the crew. Sudden inspiration struck me. “Gabby, I’d like you to be my number two on this case—or number three, after Perry.”

She gave me a wide-eyed look, although all of her looks were like that. “Me?

Why?

I don’t know anything about Faalaxi law —”

“You don’t have to. In fact, my gut’s telling me this case isn’t going to come down to the law as much as it’s going to come down to figuring out what’s motivating the various parties involved. And you, my dear, have proven very adept at teasing out stuff like that.”

She took off her apron. “Okay, if you think I can help, I’m game!”

Icky called out from the cockpit. “What about dinner?”

I rolled my eyes. “Won’t kill you to… I don’t know, eat a salad or something, Icky.”

“You don’t make friends with salad, Van.”

I glanced at Perry. “All these damned Simpsons quotes are your fault, bird. You got her hooked on that stupid show.”

“Hey, it was awesome for the first decade or so —”

“We are not having this argument again. Icky, you can scrounge your own dinner today. Gabby is being called to the bar.”

“You’re going to regret saying that, Van,” Perry mumbled. “Wait, what?

You’re taking her to a bar?”

“Told you.”

ON THE FACE OF IT, the case was a simple instance of theft, one member of a Family being accused of stealing some heirlooms after the death of their father, and then being accused of lying about it despite being paid the requisite amount not to. The first was a significant crime, but the second was, under Faalaxi law, particularly heinous. The bar for proof had to be high, since violating the so-called Honesty Stipend could, at least in theory, lead to a death sentence. Which was my first line in the sand. I met with the Family Matriarch, a Faalaxan named Estwinilin, in her palatial suite aboard the orbital, and

made that clear. “I will adjudicate your case, but only if the death penalty is taken off the table,” I said. “I respect your laws, but not to the point where they’ll force me to compromise my principles.”

She waved a willowy hand. “That’s fine. We rarely levy that sort of sentence these days, outside of something major—you know, concealing a mass murder, high treason, that sort of thing,” she said airily. I nodded. “Alright. So, as I understand it, your nephew, uh”—I consulted my data slate—“Rostelinix, was accused by his cousin, Ustlino—

ina —”

“Ustlinosik,” she said. “Right. Sorry, I’m still getting used to your naming conventions.”

“Oh, no apologies necessary. You’re saying them without any of the appropriate tonal inflections anyway, and translators never get it right. It sounds like someone dropping cutlery into a pot.” She gave me a keen look. “But we make allowances for non-native speakers.”

I smiled. “I’m glad. Anyway, one of your nephews is accusing the other of stealing some heirlooms that he thought should have been passed down to him.”

“That’s right. Add the accusation about the violated Honesty Stipend, and you’ve got your case.”

Gabby, who’d been sitting quietly at my side, spoke up. “If I may—what’s this really about?” she asked. Estwinilin turned that keen look on her. “And you are?”

“This is Gabby, a valued member of my crew and a personal advisor. She’s assisting me on this case,” I said. “Very well, Gabby. What do you mean by that, exactly?”

“Well, your original message said something about succession. But I haven’t heard anything about that part of it.”

Estwinilin again waved a dismissive hand. “That was an error. Succession is not an issue in this case.”

“Oh. Okay. Sorry to bring it up, then,” Gabby said. I glanced sidelong at her, but her body morphology prevented her from easily doing the same—she had to pretty much turn her whole upper body to look at me. And she didn’t, so I got no cues from her as to whether she considered the matter closed or not. Still, that gut feeling I’d had about motivations persisted. I gave Estwinilin a mildly curious look. “So, if I were to find in favor of the plaintiff, what would happen?

Would he be entitled to the heirlooms?”

“Of course. If they were stolen from the estate, and since he is the inheritor of the estate, then they rightfully belong to him.”

“And”—I checked the slate again—“Rostelinix doesn’t have these heirlooms in his possession.”

“Not that we are aware—since, if we were keyed into that fact, there would be no need for adjudication.” Whatever tonal inflections she’d used

—a major part of the Faalaxi language—prompted the translator to make her sound impatient. Her words, though, did the same on their own. Still, there was something going on—a tonal element the translator had detected, but had rendered as almost slightly sad. It didn’t fit her manner at all, so it was probably a flaw in the tech. I stared for a moment, wondering at what that flaw might be. And what the outcome would be. “Excuse me, but for the record, what are these heirlooms?

They’ve only been referred to as such, and I kinda need something more specific for my transcript,” Perry put in. “They are a set of old books pertaining to this Family’s history. They are mainly curiosities, old diaries and such. As part of your duty as Arbiter, you will be expected to place a cash value on them, Master Tudor. Should it turn out that Rostelinix has indeed stolen them, he will be expected to pay that in recompense, in addition to whatever other penalties are levied against him.”

I said nothing, but gave her my most diplomatic smile—the one that promises nothing, and hides everything. Then, I began to speak in my blandest tone, going over a few more points related to the case before extricating us from the scene. When we returned to the Fafnir, Gabby pulled me aside. “Van, we’re going to get a tip soon about those heirlooms. It’s going to turn out that they are in Rostelinix’s possession—or, at least, that they seem to be,” she said. I was about to ask her why she thought that, but I just narrowed my eyes at her for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. I believe you. Or, at least, I believe that you believe that.”

“When we do, leave what happens next to me and Perry, okay?

You stay out of it.”

“Alright. I’d ask you where you’re going with this, but I get the sense that you don’t want to compromise me as Arbiter.”

“That’s it exactly, yeah.”

“Cool. Gabby, as of now, I’m following your lead on this.”

She gave me a pudgy-handed salute. “I won’t let you down!”

I smiled. “I know, friend. That’s just one of your qualities.”

9

GABBY WAS RIGHT. Sure enough, we received a tip via an anonymous comm message transmitted from the orbital. Netty-P confirmed that all of the identifying metadata had been scrubbed away. Before she could play it for me, though, I stopped her. “Nope, I don’t want to hear it. Hand it over to Gabby. She’ll deal with it. And please make specific note of the fact that I declined to hear it to preserve my impartial status as Arbiter.”

“Van, I record everything.”

“Well, record this… in higher res or better audio or something.”

While Gabby did whatever she was doing, I prepared to attend the preliminary hearing. This would be an opportunity for the two sides to present their case and any evidence or supporting witnesses. I would then adjourn the proceedings and convene them again at some future point to either request more information or issue my findings. It was all pretty standard stuff, leaving Perry and me mostly concerned about getting the nuances of Faalaxi law down pat. When the time for the hearing came, I put on my cursed dress uniform and its even more abominable stovepipe collar, then headed back into the orbital. The hearing was being held in a compartment that positively oozed gravitas. One of the major exports of Faalax was luxury goods, especially art, and particularly things like tapestries, rugs, and woven items. Faalax’s biosphere produced both a wide range of fibers and a whole spectrum of natural dyes, something the people here had been exploiting for centuries. Some of the most valuable objects in known space were Faalaxi in origin. The big chamber housing the Master’s Table in the Keel on Anvil Dark sported a huge Faalaxi tapestry that supposedly depicted some early, glorious days of the Galactic Knights Uniformed. It was, of course, about as historically accurate as a propaganda poster—hell, it was a propaganda poster—but it was a damned beautiful example. Hundreds of years old, and the intricate, colored detail was still as rich and vibrant as the day it had been woven. All of which was to say that the Chamber of Arbitration, as it was known for the duration of the case, was resplendent with the best of Faalaxi weavings, including what was supposedly one of the three oldest still in existence. Speaking of cash value, as Perry pointed out, the artwork decorating the chamber was probably worth millions of bonds at market rates. “Which means these people are really, really rich,” I said, nodding absently. “I recognize that look,” Perry said. “What look?”

“The one on your face right now. You only get it on two occasions.”

“Really. And those would be —?”

“Well, one is when it’s an iffy spring or fall day, when you’re pondering whether you want a beer, your favorite hot-weather drink, or bourbon, your go-to for cold days.”

I smirked. “Can’t argue with that. What’s the other?”

“When you’re looking deeper into a situation than you’re letting on, and at least considering things that go beyond what it seems to be on the surface.”

“Again, guilty as charged.”

“Care to share?”

“Not yet. I want to see what Gabby has to say first.” I glanced around. Faalaxi were beginning to filter into the chamber. They included the Matriarch, as well as the accused and plaintiff—or at least I assumed that’s who the two Faalaxi who sat at the respective tables placed in front of me, left and right. “Where is she, anyway?” I asked. “No idea. She left the Fafnir about an hour before we did. I can try to track her down —”

“No, that’s fine. If she has something to bring forward about all this, she’ll show up.” I glanced around again. “Is it just me, or is this pretty much the same room setup they use for Judge Judy?”

“It is, yeah. You want me to be the master of ceremonies?” Perry made his voice like a classic voice-over guy. “This is Rostelinix. He’s accused of stealing precious family heirlooms. But he denies it —”

“Thanks, bird, but this isn’t daytime TV.”

The last Faalaxi had taken their places. I glanced at the Matriarch, who was sitting in a sort of VIP box off to one side, and she nodded. “If I may have your attention, please,” I said, my comm sending my voice to the chamber’s sound system. When the last whispers stopped, I went on. “I’m Van Tudor, Master of the Peacemaker Guild. I have been asked to act as Arbiter for the matter before us today, that of the alleged theft of heirlooms by the accused, Rostelinix, from the plaintiff, Ustlinosik.”

As I named them, I turned to each of the Faalaxi in turn. The Faalaxi are a lithe, vaguely avian people, with a hint of something reptilian—they reminded me of how some sci-fi artists on Earth had speculated the dinosaurs might have evolved into an intelligent race if they hadn’t been wiped out by a big space rock. It made them always look, to me, to be slightly pissed off and predatory. It also made them hard to read, so neither accused nor plaintiff appeared to react as I named them. I then went on to summarize the details of Ustlinosik’s complaint while enumerating what had supposedly been stolen. “Does anyone disagree with these particulars or have anything they wish to add?” I asked at large. This was another of the nuances of Faalaxi law, one that seemed a little odd. I mean, I could just imagine how thrilled a judge in some US Circuit Court would be at having to ask the audience if they wanted to add anything to the case. I turned to Ustlinosik and told him to make his case. He stood, and with as much ponderous gravitas as permeated the elaborate chamber itself, proceeded into a lengthy, convoluted and largely irrelevant rant—it was precise and almost fussy, but it was a rant nonetheless. The briefing material had warned me about this, too. The Faalaxi loved them their pontificatin’, and Ustlinosik did not disappoint. It went on and on, nearly an hour of eloquent rambling that boiled down to He stole that stuff and won’t admit it. It was as though Atticus Finch had turned his full powers of legal

persuasion onto a case about an eleven-year-old accused of having smelt it, but then refusing to admit he’d dealt it. See, Van, this is nothing like Judge Judy. She’d have called four people stupid by now, gotten through two complete cases, and had three commercial breaks, Perry said in my ear bug. I gave a sage nod, as a good Arbiter should. Ustlinosik finally wrapped up, leaving a long, momentous silence hanging off the end of his words like he’d just finished a closing argument before the Supreme Court, then sat down. I bit back a sigh at the fact that we were only half done, then I thanked him and turned to Rostelinix. “The accused may now present his case,” I said —

Just as Gabby appeared in the entrance to the chamber. The instinct that had been tickling me through the whole case kicked in again, and I looked at Ustlinosik to see his reaction. Aside from glancing in her direction, though, he had none. But Estwinilin, the Family Matriarch, did. She barely glanced at Gabby before immediately looking at me. Huh. Gabby started forward, and I spoke. “If I may beg your indulgence, Rostelinix, we’ll pause for a moment as my assistant in this case approaches.”

Gabby stopped in front of the table where I sat. “Van, we need to talk,”

she said. “Is this regarding the case?”

She stared at me for a moment, then spoke in a duh tone. “Uh—yeah, of course it is —”

“Gabby, this is all on the record.”

She stared briefly again, then got it. “Ah, right!

Of course!

Silly me.”

She glanced around. “I don’t think this should be on the record, though. It—

it would —”

“Potentially be prejudicial if spoken in the presence of either the plaintiff or the accused, which would violate Faalxi legal protocol?” Perry asked. I gave him an appreciative smile. That’s my legal eagle. “Excuse me.”

I turned to the voice. It was Estwinilin’s. Huh again. “The Arbiter recognizes the esteemed Matriarch Estwinilin,” I said. “Thank you, Arbiter. I think I speak on behalf of all present who only wish to see just truth emerge from these proceedings. If you believe it beneficial to discuss whatever this matter is privately, then please do so.”

No one disagreed—of course. It was hard to otherwise make out much reaction from the wholly unfamiliar Faalaxi body language. But I saw more animation from the accused, Rostelinix, and those I’d realized supported him, than I did from anyone else. That notably included the plaintiff, Ustlinosik. I nodded. “Very well. This Arbitration will take a brief recess,” I said, before standing and gesturing for Gabby to follow me back to the Fafnir, which wasn’t docked too far away. AS SOON AS the Fafnir’s airlock sealed, guaranteeing our privacy, Gabby turned to me. “Van, you told me to not say anything to you so I didn’t, you know, compromise you as Arbiter —”

“I know,” I said, leading her and Perry into the crew lounge. “But I’m picking up a definite vibe in there that something’s going on, so I don’t think my impartiality is going to matter anyway. So— off the record—what did you find, Gabby?”

She held up a data slate. It was an image of a standard cargo crate, open, revealing its contents—about a dozen sheaves of fine paper encased in elaborate bindings. They were books, albeit with spines at the top. That, and their elaborately ornate character marked them as Faalaxian. “Well, what do you know. I assume your anonymous tip led you to them,” I said. Gabby wiggled an arm. “They’re in a cargo bay a couple of decks down and, uh”—she pointed—“that way, I think.”

“Let me guess—the bay, or at least the crate, is somehow connected to our poor accused Rostelinix,” Perry said. Gabby nodded again. “It’s one of three crates registered back to a shipping company Rostelinix partly owns. Netty-P helped me find that out.”

“Not that it was hard,” Netty-P said, joining us. The rest of the crew had gathered to listen in. “There was one rather cumbersome attempt to spoof

some metadata, but it wasn’t difficult to get around it.”

“Of course it wasn’t,” I said. “It wasn’t enough to just let us find the books. We also had to confirm that Rostelinix’s fingerprints were all over them.”

“There’s something in those books someone doesn’t want to get out. If I had to guess, it’s something that would give Rostelinix a better claim to the full inheritance, and the succession that went with it, than Ustlinosik,”

Gabby said. I had to frown at that. So did Torina, who raised her hand, lips pursed. “Uh, Gabby, if that were the case, those books would never have turned up like this. They’d have just been destroyed, and some other evidence would have been planted that suggested… whatever his name is, the accused, had stolen them.”

But Gabby shook her head. “I don’t think so. Van is supposed to put a value on these books, which has to be paid to the plaintiff in compensation. And that’s on top of everything else he’d get. I think he, or whoever’s behind this, is just greedy. They probably assume that we’ll hand the books back over without poring through them.”

“Screw ’em. Let’s just not hand them over. For that matter, let’s act like we never found them. Let them prove their own case,” Icky said, idly scratching her chin with a sound like a metal file. But I shook my head. Gabby’s logic was sound, and now I was following it to its inevitable destination. “That won’t work. They’ll just make sure the books are found another way. That’s going to create the same situation, except it will look like we were trying to cover it up.”

“And there goes Van’s impartiality—and credibility. And with it, the Guild’s,” Perry said. Torina sighed. “Yeah. And Master Kistlin will not be happy about that.”

I frowned at the image for a moment. “So the scam is this. They take the books, then accuse Rostelinix of stealing them. He denies it, despite them wanting to pay him his Honesty Stipend, because he didn’t. We show up to adjudicate the case, and just as Gabby predicted, we get a tip that leads us to the books, along with evidence that Rostelinix was the thief. I have no choice but to adjudicate against him, so he pays the penalties and Ustlinosik walks away with the inheritance—just like his aunt wants it.”

Torina cocked her head at me. “His aunt?

The Matriarch?”

“Yup. When Gabby walked into that chamber with something obviously pertinent to the case, she was interested in only one thing: my reaction.” I scowled. “Have I ever mentioned that I hate being used?”

“So what do you want to do, Van?” Gabby asked. Again, I just stared at the image on the data slate for a while. “Perry, Netty-P, how long would it take you guys to scan and absorb the complete contents of those books?”

“As fast as someone could turn the pages. But even if the books weren’t destroyed, thanks to some greedy sumbitch wanting his dirty cake and eating it too, do you really think the relevant pages will still be there?”

Perry asked. I shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Only one way to find out. Either you guys find the big secret, or you find where the big secret has been yanked out. I’d prefer the former, but I think I can work with the latter.”

I turned to Gabby. “That is damned good work, my dear.”

“Thanks, Van!”

Icky peered over her shoulder with a sweet grin—and by sweet, I mean kind of horrifying. “Okay, now that she’s done being the hero, can she make dinner, please?”

Gabby beamed anew. “How many plates are you feeling, big girl?”

Icky held up two arms and eight fingers. “Eight. And yes, there will be noodles.”

SURE ENOUGH, one of the books—a diary kept by a succession of ancestors to Rostelinix and Ustlinosik from three or four generations ago—was missing at least one, but probably no more than three pages. Perry and Netty-P were each able to confirm it independently by noting that traces of inks and pigments on one page didn’t match the one facing it. There was also slight damage to the binding. It had taken them an hour, with Funboy, Torina, Rab, Pax, and Icky taking turns flipping pages to do the scan. I was prodded twice by the Matriarch in the meantime, but I told her that new evidence pertaining to the case had come to light and I was evaluating it prior to reconvening the Arbitration. When we had what we needed, we put the books back into the crate, then I had Icky carry it back to the chamber. I brought the whole crew along, all in their best uniforms, less Netty-P, who stayed with the Fafnir. I wanted to make the point that the Guild was here—and it wasn’t taking any shit. I resumed my place at the front of the chamber, with Perry at my side. I reconvened the session, then immediately looked from the plaintiff to the accused. “Before I call upon the accused to make his case, I would like to have a sidebar with the two of you, please. To that end, I would ask that everyone else clear the chamber, with the exception of my crew”—I turned to the Estwinilin—“and the esteemed Matriarch, of course, who may attend if she so desires.”

An uncertain moment hung in the air, then people began to stand and file out. There were lots of curious backward glances and furtive whispers. When the chamber was clear, I motioned for Icky to bring the crate containing the books forward. “Here’s the missing property,” I said, nodding at the case. “It’s almost entirely accounted for.”

“Where was it found?” Ustlinosik asked. As if you don’t know—is what I thought but didn’t say. “The location was disclosed to my assistant, Gabby, by means of an anonymous tip. I kept myself recused from any of it and allowed her to investigate. During the course of that, she discovered the allegedly stolen books in this crate, in a storage bay not far from here.”

“How did they get there?

And is there any evidence that Rostelinix was involved?”

I was tempted to say no, just to see what his reaction would be. But I knew that somehow, the breadcrumbs pointing back at Rostelinix would come to light, again making it look like I was involved in a cover-up. So I nodded decisively. “There was. Evidence associated with accessing and storing this crate in that bay appears to implicate Rostelinix.”

Rostelinix stood. “That is a lie!

I had nothing to do with those books or how they ended up there!”

I held up a hand to stall his rant. “I believe you. Or, at least, I don’t believe the evidence is… entirely credible.”

Now it was Ustlinosik’s turn for outrage. “If there is evidence, there is evidence, Master Tudor. And that being the case, you have no alternative but to find —”

“Um, excuse me,” I cut in. “I was asked to Arbitrate this matter in what I believe is good faith—” Which was another bit of bullshit, because the ask wasn’t done in good faith at all, but whatever. “—and I have done so in good faith, and will continue to do so in good faith, unless and until I’m relieved of that duty.” I looked at the Matriarch as I spoke that last bit. Her dark eyes framing her beaklike face had fixed me with a keen gaze. She nodded. “I see no reason why you should not, Master Tudor.”

“That being the case, then, I would ask you to refrain from presuming to tell me how I must find anything in this case,” I said, turning back to Ustlinosik. He glared back at me for a moment, then subsided. “My apologies, Master Tudor.” He perked up again. “But you said the writings were almost entirely accounted for. What does that mean?”

“Ah, well, that brings us to the crux of the thing, and the reason why reasonable doubt has, I believe, been cast on Rostelinix’s role in all this. You see, we have examined these documents closely and have discovered that at least two pages have been removed from one of them—if not more. It is a generational diary, with the missing bits being whatever was written by the plaintiff’s and accused’s ancestor four generations ago. Interestingly, they are the last two pages entered by a particular ancestor. The pages immediately following were started by an immediate descendant.”

I watched the Faalaxi as I spoke. Rostelinix was listening intently but gave no sign of really understanding where I was going with this. Ustlinosik and his aunt, though, were watching me keenly—not focused on what I was actually saying but entirely fixated on my conclusion. “So, you see my dilemma. It would appear that somebody removed documents that have had something to say about… ancestry and blood lineages —”

The Matriarch spoke, cutting me off. “Master Tudor, what are you telling us here?

Is this going to influence your findings?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t made a decision about any findings yet. All I can say is that it’s definitely going to be a factor.” I looked straight at the Matriarch. “It certainly establishes reasonable doubt. I mean, it implies that

someone removed those pages because they contained something that would bear directly on this inheritance. I wonder what that was.”

The Matriarch returned my stare for a long, silent moment. She was used to getting her way. In her society, she wielded the power. But I wasn’t part of her society. And she’d invited me, and the Guild, to come and render judgment on this as a blatant ploy. Like I said, I didn’t like being used. So I had no problem meeting her stare second by unblinking second. She finally looked away. “Very well. Master Tudor, your services are no longer required —”

“Oh, no. You can’t just dismiss me that easily, not now. You’ve implicated me in this. And I have no doubt you’ll announce to Faalax that I proved untrustworthy for some reason and couldn’t be allowed to arbitrate the case. That’s not happening. If you dismiss me, I will head straight to your Ruling Council and your media with a few very clear statements.”

She puffed herself up. “I have enormous sway on the Ruling Council —”

“Then it shouldn’t bother you when I speak to them, should it?”

Rostelinix looked around. “What, exactly, is going on here?”

Icky couldn’t contain herself. From the back of the room, she said, “I think your great-great-great-grandma put dinner on the table for more than one fella, if you know what I mean. I think that’s what Van’s saying.”

I held up a hand. “I am explicitly not saying that, Icky, thank you. The fact is that we have no way of knowing that for sure.” I turned back to Estwinilin. “Do we, Matriarch?

Or”—I cocked my head slightly—“do we?”

Estwinilin looked imperious for a moment—but only for a moment. Then she sagged a little. “Very well, Master Tudor. Since it would seem you are determined to take what should be a relatively straightforward case —”

“Um, excuse me, Matriarch, but to the extent that it’s straightforward, it’s only that way because that’s how it was contrived. I was supposed to find the books. I was supposed to act young and impetuously—and believe me, after what I’ve seen, young no longer applies to me or my crew—and further, I was being nudged to find Rostelinix as being guilty. How’s that sound?”

“Yes, you were. Add to that the payment you would receive for your work, and that’s what previous Peacemakers have done.”

“Oh. Crap. Yotov arbitrated three cases here,” Perry said. I shot him a glare. “Why didn’t you mention that, bird?”

“Because, Van, it was at best not relevant, and at worst could be considered prejudicial. And you didn’t want that, now, did you?”

I sighed and nodded. “You’re right. Sorry, Perry.” I looked back at Estwinilin. “But it does explain why you figured this would all play out the way you envisioned it. It’s because you’ve had corrupt Masters and Peacemakers in the past who were only too happy to play that way—and, pardon the language, damn them for making the Guild, and by extension, me, look like a bunch of meek collaborators.”

The Matriarch offered a stiff shrug. “I suppose we had to run into an honest one sooner or later—unfortunately.”

I scowled but let it go. “So Rostelinix is the descendant of a bastard, isn’t he?

And that was dutifully recorded in that old diary. Even though he has, on the face of it, the superior claim to the inheritance and the succession, you didn’t want him to.”

Rostelinix looked from me to the Matriarch. “Is this—is this true?”

“Yes, it is,” she replied. “The large blue creature back there put it crudely but correctly.”

Her voice hardened. “Which wouldn’t have been a problem if you hadn’t announced that you were turning all those documents over to our public archives after your inheritance was ratified. If you had done that, the truth would have inevitably come out.”

Rostelinix said nothing. He just stared into space. Gabby stood and spoke up. “Okay, so we figured all that part out. And I know why you didn’t destroy the books. It’s because they’re worth a lot of money.”

“A fortune,” Estiwinilin agreed. “Sure. Fine. Dumb, but fine. What I don’t get, though, is why you didn’t just tell Rostelinix the truth, if it was so important. Why set him up to be portrayed as a criminal?”

“For that matter, who cares?” Icky asked. “This was something that happened four generations ago!”

The Matriarch looked indignant. “We care. It is our way. The reality of the—the severed bloodline is a stain of humiliation upon the entire family.”

“Well, sure, but you’ve gone through all those descendants since without trouble —”

“Which would only compound the shame!

Entire legacies, some of them noble indeed, would have been destroyed!”

Rostelinix stood and looked at me. “Master Tudor, I would like to plead guilty to all charges. I stole the artifacts and then refused to tell the truth as the Honesty Stipend compelled me to do.”

I stared at him. Icky started to stand, but Paxomar held her back. “Rostelinix, are you sure about this?”

“I am.”

Torina came forward. “I know it’s not my place to judge how your people do things, but… this is utter bullshit. You’re pleading guilty to a crime you didn’t commit, to cover up the minor indiscretion of a distant ancestor.”

Estiwinilin shot Torina a venomous look. “You are right—it’s not your place,” she snapped. Torina persisted, stopping in front of Rostelinix. “This is wrong. And it’s never going to be made right as long as your people are willing to throw themselves out the airlock like this. So your great-great-great-grandmother

—at worst, she made a mistake —”

“I am not interested in trying to start a social revolution,” Rostelinix replied. “I understand that you may find this objectionable, but it is the only way to preserve the Family’s Honor.”

“But—!”

I stood. “Torina, you are out of order here. You have no status to intervene.”

“Van—”

I gave her the most uncompromising look I could. “Please return to your seat, or I’ll have you removed from this chamber.”

Torina gave me a look of momentary disbelief, then her face went cold and she nodded. “Very well, Master Tudor,” she said, stalking back to her place. The rest of my crew sat looking profoundly uncomfortable. But I clenched my teeth and turned back to Rostelinix. “If I accept your guilty plea, I’ll have to assess the minimum penalties required by Falaaxi law. That means you’ll be fined, imprisoned for a period of one standard year, and disinherited—at minimum. Do you understand that?”

“I do,” he said, looking at me squarely. I glanced at Ustlinosik. He at least had the decency to avoid looking back at me and just stared at a point on the floor. “Very well. I so find, and now hand the case back over to the Faalaxi authorities for its disposition. These proceedings are concluded.”

I stood and started for the door. I wanted to go… anywhere else. But Estiwinilin intercepted me. “Master Tudor, I realize this was very difficult for you. I just want to thank you —”

I spun on her “Don’t. I don’t want your thanks. Now that I’m no longer Arbiter, I have no qualms about saying that Torina was right. This was, frankly, bullshit of the highest order. A sleazy, convoluted scheme that not only could have been avoided with a frank conversation, but was also designed to manipulate me into giving you the finding you wanted. To say that I resent that is—it’s one hell of an understatement.”

I scowled. “But you got what you wanted. And all it’s going to cost is the reputation, social standing, and, oh yeah, the freedom of an innocent man. So you’ll excuse me if I now take my leave of you.”

She gave me a cool look. “I understand. I will ensure that your payment is increased appropriately —”

“Oh, for—Matriarch, I don’t want your damned money. Put it against Rostelinix’s fines.” I started to move away, then turned back. “Oh, and a word of advice. Here, your laws hold sway. But out there”—I waved a hand

—“it’s interstellar laws, which your people are signatories to, that reign supreme. That’s the Guild’s territory. It’s my territory. I’d suggest you never forget that.”

I turned and walked away. My crew parted to let me stride past. Torina definitely looked like she wanted to say something, but I gave her a mild look that asked her to wait. It was message received, and we continued on in tense silence. I was glad to step into the Fafnir’s airlock so we could leave Faalax in our fusion wake. Because for a people who could craft such visions of beauty, they had an ugly streak a mile wide. 10

WE FLEW in silence for a while. I brooded in the cockpit, staring out at the stars, while Netty-P and Icky awkwardly went about their normal flight duties behind me. Perry perched nearby, saying nothing but ready if I wanted to talk. Torina came into the cockpit and sat in the copilot’s seat. I stared at the stars a moment longer, then sighed. “Alright, go ahead.”

She nodded. “I will. Van, I’m sorry.”

I glanced at her. She shrugged. “You were right. I was way out of line. I put you into a really bad spot, and I apologize.”

I sighed again. “What makes it worse is the fact that you were right.”

“Oh, I know I was right. I’m not sorry for what I said. I’m sorry that I actually decided to get involved and say it.”

Icky turned to look aft. “Guys, mom and dad are making up, it’s okay!”

I heard Funboy reply. “Making up how, exactly?

My understanding is that there is such a thing as make-up sex, and if that’s the case, I will be moving my workstation from the cockpit back to engineering. Or to another planet.”

Torina grinned and raised her voice. “Don’t worry, Funboy, that part comes later.”

“But not in the cockpit?”

“We’ll see.”

Now I was smiling. But it faltered and faded. “Wow. That really sucked.”

“Yup. Those were horrible people,” Gabby said, stepping into the cockpit. “But they’re stuck being horrible because of how their society works.”

“Societies can change, though. And they should change. It’s how they grow, how they progress,” Torina said. I shrugged. “Yeah, but it’s putting an awful burden on Rostelinix to be the one to change it. In a way, it might be easier for him—and definitely easier for that precious Family of his, who are mostly innocent bystanders in all this—to have just done what he did.”

“He sacrificed everything for his Family’s Honor. Why didn’t they just let him… abdicate, or something?”

“Because when you’re a scheming, conniving hammer, everything looks like a nail. That’s the problem with turning honesty into a commodity that can be valued, bought, and sold. No one thinks to use it for what it really is

—the truth.”

“I don’t know if he’s a hero or just a naïve dupe,” Torina said. I looked back out at the stars. “Those things aren’t mutually exclusive, babe. I think he’s both.”

ONCE WE WERE UNDERWAY, I retired to my cabin to ensure I had the whole sordid affair thoroughly documented. The Matriarch was the sort of egomaniacal powermonger to take offense at my parting comment regarding local Faalaxi versus interstellar law, so I wanted to make sure everything was in my report. What didn’t end up there was what Perry told me when I mentioned my niggling concern that I might have aggravated Estiwinilin with my admittedly vengeful and petulant threat. “Oh, I don’t think so,” he said. “Really?

Why not?

She seems like the type to hold a grudge,” I replied, sitting back and staring at my desk terminal. “Maybe because I suggested to the Faalaxi AI overseeing the case on their side that we’d given all of those heirloom documents a thorough scan

and found some… interesting material in them, things that should probably remain out of the public eye.”

I turned to him and raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”

“Well, all of it would probably be interesting to someone, and there probably are things in it that shouldn’t be published because no one is going to give a shit and it would be a complete waste of time.”

“You were bluffing, you mean.”

Perry shrugged. “But not lying. Not technically, anyway.”

I smiled, then rubbed my eyes. “Perry, that really sucked. I presided over the ruin of an innocent man. It was all over such trivial bullshit, too, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.”

“That’s why you get paid the big bucks, Van.”

I sniffed. “That’s all you got?

Really?”

“What do you want me to tell you?

That was realpolitik in action. You stepped into a box made of Faalaxi laws and you couldn’t step back out of it without seriously harming Faalaxi-Guild relations. Estiwinilin wasn’t joking when she said she has huge sway on their Ruling Council, and given the realities of their culture, anything but the result we got would have done huge damage to her Family’s standing. And hell hath no fury, am I right?”

“Oh, I know all this. It was the best outcome for—and here’s a phrase I’ve never liked, and I think I'm only going to keep hating more as time goes on—the greater good. But it still sucks. The well-being of the greater good shouldn’t depend on periodic sacrifices, like some sulky ancient god.”

“And yet, here we are.”

I nodded and turned my attention back to the screen. “And here we are.”

IT TURNED out that Estiwinilin was also determined to get her way when it came to paying me, it seemed. The Faalaxi concept of debt—incurring it, having it, and discharging it—was so integral to their strangely intimate form of social capitalism that she literally couldn’t let us leave without paying us something. She managed it by giving Gabby something. “The package arrived right before we left,” Gabby said. She stood in the crew lounge, holding a small box in her pudgy hands. “The note that came

with it said it was a gift given to recognize my service to the cause of justice and stuff. Considering how things turned out, though, I’m not sure what to do with it.”

“Do we know that whatever it is, it’s safe?” Icky asked. Gabby looked at her. “Wait, do you think this is a trap?

Is it dangerous?

Is it a bomb or —”

I held up my hands. “Gabby, I doubt that after all that, the Matriarch is going to try to assassinate me and my crew. She’ll just want this unfortunate business to go away, and that would be a terrible way of accomplishing that.”

“If you think it’s okay —”

“I’m sure it’s okay.”

She opened the box. We all gaped. What it contained was the sort of thing you’d likely only see in a museum, in some display of artifacts from the tomb of an ancient king. It was a pendant, an incredibly intricate and finely wrought golden filigree chain, from which hung what looked like a pearl the size of a large grape, perfectly spherical, as black as the void but alive with shimmers of iridescent orange-red. It was breathtaking in its elegant simplicity. “Oh, my—” Gabby lifted it out of the case and held it up. The stone’s fiery luster reminded me of the orange glimmers that crawled along the edges of blackened wood in a campfire. “Oh my is right,” Torina said. “That’s spectacular.”

“Probably cost a fortune, too.” Icky then turned to Paxomar. “How come you never get me anything like that?”

“Because… it would cost a fortune?”

“Oh. Yeah. Good point.”

“I don’t think I can take this, though,” Gabby said, looking at me. “Van, I know that case was really hard for you —”

Again, I held up my hands. “Gabby, you did excellent work regardless. An innocent man might be paying a price he shouldn’t, but thanks to you, he paid it out of choice—not because he was railroaded into it. And we at least had the satisfaction of forcing the people who did it to him to admit it. Not that I imagine that’s going to make them lose much sleep, but still, because of you, they weren’t able to just get away with it.”

“It sounds like you’re saying I should accept it to spite them.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, yes,” I replied, smiling. “Okay, then.” She tried to put the necklace on, but her chubby arms were too short. Torina stepped forward. “Here, Gabby, let me,” she said, then put the necklace around her neck—whose girth turned it into more of a choker—

and fastened it. Gabby turned to us. “How does it look?”

We answered by applauding. Gabby beamed back at us. Funboy stepped forward and held up a data slate. “You are radiant without it, my love, but even more so with it.” He used the slate to capture an image. “For my scrapbook,” he noted. “You have a scrapbook?” Perry asked him. “Yes. It’s an adjunct to my diary.”

“You have a diary?”

“We sensitive sorts often do.”

“Yeah, well, be careful with it. That mess we just went through was triggered by a stupid diary,” Torina said. “I do not use it to record factual information, such as issues of genetic lineage. It captures my thoughts and hopes and dreams.”

We all glanced at one another, but no one said anything. Funboy tapped at the slate. “And now, I must show my own gratitude by transferring a reasonable sum of bonds to the Matriarch. Uncle Funboy wishes for her to buy herself something nice.”

“Uh, Funboy, that’s just going to create another debt that the Matriarch is going to feel bound to discharge.”

He looked up from the slate and blinked at me. “I know.”

A moment of silence, then we all started to laugh. I’D INTENDED to head back to Anvil Dark, but we got a comm message from B shortly before we twisted out of the Faalax system. “Think I’ve got a lead on the Tsarina, Van,” she said. “Oh?”

“Yup.” Her image on the cockpit display switched to that of a star chart, with a system highlighted. “This is Eta Boötis, aka Muphrid on Earth. It’s a

bigger, hotter star than Sol, and has a teeny little white dwarf companion. It’s thanks to the latter that the system doesn’t have any habitable planets—

for a tiny star, it’s got a crap ton of gravitational pull, so the system was never stable enough to form planets. It’s just all rocks and dust.”

“I’m assuming this little stellar travelogue of yours has a point.”

“Yeah, yeah, keep your undies on, Master Tudor. Eta Boötis is a closed system, used as a military testing range and a location for live-fire exercises. It’s operated under a joint agreement by the Eridani Federation and the Ceti Alliance, with a few minor participants signed on as well, like the Wu’tzur.”

“Hey, we’re not a minor anything,” Icky grouched. “So—how about an additional signatory. Better?”

“Yeah. Better. It just pisses me off when we Wu’tzur get —”

“Excuse me, but can we get back to why we’re talking about this system in the first place and worry about Wu’tzur ego-strokes another time?” I added. “Works for me,” B said, her image reappearing. “Anyway, this is a closed system mainly because it is used as a firing range. The inner system is polluted with missile shrapnel, expended rail-gun rounds, probably some unexploded ordnance, that sort of thing. It is, to be properly descriptive, a whirling cloud of death orbiting the two stars in crazy and unpredictable ways. No one has any reason to go there anyway, but for liability purposes, the various signatories maintain several guard posts there—orbital stations located on the system’s margins, intended to warn off would-be visitors. Anyway, one of those guard posts was recently destroyed.”

“I assume it was automated.”

“Nope. Manned by three Usu. Again, it’s a liability thing. And if you have to man a lonely outpost in the middle of nowhere forever, Usu are the ideal types to do it.”

“So the Usu are dead.”

“Again, nope. They’re missing, apparently. I’m getting all of this from a source I’ve got in the Eridani military, so you can consider it reliable info,”

B said. “And they’re not the only unfortunate Usu. A few minutes after this outpost was destroyed, one of the others, light-hours away on the other side of the system, was also wiped out. And those Usu are missing, too.”

“So a coordinated assault,” Rab observed. “Very,” B agreed. “Okay, but how do we know this was the doing of the Tsarina?

And for that matter, what interest does she have in attacking these outposts?

Sheer anger?

Viciousness?” I asked. “I saw the woman punch three people over an expired yogurt coupon.”

“Frozen or regular?” Icky asked. When I turned to her, she shrugged. “It matters.”

“It does, and it was frozen, which is really just sad ice cream. But…

don’t underestimate the power of anger. To answer your question, the why of it is because of that likely unexploded ordnance I mentioned. The Ferals are always looking to restock their armories, and even a handful of missiles, or even just parts, can go a long way.”

“The whole point of it, though, is that the system is that whirling cloud of death you mentioned. There’s got to be easier ways to get weapons than that,” Rab countered. B shrugged. “I don’t disagree. But Ferals like the Tsarina aren’t noted for their corporate commitment to health and safety. And it’s a test range. Maybe they got word that something interesting was recently tested there, and they thought they could get their grubby hands on it. Anyway, it’s all just to say that the Tsarina could very well have had reasons to go to Eta Boötis. And as for how I know it was her —”

The image changed again. It showed a ship of a vaguely familiar design coming toward the imager. “This was retrieved from the wreckage of one of the outposts, along with data about drive emissions and such. Netty-P should be able to confirm —”

“Netty-P can. That’s a nearly exact match for the ship that fled the battle near Earth, the one we believed was carrying the Tsarina,” Netty-P added. “The emissions signatures confirm it.”

“Anyway, Van, I know you’re interested in running down the Tsarina, so I figured I’d share this with you,” B finished. I sat back and thought for a moment. “The question is how to follow-up on this. B, I’m assuming the Usu were considered missing because their remains weren’t found in the wreckage of the outposts.”

“That, and the fact that a standard class 2 workboat assigned to each outpost was missing as well. Presumably, the Usu used them to flee when it became clear they were about to be attacked.”

“Flee to where, though?” Torina asked. I turned to Netty-P. “A class 2 couldn’t get very far without refueling, could it.”

“No. A class 2 hull is considered the smallest that can be twist-capable. Even then, it would be the smallest possible twist drive and a tiny reservoir of antimatter—enough for three to five light-years of a twist, at most. And, anticipating your next question —”

She put another new image on the display, a chart showing all systems within five light-years of Eta Boötis. The only one of note was Arcturus, a known-space system hosting a substantial cometary mining operation. “Well, unless they met a ship somewhere, or were captured or were colluding with the Tsarina, that’s pretty much the only place they could have gone to get fuel,” I said, pointing to Arcturus. “Assuming they did, then there are another three logical destinations within five light-years, so…

maybe we’ll get lucky. Now, without casting aspersions on the Usu as a whole —”

“They’re dirtbags!” Perry said. “Thank you for that nuanced commentary, bird. Anyway, as I was about to say, it’s entirely possible these Usu aren’t missing, as much as they’re hiding. Whether they colluded with the Tsarina, or simply ran, they probably won't want to be found anytime soon.”

“Van, that binary red-dwarf system there, Ross 52AB, hosts a sizable deuterium mining outfit. They skim gas off a big-ass gas giant,” Perry said, highlighting one of the three systems close enough to Arcturus to be interesting. “Okay, and?”

“And, there’s a bar there called The Ratchet.”

Funboy spoke up. “Ah, yes. Essie and I visited it briefly during an undercover op. It was… distasteful.”

“Distasteful, yeah, but kind of a crossroads in that part of known space. If this is the line of investigation you want to follow, I think we can skip Arcturus and head right there,” Perry said. I shrugged. “Sure, why not?

To The Ratchet, Netty-P, if you please. I got my fill of stuffy bullshit formality on Faalax. It’s time to let our hair down.”

11

THE DEUTERIUM PLANT WAS IMPRESSIVE—A lattice-work expanse of gantries enclosing pipes, processing machinery, and huge storage tanks nearly two klicks long. It orbited just above the uppermost reaches of the gas giant’s atmosphere, siphoning up gas through a feed pipe nearly two hundred klicks long. A series of big chunks of rock were effectively strapped to the top of the platform, acting as counterweights to the feed pipe and maintaining the center of mass of the entire structure in the orbital track, where it belonged. Excavations in the rocky counterweights housed the control center and its crew and associated amenities—including The Ratchet. It was a busy place, too. When we arrived, there were a half-dozen bulk carriers either loading deuterium, or preparing to dock or depart. Another two were inbound, and yet another outbound with a full load. Refined deuterium was a critical component in fusion fuel, which meant it was a critical component, period. We arrived without fanfare, ostensibly to refuel. We couldn’t really hide our identity because even with a spoofed transponder signal, the Fafnir was a distinctive enough ship that it wouldn’t take much for an AI to recognize her. So, rather than trying to hide who we were, we decided to hide why we came here in the first place. We actually did refuel, but I took the crew for a casual mosey into The Ratchet—again, not an unusual thing to do while we were here. And of course it wasn’t casual at all. We wore our b-suits, but I had everyone cover

up with civilian clothes. That way, rather than sticking out as a Peacemaker and his crew, we’d just blend in—more or less, anyway. We also arrived in pairs, over several minutes, and generally ignored one another in favor of ordering drinks and doing our own discreet security sweep. “And, right on schedule,” I murmured, watching three missiles aim themselves at Torina. The missiles were human males—the rough-looking types typical of the ships that plod cargo routes carrying things like deuterium, but that didn’t worry me. This was Torina, a woman who could have knocked all three of them out cold without spilling her drink. Still, it grated on me, despite it being a direct confirmation that my wife had the presence of a queen. And the face from the golden age of Hollywood. I took it all in, enjoying the moment. “You boys are about to be let down,” I said, watching Torina wave them away while taking a drink. It was so casually cruel, I knew she’d done it for me—just so I could see her make them realize it was her, and me, and nothing else. When she winked at me, I had confirmation. She’d known all along. She was… remarkable. Smiling, I turned to Funboy, who was my partner, as we stood at the bar waiting for our drinks. “I guess you and Essie must have had moments when you were working”—I almost said undercover—“together, when you had to wrestle with your personal feelings, huh?” I was watching Torina as I said it. Funboy followed my gaze and saw Torina chatting with one of the men, who’d persisted enough to get within her orbit. Funboy rotated toward me, his expression grim. “Essie and I were close, Van, yes. But… he was not my type.”

I turned to him, staring dumbly a moment, then shook my head. “Oh. No. No!

No, I meant —”

“I know what you meant,” he said, giving me a ghost of a smile—

which, in his case, was like actually seeing a ghost. I laughed and we took up our drinks and turned to scan the bar. “I see a group of three Usu off to our left,” Funboy said. “And there are two groups of two more to our right.” He didn’t look in either direction as he spoke. “Uh-huh.”

That was a lot of Usu. On the other hand, it wasn’t unusual for ships like bulk freighters to employ Usu. There was a lot of churn among their crews, people joining and leaving ships constantly on short-term, often single-flight contracts. Usu were more reliable since they were only contracted for long periods at relatively low cost. As much as I distrusted the Usu, the way they were treated as sort of a cross between people and property bothered me. It was a step up from the way most AIs were treated, but still—if you were a person even in part, then you were a person. But I wasn’t here to solve yet another societal ill today. I turned my attention to the rest of the crowd. It was a mixed bag of the usual suspects

—humans, Gajur, Nesit, some Fren-Okun, a couple of Skels, and a handful of less common races. And they were all doing what crowds in bars did: sitting and yacking and drinking. A few were smoking or vaping things, though not necessarily tobacco. That didn’t always mean it was mind-altering, either, since there were lots of smokable things in known space that varied from species to species. Beyond the crowd and wispy fumes, I saw other parts of the bar, which were given over to different environments too noxious or corrosive for us fleshy oxygen-breathers. “So how do you want to do this, Van?

Just walk up to the Usu and ask them about the—the matter that brought us here?” Funboy asked. He’d activated his comm such that everyone else would hear our conversation in their ear bugs and could reply accordingly. I sipped my drink, a passable version of something like whiskey, albeit too sweet. “For the moment, let’s just watch. And listen in on the Usu, if we can,” I said, taking another sip. Icky and Gabby managed to snag a table that came open close to one group of Usu, narrowly cutting off a mixed group of humans and Gajur also making a play for it. One of the humans, a big guy with a bushy unibrow and a shaved scalp covered in a swirl of tattoos, glowered at Icky. This is our table, he snapped, his voice growling in my ear bug. Then you shouldn’t have left it empty, candyass, Icky shot back. Paxomar, who was with Perry outside the place keeping watch, spoke up. Icky, sweetie, remember that you’re brawling for three. Silence. The tattooed man and his colleagues sullenly withdrew back to where they’d been standing, but I noticed the hard looks they kept sending at Icky and Gabby. Funboy did, too. “Van, I am growing concerned that my precious flower may be in jeopardy,” he muttered. I glanced at him and sniffed. “I watched your precious flower get shot clean through, which barely annoyed her. I also watched her squeeze a man pretty much until he was mush. I am, in fact, haunted by the horror of his death—not that the sumbitch didn’t deserve it, but, you know.”

“Still, it is incumbent upon me as the male participant in our relationship to be constantly prepared to rescue my damsel.”

“Holy shit, Funboy, where are you getting your relationship advice from?

Jane Austen?”

He gave me a grave look. “I am an old-fashioned sort of guy.”

I rolled my eyes, but before I could speak, Icky cut in, her voice low. Van, these Usu aren’t… talking. Or if they are, it’s nothing we can understand. It’s just a bunch of low tones, like harmonics in a wonky fusion reactor, she said. Perry spoke up. Yeah, subvocalization. It lets them talk among themselves without having to broadcast comm signals. It would work, too, if I couldn’t overhear them via Icky’s comm. “So what are they saying?” I asked, making it seem as though I was talking to Funboy. I’d love to tell you it’s all stuff critical to advancing the plot of our little story, but they’re mostly gossiping about everyone else in here. Sheesh—

who knew Usu were so bitchy. And fussy. And messy, Perry replied. That messy raised all sorts of questions on its own, but before I could respond, there was a shout. “I know that Wu’tzur!

She was in on it when I got pinched on Spindrift!

She’s one of those Peacemakers!

There are Peacemakers here!”

The voice belonged to a Skel, who was jabbing a finger at Icky as he spoke. I remembered arresting a Skel on Spindrift at least a year ago. But we might have arrested more than one Skel on more than one occasion—it was hard to keep track. And it didn’t matter, anyway, because no sooner had the Skel finished shouting, than all hell broke loose. ICKY MANAGED AN AW, for f— and then the tattooed guy and his friends were charging at the table, fists swinging and feet kicking. I’m not sure what they thought they’d get out of attacking a Peacemaker, especially a seven-foot-tall one with four arms and biceps like basketballs, but—booze. Need I say more?

Things quickly cascaded from there. A Gajur swung on Gabby as she was standing up, and was rewarded with a fist that sank halfway into her face with a heavy splat, followed by a mild rebuke, “Hey, do you mind?” It came out slurred, though, because his punch had momentarily distorted Gabby’s mouth. The Gajur gaped, then swung again. Funboy immediately rushed off, shouting, “I am coming, my sweet. I will save you!”

I sighed and put my drink down. The bartender took it and put it behind the bar. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t get spilled,” he said. “Much obliged,” I replied, then followed Funboy. By then, Rab and Torina had been pulled into a bar brawl that was spreading through the crowd like the blast wave from a missile strike. Tattooed guy and two of his friends were on Icky, punching away. Gabby had gripped the Gajur that was swinging on her, and I opened my mouth to shout not to crush him the way she had the hijacker, but she simply tossed him aside. He crashed into the table of Usu, who stood and immediately confronted Funboy. Since I was right behind him, I was going to end up charging into that little fracas whether I liked it or not. “And here we go,” I said, swinging my arms to loosen up. I heard shouts and the clatter of brawling, then I went to work. I led with something simple—a hard left to the soft point of a human’s nose—he squealed like a piglet and dropped, out of the fight instantly. While stepping over him, I sent a sharp kick back to his balls, just for good measure, then caught someone who unwisely decided to attack Icky. The alien, who might have been an Eniped wrapped in an enviro suit, slammed into me even as I yanked him off the ground with an Innsu hip toss that sent him into the wall with a shattering impact. “And, two,” I said. Then it was time to fight the Usu. I launched a whistling right, hit the Usu at his neck joint, and was rewarded with the kind of pain that really makes memories. My b-suit

protected me, but my hand throbbed as I dodged to one side while snapping out a kick at the nearest Usu legs. Then the Usu hit me with a savage chop, its bright metal coming down in a silvery blur. I struck back as best I could, but the problem with Usu is that they have inorganic—that is, metal—components, and it’s not fun punching steel rods. During a brief lull, I saw Torina handily fending off a pair of Fren-Okun, chopping one of them down and making him drop like a sack. Rab, meantime, stood like a boxer, dodging and blocking blows from a human and jabbing back with surprising speed and skill. When he landed, there was always an oof or another noise. He hit hard. I saw Paxomar wading his way toward Icky, who was now a blue whirl of fists and feet. He was something of a scrawny nerd by Wu’tzur standards, but he still stood nearly six-foot-six and outweighed even a big human by at least a third. He shoved and punched his way toward his wife, flattening a human, a sallow, leering man, on the way. Then, in a moment of gallantry, Pax vaulted a table with the grace of a hippo in spandex and landed on two aliens with a bone snapping thud. Icky looked up in adoration and then got back to the science of throwing haymakers. An Usu finally connected with my jaw. It slammed me back and around, leaving a shrill whine in my ears and my lower face numb—something I suspected wouldn’t last. I kicked back but connected with nothing, and saw why through tears. Gabby had snatched up the Usu and, despite the thing’s semi-mechanical struggles, held him fast. I backed away, rubbing my jaw, and Gabby spun the Usu around and slammed him into one of his fellows like a living battering ram. They both crashed into a table and went down in a heap. It was all good fun, the saying goes, until someone loses an eye. No one had lost an eye here—at least, not as far as I’d seen, anyway—but a sharp crack, a slug-pistol shot, had the same effect. A bar brawl was one thing. I wanted to get my crew the hell out of it but was prepared for it to take time to disengage. But a firefight was something else again. Despite the pain in my jaw, I hit my comm and shouted, “That’s it, everyone out of the pool. Get outside now, and we’ll pull back to the Fafnir!”

My crew responded immediately, doing their best to draw back. There was another shot. Another, and a slug cracked past me. Rab reached the door, pulled his own sidearm, and shot into the air over the crowd. More

people winced and ducked, giving my crew a brief instant to break away and head for the door. Torina joined Rab to hold the exit, but several Usu were rallying to charge them, seize the exit, and cut us off. Perry swept in between Rab and Torina’s heads, shouting, Heads up—I mean down!

in our ear bugs. We all did it on instinct, lowering our eyes, while everyone else of course looked right at this bird that had flown into the middle of the room. They were still looking when he exploded in searing, scintillating light and noise. Shouts. A few outright screams. People winced and ducked, cursing and stumbling through their momentary blindness. It gave us a chance to race for the exit, pile out through it, then start back to the Fafnir. A couple of Usu did emerge into the rocky corridor behind us and open fire. Shots snapped past us, and Rab grunted as he took a solid hit to the chest. We were ready, though. I leveled The Drop and fired at the same time Rab and Torina did. Shots slammed into both Usu, dropping them in sprays of gore, organic and inorganic. “Rab, you okay?” I asked him. He nodded and wheezed out, “Yeah—winded!”

We carried on back to the Fafnir. No one gave chase, so I took in the state of my crew. Funboy was limping, Rab was gasping, and Icky and Paxomar were both spattered with blood, though I didn’t think much of it was theirs. We were otherwise intact. Perry caught up to us. “Good move, bird,” I said to him, a little slurred since my jaw was now officially hurting. “I figured it was in our best interests to keep the body count low,” he said. He stayed a few paces back, then flew forward and caught up, before falling a few paces back again and covering our retreat. We made it to the ship and stumbled through the airlock. Netty-P sealed the door as soon as Perry and I were through. “I can’t take you guys anywhere,” she said. We spent time catching our breath and treating our various injuries. None of them were too severe. In fact, my jaw, which was badly bruised and now swelling in spectacular fashion, was probably the worst. Rab was going to have quite the bruise on his chest, too. But we’d otherwise been lucky. “What the hell was up with the shooting, anyway?” Icky asked while Funboy treated a few cuts she’d sustained. “It was the Usu,” he said. “They chose to turn the affair into a would-be firefight. It suggests that they were particularly interested in not getting caught.”

I nodded while holding a cold pack to my jaw. “Yeah, which suggests they had something to hide. But—ow!—there’s more to it than that. They looked like they—shit!—were going to try and block the door against us.”

“So, what, they were planning on trying to kill us?

In that crowd?

How many people would they have taken down at the same time?” Torina snapped. I shrugged. “Good question. Unfortunately—damn, that stings—we didn’t come away with any evidence, anything we can use to find out what the hell they were thinking.”

“Uh, actually, maybe we can,” Gabby said. “One of those Usu got kind of… broken. Not just by me, though!

Some big guy decided to stamp on his head!

Anyway, I grabbed this from the, um, wreckage?”

She held up a small computing module. I glanced at Perry. “Bird, what are we looking at?”

“Our ship’s cook managed to grab a processing module. There’s probably still data in the buffers, so, yeah, there definitely might be some answers in it,” he replied. I smiled at Gabby—or tried to. “Gabby, if my mouth didn’t hurt so much, I could kiss you right now. That’s going to help a lot.”

Funboy cleared his throat. “Ahem. Those full, luscious lips are not meant for you, Van.”

Gabby actually blushed, or whatever her species equivalent was of blushing, highlighting the organelles in her translucent body. Torina grinned. “Yeah, Van.”

I blew her a painful kiss, then nodded to Funboy. “Of course. It was just… overly exuberant speech on my part. Now, let’s crack this processor thing and find out who’s been naughty.”

12

WE ARRIVED at Anvil Dark to an odd reception. Many Peacemakers I passed with Perry, as we headed for The Keel, greeted me quite warmly. I’d only worked with a few of them regularly, like Lunzy, Dugrop’che, and Jamberac, but I had worked briefly with a lot more. I knew them well enough to recognize them, and since many hadn’t even seen me since I became a Master, they were eager to say hello. During a break from the attention, in a lift, Perry spoke up. “So, tired of the sucking up, yet?”

“Perry, it’s not necessarily sucking up just because these people want to say hi and congratulate me.”

“Van, you worked for about a day with Peacemaker Otoan nearly four years ago. All of a sudden, she wants to invite you to The Black Hole for a drink, to get—and I quote—“caught up?” That would consist of, Hey, remember that time we flew parallel courses sixty million klicks apart while we tried to box in a smuggler?

Good times.” Perry said, sounding deeply suspicious. “Okay, in that case, we don’t have much of a shared background, I admit.”

“Barely even enough time for the ice in your drink to start melting.”

“Fine, some of it was sucking up.”

A few seconds later, Perry clarified a point. “But some of it definitely wasn’t. Did you notice that?”

I nodded. Slowly. “Yeah, I did.”

A few Peacemakers had greeted me with obviously forced politeness, and a few more had just shot me sullen, contemptuous looks. Again, these were people I’d barely worked with or had never worked with at all. They had no more reason to resent me than Peacemakers like Otoan had to treat me like their close pal. And then there were the ones who just ignored me altogether. They were, in a way, the most unsettling group of all. The ones kissing up to me, I could smile and ignore. The ones glaring at me, I could take note of. Those others, though, gave me nothing to work with at all. “Casaril’s people,” I said. “Or people sympathetic to him, yeah. I think he kind of inherited Yotov’s sleazy network, all the Peacemakers who saw their bank accounts get bigger under her watch.”

I sighed. “Yeah, we cut off the weed, but the roots are still here, wound through the Guild.” I leaned back against the wall of the lift and crossed my arms. “Sometimes, Perry, I think it would make more sense to just toss it all out and build something new. The Guild’s problem is that it’s been around for too long. It has too much baggage—and not just what it inherited from the old GKU. It’s accumulated whole warehouses of its own baggage over the… hell, centuries.”

I glanced down at him. “People go on about how awesome old growth trees are. And some species are. But some are just old. They’re sick, and tired, and decrepit, and need to be cut down or burned to make for something new and healthy.”

“That’s gotta be some kinda of record,” Perry said. “What do you mean?”

“Well, just a few weeks on the job and you’re already talking about burning the place down.”

“Fires don’t burn in space, Perry. You know that.”

“Depends on what’s burning.”

MY OFFICE HAD BEEN COMPLETELY REDECORATED. On the face of it, it made sense. It had been just as Gerhardt had left it, spartan in his unique way. Every time I entered, it triggered a flood of memories—some fond, many regretful. So changing it was something of a

relief, actually. But that said, it had been changed from the style known as Soulless Austere Bureaucracy to a different version of Soulless Austere Bureaucracy. Perry put it best. “Who knew there were so many shades of beige?”

There was even a piece of artwork—a large, high-res image of luminous golden wheatfields sprawling off to the horizon, under towering storm clouds the color of a bad bruise. Obviously taken on Earth, it was actually quite striking. “I think it’s supposed to be Iowa,” Perry said. “Yeah, as envisioned in the Travel Iowa website’s downloadable wallpapers, maybe.”

I headed back out into the reception area to see Max. “I see my office got, ah, redecorated.”

One of the vaguely squid-like entities that composed the hybrid being called Max turned its attention to me. The other just kept working. “It’s policy when an office is reassigned. And I did send you the form regarding decorating and functional preferences, Van—which you never returned.”

I waved a hand. “Yeah, I remember seeing it somewhere way down the priority list. I’m not complaining. It’s nice enough. I mean, it’s an office, right?” I turned to Perry. “Bird, come with me. I just remembered a little errand I’ve been meaning to run.”

I walked out of The Keel, into the long corridor that made up one of the connecting spokes to the outer rings of Anvil Dark. Through a viewport, I could see the next spoke around the wheel. That one contained an atmosphere that would turn my lungs to mush and led into a section of The Keel to match. It was rare, actually, for all of the Masters to breathe the same atmosphere. More often than not, one or more had to sit at the Masters’ Table virtually, since it wasn’t practical to hive off and seal bits of the august chamber housing it to provide a methane-ammonia atmosphere or lead-melting temperatures for one participant. I glanced at Perry, who’d perched on the railing along the ped-way that would whisk you along the length of the spoke. “So, do you think they’ve bugged the place,” he asked, knowing full well what my answer would be. “Yep. To the point where it’s crawling with them. We can probably dig them all out, but until we do—” I started, then thought it through. “For now,

we leave them. As of now, that office is where I’ll do the business I want them to overhear.”

“Van, they’re probably expecting you’ll make some effort to look for bugs. If you don’t —”

“They’ll be suspicious, yeah, good point. Okay, new plan. Let’s find some of the bugs and have them quietly removed. Let’s try to avoid finding all of them. A strategic kind of incompetence, if you will,” I said. “You’re assuming we could find all of them, at least without gutting the place and having it entirely redone exclusively by people we trust. If they’ve gone military or intelligence-agency grade, there’s some stuff out there that’s undetectable,” Perry reasoned. “Fine. Like I said, the office will be our disinformation kiosk. Between that and me sitting there doing paperwork, it’s going to be boring, pointless spying for some poor AI. That’s the angle I’m going to look into. It’s either an AI already on Anvil Dark, all of whom I know and a few I suspect, or it’s a noob, in which case it’s going to be obvious. I won’t take any action against them, but it would be nice to know who got stuck with the job,” I explained. “Sounds good —”

Torina cut in on the comm, interrupting Perry. “Van, I’ve been delegated to inform you that there is apparently a new establishment opening on the main upper concourse, just down from The Black Hole. You are cordially invited to attend the official opening this evening. I’ve been further informed by certain members of the crew that they’re going whether you are or not.”

“Not that I really object, but you could remind them that drunk in The Black Hole and drunk in a new place is going to be much the same experience.”

“Ah, but this is no ordinary bar. This is a noodle bar, a place called Takahashi’s Forceful Noodles. ”

Perry’s eyes flashed. “Shit. Noodles. And Icky. Together, on Anvil Dark. Why couldn’t it have been something innocuous, like backwoods moonshine or meth?”

I grinned. “Yeah, tell her I’ll be there. In the meantime, I’m going to go to my newly redecorated office and talk out loud for a while about what an asshole Yotov was.”

A pause from Torina, then, “What?”

“I’ll explain later.”

PLACES like The Black Hole were actually independent businesses started by Peacemakers either retired or wounded—sometimes both. They could apply for space to run a business on Anvil Dark, probably because the Guild had been their home and family for so long they had nowhere else to go. That was the case with the proprietor of The Black Hole, and so it was for the owner of the newly opened Takahashi’s Forceful Noodles. The Peacemaker in question, a gruff Gajur missing two fingers on one hand and with the right half of his face burned scar tissue, greeted me when I came in. His name was Sethlot. “Master Tudor, you’re the first of the big bosses to show up,” he said. “Tell you what—here’s some all-you-can-eat coupons, good for a month, for you and your crew —”

“Oh, I don’t know if that’s wise—” I started, but a massive blue hand darted between us and snatched up one of the coupons. “Yoink!”

Icky turned to the self-service bar and bellowed, “Cover me, boys, I’m goin’ in!”

“—for you to offer all-you-can-eat to my crew,” I managed to continue, nodding toward Icky. “Especially my big blue engineer over there.”

Sethlot laughed, but it faded a little when he saw I was being serious. “Well, the coupon says that management does reserve the right to limit portions —”

I grinned. “Yeah. You tell her that.”

The noodles were actually pretty good. Sethlot had a wide array of them, with sauces drawn from a range of cultures, including Earth. I tried some curried noodles and nodded with approval. “I wonder where he gets Garam Masala out here?” I said to no one in particular between mouthfuls. “There’s been stuff leaking off Earth for a long time, Van,” Perry said. Torina walked up just in time to hear that. “Yeah, there has. And it’s only spooling up,” she said, her face grim. I put down my fork. “What do you mean?”

“What I mean is that Netty-P, with Paxomar’s help, finally cracked open that processor module Gabby recovered from the Usu. He was either one of the escapees, or an associate. Anyway, it seems that the Usu crews of those guard stations were engaged in a little moonlighting.”

“Doing what?”

“Some long-range surveillance of shipping routes passing through or close to that general region, for starters. Netty-P and Pax found data related to ship types, trajectories, schedules, and even cargo mass, so they could tell which ships were loaded and which were empty. It’s not clear if they were doing this for somebody in particular, or just selling the data to whoever wanted it."

"Like pirates," Rab said. He’d been sitting with us, a mostly untouched bowl of noodles in front of him. They didn’t really fit his dietary profile, and he’d bought them more as a show of support for Sethlot. With Icky around, though, there was little danger of them going to waste. I nodded. “Pirates, smugglers, all sorts of ne’er-do-wells, yeah.” I turned back to Torina. “So what’s the punchline?”

She turned a data slate toward me. It showed a number of lines representing trade routes. Two of them were major, recognized routes, heavily traveled by commercial traffic. But there were three that were off the beaten path and used inconstantly. “Guess where those, um, alternative routes are going,” she said. I frowned. Given the orientation of the star chart and their general direction —

I shrugged. “Dregs?

Or… League space?”

“Uh, yeah, mainly Dregs in one direction. But let me zoom this out and rotate it so you can see the other end—the part you’re really not going to like.”

I knew where it was going to be even before she did, because of course I did. “Earth,” I said. “Uh-huh. And here’s the kicker. Netty-P compared the Usu mass data for the ships on those routes with their hull classes. Most of the ships heading to Earth were running empty.”

I cursed. “Yeah, and I’m sure they didn’t leave that way.”

“Agree fully, boss,” Perry said. “Which begs the question—what are they stealing from Earth?”

“And how?

How the hell are they getting enough stuff, whatever it is, off of Earth to fill up all those ships?

Your mother is right there,” Rab said. I nodded and was hit with another moment of concern that my mother had… regressed. This time, I rejected the idea. I was convinced by now that she had gone straight and was simply being duped. The Equal Grasp, since it was undoubtedly them behind it, had figured out a way to get things off of Earth without being detected by her, or by the surveillance bots Panzygrus had built for us that were still watching over Earth from its Lagrange Points. But how?

“You know, it might not be Earth at all. Maybe they’re recovering something from somewhere else in the Solar System,” Perry offered. “From Jupiter, or its moons, or the asteroids.”

I gave a glum nod. That was certainly possible. Cantullin Station—or The Fort in our collective slang—was on the edge of the Solar System, so its ability to see things on the other side of the Sun was limited. Our other surveillance assets were focused on Earth. That left a huge volume of space in the System where any number of things could be happening, of which we were blissfully unaware. “Okay. Torina, can you get Netty-P to send all of this to my mother, and to Cantullin Station?

Maybe they can get some answers, or at least some clues. In the meantime —”

“That’s your fifth bowl!” Sethlot said, sounding alarmed. I turned to find him confronting Icky. She was literally standing in front of the self-serve bar, refilling her bowl on the fly. Funboy was standing beside her, blinking at Sethlot. “The coupon says All You Can Eat. Clearly, she has not yet had all she can eat,” Funboy said as I joined them. Icky muttered something through a mouthful. I intervened. “Sethlot, I’ll pay for whatever she’s eaten. And when she’s finished this bowl, she will have had all she can eat.”

Icky shot me a look but kept chewing. “Awwwmmmph!”

Funboy held up the coupon. “Van, the contract clearly implied by the phrase All You Can Eat —”

“Let me put it this way. After this bowl, she will have had all she can eat—as in, all that she will be able to, because we are leaving. Duty calls.”

“How about I thet up a tab?

I gotta eat for two extrath—” she slurred through a mouthful. I smiled. “I gave Sethlot my credit card information.”

She scowled.“That uses those Earth things, dollops or whatever. They’re no good here.”

Funboy clicked his tongue. “They are not dollops. They are dullards.”

“US dullards, not to be confused with the Canadian ones,” Perry added. I looked at Icky in mock surprise. “Oh, no, you saw right through my clever scheme. Now, finish that bowl, then head back to the Fafnir—

actually, on second thought, take a pit stop in the hangar bay and hose yourself down. I don’t want you dripping sauce and noodle bits all over the decks. Waldo works hard to keep them shiny and clean.”

“Is something amiss, Van?” Funboy asked. I sighed and shrugged. “As usual, the answer to that is, yeah, many things are amiss. But this one specifically involves Earth. Somebody is pillaging something from the Solar System, and I intend to find out who, and how, and put a stop to it.” I pointed at Icky. “This comes as no surprise, but you have stuff on your face.”

“Where?” Icky asked, blinking. “Um… sort of this zone—” I began, circling her enormous face with my hands. “Yeah. The whole thing.”

Funboy gave her a look. “The mark of an enthusiast.”

Icky beamed. “Hear that, Van?

I’m an enthusiast.”

“Yes. Yes you, ah, are.” Sethlot, who’d been watching our exchange in bemused concern, cleared his throat with a diffidence I didn’t know Gajur could manage. I got the hint. “Bill the Fafnir for our, ah, consumption, Sethlot. We’ll be back,” I said, watching his face go from relief to alarm. He schooled his features into something neutral and managed to say, “I

—I can’t wait.”

“Me neither!” Icky boomed, then I nudged her toward our ship. Torina’s eyes glittered with mischief, and as one, we headed home. As we walked, I had an uneasy feeling, and it wasn’t about Earth. It was firmly rooted here, in Anvil Dark. I was being spread too thin and was starting to get the nagging sensation I wasn’t focused enough on what was happening here. Which was a problem. Anvil Dark was supposed to be the safe place for Peacemakers, the base of operations, the flank you didn’t have to worry about. Instead, as I made my way back to the Fafnir, I found myself again thinking about burning down old trees. 13

OUR NEXT STOP WAS, unsurprisingly, Earth. I had questions, lots of them, and the place to start getting them was my mother. I’d sent the data Netty-P and Paxomar had extracted from the Usu component to her ahead of time, asking her to look it over and see if she could think of any way that ships could move materials off Earth without being detected. As we passed the orbit of Mars, she contacted me on the secure channel we’d established for our private comms. “First of all, Van, I just wanted to say thank you.”

I smiled. “For not immediately suspecting you of being in cahoots with these people?”

She smiled right back. “Oh, no, I’m sure you did suspect me of it. Thank you for not coming out and saying it, all accusing-like.”

I crossed my arms and sat back at my desk terminal in my cabin. “Okay, a little mea culpa, I suppose. But, to my credit, I only briefly considered it, then rejected it.” I let my smile fade. “But it seems those ships are loading up somewhere in the Solar System, with something, and somehow not being detected while doing it. Unless they’re just passing through here —”

“Doubtful, since Earth really isn’t on the way to anywhere important, at least that we know of,” my mother put in. I nodded. “Yeah. Now, there could be something beyond here that’s their destination, I suppose, and we’re just unaware of it. It may be they’re either only stopping briefly for a nav fix, or just twisting right past Sol. But,

yeah, I’m not sold on that, either. So the other possibility is that empty freighters are coming here, to the Solar System, but they’re doing something other than loading up with stuff. But if so, what?”

My mother shrugged. “Sorry, Van, I have no idea. When you sent that data, I had my people scour back through our scanner logs, the logs from those Lagrange surveillance drones, and I asked Cantullin Station to do the same with their logs. None of us found even a hint of anything unusual.”

“So either those ships really don’t have anything to do with the Solar System, or they’ve got some wicked stealth thingamabob in play, or—”

Now I shrugged. “It’s a mystery. And I don’t like mysteries. I’ve got enough of them in the air as it is, without trying to juggle another one.”

“Well, we’ll redouble our watch, make a lot more use of active scanners, maybe deploy some surveillance drones of our own.”

“Thanks, mom. Appreciate it.”

“You’re most welcome. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to put on my eye patch and get back to —”

“Hah. Hah. Avast ye, and such. I said I only considered you went back to your old ways. Considered.”

She smiled broadly. “Progress. Be safe, son. Mom, out.”

I returned to the cockpit to find Miryam’s face on the center display. Her signal was relayed through my mother’s ship, then sent to us via twist comm, so we had almost real-time communications. The only lag came from the delay between the comm terminal I’d given her and the Retribution, which was located near the Moon. “I called Miryam to let her know we were coming,” Torina said as I slid into the familiar, form-fitting comfort of the pilot’s seat. “Apparently, she’s been waiting to talk to us. Something’s up at the farm, it seems.”

I turned to Miryam. “What’s going on, my dear?”

“I had a visit here from a couple of gentlemen who seemed… new.”

“New?

What do you mean, new?”

“They were… different, I guess, than the usual suspects that have come nosing around the place over the past weeks. They all keep their distance, which suggests to me that those orders from on-high, the ones that Loren Freirbach from the State Department told you about, are still in place and are being respected. But these guys came right up to the house, knocked on the door, and introduced themselves as representatives of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, aka UNIDIR.”

I sat up. “UNIDIR?

What the hell did they want?”

“Well, they were friendly enough—one had a German accent, and I think the other one might have been Italian. But they wouldn’t say exactly what they wanted, other than that they were on a simple fact-finding mission and wanted to talk to you personally. I told them I had no idea when you’d be back, so they gave me a number to call. It’s the number of a Holiday Inn Express over in Madison.”

“What’s the significance of this United Nations Disarmament Institute thing, Van?

Is this United Nations some sort of world government?” Rab asked. I had to chuckle. “Well, if you asked Myron the Gubmint Resistor that question, I’m sure you’d get an earful of conspiracy-laced yes. But in reality, no. The UN was a well-meaning attempt at achieving something resembling cooperation on global issues among all the countries on Earth. It’s a great idea, but in practice it tends to slam face-first into political reality. And corruption. And hubris. Typical human stuff, really.”

Now I frowned. “As for this specific UN department, though—well, disarmament in that sort of context normally applies to weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear ones. I suppose they’re also involved with some conventional weapons, too —”

“And artificial intelligence,” Perry put in. “They recently had that added to their mandate. In fact, on their website, they now say—and I quote—

military AI also raises profound ethical and legal questions about human agency and human control, especially in matters of life and death. The UN

Secretary-General has unequivocally stated that “human agency must be preserved at all cost.”

“So maybe that’s what this is about?

This agency is worried about the AIs we’ve got on the team, like Perry and Netty-P?” Torina suggested. I shrugged. “Maybe. But it could also be about—well, this stuff—” I said, gesturing to the Fafnir’s weapons controls. “Or it could be about the antimatter fuel we’ve got stored back there, in both this ship and the Frankie.” I grimaced. “But, and this is an important but, a UN department doesn’t normally go roaming around a sovereign country without some really specific approvals, usually from the highest levels.”

“Yeah, they’d be particularly welcome in places like, oh, China, or Russia, or North Korea, driving around asking questions about weapons stockpiles and nukes and things,” Perry said. I glanced at him. “Don’t kid yourself, bird—Uncle Sam wouldn’t be very keen on it, either. And if they did ask permission, I can’t imagine them getting it when American agencies are being ordered away from the farm. If they didn’t ask permission, then they’re way, way out on a limb.”

Miryam spoke up. “Van, they were very careful to say that this was all informal, they weren’t making any demands or anything. So if this is an unofficial thing, they’re literally just asking to have a chat, then they wouldn’t need specific permission from the government. Oh, they should still probably get it, but they’d be violating… etiquette, more than any sort of protocols or regulations.”

“That’s Miryam the lawyer talking?”

“It is. I called up a friend from my law school days who does consulting work in international law for overseas development clients. She says it’s not uncommon for UN delegates to do this sort of stuff. But they have no official standing when they do it. From a legal perspective, they’re no different than tourists.”

I sat back again. “Hmm. Okay. So why does something still smell off?”

“That might have been me,” Icky said. “Sorry.”

I snorted, then turned back to Miryam. She nodded. “Don’t get me wrong, Van. I feel the same about this. There was something about these guys. They were just a little too—I don’t know. Accommodating. A little too ready to please. Now, maybe it was a cultural thing—I haven’t traveled outside the US the way you have—or maybe they were just trying to be on their best behavior, being visitors to the States. They could even have been genuinely pleasant people. But—yeah, I get you.”

I pursed my lips and thought for a moment, as we plied on toward Earth. “Okay, Miryam, here’s what I’d like you to do. Call them back at that number they gave you and tell them that we’ll be at the farm in, oh”—I checked the flight data—“five hours or so, so that would be about three this afternoon your time. And tell them I’d be happy to meet with them.”

“Is that it?

No other precautions or anything?”

“That’s all I’d like you to do, yes. As for the precautions”—I smiled

—“just leave that to me.”

AFTER A LONG, unseasonably hot autumn, winter had crashed down on Iowa with a vengeance. There had to be a least a half-meter of snow on the ground, with drifts up to a meter deep—and probably two, against the western sides of the house, barn, and tractor shed. The wind was an icy spear thrusting out of a sky so hard and blue it looked like pale sapphire. We landed the Fafnir outside the barn, in plain view. We had plans to extend the barn more in the spring, when the weather turned again. For now, though, her tail protruded from the barn when she occupied it, her drive bell sticking through the open double doors at that end. It still meant that most of her would have been hidden from view, but I wasn’t interested in hiding her right now. I had everyone wear their b-suits, though, which provided more than ample protection against the weather. That is, except for our faces, which were exposed to the icy blast rumbling out of the western plains. My cheeks and nose were actually numb by the time I made it from the ship to the back porch of the house, which was saying something. I remembered a few really hard, cold prairie winters as a kid, hunkered down in thick long underwear, layers of clothes, and a heavy parka, yet still shivering in the arctic air. I especially remembered waiting at the bottom of the driveway on the road for the school bus, my face going numb this very same way, with my fingers and toes following not long after. It wasn’t being cold, according to my dad and grandfather. It was building character. As my foot hit the bottom step of the stairs up to the porch, I stopped, suddenly walloped by a strange wave of incongruity. I was that teenaged boy again, just off the bus at the end of the school day, clomping fast up the stairs for the back door, since Gramps insisted on keeping snowy, mucky boots out of the front hall. I was full of the doubts and insecurities of a teenager, worries about school and grades, about how my friends had seen me that day, a cool guy or not, fussing about things I’d said or hadn’t said, desperate to know what this girl or that one thought about me and if I’d ever even have a girlfriend. But I was also a Master of the Peacemaker Guild, a hardened veteran of places and things that teenagers only ever read about in the likes of Clarke or Asimov or Heinlein, and I was married, with a loyal and just-as-veteran crew of amazing people at my back. It was —

Enormous. The entirety of my life was enormous. “Hey, Van, move it or lose it. Cold out here,” Icky snapped from behind me. I jumped a little, startled out of my sudden reverie. I turned. “You’ve got a b-suit, a fur coat, and a layer of noodle sauce as insulation. I think you’ll survive the next half-dozen steps to the door.”

“Yeah, but outside of the poles, the Wu’tzur homeworld ain’t even remotely like this. We’re a hot-blooded people, and I don’t just mean my libido.”

“Yeah, that’s us, hot-blooded,” Paxomar hissed, looking miserable, then he brightened. “Libido?

Like —”

“Glad to know arctic temps can’t suppress your need for booty,” I said, grinning as I stomped my way up and into the house. As I did, it struck me that Master Tudor really had as many doubts and fears and worries as teenaged Van Tudor did. Master Tudor’s were a whole lot more terrifying, though. Sure, they’d seemed like mountains of angst at the time. But a part of me longed to be worrying about whether I’d remain acne free until the school dance on Friday, and not whether a shitstorm of violent death and destruction might suddenly come thundering out of that sapphire sky. My life was enormous. But complicated. And maybe it always had been. I CHECKED THE TIME. Pushing three-thirty. Madison was about an hour and three-quarters away from Pony Hollow, so our mysterious UNIDIR visitors had had ample time to get here. Of course, I supposed that there could have been issues on the road—glancing out the front window, the fields stretching off south periodically vanished into white voids of wind-whipped snow. Whiteouts could wreak havoc on highways, particularly since no one ever seemed inclined to, you know, slow down or be cautious or anything when visibility suddenly plunged to zero. Still, I couldn’t help feeling it was almost showtime. I touched my comm. “Funboy, anything?”

He and Rab were aloft in the Frankie. We’d replaced her scanners with a crisp new system, the old ones mounted in the rafters of the barn and running off power cells rigged up by Rab. They were intended as a deterrent

to off-world parties, switching to active targeting mode automatically if anything not of Earthly origin approached the farm. Of course, that was all they did, because there was nothing to do any targeting with. But we hoped the bad guys wouldn’t know that, and wouldn’t know what sort of hornet’s nest of incoming fire they might stir up if they didn’t clear off. “There is still one of those aerial surveillance craft, a drone, circling to the west of the farm, from three to five kilometers away. Otherwise, there is only the routine commercial air traffic you warned us about, averaging perhaps ten thousand meters above us,” he replied. “Wheee, that’s gotta be good times for that drone operator, huh?

Circling over a spot in Iowa and staring down at snow, and doing it All. Day. Long.”

I shrugged. “He—or she—is getting paid regardless —”

Rab cut in. “Van, several ground vehicles have just turned off of that main road to the north and are coming your way, fast. There are four of them. I make them arriving at the farm in about five minutes —”

Now Funboy cut off Rab. “There is also now a ship inbound from the south. It is class 5, a fast courier boat reconfigured with additional weapons and armor. It will arrive overhead at about the same time those vehicles arrive.”

I tensed along with everyone else. Miryam came in from the kitchen, where she’d been brewing coffee. “Sounds like the party’s starting,” she said. I nodded. “Yes, it does.” I touched my comm again. “Okay, places, everyone. Now it’s showtime.”

14

I WAITED at the front window, my fingers brushing the pistol grip of The Drop, which I had holstered. Icky retrieved her hammer from near the back door, while Torina readied her own weapon. Paxomar was armed as well, but I’d tagged him with protecting Miryam. A dark SUV flashed into view, braked hard, and turned into the driveway. The other vehicles, two more SUVs and a dark van, all scraped to a hard stop. People began piling out, all with paramilitary uniforms, face masks with dark goggles, and snub-nosed submachine guns. They immediately fanned out and approached the house, their weapons raised. I went to the front door, opened it, and stepped out onto the porch. I was gratified at how the wind caught my coat and made it flap dramatically, revealing my b-suit, as well as The Drop and the Moonsword both hanging from my harness. Torina stepped out to my left, and Icky to my right. “Feels like High Plains Drifter,” I murmured, smiling. “Testosterone,” Torina said, making a face. “Time to get serious, love.”

“I am. I’m also cool and ruggedly handsome.”

She smirked. “Fair. Now can we be intimidating?”

I gave a single nod, my smile fading to a rumor. Two men who matched the descriptions Miryam had given of the supposed UNIDIR people stalked up through the snow and stopped. They weren’t very pleasant or accommodating now. I recognized spec ops people when I saw them, having seen Gramps moving with that same clipped, yet

fluid purpose. The older of the two, with eyes like flint and hair going steel-wool gray around the fringes, stopped at the bottom of the porch. He opened his mouth, but I cut him off. “You know, this is the second time I’ve had to confront some uppity asshole in my front yard. At least when it was an American uppity asshole, he had the decency to do it in the late summer.”

The man’s face might have been made of granite for all the reaction it gave. “I’ll make this simple. You give us access to that ship of yours, and no one needs to get hurt, no property damaged.”

This was the German accent Miryam had mentioned. That probably meant he was, or had been, GSG 9—German counterterrorism spec ops. But he might only be from Germany and was actually just another mercenary or something. I decided to assume the former, since GSG 9 had a pretty fearsome reputation and were really damned good at what they did. A small, dark shape landed among the branches in the tree across the road. It could have been a raven. It wasn’t, but it could have been. And no sooner had it landed than I noticed some of this German guy’s retinue frowning and tapping at their personal radios, which had seemingly gone mysteriously silent. I kept my attention on my German friend, giving him an exaggerated look of suspicious surprise. “You’re—you’re not from the UN. Curious.”

“Whether we are or not is none of your concern. What should be is the fact that you don’t have the technological edge you think you do, asshole,”

he spat. He gave me an expectant look—but nothing happened. A slight frown creased his face. His colleague suddenly leaned close and whispered something to him. The German frowned and he glanced down at the microphone clipped to his tactical vest, then back up at me. I changed my over-the-top look to one of extravagant concern. “Oh, no. Are your comms not working now?

Tech. Can’t live with it, can’t shake anyone down without it. So… mercurial.”

The German opened his mouth, but his class 5 supporting ship chose that moment to break out of some low, scudding cloud and sweep over the farm. The German’s face hardened again. “As I was saying, Tudor, this isn’t as lopsided a situation as you think it is. Now, do you really want to unleash the sort of destruction we’re both

capable of in this pastoral bit of Iowa, or are you prepared to be reasonable?”

Icky took a step forward. “Van, I can’t help but notice there’s been a distinct lack of bashing heads in going on. I mean, I’m completely surrounded by absolutely no violence at all —”

I held up a hand. “All in good time, big girl. Rab, you busy?”

“Nope. We’re overhead right… now.”

The Frankie swept overhead, while the class 5 wheeled around to the east. I suspected the drone operator watching all of this unfold on his screen was no longer bored. With a sudden WHAM-WHAM-WHAM, the Frankie’s point-defense gun spat out a three-round burst that slammed into the ground between the house and the fallow cornfield bordering it to the south. Our visitors winced and ducked and pointed weapons crazily around, and one loosed a burst from his own submachine gun into the air, vaguely toward the Frankie. Torina, Icky, and I flinched a little too, even though we were ready for it, and the acoustic shocks left our ears ringing. Loose dirt and chunks of frozen earth erupted in dark fountains, showering us with grit. “As requested, Van, that was the lowest power setting,” Funboy said over the comm. “Are your guests leaving yet?”

I stared at the German, who was trying to recover his hard pose. “I don’t know. Let me find out.”

I stepped down onto the top step of the stairs. “That was the weakest possible setting for that weapon.” I glanced at the smoking craters. “If we’d fired it at its normal, full-power setting—well, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. In fact, you wouldn’t be having any conversations at all, asshole.”

I stepped down another stair. “You talk the talk, my supposed UN

friend, but have you actually seen what these weapons can do?

Do you know just how thoroughly destructive they are?

Did your friends from the Equal Grasp up in that ship happen to explain how they can’t actually do much to support you down here without killing you in the process?

I wonder if they even care.”

The German’s stoic hardness had cracked, revealing a mix of anger and uncertainty. “All the more reason for these things to not be allowed to roam free on Earth. The international community won’t stand idly by while the United States arms itself with them.”

Ah—so maybe some shadowy part of the UN, like the shadowy equivalents in the US government, the likes of Manon Clemenceau’s Defense Intelligence Reserve. Or maybe something even looser, a sort of consortium of other nations worried that the United States was about to win an arms race no one even knew was underway. Not that it mattered —

Funboy spoke up. “Excuse me, but we have no intention of arming any of the various nation-states on this planet. And if that’s now clear, I have other priorities. I am not merely a ruthless enforcer of the law and stone-cold killer, I have a softer side and am a burgeoning social-media influencer. And that requires suitable clothing, which means I need to speak with my tailor. So be off with you, now.”

The German’s companion, the one who’d whispered to him about the comms, gave an incredulous look. “What the hell is he talking about?” he asked, and there was Miryam’s Italian accent. Which Funboy apparently recognized. “My understanding was that the people of your nation-state—Italy, I believe it is called—had some of the best fashion sense on all of Earth. I see that I was mistaken, at least in your case.”

“Ooh, sourpuss gets in a sick burn,” Icky said, then frowned. “At least, I think he did, didn’t he?” she asked Torina, who shrugged without taking her eyes off our visitors. The class 5 flashed overhead again, apparently trying to continue looking threatening. The German scowled. “Enough of this. We’re taking that ship,” he said, giving a hand signal that caused all of his troops to raise their weapons at us. “If they try to interfere, kill them.”

A team immediately broke and headed for the Fafnir. Another team kept us covered, while a third made to push past us, into the house. Things began to happen fast. Icky growled and raised her hammer. The lead soldier hesitated at the blue tower of menace blocking his way up the steps, then raised his submachine gun. The soldiers heading for the Fafnir stopped short when a figure rose out of a snowdrift, blocking their path. “Sorry, fellas, but this is as far as you can go,” Gabby said brightly. They stopped, crouched, and again raised their weapons. The class 5 came wheeling back, just as the Frankie appeared overhead and hovered fifty or so meters up on her gravity polarizers. And a sharp base rumble rose briefly out of the east. Another frozen lull. I stared hard into the German’s eyes. “Are you sure you want to do this?

Because it’s about to get really messy. You and your men are probably going to die. And there’s one hell of an international incident that’s going to follow. I mean, the President and Congress might not agree on much, but something like”—I gestured around

—“this, happening in the middle of the US?

Yeah, that’ll get them to put their differences aside.”

The German licked his lips. Things had not gone the way he’d expected them to at all. Which made me wonder—what had he expected?

What had he even been told?

The soldiers heading for the Fafnir suddenly moved and tried to bypass Gabby. She grabbed two of them, yanked, and squeezed them against her hard enough to immobilize but not seriously harm them. Their friends didn’t know that, though, and all stopped and turned to cover her with their weapons. Of course, if they shot, they’d be firing into her and their comrades. And now came the climax of this little set piece of ours. A dark shape appeared over the eastern horizon and rapidly grew into a huge ship, sleek and black. I’d never seen my mother’s ship, the Retribution, from this close. She blotted out the sky, more than two hundred meters of ominous dark alloy bristling with weapons. Even better, aside from the faint humming whine of her gravity polarizers, she hung above us in complete silence. Hell, I knew what she was and had been expecting her, and I was scared of her. “You asked me if I was ready to unleash the sort of destructive fury something like that”—I pointed up—“can produce here in rural Iowa.” I stepped down the rest of the stairs and stopped a pace away from the German. “God knows I don’t want to, but I will before I let you and your people even put a single grubby fingerprint on my ship. But if it makes you feel better, I’ve got the same message for the powers that be here in the US. See, this farm isn’t really American soil, not anymore. It’s a very small part of something way, way, way bigger than you, my friend.”

The German tried to compose himself, to gather back some shred of controlled dignity. He fixed me with a hard look. “This is a card you can only play once, Tudor. Next time, we won’t show up and ask nicely. We’ll just take what we want.”

I smiled. “Oh, trust me, this is only one card in a very big deck. And it’s not even an ace.”

THE GERMAN SIGNALED for his people to withdraw. He had to do it by shouting, since his radios had all been shut down by Perry. They quickly pulled back and shot us hard glances as they went. Icky and Torina smiled brightly back at them and waved. They piled into their vehicles and drove away in a petulant display of spinning tires and spraying snow and gravel. Perry sailed out of the tree and followed us inside. Gabby came in through the back door. I touched my comm. “Thanks, Mom.”

“Anytime,” she replied. “Oh, and that class 5 took off southward and started climbing toward orbit. Do you want me to go after it?”

I thought for a moment, then nodded. “You know what?

Yeah, please do. Although don’t destroy it. If you can’t stop it and take the crew alive, then just let it go.”

“Oh, fine, make us do things the hard way.”

I laughed, looked out the window, and watched as the Retribution quickly and silently soared up into the southern sky. I had Rab and Funboy keep circling overhead in the Frankie, though, just in case there was a second act to this little bit of theatrics—because that was what it had been, just theatrics. I said so to my crew as we stood down and settled into the kitchen. “Okay, is it just me, or was that really weird?” Icky asked. “What do you mean?” Torina asked. “Well, that whole little shitshow just seemed… off. I mean, those guys never had a chance of grabbing the Fafnir. Unless Netty-P actually opened the airlock for them, they couldn’t even get aboard. It’s like—I don’t know. Like they thought things were way, way more in their favor than they were.”

“That’s because they did,” I said. “That wasn’t really a serious attempt to take the Fafnir. Oh, if we’d caved and given into them, I’m sure that class 5 was carrying someone who could have flown the Fafnir away. But I don’t think that was the point at all.”

“Then what was the point?” Icky asked. Miryam answered. “To try and drive a wedge between us and the US

government, for one. And to make the United States look bad on the world stage, for another.” She turned to me. “Did I win the prize?”

I smiled at her and nodded. “You’re spot on, my dear. That German fellow and his friends were set up. They were sold a bill of goods about how easy it was going to be, probably using the angle that we’d give up the Fafnir before letting spaceships start fighting over eastern Iowa. Giving them the support of that class 5 probably made them feel pretty much invincible. The trouble is that it was never going to work—nor was it intended to.”

Paxomar nodded. “Miryam and I were talking while all that went down outside. The point was for there to be a bloodbath. Most or all of those soldiers would end up dead and there’d be all sorts of destruction.”

Icky was nodding. “Yeah, okay. I get it. Your whole country would be horrified by it all. Your government would have to take action, right?”

“By rescinding any idea of this farm becoming some sort of off-world embassy, yeah. They’d also have to demand that we leave US territory. That’s what the good people of this country would demand, because they wouldn’t want something like that happening in their home town. But it’s also what the rest of the world would demand because they’d never believe that the United States wasn’t trying to hoard all this off-world military tech for themselves,” I said. “It’s the same reason Van isn’t calling up the State Department right now to let them know that foreign nationals tried to raid us. That would be one hell of a diplomatic mess, and again, would force the government to take action,” Perry said. I nodded. “So, when the questions come in—and they will come in, because that drone watched everything happen—our answer is that we were able to use an overwhelming show of force to drive off unknown enemies who’d joined up with some off-world opportunists. And then we turn it around and ask them just how the hell these people were able to get that organized, with all those weapons, without anyone in the FBI or CIA or whatever picking up on it.”

“Serious failure of homeland security,” Miryam agreed, nodding. “Wouldn’t look good. We’d have every right to be pissed, especially since

the safety of foreign diplomatic missions is a huge government responsibility.”

“You do realize that that’s probably going to prompt the government to put a lot more security around here. It won’t just be one bored drone operator,” Perry said. I shrugged. “Good. The more the merrier. Since we aren’t worried about secrecy anymore, then let’s lean into it. Until now, what has protected this farm has been obscurity. That’s no longer an option. So, instead, let’s make this place the focus of everybody’s attention.”

“Are you sure about that, Van?” Torina asked. I smirked and shrugged. “Oh, hell no. But it’s kind of where we are now, like it or not.”

SURE ENOUGH, I got a call from Loren Frierbach about an hour later. “Van, what the hell is going on?” she asked without preamble. “We got a report about weapons fire, armed soldiers, and… spaceships, a bunch of them, all focused around your farm —”

“Yup. We were menaced by a group of armed thugs who practically smelled military, including at least a few special ops. They all spoke English and seemed quite at home in the US of A.”

A momentary pause. “Are you implying they were American?”

“I don’t know, Loren. I’m a cop, remember?

I deal in evidence that’s objective and factual. They certainly could have been American. Why, are you implying they weren’t?

That somehow an armed party of foreign nationals managed to sneak into the American Heartland without any part of that monstrous security apparatus our taxes fund even catching a whiff of them?”

Another pause. “We’re going to have to open an investigation —”

“No shit. You’ll get full cooperation from us in it, because we’d like to know what the hell happened, too.”

“What about those spaceships?”

“Two of them were mine, including the big-ass one, drone images of which you’re no doubt looking at now. It’s called the Retribution, and it’s commanded by my mother.”

“Your—what?

Your mother?

I thought she’d just left your father —”

“She did. She really, really left him. It’s a long story, but the bottom line is that I was able to dissuade these assholes with a show of overwhelming force. Yes, they had a ship of their own, so it means they’re colluding with an off-world party—which is the part I’ll be investigating. As for those armed pseudo-military guys, though, I can only give you one other clue. They said they were from the UN.”

She snorted a hard laugh, just as I knew she would. “The UN. Really.”

“Yeah, you know, the swift, decisive part of the UN that employs armed professional soldiers on raids into the sovereign territory of its member states?”

“The UN. That was the best cover story these clowns could come up with?

They could have said they were part of a Mexican drug cartel or a strike force from the Illuminati, and it would have been more believable,”

she said. “Yeah, which doesn’t change the fact that these English-speaking guys who tried to mount a raid on a farm in rural Iowa had guns, and lots of them, and if our show of force hadn’t been enough to dissuade them, then there’d be a lot of corpses lying around in the snow out there, Loren. Something obviously went very, very wrong—and I don’t mean here in Iowa, or in outer space.”

“Okay. I’m going to talk to Homeland Security. They’ll no doubt be sending a team your way to gather information and evidence. And we’ll follow it wherever it leads.”

“I may not be here; however, Miryam, the Earth-based member of my team, will. She’ll be able to answer their questions.”

Loren hung up with a tone of apology in her voice, a recognition that there’d been a critical security failure on the part of the US government. It was the best outcome I could have hoped for. My crew obviously thought so, too. “Boss, I haven’t seen that much deflection outside of a presidential candidate. And you made it stick, too,”

Perry said. Miryam nodded. “The beauty of it is that none of it was untrue. Of course, the best lies aren’t untrue.”

Icky gave her a puzzled look. “How can a lie not be untrue?”

“By making the lie part of a sin of omission. For instance, I noticed that Van didn’t mention their accents,” Miryam replied. I nodded. “And no one is going to—is everyone clear on that?

If you get asked questions, the only thing you need to carefully leave out is the German and Italian accents. I really don’t want this to blow up into an international incident.”

“Do you really believe those guys were from the UN, though?” Miryam asked. I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s possible. The UN actually might have some sort of super-secret, um, kinetic action contingent. Or they might quietly employ mercenaries. That’s up to Homeland Security to figure out.”

Torina frowned. “But if I understand this correctly, then your government might eventually track this down to the United Nations, and then you’ll have your international incident anyway.”

I smiled. Miryam gave a knowing nod. “They might, but we’ll never hear a word about it. They’ll claim it was a rogue part of some American outfit, like Manon Clemenceau’s, before they’ll risk the shitshow that admitting it was the UN would trigger. I mean, that whole little affair would effectively constitute an armed invasion of the United States. The last time that happened was… I’m thinking during the Mexican-American Border War in the early 1900s?” I glanced at Perry. “Nope. June, 1942, when Imperial Japan invaded the Aleutian Islands of Attu and Kiska,” he corrected me. “Ah, right. I knew I kept you around for a reason.”

“Historical trivia?”

“And pop culture references, yeah.”

“Don’t I feel special.”

I grinned. “Anyway, the bottom line is that whether the UN was involved or not, we know who was behind this. It was the Equal Grasp. They really don’t want a persistent, recognized Guild presence on Earth.”

“Of course not. That would clearly establish Earth as an official part of known space. It’s in their best interest for it to remain a sort of Wild West for as long as possible,” Perry said. Funboy spoke up on the comm. “That probably means that they are behind, or at least have a hand in, the so-called True Direction that is so bitterly opposed to you being a Master. They may also have allies in the Ferals, such as the Tsarina or Kiki Treasure.”

Torina shook her head. “How the hell do you manage to say a name like Kiki Treasure and make it somehow sound both gloomy and upbeat?”

Funboy managed half a shrug. “I have a lot of verve.”

15

WE STUCK around Pony Hollow for the rest of the day, just in case there were any more shenanigans. After a couple of hours of flying around, Rab brought the Frankie back down to the farm so he and Funboy could take a break. As soon as they’d disembarked, though, Rab came directly to me. “Van, we’ve got a problem with the Frankie. Or, more to the point, the Frankie’s point-defense battery. When Funboy fired it back there during all the excitement, we got a sudden power feedback into the ship’s primary distribution system. The protections prevented it from doing any damage, but I think that battery is on its last legs,” he said after he’d come into the kitchen and stamped the snow off his boots. Netty-P’s voice came from the comm. “I’m running diagnostics and can confirm it. The power node for the weapon is failing.”

I glanced from Rab to Icky. “Okay. Can we fix it?”

They looked at one another, then Icky shrugged. “It’s an old gun, Van. Rab and I have tweaked it a few times now to get it to play nice with the rest of the ship’s systems. I think that when we installed the Frankie’s new scanner suite and did some reconfiguring of the power system for that, it just pushed things too far for it.”

Rab nodded. “Yeah, we can try to replace the node, but that’s just a bandage over the fact that the system is old and outdated. It was meant to work with older power systems that, these days, you’ll only find in decrepit relics hauling industrial waste and scrap. The alternative would be to reconfigure the scanners to work in some legacy mode, but we’d be

degrading their performance just to try and keep a creaky old weapon system working.”

“Kind of defeats the purpose of having new scanners,” Torina said. I crossed my arms. “So we need a new point-defense battery, is what you’re saying.”

They both nodded, and Netty-P gave verbal affirmation. “I’d say so. Of all the weapons on all of our ships, only the Iowa has older ones, two of her laser batteries. And they’re still working fine. This point-defense battery, though, has a lot more moving parts and is just getting worn out.”

“Okay, well, the last thing I want is that gun failing at a crucial moment, or worse, failing and cascading more problems into the Frankie. It’s a potential hole in our defenses. Netty-P, can you do a search for replacement weapons?

Something a lot more state-of-the-art?”

“The Guild has procurement contracts with a number of weapons dealers around known space. I’ll check their published inventory.”

We puttered around the farm, trying not to keep peering out the windows. I was brooding in the living room over a glass of bourbon and the fact that our original deterrent, the Frankie’s old scanners, might no longer be enough to protect the farm. The Equal Grasp had demonstrated that they were willing to take more direct action against us, albeit through a patsy, in this case the United Nations. They’d shown their hand, and we’d shown ours. And, contrary to my defiant parting words to our German friend, I really didn’t have many more cards to play. Which meant that the next time they tried something like this, whether themselves or through another duped intermediary, we might be forced to fight the Equal Grasp. Even if the destruction didn’t spill away from the farm, destroying property and hurting or even killing innocent people, it would be a cataclysm that could turn the US government against us. And the worst part was that the Equal Grasp held the distinct advantage. We were tied to one location, the farm, and had to use legal means to protect it. They had the rest of the Earth as their playground and no regard for the law. It meant that we had to win every time they challenged us. They only had to win once. We had to take the fight to them. But how could we when we didn’t even really know who or where they were?

The only firm contact we’d had with the Equal Grasp on Earth had been Forester, their Manhattan attorney. Arresting him might be vaguely satisfying, but it would make no difference

whatsoever to the Equal Grasp. We were trying to confront an opponent in a dark, unlit room, knowing nothing beyond the fact he was in there with us somewhere. And he had night-vision goggles, while we were blind —

Here on Earth. I sat up. But the Equal Grasp wasn’t confined to Earth, were they?

They were, as far as we knew, a loose consortium of interests, some of them criminal, but some of them legitimate. Sure, they worked through a maze of shell corporations, holding companies to keep their distance from the Equal Grasp itself. Ultimately, though, they were actual incorporated businesses, with owners and executives, employees and investors —

And ships and factories. “Perry, I’ve got a job for you,” I said. He sailed deftly around the corner out of the kitchen and landed on the arm of the sofa. “Ta-da!”

“You give yourself fanfare now when you enter a room?”

“No, I was just drawing your attention to the fact that I’ve landed on this couch fourteen times since we first met, and I have yet to even break a thread in the upholstery. Do you know how long, and how many reupholstery jobs it took before I got that right?”

I stiffened as an old memory sparked to life. “Wait a second. I remember Gramps getting that arm reupholstered when I was a kid—and saying it must have been because I put my feet up on it when I was watching TV. But that was you!”

“Now, now, Van, that’s all in the past. Anyway, you wanted something?”

I gave him a second or two of steely glare, but all I got back was an impassive amber stare—mainly because that was all that Perry was really capable of. I finally sighed. “Yeah. I would like you to take every scrap of information we have about the Equal Grasp, who and what it is, pull in anything you can from any other source you can access, Guild or otherwise, and track it back to every legitimate corporate entity that’s involved.”

“I notice that emphasis on legitimate.”

“Yeah. So far, we’ve been focusing on the Equal Grasp and its connection to criminal groups. We’ve found evidence The Stillness is involved, for instance. Maybe the Sorcerers. Various smugglers and other

bad guys. But we know that there are some legitimate actors with their fingers in the pie, too. So far, they’ve gotten a pass. No more.”

“What do you intend to do?”

I looked into my drink, then back up at Perry’s amber gaze. “The Equal Grasp is, itself, like a large corporation. Fighting corporations is hard, and time-consuming, and never really has the desired outcomes. It’s attacking them where they’re strong, which is always a bad idea. You want to attack them where they’re weak.”

“Their investors.”

“Exactly. Investors hate risk. The more of it there is, the more likely they’re just going to yank their money and move it somewhere else less risky. So we’re going to create that risk for them. Once we know who the players are, we’re going to make their lives as miserable as we can.”

Icky pointed at Funboy. “Finally, a job he’s perfect for.”

Funboy looked at her, then waved a slim hand. “What job?”

Icky grinned. “Misery.”

PERRY GOT A BREAK ALMOST IMMEDIATELY, even before we’d finished doing our preflight on the Fafnir to depart Earth and go looking for a new point-defense gun for the Frankie. It came from Oberin, our red-light camera baron in Defiance, Ohio. “It turns out he got an offer to buy out his whole operation,” Perry said. “It was for a fraction of what it was worth, and he told the interested party to go pound sand, but he was quite happy to share the Offer of Purchase with me. It contained, in one of its appendices, a list of nameless, numbered corporations who were putting up the money for the offer—which was a mistake on their part. Numbered corporations don’t exist in a vacuum. Netty-P and I have already been able to trace the funds back, through the usual labyrinth of shells and subsidiaries and stuff, to four of your legitimate corporate partners.”

As he spoke, a list of four corporations appeared on the Fafnir’s cockpit display, along with details tying them to the Offer to Purchase made to Oberin. I recognized two of them, a pharmaceutical company and a shipyard, both based in Tau Ceti. The others were an Eridani shipping

company and a mining consortium operating in Wolf 424, but registered in the Seven Stars League. I smiled. “Yeah, they got sloppy, didn’t they?

They didn’t count on Oberin cooperating with us.”

“Why would they?

He’s a money launderer. They probably figured the last thing he’d want to do is get involved with the Guild,” Netty-P said. “Okay, yeah, this is perfect.” I turned to Perry. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but as a Master, I can go ahead and issue formal notice to these companies that we’ll be investigating their ties to a money-laundering operation.”

“You can, yes.”

“And for reasons of operational security, to avoid compromising other investigations, I don’t have to give them any details about that money-laundering operation, do I?”

“No, you do not.”

“And if I wanted to suggest that there might be a press release about this whole situation, the fact that this investigation is ongoing, I can do that too, right?”

“You sure can. And then you’ll get to enjoy the shitstorm that will follow, because these companies will immediately profess their innocence and announce their intention to vigorously defend themselves in court —”

“But they wouldn’t have to do that if said press release never gets, um, released, right?”

“Sounds a little like blackmail,” Torina said. “That’s such an ugly word,” I replied. “Unsavory, even.”

She shrugged. “I’m not objecting or anything. It was just… an observation.”

“A good one, boss lady. And of course, there’s that risk you were talking about, the kind that would make their investors start looking for other places to park their money,” Perry said. I smiled and nodded. “Exactly. Now, it’s not often we get such a break in a case so fast, so I want to strike while the proverbial iron is hot. Bird, please craft all the requisite missives and things we’ll need to make this happen.”

I turned to the flight controls. “And while you’re doing that, we’re going shopping for a new gun for the Frankie.”

DESPITE IT BEING the most bustling system in known space, I’d actually had little to do with Tau Ceti. But few Peacemakers did, at least in their official capacity. The Ceti Alliance, of which Tau Ceti was the beating heart, had a large, robust, and highly professional law enforcement apparatus of its own, so there just wasn’t much for Peacemakers to do here. When cases came up here, the Ceti authorities usually took care of them, and when cases pointed here, the same authorities normally took them over. Now, as we plied our way through the frenetic traffic swirling among the seven inhabited worlds of the system, I took a moment to stare in wonder. It was actually rare to physically see other ships in space. If you weren’t deliberately trying to intercept them, or seeing them as they approached and departed a station or orbital, they were just invisible presences in the yawning void. Here, though, I could see flares of drive exhaust, brilliant points flaring all around the Fafnir. I could also see the distinct shapes of at least three other ships underway, outbound from our destination, Fulcrum, their plumes of plasma brilliant on our screen. But that paled in comparison to what the scanners could see. The display was so jammed with icons that some batched up several ships in close proximity, forcing me to zoom in if I wanted to see the icon for each separately. It had the feel of walking through Times Square in New York a few days before Christmas: busy, chaotic, and alive. There was a reason Ceti law required ships to fly under AI control at all times once in the inner system. The vast emptiness of space usually left lots of room for pilot errors. Amid this frantic, churning crowd of ships, not so much. We reached Fulcrum and would have then faced a substantial wait in a holding orbit before descending to Tau-Regus, a towering megacity on the surface, for an atmospheric insertion slot. But my status as a Guild Master gave us a sort of diplomatic priority, so we were cleared to descend almost as soon as we arrived. As we braked to lower our orbit, Perry and Netty-P

both uttered brief, sharp laughs. “What’s so funny?” I asked them. “Oh, just the things we’re being called by other AIs, and even a few comments from the crews of other ships over the comm,” Netty-P said. “We’re being cussed out as line-jumpers by other ships that have been waiting up for hours. Many hours.”

I shrugged. “Meh. Just ignore them. It’s a superb tactic. My family mastered ignoring things, and look where we are.”

“Yes, a regular hugfest,” Netty-P chirped. “A bit generous, but I’ll take it,” I said, grinning at the idea of Valint or my mom engaging in maternal behavior of any sort. Perry hopped around, his eyes bright with interest. “Are you suggesting we stop using threats to get our way?

That we cease using that Master’s badge as the Sword of Damocles?

Because so far, it’s pretty damned effective.”

I glanced at him. “No, we’ll keep leaning on people and using the, ah, penumbra of my badge as a means to get shit done.”

“Great word choice, boss. I’ll sally forth as always then, just not here and now.”

The Fafnir started her plunge into Fulcrum’s atmosphere. Air ironized to plasma began flickering around her in glowing streaks. Netty-P turned her head, ocular lenses whirring. “That’s a big-ass city.”

I gave a single nod. “It is. Which is why we’ll keep the implied threats to a minimum.”

Funboy leaned around from his chair. “For now.”

I had to agree. “For now.”

FULCRUM IS A PLANET OF MEGACITIES—VAST, sprawling hives of industry, commerce, and the people and services needed to keep it all running. Some had spilled horizontally, filling entire islands or peninsulas or river valleys, while many had grown vertically, soaring into towering warrens hundreds of levels tall. Connecting them was a complex web of ultra-high-speed mag-lev trams carried in huge, airless tubes, lesser routes more like conventional high-speed rail lines, and even pokey roads laden with vehicular traffic. Flying craft and shuttles raced among them. From above, the place resembled a kicked anthill, if the ants had developed all sorts of high tech and sophisticated industry. But Fulcrum had a darker reality to it, one that was straining the social and political fabric more every day. The biosphere was almost non-existent, the air was fumed with pollutants, and essential commodities like food and water were becoming ever more expensive. Perry had mentioned that even in my grandfather’s time, the planet had been groaning under the strain, and it had only become worse since then. But what do you do with twenty-six billion people?

It’s not as though you could remove them, like fish from an aquarium, clean the tank and put them back. Fulcrum was a wondrous, breathtaking marvel—but it was also a soul-crushing, slow-motion catastrophe, and one that could have been prevented. Could have been. I sighed myself into resignation about it all. I had my own parts of the universe to fix. Fulcrum was going to have to be saved by someone else. We landed on the megacity called Tau Regus, on an airy platform reserved for VIP traffic, and made our way into the city. Our destination was nineteen levels below us, an arms dealer named Ja-Ra with whom Perry and Netty-P had a past. He was in possession of a new point-defense battery, a generation old but still packed in its original crate. That meant it was not only as close to cutting-edge as we were going to find on the legal market, but it was also unused. Perry led Netty-P, Rab, Icky, and me through the upper levels of the city, which were actually reasonably bright. Some spaces went so far as to be airy and pleasant. As we descended, though, the character of the place progressively coarsened. Beyond the mesh gates of the lift, the light dimmed, more and more of it coming from artificial sources. The pedways and corridors narrowed, and scrawled graffiti and tacky posters became ever thicker and more vulgar on the walls, climaxing into a wallpaper made of sin. People became less friendly and more prone to wear sullen, wary stares. By the time we reached level thirty-two from the bottom, we’d entered a decidedly Blade Runner-esque world of garish neon, deep shadows, a jostle of people, and all the racket, chatter, and stench to match. Bass music thumped out of sketchy bars and clubs. Holographic ads danced and gyrated above us. The air had a weight to it. Every breath was someone else’s. Your life was a shared element, and it was most certainly borrowed. Perry led us down a side street to a narrow doorway, which squeaked aside to admit us. We stepped into a cavernous space that looked like a showroom, complete with entire thruster arrays and scanner enclosures

propped on wheeled dollies. I glanced up. A drive bell hung from rusty chains directly above me, prompting my own Sword of Damocles moment and a quick step to one side. A cold, metallic stink permeated the place. The air wasn’t dead. It was hungry. “Welcome to Ja-Ra’s,” Perry said, perching on a Universal Docking Adapter mounted on another of the trollies. “And here comes the man of the hour now.”

I followed his gaze and saw a diminutive figure ambling toward us. He was just about waist-high on me, with a bald scalp sprouting fluffy tufts of white hair. More disturbingly, he had a single, cyclopean eye that had no distinct pupil, just a steady gradation from pale around the rim to dark in the center. As he walked toward us, a steady, measured pace, bits and parts and tools hanging from a leather apron clattered. “Ja, ja, welcome to mine,” he said—or, rather, boomed, since his voice resonated as though he was speaking into a microphone at a concert. Perry bobbed his head. “Ja-Ra, this is Van Tudor, Master of the Peacemaker Guild,” he said. “Ja, Master, very good. Welcome to mine, sir, welcome.”

He didn’t offer a pudgy hand to shake or anything similar, so I just smiled and nodded back at him. “Good to meet you. Perry tells me you did business with my grandfather, Mark Tudor.”

“Ja, Mark, one of mine customers, ja. Very tough negotiator. Very tough.” He said it in a way that carried a hint of—maybe not warning, exactly, but definitely intended to put me on notice that he wasn’t interested in doing much bargaining. Perry had told me that Ja-Ra was quite the character, but an objective century had passed since Gramps had been here. This much older Ja-Ra came across as a little more grumpy and methodical. Perry introduced the others. The contrast between Ja-Ra and Icky was comically striking. It was like seeing a four-year-old peering up at Andre the Giant. Icky was instantly charmed, though more by the merchandise than the proprietor. “Your shop here—it’s so neat!

All this stuff!

And some of it—” She’d been gazing around, but her eyes fixed on something and widened. “Is that a Telic Industries drive?

A—what, Model Five type?

With the re-fusion system in the bell?”

“Ja, ja. Very old, very special. You buy?

Prob’y best if you do. My, ah, nephew sometimes takes. Not pay very well.”

I held up a hand. “He sounds… delightful. I hope to meet him one day. But no, we’re not here for a drive, thanks.”

“But, Van, that’s a Telic-Five!

Those are—they’re—they’re like—” She turned to Perry. “Help me out here, bird. What’s some Earth thing that it’s like?”

Perry looked at me. “Think the Rolls-Royce Merlin aircraft engine in World War Two. Or the Pratt and Whitney R-2800 Twin-Wasp radial engine.”

I whistled, recognizing the references, both of those engines powering storied warbirds like the P-51 Mustang and the P-47 Thunderbolt respectively, thereby helping to power the Allies to eventual victory. I gave the big piece of hardware an appreciative glance but turned back to Icky and Ja-Ra. “Very cool. But, again, we’re not here for a drive. We’re here for a point-defense system. Perry, can you point out which of Ja-Ra’s catalog listings we were interested in?”

Perry did, giving Ja-Ra the catalog number. Ja-Ra extracted a data slate from his apron and tapped at it, calling up the entry. “Ja, ja, still in stock. I sell for asking price,” he pronounced. That asking price was a little on the high side, but not really unreasonable. I was prepared to offer it, but Netty-P spoke up. “I have a question about that Invictus laser battery over there,” she said, pointing a manipulator at yet another big hunk of hardware racked in a chunky shelving unit off to one side. Ja-Ra looked at it, then back at Netty-P and frowned his small slit of a mouth in a way that switched my attention to suspicious mode. Somehow, I knew just what the next words out of his mouth were going to be. “Not for sale. Already sold.”

“I can see why. The Invictus was a great system. Old, but with the right internal upgrades—like that after-market beam collimator assembly installed in that one—it’s still a potent weapon system. In fact, Van’s ship, which used to be Mark Tudor’s ship, had one mounted on her.”

Perry abruptly took wing and sailed over to the laser battery. Ja-Ra protested. “No touching mine merchandise, already sold, I said!” he shouted, starting to toddle off after Perry. Perry, though, beat him to it easily. He landed on top of the laser battery. His amber eyes flashed, then he looked back at us. “Huh. Wow. Small universe,” he said. I narrowed my own eyes at him. “How so?”

“Netty-P was right about this laser system being familiar. The last time we both saw it, it was mounted on the Fafnir, right until it was reclaimed and removed under an outstanding lien.”

I frowned but didn’t react any more than that. I mean, sure, the odds were probably wildly against us just happening to stumble across that particular weapon. But Ja-Ra was an arms dealer, so improbable certainly didn’t mean impossible. But then Perry dropped the other shoe. “This weapon also happens to be listed in the Guild’s stolen weapons database. Serial numbers are a definite match,” he said. “Must be error!” Ja-Ra said. But Perry shook his head. “Oh, I don’t think so. The Guild’s pretty diligent about tracking stolen weapons. Now, if it was some missing enhanced reality entertainment system or something, sure. But weapons?

Not likely. But —”

“But what?” I asked. “Huh. What’s interesting is the party the ownership of this thing is registered to,” Perry said. “Who?

Who was it stolen from?”

Perry swung his golden gaze on me. “From you, Van. Turns out it was stolen from you.”

16

NEITHER PERRY nor Netty-P had noticed my identity being attached to the Invictus laser as the apparent owner because it didn’t appear that way in the Guild’s archive. There, the owner was listed as a numbered company registered in the Eridani Federation. But when Perry chased that back a step, it turned out the sole owner and proprietor of that company was one Clive Van Able Tudor III, i. e. me. “There was no connection between you as owner of 586926409-A-K8767 Incorporated, and you as Peacemaker Tudor of the Guild,” Netty-P

said, showing me the relevant data on a slate. “So there was nothing to make the connection back to the Guild because the numbered company kept your identity a step removed from the Guild’s records.”

I looked from Perry to Netty-P. “Okay, someone care to tell me how I ended up owning another company out here in the big black?” I peered at the slate. “And who the hell Alvin York is, aside from the Tennessee sharpshooting Sergeant who won a Medal of Honor in the Great War —”

I stopped and looked at Perry. “Wait. It wasn’t actually Alvin York, was it?

He didn’t end up joining Gramps out here or anything, did he?”

“Uh, no. Alvin York lived a full life after the war, married, had ten kids, did great things, and passed away in 1964, aged seventy-six years, without once leaving Earth—at least, as far as I know. Your Gramps considered Alvin York a personal hero and sometimes used his name as a pseudonym out here.” He nodded his beak toward the slate. “This was apparently one of those times.”

“He registered this laser battery and a number of other items in your name through this numbered company when you were twenty-three years old, it seems,” Netty-P said. “That was three years before he died. So he… knew?”

“That he was sick?

Yes, he did,” Perry said. “That you would become a Peacemaker?

Well, he said he knew it, and I quote, in his bones. But he made me promise that I’d just let it happen, that I wouldn’t interfere and try to nudge you that way. He was adamant that you had to find that little device in your old desk that night we met, and push that button, and then decide yourself to do whatever it was you were going to do. It had to be your choice. And I held to that promise. I was just along for the ride.”

“So if I’d never pushed that button, or just said nope, screw this, I don’t want anything to do with this Peacemaker stuff —”

“Then Netty and I would have flown the Dragonet back to Anvil Dark and handed her back to the Guild, and that would have been that.”

I had a moment imagining my life if I had turned it all down. I sure as hell wouldn’t be standing in an arms dealer’s showroom in the Tau Ceti system right now. And I’d never have met Torina, or Icky, or Rab, or Zeno, or Funboy, Gerhardt, Groshenko —

“Why the sudden smile, boss?” Icky asked. I looked at her and shrugged. “Just because, big girl. Just because.”

Rab crossed his arms and brought us back to business. “My understanding was that weapons, armor, and other components were all reclaimed from the Fafnir when she was your grandfather’s ship, under the terms of liens when he died. Maybe I’m missing something, but whether he registered them under your name or not, if there were outstanding liens on them, it wouldn’t matter. You can’t just wipe out liens that way.”

“The corporate registration never would have passed the scrutiny of the Eridani authorities if those liens had been valid," Netty-P said, then turned her imager to Perry. “I hate to say it, bird, but I think we were duped by gramps.”

Perry’s beak fell open in agreement. “Yeah. Netty and I both checked the liens carefully, and they sure seemed legit. But now that we go back and try to examine them, it turns out they’ve all been wiped, as though they never existed—which, yeah, they obviously didn’t.”

He looked at me. “Sorry, Van. Looks we screwed up, big-time. The Fafnir should have been a fully intact Dragon-class ship when you took her over. But Netty and I seriously dropped the ball —”

I waved a hand. “Bird, it’s fine. Rebuilding the Fafnir from a Dragonet was a big part of making me the spacer I am. I learned more about how ships work during those first couple of years of used parts and elbow grease than I’d ever have just inheriting the Fafnir the way she is now. The bigger question, though, is where the rest of whatever Gramps registered to me is.”

I turned to Ja-Ra as I said it. Perry nodded. “I’m guessing there’s stuff—armor, weapons, ship modules—that are currently in Van’s name around here somewhere?

Or in that new scrapyard you’re starting up in the League, because I’m also guessing you’re getting tired of all these rules and laws that the Ceti Alliance keeps insisting on?”

Ja-Ra shook his head. “So many new regulations. So many. Hard for mine to compete. Easier in the League, fewer regulations —”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s a bastion of entrepreneurial freedom—among other things. Now how about answering the question,” Perry snapped. Ja-Ra finally shrugged. “I too had a promise to keep”

“From my grandfather?” I asked. “Ja. He gave me a second chance, so I hold that promise dear.”

Rab nodded. “Your grandfather seemed to do that a lot, give people second chances, like he did with Zeno.”

I nodded. “Yeah, he did,” I said, but I looked at Ja-Ra, waiting for him to go on. He did. “The Invictus laser is yours, of course. As to the other things, I can only give you my best guesses. They were all purchased, as a group, at an auction a year ago—this, after languishing for years.”

“Purchased by whom?”

“They call her the Tsarina.”

THE INVICTUS LASER was a substantial upgrade—or restoration, if you wanted to get technical—for the Fafnir. It was, in its own modernized form, more powerful and more efficient, and it had a higher rate of fire than either

of her current laser batteries. It massed more, but the increased effectiveness of the weapon made the added mass more than worth it. I decided to give the laser battery it was replacing to Ja-Ra free of charge, since he had been an old associate of my grandfather. And like Zeno, Gramps had seen something in Ja-Ra that made him worthy of at least some redemption. On the other hand, when he offered the new point-defense battery for the Frankie to us for free as well, to try and smooth over the fact he’d never tried to contact me about the Fafnir’s errant components, I accepted. You’re damned right I did. Ja-Ra knew that those components rightfully belonged to me and should have gotten hold of me about them. If he had, we might have been able to chase down who had scammed them away from the Fafnir under Perry and Netty’s virtual noses years ago. And who knew where that might have led?

Whoever did it had managed to craft fake liens so good they fooled Perry and Netty both, which made it an extremely professional scam. It was the sort of thing only a major player, like the Stillness or the Sorcerers, could have pulled off. Or the GKU. And if we’d gotten on that trail three, four, or five years ago, the whole course of everything we did and chased and investigated since then may have turned out very, very differently. Possibly much worse, of course, and there was no way to know anyway, it being the road not taken and all that. But, still. Ja-Ra should have known better. Giving me the point-defense battery was the least he could do. It was going to take a couple of days to get the old hardware off the Fafnir and the new stuff mounted on her and the Frankie, almost a day of that just waiting for yard space to become available to do the work. That left us hanging around Fulcrum. I gave the crew limited leave, to keep them close to the ship, while I resolved to once more fling myself into the fast-paced, high-stakes world of Guild paperwork. It was in the midst of this that Petyr Groshenko suddenly showed up in his heavy cruiser Poltava. He announced his arrival by comm shortly before he docked, and an hour later was striding through the Fafnir’s airlock. He held a bottle of vodka aloft as though it was a lantern lighting his way. “Permission to come aboard, Master Tudor,” he said, grinning. I glanced pointedly at the airlock behind him. “Kinda think you already are. Hello, Petyr. Fancy meeting you here. You just happened to be visiting

Fulcrum?”

“No, I just happened to be talking to B a couple of days ago. She told me about this True Direction bullshit, Kiki Treasure and the Tsarina, the Equal Grasp—anyway, I thought the two of us were past due getting caught up. So I put in a discreet enquiry to Alic, who let me know you were here, at Tau Ceti. And I was only a short twist away, so”—he brandished the vodka bottle—“here I am, ready to relieve you of the burden of drinking nothing but the vile corn whiskey you apparently adore.”

I laughed and invited Groshenko into the crew lounge, where Torina, Perry, Gabby, and Funboy joined us. Torina was happy to indulge in some vodka. Gabby demurred—not because she was a teetotaler, but because booze offered her nothing of value, no flavor or effect. It was, to her, literally just water plus impurities. Funboy eyed the glass Groshenko poured for him with suspicion. “Yet another exhortation to deliberately consume a metabolic toxin as a form of collegial celebration. You drink substances such as this, you inhale the effluent of combusting vegetable matter, you ingest foods that are laced with carcinogens and other noxious substances —”

“You like cheese, Funboy,” I pointed out. “Cheese is different.”

“Why?”

“Because I like it.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, the world according to Funboy,” Perry declared. We laughed, then I pushed on and brought Groshenko up to date on everything that had transpired since I’d last seen him at my investiture as Master. He nodded along, occasionally interjecting a quick question or observation. When I reached the end, though, describing why we’d come here, to Fulcrum, and what we’d learned from Ja-Ra, he put his drink down. “Damn,” he said, his voice quiet. I frowned and cocked my head at him. That single word had been about more than some missing spaceship components. “Petyr, what is it?” I asked him. He sighed. “There’s a great deal you don’t know about your grandfather’s history with the Guild, Van. I know you’ve found that aggravating, even infuriating at times, but Mark had very good reasons for everything he did. For instance, there are things he only wanted you to learn when he believed you’d be ready to learn them. But there are others he

wanted kept from you, and from nearly everyone else, for that matter, because they’re done. Finished. They’ve scarred over and need to be left alone to avoid reopening old wounds, old animosities—hell, old wars.”

Groshenko picked up his glass again and frowned at it. I just waited for him to go on. “It’s really no different than the many, many things you’ve done, Van, in that world of… computers and networks and such,” he said, waving a hand. “Hacking. That sort of thing. I’m sure there is a lot you will not tell anyone about because you wish to protect yourself, or others, or some greater good or ideal.” He fixed me with a keen look. “Now, you may deny it and say that your past as a hacker or cracker or whatever you called yourself is an open book.”

I smiled and shrugged. “Well, there might be a few pages ripped out of it, yeah. But where are you going with this?

What does this have to do with missing spaceship parts and the Tsarina?

What, were they secretly lined with gold bars or something?”

His face went grave, and he put his drink down again. “Mark may not have been willing to share everything with you, or others, not all at once, and some of it not at all. But he kept his own records. Very detailed, very meticulous records. And he was damned thorough. He constantly compiled maps and documents and notes on the events, people, and places he observed, talked to, made friends with, made enemies with —”

Groshenko sighed. “It is a trove of information that occurs in no other database. It is material that the Guild does not have, nor does the GKU—it exists only in one form, the form Mark created it in. People, locations, dates, times, movements of ships, sums of money, it’s all there.”

I shook my head. “Okay, wait. Why the hell did Gramps keep these records off the grid, as it were?

Why wouldn’t he have just entered all of this stuff into Guild archives, like everything else?

That seems pretty damned irresponsible.”

Groshenko gave me a flat look. “So everything you do and say, Master Tudor, is made freely available to the Guild?

To all of the other Masters?

You are as willing to share things with Marlow as you are with Alic or Volfinn?”

I opened my mouth but said nothing. What could I say?

That the rot and corruption afflicting the Guild was something new?

That it didn’t exist in my grandfather’s day?

Groshenko went on. “There’s another reason he kept it out of the Guild’s hands. He had to, because the Guild didn’t want any of this stuff to be known, much less recorded. Mark documented the real answers to crimes that, from the Guild’s perspective, were never solved, or the perpetrators were never brought to justice for. Corruption, bribery, blackmail, and collusion may have kept guilty parties from ever being held accountable, but Mark documented it all.”

“It does seem unlikely that the Guild would be willing to keep records documenting its own incompetence, indifference, or malfeasance,” Funboy agreed. I finally just puffed out a breath. “Okay, fine. Then let’s get to the part that’s making me really uncomfortable, the part we circled around here. It’s this connection you seem to be hinting at between this stuff Gramps collected and the missing components from the Fafnir. Are you saying that’s where all of this secret info is?

It’s not gold bars lining the missing parts of the ship, but my grandfather’s trove of information about—hell, everything, it sounds like?”

Groshenko sighed. “I don’t know. Mark passed away before I ever had a chance to talk to him about it. I just assumed that, being Mark, he set the conditions ahead of time that would lead to it being found and revealed, probably to you. It never occurred to me that it might have been incorporated somehow in the Fafnir, because like you, I assumed the liens were genuine. Mark never would have put his archives into components he knew were going to be reclaimed upon his death. But now, it turns out that the liens were fake, and that he’d specifically registered all of those components to you, so —”

I sat back and blew out another long breath. “So those components might include all his secrets. And now it’s all in the hands of the Tsarina.”

IT SOUNDED REALLY, really bad. Disastrous, even. My grandfather had specifically and meticulously documented volumes of information, at least some of which laid bare corruption and wrongdoing in the Guild. The Tsarina might be able to do enormous damage with stuff like that, or she might be able to sell it to people who would. Or, alternatively, she could

simply destroy it, ensuring that everything it revealed would never see the light of day. And some of that stuff might be helpful, or even outright crucial in solving some of the cases and problems we were now facing. But, it turned out to be much more nuanced than that. As Groshenko explained it, Gramps hadn’t just written all this stuff, some of it incredibly sensitive and incriminating, in plain text in a stack of old paper diaries, the way the Faalaxi had. Groshenko wasn’t sure how Gramps had recorded it. It wasn’t in electronic format, but something far more durable and harder to duplicate. It might be marks imprinted on hull plating, or spots etched into ceramic composite, or—hell, it might have been the patterns of inclusions in crystals. Whatever it was, it would be something physical and extremely resistant to time and wear. It would be practical. It would be… Midwestern. And it also wasn’t going to be, to use the cryptographic term, in the clear. It was undoubtedly encrypted in some fashion, and probably not with a simple mathematical cypher. It was likely more subtle than that. Groshenko knew that my grandfather had contacts with all sorts of different types of cryptographers across known space. Some encoded things in music. Some employed the relative motions of celestial bodies as the basis for their encryption. Some built their cyphers on complex chemical reactions. Our friends on Faalax were even known to weave encrypted information into tapestries, combining art and secrets in a way that was practical and unique. “So we could be looking for anything, anywhere,” I said, putting down my empty glass and waving off Groshenko’s offer of a refill. “And that includes the missing components from the Fafnir. Great. Maybe we can go back to Earth and solve the case of Jack the Ripper while we’re at it.”

Groshenko offered a rueful smile. “Finally. I’m sure Scotland Yard will send flowers, or perhaps little cakes. You know how demonstrative they can be. But—in our world, Van, we work with what we’ve got, and to me, that means we begin with those missing ship components. There’s a reason Mark transferred ownership of them to you—and that someone then went through a lot of trouble to subsequently steal them.”

“I guess. I just wish Gramps had been less in love with these convoluted scavenger hunts. It all seems so… wasteful.”

Groshenko shrugged. “Considering the forces he was contending with, the types of people he was worried about, it made sense to him.” He smiled. “When he wasn’t foiling my plans in Africa or Greece or Poland, he was foiling other people’s plans out here. Very bad people’s plans.”

“It’s a good point,” Gabby put in. “Your grandfather had to figure out how to make sure you’d learn the things you needed to, Van, when you needed to learn them, but only after you’d decided to become a Peacemaker. Even then, he had to make sure you learned them when you could use them, but also when it wouldn’t put you in too much danger when you did—at least, not until you were ready for it.”

“And he then had to prevent anyone else from obtaining this information in the meantime," Funboy added. I indulged myself in another moment of indecisive bitterness, then shoved it aside and sat up. “Okay. Bird, you and Netty-P start working your sources. When we leave here after those weapons are mounted, I’d like our next destination to be the start of the trail to—wherever the hell it was that Gramps wanted us to go.”

17

DESPITE THEIR BEST EFFORTS, though, by the time Groshenko had left and we were ready to leave, Perry and Netty-P had come up empty. Perry only had one suggestion to offer, and it wasn’t one that particularly thrilled him. “Candler?” I asked him. “Yeah. Candler.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s been around for a long time, and because Mark was one of the very few Peacemakers that actually engaged with him. Most wrote him off as a curiosity at best—I mean, seriously, an AI desk?

But your grandfather actually treated him almost decently. Mark was a rarity, Van. He built relationships with everyone.”

“First Zeno, then Ja-Ra, now Candler—he had a way of seeing better things in people than others saw, didn’t he?” I smiled fondly and shook my head. “How many other sad sacks out there did he help, I wonder.”

“Well, considering the way he seemed cool with locking me out of my own memories, I have literally no way of saying. And speaking of memories, Candler is probably going to want one. I’ve got one ready. It’s me telling Mark that Candler is the sort of guy who’d ask a dying man for a favor, and that he’d been a broken, miserable asshole since the day he was activated,” Perry said. I blinked a few times in shocked surprise. “Uh—Perry, are you really sure that’s the sort of memory Candler would even want?”

“Well, if he’s got it, I don’t, so there’s that. Plus, it seems like the right one to give him.”

Past me probably would have just nodded and gone along with it. But present me had been around the block often enough now for that to give me pause. I cocked my head at him. “It seems like the right one to give him?

What does that mean?”

“Strictly speaking, it means that after assigning weighting values to all possible responses to Candler, this one achieves the highest probability of success in a statistical sense —”

I held up a hand to stop him. “Sure, that’s the how of your AI thought process, I get that. I’m getting at the why. I mean, if you’re the one assigning weighting values, then it’s really still just subjective on your part, isn’t it?”

“Well, in a way, I suppose. But those values aren’t just arbitrary. My programming is intended to assign weighting values in accordance with criteria based on a whole range of —”

“Perry, you’re just pushing the question further back along a chain of computation without answering it. Let me put it this way. Why are you weighting the idea of offering that particular memory to Candler so favorably?”

“Because—”

And he stopped. He seemed frozen for a moment, his amber gaze staring into nothing. Then he looked up at me. “Because those are the weighting values my programming is instructing me to assign to it.”

I just stared at him. He stared back. “Try something for me, Perry. Try assigning the worst possible weight to that idea —”

“I already have,” he said. “Thousands of times, relative to thousands of other options, just while we’ve been sitting here. That one wins out every time. Every single time, no matter what I try. And now I see why. Every time I run it, data is injected from an obscure little subroutine that should have nothing whatsoever to do with it.”

I nodded. “You know what that is, don’t you?”

“Yeah. It’s Mark, speaking to me.”

“We need to go and see Candler.”

Perry nodded. “Yeah, we do.”

BUT AS WE made our way to Anvil Dark to meet with Candler, I found myself uneasy about something. I brooded over it doing paperwork, and while taking a trip to the cockpit to check on the Fafnir’s flight operations with a new Invictus laser installed—which were all fine and green. Then, I chewed on it over two cups of coffee. The trouble was, I wasn’t sure what it was. Until I suddenly was. Clearly, Gramps had again used Perry to hide a seed of critical information. This time, instead of a complete memory, it had been the data pointing Perry at that one particular memory, the one he should offer to Candler as payment. It was obviously a plant, that memory probably being like a password for Candler to unlock something for him. It was a clever way, actually, of concealing vital clues in plain sight. It helped ensure we learned the things we needed to know, while the bad guys Gramps clearly foresaw lurking around us didn’t. Which was fine, except it also involved more manipulation of Perry’s memories, of his mind. I appreciated that Gramps had his reasons for choosing that way of bequeathing important information to me, but the part I was brooding over was Perry’s role in it. He’d chosen to assume he was a willing participant in it all, but by the very nature of the scheme, he didn’t remember if he really was or not. And that bothered me. I’d long since settled on Perry as a person, not to mention my funny, cool, smartass of a best friend. The only real difference between him, or Netty-P, or Candler or Hosurc’a or any other AIs and, say, me was that we’d constructed their minds so we knew how they worked. That allowed us to fiddle with them, alter how they worked, what they knew or remembered. I changed bothered to concerned. I was still brooding on it when we twisted, and when we finally arrived at Anvil Dark. I’d had Perry and Netty-P reach out to the various AIs they knew on the station, to make sure there were no simmering plots or schemes, no issues about to explode in our faces when we stepped through

the airlock. None of their contacts were aware of anything, although Master Kistlin apparently wanted a quick meeting with me, now that I was back on the station. I decided to pay him a visit first. “Van, I read your report on the Arbitration on Faalax with much interest

—and appreciation. You seemed to handle it very well,” he said. I shrugged at him across his desk. “An innocent man was ruined financially and will spend time in prison, all to preserve a convenient bit of fiction for some wealthy, privileged assholes. Yay me?”

Kistlin sat back. “You might as well have just quoted my job description, word for word. Our relationships with our Signatories are nothing but an unending succession of compromises and concessions. They are what allow us to continue doing what we do throughout our jurisdiction

—which is really their respective jurisdictions, of course, and they consent to allow our continued operation in them. I thought it would be useful for you to get a taste of that.”

“Yeah, well, it tasted pretty foul. Has it ever occurred to them that if we weren’t out there enforcing the law for them, they’d have to do it themselves?

Every single case of piracy or smuggling, every major cross-territory case like the ID theft ring, all of it would be on their own hook?

And how likely would it be that the Eridani would let the Ceti authorities chase some bad guys into their territory?

They’d have to all learn to”—I made air quotes—“cooperate, and fat chance of that.”

Kistlin let me rant, then nodded. “All very true. And yet, there it is, Van. We are only as capable and effective as our Signatories are prepared to allow us to be.”

I nodded glumly back at him. I sensed I’d done as much ranting about it as I could, and that if I persisted, I’d start to irritate Kistlin, which I did not want to do. I needed his support in threading my way through the Guild’s own shitty politics, so I had to suck up the external shitty in the meantime. Another compromise. I was coming to realize it was that, and not antimatter, that really powered known space. PERRY, Netty-P, and I trekked to Candler’s lonely compartment. I brought Netty-P along— not for any particular reason, but because I had a feeling

that whatever was going to happen was going to be important from an AI point of view. It was going to be something big, maybe even momentous, and I wanted her to be part of it. When we arrived, I got right to the point. “We have a memory for you, Candler. It’s a payment.”

“For what?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out.” I turned to Perry. “Go ahead, bird.”

Perry looked from me, to Candler. “Before I do this, Candler, a bit of preamble. This is a very old memory. A lot has happened since then. We’ve all changed—for better, I think.”

“Wow, it’s gonna suck that bad, huh?

Why the hell do you think I’d even want a memory like that?” Candler asked him. “Because then I won’t have it, and I’ll be a better person for it. And since it’s not actually a memory you formed during the course of your Guild duties, you don’t have to keep it either. And because it’s significant in another way—it’s that payment thing Van mentioned, though for what, I guess we’re hopefully going to find out. But that payment bit is less important to me than the rest of it. So—I’m sorry about this, Candler. Here you go,” Perry said. “Oh. Yeah, ouch. That’s harsh, Perry.”

“I know.”

“But I see what you mean about payment,” Candler said, followed by a soft click. I frowned at him. “What was that?”

“Bottom drawer on the right.”

Still frowning, I bent down and slid open the drawer. As I did, Perry made a Huh sound. I paused and glanced at him. “Sorry, it’s just that all this time I’ve known Candler, and it never occurred to me those drawers were real.”

“I am a functional desk, Perry, thank you very much,” Candler declared. I smirked and shook my head. “That is probably the first time that sentence has ever been uttered, anywhere, with such pride,” I said, and slid the drawer open. Inside was —

A feather. A sleek, black, metallic one. I picked it up and held it toward Perry. “You lose this, bird?”

Perry said nothing. Candler, though, spoke up. “Tell him, bird. I just remembered it, and I’m sure you did, too. Tell him how it happened.”

I looked from Candler to Perry. “How what happened?”

Perry still said nothing. I scowled at Candler. “What the hell is going on?”

“Tell him, Perry. Tell him about the day the Stillness almost ended you. Tell him about the ungrateful little shit who got you torn into little pieces.”

“I’ll tell him, you absolute asshole. Netty was there, too,” Netty-P said, surprising me with the uncharacteristically bitter vehemence in her reply. Perry took a long pause, the moment stretching as I realized he was choosing his words with care. “It was a setup. A fight, but a setup, and before I go any further, let me make one thing clear. I’d do it all again, without hesitation.”

“Do what?” I asked, as fingers of dread began to climb my spine. This was an unusual tone for Perry. It was… distant. Heavy. It wasn’t him. “So, a setup. Valint was there, and Mark, and Tonsuc, and a lot of other people who didn’t have any choice. I know, I’ll get there, boss, just let me

—it was a Stillness cell, and we were outgunned and had shit for cover. I was given a choice. Me, or Mark.”

“What?

What the hell do you mean?

You had to choose between the two of you for what?” I asked. “Life. Me, or Mark. I ate a round for him—several, really—and lost a lot more than just a couple feathers. I was dead, more or less. Drogo carried what was left of me as Mark got treatment. I didn’t protect him entirely, but I gave myself up, wholly, to save him. And he lived, and so I never really cared about the pain, or the memories. The memories. That was the worst. That, and being played for a fool, and damned near losing myself. And my partner,” Perry continued. “Anyway, all of which is to say I’ve been wondering where that feather went.”

“Mark Tudor told me to hold it for the day that you showed up with that memory—that is, the day that a Tudor was ready to start imposing his will on people other than a poor, neglected, and studiously diligent desk. Or so it would seem, anyway, since I seem to have just had the memory unlocked myself,” Candler said. I looked at the other drawers. “So, there might be other interesting things stashed away in your drawers?”

“I don’t think so. I can freely unlock them all, so fill your boots and check it out, Master,” Candler said. A series of clicks announced him unlocking his other drawers. I stared at the feather for a moment, then shook my head. “No. Unless you specifically want me to, I’m not going to open any of those other drawers. I’ve taken it on faith that Gramps was doing all this for a good reason so far. If you do have more secrets hidden away, Candler, let’s let them stay that way.”

“Wow. You’re not even curious in the slightest, boss?” Netty-P asked me. I smiled. “Oh, intensely. But if it was something I needed to know, I’m sure Gramps would have pointed me at it. For that matter, there could be things in them I really don’t want to know, or that aren’t even meant for me.”

“Or nothing at all,” Perry said. “Or nothing at all. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned doing this job”—

I paused as snapshot images flashed through my mind, like the visceral horrors I’d experienced inside the damned Cusp machine, or the killing fields on the mining world called Level Blue—“it’s that sometimes it’s better to not know things.”

I yanked myself out of my moment of dark reverie and looked at Candler. “Up to you, though. If you want to know what, if anything, are in these other drawers, we’ll open them and find out.”

A moment passed, then another series of clicks announced the drawers being locked again. “Van, I’ve come to realize you’re a pretty smart guy,” Candler said. “Someone worth trusting. So, yeah—maybe it’s better to just not know.”

WE QUICKLY BROUGHT the feather back to the Fafnir. I wanted to give it a thorough analysis, but I needed to keep it away from anyone outside the crew. We were fortunate to have Paxomar still with us on his sabbatical, so his background in material science and engineering was particularly handy. It was why, in fact, that despite the Fafnir’s relatively limited analytical resources, Pax was able to make some conclusive determinations. “In every

respect, this feather is identical to the reference feather Perry provided. The materials are exactly the same, right to the trace values of certain indicator metals, like tantalum and terbium. Those are identical in both feathers, within the limits of analytical uncertainty. Likewise, the types and extents of alteration resulting from exposure to various environments checks out. The feather you found in that desk should exhibit slightly different patterns of oxidation than the reference feather because it’s spent decades sitting in the Anvil Dark atmosphere—and it does.”

He sat back from the worktable in the Fafnir’s engineering bay, where the various analytical instruments were, then handed the feather to me. “I am confident that this was, indeed, originally one of Perry’s feathers, and that it has, indeed, been languishing on Anvil Dark for the past—oh, forty-plus years.” He sniffed and glanced at Perry. “You’ve got one hell of a serial numbering system for your feathers, though. Do they each really require a unique number of, like, five hundred digits?”

“No, they don’t. They aren’t even serial numbered that way to begin with. It’s all done with radio-frequency tags, so—what the hell are you talking about?” Perry replied. Pax frowned, then sat forward again and tapped at the work terminal. He called up a micro-image of the shaft of the feather. He zoomed the view until it showed a string of hundreds of characters—some numeric, some just symbols. The whole string was just a couple of microns long. I nodded at it. “Well, now we know how to decode the records Gramps left. That, my friends, is a good old-fashioned cryptography key. Now we just need to find whatever the hell it’s meant to decrypt.”

“Whatever it is, it’s either really valuable, or really sensitive,” Torina said. “Mark didn’t give a damn about money,” Perry said. “To the point that it was actually a problem at times. But he did give one hell of a damn about justice.”

“Then I think we can guess what he compiled, and it ain’t about monetary value,” I said. “Thanks to the bird’s feather, we don’t have to guess. We can simply read—whatever it is, once we find it.”

“See?

I’ve always been helpful, whether it’s comedic timing or literacy, I’m your bird,” Perry said. “This gives me an opportunity to use some new material, based upon my ongoing research of Earthly culture,” Funboy said, then straightened slightly and looked gravely at Perry. “Your timing is slightly better than a fill-in cruise ship prop comic, if that same comic was facing backward and blindfolded. And drunk.”

“Oh, that’s hilarious—coming from the guy who wanted to buy a timeshare in Bogalusa, Louisiana,” Perry shot back. “That wasn’t a timeshare. It was an opportunity.”

“Well, guys, I’d like the opportunity to find my missing spaceship parts and start moving forward on dealing with the Tsarina. Or anything else conducive to actually engaging in, you know, the act of obtaining justice.”

Netty-P spoke up. “Well, in the course of chasing some leads based on Ja-Ra’s records, we did find the first name in the chain of custody, so to speak. It’s none other than Dayna Jasskin.”

I nodded. “Alrighty, then. Let’s pretend it’s payday and go to the bank.”

18

DAYNA INVITED us straight to her office when we arrived at Procyon. I’d only told her that it was an urgent matter, both for me and the Guild. Her reply was immediate and assertive. “Masters of the Guild get to skip the line at the teller. I’ll see you when you get here.” She hesitated, then gave me a wary look. “Care to share anything about the matter in question?”

“Not over the comm, Dayna, no. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

And here we were. I explained to Dayna what we’d found, leading up to her name and that of The Quiet Room coming up in our investigation. She was immediately put on edge, even a little angry. “If your grandfather implicated us in this—whatever this scheme is, then I want to know how. I’m opening all of my records even remotely related to this matter to you—though some stuff might be redacted to protect other parties, of course.”

It took a few hours, but Dayna finally handed over a data module containing copies of all the records Perry and Netty-P had asked her to compile. We could examine them on the Fafnir but couldn’t leave with the module and had to scrub all traces of them from our information systems before we left. I valued my relationship with Dayna and The Quiet Room too much to do otherwise, so I confirmed with her that we would. The AIs quickly sifted through and analyzed the data, doing in moments what would have taken a whole team of people hours, maybe even days. Most of it was routine, and therefore uninteresting transactional stuff. A few

items jumped out, though. One was a series of payments made by Gramps to a numbered account held by a similarly nondescript, numbered holding company. We were able to surmise that it was probably an account ultimately held by Ja-Ra, though, based on a transaction amount Perry was able to match to an entirely separate document. The main point of interest was a lien Ja-Ra paid off from a Ship’s weapons hard-point/mount, customizable, 2.5 meter diameter, self-powered, model Xentus 5, type 48G, part number 48G-000259.

Perry put both items on the display in the crew lounge. “Note that the amount Mark paid into the account, and the value of the mount listed in the lien payment two days later, are exactly the same. Now, it’s circumstantial, but the exact same amount two days apart —”

“Yeah, we’re not fans of coincidences,” I said. “So if that’s right, then why was your grandfather giving Ja-Ra money?

I mean, unless he bought the mount later on and it was all some sort of convoluted deal,” Rab said. I shrugged. “No idea. So… a weapons mount. A pretty out-of-date one. Would something like that still even be in use?” I asked Netty-P. “It’s an older model, but it checks out,” she said. “More importantly, it’s one of the items that was removed from the Fafnir.”

“So it did have a lien on it,” Torina said. “Yeah, but Gramps obviously had it cleared, through Ja-Ra or whoever this intermediary is,” I said. I asked Netty-P to send the information about the mount to Dayna, who was searching other sources she had. Maybe she could come up with something more about it. “Gotta be honest, I’m more interested in whatever weapon was attached to it,” Icky put in. “I like guns, especially if they’re ones we already technically own.”

“Well, the weapons that were affixed to that mount were a system called Finality—a hybrid of twinned, selective-fire mass drivers that could function both as a point-defense and an intermediate-range main battery. It wasn’t quite as effective as standalone versions of either of those weapons in those roles, but it was more efficient, since it only takes up one hard point.”

“It could also be brutal at close range—could chew a hole even through the armor of a battlewagon like the Iowa pretty damned fast,” Perry said. “Finality, huh?

That’s a distinct name. Nice branding,” I noted. Perry nodded. “I remember Mark opening a twenty-meter hole with it down the flank of a class 11 that got froggy with the wrong water carrier.”

“The wrong water carrier?”

“Yeah, as in one close enough that Mark could see the dumbass 11

attacking an unarmed ship. Mark hated bullies. He was a lot like you that way.”

“Why, bird, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. Well, other than when you said wearing a blue shirt made my eyes dance,” I added, smirking. “It’s true—it’s your color, Captain Handsome, but that’s not critical right now.”

Icky raised a hand. “Excuse me, but that’s Pax’s nickname on date night. Use it sparingly, please, to avoid awkward moments of confusion.”

Silence, then Torina sniffed. “Like this one.”

Icky nodded. “Yeah, like this one.”

Funboy heaved a theatrical sigh. “Yet another sexually charged bit of innuendo I would prefer to have not known. I am currently considering new material for my Instagram account on Earth, and am trying to keep it family-friendly. You are not assisting by suggesting a shameless festival of”—Funboy paused, searching for a word—“of copulation. No, wait—of humping. Yes. That seems even more cutting and incisive.”

Icky gave him a flat stare. “Oh, no, you’ve cut me to the quick, Funboy. How shall my self-esteem ever recover?

Anyway, a girl likes to know her libido is sending the right message, and this seems to confirm it. Now, with that out of the way, what about my guns?”

Nothing in Dayna’s data gave us any further leads. Again, she’d said she was going to continue searching other records, ones that she wasn’t prepared to hand over to us, so I called her up and looped her into the conversation. It turned out she'd scored a hit shortly after we let her know about the missing hard point. “As a matter of fact, I have got you a lead on it and those guns,” she said. “We have access to weapons-registration databases maintained not just by the Guild, but by other powers in known space. I got a hit in the Eridani archives. It looks like the last sale of the mount and the weapons on it was registered there.”

“Do tell. Is it some scofflaw?

A pirate?

Some other criminal in need of wrangling?” I asked her. She actually laughed. “No, even better. Your guns, or their last known location, at least, is none other than your very own homeworld.”

I gave her a derisive look. “On Earth?”

“Unless you’ve changed home addresses, yeah. Does the name Deacon Pruitt mean anything to you?”

I tapped my finger on my chin. “Hmm. Deacon Pruitt. Just let me run through the eight billion names of everyone on Earth—nope, sorry, Dayna, can’t say I can place Deacon Pruitt,” I said, grimacing at her. She shrugged. “Hey, you never know. I mean, he could have been the President or King or Emperor of your nation states. I’ve only just started doing my homework on current Earth culture, so sue me.”

“You’re doing homework on Earth?”

“It’s a new potential market, Van. We have to be ready for anything.”

“Yeah, I guess. Anyway, do you have any information other than that name?”

“Does the name… um, Nickajack Reservoir, Tennessee mean anything to you?”

I nodded. “Tennessee sure does. And I’m sure we can track down Nickajack—” A sharp laugh from Perry cut me off, and I looked at him. “Oh, boss, this is just too good. I only had to do a quick search, and I found Mr. Deacon Pruitt of Nickajack Reservoir, Tennessee. It turns out he is prominent in certain circles back on Earth.”

I gave him a suspicious look. “What circles are those?”

He answered by putting a picture on the display—a tall, skulking figure in camouflage and mirrored shades. “You know good old Myron, Tony Burgess’s friend?

Those circles. Turns out Deacon Pruitt is something of a celebrity in the ancient-aliens-Area-51-the-truth-is-out-there scene. He runs a blog beloved by conspiracy nuts everywhere. In fact, Myron is a subscriber and a frequent poster on it, it seems. He does, as they say, collabs.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “And he’s got alien weaponry in his front yard?

Is he about to have a bad day or what?”

But Perry shrugged. “Or maybe the best day of his paranoid little life.”

IT WASN’T hard to find Nickajack Reservoir, an artificial lake created by a dam on the Tennessee River in the southernmost part of the state. It was harder to find Deacon Pruitt’s place, though, because the terrain around the reservoir was rugged and heavily wooded, and it threaded through with a winding lacework of narrow, twisting roads. Homes and farms were dotted across the countryside as though someone had sprinkled them from a vast shaker and they’d been built where they landed. We circled the Fafnir above the region for a while, while Netty-P and Perry compared the information they’d been able to glean from public sources with the landscape. Perry finally announced a hit, highlighting a particular property on both the topographic overlay on the master display, and on the cockpit canopy. We veered that way, then resumed circling. “Ah, one of these guys,” I said, peering down as we started orbiting over the property in question. It was about ten acres or so, mostly wooded, located up a stream, feeding into a creek that drained into the Reservoir a few klicks away. “A junkman.”

“A junkman?” Torina asked. I nodded. “Yeah. It’s a variation on a hoarder. You’ll find them everywhere. We’ve got them in Iowa. I’ve noticed a few as we’ve flown near Appleton and Frankenmuth and even DC. They’ve got them in Canada

—hell, I’m sure they’ve even got them in Russia. People who accumulate junk, usually old cars and trucks, refrigerators, tractors, bulldozers, washing machines and dryers—you name it, and if it’s made of metal, has a motor, and can somehow move under its own power, they’ll have it. They’ll have it stashed away, part of a huge collection in a backwoods lot, grown through and over with bush and trees and weeds and stuff.”

“We got ’em on Wu’tzur, too,” Icky said. “And, for that matter, out in space. Lots of little junk collectors with scrap and old spaceship parts they’ve gathered around an asteroid or something. Usually cantankerous old farts, too.”

Rab nodded. “I know the type. They often never want to sell anything, they just want to have it.”

“It sounds like a pointless exercise that ultimately results in little other than breeding vermin,” Funboy concluded. I shrugged. “Pointless to you, maybe. But it takes all types to make the universe work. And there are enough of these guys around that it must speak to some—I don’t know. A need of some sort —”

“Order,” Gabby said. “It’s about order. And control. Having things you think you might one day need, knowing where they are and where you can go to get them.”

“There you go,” I agreed. “Now, Mr. Pruitt down there is particularly dedicated, it seems. In addition to the usual old cars and trucks and trailers and junk, he’s got an actual boxcar, ex-Cotton Belt Railway. I don’t even think that exists anymore.”

“Nope, it was amalgamated into Southern Pacific in 1992, and it’s all now part of Union Pacific,” Perry said. “So that’s been down there a while. Must have been a treat pulling it up the holler, or whatever he calls his little slice of heaven,” I said. “I’ve got a better question. Are there any Finality point-defense batteries down there?” Icky asked. I shook my head. “I don’t see any, but there’s stuff under tarps and in three or four sheds, so they could be inside them. No way we can scan for them, huh?”

“Well, they’re not powered up, if that helps,” Netty-P said. “If they were, there’d be some characteristic emissions evident this close to them. But that’s about all our scanners are going to tell us.”

I frowned in thought. What little we knew about Deacon Pruitt came from Tony Burgess, who we’d called up on our way to Earth. He didn’t know Pruitt personally, only by reputation in UFO/alien coverup/conspiracy circles. He’d been an outspoken critic of many other, similar sorts on his blog, which we’d also checked out, accusing them of all being “part of the whitewash.” Anyone who expressed even the least doubt about the

“Truth”—and yes, he capitalized it—or was even slightly skeptical or demanding of proof was labeled as being part of the “Machine”—also capitalized. It meant that the likes of Myron could probably pass muster with Pruitt, but even Tony, as ardent a believer as he’d been, probably wouldn’t. That, taken together with the hermetic lifestyle and the junk hoarding, spoke of a man who was… perhaps not well. We need to approach him with compassionate caution. I started mapping out a plan to ground the Fafnir in the clearing down there, a couple of hundred meters from what I assumed was his house, and then I’d take Torina and Perry in a wary, unthreatening approach. But as I did, it occurred to me that that probably wasn’t going to be the right way. We’d just be a couple of ordinary people with a bit of extraordinary tech, and that could feed into Pruitt’s only-too-obvious fears about government cover-ups and shadowy operatives and the like. By the time we managed to convince him we were legit—if we could manage that—any number of things might have gone wrong. And Tony said Pruitt had a reputation for at least violent writings and threats and things. The last thing I wanted was for someone to get hurt. So, I did a 180 and decided we needed to go with shock and awe. So we could bring Icky and Funboy and Gabby with us—or, we could lean into the shock and awe even harder. I settled on that. “Netty-P, bring us right over the top of his house, ten meters up, say, and deactivate the stealth system. And make some dramatic noise—maybe fire the thrusters in station-keeping mode.”

“Will do.”

We spiraled down, then came to a halt just above what we assumed to be Pruitt’s house. The gravity polarizers kept us aloft, so we didn’t need the thrusters, but they fired with a satisfying, hissing whoosh that stirred up dust and beat the vegetation below like the downdraft from a helicopter. With her stealth system shut down, the Fafnir would make one hell of an imposing sight to someone who came stumbling out of the house —

Like the man doing that down there now, cringing, shielding his eyes and peering up through slitted fingers, a pistol in one hand. With his other arm, he seemed to be struggling to pull up his pants. “What the hell was he doing in there—no, wait, I neither need nor want to know,” Torina said. “Oh, no, be careful, Van, he’s armed and dangerous,” Perry intoned. “Don’t mock him. He almost got his pants on right,” Rab said. “Those are pants, right?

The things you hate?” he asked Icky. She grinned. “Correct. No pants unless absolutely necessary. Hey, I found a kindred spirit!”

But I shook my head. “Be nice, please. Put yourself in his place and imagine how you’d be feeling right now.”

Perry’s eyes flashed. “Right. Compassion and, uh, stuff.”

There was enough room to land the Fafnir about thirty meters away, in a clear space bordered by the rusty old box car on one side and the remains of a Ford extended-cab pickup on the other. While Netty-P handled the

landing, I led Torina, Rab, Gabby, and Perry to the airlock. Torina and Rab had their lethal weapons slung, just in case there was more going on here than it appeared. Rab cradled a goo gun, while I had The Drop holstered and set to stun. As soon as the airlock opened, Perry launched himself into the sky. We stepped out and walked with slow deliberation toward Pruitt. The man had regained his composure and now brandished his pistol, an old Colt.45, at us as we approached. He was tall, lean, and scruffy, with a narrow face and sharp, bright eyes. “Y’all stay back now, or I will open fire, so help me I will,” he said, then turned and shouted over his shoulder. “MAVIS, ENACT PROTOCOL

SIX!”

I raised my hands. “Mr. Pruitt, we’re just here to talk. We don’t mean any harm.”

“MAVIS, I SAID ENACT PROTOCOL SIX, DAMMIT!”

We kept approaching. I was keenly aware of the muzzle of the.45, which waved and wobbled all over the place as Pruitt shouted. “MAVIS—!”

We stopped about five meters away. “Mr. Pruitt, please. We just want to talk to you about something you purchased, or came into possession of, that we think is probably still here on your property.”

A frumpy woman in a housecoat appeared on the porch, stomped down the steps, and strode up to Pruitt. He looked at her incredulously. “MAVIS, I SAID TO ENACT —”

“Protocol Six, yeah, yeah, I heard ya’.

The whole damned county heard ya’.” Without batting an eye, she yanked the.45 out of Pruitt’s hand, expertly unloaded it, and stuck it into her belt. Then she peered at us through thick reading glasses. “And just who the hell are y'all?”

With the.45 gone, we relaxed. I smiled and introduced myself, then the crew. Deacon Pruitt took us in, wild-eyed and breathing hard with excitement. “It’s true. It’s all true—all true—!” He turned to his wife. “Why didn’t you enact Protocol Six, woman?

They’re here, they’re here!”

“Because we don’t—what’s the word you use in that stupid protocol of yours, oh yeah—we don’t eradicate guests. We treat them with decent Christian hospitality.”

“Protocol Six was about eradicating aliens, I gather?

What were Protocols One through Five, then?” Torina asked. Mavis Pruitt shrugged. “Oh, everything from the Good Lord’s Second Coming to the New Great Flood. You’d have to ask my husband for the details, and I’d recommend y’all don’t, because he’ll give them to you if you do. Now what’s this all about?”

I couldn’t resist a smile. “You don’t seem very surprised to see us, Ms. Pruitt.”

“That would be Missus Pruitt. None of that new-age Ms. stuff here, please and thanks. Anyway, you’re some of those aliens we’ve seen on TV, ain’t ya?”

“We… are, yeah. Though I’m actually from Iowa myself,” I said. Mavis nodded. “Iowa. Good people. Rooted in soil, as my daddy used to say.”

Gabby stepped forward. “And us showing up like this—it doesn’t surprise you?”

Mavis shrugged. “Why should it?

The Good Lord ain’t revealed all his mysteries to us yet, so this”—she waved her hand at us, and the Fafnir behind us—“is all just one of the newer ones He’s chosen to pull the curtain back on.”

Deacon, who by now had composed himself, stepped forward. “I knew about you aliens all along. I knew it. I’ve known you were real since I was taken by some of you in 1987, taken aboard one of your ships and—and things were done to me,” he hissed. Mavis glanced at him sidelong. “I always thought that was a bunch of hooey, but seeing y'all, I’m not so sure. You didn’t take him aboard and do experiments and things on him, did you?

’Cause it would explain a lot.”

I glanced at Torina. Unfortunately, after Tony’s experience with the “frat boys” who’d tried to abduct him, I couldn’t rule it out. But somehow, telling the Pruitts that Deacon had probably been the victim of a stupid frat-boy prank didn’t sound like the sort of thing they’d like to hear. “It’s possible. There are a lot of interests out there,” I said, glancing pointedly up. “And some of them are pretty… inscrutable.”

I heard Rab suppress a chuckle. Perry didn’t bother and just laughed in my ear bug. We spent the next few minutes explaining why we’d come. Deacon had, by then, become much more lucid than he had been. He finally crossed his arms and glowered at me. “Them guns ain’t real. The man who sold them to me told me they was just props from some movie. I just wanted ’em to make a point, that my home won’t be threatened when the inevitable fall of civilization comes.”

“If they are what we believe them to be, they are very real, Mr. Pruitt,” I said. “The fall of civilization, huh?” Torina said, glancing around at the scrap and debris. “How could you tell when that happened, exactly?”

Mavis clicked her tongue at her husband. “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Deacon, did you go and buy some sorta celestial artillery and put it in our weeds?

You know the kids keep sneakin’ in and playin’ around that stuff.”

“But he said they weren’t real!”

“Who said they weren’t real?

Who sold them to you?” Torina asked. Deacon frowned. “Don’t really remember much. Some guy, a Yankee-type from New York or California or something. It was, oh, fifteen years back, now.”

I grimaced at that. Had the Equal Grasp, or something like them, been operating on Earth that long?

I’d long since learned that aliens had been coming and going to and from Earth for centuries, but selling arms to Earth people, ostensibly as nothing more than props?

Why?

As we probed deeper, though, the reason for the sale started to become evident—it was a convenient way to stash the weapons in a place they’d never likely be found, at least not without access to the bill of sale like we’d had, thanks to Dayna Jasskin. In other words, they were pretty much hidden in plain sight. And as for the who of it, the one who’d sold them, the best description Deacon could give us definitely sounded like a younger version of our friendly Manhattan attorney, Mr. Forester. “Van, if that’s the case, it means this weapon is probably still functional,” Rab said to me quietly. I nodded. “Can we try to power it up to confirm it?”

“We could grab a power cell and try to get it to boot up. The proof would be firing a round, though.”

That made me frown. “Fire a round?

What, you mean here, in Mr. Pruitt’s yard?”

Rab nodded. “We could lug it back up to orbit, I suppose. Your Mr. Pruitt over there might object, though, especially if it’s Icky doing the heavy lifting. She’s… noticeable.”

Icky, hearing her name, joined us, then performed a small bow. “I am. And pretty, too. But enough about me. If the thing works, isn’t it even more likely he’s gonna want to hang onto it?”

I smiled. “That’s going to depend on his wife, I think —”

“Who can hear every blessed word y’all are saying,” she suddenly said, striding toward us. “Didn’t your parents” —she looked from me to Rab and Icky—“or whatever you foreign alien types might call ’em, tell you it ain’t polite to whisper about people right in front of them?” Her frown suddenly deepened. “Wait, am I being presumptuous?

Did y’all even have parents, or were you, I don’t know, grown in a vat or something?

The Lord does work in mysterious ways, and there ain’t many more mysterious than you folk.”

“I had a mother and a dad,” Icky said. “What was wrong with your mother?”

Icky blinked at her. “Sorry, what —?”

“You called your dad your dad, but your mom your mother.” Mavis suddenly looked sympathetic. “Did you have a troubled time with her?”

“She… was a big-time criminal who tried to kill my dad and me. So, yeah, you might say that —”

“She’s still your mother, so don’t you disrespect her,” Mavis said sharply. And Icky actually sagged a little and looked downright scolded. “Yes, ma’am.”

Rab smiled. “I have three fathers and seven mothers.”

It was Mavis’s turn to look a little taken aback. “Oh. Well—” She patted Rab’s arm. “Okay, I love my mama and my pa, God rest both their souls, but”—she leaned closer to Rab and lowered her voice—“even I got my limits.”

Rab grinned. “Trust me, ma’am—so do I.”

She actually grinned back at him, then turned to me. “Anyway, if that cannon over there shoots for real, I want it gone. Last thing I need is for Deacon to have artillery at his beck and call.”

I gave her a firm nod. “Yes, ma’am.”

Icky retrieved a power cell from the ship, then she and Rab pulled the grubby tarp off the Finality battery and hooked it up. Icky opened the protective cover over the weapon’s status panel, then she and Rab watched as it powered up. After a few seconds, they both turned to me- and Icky gave several thumbs up. “It’s online, Van,” she called. I nodded. I wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of firing it here. But given that Mavis had made it clear she didn’t want it around if it were live, this seemed the surest way to get the damned thing away from her husband without too much strife. So I returned my own thumbs-up. “Go ahead,” I said. “Fire it into that hillside over there, lowest possible power.”

Rab nodded and tapped at the panel as Icky loaded a single PD round. Rab linked a data pad to it so he could fire it remotely, and we all retired a bit, putting the armored bulk of the Fafnir between us and the weapon. Even if it exploded, it shouldn’t do too much damage, but I was a little worried about shrapnel. Better safe than sorry. “Fire in the hovel!” Icky shouted. Funboy nodded appreciatively, “An intelligent, subtle, and yet somewhat vicious joke. I didn’t think she had it in her —”

WHAM. The round slammed into the hillside and blasted out a small crater of black dirt, bits and clods of the stuff erupting in a brief cascade. Deacon yelped and dropped to the ground, his hands over his ears. “MAVIS, WHY THE HELL HAVEN’T YOU ENACTED PROTOCOL

SIX?”

“I’m going to do that right now, Deacon,” she said, turning to us. “I assume you good folks are going to take away that instrument of devilry, but not before I do right by y’all and offer you some refreshments.”

“That’s Protocol Six?

Refreshments?” I asked her. “It is as far as I’m concerned.”

“Ooh, have you got noodles?” Icky asked. “I’m giving you sweet tea, you big blue abomination, and you’ll like it,”

Mavis said. “Yes, ma’am.”

ICKY DRANK an entire pitcher of Mavis’s sweet tea, belched brightly, and said, “Van, I would invade Earth for this stuff. Can we take some with us?”

“Uh… sure?

I mean, it’s tea, just with enough sugar to kill a horse.”

“Oh dear. Will it cause her to release digestive gasses like that as well?

In a manner similar to the aforementioned dead horse, albeit after a period of decomposition and bloating?”

Torina put down the sugar cookie she’d been about to bite into. “I’m suddenly not hungry. Funny, that.”

“Yes, it was hyperbole on my part,” Funboy said. “But I seem to be the only one concerned with Icky spraying saliva and other materials around the Fafnir like a furry fire hose.”

Perry cut in. “I have a different concern. These guns. We can take ’em, but —”

Deacon, who’d been sulking apart from the rest of us on the porch, suddenly sat up. “The hell you can!”

Mavis turned to him and simply said, “Deacon!”

“Mavis, I bought that thing fair and square —!”

“And now you’re gonna sell it to Mr. Tudor here the same way, so’s we can get the damned thing off our property.”

“But Mavis —!”

“I will not have some sort of celestial artillery sitting in my front yard, Deacon Pruitt,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. He sputtered a bit, then subsided. “Fine. You can have the God —”

“Deacon!

Don’t you dare blaspheme!”

“—the damned gun. But you’re gonna pay for it!”

I held up a hand. “Yes, Mr. Pruitt, we’re going to pay you for it.”

Funboy nodded. “Van has a credit card. He will use that.”

“I don’t take no damned credit cards!”

Again, I held up a hand. I’d already discussed it with Mavis and had handed her the money in my wallet, about two hundred dollars, and agreed to wire her another three thousand. The weapon was, of course, worth vastly more than that from an Earthly perspective— vastly more. But she mainly wanted it out of her yard. “Van, we’ve got to get some tea before we leave Earth,” Icky said, and Funboy surprisingly nodded. “Icky’s intestinal exhibitions aside, it is quite pleasant,” he said. “You can use your credit card for that.”

“Fine. We’ll stop by a Piggly Wiggly on the way,” I sighed. “You gonna go find the other guns now, too?” Deacon suddenly asked. We all stopped and stiffened. “What other guns?” I asked him. “That Yankee. He said he had a couple more he wanted to sell me, but somebody decided no,” he said, glancing sidelong at Mavis. She crossed her arms. “You get rid of a few of the cars, and the tractors, and that combine harvester—what in the Good Lord’s name do we even need a combine harvester for, anyway?

We ain’t exactly growing amber waves of wheat here, now, are we?

Anyway, then I might consider letting you buy up some more junk. But no more heavy ordnance!”

“Fine.”

I persisted, getting all the information about these other weapons I could out of Deacon. He remembered they were called shredder cannons, though not much more of any substance. Perry immediately recognized the term. “Yeah, those didn’t come off the Fafnir. If they’re what I think they are, they’re nasty, vicious antipersonnel weapons, actually banned by interstellar convention because they were purpose-built to not only kill, but to inflict the greatest possible suffering in the process. They’d probably even be illegal here in Tennessee.”

“You oughta see our fireworks,” Deacon said. I sat back in my chair and blew out a sigh. “Great. Looks like we started with someone trafficking in the Fafnir’s old weapons, and now we’ve stumbled into a whole gun-running operation.”

Torina smiled. “Eh, what’s one more major case, more or less?”

19

WE TOOK our leave of the Pruitts, with Deacon telling us to get the hell off his property, and Mavis telling us we were welcome back any time. I glanced significantly at her husband. “Really?”

“Oh, don’t you mind him. Deacon’s a good man. Batty as a belfry, but they’re mostly those cute, cuddly bats, the kinds that look like little puppies. Only a few of ’em bite.”

I smiled. “Well, I appreciate the offer of hospitality, Mrs. Pruitt. Especially considering, uh”—this time, I glanced back at my crew boarding the Fafnir—“who some of us are.”

She shrugged. “We’re all the Good Lord’s creatures, even the ones that come from out there on Mars, or wherever. Now, you get—go fight them Klingons, or whatever it is you do.”

I laughed and waved as I boarded the Fafnir. We lifted and headed to orbit, aiming ourselves for Anvil Dark. I wanted to check in while availing ourselves of the maintenance facilities to mount the Finality battery. In the meantime, we not only had further leads to follow on the parts missing from the Fafnir, but we also had a gun-running outfit to report on—another scummy link in the chain that was the Equal Grasp. The Piggly Wiggly was going to have to wait for our next trip to Earth. WE ARRIVED at Anvil Dark amid the slow simmer of reactions I’d come to expect. Some were effusively cheerful and sucking up, more were sullen and resentful, while the rest were a sort of wary standoffishness. The latter included Peacemakers who’d probably been one of the other two groups at one time, but had hitched themselves a little too closely to Masters who’d fallen from grace, like Yotov. In other words, they’d been burned—offered or promised things that never materialized, or done things that had made them vulnerable in ways they’d expected to have covered from on high. Not all of them had joined the sullen and resentful camp and were now just bitter and jaded and wanted nothing to do with Masters at all. The truth was that I could handle the outright resentful and spiteful ones, and I could even handle the grim and distrustful types. It was the suck-ups that were really starting to grate on me. One in particular, a young Fren-Okun Peacemaker freshly out of her Initiate phase, had taken to making herself known to me these last few trips to Anvil Dark. Her name was Sletha, and while she was bright and even somewhat charming, she lacked the ability to pick up social cues. She was the type who’d shrug off each increasingly obvious attempt by someone to disengage from her, and just keep pushing on with a conversation that had gone long past its best-before date. “Master Tudor!”

I almost stumbled, then closed my eyes, breathing a silent plea for—I don’t know, something, an attack on Anvil Dark or the sudden formation of a terrifying spatial anomaly, anything to keep her from —

“Master Tudor!

It’s me, Sletha!”

I had Perry and Torina with me, the three of us on our way to the Keel to check in with Max and drop by Kistlin and Alic. They’d both picked up on Sletha’s attentions to me—it was hard not to as she had the subtlety of a velvet hammer—and were, of course, deeply sympathetic. Torina leaned toward me. “Vaa-aan, it’s your girrrrl-friend.”

I glanced at her. “Jealous?”

“Green with envy, babe,” she laughed. Sletha caught up, maneuvered in front of us, then planted herself squarely in my path. “Master Tudor, welcome back to Anvil Dark!”

I offered her as much smile as I could manage. “Thank you, Sletha. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got two other Masters waiting for me —”

I started to step around her, but she sidestepped to keep blocking my way. “Certainly, Master Tudor!

I just wanted to let you know that I’ve finished reading your after-action summary on the hijacking of the Perihelion Starbow—you know, the big liner that those Yonnox grabbed during her shakedown cruise, and you and Gabby and Perry did that really clever boarding action, where you had to stay in the shadow of —”

“I remember it, yes. I was… kind of there, after all.”

“I was the one who did all the calculations, kept us from sliding into the hijackers’ field of view as we approached,” Perry said from where he’d perched on a nearby conduit. Sletha glanced at him. “Uh-huh.” She turned back to me. “Anyway —”

“That’s it, huh?

No other credit for the bird?”

Sletha glanced at him again, smiled quickly, then again turned back to me. “Okay, then,” Perry said, shaking his head. “Anyway, I wondered if you’d have some time, so I could ask you some questions about it. I think it would be really useful to know how you approached the whole situation, so that if I ever face anything like it —”

I stopped her with a hand right in front of her face. “Tell you what. Write your questions down and send them to Max in the Keel. They’ll make sure I get them. Now, I really have to go,” I said, practically shouldering her aside to get by. “I’ll do that, Master Tudor!” she called from behind us. “And thank you!”

Torina made her voice breathless. “Oh, Master Tudor, you’re so big and strong and wonderful!”

I took a moment to preen. “Finally, I’m being treated with the adulation I deserve.”

“Oh, yes, Master Tudor, a thousand times, yes!” Her smile and voice hardened. “Right up until the moment you steal all the blankets again. Then it’s back to an elbow in the ribs.”

“Perry, remind me to wear my b-suit to bed tonight.”

“Boss, let me go one better. Find something we call a couch.”

WHEN WE ARRIVED at the Keel and I checked in with Max, I expected the usual array of administrivia to be waiting for me—and it was. But Max also had something very un usual. They handed me an actual paper envelope, sealed, with nothing but my name written on the outside, along with a brief message —

Please give this to Max, to deliver personally to Van Tudor. “This was dropped off by Lunzy. Apparently, it showed up in a delivery of provisions to her ship. And before you ask, yes, she tried using the station’s surveillance imagery to find who it might have been. She couldn’t narrow it down, though, to more than a half dozen different individuals who might have had a chance to stick it into the load of stores as it was moved from Logistics to her hangar bay. She identified two of them, but they both said they knew nothing about it.”

I held up the letter. It was made of fine paper, opaque to light. It could have originated nearly anywhere, even at a Staples or other office-supply place on Earth. “Those loads of provisions pass through security scanners before they’re delivered, to weed out contraband or dangerous items like explosives. They didn’t pick up on this?” Perry asked. “It turns out that paper on its own doesn’t trigger the system, at least not in such a small amount,” Max replied. “And if the threshold is set too low, it starts throwing false positives. I’ve had it thoroughly scanned. It contains nothing but a single sheet of folded paper. If there’s anything written on it, though, it must be using some form of ink that’s transparent to scans, because it seems to be blank.”

I nodded. “I guess that means, at least, that there’s nothing too physically dangerous in here,” I said, hefting the envelope. “Like some sort of funky bomb that could fit in an envelope like this.” I stared at it a moment. “Still, I don’t want to take any chances. We’ll take this back to the Fafnir, scan it again, then get Waldo to open it somewhere safe.”

“What did you mean by physically dangerous?” Max asked. I offered them a thin smile. “Trust me, Max, words can ultimately be far more dangerous than even antimatter.”

WE TOOK the envelope back to the Fafnir and scanned it every way we could. Sure enough, it seemed to be nothing more than a single blank sheet of paper folded inside an envelope and sealed with adhesive—like I said, something I could have bought in the stationery department at a Walmart. Out of ideas, I gave it to Waldo, who took it to a corner of the hangar bay, behind a stack of cargo crates, and got him to open it. We watched on the big display in the crew lounge. He deftly sliced open the envelope and extracted a single sheet of paper, just as the scans had predicted. I crossed my arms. “Feeling kind of silly now. Or maybe paranoid is the better word.” I glanced at the crew. “Anyone else feel like we’re overreacting?”

But I got headshakes in reply. “Van, considering the number and sorts of people who want you dead, you’re right to suspect something like this,”

Rab said. I gave him a mirthless smile. “Thanks, Rab. That makes me feel so much more at ease.”

“Waldo’s chemical discriminators are detecting a substance impregnated into the paper,” Netty-P said. “It’s a complex organic compound, something that seems to have chemical receptors for DNA.”

Torina scowled. “Some kind of toxin, then. It was probably meant to poison you when you handled the paper, Van.”

I opened my mouth to concur but stopped and closed it again. Instead, I curled my lip. “Really?

That seems like an awfully convoluted way to make an assassination attempt. I mean, a lot of things had to happen in ways that the person who put this together couldn’t control. The letter could have gotten lost on the way, or Lunzy could have opened it, or Max.”

“DNA discrimination could indicate a toxin specifically designed to target you, Van,” Funboy said. I thought about that, then shook my head again. “I’m still having trouble buying it. Again, Lunzy or Max or someone else who found it could have opened it, just seen a blank page and tossed it away.”

With that, I turned and headed for the airlock, then exited the Fafnir and walked toward Waldo. On the way, I grabbed a pair of work gloves from a maintenance cart. The crew followed me. After putting the gloves on, I took the page from Waldo. Unsurprisingly, nothing happened. The paper just hung limp in my hand. I examined it closely. It was utterly featureless, just blank and white. I held it at an angle to the light to see if I could detect the imprint of any writing, but there was none. Holding it up to one of the bright work lights revealed nothing, either. So, I removed my right glove. “Van, be careful,” Torina said. “I have brought along my medical kit, which contains a broad-spectrum antidote to most types of toxins,” Funboy said. Torina shot him a glance. “Only most?”

“I could attempt to stock antidotes to the rest, if you wish. Some are extremely rare and expensive. I will need most of the Fafnir’s cargo bay and—I believe several hundred thousand bonds will suffice —”

“I don’t think this is poisoned,” I said, then touched my finger tip to the page. Parts of it where I touched immediately turned dark, becoming parts of letters. “Thought so,” I muttered as my hunch played out. I slid my fingers across the page, left to right, from top to bottom. Blocky handwriting appeared in their wake. I glanced up. “The ink was keyed to my DNA, so only I could make it visible.”

“Wow, that’s pretty clever!” Gabby said. The crew crowded in and read over my shoulder. Van, word is that you’re looking for a companion sword to that one you carry. Dohlennz had one of them. But he wasn’t going to use it himself—not his style. He built it into the ultimate bodyguard, which he left watching over his hideout. His REAL hideout, where he did all his REAL work. I found it, but I can’t get near the place. So I’m offering it to you, but I want something in return. There’s a guy, Rosco Bayne, in The Hole. Release him and I’ll give you the location of Dohlennz’s place, and then good luck with that because you’ll need it. — Alannis

P. S. Tell Funboy I’d be down for another visit. He can name the time and place. Torina smirked at Funboy. “Looks like you made an impression on her.”

“Several impressions, actually. One was in her anterior —”

“Yeah, that’s fine. I don’t need the sordid details.”

I stared at the page for a moment, then turned to Perry. He started speaking before I could. “Rosco Bayne is currently just over a year into a five-year sentence for running some highly addictive chems to the Gajur homeworld in the aftermath of the Calamity infection there. Desperate people looking for respite from desperate times, that sort of thing. He ended up firing on a Peacemaker while trying to avoid arrest,” he said. “So a scumbag. And Miss Sleazy Pants there wants you to let him go with a promise that she’ll give you Dohlennz’s secret lab,” Icky said. “Yeah, that’s totally not a scam to spring one of her scuzzball friends from the lockup.”

I kept my gaze on Perry. “Can I even have someone released from The Hole?”

“Given the particular charges he pled to, yeah, a single Master has the authority to commute his sentence. If the charges were Class Two or higher

—hijacking or piracy, kidnapping, murder, that sort of thing—it would take the consensus of three Masters.”

“Van, you’re not seriously considering this, are you?

This woman is about as trustworthy as Dohlennz himself,” Rab said. The others nodded agreement—or almost all of them did. Funboy spoke up instead. “While I have no doubt that Alannis is more than capable of acting duplicitously and in bad faith, I don’t believe this is one of those occasions, actually.”

Everyone turned to glower at him. Icky sniffed. “Just because you bumped her grind, sourpuss, doesn’t mean she’s suddenly all nice and stuff —”

“Did I not just say I don’t doubt her capacity for malfeasance?

But I don’t believe that to be true in this case. Even while… bumping her grind, as you so inelegantly put it, she made reference to Van. For reasons known only to her, she is rather… preoccupied with him, it seems.”

I cocked my head and couldn’t resist a bit of a smile. “Really?

She was talking about me while you guys were —?”

“Um, excuse me, Master Tudor, but you’ve got a little smug satisfaction on your face there. You might want to wipe it off—or would you rather I do it?” Torina asked, her eyes flashing. I raised my hands. “Sorry, had a bit of an ego leak.” I turned back to Funboy. “What are you saying?

That I can trust her because she’s infatuated with me?”

Funboy shook his head. “I did not say infatuated, I said preoccupied. I am not certain there is a romantic or sexual component to it at all. Whatever it is, however, I find it highly doubtful that she would squander it merely to cause the release of a relatively minor criminal. Rather, I believe that she is making this offer in good faith.”

Gabby nodded. “She might not even care about this Bayne guy. This might actually be her way of solidifying Van’s trust in her—he releases this guy, and she makes good on her offer?”

Icky was still suspicious. “Why?

What’s the point?”

“She may have some specific reason she’s going to want him to trust her in the future. Or she may just be banking some goodwill with him.”

“She does have access to a Guild Master,” Perry said. “That’s no small thing. So, yeah, I think Discount Eeyore and his gal are right. If Alannis double-crosses Van on this, that’s it, he’ll never trust her again. I don’t think she’s going to blow away her relationship with him over this Bayne character.”

I looked at the letter again, then nodded. “I agree. Perry, draft up whatever’s needed to get Rosco Bayne released. But we’re going to The Hole. I want to be there, see the guy for myself, when he’s finally sprung.”

20

ROSCO BAYNE WAS AN UNREMARKABLE MAN—HUMAN, about forty, with the rough, seedy look that seems to typify the shady spacer type. He was wiry, though not muscular, and his only truly distinguishing feature was a nasty burn scar that marred the side of his head and made his ear look like droopy, melted wax. He was checked out through The Hole’ s Release Office, but before he could step through the final gate and head for the shuttle bay, I stopped him. I’d brought Icky, Funboy, and Perry with me, all of us suitably b-suited up and armed, just in case this really was some incredibly convoluted assassination attempt. I was a little surprised at how unsurprised Bayne was to see me. “Yeah, she told me you’d probably be here,” he said, his voice raspy, like he’d inhaled a little of whatever had burned his face. “Who’s she?” I asked. “Said her name was Alannis. She visited me out of the black about two weeks back. Said she was gonna get me sprung.”

“And you didn’t think that was strange?

Some woman you don’t know showing up and saying you were going to be released?”

“Hell yeah, I thought it was strange. But strange shit happens, you know?

Some of us get messages in here from people who say all kinds of stuff. Some of it’s pretty weird. Like, I had a guy, said he was from Tau Ceti, who wanted to—” He hesitated, actually looking a little embarrassed,

which seemed pretty out of place on him. “Let’s just say I don’t travel anti-spinward, if you know what I mean.”

“Travel anti-spinward?

Really?” Perry said. “Hey, to each their own, live and let live and all that. Me, though—I’m a spinward kind of guy.”

I frowned at him. “Good to know. Anyway, is that all this Alannis said to you?”

“No. That’s the funny part. She made me memorize a set of stellar coordinates. They really are somewhere to anti-spinward, though that’s all I know. She said I was supposed to give them to—um, you. She said you’d be here when I was sprung. ’Course, I thought it was all bullshit, but —”

“Sure, fine. The coordinates, what are they?”

He narrowed his eyes, looked into the distance, then rattled them off. He did so with enough certainty that it seemed clear he was reciting them just as he’d been given them. I glanced down at Perry. “Got them and shared them with Netty-P. She says they point to a red dwarf flare star system about fifteen light-years spinward of Procyon. It’s in unclaimed space, about equidistant from the established boundaries of both known space and Unity.”

“So are we good?

Can I go now?” Bayne asked. I nodded. “Just stay out of trouble. You only get a chance like this once. You end up back in here, and I’ll make sure they throw away the key. And you fire on a Peacemaker again, and your cell might just be an open airlock

—if you live long enough to get here in the first place, that is.”

Bayne nodded back. “Yeah, yeah, message received. I could stand to spend some time running ore concentrate or something anyway. If I’m gonna be stuck in a dank compartment bored outta my mind, I might as well be making some money while I do it, huh?”

“SO IT WAS her testing you after all,” Torina said as we prepared to get underway. I shrugged as Netty-P ran the preflight checklist. “So it would seem. She wanted to see how much I really trusted her, and then try to make me trust her even more.”

“Please tell me you’re not falling for it.”

I smiled. “Falling for it?

No. But am I willing to listen the next time Alannis talks?

Yeah. She’s a self-serving narcissist and really doesn’t care about anyone but herself, sure. But I don’t think she’s actually… evil, or anything like that. She’s… chaotic neutral.”

“Chaotic neutral?

What the hell does that mean?”

I laughed. “It’s from a thing called a role-playing game, sort of live-action improv where people pretend to be warriors and rogues and wizards and things. They can play their characters different ways, called alignments

—be dedicated to truth and honor and all that, and you’re lawful good. Be a total bastard that just wants to inflict pain and suffering, and you’re chaotic evil. If Alannis was a character, she’d be chaotic neutral. Not good, not bad, just a shitposter who hovers somewhere between the two.”

“So… untrustworthy.”

“Yup—except when she’s not.”

“This game you describe, role playing—it sounds fascinating. I have been looking for new ways to entertain my followers on Instagram and other forms of social media back on Earth. Perhaps this is an opportunity,”

Funboy said. I shrugged at him as the Fafnir backed away from The Hole. “Not a bad idea, actually. There are plenty of people who play role-playing games like that, and they can get lots of followers. Speaking of which, I keep meaning to ask and keep forgetting—how many followers do you have now, anyway?”

“On Instagram, when I last checked, I had eleven million six hundred and forty-one thousand two hundred and three followers.”

I blinked at him a few times. “You… have eleven million followers?”

“And six hundred and forty-one thousand —”

“Yeah, fine, sure. So you have almost twelve million followers?”

“I realize that the number is disappointingly low, which is why I am looking for new content —”

“Funboy, what makes you think that almost twelve million followers is low?”

“That only represents zero-point-one-five percent of the population of Earth. At this rate, I can never practically expect to engage with the entirety of Earthly humanity, which is the point of my doing this.”

I glanced at Perry, who shrugged. “He’s got a point.”

“Really, bird?

You’re serious?”

“Yeah. In the absolute, most technical sense, he’s right. You want to know the average shoe size of everyone on Earth?

Measure the feet of everyone on Earth. Of course, we invented statistics so we didn’t have to, so —”

“Funboy, twelve million followers is amazing,” I said. “It’s a spectacular success. The vast, vast majority of people on social media will never have more than a teeny-tiny fraction of that.”

Funboy blinked back at me. “Ah. Well, that mollifies me somewhat. However, the point about my providing fresh material remains. I shall investigate this concept of role playing more fully.”

We’d turned onto our departure trajectory from The Hole and got underway. We were proceeding first to Crossroads, to drop off Paxomar so he could return to the Wu’tzur homeworld and resume his day job, his sabbatical winding down. As the drive lit, I thought about Funboy crouched behind a game-master’s screen, rolling polyhedral dice, then turning to the other players and proclaiming, “Oh dear —”

Hell, I’d sit down and watch that myself. THE STAR SYSTEM Alannis had directed us to wasn’t only remote, it was wildly inhospitable. Most red dwarfs we encountered were sedate little balls of ruddy plasma, often barely visible from more than a few hundred million klicks away. This one, though, was a flare star, larger and far more active. It spasmed through complicated cycles of brightening and flinging off gales of stellar wind, bursts of radiation, and clouds of charged particles that coalesced into clouds of dust and gas. These explosions of activity mostly happened on cycles of days, but they were superimposed on other variations that happened over weeks and months at the long end, and hours at the short one. The result was a star that seemed almost alive, a barely restrained beast huffing constantly and periodically erupting in paroxysms of raw fury. Netty-P was able to tease some sense of order from it, but a healthy dose of chaotic unpredictability remained. “So the question is, how safe is it for us to even approach?” I asked her. “The answer to that depends on how close you want to get to it. But even then, it varies wildly.”

“The bottom line, please.”

“The bottom line is that we do not want to be caught in one of the more energetic eruptions, which constitute about fourteen percent of the star’s life cycle. And I mean about fourteen percent, because I can only base that on available data, which is scant. That could easily vary five percent either way.”

“I guess that explains why Alannis said she couldn’t get near the place,”

Rab said. “So the worst case scenario is there’s a one-in-five chance of us getting walloped by one of those energetic eruptions, as you call it. What happens if we are?” I asked Netty-P. “If we’re within about two hundred million kilometers, the combined effects of radiation and erupted, charged particulate material forming the stellar wind would likely damage the Fafnir severely and injure, incapacitate, or even kill everyone aboard.”

“Yikes.”

She blinked an imager. “Yikes indeed. The threat does diminish rapidly at greater distances, however.”

Rab spoke up. “Unless I’m missing something here, doesn’t this mean we’ve come up empty?

That your friend Alannis really did just end up duping us?

Because we’ve already established there’s nothing of interest in the outer system, and if the inner system is that hostile —”

“Ah, but there is a wrinkle that you are missing, Rab. Mainly because I’ve only just been able to resolve it amid the star’s activity,” Netty-P cut in. “There is a strong magnetic anomaly located about two hundred and seventy million klicks from the star. It is persistent and has exhibited what can only be orbital motion in the time we’ve been here.”

“A planet?” Torina asked. “I’d say so. I haven’t yet been able to image it directly, but I believe there’s a planet orbiting the star. It has a relatively strong magnetic field, about eight times stronger than that of Earth. A field that strong would probably deflect most of the stellar wind. Radiation would still be an issue on the surface —”

“But not beneath it,” I said, nodding. “In other words, Dohlennz could have excavated and buried his laboratory, or whatever the hell it is, in the

bedrock.”

“Exactly,” Netty-P replied. “So the evil mad scientist builds his lair in the most spectacularly dangerous place imaginable,” Perry said. “Why does that somehow seem familiar?

Hmm —”

“Maybe because it’s a cartoonishly supervillainous trope?” I said, frowning at the ominous image on the display, veils of dust and gas lit angry crimson by the beast lurking within them. I puffed out a sigh. “I honestly don’t know if it's worth the risk. What do you guys think?”

“If there’s a mate for your sword in there, Van, we should go get it,”

Icky said. Torina nodded. “There might also be a trove of useful information. Or we could all die.”

The others nodded. Perry, of course, couldn’t leave it at that, putting on a soft German-ish accent. “No, Mr. Bond, we expect you to try.”

NETTY-P FINALLY CONFIRMED that there was, indeed, a planet orbiting amid the star’s maelstrom. She estimated it was a rocky body, about forty percent more massive than Earth. It probably had little or no atmosphere, the gasses having been blown away by the stellar hurricane. She also calculated that it was likely tidally locked to the star, meaning it always pointed the same face to the star’s fury. “So the daylight side of the planet is probably a barren hellscape, though not in the sense of actually being hot. In fact, the star’s thermal output is pretty low, so it’s probably rather cold. But it would be repeatedly bathed in intense radiation. And the polar regions are probably affected by storms of charged particles funneled down along the planet’s magnetic field,” she said. Torina pointed at the dark side of the planet model Netty-P had assembled. “So the night side is probably pretty sedate by comparison, is what I’m getting from this.”

“Probably. Again, at the high latitudes, there are likely some weird effects from those surges of charged particles, but near the equator—yes, things are probably a lot quieter.”

“Sounds like that’s where we want to go, then. The trick is going to be getting there.”

I nodded. “The only viable way of making the flight, I think, is by using the combi-drive. We can fly right through the worst of it without being affected, and kill the drive once we’re in the planet’s shadow. My only concern is fuel, especially since we’ll have to fly out the same way.” I looked at Netty-P as I spoke. “A valid concern. Add on the twist to get here and a twist back to Procyon, and we’ll be digging deep into our fuel reserve. We won’t have much margin for error,” she replied. Funboy spoke up. “Frankly, it is not the flight that concerns me as much as what we are likely to find in Dohlennz’s abandoned facility. Or am I the only one who recalls Alannis making reference to the ultimate bodyguard, which apparently wields the Moonsword’s companion blade?”

“Couldn’t have been that ultimate. He didn’t have it bodyguarding him when we finally confronted him, did he?” Icky said. Funboy turned to her. “That is an unwarranted assumption. He may not have had the opportunity to retrieve it from here beforehand. Or he may have decided that the best use for this supposed bodyguard—an ambiguous term, I might add—was to leave it here to protect his base of operations.”

Icky sighed. “Well, I wasn’t super worried— wasn’t, until now. Thanks, gloomy. You really know how to bring the room down.”

“The bodyguard, or whatever it is, worries me, too. But what else we might find down there worries me just as much,” Rab said. “This is Dohlennz we’re talking about here.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Suffice to say we’re going to be extremely careful. And if any one of you, and I mean any one, wants to pull the plug and turn back once we’re inside—or even doesn’t want to participate in the first place—feel absolutely free to speak up.”

Silence reigned, so I gave everyone a single nod. “Okay. One last thing. If anyone, at any point, wants to scrub the entire mission, you can speak up about that, too, when the time comes. There will be no argument. We will all, without question, immediately extract. Is that clear?”

Everyone agreed, and more importantly, they did so instantly. We were in accord. “Okay. Let’s suit up, depressurize the ship, and rig for battle.” I turned to Netty-P. “As soon as that’s done, take us in please.”

“Standing by, boss. The Fafnir is ready to rock.”

THE FLIGHT IN WAS UNEVENTFUL, if you can call creating a small pocket universe around yourself to bypass the normal laws of physics uneventful. We returned to normal space poised over the dark side of the planet. It meant that the view in one direction was nearly featureless blackness, lit only by sporadic flickers of sickly orange from ongoing volcanic eruptions. Everywhere else we looked was mottled shades of dull red gloom, the pall of dust and gas lit by the fitful glow of the unseen star. It was an unsettling sight, one of the most sinister locations I’d encountered anywhere during my travels. And that was saying something. “Damn, this could be in the Mordor travel brochure,” Perry said, finally breaking the silence. I snorted in agreement. “Damn right, bird. From now on, whenever I hear the word hellish, this is going to be my go-to memory. This is a core memory, now.”

“There’s a lot of erupting going on down there. I can count—what, probably a dozen twisty streams of lava without moving my eyes much. And they must be pretty big for us to see them so clearly from this far away,” Rab said, his tone as uneasy as I felt. “The planet is quite volcanically active, probably owing to a combination of its own internal heat and the effects of tidal stretching,”

Netty-P said. “Basically, it’s being constantly squeezed and stretched as it orbits, and that’s adding heat energy to its interior.”

“Maybe Dohlennz’s place has been buried in lava,” Icky suggested, but even as she spoke, Netty-P projected an icon onto the canopy, and another on the schematic map of the planet she was assembling on the display. “That is the only artificial structure I’m detecting,” she said. “It sits on an upthrust highland region with little active volcanism. The volcanic activity you are seeing would likely be submarine—if the planet had any

remaining oceans, that is. So that highland would probably have been a large island or small continent.”

“I wonder if anyone ever lived here,” Torina said. There was silence as we all contemplated that idea. If there ever had been a civilization here, there certainly wasn’t now. And as for what had happened to them —

Yeah, thinking about it just made this gloomy, miserable place even more gloomy and miserable. “So it looks like we have our destination. What are the surface conditions down there, Netty-P?” I asked. “Minimal atmosphere, mostly carbon dioxide and other trace gases, with about a third of the atmospheric pressure you’d find on Mars. The temperature is negative one hundred and sixty-five Celsius and probably never budges much from that. Ambient radiation levels are high but well within allowable tolerance—your b-suits will provide more than adequate protection.”

She paused, then went on. “I’m also detecting EM emissions suggesting that power is being generated and utilized down there, but nothing to suggest the source. Given the nature of the place, it might be using geothermal power.”

“It must have cost a fortune to build down there. I mean, hauling stuff here, excavating, getting everything set up and running—how the hell did Dohlennz even afford it?” Gabby asked. “He didn’t,” I said. “Helem Gauss did. Dohlennz was supposed to be his ticket to immortality, remember.”

“And look how that worked out for him. Not a very good investment, as it turned out,” Icky said. “Maybe not. But Dohlennz was definitely trying—and some of his experiments might still be down there.”

“Damn it, Van, you don’t care if I ever sleep again, do you?”

21

WE DESCENDED to the location we assumed was the entrance to Dohlennz’s base gradually, in a broad series of sweeping arcs, actively scanning as we went. If there were defenses, I wanted to trigger them so we could neutralize them. But there was nothing, not even active scanners radiating back at us. It seemed that Dohlennz had decided to let the remote and dangerous location of his lair be its primary defense. And given the nature of the place, that really wasn’t a bad idea. Without the combi-drive, a safe approach to get here would have been extremely difficult at best, and impossible altogether if the star was in full fury. Which raised an interesting question as I stared down at the barren, forbidding landscape now looming beneath us. The screen intensified and brightened the view, which otherwise would have been lit by nothing but the faint crimson glow of the star reflected off the dust clouds above. “Since he presumably didn’t have a combi-drive of his own, how the hell did Dohlennz come and go from this place?” I asked no one in particular. Netty-P offered an answer. “Given enough data, it is probably possible to predict the waxing and waning of the star’s activity with reasonable accuracy, and plan travel accordingly. If you’d been prepared to wait at least several weeks, we probably could have done the same thing.”

“Yeah, I love you guys and all, but after that trip out to Reverie where we got the combi-drive, I think I’m over us spending weeks jammed together in the Fafnir,” Icky said. I heard soft grunts of assent. One of them came from me. We were currently just a thousand meters over our destination. We could see it now, a ramp excavated into a rocky hill, terminating at a set of heavy blast doors. A combined scanner and comms array sat atop the hill, maybe twenty meters or so above the ramp. Netty-P confirmed that the scanners, although sophisticated, were passive only. That didn’t rule out other active scanners, perhaps co-located with ground-based weapons. But we’d detected nothing of the sort and had pretty much concluded there were none. Somehow, that fact seemed to make the sight of the ramp and the blast doors even more unsettling. Had Dohlennz been so sure of the forbidding nature of this place that he just hadn’t bothered with other defenses?

Or were the real defenses actually inside?

I pushed the thought away. “Okay. Let’s land and see what happens.”

We settled the Fafnir down on a flat sprawl of barren, pale gray rock about two hundred meters from the ramp. It had been swept clean of boulders and other debris, and was even free of dust, meaning it had probably been used as an impromptu landing pad in the past. The gravity polarizers shut down. We sank into our seats, all a little heavier thanks to the higher surface gravity. I had Netty-P remain ready to immediately lift again, in case unseen weapons opened up—or those blast doors parted and something horrifying came pouring out. But nothing happened. I unstrapped and stood. “Okay. On to the next step. Let’s get bombed up and disembark. Bring as much ammo for your weapons as you can. Rab, how are we set up for explosives?”

“We’ve got ten breaching charges, including two of the big ones that we can dial up to one hundred tonne explosive equivalent, if we want,” he replied, unfastening his own seat harness. “Bring them. In fact, let’s bring Waldo along to tote and carry. Everyone goes except Netty-P. She’s going to stay here with foot ready on the gas.”

Gabby peered at me through her faceplate. “Does that include me, Van?”

“Gabby, you more than proved yourself during that liner hijacking. But if you don’t want to, like I said before, just say the word —”

“No, no, I want to!

Thank you!”

I couldn’t resist a reflexive glance at Funboy. He just stared back at me, then switched to a private channel. “This is Gabby’s decision, Van, not mine.”

I nodded back at him. I didn’t bother saying why I wanted Gabby along. Frankly, the more guns we had ready to fire, the better. I DISEMBARKED FIRST, with Rab at my side. We went left and right and took up firing positions behind the Fafnir’s landing gear. Rab had his BAG

ready, the big gun a comforting presence. Perry disembarked, too, but only to take up another covered position so he could employ his own scanners. The wispy atmosphere wasn’t enough for him to fly aerodynamically, while the gravity was too strong to let him fly on thrusters. Torina and Icky came next. Once they were in firing positions, Rab and I rushed forward and took up new positions of cover behind rocky outcrops about fifty meters away. That gave room for Gabby and Funboy to exit and take position, and then Torina and Icky to move up and join us. We progressed that way, alternately moving or giving cover to those who were, until we were all in position around the top of the ramp. It wasn’t flawless, but for people who weren’t trained and dedicated infantry soldiers, it was pretty damned good. And, as it turned out, unnecessary. There were still no external defenses. Better safe than sorry, though. As Gabby and Funboy moved up, I took a moment to take in my surroundings. Dark stone swept away in all directions, pink and gray and surly. The ground dropped steadily to the planet’s east, falling into a rugged plain of sawtooth ridges and deep ravines cast in permanent shadow. Only the fitful, far-off glow of erupting lava broke the monotonous gloom. The sky vaulting above was mostly black and empty of stars, shot through here and there with the wan crimson glimmer of starlight reflected off the dust and gas clouds. It, and the glow of molten rock, was the only illumination that ever relieved the perpetual night of this cold, dead world. I was hit by another of those moments, but this one had nothing to do with awe or wonder. This was an icy chill that went bone-deep, a wash of existential dread. This nameless, lifeless planet was a scene from an H. P. Lovecraft story, the sort of place the protagonist would be flung to through some ancient portal or ritual. A barren, blasted place among whose rocky wastes he would stumble blindly, groping, crawling, while monstrous terrors gathered around him in the night-shrouded canyons —

“Van?”

I jumped. Torina had moved up beside me. “Are you okay?” she asked. I could barely make out her face behind her visor, but I could tell it was taut with worry. “Sorry. I guess I got distracted by”—I took a breath that shuddered a little—“ah, that.” I swept an arm out toward the view eastward. “I know. It’s not the homiest place we’ve ever visited, is it?”

“No, it is not.”

I yanked my focus back from that dreadful distance and put it on the ramp. We didn’t have to go poking around in that burnt and frozen corpse of a landscape for imagined horrors. There were probably very real ones waiting for us behind those blast doors. “PERRY, HOW ARE YOU DOING?” I asked. He’d been cabled into the panel controlling the blast doors for nearly five minutes now. I hated exposing him to whatever hostile data might try to surge itself at him across the cable, but if he couldn’t crack them, we’d have to blow them. Rab judged that our two biggest breaching charges could do it, but he couldn’t predict what the shock waves from the blast would do to the excavations beyond. There wasn’t much point blowing open the doors, only to collapse everything behind them. “Sorry, Van, but there are layers upon layers of security here, and they’re layered over more layers—” His amber eyes shone up at me through the gloom. “Oh, and did I mention there seems to be a self-destruct function built into it all?

If I’m not careful and I trip it, it’s going to trigger—

something. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not anxious to find out what that something is.”

“Take all the time you need, bird.”

I glanced back up the ramp. The others waited there, keeping a cautious watch out around us. Rab crouched near Waldo, who was laden with spare

ammo, including the explosive charges, as well as extra air for our suits. Even if the stuff inside was breathable, I didn’t want anyone exposed to it. Our limited experience with Dohlennz’s work had been nothing but the worst sorts of biohazards, and I certainly wouldn’t put fiddling with microbes past him. “You know what I like about this place?” Icky said, breaking the ponderous silence. “What’s that?” Gabby asked her. “Absolutely nothing. Oh, no, wait—I lied. I don’t live here. So it’s got that going for it.”

“Yeah, Dohlennz could have picked some serene, pastoral world of flowery meadows and bubbling brooks for his hideout. But oh no, I’m the scary supervillain, my lair has to be where nightmares come from,” Rab replied. “I find stereotypes exhausting.”

Their banter was light, but I could hear the stress in their voices, like springs stretched a little too far. I got it. Down here, at the bottom of the ramp, I couldn’t see the awful hellscape sprawling off in all directions, but I knew it was there. I could feel it —

“Okay, Van, I got it,” Perry said. “I recommend you get back, though, since I have no idea what might come out of those doors when they open.”

I glanced down at Perry. If I pulled back, it would leave him down here alone. “Just open the damned doors, bird.”

His eyes gleamed at me for a moment. “Okay. Here goes nothin’.”

The blast doors cracked apart, then swung silently back. I had The Drop holstered and carried a much punchier slug rifle. As the doors opened, I raised it, flicked the safety to burst mode, and watched the view beyond the doors, image intensified by my visor, as it was revealed —

Which was another set of blast doors about ten meters away. I let out the breath I’d been holding, flicked the safety back on, and lowered the rifle. “Shit.”

“It’s an airlock, Van. Of course there are inner doors. And I’ve got control of them, too.”

“Oh. Okay, then.” I started to turn away, to look back up the ramp and call Rab forward, with the others to follow. We wouldn’t enter in one gaggle. Rab and I would go first and gain what in my Army days I’d

learned was called a lodgment, a foothold, in this case inside a building. But something caught me, and I turned back to Perry. “Yeah,” he said. “I have to stay here.”

“The self-destruct?”

“Uh-huh. I thought I had it blocked out. Turns out I was wrong. It triggered when the doors opened. I must have missed something. I can keep the trigger signal from reaching whatever it is that goes ka-blooey, but only while I stay cabled in here.”

My thoughts instantly slammed back in time, to Rolis. He’d been forced to stay cabled into the mechanism of the junkyard dog, the automated ship we’d encountered near a neutron star. He’d saved our lives, at the cost of his own. I shook my head. “No. Absolutely not. Perry, I’m not leaving you here —”

“Yeah, Van, for now, you are. Look, you guys go inside, clean house, do what you have to do, and find yourself a new sword. I’m fine here. Netty-P

and I will work on the problem and try to come up with a workaround.”

“Perry—”

“Van, go. The sooner you do, the sooner we can all get the hell away from this godforsaken place.”

I closed my mouth and just stared down at him for a moment. A hot, dark flare of pure hatred gripped me. Dohlennz was dead, but he was still working his vile, insidious evil from beyond the grave. I hated him. Hated him. Hated him more than any Gauss, more than the Sorcerers, more than anyone or anything I'd ever confronted. Fine. I could use hate. Put it to work. “Rab, on me. We’ll go in first. Once we’re inside, Torina, you can bring the others in.”

I turned back toward the doors, again raised my rifle, and entered the airlock. When the inner doors opened, I really hoped there was something hostile on the other side, so I could kill it. BUT THERE WASN’T. There was just a corridor stretching into the distance, ending at another set of doors about twenty meters away. Three more doors

opened along each side of the corridor, evenly spaced. Rab and I moved up to the first pair, and I pointed at the one to the right. He nodded. “Torina?” Rab asked. Her reply was muffled and distorted by the intervening blast doors, but we’d anticipated that. She, Rab, and Funboy each carted along a comm signal-booster strapped to their harness. “Here. I don’t hear screaming and shooting, so I gather you’re okay,”

she said. “So far. Look, we’ve got a couple of rooms right inside the entrance here. Rab and I are going to clear them, so we can use them for cover going forward. Just hold out there for now—although, if you suddenly do hear screaming and shooting —”

“Turn around, board the Fafnir, and get the hell out of here, got it.”

Despite my worry for Perry and the hatred for Dohlennz still seething inside me like a nest of snakes, I had to smile. “At least try to look a little sad at my funeral, okay?”

“I promise I’ll try. Hope the food’s good.”

“I’ll prepay for a caterer. Crab cakes, stuff like that,” I said. Rab snickered. “Thoughtful. Door, boss.”

“Ready.”

We each moved to separate sides of the door. It was a pretty conventional type, sheet alloy with a manual latch and no visible hinges. I reached for the latch to push it open and burst in. We’d already agreed that I’d go right, Rab would go left, and we’d just shoot up anything that presented itself. That had been a hard decision, but I was convinced it was the right one. We had little reason to believe that Dohlennz had any prisoners or hostages stashed away here. At least, none that would still be alive —

Or would want to be alive. I gripped the handle and —

Pulled my hand away again. Rab looked a question at me through his visor. “That hand scanner of yours, the one that you use when you’re setting charges—to scan the rock and things —”

“What about it?” he asked. “Can it scan behind a door like this?’

“It’s only meant to measure structural data—stress patterns in the rock, amounts of strain, locations of fractures —’

“Yeah. Do it, please.”

His puzzled face persisted, but he pulled the device off his belt, aimed it at the door, and triggered it. He watched the display. “If this is right, there’s no space behind this door. It’s just set into solid rock.”

I gave a grim nod. “Yeah. To quote a famous fish-general, it’s a trap.”

“A… a famous fish-general?”

“I’ll tell you later. Suffice to say that we do not want to open this door, and not only because it goes nowhere.”

“How did you know?” Rab asked, lowering the scanner. “I didn’t. And yet, I did. I just have to imagine the most vile, twisted, and evil outcome to every situation and then tell myself it’s probably what Dohlennz would do.”

“So someone breaks into his lair, this is the first door they come to —”

I nodded. “Yeah. It’s a trap.”

We checked the door opposite. It was just as fake. The next two along weren’t, though—which also didn’t surprise me. No one who entered this place would want to leave unopened doors behind them, so of course they’d have opened one of the first two. We cleared each of those next two rooms. They turned out to be so mundane it was almost funny. They were storerooms full of food and similar provisions. “Even supervillains gotta eat,” I said as Rab and I took up firing positions in the two open doors. I called the others in, cautioning them to not even touch those first two doors. “How come?” Icky asked. Rab glanced back at her. “Ask the fish-general.”

Icky stopped, gripping her hammer and her slug carbine. “What?”

STEP BY PAINSTAKING STEP, we made our way deeper into Dohlennz’s subterranean lair. Rab and I formed one pair, and Torina and Icky a second,

each pair leapfrogging past the other as we proceeded. Gabby, Funboy, and Waldo brought up the rear. In a free manipulator, Waldo wielded a slug pistol, giving us an added bit of firepower. He was being controlled by Netty-P, though, since his onboard judgment was more about fixing spaceship problems than reliably selecting targets during a firefight. By the time we’d gone about a hundred meters, we’d cleared nearly a dozen compartments. None of them had contained much of interest—either mostly empty storage or machinery spaces related to maintaining the lair’s internal environment or operating the comm and scanner array on the surface. By the time we reached another set of blast doors, I was definitely feeling the effects of the planet’s higher gravity. I felt like I was lugging full battle rattle, including body armor and a packed rucksack, like back in my Army days, despite carting along only spare ammo, the holstered Drop, the sheathed Moonsword, and an Innsu knife. We took a break while Rab examined the doors. “I’m not excited about fiddling with the controls,” he said, gesturing at the panel set into the annealed rock wall beside it. “We could just blow it, I suppose.”

I held up a hand and swallowed some water I sucked out of the tube stuck into the corner of my mouth. “Perry, you there?”

His reply was faint and fuzzy but still distinct. “Nope. I’m drinking wine, and eating cheese, and catching some rays, you know.”

“How’s our little problem coming along?”

“Still working on it.”

I wanted to press him for details but didn’t. If anyone could figure out how to disengage him from the blast-door controls without triggering the self-destruct, it would be him and Netty-P. I shoved my focus through the throng of worry instead. “Do you have any control over these interior doors?”

“Gimme a sec. I’ve been otherwise engaged.”

I waited. “Okay, I see one set of internal blast doors. Those the ones?”

“Yeah.”

“Van, I don’t know what’s beyond them. That information just isn’t available to me.”

“That’s okay.”

“Right. Say when.”

I glanced at the others in turn. Each nodded. Netty-P even nodded Waldo’s imager. I turned again to the doors, then ushered Rab back, giving us a few meters of clearance. We all raised our weapons. “Okay, Perry—now.”

“Opening now.”

The doors slid open. And literal hell came pouring out. 22

I’D EXPERIENCED horror since becoming a Peacemaker. I’d seen death and destruction, both up-close-and-personal and from a distance, on scales small and large; I’d watched people die, both strangers and friends; I’d seen the things that had happened to Carter Yost and Helem Gauss, both of whom surrendered their humanity to inhuman purpose; most of all, I’d literally lived the agonizing, terrifying death of a man through the evil, first-person voyeurism of the infernal Cusp machine. The horror of the next few moments after those doors opened vaulted past a lot of that and certainly rivaled the worst. It was, a tiny, incongruous part of me thought as I swiftly changed magazines, like the movie Aliens. There were monstrosities, abominable things that lumbered and slithered and darted, and there was a ceaseless fusillade of gunfire hammering away, all of it strobe-lit by the dazzling light show of muzzle flashes. Even mass drivers erupted with searing discharge when they fired pulses of superheated air. It turned what had been tense silence instantly into a cacophony of splintered nightmare images. A metallic skeleton, like a Terminator, except sheathed in very human muscle and with scything blades for arms, staggered under hammer blows from Rab’s BAG. Something that looked like a writhing sack of flesh flailing about with lashing tendrils groped toward Torina, but Icky shot it to gory fragments, howling with rage as she did. Every creature was an offense to my senses—they weren’t just the enemy. They were wrong. I sighted on a jointed, spider-like monstrosity sprouting limbs—human, Eniped, Yonnox—and squeezed out burst after burst, tearing it apart as silky fluids looped away in hot arcs. Something like a snake made of bone, flesh, and ceramic slithered so fast it was just blur, darting past Rab and me, flashing between Torina and Icky and slamming Funboy against the rock wall, then stabbing at him with spikes of gleaming alloy. Icky bellowed and slammed her hammer down on it, striking again and again. It released Funboy and whipped around to strike at her, but Gabby jammed the muzzle of her carbine into it and held down the trigger, emptying her magazine. With a blank expression. When the snake-thing was dead, Gabby stepped over it and picked her next opponent without making a sound. More things came bubbling out through the doors, clambering over the gore and wreckage of their fellows. They skittered and squirmed, flopped, and capered madly, almost merrily. And we gunned them relentlessly down. Stray rounds and ricochets smacked into me and the others. We had to count on our b-suits to protect us because it was either fire as fast as we could change magazines in the cramped corridor or be overwhelmed. I glanced back and saw Funboy was still up, methodically hosing down whatever appeared in the doors with fire. I allowed myself a flicker of relief, then turned back and resumed the carnage. And then it just—stopped. Icky, roaring incoherent rage, loosed another half-magazine down the now empty corridor before Gabby pulled at her arm. “Icky!

Icky, stop!”

She swung a gaze like lasers on Gabby and actually started to raise her hammer. Funboy tensed toward her, but Icky pulled away and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah. Okay,” she said, breathing like a forge bellows. “Yeah. Okay.”

Rab, his BAG still aimed toward the doors, glanced at me with wide, wild eyes. “Van?

What now?”

I looked around. Something hummed persistently in my ear. It took me a moment to realize it was Perry. “Dammit, Van, what the hell is going on?

Talk to me!

What the hell —?”

“Stand by, Perry,” I croaked, took a deep breath, and tried to get my mind to focus past the terrifying, nightmarish blur of the past —

Just over one minute, according to my suit’s chronometer. One minute that had lasted hours. I looked at Rab. “Okay. Maintain your position and shoot anything that even squirms a little down that corridor.”

He nodded. I turned and went back to each of the others in turn. I had to step in, around, and over slimy chunks of flesh, shattered bone and ceramic, and pools of viscous fluid. The broken remains of the snake-thing that had attacked Funboy still lay along the center of the corridor, steaming guts strewn about in what had become an abattoir, not a hallway. Everyone was intact, though injured. B-suits were scraped and gouged by claws and fangs and spines, a few penetrating deeply enough to activate the release of sealing foam. Everyone had also taken a few bullet hits, unavoidable in the close-quarters fight, though they all seemed to be ricochets—at this point-blank range, a direct hit from a mass-driver slug would have easily punched through a b-suit. Funboy had taken the worst of it. The snake-monstrosity had slammed him against the wall hard enough to leave him winded and bruised. Without his b-suit, he probably would have been outright killed. The gnashing and tearing of the thing’s—mandibles, or spines or teeth or whatever the hell they were, had gouged deep furrows in his suit, parts of them filled with a mix of sealing foam and blood. When I looked into his visor, though, he merely stared solemnly back at me. “Funboy?

Are you okay?”

“Considering the circumstances, yes—surprisingly. However, allow me to add—ow.”

I smiled. His voice was a little tight, but he was still up and mobile and immediately began tending to the others. Gabby floated around him. “Are you sure you’re okay?

Are you sure?”

“I am in adequate condition to continue the mission.”

“But are you okay?”

I moved back to Torina. She had a hard, bright look in her eyes, one that probably mirrored my own. “That was—not fun.”

I shook my head. “No, it wasn’t.”

She took my hand. I squeezed hers, then turned to the rest of the crew. “I think now is a good time to remind everyone what I said, that if anyone wants to go back, or thinks we should all go back, speak —”

“Van, we’re wasting time here. Let’s finish this,” Icky cut in. I glanced at the others and saw nothing but nods. Rab summed it up. “Now that we know about this place, Van, we can’t just leave it. It’s wrong. An infection. It needs to be eliminated.”

Torina nodded. “What he said. The only thing worse than”—she glanced around at the carnage—“than facing this, would be knowing that it’s still here, alive.”

“As much as you could call this bullshit alive, anyway,” Icky muttered, kicking a fused fragment of bone and alloy with her boot. It looked familiar. Much of the organic debris looked familiar. I thought that I could probably place at least some of it by species if I wanted to examine it more closely. I didn’t. I took a breath. “Okay. Fresh magazines, everyone, and replenish your empties from what Waldo’s carrying. Drink some water, and we’ll push on.”

I avoided looking at the remnants of slaughter and instead gazed at the way ahead as I spoke. It beckoned back at me in brooding silence, a rocky tunnel plunging down into darkness. I murmured to myself as we picked our way forward. “Hell is real, and it’s cold.”

WE DISCOVERED why we’d been attacked by the army of the damned when the door had opened. Something we’d done earlier had caused small compartments lining a large chamber opening off to one side of the corridor to spring open, releasing their occupants. That was the stuff of nightmares all on its own. “So those things were just… trapped. Shut away in these tiny cells. Since Dohlennz died,” Icky said, her tone teetering somewhere between outrage and horror. “At least that long,” Rab added, aiming his BAG as he checked each of the compartments to our right, making sure they were indeed empty. “No wonder they were so pissed off,” Torina said. Gabby shook her head behind her visor. “I think they were made that way. Still, I don’t know if I should hate them, or feel sorry for them, being locked up forever, as far as they knew.”

“Both would be an appropriate reaction,” Funboy intoned. I said nothing. I just imagined those—things—scrabbling and skittering and clawing, hissing and shrieking, trapped in their cramped little cages —

I shuddered. And hated Dohlennz even more. Several more chambers opened off of the main corridor. A couple were living quarters, with spaces for sleeping and eating and even entertainment. There was even a ping-pong table. A ping-pong table, with a brand name I recognized as one from Earth. Dohlennz, or somebody, had been playing ping-pong just paces away from horrors that made Dr. Frankenstein’s lab look like a walk-in clinic. The sheer incongruity between the mundanity on the one hand, and the twisted, perverse evil on the other made me want to giggle—or maybe scream. I wasn’t quite sure which. The other compartments were clearly where Dohlennz had done his—

his “work.” Machines, racks of components, refrigerators containing who knew what, because we didn’t want to look, more containing jars and flasks and bottles of chemicals—all of it loomed around several gleaming work tables similar to those you’d find in a morgue. Articulated arms sporting powerful lights, keen blades. and tools, some brutal and blunt, others needle-like, hung over the tables, one of which was fitted with manacles. Everything was clean and polished to a mirror-like shine. Rab cradled his BAG and looked around. “You know, after that shitshow back there, I thought things couldn’t get any worse. But”—he nudged a strap, obviously intended to fasten something to one of the tables and keep it there, with the muzzle of his gun—“yeah, turns out I was wrong.”

“It’s the fact that it’s so clean,” Gabby said. “He did the things he did here, and then he cleaned it. Cleaned it so well.”

“He undoubtedly wanted to avoid cross contamination between projects. From a purely practical point of view, such sanitation makes imminent sense,” Funboy said. “Ordinarily, I would find such pristine sanitation most agreeable. Given the circumstances, however, I do not.”

“Van, we still haven’t found any evidence of that sword,” Torina said. “Or that bodyguard—unless it was one of those things back in the corridor,” Icky added. I nodded. “That corridor out there carries on, so there’s still some space down here we haven’t searched. Before we do, though—Perry, how are you doing?”

“Fantastic. I’ve been working on this problem with the self-destruct system, then I listened to you guys shouting and yelling in near panic, and shooting at stuff like you were reenacting the Battle of the Bulge, then I worked on the self-destruct problem some more —”

“Yeah, it’s been pretty hairy down here.”

“Actually, I don’t think any of those things were hairy. Spikey, slimy, chitinous, metallic, yeah, but not hairy,” Icky put in. I flashed her a quick smile. She returned one, though it was strained, more like a skull’s grin. Then I turned back to Perry. “Bird, have you made any headway with the self-destruct?”

“Actually, yes. But Netty-P and I aren’t quite there yet.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I would not unplug from this stupid terminal yet because I’m not entirely sure the place wouldn’t go boom. And when it comes to places going boom, especially when said place is full of your friends, and you are cabled into said place, entirely sure is kind of my bottom line.”

“I guess that’s encouraging. Keep at it.”

“Not like I had anything better to do. Oh, on a related note—can we buy about ten klicks of data cable sometime?

This would be a lot less nerve-wracking if I could be more than a meter away.”

I smiled. “I’ll look into it.”

“Self-destructing aside, bring ’em all back in one piece, Van, okay?

And I include you in ’ em.”

“That’s the plan.”

WE PRESSED ON. Between the stress of traversing the barren, rocky tunnels, the fresh memories of horror, the drag of the higher gravity, and the pervasive gloom, every step was a labor. I checked my air repeatedly, expecting it to be nearly exhausted—the b-suit could only recycle it so

much. And each time, I was surprised to see I had well over an hour left. I was sure we’d been in here for freakin’ hours already, but it wasn’t even quite one. Sweat beaded on my forehead. A rivulet ran into my eye, stinging and making me blink. I moved another step forward, rifle raised, looking around the sight reticle at the way ahead. Every few steps, I stopped and listened. Nothing, silence. I glanced at Rab, saw he was staring steadily ahead, and glanced back at the others. They were staggered along the corridor, Icky now at the rear, since we couldn’t discount threats coming up behind us. I turned forward again and resumed my way. Another step. Another. The tunnel bent slightly to the right. Working around the bend revealed that it ended at a metal door about six meters ahead. There was another door on the right, about three meters away. I moved to the right-hand door. Rab joined me and, without a word being spoken, scanned it. I blinked through more sweat. He nodded. “There’s a room back there.”

I signaled the others. Torina and Funboy moved past us, facing the further door, their weapons raised. Gabby and Icky watched out behind us. Rab and I arranged ourselves, and I gripped the door handle. A thought, A trap?

flashed through my mind. It might be a real room, but that didn’t preclude it being trapped. I let go of the handle and pulled out my own hand scanner, then checked for odd electrical phenomena or anything like that. There was nothing. We breached the room, me going left, Rab right. The space was about ten meters square and full of machinery. It was active, humming and hissing away. I called Icky forward. She poked her head in. “Air processors. Water pumps. That’s a power-distribution node over there.” She glanced at pipes and conduits vanishing into the left-hand wall. “Those probably lead to whatever’s in this next room —”

“Last room, I hope,” Rab muttered. She nodded. “Sing it, brother. I’m over this hellhole. Anyway, the one thing we haven’t found is a reactor, or whatever’s powering this place. I’m guessing it’s what’s behind that door,” she said, jerking her head toward it. I nodded, and not just at her assessment. I was done with this place, too. Frankly, if we opened that door and found more than a reactor and associated machinery, if there were more tunnels and things plunging deeper into the rock, I was going to call it and pack us back to the Fafnir. We could focus on rescuing Perry and then decide if we wanted to take another try, after a well-earned break. Because once we were finally done, I was destroying this place. Whether by making it self-destruct, or just bombarding it from above, this damned chamber of horrors was not going to—I’d say live to see another sunrise, but the sun didn’t rise here. In any case, it would die, and with it would die the last remnant of Dohlennz’s evil to plague the universe. I hoped. We pushed up to the final door and rearranged ourselves again, then I checked in again with Perry. He and Netty-P hadn’t progressed any further to a solution. Icky had an idea. “Bird, have you figured out what the self-destruct actually is?

Is it, like, an explosive charge?

A nuke?

Something like that?” she asked. “No, we’re pretty sure it shuts down containment on a fusion reactor, an oldie but a goodie.”

Icky looked at me. “If that is the reactor in there, Van,” she said, jerking a thumb at the door, “and we can scram it —”

“No boom,” I replied, nodding. “No boom would be nice, yeah, for everyone involved,” Perry said. “It certainly would.” I turned to the door and nodded to Rab. “Okay, let’s get this hell over with. Sword or not, I think whatever’s behind that door is the end of the line for us.”

Rab gave me a weak but wry smile. “Care to rephrase that?”

“The end of the mission?”

“Better, but still —”

I smiled back at him, turned to the door, scanned it, and found nothing especially notable, then we breached —

—into a large space at least twenty meters on a side. Sure enough, it contained a fusion reactor, running, plus large tanks of deuterium and helium-3 fuel, and associated ancillary equipment, all connected by a maze of pipes, cables, and conduits that lined the walls and snaked overhead. I immediately headed for the reactor controls, Icky right behind me. Our clear goal was to safely scram the reactor, shutting it down to end the self-destruct threat Perry was keeping at bay. In other words, we let our guard down ever so briefly, but it was enough for the attack to strike without warning. From above. 23

I HAD my rifle pointed toward the darkened space behind the hulking fusion generator, Rab to my left doing the same. I caught a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye as something swept between Rab and me. I tensed and turned —

Just in time to see a gleaming blade slam into one of the crew behind me. This all happened in an instant, so I was still registering it even happening, much less understanding who’d just been impaled. Not Icky, but —

I blinked once and the gut-wrenching reality of it slammed into me like a runaway, crashing car. My breath caught, oh no no no, it was Torina—but no, it wasn’t, it was Gabby. Something monstrous unfolding from the ceiling above had just impaled Gabby with a blade I instantly recognized, driving it hilt deep. Gabby yelped, but that was it. Had it been Torina to her right, or Funboy back and to her left, the wound would have been fatal. The dumbest of luck had delivered the blow to Gabby, though, to whom such a horrific wound was just an inconvenience —

Was the brief glimmer of realization I had before the blade abruptly jerked up, essentially slicing Gabby apart from her gut to her shoulder. She toppled to the floor with a heavy, damp thud, viscous fluid oozing from the sliced-apart remnant of her b-suit. A frozen instant, a single tick of the clock. Then pandemonium. The thing kept unfurling from the ceiling, vaguely spider-like, though maybe more sea urchin, a bulbous body the size of a trashcan made of polished alloy and dark, vitreous ceramic. Many-jointed legs sprouted from it in all directions, a spray of slender limbs, metal and dark bone, some ending in clawed feet that seemed to adhere to whatever they touched, some in wicked blades—and one in the most wicked blade of all. Even as it unfolded itself, it slashed all about, striking b-suits and helmets with savage abandon. Torina dove aside and snap-fired her rifle, then double-tapping one shot that missed, another that clacked and glanced off the armored body. Rab hurled himself backward as two blades struck at him, one slicing across his b-suit and cutting deep. He pounded out a burst from his BAG, but the big gun was built for long-range, sustained fire, and his rounds slammed into the pipes and conduits overhead. One immediately erupted with a fierce spray of vapor that washed through the compartment. Icky shouted and struck with her hammer, landing a hard blow on the thing’s body that actually staggered it. Three more of the blades, including the Moonsword’s companion, lashed in at her. She took a bad cut across the bicep of one upper arm that bubbled with sealing foam. The Starsword, or whichever blade it was—it didn’t matter—missed taking off her lower arm on that side by what looked like millimeters. Waldo, proxying Netty-P, fired two aimed shots that slammed squarely into the thing’s body—and both ricocheted off. Into Funboy. Funboy uttered a wild, desolate howl, a slurry of rage and anguish and despair, a distillation of all the emotion he never would or perhaps even could reveal. He flung himself at the thing without thought and fired his rifle point-blank. The slugs ricocheted off it and snapped against rock or slammed into machinery. One clacked off the casing of the fusion reactor. All of this unfolded in the space of a single breath, a swirl and blur of panicked reaction. A little fragment of thought showed me how it would play out—slugs would barely slow it, it would slash apart my crew with that damned sword, or a stray round would hit something critical and end this for all of us in an incandescent instant. But a deeper, more elemental and wiser part of me was already acting. I dropped the rifle. It would be useless. I ignored The Drop. It would be no better. Instead, I swept out the Moonsword. It rattled out of the sheath, and

the alloy reinforcement holding the blade together caught on the lip and then came free. I swung as I drew, the blade neatly slicing off one of the thing’s jointed legs. It had no discernible eyes or other sensors, but it immediately turned on me regardless. Three blades slashed at me from three different directions. I dug deep into my Innsu-honed instincts and dodged and wove as best I could, desperately fighting the heavy gravity. One struck my right arm, clacking against and off the vambrace Linulla had made for me so long ago. The Starsword immediately swept in. I’d kept a sliver of my focus on it, because it was the true threat —

I ducked, and it barely clipped the top of my helmet. I didn’t know what damage it had done and didn’t care—it hadn’t taken me out of the fight, and that was all that mattered. I glimpsed Icky as she drove herself in among the legs, slamming her hammer like a battering ram into the body. Funboy, still wailing the most desolate cry I’d ever heard, shoved his way directly beneath and slammed upward at it with the butt of his rifle. I lost track of Rab, Torina, and Waldo and couldn’t spare even an instant to look. The next few—seconds, I suppose, but you could have said hours and I’d have bought it—were a dragging, gasping, sweat-sodden blur of dodging, ducking, jumping, and striking. I took repeated blows from the lesser blades, but they were still keen enough to slice through my b-suit, drawing white, electric lines of pain across my flesh before the sealing foam could deaden them. I focused on the Starsword and dodged it with frantic desperation, looking for an opening to slash the leg that wielded it. I cut two others, but the thing was fiendishly smart, using other limbs to protect that one while it sought the killing blow. But it still wasn’t enough. Whooping breaths, sweat stinging my eyes, I stumbled a little, and that killing blow finally arrived. The only way I could stop it was by frantically parrying with the Moonsword. The two blades met with a thin clang, and then my blade snapped. It deflected the strike, but I was left holding the hilt shard of the Moonsword, a little over half the blade’s length ending in a neat, diagonal break. What had started as a chip so long ago had finally culminated. My sword was shattered. As the rest of it clattered against the floor somewhere, I found myself suddenly freed of the worry of breaking it, the thing that had been holding

me back. The remaining blade was still preternaturally sharp and completely free of chip or crack or other flaw. So I slashed with it again and truncated another leg —

But I saw the Starsword blur toward me. Just in time, I blocked it, knocking the blow wide with the only thing we possessed that the Starsword couldn’t slice through. In another instant, though, it would reverse and strike back, and I’d have to parry again, and do it again and again and again, getting it right every time because the first time I didn’t I was dead. And this thing wouldn’t be defeated by cutting off its legs—not before it killed me and my crew, some of whom might already be dead, for all I knew. The wild, dark inspiration came from some place made of instinct and hatred. I shouted a single word. “FUNBOY!”

He was still slamming his rifle-butt into the thing from beneath. Icky was—somewhere else, retreated, down, worse, I didn’t know. The only thing that mattered right now was Funboy. I hefted the remnant of the Moonsword. Made an instant of eye contact with him. Tossed it to him. And flung myself backward, out of the fight. Another bright line of pain flared across my right shin, then I banged against something behind me and spun partway to my right. I twisted desperately back, clutching at The Drop for all the good it would do. For all the good any of it would do. I’d just thrown something that could easily slice off Funboy’s fingers and expected him to catch the hilt, amid the chaotic fury of a desperate, close-quarters melee. All I did know was that in that instant of eye-contact, Funboy had understood what I was asking him to do. So when I finally turned back, raising The Drop as I did, I expected to see Funboy crouching under the abominable thing and clutching the bleeding stumps of his fingers. Instead, I saw him slashing upward with the shard of the Moonsword, sweeping the blade back and forth as fast as he could. Each stroke cut deep, tearing through the thing’s internals. Torina had appeared, putting herself between the Starsword and Funboy, a place of the rawest danger but the most utter necessity. And she was magnificent. Again and again, she dodged and deflected the Starsword, her lithe form all graceful, deadly motion. She was practically a blur, leaping and diving a frenetic dance that seemed to keep her just out of the Starsword’s reach. Like me, though, she only had to fail once —

But the monstrosity’s movements had suddenly become halting, spasmodic, uncertain. Rab saw his chance and dove in among the shuddering legs to jam the muzzle of his BAG up and into the gaps opened in the armored shell by Funboy. He squeezed the trigger and held it down. Debris, fragments of metal and ceramic, and gouts of organic sludge exploded from around the BAG’s muzzle, showering both Rab and Funboy with shrapnel and gore. A second later, the shell came apart, exploding in a blast of fragments and muck that spattered the compartment. The thing went rigid and still, then slumped down on top of Funboy, pressing him to the floor. Silence fell like a hammer. Gasping, I stumbled to Torina. She just nodded. “Fine. I’m fine,” she said, although she wasn’t—she had several nasty gashes across her b-suit. But she was up and lucid, and that was all that mattered. I found Icky. She stood in mid-swing, her hammer raised. If she struck, she was as likely to hit Funboy as the spider bot, so I raised a hand. But she was already lowering her weapon, her shoulders heaving as she breathed. I swung my attention to Rab and Funboy. Rab had dropped to his knees and stayed that way. I pushed my visor toward his. “Rab!”

He looked up at me, then nodded. “Yeah. Yeah.”

It was all he said. I nodded and clapped his shoulder, then turned to Funboy. Despite numerous wounds and a b-suit that seemed mostly made of sealing foam, he was already squirming out from under the thing, toward Gabby. He breathed a single word over and over. “No no no no no —”

Icky shoved past me, heading for—something. I ignored her and grabbed Funboy by the shoulders. “Funboy—!”

He tried to shake me off and just keep crawling toward Gabby—or her remains, anyway. “Van—the reactor!” Icky called out. I let go of Funboy and turned to her. It had been damaged, she was going to tell me. Damaged, and it was about to blow and there was no way to stop it and after all that we were all dead anyway —

But she sucked in a breath. “I scrammed it!

It’s coming offline,” she gasped out, slumping back against it. I gave her a nod. “Perry —?”

“I can’t confirm that so I’ll take Icky’s word for it. Van, what —?”

I looked at Gabby. “We’re coming back. Now.” I pulled in another breath and winced. Pain was starting to ripple across my body, dark and deep. “Netty-P—

preflight —”

“Done. We can lift the instant you’re back.”

I swallowed hard. All the emotion—fear, horror, disgust, rage, the mountain of it I’d been holding at bay, was starting to crash down on me like a dark tsunami. But I shoved myself through it, shouldering it aside. Not yet. AFTER ALL THAT, I almost forgot about both the Moonsword and the Starsword. All I wanted to do was to get my crew to safety. Nothing else mattered. Torina, though, had the presence of mind to grab both—the fragments of the Moonsword, the hilt-shard of which she used to cut the Starsword off the monstrous leg it had been fastened to. We had Waldo dump everything so he could help us carry Gabby’s remains, and then we stumbled our way back through the vile lair. If we were attacked again, I doubted we could fight back and survive. But we weren’t. We made it to the airlock, which Perry cycled for us as fast as he could. Netty-P had lifted the Fafnir and brought her as close to the top of the ramp as she could, so she loomed above us, all sleek power, a place of refuge and safety. The others dragged themselves up the ramp. I stopped by Perry, who was still cabled into the panel. “Van, I have no way of knowing if the reactor —”

“It is. Icky said it was.”

He nodded. “Good enough for me.” He unplugged the cable with his beak and reeled it back into his chest compartment. Without another word, we made our own way up the ramp and aboard the Fafnir. Icky and Torina were pulling off Gabby’s b-suit so they could lift her into the auto-med. Torina caught my eye as I passed them. “She’s… crystallized, whatever that means. I have no idea if she—” She stopped there. I nodded and turned. Funboy stood nearby, his helmet off, simply staring at Gabby with wide, blank eyes. I saw Rab stumble into the crew lounge and collapse onto the couch. I looked down into Funboy’s shell-shocked face. He blinked at me. “Van —”

“Funboy, everyone’s hurt.”

He looked past me, back at Gabby, who Icky was now lifting into the auto-med. “Gabby. She’s —”

“Funboy, everybody is wounded. We need you. We need you to help us.”

He blinked at me again, opened his mouth—then slowly closed it and nodded. “Yes. Yes. You’re right.” He looked at Gabby one final time, then moved to retrieve his crash bag. I turned and strode forward, gritting my teeth against the pain. Perry followed me. Netty-P waited in the cockpit. “Van, I’ve sent an emergency message to B. She’s going to meet us at Procyon —”

“Good. Thank you. My ship,” I said, slumping into the pilot’s seat. “Your ship.”

I hammered the controls, spooling up the gravity polarizers and firing the thrusters, lifting. Once we had a positive rate, I punched at the weapons panel to bring everything online and go weapons-hot. I slaved everything to a single targeting reticle—the lasers, the particle, plasma-pulse and accelerator cannons, the mass drivers, and even the point-defense batteries. I considered the missiles but left them on standby. I did, however, also slave

in the Frankie’s ventral suppressor cannon, which was exposed and free to fire even while she was docked. As we climbed, I locked the targeting reticle on the hidden lair. Ten klicks up, I fired. All of it. In sustained fire mode. When Colonel Mandeville had tried to demand the Fafnir, I’d reflected on how she could be a city-killer. Given enough time, she could probably be a planet killer. What transpired now proved it. I’d never seen all of her firepower delivered at once, against a target I could see. And I wanted to see it. The rocky surface quickly began to glow under the barrage. Mass-driver impacts hurled debris nearly a thousand meters into the rarified air. Stone cracked, splintered, and began to flow like melted wax. I just watched, not wanting to miss even an instant of the destruction, of the terajoules of raw energy cleansing creation of what I hoped were the last traces of Dohlennz. The Fafnir’s bombardment now terminated in a small lake of glowing, liquid rock. Lava fumed and fountained as the mass-driver magazines emptied and they ceased fire. I let the rest of the weapons continue firing until their safeties cut in, shutting them down and putting them into cool-down cycles. That happened when we were a hundred klicks up. I then targeted two missiles, set them for delayed detonation in ground-penetrating mode, and fired them. They slammed into the lava pond, one-two, then both detonated an instant later. Glowing slag erupted across the landscape, and what was left of the pond slumped into the collapsing network of tunnels and compartments. Netty-P quietly switched all weapons to standby and said, “Van—my ship.”

I stared down at the glowing scar on the dead planet below. It was already fading, cooling into obscurity. I nodded. “Your ship.”

Then I dragged myself to my feet and headed to the rear. Perry followed me, not saying anything, just being there. My crew needed me. 24

WE WERE ALL HURT, but none of us badly. None of us, that is, except Gabby. She remained in the auto-med, shrunken and crystallized into dormancy. The auto-med couldn’t do much, though. From its perspective, she had no life signs. To the limited extent it even could treat her species, it had no treatments to offer. As far as it was concerned, she was dead. And maybe she was. None of us had any idea if she could come back from being effectively cut in two. Of the rest of us, Rab and Funboy were worst off. They’d been right there when Rab’s BAG, firing explosive rounds, had gone off like a grenade. The gun itself had been destroyed, but so had Dohlennz’s monstrous creation. The resulting blast and shrapnel had flayed them both, inflicting serious harm, though none of it was life-threatening. Both were determined to just push through it—Funboy, in particular, threw himself into treating everyone else’s hurts. I had to order him to treat himself. Of the rest of us, Icky probably got off the lightest. She explained why, looking a little shamefaced as she did. “I didn’t know what else to do, Van. So I yanked the two big demo charges off Waldo and was rigging them up to blow. I figured that could kill that thing, if anything could.”

I gave her a puzzled head-cock. “So what was the plan, exactly?

Set the charges and then —”

She shrugged. “Run?”

“That was the plan?

Or is it a question?”

She sighed. “Honestly, Van, I hadn’t thought it through much more than that. But I didn’t know what else to do —”

I put my hand on an unbandaged part of her arm. “Given the circumstances, big girl, it wasn’t a bad plan, not a bad plan at all.”

She glanced at Funboy, treating Rab. “Not good enough, though. I mean, what would have happened to”—she dropped her voice to a whisper

—“you know, Gabby?”

I stopped her. “Doesn’t matter because we found another way.”

“Do you think she’s—that she can —”

“I don’t know, Icky. But we’re going to try and find a way to fix that, too.”

B COORDINATED her arrival at Procyon so she was waiting at our twist point. We immediately docked, and she came aboard, two of her assistants in tow and wheeling a litter. She was all business. “Yeah, this auto-med is great for humans and the like, as long as it's nothing too complicated. For someone like Gabby, it might as well be a cargo crate,” she said, as her assistants, helped by Icky, maneuvered Gabby onto the litter. We stood clear but watching. Torina stood behind Funboy, her hands on his shoulders. “Can you treat her aboard your ship?” I asked her. She shook her head. “No. I’ll do what diagnostics I can, but I don’t have the expertise or the facilities. She needs specialized stuff—as I understand it, basically a nutrient bath and time for her body to—to do what it does. There really is no other treatment, at least that I’m aware of. Anyway, I’m taking her to Pont Alus Kyr. If anyone can help her, they can.”

That made me frown. “Pont Alus Kyr?

Really?

They haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory lately, B."

“No, they haven’t. And that’s why they’re falling over themselves to be accommodating and absolutely transparent. Trust me, they’re aware that they didn’t get caught with their pants down—their pants were pulled completely off and left dangling from the chandelier. They did a major

house-cleaning and brought in a new director from Tau Ceti. But don’t worry, my people and I won’t leave her side.”

“So there’s hope?” Torina asked. She looked at us gravely, her antennas unmoving, not even twitching. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t. I don’t want to say there isn’t—but I also don’t want to say there is. The physiology of her species is just so weird. And given some of the things I’ve dealt with, that’s saying something, believe me.” She sighed and shrugged again. “I’ve learned from long, hard experience that when it comes to this sort of thing, honesty really is the best policy.”

She followed Gabby back into her ship, and the airlock cycled shut. B

cast off, and the rest of us dispersed so we could get underway ourselves, heading to Outward to refuel, and then carry on to Anvil Dark. As I started to turn away, though, I saw one figure, unmoving, just staring at the sealed airlock. I turned back and joined him. “If anyone can help her, B can.”

Funboy was still for a moment, then he spoke, his tone clipped. “I am aware of B’s acumen in such matters.”

I looked at him. I knew better than to say something inane, like, are you okay?

Instead, I just gave him the opportunity to say something. Which, I knew, might include some incendiary words flung at me. It had been my decision to enter Dohlennz’s evil lair, after all, and mainly to try and retrieve one of the Moonsword’s companion blades at that. Matterforge had given me reason to believe that doing so was important to whatever lay ahead, but still—it felt self-serving, a quest to retrieve some treasure that may have cost Gabby her life. I mean, I was thinking that, so I shouldn’t be surprised if Funboy was, too. But he just gave me a steady look. “I shall return to duties now, Van. Unless you believe I shouldn’t.”

“Why would I think that?”

“I suffered severe emotional trauma. I may not be fit to perform normally.”

I couldn’t resist a smile. Leave it to Funboy to be clinically self-aware about himself. “What do you think?” I asked him. “I shall attempt to endure. However, I am not entirely certain I shall be successful.”

I touched his shoulder. “That’s every one of us right now, Funboy, believe me.”

I WAS TRYING to thread my way through my report regarding what had transpired in Dohlennz’s abandoned lair, but it was tough. I kept sitting back from the desk terminal in my cabin, reading what I’d written, then deleting chunks of it. It either came across as too sterile, not capturing the horror we’d experienced there, or like a beginner’s stab at a sci-fi horror novel. I wanted to land somewhere between the two—factual and accurate, but still making it clear the place had been a vile pit of evil. We had no case to make against Dohlennz, obviously, but it would still form part of the case file and could inform future investigations. I felt I owed it to my people to ensure that whoever read it down the road understood what we’d gone through. I was typing, not simply dictating to the terminal’s AI, like most people did. And I was using a QWERTY keyboard, which was a thing available from Anvil Dark stores. I’d grown up with that keyboard and felt at home using it. It meant every time I deleted material, I had to type it out again, though, and that was getting kind of old. Maybe I should switch to dictation —

The door opened, admitting Torina and Perry. I lifted an eyebrow at them. “Yes, by all means, come in,” I said, waving grandly. Torina sniffed. “I’m your wife, Van. And by that, I mean I’m your wife right now, not your Second.”

“And I’m your friend, not an AI,” Perry put in. “Or, I’m still an AI, obviously, but —”

I smiled. “I get it, folks, thanks. And before you start hammering at the emotional support you think I need, I’m fine.”

Torina gave me a quizzical—and doubtful—look. “Really?”

I turned to them and nodded. “Yeah. I am. Van Tudor of even a couple of years ago—hell, maybe even a year ago, would have been a mess of guilt

and second-guessing and self-recrimination, yeah. This version of me is —”

I sighed. “Okay, maybe not fine. How could I be fine?

After all that—

after what happened to Gabby—no, I’m still processing it all. But I’m not falling apart, either. I’ve made my peace with the fact that in doing this job, I’m going to lead people I care about, people I consider friends, even people I love, into dangerous situations. And sometimes they’re going to get hurt. For that matter, sometimes I won’t be leading them into those situations—

I’ll be sending them into them.”

I leaned back and stretched. “So, yeah, I’ve been down this soul-searching road already. And if I hadn’t been able to follow it all the way, then I wasn’t going to accept this job as Master. It’s still—” I shrugged. “It’s hard. Damned right it is. But that’s just how it is. And if I ever do get to a point where it does make me fall apart—well, then it’s time to retire.”

Torina and Perry looked at each other, then turned back to me. “Okay—well, that was a lot easier than I’d expected it to be,” Torina said. “But it still leaves a question.”

“What’s that?”

“Why are we going to Anvil Dark?” Perry asked. I furrowed my brow at him. “To deliver my report?

Get caught up on work there?

Check in with Alic and Volfinn and Kistlin, find out if Marlowe has caused any more trouble?”

“Uh-huh. Tell me, Van, where’s your Moonsword right now?”

“Or the blade we retrieved from that hellhole, whatever it’s called,”

Torina put in. “It’s—” I started, turning toward my weapons locker at the foot of my bed. But it wasn’t there, I knew. I’d removed the empty scabbard from my harness and put that away, but as for the sword itself, or its fragments, anyway—or the other blade —

I turned back. “I’m not sure where they are,” I admitted. Torina nodded. “No, you’re not. You’ve never even asked about them.”

“You must have put the Moonsword’s empty scabbard away. You just looked at your locker, so it’s in there, isn’t it?

But not the blade itself. You didn’t even wonder about that?

Don’t you think that’s kind of strange?”

Perry asked. “So back to the original question. Why are we going to Anvil Dark?

Why aren’t we going to Starsmith to get your blade made whole again?”

Torina asked. I just stared at them. None of it had even occurred to me. My sword was missing, and it hadn’t even entered my mind to wonder where it was. “Holy shit,” I said, staring at them. Torina nodded, then came over, knelt, and put her arms around me. “You might style yourself as a tower of strength, Van, determined to make the tough calls and then be there for everyone afterward. But while you’re doing that, don’t forget something very important.”

Perry hopped on the desk and put his wing on my shoulder. “We’re here for you, too, boss.”

TORINA HAD STASHED the broken Moonsword and its companion blade in the main weapons lockup. And, sure enough, I found them wrenching to even look at, especially the new blade —

— abruptly jerked up, essentially slicing Gabby apart from her gut to her shoulder. She toppled to the floor with a heavy, damp thud —

I’d stopped with fingers a few centimeters from the Starsword, or Sunsword, whichever of the two it was. Its hilt was still enclosed in the mount Dohlennz had fashioned to fasten it to his monstrosity. I hadn’t yet even touched it. —a heavy, damp thud —

I scowled, then grabbed the blade and hefted it out of the locker. Yes, it was the blade that had hurt, maybe even killed Gabby. But that didn’t make it some sort of evil talisman, carrying a curse or something. It was a tool. Peacemakers and pirates could both use the same torque wrench. The evil that had harmed Gabby had been Dohlennz and his vile creation. This blade had merely been wielded by it. I studied the weapon. It essentially was the Moonsword, albeit without the things that Linulla had added to my blade. Dohlennz’s mount left it completely unbalanced, virtually unusable as it was. But that could be changed. “Netty-P, we’re altering course,” I said. “Get us headed to Starsmith, please, and send Linulla a message to let him know we’re on our way.”

LINULLA STUDIED the new blade carefully, and with a critical eye. We waited, amusing ourselves by watching Icky introducing herself to the latest brood of young Conoku. This time, none of them were Linulla’s but were rather the offspring of other Conoku who had been sent to Starsmith by their parents. They would function as assistants and apprentices to the other smiths, learning the artisanal skills and knowledge of materials and crafting. It seemed that pursuing forge work and other smithcraft had become something of a fad among young Conoku, spurred on by the fame of the crew of the Iowa and Cantullin Station. And that meant that a lot of them were really here to get involved in those gigs, which made my crew something of celebrities among them. I was intrigued to note that Icky’s demeanor around the rambunctious young Conoku had changed. She wasn’t the big kid lording over and tumbling around with all her little friends anymore. She was still happy to laugh indulgently and enjoy their company, but she was more detached about it, more willing to rein in those who got carried away, and even gently chastise those who went too far. “She’s becoming downright motherly,” as Rab put it, watching her. Torina and I exchanged a smile. “She is, isn’t she?” I said. Torina nodded, but her eyes narrowed a little. “Is it just me, or is there a little Zeno showing through in her?”

“It’s not just you,” I replied. Rab gave a jowly P’nosk smile. “Icky’s own mother might have been a disaster, but she ended up learning how to do it right from the best.”

Linulla finally finished his inspection of the blade. “Well, Van, I can’t find a single flaw. The blade is intact and as well-forged as any I’ve seen. It would probably be easier for me to move all your upgrades from the Moonsword to this one. We can keep the Moonsword itself as a backup, as it were—a source of raw materials in case we need to repair this one —”

“I get that, Linulla, yeah. But what if we use this one to reforge the Moonsword anyway?”

“Why?

I mean, I can, but it’s going to take several weeks, and it’s going to be expensive. It’s also not really necessary —”

“Yeah, Linulla, I think it is. I know that blade is as good as it gets. I’ve seen it in action. And yeah, I know that there isn’t some dark magic, or whatever, that attaches to it, just because of what happened. But Gramps

handed down the Moonsword. That’s my blade. And it’s the one Matterforge was talking about when it said the sword was going to be important. Or, that’s how I took it, at least —”

Linulla held up a claw. “No need to explain, Van. I get it, trust me. In fact, I’ll let you in on a little secret. Remember how I mentioned an odd pair of fellows, both apparently from Earth, who had showed up here with a sword called a katana?

The smaller, quicker of the two had intrigued me with comments he made about the blade having a spirit residing in it—that all things have spirits residing in them, and that the nature of those spirits affected, and was affected by, how those things are used. I respected his beliefs, even if I didn’t share them, but—” He hesitated. “But what he said resonated with me afterward. Sometimes, two ingots of chemically identical metal will behave slightly differently when being worked, for reasons I’ve never been able to discern. Perhaps there’s something to what he believed. In any case, I get what you’re saying. You, and Mark before you, wielded the Moonsword in the cause of what is just and right. Perhaps this blade, which I believe is the Starsword, can do the same—but as part of your Moonsword. It is a fine weapon, and it deserves to be —”

He hesitated again. I offered a word. “Cleansed?”

“Yes. Cleansed. Leave this with me. I’ll call you when your blade has been made whole again.”

I nodded, then glanced at Torina and the others. “Guys, I need a moment with Linulla,” I said, and led him away. When we were out of earshot, he turned his eye stalks to me. “Van, if this is about Matteforge, I’ve heard nothing from —”

“It’s not. This is about another issue entirely. When you’re remaking the Moonsword, there’s something else I’d like you to do for me.”

25

WE LEFT STARSMITH, now intending to return to Anvil Dark. Before we could twist from the Starsmith system, though, we received a call from my mother. “Van, Netty-P told me what you and your people just went through. I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah. Turns out that bastard Dohlennz manages to be evil from beyond the grave.”

“Unfortunately, in my experience, the wrong people wield influence beyond their own death. If you need to talk —”

I smiled at her. “Thanks, Mom. And I mean that sincerely—thank you.”

She gave me a puzzled look. “Why the emphasis on thanking me?”

“Because, Mom, that is the first time you’ve ever offered to be there for me—and you said it without even thinking about it. It was perfectly natural and sincere. You’ve… come a long way.”

“We’ve come a long way, Van.”

I nodded. “I stand corrected. We have.”

“Anyway, this isn’t just me calling you to be a decent mom. I just got a message from Miryam. She had a visitor.”

I tensed. Visitors to the farm these days inevitably meant trouble. Whether a rogue part of the US government, or that of another country, or the UN, or any of them working at the behest of or through the machinations of the Equal Grasp —

“Who, and does she need help?

Because if she does —”

“If she does, I’ll be there, don’t worry. No, this was a different sort of visit. It was someone presenting themselves to the embassy of known space, seeking what they called a diplomatic meeting with the ambassador.”

“Oh. Okay. Did Miryam have a name?”

“She did. The visitor was one Mavis DeMont.”

I frowned at that. “Mavis DeMont. Don’t recognize the name.”

“Neither do I, but that doesn’t mean much. I might be watching over Earth, but I don’t know much about what’s going on down there—nor, from watching the occasional media broadcast, do I really want to.”

“Tell me about it.” I activated my comm. “Perry, do you recognize the name Mavis DeMont?”

“There’s a Mavis DeMont who owns a diner and motel in Casper, Wyoming. And a Mrs. Mavis DeMont recently passed away in Tullahoma, Tennessee. Mavis DuMont, with a u, not an e, just won ten grand in a scratch lottery in Wainwright, Alberta —”

“Holy shit, Perry—how, and maybe an even better question is why, do you know this?”

“I download on the order of five thousand different media sources every time we go to Earth. I like to keep on top of current affairs.”

“Like the winner of a scratch lottery in Alberta.”

“You never know when it might come in handy. Any other random names you’d like to ask me about?”

“Let me refine my query a little. Can you think of any reason why someone named Mavis DeMont would have shown up at the farm, seeking a diplomatic meeting with the ambassador for known space?”

“Maybe Alberta Mavis is looking to spend her windfall dough on a truly out-of-this-world vacation?

Otherwise, I got nothin’, sorry.”

“Okay. Netty-P, change of plans. We’re heading to Earth.”

Icky leaned out. “Are we gonna get scratch-offs and sweet tea?”

I shot her a look, then grinned. “Dad says maybe.”

Icky hooted. “Yes. Team dad for the big girl.”

WE ARRIVED JUST as the snow, which had fallen in quantity while we’d been away from Earth, was beginning to melt. Time distortion from twisting

made me feel like it was happening awfully early, but it also meant it was the ugliest time of the year—the trees were still bare, what grass was showing was still dead, the snow was mushy and grimy, and everything was wet. B called as we were about to start our descent from orbit toward the farm. I took her call in the cockpit, with everyone present. A thick pall of mingled hope and dread hung in the air. “Well, the good news is that Gabby has started to show some signs of metabolic activity. Now, before you get too joyous about that, it’s just chemistry happening at this point. Molecules are doing their thing, there are reactions happening, and that’s a hopeful sign. It means that, at the most fundamental, biochemical level, at least, there’s still potential. But it’s a way off yet from constituting life signs—as much as her people have what we’d call life signs in you or me, that is.”

“But these chemical things have to happen, or nothing else does, right?”

I asked. B nodded. “That’s right. The critical point is going to revolve around that chemistry de-crystallizing her, converting what’s currently a complex sort of sugar back into the other compounds that drive her life processes.”

“When will we have any indication of that?”

B sighed. “None of us here have any idea. We’ve contacted other representatives of her race, and they’re not sure either. It turns out that even to her people, the foundational stuff that causes them to be alive and stay that way is kind of a mystery. Which, really, is true for almost every species. In other words, all we can do is wait and hope.”

Funboy spoke up. “B, while I realize it is unlikely, if there are any organs or other components of or substances derived from my body that would be helpful, I will provide them immediately.”

Torina’s face crumpled a bit. I think mine did, too. B smiled. “If anything like that comes up, I’ll be on the comm to you immediately, Funboy, I promise you that.”

I SAT IN A KITCHEN CHAIR, it creaking under me just as I knew it would. “So this Mavis DeMont—what did she look like?” I asked Miryam. “Late forties, probably,” Miryam said, grabbing the coffee pot and pulling it out of the maker. “A little done-up, as my mother used to put it, to describe women who wear a little too much makeup. Someone who puts value on her appearance. To me, that means someone who has to glad-hand with others on a regular basis—a politician, a reporter, a journalist, that sort of thing.”

“And she only said she wanted a diplomatic meeting.”

Miryam poured coffee for Torina and me, then one for herself. “That’s right. She was pleasant enough about it, but she also seemed a little—I don’t know, furtive. Like she was trying to get away with something. She was alone, too. Just drove up in a rental car.”

“Furtive. Huh.” I stared at the coffee, then turned to the phone number written in an unfamiliar hand on a sticky note, the contact information the mysterious Mavis DeMont had left. I glanced at Perry. “Can you dial her up, please?”

“I'm a hyper-advanced combat AI. From an Earthly perspective, I’m staggeringly more powerful than the best of the terrestrial supercomputers. And you’re going to use me as a cell phone."

"Well, otherwise, I'd have to walk all the way to the phone over there, and dial, and —”

“Oh, for—hang on and I’ll put your damned call through.” I spared Perry the indignity of actually functioning as a receiver by having him send the signal through my data slate. I could have used the, you know, phone—

but this had the advantage of allowing Perry to ensure the call wasn’t monitored or tapped in any way since he controlled it from end to end and could rapidly bounce it around the phone system. It wouldn’t stop the other end from using speakerphone, of course, to let others listen in that way. A woman’s voice, quick, clipped, and mature, answered. “Hello, who’s this?”

“Van Tudor,” I replied. A brief hesitation. “Oh, thank God,” she finally went on. “Please tell me you’re at your farm.”

I glanced at Miryam. She’d narrowed her eyes and scribbled something quickly on a piece of paper. I read it— Relieved, nervous. I nodded. I got the same thing—relief, but still a healthy dose of anxious stress. “I am. For the moment, anyway. But —”

“I’m on my way.”

“Whoa, hang on, Ms.—DeMont, is it?”

“Yes, and please, we don’t have time to chat.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll tell you when I get there. Make it… fifteen minutes.”

I went a little wide-eyed at that. She had to be somewhere nearby, probably Elkader. She’d actually stayed in the area, waiting for us to return to the farm?

That spoke of desperation?

“Alright, we’ll see you then,” I said, but she was already hanging up. I turned to the others. “Gang, I know it’s cold out there, but I don’t want to take any chances. Rab, you and Funboy get aloft in the Frankie and hold position nearby. Perry, I’d like you up there, too, watching for traffic coming this way. Netty-P, stand by for a crash ascent in the Fafnir. The rest of us will hunker down here.” I turned to Miryam. “Get your boots and coat and stuff on, my dear, in case we have to bug out of here fast.”

Everyone dispersed and got ready. And then we waited. ALMOST EXACTLY FIFTEEN MINUTES, as it turned out. Perry saw a lone car approaching and followed it from above. There was no other traffic, aside from a pickup full of hay on its way to a delivery, probably, and a truck for pumping out septic tanks heading to a call somewhere east of us. The roads were otherwise empty, as was the sky—except for the ubiquitous surveillance drone being controlled by the most bored person in the entire United States military. The car rolled up into the driveway and stopped, then a tall, wiry woman got out. She had a narrow face with a purposeful expression. Dark hair fell from beneath a practical, worn-- but clean-- headband. As she made her immediate way toward the house, I figured her for mid-forties, maybe just starting to push fifty. I opened the door before she could knock. “Ms. DeMont, please come in,” I said. She stepped into the hallway and swung her gaze around while pulling off soft leather gloves. Her gaze fell on Torina and Miryam behind me—and

then Icky waiting in the living room. I was waiting for that, wondering how she’d react. She didn’t, aside from a look of the most mild surprise. So either this woman was particularly unflappable, or she’d had dealings with aliens before. She turned back to me. “Mr. Tudor?”

“Yup, that would be me,” I replied. Some of the hard tension that had been tightening all the muscles and tendons in her face drained away. “Finally. These past days have been hell, waiting for you to show up.”

I pursed my lips, then gestured for her to follow me to the kitchen. “We’ve got coffee—or something stronger, if you’d prefer.”

“Coffee would be fine.”

I nodded to Torina and Miryam, who ushered DeMont into the kitchen. I headed that way via the living room but paused to talk to Icky. “I don’t think I’m the first Wu’tzur she’s seen,” Icky said. “I could’ve been a piece of furniture, for all she reacted.”

“Yeah, I noticed that, too.” I turned to the comm. “Everybody just keep doing what you’re doing for the moment while we find out what this is about. Rab, Perry, anything notable out there?”

“Just a lovely panorama of snow-covered dirt and dead trees. Kinda like staring at a charcoal sketch. A lot. For a long time,” Perry replied. “Nothing from here up to orbit, either,” Rab added. “Just the usual traffic, aerodynamic craft, and satellites.”

“You guys know what to do if that changes,” I said, then headed into the kitchen. Mavis DeMont sat cradling a cup of coffee in both hands. I put a pleasant smile on my face and sat across from her. “Now then, Ms. DeMont—what’s this all about?”

“Very simple, really. I want asylum.”

I stared for a moment. I’d expected demands, or warnings, or maybe an offer of some sort of deal. I hadn’t expected that. “Asylum?

Uh —“

“This is an embassy, isn’t it?

A location that officially recognizes the off-world powers in the person of you, the Ambassador?” She started to look alarmed. “That’s what my contacts in the State Department told me —”

I held up a hand. “You’re absolutely right. And it’s not that I’m dismissing your request for asylum or anything. I just wasn’t… expecting

it.” I glanced around. “We may be an embassy, here—or technically, I guess, a consulate—but we haven’t really gotten very far in terms of setting up shop —”

“Mr. Tudor, I genuinely believe my life is in danger. I need you to tell me if you can accommodate my request for asylum, because if you can’t, I’m going to have to find other —”

“Again, Ms. DeMont, let’s—let’s slow down. Maybe back up a bit, even. Who are you?

And why are you seeking asylum?”

“And from whom?

Or what?” Miryam put in. DeMont looked down into her coffee, then back up. “Alright. I’m an international trade consultant, with a specialty in developing and improving business relations with investors and various countries in eastern Asia, particularly China and the Philippines. It was in that capacity that I was hired to use the skills, knowledge, and particularly the contacts I’ve developed over more than twenty years to foster a client’s entry into the region. I did that, and now have reason to believe that same client wants me dead.”

I narrowed my eyes. “And who would this client be?” I asked her, though a part of me already knew the answer. “I’m sure you’ve heard of them. They’re called the Equal Grasp.”

DEMONT MADE HER CASE, then I left her with Miryam and Torina to do some follow-up and retired to the master bedroom upstairs. I closed the door so I could talk to the rest of the crew. “Perry, can we even offer someone asylum?” I asked him over the comm. “Asylum isn’t a universally recognized concept around known space. For instance, the Nesit don’t recognize it—so don’t plan on going and hiding out in Nesit territory.”

“I wasn’t, thanks. Does the Guild recognize it?”

“In principle, yes. In practice, the Guild hasn’t had any requests for asylum made to it since its inception—at least, there aren’t any recorded. But yeah, I’d say you could legitimately offer her asylum. Of course, that would mean she’d have to remain in Guild territory. That means the farm,

the Fafnir or another Guild ship, Anvil Dark, or a few other places like Gus’s precinct station on Crossroads, Guild missions to the major powers, aboard The Hole, things like that.”

“The logical question is, what’s in it for us?” Rab said. “Wait. That came out a little harsher than I meant —”

“No, it’s a fair question. If we’re going to take her in and incur the risk associated with that, then we need to decide if we’re doing it out of sheer altruism or if we expect some quid pro quo,” Perry said. “Again, that’s kind of your call, Van. Although, if I can editorialize a little here —”

“Please do,” I said. “Van, if she was seeking asylum from, say, political or religious persecution from some place on Earth, like so many other poor folks face every day, I’d strongly recommend denying her request. There are lots of other jurisdictions she can turn to on Earth. And we really don’t want to set that precedent. We’re not really set up to handle a large influx of asylum seekers, and I don’t think the US government would be very happy about it, either.”

“But DeMont is seeking asylum from the Equal Grasp.”

“Exactly. I think that actually does make her a legitimate candidate for asylum. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable for you to ask her to reveal, in turn, whatever she knows about the Equal Grasp. If she says no, well, then I guess it comes back to how altruistic you’re feeling,” Perry said. “There are good reasons to let expats from the Equal Grasp know that they have a safe haven with the Guild, Van," Rab said “Anything that encourages them to come to us —”

“Yeah. It’s the same reason you should always take in prisoners in wartime and treat them as well as you can. You want the enemy to surrender to you,” I replied. “Okay, well, then let’s see what Ms. DeMont has to say.”

I went back downstairs but found that Miryam and Torina had already started the process. They were deep into conversation with Mavis DeMont, apparently having already teased out some stuff about the Equal Grasp and its operations. Miryam shook her head yes as I sat down at the table. “The Equal Grasp is sticking their fingers into Earthly affairs everywhere they can, it seems. If anything, they’re putting even more effort into involving themselves in other parts of the world, developed and developing,” she said. “A lot of bribery, but more than a little blackmail, extortion, manipulation, and even outright threats of violence, ” DeMont added. “It’s the last that has me worried. I did what they wanted, but some others in my line of work they’ve employed have gone missing. Either it's just ominous coincidence, or they see it as dealing with loose ends. I’m assuming the worst.”

I nodded at her. “Okay. We’d like to hear everything you can tell us.”

She gave me a pointed look. “And?”

“And, I’m prepared to offer you asylum. That may mean, however, that we’ll have to end up taking you off-world, at least temporarily. This might be an official consulate, but it’s still just a clapboard farmhouse in rural Iowa. If the Equal Grasp really wanted to get shitty about you being here —”

“That’s fine. I’ve been off-world before. In fact, I have a contact out there—or up there, or however you want to put it. Someone with some stature and some power. I met her through the Equal Grasp and made sure to cultivate her as a contact. Because that’s what I do. I cultivate contacts.”

She shrugged. “The players might change—hell, it turns out they might change species”—she glanced toward Icky, who was lounging in the dining room—“but the game stays the same.”

“Who is this off-world contact you’ve got?” I asked her, particularly noting she’d said her. That could be very good, if it were, say, my mother or Valint. But it could also be very bad, if it turned out to be Yotov or the Tsarina. “She calls herself Polite Citizen, but her name is —”

“Kiki Treasure. Yeah, we know her. Or we know of her,” I said, puffing out a sigh. Torina frowned. “Is that the one who stuck someone on the prow of her ship?

The one those two Hu’warde told us about?”

“One and the same. They all but declared her a psychopath.” I glanced at DeMont. “And this is who you want us to take you to?”

She shrugged again. “Considering some of the people I’ve dealt with—hell, some of the people on the contact list in my phone—what’s one more psychopath?”

26

IT GOT BETTER. DeMont not only knew Kiki Treasure, but had comm data that would allow her to make contact. She offered it to us, so I passed it over to Netty-P for her take on it. “It’s a valid twist-comm destination ID. It’s what the twist-comm system uses to find and put through a comm message to a particular ship or location,” she replied at once. I left Mavis with Miryam and Torina to see if she had anything else to offer us, and headed for the Fafnir. As I crossed the yard, wincing at the icy wind gusting out of the west, I pondered what to do with our asylum seeker. We couldn’t just leave her here with Miryam. The Equal Grasp may be willing to keep their hands off the farm to avoid antagonizing me any further—but that could very well change if they learned DeMont was here. She insisted that she’d covered her tracks well, the ability to slip into other identities apparently a beneficial thing given the type of work she did. Because she’d come clean that she was more than just an international trade consultant. She certainly did do that sort of work, matching and smoothing the way for foreign investors in new markets. But some of those investors were the shadiest ones—gray- and black-market arms dealers, smugglers of all types, scummy oligarchs looking for places to park and launder money, those sorts of scuzzy things. And some of those markets were in war zones and remote backwaters where the law was basically that of the jungle. If she’d been in known space, she’d have been right at home in the Stillness or the Arc of Vengeance. But she maintained that using her alternate identities, each of which came with their own passports and ID, she’d managed to reach Pony Hollow without being detected by the Equal Grasp. I glanced up at the hard, blue sky. For now, maybe. But if they really did want her dead, then once they realized they’d lost her, one of the first places they’d come looking was here. I boarded the Fafnir and settled into the cockpit while Netty-P put through the twist-comm call. As we waited for a response, I ran through a quick summary of things I had to do—besides figure out what to do with Mavis DeMont, that is. For one, there was still the matter of Julian Kroegkamp, the mercenary we’d picked up in Africa who was working in cahoots with the Equal Grasp. He was still being held off-world, but no trial date had yet been set because the Masters still hadn’t settled on the matter of jurisdiction. It had been weeks now, and despite the outward appearance of much politicking, nothing had really changed. I just needed one more Master to commit to the Guild having jurisdiction to push the case to trial. I thought I’d had Kistlin finally in my corner, after adjudicating the dreary succession case on Faalax, but he was still dithering. Which pissed me off. A lot. In its current form, the Guild seemed to be designed to not get things done. Sure, I got the idea of checks and balances and all that to avoid abuses of power. But when those checks and balances started to prevent anything from getting done—well, you definitely had a problem. Moreover, I sensed the slimy fingers of the True Direction, the secretive faction within the Guild that apparently wanted me gone, at work here. So not only was I up against bureaucratic inertia and a system tailor-made to be incredibly inefficient, but I was also sailing into some outright malfeasant headwinds. And speaking of the True Direction —

The opportunistic Gajur Peacemaker named Blustumol, and his Nesit Second, were still on ice in alternate detention facilities on Dregs. I couldn’t leave them there forever. It was probably worth a trip to visit Toba, their for-profit jailer, to see if they’d cracked and were willing to give up any information. And the list went on. There was still a missing twist-comm unit on Earth, there was following up on the attack on Fort Cantullin, there was the ongoing effort to set up a discreet little outpost on Shhh —

“Van, I have one Kiki Treasure, aka Polite Citizen, on the comm for you,” Netty-P cut in, truncating—thankfully—my thoughts, which had been starting to race. “Put her on, please.”

The display lit with the image of a woman who could have been an older version of the DC Comics character Harley Quinn. Her face lit with a bright, broad grin. “Master Clive Van Able Tudor the Third, it is you!

Now, how did you get this number?” Her expression went exaggeratedly tough. “Did you break some thug?

Work ’im over til he cracked?” She mimed punching someone. I smiled. “Well, aren’t you all colorful and such. Tell me, impale anyone on the prow of your spaceship lately?”

“Oh, you heard about that?

Oh, pfft—that was just a big misunderstanding.”

“Uh-huh. One hell of a misunderstanding if it ended up with someone becoming your hood ornament. Around these parts, we frown on that sort of thing. It’s called—oh, what’s that word again?

Oh, yeah”—I flattened my expression at her—“murder.’

Still grinning, she shrugged. “Or a casualty of war. I find that sidesteps that whole messy murder thing quite nicely.”

“It might, if you were, you know, actually a party that could legitimately engage in armed conflict as it’s recognized under interstellar law. And if you could therefore constitute a legal combatant. And if you hadn’t deliberately killed one of your own subordinates and trussed them up on the front of your ship, which would still be murder.”

She cocked her head at me. “Now did you just call me up to lecture me on the errors of my ways, or is there some point to this?”

I shrugged. “I’m honestly not sure. I got your twist-comm data from a very nice lady named Mavis DeMont here on Earth. Now, to be blunt, I find you Ferals and your whole edgy and dangerous shtick to be rather tedious, and I have better things to do with my time. But when it involves Earth, my ears tend to prick up and take an interest. So tell me, Polite Citizen, what is your interest in Earth?”

I was surprised when Treasure’s face turned a shade of serious at the mention of Mavis DeMont. “Is Mavis alright?”

“She is. She’s here at my farm in Iowa—which is on Earth, in case you weren’t aware —”

“I know where Iowa is, and where your farm is, and lots of other things about you, Van—I can call you Van, can’t I?”

I shrugged again. “It’s my name.”

“So, what—you’ve got Mavis locked up?” she asked, her look turning genuinely hard, her tone menacing. Which was interesting, but I shook my head. “No. As a matter of fact, she came to me, seeking asylum. She believes the Equal Grasp has decided to turn on her and that her life is now in danger as a result.”

Treasure’s hard look turned wary. “She believes that, huh?

But you don’t?”

“I don’t know what to believe. For now, though, I’m treating her as being on the up-and-up. Which brings me back to that point we discussed. You obviously have an interest in both Mavis and Earth. Why?”

Treasure maintained that wary look for a moment, studying me with it. Finally, she leaned into the image. “Van, you have a reputation for being a straight shooter. Personally, I don’t get it, but if it works for you, hey, who am I to judge. Anyway, if I were to offer to meet with you, in person, under a flag of truce, would you honor it?”

It was my turn to give a wary look. “I might. It depends on why. Why should we meet?”

“Because I can give you… lots. Lots and lots. Lots on the Equal Grasp, lots on the True Direction, and lots on the Tsarina, who’s behind a whole bunch of it. But I’ll only do it if you grant me immunity to all of my past…

um, indiscretions, and it's under a strict flag of truce. Our meeting.”

I sat back and frowned at the display. I had no particular reason to trust this woman. From what I’d heard of her, I would consider her a psychotic nutcase who kills members of her own crew and displays them like trophies as a sort of discipline, and she apparently hated the Tsarina as a rival for power in the GKU. The former was definitely a problem. The latter was something that could be useful—but could also help said psychotic nutcase consolidate her grip on more of the GKU —

I looked back at the display. “I’ll call you again shortly. I have a bit of due diligence to do.”

She bristled but subsided with visible effort. “Fine. You do your due diligence,” she said, and signed off. “Van, you’re not really going to offer her blanket immunity to all of her past crimes, are you?” Netty-P asked me. I shrugged. “Depends what those past crimes are. One murder, it seems, by her own admission. I’d like to find out what other skeletons are chilling in her closet before I decide anything—and I know someone who might have the skeleton key. My dear, please get my mother on the comm.”

I SPOKE TO MY MOTHER, made another couple of calls, then told Netty-P to contact Kiki Treasure again. Torina showed up in the midst of it all. “Just thought I’d see what was going on.”

“I’ve been chatting with some scum and villainy about one Kiki Treasure,” I said, then explained the rest. Torina gave me a cautious look when I was done. “You sure about this, Van?

It sounds pretty damned risky.”

“Sure?

Oh hell no. Sure is a luxury I’ve long given up on enjoying, along with the young man’s certainty he’s going to live forever and the youthful ability to make love more than once or twice before falling into a deep sleep.”

She smirked at me. “Twice?

Since when?”

“Do you two mind?” Netty-P put in. “I’m right here.”

Torina laughed and left, and Kiki Treasure came back on the comm. “I’ve done some homework, Kiki,” I said. “And while you’re hardly an angel, I don’t see anything in Guild records that would preclude granting you a qualified immunity from past crimes.”

“Qualified how, exactly?”

“That something heinous doesn’t turn up after I’ve made the offer—

essentially, anything involving serious, lasting harm or death to other sapient beings in known space. So if we suddenly turn up some new murders, a bit of genocide, that sort of thing, and it occurred inside Guild jurisdiction, the deal is off. So if there’s anything we should know that

might throw our burgeoning relationship into chaos at an inopportune moment, now is the time to come clean.”

She gave me that Harley Quinn grin and shrugged. “Nope. See, it’s never been necessary to actually do all the bad stuff. People just have to think I’m a bad, bad girl. Reputation goes a long way. And I’m really, really good at spreading rumors about myself.”

“Uh-huh. The other qualifier is a bit of a no-brainer. You have to actually have useful information for me. If it turns out you knowing lots of stuff about the Tsarina and the Equal Grasp and the like is just more…

reputation, without substance, then we have no deal.”

“Oh, I got lots. Tell you what—I’ll even give you a freebie.” She reached offscreen and did something. “I’m sending you a set of coordinates, a very particular location. It’s a rogue planet, one of those crazy worlds that’s off on its own, got kicked out of its star system —”

“I know what a rogue planet is, thanks. What’s so special about this one?”

She turned back to me, her eyes shining. “It’s a base, one belonging to my dear old friend the Tsarina.”

KIKI TREASURE AGREED to meet with us at Fort Cantullin. She would come in her ship alone, would use no active scanners, and would have her weapons powered down and stowed. I considered bringing the Iowa back from Shhh, where she was still standing vigil over the Creels and the others we had there building our outpost, but decided against it. Instead, Icky called up her father, Urnak. His Nemesis was almost as potent a warship as the Iowa. I also called for our freighter-converted-to-carrier, which we’d renamed the Unobtrusive—a bit of a tongue-in-cheek reference to her concealed nature. She carried her full complement of four up-gunned and upgraded workboats, which, in the hands of their Conoku crews, made damned good ersatz fighters—fast, nimble, and hard-hitting. In the meantime, I wanted to check on Treasure’s claim that the remote, wayward rogue planet was, in fact, the Tsarina’s base of operations. At my mother’s suggestion, I called up Petyr Groshenko. The Tsarina had apparently been a thorn in his side for a long time, and not just out in

known space. When she’d been known as Ekaterina Andreev, or simply Kat, she was a fierce rival of his in the shadowy, overlapping, and, it seemed, exceedingly dog-eat-dog world of the KGB, Spetsnaz, and other Russian covert agencies. Fierce rival had apparently meant she’d made at least a couple of attempts on his life, so there was definitely no love lost between them. “Petyr, I don’t want you to chase after her yourself,” I said. “She has a ship with a combi-drive. When the time comes, the Fafnir needs to be part of the battle.”

He gave me a tired smile. His whole demeanor seemed a little…

shopworn. I wondered if the degenerative disease that had made him retire from the Guild, the one he’d managed to put into remission, was starting to flare up again. “Trust me, Van, I have no intention of flinging myself headlong after that miserable bitch. We recently acquired a ship, the Prowler, that I’m going to send out there. She’s got the scanner cross-section of a grain of dust, and her own scanners are—and I mean this—state-of-the-art, for a sort of art that most definitely is not in the showrooms yet. She’s an ISTAR ship

—intelligence, surveillance —”

“Target acquisition and reconnaissance, yeah. I remember the acronym from my army days.”

“Yeah. Anyway, I’m going to send the Prowler out there for a peek. If Kat—that is, the Tsarina—is there, we’ll know it and keep eyes on her while we figure out how to proceed.” His face hardened. “That said, though, I do want to be there when we take her down, Van.”

“You can count on it, Petyr.”

He gave me a nod, then signed off. I made my way back to the house. I was surprised that the light was failing, dusk starting to tinge the eastern sky. I hadn’t realized I’d been aboard the Fafnir that long. Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess. Mavis was still sitting at the kitchen table, still cradling a coffee mug in her hands. For all I knew, she might not have even moved in the intervening hours. She, Miryam, and Torina looked at me expectantly. “Mavis, we’re heading off-world, and you’re coming with us. For now, it’s the only way I can guarantee your safety. Miryam, I think you should come along, too, or else take one of those vacations of yours. I really don’t want to leave anyone around the farmhouse. And I don’t intend to keep its

emptiness a secret, either.” I glanced around at my home—the place where I’d grown up, and then grown up again, albeit in a very different way, that rainy night I’d found a remote in my desk drawer, and then a starship in my backyard. That seemed so long ago now. Longer ago, even, than things I knew were older, things from my teenage years. That was weird—but probably not surprising. “The best way to keep this old farm in one piece is, I think, to make it as uninteresting as possible,” I said, patting the wall beside the refrigerator. “And that means leaving it empty.”

“Much as I love you guys, if it’s a choice between bunking down on the Fafnir and spending a few weeks in Japan, I think I’ll risk the earthquakes and tsunamis and things, thanks,” Miryam said. I raised an eyebrow at her. “Japan?”

She shrugged. “I’ve always wanted to go there, tour Kyoto, some of the old castles.” Her eyes twinkled. “I also know there’s a few onsen, hot springs, where everyone bathes in the nude. Maybe I’ll get lucky and go for a dip while Brad Pitt’s there. Although I’d settle for a reasonable facsimile.”

Mavis flashed a coy smile. “I’ll give you a few places to check out that

—I think you’ll enjoy them, let’s put it that way. Oh, and I can hook you up with cheap hotels, too.”

Miryam returned an appreciative nod. “You’re on. And in the spirit of our hairiest crew member, we won’t wear pants.”

Mavis’s brow shot skyward. “Now it’s a party.”

I CLOSED the door to the farmhouse, then tugged on it, making sure it was locked. Clinton Barnes, the County Sheriff, said he’d keep an eye on the place, which was now closed up and winterized. I wasn’t sure when we’d be back, and I didn’t want to come home to something like a pipe that had frozen and burst. I’d also put in a call to Loren Frierbach to let her know I’d be away for an extended period and the farm would be empty. I did that over an open phone line, hoping that whoever might be listening in got the message loud and clear. I also suggested she maintain surveillance on the place anyway, since it might still attract attention in our absence. She

agreed, meaning that profoundly bored drone operator wasn’t going to catch a break. “So where, exactly, are we going?

Other than”—Mavis gestured up at the sky as we crossed the yard to the barn—“that way?”

“To orbit, to meet with… people, for lack of a better term, from the Equal Grasp.”

“Do you know where Pluto is?”

“The planet?”

“Not the dog.”

“We’re going to Pluto?”

I smiled as we entered the barn. The Fafnir gleamed at us in all her glory, under the bright, white lights. The airlock stood open. Icky was fussing with one of the landing struts. “Past Pluto, actually. We’ve got a base out there, on an icy rock called Orcus. We’re going to be meeting with Kiki Treasure.”

I stopped at the airlock. “And then you, and she, are going to spill everything you know about The Equal Grasp, its operations on Earth, your contacts in it—everything.”

Mavis gave the Fafnir a nervous glance. “I guess that’s what I signed up for, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.” I gestured into the airlock. “After you.”

I called Icky aboard, then we sealed up and lifted, to meet and retrieve the Frankie in orbit. From there, we were off to Cantullin Station. I looked down at the farm as it was dwindling beneath. Lit only by a single light on the house, and another on the barn, it looked small and sad and alone amid the sprawl of nighttime Iowa. And then the two tiny points of light vanished, swallowed by clouds. I pulled my gaze up and put it forward, on the way ahead. Because that’s where the danger was. 27

ONCE WE WERE UNDERWAY, passing the Moon with the Earth in our wake, I confirmed with Netty-P that the scans were clear, then headed for my cabin for a long, relaxing snooze. At least, that’s how it played out in my imagination. In reality, I was going to get caught up—or maybe just make myself a little less behind—on paperwork. I left Mavis in the cockpit to enjoy a view I’d long since stopped even really seeing, with Torina and Icky to answer her questions. She was sharp and inquisitive, a few of her questions obviously slanted toward thoughts about how she might be able make a name for herself and earn some money out among the stars. “So if you want to move a cargo from one—place, planet, whatever—to another, are there import-export procedures?

What are they?” she asked as I headed aft. Torina deftly punted that one to Perry. “Friend Bird, you’re our expert in that sort of thing. How about you handle this one?”

Perry replied enthusiastically. “Okay, so the foundation documents for interstellar trade are the three Commerce Conventions. The first of these deals with matters of carriage —”

I smiled as his voice faded behind me. Perry could, and would, talk forever as long as people were willing to listen to him. I knew he had the good sense to not tread into any subject matter that might be classified or sensitive, but he could still probably talk continuously for most of the trip. Holding court, as it were, was the very definition of Perry’s idea of a good time. As I entered my cabin, though, I was intercepted by Funboy. “Van, may I have a moment of your time?”

“Sure,” I replied, gesturing for him to follow me in. I closed the door and sat at my desk, then gestured to the other chair I’d managed to shoehorn in beside the desk, but he shook his head gravely. “This will not take long. Van, it is with regret that I wish to tender my resignation from your crew. This is no reflection on you or the others. Rather, I do not believe that I can effectively perform my duties, certainly not to the standard this ship and crew deserve.”

I blinked in surprise—a little, anyway, because I wasn’t really that surprised at all. I’d been waiting for Funboy to finally let some sort of reaction to what had happened to Gabby break through his dour shell. And here it was. I crossed my arms. I wanted to hear it from him. “Why?

What makes you think your performance has fallen off?”

“During the entire time that Rab and I were patrolling the air-space above the farm in the Frankie, I was… distracted. I found that I could not concentrate on the task at hand. My situational awareness was less than acceptable, considerably so.” He gave a slow shrug. “Had there been a need for quick action in response to, say, an attack, I likely would have been more of a liability than an asset. Accordingly, I am not long fit to serve on this ship.”

“You were distracted by thoughts of Gabby.”

He’d been looking into a point in space. Now, he gave me a brief, hard glance, then looked away again. “I fail to see why the source of my distraction matters —”

“If this was a battleship, Funboy, with a strict military command structure and dozens of crew, you’d be right. The details of your personal issues wouldn’t mean much to me as the captain. They couldn’t. I couldn’t possibly be that involved in each of my crew, so my overriding concern would simply be your job performance.”

I shrugged back at him. “But this is the Fafnir. We have only nine souls on board—ten, if you count Waldo, although he’s really more equipment than soul. And we don’t have a rigid military hierarchy. We’re a—a family. So yeah, you’re damned right the source of your distraction matters to me. I

care about you, Funboy, because you’re my friend—and, yeah, a member of that family.”

Funboy’s gaze flicked back to me—and then he did something as remarkable as anything I’d seen in known space. He burst into tears. His face crumpled, and then he crumpled, kind of folding forward and shuddering with wracking sobs. A stray flicker of thought—it turns out Surtsi cry like humans—but I had already reached out to him, pulled him against me, and wrapped my arms around him. It didn’t even occur to me to hesitate. This was another being in pain, someone I cared about. I held him, and kept holding him, and would keep holding him until he didn’t need me to hold him anymore. Which was a while. A part of me had always believed that a good part of Funboy was a façade that his gloomy exterior concealed— hell, probably a gloomy interior, but it wasn’t all charmless gray. There were genuine feelings in there, but for reasons both cultural and personal, Funboy—

Cheerful Enthusiast—kept them carefully locked away behind a wall made of frowns and Oh dears. But the wall was broken, at least for the moment, because Funboy hugged me right back. He stayed like that, sobbing softly and shaking as we embraced, for a while. Finally, he pulled away. He tried to speak but couldn’t push out more than a word or two at a time. I shook my head at him and gently pushed him into the other seat, then waited for him to recompose himself. I looked for a tissue, but it seemed that Surtsi did not produce tears when they cried. He finally nodded. “I am… once again in reasonable control of my emotions.” He looked down at the deck. “Van, I don’t know what to say. How to even begin to apologize for that shameful, shameful display —”

“From my perspective, Funboy, you have absolutely nothing to apologize for. Nothing. Now, I realize that showing such open emotion might be an issue for you, as a Surtsi, and that’s fine—it’s not my place to judge that. But as far as I’m concerned, such a display, as you call it, is just part of being a living, thinking, feeling person.” I touched his arm, and he looked at me. “But if it would make you feel better, I’m fully prepared to say it never happened. That’s entirely up to you. I will mention something I’ve learned, and you may choose to find this useful. It’s this—if you don’t

let your emotions out, then your emotions will come out when they want to, and not according to you.”

He looked at me for a moment, then sighed and looked away. “I appreciate that. And as far as anyone outside this compartment is concerned, I… would prefer that, yes. It would be much easier.” He looked at me again. “But I am… prepared to acknowledge to you, Van, that it did indeed happen. And to further stipulate that… I am glad you were there for me.”

“We have to be here for each other, Funboy. There’s been more than a few times I’ve huddled in this cabin, or somewhere private, and leaned hard on Torina or Perry, believe me.” I offered a smile meant to be reassuring. “So, yeah, I don’t really like putting on big, open displays of emotion, either. But it’s part of being an emotional being.”

“I have seen you obviously angry and upset many times, Van. I don’t believe that you are as discreet about it as you may think yourself to be. And I must admit that I have found it rather… unseemly.”

My smile turned wry. “Ah. Well, thanks for telling me.”

He blinked at me. “Have I offended you?

Because, if so —”

I laughed. “No, no, not at all. And you’re right—I probably am freer with my emotions than I like to think I am. I mean, I think I’m cool and collected —”

“You’re really not.”

I laughed again. Funboy shook his head. “We Surtsi have a complex relationship with our emotions. We do not seek to deny them, as much as we prefer to assume the worst about most things as a means of managing them.”

“Really?

I hadn’t noticed.”

“That was sarcasm, yes?”

“Yes, yes it was.”

“But after all of this is said, I still believe that my resignation is in the best interest of the crew.”

I sat back, sighed, and gave him a thoughtful look. “For the record, I don’t.”

“Van, I appreciate your attempt at loyalty based on friendship —”

“It’s not just that. Funboy, you were a skilled undercover operative, which is no mean feat. That required you to do your job regardless of your

feelings, right?

Because you couldn’t afford to let your persona, whatever it was for that op, to slip, not even a little.”

“That is… true, but —”

“But?”

He looked away again. “Love is new to me. It is not an emotion I am used to handling. The potential loss of Gabby is proving… very difficult to manage.”

I cocked my head, considering, then decided to try an angle I’d likely never try with anyone else. “You were going to lose her eventually.”

He looked back at me, genuinely surprised. I nodded. “Sorry, my dour friend, but you are both mortal beings. One of you is almost certainly going to finally die before the other.”

“That is true.”

“It is. So all you can do—all any of us can do—is just enjoy the time we have together. And when that time ends, well, then you have the memories of that time together. Now, I know that doesn’t necessarily help your present situation regarding Gabby, but if the worst happens —”

“I shall cherish the memories of our time together, brief as it was.”

“It’s all you can do. It’s all we, any of us, can do.”

“Have you contemplated the same reality regarding Torina?”

“Every single day. That’s why I try to make every single day with her the best one so far.”

Funboy stared at the deck for a while. And then he stood and faced me. “Van, I believe you have a component of Surtsi in you. You have crafted a response that, while not allaying my anxiety and sadness, allows me to better manage both. I would like to withdraw my intent to resign, if you will allow me.”

“I never accepted it in the first place, Funboy.”

He nodded, turned away, then turned back —

And leaned in to hug me again. It was quick, long enough for him to say, “Thank you.”

He went to the door and opened it, to find Torina outside. She blinked. “Oh, I’m sorry. I was just coming to get Van to see if he can take over the cockpit for a while. I’m… Perry’d out.”

Funboy looked up at her gravely. “Torina, you must cherish this man who is your husband. He has skillfully woven an argument that makes me much better able to deal with my anguish regarding Gabby. He pointed out

that eventually, we will all die anyway,” he said, then walked away—

whistling. She stared at him going, then turned back to me. “You— what?”

I spread my arms. “What can I say?

Apparently, I’ve got a little Surtsi in me.”

WE ARRIVED at Cantullin Station to find Kiki Treasure already there. She’d come in a single ship, her scanners in passive mode and her weapons stowed, just as I’d stipulated. And she’d waited for our arrival at a respectful distance after identifying herself. We then convened on Cantullin Station itself and spent the better part of the next day talking with her and Mavis DeMont. Between them, they provided some fantastic intelligence on the Equal Grasp, the True Direction and the Ferals generally. The Equal Grasp, it turned out, had found limited traction in the US government. This was, according to Mavis, partly because the US government was, true to form, focused pretty inwardly on its own political squabbles and machinations and didn’t have a single, easy point of entry for someone seeking to influence high-level policy. I got that. A lobbyist for, say, the coal industry is going to put time, effort, and resources into influencing policies relating to coal and isn’t going to have much interest in, say, policies relating to the sugar industry or trade and political relations with Scandinavian countries—

again, except insofar as they involved coal. The Equal Grasp didn’t have the time or interest in chasing individual issues like that, so they’d shifted their attention to more autocratic regimes

—places where only one person, or a small group of people, called all the shots. And, according to Mavis, they were making and expanding their influence in those sorts of states at an alarming rate. It was definitely something we were going to have to figure out how to address. But Mavis had some good news. She wasn’t the only one the Equal Grasp had pissed off. She had names of a dozen people, all well-connected and all exploited by the Equal Grasp and then cast aside when they were no longer perceived to be useful. Most of them, like Mavis, were now laying low, in fear for their lives. A small group of disaffected people might not

sound like much, but Mavis assured me that these people knew names, dates, places, activities—everything we’d need to start crafting some countermeasures. So it was definitely a start. As for Kiki, she was able to give me some insight into the True Direction. Frankly, she had a lot more attitude about it than I liked—a Brit might have said she was all “mouth and trousers.” A Texan might say she was “all hat, no cattle.” I thought she liked playing up her bad-girl, loose-cannon image a little too much, and I quickly found it tiresome. But she did have some good, solid leads regarding the True Direction sprinkled among the colorful braggadocio, which Perry carefully noted. It gave us a number of things to follow up on in the GKU, but also in the Guild. The Guild. Yeah, that was a bigger revelation than I’d expected or liked. It turned out that Casaril, the Nesit protégé of Yotov, was a far bigger threat than I’d realized. Treasure revealed that Yotov was still in play, at large somewhere out in known space and pulling Casaril’s strings. It meant an old villain had reentered the game, but her piece was hidden, and she had a score to settle. “I think old Yotov is the real driving force between this whole True Direction thing,” Treasure said. “She created a network of minions in the Guild specifically against the day she got ousted. Now, she’s using them from somewhere outside. She’s decided she’s going to run the Guild—and then sell her influence to the highest bidder. The Stillness wants to make sure there are no Peacemakers around some planet while they’re being bad guys there?

She’ll sell them that. The Arc of Vengeance wants some evidence to go missing?

She’ll sell them that, too.”

I forced myself to keep a bland look on my face. This was far worse than I’d thought it was going to be. So not only did I now have to worry about the Equal Grasp turning autocrats on Earth into their little puppets, but I also had to worry about Yotov doing the same to Peacemakers—and maybe even Masters. But it didn’t end there, because we now came to the matter of the Tsarina. “She’s shaping up to be Yotov’s military arm,” Kiki claimed. “She and Yotov ended up being thick as thieves, probably because they both hated Groshenko.”

She leaned toward me over the table in the galley, which we were using as a conference room. “That’s why that has to be your first move, Master

Tudor—taking out the Tsarina. You can’t let her keep accumulating power, because it’s going to be Yotov wielding it.”

Torina gave her a thin, hard smile. “That also puts you in a much better position to take over running a big chunk of the Ferals.”

Kiki grinned back at her and shrugged. “A happy coincidence. But so what?

Once your dear old mom Jocelyn decided to pack it in and turn all honest and noble and shit, someone had to take charge. The Tsarina thinks it should be her. I happen to disagree. So, enemy of my enemy and all that, am I right?” she finished brightly. I frowned at her, mainly because she had a point. If what she was saying was true—and I definitely wanted some corroboration, at least a second opinion, probably from Groshenko and maybe from Alic—then taking out the Tsarina was very much a priority. If Yotov was really behind this, then the last thing we could afford was to let her build up her own private army on top of everything else. And, sure, it might catapult Kiki into leadership of much of what remained of the Ferals. But if it was a choice between her and the Tsarina—well, so far, Kiki had dealt straight with me. I saw Torina watching me, so I lifted my shoulders and said the only thing that came to mind. “The devil you know.”

28

GROSHENKO’S STEALTHY SPY SHIP, the Prowler, confirmed that the Tsarina was indeed using the rogue planet as base of operations. There was a large ship, a class 18 bulk carrier, in orbit, probably repurposed as a sort of mobile logistics and maintenance depot, served by a couple of small, fast freighters to bring in supplies. The Prowler otherwise identified ten more ships, varying from two menacing, up-gunned class 14s, to a motley collection of more ramshackle vessels ranging from class 6 to class 11.

Netty-P confirmed that one of the class 14s was the Tsarina’s ship, the one we knew to be equipped with a combi-drive. From comms traffic intercepted by the Prowler, we’d learned she was named the Afanasyev. I had to raise an eyebrow at Groshenko over the comm. “I’m assuming that name is significant —”

Groshenko nodded. “During the Battle of Stalingrad in World War Two, there was a Soviet strongpoint that came to be known as Pavlov’s House, after the Sergeant who was ordered to occupy it with his soldiers. They were besieged by the Nazis for most of the battle and pounded by repeated artillery strikes, the house basically reduced to ruins—but they held out and kept defending their position, then joined in the counteroffensive once the Nazi attack on the city was finally broken. History recounts that they killed hundreds of their enemies but lost only three soldiers themselves. And although it was forever known as Pavlov’s House, the leader of the defense for most of the siege was a young Lieutenant named Ivan Afanasyev.”

“So a great hero of the Soviet Union, then.”

“Very much so,” Groshenko agreed. “Now, there’s no doubt been some embellishment of the story—one thing my people are very good at is portraying themselves gloriously,” he said, giving another tired smile. I wanted to ask him if he was okay, but with Kiki listening in, I didn’t want to get into it. From his reaction when he’d seen her in the comm call, he obviously knew her and wasn’t exactly a fan. His willingness to entertain working with her at all probably came from the fact she was the Tsarina’s bitter foe, and he hated her even more. “Okay, so Netty-P has run the numbers, and, given the absence of a star, we can twist in almost right on top of them,” I said. “The logical approach is to do just that—strike without warning and disable or destroy as many of the Tsarina’s ships as we can.” I grimaced. “The only part I don’t like is not offering them a chance to surrender first.”

“Hah!” Kiki shook her head. “Surrender?

Oh, you’re adorable, Van. Ferals don’t surrender—not unless you put them into a position where it’s that, or their precious skins. Just ask Jocelyn—am I right, my dear?”

My mother, also on the call, gave a sour look. “As much as I hate agreeing with Kiki, she’s right. The whole point of the Ferals was a refusal to give in to the way the GKU had evolved. We believed—and they, the ones still in the business like Kiki and the Tsarina, still do believe, that the GKU was meant to be the preeminent power in known space. Not the Eridani, not the Ceti, not the League, and certainly not the Guild. If you want the Tsarina to surrender, you’re going to have to fight her into a position where she’s got no other choice.”

I gave a resigned sigh. I didn’t like it—ambushing and killing people without giving them an opportunity to lay down their arms peacefully simply rubbed me the wrong way. But the reality was that I kept running into opponents who didn’t work like that. The Sorcerers, the Tenants, the Kroegkamp, now the Tsarina, none of them asked for or gave quarter. The dreary fact was that if I sent a surrender demand to the Tsarina, it would just be a signal for her to power up her weapons and get ready for battle. Netty-P cut into my somber reverie. “Van, I’ve been looking over the data Groshenko sent. Emissions signatures from four of the Tsarina’s ships are a dead ringer for four we’ve encountered before. Remember the pirates who attacked the two bulk water carriers bound for Reticulum?

The ones we came to assume were Ferals?”

I nodded. I did, because that incident had led to the ambush and death of a young, overly enthusiastic Peacemaker named Koltix. “Those ships are one and the same?”

“They are. Confidence level in the match for all four exceeds ninety-five percent, which is, for all practical purposes, certainty,” she said. I nodded again. “Okay, considering those same scumbags are implicated in the death of a Peacemaker who they ambushed, I now feel a lot less bad about ambushing them.” I had a sudden, worrying thought, though, and turned to Kiki. “You don’t know anything about that, do you?”

“Hah!

That was the Tsarina’s op. She and I aren’t exactly into combining our forces. If I’d been there, we’d have been shooting alright—

but at the Tsarina’s gang, not Peacemakers,” Kiki said brightly. “So who’s Selcurr?” Perry asked. “His name came up during that whole sordid affair, but we were never able to run down who he was.”

“Selcurr is the Tsarina’s number two.” Kiki wrinkled her nose, as though smelling something bad. “Nasty piece of shit, too. Brash, loud, full of himself —”

Torina gave her a cool look. “So totally unlike anyone else in the Ferals,” she said drily. Kiki looked at her, laughed, and said, “Hah!

Good one, Missus Master Tudor!

The difference is, though, that I’m so damned charming about it!”

Torina’s eyes had hardened at the Missus Master Tudor thing, and I saw her body tense and shift like she was about to make things physical. I pointedly stepped between them. “You know, just because we’re allies of convenience doesn’t mean we have to like one another. But we do have to refrain from unduly antagonizing one another.” I narrowed my eyes at Kiki. “Let’s have nothing but civility from here on, at least until the real enemy, the Tsarina, is dealt with, hmm?”

Kiki sat up and threw me a salute. “Yes sir, Master Tudor.” She looked past me, at Torina. “Sorry for spouting off, Peacemaker Second Torina, ma’am. Sometimes my mouth gets ahead of what little good sense I’ve got.”

Torina relaxed. “Ain’t that the truth,” she muttered, but maintained a poisonous smile. I turned back to Groshenko. “Okay, Petyr, you’re the career soldier and tactical expert among us. What do you think?”

“The best plans are always the simple ones, with the fewest moving parts. So I agree, we rendezvous all our combat power, then twist as one in and immediately open fire. We destroy as much as we can, and then, once they’re on the ropes, we can start talking about surrendering. Anything else is going to lead to a protracted fight, which will probably just lead to even more casualties, and that includes among our own people.”

I nodded my agreement. There was a reason you always sought to attack your enemy with overwhelming force, and why you didn’t stop to treat your own casualties in a firefight. The best way to preserve life in the horrific shitshow that was war was to end it as quickly as possible. OUR OVERWHELMING FORCE was just that—a hastily assembled task force consisting of the Fafnir, Groshenko’s Poltava, and two more of his ships, class 10s, the Ugra River and the Molodi, both unsurprisingly named after great Russian victories over the Mongols and the Ottomans respectively. We also had the Iowa, pulled from watching over Shhh, with Icky’s father Urnak taking her place with his Nemesis, and our makeshift carrier the Unobtrusive. From the Guild, I was able to bring in Lunzy, Lucky, and K’losk, plus two more Peacemakers I didn’t know well, but for whom all three of them vouched. And then we had Kiki’s contingent. She brought her own ship, the Seething Smile—without its grisly hood ornament, I was glad to see—and three others, two class 11s and a class 13, all with that rough-around-the-edges Feral look. That gave us ten fighting ships total, plus another five we could consider fighters—the Frankie, and the four up-gunned workboats carried by the Unobtrusive, who could defend herself but wasn’t otherwise really a credible warship. My mother offered her own ship, the Retribution, and four more to the effort, but I had a private conversation with her and asked her to hold off and function as our reserve. For one, she could easily twist in to the battlespace if we needed her, since the no-twist zone around the rogue planet was so small. For another, I wasn’t one hundred percent convinced of Kiki Treasure’s reliability. “There’s still a small part of me that can’t let go of the idea that she might be in cahoots with the Tsarina, despite her insistence to the contrary. And even if she’s not, I wouldn’t put it past her to try something once we’ve defeated the Tsarina—like attempting to take out a Guild Master to further her cause among the remaining Ferals,” I said to my mother. She smiled back at me. “That’s some fine strategic thinking, Van—not to mention a pretty good understanding of the Feral mindset.”

I shrugged. “I just distrust everyone not a member of my crew or who’s stood with me in battle in the past. I seriously think that elusive thing driving the universe that we call dark energy is really just paranoia.”

My mother laughed and agreed to stand ready to twist in with her own squadron if and when we needed her. I made sure that everyone, and particularly Kiki, knew that my mother was standing by with a reserve I only described as “large.” And if that wasn’t enough to dissuade her from contemplating any shenanigans, I had another ace up my sleeve, one I kept from the entire task force as it was assembling at a numbered-only red dwarf star about four light-years and an easy twist away from the rogue planet with no name. About an hour before we launched, two sleek, dangerous-looking class 14s twisted in to join us. I welcomed them and introduced them to the rest of the task force. “I’m sure some of you will remember Schegith’s cousin, Glaffin. He’s helped us out a lot in the past,” I said, sharing a split screen with him on the task force’s comm screens. “This one is pleased and honored to contribute to this noble cause,”

Glaffin said. “His two ships are both dedicated warships, battlecruisers, veterans of the Battle of Null World and the fight against the Tenants. I’m sure we’re all glad to have their considerable firepower at our disposal. Okay, everyone, we launch in twenty minutes, as soon as we get the latest intel update from the Prowler,” I said, and signed off. Torina gave me a wry look. “Funny how you never mentioned the Schegith helping out in your mission briefing.”

I shrugged and smiled back at her. “Oops?”

“It’s almost as if you wanted to take somebody unawares with their participation—maybe make them think twice about any double-crosses,”

Perry said, then pretended to cough. It sounded an awful lot like Kiki Treasure. “Almost,” I said but turned serious. “The Schegith, the Iowa, and the Fafnir by themselves have her outgunned. Add on the fact I’ve got my mother on speed dial, and I hope it’s enough to keep her honest.”

THE PROWLER’S final report showed little change to the situation at the rogue planet, which had only a stellar catalog number, a lengthy one beginning with RPM for rogue planetary mass. Perry started calling it Revs, so that name stuck. “One of the supporting logistics ships has apparently twisted away, which is good—I’d rather not have them in the line of fire anyway, if we can help it. One of the other warships has also twisted away, which isn’t so good, but it’s one of the smallest, so—whatever, guess they got away. Otherwise, there’s only been a few minor and local and ship movements. So we are a go. We twist in one minute from the Fafnir’s mark,” I said, then closed the comm. I checked to make sure my prerecorded surrender broadcast was cued up and ready. I’d decided to transmit a surrender message even as we opened fire. I hoped that the combination of incoming fire and my demand to stand down would make at least some of the bad guys decide to pack it in and run up the white flag. It did, so I glanced around the cockpit for a last-minute crew check, having to turn in my seat to do so. The ship was rigged for battle, so she was depressurized. Everything looked good —

Except for Icky. She was staring rigidly straight ahead, a tight look on her face. I frowned at her. “Icky, you okay?

You look like—well —”

“Like you’re soiling yourself,” Torina said. “Sorry for being crass.”

Icky glared back at her. “I’m not!

No. I’m fine. I think I ate a little too much pre-battle meal.” She winced a little, then gave me a wobbly smile. “You know me, I don’t like to go to battle on an empty stomach.”

I frowned at her. “Okay—but if it gets worse, big girl, you sing out right away —”

“Yeah, Van, I’m fine. Let’s just go kick some bad guy ass.”

I turned back and checked the tactical overlay. The Frankie was onstation, about five hundred klicks to port, piloted by Rab and Perry. Funboy

was filling in for Rab as our backup on weapons, while Icky was ready to swing into damage-control mode. The rest of the task force was already arrayed for battle, every ship in its assigned place. Kiki’s flotilla was stationed on the extreme starboard flank of the formation. If I had to call my mother in because she tried something stupid, her ships would be immediately easy to find —

“Twisting now,” Netty-P said. With a familiar wave of gut-twisting disorientation, the stars abruptly changed. The ruddy glow of the red dwarf near which we’d marshaled our forces winked out and was replaced by nothing, no light at all. Revs was just a lonely, rocky planet a little larger than Mars, a desolate wanderer kicked out of its origin system by some unknown, ancient catastrophe. With no star nearby, we’d been plunged into the cold interstellar night. But there was no time to contemplate the existential implications of it all because the tactical overlay was quickly filling up with icons—blue ones popping up in rapid succession as each of our ships completed its twist, and red ones appearing as the scanners, ramped up to full-power fire-control mode, painted the enemy ships as targets. My surrender broadcast started to transmit, urgently and on repeat. Our ships immediately erupted with fire, pouring destructive energy at the Tsarina’s fleet. Everything was going just as planned —

Until it wasn’t, and things rapidly started going very wrong. 29

HALF of the Tsarina’s ships were immediately disabled by our sudden and unexpected onslaught. One of them exploded and vanished in a dazzling pulse of uncontained fusion plasma. That should have been enough to call the battle pretty much decided right there. That is, until three of our ships were wracked by explosions in rapid succession—Groshenko’s Poltava, one of the Schegith warships, and the Iowa. The Poltava lost her drive, while the Schegith and the Iowa suffered hull breaches and sporadic power losses across both ships. I cursed a blue streak. “Netty-P, where the hell is that fire coming?”

“It’s not incoming fire, Van. It’s mines. They’ve laid mines on the approaches to their anchorage”

That yanked at my gut. “Mines?

We’re in a minefield?”

“The ships off to port are. They’ve all started mine countermeasures. Here in the center, and off to starboard, seems clear. We got lucky and twisted in to a point inside the minefield.”

I cursed some more. Mine countermeasures meant the ships to port—

almost half of our combat power—would be focused on detecting mines and clearing them with whatever weapons would be most effective. It was demanding work, requiring a lot of deconfliction and coordination to ensure that ships didn’t inadvertently target each other, or trigger mines that might damage friendly ships in the process. They managed to keep up some fire on the Tsarina’s ships, which were now getting underway, but it was a fraction of their full firepower. “Why didn’t the Prowler detect the damned things?” Torina snapped. “The mines are pretty well-stealthed,” Netty-P replied. “Small, passive, inert until they detonate, and thermally at ambient temperature. The Prowler couldn’t detect them from where she was positioned, not without using active scanners.”

I allowed myself the luxury of a little more worry about the crews of the damaged ships—particularly the Conoku aboard the Iowa, and Groshenko aboard the Poltava. Then I heaved it all aside and placed my focus back on the immediate situation. The Poltava still had power but was dead in space. Betty, Netty-P’s counterpart aboard the Iowa, reported no casualties among the crew—

thankfully—but that severe damage to the power distribution system consequent to a massive hull breach had the crew scrambling to jury-rig repairs. The damaged Schegith ship reported that they were no longer combat-effective and twisted away. So not good, but not absolutely terrible —

Icky moaned. And then she howled like a feral beast. We all spun to her. Her face was a rictus of pain, with a healthy dose of rage. “Icky, what’s —?”

“PAIN. VAN IT IS PAIN OH STARS ABOVE THISSSSSS ISSS —”

I gaped at her, then immediately looked for battle damage near her station, a piece of shrapnel, maybe —

“Oh dear. This is unfortunate timing,” Funboy said, staring at the medical scanner he’d pulled out and was aiming at Icky. “Unfortunate timing?

For what—?” I started, but Torina got it before I did. “Icky, are you going into labor?” she asked. “Either that—OWWW!—or someone snuck a damned drive bell up into

—DAMMIT!—no man’s land when I wasn’t—SHIT—looking!”

I blinked. “Labor?

But—it hasn’t been even close to nine months —”

“Yeah, Van, because the way humans do—Oh, FOR—do everything is how we all freakin’ DO IT!”

Funboy turned to me. “I have done some research into Wu’tzur procreative physiology, against this very sort —”

“OH DAMMIT ALL TO HELL I —!”

“—of eventuality. Their species' gestation period is shorter than that of humans. This is still early, but not unusually —”

“Um, excuse me, but could you guys converse about this ANOTHER

DAMNED TIME!

I’M GONNA START EJECTING ESCAPE PODS

HERE!”

“Icky and I will have to retire to the galley and repressurize it. The table in there should be adequate for this purpose—of course, it must then be immediately replaced, given the obvious hygienic impact —”

“FUNBOY SHUT THE HELL UP AND HELP ME!”

I nodded at Funboy. “Both of you, go,” I said, then turned back to the tactical display. I again had to force my head back into the battle. The Tsarina’s surviving ships were putting up a spirited defense, maneuvering to get outside the gravitational effect of Revs, probably so they could twist and escape. I looked for one ship in particular, though. The Tsarina’s ship, equipped with a combi-drive, was a high priority target. It should have been disabled in our opening salvo, but I didn’t see it. And then I did, a red icon popping suddenly into existence, at nearly point-blank range. An instant later, alarms blared, announcing that we’d been lit up like a Christmas tree by fire-control scanners. SOMEHOW, we’d missed the damned thing, I thought, even as my body was doing its own thing and reacting. My time in space had given me muscle memory enough that I slammed the thruster controls, rotating the Fafnir to point her drive bell directly toward the Tsarina’s ship. The stern, with its thick rad shielding, was the toughest part of the ship, while also presenting a smaller target aspect. At the same time, I fired the glitter caster, which enveloped the Fafnir in a cloud of shimmering chaff. And that was all I managed before something whumped hard into the ship, shaking her down to her structural bones. More alarms blared, and the drive went offline. I swore and looked at the reactor status. It was still green. But the master warning panel glowed with DRIVE BELL INTEGRITY

COMPROMISED, FUSION DRIVE IN SAFE MODE. Something, a mass-

driver shot maybe, had cracked or blown a chunk out of the drive bell. Without it and the powerful magnetic field it produced to guide the fusion exhaust into a thrust plume, the drive would produce nothing but a cascade of uncontained plasma. Not only would it produce dramatically reduced power, but it also threatened damage to the ship itself. In other words, we were now as dead in space as the Poltava was. Torina hammered at the weapons controls and got off a few shots from the particle and plasma burst cannons, but the red icon vanished as suddenly as it appeared. “Netty-P, can you track her?” I asked. “Only very generally. She is using her combi-drive to head that way”—

a trajectory appeared on the tactical overlay—“and has, in fact, now returned to normal space.”

The red icon reappeared. This time, it popped up close to K’losk’s ship, fired and inflicted damage, and then vanished again. I pounded the armrest in frustration. I’d run through my whole repertoire of profanities and was now in repeat mode. The Tsarina’s ship was making full and skillful use of the combi-drive—disappearing, moving with an invisibility cloak, reappearing, shooting at one of our ships and inflicting punishing damage at whatever range they chose, disappearing again. And the only ships we had with combi-drives, the Iowa and the Fafnir, were both offline. The Iowa couldn’t keep things powered up long enough to stabilize the drive, while we couldn’t produce any thrust at all. The combi-drive was a fusion of the twist and normal-space drives, and with one of them not working—well, we had the combi- part, but not the drive part. Our ships tried to counter, to anticipate where the Tsarina’s ship would pop back into existence, but she was damn good. She only returned to normal space long enough to loose a shot or two, then vanished again. Our return fire just found empty space. Slowly, she was chipping away at us. Lunzy and Lucky both took hits. So did Kiki’s flotilla, and one of her ships actually exploded as her reactor blew. The Iowa took a few more wallops —

“Van, Icky and I are now unsuited—ah. Yes. Icky is particularly unsuited. That’s right. I am in full view of —”

“Sourpuss, just do WHATEVER the hell it is you do when—when you do this sort of thing!” Icky bellowed, making my helmet headset buzz. “Ah. Yes. I believe my role is to provide encouragement and to catch the offspring when they emerge.”

“You BELIEVE?

Haven’t you ever DONE this before?”

“I—no. Why would I?

My background is in immediate trauma care. I have not had occasion to participate in a birth during battle —”

“Guys, can you keep this off the comm, please?

We’ve got enough trouble on the go!” I snapped. “Yes. Please just ensure that this portion of the ship does not decompress. That would be… a problem.”

I blew out a breath. “We’ll do our best.”

Netty-P spoke up. “Van, I’ve analyzed the Tsarina’s movements. She is using the minefield to her advantage, using it to take refuge while preparing for her next attack. I believe that can help me predict —”

“Do it. Meanwhile, isn’t she going to run out of fuel soon?

Our combi-drive is a fuel hog.”

“Eventually, of course she will. But she is traveling only short distances, just a few light-seconds at a time, at most. Assuming she has the same fuel capacity we do, and that her drive performs to similar specs, she could continue doing this for at least another thirty to forty minutes and still have sufficient antimatter to twist away.”

I watched helplessly as she popped into existence yet again, this time pounding shots into the Ugra River, then vanishing again. At this rate, our task force wasn’t going to last half that long. We were losing this battle. A ship popped into existence just a few hundred klicks from the Fafnir. I spat another useless curse while hammering the thrusters to again try to rotate the ship stern-on, while Torina frantically tried to target it. But it wasn’t the Tsarina. It was Kiki Treasure. My heart met my toes. So this had just been a big setup after all. I’d been played, and played damned well —

“Hey, Master Van, you need a hand?” Kiki called over the comm. “Treasure, if you’re here to attack us, just do it —”

“What?

Attack you?

No!

I’m here to give you cover!

Looks like your drive is down, so I got your back!”

“You—really?”

“Yeah. Hell, Van, you’re the first person in a moon’s age who’s actually respected me enough to trust me. I may be a crazy asshole, but I got my soft

spots.”

“O—kay, then. Thanks, Kiki. That means a lot —”

“Van, Rab here. Perry’s got us tracking the Tsarina’s ship.” As she spoke, the Frankie flashed past ahead of us. “She’s making a run on Schegith’s cousin —”

“Who just twisted away,” Perry said. “And reappeared a few million klicks distant. Good one!

He dodged her attack nicely. Mind you, he can’t hit back at her, so… it’s something, I guess.”

“She’s back in the minefield,” Netty-P said. I nodded as the elusive red icon again appeared on the tactical overlay. I flung my attention back to the drive display. If only there was some workaround, some way of using the drive even with a damaged bell —

I turned and looked right into Icky’s empty station. Shit. If there was anyone who’d know, it was her. But she was kind of busy —

Screw it. I switched comm channels to the one Funboy and Icky were monitoring. “Icky, I know you’re kinda tied up —”

A wild howl was my answer. I pressed on regardless. “Is there any way we can get the drive back online with a broken bell?”

“Yeah—you can extend the primary magnetic field—propagate it out the—AW, SHIT!!”

“You may give birth at any time, Icky,” Funboy said. “Oh, really?

Is that PERMISSION, you miserable little piece of —!”

“Icky!” I snapped. “Please, we’re in a world of shit here.” I didn’t add, and so are you and your babies, because I didn’t have to. “Yeah. Extend, reshape the primary field—to channel and focus the drive plasma. It won’t give more than about twenty percent thrust, and the whole—OW CRAP!—drive would have to be—overhauled —”

“How?

How do we do it?”

“In engineering—reconfigure the field coils by cabling in—OH THAT

HURTS!!—uh—what was I saying—oh, yeah, cable in auxiliary power to boost the field, then realign —”

“We have to do this physically?

In engineering?”

“Yeah. Shit—sorry, Van —”

“That’s okay, Icky,” I said, before sinking back in my seat and closing the channel. There was no way to get to engineering without going through the galley, which was pressurized and couldn’t be depressurized, because

Icky obviously couldn’t get in a suit. We’d have to go outside. But even then, Icky had the expertise, not Torina or me. And I needed Netty-P here, operating the rest of the ship —

I banged the armrest again, swearing richly —

“Van, Rab. The Tsarina’s lining up again. I think she’s coming for the Fafnir.”

I glanced at the overlay. But I had nothing. No ideas. The best we could do was hope that between the Frankie, Kiki, and Torina, we could hold her off. And if not, that was it. “Van?”

It was Groshenko, but audio only. “Petyr, you’re alive —”

“Yes and no. Look—we don’t have time. My crew has abandoned ship. I’m going to stop the Tsarina, once and for all,” he said, sounding profoundly weary. But there was something else. A hard, resolute acceptance. “See your mother. She has something for you.”

“Petyr—”

“You sound just like Mark, you know that?

Just like him.”

It was all he said. “Petyr!”

Nothing. Torina pointed at the overlay. “Van,” she said, her voice quiet. The Tsarina’s icon winked out. So did the blue one marking the Poltava. A few seconds later, light so white it hurt flooded the Fafnir’s cockpit. IT LASTED AN INSTANT, then the canopy turned black. The scanners went dark as well as they saturated and their safeties tripped. A few seconds after that, the canopy cleared and the scanners rebooted. I watched intently as the overlay refilled with data —

But the Tsarina’s ship and the Poltava were both gone. “What… happened?”

“As near as I can tell, Groshenko twisted the Poltava directly into the Tsarina’s flight path, then used his twist drive to maintain a small amount of

spatial distortion. It was similar to how we affected the Tenants’ ability to control their human hosts with the Fafnir’s twist drive. The distortion must have been enough to disrupt the Tsarina’s combi-drive, with the result that her ship struck the Poltava at a relativistic velocity,” Netty-P replied. I blinked at her. She nodded her imager back at me. “I’m sorry, Van.”

I nodded back at her. I had nothing else. But the thunderous silence lasted only an instant. The comm suddenly exploded with noise—howls, raucous and wild. “Van, the crew complement of the Fafnir has just increased by two,”

Funboy said. I turned to Torina. She was crying behind her visor. I joined her, for the loss. For the joy. For all of it. EPILOGUE

THE TSARINA’S surviving ships surrendered to us almost immediately after the colossal explosion that claimed her and Groshenko. My mother arrived to take charge of them, while the rest of us prepared to limp back home. The Iowa was serviceable, with only a few minor injuries to her Conoku crew, thankfully. She needed repairs, though. And the Conoku who’d piloted our workboat fighters launched from the Unobtrusive had acquitted themselves particularly well, dishing out a lot of punishment and not taking a scratch to themselves or their boats in return. “Van, I’m sorry about Groshenko. He was good people,” Kiki said. I nodded. “Yes, he was.”

“Okay, so your mom and I have the situation here in hand. You go, take care of your people. And we’ll be seein’ you around.”

I signed off with her, then called up my mother. We only chatted briefly, long enough to work out the post-battle details, and for me to ask her about Groshenko’s parting words. “What did he mean, you have something for me?”

She held up a box, one obviously big enough to hold a liquor bottle. “He gave this to me. Said to give it to you when the time came. He wasn’t specific about that, but I guessed —”

“Yeah. I think he was sick again.”

She nodded. “I’ll send it over, and you can be on your way. And give Icky and her family my best wishes.”

“I will, Mom, thanks.”

“VAN, I’d like to introduce you to my son, Clivax, and my daughter, Torii,”

Icky said, giving me a tired smile. “Sorry they never asked permission to come aboard.”

I smiled back at her. “We’ll overlook it this time.”

They were suitably adorable, in their own particular Wu’tzur way—two squirming, mewling, occasionally howling and shrieking bundles of downy bluish hair over purple-pink skin. Eight tiny arms waved about, one of them grabbing and squeezing Torina’s offered finger in a diminutive hand. She winced. “Wow. That’s quite a grip,” she said, extricating her finger with some difficulty. “I’ve been feeding them. Tell me about it,” Icky shot back. “They’re beautiful, Icky. Congratulations,” I said. She nodded, but turned grave. “I heard about Groshenko. Damn.”

“Yeah. Damn is right.”

Icky rolled her head to look at Funboy. “And thanks, you. I could’ve done it without you—but I’m glad I didn’t have to.”

He nodded solemnly back at her. “It was my—alright, it really was not my pleasure. In fact, it was quite messy. But it was my honor and privilege to assist you.”

Icky went wide-eyed. “Oh!

Damn!

I have to let Pax know!

And my dad, let him know he’s —”

“A grandpa, yeah,” Rab said, smiling at her. “Don’t worry, I let him know when I was giving him a quick rundown on the damage to the Iowa, since we’re going to need his help to fix her. He’s going to call your husband.” He turned to me. “Van, I’d suggest we send Icky and her new family along with the Iowa to Shhh, to meet up with Urnak and pick up Paxomar on the way.”

I nodded. “Sounds like an excellent plan.”

Netty-P interrupted. “Van, B just showed up to assist with casualties. Your mother called her in. And she’s got news about Gabby.”

I tensed and looked at Funboy. His expression didn’t change. He just said, “Please share it.”

“She’s awake and recovering. It looks like she’s going to eventually be fine.”

Funboy nodded, then blinked around at us. “Please excuse what I am about to say,” he intoned, then slammed his fist up in the air and shouted, “YES!”

He then went serious again and lowered his fist. “I am… extremely gratified.”

WE RECOVERED THE FRANKIE AND, with it, Groshenko’s package. Rab offered it to me with gravitas and an, “I’m sorry, Van.”

“Same, boss,” Perry said. “Thanks, guys.” I turned to take in them and the rest of my crew. “I’m going to retire to my cabin for a bit. Icky, if you can talk Funboy through reconfiguring the drive so we can get the hell out of here —”

“Already on it, Van. You go—take whatever time you need.”

Torina took my hand. “It’s been one up and one down, over and over. Are you okay?”

I sighed. “I will be.”

I closed myself in my cabin and opened the package. Predictably, it contained a bottle of vodka, but it also contained a data module. I plugged it into my desk terminal, and it played its contents, a recorded message from Groshenko. “Well, Van, you shouldn’t be seeing this until I’m dead, so if I’m not, turn the damned thing off and wait until I am.” He smiled. It was a tired smile, very tired. “You won’t have to wait long if I’m not. The medical folks, B, they’ve done everything they can. Ah, hell.” He shrugged. “I knew it was only a stay of execution, not a commuted sentence. The grim reaper, he always wins in the end, yes?”

“Anyway, I just wanted to say that—well, I never had kids. I envied Mark for a lot of things, but that most of all. So, that stay of execution?

It was worth it, because I got to see you become the man you are. You finally made a Tudor a Master. To say I’m proud of you—yeah, it doesn’t even begin to capture how I feel.”

He leaned forward. “But this is really where the hard part starts. I’m not sure where the Guild’s going, Van, but I don’t think it’s anywhere good. It’s worth saving, though. Despite its warts and scars, it’s still a force for good. So—this is kind of heavy, I know, but it needs saving. And you’re the one to do it, I think. How, I don’t know. But you’re smart and strong, so if anyone can figure it out, you can.”

He sighed. “And that’s about enough of that. It’s time for me to go, to help you take down the Tsarina. I… don’t know.” He looked far away for a moment. “I think this will be my last battle, one way or another. So, when it’s done”—he looked back into the screen, at me—“the Poltava and the Prowler, they’re both yours, Van. I’ve done the necessary paperwork. It will be waiting for you on Anvil Dark. So will a list of contacts, people I think you’ll find useful. I hope these things, those ships—that they help you for whatever lays ahead. Because I think you’ll need them.”

He reached down and lifted a glass, but held it and stared into the image. “One last drink?”

I uncapped the vodka and lifted the bottle. “Here’s to living well, and to dying even better,” he said, grinning, then downed the glass. “Here’s to you, Uncle Petyr,” I whispered, and took a swig from the bottle.