Coera

Scene

Space wobbled. It was a beginning.

Spirit begat Mind, and Mind begat Form. Stars came first. Brilliant points of light and energy, radiant missionaries of creation - they nurtured the void, and in time, in patience, they bore fruit. Form, the artful expression of Mind, itself begat mind. Spirit rejoiced, and declared that it was a beginning, indeed.



The Universe was as stable and peaceful a place as it had been since the beginning, perhaps much more so than most times.

After the collapse of the Boundary, all of the prophecies had been proven true in one way or another. The finally balanced complexes of power had been more than upset; they had been broken. Thousands of species rejoiced; thousands ripped their hair in terror.

Man had overthrown the dominion of the Supremals wherever they had been interested enough to bother, and they'd escaped the temptation to replace them. In general, the children of Adam were more interested in commerce, invention, and discovery than slavery. Their empires did not need slaves to thrive. They needed only room.

Scene

Space wobbled. It was the preface of things to come, a transfer of energies and mass.

A blue and white dot danced in loops and swirls through the void, humming the music of the spheres. The ice planet basked as it rolled around its sun. Yellow light washed over the rippled surface of frozen oceans and refracted into rainbow compositions few eyes ever saw; they were the planet’s private joy. Ripe white clouds of every type and texture wandered the atmosphere, signs of a climate just rich enough to support a sparse native ecology. In one coastal basin on the southwestern arc of the planet’s smallest continent, a non-native ecology of metal and plastics and ceramics had sprung up almost overnight. The small mining colony of Chandier recorded its founding date with much celebration and all of the expected hooplah. The colony expanded, and various peripheral ecologies developed in its shadow.

Many thousands of miles above the surface, the sparkling green wink of the nav-beacon on the fixed-orbit station marked the passing of the seconds, days, and years with pleasant regularity.



Man had come to Chandier simply because it was in between here and there.



They didn't know and didn't care about her history. They didn't know of her allegiances in the Wars of Consumption, and of her Poetry denouncing her mortal foes. They didn't know of her retirement-in-exile, her sentence to bask, silent, in the love of her hearth star. Like most self-stilled Minds, she'd intended herself for life, and was seeped in her own life-blood: Water. For Water is the Active Humor of the Incarnate-Planet-Goddess; it is the manifestation of her gaia, and the cord-blood of the Life she sustains. But Chandier (and we must call her Chandier, for her true name has long since been lost) was unfortunate in the choice of her hearth star - whether through ill health or perhaps a disagreeable personality, the star had cooled and did not smile upon Chandier quite enough to keep her blood flowing. So, amidst the despairing dreams of a sleeping planet, all but the hardiest of her species succumbed to the ice.



Man returned to Chandier after their computers had thought about it for awhile and told them it was a likely source of Diatherine. There was, in fact, a particular intersection of crust plates and coastal cliffs where the probability warranted further research. There had been orbiters, landers, probes, drones, expeditions, and at last a contract and a mining colony. The computers had decided that there might be as much as three-tenths of a cubic meter of Diatherine, but probably no less than seventeen-hundredths. Any amount in between was a boon.

Diatherine was the most valuable substance Man desired, and it was also the most delicate. It would melt to simple sugars and water at temperatures low enough that the water would refreeze. This was particularly frustrating for Man, since they wanted to drive enough energy through each crystalcule to boil hydrogen. But those are the breaks.

Diatherine was the solution to the Extra-Boundary Problem. Man had all the energy and motivation they needed to move beyond the watchful eye of their own star, but their science had left them with the practical problem of communication. Their communication, you see, depended on the good nature of light. Light was very sensible, and would never break its own rules, so it took the time that it saw fit to deliver the messages entrusted to it. Light is very fast, and very reliable, but it will never travel faster than it ever did. And who wanted to travel years and years through the stars, if it meant a temporal exile from their kin? If one got as far as one light-year from their own Ohida (a trivial distance, where interstellar travel is concerned), they would have to wait two years to say 'Hoi hoi' and hear her cheery reply. Of course, the really interesting stars were well outside the Boundary, at least 100 light years away, so our stellanaut would have only a small chance of reaching his destination alive, even if he joined the Navy very young, and would have no chance to send his mother a post card at all!

But then the Theocrats of Ohida, the scientists, discovered diatherine. Diatherine is a supertight, molecular-scale crystal matrix compose of hydrocarbons suspended in hydrogen-oxide - "sugar-water" - and it was exclusively the result of concurrent extremely low temperatures and extremely high pressures acting on organic molecules. In other words, it was very uncommon. Due to its precarious melting point, it is not unlikely that most diatherine disappeared before any Man had a chance to discover it. And had he somehow stumbled upon it in a pristine condition, what is one ice crystal among billions.

Yes, Diatherine is slightly orange, but Man's eyes are not so clever.

I will leave it to you to uncover the turgid history surrounding the discovery of the molecule so we may return to a more general discussion of its properties.

Diatherine, you read is created from simple hydrocarbons and water crystals. Under the right conditions (extremely high pressure, extremely low temperature, yes) the hydrogens in the water are shed and replaced by the hydrogens in the sugars. The carbon chains are trapped between the oxygen pairs, and create a uniquely-stacked concatenated molecular crystal of high density. The density is so great that it defies understanding of gravitational forces, but it is quite stable at low temperatures. These molecules can be isolated, and if they exhibit sufficient concatenation. Due to the pressure of the density, if the technician can avoid collapsing the molecule into a microscopic black hole, the hydrogen atoms themselves will partially fracture. It is caledl a partial fracture because the the subatomic particles behave as if they have not, in fact, been separated, and the molecule will remain stable - in spite of any physical distance interjected between the fragments of the molecule!

What is the significance of this? Why, forces acting on any fragment of the molecule will resonate to the other fragments in real time. Inducing vibration - say the digitalized voice of our stellanaut - into the matrix of a molecule fragment at one of our interesting stars will immediately induce the same vibration into the molecule fragment in the receiver back on Ohida where the mother is proudly beaming.

Mankind, always ingenious and industrial, was able to parlay this advantage into the fields of circuitry, weaponry, and most importantly, transportation.

And Mankind, who could now both talk and move faster than light, found all the room in the Universe they could ever need.

Scene

Space wobbled, and an inertial bubble flashed out from the end of its diatherine ray. The bubble filled from the center with plasmatic energy, which arced and spat and popped and finally coalesced and produced a ship. The ship was sleek and fast - in form, it was a racing yacht, but it was not flashy, and not marked. Paired slip engines dominated its shape; they traded high operating costs for speed and no vapor trail.
The pilot had taken a great risk by carrying momentum into the bubble. The slip engines charged, launching the yacht through the decaying bubble as soon as a large enough hole appeared. Disaster was courted as the ship was deftly rolled through the unstable opening, and an engine nearly brushed against the shrinking remnants of the bubble.
A moment later, the bubble exploded.

“She was already out of the bubble, Sir. I’m still pinging her, but she’s almost out of range.”
“Damn her!” The captain squeezed the arms of her chair, and nearly floated out of it in her excitement. She reached behind her and strapped herself down.
Around the captain, above and below and to the sides, a crowded bridge crew held their collective breath. All eyes were turned to the main screen bowl that filled one wall of the room. A small yellow dot wandered toward the left on the screen. The dot was beeping, but it was growing fainter. Suddenly the dot turned red, and four angry arrows appeared around it. A steady voice at one of the terminals in the corner of the bridge declared, “Target lock.”
“Main guns!” The captain leaned forward in her chair, to the limits of her restraints. “Full engines forward, give the helm to Finder.”
From behind the captain, another voice - a strangely male voice - warned from the shadows: “This will be your last chance to capture her, Captain. We will not be able to spot her jump a second time.”
“Fire it all, girls! I want every tube empty before we lose the lock.” The captain turned over her shoulder to the shadow. “She won’t be jumping a second time.”

The unmarked yacht slipped through space, racing silently toward the dark side of Chandier’s planet. It angled slightly to face the distant winking green nav-beacon floating thousands of miles above the surface, and it accelerated. Almost out of sight behind it, the glowing gases of an exploded jump bubble were fading into a gentle halo.
Beyond that, and dwarfing the spot in its opening maw, was the angular hulk of a battleship. It was shaped like a giant wing, long and narrow to fit sideways through the more stable jump rings; it would never be able to navigate an atmosphere. The battleship was now in attack position, its glowing engines extended away from the weapon clusters bulging out above and below the long wing. A lump in the center of the wing was opening like a giant mouth, and its teeth - short-range fighters hanging like bats inside - began dropping away and lighting their engine.
All of this, too distant now from the escaping yacht to appear as more than colored lights against an inky backdrop, was lost as the weapon clusters blossomed in bright yellow and white.
Immediately, the yacht dropped into an evasive routine. It began to yaw, and the slip engines pushed it randomly off-course; it spun, and ancillary drives knocked it to the side. It tumbled erratically, away from its path toward the fixed-orbit station; where it had been, tracing rounds streaked by, lighting up the vacuum.
The yacht juked again, but the second volley of tracers was well-aimed. Two of the tracers buried themselves in the starboard engine, from which a thin mist of vapor began to seep, like blood in water. Then came the predators, torpedoes snaking out in every direction from the battleship. The yacht’s engines fired fully in hopes of a last, desperate escape, but it was too late: the torpedoes began striking the engine near the breach, and, rather than explode, they burst open on impact, spattering a thick, sticky liquid over the hull. Where it was spattered, the ceramic hull began to dissolve, and soon the starboard engine was riddled with holes.
Within moments, the ship was spinning out of control, accelerated by the still-working port engine. The ancillary thrusters fired in automatic stabilization patterns, but the ship was moving too quickly, and into the gravity well of the planet. Faster and faster it fell, until it disappeared into the swirling upper layers of white storm clouds.

Once again, the bridge aboard the battleship was silent, except for the muted notes of the control station monitors. Thirty or so breaths were cautiously held, while the captain floated toward main screen bowl, her restraints now abandoned. The red dot was frozen near one edge of the screen. A Gunner near the bottom of the room wavered, “98% chance of hit on that last salvo, sir. Likely main engine breach.”
The Captain’s eyes flicked from the Gunner back to the screen bowl as the red dot began to blink yellow. In the corner of the room, a dispassionate voice declared, “Losing ping.” The dot turned full yellow, then disappeared. The same Finder stated flatly, “She’s lost.”
“What!” The Captain twisted and kicked off the top of a harness post toward the Finder. She floated up behind her chair and stared over her shoulder at the screen. “She couldn’t have gone behind the planet that quickly.”
“No,” said the blank-faced woman, who did not look up from her monitor. “Into it. That blue line is the outline of a storm. She went right into the leading edge.”
The Captain turned back toward her previous perch, to the aide mounted behind it. “I want three squads of airships following behind the storm. As soon as it clears, we pounce.”
From behind the aide the Comm station blinked. The Comm officer raised her voice. “The Planet hails, Sir! They demand immediate cease and desist and return hail.”
In the shadows at the back of the room, the male voice said, “Your last chance..” the Captain squinted into the shadows, about to protest, but a door slid open and shut, and the shadowed figure was gone.
The yacht spun wildly through the streams of thick snow and heavy winds as it streaked toward the surface. The ceramic hull glowed faintly as an odd leading edge caught the atmosphere. There was a flash of light, and the main engines, long since a hindrance, were blasted free, leaving nubby mounting fins. Still the minor thrusters were firing, trying to reduce the spin, but it was of little use - a barely visible landscape of broad white patches and huge rounded boulders rushed upward through the blizzard.
Just before it hit, the yacht flashed again, and another piece, barely more than a circular sliver from beneath the forward bulge, separated and blasted away, upward and away from the surface. Then the hull smashed into the snow, sending another blizzard flying up to contend with the assault from the sky. Chunks of shattered ceramics shot through the air in every direction, ringing the large crater of the ship. Half a moment later, the main engines hit the ground in the distance, exploding as their slip foils were ruptured. Even through the blizzard, the noise was tremendous. Finally, the escape vehicle came back down, glanced off a boulder and sliced into a snow patch, burying itself halfway.
The flurry blown up by the crash settled back, and even the smoke billowing from the twisted hull was beaten down by the storm. The wind howled, furious at being upstaged, and blew even harder.
There was a muffled blast from escape vehicle, and a round hatch door bounced several feet across the snow. Behind it, the semi-viscous dampening gel poured out of the hole, carrying a few loose odds and ends. The liquid splashed over the lip of the escape hatch and swirled through the snow, melting it away from the escape pod. Even as it was still dwindling to a trickle, shapes began moving inside.
Two large figures crawled out of the hole and fell to the snow. A third, smaller, tumbled after them, but she immediately clamored to her feet. Coughing up the dampening gel, she stumbled through the drifts toward the wreckage. The hull creaked, and began to sag, but she pressed on. She had nearly reached it when she was yanked back by one of the larger women, and just in time as the wreck twisted and groaned and collapsed on itself with a great crash. The two larger women led her away, and her howls matched the blizzard.

Scene
Two souls ascended through the blizzard, though they were unaware of it. They were laughing, and racing each other away from the planet through the ether. Neither the pilot nor the copilot worried about their crash, nor did they remember it, though they did have some dim tug in the back of their head about their passengers. The copilot took the lead as they disappeared toward some distant friendly sun to await their return.
The planet continued to dance around its sun, unconcerned with it all. The blizzard, large as it was, grew bored with its devastation and scattered off in different directions to draw patterns in the snow. Three figures - two large, and carrying bags on their backs, and one smaller walking a ways behind - trekked across the sparsely-wooded, snow-drenched hill slopes, all but invisible in their all-weather parkas.

Scene
Leagues away, a vast, white plain stretched for miles. In fact, it was frozen lake, but it was frozen so thick and so long and so perpetually snow covered that everyone called it a plain.
A giant foot, half the height of a woman and clad in stainless steel and ceramics, smashed into the snow. Large rubber meshes, stretched like sails from horizontal masts on the sides of the foot, played the part of snowshoes to keep the foot from disappearing into the snow. The creature beneath the foot was not so lucky.
The owner of the machine foot and its mate was a large white-and-metal egg, painted with the colors and flag of Blackbie CenCom. Beside the two chicken legs and their respective feet, the egg possessed a pair of arms that swung and punched and grabbed and kept balance and occasionally voiced the hollow “Thpat-thpat-thpat”of automatic magnet throwers. At the rear of the egg was the big lump of a hydrogen driver, and at its pointed tip on the opposite side, the dull brown plate of a sensor plate. Slung beneath the bottom like a thong was recessed the armor.
Four of these battleeggs kept to a loose circle amidst a great swarm of small hostile creatures, looking not unlike beetles that strayed over an anthill. The creatures were not quite the height of the battleeggs' feet, and roughly shaped like jelly-beans with stubby arms and legs, though their exact shape wasn't easy to make out when they were sporting their deep-cold activewear. They were surprising fast and nimble for all of their anti-lank, and once they had a purchase on the battleegg or had brought it to the ground, they tore at it with their weapons - charged claws that turned the ceramic to acrid dust and would do worse to the pilots inside. Their warcries were more annoying than threatening, though, and most of the nasties could be pulled off or shaken from the back of the battleggs and stomped before they could do too much damage. Most. It was just a matter of lasting long enough. Then one of the eggs went down.
Cormick Greene straddled the cradle inside his egg, his eyes half-closed and his breathing slow and regular, even while his feet churned in their stirrups and his hands shot out in every direction, pinching and twisting at empty air. Most of the pilots, the “snowboys”, learned to fight with their eyes closed so they could focus on the field projection feed coming from the jack in the back of their head, only bothering with the gauges and blinkers and idiot lights scattered around the nest when the feed alerted them. Cormick's battle meditation mother, however, did not believe he could relax with his eyes closed without falling asleep, and taught him Zen.
Cormick saw the egg behind him go down. He swung at a clump of the nasties and fired a spare round through one that appeared to have designs on his arm, while turning his attention behind his head. It was Damwick's egg - he was usually opposite Cormick. The egg's legs had splayed, and it was now little more than a bump beneath a throng of the viscious buggers. They were packing in tight, each trying to pry their claw into a seam in the armor or hack a new one. One. Two. B-b-b-boom. Cormick had braced his egg for the blast, but the bodies of the Squishies absorbed most of it.
They were called Squishies because aside from their skulls and digits, their ligature was at its hardest something like cartilage, and they squished like stale jelly donuts. Officially they had had been labeled Squamiform Celerensis, but only the news outlets called them by that name. The Squishies hadn't been one of the earlier races humans came across - as a whole they were underachievers, they developed little of their own technology, and were usually kept as slave or food races. When not so attached they were scavengers or pirates, though they were more of an annoying parasite than a blight. Once the Squishies discovered that mankind didn't take slaves or eat sentients, humanity became their defacto host species, and Squishie colonies appeared across Ohidaspace.
Cormick kept half his attention on the cloud of snow dust and dullish-grey blood, and stomped on a handful of Squishies that had been pushed into the snow by the blast. The explosion had cleared a wide swath, but it was less than a part in a dozen of the crowd that had already begun swarming again. The swarm was closing back in over the blast crater now, and several of the critters were braving the burns of the hot shield egg to try to rip into it with their hooks.
“Triangle!”
The voice was in Cormick's ear, not through the feed. It was Byrie, the squad commander, but the order was only a formality for the records; the three remaining eggs were already repositioning. Byrie had moved beside Damwick's spent egg to clear the scavengers trying to peel it open - not that they should be able to, but the maintenance crews were down to a skeleton these days, and it was better not to take chances.
“They're up on my legs... They've got my legs!” That was Roger, the fourth egg. He didn't wait to fall; Cormick couldn't brace before the shock of his explosion knocked into him.
Boom.
Time slowed for Cormick. A ring of fire erupted around Roger's egg, and legs, arms and drive seperated from the body. The radial shield wrapped around Roger's egg, snapping into place even faster than Cormick could see in deep meditation. The shield's snap signalled the peripherals, which blew apart in a thousand direction each, scattering shrapnel pieces of ceramic, metal, wire, and plastine. B-boom. Boom! The blasts were stronger, since they weren't buried in snow, and Squishies flew through the air. Cormick had just twisted, and an ankle joint the size of Cormicks head glance off the canopy and sent him reeling.
Time recovered, and Cormick toppled into a berm of Squishies that had survived the explosion in his shadow.
All of this for an RSU. At the center of this mob, a quadrapedal robot wandered slowly, obliviously, through the tangle. Though it was the center of attention of both the Squishies and the Snowboys, neither had any intention of harming it - the Snowboys simply intended to keep it the lawful possession of Blackbie Centralized Communications, and the Squishies planned to make it their own. Therein lay the cause of the skirmish, or at least its initial cause. Things had progressed to a feud by now.
Cormick now turned to check on his captain, but all he saw was a great lump of Squishies. Cormick popped his jaw to turn on his mic. "I'm coming around..."
"Don't bother," came the harried voice of Byrie. "I'm calling the strike."
"No! I can hold them."
Byrie snorted a laugh. "You're not THAT good. Not worth the risk, anyway. I'm shelling in three, so duck."
“Wait... wait!”
“Three!” B-b-b-Boom!
He had 45 seconds before the melee was a crater.
“Crap!”
Cormick had his back to the blast and stumbled forward, then immediately turned through the cloud of snow and parts toward the muted shape of the RSU. The robot was almost as big as his egg, but with a heave he grabbed it by its lift points and heaved it out of the snow. A half-dozen Squishies clung to its various antennae and protruda, but Cormick paid them little mind.
While Byrie's explosion was still settling and the Squishies were getting back to their feet, Cormick lugged the struggling RSU away. Just a few more meters to an outcropping of rock, a natural shield. A final creaking straining throw, and the RSU went over the rock and into the drift beyond. It landed on its back, and it legs writhed in the air like a beetle's.
15 more seconds. Cormick already saw the incoming arrows on the edge of his radar. All four eggs had beacons, but his was the only one unshielded, and thus the strongest. He jumped, and burned a full second of thrust to get back into the center of the throng. That was it; he spoke the code phrase and popped a few feet into the air as the limbs of his egg were jettisoned. He squeezed his eyes shut as the cockpit was flooded with cushioning gel, and he heard the snap of his shield just before the muffled explosions around him.
Then the cockpit speakers crackled through the gel. “The cavalry has arrived, boys! Brace for impact!”
Cormick turned off.

Scene
On the other side of the outcropping, a wave of heat melted down the snow enough for the RSU to get a good grip and flip itself over. Now upright and out of crisis mode, it noted several failed operations to its mother and wandered off to continue its mission.

Scene
A large covered truck trundled up to the checkgate at Chandier. Behind it the track winded away into a thick layer of snow blanketing mountain ridges. Ahead was the thaw, the carefully planned curves of Chandier, the stacked-disk buildings, and beyond them, the spires of the spaceport. “Recalled field equipment,” the driver declared, and the bored guard waved her through. The truck lurched as it continued onto the mesh street and around a corner, only to be stopped at a light. “Damn traffic...”
As the truck idled, a cautious head poked up over the back gate. Sensing the coast was clear, the whole lithe body slipped over and fell into a crouch. There were two light thuds as the two larger women touched down beside her, each carrying a case in their hands. They slipped off the street and into a gap between the buildings before the truck lurched again and rumbled off down the street.
Secured in their foot-alley, the two large women took up posts on either side of their red-haired leader. Each set down their case gently and went to work. The bulkier of the two, some two-and-a-half meters tall and a generous meter across, with curly blondish hair and a button nose, was gathering up their coats and connecting each in turn to a data stick. As she did, the bright white color of their coats melted away into a darker pattern better suited to city traffic. Once done with their coats, she began angling to start on their gloves, boots, and bodysuits. The other large woman, sleeker but still a tower of muscle, with with straight black hair cut short enough to curl under her pointed ears, peered through slitted pupils at a handheld. Occasionally she fiddled with the jog wheels or scrawled a command with her thumbnail, but she refrained from voice command.
The last woman was of average height, though she appeared a child between the other two. Her hair was red, long, and braided, and it hooded her face as she squatted down, her hands tucked under her face. She was muttering, and a bluish glow shone out from between her braids.
“What's the plan?” That was Button-nose, asking either of them as she bent down to access the collar of the shorter woman.
The other Brute answered distractedly. “Straight for the spaceport, I say. I'm looking up the bus routes now.”
Button-nose dropped her eyes to the other woman, who hadn't said anything to them yet. “Gaia?” Now both Brutes eyed her. She didn't seem to have heard them. “Gaia, what's the plan?”
Gaia looked up at them from her crouch, brows furrowed. “The plan? Stay put, for now. We're deciding on particulars.” She went back into her stoop.
The cat-eyed Brute shot a meaningful look at the other and questioningly mouthed the word, 'We?' “We've already lost two days trekking here; wasting more time will only give Turnbull more time for traps. The spaceport is slammed full of outbound flights. We can lose ourselves in the shuffle easy.”
Gaia shook her head without looking up. “We should not hurry to the airport. There is nothing good waiting for us there.”
“Gaia!” The cat-eyed Brute caught the woman by her shoulder, shocking her into looking up. “Talk to us, not your watch. I don't know what we put into you, but it wasn't psychic. Look at the facts,” she waved her handheld at Gaia. “You've been . . . a little crazy, since then.”
Gaia looked to Button-nose for confirmation. “Lorry?”
Lorry the Button-nosed Brute took a pained, conflicted look and shrugged, clicking the datachip on her fingernails. “I wouldn't say crazy, really.” Her eyes locked with the Cat-eye. “But unstable. Since the operation. Your decisions have been unusual since then.”
Gaia finally straightened from her crouch to give each a long look. “Have I ever given you reason to doubt me?”
Cat-Eye shot back, “Have you ever had a second personality implanted in your back?”
Lorry pushed her hands to the ground to keep their volume down. “Look, this isn't the place for an argument. Gaia, I'm siding with Fly here. It's not that we don't trust you, but we're not surgeons or head-doctors, and we need to get you looked at sooner rather than later. Last we looked, you were still bleeding, and I don't think the last few days will have helped that.”
Gaia was about to argue, but she sighed and her shoulders slumped. “I'm not in bad shape. I'll be fine. Let's go to the spaceport.”
The three women, down bedecked in flashy patterns better suited to blend into street traffic, took up their burdens and continued between the buildings to the street beyond.
They stepped into a throng of people and even the Brutes disappeared into the variety.
Shops lined the walkway, and signs flashed their ads to everyone and no-one. A good half of the shops stood empty. One out of every ten pedestrian towed suitcases, and most were heading to a long bus idling up ahead. Above the throng, a huge monitor was tuned to a local news source, which was displaying footage of huge blast crater in an otherwise undisturbed field of snow. The voice of the journalist filtered through the crowd, so that each person heard it as though just behind their ear.

Scene
"This is Kurtie Brook for Chandier’s Channel Three, reporting from sector 165-mark-Gee, the site of a very recent skirmish between Chandier’s own Rover Group Five and a Squamiform Legion estimated at 2-hundred-fifty strong."
Kurtie was grinning into her auto-camera, her meticulously kitten-cute face covering more than two-thirds of the screen. Behind her the steam was still rising from the crater in the snow.
"The short battle, which lasted only a little over 12 minutes, resulted in the complete decimation of the Squamiform Legion. The four pilots in Rover Group Five should be well-known to everyone in Chandier after last month's standoff at the Mastiff cliff face... I'm told we might have footage of their de-shelling in just a moment here... No? Can we put up their stock photos now? Thanks!"
As Kurtie continued, an image of the four snowboys publicly receiving an accolade scrolled across the screen.
"Capatin Byrie Harold, Lievtenant Damwick Gunder, Lievtenant Cormick Green, and Chandier native, Lievtenant Major Roger Jasper were forced to expend their Rover Enforcement units, but are currently being listed only as non-casualties by the War Office. Stick with us folks! Channel Three will be first with a live interview of our heroes as soon as I can rush back to where the army has them stashed. Until then, I’ll go back to Channel Three’s Dana Grim and Farier Thrush in the studio for some reactions to this morning’s victory and an interview with Blackbie Centralized Communications’ Officer Korie Morefield."

In the open square beneath the screen, foot traffic had become sluggish and clumsy, as most everyone was drawn to the images of the battlefield. There was a hearty cheer as the names of the snowboys were announced. When Kurtie's face gave way to the anchors in the studio, rapt attention gave way to business and the throng became more orderly.
Gaia and the two Brutes were filing onto public transportation labeled "Spaceport"; they were the only passengers without a retinue of luggage to pack in ahead of them.
On the bus, the overhead displays were carrying the same news channel. The female anchor was now flirting with the camera.

"Thanks for that on-the-site report Kurtie. We hope you’ll stay with us to report as more details from today’s victory and images of the heroic pilots become available. As you know, Farier, the skirmish today is not an isolated incident, but only the culmination of a long history of hostility between the people of Chandier and the Squamiform population squatting in the Eastridge mountain chain."
Farier nodded with knowing, furrow-browed seriousness. "That’s right, Dana. For the last seventeen years, Squamiform pirates, commonly known as 'Squishies', have illegally occupied the Eastridge mountain chains, which are the only other registered potential Diatherine mining sites on this planet. The Squamiform population, believed to be over 3 hundred thousand individuals strong in the childing season, has successfully waylaid every Blackbie foray into the mountain chain, making it cost in-effective to explore the mining sites, and costing the company billions of dollars in repairs and lost revenues. Mayor Young told Channel Three last month in an exclusive interview that the Squamiform presence was, and I quote, 'an important factor in the decision to withdraw the city of Chandier from this planet four months ahead of schedule.'"
Dana nodded to Farier but smiled at the camera, "And an unfortunate but necessary decison it was, Farier. Squamiform violence, often linked to the theft of company mining equipment, has risen dramatically over the last several years, and seems to be directed at expelling the company’s presence from this planet. In the last three months, six employee deaths and eleven injuries have been attributed to the Squishies - a 250% increase from five years ago."
"That’s why today’s victory is so significant, Dana. To explain to us how it is significant, and to tell us what the possible repercussions may be, we have on the show this morning Blackbie Centralized Communications own on-site Strategic Security Officer, Korie Morefield. Welcome to the show, Officer Morefield."
A new camera focused on a glowingly cheerful woman in Blackbie formals. "Thanks, Farier, Dana. You can call me Korie. As you know, our Rover groups have had limited success against the Squamiform Bandits in the past because of the mobility inequity…"

Gaia filtered out the noise of the displays, the edge of the rounded lockbox that slid into her shin each time the railbus took a left, Lorry's elbow resting on her shoulder. She stared blankly out the arching window at the quickly passing buildings, or often the empty space where building modules had been. Modulers were busy at each block, pulling the evacuated segment disks out of their frames and locking them into place in a transport cylinder. She noted this vacantly and let her eyes pass on. Thoughts, observations come easily and unbidden, but they pass as easily in meditation. Strife is the same. You know this, my dear. You learned this long ago. If they wish to go directly to the spaceport, we shall yield. It will be a delay, but they are necessary to my cause, and their trust would be of great benefit. I will see to it there is no harm.
Gaia blinked slowly, assenting, though assent is presupposed in submission.

Scene
Many leagues away, past the plains, in the mountains that crack and grind through the continental icefields, a full nest of Squishies crowded into the stands of their Great Hall. Like all Squishie technology, the Hall was an adaptation, carved out of a natural cave to suit their purposes. Shafts of light from the gaps in the rocks overhead mixed with the crudely wired artificial lights. Shambled piles of patched-together stolen or salvaged equipment loomed in the corners. At the center of the arena was a raised stone platform - a stage, and at its center, the focus of a mass of monitors replicating him like a fly's eye, was the Squishie General.


Scene
The General walked to the center of the stage. He drew up his chest and waited as the tribe, his tribe, quieted themselves and turned their attention on him. The whole tribe was there, or listening if they were on post. The womenfolk had banded together in the front rows, as they did, and most of them had a child or several balanced on their knees. Next season's soldiers. Good.
"Gentlemen, Ladies, Soldiers, Honored Persons! I have drawn you together tonight to announce a tragedy of the worst variety!"
Whoever wasn't paying attention before was now. The hush in the audience was gratifying.
Behind the General, the displays showing his stern face flipped to one big shot of a wide crater blasted out of a vast snowfield. The camera panned, and focused on the hand of a Squishie - limp and laying over a rock.
There were numerous sharp breaths drawn in from the first several rows of the audience. Then there were howls of anger.
The General let the image linger before continuing.
"Today, in Serapie Burrough: a massacre!"
Waving his arms to the displays, the General signalled for the images to change. They began to show twisted bodies and pieces of twisted bodies scattered throughout the crater.
"Hundreds dead, thousands more wounded!"
Even from the doctored images, this was a gross exaggeration. But who was concerned strictly with truth when there was a point to be made?
"And today's casualties are but the most recent in a long series of Beady-Eye violence!"
The displays behind the general showed the most twisted, degenerate, shifty-eyed humans they had on file.
"But these thousands did not die without reason, my companions!"
The audience was wrapped up in it, now. Many of them were on their feet and calling back. "Yes! Yes! Tell it, brother!"
"No, they are heroes! And we all know the great goal for which they gave their lives . . ." The general had them. The displays were dim, focussing every eye intently on him. "Wealth!"

The word was a catharsis, and had the audience cheering wildly, and chanting, "Wealth, wealth!"
The general continued, "No, the deaths at Serapie must not deter us from wealth; No, indeed! As our esteemed doctor Goowelly—"
The audience was chanting, "Goowelly, Goowelly!"
"--may his memory never fade,"
"Nooo, sir!"
"said before I was born, 'If I do not die today, I’ll just have to do it tomorrow.'”
A single voice called out "Tomorrow!" and promptly received an fist to the side.
"Folks, take this to heart! For we must have our reward. We must strike back!"
Back on cue, the audience replied, "Revenge, revenge!"
"Remember Serapie!"
"Serapie, Serapie!"
"We must double our efforts against the Beady-Eyes!"
In the first row, a Grand Mother was fanning herself to keep from fainting. "Oh, Great Spirits, yes!"
"We must go into the very heart of their Hell!"
Now the displays showed the human city of Chandier.
"Hit them where they live! Steal more of their equipment, and break what we cannot carry! Burn their shrines! Make them miserable!
Another mother clutched her offspring to her chest and shook a fist. "Make 'em beg!"
The General paused a beat, and took on a more serious tone. "I cannot say I expect more than half of you to come back with all your limbs intact. But do this for the children!"
"For the Children!"
He pounded his fist. "Remember Serapie!"
"Serapie, Serapie!"
"Right. Now break up into your teams, companions, and get cracking! We need plans! And good ones this time!" He frowned in a particular direction into the audience.
The tribe didn't need any more encouragement - they were scurrying from their seats, buzzing among themselves.

The general was smiling as he left the stage. It was good to have the whole brood behind him. But his special teams were already halfway to the city.

Scene
Back in the city, in an anonymous box warehouse at the edge of the military zone, a longcar pulled out of a darkened doorway. The car was unmarked, unescorted, and unassuming. It turned in the direction of the Executive Tower, but it made no promises.

Of course, Kurtie Brook had her sources. She knew the Snowboys were packed in the back of that car, just as she knew they were on their way to an unpleasant conversation. Just as she knew a hero story was the best coverage she'd get from this assignment before they ported her off the planet with everything else. Besides, those boys owed her an interview - an invterview she may no be able to get tomorrow. She was getting the flat-hand from Morefield's media office today, which only confirmed her suspicions.

The car slipped into the subterranean tunnels at the edge of the military zone - it would only attract attention to run it through the ped streets of the inner city - but Curtie wasn't watching anymore. She'd turned up her outdoors backdrop and petitioned the office for live feed.

Scene
The Square beneath the Executive Tower was usually empty. It fronted the magnificent grand entrance of the city's tallest building, and with a collonaded carportico and arcing stepway up to the first level of the Tower, the Square was an impressive locale for the Mayor's quarterly Summary. But Chandier had no important executive visitors after its first year, and the Mayor wouldn't be giving any addresses during the shutdown. The Square was nestled in the cleavage of the administrative complex, so with no shops to draw foot traffic, it was a discrete location for the longcar to insert its passengers.

Kurtie stifled a giggle as the longcar emerged from the ramp in the center of the square and stopped dead in the heavy crowd of her audience. The people turned to stare at the longcar, but neither rushed to surround it, nor stepped back to make way. The car honked and lurched forward several times, but in the end it had to settle for inching into the square, nudging the passive crowd out of the way. Kurtie could almost hear the frantic driver screaming at dispatch.

She wasn't on-site - that wouldn't be proper, and Morefield had already declined her interview with the boys - but she was pulling signal from volunteers in the crowd, and she had a remote monitor above the ramp static on Channel Three.

The Monitor flicked to life to display Farier and Dana wrapping up their show. Farier turned to the camera. "Thanks for staying with us this morning. Come back tomorrow for updated shuttle schedules and the results of our Destination Survey. We turn now back to Kurtie Brook for an update on her earlier story. Kurtie?"

Kurtie's face appeared in the monitor, standing in front of the crowd in the long car. Several of the less savvy audience members twisted in confusion to find her, but most of the people, seeing themselves in the monitor, sprung to life and jostled to frame themselves in the camera for a memory. They even began to cheer as she spoke.

"Thanks, Farier! As I promised, I've tracked down today's battle heroes, and found them on the very steps of the Executive Tower's Grand Receptionary! I'm here with the throngs of grateful citizens in Executive Square to send my thanks to Capatin Byrie Harold, Lievtenant Damwick Gunder, Lievtenant Cormick Green, and our very own Lievtenant Major Roger Jasper.

"While the BDF has declined our repeated requests for an interview with Capatin Harold and his men, at least until after their meeting with the Mayor's Office, I hope to catch them for my segment tomorrow morning, so stay tuned."

In her studio, Kurtie turned to invoke the backdrop behind her. "In the meantime, lets see if we can't encourage the Army to at least let us see our Heroes!"

On cue, the crowd went wild.

Reluctantly, after a long pause, the rear doors of the longcar slid forward. Only now did the audience step back, leaving a wide enough circle for everyone to get a good shot with their cameras. Byrie emerged first, like an actor, pausing to straighten his uniform leathers and draw back his shoulders for the crowd. Next came Roger and Damwick, with Cormick trailing. Chests pressed, arms raised in salute, the Snowboys marched in loose formation down the aisle forming for them toward the the stepway. An almost reverant still passed over the crowd.

Kurtie held her breath as she peered into her screen.

But then a Femme burst out from the wall of people and flung her arms around Byrie, pulling herself down into a dip as she stole a long, noisy kiss from him. Stumbling back to catch her breath, she raised her hands in victory. The solemnity of the audience vanished, and people pressed in from every direction to touch the Snowboys. Femmes gave hugs or kisses, women took them, and men mostly just wanted to grasp hands. There were even a couple of babies produced for benetecture.

Kurtie was already dropping her studio into standby and setting the locks. The crowd had tied up the Snowboys for at least another 20 minutes, long enough for her to swing by the shop on her way to the Executive Tower. Her scene had picked up double viewership from the peak of the morning show, and even Channel Seven was leasing her feed. She had a feeling Morefield's office would be interested in renegotiation.


Scene

The Penultimate level of the Executive tower had the second-best view of Chandier. The spires of the spaceport bristled over the ice bay. In the morning, when the sun hit them, they would glow like glass. To the east, the meandering curves of the superurban streets rolled up into the residential hills. A fogbank hung in the northern ridge.

Cormick was rarely treated to such a view, and now he couldn't appreciate it. He tried to focus out the scene, to imprint it for a later painting, but he couldn't ignore the sound of Byrie's voice - there were too many years of training to allow him that luxury. Beside that, Byrie was fighting for their future.

The quadry was alone with the Sub-Mayor in his office. He had received them formally for the audience of cameras and onlookers in the hall outside, but once the door was shut, he blackened his inside windows and turned his back to them so no infrareds could read his lips. He pulled his chair over in front of him apparently so his hands would have something to crush.

The Sub-Mayor was barely controlled as he responded to Byrie. "Your opinion - as it stands - is irrelevant, Capatin! You have destroyed 5 billion Sesters of Company Inventory in the course of a meritless pleasure hunt—"

Byrie raised his hand for a confident interjection, "The mission transcripts will clearly show that the course deviation was applied for and approved—"

"Under false pretenses!" A small drop of spittle flew from the Sub-Mayor's mouth.

It struck Cormick that the Sub-Mayor, though he was white-haired, had a surprisingly high rank for a male in an administrative post. He jaw-clicked over to the sub-vocal channel. "He's already made up his mind. He's got something to prove."

Byrie started again with the Sub-Mayor. "-Approved, when Lieutenant Gunder observed a Squamiform melee team destructing MRS-Eight-Five-Doris. We followed standard protocol and neutralized the enemy team."

"Had that been the entirety of your actions, Capatin, you would still be on duty and not standing here."

Byrie continued. "We then noted and logged a legionary-proportioned Squamiform force advancing on us, so, as we had already been approved for mission deviance, we moved to intercept in order to reduce their angle of attack. The decision was clear and justified."

The Sub-Mayor leaned over his chair. "Allow me to explain to you what is clear to me, Capatin. The Mobile Remote Sensing device you protected costs Blackbie just under 800 Million. The combined cost of your spent Enforcement Units, Air Support, and the Retrieval comes to 4.7 Billion.

"You see, Capatin, today your unit cost the Company 4 Billion more than you are worth. That alone could be forgiven, but your past history of reckless disregard for company policy, destruction of property, and cost-intensive missions does nothing to recommend you for further activity. We are here to make money, Capatin, not to get our faces on the local news feed. In order to prevent future loss to this Company, as of today, your unit’s employment is terminated.

The word hung in the air as the Sub-Mayor slid his chair back to the desk and hovered over the window controls. "Smile and wave, soldiers."

The interior windows faded back to clear. The people in the hall glanced up, and turned from their bored musings and conversations to gaze through the window, bringing their cameras to bear. Cormick saw Kurtie Brook pressed against the glass. She smiled and waved at him.

The Sub-Mayor turned his back to the window again. "Of course, we at Blackbie Central Communications believe in keeping a good face to our constituents, and as the citizens of this operation have made you their darling today, I am authorized to offer you the following contract: All charges of undue destruction of property will be permanently withdrawn from your records. Migration transportation off-planet will still be provided, as previously agreed. And you will receive standard early termination compensation, along with battle hazard bonus, provided you do not reveal the contents of this conversation to anyone. Agreed? Good. Now go out there, enjoy your brief celebrity, and mention Blackbie Central Communications distinctly and in a favorable light at least 3 times to make the contract binding."

The quadry stood as a unit and shook his hand.


Scene
Far below, a world below, the crowd had completely vanished from the Executive Square. Fickle and predictable as they were, without the guiding force of Kurtie's magnetism they had succumbed to the principles of gas in a vacuum and dissipated into the rest of the city.

In place of the crowd sat a long, sleek cruiser - entirely black and unmarked, save the garishly bright Turnbull Red logo emblazoned on each of the rear doors. At the front and rear of the car, small transports huddled with a collection of bored but expressly unlazy Turnbull Red soldiers acted as the honor guard.

A motorcycle flew out of the subterranean access tunnel, going just a bit faster than the right speed for an empty square and far too fast for a square with several cars parked right in front of him. This danger was particularly compounded by motorcycle pilot's insistance on staring at the flashing skins of the police vehicles directly behind him, rather than on the road in front.

The Turnbull Red troops leapt from the back of their transport just as the motorcycle smashed up against it at full velocity. The police vehicles skidded and hopped to a stop without crashing into anything, much to everyone's surprise. Within seconds there was quite a fracas, with a semi-circle of Turnbull troops and a semi-circle of police fully circling the accident, weapons drawn and yelling at each other about various things that didn't matter. From the cluster of conflict, a pale blue and mostly transparent thief flung down what he thought was his motorcycle gear. Amazingly, no-one seemed to notice him, so, quick as a flash, he slipped out of the circle and took off running across the square. So enrapt was he with his clean getaway that he didn't notice as spirit thinned out and disappeared into a shadow.

Scene
Far above, a world above in the Executive Tower, Mayor Young lounged in the center of the sofa in her suite. It put her guests, as she was polite enough to call them, in a very awkward position. As bold as she was, the Turnbell Red Captiain, who looked much older in planetary gravity, dared not sit at the Mayor's desk, nor would she move any of the other furniture in the room to face the sofa. She settled for leaning against the desk - at the moment with clenched fists. The captain had a whole team of underlings accompanying her as a show of her officiality and importance, but they were very busy looking away from Mayor Young, either at the window at the breathtaking view, or at one of the various trophies or trinkets, or just at their own hands and feet.

The Mayor leaned further back in the couch, if that was possible, and crossed her arms across her chest. "Calm yourself, Captain Laraka. There is no reason to lose your temper."

It was far to late for that, of course, as the Captain had been fuming before she arrived at the tower and spent two hours filling out forms and waiting in a small room. "Three days," she said, "of unanswered messages, refused landings, and dodges by your secretary, and finally I get fifteen of your minutes in between a haircut and a public address on proper packing techniques - I think I damn well have a right to my temper. Consulting you on my presence here is only an unnecessary courtesy, as I see it."

Mayor Young nodded graciously. "See it as you will, Captain. Your minutes are wasting."

The Captain tensed her shoulders in exasperation. "You've read the abstract, at least."

The Mayor lifted the tablet in her lap and flicked at the screen with her stylus. "It's here somewhere.."

As if by magic, a paper copy appeared in aide's hand near the Captain, who then thrust it on the Mayor. The Mayor took it, slowly, politely, and held the corners to illuminate the page.

"I see," she said, glancing it over. "This states that the inventory of Turnbell Red has been lessend by 12 ... unnamed, yet strategically valuable items. These items are believed to be in the possession of an unknown corporate saboteur, who you claim is somewhere on my planet, in the vicinity of my city. And you want to ... Ahh: As the vested representative of your corporation, you intend to dispatch a minor unit of your finest muckers to retrieve your investment. Of course, this will be at negligible projected cost to Blackbie Centralized Communications, parent company of Chandier Diatherine Extraction Enterprises, ... and on it goes." An exasperated sigh escaped her. "Captain, I'm afraid that after my careful consideration, I must refuse your request. As I'm sure Turnbull Red's lawyers neither believe nor in any way meant to imply, Blackbie Centralized Communications has no dealings with corpororate saboteurs of any kind, much less this particular purported individual. Frankly, I have no wish to acknowledge your out-of-channel maneuverings. Your loss is of no concern or import to me. However, if I allow your Rent-a-Marines to go traipsing through the streets and homes of my people-"

"My soldiers are quite professional. Projections show negligible cost and inconvenience-"

"I do not agree with your projections, Captain! I am very familiar with the professionalism of hired security squads. In case you are blind or were otherwise not aware, this city is in the process of an escalated evacuation. In two weeks, this will be a ghost town, overrun by cockroaches and Squishies. As you can imagine, the schedule is quite intense, and there is simply no room for beetle-browed bootboys to go poking their gun barrels into our business. This operation is overbudget as it is. You come to me, demanding my time, demanding special favors, and offer no incentive. Honestly, what did you think I would say?"

The Mayor's eyes locked the Captain's, and the room seemed to crack with the energy of two steel hammers smacked together.

Mayor Young smiled sweetly and stood to take her tablet around her to her desk to enter a new note.

"However, Blackbie Centralized Communications bears no ill-will toward the Turnbell Red Technology Group, and in the interest of corporate fellowship, we will make available in real time the manifests of all registered ships leaving our airspace. You may then follow whatever ship you deem to be carrying your merchandise, or, conversely, you may enter the city after all Blackbie personnel have been removed, and company interests are withdrawn from the planet under Mining Rights Act 31b, Article 6, and examine it to your content."

Captain Laraka flustered, "That is not sufficient!"

The Mayor maintained her smile, but it hardened with a mother's sternness. "You will make it sufficient, Captain, because that is all you have. You have no legal right to be here, and imposing an armed force on a privately-held planet violates Principle Corporations Agreement Issue 502-dot-4. Your appointment is ending early; your time is up. Good day!"

A heavy silence hung in the air until the Captain smacked the desk with her fist and stormed from the suite. Her aides shuffled out behind her, still not raising their eyes to meet the Mayor's as they satisfied ritual and thanked her for her hospitality.

The Mayor sunk into the large chair behind her desk and turned to a shadow in the corner. "You must leave as well. Have a good day."

Out of the shadows came a thin man, young, dressed in the finest suit that could disappear into a crowd. He inclined his head to the Mayor and made for the door, but instead of following the Turnbull coterie, he paused, as though in thought, than quietly shut the door. His voice was quiet, calm, but filled with a casual confidence that left no room for obsequiousness. "Your Honor, I apologize for the time we’ve taken from you. I understand the value of your time and the pressures you’re facing. Is this office monitored?"

"Yes."

"Turn it off."

The thin man waited patiently while the Mayor considered him, then entered a code into the surface of her desk. He continued, "I am a man of business, Mayor Young, not war – much like yourself, I respect incentive above threat. The Captain - she is hot-headed and blind, and I have no great love for her. To be honest, I enjoy watching her wheels spin, when the matter is not of such grave importance. To the point: I have read your publics - your operation here is essentially over, and you barely cleared the lease fee for the planet. Your operating costs have run over expectation. This planet represents a net loss to your company, and more importantly, to you, from this point forward – an unfortunate but unavoidable fact, yes? But perhaps it is not so unavoidable."

"You have my ear."

The thin man smiled and produced a credit accounter, on which he began entering figures. "Turnbell Red would like to buy your operation - we will assume the remainder of the lease, of course, including any fees associated with the extension we may need." He pressed a button the flipped the screen to face the Mayor. "This, I believe, is the approximate as-new price for the equipment you intend to scrap here, as well as one month’s operating costs to cover any delays caused by the Captain’s interference here. Though, of course, we do not forsee any delays; rather, we’d like to speed your departure. You understand?"

Mayor Young looked at the figure only long enough to grasp its dimension. "Fully."

The thin man inserted a finger ticket into the accounter and set it on the desk before the Mayor. "Now, I’ve left the recipient field on this blank. I’ll trust you to make it out to Blackbie CenComm or some affiliate, or whomever you see fit."

The Mayor's hands sat folded in her lap. The ticket remained on the desk between them. "This may be difficult to explain to my Director."

The thin man's smile spread to a sharky grin. From his inner coat pocket came a portfolio, which he opened before her and set on the desk, covering the ticket. "In fact It will not. Let me detail what really happened here, what our Captain is not at liberty to discuss: Our missing merchandise is Classified Level 3 and has been marked of crucial importance by the corporations listed below, all of which have strategic alliances with Blackbie. As I’m sure you’re aware, Issue 373-dot-0 of the Principle Corporation Agreement requires the local governing body to sub-ordinate to the plaintiff company – Turnbell Red, in this case – for such a time as is deemed reasonable and necessary for the recovery of such classified objects, etc. I believe we can both agree that two weeks is a reasonable period of time, yes? By which time you will be sipping cocktails en route to a new assignment, or perhaps on an extended vacation? Do we understand each other?"

The Mayor stood and offered her hand to the thin man. He took it in his, and touched it lightly with the fingers of his opposite hand, striking the deal.

Without thought, the Mayor pulled back her hands and drywashed them before smiling as well. "Sir, I believe you have bought yourself a planet."


The thin man appeared in the foyer outside the Mayor's door, and the Captain and her retinue stood expectantly. He spoke to her in a low voice as he strode to the lift. "We have the green - get your soldiers in place immediately, before the news is spread. Don't let anything slip through."

The Mayor's secretary watched them with interest. After the lift doors slid shut, the intercom light on her desk began blinking, so she dutifully pressed it. The Mayor's voice came through clearly, but modulated to dissapate just beyond the deskspace. "Doll, are you alone? Lock the door once they’ve left – we have to act quickly."

Scene
The bus bearing Gaia and her Brutes glided to a stop in what was now the busiest section of the city. Behind them, the Executive Tower loomed like a great steeple, or like the needle on a sundial. Before them, the spires of the spaceport leapt up from the irregular skyline of domes and cylinders and collonades and all of the typical structures one would expect to see at a non-equatorial ground base. From just beneath each spire, a several wide-beam lasers shot up into the sky, powering and guiding the lightcrafts bearing passenger rings and disassembled building parts as they shuttled between the ground and the fixed orbit station high above. Scattered across the wide expanse of the entryyard of the spaceport, queues and throngs created an ever-changing labyrinth for the luggage carts and vendors and important people.

The Brutes stepped from the bus and straight into a throng; they used the cases each held and the threat of their size to clear a path through, while Gaia followed in tow. Once through the crowd, Gaia doublestepped to sidle between them, her normal position of leadership, but the tone in her voice was less assuming. "What's the plan, Fly?"

"Simple," answered the dark-haired Brute. "We need to get to that HFO. Once we're at the station, we play it by ear - we should have enough to buy a ride, a discreet ride, or there will be something open enough to sneak onto."

Gaia did not say that this was not really a plan, but she thought it quite clearly. She felt an amused smile inside her. Though she stayed between them, she let the Brutes lead her past the queues and into main concourse. The concourse was an expansive atrium, but a simple enough construction - a company does not waste too much money on a building they will have to leave behind. The barrel arch of the roof met the ground before and behind them spanning a standard metric block, and the metal tiles of the open ceiling were scattered with dayglo tiles that would pass sunlight through during the day and provide their own at night. Lines hung from the ceiling, suspending signs to direct the lost, confused, or uninformed. A good third of the signs read "Information".

Fly led the party toward the nearest such sign with the least apparent crowd, and parked them in the queue for the agent. Of course, most of the people beneath the info sign were standing in the hotspot and following the prompts on their tablets, but Gaia had made it quite clear earlier that they weren't to leave any greater trail than they had to, and it was the worst kept secret that even the most benign of soft services were crawling with scraperbots. So they waited their turn, casually watching the crowds, the security, the doors...

"Are you three together? How can I help you today?"

Fly was not the storyteller Gaia was, but it was her plan, so she spoke up. "Ah, yes. You see, we have these boarding tickets for next week. Well, we had them. But we'd like to move them to today? As soon as possible? We've booked passage on a ship docked there due to leave this evening, so..."

"Oh, I'm very sorry to hear that." The information agent smiled sympathetically, with a tilt of her head and a slow blink that made her empathy believable.

Lorry stepped forward. Huge though she was, she had a way with softies that had them cooing like she was a stumbling, blinking kitten. "I know it's an awful trouble, especially as busy as it is. If we have to pay a transfer fee, that's okay. We just don't want to miss our ship and get stuck here. Is there anything you can do for us?"

The agent wrung her hands against the edges of the booth. "I'm sorry, Dearie, but there really isn't. We've had a dreadful delay with the lightships just in the last few minutes - nearly all the rings were appropriated for a sudden high-priority migration. We've already had to bump everyone below blue class until tomorrow. Nearly everyone in this building is in the same position as you. I wish I could help."

Gaia half-listened as her companions caught the keywords and began working the agent. Fly would cajole, possibly threaten, ask for her supervisor. Lorry would wheedle, or flirt - flirt, it seemed. The agent was nodding and suggesting something - she wrote an address and a time on a card and was slipping it into Lorry's belt.

Danger!

What? Where? Gaia asked.

Quickly! Away from the stacks.

Gaia glanced over the crowds toward the stacks leading up from the atrium to the docking rings at the base of the spires. The lifts coming down the stacks were filled with people. People dressed in that distinctive color of dried-blood red. Gaia blinked, but her instincts won out over her surprise. With a quick thanks to the agent, she looped each Brute through the elbow and began pulling them away. "Don't look toward the stacks."

Of course, they both did.

The crowds were murmuring and shuffling and scuttling, then they dissolved away before a mass of red-shellacked Turnbull Red marines. Advance teams were already breaking off, causing commotions as they broke through emigrant queues and spread out across the atrium. An apparently arbitrary spot was chosen and broadcasting equipment was erected in moments; other equipment was gathered and a base of operations began to assemble. A surprised voice shouted, and cluster of red boots gathered around him. There was muttering and arguing, but a confident arm and finger lashed out in the direction of the information booth. The cluster turned as one to see three dark flashes disappear into a hallway.


Gaia turned hard into a dark corridor, pushing off the wall to redirect. She was panting. She hadn't been shot at, not personally, for more than a year; she was having trouble pushing back the white fear that closed in around the periphery of her vision.

Her Brutes were several paces ahead - heavy as they were, they had longer legs, and Fly had the best hearing and vision. They needed to stay unbunched, too, after they almost fell over each other scrambling away from that gel grenade that caught them by surprise.

They hadn't stopped running. They couldn't stop, with the sound of boots and bullets and voices always behind them, beside them, sometimes in front of them. Somehow they'd managed to stay just far enough ahead to avoid a direct line of fire, but there couldn't be too many more cluttered offices or twisting hallways in the spaceport. They'd have find the way out very soon.

Gaia glanced up to see another cameradot. The three of them had their hoods over their faces now, but more than likely there was a dot where they entered the atrium. It would just be a matter of digging the records.

They turned down another hallway lined with office doors. It looked like half a dozen others Fly had picked. Gaia thought the doors had different numbers, though.

I have it now. I found the floorplan.

Gaia grimaced as she sprinted through an open room after the fleeting shadows of her Brutes. I won't be able to look at it unless we stop.

No. Don't stop. I'm turning off the lights to guide your kitty. She likes the shadows. There was a hint of playfulness in the voice, too. I've locked every door behind you. That should give you a few seconds.

Gaia had just a second to breathe - Fly had stopped to fight with a locked door before Lorry ran past her and they all moved on. Can't they track us if you're in the system?

They're tracking us anyway. They're tracking me, anyway. It's something in my box.

Can you disable it?

No. Not right now. It's a seperate circuit on the same battery, so I can't short it.

What do we do?

Wait. There. Go in the door.

A door just ahead of Gaia clicked. Without hesitation Gaia pressed and it opened; she snapped, and the Brutes stopped, then turned to follow her in. The overhead light had popped on, but Gaia dimmed it with a wave of her hand. The room was large, or seemed like it should be - all Gaia could see were rows and rows of shelves filled with junk equipment and boxes filled with what was probably more junk equipment. Dim lights flicked on and off down the rows.

Go into the rows so you can't see the door.

Then what?

Just wait, Duckie.

Gaia led the Brutes a dozen paces into the room and cut into a random row. She caught the other two by the hands before they could push past her and held a thumb up to her lips.

Both Brutes crouched to Gaia's level. Lorry mouthed, Have we lost them?

Fly shot an angry glance at Gaia before mouthing back, If we could have lost them, we'd've done it before. They've got a tracker on us. We're being surrounded. We need to keep moving.

Gaia cut a firm hand across the conversation. We wait. She's getting us a way out.

Fly cut back, She's the one feeding them our location! She's their box!

Gaia's retort was truncated by a banging at the door. The banging was drowned in pounding feet, and then there was silence. A moment later, there were beeps, and a growing hum. The telltale sound of a cracker.

Hush now. I'm going to have to go dark in just a moment. Your way out is the door second to the left at the back of the room. Straight ahead to the end of the corridor. The door there leads to a hanger out. Tell them.

Gaia passed this to the Brutes in fewer words. The hum from the door was much louder. It would crack any second.

At the back of this room is a metal bin. You and the other two cases must be in it before you leave. It's a tight fit.

What?

Lorry will carry you. Go now!

Crack! The door fell open, and the overhead light flooded the room. At the same moment, the lights and sounds of equipment coming to life filled the aisles. Every row bristled with the hundreds of glowing meters and panels of junk equipment. Clicking and whirring and the spinup of fans became a sea of white noise. There were shouts and curses from the direction of the door, footsteps, the crash of equipment, and the squelchy thuds of gunfire, then more shouts.

Gaia and the Brutes were already at the back of the room. She had already spied the bin; it would be a very tight fit, limber as she was. Fly was about to curse out loud when Gaia wrenched the case from her hand, but Lorry understood at a word and helped Gaia stuff herself in before shutting the lid.

It only took seconds for the bin to become hot. Gaia's second skin kept her temperature down, but her face felt like it was burning. The corners of one case pressed into her thigh, but she was too busy pumping her hands to keep circulation to figure out how to shift. In a way, the tight fit was a blessing - the bin bounced roughly as Lorry ran. Gaia thought they must be coming to the hanger by now.

The bouncing stopped.

There were 23 seconds of silence.

Then the bin fell to the floor. The second skin saved Gaia from a broken elbow, but the pain was too much. Tears leaked from her eyes. Then the bin swung up and crashed into something. There were the muffled shouts of women, but not her Brutes. A couple thuds of gunfire. A pause. Then the bin started moving - it was dragging on the floor. It was pulled up onto some kind of platform, and other things; heavy things, were put on top of it. The platform started moving.

Gaia felt woozy. The air was close in the bin. She stretched and pulled to get her hand up to her ear. She needed to save the oxygen. She had a small plastic nub on tip of her middle finger. If she could just reach the pressure point. There. Again. Threeeeee.....

Scene
The storehouse in the shadow of the Executive tower swarmed with activity. What had been an empty, echoing box two hours ago was now the nascent Turnbell Red command center. Comms terminals were the first to go up, but there had been some trouble locating the power feed. The Captain sat in her elevated chair and alternated between scowls and crushing the ends of her armrests beneath blood-drained knuckles.
Of course, the Blackbie Mayor, that Young woman, had promised to clear the Executive Tower within the hour.

And she had. She'd given the Agent the code to her suite, and set him up with guest access to the city's systems. But as the Captain had discovered when she tried to move her personnel in, it was only the Mayor who had cleared the Tower. All of the lower floors were still filled with ordinals, maintenance workers, and functionaries busy cleaning out their personals. The Captain had to wait a quarter hour just for a free lift. And when she finally made it to the top of the building, she found that the Agent had already claimed the suite for his staff. There wouldn't have been enough room for all of her people, after all.

So the Captain was fuming in her chair when the whir of fans and the growing glow from the monitors told her that the comms terminals were finally online.

Her First popped up from the cluster of technicians now exctricating themselves from the back of the terminal banks. "We're online, Miss!"

"Thank you."

A moment the agent walked in through the wide-open truck doors of the storehouse. Even in the bustle of technicians scrambling to their next project and bridge crew running to their posts, the Captain but could not help but spot him. He was the weight of Turnbell Red's Operative Board hanging over her shoulder. He was heading directly for her, and walking as quickly as one can walk and still appear collected. The Captain spoke before he reached her to start the conversation in her control. "The salvage team should be at the crashsite shortly. Early indications show grouped wreckage and a low possibility of survival. We should have the units by local midnight."

He spoke quickly and quietly as soon as he reached her dais. "What's the status of the spaceport teams?"

The Captain narrowed her eyes. "I suppose they are still sweeping. We've only just had the Comms stations up. There were-"

"I see." The Agent frowned with disapproval. "They made contact just after touchdown. The Pirates were at the spaceport."

"We have them in custody, then?"

The Agent's frown deepened.

The Captain stood and turned toward the Comms bank. She noticed for the first time that all of her Comms girls were feverishly dictating, while her First was running between them, managing was was evidently a crisis in motion. "Ann?"

Her First snapped to face her. "Possible contact from the spaceport teams, Miss. The signal was weak and it was lost shortly after being locked, but it was heading away from the spires."

"Nothing lands or lifts from those spires!" the Captain barked.

The First nodded and turned back to the Comms girls.

The Agent was still waiting behind her. "We have the feed from the spaceport back in the Mayor's suite. Your boots had the signal for over ten minutes."

The Captain's eyes widened. She was responsible for so many incompetants. "I'm certain-"

"Listen to me. We had visuals for the first minute. We only saw three of the Pirates, but they seemed to have both of the original cases."

"Just the first minute? I thought you said 10."

"They whiteflashed all the cameras after that."

The Captain paused in confusion. "Weren't the cameras hardened?"

"It seems they they were. The Pirates also took remote systems controls. They locked your teams into the hallways and rooms they were in."

"I see..." The Captain nodded. Here people weren't incompetant - they were simply outclassed. The Board couldn't blame her for that.

"I don't think you do. Blackbie's a CenComm. They design the hardening we sell. No one can hack them while running."

"That just proves they're on Blackbie's payroll."

"No. No, it doesn't, Lian. I need you to run the feed against the against the timer-key for each of the twelve units."

The blood drained from the Captain's face. "They're online? Without training or the manuals? They couldn't..."

The Agent's eyes narrowed. "Run the feed." He turned and walked away.

Scene
Gaia woke to the dark, but not the dark of the bin. Lorry's face was above her, at a strangely reversed angle, and she was talking, but Gaia couldn't hear her. Beyond Lorry's head were the shadows of buildings, and beyond that, a strange night sky.
Gaia's ears were ringing, and there was some kind of vibrating sound. No, that was Lorry talking. Gaia squeezed her eyes shut a few times, and tried to concentrate.
She was in Lorry's lap. Fly was rubbing her calves and looking worried.
Oooh. She had a bad headache.
"Can you hear yet?"
"Yeah." Gaia tried to raise her hand to her ear, but it just hung limply, acknowledging commands with a vague jerk.
Lorry and Fly were arguing. "You didn't think it was air-tight, either. Or at least you didn't say anything if you did, which is worse." "We should have checked." "We shouldn't have used it in the first place. Just another one of the little voice's great ideas."
Gaia's head bobbed and she realized she could hold it up. All of her body tingled.
Lorry looked back down at her, and Fly stood to ask, "Can you stand?"
"I don't think so."
Lorry slipped her hands under Gaia's arms and lifted. "Let's try, honey. We're pretty far from the spaceport, but we should get indoors."
Fly added, "We found a skinshop in the directory. It's not too far."
Gaia nodded, "Good girls." She managed to get her feat beneath her and almost stood. Lorry caught her before she twisted an ankle.

A few minutes later and Gaia was hobbling down the walkway, propped up between the two Brutes. They were heading toward a darkly tinted door, etched with the second skin logo and not much else. The door chimed as they stepped inside, but there was a short little woman already behind the counter. She was just sitting there, her chin propped in the balls of her hands, her elbows sprawled on the counter; she was simply waiting - not reading, or watching a screen. She perked as the girls came in. "Three?"
All three nodded.
"Bath-and-wash, or bath-and-change?"
"Change." They would be changing even more than their clothes before they left this place.
"What kind of room?"
"Bath. You have bath, right? Good. Do you have a party room?"
Once Lorry and the proprietor had settled on a price, Lorry produced the cash dispensor and popped the grams across. The short lady - she was even shorter than Gaia had thought, once she slid off her stool - then led the back down the hallway to the room on the end and keyed open the door for them.
"How long?" Fly asked.
"You have it for two hours. But don't worry about it. Take your time. If it gets busy after that, I'll chime you."
The Brutes thanked her and led Gaia into the room.
The skinshop had been clean, but not especially impressive - the party room was about the same. A flattened domed ceiling spanned the room and stretched to the tile floor. There were two tubs, each easily large enough for both the Brutes at once, a cold pool, lounging chairs, and a couple of terminals for ordering refreshments and shopping for new skins.
Fly had picked up a couple of oil packets at the door, and she began to work a dollop beneath Gaia's second skin as Lorry knelt before her, working off her boot bindings. Gaia stood still, eyes shut, and accepted the ministrations. Fly's fingers found the catch at the back of her neck, and the seam on the skin split down her back and her arms. Fly worked the oil into her skin as she peeled back the sheath.
Once Gaia was nude, she turned to help Fly from her boots, but Lorry caught her arm and led her over to a flattened lounge chair and told her to lay on her belly. Gaia's joints were stiff, but the oil Fly had rubbed on her was seeping in and warming her. Lorry knelt over her and produced a vial of balm. "That surgeon was a hack, Gaia." Lorry was peering down at the small of her back, at the spot where the bump had been in her second skin, at the spot that now showed a grooved, rounded lozenge about half the size of a fist lodged in a semi-implant dish protruding from the skin over Gaia's spine. "You're all red around the adaptor. I don't think it's healing well."
"It doesn't hurt much," Gaia answered, though she winced as Lorry began to rub the balm in around the dish.
Lorry frowned. "I still don't know why we had to install it in the field instead of at a field hospital."
Gaia closed her eyes while the mild anasthesia in the balm numbed her skin. "Yes, you do."
"Well, I don't like it."
After the balm had set in the skin, Lorry left Gaia alone in her lounge chair. Fly had managed her own way out of her clothes and was perched at the edge of one of the baths, sampling it with her fingers. She stood as Lorry joined her, and helped her find the seams and the edges of her gloves. Then they sunk into the bath together, and warm water splashed up onto the tile until the drain found a balance.



When Gaia woke - oh, no - she had slept!

She sat up straight, and felt no pain, in her elbow, or anywhere. She felt no fatigue at all, though she'd earned quite a bit over the last few weeks. She - and the Brutes - had not had more than an hour's sleep each third since the crash, and that was not nearly enough. But now she felt like she'd slept a day. Or Two. But it couldn't even have been hours - Fly and Lorry were still giggling in the bath together. They weren't good for more than a quarter-hour of foreplay before they'd be at it in earnest, especially as hard as they'd had it recently.

Ducky?

Darling? You're back!

I was never away, my Ducky - just quiet. In Passive mode. How was your nap?

The best I've ever had. Did you do that? How long was I out?

Three minutes. I probably should have woken you after two, but you deserved a real rest.

Darling, you're the best friend a girl could have.

Do me a favor, friend?

Anything.

Pilot us over to that screen. I need access to the net, but I don't think my antenna's going to be a safe bet for awhile.

Darling, that's not a public terminal. I don't think it will have access beyond the bath catalogue.

Let me worry about that. Just sit down, put your fingers on the keys, and stare straight ahead. Count the fungi spores on the tiles, or something, but keep the screen in your peripheral vision.

What? What are you going to do?

I'm going to drive for awhile, Ducky. Don't worry. You never need to worry again, as long as you have me around.


One minute later, Gaia blinked and was looking at the 'Skin shop on the screen. There was a racy little jet piece rotating in the display.

I think you'd look absolutely irresistable in this, Ducky.

Darling, have you been shopping?

Just browsing for a few seconds, dear. I wouldn't buy anything on your credit. Not without your approval. But tell me you wouldn't want to bed yourself in that uniform? And look what I found for your large friends. It wasn't easy to find anything, because of their size, but I think they'd look smashing in these...



There was a loud splash as Lorry's hand slipped on the edge of the pool, and she and Fly went other together. They come up a few seconds later, lips still locked together, and Lorry was maneuvering around into Fly's lap.

"Hoi! Girls - save it!" Gaia called out from the other side of the room. "You're going to need some of that rut for later tonight, if we're going to hitch a ride."

"Give us a few, for Vrahi's sake! There will be plenty of pheremones left when we're done. Probably more." Fly pulled Lorry back to her.

"No, come here." Gaia beckoned them over. "Look what she's picked out for you."

Lorry pushed up out of the pool with smiling obedience and padded over to the screen, still dripping.

Reluctant and muttering, Fly followed. She pulled at the tips of her ears to get the water out. "She?" There was a hint of anger in her voice.

Gaia met her eyes. "You know who."

Lorry reached around Gaia to tap the nubbin and turn her outfit. "I think it's lovely! Just the sort of thing I'd wear. I'd never have though to match the hat to the dress like that, but it's cute. I can't believe she found that it in my size. Oh, Fly - look what she found for you. It's perfect!"

Fly had crossed her arms and was feeling her molars with her tongue. "I think I'll get a pet, too."

Lorry looked blankly at her and continued to drip. Gaia frowned.

Fly continued. "You know, Gaia has her pet personality that she brings along on critical missions, so she can unlock doors and shop for matching outfits. I think I'll get a pet bird, though. A canary, maybe. I'll keep him in a cage and he can smell for poisonous gasses. What about you, Lor? A goldfish?"

Lorry grinned. "A Kitty with a pet bird. I wonder how long that would last?"

Gaia spoke quietly. "She's not a pet, Fly."

"What is she, then? A team member? Did we vote on that? I don't remember voting on that. But she hears everything you hear and sees everything you see and knows what you know. And, technically, hmm - doesn't she work for Turnbull? The same Turnbull who is looking to put some fresh bulletholes in each of us?"

"Technically, no, she didn't work for them, she was their slave, remember? There's a difference. A big difference, as far as the Nymphs are concerned."

"Look, we've been working together a good number of years, and we've had a good run. But I've never seen a mission get this fouled up with you. And it didn't start until we got on the Dawn Treader and you plugged in that glorified appendix. And now the Roushes are dead, the Dawn Treader is wreckage, and we had Turnbull Red bootboys tailing us at the spaceport like we were leaving breadcrumbs. What kind of coincidence is that?"

"Fly, listen to me. The problem at the spaceport was corrected; it won't happen again." Right, Darling?

Not quite, Ducky. But I'm not playing loose with your lives, or mine. I think I've figured out where we can burn out the relay - I can show you later, we get a chance. In the meantime, I'm keeping my power low enough that the effective range isn't past your fingertips. No wireless

Good enough for me. "And the Dawn Treader was not her fault - don't even think that for a second. The Roushes were great pilots and great people, but they weren't so good they couldn't possibly be shot down. That's what happened. And "She" is working with us. She's gotten us out of more tight corners than you're aware of."

"There have been too many tight corners, Gaia. I do this job for money and interest, not to trade in my lives."

"Not even a little for the Nymphs, Fly? You'll remember this is their bounty? But I tell you what. Once we get to System Cetaron, we'll split the pot, and you can look for a better job. And Lorry, if she finds a pirate gig that's less dangerous than this one, I'll understand if you go with her."

Lorry was watching the two of them with wide eyes.

"Suits me," said Fly. She grabbed Lorry by the wrist and drug her back to the pool for a good sulk.

Gaia turned back to the screen and submitted the orders for the 'Skins and accessories. For a moment she hesitated, tempted to bring in Fly's dimensions by a half-inch in every seam, but that was stupid and petty - she may still need the lump to get back home, and then she'd need her in best form.

Go easy on her, Ducky. This is hard on all of you, and they still haven't had a good rest. Give her some slack.

Too much slack, and we'll end up going different directions. Gaia sighed.



Gaia had her bath in another pool. A look from Fly's slitted eyes told her it was not yet time for make-up sex. But once Fly had exhausted herself with Lorry (Gaia refrained from interrupting them again), once they'd all had a thorough soak, and the warm water had a chance to melt their marrow a bit, once Marm Indred had brought them the vacbags filled with the blank 'Skins and Jungas and the rest, and the chits with their patterns, the tension in the air began to melt away. Gaia smiled while Fly dressed Lorry in her flowers, and applauded once Lorry had Fly closed up and snapped in the chit - Fly herself purred when she saw herself in tiger stripes and a Prehensitail. Then Gaia stood and let the two of them fuss over her while they closed her in her own 'Skin, which took a little extra wedgery, since hers was an ExactFit instead of a StretchToFit.

Once they were proper, Gaia began their program of re-profiling. They all went back to natural colors for hair and skin - Gaia lost the red hair for a straight jet black that matched her 'Skin; Lorry seemed pleased to see her own freckles and blonde curls again; and Fly, whose natural color wasn't natural, just redyed to cream and black. They all deflated the pouches in their face, too. The pouches looked natural enough, but felt like scar tissue when they were inflated, and that's not the kind of thing you want to explain when you're in a dark corner trying seduce someone.

Gaia settled with Marm Indred over the screen. They'd ended up with a surplus - their Ruckus skins were high quality, and worth quite a bit more than decorative lot Darling had picked out for them. Gaia told Marm Indred that the surplus was hers as a tip, and have a blessed evening, and they'll be leaving out the back door if she didn't mind. She didn't mind at all.

Scene

Cormick was the last to arrive at Marta's, the cantina where the quadry regulared. The doorkeep waved him through without a tip - Marta was on the roster for offshipment tomorrow, and she was probably casting wide for all the business she could on her last night. She wasn't doing too badly, either, to judge by the crowd blocking the foyer just inside the door.

Cormick side-shouldered between the bodies into twilit room beyond. The cantina was typical, if big. The circular bar, swarming with waitresses, eager patrons, and probably a of couple blood-scenting sharks, sat in the center of the large round room; above it blossomed the holo-display. The display was somewhat off-color and grainy, but Marta was probably waiting to see if it would break in the move. Why replace it when Blackbie's Migration Services would do it for you? It was a good enough display to watch Battle on, though. Cormick took note of the time - another half an hour before tonight's match would start. At the moment, the display was cycling through randomly generated patterns keeping time to the music of the "band" - Marta's twin neices. Let's see - it was Pear crooning the downtempos, and Apple behind the pile of equipment keeping the beats. Apple was the one with the bobby haircut. Right. They weren't bad, though - they were good enough to attract a small audience, could keep a dance floor moving for a whole night, and at least one of them was usually up for a snuggle between sets, for a snowboy like Cormick.

Most of the regulars were military or spaceport staff. The two crowds complemented each other and could be counted on for at least a trickle of patrons any time of day or night. Marta must have paid with her backteeth to get the license on the strip running between the two districts.

Cormick wound his way toward the bar and found a spot where he could lean on the marbled slab. The hollow behind the bar was sunken and dark, and Cormick had to lift himself up a bit to see the black-clothed bodies bustling around behind. A moment later a face appeared before him. It had been pretty, years ago, and still was in the shadows beneath a frame of hair and behind a layer of paint that filled in the creases. "What for you?"

"Hoi, Marta."

"Oh! Hoi there, Boy! I didn't see you there - lean over and give me some lips." She caught his collar and pulled him over for a peck. After letting him go, she called over her shoulder to the mousy woman at the tablet in the middle of the bar. "Tell the girls to take a quick break after they finish this song. Then run that newsie piece again on the display, yeah?" Marta grinned back at Cormick. "Kurtie gave us a bundle of her clips from today. We ran 'em when the rest of your boys came in, but now that the whole crew is here, we'll run 'em again, eh?"

"Don't show it on my account. Are you trying to embarrass me?"

"Embarrass you? I'm trying to get you an invite for the night. Well, that and business picks up each time we show it."

"I won't stand in the way of business. So, the juice for me, put a round on my account for my table, and point me in their direction."

"They're back there at the big booth in the corner, and don't bother with the round - I've had so many people buy your table rounds tonight that I'll owe you a credit wherever it is we touch down. Of course, I don't tell them that you'll all be good and sloshed before I make it to serving you their order. Bad for business. But, come look me up, once we set up again, boy. I promise to make good on your credit. You and I can drink through it in some dark corner together. Speaking of which, where is Blackbie sending you? Do you know yet?"

Cormick glanced over his shoulder and found his table through the milling bodies. His whole table was watching him. Damwick said something and they all laughed. "No." He turned back to Marta. "I mean, they retired us."

"Retired you? You're all still so young and tender."

"Twelve years out of the service this year."

"Well, seasoned and wiry, maybe. But no throwaways."

Cormick shrugged. "Blackbie's paying us full benefits, so I'm not complaining. We just have to figure out what to do to keep ourselves busy."

"If you listened to me, you'd put your stake and those moves of yours into Battle. I know you could live like a king within a season."

"If I listened to you, you'd be keeping me in your belt pocket. Toss me to the twins when you were through with me."

"Maybe so, Boy. Except I don't think there would be much left for the twins when I was through with you." She set a cup filled with a dark, swirling liquid on the bar and nudged it toward him. "Here, give me another kiss, in case I don't see you on your way out. One to last me for awhile." For all her talk, Marta was a sweet old soul, and her goodbye kiss was soft and chaste. She rolled Cormick's earlobe between the fingers of glove, gave him a light pat on the cheek, and began tapping the list of drinks that had piled up for her.

Cormick scooped up his cup, sipping off the top so it wouldn't spill as he wound his way toward the table. In the background he heard the Channel 3 audiologo, then Kurtie Brook's voiceover. Over his shoulder he saw stock footage of Eggs on the display, and a wideshot of sector 165. He ducked his head and pushed through the crowd toward the table. Marta would like nothing better than to catch him out in the middle of the floor when his face showed on the display. She'd probably turn a spotlight on him and see if she could make him blush.

He broke through to his table. "Hoi. Full house!"

Cormick made quick nods of greeting all around before looking for a place to sit. They hadn't left one for him. Damwick was sitting right at one edge of the crescent bench, and Glenda, his steady, sat beside him and had a leg up in his lap. She regarded Cormick with a raised brow. At the other edge of the bench, Shon had one thigh half-off the seat, and Roger was pressed right up beside her. There was plenty of room between those couples and Byrie and Tetva at the back of the crescent, as much as the latter two were attempting to sprawl out to fill the bench.

Cormick bumped Damwick with his knee as he set his cup down. "Slide over, Gunder."

Byrie flicked his head beyond Cormick. "Bench is full, Greene. Looks like you'll need to order up a chair."

Cormick cast a worried glance over his shoulder at the display. It was showing headshots of his quadry now. "Come on, Capatin. There's plenty of room. You know they're going to-"

"-CAPATIN BYRIE HAROLD ... LEFTENIN DAMWICK GUNDER ... LEFTENIN MAJOR ROGER JASPER ... LEFTENIN - PLOOS - CORMICK - GREENE !"

A halo light above the table crowned the quadry as Kurtie's voiceover listed the heroes of the day. A soft spotlight cast his shadow over the table as Cormick's name was drawn out. He turned away from the table to see top-down footage of his egg wading through a sea of squishies (probably super-enhanced video from the HFO). The cantina crowd was applauding, watching the display, or, more and more, following the spotlight over toward his table.

For the next quarter hour, Cormick was bustled around the tangle of people that had pressed up into the corner around his table. Bustled and bussed. Since he was the only one of his quadry standing, he took the brunt of the attention. "Thank you." "Thanks." "No, it wasn't too scary." "Not very often." "Yes, thanks." "Just a part of our job." "No." "Sure - maybe later?" "I'm not sure." "No.. yes." "I mean Yes". "Thank you."

And even when the crowd was talking to the seated snowboys, they were bouncing the attention back at him, grinning all the while. "Yes, that was his Egg there on the screen." "No, he's the single one." "I think he dances even better. You should ask him." "I've got one right here, thanks, but I don't think Leftenin Greene's had even one drink yet tonight."

The crowed began thinning to normal proportions once all the femmes and half the women had been kissed, and the other half had had their hand shaken. A few of the men wanted to grip his shoulder and quiz him about the military, but most of them left with a femme, telling her about that one time he had run into a couple of squishies... no, it was at least a half-dozen.

Cormick turned, mouth drawn, back to his table, where he found everyone holding back laughter to one degree or another. "Thanks for that."

Byrie flashed a grin up at Cormick while he keyed an order into the table. A pair of chairs slid out of the ground, filling in the gap in the crescent. "We got the better part of Marta's attentions when we got here, we just didn't want you to miss out. Now have a drink and have a sink, Greene. You're blocking my view of the display, and the Battle is about to start."

Cormick shared a few words with Glenda and Damwick before the band stopped and the ambient light in the room dropped by several degrees.

"Who's on tonight, Gunder?"

Damwick answered in a lower voice since the cantina had quieted while the display re-synchronized at double size, filling the open air over the whole bar. "The main show is a multi - all non-humans. I don't think any of them are supremals, though, or there would be better billing. The opener backed out this morning, though, so Marta bought a Tiger repeat." Cormick nodded and sipped. A waitress passed in front of him, distributing food orders. Cormick didn't recognize her - she was probably weeking here. A lot of people's jobs had gone off-planet before they were scheduled to.

An ebb of appreciative murmurs went through the cantina as the title announcing the historic Tiger match spiraled around the display for all to see. Models of the two Battlers appeared in the display as they always did, and disembodied voices and pointers, only occasionally embodying to show the celebrity faces, discussed the strengths and weaknesses of each of the combatants.

Tiger was Earth's champion, but she was the darling of all mankind. She'd appeared in the competition sometime shortly after the war, and had worked her way up the rankings the long hard way, by winning match after match. She entered the interstellar majors already top-tier-ranked, and as one of the wealthiest and most idolized individual humans. Celebrity news had her as the matriarch of an anonymous plenigamy that included not a few corporate royalty. Her face was a cliche in the movies, both licensed and unlicensed, though the difference was hardly distinguishable any more. Either way, she was a stunner: Seven feet tall (as tall as women got without Brute genes), strangely voluptuous and lean at the same time, and the face of an Angelblood. She wore the same costume in every match - her famous unarmored tiger-striped 'Skin, matching Junga gloves and boots with two wicked six-inch claws on each, and long hair pulled back into a knotted pony-tail that only a few opponents had made the mistake of trying to grab. Tiger was fighting only death matches in the majors, and her career lasted a single season, not because of loss, but because she ran out of willing opponents, and wouldn't accept the unwilling ones.

This match had been her last that season, and Cormick remembered that it had been very short. The commentators had tried to stretch the matchtime with commentary and analysis, but had eventually completed the hour with highlights from the rest of her season.

Her opponent was a Gouh Hwar; she was the size of a Supremal - fifteen feet when standing upright, and probably a half-ton in weight. She was roughly the shape of a tail-less, ear-less rat, if rats were covered with spiny scales. She wasn't as smart as your average Supremal, but she was smart enough to be a Battler - Cormick remembered she had a significant vocubulary during the taunt session the day before the match. And according to the commentators, she had a history of wins in the Southern Cross stretching years back before Tiger was born. Odds were slightly in her favor. Odds went even more in her favor when Tiger confirmed she wouldn't change her gear, despite her claws being too short to cleave the Gouh hwar's scales, and her Second Skin offering no significant crush protection.

The Battle went like this: Tiger rushed the scaled rat and flicked a quick prick at her nostril, one of the only unarmored spots on her body, before launching herself up and over. The Gouh hwar stood and tried to snap Tiger out of the air; the latter obliged by catching a tooth and plunging straight down the other's throat. What happened next can be guessed at by the convulsions and contortions the beast went through; apparently Tiger went down fast enough to avoid both the Gouh hwar's snapping jaws and her row of back-trap teeth, and a few long seconds later she stumbled over, limp but not dead, and Tiger cut her way out its belly and issued the coup de gras through the eye.

The audience in the Cantina was respectfully silent during that minute or so, cheering only when the commentators began on the analysis, which now included a cut-away extrapolation of what was going on inside the beast's belly.

Byrie thumbed the controls at the table, and the booth was bathed in the ambient hum of anti-noise. Then the sound from the display was allowed in, but quieter than Marta had set it; all other sound in the Cantina was half-muted. "Do you think you can beat her?"

Cormick turned back to the table; Byrie was looking at him. "Who - the Gouh hwar?"

"Tiger, of course. She killed the Gouh hwar, remember? And none of your fake, stammering modesty, Greene. We need a straight answer. Money could be involved."

"Yes. I suppose. Though I don't like death matches - not for myself. Not profitable. Doesn't leave much room for a rematch."

"Then why don't you? Death matches aside, though of course you know your whole stint with Blackbie and Mother Military before that puts the lie to you."

"Capatin - are you trying to get rid of me?"

"Quite the opposite. I'd stake the quadry share on you and ride you to retirement. So why don't you go and make us all rich. You have the skills. You have Allah's favor, eh?"

Cormick frowned. "I think you know the answer." Why was Byrie quizzing him about it? Especially when he knew why Cormick was the late one here. They already had a business plan. "I might have some moves, but I don't have charisma."

Glenda beat Damwick to the retort, "Marta might disagree." Damwick added on, "And half the cantina. They'd put you on the dessert menu if the kitchen would be here tomorrow."

Cormick shook his head. "You couldn't get Humanity behind a male Battler. I'm not empathic - not commercial enough. You all know that. I'd win some matches, but they'd never put me in the majors."

"Leftenin, do you know what Tiger's name is?"

"No."

"Greene. Siobhan Greene."

"What of it?"

"She shares your Mother. You two are ... cousins. From the same creche. And she only graduated two years ahead of you. You'd have bumped shoulders for sure if you'd stuck to the Gladiator Track."

"Capatin, I have thousands of cousins scattered in every Empire, and I wouldn't recognize more than a handful. Two of the quadries here on Chandier have Greenes in them."

"But the fact is, you share genos with her. Whatever charisma you think you don't have just hasn't had the stage to shine on. You're more than a match for her in every other way."

"With all respect to you and the quadry's finances, you'll have to trust me that I've done the equations, and the derivative is no Battle for this Greene. I think we should concentrate on plans that have already been made."

Of course, the charisma problem wasn't it, or it wasn't all of it. There was plenty of money to be made outside the majors. He did have the aptitude - Mother Military had drafted him after his first year of quadry training for the Gladiator Track, and only let him go, one demerit shy of permanent mop duty, when he failed out of the program. For the third time. For intentional losses.

Cormick was very good at killing. It was reflexive for him, and he absorbed the training he'd received like a sponge in a bucket. But he didn't enjoy doing it.

He didn't get angsty about it - he knew as well as anyone that souls re-incarnated - a particular body was just another change of clothes. And those species that didn't re-incarnate? Well, he wasn't an assassin - if they were fighting him, their death was already a possibility they'd accepted.

His soulsight wasn't the problem, either. As he'd explained to Byrie after the Capatin figured it out (and after the Capatin had been threatened if he ever let it slip - Cormick wasn't interested in being concripted into special programs by the Mother!), seeing souls made it that much easier for Cormick to discorporate them, both in practice because it let him see the weak points, where he could shake them loose from their bodies, and in spirit, since he had confidence in the "change of clothes" dogma Byrie had sold him on during his conversion.

As best as he could tell, the problem was that Mother Military had done too good of a job of bonding him with his quadry, or too poor of a job providing him with other family, however you wanted to look at it. He wasn't lacking ability in the sport - he lacked desire. He didn't really want the fame, he didn't really want the fortune, and so far he had done passingly well at finding a bedmate as often as he needed to keep himself happy. What he wanted was a family, and the quadry was it, or as best as he'd found so far.

Cormick frowned at himself as he lifted his cup and sloshed it back. Deep thoughts, Greene, for someone who's having his first drink.



Resplendant in her slick new 'Skin, and in what amounted to a new skin as well, Gaia palmed open the door to a place called Marta's.

Are you certain about this place, Darling? It could be dangerous to be wrong too many times in a public place.

Quite sure, Ducky. There is no better place to find a pilot, and no place less likely to find Turnbull tonight. I've done my reading. Please don't worry.

As you say.

In fact, Gaia was not worried - she was excited. Between the bathhouse and the new 'Skin, she was downright eager. Her vocation did not often provide her with an excuse to prowl, but she'd learned that the easiest way to catch a helping hand was with her thighs. And the best bait was a wink and a smile.

She passed through the entryway and into the large, reverse-dished interior of the cantina. There was a bright holodisplay of some fighting sport running over the bar in the center of the room; columns, booths, moody ambient lights, and some poorly cultured flora broke up the perimeter of the room into cliques and clusters where there was plenty of room for privacy. This would be easy.

Her Brutes would follow her into the cantina a few minutes later - as a group of three, they were two obvious a profile. But they knew the drill, and Gaia could count on their ability to become background. And if she couldn't charm a hitch from a pilot team, there was always a change Lorry or Fly could tickle their way into a berth offplanet.

Gaia logged into an autostation at the bar with a generic ID and entered a request for low-proof juice. There was no sense talking to a barkeep who might remember her face tomorrow, unless that barkeep had a pilot's license and a parking space out back.

Where do we start, Darling?

This is your hunt, Ducky. I led you to the fold - there are sheep everywhere you look. But you're the She-wolf. Start by nibbling.

Gaia grinned and wet her lips. Now which of these sheep fly the fastest ship?



Cormick had been watching her ever since she'd come in the door. She was pretty, in a dark, hungry sort of way, but that wasn't what interested him. She wore some sort of Indran mark on her forehead; it was bright and detailed and intricate and designed to catch attention, but that's not really what interested him. He was sure the glossy jet skin she was wearing was turning quite a few heads, but even that wasn't what interested him; at least, it wasn't the only thing. When she dallied behind the viewer over the bar, it gave him a chance to study her - discretely he thought. But he wouldn't have been able to focus on the viewer even if they were calling his number for the lottery. She was a beacon. To his eyes she glowed; she was a being of light; she was bathed in spirit.

He wondered if that meant she was his soulmate?

"It's rude to stare at a woman's legs like that, my boy." Kurtie breathed in his ear in that half-loud bar-whisper. "Especially when there is a pair here that is always open in invitation to you."

Cormick turned toward Kurtie. She raised her brows and tilted her head to the side, with a shrug that said, I'm just letting you know.

Cormick's eyes flicked back to the table. Damwick and Glenda were amused. Byrie was doing a poor job of suppressing a laugh. With no other allies at hand, Cormick hid his reddening cheeks behind a raised glass.

Kurtie was clearly pleased with the reaction from the table and was about to say truly wicked, when Roger leaned forward and set down his empty cup.

"So... Cap. Not that I want to be the one who questions free beer or gets in the way of twisting Greene's ribs, but you mentioned business on the jaw."

Byrie unwrapped his arm from Tetva's shoulder and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table so he could peak his fingertips. The subtle glow of the table, filtering up through empty and half-empty glasses, cast a sober pall along his face. "Lean in, Damwick. Come on, girls - you too. Shoulders tight. Yes, Kurtie. You, too. This may end up concerning you as much as the rest of us. Cormick, you have the key?" Cormick fished a little button out of his 'slung bag and set it on the table. Byrie nodded and glanced around, to make sure each face was waiting on him. "Greene and I have already talked about this, but I haven't had a chance to talk to either of you, since things happened pretty fast this afternoon. You both know we've been thinking about using our pot to buy out our contract after we got off this snowball. None of us really care for Mother Military any more, and I'm pretty sure the feeling is mutual. Well, She released us today. When Blackbie dropped us, She said she'd just as soon we don't report back in and waste perfectly good food and salary. So.... we're loose."

Damwick and Roger took a few minutes to absorb that, just like Cormick had a few hours earlier.

Damwick's eyes narrowed. "So..."

Byrie tightened his lips and nodded. "That's right. Each of you are loose. You don't have to do another damn thing I say. You wouldn't even get locked up for taking a swing at me, though you'd probably end up prying your teeth out of this table." His eyes flicked uncomfortably to Cormick, admitting the exception. "So, Jasper, you're already home. Easy enough for you to make your life, though you'll probably want to staple your home down, if you don't want to wake up space-side tomorrow morning."

"God! You know I didn't even want to come back here with the quadry. Just because Mother Military got my genes from someone who happened to live here a quarter century ago doesn't mean this snowball has a claim on me. No offense, Kurtie. Don't run that."

Kurtie chuckled. "Don't worry about it. 'Chandier Native hates Chandier' - that's not news."

Roger turned back to Byrie. "I'm sticking with the pot as long as there is one. Captain."

Byrie nodded. "What about you, Gunder? You want your seventh and your ticket?"

Damwick shook his head. "I'm in. What's the plan?"

"Well, that's lucky." Byrie pressed his fingertips together and his knuckles cracked. "It would have been a hell of a time trying to free up the pot again. The plan, boys and girls, is this:"

Byrie gave the button in the middle of the table a bump, and it flickered sadly. His brows furrowed dangerously, and he gave it a more demanding click. The top of the button began to glow, and a small projection sprung up from it and began to spin slowly. Small bullet points beckoning for attention orbited around it.

Roger's nose wrinkled. "What's that?"

Byrie grinned broadly and began using bold gestures toward the button. Cormick leaned back while Byrie sold it. "'That', Mr. Jasper, is the fastest ship on Chandier. Well, the fastest one that was for sale. And it's ours. One-seventh yours."

"That hunk of junk? It's got to be twenty years old! That part there is, anway. That part's probably thirty. And I don't know about those things."

"That is a seasoned privateer vessel."

Glenda leaned low, putting her eye closer to the model. "It doesn't look fast. I'm not talking about the engines - it looks like it would fall apart if it left the ground."

"Looks, my dear, can be and should be deceiving in our new line of work."

"How does she handle?" It was Roger again. He was opposite Glenda, chin near the table surface, flicking through the bullet points of the projection.

"We'll find out tomorrow."

"You bought her unflown?" Roger was aghast, and he was not alone. Even Tetva was eyeing Byrie with uncertainty over his shoulder.

"Please - anyone who can give us an example of a bad decision I've made, a bad direction I've led us, remind us all." The table was silent for a few moments. "Here, I'll even give you an easy one - yesterday? I got us all fired."

Damwick grinned his lopsided grin. "Actually, I'd been praying for that five times daily since last year."

Cormick added, "And I'd never been in the Executive Tower before. They have nice couches."

Kurtie took the opening. "You should have told me, dear. I would have given you a private tour. We could have tried all the couches."

"So no examples? No-one?" Byrie looked at each head in turn until it was shaken. "And just to put you at ease, I'd like to remind you that I do know some people outside of this table. In fact, I've made an effort to meet a few more of that variety of person over the last few years. Some of these people have skills, and contacts, which are useful for checking backgrounds and ship-tag histories and other such things. What is more, as surely as you can trust me not to squander your one-sevenths, boys, or Cormick's two, I would think you trust me to most fervently and jealously guard the placement of my three-sevenths. So."

"So," agreed Damwick and Roger, and Cormick nodded wordlessly.

"So, here's where it becomes interesting." Byrie tapped his fingertips together. "As I'm sure you all know, Allah does not permit the interexchange of husbands and wives." He looked up to Kurtie who probably didn't know, since she wasn't one of Byrie's converts. "Serial monogamy is permitted to an eremite, but not plenigamy. There is a focus necessary for the performance of the sacrament that does not allow for indecision in your choice of a partner."

Kurtie grinned. "Sacrament? Sounds good..."

"Therefore, we will be a ship of four or eight. Each of us will be partnered, or none of us will. Now, I know we've been in the field for weeks at a time before, but I don't think Tetva would wait for my old carcass to come back if we were gone a month, or even a year. It could happen. I've been running through the jobs on the hire. More importantly, I don't want to imagine what would happen if Gunder tried to keep the numbers again, or if we had to eat Cormick's cooking more than two meals in a row. So Tetva's on. Glenda? Shon?"

Glenda considered Byrie carefully, long enough that worry started to show on Damwick's face. "What's the buy-in?"

"One-eighth, or scale."

"Hmm." She jerked to an apparent under-the-table elbow from Damwick. "What? I'd try to buy you out. But I think, yes. Scale. I'll try a job, but I may want off after the first run." She turned purposefully to Damwick. "And if that happened, I'd hire a doxy for you to keep your boss happy, until you got tired of your adventures and knew what you wanted. I can wait a month, or a year."

Byrie nodded graciously. "I'm glad to have a professional operator aboard, Glenda. It could be dangerous, though."

"I don't mind the danger. I'm combat-ready. I don't like bad management."

"I shall do my best to live past your expectations, then. Shon?"

Shon had never been talkative, and her voice could barely be heard over the din of the bar. "We're married, now."

A great cry of surprise and congratulations rose from the table, and Byrie keyed in another round of pitchers before it was over.

Shon, now broken with grins and thank-you's, began again. "We're married, so I'll go where Roger does. I can only do scale. If you need anything I can do."

"Can you keep ship?"

"I believe so."

"Then you're welcome. Greene, that leaves you. Now I barely trust you around all of these women at the table, and much less if you sidle up to one in some dark corner of the ship. Shall we find you a doxy? I'm sure we can find one who would be willing to service on a high-risk privateer for, say, half your proceeds. Or should we perhaps consider a woman who has very subtley hinted that she would like to keep you for a pet. A woman who brings the valuable skills of public relations and sales, instead of just taking up space in your bunk. (Though I hazard there will be some of that.)" Kurtie grinned at Byrie. "A woman who I already spoke to about this an hour ago while you were picking up this key." Byrie winked back at Kurtie. "Now, Cormick, I don't want to rush you into any hasty decisions. I'll give you some time to think it over. How about five clicks? Two. Three..."

"Excuse me?"

Cormick looked up, over his shoulder, and was nearly blinded. It was her. The luminous woman.

"I'm sorry for eavesdropping - I was - but I heard you mention privateering, Captain. And I see your ship there. Do you already have a charter off-planet? If not, I'd like to talk. If so, I'd like to talk soon."

Byrie smiled. "Do sit down."

The woman did so, sliding into the narrow gap Cormick had created between himself and Kurtie (who was demonstrably unpleased with the new arrangement).



In another corner of the Cantina, Lorry was playing the part of the redundant fishhook, though Fly was doing more of the talking. They were sticking to the plan, keeping their distance from Gaia (though not looking like they were trying to keep their distance.) After the ruckus they’d raised at the spaceport, there could be shape routines running in cameras anywhere; Gaia could move a lot more freely without two 9-foot Brutes looming over her shoulder. But in a fab city like this one, even one Brute would be noticeable, so Lorry and Fly stuck together in the shadows at the edge of the room, counting on a reduced viewing angle for anonymity. Lorry tried to keep an eye on Gaia, though; they needed to be ready to meet her as soon as she gave them the signal. Gaia had sat down at a table with what could have been a pilot group, maybe. She was sharpening her claws.

Lorry took a sipped the froth from the top of her cup and shifted uncomfortably in her seat, or her small portion of it. They were on a couch behind where the band was setting up for another set, facing off into a small, poorly lit alcove where they might have a little privacy. Lorry normally fit well with Fly on a couch – there was plenty of room for cuddling, for some criss-crossed legs, or for Gaia to slide up into one of their laps. But normally they didn’t have the two co-pilots of the Undertow crammed into the couch between them. In all fairness, she and Fly had attempted to join them on the couch when they found out the pair were taking their ship off-planet tomorrow. Now the four of them were stuck.

Fly was done up with a tigress motif – her ‘Skin, boots, and gloves were all black-striped and setting off her already pointed ears and fangs, and she had her glove-fingers drawn into claw-like points; it was doing to the male half of the pilot duo what it usually did to Lorry, that is, make him perky and wriggly. He was purring almost as much as Fly as she ran her clawpoints through the hair behind his ears.

The female half wasn’t as enthralled by Lorry’s sunny flowerprint and blossom hat. She shifted on the couch to get a little more room, and Lorry slipped further down the armrest and onto the couch, making things a little tighter.

“You say,” the female co-pilot asked, “that there’s another one of you?” There was some incredulity in her voice. “Our cabin is … not large.”

“Oh, but she’s much smaller,” Lorry said, with an assuring set to her brows. She glanced over her shoulder toward Gaia’s table and hoped she was doing better.



Once the luminous woman and Byrie began the bargain, Cormick and the rest of the table fell silent. It gave him a good opportunity to study her, and with Kurtie sitting on the far side, he didn't have to deal with her elbow, only the occasional evil eye cast past the newcomer. The woman had given her name as Gayahtri Spivak, a classic Hindish name that matched her looks. That kind of racial specialization usually meant Mother Military or formal religion. Cormick considered the latter more likely - she had that mark on her forehead, and had the earnestness of belief about her. The Mother had a way of kicking any kind of earnestness out of her children; it didn't cohabit well with unquestioning obedience.

Gayahtri was wearing a polished black 'Skin that clung to her curves the way a 'Skin should, with Jungas to match and some kind of filmy drapery that disguised her shape only just enough to make you look harder. It was the uniform of an dom femme, or more likely, a woman on the prowl.

But Cormick wasn't staring at her curves; nearly three-quarters of Marta's patrons had them in a reasonably congruent analog. He was staring at the light of her soul.

Cormick hadn't woken one morning in early puberty to see the light in the eyes of his bunkmates. He hadn't reported to Mother's Special Programs like the bulletins demanded, to announce that his adolescence had gifted him with seeing the Life in his fellow conscripts. He never told Commander Oostrienne about the sparks that met in their mouths the first she secreted him into her office to kiss him, or how he knew weeks before she told him that her interest in him had dwindled and transferred to another first-year instead. According to Special Programs, these powers - Remainders, they called them - that they sought manifested with the first promises of adulthood, so Cormick had felt no disloyalty in keeping to himself what he had kept to himself since he had been taught to sign at six months and his first memory had been embossed. In truth, he wasn't certain until he was ten years that he saw anything different than anyone else, and by then the seniors in his bunkroom had long since taught him the indirect but crucial skill of saying silent.

But Cormick had never, in all his memory, seen a soul like this. Most commonly he saw only the pale blue light behind the eyes. Some charismatics might glow in the mouth as they spoke; lovers shared lightning at the fingertips when they touched, and more as they moved closer. He'd see the faintest of auras if the background was sufficiently dark; Marta's, with it's ambient twilight, was a great place to size someone up. The only time he'd see the full ghost - a thin veneer of the body shape hung from the bright bar of light that ran the ley line from the mind to the focus in the gut - was with a fresh corpse, and those ghosts didn't stick more than a few minutes.

That was the only time until this evening. This Gayahtri's ghost shone through her face, even glowing through her 'Skin. Her ley line was not a hazy, static bar - it was distinct congregation of mandalic motifs. Perhaps most disturbing, the ghost did not seem bound to her body; it was a heartbeat behind her when she moved, gracefully tounching her cup only after she had lifted it to her lips, and feeling out the curves of the cup's edges while the body held it firmly. The body listened intently to Byrie; the ghost studied each at the table, and arriving at last at Cormick, it smiled beatifically. Cormick quickly looked away.



Gaia nodded appreciatively at what Capatin Harold had told her. Their ship looked a disaster, but the Capatin embodied the first law of privateering: "To thine own skin be true." If the Capatin would fly with the ship, it was safe enough for her, and for her precious cargo. She'd given the table her true name against her instincts, but on her Darling's insistance. Darling had not yet led her wrong, but she would not make good pirate - she was too insistant on honesty.

Trust me, Ducky.

I am, Darling, more than you know.

"Good", said Harold, tapping the key in the center of the table. The holo of the ship disappeared, and he slid it to the man beside her, called Greene. Greene was the only one alone at the table, if you didn't count the blonde tart on her right. No-one else seemed to. The blonde was making eyes at Greene, but her fuming glares at Gaia were too desperate for Greene to be her sure thing. So Greene was available, and might be a way to lock the deal. Maybe even a way to get a discount. Gaia winked at him.

He blushed! This would be easy.

I like him.

Should we be bed him, Darling?

More than that, Ducky.

Shhh. Towel down, Darling - You're making me too squirmy. Let me do some business.

Capatin Harold had settled back confidently in his seat. "So, next I ask, What is the destination? And should we expect inconveniences? For if you were eavesdropping as closely as you should have been, you'd know this is no salt and flour barge."

"Star Cetaron is your destination, Capatin."

"The Nymphaeum? No discounts for clergy, Sister. Especially not for clergy."

"None expected, Capatin. As for inconveniences, let me just say that there must be absolutely no pitstops or hitchhikers, though doubtless there will be some who will very persuasively try to convince you otherwise. You must jump straightly. If you must hub even once, your payment will dwindle most saddeningly."

"I see." Byrie scratched behind his goatee. "These persuasive hitchhikers wouldn't be moored in the battleship over the HFO, would they?"

Yes. Tell him 'Yes', Ducky. It will only be worse for us if he finds out later.

Gaia leaned forward so she could speak in her lowest voice. "Though I haven't had time to catch up on the comings and goings of the HFO, Capatin, I would suspect that you and I are of an understanding - your trade is in transportation, not information."



Cormick had been studying the half-life of the of the bubbles at the surface of his cup since the wink. He hadn't been used to his cheeks burning since graduation, and the experience left him feeling off-balance. How had he handled it before. Certainly not in staring at the object of his affections! He had to satisfy himself with stealing sidelong glances at this Gayahtri, and trying to pay attention to what job Byrie was committing to him to.

"Well..." Byrie wasn't taking the time to think, Cormick knew. It was for the benefit of Gayahtri. Byrie reacted at the instinctual level, just like he did. "That's the real trick isn't it. We'll have to move past the HFO to jump, even if we can make the calculations, and your spider up there has already thrown the web out for you. It will cost you double. Seventy Thousand."

Cormick kept his mouth from dropping open, but his eyelids did it instead. They'd paid Seventy-Thousand for the ship, and Byrie thought they could make it back on the first job.

"Half now, half on delivery," Byrie continued.

"I've bought ships for less, Capatin."

So would've they, if they hadn't been on this snowball when they were shopping.

"It's not the ship you're paying for, Sister. It's the expertise of the crew. If you think someone else on this planet can fly you safely through the spiderweb, I invite you look around. But we do not price-match, and we won't be here waiting for your business tomorrow morning."

For the long holding of a breath, Gayahtri did not respond. "I can give you Ten Thousand now, Capatin. It's all I have. But the Nymphs will pay you an additional One Hundred Thousand on successful Delivery."

One Hundred and Ten Thousand! Cormick had at one time thought of retiring on less than two-sevenths of that.

"Interesting..." mused Byrie. "But what's the cargo? Too much mass will cost you more."

"That's no problem, Capatin. Only myself, and two others. One bag apiece."

"This is no cruise-liner, Sister. The bunks are full."

"It's not the ship, I'm paying for, Capatin, it's the expertise of the crew. And I'm sure you have a broom closet you can spare us. If no-one among you will share a bed."

Byrie chuckled. "Well said. Sister, you have a bargain. I will take your Ten Thousand now, and you and your two will meet us at the following coordinates tomorrow, no later than Half-Day. We will be leaving at half-past then, and we will expect the Nymphs to honor your deal, whether or not you are on-board when we leave."

Gayahtri fished in her hip bag and pulled out a conveyor. The x^3 bank was larger than Cormick had ever seen, and it was more than half full. The marks on the top read 5*9*9*3. 10,047 Cash!

Byrie balked when he saw the payment, but did not lose a step. He took out his own conveyor, and somehow coaxed it to accept the 10,000. Cormick thought he might have lost a few grains in the transfer, but Marta's bots would find them later. She'd be pleased by the tip.

Gayahtri took back her conveyor and rattled the few remaining grains it held. "Capatin, we will be more than on time. Now if you could recommend a flop where 47 might buy a bed and a reasonable expectation of privacy, I'd be obliged."

Byrie tucked his conveyor away and slapped both hands on the table. "My pleasure, Sister. Lievtenant Greene!"

Cormick immediately straightened, and responded from instinct. "Yes, Sir!"

Byrie nodded. "Thank you for volunteering, Lievtenant!" He looked back to Gayahtri. "Our best man, Cormick Greene, will show you more hospitality than 100 points could buy, Sister Spivak, and your 47 are yours, unless he earns a tip." His attention returned to Cormick. "Greene! You have the biggest apartment among us - I expect that your bed is in guest-receiving condition, and your couch is in you-receiving condition, or it will be in twenty minutes, yes?"

"Yes, Sir!" Cormick stood. He thought he should resent the trick Byrie pulled on him, but he didn't. Byrie might even expect him to service the woman, but he didn't mind.

Gayahtri quickly stood along with him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Thank you, Capatin. But there is no need for the urgency. Perhaps Left Greene and I could learn each other before he takes me to his apartment." Her eyes met his. "Cormick, is it? Do you dance?"

The greatest surprise was registered by Cormick when he said yes.



Of course, Kurtie left in a huff only moments later.



Gaia found that Cormick was a good dancer. That was good, since they were the only ones dancing on this side of the bar nest. There was a band playing on the other side of the bar, but it would be too noisy over there for her to hear herself think, much less for him to hear her, if she wanted to speak.

When she'd first stopped him in an open spot on the floor and assumed the stance, his hand had gone naturally to the small of her back. They took a few steps, and his hand rose, toward the bulge where Darling lived beneath her 'Skin. For a second, her blood froze. Then she took his hand and guided it down, lower, over the curve of her ass. "That's better, isn't it?" She flashed teeth at him, and he demured. That only encouraged her. "I can be wriggly when I dance, so you'll have to keep a firm hold, or you might lose me altogether."

He nodded, and complied by squeezing her buttock as they kept time to the music while the band played on and people moved around them, to and from the bar.

Meanwhile, he was a good dancer. He could lead or follow, as she allowed, and he was graceful, without being fluid. 'Fluid' was her job; she melted to him and made sure he felt her curves while he accented her steps, or chose his own if she hesitated even an instant. "You're very good," she whispered in his ear.

He was embarrassed or didn't understand her; either way he blushed and said nothing.

She realized that he glanced into her eyes whenever he thought she wouldn't notice, but she noticed each time and he looked away. It was like he knew her from before and was waiting for her to remember it. Or perhaps he had a crush on her. The beat changed and they turned, and her leg slipped between his. Oh, yes - he had a crush on her. She grinned. "What is your apartment like, Cormick?" He looked at her and she caught him; she moistened her lips with her tongue. He almost tripped. She rested her cheek against the side of his head, which involved only a little slump on her part. He was about eight inches shorter than her, though she was average height. He probably had military ancestry.

"Normal, I suppose?"

Oh - he was answering her question. She'd forgotten she asked it - it was only to get his attention.

"I mean, it's pretty overgrown, but I keep it clear. It's not as big as the Capatin suggests, but it will be comfortable. And the bed is clean, Marm Spivak."

She tilted her head to whisper directly into his ear. She pressed close enough that her lips would just brush the upper folds of his ear, and her breath would rustle in the soft hair there. Each time she swallowed, each time her lips met, he would hear it and feel it louder than the beating of his own heart.

"Gaia. Please, Cormick."

"Of course, Gaia."

"I'm sure the bed is wonderful, Cormick. But we're hitting it off so well, we may not make it far. I hope your couch is ample?'

"I-"

She turned them at another change of the beat, and kept him from having to think of a clever response. Usually, to properly seduce a man, you had to give them room to feel like they were the aggressor. You had to play the femme. But some men - they were never the aggressor, and those - you just had to keep them from embarrassing themselves. They were Gaia's specialty.

"Cormick - have you had dinner?"

"No, actually. I-"

"Good. Because I'm planning an all-you can eat buffet, back at your apartment. And I think it's just about cooked. Do you understand me?"

She pulled back to catch his eye. His face went from blank, to shocked with surprise, to a guilty grin. She leaned back to his ear with a smile of her own. "Shall we go, then?"



Lorry had been certain almost half an hour before that the pair between her and Fly weren't their trip off-planet, but Fly hadn't given up on the co-pilot whose face she was devouring. So, Lorry tried to make small talk from time to time, and kept an anxious eye on Gaia. The female co-pilot barely responded in that "I hope you'll not be here very soon" kind of way, while her partner was disappearing into Fly's lap, and discovering just how strong the cat-eyed Brute's tongue was.

Then Lorry saw Gaia moving toward the door, a smaller man in tow. Gaia caught her eye discretely, and flashed her "five and follow". Lorry blinked in response.

"Well." Lorry nodded at the woman next to her. "I suppose we'd better settle with the bar. It was a pleasure, Capatin Naaka. Fly?".

The co-pilot kissed Lorry on the cheek with only the requisite courtesy, but she seemed visibly relieved as Lorry stood and the couch suddenly became spacious.

"Fly?"

Fly had rolled the co-pilot beneath her, and looked like she mount him right there in the shadows of the cantina. She still hadn't broken the liplock she had on his face.

"Fly!"

The Brute looked up, leaving a red-faced, panting, and very pleased man half-dissolved on the couch beneath her. "Now?"

"Now."

"Hmph." Fly tousled the male co-pilot's hair with claw-sharp gloves and stood. "Capatin Ono. It was a pleasure."

"Ah... yes". He straightened up on the couch, glancing over at his partner as he made himself more presentable. "A pleasure."

Fly smoothed the wrinkles in her 'Skin. "I left a card with my postal box in your jacket, Capatin. Leave me a message if you're in my zone. Maybe we can play that game you were mentioning. I'm sure I can find a pair of mouse ears."

The co-pilot looked at his partner and reddened as the Brutes walked away.

Fly furrowed her brows at Lorry and crossed her arms as they reached the corner station of the bar. "I was winning allies. Nearly there. Another few minutes and he would have named the ship after me."

Lorry shook her head as she settled with the station at the bar. An older woman behind the bar smiled at her when the tip registered in the computer. Lorry nodded. "Five and follow, Fly. Let's make sure she doesn't get out of range."

Fly frowned, but followed Lorry out of the cantina.

Scene

Kurtie tripped into her upstairs office, drunk on anger and tears. That thieving bitch! And Byrie had let it happen, after their conversation earlier. No, it wasn't his fault - that bitch had witching in her eyes, and he was just a man.

She fell into her chair and it slowly rotated.

But Cormick had let it happen! No, it wasn't his fault, either - he was the sacrificial bull she was leading to slaughter on her altar; he would only know which way his nose was pointing when she pulled the ring in it. But that thieving bitch had swooped in and grabbed the ring from out of her hands, right before. Right before! Kurtie had been working on Cormick for four years, and the bitch comes in the night before! Kurtie's teeth ground so hard they hurt, but that was okay. That bitch would be feeling the pain, soon. Kurtie would find Cormick's address and tell him a thing or two about the bitch who ... something. She would think about it later.

For a moment, she toyed with the irony that she had never been to his place. Her seduction of Cormick had always involved taking him back to her own prepared lair, where she knew all the tricks, knew where all the goodies were hidden. Ah! She might have something of his downstairs, and she could take it over to his place, and ... She'd think of how to turn that trick when she got there.

She pounded the wake button on her screen with too much vigor, but the screen knew better than to complain when Kurtie was in a mood.

There were messages waiting for her, possible news items. She took a look with vague disinterest - she'd already written her resignation letter for tomorrow morning. A few items about the migration off-planet: itinerary changes, general advice, things like that. Dana wasn't too good to cover those herself. Bitch. There was a new category called "Turnbull Red". The company had bought the rights to the planet post-migration, but arrived early and was hassling the queues at the spaceport. Whatever. Her ride off-planet was strapped tandem in Cormick's lap. Oooh. One was marked "Urgent Priority". Okay, whatever. Click.

Kurtie laughed, and looked at the message again. Then she laughed harder. There were three faces, captured and re-rendered to slowly rotate by some security cameras. The shots were grainy, but she had a good eye. The shape of the face - that meant nothing to her. That would change with a few bioplaz inserts. But those witching eyes.....

The middle face was the bitch.

She selected the face and printed it to her renderator. This was too good. Hmm... but maybe she was dangerous. That's what the dispatch said, in big red letters. They'd killed two dozen security personnel at the spaceport, and wounded at least as many innocents. She was a bitch! Kurtie laughed and opened her cooler door to search for an alcohol.

Okay, so she couldn't go there tonight, or she might end up a pretzel, or worse, a pretzel full of holes. The bitch was dangerous, and she had two dangerous friends. But if she sent these Turnbull Red people... Who were they? Weapons Group? No, no... Cormick might end up full of holes, too, and she wasn't interested in that at all.

No, tomorrow, once they left the apartment - she could separate them once they left the apartment, and those Red bootboys would have their bitch, and Kurtie would have her bull. Kurtie drank her alcohol and made plans.

Scene

A Turnbell Red Bootboy stood at the City boundary, peering out at the dozen meters or so of snow that the city lights illuminated. A road in the city became a truck trail beyond the gates and twisted off to some god-forsaken place that these god-forsaken snowballers wouldn't give two squirts about in another day. The Blackbie Boots they'd relieved of this post in the afternoon had been only too happy to turn over their charge.

His finger teased the trigger on his rifle. He'd been warned to watch for entrants at the gate, but last he heard, the spaceport parties had already marked the target. So he was just waiting. Waiting in the cold, and not being paid enough to wait in the cold. He was barely being paid enough to wait in the "comfort" of his bunk onboard the ship. "Private Norugu!" There was no reason why he should be the one outside. "Private!" He turned away from the black-meets-white horizon, toward the guardshack where his subordinate was warming his hands. "Private, your shift! Get out here, Norugu!"

The Bootboy trudged back toward the gatehouse. The movement of the light said the kid Norugu inside was ignoring him, not sleeping. That meant he was due a good kick in the shins, but no formal demerit. "Private!"

He reached the gatehouse and stopped short. Norugu was sprawled on his belly on the floor. A dark red puddle spread out from beneath his chest. His gun was retracted to his shoulder strap. There was a dark figure on the table in the back of the gatehouse.

"Shit!" He snapped his own gun from his shoulder.

He saw a shadow in the air above him, and just glance another before his throat was warm and his vision grayed. He knew he had gotten off a few rounds, but they were too quiet for anyone to hear. His fingers felt for his transponder, but they were too heavy to move. It wasn't that important, anyway. His body was so heavy, so he might as well just lie here and sleep it off. It was so cold, though...



The Blue-Yellow-Blue Ninja cleaned his forks in the snow and moved past the Squinty's corpse into the shadows of the city. Behind him, his nephew left the all-clear beeper for his cousins. Squinty ears were too tinny to hear it, and their eyes too Squinty to see the dozens of shadows that would slip in behind his team.

All around the edges of the city, similar beepers were inviting his brethren to the Dance.

The Ninja saw the path he'd memorized into the heart of the city; it was sufficiently shadowed. He signalled his nephews to follow in his steps, and led the way to their mission-point. He was well pleased. Glory be to the Families! Glory be to the General-Father! Tonight was the beginning of a Great Retribution.

End Act One