Stuck in the Astral with You

The rec room doors slid open. Immediately, the faint ringing of sleigh bells assailed Tiffany. The association formed in her mind in an instant, and the holographic evergreen tree in the middle of the room made it official.

“Shit, when did Christmas happen?” she mused aloud to no one in particular.

Pulling out her datapad, she checked a feature she rarely paid much attention to since leaving a life of schooling and extracurricular activities behind: her calendar.

DECEMBER 20, 2563

Looking up with a scowl, she shouted into the room, “Since when did we start dragging this shit out a whole fucking week?”

Heads turned. Games of pool and cards paused. The general scrounging from the snack buffet halted as everyone waited for someone else to answer. Ever since learning of the existence of the Rucker Syndicate, she’d been warned of hardened, ruthless criminals who weren’t to be trifled with. These days, she was the one who no one wanted to piss off.

Word had gotten around, circled back to the Errand of Mercy, and filtered through to this rival band cloven from that common stock. There were wizards, and there were Wizards. The former mooched off Convocation credit, tinkered with star-drives, maybe levitated a few items here or there. Basically, party tricksters. The latter created piles of ash and left a trail of will readings in their wake.

“Get in the spirit, sweetie,” Jeanine called out as she approached with two glasses filled with a yellowish-tan liquid. One of these found its way into Tiffany’s hand.

She gave a sniff. Her nose crinkled. “Eggnog? Nana, I can’t stand that shit.”

Nana Jeanine gave a knowing smirk. “Maybe you’ll like it better with a little brandy in it.”

Tiffany raised an eyebrow and inspected the drink anew. Nana might have had a point. She took a cautious sip and swallowed. “Bleagh. Two shitty tastes that taste shitty together.” She passed the glass back to her grandmother and jerked her head toward the tree. “So, was all this your idea?”

“No, but I was the one who told them to just go ahead and light it up. Hard enough feeling festive when your whole family wants to pretend you’re dead. Being out in this purple slimescape doesn’t help any.”

Tiffany gazed into the astral. One entire wall of the rec room was floor-to-ceiling windows, interspersed with structural stanchions. She sighed. “You get used to it.”

“Not at my age, you don’t.”

Tiffany was about to launch into a counterargument before realizing she didn’t care. “Sure. Whatever. But it’s not going anywhere.” She worked her tongue around her mouth and sucked at her cheeks in an effort to purge the lingering aftertaste.

It was one of those intuitive senses that grandmothers had. A shrewd look twinkled in the old woman’s eyes before she turned to head for the buffet. “Maybe we can find something to put some holiday cheer into you.”

Following along thanks to some strange intergenerational hex, Tiffany browsed the offerings. There was the usual fare of beer pretzels, beer nuts, and just plain old beer, along with cheese, crackers, nachos, and chicken wings. In addition, a number of holiday-themed treats had been scattered down the length of the table. Cookies shaped like trees and wreaths were slathered in green frosting. Miniature yule logs and stubby candy-cane-looking pastries of the same shape tantalized from within individual plastic wrappers.

Tiffany lifted a discarded cardboard box left nearby the festive treats. “Merri Snakks?”

Jeanine shrugged. “It was either those or bake homemade. And your mother got her lack of kitchen skills from me.”

A nostalgic smile came unbidden. “Hey, not everyone can bake like Judy Griddles, Nana.” She still had vivid memories of the fire rescue team putting out the blaze at Nana’s house one Christmas when she was five years old.

Jeanine gathered an assortment of the holiday-themed treats on a plate.

“You’re gonna get sick if you eat all those,” Tiffany warned with her best scolding voice.

Nana sighed. “Bringing them to Candace and Roger. If it weren’t for me, I swear they’d forget to feed those two at all.”

A bucket of ice water washed over the conversation. Tiffany swiped a hand across the plate, scattering the snacks. “They’re lucky to be eating at all.”

With that, she stormed out of the rec room.

Galen Frome tapped at the datapad in his lap while he reclined, feet up on his desk. The day’s shipping manifests scrolled by, checked in turn, compared to warehouse inventory, and approved with his inspector ID code.

Not that Galen was an inspector anymore. He’d been Chief of Operations going on five years now, with a promotion due next June. If he kept Martinelli Storage and Logistics operating smoothly until then, he could retire his inspector ID code for good.

Until then, he supervised a facility of 927 loaders, inspectors, logistics support specialists, a client relations team, and his brother Natron. Natron didn’t do much, but he was listed on the payroll as Quality Control Chief.

Natron did, on occasion, knock on Galen’s office door to interrupt his work. “Hey, we got a guy here to see you,” he announced after letting himself in.

Galen flicked his datapad with the back of one hand. “Can’t you see I’m in the middle of something? Have Liza deal with him.”

Natron put a hand to the side of his mouth like he was some kind of holovid spy. “It’s. You. Know. Who.”

With a clatter, Galen dropped his datapad on the desk. “No. I don’t know who. And I’m in no mood for guessing games. If it’s Viv, send her on up; otherwise, I’ve got a report to file.” Vivian had an annoying habit of barging in during his business hours. But their anniversary was coming up soon, and he couldn’t think of a damn thing to get her. Maybe a piece of his time might blunt the sting if he blew that.

Natron shook his head. “It’s a couple guys from the you-know-what.”

Galen got up, ready to shove his little brother out the door despite giving away ten kilos’ worth of muscle. “Leave. Now. Delegate, or so help me, I’ll find someone else to fill that QC office.”

Through gritted teeth and in a whisper that might as well have been a shout, Natron blurted out, “It’s the Ruckers.”

Ruckers? Here? “Impossible. We’re done with that bullshit. They got their piece of the company. We don’t get surprise shakedowns anymore. That was the deal.”

“YOU tell ’em that!”

With a huff, Galen shouldered his way past his idiot brother. No amount of delegating was going to get rid of syndicate tough guys. But he wasn’t going to be bullied. He was protected now. If these idiots weren’t with the program, he had a contact in the organization with the clout to set them straight.

The catwalk outside Galen’s office overlooked a five-story drop to the floor with a view of stacked cargo containers close enough to jump across—for a more athletic gentleman, leastwise.

Metallic steps rang as Galen’s shoes pounded toward the duracrete of the warehouse floor.

Waiting for him at the bottom was a human advert for steroid supplements. Beady-eyed and with a jawline shaped like a shovel blade, he barely fit inside the slick business suit he wore. Seams bulged. Buttons clung on desperately to hold the front closed. Long hair slicked back against his head before gathering in a ponytail.

“You Galen Frome?” the man asked.

“Yeah, what’s the meaning of—?”

“Here,” the Rucker representative said, pressing a pair of datagoggles into his hands. “Put these on.”

Hoji, Galen’s foreman, came running from a nearby aisle of shipping containers. “Boss, they’ve got guys going around with magnetic boxes, sticking them to support beams.”

“What’s this all about?” Galen demanded. All he wanted were simple answers. There was an easy solution here. The whole gangster theatrics thing had worn thin for him long ago.

“Put the goggles on. A comm will connect. Read from the prompter.”

Galen didn’t like the sound of that. Not one bit. “What are your people doing with those boxes?”

The gangster seemed nonplussed. “We’re going to blow up this warehouse.”

“WHAT?”

“And if you play along, we’ll let your people leave first.”

If?

The rest registered in his mind, but the threat echoed in that lonely word “if.”

Donning the datagoggles, Galen’s view was obscured by an opaque interface screen that indeed promised a readied comm. Not feeling like he had a lot of choice today, and making a note to read his Rucker handler the riot act over this interference in his business, he decided to play along.

After all, the explosives were a threat. If he complied, there was no way the Ruckers would blow up a warehouse they owned a controlling interest in.

Mouth dry, he waited for the connection to come through. When it did, he recognized the face.

“You… you…”

Tania Rucker was stern-faced and menacing, sitting in a high-backed chair with a backdrop of bare steel behind her. “What is this? Who are you, and what do you want?”

Words hung in front of his eyes, interposed between him and Ms. Rucker. So much for his Rucker handlers…

Clearing his throat, Galen began reading. Haltingly, mechanically, but pushing forward while trying not to let the words sink into his own mind.

“Tania Rucker. You should have known this was coming. Actions have consequences. And this—”

“Who are you!”

Galen ignored her and blabbered on. More words scrolled up into view as he read. “Is the first of many. Know that all of this could have been avoided. You’re going to regret the day you were born. I know I do. This messenger doesn’t even know he’s about to—”

Without reading the last word, Galen tore off the datagoggles. His feet were already moving, breaking into a run for the nearest emergency exit.

But no sooner did the goggles come off, the whole building jolted with a linked series of explosions. He had only a fraction of a second to process the wall of flame rushing up to incinerate him.

They strolled the cobbled street, heeled shoes clacking with each step. Esper wore her favorite frilly pink dress; Karen wore a matching version in saffron. As her guest gawked at the quaint little shops and the burbling fountain, Esper studied her companion’s reaction.

“So, this is where it all happened,” Karen mused. “This is where you took me when the casino had used me up and left me broken. This is where you pieced me back together again.”

A lump formed in Esper’s throat. She’d known this was a bad idea, but somehow, she found herself unable to deny Karen’s request to see this place. So many had been turned off by the mental realm. Couched comments hinted that Tanny still had nightmares about their kidnapping by Lloyd Arnold. Ilsa had nearly suffocated upon realizing she wasn’t breathing real air. It confused Kubu to no end. It just… felt nice sharing Esperville with someone who appreciated it.

But this wasn’t how she wanted it remembered.

“Not exactly.”

Karen twirled, expertly billowing her skirts. Her dimpled smile was conspiratorial. “Oh, I realize. Same theater, different stage.”

Esper scowled playfully. “Hadn’t thought about it like that.”

“I assume you kept it all.”

“Kept?”

Karen shrugged as she walked backward effortlessly in her heels on the uneven street. “I don’t know how it works. Kept? Remember? Magic it up anew? Can I see my old high school, for instance?”

Taking a deep breath, Esper steeled herself. This wasn’t going to be a pleasant afternoon of chatting at the cafe patisserie after all. “All right. Let’s go have a look.”

She allowed the streets of Esperville to dissolve like a holovid scene until the cobbled streets had become a gymnasium floor. Painted lines ran in concentric ovals, marking out the lanes of a sprinting track. Sets of bleachers made of cheap plastic and grimy from years of use ran up both sides. Fluoro-tone lighting shone down from fifteen meters overhead.

Karen spun, eyes wide with wonder. “It’s like you have a time machine. It’s just how I remember. There’s the banner from our Midlands State Gymnastics title in ’57. And that’s the sign we painted for the pep rally before the Mathademics Finals.”

Esper held her tongue that Mathademics wasn’t a thing on Rigel IV; it had barely made inroads on Mars by the time she’d dropped out of high school back home.

Still clacking in her Victorian heeled boots, Karen paused as she headed into the girls’ locker room. “Can you do me up in my cheerleading uniform?”

They’d only done three semesters of cheering together before Esper had guided teenage Karen into a more cynical direction. Frankly, Esper had done it out of a sense of moral self-preservation. She’d had a hard enough time keeping Karen as a friend while suppressing her own attraction.

And yet…

With a wave of her hand, Karen changed from debutante to cheerleader. Red and white sweater, pleated red skirt, and bright white sneakers straight from the plastic went along with a change in makeup and a no-nonsense ponytail.

Karen looked down and studied her new outfit. “I don’t remember the sweater being this baggy.”

Gritting her teeth, Esper flicked a finger. The uniform top shrank two sizes, shrink-wrapping Karen in synthetic wool knit.

Beaming, Karen looked Esper in the eye. “Perfect. Your turn.”

“I don’t…” then she registered that look. Her resolve melted. “OK. Fine.”

With a snap of her fingers, she wore a matching ensemble. “I never noticed how much you look like Nina. I mean, not exactly, but so similar I can see how you did it.”

“Did what?”

“Convinced yourself you were her.”

The two of them careened through the school. Karen couldn’t see things fast enough. Esper could barely keep up at times. She opened her old locker, inspected the school trophy case, sat at the desk in her Colonial History class.

By the time they arrived back at the gymnasium, they were both short of breath. Esper didn’t feel the need to relax the rules to allow them unlimited stamina; she needed the break.

“Can you fill it with people?” Karen asked, sweeping a hand across the stacks of empty bleachers. “From back then?”

Long having given up pushing back, she indulged the request. In an instant, the gymnasium buzzed with hundreds of inane high school conversations.

Karen wandered along at floor level, faintly eavesdropping. “Do real students sound like this, I wonder?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Esper replied from a pace behind her.

With a suddenness that narrowly avoided causing a collision, Karen stopped in her tracks. “Some of these students are duplicates.”

“Twins,” Esper suggested with a lame smile.

Karen squinted, studying the crowd. Then she pointed to a boy in the third row just in front of them. “There are five of this one… no, six.”

“Sextuplets?”

Karen smirked. “Can’t blame you. If I had to make up a whole school full of teenagers, I’d have fizzled out long before this.”

“Can I interest you in a mocha latte and an éclair back in Esperville?” Esper teased, trying to make the snack as appetizing as possible without actually making Karen hungry with magic.

“Sure,” Karen replied brightly. “Just one side trip first. OK?”

“OK. Where to?” Esper asked. She had her guess: the little pedestrian overpass where they went to get away from parents and school and just talk long into the night.

“My old life. All of it. As best as you know it.”

Esper gaped.

“I mean it.” Karen crossed her arms, though it was hard to take her seriously as a taskmaster in that uniform.

“We didn’t know one another that long or that well, and—”

“Then it shouldn’t take long.”

This had all the inklings of a well-laid trap. Still, Esper felt duty-bound to attempt an escape. “It could take hours. Maybe days.”

“We have plenty of time. You mentioned that about three months pass every time you sleep. In the two hours until dinner in the mess hall, you can show me up to five days’ worth of the life I lost.” She smirked. “I had an excellent math teacher.”

“There might not be a lot to see. I can’t show you things I wasn’t around for.”

“Take your time. Fill in the gaps. Make your best guesses. It doesn’t have to be in chronological order or cross-checked with reliable sources. Mix in snippets of your life at the brothel, of Kubu and Harmony playing at the daycare. Just tell me a story of who I used to be.”

There was desperate earnestness there. Esper couldn’t say no, but she felt like she had to give one final effort.

“It’s a pretty grim story.”

Karen flung her arms out. “But it had a happy ending. Or a happy wherever-I-am-now in it. I can take it. I’m going out of my mind not knowing who I am. Please.”

That was the final straw. That please. She couldn’t say no. But where to begin?

With a sigh, Esper swept out a hand, and the gymnasium vanished. The two of them now perched on pedestal seats at the bar of a pancake house, watching Esper and Melody in a conversation at a nearby booth.

“I’m not letting you buy me a fucking coffee,” Melody snapped, voice trembling on the verge of a breakdown. “Madame D barely pays you, and you just saved my life…”

Tanny stood at the head of the conference table, arms crossed, not letting any inkling of the fury inside her show on her face. As she waited for the attendees to filter in, the strings of cable lights strung around the room caught her eye. Blinking red and green, they seemed unable to decide whether things were just fine or a dire emergency. The holiday cheer they were meant to convey washed over her without shifting her mood.

Chitchat and conversations died out as the participants in the strategy session took note of her stern presence. Apparently, she wasn’t projecting the calm, cool demeanor she was aiming for.

All the better. She was in no mood for the typical chatter of recent meals and core world gossip.

Esper was the last to arrive.

“Nice of you to join us,” Tanny commented.

“I’m still a minute early,” Esper replied casually. She was so far from the cowering apologist she once was. She slipped into a seat at the opposite end of the table rather than take the open one left for her by Tanny’s side.

Not wanting to derail her own meeting with a petty argument over whether arriving at a meeting just in time for the presentation to start was appropriate for someone in Esper’s position, Tanny flicked on the holo-projector and began.

“We knew this was inevitable. The loyalist faction struck back late last night.” With a tap on her datapad, the holo displayed a newsfeed loop. A shopping complex on Titan billowed smoke as fire-suppression drones pumped jets of foam into the ruined building from above. “Twin Pines Plaza contained six businesses controlled by our people. It’s no coincidence that a mysterious plasma leak exploded just as the doors were opening for business.”

With another tap on her datapad, the image shifted. Search-and-rescue crafts flitted among the wreckage of a freighter, looking for survivors. But from the scattered, tumbling debris field, that seemed optimistic. “This was, until recently, the independent freighter Castellan Delores. Officially, they were a short-hop delivery service ferrying mostly home furnishings to the outer core. Unofficially, they ran a break-even legitimate operation as a cover for their smuggling work—for us.”

“Smuggling what?” Tiffany asked.

It was a fair question. Irrelevant in the grand scheme. But fair. “Mostly low-level soldiers for the Ruckers who needed an identity recycling. They broke for us when the split happened.”

“How many people were killed?” Esper asked.

“Estimates are ninety at the shopping plaza. There were eleven aboard the Castellan Delores. And just this morning, I got this…” Tapping again, she brought up a feed of a man wearing datagoggles, speaking like someone had a blaster to his head and a script in his face.

“Tania Rucker. You should have known this was coming. Actions have consequences...”

She let them listen to the whole message until it was cut off, then switched the holo view to a collapsed crater strewn with steel support and tram-sized shipping containers crumpled like empty beer cans. “Martinelli Storage was a business partner of mine. I owned 60 percent of their stock and paid their customs-liaisons to conceal the taxable value of our shipments through their custody.”

Tiffany raised a hand. It was a welcome change.

“Yes?” Tanny called on her as she would a student.

“How did the datagoggles send a picture of him wearing datagoggles? Shouldn’t they not be able to do that?” the young wizard inquired.

Tanny spread her hands. “That’s what you took away from all this?”

“Yeah. We’re under attack. Duh. But it’s a legit question. How the fuck did a pair of datagoggles take a picture of themselves?”

Bosch slid into the conversation to prevent a brewing argument. “Total value of today’s losses… roughly 120 million terras.”

Tanny took the number in stride. It was a solid punch. But Don wanted full control of the syndicate back. He wasn’t looking to destroy the economic engine underlying it. This message was to her lieutenants, her tributaries, her minor operatives: pick the wrong side and you might get blown up.

“We knew there would be losses on both sides,” Tanny said in a pro forma prelude. No one was ignorant of how this business worked—not even the kid. “What matters next is how we respond.”

Major Bricker—Wesley—leaned back, causing his seat to creak. He laced his hands behind his head. “Let me make a few comms. We can put together a platoon and stage an on-planet assault. Go straight to the horse’s mouth and perform a syndicate leaderectomy.”

Tanny blinked. “You want to lead a military operation on Mars?”

“Listen, pal,” Gunner spoke up. “You stow that holovid bullshit before you get us all killed.”

Wesley rocked forward in his chair until his elbows came down and slammed onto the table, startling everyone in the room. “Listen here, skippy. If you want them making holovids about your life, you’ve got to live the kind of life a holovid aspires to be.”

Gunner scoffed.

“Go watch Last Stand at Daedalus Colony.”

“Seen it.”

Wesley narrowed one eye at the man. “Good. Just know that someone in Earth Navy got his ass chewed to the bone over that story leaking. And I was Major Fearless in the real-life version.” A smug look brought back the bloviating doofus he’d been play-acting since Tanny had reconnected with him in Esper’s crew. “Of course, the real thing was too unbelievable for Hollyworld. They had to tweak some details to fit their hero-of-the-month formula.”

“Anyone believe a word of this fucker?” Gunner asked. “I mean, I know he’s tough and all, but—”

“I do,” Tanny said firmly. “I was there. I flew that mission. But I’ve seen Last Stand at Daedalus Colony. The stuff that happened on the ground…”

“Classified,” Wesley replied. “And your part got changed to a guy because the studio snagged Brett Savage for the role. The villains became eyndar instead of rebellious humans. And the Half-Devils got taken out so they might get a holo all their own.”

“Point is,” Tanny stepped in before the shaggy-dog story approached megalodog proportions. “We can’t dust my father, even if attacking Mars wasn’t idiocy. We need the syndicate intact to take control.”

Wesley shook his head. “Not how the marines operate. You know better. If you can strike at a command target, that’s a priority over slugging it out with the rank and file. So long as the little guys mix it up, no one wins and everything gets destroyed. Victory is checkmate, not swapping pawns.”

“Your opinion is noted,” Tanny replied sternly. That was language the retired major should understand. That was a standard blow-off from an indulgent commander whose patience for competing opinions had just run its course.

“Your revolution,” Wesley said with a shrug, sinking back into his chair.

“Yes, it’s my rebellion,” Tanny replied, gently correcting his terminology. “But it’s our fight. I want ideas on how to put a dent in the old guard’s stranglehold. We’ve got our loved ones out of harm’s way as best we can—”

Tiffany harrumphed.

“And now we need to show the galaxy—and the rest of my father’s loyalists—that he’s not invulnerable.”

“Killing him sure would do that like there’s no tomorrow… for him,” Wesley pointed out.

Tanny refused to even glare in his direction. “Reconvene at 1100 hours tomorrow. I want ideas, not full-blown plans. Once we know what we want to do, we can pool our expertise to decide how to do it… Dismissed.”

From the far end of the table where she’d sat all meeting with hardly a word, Esper met her eye and gave a curt nod.

They were in this together.

Tiffany trudged through the forest, knee-high boots crunching dry leaves underfoot. Sunlight squeezed through the thick canopy far overhead. She didn’t worry about getting lost. In Tiffsylvania, the village was wherever she decided to find it.

The solitude available to her here allowed time to think without getting other people’s opinions stuffed into her ears. If she needed syndicate propaganda pumped directly into her brain via yammering noise-holes like Bosch and Tanny, she’d go find them in the rec hall.

But solitude had its limitations. Today, she needed to vent.

“You know, a couple months back, we’d have been hammering fuckers like Tanny and her friends into shipping crates for colonial sheriffs or Earth Interstellar to come collect.”

Greggory nodded along. “Ayuh. More than likely.” He took two long strides for every three of Tiffany’s and didn’t complain about any pace she set.

“But just because Tanny used to work for the same little outfit as her, somehow she gets a free pass for extortion, hijackings, smuggling, money laundering, and probably a bunch of shit I don’t even know about.”

“Seems that way.”

Tiffany cast him a surreptitious glare. Greggory was supposed to be supportive, not a nodding spring-head figurine. “Is that all you can say?”

“Nope. Just… don’t seem my place. Said yourself, it’s in t’other world.”

Tiffany stopped and pushed him against a tree. Despite being twice her size, Greggory allowed himself to be manhandled with a simple lopsided grin on his face. “Take my side. Or have an opinion of your own. Does stopping a… a bandit gang justify taking help from another gang that promises to be nicer bandits?”

Despite Tiffany keeping him pinned to the tree trunk with the palm of her hand, Greggory rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “My pa taught me right from wrong. But never mentioned nothing about wrong from less wrong.”

“Mine either,” Tiffany said with a huff, brushing her lover off as she released him. “And mine was probably an expert.” She’d made few enough changes to Mort’s gift, but restoring the blacksmith to the version that still fawned over her had been among the first.

A thoughtful scowl crossed the blacksmith’s features. However, Tiffany didn’t get her hopes up. While initially she’d looked for signs that a little of Mort’s wisdom had rubbed off on his creations, she’d discovered that, if anything, he’d created most of them with an intentional absence of deep thought. The expression on Greggory’s face could easily have been wondering where he left his hammer as anything profound.

“But don’t your pa live with ya now?”

Tiffany scoffed. “Hardly.” She resumed her hike, deciding that the village was just beyond view over the low rise ahead of them. “He’s locked up. It’s not the brig—the dungeon, that is—but he’s a criminal and being treated as such.”

“What’s he done that’s worse than them sin-de-kate lads yer grumped about?”

Puffing her cheeks as every gram of air fled her lungs, Tiffany shook her head. “Dunno. I mean, is a pirate any better planetside or in space? That’s what bugs me about this: the hypocrisy.”

“Ain’t never been far from the village.”

Tiffany frowned to let him know she hadn’t gotten the gist of his non sequitur.

“That there sea. The Hip Okra Sea. Never heared of it.”

Tiffany stalked off toward her village home, wondering whether to invite Greggory along or not. On the one hand, he was half the reason she came here instead of going back to a more modern, in-progress realm. On the other, she’d had more enlightening conversations with her Mr. Happy XL, which performed the same services without being an idiot.

“Come on,” Tiffany told him after a moment’s consideration. “I’m buying dinner. We’re both getting drunk tonight. And you’re coming home with me. That good with you?”

Despite being an omnipotent goddess in her own mind, she allowed the denizens some degree of control in their lives.

Greggory’s gormless smile foretold his answer. “O’ course, milady.”

Hours later, the blacksmith lay beside her, snoring heavily. One thick arm draped across Tiffany’s chest beneath the covers. Sleeping within her own dreams was weird. But Tiffsylvanian days stretched two across each night of the temporal world. Without upsetting the rules of this imaginary world—which felt advanced for how new she still was at this—it was either sleep or lurk in the night like some kind of witch.

She couldn’t help it. Dumb as his own anvil, Greggory’s words clung like slap tape to the walls of her mind. Unable to peel them off quickly or easily, she was forced to examine them in unwanted detail.

What if her father did have some insight? Roger had been a pirate. He’d no doubt dealt with allies who he decided were just a shade more trustworthy than his enemies.

But Roger was also a devout liar. She’d been able to see through his lies before her parents had split up. The provenance of her birthday presents hadn’t been from fancy off-world toy stores; they’d come from dead children aboard ships unfortunate enough to cross Roger’s path. He wasn’t off gallivanting with friends; he was hunting ships like a rabid fox hunts rodents.

She couldn’t trust him.

Or could she?

Out there, Roger was a pirate with offended dignity and a grudge the size of a moon. In here, he’d be at her mercy. She could drink his mind. Finally, Tiffany would be able to convey the depths of her loathing for the…

In the darkness of her bedroom, she blinked to clear her thoughts.

No. She couldn’t kill Roger—or even Candace, who really deserved it more. Sure, maybe he wanted to marry her off, but that was mostly just outdated chauvinistic control-freakiness. He hadn’t been malicious about it. Well, maybe a little. Still, the threshold for patricide ought to be higher than for the general galactic population.

Tiffany heaved a sigh. Maybe she could come up with a plan for the syndicate to strike back. Maybe if she had a brilliant plan—or some compelling seeds with which to grow one—she might help guide this runaway tram before it veered into a populated area.

Could they wreck businesses of Don’s just like the ones Tanny’s side had lost?

Or maybe they could strike at Don’s extended family, turning the tables on his attempt to coerce Tiffany.

What if they got some friends in the media to start running an expose with former syndicate members telling all? They must have media friends, right?

God, her mind just wouldn’t shut up.

Elbowing the ribs at her side, the snoring ceased. “Hey. You awake? I’m not tired yet. C’mere.”

Groggily, Greggory rubbed his eyes. With a yawn, he rolled and loomed over her. “O’ course, milady.”

Esper skulked into the meeting amidst her fellow conspirators. Like everyone else, she’d been provided an extensive listing of Rucker holdings that were solidly in the Don camp. She’d dutifully studied until the wee hours of the morning before collapsing into slumber, promising to digest the information in detail in Esperville.

But Esperville hadn’t proven to be the refuge she’d hoped.

She hadn’t been able to bring herself to eradicate the flotsam Karen had wheedled her into dredging up. Now, those vignettes littered her mind like the backlot of a Hollyworld studio, discarded sets bereft of actors and production crew, but hollow reminders of the scenes that had taken place there.

Wallowing in the past, Esper had replayed for Karen the best guesses and partially documented as well as snippets that she’d been present for. It didn’t even qualify as a tragedy in literary terms since it didn’t deal so much with a downfall as a failure to rise. Karen had lived her original life, as best Esper had been able to tell, beneath a crushing weight of self-consciousness. Always pretty, she’d been puffed up as a decoration, too stupid and weak-willed to be anything more.

Her parents belittled her, showering her with cheap, tawdry baubles to adorn herself and squelching any ember of ambition before it could catch fire.

Teachers had indulged her as delicate and helpless, propping up her grades and punishing bullies—undermining her independence. It also isolated her from potential friends who worked harder for worse grades and resented the protections being teacher’s pet granted, even if she never sought them out.

Once puberty hit, she became an object to many, doted on by anyone attracted to young girls. That number included nearly every boy in her school, a fair smattering of girls, and a disturbing number of teachers. But each time she indulged one, she earned the ire of the rest. By her second boyfriend, Karen had already been branded a whore.

“Esper, did you hear me?” Tanny asked.

Blinking, Esper recalled her position. Some portion of her brain had been paying attention and caught her up on a listing of unhelpful suggestions from Tanny’s people. Tanny had just prompted for Esper’s ideas. “Yeah. Sorry. What if we refused to play the game on Don’s terms? What if, instead of seeking out victims of our own, we started staking out our own allies and being ready to rescue them? If the other side of the syndicate sees they can’t strike out, they might grow frustrated with Don’s leadership.”

Tanny pursed her lips. “It’s certainly a… different… strategy. Not sure how viable it is. We have a vast network on our side, but it’s more business than paramilitary. We have the core of our proactive group right here on this ship. But we’ll keep it in the running. Tiffany, what did you come up with?”

“Fuck ’em,” Tiffany said with a casual flip of her spread palms. “They want to drag families into this? We can too.”

“Tiff!” Esper exclaimed. There was no doubt that her apprentice had changed since reading the Tome of Bleeding Thoughts—how could anyone not? But this was a step too far.

“Take an ice bath,” Tiffany shot back. “Think about it. Most of Don’s family are the people we’re fighting. We’re not kidnapping judges’ kids or cutting the hands off people’s parents. Let’s not trim leaves off the crime tree; I say we start hacking off limbs.”

Tanny straightened. “Huh… OK. Not exactly going after soft targets here, but it might prove we’re a threat. The first problem I see is galvanizing the family around Don. Anyone on the fence might double down with my father if it means protection from us.”

Wesley spoke up. “Continuing the tree analogy, there’s still the option of hacking directly through the trunk. Then, we collect the fruit, distribute most of it to the townsfolk before it rots in the orchard, then plant the rest in the ground so new trees can grow in time for next harvest.”

“We’re not killing my father,” Tanny explained. “As much as he deserves it, we lose most of the syndicate if we kill him.” She sighed. “But, as always, we keep it as a backup plan, just in case.”

Esper’s mind wandered back to Karen’s reactions to seeing her old life. The syndicate nonsense blathered onward around her. This wasn’t her specialty. Tanny had admitted as much when they hammered out the terms of their alliance. Esper’s primary responsibilities included A-class operations, top-level management, and vetoing plans if they crossed into the moral black. She opted to wait to the end and play Caesar to the victorious plan—thumbs up or down to decide its fate.

Karen had been so… sanguine. Without the visceral memories of the acts themselves, she witnessed them with an outward calm that Esper couldn’t relate to. The horrors of her prior life were a mere walk-through holovid exhibit for all the reaction it garnered. Aside from morbid fascination, the only time Karen had truly reacted was upon realizing—early on, in fact—that Esper had been smitten with her. It seemed dishonest to conceal the fact, so Esper had gotten it out of the way at the beginning.

But it was Karen’s parting words as Esper had warned of the shock of reality returning for both of them that stuck with her.

“I guess I probably still owe you that tip I promised plus a few more.”

While Esper realized her emotional intelligence plummeted around the former Melody, she couldn’t detect any joke or reluctance in that statement. There was no sly smile of sarcasm. She wasn’t teasing.

“Well,” Tanny said with a tone that snapped Esper’s attention back to her surroundings. “Thank you all for your input. But I have a plan also, and I think we’re going with mine.”

“What?” Tiffany snapped. “We sat here for like, what, two hours, and you were just going to do whatever the fuck you wanted anyway?”

“I was perfectly willing to go with a better plan, but I didn’t hear one,” Tanny said matter-of-factly. Frankly, Esper wasn’t surprised. While Carl had always been their idea man, the pie-in-the-nebula dreamer, Tanny had been the one to buff the edges off their plans and make them vacuum-rated back in the day.

It was time to intervene as an arbiter with veto power. “So, what’s this plan?” Esper asked.

“Friendli Foods has a monthly mega-freighter shipment to Earth due next week. A month’s worth of food for roughly 16 billion people.”

Tiffany gaped. “I knew they were big, but… that’s like a quarter of the population or some shit, isn’t it?”

Esper hadn’t seen a recent census, but the guess sounded close enough. The numbers, for once, played no role in her objection. “Wait. Don Rucker owns Friendli Foods?”

Tanny smirked. “53 percent of it.”

“All those Snakki Bars I ate were—?”

“Funding the Rucker Syndicate,” Tanny said, then shrugged. “Don’t sweat it. One of billions.”

“No wonder we always had Snakki Bars in the house as a kid…”

Wesley cleared his throat. “Um, wouldn’t that cause massive starvation?”

“On Earth?” Tanny scoffed. “Fuck no. But it’ll destabilize the galaxy’s largest food megacorp.”

“That is a lot of food to go missing,” Esper pointed out.

“One,” Tanny said, holding up a finger. “Earth wastes more food than most core worlds eat. Two—” She held up another finger. “If there’s a shortfall, Earth will simply import more from another supplier.”

“And three?” Tiffany prompted. “There’s always a three.”

Rather than putting up a third finger, Tanny folded her arms and smirked. “Three, I have been investing heavily in Phabian Processed Proteins.”

“See?” Bosch asked, pointing to his boss with pride.

“3P is you?” Tiffany asked incredulously.

Tanny nodded.

“Oh,” Esper said. “I guess we’re getting new laaku food processors, then?”

Tanny barked a laugh. “Hell no. We’ll be eating Friendli Foods from now until doomsday when we drag that megafreighter to the deep astral.”

Tiffany found that there were still quiet places aboard the Errand of Mercy, even if they were becoming fewer and farther between. Most of these sections were damaged, but if she watched her step and minded the sharp edges of ruptured steel panels, it wasn’t dangerous.

Strolling aimlessly to clear her head, Tiffany tried to envision a galaxy without Friendli Foods. Sure, it wasn’t good food, but it was available at every gift shop and fueling station, in every vending machine and cheap bargain starliner canteen. You could buy the same Crunchi Chipz on Earth or on Shithole Omega IX. Puffi Cereal tasted the same on Keru or Rigel IV. No sane sentient would call it health food, but every creature with a thumbprint in the galaxy had bought from Friendli Foods at some point in their life.

A hiss up ahead brought a furrow to Tiffany’s brow. If she wasn’t mistaken, that was the sound of a plasma torch. Years ago, wandering a derelict frigate and stumbling onto a work crew would have turned her feet the other direction before her brain had ever been consulted on the matter. Now, the interruption of her solitude brought boiling indignation.

Rounding a bend in the ship’s geography, she discovered a lone welder at work, patching the corridor bulkheads. Marching up to the worker, Tiffany didn’t even shield her eyes from the blinding glare; she allowed her eyes to ignore the excess brightness by refusing to acknowledge anything being too bright to look at.

“What’s the deal?” she demanded.

The plasma torch flicked off. The welder raised the full-face visor with its insta-black window. “Yo. What can I do you for?” Though his words were flippant, they were delivered with a degree of respect that caught her off guard.

“I was looking for a quiet walk down here in nowheresville.”

Immediately, the syndicate workman slipped the flip-up mask off his head and shoved it into the duffel on the floor beside him. The plasma torch followed close behind. “Yes, ma’am. Just some routine touch-up work. Nothing that can’t wait till later.”

“Thanks,” she mumbled in a daze as the universe, for a moment, stopped making sense.

Shortly thereafter, the welder’s footsteps faded from her hearing.

“I’ll be fucked,” she mused. “I outrank someone.”

It was strange being looked down on for her youth after a full lifetime in Mortania. The villagers had never belittled her age. By the time they got over thinking of her as Mort’s apprentice, they realized she was a powerful sorceress in her own right. But the real world’s denizens had been slower to adopt the idea that she was a force to be reckoned with—and thus respected.

Tucking her hands in her pockets, she whistled aimlessly as she strolled onward.

The next set of footsteps drew a smirk instead of annoyance. It was time to try the pulling-rank trick again.

When she came to an intersection and saw who was sharing her private walk, she froze in surprise.

“What are you doing down here?” Tiffany demanded.

Esper folded her arms. “I could ask you the same, but I think we both know the answer. Getting a little too syndicate-y back there.”

“No shit. You’re the one who’s supposed to be slapping dicks when the goons get too goony.”

Esper shrugged. “I talked to Tanny afterward. She seems confident we can take over a freighter that size without harming the crew.”

“Easy to say right up until something goes wrong. Then it’s Murdertown Part III except without the fake Hollyworld blood.”

Esper took a long, cleansing sigh. “Well, we knew this wasn’t going to be a wicker basket full of kittens.”

“Note to self,” Tiffany muttered. “Shopping list item.”

“People are going to get hurt. Our job is to keep it to a minimum. But right now, we’re committed. Don Rucker is in the early stages of a rampage, and we’re liable to cause more harm leaving him unchecked now. The time for stopping was before we started stealing his extortion hostages.”

Tiffany pounded a fist into the wall, leaving a dent that some helpful syndicate worker would someday fix. “I just feel like we’re getting tram-railed.”

“Maybe,” Esper agreed. “But all we can ever do is our best. Just remember: Tanny knows she runs this show at my—at our—pleasure. This whole business is a house of cards we’re holding up. If we step out, it collapses. Tanny doesn’t have the resources to fight Don toe-to-toe, even in small battles, without us around.”

Tiffany chuckled. “Who’d have thought, right?”

Esper laid an arm across Tiffany’s shoulders and guided her in the resumption of their individual walks, now a two-person affair. “Beware a girl who walks into the darkness and comes out stronger.”

Captain Linus Hazelwood had the square jaw and hard eyes of a twenty-year navy man. His face was pink from a hot shower and smooth as Nefertari linen. The part in his hair was straight as a laser. His uniform crisp white and bearing the stylized double-F logo of Friendli Foods. When he spoke, his voice carried the authority commensurate with shepherding the largest recurring shipment of foodstuffs to Earth.

“We’re 27 hours from full capacity,” he said to the comm screen. He held up a datapad and glanced at a message from his pal Roy on Neptune Station. “All sections reporting status green. Loading teams operating at 96 percent efficiency. And you can count on us improving that.” He pointed a reassuring finger at the comm screen.

His counterpart on the comm was Yang Julie. She wore a bored expression behind her accounting datagoggles as she passively absorbed his daily status report. “Fine. Talk to you tomorrow. Friendli HQ, out.”

The screen went dark, and Linus blew a cheek-flapping sigh. From out of view of the comm panel, he retrieved a mug emblazoned with “Household’s #1 Dad” and drank the contents in a gulp. Cold though it might be, coffee didn’t go to waste aboard the Friendli Neighbor. Couldn’t very well start a new brew without finishing the old.

Rising to his feet, his chair and back both creaked ominously. His flip-flops slapped with each step to the coffee maker. Below the pristine uniform top, hairy legs stuck out from knee-length shorts imprinted with coconuts. As the coffee maker trickled a new brew into his mug, Linus unbuttoned his uniform top and carefully transferred it onto a hanger. Underneath, he wore a pink tank top.

When his coffee was ready, he exited his office and emerged onto the ship’s bridge.

“Captain on deck,” Haley Salam called out.

“Shove it,” Linus retorted to his helmswoman. It was only the two of them. Slouching into his command chair, he let out a luxuriant sigh. The imitation shag covering he’d slipped over the ripped imitation pleather had left the seat the most comfortable on the ship.

Couldn’t let his mood run away with him though. He keyed the intraship comm.

“Jordan, what’s going on down there? You’re killing me. Killing me.”

Jordan’s voice came with a background grumble of heavy machinery. “You wanna get down here and help reseal a 100-ton cargo container of Twisti Noodles?”

“Reseal?” Linus asked in a panic. They weren’t supposed to open anything once it was brought aboard. Food safety regs were crystalline on that.

Jordan became massively condescending. “We never lost cryo. No interior packages got opened. We had a few empties in good condition, so we’ve transferred everything over. Besides, they’re Twisti Noodles. What could happen to them?”

She had a point there. Linus rubbed his chin. “Fine. Just make sure your team puts in enough off-clock hours to hit the 96 percent efficiency I promised HQ.”

“You promised WHAT?”

“Hey, it’s my job to make us all look good. If you—”

“You’re not getting that promotion. There is no promotion. This is it for all of us. End of the starlane.”

Linus huffed. “Roger that. Just… fudge something so I can pass it off to HQ.” He quickly closed the intraship comm before Jordan could make a reply.

At the helm, Haley turned to snicker at him. “Sounds like someone’s sleeping on the couch tonight.”

“Couch is more comfortable,” Linus muttered to himself.

But Haley wasn’t done with him yet. “This is why fraternizing with the crew goes against the company handbook.”

Linus grunted. “Then they oughtta give us more than two days off a month.”

Tiny ships, little more than pinpricks of light, buzzed around a pint-sized megafreighter like flies on rotten fruit. Descending from the heavens, a meaty finger jabbed the ship from above, passing harmlessly through its holographic hull.

“This is our target,” Wesley bellowed for all the room—and possibly a few adjacent decks—to hear. “The Friendli Neighbor is the flagship of the Friendli Foods fleet. It’s packed to the puffy cheeks with everything from Juici Pouches to Yummi Cakes. It boasts a crew of thirty-five and a paramilitary escort of six Durden-class medium-range patrol ships.”

The audience was mainly Rucker people. Only Esper, Tiffany, and Kubu were friendly faces. The evacuees and repatriated hostages—both actual and potential—had been left clear of the briefing. While he’d given plenty of tactical briefings to less-than-welcoming assemblages, it was always nice to at least be appreciated.

“So, what?” Gunner asked. “We dust the patrol ships and haul up to a ship the size of a space station?”

Wesley scowled and shook a finger. “Now, now. Those fine men and women haven’t done anything wrong. We’re going to give them ample opportunity to vamoose—and plenty of firepower to convince them of the wisdom of that course of action.”

“How can we be sure they’re cowards?” Steez asked. He’d been quiet of late, but now his reedy little voice cut through the air to be heard by all.

“Well, when you put it that way,” Wesley said before breaking out in a chuckle. “We have access to the pay scale for the escort pilots. Plenty of mercs will fight it out for top terra, but for what Friendli Foods shells out, we’re more likely to receive resumes than incoming fire.”

Truth be told, Wesley had never seen the advantage of mercenaries. They left a gap in the old Venn diagram between competence and loyalty. Sure, you could pay them to rough up rivals and put on a show of force, but when the going got toughest, the toughest got going. Only the ones too raw to read the writing in the stars got stuck in the line of fire in a lost cause.

True loyalty only came through character and belief in a cause. A man could live in a trench, fight with his intestines spilling over his belt, take on thousand-to-one odds if he held the unquestioning belief that defeat was the end of everything he loved.

Over the following three hours, he explained to these merciless minions of mayhem every relevant millimeter of the Friendli Neighbor, the weapon load-outs of the escort ships, personnel profiles on the freighter crew, and the coordinates for the escape—should the command team be lost or incapacitated during the infiltration.

Wesley had heard of less likely events during missions. Once the ball started rolling, all it took was one 00 on that roulette wheel for all those predictable red and black slots to whoosh out an airlock.

“Any questions?” he asked, standing at ease with his hands clasped at his back.

It wasn’t that there hadn’t been interjected queries along the way. This was just the time for any final questions. Whether it was to hearken back to earlier points, things he had somehow failed to include, or general points that hadn’t fit into the briefing, now was the time.

Gunner raised a hand and spoke when Wesley nodded in his direction. “So, were you really in Omicron Squad?” By the buzzing reaction from around the briefing room, he hadn’t been the only skeptic.

“Of course not,” Wesley lied deadpan. “That was a cover for my top-secret acting career.”

The chorus of chuckles broke the mood.

“And now, for the moment you’ve all been waiting for…” he paused for effect. This hadn’t been standard operating procedure in the Corps, but he felt the need to add a little drama to the briefing. Otherwise, the odds of getting the rabble under his command to pay attention to the end was next to nil. “The team assignments.”

He rattled off names of Rucker soldiers followed by ship names, giving a quick summary of that ship’s role before repeating the process with the next team.

“Finally, the command team will be me, Tiffany, and Kubu aboard the Residual. We’ll be hanging back during the ship-to-ship fighting and spearheading the boarding action.”

“I get to go on the mission?” Kubu asked. Wesley wondered what the megalodog thought he was in this briefing for if not to be included.

“Yep,” Wesley replied crisply.

“I’m not on the command ship?” Esper asked. Wesley wondered what the wizard thought she was doing heading a major interstellar rebellion if not to be excluded from the dirty work.

“Nope.”

“On a ship with more food than EVER?” Kubu continued.

“I trust you can rein in that appetite until the fighting’s over?”

Kubu nodded vigorously. “Oh, YES!”

“Why am I off the A Squad all of a sudden?” Esper demanded.

“You and I can’t be seen on this one,” Tanny said. She’d at least had the decency to understand her role in this whole shebang. “It’s enough of a risk that your friends are going to be there. Truth is, we need their skills here. Although… I would like it if we could place a couple of my people on the Residual.”

“If we’re not your people, this isn’t the mission for us,” Wesley replied without missing a beat. Despite the fact that she controlled roughly 10 percent of the largest criminal syndicate in ARGO space, Tanny didn’t intimidate him in the least. He knew how marines worked. And while she’d been out for nearly a decade, the operating system in that skull of hers was still Earth Marine Corps standard issue.

“Fine,” Tanny said. “I made you mission lead. Lead.”

Wesley turned his winningest grin on his troops. “Don’t worry, amigos. This is going to be fun.”

Tanny’s quarters had once been two lieutenants’ suites, now joined together. After an initial stint in standard accommodations, she’d had her people cut out some walls and redo the plumbing. Now, it was more spacious than Esper’s quarters—though she kept that observation to herself as she admired the decor.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” Esper commented without taking her attention from the wall hangings. Flatpics from across the galaxy, a humble display case of service medals, a battered marine-issue blaster rifle. The walls of her living room had become a tableau of her life as if she required a reminder of the path that had led a spoiled syndicate scion to bite off the hand that had fed her.

A clink of glassware and a slosh of liquid drew Esper’s attention to the wet bar. “Care for a drink?” her host asked as she filled one tumbler and poised the bottle above another just like it.

“It’s not even noon.”

Tanny shrugged and held the bottle out toward the windows. Her panoramic view of the astral belied any sense of time. “I don’t see a sun overhead. Besides, you look like you could use a drink?”

Esper snorted daintily. “When have I ever?”

“Today,” Tanny replied firmly. “Something’s eating you up.”

“Just water,” Esper said as she slumped into one of Tanny’s imported Martian chairs.

With a shrug, Tanny filled Esper a glass from the tap.

Accepting her drink, Esper nodded her thanks. “It’s the whole Friendli Foods thing.”

“Look, if I told you every single business my father had his fingers in—”

“Could you?”

Tanny huffed. “No. Well, yes. What I’m trying to tell you is the list is too long to go through. You’d be at it for days, maybe weeks, just reading company IDs.”

The water had the same slightly off-putting flavor as the rest of the ship’s drinking supply. Esper was too preoccupied to ignore it. “What else am I going to have to do with my time while everyone is out there risking their lives on our behalf?”

“First off, it’s not going to be that dangerous. Friendli Foods is a fucking institution. And the people who might go after them have been alerted—with varying degrees of subtlety—that they’re under Rucker protection.”

“Yeah, but normally I’m there to keep things from getting dangerous.”

“Get over yourself. Neither of us is essential on that mission. They’re hijacking ARGO’s largest delivery hover. Borderland pizzerias have tighter security.”

Esper smirked. “That sitharn on Nythy sure was paranoid.”

“If I was serving crickets as a pizza topping, I’d have paid someone to watch my back too. But my second point is: my father is in everything. If you don’t buy his brand of toothsoap, you watch his holodramas; if you don’t invest with his brokerage, you wear his lingerie.”

Esper arched an eyebrow.

Tanny blew a sigh. “You know what I mean. But there’s no finding a clean path to consumerism in a Rucker galaxy. The only ones who don’t put money in my family’s vaults are living destitute or enslaved.”

Gazing out the window, Esper sipped her water. “I still feel like I should be out there with them.”

“Don’t act like you’re getting a free pass,” Tanny warned.

“I don’t need a pep talk.”

“Reconsider that drink?” Tanny held up the decanter.

That elicited a chuckle. “Remember that time on Champlain VI when you got me drunk?”

“It wasn’t exactly hard. You were practically brain-dead after your second.”

“And you ditched me to go sleep with some random guy…”

“Random guy had a random friend if you remember. The offer was on the table.”

Esper threw up her hands, leaving the glass of water floating in place where she’d left it. “I’m lucky I was sober enough to say no.”

Tanny wagged a finger. “No, you were prudish enough to refuse while hammered.”

“That was a low point for us.” Was it? The words had come unbidden. Was that the worst that had ever passed between them?

Tanny took a sip of her brandy. “I would have thought it was the night you accused me of running a sex slavery operation and I sicced Mriy on you.”

“Where is Mriy anyway? She wasn’t in the briefing.”

“She’s got her role to play in all this. But she’s not a natural team player. Carl never figured that out.”

Esper sighed and threw back the contents of her glass. “As long as she’s not running around murdering people left and right.” She gave the glass a little push, and it slid through the air as if atop an invisible bar. “Fine. Hit me.”

Tanny caught the glass and poured Esper a drink.

It had come as a surprise when Tiffany discovered a bowling alley aboard the Errand of Mercy. It was still so new it smelled of plasma discharge from the welders. All the balls were lined up in tidy racks, sorted by weight. All but one.

Nana Jeanine was the other surprise, but when Tiffany had asked around, this is where everyone said she could find her. Despite some irregularities in form, the old woman was managing a competent attempt at picking up a 3–10 split.

Seven kilos of polyurethane rumbled down a polished wood parquet—synthetic, Tiffany assumed—and clipped the 3-pin. But the 3-pin’s ricochet off the wall narrowly missed knocking down the 10.

“Bullshit!” Nana exclaimed. “I was robbed!”

“Hi, Nana,” Tiffany said with a finger-waggling wave once her grandmother looked back. “Didn’t know you bowled.”

“Dated a wizard a million years go. Before I met Grandpa Eduardo.”

“Mind if I join you?” Tiffany asked brightly, forcing the smile onto her face.

Nana shrugged. “Suit yourself, sweetie. But it’s a stuffy game for old folks and wizards.”

“I don’t mind,” Tiffany said, plugging her fingers into the holes of several balls in the rack before one felt just right. “I was just hoping to talk. I can talk and bowl at the same time.”

“You know the rules?” Nana asked. “There are ten pins—those peanut-shaped pegs down yonder. Your job is to—”

“Esper taught me the rules. You can go first and keep score.”

Nana raised a gray eyebrow but took her place behind the lane. Three steps forward, and she bowled. Her shot appeared to be on target until the spin caught up to it, and it veered into the gutter.

The same happened for Nana’s second ball.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Nana groused. “This lane is defective.”

Fighting back a smirk, Tiffany took her turn and bowled a clean strike.

“So, this is how it’s gonna be, huh?” Nana asked. “You wizarded the balls.”

“Duh,” Tiffany replied. “That’s the game, Nana.”

“Why don’t you try me without the fancy magic tricks?”

Tiffany pondered the question a moment. “Because I might lose. It’s a semi-official rule for wizards: Don’t let the techies win.”

“I’m no techie.”

“To a wizard you are. I’d be doing a disservice to my adopted people if I let you stand a chance.”

Nana lobbed her ball onto the lane with a crack. “No point in this then. Care to ruin a bottle of gin for me too?”

Tiffany couldn’t be sure whether that was an oddly worded offer of a drink with her grandmother or a warning that she’d better not magic the booze. She chose instead to change the subject. “Am I a bad person for not being super psyched about helping half a syndicate steal a huge helping of Earth’s food supply from the other half?”

“Probably.”

Tiffany blinked.

“Bad person once you get mixed up in business like this. When I heard you’d run away from your mother, I had some hope you might bail yourself out of the life your parents chose for themselves.”

“I mean I get to be lead wizard on the mission, which is a kick in the ego. Gotta say, kinda electric over that part. It’s just…”

A bony arm wrapped around Tiffany’s shoulders and pulled her close. “It’s a big responsibility.”

“No shit, right?”

How could she put into words the enormity of her role in all this? Two armies were about to clash, not directly at the site of the hijacking, but with the understanding that she was spearheading the first open warfare. Her name was liable to go down in the annals of syndicate warfare if she wasn’t careful.

There was a limited seating area behind the bowling lane. Nana Jeanine sat down and patted the seat beside her. “Tell Nana all about it.”

Taking a deep breath, Tiffany unloaded all her baggage. She glossed over a few hows and whys but covered everything from discovering Esper was losing her mind to the role she was supposed to play in this mission.

“We leave tomorrow for Epsilon Eridani, and I’m expected to be in control of a two-billion-kiloton freighter two hours later.” Tiffany had no idea how much the ship weighed or whether that subject had even come up during the briefing. She silently challenged her grandmother to dispute her conjecture.

“You probably shouldn’t go around telling people your plans like that,” Nana warned. “Your father was a pirate. You should know better.”

Tiffany shrugged. “They’re cutting off all comms to and from the ship. It’s not like anyone eavesdropping could even do anything with the information.”

“They’re cutting the omni?” Nana asked in a mild panic. “I’d better get my shows downloaded.”

“Dunno,” Tiffany said with a furrowed brow. “Probably already too late.”

“What if I gave one of the Rucker boys a list? I just want something besides the dreck I found on the ship’s computer.”

With a curt nod, Tiffany decided she’d at least do this much for Nana. “Give me the list, and I’ll pass it along.”

Nana hugged Tiffany tight. “You’re a good girl.” Then she released her. “But there are a few entries on my list I don’t want you knowing your Nana watches. Actually, more than a few.” She winked.

Tiffany felt her cheeks warm.

Captain Linus Hazelwood cracked his knuckles and rubbed his hands together. His datapad was awash in green checkmarks, just the way he liked it. The command chair creaked as he reclined. Chopping a finger toward the forward view screen, he gave the order.

“Let ’er rip.”

Haley opened the throttle. A dull growl reverberated in the deck plates. The view didn’t change.

Yawning, he rose from his seat and headed for his office. “Give a shout when we reach the astral gate.”

Given the vast bulk of the Friendli Neighbor, it would be hours before they hit wizardly space. Few public astral gates in the galaxy could accommodate the ship, and Sol was home to seven of them.

Epsilon Eridani was home to another.

Just before the door opened to his private office, a pair of escorts swung into place ahead of them. Despite not being strictly needed until they were ready to gate, it was nice seeing Billie and Rahim on the ball.

Once inside, in the privacy of his own refuge, he carefully donned his dress uniform and parked himself in front of the comm screen. A quick check in the mirror confirmed that, from the chest up, he was corporate-friendly. He pulled back his lips and spotted a bit of pulled pork between his teeth—a career disaster if ever there was one.

Using a Mindy Mun concert t-shirt as a bib, he performed a simple self-dentistry procedure using the pin from one of his cuff links to remove the morsel of pork. He wiped the pin on the t-shirt before returning it to his cuff.

Settling into his chair and straightening his back, he opened a comm to HQ. In seconds, Yang Julie’s image appeared.

“Captain, is the Friendli Neighbor underway?”

“Affirmative. ETA to Gate Epsilon Eridani 1 is two hours, nineteen minutes. Final loading efficiency rating, 97 percent,” Linus said with a smug grin practiced for hours in the mirror until it conveyed cocksure competence.

Julie pursed her lips as she nodded along. Then she squinted. “Is that a… a bib you’re wearing?”

Hastily snatching the t-shirt from his collar, he flashed a quick, self-conscious smile. “My apologies. I was just down overseeing some maintenance work prior to departure. Didn’t want to smudge my uniform.”

This seemed to satisfy his contact in logistics. “Excellent work as always, Captain Hazelwood. Friendli HQ, out.”

Rolling his eyes, Linus stripped out of his uniform top and tossed it over the back of his desk chair. He wouldn’t need it again until the Friendli Neighbor arrived in orbit around Earth.

It was strange. He’d been making regular transits to Earth for over fourteen years now, and yet he’d never set foot on the planet. Not for a school trip. Not for either of his honeymoons. And never for business.

“If this promotion comes through,” Linus promised himself, “I’m going to visit The Great Barrier Reef.”

Maybe with Jordan.

If reefs weren’t her style, he’d make sure she saw something she’d always wanted to as well.

That reminded him. Plopping down at his desk, he keyed the intraship down to loading control. Voice only. “Hey, babe. Nice job getting that load stowed. I told HQ we hit 97 percent. Can you make your numbers match up?”

“Yeah. Lemme just secure the last 227 crates while you put your feet up and pretend it’s all done.”

Legally speaking, they weren’t allowed underway until the cargo was loaded and secured. The secured part was paranoia and insurance-speak and left a captain a lot of leeway if he needed to pad his efficiency numbers.

And that was legit in Linus’s book. Efficiency was getting underway on time. Efficiency was getting all their cargo to Earth intact. The rest was data-pushers and middle managers getting in the way.

“You need me to come down there and lend a hand?”

“Rate we’re going, I’m gonna be too wiped after hours to do anything else.”

Linus grinned. He could take a hint. “Lemme fire off one more report to HQ, and I’ll be right down.” He signed off the comm.

There was no additional report.

Yawning, Linus set an alarm for thirty minutes and collapsed onto his office couch for a quick nap.

The hour had arrived. Wesley stood at the boarding ramp to Hel’s Valkyrie, ushering a scattering of Rucker troops aboard. Tiffany didn’t know why he bothered. This mission wasn’t about foot soldiers; it was a commando operation straight to the heart of the target vessel.

Tiffany was the brawn in this whole business.

That thought chilled her.

Everything had scaled up. What had once been a cozy little hideaway amid a vast empty vessel had turned into a mostly operational Earth Navy surplus frigate. What had once been a band of friends had ballooned into a rival syndicate. What had once been watch and learn had become “watch out for this one.”

She slapped the datapad idly against the palm of her other hand, searching the gathered well-wishers for a particular face. The Ruckers were nothing if not a unified front, at least on the surface. Anyone remaining on the ship, it seemed, had come down to see the assault team off.

There!

Tiffany didn’t have to clear a path; one opened wherever she moved. She made her way over to Richie and pawned the datapad off on him. She practically dared him to bring up the last time she’d trusted him with a datapad. This was a chance at redemption—and he was the only techie she knew among the crew.

“What’s this… um, Wizard Tiffany?” he hastily added the last after catching himself being flippant with her.

“A list of shitty holos my grandmother wants to watch,” Tiffany explained. “I know we’re on a security blackout. I’m counting on you to grab these before we get to the intercept point.”

“But—”

Tiffany held up a finger. “No buts. I’m counting on you to make a secure connection and whatever shit you have to do to not put anyone at risk.”

Flustered, Richie swiped at the list. “Yeah… I mean, sure. I can get these.” He looked up. “You sure this is for Jeanine?”

Tiffany crossed her arms.

“Got it. Forget I asked. It’s just… a little odd. Dinah’s Life?”

“Never heard of it.” Tiffany turned to leave. The particulars of Nana Jeanine’s holos weren’t her concern. The few she did recognize made her certain she didn’t want to know the rest.

“Just seemed a little juvenile.”

Did it? A creeping tingle wandered up her spine. Was this something else she’d forgotten? This wouldn’t be the first time when popular culture eluded her of late. Esper’s warnings continued to rattle around in her brain. Who knew exactly what she’d lost when she incinerated Bitchy Tiffany?

“Whatever,” Tiffany said, raising a hand in a classic brush-off. “Just get it done. Make it happen. If Jeanine has any complaints when I get back, I’ll be coming by for an explanation.”

One of the perks of being a wizard, she’d discovered, was that people’s imaginations often did most of the work for you when it came to threats. The vaguer the better.

Hastening her pace, she acquired Kubu as a companion. The megalodog bounded through the crowd and slowed to match Tiffany’s stride.

“Are you excited?” he asked. “I am.” His whole body wagged.

“I wouldn’t have guessed. You do know this isn’t going to be playtime, right?”

Kubu nodded, looking up at her instead of where he was going. She had no idea how he constantly got away with doing that without walking into walls and doorframes. “Oh, yes. We’re on an important mission. But we’re also stealing a big ship full of food that I’ll be able to look through once we have the people on board rounded up and explain to them that they’re not going to get hurt.”

Right. No one was going to get hurt. If Esper and Wesley weren’t going to level with him, Tiffany sure as shit wasn’t going to be the one to break it to him. The odds of these Ruckers holding back or playing soft-slipper with the freighter crew were somewhere between nil and double-nil.

Wesley was water-wheeling an arm to shoo them inside. “Choppity chop-chop. Time to stop stopping. Let’s get a move on and lift off.”

Tiffany paused as the boarding ramp rose behind her—the last one to board as Kubu rocketed ahead. “Did you, like, spend your whole career in the marines coming up with stupid little sayings?”

“Yep. They had these huge, strong, aggressive fellows for the messy work. I was Chief Catchy Diddy Officer. Helps the troops remember their orders better than, ‘SIT YOUR ASS DOWN, MARINE, AND SECURE THAT JUMP HARNESS. ON THE DOUBLE.’” For that brief instant, Tiffany froze in terror. The mien and manner of her goofy friend boiled away, leaving a bellowing demon. Then his easy grin returned. “So… find some seats and grab some eats. I know we’re going to be boarding the galaxy’s largest roving candy machine soon, but never start a mission on an empty stomach.”

Still shaken, Tiffany found herself with a priority seat, saved by the Rucker assault troops, just back of the cockpit. She parked herself there and buckled in. It was only after reminding herself that she was a wizard and subject to the laws of gravity and inertia at her discretion that she unbuckled and shook her head.

Gotta hand it to him. He knows how to give an order.

But would Wesley be able to order the Ruckers around as easily? She dearly hoped so. The lives of the Friendli Neighbor and its little corporate escort fleet were counting on him.

It was just the two of them on the bridge of the Errand of Mercy. Esper and Tanny stood side by side, watching Hel’s Valkyrie depart. There was no operational reason why the vessel had to cross the forward viewing window of the bridge. But Wesley always had a mind for camera angles.

A smile crept onto Esper’s lips. “It’s like they’re all grown up…”

Tanny kept her hands on her hips. “We could be so lucky.”

Huffing a sigh, Esper began to pace. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Tiffany to manage the steep astral drop back to realspace. If anything, the girl had become all too competent since reading the Tome. It was a disconnected sensation of being cut off from the main action.

“I don’t like being the one staying safe while sending people I care about into danger.”

“It’s part of being a leader. You can’t take every risk alongside your team. Not once you get big enough to have multiple irons in the fire.”

“Yeah, but for something this big? And I don’t just mean that the freighter is large enough to found a colony on its hull.”

“Megafreighter. Don’t let anyone who’s served aboard one hear you call it a freighter. It’s like calling the pope ‘mister.’”

Esper cringed.

“I just don’t feel right. It would be different if I was staying behind because of a higher priority.”

“Plausible deniability is a higher priority. This one’s liable to get a proper investigation. And by liable, I mean I guaran-fucking-tee it. It’s not just the value of the cargo either. There are going to be a lot of pissed-off Earthlings waiting for grocery drones that arrive shorthanded.”

“And then you’re going to swoop in with that laaku goo?”

“Not right away. That would be too suspicious. But before things get hairy.”

Friendli Foods may have been a juggernaut, but Esper couldn’t picture food riots on Earth. Anyone interested in healthy eating wouldn’t even notice the difference. But it would still be traumatic for oodles of parents who fed their kids Sweeti Flakes or college students living on Snakki Bars.

In the distance, the tiny Hel’s Valkyrie vanished. Tiffany’s transit barely caused a tingle. She was so superbly subtle now; a quicker study than Esper ever was, to be sure.

Esper scanned the bridge. After populating the ship with something resembling a crew, it was odd seeing it as empty as when they’d first captured it. “We’ve had our little moment. Should I call the bridge crew back?”

“Not yet,” Tanny said, and Esper caught a glimmer of some sly motive in her inscrutable expression. “Now that they’re gone, it’s time I told you part two of this plan.”

“Part two? We haven’t finished part one yet. Aren’t we getting a little ahead of our—”

“It’s parallel.”

Esper scowled. She’d hear this out, but surprise plan changes were going to come up at the next steering committee meeting of the syndicate. “Why didn’t we discuss this?”

“You knowing would have been fine. Them knowing wouldn’t be.”

Esper was already shaking her head before Tanny finished. “That’s not how things are supposed to work.”

“Let me explain. Then get judgmental.”

Esper arched her eyebrows.

“Fine. Get judgmental whenever you goddamn please. But pay attention. We can’t get connected to this mess by the general public. Our endgame is a semi-legitimate Rucker Syndicate. I can’t be that if I’m the woman who took away kids’ Frosti Cakes and Sippi Boxes. And you can’t get associated with that either.”

“Something that might have been good to factor into the planning phase.”

“I did.”

Esper waited and scowled.

“We need someone to claim credit for this. We need someone proud of this job. We need someone… to take some heat.”

This duplicity was a step too far. “You can’t hang Wesley or Tiffany out to dry for this. And if you try to pin this on Kubu…”

Tanny pressed a palm to her forehead. “Are you done being an idiot?”

“NO.”

“We need a patsy. And I’ve got one picked out.”

“Not one of your loyal followers, I hope. Because if that’s how you treat your—”

“WOULD YOU JUST LISTEN FOR A FUCKING MINUTE?”

Esper didn’t back down. Stepping within half a meter of Tanny, she looked her right in the eye, daring her old friend to look away. Whether it was a good idea to meet an angry wizard’s gaze or not, Tanny did.

“How about you just spit it out? Enough playing this like a holovid drama.”

“My cousin Janice.”

“Janice Rucker?” Esper echoed skeptically.

“How many cousins do you think I have named Janice?”

“How do you expect us to get Janice Rucker to take credit for hijacking a freighter—make that megafreighter—full of Friendli foodstuffs? From her uncle.”

Tanny’s sly grin hinted at the answer before she even spoke. “Why, we kidnap her and replace her with an impostor, of course.”

Wesley cracked his neck and checked the nav computer again.

“Egad, we’re already to the rendezvous,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief—and enjoying the limber freedom of motion after getting out that kink. “Full stop. TIFF, DROP TO TWO AU.”

“I’m right behind you,” Tiffany replied from the cockpit entrance. “And you’ll have to settle for two-ish. If I can feel ships there, I should be close enough that the universe fudges the difference.”

Chuckling, Wesley turned in the pilot’s chair. “You know, I used to ride what we called Omicron Astral. Eight units deep and a fast ship even relative to realspace. Why, we had to orient the thrusters toward the floor so when we overcame the gravity stone it wasn’t throwing us all to the rear of the ship. And even then, we’d be weeks crossing the galaxy on some missions.”

Tiffany’s neutral expression didn’t change. “Yeah. Magic. Funny how that works.”

“I mean, we just crossed entire solar systems. Whole constellations! And we can still see the Errand if I swing us around.” As he said it, he reached behind him and triggered a pair of quick thruster bursts. The first sent them into a flat spin; the second stopped them. Though tiny at incredible range, the Errand of Mercy was perhaps fifty kilometers back.

And yet…

Theoretically, they were in the Epsilon Eridani system. The nav computer—poor beleaguered thing—agreed.

“Just quit fidgeting with the ship and gimme a minute.”

Putting up his hands, Wesley surrendered to that logic. “No problemo, kiddo.”

Her dead-eyed glare sapped the joy from his lighthearted linguistics. “That’s never been funny.”

Folding his hands in his lap, Wesley stared out the forward window and waited.

There was a smudge on the outside of the glassteel, possibly someone’s greasy handprint. He itched to sneak out EV and wipe it clean. Technically, it wouldn’t interfere with his piloting the craft, but now that he’d seen the smudge, there was no unseeing it.

As he watched, the background shifted. The purpley purple turned purplish gray, then grayish purple, before settling into a uniform gray the same shade as a morning fog.

“All you,” Tiffany called out from the passenger compartment.

Already, they were being hailed. Wesley opened a comm. “Arrived at agreed coordinates. Not seeing you.”

They were right on time too. 1630 hours. Even having to account for Tiffany’s downright wizardly lack of punctuality, he’d managed to hit his schedule.

The response came not long after. “Hold position. ETA 10 seconds.”

Lifting one skeptical eyebrow, Wesley kept his gaze on the dashboard chrono. It was nine seconds before the scanners picked up a vessel approaching from realspace.

The Hoplite-class light carrier wasn’t Earth Navy manufacture. It had been designed on speculation and never won a contract for military use. That didn’t stop some of the richer border colonies from purchasing blueprints and constructing their own. This specimen, a quarter the size of the Errand of Mercy and broadcasting a no-doubt phony ID proclaiming itself the Blackheart, appeared off the port side of the Hel’s Valkyrie, all guns hot.

“Fancy entrance,” Wesley replied. “Since we’re not planning to practice boarding actions, get us a clearance to a hangar bay and I’ll get us aboard. No time to waste.”

“Copy that, ghost.”

Wesley grinned. “Ghost” was somewhat dated marine lingo for someone you didn’t want to identify over a potentially unsecured channel. He was either dealing with a fellow retiree or at least someone who’d done a little research.

Seconds later, the Hel’s Valkyrie received a docking clearance for Bay 5 on the Blackheart. Wesley wasted no time zipping around to the side of the carrier and lining up to land.

At the last second, he accepted the docking code that came along with their clearance. The Blackheart slaved the controls of the Hel’s Valkyrie and managed the landing sequence.

It wasn’t that Wesley couldn’t have landed just fine on his own. This was a matter of courtesy. After all, if that ship meant them any harm, even a carrier was armed well enough to dust them like a firing-range hull.

“Who’s doing the talking?” Tiffany asked, sneaking up behind him as if he couldn’t hear her coming.

Without looking back, he replied, “Me, squirt. You’re the muscle here. I’m the face.”

She snickered. “Who’d ever have guessed.”

“I’ve got glossy flatpics in my portfolio that would knock your eyeballs out.”

Tiffany’s voice fell. “I was more talking about me being the muscle. But then, these oversized grocery drones would be fools to resist us once we board.”

“Fools usually act like fools,” Wesley cautioned. “Heck, if the galaxy wasn’t about 95 percent chock-full of dumbasses, I’d hardly have worked a day in my life.”

The Blackheart rose ahead of them, growing like one of those toy sponges that was teensy until you got it wet. Without any backdrop to provide perspective, it might as well have been. Once the carrier was full-sized, the Hel’s Valkyrie slipped inside. The atmospheric force field squeezed around them, sealing once they arrived inside. Even before they touched down, a steel vacuum-shielded outer door closed in, relieving the force field of duty.

A faint thud echoed through the hull.

Tiffany stepped aside and swept a hand for him to precede her. “Après vous, amigo.”

That was a subtler jab than the kid usually pulled. He smirked and let her see him smirking as he passed by with a gracious nod. Butchering a heritage language or two was a great way to disarm people who might otherwise assume you were competent.

Wesley beat his troops to the boarding ramp and was first down to the hangar. Their hosts all wore black paramilitary uniforms, common to the mercenary backbone of the galaxy. The leader, wearing the same uniform but with epaulets and gold rank insignia, stood front and center.

“Captain Donovan Derocher,” the man said, sticking out a sturdy-looking hand.

Wesley took that hand and gave it a measuring squeeze before shaking. The man had a decent grip for someone who wasn’t an active-duty marine. “Wesley Wesley, Holovid Actors Guild, retired.”

That drew a chuckle from the mercenary captain. “I used to be in the holos too.” He winked. “Come on. We’ll get your troops to their assignments. I already ordered us underway as soon as you were secured on board. ETA to target 57 minutes.”

Wesley declined to point out that if Captain Derocher allowed Tiffany to drop them deeper, they could be there… well, now. Fifty-seven minutes was good enough.

Despite having the tiniest feet and least bulk among the assailants, Tiffany’s descent from their shuttle drew his attention just for its jarring dissonance with the rest of the booted stomping. Her sneakers squeaked on the slick surface of the hangar floor. “I feel underdressed,” she announced to a chorus of chuckles.

Wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and jeans, Tiffany indeed stood apart. No body armor, no helmet, no uniform of any sort. She didn’t look the part of either a wizard or the firepower behind the takeover of a megafreighter.

Bounding down the boarding ramp, Kubu wagged his tail fit to break kneecaps. “Hello, everyone! I’m so excited to help on the big mission!”

“Could I have a word with you?” Captain Derocher asked quietly, just for Wesley’s ears.

Wesley nodded and followed the captain out of the hangar.

In the corridor beyond, he resumed a standard volume. “Mr. Wesley—”

“Major, if it makes you feel any better.”

“Major, I have to admit I have my concerns about your crew.”

Placing a hand on the man’s shoulder, Wesley gave Derocher a somber nod. “I understand your concerns, and I share them. But for this mission, we’re working with gangsters.”

“No. I mean the girl and her dog.”

Wesley rubbed his temples, not even sure where to start. “Look, Captain—”

“Lieutenant, if it makes you feel any better.” Derocher grinned lopsidedly.

“Lieutenant, that girl dropped us out of about 75 AU deep to get here from the Hipparcos system about ten minutes ago. The megalodog—not a dog,” Wesley added with a pedantic finger raised, “can grow to the size of an Armadillo-class troop transport and shrugs off light arms fire. Trust me, marine, they’re not the weak link in this outfit.”

Captain Derocher gazed at the door to the hangar. “Don’t make me regret taking your word on that.”

Esper sat in the co-pilot’s seat of the Shiss Raal, hands in her lap. Though her eyes aimed at the console in front of her, she wasn’t paying any attention to the readouts. They’d come out of the deep astral hours ago in an attempt to blend in with the normal traffic around New Venice.

During that time, the conversation had flowed mainly in one direction.

“She had a pet dog, a dachshund named Snakeeyes. Um, probably got it when she was about eight. And don’t let anyone trip you up; Snakeeyes was a girl.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And she’ll tell people her favorite ice cream is chocolate, but it’s really pistachio.”

“Pistachio. Yup.”

A finger and thumb appeared in Esper’s field of vision, snapping and startling her to attention. “Mars to Esper. You absorbing any of this?”

“No.”

With a melodramatic huff, Tanny flopped back in the pilot’s chair. “You know, if you’re not up for this, we can scrub this mission.”

“I’m up for it,” Esper promised. She swallowed. “I’m just steeling myself for what it’s going to take.”

“Enough steeling. It’s time to cram. You need to know these little details if you want people to buy into you being Janice Rucker.”

How could she do this? How could she explain? “Your way is never going to work.”

“WHAT?”

“No matter how much you feed me about your cousin, you don’t know her well enough to fool everyone in her life. You know exactly enough to teach me how to fool you.”

A thoughtful and consternated scowl grew across Tanny’s face. “Well, I think we know you’re still the logical choice. But if you’re going to flake, disguise me and I’ll do it.”

“You won’t do any better.”

Tanny gritted her teeth. “But I’m willing to try, dammit!”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t be the one impersonating Janice. It’s just… your way won’t work.”

Tanny watched her a moment. “What are you suggesting?”

“Focus on what you need me to do once I’m in place as her. That’s what’ll help me.”

“That’s putting the main thrusters at the bow, isn’t it?”

I am not Mort. I am not Lloyd Arnold, Esper swore silently to herself. “I’ll take care of the impersonation just fine. I need a plan of attack for afterward.”

“First off, you need to confirm Mriy’s death to my father,” Tanny said. The slight knit of her brow told Esper she was still unsure about this leap of faith being asked of her.

“Naturally.”

“Then you need to drop some innuendo—ham it up, make it clear you’re shitting with him—about the Friendli Foods hijacking. Time it right, and it’ll be too late to stop us and too soon for you to know through any secondhand means. My father’s no idiot. He’ll put the pieces together.”

“What kind of innuendo?” Esper asked.

“Make it something greedy. Try to sell him food to make up for the shortfall. Offer to help him find out who did it. Or come up with something of your own. You just need to establish a motive.”

Esper nodded along. “I can do that.”

Tanny licked her lips, and her eyes flitted in their sockets, seeking any view but Esper.

“What?”

“There’s one thing I’ve been hesitant to mention,” Tanny admitted.

“Spit it out.”

“Janice has a new boyfriend.”

Esper scrunched her nose. “I’ll close my eyes.”

But Tanny had barely paused. “I’m not expecting you to—huh? What?”

“What what?” Esper countered.

“I was just about to say: I don’t expect you to sleep with him, but maybe come up with some way to start a fight. Break up with him maybe?”

Esper’s cheeks puffed as she let out a long breath. “It won’t be the worst thing I do for this mission.”

“OK. You win. I’ll say it: explain.”

Here it was. Tanny had never liked this whole aspect of magic. She’d had nightmares after being trapped in Lloyd’s bland mental prison. Her torment and captivity had been a military brig, but it wasn’t as hard on her as accepting the disembodied existence living in a dream world where another mind had utter control over her fate. For all Esper knew, those nightmares still plagued her.

“We’re going to kidnap Janice…”

“Yeah, that’s like Step A of this plan.”

“But I’m going to kidnap her mind. You’ll just be transporting flesh.”

Tanny blinked. “I’ll be transporting what?”

“An empty shell, alive but lacking vital animus.”

Tanny leaned away from Esper. “Whoa. I didn’t think you did that kind of thing.”

“I’ve gotten it under control now. But I’ve slipped. A few times.”

“How many…?” Tanny asked warily.

Esper rolled her eyes. “Fine. More than a few times. But that’s not exactly what I’ve got in mind.”

Despite the grim topic, Tanny managed a smirk. “You mean who you’ve got in mind.”

Esper shot back her mom-look for ‘not going to encourage you.’ “I’m not going to do that this time though. I’ll use Lloyd’s method, not Mort’s book.”

“You know how he did that?”

“It’s not quantum physics. Plus, it comes with the added bonus of not getting her stuck in my head when we’re done ruining her life.”

“Hey,” Tanny said, aiming a stern finger Esper’s way. “She deserves everything she gets. But… what do you plan on doing? Torturing her for the information you need?”

Esper’s eyebrows shot upward. “NO! And we’d be having one of those ‘I’m the conscience of this new syndicate’ conversations I keep threatening if it weren’t for the fact I’m on the wrong side of the fence here already.”

“What then?”

“She’s going to see what I see. I’m going to build her a little diorama to live in that looks exactly like wherever I am. Then, once I know how she’d react to a situation, I can either do what she does or adjust according to our plan.”

“Wow.” Tanny sat there, barely blinking for long moments. “Just… wow.”

“You OK over there?”

“Yeah. I mean… that’s devious. Like, devilishly. And a little worrisome. How can I be sure you haven’t done this to me? How can I be sure I’m not a disembodied puppet in your mind?”

Esper tented her fingers and tapped them together. “You can’t.”

When Tanny recoiled in horror, Esper burst out in laughter.

“I’m so sorry. No. You’re fine. But you can see why I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“No shit.” Tanny shuddered elaborately.

“I’ve changed since you used to know me. I’m more dangerous. I’m harder on the inside. But I still don’t want to do anything to hurt you. Janice on the other hand…” Esper thought back to all Tanny’s briefings, the dossier, the resume of malicious greed and outright evil. The murders. The extortion. The kidnappings. The subsequent shipment of unransomed kidnapping victims to the Dark Star. All with a gleeful arrogance and utter confidence in her right to treat anyone any way she pleased.

Esper ground her teeth. “She’s getting fucked over.”

Jeanine stood in the brig. The nice young man on duty had given her the access code to the doors—but not the inner force fields that were the true security measure in the ship’s jail. While most of the accommodations remained empty, cells 1 and 2 were occupied. Directly across from one another, they were arranged perfectly for her needs.

Punching in the code to cell one, she opened the steel isolation door.

“Ma, what’re you doing here?” Roger demanded, rising from a ball on the cot where he’d no doubt been cowering in anticipation of a guard being on the other side of the door.

Ignoring the question, she crossed to cell 2 and repeated the code.

“Mom?” Candace raced to the force field and threw her hands against the door frame, just out of reach of the shocking barrier. “You’ve got to let me out of here.”

“Candace?” Roger called across the way. “They locked you up too?”

Candace scoffed. “Like that little bitch was going to treat me like her actual mother.”

Shaking his head, Roger replied, “Naw. I was sure she was just saving you for a private barbecue. Kid’s a real wizard now.”

Standing there with her arms crossed, Jeanine watched the pair argue, head snapping back and forth like a tennis spectator. After a few minutes of their bickering, she was convinced they’d forgotten she was even standing there.

“C’mon, Ma,” Roger wheedled, first to break the spell that had rendered her invisible to him. “I can make good if you spring me. You know I can.”

“Your granddaughter’s gone completely out of orbit,” Candace warned. “Open this cell, and we can both get away from this horrid place before she decides to play jury and executioner with us.”

Jeanine harrumphed. If that girl had wanted them dead, they’d have never made it off Mars except in a restaurant take-home bag. “Tiffany’s the only damn thing either of you has done right in your whole sorry lives. If I’d have known back then, I’d have contracted you both when she was a baby and raised her myself.”

That shut the two of them up for a moment.

“Aside from the fact she doesn’t seem to need much looking after these days, I’d still consider it. Ducks in a bucket, the both of you. Don’t think those Rucker boys wouldn’t look the other way if I wanted a blaster and the force field codes.”

“Do it,” Roger taunted from inside the force field. He was an utter mess, dressed up in castoff clothes, still missing a hand and one eye covered in a gauze pack to disguise the mangled socket beneath. “You think I’ve got anything to look forward to but a slow death on someone else’s whim?”

“Yeah,” Candace agreed. “Shoot him. Put him out of my misery once and for all.”

“I have no intention of shortening anyone’s misery today. In fact, I came down here for exactly this pick-me-up. Thanks, both of you.”

Roger spat at her. The spittle sizzled on the force field. Candace laughed in his face from a meter away and waggled a finger at him.

“You sick bitch,” Candace shouted. “Leave us alone!”

Jeanine turned. “Us?”

“Me,” Candace hastily corrected. “Stay and torture that asshole all you want.”

“You two had one real job in your lives: raise Tiffany. The rest was window dressing. The deals, the attacks, the plundering—you could have worked as an accountant and done your damn job as a father.”

“Hah!” Candace scoffed. “Roger St. Cloud, CPA. In what alternate timeline?”

“As for you,” Jeanine continued, turning to shake a judgmental finger at her daughter. “I heard about that mind-softening you signed Tiffany up for.”

“She could still use it if you ask me,” Candace grumbled.

Jeanine couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She stuck a finger in her ear and twisted it around to clear the gunk that must have made her mishear. “Say again?”

“You heard me, you old biddy,” Candace shot back. “Burning out a few miswired synapses would do that brat a galaxy of good.”

Jeanine pursed her lips and scowled thoughtfully. “That gives me an idea. Candace, did you by any chance pay in advance for that procedure?”

“Yeah…” came the wary reply as Candace took a step back from the force field.

“Excellent. I’ll contact the doctor and tell him there’s been a small delay and a change of patient.”

“NO!”

Roger burst out laughing. “Do it, Ma! I’d even take her back. You want more grandkids? I’ll give you another dozen.”

“Jeanine… Mom. You can’t do this.”

“Can’t I? I have a willful, disrespectful daughter. What other recourse do I have?”

Jeanine watched as animal terror swept over Candace. Her pupils dilated. Her chest heaved.

“I’ll kill myself first.”

“Kill yourself?” Jeanine echoed. “Oh, my. GUARD! Bring the self-harm restraints! We’ve got a suicidal one!”

“NO!” Candace shouted, diving for the force field. A sizzling buzz reverberated as she was thrown back. Muscles jittering, Tiffany’s mother wobbled and tried to manually hold her head on with both hands, stumbling and falling onto the cot.

“You two are a menace to Tiffany’s health and happiness. And even though maybe she doesn’t need the help any longer, I’ll always be looking after her.”

Two quick button presses sealed the bickering pair behind steel doors.

The Rucker guard appeared a moment later bearing a bundle of fabric that jangled with metal clasps. “Which one?” he asked as he shook out the “garment.”

A single elaborate contraption of synthetic fiber and steel fastenings, it was shaped like a human body that had been deflated, arms wrapped around in a self-hug. It would pack up an adult human like a mummy, designed to prevent thrashing, scratching, biting, yelling, and pretty much any form of locomotion. The hood had noise-canceling muffs and a built-in gag. A fitting at the nose allowed easy access to pump in a sedative gas.

If Jeanine had owned one of these as a young mother, Candace would have spent her teenage years in it.

For a brief flash of conscience, she considered rescinding the request, playing it off as the joke it had been.

Instead, she hooked a thumb toward Candace’s cell. “That one. Leave her until I tell you otherwise. And don’t trust a word she says.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

After all, duplicity ran in the family.

Wesley slipped behind the controls of the Persimmon. The Barnacle-class boarding assault ship had probably lived a previous life latching onto eyndar warships and boarding zheen broodships during the various wars of the past quarter century. Whoever had refurbished it hadn’t replaced the seats, permanently crushed into the contours of a large human—though still small by Wesleyan standards.

Flipping through his pre-flight checks, he found that all systems were in proper order—unless, of course, the diagnostics themselves were on the fritz.

“We good back there?” he called behind him.

“All ready!” Kubu reported eagerly.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Tiffany said with a sigh. “Gotta say that, for all the times I’ve bitched about pirates, I never thought I’d become one.”

Wesley chuckled easily. “If I told you about all the things I’d become that I never expected…”

“I don’t count holovid roles,” Tiffany retorted.

“Me either. I’ve been a bouncer, a bodyguard, an underground pit fighter, a resistance cell operative, a musician, a barber, a furniture hauler, a florist, a colonial duke, an interior decorator—”

“How old were you when you joined the marines?” Tiffany asked incredulously.

“Eighteen years, two days, and only because my birthday fell on a Saturday and the recruitment office was closed weekends. Did all that stuff as cover for one mission or another. Sure, the ones where you can just barge in wearing power armor and start blasting were fun, but I learned a lot of fun life skills for the ones that required a gentler insertion.”

“Well, this is going to be a rough insertion,” Tiffany proclaimed. “Not even entering through a proper orifice.”

Wesley graced her with a withering look. “Kid, I was an active-duty marine for over twenty years. I have heard every boarding-action-as-sex innuendo ever invented, including being there for the first introduction of a few. And I know you’re no innocent flower, but could you humor me?”

Tiffany swallowed and gave a nod. “Sorry. Just nerves.”

“It was for the marines, too, usually.” Changing the subject, he keyed the secure comm channel for the mission. “Persimmon, reporting all checks green. Engines hot.”

“Mission control to Persimmon,” Derocher replied. “Escort hot in two. Follow the fighter screen.”

Wesley cast Tiffany a surreptitious glance. As operational lead on this mission, he’d been privy to a few details kept from the more sensitive ears among the team. While eight of the twelve Gremlin-class fighters would be piloted manually, four carried corpses and were being flown remotely by Tanny’s people. A fly-by-omni ship would never perform like one with a pilot’s ass parked in its seat; those four weren’t meant to make it through the battle.

Just by the liftoffs, Wesley picked out the real pilots from the ones playing video games from a control room on the Blackheart. There was just a subtle difference in handling. It probably screamed to an actual fighter pilot, but to Wesley, it still whispered.

When the last of the escort fighters cleared the atmo force field, Wesley powered up and flew the Persimmon in pursuit. Two other assault boarding crafts flanked him in formation. The Ruckers wanted their people aboard the Friendli Neighbor. Wesley assumed they’d be an annoyance at best. But manpower was manpower.

The coming battle was going to be won by girl power.

“Holy fuckballs,” Tiffany remarked from the cockpit entrance. In defiance of standard military protocol, she hadn’t bothered strapping in for the attack. “That thing’s bigger than planets I’ve been to.”

Wesley squinted out the front window. The Friendli Neighbor loomed in the distance. But against the gray astral, it was impossible to judge scale. “Not sure how you can even tell from here.”

“I just can.”

Wizards being wizardy, he supposed. While he wasn’t used to Tiffany being so cryptically wise and perceptive, he shrugged it off. Good study habits, presumably. Had to pay off sooner or later and now was a better time than most to grow into Esper’s hand-me-down sneakers.

The Blackheart dropped off scanners, back into the deeper astral. He didn’t ask but supposed that Tiffany felt that too.

However, the scanners were picking up something else that shouldn’t have been here.

Keying the mission comm channel, he called out, “We’ve got company.”

“Thought we knew they had an escort of their own,” Tiffany pointed out.

“Yeah, a few minor nuisances. Not the three customs enforcement ships coming at us,” Wesley said, pounding a fingertip on the readout identifying the incoming bogeys as Guantanamo-class patrol vessels.

“It’s smooth, right?” Tiffany asked. “We’ve got them outnumbered.”

“But not outgunned,” Wesley said. “It’s a dozen light fighters against four medium-weight fighters and three pirate-hunters packing enough plasma to pound us to paste.”

“Oh.”

“Are we in trouble?” Kubu asked shyly.

“Yep,” Wesley replied. “But I’ll promise to handle all the worrying, if you two split up the ‘keeping quiet’ and ‘not getting in my way’ duties.”

Watching the tactical readout, he watched as their own escort fanned out to engage. Rings around each vessel marked the max range on their weaponry. The Guantanamos had a 2km effective range advantage. The fighters were comparable. While technically armed, the paltry weapons of the Persimmon weren’t going to factor into this engagement unless things were bleak.

“Persimmon to Blackheart. We’ve run into extra resistance. Requesting backup.”

It was a long shot, but the carrier was more heavily armed than the Guantanamos, even if there was only one of it.

The reply came promptly. “I was paid for a drop-off, not a rescue.”

For a brief moment, Wesley considered promising the mercenary captain more money. After all, this was all Tanny’s project. She could cough up more terras on demand like a stage magician. But he only had to think back to his scolding about the cowardice of those who fought for money.

Wesley held his finger down on the comm so hard that the console creaked. When he spoke, it was as Major Cassius Bricker. “I’m calling in backup per Directive 499, authorization code Omicron One.”

The Blackheart materialized at their astral depth within seconds. “Lieutenant Donovan Derocher reporting as ordered, sir. Hoorah!”

There were no ex-marines.

Wesley followed the fighter escort as they zoomed straight into the teeth of the Friendli Neighbor’s escort fleet. Say this for the gangsters, even the ones flying their own fighters weren’t cowards.

As the two sides closed to weapons range, the gray astral exploded in color. A light show of plasma bursts crisscrossed the void.

Jamming the throttle open, Wesley aimed them straight for the megafreighter.

A panicked, clear-channel broadcast went out from the Friendli Neighbor. “What’s wrong with you people? You can't stop Friendli Foods! Earth is counting on us. It may not be healthy, or particularly tasty, but it's reasonably affordable and Earthlings LOVE it!”

Wesley didn’t alter his trajectory except for basic evasive maneuvering to keep targeting computers from getting ambitious and predicting their course. “How about you make the smart play and call off your buddies out there?”

“I don’t even know who those guys are! You people are all insane! I’m just the grocery megafreighter!”

Wesley closed the comm. He made it a point never to argue with idiots. Just dragged words around in a loop and never got anywhere.

A red lance of plasma flashed across their bow, momentarily blinding everyone with a forward view.

Hammering the throttle open, the Persimmon lurched. He felt the pressure of the acceleration against his back.

“Whoa!” Tiffany called out. “That freighter’s getting close awful fast. You sure we’re not going to splatter when we hit it?”

Wesley thumped a fist against the inner hull. “This baby’s made for impact.”

Clinging to the doorframe white-knuckled, Tiffany grunted out, “But what about us?”

“Gravity stone’s in the back. How about a little boost?”

Tiffany’s eyes widened.

She’d been right. There was no way they’d survive slamming into the Friendli Neighbor at this speed without some augmented gravity.

Once he was sure they were aimed to intercept—and the Friendli Neighbor barely counted as a moving target—Wesley flipped them around to collide boarding-ram first.

In the distance, he could make out the Blackheart running interference for the assault ships. Withering exchanges of fire traded back and forth.

Wesley keyed the comm. “All clear. Bug out. Boarding impact in five… four… three… two…”

A thunderous crash rocked the Persimmon. But it was mostly noise. The impact in Wesley’s seat was no worse than trying to sit down when someone snuck the chair out from under you.

Grabbing a blaster rifle on his way out, Wesley found that he was the last one off the ship.

The assault on the Friendli Neighbor had begun.

How she’d ended up back on New Venice was a metaphysical conundrum. Esper had sworn never to return, both for the legal scrutiny after her involvement in the destruction of the Dark Star and for the potential of crossing paths with Karen again. The universe had taken an almost perverse glee in picking apart her vow. First, Karen had moved aboard the Errand of Mercy and unraveled the mystery of her past right in Esperville. Now, she was back beneath the red glow of Barnard’s Star.

The more literal “how” to her arrival was Mriy’s bounty-hunting ship, the Shiss Raal.

“You ready?” Tanny asked.

Esper snickered. “I should be asking you. I know what I’m doing.”

Squeezing her eyes shut, Tanny nodded her consent.

Two new people, coming right up. When Esper snapped her fingers, it was done.

Tanny opened her eyes, instantly checking her reflection in the curved glass of the cryo-pod meant for transporting frozen prisoners. “Hoe. Lee. Shit.”

“You like?” Esper asked.

Fingers explored the contours of an unfamiliar face. “It’s not an illusion. I can feel it.”

“You’re five centimeters shorter. A little body-modder blue tint to your skin. Plumper lips. A few extra piercings in your ears.”

“And my boobs?”

Esper felt her cheeks warm. “I modeled you after one of the girls at the Maison d’Être. She was… well, she swore it wasn’t cosmo.”

Tanny tore her gaze away from her own reflection and studied Esper. “I see you went with a more compact model.”

“It’s a shell game,” Esper countered. Her own disguise was store-mannequin bland, nearly androgynous. With short-cropped hair and smooth skin, she could have passed for a teenage boy or a middle-aged woman solely by her clothing and accessories. “The more eyes focus on you, the less attention will be on me.”

Tanny thrust a blaster into Esper’s hands, complete with strap-on thigh holster. The two of them hastily changed into weather-beaten border colony spacer attire. Dusty and faded, they looked like they’d either been through the clothes processor a few hundred times or never at all. Leather, denim, and steel predominated. Tanny added a pair of no-tech goggles to her outfit. Esper tied on a green bandanna as a headband.

“How do I look?” Esper asked.

Tanny popped the blaster from Esper’s holster and disengaged the safety before returning it. “Like you belong in a seedy casino.”

“Overt seediness would be an upgrade over the last one I visited here.”

“How about me?”

“Like an exotic companion who ditched the brothel for outlaw life.”

Tanny raised a warning eyebrow.

“Hey, I picked that disguise for you because Lucerne wasn’t my type.”

“Speaking of names…” Tanny said just as Esper raised a finger.

“Speaking of speaking.” New voices please. “How about this?” Her melodic timbre had been muted, lowered an octave, and become slightly scratchy.

“That still doesn’t matter if you don’t remember your—what the? I sound like I’m comming from one of those audio seduction services on the omni.” Tanny’s voice had become breathy and husky.

“Too much?” Esper asked with a coy smile.

“A little,” Tanny replied testily.

“Lean into it,” Esper advised. “You’re the one she’s known since childhood. And I know my cover story. I’ve been practicing it for months.”

“Months, but we only—”

Esper fixed her with an omniscient and inscrutable smile.

Tanny shuddered. “Fine. Just humor me.”

“I’m Zaa’rhee Campbell. Grew up on Bathwood, a mining colony I left as soon as I could stow away on a freighter. Been making ends meet until I met up with you, Rhoda Cohen, and we decided to make our fortunes together.”

Tanny scowled. “I still don’t like this couple cover story. Carl used to pull this shit all the time. I swear it was a desperate attempt to kindle sparks.”

“I won’t even kiss you,” Esper promised. “Besides, this is the safest way to stay together. If one of us were to pose as a man, Janice is liable to want to play with him. If we go solo, we’re liable to draw interest from her underlings.”

Tanny grunted. “Me, maybe.”

Esper shrugged. It was a fair point. “You got the proof of death?” she asked.

Tanny hefted a metallic case sized to carry a basketball. She strained under the weight. “This body could use a little more muscle.”

With a wave of her hand, Tanny’s arms bulged with new muscles, straining the fabric of her tunic. At a crossing-out gesture with one finger, the sleeves of that tunic vanished, leaving bare flesh exposed.

Tanny studied the new biceps. “Now I look like I bench-press my brothel customers.”

“But the case feels lighter, doesn’t it?”

A tight scowl preceded Tanny’s nod. “Fair. You ready to go?”

“Sure thing, Rhoda,” Esper said as she swatted Tanny playfully on the backside before exiting the Shiss Raal.

Tiffany hadn’t known quite what to expect when emerging into the cargo hold—one of the many cargo holds—of the Friendli Neighbor. There had been images, of course, flatpics and miniature holos representing the warehouse of tram-car-sized shipping containers of Friendli Foods fare. But images never quite carried the weight of being somewhere, whether that was a space station, a tropical paradise, or the inside of the galaxy’s largest moving vessel.

Wesley’s hasty impact with the megafreighter’s hull had left them three stories up, staring at a dislodged container knocked askew when the ram burst through the wall. Towers of stacked shipping containers rose twenty more stories above them at least. Rows of similar stacks stretched as far as the eye could see.

Rather than levitate the three of them to ground level, she dragged a series of shipping containers out to form a staircase. Though each drop was three meters, none of their team struggled.

Tiffany landed feather-light at each level.

Wesley absorbed each fall with a grunt as his legs cushioned his landing.

Kubu bounded down like the oversized boxcars were mere stairs.

“Stick together,” Wesley ordered, carrying his blaster in one hand and referencing a datapad in the other. “We need to make our way to the bridge to secure the helm.”

“What about those other ships out there?” Tiffany asked.

“The sooner we can gain steering control, the sooner we navigate out of this mess.”

Putting a fist in front of her mouth, Tiffany cleared her throat. “What if, say, a wizard were to drop us to our private astral depth first?”

“Negatory, mini-Esper. We need to bring this barge to a halt.”

As Wesley set off, Tiffany darted in front of him and blocked the way. “You don’t think I can do it. Do you?”

Wesley flashed that condescending smile of his. “Not a matter of can or can’t. It’s a matter of sticking to the plan.”

“Plan’s already out the airlock. Those extra ships weren’t supposed to be here.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

“You’re scared,” Tiffany shot back before he could finish. “You think I’ll get us all killed.”

“There was that space station.”

“That was a lifetime ago,” Tiffany warned cryptically. “And if we got sold out so that someone could have three gunships waiting for us, who’s to say there aren’t a hundred troops on board with more coming to defend the freighter itself?”

The silence that followed came accompanied by a thoughtful scowl from Wesley. “Level with me. Can you do it?”

“Um, guys?” Kubu said.

“I think so,” Tiffany replied.

Wesley leveled an accusing finger. “I need better than ‘think so,’ soldier.”

“Guys?”

“Theory is theory until I try,” Tiffany explained. “This thing is practically stationary. It’s just a matter of size. If I can convince the universe that—”

“GUYS! THERE ARE PEOPLE COMING!”

Tiffany and Wesley looked in unison to Kubu, standing with his ears perked up and watching the end of their towering row of containers.

“How many?” Wesley asked.

Kubu whined softly. “So many yummy smells…”

“Focus!” Tiffany scolded. “How many?”

Sniffing the air, Kubu announced. “Fifty? About fifty.”

“New plan?” Tiffany asked Wesley. After all, this was his mission. If there were fifty guys already on them when the security contingent was only purported to be twenty, there must have been hundreds spread throughout the whole ship.

“Scrub the frontal assault,” Wesley replied promptly. “Asymmetrical warfare time. Split up. Take them out when and where you can. Minimize personal risk first.”

“And what about the astral drop?” Tiffany demanded. “Yes or no?”

“We can buy you time,” Kubu promised.

Tiffany gaped at him. That was the most tactical thing she’d ever heard out of the megalodog.

“What?” Kubu asked defensively. “I pay attention. Esper likes quiet when she does big magic.”

“Right,” Wesley agreed with a nod. Tucking away his datapad, he slapped the barrel of his blaster rifle into his free hand. “We’ll lure them away. You get us purply-deep in the astral. THEN we’ll deal with these troublemakers.”

Tiffany found herself speechless. She’d expected an argument. She’d figured on a shouting match that she’d lose, then go ahead and perform the astral drop anyway.

“Kubu, you good on your own?” Wesley asked.

The canine nodded. “Just say the word…”

“GODZILLA MODE,” Wesley bellowed.

On cue, Tiffany felt the magic. She allowed it to unfurl without interfering. It was simplistic, raw… primal.

Kubu grew to the point where an aisle sized for hover-lifts and giant shipping containers now felt cramped. When he sat on his haunches, the deck plates creaked. Throwing back his head, he let out an exultant howl that echoed throughout the cargo hold. Tiffany and Wesley both covered their ears.

When the megalodog bounded away, the whole cargo hold shook.

Wesley flipped his blaster rifle to stun. “Guess I should go head off the ones that flee.” He gave a salute and a wink before racing off in pursuit of Kubu.

Tiffany watched them for a moment until Kubu disappeared around a corner, letting out a growl that was still ungodly loud from half a kilometer away.

Blaster fire echoed.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, Tiffany hoped they could sheepdog those mercenaries away from her. Closing her eyes, she blotted the conflict from her mind.

She envisioned a ship.

Huge.

No, massive. Colossal even.

I’ve heard of whole planets slipping in and out of astral. Size hardly matters anymore, huh? This ship’s no big deal compared to a whole planet. Just another traveler heading away from reality. There’s a place where I’d like to be right now, the deeper astral. Where Esper parks the Errand of Mercy. Let’s take a trip there.

Tiffany may as well have put her shoulder against the trunk of an oak and toppled it through strength of muscle.

Look, I know this ship is bigger than usual, but we’re already astral. Proof of concept right there. Just… let’s go deeper.

The Friendli Neighbor groaned in protest. Tiffany knew it hadn’t left their previous astral depth, however. It really was too big, and she knew it. This had been Esper’s biggest objection to the plan. Tiffany wasn’t up to this.

Her own belief was holding her back.

No…

Esper’s belief was holding Tiffany back.

Esper and her condescending superiority complex can go fuck themselves. I’m Tiffany Bell, and I don’t need anyone telling me what I can and can’t do. I’m every bit the wizard Esper is. I studied under Mordecai The Brown, even if I had to manage my own education. I’ve endured learning the secrets of the Tome of Bleeding Thoughts. You will respect me. I’m not weak-willed like Esper. I was able to break free of the Tome without giving in. I am Mordecai’s true heir. I’m the one who took his advice. I’m the one who can overcome any obstacle.

Tiffany felt it first in her toes. That sensation of vertigo crept up her legs until it reached her gut and exploded. It was the roughest astral drop she’d ever experienced. The Friendli Neighbor slipped partially into deeper astral space, then dragged the reluctant portions along like slurped spaghetti.

It was that slurping sensation that did Tiffany in.

She collapsed to her hands and knees on the deck plates, retching. But when she rolled onto her back, panting for breath, and wiping her mouth on her sleeve, she’d done it.

The Friendli Neighbor wasn’t in the deep astral. But it was deeper than the firefight going on outside.

The decorator sprayed a swath of teal across the wall right beside a similar band of coral tint. Flipping an indicator switch on the handle of the sprayer, she added a saffron sample as well. When she turned to seek approval, it wasn’t from Don Rucker.

“Which do you prefer, Mrs. Rucker?” the decorator asked brightly.

Gladysson wore a filter mask to protect the baby against the 2-ppm concentration of tinter loose in the air. Don and the decorator opted out. Tapping a painted fingernail against the mask as if it were her lip, she pondered a moment before answering, studying each color like the face of an informant.

“Do you have any other tints?” Gladysson asked at length.

Don rolled his eyes.

A quiet ahem caught his attention from behind. Jimmy stood in the doorway with a “business” look in his eyes.

“Scuse me,” Don said, backing out of the nursery-in-progress. “Gotta take care of something.”

Instantly, the decorator turned off the sprayer, its efficient little hum of readiness cutting off abruptly. “Shall I come back later this—”

“You two finish up,” Don insisted. He didn’t dare leave Gladysson without something to do and someone to boss around. If he did, she was liable to start trying to help with business. The closer she got to her due date, the more she pushed him. He shot his young wife a smile. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

The door slid shut as Jimmy fell into step beside him in the hall.

“What’ve you got for me?”

“As usual, Don, it’s a mix. Good and bad.”

Don growled. For once, couldn’t it just be all of one or the other? Even bad news gave him license to pound off at someone about things. This wishy-washy combination left him frustrated with the whole affair. “Good first.”

“Our informant was playin’ square. We intercepted an assault team trying to board the Friendli Foods megashipment headed for Earth.”

“Good,” Don stated. He wished the matter would drop right there. Unfortunately, he knew better. “Lemme guess, they still took out the ship?”

“Took? Yeah,” Jimmy replied. “Out, not so much.”

“Huh?” Don had lost the thread tying this bundle of news together.

“One of the boarding ships made hull contact. Couple’a minutes later… poof.”

“What’s poof?”

“Gone.”

“Exploded? Vaporized?”

“Best guess?” Jimmy asked. “Astral. We dusted four merc fighters, and we got a salvage team gonna pick ’em up before Search and Rescue’ll be on site.”

Don huffed. “Leave the wrecks for Earth Interstellar. We’ll get better reports. Got anything else I need to know?”

Jimmy cast a sly glance back down the hall toward what would become his baby cousin’s nursery. “Oh, yeaaaah. Loads. Urgent stuff. Can’t talk about it here though. Lemme buy you a couple drinks and tell ya all about it.”

Jutting his jaw, Don nodded. “Yeah. The Jetfish sound good?”

“Sure,” Jimmy replied. It didn’t take much twisting to get a young bulldog like Jimmy to hang out at The Jetfish, drinking top-notch booze served by top-notch tail. It was no place for an upstanding kid like Jimmy to find himself a wife, but it gave him plenty of reasons not to rush the search. “Hell, if we don’t rush ourselves, this business might run you late for dinner.”

As they headed for the hover garage, Jimmy already tapping a message to the family’s private pilot, Don wagged a finger. “This is business. Let’s not go rushing it.”

Most hotels didn’t have a lift that went ten stories underground. The Avernus Meadows Grand Lodge did. Only people in the know were aware of that fact, and the computer on board the lift was the perfect bouncer.

“Basement level 10,” Tanny told it, her voice still belonging to the sultry Rhoda.

ERROR. DESTINATION NOT FOUND. PLEASE STATE DESTINATION.

The lift was polite in its feigned confusion. After all, this was a mid-tier corporate chain hotel on a core world. There was a certain decorum expected of even the most pedestrian of computerized interactions.

Esper spoke up, her raspy alto, “Basement level 10, please.”

Tanny shot her a glower. The politeness had been out of character. Esper winced and gave a confirming nod that she wouldn’t make that mistake in front of a live audience.

ALL PASSENGERS APPROVED. LEVEL B10.

A soothing ding accompanied a faint sensation of motion.

“Thought this was a core world,” Esper whispered, leaning toward her companion. “I felt that.”

“Just a little. People expect it. Now shut up.”

The lift didn’t display their current level as they descended, but when it opened, the familiar buzz of a casino filled the air.

Green felt and the clack of hardcoin chips melded with the scents of smoke and a sinusoidal hum of elation and disappointment as jackpots were won and lost. Unlike the Dark Star, this New Venice casino was anything but swanky. The lighting was washed out and dim at the same time. A faint presence of body odor hung in the air.

Patrons wore a mishmash of cheap business suits, leisure attire, corporate uniforms, and sports fan apparel. The wait staff wore either black bikinis or skin-hugging shorts, paired with a white collar and black bow tie. Oiled skin. Bleached teeth. Dead eyes. The dealers and table runners sported unisex tuxedos. Only the management staff looked like they took home real money, decked out in tailored suits and jewelry; the looks in their eyes were predatory.

Tanny took the lead, heading for a blackjack table. Esper appreciated the choice of game. They hadn’t discussed that part of the plan, but she wondered if Tanny knew how good she was with probability.

Not that it mattered. If Esper needed to win, the gewgaws scattered throughout the casino wouldn’t detect her magical interference.

The two ladies took adjacent seats. The case Tanny had carried all the way from the starport plunked down between them.

It didn’t take long—just a few winning hands—before someone from security approached them.

He was in his mid-thirties, solid but not intimidating aside from the blaster sidearm and mag cuffs. Esper wasn’t inherently afraid of uniforms, but she supposed that might have helped against some miscreants. “I’m going to need to have a look inside that case.”

“Your boss’s eyes only,” Tanny said as she peeked at her down card.

The security guard put a hand on Tanny’s shoulder, just above her exposed blue-tinted skin. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to—”

Esper grabbed the man by the wrist. “You don’t need to get physical,” she told him. The security guard caught her eye as he made a vain attempt to stare her down. Mistake. His eyes glossed over as Esper reached inside and unlocked the door to his brain. Allowing herself to stroll inside, she found an uncomplicated mind, easily diverted without much coercion. “We’d be happy to come with you to see Miss Rucker.”

The guard’s eyes twitched as they attempted to blink but couldn’t. “Of… course. Please follow me.”

Tanny picked up the case. Esper scooped her winnings into a jacket pocket. She didn’t care about the money, but Zaa’rhee Campbell should have. So, she made her way to the lift with a telltale rattle.

The guard held the door for them and turned aside a couple of businessmen to wait for another lift. Once Esper and Tanny were aboard, he gave the instruction. “Penthouse.”

The two women exchanged a knowing look. The lift rose.

Kubu loped along easily. The ship people ran away wherever he went. Any time he got close, they split up and went different ways all at once. They yelled and shouted to each other, making plans Kubu could only assume they didn’t realize he could hear or understand. Coordinated retreats, flanking maneuvers, ambushes, distractions. Kubu would have been impressed if it hadn’t been so ineffective.

It wasn’t that the blasters didn’t hurt. It was that he barely noticed them at all. With all the bright flashes and no harm, they might as well have been using laser pointers.

With one paw pinning a hapless blaster-man to the floor of the cargo hold, Kubu whined softly. He didn’t know what to do with the man. He was a people. Esper had long been clear on the topic: no eating people. While not digestive in nature, crushing him until he popped seemed similarly unacceptable.

Both options would have been easy.

In fact, Kubu had to be careful the little human was still able to breathe. The hand clutching his blaster rifle was attached to an arm that had made a funny crunching sound when Kubu flattened it to prevent more shooting.

So fragile.

The human stank of pee and poop. Why was it that scared people made bathroom in their pants? It was hardly the time. If they got killed, it wouldn’t be with the regret of missing out on one last bowel movement. Maybe if Kubu was the sort with a weak stomach, the ickiness might have made him let the person go? It was as good a theory as any.

Nevertheless, Kubu had lots more people to round up and no way to stop them getting away again if he let one go.

Tentatively, he let up the pressure holding the human down. “Stay,” he told the man.

Groaning and curling into a ball, the blaster-man grabbed his broken arm.

Kubu tried to pick up the man’s weapon, but the blaster rifle was too tiny for his massive paws to grip. After several failed attempts, he licked it up off the ground and bit down.

The barrel slipped between his teeth several times before he managed to get it between two fangs and crush it. It tingled against his gums and tasted of high-density plasma gel.

When he spat it back out, the blaster rifle looked like used chewing gum.

“Stay,” Kubu reiterated.

Stepping gingerly over the man, Kubu headed off in search of more.

Blasters zapped from all sides. Mr. Wesley was having a shooting game with the blaster-men. Kubu had never seen him get shot, but he assumed that—big as he was—Wesley wasn’t plasma-proof.

Racing through the stacks of freighter crates, each leaking whiffs of delicious smells, he tried to concentrate on the scents of unfamiliar humans.

Sniffing, he discovered a pair of blaster-men on the far side of a stack of containers full of Snakki Bars—Peach Mango and Strawberry Truffle. He had never tried the strawberry truffle and considered it a lesser “gotta try” item. But it was on the list.

No, he told himself firmly, it is time to stop the blasty-men. Eating is a reward for later.

But there were so many of them, and stopping them without hurting them was very much a one-at-a-time business. And there were so, SO many of them out there now. His initial guess of fifty seemed to have missed the mark badly. Kubu knew from the briefing that, large as this cargo hold was, it was only one of a dozen that stretched the length of the Kubu-sized freighter. Whoever had sent the blaster-men must have spread them out.

Now, blaster-men from all over the ship were converging on the intruders.

And with just three intruders, that was a lot of converging.

The whirring engines of a hover-fork approached from the distance. More of the blaster-men. Kubu didn’t want to hurt them. But if there were too many of them, he didn’t know what choice he might have.

Also, somewhere in the back of his mind, Kubu knew there were weapons that could hurt him, even when he was full-sized.

That was when Kubu’s ears perked up. A distinctive whistle cut through the clutter of other noises as fleeing blaster-men and the blasters they fired mixed with shouting and machinery. It started high-pitched and held, then rose, then lowered again.

Wesley had called it a boatswain’s call.

It was the signal for trouble.

If Wesley was in trouble, this had gotten serious.

Throwing caution to the air blowers, Kubu homed in on the sound and ran.

At an intersection of aisles, a hover-fork carrying a dozen mercenary blaster-men plowed into him. He hadn’t been paying attention. The vehicle caught him in the ribs at fifty kilometers per hour. Kubu yelped and toppled as his momentum carried him into a tower of Twisti Noodles crates.

His neck jerked funny. His head left a huge dent in the steel container it hit.

For a moment, anger boiled to the surface. Instinct took hold. A red haze overtook him.

Growling.

Gnashing.

Swiping.

Biting.

Shaking.

Panting through bared teeth, Kubu blinked and reoriented himself. He tasted blood. Smelled blood. Saw blood.

Blaster-men lay smooshed, splattered, torn apart. The hover-fork was smoking against the towers with teeth marks in the chassis.

Kubu had had it with the blaster-men. He was going to find Wesley and make him safe. If any of the blaster-men tried to stop him… well, their safety was their problem now.

He sprang off in the direction where he’d heard the whistle.

Kubu was done playing nice.

The lift doors opened. Their escort stepped aside.

“Who the fuck is that?” Janice called out, neck twisted to view them over the back of her couch. The holovid in front of her showed a Bronze League fight in progress: Cashman vs. Epstein by Tanny’s expert eye. If this were a live feed, they would have been vying to earn a shot at the title against Pérez.

The penthouse suite was everything the casino below wasn’t. Everything was spotless, new, and had the sheen of expensive manufacture. Her couch was dinosaur leather, softened to a feathery suede yet keeping the predatory patterning. The holo-projector came from Phabian, one of those hard-to-pronounce brands named in a laaku heritage language. The wall behind the holo was a single pane of glassteel overlooking the city of Santa Croce. Other walls bore paintings from colonial masters but nothing from Sol. It was the only hint of humility in the whole place.

Tanny knew it was because Don refused to let any Old Earth masterpieces past Mars.

She took all the decor in within seconds of the doors opening.

Their pet guard stepped into the suite and waved them inside. “They have something to present; your eyes only.”

Growling at the back of her throat, Janice paused the holo-projector and got up. She wore a black sports bra, matching leggings with a white stripe up the side, and bloodred trainers. The half-empty EnerJuice clutched in her fingerless-gloved hand suggested a recent workout, not one upcoming. Her long black hair was gathered into a ponytail. Out of place with her attire, she wore silver hoop earrings and a diamond necklace fit for a dinner party.

“You know, not every jackass who says that gets a free pass to a meeting,” Janice told their escort. Nevertheless, she stalked over to size up Tanny and Esper in their disguises. “So, what’s the deal with you two?”

Tanny caught a glimpse of the bodyguards lurking in the kitchen. She knew that if she stepped out of line, they’d be on her faster than dogs on steak.

“Bounty collection,” Tanny replied, holding up the case.

Janice sneered. “Below my pay grade. Go talk to Bill Harker.”

“It’s not for you,” Esper put in.

That caught Janice up short as she headed back to her couch. She’d just unpaused the Bronze League bout only to freeze it again a second later. The fighters shifted positions as they traded probing punches. “Then why the fuck are you bothering me with it?”

“Caught the dust-lister on your turf,” Tanny explained. “Didn’t want to off-world it without clearing it.”

“Cute,” Janice said with disdain. “But I don’t care if you export bodies as long as you don’t get caught with them. Especially not if you carried a goddamn head into my casino. I assume that’s what you’ve got in the case.”

Tanny nodded.

Janice ran a hand over her face and clenched a fist. “What am I going to do with the two of you stupid bitches?”

“Buy the head off us?” Esper proposed.

“Buy it?” Janice echoed incredulously. “You’ll be lucky if you walk out of here alive. Corpses are bad for business. But sometimes three are cleaner than one.” She kept glancing down at the case. “Who did you dust, anyway?”

“Mriy Yrris,” Tanny said like it was no big deal.

Janice widened her eyes. “Don’s big contract?”

Tanny shrugged her bare, blue-tinted shoulders. “I guess. Knew the fuzzball was a hot ticket, so I didn’t exactly sit on my blaster.”

“You just saw her and gunned her down?” Janice asked incredulously. “Don’s top head collector… got her head collected… by you two?”

“Followed her back to her ship. Dusted her at the starport and boosted her ship.”

“It was on Howie’s Moon,” Esper added. “They didn’t ask for takeoff clearance. New Venice might.”

A sly look narrowed Janice’s eyes. “I get it. You’re on a hot ride with an expensive head. You might not be able to take off from New Venice, but you sure as fuck won’t get onto Mars without help.”

Tanny nodded along. “We’ve got the rest of the body in cryo, but that about sums it up.”

“What’s your price?” Janice demanded.

Tanny knew that Don would want to meet the ones responsible for dusting Mriy. Janice wouldn’t deprive Tanny’s father of that privilege. The only risk was her taking credit and disposing of them, but that sounded like too much work and mental energy for the likes of Janice.

With a snap of her fingers, Janice summoned her goons from the kitchen. One came with his blaster pistol out. The other brought an oversized sandwich. “Open it.”

As the two goons loomed, one keeping a blaster trained on her, the other chewing open-mouthed, Tanny knelt and popped the seal on the case. A fog of cold air escaped. When the lid opened, Tanny reminded herself that this was only an oversized head of lettuce, slightly past its shelf life, pillaged from the pantry on the Errand of Mercy just before they left.

Gritting her teeth, Tanny tangled her fingers in the scalp fur of a disembodied azrin head and lifted it for inspection. Trailing dangling red gore too frozen to drip blood, it was the head of Mriy Yrris, former assassin for Don Rucker, former bodyguard to Tania Rucker, former security officer on the Mobius, former Silver League contender… Tanny’s best friend.

“That thing better pass a DNA scanner,” Janice warned. Apparently, she either didn’t know Mriy well enough to identify her from a frozen head or was wary of some rather bold duplicity.

The latter would have been right on the mark.

“We’ve got the rest of the corpse on the fuzzball’s ship if you want a complete scan. We’ve got nothing to hide.”

Esper chuckled. Tanny’s guts clenched. This was her rodeo; Esper was supposed to keep her yap shut. “Well, we don’t have nothing to hide. Am I right?”

Janice snorted in amusement. “Yeah. Close that thing up. We’re taking a ride. Where’s the ship?”

“Nicelli Starport,” Tanny replied as she packed up the dummy head. Even after closing up the case, she rubbed her hand clean on her pants.

Janice jabbed a finger against Tanny’s sternum. Her borrowed body rocked back from the impact. “If you’re fucking with me, you’re going to wish you’d never met me.”

I already do, Tanny replied silently. Soon, you’ll be wishing the same.

Four ladies surrounded a small round table in a back corner of the rec room aboard the Errand of Mercy. The eldest among them sat studying her hand of cards with mock seriousness.

“Do you have any sixes?” Wendy Wesley asked the youngest player at the table, narrowing one eye shrewdly.

“Nope!” Harmony replied triumphantly. “Go in the pond.”

The “pond” in this case was the communal pile of disorganized cards emblazoned across the back with the title “Here, Fishy Fishy!” The only differences between these and normal poker cards were the omission of face cards in favor of a simple one through ten range and the suits had been replaced by colored fish.

“Mommy, have you got a four?” Harmony asked in turn.

Karen made a show of inspecting each card in her hand before turning over a card bearing four blue fish on it. She held it gingerly between thumb and forefinger as a tiny mousetrap of a hand snapped it up and added it to her own as she announced, “Here, fishy fishy!”

Then Harmony laid down a set of fours.

In the process, Karen noticed the girl was, in fact, in possession of two sixes. For the sake of everyone’s mental well-being, she declined to take the opportunity for a lesson on cheating.

“What do you think they’re up to right now?” Karen asked absently, trying to play it off as mild curiosity rather than a gnawing worry trying to claw its way out of her stomach like a lizard hatching from its egg.

“Not following legal advice, that’s for sure,” Saliza grumbled as she scrutinized her cards. The level of attention to detail she was giving the game seemed excessive given that they were all doomed to lose to a cheating five-year-old. “I knew Esper could be hard-headed, but Tania Rucker makes Al Capone look like an easy client.”

“I don’t even know who that is,” Karen admitted.

“Famous mobster from Chicago Prime,” Wendy explained. “Law enforcement at the time couldn’t get charges of murder, racketeering, and money laundering to stick, but they jailed him on tax fraud. And what Wesley, Tiffany, and Kubu are up to is the type of Class 4 felony that Wes used to do for a living under the guise of a military operation.”

“I’m more worried about Esper sneaking off with Tanny,” Karen clarified. While she liked Wesley and Tiffany, and Kubu was wonderful with Harmony... Esper was special.

Saliza shot her a patronizing scowl. “If there’s one woman who can look after herself in this galaxy, it’s Esper Richelieu. If there are two, the second one might also be Esper. Now, pick a card.”

Blinking, Karen took a quick check of her hand. “Um, nines?”

“Nope. Go fish,” Saliza replied matter-of-factly.

Harmony gasped. “No. You can’t go fishing. You have to ask the fishies nicely: Here, fishy fishy. Go to the pond and take a lost fishie home with you.”

Saliza raised an eyebrow, but the skeptical glare was for Karen.

Karen shrugged slightly in reply. Who was she to argue with the little one-page story sheet that came with the deck of cards? They were helping lost fish find their friends so they could all go home together. It seemed more wholesome than perpetuating the cycle of wildlife murder.

Humbled by her young opponent, Saliza drew from the central pile.

“If you want my advice,” Wendy said, then paused for effect.

“Please,” Karen supplied during the pause.

“You need to keep yourself as busy as possible. If I sat at home and waited for word on Wes’s well-being, I’d have died of heart failure decades ago.”

“Hard to do paralegal work when no one’s taking legal advice,” Karen replied.

Saliza grunted. “You can say that again.”

“Must be easy when you’re an ambassador,” Karen suggested coyly. “Super important. Soirees galore. Back channel communications. Talking to spies.”

Wendy chuckled. “Usually, the diplomats are the spies. It simplifies the chain of command.”

Karen gaped. “You were a spy?”

“Were?” Wendy echoed. “Am. At least until word gets back to the ARGO Ministry of Statecraft.”

Harmony had set down her cards and was watching the conversation intently. “I heard you met rata-tatta-tat-o-rets.”

“Ratatoret,” Wendy corrected gently. “And yes. I was posted there for three years before my loving husband decided to uproot his Hollyworld career and take up freelance heroics.”

“I read about rat-at-uh-rets in my book If It Talks,” Harmony proclaimed proudly. The book was a childhood primer on the various sentient races of the galaxy. It predated the discovery of that mystery planet where all life in the galaxy had started but covered a wide variety of species in and around ARGO space. It was a handy starting point at realizing that aliens weren’t animals even if they looked like them.

Karen’s only issue with the book was that they made certain species—particularly the eyndar—a little too cute.

Harmony launched into a ten-minute diatribe on everything she knew about ratatoret, starting with their depiction in If It Talks, then diverging into the ratatoret family in Hippo and Friends, the “Fuzzy Tail Song,” which included a verse about ratatoret tails, and a story a daycare friend of hers told about the time he visited the ratatoret homeworld. The latter was, no doubt, a lie. Children of the hostesses at La Maison d’Être weren’t the planet-hopping types.

“Is that what they’re really like?” Harmony asked at length, short of breath.

“They’re quite kind, I’ve found,” Wendy said. “I’d also mention that they find our fascination with their cuteness mildly offensive.”

Harmony covered her mouth with both hands. “Oh, no! That’s awful. Because they’re really cute.”

“An eyndar probably thinks you smell like poop,” Wendy explained.

Harmony gasped anew. “Nuh-uh! I use wipes!”

Karen furrowed her brow. Harmony had been toilet trained for years now.

“They have very good noses. They can smell even if you clean up after,” Wendy explained. Karen had to admire the tactic. For whatever reason, small children, even delicate, sweet things like Harmony, were fascinated by bodily functions. If there was a way to get through to a young child, this was it. “They don’t think anything of it, but you got upset when I told you.”

Harmony nodded.

“See? It’s the same for the ratatoret people. I have never petted one or stroked one of those luxurious tails.”

Harmony sighed. “Being ambassador must be great. I want to be one when I grow up.”

Add that to the list. Who was to say a girl couldn’t grow up to be a chef commando stylist architect wizard and an ambassador? Certainly not her mother. As far as Karen was concerned, Harmony could grow up to bake cakes that looked like buildings of her own creation, concealing weapons inside so she could break into the wizards’ conclave on some foreign planet she was negotiating with. Why not?

Wendy’s smile held a lifetime of wisdom. “An ambassador talks for a living, but the less she has to say the better. Ambassadors are good listeners. And they always tell the truth, just not always the truth someone else believes. Being a good diplomat means speaking clearly so everyone understands you and being able to give bad news in ways that keep people happy.”

Karen heard echoes of her past life in those words. Even from Esper’s recreations, she felt the connection.

You were great. I admire whatever trait you’re exhibiting this second.

You’re sweet, but I don’t need saving; this is my livelihood.

But Wendy wasn’t done yet. “Unlike my Wes. He talks to keep his vocal cords warm at all times. I listen to maybe every tenth word to judge whether he’s making sense, then go back to filtering him out. And somehow, as sweet a guy as he is, he has the weirdest gift for pissing people off.”

Wesley marched at the rear of a phalanx of prisoners. None of the hardened mercenaries dared unlace their fingers or take their hands off their heads. They respected the blaster pointed at their backs and knew that the man toting it wouldn’t hesitate to use it.

It wasn’t even Wesley’s original blaster. While he was always a big planner, three spare plasma packs hadn’t been enough. Eventually, he had to start confiscating the weapons of the downed enemy soldiers.

And not to mince words, but these were soldiers, not syndicate leg-breakers, regardless of their employer’s line of work.

Elsewhere in the ship, Kubu was scouting for more insurgents. The colossal softie had channeled his inner Cujo, bailing Wesley out of a jam where he was pinned down between three converging units of mercenary troops. Once that siege had been broken, chaos plus the aid of a full-grown megalodog had turned the tide. Troops had scattered. Efforts to regroup had failed in the face of superior intelligence gathering and operational control of the combat zone.

Part of Wesley wished this rabble would try something funny. Already, he struggled with the idea that they could be prisoners of war. They wore no uniform, fought for no flag. No government sanctioned their actions, and the one they fought for had signed no treaties. If their places were reversed, Wesley would receive nothing like the stark-yet-palatable internment due any prisoner of ARGO. Under Don Rucker’s tender care, Wesley would be fated to meet the Tooth Fairy in person. Followed thereafter by the Fingernail Fairy, the Testicle Fairy, and the Non-Essential Organ Fairy before finally meeting the Grim Reaper—a.k.a. the Soul Fairy.

Another part of Wesley remembered that he was better than them. Stronger, faster, smarter? Yes, yes, and yes. But more importantly, he had a moral center that these despicable vermin couldn’t comprehend. He would treat them the way subdued sentient prisoners deserved, even if individually they deserved anything he decided to do to them.

A third part of Wesley wished he had a vehicle of some sort. His feet could take days of constant marching, but this mission wasn’t the leisurely sort in design. Yet it threatened to take on that languid pace through errant execution. Someone had known they were coming. In no galaxy was this all the firepower Don Rucker could muster; it had no doubt merely been what he could gather on short notice. With longer notice, the arrival of a more formidable force was inevitable. He had to get control of the bridge before then.

Finally, a fourth portion of Wesley’s mind wondered where Tiffany had gone. It wasn’t like her to disappear for this long—aside from the time she’d vamoosed for a whole month. But there had been extenuating circumstances.

The possibility that Tiffany had been taken down by these incompetent—if numerous—nitwits didn’t sit with the recollection of a slip of a girl who’d just hoisted eleventy bajillion tons of megafreighter across a make-believe dimension of spacetime with nothing but the two kilos of meat between her ears.

“How much farther?” one of the prisoners called back, the first to dare speaking since the march began.

“Anyone who wants to rest, I can leave you a nice comfy corpse any time,” Wesley replied. He jabbed with the barrel of his commandeered blaster to order the man’s eyes forward.

“Who the hell are you?” another of the prisoners asked. Wesley was tempted to nip this whole Q & A session in the bud by gunning one down, but he couldn’t help himself.

Taking several seconds to ponder the question, Wesley first rejected giving his original name. After all, who even knew him outside an exclusive circle? Then he rejected telling them his current identity. Instead, he tested their knowledge of obscure holovids. “I’m Herodine, God of Blasters.”

A couple of prisoners even dared chuckle, picking up on the joke. The Herodine series had run through four sequels without so much as breaking even in ticket sales. The whole thing had been a vanity project by the director’s father.

It was another half hour before Wesley arrived at the bridge. Threading his way through the prisoners, he dared them to try disarming him. The more he could justify sizzling, the fewer there would be to guard.

Keeping one hand on the blaster, he opened the door.

Several ideas raced through his commando brain. This was the perfect opportunity for one of his charges to get brave. There was a good chance of the door being locked; a smaller chance of it being booby-trapped. If the door opened, he was liable to find the bridge crew dug in and waiting to ambush him. If no one was inside, the controls were undoubtedly either sabotaged or rigged to explode.

As soon as the door started to open, Wesley took cover. His prisoners were in line to take any incoming fire.

No incoming fire came.

Wesley peeked.

Tiffany sat on the arm of the captain’s chair and waved to him.

Lowering the muzzle of his blaster rifle, Wesley entered, taking in the scene in an instant.

Three humans in corporate uniforms—and one in a sleeveless t-shirt—sat cross-legged in a row, hands atop their heads. The rest of the bridge was empty. It was also startlingly small for the size of the vessel.

“About time you showed up. Brought friends too,” Tiffany said. She turned to her prisoners. “Those bozos with you?”

The man in the grubby t-shirt shook his head. “When they send us with security, it has quotes around it. They don’t even get weapons. They’re loss prevention, not a militia. These assholes are trying to take over the ship, same as you people.”

“So, you’re not friends with them,” Tiffany concluded.

Wesley had a grim idea where this was going. He chose to clench his jaw and wait it out.

“Never seen any of them before in my life,” said the one Wesley presumed was captain despite his attire.

“Good,” Tiffany said, slipping off the chair’s arm and onto her feet. “Because I’d like to turn this over to someone who knew the whole plan, including where we’re heading next.” She snapped her fingers.

There weren’t even screams as the men outside the bridge burnt to cinders. Scarier, if possible, was the lack of any side effect on the bridge. The lights hadn’t even fluttered, and nothing winked out.

“There,” Tiffany said, sweeping a hand toward the command chair. “You’re off guard duty. Now we own a megafreighter.”

Janice waited as her security detail herded the two lucky bounty hunters into her private hovercruiser. It was hard to imagine them taking out an experienced azrin dust-collector like Mriy Yriss, but that merely hammered home the point that all it took was one slipup, one bad day, for everything to come crashing down.

Plus, azrin aged at a downright unnatural rate. Already in her late teens, Mriy was past her prime.

The two were an unlikely pair, nevertheless. One struck her as a pleasure girl on steroids or gene mods. The faint blue tinge to her skin made Janice’s own skin crawl. Body-modders were freaks, every last one of them. Her plain companion was clearly smitten whether they were lovers or not, explaining the partnership from that angle, at least.

Both carried themselves with unearned confidence and a brash naiveté that suggested their future career prospects would dry up in brief-yet-spectacular fashion—possibly later today. That came down to how this little fact-finding mission went. And from the outset, her bet was that these two killed some azrin vagrant by mistake.

Leaving the pair armed was something she’d picked up from her Uncle Earl. So long as her people were armed, letting a couple random dregs keep their sidearms wasn’t an issue. If either drew plasma, they’d be dead before they could squeeze a trigger. It also allowed Janice to continue to form her opinions of the pair.

The one who called herself Zaa’rhee had probably only ever fired her piece at the target range. And her target range was probably beer cans in a deserted warehouse. Her companion, Rhoda, had at least been at this long enough that the blaster was second nature at her side. Without seeing her handle the Chesterfield P9, it was hard to tell much more than that. But her piece was a few years old and well used—by whom it was impossible to tell.

Once they arrived at the starport, Janice’s estimate of the pair took a bump upward. The vessel was indeed the Shiss Raal. Even with a quickie data scrub, it was readily verified as the real deal.

Janice, her security detail, and the two luckiest shits in the galaxy climbed aboard with the help of an override scanner Zaa’rhee operated. Inside, Janice sneered. This was a slovenly hovel of a ship. If the azrin owner had taken decent care of it, these two had trashed it in record time. If not, Mriy Yrris’s carelessness in getting killed began to seem less a matter of bad luck and more the inevitable end she’d been begging for.

She kicked a takeout carton from underneath the edge of the cryo-pod. “What the fuck is this crap?”

Zaa’rhee squinted as she leaned over. “Spacey Jim’s. The boat wasn’t packing human food when we lifted it.”

“Forget that,” Rhoda snapped. She punched commands into the cryo-pod. “This is what you’re here for.”

The pod emitted a cloud of vapor as it unsealed. Zaa’rhee took a step back from it, but Rhoda held her ground. So too did Janice. She waited for the fog to clear, speeding the process with a few waves of her hand.

“Fuck me,” Janice muttered. The headless occupant defrosting before her eyes wore mechanics’ coveralls but had a pair of ceremonial azrin bone daggers sheathed at her thighs. Quickly, she got on her datapad. “Paulito, you got that DNA comparison yet?”

While the head’s DNA had been easy enough to scan, tracking down a record of Mriy’s DNA to match it had proven more difficult.

Rhoda and Zaa’rhee exchanged an inscrutable look. Nerves. It had to be. They weren’t sure either.

“Worried?” Janice taunted. “You should be. If you pulled me away from Cashman vs. Epstein for nothing, you’re going to wish you flushed the body and kept the ship.”

The datapad chirped. “Just coming through. Have the answer in just a minute.”

Rhoda shot Zaa’rhee a wide-eyed, clenched-jaw glare.

The drab young woman took the cue and stepped between Janice and her partner. “I’m not afraid of you.”

Janice didn’t like Zaa’rhee’s tone. She stepped into the amateur duster’s personal space and glowered down at her from her 5cm height advantage. Normally, Janice preferred heels, but even in her trainers, she could bully this little nothing.

Their eyes met. Janice’s throat clenched.

For a moment, she’d seen doom in those eyes, an intensity that even Don Rucker himself couldn’t muster.

In an instant, her guts unclenched, and the moment passed. Paulito’s follow-up broke the spell.

“Negative. No match. Want me to widen the search?”

Not taking her eyes off the two dead women watching her, Janice replied, “No. I don’t care who it was, just who it isn’t.” She ended the comm.

“Any last words?” Janice asked. Her bodyguards had blasters aimed at the hapless pair since coming aboard. They were only waiting on her word or some foolish action by the doomed two.

Rhoda sighed. “For what it’s worth, we thought it was really her.”

“Yeah,” her companion replied. “I’m so Zaa’rhee.”

Janice cringed. She’d heard last words of varying quality throughout her career. But she couldn’t remember anyone going out on a lame pun before.

When she dropped an index finger like a headsman’s axe, her bodyguards opened fire. Rhoda and Zaa’rhee dropped to the floor without fuss. Corpses.

What a pair of dopes. All they had to do was a little legwork of their own before dumping this issue at her feet, and they’d still be alive and with Mriy Yrris’s starship.

It did raise the question of what had become of the azrin assassin. Faked her death? Got her ship stolen after a series of odd coincidences? Stranded out in the cosmos somewhere?

Questions for another person, another time. Mriy Yrris had already taken up too much of Janice’s day.

Janice pulled out her datapad again. “Paulito, cleanup at Nicelli Starport. Pad 37D.” She looked down and shook her head. “We got a couple idiots to dispose of.”

Three limp forms slumped to the floor of the Shiss Raal.

Wearing the body of Rhoda Cohen, Tanny shook her head. Janice and her two bodyguards hadn’t even hinted at resisting. She pulled out her blaster and held the power indicator toward Esper. “Didn’t even waver. How’d you do that?”

Esper smirked. “I could give you an esoteric explanation of the arcane theories involved. But let’s just say: practice makes perfect.” Esper had conquered the Tome of Bleeding Thoughts, made a pilgrimage to the foundry where the vaieen had raised humanity from their ape-like ancestors, spent centuries curled within the folds of her own mind.

Tanny grabbed Janice and began stripping off her clothes. “You going to gimme a hand?” she asked when Esper didn’t move to help.

Blinking, Esper knelt and aided Tanny. The workout gear was elastic but damp, clinging stubbornly as the two worked in concert.

Just as they’d gotten custody of Janice’s outfit and Esper had begun to remove her own clothing, Janice’s datapad chimed. Esper cleared her throat and hit the accept button.

“It’s not her. Don’t know who these punks dusted, but it’s not Mriy Yrris.”

Esper scowled, unhappy at how far she’d been in her guess as to what Paulito would say. When she replied, it was in Janice’s voice. “Yes, it is.”

“But—”

“No buts. I’ve got a plan. I need this body to be Don’s pet kitty. Fake what you gotta fake. Capisce?”

“Got it, boss.”

Esper hung up on him. That seemed Janicey. She looked to Tanny for approval.

The blue-tinted woman posed over her naked cousin shrugged. “Keep being a scheming bitch and no one should notice. Should I, uh—?”

Esper paused with her shirt half off. “What? Oh. Who cares? It’s not even my body.” When she finished undressing, she examined Janice’s body.

With Tanny’s help, they lifted and turned and ogled. Esper unbound Janice’s dark hair to measure the length. She pulled back her eyelids to check the exact hue, right down to the little fleck of yellow in the brown. They pried open her jaw to match her teeth perfectly. Esper copied tattoos ranging from a winged eagle at Janice’s lower back to an Earth heritage language character tucked behind her ear. Two extra pairs of piercings per ear appeared in Esper’s ears. They discovered an unused piercing in the septum of Janice’s nose, and Esper matched that as well.

After half an hour’s inspection, two Janice Ruckers shared the prisoner compartment of the Shiss Raal. Taking the time to dress, Esper discovered that Janice’s workout gear was ultra-comfy. She pulled her hair back into an identical ponytail using the same elastic cord. As a final touch, she looped the hoop earrings through the same set of holes Janice had been using and hung the necklace around her neck.

“What do you think?”

Tanny shuddered. “You’re her. That’s fucking terrifying.”

Esper booped her on the nose with one of Janice’s long, bloodred-tinted fingernails. “Just remember this: I barely know Janice Rucker. But if I ever need to be you, no one would ever know.” She said it playfully, but it was a grim reminder that she was going to take her role of moral inquisitor of the new syndicate seriously.

Tanny nodded mutely.

The two women loaded the real Janice into the cryo-pod that had always been empty. When Janice was safely inside, Esper waved a hand over her. She transformed into a remarkable likeness of Mriy Yrris—with an intact and attached head.

“She’s still alive, right?” Tanny asked. She lifted one of the furry arms and let it drop with a thud.

Esper nodded. Her reply was in her own voice. “I could have subsumed her essence, but that would have left her mind stuck in mine. It’s a pain in the you-know-what getting them back out after that.”

Tanny raised a finger. “Number one, don’t use that voice again until you’re done being Janice. Two, don’t ever say ‘you-know-what’ if you’re trying to be her. If there’s anything that’ll raise suspicions quicker, it’s pussyfooting around.”

“What?” Esper replied in Janice’s voice and put her fists on her hips. “You think I can’t cuss?”

“Swear. And I know you can. But can you swear like Janice?”

“Try me.”

Tanny spread her hands. “Freestyle it.”

“How come you chuckle-fucks gotta keep makin’ me look like I’m Tanny’s bitch? I’m up to my tits in assholes around here!”

Tanny scowled. “Passable. Doesn’t sound natural, but you were angry enough that nobody’s gonna question it. Just try not to go too overboard.”

Esper grinned. “Thanks. I’ve been paying attention to Tiffany for ideas.”

“Wipe that smile off your face,” Tanny snapped. Her sudden shift in demeanor rocked Esper back on her heels. “Don’t thank anyone unless it’s sarcastic. And don’t let anyone knock you off guard.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“And NO APOLOGIZING!”

“Fuck off and leave me alone,” Esper griped. “I got this.”

“That’s more like it,” Tanny replied. She stared down at the two goons on the floor. “What’ll you do with them?”

“They’ll be easy enough,” Esper replied. Then she sighed. “Though it might help if I knew their names.”

Tanny glowered down at them. “The one with the bad haircut is Michelangelo ‘Mikey’ Niles. The one who smells like peanut butter is ‘Two-Shot’ Pete Amaretti. Your bodyguards.”

Esper filed the names away for later. Then she took charge, just like Janice would have. “Shut yourself into the cockpit. Power up the engines. When I’m disembarked, beat ions.”

“Roger. Good luck.” Unexpectedly, she wrapped Esper in a hug.

Not falling for the trap again, she pulled away and pushed Tanny back. “What’s the idea?”

Tanny grinned slyly. “That’s more like it.”

“That disguise will wear off in about an hour. Don’t be in the middle of anything.”

“Got it. I’ll watch the chrono.” Tanny headed into the cockpit and shut the door behind her.

Esper waited until the engines hummed. Taking a deep breath, she told herself that for the foreseeable future, everyone she interacted with was going to need to believe she was Janice Rucker.

A quick, subtle levitation brought Janice’s—her—bodyguards to their feet.

With a snap of her fingers, Esper brought the pair awake. “Hey,” she snapped. “Are you two listening? I said, let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“Sorry.”

“Right, boss.”

The pair preceded her off the Shiss Raal and powered up her hovercruiser.

Neither questioned her. Neither asked for clarification or expressed curiosity about what had become of Rhoda and Zaa’rhee. If all her underlings were as docile and unwilling to admit to ignorance, this assignment would be a piece of cake.

Wesley loitered about the office of the man whose ship he had just commandeered. Captain Linus Hazelwood was everything that civilian service loved in their commanding officers. He owned a spiffy dress uniform, aimed his comm panel at the one corner of the room he kept spotless, and allowed every other aspect of his personal and professional life to fall into shambles. With casual disinterest, he ran a finger across the surface of the man’s desk, inspected the grime that swipe had collected, then wiped it clean on his pants.

Linus shrugged and offered a lame smile. “Nobody comes here but me.”

Major Cassius Bricker had parked his keester on moldy swamp logs, ash-covered rocks, and the debris of starships still spattered with the blood of their crews. Only the question of whether the captain’s desk would support his bulk gave him pause as he used it as a chair to loom over his flabby prisoner.

“Before we get started here, I just want you to know this is nothing personal.”

“Started?” Linus echoed with tremor in his voice. “Started what?”

Wesley cracked his knuckles. “The girl and the dog are going to find your people eventually. This ship is huge, but the pup’s got a sniffer like a recon-grade scanner. Girl’s a wizard with a wood chip on her shoulder that doubles as kindling—if you know what I mean.”

The captain nodded spasmodically. He’d seen those Rucker goons burst into flame before his eyes. That had even gotten Wesley wondering just how flammable he might be.

“Unlike the—ahem—affiliated gentlemen who arrived just before us, we prefer keeping the civvies alive and happy. Are you happy right now, Captain Linus?”

“Oh, yes. Very much happy!”

Wesley sighed and leaned forward to clap a hand down on the man’s shoulder. “Really?”

Linus cleared his throat. “I mean. No. Look, mister. I’ll tell you whatever you wanna hear, OK? Just bugger off and let us deliver our shipment. Friendli Foods can pay a ransom or a finder’s fee or whatever it would make you happy to call it.”

Still pinning the captain to his chair by the weight of his hand, Wesley looked the man in the eye. To his credit, the captain didn’t shy away. “I’m not here for money. Level with me. You let those Rucker mercs on board because you’ve got an understanding.”

The whole saggy mass of human jittered beneath Wesley’s hand. “They warned us of a hijacking.”

Wesley nodded along with the understanding calm of a father. “I get it. Seemed safest. You didn’t want to repel a boarding action. No one in his right mind would. Let’s ignore the fact that the alarm for general quarters is my favorite song. I know I’m a bit of an exception. Not just because I can crush a man’s skull in one hand.” Wesley took the captain’s head in hand and gave a gentle squeeze and a shake before releasing him. Captain Linus shut his eyes and whimpered. “But I also don’t mind sticking my finger in a hornets’ nest if the situation calls for it. In this case, the hornets are the Ruckers.”

“Sticking your…?” Linus furrowed his brow. Clearly, Wesley had lost him somewhere along the way.

“Of course, no active duty marine would say ‘finger’ there, but this is a family hijacking. To make a long story short—”

“Please.”

“I’m not going to try to convince you we’re the good guys. Good guys come with uniforms, sirens, badges, that sort of thing. Tend not to light crowds of people on fire either. But we’re the less-bad guys. And that’s important. Look, there’s a lot going on here that you’d probably find fascinating if you weren’t sitting where you’re sitting.”

Linus was staring, unblinking. None of this seemed to be registering.

Wesley cleared his throat. “Right. To make a medium story short, we’re not planning to hurt you or your crew. Just order everyone to the bridge, sit tight, and we’ll deliver you to someplace with a public starport once we secure the ship.”

Linus shook his head. “Who the hell are you people?”

Wesley tapped in commands, opening a comm channel to the intraship loudspeakers. All that remained was for Linus to hit the button and speak. With a wave to usher him toward the panel, Wesley told him.

“We’re the ones taking the Rucker Syndicate apart. Now, make the announcement.”

Tiffany felt no particular shame in accepting the ride. Kubu was, in fact, quite comfy once you got used to the coarse fur and the undulating layer of muscle just beneath. He was wider than a horse, which made keeping her seat more a matter of grip with her fists than her thighs. Fortunately, he also knew she was up there and didn’t perform any crazy maneuvers with Tiffany aboard.

“You think it would be OK if we took a break for something yummy?” Kubu asked. It still took getting used to hearing him thunder like some holovid monster.

“Sure,” Tiffany replied brightly before letting her own stern schoolteacher tone slip in. “As soon as we’ve cleared the ship of crew and any Rucker soldiers we missed.”

Kubu’s sigh would have belched fire had he been a dragon. “Ooookaaaay.”

“Plus, I’m not sure there’s anything yummy here at all. This is all Friendli Foods shit. I’ll give it edible. But yummy? Nah.”

“Esper likes Snakki Bars,” Kubu pointed out as they ambled up to an intersection and checked both ways. First Kubu looked left as Tiffany turned right. Then they reversed. After a brief pause, Kubu kept going sternward down the colossal freighter.

“It’s a kiddie treat,” Tiffany replied. “It’s all empty carbs and science flavorings.”

A dollop of saliva splashed to the floor from Kubu’s gaping maw. “Yeah.”

“There’s no meat in it.”

Kubu stopped short, forcing Tiffany to tighten her grip and hunker low to avoid being dislodged. “I am not a carnivore.”

Tiffany snorted. “Coulda fooled me.”

“I’m an everythingivore.”

“Omnivore,” Tiffany corrected, even though the times Kubu went out of his way to eat veggies or grains could have been counted on one hand.

“Omnivore means meats and not meats. I can eat things you don’t think are food.”

“Weird brag, but I’ll give you kudos.”

The megalodog twisted around, unable to look Tiffany in the eye but clearly trying. She was perched on the scruff of his neck, just behind the base of his skull. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to evolve so hungry that your species is willing to eat porcupine quills and dinosaur toenails?”

Even Tiffany’s fertile imagination came up short. “You got me on that one. How about this? We crack open a crate, you take a quick snack, and we get right back to work.”

“Oh, boy!”

It didn’t take long. Tiffany didn’t even have a chance to offer magical help before Kubu had toppled a stack of crates with a crash that threatened a hull breach. Jaws like the ram on the assault shuttle bit open a hole in reinforced steel; the side peeled open like the shiny foil around a takeout hamburger.

Soon, Kubu had finished vacuuming out plastic-wrapped packages and consuming them in mass quantities. From her perch, Tiffany couldn’t even make out the label to identify what he’d snarfed down.

“Can we get moving now?”

Kubu burped. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“Did you even taste it?”

“Nope,” Kubu said wistfully. “But maybe the next burp will taste like Poofi Pops. If I’m lucky.”

“Can you smell more people or not?” Tiffany demanded. If the megalodog kept reminding her that he’d eaten everything—plastic and all—she was going to barf.

“Yah. I can.” Cowed, Kubu hung his head and sniffed along as they set off once more in pursuit.

When Kubu’s ears perked up and he sped up his pace, Tiffany knew what had happened even before he spoke. “I found someone.” He sniffed a few more times. “Five someones.”

“Sneak if you can.” It was a hopeless request. Kubu crouched as he advanced. The deck plates groaned with each step he took.

Tiffany closed her eyes and fluttered her fingers to limber them. The ritual was overkill for a bunch of spacers and thugs. Whether they came upon more mercs or the crew of the Friendli Neighbor, Tiffany would make quick work of them.

At one intersection amid the crate stacks, Kubu lunged forward, head turning to face down the sideward aisle to their right.

A hail of blaster fire greeted them.

But the ones with the blasters were wearing Friendli Foods uniforms. Even without magic to divert them, all the shots went wide. “Attention all personnel,” a timid voice boomed from the ceiling. “Please surrender to the hijackers. Don’t cause any trouble, and we’ll get dropped off at a planet with a starport.”

“Good timing,” Tiffany called out. “Put down the flashlights, and Cerberus here won’t swallow you whole.”

The overhead voice wasn’t done. “I’d like to add that our benevolent host is in possession of a complete crew roster. Anyone not reporting to the bridge by nineteen-hundred hours—wait, we don’t use military time on this ship—by the end of dinner break will be assumed hostile.”

Tiffany smirked. Either the captain was slick enough to alert his crew that he was being forced to read from a script, or he was an idiot. Still, it could only mean that Wesley had gained the man’s cooperation by whatever means.

“Still wanna shoot at us?” Tiffany asked. “Didn’t go so well for the Rucker rescue rejects. If you were counting on them for security, I hate to be the one to break the news: they’re mostly dead.”

“How can we be sure you—?” a woman began. But she was interrupted by a clatter of blasters being thrown to the ground.

“I’ll take my chances with them playing nice,” one of her companions stated bluntly. “Any other way, we’re fucked.”

Tiffany drew herself up tall in the lack-of-saddle. “You have my word as Deaconess Alrithea Blackstone of the Convocation Criminal Syndicate Task Force that if you submit you will not be harmed.”

Kubu put his ears back as if he perhaps hadn’t heard her correctly. So long as he kept his mouth shut, Tiffany didn’t care whether he objected to the deception. The less their real identities floated around in people’s mouths, the better for them all.

The lone woman still holding a blaster rifle aimed at them threw it to the ground and put up her hands. “Fine. We give up. What now?”

“Get to the bridge. When you get there, put your hands on your head. And don’t bring any weapons.”

“Is that it?” the woman asked, perplexed. “You’re not going to escort us?”

“Do you need an escort?” Tiffany asked. “Frankly, we’re more likely to get lost than you are, and we still have a ship to search.”

“I... guess not.”

“If any of you are hungry, there’s an open crate of Poofi Pops a couple aisles back thatta way. Now, scoot!” Tiffany ordered. “We’ve got work to do. Your ship is too damn big.”

Exra Fairfield grinned reassuringly into the holo-camera carrying his likeness to shareholders across the galaxy. Late in his middle age with a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper mustache and goatee, he projected an air of casual amiability and unflappable confidence. The patriarchal likeness of Friendli Foods’ founder, Phineas Fairfield, towered on the wall behind him, set against real wood paneling imported from Octavius VI.

The update had dragged on. Fiscal Q4 of 2563 had been a Twisti Noodle of a ride, demanding more explanation than usual. At long last, he had come to his closing remarks.

“As always, Friendli Foods feeds more than just the body. We are the reassuring comfort snack of the core, the colonies, and beyond.” A notification blinked an urgent red in his desk monitor. The camera wasn’t angled to pick up on the signal, but Exra’s eyes were momentarily drawn away from the crosshair target that focused his attention in a manner that his public image team had calculated to be optimal for trust. But Exra Fairfield wasn’t merely CEO because he descended from the company founder. He had cousins with a more direct lineage back to old Phineas. Exra pressed on with nary a hesitation. “Whether it’s childhood memories of our flagship Snakki Bars or falling in love with our new Cheezi Slurps, Friendli Foods is focused on bringing shareholder value by packaging happy memories with every bite. Thank you all.”

The “camera on” indicator winked off.

Exra puffed his cheeks with his sigh. “What the hell’s going on? This terminal is set up to block anything but a Priority One alert. Timbo, you know not to bother me during a shareholder comm.”

The door to his assistant’s office slid open. Timbothy slunk in, shoulders hunched. “It’s him,” he whispered.

“Him?” Exra bellowed in perplexity. “Him who?”

Timbothy lifted his shoulders, jutted his elbows, and stuck out his jaw. Reaching inside the flap of his jacket, he drew his hand out as a finger-blaster and pantomimed firing a few shots. With gritted teeth and raised eyebrows, he reiterated, “HIM.”

Realization dawned. Exra’s mouth went dry. “Well, why didn’t you say so? Is he here?”

Timbothy went white. “No. Just… waiting on the comm.”

“Waiting?” Exra snapped. He fumbled over the controls in his desk console, a button layout that the computer dinguses had customized to his exact specifications and preferences. “You don’t keep a man like him waiting! Next time, cut the broadcast and tell the shareholders we had technical difficulties. We make leisure foods, not comm equipment.”

Finally, Exra collected himself enough to bring up the idling comm.

“Earl, what can I do for you?” Exra asked with a sycophantic grin.

The Rucker captain had a head like a Crispi Ball. Dead eyes bored into him right through the comm panel. “We got a problem.”

“We do?” Exra squirmed in his chair.

“One of them big freighter shipments to Earth’s gone missing. The Friendli Neighbor.”

Exra could feel his eyes nearly fall out of their sockets. “Missing? It’s the size of Manhattan Prime.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Exra blinked a few times to reboot his ears. “Don’t worry about it? I just got off the comm with my shareholders. I just talked Curli Chips around our worst quarter in ten years. People hate our new Cheezi Slurps, and I’m counting on our nice, steady sales on Earth to smooth out that hiccup. Now, you’re telling me the Friendli Neighbor’s gone missing and not to worry? PICK ONE!”

“We’re getting it back,” Earl assured him in that gravelly bass that reminded Exra of a circus bear—just tame enough to forget it was a wild animal if you tried. “I need your people to keep a lid on it. Don’t do no one no good if this gets loud.”

“No argument from me,” Exra replied hastily. “Seriously, don’t we pay you people enough to keep this from happening?”

“We’re dealing with it,” Earl said. If words could reach through a video comm, Earl’s would have just grabbed Exra by the collar and hoisted him off his feet. “Keep your shit together and your yap shut. Get ahead of this. Known delay. Maintenance check. I don’t care. You keep this off the newsfeeds or the next shareholder meeting, you’ll be out of a job.”

It was hard to forget that Don Rucker was one of his biggest investors.

Exra nodded tightly. In the grand scheme, losing his job wasn’t all that bad. He had a retirement nest egg that could buy moons. Linnifer had been getting on his case for years to spend more time with the kids. Grandchildren weren’t far off by now.

“And as you retire to a life of ease and seclusion from the public eye, you’ll end up traveling on a shuttle with a poor safety and maintenance record. The crash will barely get a mention on the evening feed.”

Exra swallowed. “Anything else I need to know?”

“Naw,” Earl assured him. “Just maybe schedule some repair work. Them pirates we’re taking care of as our part of the deal might have scratched up a little paint.”

Nodding in defeat, Exra made a vow. “You won’t hear a word about this.”

“Good.” The comm ended abruptly.

“Timbo!” Exra shouted.

The door slid open a crack. Timbothy peeked through. “Sir?”

“Scotch. Neat. Hell, bring two glasses. Then get me Kimetha in PR on the comm. We’ve got a crisis to cover up!”

The Shiss Raal drifted through the shallow astral, bound for the borderlands. Her destination didn’t matter. In fact, the less destination, the better. Her only goal for the moment was to bide her time until Esper had done her part. An unfortunate necessity in seeing the plan off was being stranded with no way back to the Errand of Mercy. The only two women she knew who might get her back were now both on assignment.

Her only companion was comatose in cryostasis.

Allowing the Shiss Raal on autopilot, she joined Janice in the ship’s cramped lounge. Seated on a bench with crushed padding, Tanny studied the blue tint of her skin. She was getting used to the balance and feel of her borrowed body, but never her own appearance in it. Esper had, of course, put her into the least recognizable form possible without altering her gender or species.

Even as she studied her own pores, trying to see if the tint went down inside or not, a tingling sensation washed over her. Her skin shifted back to its own dusky hue. Her body hardened, contracted. Even without her marine chem regimen, she’d kept in better shape than Esper’s pleasure-girl inspiration. Ducking into the washroom, Tanny gave herself a thorough inspection before changing into more comfortable clothing. Even Rhoda’s cheap blaster felt better on her hip than nothing.

“More like it,” she said to no one as she emerged with a long breath.

Sitting back down on the bench, she reached out and patted a hand on the cryostasis pod. “Just you and me for now.”

Wiping away the condensation on the glassteel, she made out Mriy’s face inside. Janice looked utterly convincing. Esper knew their friend well enough to make a perfect duplicate. Frankly, if all went well, no one would even see the masterpiece.

“You don’t deserve that body,” Tanny told her. “There are plenty of asshole azrin out there, but they’re at least fighters. You… you’re every bit as shitty as I knew you could be. You know what? I was perfectly happy lying to Esper to get her to go along with brain-jacking you. But you…” she thumped a fist on the glassteel. “You turned out to be a slaver. Oh, bitch. You picked the wrong wizard to get caught by on that count.”

Tanny chuckled. When had Esper turned into a woman to be feared? Mort had taken a family hovervan, stripped out the extra seats, installed guns, a shield generator, and a new transponder ID. From the outside, it looked as harmless as ever; hell, entire industries burned up women like Esper as fuel for their profits. Roused to anger, it packed the punch of a Typhoon.

What had Esper been like before Mort had gotten her in his bony old grasp? Had she really been so sweet and innocent, optimistic and naive? Had Mort really scooped out her insides and replaced them with this cold-eyed hardass, or had he merely scraped off the priestess that had been tinted over the real Esper all along?

“I’m no good alone with my thoughts,” she told Janice. “Glad I’ve got company.”

She laughed at herself.

“Listen to me. Talking to a Freezi Pop. You can’t even hear me. Good thing too. For you. That cryo’s too good for you. If I thought you’d feel it, I’d drop you in the pain pod.” The second human-sized pod on the far side of the lounge stood ready and empty. Still talking to the absent Janice, she crossed over and put a hand on the glassteel of the empty pod. “I could have been you. If Don had his way, I’d have been chaining some ally to the family by a gaggle of brats, but I’d still have been running my crew. At least I had the good sense to get out of the family—for a while anyway.”

As she stood, lost in thought, her fingers glided across the controls of the pain pod. Idly, she browsed the settings. She’d always been vaguely aware of the gruesome devices, of course, but she’d never used one.

The variety of options was astonishing. The occupant could be restrained, dosed with paralytic gas, or be allowed to thrash around inside. Electrical shocks, suffocation, drowning, sonic vibration, recorded messages ranging from threats to promises of harm to family… Tanny could hardly imagine the corporate meeting where the features list had been hashed out. The prisoner could be force-fed via a robotic nozzle, injected with intravenous nutrients, or allowed to go hungry.

But the pod wouldn’t kill. Ironically, it doubled as a medical scanning bed. It would bring a prisoner to the verge of death over and over but go no further.

“You’d break like porcelain,” Tanny told Janice. “If you were in that body of yours, I might even prove it to you. You’re just a petty bully.”

Deep down, Tanny knew that no mindless device could break her.

Among the options, Tanny discovered an auto-release timer.

She popped the lid. It swung open like a coffin.

Tanny triggered one of the wrist restraints. It circled out from a recess in the base, locking into place with a magnetic clack so fast it startled her. Heart quickening, she felt along the inside of the cuff. Smooth polymer steel brushed against her fingers. Not uncomfortable in the least. Firm. Implacable.

Ambling over to her prisoner, Tanny found that Janice had reverted to her own form.

The pain pod could keep her alive as easily as the cryo-pod.

Maybe Esper would learn all she needed and allow Janice’s mind to snap back to her body, just like when they’d been released from Lloyd Arnold’s clutches. Janice would be Tanny’s prisoner—all of her, body and mind.

The things the pod could do to her. Tanny had wished so many times for her cousin to suffer. The pod could do more than she’d ever fantasized.

Shaking her head, Tanny rubbed her eyes. “What would that prove? That I can torment a helpless animal like you?”

But the pod wasn’t designed to cause lasting harm. Not physically, anyway. It didn’t amputate fingers or pull teeth. It was a test of mental toughness, nothing more.

Tanny breathed on the glassteel, letting her breath fog the window and hide her cousin’s nudity from her. She crossed back to the open pain pod.

“No marine would even flinch,” she concluded. Simulated pain, petty torments, the kind of thing that boot campers could put up with during push-ups.

The pod didn’t accept voice commands.

Tanny had nothing but time on her hands.

How bad could 90 percent of her physical pain threshold really be?

Even once the Friendli Neighbor was off the board, Esper had plenty of work to do to implicate Janice. She had plenty of time on her hands and little to do.

Plus, if she could take it, there was no reason to spare Janice the punishment she deserved. Tanny toyed with the settings.

“Half an hour. What do you think? Would half an hour of neuroshock treatment snap that pathetic ego of yours?” Tanny asked Janice. She tapped an up arrow a few times. “Oh yeah? How about two hours? Or two days?” Tanny tweaked restraint settings and added twice-daily force-feedings. She pulled up a list of names of women Janice had sold to the Dark Star. She’d get sick of hearing them, but what would be more perfect than forcing Janice to listen to the names of her most helpless victims nonstop?

The interface prompted her to record the message.

Tanny opened her mouth, realizing suddenly that she’d taken this whole thing too far. Was she really going to subject herself to two days of mechanized torture just so she could justify doing the same to Janice? Had she lost it completely?

Before she could second-guess herself, Tanny drew her blaster and fired. And fired. And kept firing as sparks flew and droplets of superheated metal dribbled to the floor. She didn’t stop until the power cell ran dry. Mriy was going to kill her for wrecking her borrowed ship. But this message wasn’t for the azrin.

Wiping clear the window into the cryo-pod, Tanny jabbed a finger against the glassteel. “That was a favor. Because I might not be crazy enough to test that sadistic shit on myself. But sooner or later I might have used it on you.”

Mriy floated in the void. Her breath hissed inside her EV helmet, the only sound for a million kilometers in any direction.

She hated this plan.

Don Rucker’s intel wasn’t that good. As the end user of it on so many occasions, she was all too well acquainted with the limits of his extensive network of snitches and secret salesmen. Had her input been taken more seriously, this transfer could have taken place on an abandoned colony moon, an unmanned listening post, even simply ship-to-ship in a gap between core world trade routes.

But, no.

Tanny went completely paranoid. Admittedly, the dead drop eliminated the possibility of forensic evidence. Police technicians could be remarkably astute about biological contaminants and traceable residue left behind when two ships docked. Mriy ought to have known, considering the price those thieves charged for such evidence.

Her main problem, aside from the existential horror of waiting alone in an endless void, was that the whole plan hinged on a loose link in the Rucker Rebellion’s network of covert operatives. If the ship never arrived or somehow couldn’t find her, Tanny would never even launch an investigation before Mriy starved to death out here.

Hours lazed past. Mriy hadn’t even a chrono in her helmet to watch the time trickle away.

Hunger gnawed at her gut.

The Mobius appeared from the astral. She was saved! As it swung around to present its cargo hold, Mriy made the mistake of blinking.

There was no ship.

Mriy snarled at her own traitorous mind.

When a ship the color of fresh blood passed by and applied braking thrusters, she swore not to be fooled a second time. She blinked. The vessel remained. Mriy blinked again repeatedly, and her hopes rose.

The ship maneuvered gingerly into place, aligning an airlock as it edged closer to her. Irising open, the airlock ejected a humanoid figure obscured within an EV suit similar to hers. A hand grasped her wrist and tugged. Pulled by a winch, Mriy and her rescuer slurped aboard the rescue vessel.

Mriy reached up to tear off her EV helmet, but a restraining hand stopped her.

Right.

She could have shrugged off that hand, but it served as a reminder that the airlock hadn’t finished its cycle. Mriy waited until the klaxon faded into full volume, then stopped, before freeing her poor, crushed ears from the human-designed helmet.

Shaking her head to clear it, she pushed past her rescuer as soon as the far side of the airlock opened.

An involuntary snarl escaped her throat as she bared one fang. “Took you long enough,” Mriy said to July.

The purple-haired and purple-eyed human studied her with hands on hips. “Look fine to me.”

“Food,” Mriy ordered.

She had no fondness for Tanny’s operative. July had been Carl’s practice mate for a time. A racing pilot, not a warrior. Despite her successes, Mriy doubted the mettle of this one if confronted with real danger.

“On it,” called a voice Mriy only recognized from a surveillance dossier. A slender, pink-haired human entered bearing a plastic sack that reeked of chemical meat preservative. The label read “Mr. Frank’s Earth-Style Chik’n Wings.” The misspelling of the human meat wasn’t lost on her; it suggested that this meat was not, in fact, butchered from one of the feathered bowling balls the humans enjoyed so much.

Mriy was beyond caring at this point. She sliced through the plastic with one claw, then threw back her head and upended the bag. She chewed the meat from five wings, spitting bones to the floor one by one as her rescuers looked on in discomfort. When the worst of the gnawing ceased, she addressed Ilsa.

“You’re supposed to be at a safehouse.”

“Safer here,” July countered. Mriy couldn’t help noticing how the human captain’s hand strayed toward her blaster. Did she really expect Mriy to be so ungrateful as to kill her over such a slight? It was Tanny’s plan, after all, not hers. “Plus, good data techs aren’t cheap.”

“You stole her,” Mriy reasoned, popping another wing into her mouth and sucking on the bone once she’d relieved the raw morsel of its meat. Using an old hunter’s trick, she cracked the bone in half and worked it around with her tongue to clean between her teeth with the splintered end.

“She made me an offer,” Ilsa interjected. She popped the top on a can whose label was obscured beneath her hand. Mriy had expected the familiar scent of beer, but instead discovered a wafting aroma of fermented grape. “I accepted. If I’m going to keep getting sucked into a life of crime, I’d rather be paid than on the run.”

The sitharn who’d rescued her was in the corner, stripping out of his EV suit.

“Thank you,” Mriy said to him.

“My job,” the sitharn replied. She could appreciate the simplicity of the response.

“You did your job well,” Mriy told him. When she turned to July, she could feel her pupils widen. Doing it consciously was a trick not many azrin learned. But in her line of work, such subtle intimidation tactics were prized. A predator only narrowed her pupils when it was bright—and there was no prey in sight. The lighting on the Hatchet Job was plenty bright for her to have relaxed. “You did not.”

July backed up a step. Her hand touched her blaster’s grip. Mriy didn’t watch the weapon so much as the muscles of the arm doing the reaching. The human didn’t realize how perilous her stance was. Even in the unlikely event she could draw the weapon and fire before Mriy closed the three meters between them, this human wouldn’t know about the layer of ablative armor she wore beneath her EV suit. One shot was going to kill nothing but an expensive garment.

“Tanny will not be pleased,” Mriy continued. She glided closer. July had passed on her only remote chance to win a confrontation. Mriy closed a firm hand over July’s wrist. The human’s heartbeat throbbed in her neck. When Mriy spoke into the human’s ear, her whiskers brushed July’s cheek. “We shouldn’t tell her.”

“We?” July echoed.

Good. The human wasn’t an idiot, at least.

Mriy relieved the human of her blaster. “Yes. We. You are my crew now.”

“Excuse me?” July asked incredulously. “Your crew? This is my ship.”

“Nonsense,” Mriy replied with a hissing snicker. “You stole it. The galaxy turns. Now it is mine.” She watched for reactions from the techie human and the sitharn, but they seemed disinclined to intervene.

“I work for Tania Rucker,” July protested. “I’m Agent Red.”

“Agent Scarlet,” Mriy corrected. “Red is the alias you tell the marks, not your boss.”

July swallowed. She raised her chin defiantly.

Still clutching the human’s blaster in her off hand, Mriy extended the claws of her other hand. “Among my people, scars are given to teach a hunter her place in the pack.” She reached out slowly for July’s face; the human flinched but held her ground.

“We saved you!” Ilsa protested.

Mriy froze. “Yes. I know. I do not wish this to become contentious. I have faked my death twice over, and I think Tanny underestimates the danger I face returning to my old life. You have disobeyed the future head of the Rucker Syndicate and kidnapped her leverage over Esper.” She turned to Ilsa. “You are a chew toy that Esper and Tanny would war over if either knew what had happened to you.” A quick glance to the sitharn dismissed him. “Whatever your reason, you’ve come along for this deadly voyage. I fail to see why we should not all join forces and find new names, all of us.”

July swallowed, reeking fear. “Yeah, maybe. But it’s still my ship.”

“Please… You may be a pilot, but you are no captain. I will not be difficult to work for. We will hunt our prey and feast on their terras. We will live well and easily between hunts. In time, you will see that I am the best choice.”

A tiny, computerized voice nattered from the datagoggles Ilsa wore. It suggested that she go along with Mriy’s plan. So quiet was the AI that Mriy knew the others were oblivious. Likely, the techie had concealed its existence from her colleagues.

“Maybe… we could work for her?” Ilsa suggested tentatively.

July shot her human friend a fiery glare.

Mriy relaxed and smiled. Only a full mutiny from the three of them posed even the most basic of threats. These were prey—albeit competent prey—pretending to be hunters. “Good. I will have a blood oath of fealty from each of you—or just your blood.”

As best she could tell, none of the three spoke Jiara. They parroted the words Mriy spoke, binding their lives to her pack.

A die the size and color of a ripe strawberry tumbled across the table, landing on 3.

Dutifully, Wendy moved her token three spaces and landed on a trapdoor with an arrow pointing down several levels of the tower.

“Drink!” Saliza and Karen called out in unison.

With a sheepish smile, Wendy poured herself a shot of bourbon and threw it back in a single motion. She wiped her lips with the side of a finger. “If you think this will impact my performance, there’s an in-tik trade minister who’d like a word with you.”

Saliza scooped up the die and rolled a 2. Her token advanced to a neutral spot just in front of the stairs up to the next floor of the tower. “I considered xeno service, you know,” she remarked casually. “Even did a semester on Weshanesh.”

“What happened?” Karen asked.

“Weshanesh happened, right?” Wendy asked with a smirk. Saliza nodded. “While it may be Earth-like, few temperate climates are populated. Most of the cities are subarctic at best. It’s one of the few Earth-likes with a populated Antarctica.”

“Plus, it just never felt right turning my back on so many humans back in the core. Like, who was I to go helping another species while mine was such a clusterfuck?”

Karen put a finger to her lips alongside her scowl.

Though comatose in a limp-limbed sprawl across the couch, Harmony’s little ears were still close by. After all, Towers & Trapdoors hadn’t begun the evening as a drinking game. Saliza winced an apology and took a sip of her gin and tonic as self-reproach.

Karen took custody of the game’s lone die and tossed a 5. Her token crept close to the pinnacle of the tower, where a sumptuous bedroom full of toys and games awaited the victor. “I wonder when we’ll ever get to do some good around here. I mean, we’re right at the heart of proof of humans being flustered chickens.”

“I’m still skeptical this is all going to work out the way they’re hoping,” Saliza confessed. She gazed at the door of Karen’s quarters and, by extension, the rest of the Errand of Mercy. “It’s like… real estate speculation in a war zone. Feels ghoulish.”

Wendy swayed her hips without leaving her seat. “Sometimes I like feeling a little… ghoulish.”

Saliza rolled her eyes. Karen giggled.

“I wouldn’t worry about them failing,” Wendy added. “That’s for sure. My Wes hasn’t failed a thing in his life.”

Saliza snorted. “No offense, but have you watched his holos?”

“Every last one.”

Saliza stared wide-eyed.

“Don’t look at me like that. It’s not the marital hormones if that’s what you’re thinking. He doesn’t make those holos for the money or the acclaim or even to make good entertainment. He keeps a bunch of people in the industry employed and keeps his old identity buried.”

“Kept,” Saliza corrected.

“Kept,” Wendy agreed with a nod. She took her turn and rolled a 6, which landed her on another trap door, plunging her all the way to the ground floor of the tower. Her next shot was poured before either of her drinking ladies could goad her. “He could have slipped into any one of those roles like a second skin. But he’s playing Wesley Wesley these days. And that guy’s a hopeless ham.” She downed her bourbon mid-sentence like it was nothing but a comma.

“Well, thanks for the vote of confidence,” Saliza said acidly. “But I still have my doubts. And who’s to say the new regime is any better than the old? Or at least worth the bloodshed it’ll take.”

“Esper will make sure of that.”

The other two looked to Karen in unison.

“I thought you said she showed you everything,” Saliza said, squirming in her seat. “You still sound like you’re hung up on her.”

“Hung up?” Karen echoed with a delicate sniff. “I’m completely lost in her.”

Saliza rolled her eyes. “That was all make-believe. It was the fiction she painted over your rotten childhood.”

“And she painted it just for me,” Karen argued. “And she never acted on anything she felt. Plenty of other women from the Dark Star are in assisted living right now. Broken, incomplete, uncomprehending what happened to them. Esper not only spent years sparing me from that fate, she gave me the sweetest life I could have hoped for. It was a backstory written by a tragic poet, and the only reason it couldn’t be all roses and perfume was having to line up the edges where my story had to explain my little Har-Bunny and working for Dalisay.” Karen took a gulp of her wine cooler, wrinkling her whole face as she swallowed, then gasped.

Saliza rested a hand on Karen’s. “But you know she was infatuated. That’s why she singled you out.”

“I know enough of medical ethics to know that even if she volunteered, no psychiatric hospital would let her rebuild patients’ minds. But you know what, if they let her, I bet she would have. I was just the one she took away and brought back to something like a normal life. And I’m not going to pretend I don’t feel special.”

“The grand gesture isn’t proper fuel for the fire of romance,” Wendy said sagely. “But the selfless act, done in secret with no expectation of return… that suggests true love. Plus… well, you’d make a cute couple.”

“Sickeningly,” Saliza agreed glumly.

Wendy nodded to the board. “You going to roll?”

Saliza pointed to Wendy’s token just a few spaces ahead of the starting square. “Sure you’re sticking this one out? Juliet here has this thing locked up tight.”

Wendy pushed the die across the table. “I don’t give up. Part of the job. A good 90 percent of diplomacy is just dogged persistence. Don’t give up on the process, no matter how hopeless it looks, and eventually you’ll hammer out an accord. I owe a lot to Wes for showing me how true that is.”

Karen smirked shyly. “I can’t picture him fighting. He makes such a wonderful horsie playing with Harmony.”

Wendy narrowed her eyes over the top of her glass as she paused mid-sip. “Oh, don’t let the goofball act fool you. That man is an utter beast when he has a target in his sights. Take it from a former target.”

Wesley pulled a data cable from its socket and plugged it into a jack that wasn’t quite the right size. Force-fit into place, it required a squirt of insta-bond to keep it from popping back out. The power line sparked as he yanked it free; he blinked spots from his eyes but didn’t take his head out from under the console on the Friendli Neighbor’s bridge.

WARNING. POWER FAILURE IN LONG-RANGE COMM UNIT.

“Thanks, but I knew that,” Wesley replied to the computerized voice.

Wesley jammed the power cable into a terminal block already overburdened by someone with a poor idea of ship maintenance and a knack for creative electrical routing. A weird, high-pitched hum emanated from the unit.

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Captain Linus asked, hovering over him like the starship’s nanny.

“Aren’t you the one who spotted five ships on an intercept course?”

“Yeah.”

“Wanna talk to them?”

“Not really.”

“Well, I do,” Wesley snapped. “Because your boat had the nimble maneuvering of a glacier with emergency beacons instead of weapons. And since our last guests wrecked your comm array…” he left the rest for the smarter-than-he-looked Linus to figure out on his own.

“This is a Friendli Foods megafreighter,” Linus protested. “Worst case, they board us, and you and your commando team can take care of them.”

“Appreciate the vote of confidence, but you’re perhaps a little too interested in a boarding action for your own good.”

Linus scoffed. “The way you and your wizard friend handled those boarders…”

WARNING. POWER OVERLOAD IN SHIPBOARD COMM UNIT.

“That’s more like it!” Wesley said, then pushed himself out from under the console. He gazed up into the worried face of the ship’s captain. “Look, if we can’t turn them away with words, we can at least signal for help.”

“Help?” Linus echoed. “We’re at 8.37 AU deep. We’re more likely to find tentacled space monsters down here than help.”

Wesley climbed to his knees and tapped the intraship comm. While all the readouts indicated it should be broadcasting to the innumerable cavernous holds of the ship, it would instead be blasting unencrypted signal through the port navigation antenna. “Attention incoming vessels. Assistance not required. Please break off.”

“Does that ever work?” Linus asked, watching the comm panel as if it would seamlessly switch over to displaying useful inputs received from a non-encoded antenna.

“First time for everything,” Wesley mused. He peered at the traffic control panel the next console over. Without the ability to receive incoming transmissions, watching the behavior of the incoming vessels was the only way to know whether their message was working. The primitive array on the Friendli Neighbor wasn’t even identifying the bogies by ship class, just bulk displacement. Given the size, Wesley guessed they might be anything from police interceptors from Epsilon Eridani to customs enforcement to the Barnstormer-class all-purpose troublemakers favored by criminals throughout the galaxy for their ease of customization.

Wesley was betting on the latter.

He tried the comm again. “All vessels, this is the Friendli Neighbor. We are requesting urgent assistance with an airborne biotoxin that seems to be eating through the filters in our protective gear. Please, we need immediate evac!”

Linus threw up his hands. “What if they decide to help?”

“Then they’re not the sort we need to worry about and would probably accept an apology. ‘Our mistake. It wasn’t an airborne acid, just a damaged 10,000-kilo drum of Spici Ramen powder.’”

Wesley had never cared for the entire lineup of misspelled foodstuffs. All else being equal, they’d have tasted better with a dose of spelling and grammar. The one time he’d tried Siracha Spici Ramen, the additive packet had indeed exploded as it ripped open. On the whole, it worked better than riot-control gas for bringing on watery eyes and sneezing.

“They’re not turning back,” Linus said with a note of rising panic.

“Relax,” Wesley replied, placing a reassuring hand on the man’s shoulder, incidentally stilling the man’s trembling by sheer mass. “Have you ever handled a blaster?”

Linus looked up at him, eyes wide and vacant. “We don’t carry weapons.”

“Plenty down in the cargo hold with the bodies.”

“Bodies…”

“Have you ever fired one?” Wesley pressed. There was a general theory floating around the cosmos that you shouldn’t arm cowards; they were a liability in a hot zone. But Wesley had always held that a blaster in his hands gave a civilian a bit more spunk. Half the borderlands was filled with scared-shitless rabble clinging to their blasters for emotional support to get through their days.

“Basic blaster-safety course,” Linus replied in dismay.

“You won’t need to do anything crazy,” Wesley promised. He shot the captain a thumb skyward. “That’s my job.” In his head, he was already starting to make worst-case estimates of how many troops those incoming vessels might be carrying. If the Ruckers kept sending scatterings of vessels at them, Wesley felt confident he and his team could hold them off indefinitely. Eventually, a long enough gap in attacks might allow the lumbering Friendli Neighbor to plod its way far enough off the beaten path to avoid detection. After all, 8.37 AU deep, there weren’t many vessels able to reach them.

Linus stood transfixed by the scanners. “They’re… turning aside.”

Curiosity piqued, Wesley checked. The captain was correct. The vessels were no longer on a trajectory to board them.

“So… we’re in the clear. Right?”

Wesley shook his head. He watched the oncoming ships. The distance from the Friendli Neighbor ticked down. “Hold onto something.” He gripped the edge of the console in both hands. Numbers shrank rapidly, then slowed, then leveled off. The ships ran in parallel.

“Hold onto—?”

The Friendli Neighbor jolted under the impact of weapons fire. To its credit, the ship barely budged. Even without a handhold, Linus kept his feet easily.

“They’re firing on us!”

“So it would appear.”

“What do we do?” Linus demanded. “This ship isn’t armed. We’re slow as a wet turd on permacrete. And they’re not taking our comms.”

“At least you won’t have to fire a blaster,” Wesley offered in a lame attempt to cheer up the captain.

“This is no time for jokes!”

Wesley chuckled. “In my professional opinion, it’s the perfect time. Nobody needs a joke on a Friday night, in a club full of happy drunks, listening to a stage comedian. The time to joke is when doom’s got you in his crosshairs. The best punch line is when doom squeezes that trigger and all you hear is a ‘click.’ Can’t get to the punch line though if you don’t tell the joke.”

Linus stared at him dumbfounded. “The hell is wrong with you?”

Wesley pointed to the still-open access panel where he’d been working moments ago. “Just get down there and untangle the comm system.”

“A farewell to the crew and your team?”

“Time to check on the universe’s sense of humor.”

Esper picked her teeth with a fingernail. It was a weird sensation since neither the nail nor the teeth were the size and shape she was accustomed to. Nor was the gesture one she practiced regularly. However, in a mental terrarium mirroring the private dining room of the Avernus Meadows Grand Lodge, the mind of Janice had performed the game ritual at the end of her meal. Stabbing roast pork with a two-tined golden fork, buttering both sides of a dinner roll but only eating half, three glasses of Chardonnay, Esper had done them all just as Janice had. She’d carried on the same conversation, snapped at the same waiter, consumed her dinner in the same order as her copy of Janice.

She was a marionette pulling her own strings.

By adjusting the rate of time’s passage in her cordoned-off sanctuary in Esperville, Esper had kept the total duration of the meal the same yet given herself padding to react seamlessly to her companions—Janice’s inner circle.

The differences had been minor, the ones Esper introduced intentionally, at least. Her inner Janice had been tricked into calling each of her crew by name, giving Esper insight into who she was breaking bread with. If she needed to improvise or understand the conversation as it dragged in more proper nouns than Tanny’s briefings had covered, Janice held the information she needed.

To her surprise, Janice hadn’t changed out of her workout gear before heading to dinner. The restaurant was, by all accounts, moderately fancy. Her goons wore suits. The waiters sported tuxedos. Though they had only met in passing, Janice had struck Esper as the sort that put on airs. Instead, she’d eschewed decorum as a power move.

“Anyone have my datapad?” Esper asked with an annoyed frown. She parroted the words and retrieved the fingerless boxing gloves from the white tablecloth just as Janice had. Unlike her captive, Esper was genuinely curious both why she needed it and why Janice expected one of her crew to have it on them.

“Think you left it upstairs,” Mikey suggested.

Two-Shot Pete perked up. “Want me to run up and grab it?”

“No, fuck-face. I’m heading up anyway. Go hold a lift for me.” Two-Shot Pete nodded and scurried off to do as Esper bid.

You people seem too nice for this line of work, she thought to herself. While she was sure they got up to plenty of no good—they just thought they witnessed a murder, after all—they behaved like beaten animals around Janice. While she didn’t think any of them deserved to get off scot-free, they could have gotten jobs with less of a tyrant. Maybe a happier workplace could have shaped some of them into decent human beings.

Sadly, they were unlikely to get that chance.

Esper arrived at the lift to find Two-Shot standing there with his hand breaking the safety-scanner, keeping the doors open. She waltzed in without pause or thanks. Two-Shot might as well have been a wedge doorstop for all the notice Janice paid her make-believe version. Esper accorded him no additional gratitude.

At least aloud.

Thanks.

It helped to remind herself that she wasn’t Janice, that she wasn’t the callus-hearted psychopath that Tanny’s cousin had proved to be.

Launching identical searches, Esper had to guess ahead of Janice to find the datapad without knowing in advance where to look. But the tech device had been on Janice’s nightstand. Esper allowed her vision to flow into Esperville and pantomimed Janice’s gestures unthinkingly. It was the closest Janice had come to controlling her own body since Esper had copied it. But Esper couldn’t risk letting herself fumble with such a simple device in front of Mikey and Two-Shot Pete, especially when Janice hadn’t dismissed her versions. The pair had followed as if leashed.

Esper had played at bodyguard before, but this was what the real deal looked like. No motives or objectives of their own, just shadows to keep Janice Rucker safe wherever she went and whatever she did.

Why do I care about these two murderers?

Sympathy wasn’t a new sensation for her, even when it came to unrepentant killers. But this bond was more than merely feeling a sense of obligation toward a pair who would—mistakenly—lay down their lives if Esper required it for her protection.

Samson and Napoleon.

This was how they got their start. They ran jobs for the Ruckers before ending up as bodyguards for low-level lieutenants in the organization. If Tanny hadn’t known better, Esper could have wound up with Samson and Napoleon in her care. Could she have been so callous toward them?

Suddenly, the datapad sent a comm.

Esper hadn’t been paying attention to her fingers as they’d run through Janice’s datapad. Her heart quickened as she saw the name of the recipient: Jhett Monticelli.

Tanny had never mentioned that name. None of the crew had breathed a word about him.

Esper assumed it was a him. With no flatpic in Janice’s contact list, she was guessing. The name had a “him-ish” sound to it.

Turning to her bodyguards, Esper scowled. “A little privacy.”

In Esperville, she twisted the scenario just slightly. It was the bodyguards who demurred. They offered to wait outside, receiving a snippy “whatever” for their trouble from the shade of Janice.

The comm connected.

“Hey, babe.”

Oh, poo. Esper had been afraid of that.

Instantly, she switched her mind into autopilot, allowing Janice to play Cyrano de Bergerac to her Christian de Neuvillette.

“Hey, yourself. Where were you at dinner?”

“You know how it is. Business.”

“Don’t gimme that shit. Just get over here. And take two of those fucking pills this time.” Esper couldn’t help wondering whether the double-entendre there was intentional.

Janice ended the comm, and Esper gratefully did likewise.

In the largest diversion yet, Esper doctored Esperville’s version of events. As Janice showered, Esper hastily threw on a blouse and mounted a search of Janice’s datapad.

While initially she’d feared an elaborate system of aliases and password-protected files, instead, she found what she was looking for with ease. The comm ID was marked “Uncle Don.” From what Esper had gathered of the Rucker family tree, Tanny and Janice were second cousins, sharing a common paternal grandfather. Technically, Don Rucker was a cousin once removed. Playing a role or not, though, Esper wasn’t going to split hairs over the matter.

Esper placed the comm.

This was flying blind. This was the risk, not the dinners or the bodyguards or the mystery boyfriends.

Don’s image appeared in short order. The old gangster scratched at the corner of his lip and watched Esper with a knit brow. “Whadda you want?” He sat in a sumptuous office with a crystalline decanter by his side, half filled with an amber liquid.

Esper twitched a conciliatory smile. Tanny had warned her that Janice wasn’t in the good graces of the main family. “Got you a present.”

“I don’t have time for this shit. Spit it out or get off the fucking comm.”

Taken aback, Esper hesitated. Even from across star systems, Don Rucker had an imposing presence. “I… uh… there are two bounty hunters on their way to Mars with the corpse of Mriy Yrris.”

Don’s eyes grew wide. “Your people?”

“I found them.”

“You seen the body?”

Esper nodded. “DNA scanned. Came back a match. Happy birthday.”

Don smirked ever so slightly and leaned back in his chair. He poured himself a snifter of what Esper assumed to be brandy. “You keep not fucking up like this, maybe you’ll see a little piece of Mars.”

Remembering that such a prospect was all Janice could ever have wanted, Esper forced herself to smile. It was a sly, humorless smile, more victorious than joyous, but that was the best smile she’d seen out of Janice.

“Let the dusters keep the bounty. If they kick up, maybe I’ll keep them around.”

Don’s face soured. “You manage your business. I don’t care.”

The comm ended.

So, it appeared one act of competence—one gesture of conciliation—wouldn’t free Janice from Don’s doghouse.

The door chime sounded.

Esper froze.

Janice was just getting out of the shower, wrapping herself in a towel as she preened.

“Yeah, come in.” She didn’t know how to reconcile this one. There was too large a discrepancy between her current state and Janice’s in Esperville. Meshing the two would be messy, inaccurate, and might upset Janice in ways that might cause Esper to draw attention should she imitate those behaviors.

Jhett swept in with a bouquet of roses. Mikey and Two-Shot Pete outside didn’t so much as hassle him on the way by. When the door to Janice’s suite closed, he and Esper were alone.

Don Rucker had been orbiting a different sun than her. They’d never been exactly close interpersonally, either, to hear Tanny tell it. Jhett was just shy of two meters of glitz and grin. He practically glowed from his shining white teeth to the gloss of his wavy black hair. His tailored suit hugged an athletic figure. The gold chain around his neck and gold rings on several fingers spoke of an ease with wealth suggesting he was more than a straggler Janice had latched onto.

While Janice held up dresses to her nude form in the mirror, Esper found herself without a guide. Rather allow Janice to run amok or distract her, she froze Esperville, slowing time to a thousandth of its rate as she experienced it.

She was either Janice Rucker or she wasn’t. Worst case, she’d have to do something unpleasant to this man to smooth over any mistakes.

“What’re those for?”

Jhett shrugged in a slimy, transparently manipulative manner. “Sorry?” He inclined his head. “Fresh from the gym?”

Esper looked down as if she hadn’t noticed she was in a sports bra and leggings. It almost physically hurt to lash out in the face of such a sweet gesture and innocent question, yet Janice hadn’t shown any other side of herself thus far. “You use both brain cells for that one?”

Jhett strolled over, casually discarding the roses on the dining table on his way past. As Esper tensed in anticipation, he gathered her in his arms. The layer of sweat from her workout had long since dried, but she must have still smelled. Jhett didn’t show the slightest hesitation.

She was either Janice Rucker or she wasn’t.

When Jhett leaned down, Esper stood on tiptoe to accept his kiss. To his credit, Jhett wasn’t half bad.

The arms beneath that suit coat were firm and thick. He radiated a primal heat. His kiss tasted of peppermint breath spray.

“Whoa,” he said when they parted. “You weren’t kidding about needing two tonight.” He played it off as a joke, but had Esper oversold her amorous greeting? Did Janice take longer to warm up to a man?

It didn’t matter.

She wasn’t looking for romance, and she didn’t know if she could pull off that sort of intimate interaction convincingly. She and Janice were too different. Esper might alter their relationship in a way that could draw unwanted suspicion.

But if there was one thing Jhett had in common with so many men across the galaxy, he wouldn’t mind if his evening plans got simplified. It wasn’t her habit these days, but she’d slept with enough guys that one more wouldn’t kill her. She hadn’t loved the others.

Esper grabbed Jhett by the necktie and headed for the bedroom, not looking back as he shuffled along behind, mincing his steps so as not to trample her feet. “I’ve had a shit day. You’re gonna fix that.”

“Yes, ma’am.” She could hear the grin in that voice without needing to see it.

A faint pang of guilt gnawed at her. This was technically a crime all its own. She consoled herself on the twin altars of this being the least of her current criminal activities and the fact that Jhett seemed to be enjoying himself.

Despite her tremendous imagination, Esper couldn’t pretend he was Ilsa or Emily. Lights on or off, it didn’t matter. Nor could Esper envision sharing her bed with Karen. The best she could come up with on short notice was to imagine Cedric beneath her, and she was still vaguely mad at Cedric.

Then again, Janice was vaguely mad at everyone. She went with it.

Tiffany clapped her hands twice, sharply. “Chop, chop! Move along. No lollygagging.”

Kubu cocked his head as he looked down at her. “Why would anyone gag on a lollypop?”

Ignoring the question, Tiffany kept her scowl fixed in place as they herded five more humans toward the front of the ship. Kubu had reported that they were the last, and she was willing to trust his nose on the matter. Searching the mammoth vessel sucked. Anyone with a Friendli Foods uniform or company ID got added to the herd or shipped along with a stern warning not to screw around. Anyone without found themselves efficiently converted to cinders.

Tiffany was done fucking around.

Esper had her way. Tiffany had hers.

“If it speeds you up, you don’t have to keep your hands up,” Tiffany told them.

Her charges obliged readily. Three women. Two men. All part of a warehouse logistics team, according to Jordan, their shift leader. The five of them had been huddled together with a couple scavenged merc blaster rifles when Kubu had found them and convinced them that they were better off surrendering.

Now, Tiffany was eager to get to the bridge and get off her feet. If the idiot crew could keep themselves from interfering, it was time to haul this barge to the borderlands to rendezvous with Esper.

Distant thunder rumbled, echoing in the upper reaches of the hold.

“The hell?” she mused aloud.

“Blasters,” Kubu concluded.

“Who’d be shooting at us down here?” Tiffany replied. “We’re way under where ships should find us in the astral. I think.”

Weren’t they? Like any wizard, Tiffany was no astralometer. This wasn’t the purple astral she’d been aiming for, but it ought to have been plenty deep to keep more mercs from finding them. A sinking feeling—and another thundering rattle of the hull—told her she might have been wrong about that assumption.

“I served two tours in Earth Navy,” Jordan offered. “That was definitely incoming fire.” The crew looked to their leader. They looked to Tiffany. They looked to Kubu. Caught between captors and hostile vessels outside, they were weighing their options for self-preservation.

A new kind of thunder erupted from above, this time in a smooth baritone. “This is your hijacker speaking. We’re under hostile fire without external comms to so much as negotiate a surrender. If anyone knows where to find an escape pod, I’d suggest sitting inside one and not ejecting it. Mercs love target shooting. The in-flight holo has been canceled. Snacks are available in any shipping crate. Hijacker out.”

Tiffany gaped.

“What! No plan? No miraculous escape?”

“Oh, and if any wizards down in the hold have bright ideas on slipping the leash of Death today, I’m pre-approving all plans, the crazier the better.”

Tiffany huffed. “Well, that’s a little more like it.”

Her pocket jangled. The tune was by the Warbling Wallbergs. Nana’s favorite band. Juggling the datapad as she dug it out of her jacket, Tiffany hastily accepted the comm.

“Nana?” she blurted as the voice-only connected.

Nana Jeanine gasped in relief. “Oh, Tiff. You’re all right. Quick. Get to an escape pod. They’ll pick you up. You’ll be safe.”

“What?” How did Nana Jeanine even know they were under fire? Had Wesley been wrong about the comms? Had they gotten a distress call out in time? If they had, why was Nana the first to put that fact to use?

“Don’t ask questions, bunny. Just do it.”

It took several seconds to locate the mute command. She searched the faces of her captives. “You all eavesdropped.” It wasn’t an accusation, just forestalling objections. “I want an explanation. Ship’s comms are down or aren’t they? If they are, how am I getting comms?” She waggled the datapad.

All the crew were still carrying their personal datapads—probably stupid of Tiffany not to have confiscated them but whatever. Jordan was the first to report in. “Mine’s dead. All functions, no signal.”

The others nodded in agreement.

“What’s up with mine?”

“Gotta be getting signal from the ones shooting at us,” Jordan said, arms crossed.

Tiffany’s blood ran cold. The mercs attacking them were relaying Nana’s signal.

“Tiffany? Honey-bunny? Are you there?”

Hastily, Tiffany found the unmute command. “Sorry, Nana. Had to… um… puke.”

“Keep it together, sweetie. Find an escape pod. Do it for Nana.”

Tiffany held up a warning finger to her lips, demanding silence from the spectators. “Yeah. Escape pod. Got it. You sure they won’t shoot me?”

“You’ll be safe soon. Trust Nana.”

Tiffany stomped in place, making sure her steps were loud enough for the datapad to pick up. “All right, Nana. I’m in.”

“Good girl. Close the hatch and eject.”

“OK. Going to lose signal now. See you soon.” Tiffany ended the comm. “Well, fuck.”

“Can we come too?” one of the warehouse staff asked.

Jordan slapped him on the shoulder. “You think she was going to all that trouble to actually go through with it?”

More impacts rocked the ship. Far overhead, a hiss of leaking atmosphere suggested a minor hull breach.

“Tiffany?” Kubu asked, that big dopey bass voice sounding too scared to come from a creature his size. “What happens if they shoot up the whole ship?”

Taking a steadying breath, Tiffany gave an order. “GO. All of you. Get to a compartment with a solid atmosphere.”

“What about—?” Kubu started to ask.

“I’ll be fine,” she snapped.

Pressing her palms together, Tiffany closed her eyes and waited for the squabbling herd under Kubu’s care to scramble out of earshot.

Time to end this.

The universe cocked an ear, unsure what to make of her pronouncement.

We have come to a space between. Neither the common astral nor the realm of wizards. This is unacceptable. Unsustainable. Creatures, vessels, all belong to one or the other. To the one, the astral at the edge of reality, to the other, the astral at the edge of imagination. I reject this intermediate state, this no-sentient’s-land, as a temporary haven whose time has expired. Finish the journey I requested. Deliver me and mine to the place where my teacher dwells.

Tiffany could see it so clearly. She knew the shade of astral indigo and the character of the swirls and whorls viewed out her bedroom window. The feel was unmistakable. Universe, this was the place.

Take me there. NOW.

It wasn’t until studying under the tutelage of Mordecai The Brown that she’d ever have dared speaking thus to the cosmos. The sweet wheedling of Esper and the logical conundrums Keesha had tried to teach her wouldn’t get this megafreighter out of the middling astral.

A wave of dizziness washed over her. The enormity of her request became clear when she felt the megafreighter scrunch like an accordion around her. Time and space warped. When the sensation passed, Tiffany lost all concept of balance for a moment, falling flat onto her back without trying to break her fall.

Her head struck the floor. Sparks flashed behind her eyelids.

“Ow.”

But she’d done it. They were at the Errand of Mercy’s private astral depth.

Leaking air still whistled out through the ceiling. Without getting off her back, Tiffany dug in her pockets to find the air-making necklace she and Esper had passed back and forth so many times. Gingerly lifting her head, she slipped it on. Wincing before lowering her head to the floor again, she breathed deeply from the comforting stink of the Serengeti, a place she’d never been but could identify with her eyes closed.

Knowing the Friendli Neighbor was safe for the time being, Tiffany let her limbs go limp. She’d earned the rest.

The hull shook.

The hiss of air above her became a torrent.

Rolling onto her stomach, Tiffany collected her thoughts like the fragments of a shattered vase. “What? How? It worked… I thought it … worked.”

Esper held court in Janice’s living room. Jhett had been gone by morning. That had allowed her to sync up reality and Janice’s mirror prison in Esperville. From there, she’d followed Janice’s morning grooming routine, skipping only the hormone regulator recharge and a scattering of pills in unlabeled canisters. Whatever the varied chemicals did for Janice, Esper was happy to skip.

Just as her captive counterpart, Esper wore a sleeveless black blouse and bell-bottoms, all in silk, along with a jangly array of silver bracelets, necklaces, and oversized hoop earrings. Despite wearing Janice’s hair loose, Esper had followed a regimen of teasing and fluffing until it had a volume and shape all its own. The tinters, creams, and powders all went on in a style familiar to any upscale Martian girl of the era, and Esper autopiloted through it once she got the gist.

Now, lounging in an easy chair in high heels, morning glass of cognac held loose in a hand dangling over the arm, she surveyed her inner circle.

“I spoke to Don last night,” she declared as a preamble. Anyone who might otherwise be inclined to lose focus now paid her their undivided attention.

“How’s the big boss doing?” Roy asked amiably. He perched at the edge of her couch in a suit that barely contained him. As soon as Esper relayed the response to Janice, she knew the appropriate reaction even without waiting for verification.

“Shut up.”

Roy nodded hastily.

“You all know there’s a little spat between Don and Tania.”

“You call it a ‘spat’ or was that Don?” asked Bill Harker.

Esper let the interruption pass. Bill was old guard, a steward from an earlier era of the syndicate. His bloodline meant he’d never rise to the upper echelon, but his standing in the organization was rock-solid. “My word. Doesn’t matter whatchu wanna call it. There’s been a break in the unspoken covenant. Tania’s crossed a line she can’t uncross, and an unfortunate number of misguided associates have done the same.”

Silence. She had their undivided attention.

“Now, you know I’ve never been Don’s favorite niece. But, times get tight; families come together. He’s putting his faith in me to clean house.”

They shifted in their seats, tried to shrink inside suit coats. Leaned against the walls wishing they were on the other side.

“None of you want to hear this, but Don thinks there’s disloyalty here. He’s charged me… me… with snipping the cock off this bull.”

Throughout the room, men crossed their legs or squeezed their knees together. Esper had to admit, getting that colorful phrase out of Janice had been a coup. Only in Janice’s version of this meeting, they were talking about curtailing an independent number-running racket operating out of the Curio District. Janice was a pro at mountain-sizing her molehills.

Esper threw back the contents of her drink, reducing it to water before the burning sensation of the first taste could trail all the way down her throat. This body might have looked like Janice Rucker at that moment, but it was still hers. She allowed them a moment longer to squirm. “Oh, get the fuck over yourselves. No one here is in any trouble.”

Relief seeped out of every pore in the room.

“But Don released the following names of Tania’s collaborators. Given that Don doesn’t exactly give out this sort of assignment lightly, we’re not going to fuck it up. It’s a little past 9 a.m. now; I don’t want anyone on the list turning into a pumpkin. By midnight, there are twelve fewer residents of New Venice. Got it?”

A chorus of “got its” answered her. Solemn. Respectful. Dedicated.

Esper then rattled off a listing of names Tanny had given her. Far from her associates, these were Don loyalists operating out of New Venice but working for other crews. There were dozens more beside these, but listing everyone would have been too suspicious. Her kill sheet drew gasps and gapes and disbelieving blinks.

Deep down, Esper curled into a ball and was sick over it. She was signing death warrants—almost literally. These eight men and three women would die because of her part in this.

But Janice Rucker wouldn’t hesitate, and thus neither could Esper.

“I can’t believe half those names myself,” Esper admitted. Better to address the skepticism than deny it. Carl had taught her that. She wasn’t lying to them; if anyone was getting deceived here, she was in the same shuttle as them. “But I’m sure as fuck not comming Don to ask for a second opinion. We’ve got our orders; we’re going to prove our loyalty.”

“You said twelve,” Bill said. He had his fingers up as if he’d been counting on them. “That was only eleven.”

Esper smiled without humor. “Good. Someone was paying attention. The twelfth name is Jhett Monticelli.”

“But… but…” Roy sputtered, poking two fingers from opposing hands into one another.

“Yeah,” Esper snapped, glaring down the source of the unsubtle innuendo. “So what? I had a going-away party for him. None of you chuckle-fucks is next in line, so don’t go getting any ideas.” That broke the ice and drew a few snickers. “But do him a favor—from me. Don’t let him see it coming.”

Esper felt her mouth go dry. Tanny’s list had only been eleven names long.

All power went out.

The bridge of the Friendli Neighbor went dark. Only the forward windows were visible, awkward, round-cornered quadrilaterals that looked into the void. Flat gray astral space turned abruptly to swirling purple alongside a roller-coaster drop of the internal organs.

“Shit on me,” Linus griped. “They got the main reactor.”

Wesley grinned. “Nope.”

“What makes you so sure, smart guy?” Tapping, slapping, flicking, twisting, the sound of every kind of control on the captain’s console being checked in rapid succession.

Never one to miss a dramatic moment, Wesley stepped in front of the window, allowing Captain Linus to view him in silhouette. Swinging his blaster rifle around, he tapped the trigger several times.

Linus yelped, and the thud that followed was the paunchy human throwing himself to the floor.

“Relax,” Wesley said with a chuckle. “Didn’t you feel that queasy twisting of every molecule in your body at once?”

“I assumed that was the immanent fear of death.”

“Nope. Magic. BIG magic.”

“So…”

“We’re saved.”

“Our ship is dead, and outer space turned into Grape Juici Pouch. How’s that ‘saved’?”

“Every ship I’ve ever seen magicked this bigly has always gotten over it. Besides, you heard anyone shooting at us since the lights went out?”

“Magic got the other guys too?” Linus ventured.

“Nah,” Wesley replied, finding the captain in the dark and clapping him on the shoulder before helping him to his feet. “Why would we drag them along? Extra baggage. Now we just wait for our ship to show up, and we can get your people to a neutral planet where you can hitch a ride—on the Friendli Foods terra, I presume—back home.”

“That easy, huh?”

Wesley shot the man a thumb skyward before realizing the gesture didn’t carry its usual comforting reassurance in the dark. “It’s hardly fair even calling them suicide missions when you’ve got a wizard along.”

The lights flickered and coughed back on.

“Heeeey!” Wesley cheered. “There we go. See?”

Linus parked himself in front of a console. He whacked a palm on the screen a few times until it came back on. For all Wesley knew of magic and how it wore off, the cajoling might even have helped. “Shit. Still no nav.”

“That’s normal,” Wesley explained. “We’re too far down to communicate with the public astral buoys. Our ship has its own, plus, we’re around this deep already. Just sit tight and—”

The ship jolted.

Linus glared wide-eyed at him. “If we came here alone, WHO’S SHOOTING AT US?”

It was a fair question and not one Wesley was prepared to guess at when the ship’s short-range scanners were back online.

“Well, I’ll be. We did bring those pesky interceptors with us.”

“You’ll be?” Linus parroted. “Is that all you can say? Where do we run from here?”

Wesley shrugged and motioned to the helm. “Pick a direction.”

“Moons maneuver quicker than this flying space station!”

Wesley pushed past him. “Even so, rather at least pretend. Makes for a better story than just waiting like a modern Farallon de Medinilla.”

“A what?”

The puffed-up deliveryman was losing it. Wesley needed to ground him and quickly. “It’s an island on Earth. Before it was condos and surf shops, ancient maritime navies used to use it for target practice.”

Linus spread his hands. His manic disconnect from the events around him bordered on a psychotic break. “Reassuring. Perfectly fucking reassuring. You keep making that 45-minute right turn and tell me all about old Earth Navy bombardment rituals.”

The whole bridge rocked. A volley must have hit close by.

A pair of the vessels flashed across the forward windows. “Aha! Barnstormer-class. I knew it!”

“HOW DOES THAT HELP US?”

Wesley shrugged. “I enjoy being right? Boosted the old morale a skosh?” He pinched his thumb and forefinger together, leaving a tiny gap.

Another of the Barnstormers zoomed past. This time, lances of plasma chased after it. Bolts half the size of the interceptor made several narrow misses before connecting. A flash of shields gave all the protection of an eggshell in a vise. The Barnstormer exploded in a plume of ignited atmosphere. Overkill fire poured in, pounding the wreck to scrap metal in seconds.

“There. See?” Wesley pronounced, waving a hand toward the scene.

“See what? What’s happening?”

“We made our rendezvous. Hadn’t I mentioned that I have a friend who owns an Earth Navy frigate?”

Linus shook his head. “No. No, you fucking didn’t.”

“Well, it was decom. But we’ve been getting the guns up and running again.” He stood and guided Linus to the captain’s chair. “Get on the comm, and tell your crew that everything’s going to be fine now.” Heading for the cargo holds himself, Wesley muttered well within the hearing of the captain. “This is why I don’t work with civilians.”

Tiffany hustled down the corridors of the Errand of Mercy, whole body jittering inside. She could only hope that no signs of her inner turmoil showed outwardly, especially not given her traveling companion.

At her side, Tanny matched Tiffany’s pace with fewer steps. Long, confident strides carried her along.

“I’m glad you could make it back,” Tiffany said with a flash of smile she couldn’t sustain.

“I’m surprised you could get that whole fucking freighter here,” Tanny replied. “That wasn’t the plan.”

“Neither was you disappearing with Esper.” She tried to keep the reproach from her voice. Whether she succeeded or not barely mattered. What was Tanny going to do to her? It was hard reconciling the woman angling for Don Rucker’s seat on the hidden throne of Mars with a mere woman with a blaster she could render inert in the blink of a whim. “I’d really hoped to get her advice on this one.”

“We needed the secrecy until it was too late to stop us. Esper’s a big girl. She’ll be fine.”

Tiffany stopped short. “I’m not worried about her. I’m worried about us without her.”

Tanny had pulled up and waited, glowering back at her. Now she resumed their trek. “Please. She’s our most valuable ally but not our only resource. Some things we can handle on our own.”

Handling wasn’t the problem. This was a moral conundrum if ever Tiffany had faced one.

“Still…” she mused.

“You did the right thing letting us know,” Tanny said. “I know how hard it must have been.”

But it hadn’t been hard. It should have been. It was now. But in the moment, her duty had seemed so clear.

When they arrived at the brig, Tiffany forced herself to follow a pace behind Tanny. Alone, she wasn’t sure she could have entered.

“What the fuck is this?” Tanny demanded.

Tony Nines shrugged. “We’re on omni silent. This was better than anything in the holo archive.”

The guard had left the cell doors open with just force fields keeping the inmates from escaping. There had been a buzz of familiar voices, too muted to properly eavesdrop, just prior to their arrival. Roger, Candace, and now Nana Jeanine all watched Tiffany from captivity.

Tiffany swallowed. She crept forward, barely able to force herself to advance between the opposing cells containing her biological parents.

“Close them!” Tanny ordered.

The guard complied. As he slapped the control console at the security post, Roger and Candace each leaned away from the rapidly sliding door, grasping for the last seconds of the brig outside their cells.

“Wait, I—”

“Please, kid, don’t let—”

Only Nana Jeanine remained in view. She stood, humbled and solemn, watching Tiffany approach.

“I’m glad you made it.”

“No thanks to you!” Tiffany snapped. She leaned in, both hands sparking scientific lightning that clawed at her ineffectually. “WHY? Why did you sell me out?”

Nana Jeanine shook her head. “The galaxy can burn. If you made it, that was all that mattered. I played the odds.”

“I don’t get it,” Tiffany said, shaking her head. Her chest heaved. Thoughts swam. “Did you think I’d forgive you? That I’d overlook you betraying me and all my friends just to hedge on the chance we might fail?”

“Chance?” Nana Jeanine scoffed. “I heard enough of that crazy plan to know it was ten ratatoret in a trench coat. Say what you will about your father, but he knew enough to pick on weak targets.”

“You didn’t believe in me.”

Nana Jeanine scowled. “Honey-bunny, you’re not even an adult yet. These gangsters are perfectly happy using you up and spitting you out. Legally speaking—”

Tiffany barked out laughing, looking to the ceiling with arms spread. “Legally speaking? Can you hear yourself? We’re on a stolen navy frigate—a frigate I personally hijacked from a murderous cult—trying to overthrow the Rucker Syndicate. Breakfast isn’t legal around here.”

“But still—”

Tiffany drew a slashing finger across her lips. “Zip! The minor’s talking now. Esper’s my legal guardian; and newsfeed: I don’t need a chaperon anymore. I killed forty-five men and women on that freighter—megafreighter, whatever. All of it almost went for nothing because you tried to hold me underwater until I took your life raft.”

Nana Jeanine’s words were quiet. “You’re my only granddaughter.”

“I already disowned Roger and Candace.” Tiffany shook her head in disgust. “You can join the club.” The sigh that followed left her hollow.

“You said all you need to say?” Tanny asked from behind her.

Tiffany wiped a hand over her face and stepped away. She shielded Jeanine from her view.

A faint hum, only noticed by its sudden absence, perked up Tiffany’s ears. She looked up in time to see Tanny aiming a blaster at Jeanine. The force field separating them was gone. Jeanine stood there, stiff as a rod, eyes squeezed shut.

“You don’t have to—” Tiffany began.

The report of a blaster cut her off.

Tiffany tried to look away in time, but she saw the hole in the center of Jeanine’s chest. The image etched itself inside her eyelids as she tried to shut it out. When she could finally find words, she fought them out past a sniffle. “You didn’t have to kill her.”

When a hand rested gently on her shoulder, Tiffany opened her eyes. Tanny didn’t quite meet her gaze, but she came within a practiced near miss. “You didn’t stop me. You knew it had to be done. It wasn’t your place to do it. None of this lot would have dared. She had connections in the old guard, and she was your blood. Esper wouldn’t have. You couldn’t have. Had to be me.”

Tiffany breathed in and out. In and out. A war waged inside her, in a space more primal and less regimented than Tiffsylvania. Part of her wanted to tear Tanny to atoms, to burn her, to crush her to a fist-sized lump of hyper-dense flesh. Another part gushed relief and gratitude.

More than both, Tiffany felt equal measures of guilt and shame. Jeanine had only been here because of her. Without Tiffany, they’d have come up with a different plan. Even without wizardly aid, that plan would have worked out swimmingly. Because Tiffany wouldn’t have supplied a mole to alert their target.

When the silence lingered perhaps too long, Tanny patted her shoulder and walked by.

Introspection interrupted, Tiffany turned and opened her mouth to say something.

“I don’t need any thanks or excuses or any of that,” Tanny said before Tiffany could get a word in. “You proved your loyalty—and your ability.

“And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry for your loss.”

Kubu lay in the corner of the rec room, head on his paws, staring at the holographic Christmas tree. Recorded music filled the air. Sugary foods wafted sweet scents throughout the space. It had been going on for days. He didn’t even know which day had been Christmas itself or whether it had even come yet. People just seemed to enjoy the festive atmosphere and weren’t willing to let it end.

Esper was missing it. She was still on a mission, and Mommy wouldn’t say where or when she’d be back.

At least if they’d told him in advance, he could have given her a present.

Even distracted by his melancholy musings, Kubu couldn’t help taking note of the patter of the tiniest feet on the ship.

“Kubu! There you are!” Harmony called out. She navigated the asteroid field of adult bodies throughout the room at full throttle, hampered only by keeping both hands behind her back.

“Hi, Harmony,” Kubu said, tail thumping the wall with each pass.

“Merry Christmas!” she pulled a sheet of kiddie craft paper from behind her back and held it out to him.

Karen caught up at a leisurely pace, smiling over her daughter’s head. “She spent all last night working on it.”

The scene depicted on the page was a paper mosaic rendered in several colors of craft paper, augmented liberally with Wax-i-Rod. A black oval with four legs all in a row had a circle for a head, with tongue and tail in red and black crayon respectively. Kubu presumed it was him. The pink triangle with the peach circle atop it wore a crayon cowboy hat. The rest of the picture, Kubu struggled to puzzle out.

“This. Is. AMAZING! Thank you so much!”

“You can put it up on your refrigerator,” Harmony suggested.

Kubu hung his head. “I don’t have a refrigerator.”

Harmony’s face fell.

“I tried telling her that,” Karen explained. She never sounded mad or disappointed or unhappy at all. Except for Esper, Karen might have been the nicest person in the galaxy.

“But…” Kubu teased. “There’s nothing stopping us from putting it up on the wall. Could you help? My paws aren’t good at holding paper.”

Harmony nodded vigorously. Her impish grin outshone the Christmas tree. “Do you have easy-tape?”

“I’m sure we can find some,” Karen assured her.

The three of them set off into the ship on a circuitous route to Kubu’s quarters.

While Harmony raced ahead, Kubu hung back and whispered to Karen. “I didn’t remember a present.”

Karen giggled. “Harmony already got one from you.”

“She did?”

“Sure did. You came back with Yummi Cakes in every flavor. I’ve had to circle her like a vulture to make sure she gets some real food in her between snacks. This has been her favorite Christmas ever.”

“Oh.”

Karen scratched the fur behind his ears. His brain resorted to backup as main power went offline. Her scratches felt so nice. “I know it’s not the same without Esper around. Don’t worry. She’ll come home safe. When she gets back, we’ll celebrate all over again.”

Don Rucker wasn’t much of a reports guy. Nobody who’d ever gotten to know him would have mistaken him for one. Yet today, he pored over police forensics data from the Friendli Foods hijacking. Clenched in hands that threatened to crack it in half, the beleaguered datapad bearing the intel from their sources inside Earth Interstellar told a tale he hated hearing.

Earl stood like a pillar holding up the room. Maybe he was holding up the whole goddamn business. Jimmy was a good kid with a bright future, but Earl was foundational.

“Can you believe it?” Don asked, flinging the datapad to his desk with a clatter that almost sounded relieved. “My own flesh and blood.”

Earl shrugged, barely able to articulate those mountainous shoulders. “Could be false flag.”

“Those goddamn pig farmers know their shit,” Don snapped. He slapped the datapad off the table. Earl didn’t so much as glance to watch where it landed. “This is too easy for them to fuck up.”

“None of them was blood,” Earl pointed out.

Don seethed quietly for a moment, turning that over in his head. Four bodies had been recovered from the hijacking of the Friendli Neighbor. They’d been DNA-confirmed, and their IDs matched known associates of Janice Rucker.

Seeing he was gaining traction, Earl persisted. “Anyone could have hired them.”

His brother was talking sense. None of the bodies had been what he’d have considered confidantes or even crew lead material. Don drummed his fingers as he mulled the possibilities. “What’s simpler? Janny hired a bunch of stiffs she knows she can count on, the job goes a little sideways… a few get killed. Or—and this is what I’d have to believe if what you’re sayin’s true—someone hired Janice’s pet wet-work team for a job that they’d have to know was crossing the family’s business, just on the off chance an unarmed boat the size of a city happened to shoot ’em down.”

“Coulda been friendly fire if it weren’t for the unfriendly sort showin’ up.”

Don kept drumming his fingers. “We watch her. I won’t go for an atomic housecleaning on my own niece—no matter how much of a snotty bitch she is—without more solid proof. If her people really did dust the right azrin, that’s a bigger loss to Tania than one oversized bag of groceries is to me.”

Earl inclined his head in appreciation. He held the equivalent position for Don that Mriy had for his traitorous daughter.

A knock gave a second’s warning before the door opened. If it had been anyone but Jimmy—or maybe Gladysson—he’d have been pissed. But the look in Jimmy’s eyes told Don all he needed to know even before the words came out.

“He’s here.”

“Show him in,” Don said with a beckoning flick of two fingers. When Jimmy ducked back outside, he said to Earl, “I’m sick of that wizard of hers. About time we fight fire with fire.”

Earl shook his head. “Still don’t like this one.”

“Can’t fight an enemy we can’t catch,” Don countered.

The door opened again. Jimmy entered, ushering in a proper gentleman, thin and prim, with a nose that lifted a shade too high for humility. The newcomer wore a tuxedo and white gloves, bearing two boxes one atop the other. The lower box looked like it might contain a thick-crust pizza, at least by its size. It was made of polymer steel and bore an A-tech locking mechanism and interface pad. Atop it was a simpler plastic case with a push-button clasp.

Jimmy made the introduction. “Allow me to introduce Mr. Hobson.”

Hobson bowed. “Mr. Rucker, it is an honor and a privilege to meet a man of your—”

“Can the pleasantries. Is that the item?” Don nodded to the fancier box.

“Indeed it is.”

“I wanna see it,” Don insisted.

Bowing again, Hobson set the stacked boxes on Don’s desk. “I anticipated your desire to inspect your purchase and prepared the necessary precautions. If you’ll allow me—?” He kept his movements slow as he unclasped the lid of the plastic box. Behind the man’s back, Jimmy gave an affirming nod of confidence.

Click.

The next thing Don knew, he was being handed a pair of cheap shader lenses of a sort he wouldn’t be caught dead wearing in public. Jimmy and Earl received matching shaders, and Hobson slipped his on without hesitation.

“What’s the deal?”

Hobson looked like the habitually solemn sort, but his features hardened to stone. “Mortal eyes were never meant to fall upon these pages. Even wizards are best advised against gazing overlong at the spine.”

Earl pulled down his shaders to look Don in the eye. “You sure you’re doing the right thing here?”

The simple fact that Earl was willing to question him in front of an outsider hammered home just how deep his concern ran. But this wasn’t a time for timidity. “We either get ahead of this business, or it’ll be the end of us.”

“You think so?” Jimmy asked.

“I do,” Don confirmed. Father and son would both need some talking to after this was over. He valued their counsel, but this matter was already settled. He jabbed a meaty finger toward Hobson. “Open it.”

The gentleman didn’t hesitate. Deft fingers tapped rapid-fire on the keypad. An accompanying series of bleeps ended in a chime and a magnetic clack. Hobson opened the lid.

Don, Earl, and Jimmy all held their breath.

With gloved hands, Hobson lifted a careworn leather book thick enough to beat a man to death with. If it lived up to its reputation, simply peeking at the contents would be far deadlier. It would be worth every terra of the 300 million he was paying for it.

“Gentlemen, may I present you the one and only surviving copy of the Tome of Bleeding Thoughts.”