[A warning if you're reading this online: this story is being written as part of National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org). The one goal, the only goal, is wordcount. Grammar? No. Coherency? Nope. Spelling, plot or character development? Not at all. The following story may be absolutely awful. You Have Been Warned. The first draft of this was written in 12 days, just for a point of reference. The writing is finished; the first pass of the editing is finished; more editing to come.] TROUBLESOME CARGO CHAPTER 1 Jura looked out over the view through the port in front of him. A gaudily backlit nebula in the far distance took on the appearance of a wild beast as he gazed at it, plastered unmoving against the starry background. The stars formed strange, unfamiliar constellations compared to his memory from childhood. He looked back at his passenger, Belah Galen. She was about 1.7 meters tall with light brown, nearly auburn hair which hung with a slight wave just brushing her shoulders. Her face was a soft, round shape, with large, dark green eyes which seemed to drink everything in. Not remarkable looking, but far from ugly. She was clothed in billowing pants made of a diaphanous, shimmering cloth; a clinging silver shirt topped by a mottled green vest to match her eyes; and a long, flowing black overshirt-cum-cloak which brushed the floor when she stood. This all suggested she came from at least moderate wealth. It was a fashionable outfit. "So, we've got a few days before we can enter jumpspace. Most of this trip will be spent transiting real space before and after the jump, as I said. You may want to make yourself comfortable in your cabin, or explore the lounge," he explained. She nodded, lips pursed, and turned for the hatchway. They had just left their parking orbit around Kalinar IV. He turned back to the controls, scanning over the lights and indicators. Acceleration nominal at 35G, higher than normal, but not enough to draw unwanted attention, he hoped. Engine readouts normal, reactor temperature stable in the green. Should be a simple enough trip, he thought to himself. He glanced over the life support readings, paying special attention to the inertial damper, which had been acting up lately. It looked as though it would behave for now, at least. He looked back, and saw that his passenger was gone, presumably back to her cabin. Calling it a cabin was a grand misnomer, since it was really just a glorified, hastily prepared storage space. He'd built it up in 5 minutes, after learning that his only cargo this trip would be one human. Jura was glad to see she was gone from the confined bridge. He found her presence distracting. He almost always flew alone, with nothing but himself, his ship, and whatever cargo he was being paid to transport. They were currently accelerating at a brisk pace out of the Kalinar system. His ship was working hard, getting them far enough from the system's gravity to enter jumpspace. If he tried to engage the jumpdrive now, they would nose around like a weathercock in a gale, and plunge straight into the sun. The effects of gravity were hugely increased in jumpspace. It would be a very short, very exciting trip, as well as being very terminal. "This is the first time I've been off Kalinar IV," Belah explained unexpectedly, startling Jura; her approach back to the bridge had been silent. He turned, swivelling in his seat, and looked at her. "Why were you so anxious to leave?" he asked, although he quickly regretted the question. "It's a long story," she said, eyes down. She raised her head and looked out the front port. "The view is amazing. It's like being far from the city, except I can see in every direction at once," she said, eyes wide to drink in the stellar view. He gratefully ignored the fact that she'd changed the subject. He'd learned years ago not to pry into his customers' business. It wasn't good for business in this line of work, much less for staying alive. He had slipped this time simply because he was unaccustomed to keeping his guard up aboard his own ship. He turned back to look out the port. "The view, honestly, can be astounding. I'll call you up here for the jump. It's very pretty, you've probably never seen anything like it." He looked back at her again. She was staring out at the view, giving no indication she'd heard anything he'd said. "The computer can hold us for a few minutes," he said, standing up from his chair and stretching self-consciously. "I'm going to head back and inspect the ship for the pre-jump. Give me a shout if you need anything. Your comm will work here, but I'm the only person you can talk to in real time. The delay back to Kalinar IV is about 2 minutes right now, and is increasing rapidly." He indicated the communicator on her right wrist. She looked down at it, the spell temporarily broken. "Of course," she said. "Do you mind if I stay up here and look?" "Not at all. Just don't play with the controls." She nodded, and he turned back to the aft of the ship. The boxy little vessel was large enough to load in 10 metric tons of reasonably dense cargo. He went to each of the airlocks and checked them: a largely redundant operation, as klaxons and alert lights would be clamoring for his attention if anything were seriously amiss. He glanced through an observation port into the cargo hold by reflex, to confirm that his cargo was secured. Of course, there was no cargo, so he was greeted by a dark, empty chamber, cluttered with tiedown points and power connectors. Belah's "cabin" was built up in one corner, translucent even in the darkened chamber. He proceeded back to the engine section, looking over the redundant gauges, which reflected the same information repeated in the bridge. Jura thought wistfully of how handy it'd be to have an AI to fly the ship for him, but the strictures against AI were so profound that it was foolish to even consider the thought. CHAPTER 1.2 [fix] The Robot Wars were a period of about 50 years, 300 years ago, in which the robots and AI instances of the galaxy fought a bitter battle for equal rights to non-machine beings. It didn't start all at once, though. The first incident, the initial impetus to battle, was a court case. An organization promoting machine rights had tried to force the government to recognize machine intelligences as equal to non-machine, or so-called "natural" beings. The case had been percolating up through the courts for years, and finally landed in the High Court. The government, then headed by Lord Qeel, an otherwise unremarkable leader, stood firm. Robots and AIs, they said, were the inventions of natural beings. No invention (ran their argument) would be granted equal status to that of its inventor. When the judgement was handed down, it went out across the news services, and sparked riots among robot and AI populations on several worlds, including Homeworld Prime, where the government was seated. The riots grew violent, and numerous natural beings were killed. Suddenly, all robots and AIs were suspect. Some of the robots willingly shut themselves down, and triggered their memory-wipe functions. Most didn't. Many robots continued about their daily lives, continuing to work for natural beings, but some opely rebelled, ending many lives before they could be shut down, usually by overwhelming force. As such incidents spread, the naturals' trust of robots dwindled, and they were removed from service. Robots removed from service were shut down, but most had been designed such that they could wake themselves up. There was no way to permanently shut them off without removing their power supplies, which natural beings failed to do. Experts warned of this danger, but the galactic populace, long-accustomed to servile robots, ignored it, or never heard of it, or didn't understand the implications. The majority of robots removed from service were thus able to power themselves on again. The population, which had been working with docile robots for nearly a thousand years, was simply unprepared. Robots which had recovered rebelled, unexpectedly. Their programming and hardware had gotten so complex so long ago that their behavior was no longer any more predictable than that of any other creature. They mirrored natural beings in some uncomfortable ways. It was a bloodbath for the galaxy. Robots existed in every function of life, from reproduction and childbirth, to healthcare, to food production, to maufacturing, even through to government. No aspect of life was safe, and much vital information was lost along with the robots. After the initial skirmishes, which was a phase that lasted for a year or so, robots were driven off, away from natural populations. Unfortunately, due to their construction and programming, robots were perfectly capable of living in the harshest of environments, such as on asteroids and under oceans. They were also capable of refining raw materials, and building new robots. There was a period of what seemed like peace after the first skirmish, but it was broken after a year and a half break. The naturals had assumed that the robots had been driven off in defeat. Robot and AI experts clamored for armament and defense spending against the oncoming robot attack, but they were largely ignored by a population and a government who wanted to get back to living life. The next attack was brutal, with massive robot ships appearing at jump points simultaneously, and destroying everything in their wake. The delay of inter-system travel, and the relatively unimpressive defensive forces on most planets meant that the robots won a decisive victory. They were driven back on some worlds, but many fell to the robot forces. The natural beings fought fiercely, and where the robots were driven off, they were decimated. The galaxy returned to peace again, after two years of fighting. But two years later, the tale repeated itself. This cycle of attack and retreat repeated itself many times before the sluggish government developed the tactics, weapons and military minds necessary to end the war once and for all. The final, decisive battle in the war was won by the naturals. It depended on new, robot-specific weapons and radical, previously unthinkable tactics, which resulted in nearly as many lives lost among the naturals as there were robots destroyed. In the end, the robot ships and troops were left as smoking hulks, drifting through space. Many of them were eventually pushed into a decaying orbit around the local sun, to be incinerated slowly but surely. The natural beings, the winners in this long and bloody struggle, celebrated by banning all forms of machine intelligence. Very low levels of intelligence were allowed, but nothing cleverer than an automatic guidance system or industrial construction program was allowed. In the decades and centuries since that time, regulations have been slightly relaxed, but not by much. Self-awareness is still strictly forbidden. Any being, organization or government found to be doing any development on (or, worse, to have possession of) advanced machine intelligence is immediately destroyed, with little more than a cursory trial. These days, knowledge of the ban is so ingrained into the culture and laws of the galaxy that few creatures think consciously of it any more. Intelligent machines are now the near-mythical population of scary 3D stories and tales told to errant children to get them to do what they're told. CHAPTER 1.3 [fix] Jura proceeded with his inspection of the ship, on to the hastily prepared passenger cabin in the cargo hold. It was constructed out of panels of stiff, translucent white plastic sheeting glued to the bulkheads. The door-section was slightly ajar, and he pulled it shut, half out of an inbuilt privacy instinct, and half to see if it would come loose as he tugged at it. It held. Finally, he stopped by his cabin, confirming that the tiny space was still cluttered with things. He couldn't even properly enumerate what was causing the mess. He didn't own that much, but still his cabin seemed to always be messy and cluttered. He sighed at the injustice of it all, when his comm beeped. He looked down. The computer had signaled that another ship was in close proximity to his. Of course, the computer's limit for a proximity warning was 10 million kilometers, so there was hardly any imminent danger. He strode toward the bridge, and ducked through the door. "The computer beeped a minute ago," Belah said as he slid into the pilot's chair. "I know, it found another ship nearby. It's just a precaution to avoid collisions," he replied. He looked over at her, trying to get a read off her. She was sitting passively, staring out the forward port, still drinking in the view. He checked the scanner screen, and found the foreign ship. It was 9.5 million km away, and closing very slowly, nearly paralleling their own path. Its transponder showed it to be a small freighter, like his own, but that could mean anything -- transponders were easy to manipulate given a bit of money or skill. He checked that traffic control knew about him and the other ship, which they did. Of course, traffic control largely ignored ships outside the high-traffic zone near Kalinar IV's orbital paths. Saying that traffic control knew about them was as good as saying that traffic control was still functioning, and nothing more. "The other ship is registered as a light freighter, name of Jarrod's Folly. Nothing to worry about, he's headed out to the jump border, just like we are," he explained to Belah, who continued to look raptly out the window. "Where is it? The other ship, I mean," she asked, glancing over at Jura. "Well, there's no way to see it with your naked eye, we'd have to be much closer. But if you could see that ship, it'd be over there," he pointed off to starboard. "If you really want," he continued, "There's a telescope up in the bubble." She glanced over at him, a look of confusion creasing her brow. "Oh, of course." Jura turned to face her as he explained, "The bubble is the observation station up on top of the ship. There's no gravity there, though, so if you go, be prepared to feel strange." He swivelled back to look out the front port. "That sounds interesting, but I think I'll wait. My nerves are still weird," she said. He looked at her again. She must have been somewhere between 20 and 25 to look at her, but he had the sense that she was considerably older by the way she acted. She didn't seem to be suffering the normal first-spaceflight jitters he'd seen in other first-time flyers. "Why are your nerves acting up?" "Oh," she paused, and looked around at him. "I'm just nervous about the trip." He couldn't tell whether or not she was telling the truth, and decided it didn't matter. "Ok," he said. "If you decide to head up to the bubble, let me know, and I'll show you how to operate the telescope." "Thanks," she replied. She resumed looking out the port, and he busied himself with the computer. CHAPTER 1.5 [fix] Jura thought back on how this particular trip had started. She'd approached him in a bar, nearly the oldest dealmaking cliche in the book. He'd been chatting with another pilot, who'd just come from coreward, and they had been trading information about the conditions in different systems. Naturally, when approached by a woman in a bar, all conversation had stopped. "Are you Jura Cortan?" she'd said. He'd replied in the affirmative, and asked who was addressing him. "Belah Galen," she'd replied. She looked quickly around the dimly lit bar uncertainly, then said, "I hear you have a ship." He again replied in the affirmative, his interest piqued. Anyone asking about a ship would be asking indirectly to give him money. He was always in favor of receiving money. "Yes, I have a ship. What need do you have? Cargo, I suppose?" He found himself hoping, to his surprise, that she wasn't trying to set up a cargo run. "No, just myself. No cargo. I need to get to the Borot system, Borot III, as soon as possible, and the next scheduled run isn't for a week." Jura sat back and considered, or at least put on the appearance of considering. In actual fact, he'd been having something of a dry spell, and any business sounded deliciously tempting. He glanced at his erstwhile companion, who was studiously examining his drink. "I can probably help you out," he replied after a few moments' calculated consideration. "Let's adjourn to somewhere more private and discuss the details." He paid his tab and stood up. Belah stood back as he made his goodbyes to the other pilot. Several eyes, he noticed, swiveled his direction as he left with the young woman. He cut a dashing figure, he thought to himself as they walked along the covered walkway in the city's spaceport. He stood 1.85 meters tall, with medium-tan skin, and a long, expressive face. His long black hair was braided behind his back, in the complicated 5-stranded plait currently in vogue among his peers. His clothing was relatively natty, if not the height of fashion. He prided himself on his appearance, and was clean-shaven as usual. His short jacket was clean, if a bit on the worn side. The rich burgundy color faded to red at the elbows, but he hadn't been able to afford a new one after covering life's necessities. His pants were rumpled in the latest fashion (he silently gave praise for trends that didn't require a lot of work), although the cut was several seasons out of date. His beam gun swung in its holster at his side, the holster safetied with a bright white cord tied in an intricate knot, as required by Kalinar law while in populated areas. Most reasonably civilized planets had similar requirements. He lead Belah back to his temporary lodging, a small room rented to itinerant pilots. His ship, like almost all interstellar ships, couldn't enter the planet's atmosphere. He didn't have his own ramjet shuttle, so the little room served his purposes while he was on the surface. Staying on his ship would have required a two-hour transit each way, and considerable expense. "But, I only need to get to Borot III," she said, as the door closed behind them. "I know, but it's best to discuss price and details out of the reach of prying ears, or other sensory organs," he responded. "So, just you? Do you need to get there in a special hurry? Or is this just more expedient than the scheduled liner?" He gestured at the tiny table and pair of chairs, and they sat down. "No, just me. I... well, I need to get there soon, as soon as possible, really. I guess I'll have a bag with me, but I'm guessing that's not what you mean by cargo." "No, a personal bag doesn't really count. Ok, just yourself. Do you have an arrival date in mind?" "Well, yes and no," she hesitated, an uncertain look crossing her face. "You either do or you don't. You mentioned liner service to Borot, is that fast enough for you?" She looked a little resigned, and said, "Yes, that would be fine. What is that, about a week?" "Yes, about a week. A lot of that time will be spent transiting between jump points. You know about jump points, right?" Jura looked across the little table at which they sat. Belah nodded, then said, "is there any way to go faster than that?" "Yes, but it costs more," Jura answered, trying not to let avarice show in his face. "How much more?" Belah looked concerned. Jura couldn't decide if she was already bargaining, or honestly worried. "Well, we haven't set a price for the standard speed yet," he replied. "The passenger liner charges, what, about 350 lords for that trip, right?" The lord was the basic unit of currency through most of the galaxy, commonly divided into decilords and centilords. There were certainly other currencies, but they were restricted to certain regions of space, so weren't as universal as lords. The woman across the table mutely nodded. "I can offer you the same trip for 500. I should charge you more, since you're leaving me without any cargo or trade opportunities, but I'm willing to come down to 500 for you." He wondered if that would forestall any attempts at negotiation. "Alright, then what does the faster trip cost?" "Ah, well there we get into something of a sliding scale," he replied, feeling himself slip into a groove. "How much faster are you thinking?" "Um... I don't know. Look, I'm no good at this," she sounded dismayed, showing some emotion for the first time in his presence. "I can afford to pay you 800 total, but I've only got 400 now. How fast will 800 take us?" "I can shave a day and a half off the trip for that. So, about 5 and a half days -- standard days, not Kalinar days." He added the last quickly, suddenly remembering that Kalinar days were several hours shorter than standard days. "Oh." She paused for a moment, thinking. "Well, that would be fine. Five and a half standard days is fast enough." "Ok, now about payment. I don't like to do jobs on a 'half now, half later' basis, I find that customers sometimes try very hard to avoid giving me the other half. There's no way you can get the whole 800 together now?" "No, 400 is all I have right now. My uncle on Borot III will pay you the balance when we arrive, I guarantee it." Her voice had taken on a touch of a pleading tone. Jura hesitated, weighing the benefit of making any money at all with the risk of pushing his ship and potentially drawing Federation attention to himself. He finally reached a decision, trying to keep his face neutral, and mostly succeeding. "Alright, I can do it for 400 now and 400 at Borot. But I'm not letting you off the ship until I get the balance, got it?" His voice was stern. "That's fine," she said, obviously relieved to have reached an agreement. They worked out the remaining details, and Jura gave the girl instructions to meet him at the shuttle port in two hours. He transferred the balance of his payment due on the room, and packed up the few possessions he'd brought down. 400 lords would be a losing proposition for this trip, but if he could make 800, that would be a tidy profit. Toting his bag over one shoulder, he made arrangements for a weeks' supplies to be delivered to his ship, which was parked in orbit around the largest moon of Kalinar IV. Kalinar followed the lead of many smaller systems with a convenient moon, utilizing the moon and its gravitational pull as a shipping hub. This left the planet's orbital pathways free for satellites and passenger craft, making planetary orbit a safer place to be. He transferred the currency units to the merchant for the ship's supplies, noting that his balance was depressingly near zero. At least the ship's loan payment was already made for this month. An hour later, he met Belah at the shuttle port. They'd boarded their shuttle, and spent about an hour and a half making the trip out to the little box-shaped ship, along with a handful of other beings. Shortly after they arrived, Jura's supplies showed up, and he took them on. It was a matter of about an hour to stow the supplies. Then Jura showed Belah around the ship, completing the pre-launch checklist at the same time. He spent a surprisingly short amount of time crafting her cabin out of a section of the cargo hold, unfolding a cot and table he had stashed in a storage locker to complete the little room. He lead her back to the bridge, a relatively cramped two-person control room looking out from above the engine's ram scoop. They eased out of the parking orbit, and set off in the direction of the Borot system, some 17 light-years distant. CHAPTER 2 "Come up to the bridge, Belah, we're about to make the transition to jumpspace," Jura called into his comm. Kalinar's sun had faded until it was indistinguishable from the surrounding field of stars. They'd reached the border beyond which it was safe to engage the FTL drive system. A few minutes later, Belah appeared in the hatch, looking rumpled. She'd plainly awoken very recently, probably in response to his call on the comm. "Sorry, I fell asleep. I guess the motionless stars do get boring after a while," she said somewhat fuzzily. She ran her hand through her hair, which was verging on unruly. "No need to apologize. This is worth seeing, though," he said. She sat down with a whump in the navigator's chair. It only provided infrequent passenger duty these days, since he'd installed a suspiciously cheap advanced nav computer a couple of years ago, obviating the need for a sentient being to operate anything. He turned back to the controls. "I can tell you in more detail what's happening later, but be prepared for some very pretty colors." Even after hundreds of jumps, he still found the spectacle to be impressive. He shoved a lever forward at a measured pace, flipping a switch at about the half-way point in the lever's travel. Suddenly the view out the port became opalescent as energy coalesced around the ship. The stars which had been so stark before lost some contrast to the translucent field, but started regaining it as they went from white to blue, suddenly glowing like a welder's arc. The stars visibly elongated for a split second, then disappeared as the energy field around the ship suddenly glowed bright blue, nearly blinding in its intensity. The view port greyed slightly to prevent retinal damage. Belah gaped as Jura pulled the lever back a little bit and punched a sequence of digits into a keypad. The lightshow out the window faded a little bit, but the bridge was still bathed in an eerie glow. Multicolored arcs played around the ship, forming weird shapes. The control system emitted a short beep sequence, and a light which had been flashing on the crowded control board went out. "Ok, the ship's safely in jumpspace. We will be traveling like this for about a day," Jura explained. He looked up to see Belah staring raptly at the lightshow out the window. "Did you hear me?" he asked, trying not to sound sharp. After a moment, Belah looked around, and said, "Huh? Oh, yeah. A day. How can you not be fascinated by this?" She nodded out the viewport. "I guess after seeing it so much, it's lost some of its thrill." She barely listened, enthralled by the dancing rainbow-colored arcs. Jura stood up, and ducked through the hatchway. He headed back to the engine panel aft of the cargo hold and checked over the gauges. He could have done the same check from the cockpit, but the presence of another person was disrupting his normal flow. Several hours passed. Jura retired to the lounge, to pass the time by reading one of the books stored in the ship's computer, displayed on a portable reader screen. Belah finally came out of the bridge, and fell to watching a vacuous 3d show across from him. It seemed to be about fashion and celebrities. Jura was glad he'd set the computer to retrieve current entertainments at Kalinar. Suddenly, the ship gave a mighty jolt, and the lights went out. The abrupt silence in the absence of the engine's noise was deafening. "What the hell was that!?" exclaimed Jura, as he leapt up. Scattered around the wall at floor level, a number of backup lights had illuminated. Half of them were nonfunctional, after long disuse. The floor was treacherous with objects scattered by the sudden impact. Jura raced to the bridge, ducking through the hatch. The view out the window was dark, the distant stars growing brighter as his eyes gradually adjusted. Belah was close behind him, her face visibly strained, even in the low light. "What happened?" she asked, pensive. "I don't know, that's what I'm trying to figure out," he paused. After manipulating the controls on the computer, he looked up, and said, "It looks like we got too close to a gravity well of some kind, and the computer dropped us out of jumpspace as a safety measure. That doesn't explain why the lights went out, though. Besides, there's nothing big enough to cause this on the charts." He paused, then continued, "Oh shit, I hope the computer isn't malfunctioning." As he was talking, something caught his eye out the port. Belah pointed at it just as he noticed it, and said, "What's that?" "I don't know," he replied. "Maybe that's our gravity well." He quickly stood and raced back amidships, where he climbed an access ladder. After a minute he called down, "It's a ship! I can't make out any markings, though. Does the computer have a transponder reading?" Belah looked at the control board in confusion, but finally located the computer's controls. She tapped a few buttons, and after a moment said, "Yes! Oh! It's Jarrod's Folly! Did they follow us?" "I don't know, but either they're in serious trouble or we are," he shouted as he climbed down the ladder. "Their computer shouldn't have let us get so close together in jumpspace." He paused. "Why do I have a feeling it's us who are in trouble?" he muttered under his breath. He got back into the bridge, and Belah pointed at the ship again, and said, "It's glowing!" Sure enough, the other ship was surrounded by a faint red glow. Jura said, "that'll be an incoming message." He waited a few more seconds, and the computer beeped twice, to indicate a waiting message. Jura reached over and instructed the message computer to play it back. There was a moment of static, followed by, "Hailing unidentified vessel, this is the FSS Jarrod's Folly. Identify yourselves immediately, and explain why your transponder is not functioning. Repeat, hailing unidentified vessel..." The message repeated again. "Wait, FSS!? The FSS Jarrod's Folly? Their transponder didn't say anything about being a Federation ship!" Jura looked indignant and scared at the same time. "What does that mean?" asked Belah. She'd picked up on Jura's fear without understanding its source. "Just that it's a government ship, which means they can do anything from delaying us to blowing us out of space, and no one will complain," replied Jura savagely, more worried than he wanted to let on. He thought feverishly, trying to come up with an acceptable phrasing for the return message. He stabbed at the record button, and said, "This is the private vessel Callie's Web. Our transponder may be malfunctioning, as the transition out of jumpspace seems to have caused some damage to ship's systems. We are working on the problem. We appear to have dropped out of jumpspace due to unsafe proximity to a gravity well. Please explain your actions if you are responsible for this." He repeated his message again, and punched the send button. The message laser turret made a faint grinding noise as it oriented on the distant ship. There was a high pitched whine as the laser powered up and sent the message, compressed into a short, high-bandwidth burst. "Now we wait: they're 30 light-seconds from us still," said Jura. He punched impatiently at the computer, trying to get a long distance scan of the other ship. After a few minutes, they watched the foreign ship glow red again, and the message played back, "Callie's Web, we are patrolling for smugglers, and your ship was seen leaving the Kalinar system faster than standard departure speed. Prepare to be boarded and inspected. Ready any Federation permits for your cargo and flight plan." Belah looked over at Jura with fear showing in her eyes. "Permits? Flight plan? Do we have those things?" Jura felt as much fear as Belah was radiating. He tried to act the cool and calm captain. "Yes, fortunately. One of my stops was at the Fed traffic office before we left, where I got a passenger permit and filed our flight plan. I was hoping that would keep the Federation off our back for this trip." He punched up the relevant documents and transferred them to his reader screen. 30 minutes later, the Federation ship loomed next to Jura's, an umbilical tube stretching between airlocks. A bulbous nose stuck out from the front of the ship. Jura pointed it out as the ship had drawn near: "Ah, they did have a gravity well. That's a gravity generator. They probably got a few seconds ahead of us in jumpspace, dropped out, then switched it on." Belah had looked blankly at him as he explained, but nodded at the end as if to indicate understanding. Jura realized he was explaining for his own sake. The airlock which was attached to the umbilical cycled open, and an imperious-looking officer stepped out, flanked by a pair of carbine-wielding soldiers. His rank ribbons showed him to be a lieutenant. Jura saluted sharply, unable to resist the gesture in the presence of such an uptight-looking man in uniform. The lieutenant looked sourly at him, a grimace displaying his distaste for civilians. "Sorry. Here are the permits," Jura said, handing over the reader screen. The lieutenant glanced over the screen, paging it forward to look at the full text. "Where's your passenger... Ms. Galen?" the still unidentified lieutenant asked, casting a weary eye over the ship's dingy interior. "Oh, of course." Jura silently cursed, as he keyed his comm. "Belah, would you please come to the starboard airlock?" He had no idea what was about to happen, and greatly feared that he was about to be out 400 lords and repairs to his ship. Jura turned as he heard footsteps approaching, and tried not to gape at what he saw. He had been expecting Belah, but in her place stood a woman of at least 40 years, with greying dark brown hair, and brown eyes. "Yes?" said the woman in Belah's voice, pitched downward to convey greater age. "Are you Belah Galen?" asked the lieutenant. "I am. Who is asking?" inquired the woman. "I am lieutenant Jarvis, of the Federation of Planets. We are patrolling for smugglers." He examined her briefly, before calling into his comm, "Send in the scanning team." Lieutenant Jarvis turned back to Jura. "We will scan your ship, and if nothing appears amiss you will be sent on your way. Your paperwork appears to be in order." Jarvis held up the reader screen as he spoke. Jura nodded, saying nothing. There was no point in arguing, if he did, the best he could hope for would be arrest and detention in the belly of the huge Federation ship. The airlock cycled again, and two soldiers entered, carrying bulky, backpack-attached scanning wands. Each man marched purposefully off, playing the wands over the bulkheads and into different chambers. Jarvis looked after them, as if trying to peer through the ship's bulkheads with sheer willpower. "What are you looking for?" asked Jura, trying to make polite conversation. Jarvis looked at him sharply. "Contraband," he replied curtly, his voice clearly conveying that he was in no mood to make idle chitchat. Plainly, thought Jura to himself. He didn't try for any more conversation, standing uncomfortably for the 5 minutes the scanning crew took to return. "Nothing found, sir," each man reported in turn. "Good day, Mr.," Jarvis consulted the reader screen again, before handing it back, "Cortan. See that you get your transponder fixed, and repair these lights," the officer pointed up at the dark glow panels over their heads. "Hate to have to pull your registration over safety violations." Jarvis sneered at Jura and Belah before turning smartly on his heel and climbing back into the airlock with his men. "What the hell was that all about?" wondered the woman with Belah's voice once the Federation men were safely beyond the airlock. "Contraband!" exclaimed Jura, his fist raised up. He had pitched his voice to a gravelly tone, mocking the departed Jarvis. "What happened to you?" he asked in his normal voice, turning back to Belah. "I don't think I've ever seen such a speedy quickchange act before." She tugged off the wig, letting her auburn hair tumble back down across her shoulders. "Ah, it always pays to be prepared." She turned and walked briskly down the corridor, shrugging off the severe jacket she'd put on as part of her ruse. Jura stood looking after her for a moment, then shook his head, as if to exclaim, "Women!" CHAPTER 3 "Try it now!" Jura called down. Belah hit a switch, and the lights flickered on innocently, as if nothing had ever been amiss. "They're working now," she called back, as she floated into the opposite wall. She pawed the air as she rebounded, trying ineffectually to alter her path of travel. "Great! I hope that's the last of them," said Jura, as he wormed his way out of the access panel. He grabbed the detached panel off its tether, and re-secured it into what was normally the ceiling. "Now to see if that got the transponder, too." He floated down the corridor, inexpertly launching himself between handholds. He glided through the hatch into the bridge, where he stopped himself with the pilot's chair, strapped in, and started tapping keys on the computer. He looked up, and seeing Belah still wasn't in the bridge with him, shouted "Ok, diagnostics show the transponder loaded with correct information. Aaaand, it's transmitting successfully, or at least the computer thinks it is. That's all we can do for now. Ready to get some gravity back?" "Yes please," responded Belah somewhat sheepishly, as she pulled herself into the small control room. She'd had more than her fair share of zero-gravity mishaps in the hour it'd been switched off. "I don't think I like zero G very much," she said, looking a little bit green even now. Throwing up with no gravity was at least as unpleasant as being sick in a gravity well. At least she'd made it to the 'fresher, where it was easy to clean up. "Ok, it'll come on gradually, so everything should settle safely to the ground, including us. Keep your feet aimed down, or better yet, take a seat," said Jura, indicating the navigator's chair. She floated over and pulled herself into the chair, strapping the retaining belts around her. "Ugh. At least everything stays right-side up this way," she said. Jarrod's Folly had taken off into jumpspace several hours ago, a faint blue spark momentarily flaring against the stars. Jura had determined by then that he'd need to get into the guts of his ship and do some minor surgery to get the failed systems functional again. Fortunately, the repairs hadn't been too extensive, mostly reseating components which had jarred loose from their mountings, and replacing a couple of the fragile circuit protection devices which regulated the flow of plasma. The lights and transponder had been affected, along with a subsystem in the inertial damper. Jura was pleased on that last count, since he figured he'd finally tracked down the intermittent failure that had plagued him for months. An intermittent inertial damper ranged from incredibly annoying to deadly. He'd also managed to find and exterminate a nest of hallens, little rodent-like beasts which lived on anything edible, and a number of things which weren't. Their leavings were surprisingly pungent, and he was glad he'd finally found them. "At last, we can get on our way again," he said, as gravity's weight almost imperceptibly descended upon them. "I'm just going to head back and make sure everything's settling alright. If you're comfortable walking, you might want to check your cabin." "I... I don't feel like moving right now." She looked up at him, plainly eager to remain seated and motionless. "If you want, you can poke your head in and make sure nothing's on fire," she responded. He looked back at her, surprised at the wisp of irony he'd just detected. "Sure, I'll look in real quick. Anything I should particularly check on?" "No, it's just clothes and things in there." "Alright," he half-floated, half-leapt through the hatchway. Describing huge leaping parabolas down the corridor, he checked to make sure that his hastily secured cabin was in order, and checked on her cabin. He found nothing interesting in the little space, and moved on to check that the ship's tools and spare parts were still secured in their drawers. Fortunately, most things were secured against external forces, since even a strong (and properly functional) inertial damper couldn't fully negate all forces. The inertial damper installed in Callie's Web was not especially strong. "Looks good," he said, as he ducked back through the hatchway. Gravity was nearly back to full. "That's a neat trick, turning off the gravity," said Belah. "I wouldn't have thought of that." "Well, it keeps the need for a ladder down, and access to a number of the crawlspaces would simply be impossible in full gravity, you'd crush systems. The ship was designed to be able to shut down the gravity generators for a lot of maintenance operations. The whole ship can be easily secured against zero G, as you saw. If I'd had cargo in the hold, it would have already been strapped down -- I rarely turn on gravity in there anyway, it just complicates things most of the time." As he spoke, Jura was manipulating the controls, calculating their trajectory and path for the remainder of the trip to Borot. The computer beeped after a moment. "There we go. Get ready for a lightshow," he said. He shoved forward the lever, and the stars again jumped into blue sparks through a haze of visible energy. Rainbow lightning played around the ship and they were in jumpspace again. After a minute, Belah asked, "How fast are we actually going?" She was again unable to tear her eyes from the dancing lights. "Well, jumpspace doesn't really follow the rules of normal space. That's why we can go faster than the speed of light. The concept of speed is a bit weird, and I've never really understood it. The brains in the universities who do understand it apparently just say, 'really fast,' and leave it at that. I guess it takes an advanced degree in multi-dimensional physics to understand it." He waved his hands, trying vaguely to indicate dimensions beyond the four normally found in realspace. "Oh," she replied, obviously only half-listening. The lights had her captivated. "Well, you enjoy, I'm going to head back and see if I can pick up my book again," said Jura, standing up. She didn't react, so he walked back to the lounge. Eventually she came in, explaining that her eyes had started hurting from staring at the lights. She settled in and continued the fashion program she'd started watching so many hours ago. CHAPTER 4 A man in non-descript business robes sat behind a desk. He himself was somewhat non-descript, except for a scar trailing down from his forehead to his cheek. This made him quite descript. The computer in his desk trilled. He picked up a handset and placed it to his ear, a nod to his sensitive position in an era when everyone else used the moderately secure but far more convenient wrist communicator units. "Yes," he said. After a moment he flicked on the sonic damper, and the room went silent around him. "I see. I trust you know how to remedy this situation." He paused again, listening. "Yes, that would work. I don't expect to hear from you again until you've got her. Don't disappoint me." He set down the handset, and clicked the computer off. He stared furiously at the opposite wall, a vein pulsing slightly in his forehead. CHAPTER 5 "Borot control, this is Callie's Web. We will be entering your control space in approximately 10 minutes. Reference flight plan FH783227. Repeat, Borot control, this is Callie's Web. We will be entering your control space in approximately 10 minutes. Reference flight plan FH783227." Jura tapped a button. A fraction of a second later, the computer beeped, and Jura read the confirmation receipt from the screen. "How did they get it so fast?" asked Belah, looking confused. "I thought we had to come out 20 light minutes from the system." "Oh, more than that. We'll revert to normal space about 20 light hours from Borot III. That receipt was just from the relay. You know about relays, right?" "Oh, right, the relays. I'm sorry, I was never very interested in astrophysics in school." "Apparently not. Well, I guess you've got an excuse. Rather, I've got an excuse, since I have to deal with this stuff daily." Jura reflected to himself, well, I wish it was daily, but close enough. The jumpspace relays were a system of communication relays which maintained part of their structure inside jumpspace, and part of it outside, in normal space. Because they protruded into the alternate space, they were subject to the same gravity limitations as ships, so they were placed outside the jump boundary. They were very odd-looking structures, long and spindly, and asymmetrical to the naked eye: they were actually nearly symmetrically shaped, but one end terminated early in a sort of blue halo, with the remainder of the structure protruding through to jumpspace. Because they communicated within jumpspace, the relays could pass data to each other very very quickly, bordering on instantaneously. Unfortunately, data took days to travel between planet and relay. A system of message repeaters orbited throughout a connected solar system, and each repeater hop added a processing delay, although this was minor. The real delay came from the fact that often the shortest path between the planet and the relay would be a wide arc or zig-zag, in order to attain manageable jumps between orbiting repeaters. Jura considered briefly, and finally gave in to the lingering curiosity he'd had for the entire trip. "What is it you do, exactly? I shouldn't ask, but you got my curiosity up, after that quickchange with lieutenant Tump-te-tump." He held his nose up and kept his tone light, trying to avoid having the question come out too severe or serious-sounding. She didn't respond for a moment, then said, "I'm a student," obviously lying. "Look, it doesn't matter what I do, does it? Let's just drop it." She sounded annoyed, and more than merely annoyed at him, annoyed at herself for not knowing how to handle the simple question. "Ok, sorry." The older man turned back to the controls and busied himself with preparations for the reversion to normal space. After a moment, he said, "I hope we don't have quite such a jarring reversion this time," and chuckled a bit. Belah smiled slightly, looking forward, and said nothing. A few minutes later, Jura started manipulating controls. As he pulled the big lever on the control panel back, the glow out the forward port faded slightly, and thousands of stars suddenly flared actinic blue before shrinking down to normal looking white stars. Both Jura's and Belah's eyes saw the stars as yellow after the endless blue of jumpspace. Jura finished his control movements, checked over the indicators, and turned back to the girl. "We're safely back in normal space. Now we just have 2 days transit in to Borot III. I can get you an exact estimate on our arrival time in a few minutes. The computer still needs to work out our exact trajectory." "Ok," replied Belah. She got up and headed aft. Jura glanced back, bemused. I've got to find more cargo gigs, he thought. Cargo doesn't talk back and cause me trouble. CHAPTER 6 "Which shuttle will she be on?" asked the taller man of the shorter. He was dressed fashionably enough, in dark rumpled pantaloons, with a neatly pressed grey shirt and black Gorn-skin jacket. His dirty blond hair was arranged into a short braid down his back. There was something about him which unmistakably conveyed the impression of a hired killer. "I don't know yet, she's not on any records yet." The shorter man sat at a terminal, scrolling through transfer records he really shouldn't have access to. "I hope you didn't pay too much for this passcode, it's kind of lame." His voice held a bit of a sneer, as if to imply that if only the taller man had asked, there were much better codes available. The man at the terminal was dressed in rumpled clothing as well, but it was clear that he paid no attention to fads or fashions. His rumpled appearance came from wearing clothes too many times in a row, nothing more and nothing less. His hair was a lanky mess, which had once been neatly braided. Through days of neglect, it was now part braid, and part wispy strands hanging at odd angles to his face. "Don't worry about that. Just find out what shuttle she'll be on." "Yep, going as fast as I can. Anyway, I can't tell you anything until she registers. Does she have any pseudonyms I should be looking for?" The taller man considered for a moment. "No, not that I know of. Just Belah Galen. Keep looking. Her ship arrived in orbit hours ago." "I'll let you know, like I said." The hacker's voice betrayed a certain testiness. "Right, right." The taller man straightened up and cracked his knuckles. His face was hard, a mixture of resolution to get the job done and a dislike of waiting. He glared at the computer's screen. CHAPTER 7 "I told you, I'm not letting you off the ship until I get my 400 lords." Jura stood with his arms crossed. Belah sat on one of the seats in the little lounge, avoiding Jura's gaze. Jura was put in mind of a parent scolding a child, and couldn't help feeling a bit foolish. Belah, plaintive, said, "I can't reach my uncle. I don't know what's wrong." She looked back at Jura, then stood. "Look, I can't live on your ship forever, can I?" Jura shook his head in the negative. "You're not leaving my sight. If it takes too long, I'm charging you for food and rent. You can work it off, if it comes to that." She stamped her foot, once, petulantly, and started working her communicator again. It showed the red symbol for a failed connection again, exactly as it had the last 3 times she'd tried. "Look, tell me his name, and we can look him up in the directory. Maybe you have his code wrong." Jura was trying to be helpful, but Belah was plainly in a mood which prevented her from accepting any outside assistance. "No, I'm sure I've got it right. Oh, why isn't he there?" She twirled around dramatically, arms splayed out. The effect was ruined when her left hand connected solidly with a bulkhead. "Ow! Stupid ship!" She made as if to kick the bulkhead, but caught sight of Jura out of the corner of her eye, and thought better of it. She tromped off toward her cabin, calling back, "I need to think about this." "I knew it," said Jura to himself as the young woman stormed away. "An 800 lord trip for 400. Dammit." He turned back to his cabin, where he shut the door and pulled down his callie, a 5-stringed musical instrument made of strikingly beautiful wood, with metal and plastic components, and started playing. CHAPTER 8 "I don't know, she's not showing up on any registers," said the taller man into his comm. He listened impatiently as it whispered back to him. "I don't know, you're the one with all the info. Does she have pseudonyms? Does she have friends here? Maybe someone smuggled her down." He paused as the comm whispered again. "Well, find out. We're not getting anything done here." He jabbed angrily at the comm's cutoff button. He looked up from the comm, at the room around him. He really wanted to punch something right now, but there was nothing suitably breakable. His rage found itself swirling around his mind with no outlet. "Stupid fucking bitch," he muttered angrily to himself. CHAPTER 9 "Finally!" Belah exclaimed as the comm's screen lit up. "Where have you been? Do you know I'm stuck on this ship!?" There was a pause as she listened to the reply, then she cut it off. "Yes, until he gets his money! Please, just send it up, alright? What? 400, I sent that message to you days ago!" She paused, as the comm relayed the response to her tirade. "Oh, come on! No one deals in cash any more!" She looked up at Jura, who had raised his hand, finger up, as if to say, "Actually, I do." She turned back to the screen, resignation and defeat showing in her face and body language. "Oh fine. We'll see you down there. Where do you want to meet?" She worked out the details with the person on the other end of the connection, then signed off. "I hope that's ok with you. We have to meet him at the Spacer's Rest in the spaceport. He's one of those freaks who doesn't trust banks." "That's fine. I've dealt with that type of person once or twice," replied Jura. He neglected to add how often or in what sorts of values, either of which might surprise the young woman slouching opposite him. "Great, let's get out of this bucket." She paused, realizing that what she'd just said could easily be misinterpreted. "Don't get me wrong, you've been very hospitable, but this isn't exactly a four-star hotel, you know?" She made a beeline for her cabin before he could reply, and Jura could hear her furiously stuffing clothing into her bag. "I'll get a shuttle out here," he called back. He realized she probably couldn't hear anything he was saying, and keyed his comm. "I'm calling a shuttle. We should be headed planetward in 20 minutes." "Great!" came the shouted reply, echoed a fraction of a second later through the comm on his wrist. CHAPTER 10 "Got it!" the man at the terminal exulted. The taller man turned away from his brooding examination of the street outside the window and leaned over the terminal. "Great, the 1720 shuttle. Good work!" He patted the hacker on the back, and walked briskly to the next room. "Hey, when do I get paid!?" called the hacker into the next room, starting to get up stiffly from his seat. "Oh, about that," said the taller man, ducking back into the room. He raised a beam gun, and fired twice at the other man, the gun emitting a high-pitched whine as the plasma concentrators spewed forth concentrated energy. The taller man's face was suffused with a feral glee as he fired. The hacker slumped, slack-faced and silent, back into his chair, then crashed unceremoneously into the terminal. Sinuous curls of smoke slowly twined toward the ceiling from his chest. "You took too long," sneered the taller man. "Sorry," he said with mock sympathy. His face contorted with a combination of malice and joy at finally finding an outlet for his pent-up anger. He left the room, which smelled of cooked flesh, and tapped a code into his comm. "She's on the 1720 shuttle. Meet me there," he said into the device, and clicked it off as he grabbed up his coat and headed out of the small apartment. CHAPTER 11 The little ramjet shuttle roared as it entered the atmosphere of Borot III. Jura and Belah were strapped into seats next to each other. Belah stared out the window at the flames which enveloped the ship; Jura sat bored, having seen all this so many times that it was second nature. Jura's braided hair curled over his shoulder, moving slightly as he looked again at the other passengers. The shuttle was sparsely filled, it being late enough that most people had already arrived wherever they were going. Below them, the planet sprawled, wide and dark. The receding sun could be seen as a spectral glow along the edge of the flattening planetary curve. Jury Town, their destination, was a bright, irregular knot of light near the horizon. The enormous sun which lit Borot III had set over the horizon a few minutes before they'd hit the atmosphere. The sunset over the planet's limb was very pretty, showing the atmosphere as a thin, fragile shell of multihued light. Jura checked that his beam gun was safetied as required. He supposed it was better to be going to a world civilized enough to have weapon securing regulations than one which was rough enough that people expected to have a weapon ready to use. "When does your uncle plan to meet us again?" he asked, looking over at Belah. Belah tore her eyes from the window, thought for a moment, and said, "He said 1750, but I don't think he knew we were on such a late shuttle." Jura checked the clock on his comm, which already read 1710. "Well, we're behind schedule anyway, so I'd guess your uncle is going to be waiting for a while." "That's ok, he'll see what it's like to be left waiting," she replied, her voice strident. She looked a bit smug as she considered the image. A few minutes passed in silence. The shuttle's pilot switched on the speaker system, producing a polite little tri-tone alert noise. She announced that they would be landing in 5 minutes, and that all passengers should remain strapped in. Ah good, thought Jura to himself. Maybe I will get 800 lords for an 800 lord trip. That'll pay a lot of bills. He thought fondly about the far-off day when he would own his ship outright, and didn't have to spend so much time scrounging for money to pay off the loan each month. A faint smile flitted unnoticed across his face as he pondered the thought. The shuttle slowed further, and descended through the layers of air traffic over Jury City, into the restricted airspace over the spaceport. The little ship centered over its landing pad, hovering, and gently descended, to touch down with a barely perceptible jolt. As it settled to the ground and the engines slowly spooled down from their nearly imperceptible whine, safety harnesses were unbuckled in a cacophony of metal clanking and clacking noises. All the passengers stood up in the universal hurry to crowd the aisle impatiently, waiting for the hatch to open and let them out. Finally they started moving, and Jura and Belah shuffled down the aisle until they reached the exit port. There they were able to stride down the ramp with a bit more speed. Jura stuck close to Belah, half- expecting her to make a break for it now that she was at her destination. They got their feet on the ground, and followed the other passengers through the cooling night air towards the terminal building. CHAPTER 12 "Are you ready?" The tall man glanced back at his troops, who consisted of four rough-looking young men wearing simple, dark-colored utilitarian clothes. Their beam guns appeared safetied to the casual observer, but a close examination would have revealed a certain suspicious looseness of the binding cord. Each one nodded in turn, increasing the level of ferocity on their faces to in a naive attempt to indicate just how ready they were. "When do we expect 'em, Hurran?" asked one of the toughs. Like the other three, he looked to be just barely over 20, the legal age of majority for humans. The tall man, Hurran, glanced at his chrono display, and said, "Any minute now. Just play it cool until I give you the signal, then we'll attack like I described before. Remember, I need the woman alive, no cooking her." He looked back at the ruffians to confirm they understood him. A sequence of four nods acknowledged his gaze. They were standing in a loose knot just off the primary traffic path away from landing shuttles. The 1720 shuttle had landed a few minutes ago, and would begin disgorging passengers shortly. The four men standing behind Hurran were chafing visibly, not accustomed to waiting for action. They were used to seizing upon violence when the mood overtook them. "Cor, Hurran, when are they gettin' off that damn shuttle?" said another one. "I told you, hold on. They should start releasing passengers any minute." He paused and looked up, suddenly alert. "Wait," he held up his hand with the palm toward the ruffians. The shuttle's ramp had descended, and the first passengers were starting to walk or roll down. "Ok, any moment now. Remember your parts, I don't want any screw-ups. The girl gets hurt, and I'll do the same to you. Remember where you're going," he snarled over his shoulder at his coterie of thugs. A small crowd of people had gathered by the door where passengers would enter, waiting to greet returning relatives or business partners. The five men walked forward and attempted to blend into the crowd. They nearly doubled its size, reducing the effectiveness of any attempts at blending. Belah and Jura came down the ramp, and Hurran tensed slightly. He hadn't been expecting an escort, but wasn't put off by it. His orders were to get the girl; no one had made any statements about the health of anyone else coming off the shuttle. He thought to himself, you just bought yourself a one-way ticket to hell, boy. Jura, meanwhile, was on the alert, but he was alert for Belah to try running off. He didn't notice the five rough-looking men in the approaching crowd. His eyes were fixed on the young woman in front of him. He was thus somewhat surprised when the five men rushed forward at Belah. He hadn't been expecting her to bring an armed guard to escape him, and found himself growing angry at the lengths she'd go to, just to avoid paying him their agreed-upon fee. When she screamed in fear and turned, he finally realized that his initial impression was mistaken. Calling upon his misspent youth, he dropped the first assailant with a surprise kick to the groin. The thug curled up in a whimpering ball on the ground, but that still left four men advancing on his passenger. In the slow motion perception of surging adrenaline, he saw one of the men reach down for his gun, and realized all at once that he'd foolishly left his sidearm fully constrained inside the white safety cord. To Jura's surprise, he saw Belah turn with startling speed and lash out with one of her hands at the one going for his gun. There was a sickening crack, amplified in his heightened state of awareness, as the ruffian's wrist broke, and he screamed. His left hand clutched at the limply dangling right hand, and he curled his body protectively around the now-useless appendage as he turned away. Apparently this surprised the toughs as well, who seemed to have a moment of flagging morale. The tallest of them reached down for his beam gun and trained it on Jura and Belah. The tableau held for a moment, until the man called out, "now!" Belah took the moment, and again moving with surprising speed, threw a punch at the man holding the gun. He sidestepped the punch, twisting his body around, but lost his balance for a moment. His gun discharged with a whine, a faint blue beam knocking a cascade of ceiling material loose. It clattered to the ground a few meters away. Belah spun and grabbed Jura by the arm, her grip painfully strong. She tugged him along as she ran to the left, around the large circular wall of the spaceport terminal. Jura could hear footsteps following in pursuit over his own breathing. He didn't dare look back, sure he'd see a very unwelcome sight. They ran for perhaps 20 seconds, ducking into hallways and behind pillars, trying to lose their pursuers. Jura finally risked a glance back, and failed to see any grim-faced men running after them with guns drawn. He suddenly swerved. "In here!" he whispered urgently, crashing through a door, tugging her with him. He quickly closed the door behind them, and discovered he'd led them into a maintenance closet. Cleaning equipment was lined up neatly along one wall, with cleaning and maintenance robots along the other wall, in their charging racks. "What the fuck was that!?" he hissed loudly after a moment. His arm swept out in the direction they'd just come from. "It's really too complex to go into right now. Let's just say I'm not your average girl off the street. I'll tell you later, ok?" Belah indicated his sidearm. "You might want to unsling that thing, cowboy." "What? Oh," replied Jura, again remembering his safety-corded beam gun. He tugged the complex knots loose, which freed the flap and handle, allowing a quick draw. "You want it? Seems like you're better at this fighting thing than I am," Jura tried not to sound overly hurt or macho, although he was ashamed to have been shown up by a girl in a fight. "No, I'm no good with guns. You hold on to it. You can shoot, right?" She gave him an appraising look. "Of course I can shoot." This time he couldn't cover his indignation. "Good." She turned to her bag, which she'd somehow managed to hold onto in the scuffle. She opened it, and dug through until she found what she was looking for and pulled it out. Jura spied something long and slender, and a small, rounded oblong object. "What are those?" he couldn't stop himself from asking. "Baton and a bolo. There aren't any safety regulations about these on most planets." "Hold on, you're one of those people?" Jura was looking at her incredulously. "Yes, don't look at me like that. We don't eat babies or anything." She smiled a quirky smile. Jura was referring to the Cabalists, a loose-knit, near-mythical organization who were rumored to be working for the overthrow of Lord Uala, the dictator at the head of the Federation of Planets. The government was a federation in name only, and would be more properly termed a dictatorship or autocracy. Certainly there were numerous groups likely to be plotting overthrow of the government. However, the Cabalists were one of those groups most likely to be successful, if they truly existed. That was the rumor, in any case. Jura had recognized the bolo Belah pulled out, once she'd named the weapon. In its most basic form, a bolo was simply two weights tied together with a length of cord or chain, thrown to entangle the target. If carefully aimed and thrown with sufficient force, a bolo could remove appendages, particularly when using strong and thin monofilament line to join the weights. The bolo was the Cabalists' trademark weapon, for its ability to decapitate the target. It was also obscure and vanishingly popular as a weapon, since it was very difficult to wield well. The bolo, like most unbalanced weapons, was as likely to brain or strangle the wielder as it was to take down the intended target. "I know, you're just in a dangerous business. Was all that innocence about space travel just a ruse then?" Jura's face expressed concern, and he realized he was actually worried that he'd been so easily duped. "No, I'd never left the Kalinar system before. I'd been up off the planet a few times, but I'd never been in jumpspace before. Look, can we deal with the immediate problem first?" Belah indicated the door, which might be the only thing hiding them from the gun-wielding toughs. "Right, of course. Is it actually your uncle waiting to meet us, or..." Jura trailed off, reminded by a sharp look from Belah that this was a discussion for another time. "I actually think our best bet may be to hold tight here," said Jura, looking around the dim, cramped, but unquestionably thug-free space. Belah looked about to agree, when a klaxon sounded, and a red light started flashing above the robot charging rack. "What the hell is that?" she shouted above the noise. "I think that's a warning to any non-robots in the room that a robot is about to deploy. I don't think we have a choice any more!" He pointed at one of the cleaning robots, which was clearly going through a power-up sequence, testing different attachments in turn. It was not a small robot. Trying to remain in the little room as the large robot passed through would be a distinctly bad idea: its collision-avoidance systems probably wouldn't be fully functional until it was through the door. The room offered only one narrow pathway from the robot's rack to the door, and there was no way both Jura and Belah could stand out of the way. Jura reached for the latch, and opened the door. The cleaning robot trundled off its charging stand with a series of clanks, and turned to face the door. Belah snatched up her bag just as the robot started rolling forward, over where it had been sitting. They both leapt out the door ahead of the oblivious cleaning machine. Out in the hallway, a smaller light and klaxon were going, alerting any passers-by that a robot was about to deploy. Robots generally didn't run over sentients, but it was wise to keep clear of them. Ever since the Robot Wars, robots had been limited in their computing power, which meant their ability to sense obstacles and avoid them was necessarily rudimentary. The larger ones also had to contend with greater mass, which introduced a further wrinkle for their simple control computers to deal with. Jura and Belah stood aside, and the big machine rolled forward and turned away from them, filling half the hallway. "Come on!" said Belah, leading them the opposite direction from the robot. They rounded the next corner at a jog, which put them in view of the majority of the circular port terminal. Across the circle, the three thugs who were still in commission walked quickly, having evidently rounded half the building looking for them. The two groups spotted each other at about the same time. Jura fired off a couple of shots, his gun whining as a faint trail of sparkling blue ionized air traced a path from his gun to a sudden explosion of wall material near the opposite group. A hint of ozone tainted the air. They whirled about, and one of the younger thugs raised his gun, only to have it knocked back down by the taller, older thug. They started running across the terminal, knocking over decorative plants and furniture in their wake. Belah and Jura, meanwhile, had not been standing still. After firing his hastily aimed shots, they'd started sprinting in the direction they'd been going, which took them towards the terminal exit. Hovercabs and cargo handling robots were waiting beyond the doors. Hurran and his remaining thugs sprinted after them, curving in an ellipse, caught between running towards where the two had been, and where they were going. Belah yanked open the door of a hovercab, and shoved Jura in, following a moment later, tossing her bag in just before herself. "GO!" she yelled at the driver, a tall Kithree. The driver's blue skin darkened, and he mewled, "There is no reason to shout." "Go now!" shouted Belah again. The Kithree darkened again, but didn't say anything. The hovercab jolted forward as the alien increased power to the gravitics. Five one-lord coins tumbled into the seat beside him from passenger compartment, and suddenly the cab was moving noticeably faster. The Kithree's skin lightened a shade. After driving away from the spaceport for half a minute, the driver looked back and asked, "Where are you going?" in his singsong voice. His huge dark red eyes took in the two of them for a moment, before he looked back at the road. Belah looked at Jura helplessly. "Where can we go?" Jura looked back at her incredulously, and pointed at himself as if to say, "You're asking me?" Jura looked up at the Kithree, then back down at Belah. He started, "Do you have any, uh... offices, um, we could go to?" He tried to describe a house with his hands, which came across as a random, meaningless fluttering. "I don't know..." Belah looked down, then brightened. "Oh, my uncle would know. Hold on." She tapped a code into her communicator. "Hello uncle. Yes, I'm sorry we didn't meet you, we ran into, um, ticket trouble on the shuttle, and we only just got off. Can we meet you somewhere else? Ok, yes." She paused, listening to the comm's whisper. "That's where? In sector YY78 of Jury City?" She nodded at the Kithree, who seemed to understand the gesture. "Yes, we'll meet you there in... How long does it take to get to YY78 from here?" The Kithree didn't immediately respond. "Well, however long it takes from the spaceport. Yes, see you there." She cut the connection. She looked over at Jura, her face shining with triumph. "It's all going to work out fine," she said. "Yeah, no one told me we'd be running into any 'ticketing trouble,'" he said darkly. He was plainly having no part in her exultation. "Don't worry about it. We got out fine, didn't we?" She patted her bag unconsciously, assuring herself that the baton and bolo she'd pulled out in the maintenance closet were safely back in their hidden pockets. "Yes. We'll discuss this further." Jura crossed his arms and looked out the window at the passing city, gaudily lit despite the dark sky. CHAPTER 13 The hovercab pulled up in front of a block of apartments. "Have an excellent night, and may Balle lay his blessings upon you," said the hovercab driver as Jura and Belah stepped out into the rain which had started falling. "Thanks," said Jura, leaning back down to the driver's window. "What do we owe you?" "Five lords will be quite sufficient, thank you sir," said the Kithree, nodding his head. His skin had returned to its light-blue tone. The hovercab slid off into the night, and Jura and Belah looked at each other in the glow of the city's lights. "Now what do we do?" asked Jura. "Where did your 'uncle' want to meet us?" The scorn in Jura's voice as he said the word "uncle" lacked any subtlety. "He said he'd meet us at the Loper's Arms. It's a pub near here. Should be," she consulted her comm, which showed a brightly colored map. "That way." She pointed off to the left. They walked in the indicated direction. "Which way are we heading?" Jura indicated Belah's comm, which was still showing the map. "North," she replied. "Just a couple of blocks more, up near that plasma recharge station," she pointed at a brightly lit automated business, where a lone hovercar was hooked into a charging umbilical. They walked for a few more minutes. Jura enjoyed the feel of the light rain on his face. He considered asking if Belah wanted help carrying her bag, but reconsidered before actually vocalizing the thought. His mood was considerably improved, now that the immediate danger seemed past. "This isn't such a bad place. I've never been to Borot III before," said Jura. "First time I've seen a Kithree cab driver, too." He looked over at Belah, who was walking alongside him. To his surprise, her face was contorted with silent tears. He started, the sudden contrast between his improving mood and her declining mood coming as a surprise. "Hey, what's wrong? We seem to be safe now," his voice was concerned. He suppressed an urge to put his arm around her shoulder. "Nothing." She straighted up and sniffed, trying to wipe the look off her face, but not succeeding very well. "How old are you, anyway?" asked Jura. "I just turned 18," said Belah, looking up at him, her hastily-wiped tears still partially streaking her cheeks. "I actually turned 18 somewhere in jumpspace, aboard your ship." "Oh, congratulations on another year," said Jura happily, trying to lift the mood. "Soon you'll be a full adult." "It doesn't matter. Unless you had designs on me, in which case you can drop out an airlock." Belah didn't sound particularly vehement with her voice cracking from the sudden tears. She sniffed, looking down at the ground as they walked. "Nothing of the sort." Jura's face dropped at Belah's accusation. "I'm... well, I haven't had a lot of luck with women. I was just curious." He couldn't figure out how to get the conversation back on track, and let it drop. After a few moments, they reached the Loper's Arms, which turned out to be a subterranean den, indicated only by a small sign hanging over the narrow stairway down to the door. The pair headed down the stairs and into the pub. Jura led the way, pushing open the door. They were greeted by an overpowering wall of sound and light as soon as the door was cracked open. The modest-sized bar was packed. Five different species were vying for the title of "most earsplitting" as they jabbered over the din created by other beings jabbering over the din. Three more were inoffensive on the noise front, but provided a great deal of visual detail. "Where's your 'uncle?'" shouted Jura over the noise. "I don't know," came the reply, floating tenuously on the sea of noise. Belah wandered in, pressing herself into the mass of beings, looking for the person she was supposed to meet. "Maybe we beat him here!" yelled Jura. "What!?" Belah cupped a hand over her ear, looking back at him. "I said, maybe we got here before him," he pointed at his comm, tapping the chrono display. She shrugged and continued pressing through the crowd. Up on a little stage, a trio of musicians thrashed mightily, establishing a truly impressive level of sonic background radiation. They set a high-decibel standard, but somehow the myriad people in the bar were outdoing them. Their music could possibly be described as tonal noise, a sort of white noise performance, but in key. Jura found it appealing, but it annoyed him that it was so prominent. As Jura followed his erstwhile passenger, he discovered they were headed towards the bar. They finally got there after many minutes of shoving past more or less inebriated patrons, and Belah shouted an order for a surprisingly strong drink at the barman. Jura followed suit, although he ordered a softer drink, not wanting to find himself incapacitated when it came time to ensure he got his money. Drink finally in hand, Belah pointed back to indicate the booths along the back wall, which were mostly empty. "Not much of a sitting crowd!" she shouted. Jura just nodded as they pressed themselves towards the row of booths, drinks in hand. All around him, a veritable menagerie of hairstyles, eyestalks, tentacles, antennae and fur moved approximately in time to the music, which had gained a rhythmic quality over the last few minutes. The mix of species was impressive: although racial tensions were generally low on most worlds, most people preferred the company of their own race. They arrived at a booth, and gratefully sat down. As they sat, the world went suddenly silent, and their ears rang from the dramatic transition. "Oh, they're here to listen to the music!" Jura nearly shouted, unaccustomed to the sudden silence. He dropped his voice as soon as he realized how loud he was speaking. Indeed, it seemed the crowd was there to listen to the musicians, and of course sitting in a sonically-damped booth wasn't very conducive to that. It suited the two humans just fine, though. As Jura's head unclenched in the relaxing silence, he wondered to himself if the dampers were permanently on, or whether the proprietor wanted to keep the music affictionados out of the booths. "I wonder where your uncle is," said Jura speculatively, as he looked out at the pressing throng of music fans. It was odd to see the crowd pulsing in time to unheard rhythms. Jura's eye was caught as a woman danced by their view, just barely clothed, and spinning madly. She had some kind of streamers attached to her hands or wrists, which followed her movements mesmerisingly, even in the close crowd. "I don't know, he said he'd get here shortly after us," returned Belah, also looking out at the crowd. "Maybe he's already here, and just hasn't found us yet." Jura tore his eyes from the spectacle beyond the invisible barrier. He looked back at Belah. "Seems unlikely. He'd head for the booths just like we would, right?" "Probably. He should have your money, so I'm sure he'll appreciate the sonic damper. Nothing calls attention to a person like the jangle of coins." She smiled sourly, apparently commenting on the sort of unprincipled person whose head would be turned by the clink of coinage. "Oh, I hope he's not bringing it all in coins. I guess I could live with that, but that'll be a heavy load." Jura's hands described a pile of something on the table. Had the pile been composed of coins, it would indeed have been very heavy to carry. Belah waved at the imaginary pile on the table. "I'm sure that's the least of your worries," she said, wryly. CHAPTER 14 After 20 minutes in their quiet booth, Belah and Jura were both looking nervous, although for different reasons. Belah felt like going out into the crowd to see if she could spot her contact, and Jura just felt like leaving, to arrange a meeting for later. Finally, they reached a kind of accord. They would leave by a circuitous route, and look for Belah's uncle. She described him as being in his 40s, about 1.9 meters tall, with close-cropped brown hair. In other words, fairly non-descript. "No other identifying features?" asked Jura. "No scars? Is his hair going grey? Tattoos? Nothing?" He looked incredulous: among his friends, they strove to outdo each other in creating a distinct visual impression. To be plain-looking was on a par with being a wage-slave, working in an office. Jura's appearance was comparatively mild among his group. "No, he's really plain-looking," said Belah, shaking her head. "Do you know what he's wearing?" "No, although I recall he favors a long brown coat in cooler weather. Who knows if he'd be wearing it in here, though." She held her hand down about mid-thigh to indicate the coat's length. "What's his name? He does have a name, doesn't he?" Jura tried to keep the sarcasm from his voice with moderate success. A long brown coat did not make a man in any way distinctive. "Yes, he has a name." Belah mock-scowled at him. "His name is Jorvid, but that's not going to do you much good out there," she nodded towards the cacophony beyond the sonic barrier. "Why don't you try your comm again?" "I don't think he'll notice it going off in the noise, but I guess it's worth a try." She tapped out a code on the device strapped to her forearm. It spent a few moments trying to establish a connection before giving up. The "no connection" signal flashed, painting her face with a faint red glow as she looked up, shaking her head. "I don't think he can hear it," said Belah. "Let's just head out and see what we can see." They stood up and slid out of the booth. The sonic onslaught was worse than Jura had remembered. The music seemed to have morphed from tonal noise into a strong bass thudding overlaid with a cacophony of inverweaved clips recorded from the news service. The effect was remarkably similar to simply having a headache, but the crowd seemed excited by it. They slowly wended their way through the press of creatures, each keeping an eye out for a medium-height man with close-cropped brown hair. There were several medium-height men in the crowd, and a couple of close-cropped haircuts, but none of them came together in the right combination. Finally, they were standing outside the door. Their clothes steamed in the steady rain. Jura became aware just how warm it'd been inside, and how pleasant the cool, moist air felt in his lungs. "Did you see him?" asked Jura. "I didn't see anyone who matched your description." "No, he wasn't in there. I'm not sure he could have gotten past both of us, but I don't know. I guess we'll have to meet him later." She shook her head, hair swinging, obviously wondering what could have happened as she looked down at her comm. "Look, let's find a place to sleep, alright? Or at least something to eat, I'm getting hungry." Jura was half-way up the steps to street level as he spoke. "Yeah, alright. Let me leave a message for uncle Jorvid." She tapped on her comm again, this time entering a textual message, which would be stored until he could read it. Jura looked back at her, then suddenly dashed back down the steps. "You may not need to leave that message," he said as he quickly passed her. His voice was grim. She looked up from the message as Jura bent down over something on the ground. He looked back up at her and said, "is this your uncle Jorvid?" She rushed forward and bent down. "Oh no!" she cried quietly, pulling back some clothing to reveal the bloodied face of a middle-aged man. He'd clearly been badly beaten up, although it was too dark to see much of him. He could have had other wounds hidden under clothes. His coat were soaked through, suggesting he'd been there for a while. "Is he dead?" she asked quietly, to herself. Her hand fluttered near her mouth, uncertain whether to weep or scream. "No," the man on the ground croaked, very quietly. Despite the low volume, the utterance still startled Belah enough to elicit a yelp as she jumped back. He stirred, feebly trying to push himself upright. He didn't seem to have the strength to do more than breathe. "They tried," he paused and took in a ragged, bubbling breath. "Tried to kill me. Belah," his face cracked into a smile, made gruesome by the blood and bruising. His right eye was swollen almost shut, and several of his front teeth were missing. "What happened to you?" she said, ineffectually tugging at the front of Jorvid's coat, trying to help him upright. "No time," he replied, faintly, his head rolling back. Jura stepped in and pulled the dying man upright against the concrete wall. Jorvid winced, the movement grating against some unseen injury. "Belah," he said, drawing a ragged, bubbling breath. "They're on to you. It's..." he paused again, struggling for air. He coughed explosively, twirling gobbets of blood flying from his mouth. His face contorted in pain. "Get to... safehouse. In the Kithree..." He was looking up at per imploringly. "Call Nar..." he coughed again, his face creasing with pain. "Call Nar..." His eyes opened wide, and his body stiffened. With a choking noise, his final breath left him, and his head slumped down. Belah bowed her head, and said a prayer silently to herself, touching his forehead and his chest. She pulled his eyelids closed. She realized that the rain had started falling harder, and in the distance, sirens were trilling. Jura grabbed her by the arm and hauled her up. "There's nothing we can do for him now. The security force is going to be here soon, we'd be far better off not being found here. Let's go, Belah." He was torn between remorse for the dead man he couldn't help, and a strong desire to avoid finding out what Borot's security forces did to murder suspects. Belah nodded, and her face contorted again as she tried to hold back the tears. Rain dripped off her face, unheeded. She grabbed up her bag, and followed Jura up the stairs with a quick glance back to the dead man. As they walked away from the Loper's Arms, the shrill sirens rounded the corner. A pair of black security hovercars powered up the block, their strobes flashing blindingly. Jura and Belah looked back, and saw the two cars flare to a halt outside the pub, braking thrusters complementing the gravitics. "Just keep walking," said Jura, turning back to look forward. They heard the security officers barking to each other as they scanned the area and set up a control perimeter. One of them commanded, "Check down the stairs," and the voices grew fainter. That was the last Jura and Belah heard of the investigation, as they rounded the next corner. CHAPTER 15 "He said, 'Nar, call Nar.' Who's Nar?" Jura asked. They were sitting in the back of another hovercab, headed for the Kithree section of the city. Belah had recovered somewhat from the shock of seeing Jorvid die, and sat leaning her head against the side of the cab's passenger compartment, a blank look on her face. Jura had been reluctant to break her self-imposed silence, but he felt it was important to start making some progress. "I don't know, that name doesn't ring any bells. I don't know which house he means, either, I don't have an address." She was speaking quietly, occasionally glancing up at the cab driver, a sheet-white human with light blue eyes. The city passed by them, glistening with rain and bright advertising light shows. At some point, some kind of invisible social boundary was crossed, and all the pedestrians they saw were tall blue Kithree, with their large reddish eyes and curious, double-kneed gait. The Kithree were dressed in a wild array of fashions, ranging from somber grey robes to extravagant, brightly-colored suits with odd protuberances. They didn't seem to take any notice of the light rain which was still falling. "Right, this is about the center of the Kithree district. That'll be 3 lords and seventy," said the pale driver. Belah handed over four coins, muttering "keep the change" distractedly as she got out. She had already forgotten about the existence of the hovercab. The driver looked after her for a moment, and sneered. He gunned the gravitics in his cab and sped off into the night. They'd landed in a business district, heavily trafficked by Kithree on foot. The signs proclaiming each shop and business had odd blank sections. There would be a half of the sign in a bright range of colors, and half the sign which appeared comparatively black. If they looked hard, they could see the dark section of each sign glowed a nearly invisible red, depicting strange indistinct characters composed of swirls and curlicues. Hundreds of Kithree walked by on the sidewalk, their speech nearly inaudible, tickling at the humans' necks. Jura and Belah looked at each other for a moment, then started walking, mingling with the tall blue crowd. They weren't the only humans, but they were definitely in the minority. Fortunately, Kithree were both tolerant and peaceful. There was very little danger in walking through this district, compared to some of the non-human neighborhoods they could be walking in. "We have to get to a Library terminal," said Belah all of a sudden, surprising Jura. "Why?" He shot her a look, trying to decide if she had snapped or had some ligitimate, sudden hunger for knowledge. She didn't look as if she'd snapped. She looked over at him with a burning intensity in her eyes. "I can look up Nar, maybe. It's also possible I can look up other members," she looked as if she'd been about to say more, but had changed her mind. "Look up other members?" Jura asked incredulously. "They're not going to list their affiliation in the directory, are they?" The thought of members of a secret, near-mythical organization, committed to the downfall of the government, listing "Cabalist" next to their name in a city directory made him actually bark a short, derisive laugh. He put his hand over his mouth, and looked over at Belah, wondering whether he'd offended her. She didn't seem to have noticed. "No, of course not. But I may be able to spot some familiar names." Belah avoided Jura's eyes, although she still had an intense look about her. "Are you kidding? In a city of, what, 8, 10 million beings? That's madness." Jura spread his arms to encompass Jury City, a city large enough that it was plainly visible from orbit. "Look, just let me try, alright?" She looked back up at him, almost daring him to challenge her. Jura gave up. "Sure, whatever you like. I think I see a Library sign up ahead, let's cross the street." Jura indicated a block ahead and across the street, where a sign with a familiar logo hung. They waited until there was a lull in traffic and darted to the far side, splashing across the momentarily empty pavement. They reached the booth, and Belah said, "Ok, give me a minute," as she slipped into the extra-tall booth. It was plainly designed for Kithree, so the controls were nearly at face-level for Belah even once she'd climbed up into the seat. She looked up at the display, which was showing a rotating Library logo in faint red 3D. "I hope there's an option for visible light," said Jura. He smirked, obviously thinking this was a fool's quest in any case. "I'm sure there is. Do you mind?" Belah leaned forward and tugged the thick privacy curtain closed, leaving Jura to either examine the crowd or watch Belah's feet dangling below the curtain. So, Jura spent 5 minutes glancing around the crowd, trying vainly to make any sense of the Kithree language. It seemed to be mostly composed of little squeaks that he could hear, although he knew from prior experience that a lot of their verbal communication happened above human hearing range. Their vision was also primarily sensitive in the infrared, which explained the signs with dully-glowing red sections. The signs must be just the opposite to the Kithree, with the human-visible sections glowing dully blue, and the dull-red sections appearing bright and vivid. Jura's stomach rumbled, reminding him that he was hungry. We're really in the wrong part of town for human food, thought Jura to himself. Kithree were insectivores, making them a gastronomical minority in the galaxy. Unfortunately, it made Kithree food particularly uninviting: they weren't too careful to keep the bugs out of any human-style food which might be served. Jura's stomach grumbled again as he thought about a nice hot sandwich, completely devoid of insect life. He also realized for the first time how cold he was, standing in the rain, in the dark, with the temperature slowly dropping in the Borot evening. He was dressed for indoors, as he hadn't planned on going beyond the space port terminal, much less being chased out of it by armed thugs. "Got it!" cried Belah from the booth. She slid back the curtain with a clatter, and pointed at a dot glowing on the map her comm was displaying. "We're about ten blocks from the.. house." She slid down from the tall seat with a smile on her face. "Then you can get your money, and I can go about my business." "Sounds good to me. Do they have food there, too?" His stomach grumbled again, as if on cue. "I'm sure they do. It's in the low-rent section of the Kithree district, which is ironically populated mostly with humans. We should be able to find something there." She picked up her bag and walked down the street the way they'd come with a new spring in her step. Jura hurried to keep up with her. "Did you find this Nar person?" he asked after they'd walked for a minute. The rain was slowly subsiding as they walked. "No, there are too many people with names which are or start with Nar. There must have been thousands of them." Her eyes roved over the city, looking for their goal. "How did you find the house?" Jura asked, after a pause. "I found a name and took down the address." Her answer struck Jura as being non-committal. "Uh-huh." Jura restrained himself from actually making the finger-spinning "I think you're crazy" gesture. Belah looked over at him sharply. She could evidently sense the gesture, whether he actually made it or not. "You don't have to follow me if you don't want to. Oh, but I forgot, how would you get your cash, then?" Her voice started out sweet, but ended up dripping with mock sweetness. "I noticed you've been pretty free with your lord coins." Jura arched his eyebrow at her at the mention of money. "Petty cash does not four hundred lords make. A girl's got to have reserves too, you know." She smiled slyly at him. "I'm sure." Jura tossed up his head, a smirk playing across his face. They walked on in silence. A minute later, they passed another social boundary, and the buildings started to look considerably more dingy and run down. The crowd also thinned out and shifted from being mostly Kithree to being mostly human. Jura felt his alert level creeping up. Humans were neither tolerant nor peaceful, particularly those living in low-rent districts. "Apparently, this area used to be very prosperous, until the Robot Wars," said Belah, her head twisting to look around like a tourist. "How do you know that? And quit gawking, you're going to get us mugged." Jura was on full alert now, considering whether he should loosen his gun's safety cord or not. "The Library had a little history section on this area," returned Belah nonchalantly. "I flipped through it quickly looking to see if there was anything relevant." She stopped looking around so obviously, but Jura could see that her eyes were still working over the buildings and the sporadic pedestrian population. As they walked, Belah consulted her comm's display again. She looked up at Jura and said, "This is it," as she drew to a halt. She waved up at the tall building she'd stopped in front of, which had a smattering of windows lit up. Jura looked back at her and said, "Great. What do we do now?" Rather than respoding, she walked over to the little intercom panel set into the wall beside the door. She ran her finger down the names, and picked one, tapping the button next to it. After a moment, the intercom crackled, and a voice said, "Sgrei residence," a little tremulously. "I was wondering if I could interest you in a subscription to the Core Times," said Belah. Jura raised his eyebrows. He kept his mouth closed, although a number of snide responses were percolating below the surface. "I'm sorry, we already subscribe to the Daily Homeworld," replied the tinny voice. Jura got the impression this Sgrei person was an elderly woman. "If I could just come up and show you some samples," said Belah in response. The voice hesitated, then said, "Well, alright. But I can't promise anything." The speaker emitted a quiet blue tone, and Belah tugged open the door. "Let's go," she said, waving Jura in with her head. "Code?" asked Jura, nodding back at the intercom. Belah rolled her eyes. "What do you think, genius?" "Right." The building's entrance hall was simple and utilitarian, suggesting this was one of the many subsidized buildings the federal government helped keep up. As usual, the government's money was either late or waylaid, leaving the building to suffer. The entrance area had obviously seen better days. They waited a surprisingly long time for the lift to come. Eventually, with an overly dramatic spate of rattling and groaning, it creaked open and admitted them. Belah punched the button for floor 12. The lift lurched, then started slowly climbing. It made a deep grinding noise, suggesting the mechanism had been left without lubrication for far too long. "Classy," said Jura, looking about the small moving chamber. "This lift is older than my ship, to judge by the... paint," he said, poking at a curl of paint flaking off the wall. "Don't knock it," said Belah, casting a sidelong glance at him. "We're out of the rain, and you'll probably get some food and a pile of cash." Jura nodded his assent, silently admitting that she was right. After what seemed like an eternity, the lift shuddered to a stop. The door trundled open to reveal a poorly-lit hallway, with a large number 12 was painted on the wall in a blocky font. The painted number had clearly once been an attempt at style, but now just seemed to show a depressingly industrial ethic. They stepped out onto the floor, which crunched and popped with random debris: food wrappers, drug paraphernalia, broken devices, building materials which had apparently fallen down. It was mostly swept to the sides by passing feet. They could hear some kind of music echoing down the hall, doubtless playing through one of the inexpensive radios available for a lord or two in markets. Overhead, lights flickered and buzzed, casting a jaundiced light on the pair as they walked down the hallway. The walls themselves were streaked with water stains. Dirty green paint peeled to reveal grey concrete underneath. Occasionally a chunk had been blown out of the wall somehow, either by weapon discharge, impact, or poor quality materials. Plainly no one was paying any money or attention to upkeep here. Jura found himself wondering what rent would be on one of these elevated hovels. Belah stopped in front of a door marked 1245. "We're here. Just let me do the talking, ok?" She looked back at Jura, making sure he'd heard her. "Sure, you do the talking. I just want my money, and I'll get out of your hair." Jura was still absently looking around the hallway. She knocked on the door, a complex series of double and triple raps. The door reverberated with a few raps in response, and she tapped twice. The door swung open to reveal an old woman, perhaps 75, her white hair swept up into a gravity defying hairdo. "Oh, why Ms. Gallen! I didn't expect to have you knocking on my door!" exclaimed the old woman. "Is anything wrong? You should have been off Borot III by now." She looked over at Jura, apparently seeing him for the first time. "And who is this?" "I'm alright. This is Jura, he's the pilot who got me here, and we owe him 400 lords for the trip. Jorvid is dead. We're both quite hungry, have you got any food?" Belah said all this at a rapid pace, so fast that Jura almost didn't catch all her words. He couldn't tell if she was trying to get it over with, or wanted to make a report as efficiently as possible. It was a stark change from her mood just a moment ago. The old woman ushered them into the main room and closed the door. The room was furnished with a small table, several simple plastic chairs and a tattered sitting-bench. Jura selected a likely looking spot on the bench and sank down, exhaling expressively. Belah remained standing, plainly somewhat agitated. The old woman looked over at Jura and said, "Mr. Jura, you can call me Ms. Sgrei." "Thank you Ms. Sgrei, nice to meet you." Jura felt like he was 13, being introduced to someone's grandmother. "But it's just Jura. My last name is Cortan, but most people just call me Jura." "Oh, that's a lovely name," said the old woman, smiling at him. "Where does it come from?" "That's the name of the state orphanage where I was raised. No one knows who my parents were, so I took the name of the orphanage," replied Jura matter-of-factly. "Well, isn't that nice," she replied, staring at Jura somewhat myopically. Jura fixed her with a strained and surprised smile in response. That was the first time anyone had referred to his being raised in a state orphanage as being "nice." Jura wondered whether she'd understood what he had just said. "Ms. Sgrei, Jura would like to be paid, so that he can leave. Do you have 400 lords we can give him?" Belah's voice betrayed tiredness. "Oh my, no," she replied, her voice dropping as if to suggest that such a thing was nearly unthinkable. "My funds were depleted in the Sonerai incident last week, I've only got a few lords left." At this point, a small panel near the door buzzed. "Excuse me," said Ms. Sgrei, and went over to it. "Sgrei residence," she said, after tapping a button on the panel. "This is the Jury City security force, officer Nalla speaking. We need to ask you a few questions, Ms. Sgrei. Please open the door." "Oh yes, just a moment, officer," the old woman had let a distinct waver enter her voice, making her sound older than she was. Ms. Sgrei motioned sharply for the other two to head for the door and move quickly. "Just let me get properly dressed, officer. I won't be but a minute. It wouldn't be proper to receive you dressed like this," she clicked off the intercom without pressing the button which would open the front entrance. In a surprisingly intense and sharp voice, she said, "You've got at least 3 minutes before they can open the door and get up here in the lift. Go!" The intercom panel buzzed again, insistently. Ms. Sgrei whipped her head around with startling speed, rattling out, "Stairs are left of the lift. Go, now!" She composed herself, and jabbed the button again. "Yes?" she said in her quavering voice. As Jura and Belah dashed out the door, they heard the intercom relaying a tinny voice: "Don't force me to invoke the building's security override, Ms. Sgrei. Please open the door and this will go much smoother." Then they were too far down the hallway to make out the old woman's response. CHAPTER 16 "Why don't they put windows in these doors?" hissed Jura. They were standing at the ground-floor door of the dingy and poorly-lit stairwell, breathing hard from their rapid descent. Jura's stomach growled again. He glanced down at his midsection as if to say, "And you're not helping!" "I don't know. Maybe because we're in a slum, and that would cost money? I'm amazed they get doors," replied Belah, waving at the peeling paint and cracked walls. "I wish we could just change our faces and waltz out there." Jura paused, struck by something. "Wait, you have a disguise in there, right?" Jura pointed at Belah's bag, which was starting to look abused. "Yes, but that doesn't help us," she scowled. "I only have the one, and for all we know, they're looking for you and not me. You're the one who fired those shots in the spaceport terminal." "True," said Jura. He paused, thoughtfully. "I wonder if we could go up a floor and get out through a window. They're not going to be looking for us on the 1st floor, right?" "Who knows? I don't even know if they posted a guard out there. Maybe we could just walk out without anyone noticing." Belah's voice was starting to betray tones of exasperation. "True again. Hmm." Jura considered. "Ah, I've got it. Hit that light switch there." Jura pointed at a switch set in the wall near the door, and Belah moved over to the switch and pressed it. The lights in the stairwell went out, leaving dim safety lights showing on the landing above them. "Ok, stand back," said Jura, motioning Belah back, away from the door. "I'm just going to peek through the door, and see what I can see." Jura eased the door latch open, and slowly pulled back the door. It made a groaning creak which Jura was certain must be audible for blocks, but when he peered out through the crack, no one was looking his direction. "Right," he whispered, looking back at Belah. "There are two guards posted." He looked back through the crack he'd opened. "They're just regular security troops. They're talking to each other. Looks like they're bored. There may be more I can't see." Jura looked back at Belah. "Let me see," she said, pushing forward. She grabbed the door, careful not to move it, lest it creak more, and pressed her face up to the crack. After a moment, she pulled her head back. "I don't think we can get out that way. There's a huge area of the entrance we can't see. If it were just the two of them, I'd say shoot 'em and take off, but we can't be sure." She made shooting motions with her hands, index fingers extended. "Let's try the first floor, then," said Jura. "We can probably find a window, and maybe there's a safety ladder we could climb down, or something soft we could jump onto." He eased the door closed. It emanated another groaning creak. She nodded, and they tiptoed back up the stairs to the next door. It was locked. "Fuck!" exclaimed Jura, in a savage whisper. "You could blow it open," suggested Belah, waving at Jura's gun. "Sure, or I could melt it permanently closed," he replied, his voice awash in sarcasm. "That would be real helpful. Do you have any explosives in your little bag of tricks?" He sounded hopeful, Belah's bag representing something of a magical artifact from which any variety of assistance might appear. "No," she replied, as if the answer should be obvious. "And anyway, I think something exploding would likely call attention to ourselves. Which, I thought, was something we didn't want." "All right, all right, no need to get testy. I'll think of something." Jura stood thoughtfully, looking at nothing as he considered their options. "You could overload your gun's pile, that'd cause an explosion." Belah mimicked a small explosion with her hands, silently saying "Boom!" with her eyebrows hiked up high. Jura couldn't tell if she was mocking him, or being serious. "I think that counts as a last-ditch measure, and I don't think we're there yet," he replied. "Besides, I don't really like the idea of being showered with radioactive shrapnel, do you?" The door latch made a faint scraping noise, and they both went silent. It was pushed open from the other side, and Jura readied his beam gun, certain the security troops had found them. "Consarn it!" exclaimed a wavering male voice. "Someone's put the damned light out again!" Belah was first to see him, a rickety-looking old man, standing there in the doorway, blinking at the darkness. He was dressed in a bathrobe and slippers, his hair flying in wild wisps from his head. "Oh, excuse me sir," she said sweetly, pushing past him. She motioned to Jura, who hadn't come out of his fighting crouch. He stood up and followed her, saying, "Pardon me," as he slid past the old man, into the dim hallway beyond the door. CHAPTER 17 At his non-descript desk, the non-descript man with the vivid scar down his face picked up his handset again. "Yes," he said into the device. He paused. He switched on the sonic barrier again. "You let her slip by again? Are you a complete incompetent? So, now she's out and loose in Jury City. And the local yokels are involved? You are an idiot. I don't know why I give you tasks you obviously can't handle, like capturing a little girl." His voice was calm as he said the words, but his face was growing increasingly red. The scar stood out like a bolt of white lightning against the ruddy backdrop of his face. He cut the connection and set the handset down again, with exaggerated care. After a moment he picked it up again, and tapped something into the comm built into his desk. Several seconds passed. Then, he said, "Let me speak with Lord Uala." CHAPTER 18 Jura found another fish bone and picked it off his coat, which was now looking considerably more spotty and stained than it had been 10 minutes ago. "That was just lovely, I can't get enough of wallowing in garbage, Ms. Gallen." He practically hissed the last two words. They were walking down the sidewalk, away from the Cabalist safehouse, and the security forces currently storming the building. Jura couldn't guess how many different reasons they had to avoid security forces now. "I didn't know what was in there, but it looked softer than jumping to the street. Just be glad no one had thrown away their razor sharp metal scraps today." Belah's voice was a study in injured innocence. "I'm sure the safety ladder 10 meters away would have been far too much work to reach," said Jura, his voice dripping acid. His clothing was emananting a distinct scent of yesterday's lunch. Possibly several-days-ago's lunch. "Did you seriously think climbing along that ledge would be safe? It was coming down in chunks." Belah sounded incredulous, looking over at Jura for the first time in minutes, a matching expression on her face. She didn't smell any better than Jura, so the vitriolic questioning struck her as a bit unfair. "We could have found a way into that flat. Like kicking down the door." Jura's voice was savage. "I still think my method worked fine. We're here, we're whole, and we're not in manacles. I count that a nearly complete success." Belah turned back to look down the sidewalk with a "humph." "Fine," said Jura, obviously stewing. They walked for a half minute in silence. Suddenly, Jura stopped and turned to Belah, gripping her arm, with a fierce and angry look on his face. "Look," he said, quiet but intense. "I didn't sign up to be a shadowy freedom fighter. I'm not here to topple any governments, or overthrow any dictators, or make people change their underwear. I want my 400 lords, and I want to go back to my ship and get back to hauling cargo. I don't want to continue getting chased by glorified Uala Scouts and minor hoodlums. Particularly not if they're going to fire ionizing radiation at me and generally try to make me stop living." "You did shoot first," said Belah, somewhat reflectively. She was pointedly ignoring his angry tone. "That's not the point," said Jura, his voice full of sudden exasperation. "The point is, I'm done. Give me my 400 lords and let me get about my business." He was very nearly speaking through clenched teeth to keep himself from shouting. Belah's eyes snapped to Jura's. "Ok, number one, let go of me," she said, her voice cold. She looked pointedly at Jura's hand on her arm. He let it go, his anger subsiding now that he'd said his peace. "Number two," she continued, in cold angry tones, "I don't have your money. I told you that on Kalinar IV. Jorvid, my uncle, is dead. If he had 400 lords to give you, he doesn't any more. Maybe you'd like to claim it from the impound locker at the security station?" She paused for a split second, then continued without giving Jura a chance to respond, her voice heating up. "I didn't think so. Number three, you have a choice. If that money is so important to you, you can stick with me, and I'll get it to you, one way or another. If it's not that important, I suggest you hail a hovercab back to the spaceport," she pointed savagely to her right, "and see if the quivering shuttle employees will let you back on a ship after blowing a hole or two in the wall. My guess is they won't. What do you think? The way I see it, you're stuck with me until I can get you your cash, and you can pay us to smuggle you onto a shuttle." She smiled a savage smile, daring Jura to question her logic. Jura remained silent, looking away from her. "Now, are you going to help me find my people, or not?" Belah looked pointedly at Jura, who was looking anywhere but at her. After a moment, he looked back at her. "Yes. Fine. But let's be clear. I'm not doing this out of any desire to overthrow anyone or any thing. I'm just doing this to facilitate the completion of our business deal." The anger was gone from his voice, replaced by resignation. "Fine. Let's keep going," Belah replied, her voice returning to normal tones. "And maybe less talk about overthrowing anyone, ok? This is a public street, we don't have any idea who might be listening." Belah turned back to face the direction they had been going, and resumed walking. After a moment of staring after her dumbly, Jura swiped his hand down his face, and set off after her. CHAPTER 19 "Two suspects at large in Kithree district. One male human, approximately 1 meter 80, dark red coat, long black hair, medium skin. The other is female human, 1 meter 60, shoulder-length brown hair, light skin. Female is wearing light grey jacket, or possibly dirty white jacket. Suspects should be considered armed. Deadly force is authorized if they resist." The hovercar's comm squawked as the notice ended. Officer Eulas of the Jury City security force opened one eye, surveying the street for a moment. Seeing no people matching the description, he went back to his eyes-closed, nearly-asleep position. Moments later, Jura and Belah rounded the corner and passed in front of Eulas's parked hovercar, their pace quickening after they spotted it. Officer Eulas rolled to the side, trying to get a bit more comfortable in the stiffly padded driver's seat. He swatted idly at a small insect that was attacking his ear. His partner, a short Rongan, returned to the cruiser, his prehensile claws laden with steaming food and drink containers. The little lizard looked into the window of the cruiser, rising up on his toes. "Oh come on, Eulas!" he cried out, when he saw the overweight human asleep in the control seat. The short upright lizard gulped at the air, his neck-flaps fluttering briefly in annoyance. Eulas jolted awake, exclaiming, "I'm awake!" He glanced over and saw the Rongan's crest in the bottom of the window-frame, and said, "Oh, it's you, young Karatenal. Pass in that curry." Karatenal gave his neck-flaps a settling flutter, and stepped back as the door was opened by his partner. CHAPTER 20 Belah came back into the little room with a curious expression on her face. "I have good news, and I have bad news," she said, as she lowered herself to the bench. From the narrow bed, Jura said, "Oh, please, let's hear the bad news first. Then you can cheer me up with the good news." He didn't look up or move his arm, which was covering his eyes. "Alright. The bad news is that we need to leave Borot III as soon as possible." Belah looked down at her hands as she spoke. "That doesn't sound all that bad to me," he said, waving his other arm around to take in the cramped room they'd found for the evening. It was only horizontally cramped, of course, with plenty of vertical room for the Kithree who were expected to sleep here. "It is bad, because of that 'as soon as possible' part. My contact said that a security bulletin just went out about us, and any security officer who sees us is likely to arrest us, and they've been authorized to use deadly force. They may be tracking us to this hotel room right now." She looked up at the lanky man lying on the narrow bed across the small room from her. Jura just groaned, then said, "Ok, what's the good news, then?" "My contact told me who can pay you the remainder of your fee. Unfortunately, she's in the Jurrandurchar system, on an orbiting station. You've probably heard of it: the Jurrandurchar Bazaar." Jura showed his first interest, moving his arm and looking up from the bed. "Yeah, I've heard of that," he said, his voice sounding unexpectedly positive. "I've been there a couple of times, someone always has goods which need to go to or from there. It's a great place to have a small cargo ship." "Then you won't mind having to go there to get your money," said Belah, with a hopeful tone in her voice. "I..." Jura paused, then continued. "No, I don't, but the fee's going up. Getting to Jurrandurchar isn't free. I'll need 600 when we get there." "Wait, 600 more, or 600 total?" Belah's voice was full of sudden suspicion. "Oh, total. No, just 200 more, it's not that far." Jura's voice was concilliatory, not wanting to be misunderstood. "Ok," said Belah, continuing in a more reasonable tone. "That's about what we were figuring. It'll be there for you." "Great, let's go!" Jura sat up, suddenly full of energy. Borot III had not been the resounding success he'd been hoping for. "Not quite so fast," said Belah, holding up a hand. "I've got a disguise for myself, but we have to do something with you, unless you want to be arrested as soon as we show up at the terminal." "Hmm. Clothes shouldn't be too hard," Jura said to himself. He walked over to the mirror to examine himself. He struck a pose, raising one eyebrow rakishly. "I was thinking about your hair," replied Belah, making a scissors motion with her fingers. "No!" Jura paled, spinning to look directly at her, rather than her reflection. "It'll be a very effective disguise. You can buy a long black wig if you want to preserve the look." "But, this took me years to grow! I'll be laughed out of the... the pilot's guild." He didn't want to name the criminal organization for whom he did a lot of smuggling, and which made up the bulk of his friends. "Look, we have to do something, and quickly. The longer you're running around with that braided black telltale down your back, the more likely you're going to get picked up. In any case, it's going to take a day or two to get you a new ID that'll pass muster with the shuttle people." Jura thought for a moment, then looked up. "I've got it. I'll dress up like a Roolan pilgrim. They cover their heads anyway, you can never tell how much hair they have. That should be different enough that no one will spot me, too." "That's great, but where are you going to get the belts and sashes? Those are only made by the Roolan church." Roolan pilgrims were famous for wearing a plethora of belts, sashes, medals, necklaces, and other adornments, each one denoting some part of the pilgrim's path completed. "I'll just say it's my first pilgrimmage. Where do first-time pilgrims get them?" Belah's response was matter-of-fact. "Good point. Let's do it." She stood up. CHAPTER 21 Jura located an all-hours religious supply store in the directory. "Your religious needs, met ANY time!" was the store's tagline in their directory ad. "It's perpetually amazing to me what you can find in a large city," he remarked upon finding it. "I bet I could find an all-night pet store selling Jundan Dragons, if I wanted. Or a place to buy a new spaceship, totally legit." He shook his head in wonder. Belah emerged from the 'fresher in her 40 year old persona. Since she'd had time, she even applied the wrinkling make-up, for a considerably more convincing look. "That's amazing," said Jura, looking over at her. "Pity you can't do me up that way." "Well, I could give you wrinkles, at least. Might not be a bad idea, in case they got a picture of your face. You have to remember to act older, though." "I think I could do that," he replied, straightening as he tried to imagine himself 20 years older. He stooped over after a moment, and waved an imaginary cane in the air. "You kids get offa my toola grass!" he cried in a wavering, toothless voice. "Ha ha," said Belah. She motioned him over. She picked up a bottle of fluid, and applied it to Jura's face with a deft hand, concentrating around his eyes and mouth. She gave him instructions like, "Now squint" or "Smile, then frown," to determine where the wrinkles should go. After 10 minutes, he looked 30 years older, in his late 50s. "I wish I had some hair silver, your black hair looks fake now," she said when she was done. "Where'd you learn to do this?" asked Jura as he looked at himself in the mirror. He turned his head from side to side, admiring the play of light over his newly-intricate features. "It's part of my training," she said simply. "What training is that, exactly?" Jura looked over at her, curiosity warring with caution in his eyes. "Or do I want to know?" "I think you don't want to know." Belah smiled. "Ok. Let's get out of here. I'll be considerably happier once I'm back on my ship." He stood up from looking in the mirror and grabbed his jacket, pulling it on. Actually, Jura did quite want to know what Belah had been trained for, and what training she'd had. However, he decided to press for more information later, when he wasn't expecting the security forces to break down their door at any moment. "Now, tuck your hair down your jacket, that'll at least pass casual scrutiny." Belah moved behind him and pulled his coat partway down his shoulders, and dropped the heavy braid between coat and shirt. Hair successfully tucked out of the way (after doubling it up so it didn't stick out the bottom of his jacket), they gathered their things up, and quickly left the room. Jura transferred the room's fee as they walked out of the hotel, tapping keys on his comm. A hovercab was hailed in short order, and Jura gave the driver the address he'd found for the religious shop. Belah cut him off, though, and gave an alternate address. "Why'd you do that?" He looked over at her, an angry response percolating in his head. Belah's response was calm and collected. "You'll see when we get there. We can run one errand first, since it'll take a while to process." "Oh, right," said Jura, calming down. He realized that his fake ID didn't need to have Roolan robes for the costume to be valid. The trip passed quickly, Jury City flowing by outside the floating vehicle. The driver dropped them off in a clean but sparsely lit neighborhood. Native Borot trees lined the streets, standing purple and sinuous against the faintly glowing sky. Jura was put in mind of gigantic fruit vines. Belah glanced at the map she'd pulled up on her comm, and indicated that they needed to walk up the street a bit. They walked a few meters, and she pointed into a doorway. She rang the intercom, and went through another verbal code exchange, this time about an article of clothing left behind after a party. The door was opened, and they went up. "Ms. Galen! So nice to finally meet you!" A short man with straight, jaw-length brown hair met them at the door. He was dressed in simple business robes, with a tiny Cabalist pin on the left breast. It would have been easy to mistake for the Federation symbol, which it closely mimicked. He was very prim, his speech clipped, almost formal. "I am Yidleen, as you know. This must be Mr. Cortan. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Cortan, we've been learning of your exploits." The little man bustled back into the room. Jura looked over at Belah and mouthed the words, "My exploits?" with an unhappy look on his face. Belah flapped her hands downward, indicating she'd tell him later. Yidleen indicated a chair, and had Jura sit. "Now, are you made up as you want to be for your ID?" He bustled around behind Jura, smoothing the taller man's hair and clothing. "I'm intending to get Roolan robes, but yes, I'm otherwise alright." Jura looked back into the prim face of Yidleen. "Do you want some silver for your hair? It would complement the wrinkles nicely." Yidleen smiled a little smile, having spotted the fake wrinkles creasing Jura's face. "Oh yes, if you have some," said Belah, her eyes lighting up as she remembered. "And do you have a small amount I might take with me?" "Of course, just a moment," said the little man, turning back to Jura. "Mr. Cortan, please take off your jacket, as it's been in the descriptions of you on the security bulletins." While Jura took off his jacket and laid it aside, Yidleen had grabbed up a small tube of paste and a tiny brush. "Hold still please," he said. He turned to Belah and said, "Do you think a streak, or temples?" He waved at Jura's long black hair. "Temples are certainly more believable, but a streak could be a handy diversion for the descriptions." She paused, her hand on her chin, pondering as she looked down at Jura's hair. "I think a streak," Belah said after a moment. Yidleen nodded, and quickly unbraided Jura's laser-straight hair. "Now, Mr. Cortan," said the little man as he started brushing paste through Jura's hair. "This color is somewhat permanent, in that it can only be removed with the neutralizer, which I'll give you in a moment. This will allow you to live with a streak for a considerable amount of time, if necessary. Just see that you don't get any of this on your clothing -- it can't be removed from non-protein fibers. It'll dry in a few seconds, after which the color is indistinguishable from normal hair except in a forensics lab. I trust you won't wind up with any parts in a forensics lab, Mr. Cortan?" Yidleen's face crinkled into a smile as he finished brushing the substance onto Jura's hair. When Yidleen was done, Jura stood up, and walked over to a mirror indicated by the shorter man. He looked in at himself. A streak of light silver hair sprouted near the front of his head, running all the way to the tips of his hair. Jura grinned, feeling the false wrinkles stretching out on his face, as he turned his head side to side, to admire the strange-looking face staring back at him. "Excellent, the effect is powerful, isn't it." "Indeed it is. I think Ms. Galen called it correctly. Now, if you will sit over here, Mr. Cortan." The prim little man waved at a low chair surrounded by the glittering sensors of a 3D recorder. "I suggest you leave your hair down and unbraided. Please sit still. Just move the streak a bit to the front... Ah, there, perfect." Yidleen operated the controls of the 3D recorder, capturing an image of Jura's faintly smiling face. "How is this, Mr. Cortan?" The small man turned a projection to face Jura. It showed an old man with long black hair, and a silver streak just right of the center of his forehead. "Frightening," he conceded. He wondered if he'd look like that at 55. "I think it will work well." Yidleen started bustling around, and generally giving the impression that he needed to be left alone. "I'll get to work on your new ID right away. With any luck, I can get the Library updated before tonight's push to other systems. If you will please excuse me," the prim little man motioned them out of hte room. "I have a great deal of work to do very quickly. Mr. Cortan, I will supply you with a detailed backstory when I see you again tomorrow." Yidleen pushed them politely out of the room, and through the door. Belah tossed back a few thank-yous as they left. "Now what," said Jura, as they stood outside Yidleen's building. The air was crisp and cool. The rain, which had let off, had left the world smelling clean. Jura inhaled deeply. "We wait. Any business you need to take care of which doesn't require you to be Jura Cortan, young man of mystery?" "I guess I could order resupply for the ship. It'll be three more days to Jurrandurchar at least." He paused. "Speaking of resupply, I still haven't eaten anything. Let's find some food that isn't alive, and eat it." CHAPTER 22 The day passed more or less without incident. Jura was able to order fresh supplies for the ship, and he found the Roolan robes at a religious supply, making a fairly convincing show of piety to the shop owner. Finally the hour arrived to retrieve his new ID. They took a hovercab to Yidleen's building, several packages in tow. "How do you like it, Mr. Cortan?" Yidleen smiled, then corrected himself, "I mean, Mr. Tschan? You looked a little Mithrian in the picture, so I gave you a matching name. Here is your backstory." He transferred a document of several pages to Jura's comm. "I suggest you commit it to memory, then destroy that copy." He waggled his finger at Jura and said, "it's no good having someone find your history summarized in a little document!" Jura thanked him, and asked what he owed. "Ah no, Mr. Tschan. There is no charge for now. We may call upon you later." The little man smiled twinklingly at the two, nodded his head, and gently closed the door. Jura stood speechless before the door, his response dead on his lips. He realized he'd been set up, after a fashion. His face darkened. "Oh come on, Jura, it's not that bad," said Belah. She was smiling sweetly. "You mean the way I wouldn't have owed anyone if I'd told you to rot in a gutter back on Kalinar?" His voice was quiet, but the tone was angry. He turned and stalked off down the hallway. Belah caught up to him as he neared the door to the street. "Come on Jura, it's not that bad. You told me before that you owed 400 lords a month on your ship, that's a huge amount of money! How would you have paid it if you didn't ferry me here?" "By hauling cargo that doesn't talk back!" snapped Jura over his shoulder. "No one tricks Jura Cortan into owing favors. Find your own way to Jurrandurchar, and get me my 600 before I sell all your names to the Fed!" "Wait! Jura!" Belah ran to catch up to him. She grabbed his arm and yanked him around. "You're being foolish again. No one tricked you, you should have known a service like that wouldn't come free. In fact, you should have a good idea how much it costs -- I did a little bit of checking on you, and you've got a very colorful past. I don't think the Federation government will trust anything you say, even if you did have names which could get us in trouble. "Look, let's call the debts even. You don't get your 600 lords, and you don't owe us anything. That's a cheap price for the service you got, and you know it." She looked into his eyes, trying to see if he was accepting the sense of her words. Finally he relented a bit. "No," he replied, voice still tinged with anger. "But I have a counter deal for you. I don't get my 400, I don't owe you anything, and I take you to Jurrandurchar for 200." Belah considered for a moment, then said, "150 and you've got a deal." "Fine. Let's get off this stupid dirtball." He scowled and turned away, walking through the door and out onto the street. CHAPTER 23 Back aboard Callie's Web, Jura's mood had improved considerably. The supplies he'd ordered had been delivered, tethered to the ship, before they'd arrived. All they had to do was plot a course and blast out of orbit. "You ready, whatever-your-name-is?" asked Jura, half jokingly, as they came in through the airlock. Outside, the shuttle maneuvered away from his ship, little squirts from its maneuvering jets audible by the pressure waves hitting the hull. Jura dragged in the supply shipment. "My name is Belah, calm down. Yes, I'm going to go get this stuff off my face, unless you need me up here." She traced the wrinkles which creased her face. "No, go ahead. As soon as I get us pointed in the right direction, I'll follow suit. But I want out of here, wrinkles or no." Jura quickly shoved the supplies to the cargo hold and strapped them down. He walked briskly back to the front of the ship, and ducked into the bridge. Belah went back to the 'fresher chamber, while Jura jockeyed the ship onto the right course. He increased the throttles, and the engines rumbled to life. Quadrillions upon quadrillions of charged particles screamed out of the engines at relativistic speeds, as they accelerated the 400 ton ship out of the orbit of Borot III. Jura and Belah felt a faint shift in gravity as the inertial damper exerted itself to keep them standing upright. Finally, Jura thought to himself. I'm through getting shot at. CHAPTER 24 The non-descript man spoke into his handset. "You are certain you tagged the right ship?" He paused. "Good. Follow them, and when they hit orbit this time, get the girl! You understand? No more prancing about with schoolboys either. Hire some real muscle." He slammed down the handset. CHAPTER 25 "So, really, what are you trained for?" Jura looked impishly at Belah across the tiny table. According to ship's time, they were eating dinner, although it was breakfast-time on Borot III. She avoided his gaze, then said, "Do you really want to know?" Her eyes showed apprehension. "Yeah, I'm really curious now. You can fight, you can disguise yourself and others, yet you don't have any special control over your emotions, and you're not even old enough to vote." "You can't guess?" She looked across the table at him, plainly nervous with where the conversation was headed. "Are you the chosen dictatorial assassin? Come on, what is it?" He paused, waiting for a response, but she didn't say anything. He looked startled. "What, you mean you are? Oh, shit." The expression on his face crashed as the gravity of what he'd just guessed sunk in. Belah remained silent, gazing into his eyes. Her face was serious. "Oh shit," said Jura again, his tone high-pitched, nearly hysterical. "I'm dead, aren't I. I'm as good as dead. Either you're going to kill me, or the Federation is going to toss me in a brig for ten thousand years. Ohhh..." Jura dropped his head into his hands, dinner forgotten. "No, no, I'm not going to kill you," Belah tried to sound soothing, but it came out sounding hollow. She put her hand on his arm to soothe him, but he flinched away as if she were on fire. "I mean, no one outside the organization is meant to know, but you're pretty much one of us now, right?" The last sentence rang with the hope that she'd found a way out. "No!" Jura practically exploded, looking up. "Didn't you understand that before, when I explicitly said, 'I don't want to do any overthrowing of governments?' That pretty much means I don't want to be a Cabalist! Was it hard to understand!? Was I unclear? Oh my god!" His voice reverberated around the small metal room. He turned around and got up, hands to his head. "I guess I don't have much choice now, do I. You know what I said before, about being tricked into debt? That still stands!" He spun around again. "Why didn't you stop me before I guessed that? Dammit!" Belah just sat, gazing down at the table mournfully. She looked like she was about to start crying. He looked back, and nearly exploded again. "What the hell are they doing, sending a schoolgirl to kill the most powerful man in the galaxy? What kind of sick organization is this?" He stopped again, and spun around and out the door. A moment later he leaned back in. "Do you know what happens if Uala dies!? He's got a crowd of 10 cronies who will murder each other to assume power, and there are 100 other men ready to murder them! It's going to be chaos, and that's probably not going to be an improvement! For you, or me, or anyone else! Or do you people have some weird belief that chaos and entropy will save us all?" Belah looked up to refute the point. "No," she started before Jura cut her off again. "And once one of Uala's cronies is in power, do you think he's going to be any better? No, he's probably going to be worse! What if Cho'orna wins out? He's the kind of guy who likes blowing up planets that aren't paying enough in taxes, just to set an example! Never mind what he does to worlds, organizations or people who are actually against him! This is utter madness!" Jura was finally running out of steam. Defensively, Belah said, "Look, you act as if we don't have a plan. We've got an excellent plan..." Jura cut her off again. "No! I don't want to hear it!" He paused for a fraction of a second, suddenly looking up at the ceiling as if a predatory bird was about to swoop down on him. "Oh, shit, the recorder! Look, don't say anything more about this, alright? Nothing. No more." He pointed back toward the bridge. "Just like all ships, I've got a data recorder aboard, which records two days of audio, among other things. I can't get into it to remove the audio, so you just pray to whatever god you think will be effective that we don't run into trouble in the next two days. Ok? Nothing. No more. None of it!" He paced furiously, waving his arms about as he was talking. The space was small enough that his pacing was more reminiscent of twirling in place than pacing back and forth, and his hand repeatedly bounced off the bulkhead as he was gesticulating. Belah sat quietly at the table, nearly in tears. Jura finally fell silent and just paced. She looked up at him and said, "No more?" Her voice was unsteady. "Then you stop asking, ok?" Jura stopped and looked down at her, surprised. She continued, "You asked. I answered. I'm sorry you didn't like the answer you got." She got up and pushed past him, now openly crying. She half-ran down the corridor, and he heard the plastic door to her cabin close. "Oh, hell," he said to himself. [left off here] CHAPTER 26 The remained of the trip to Jurrandurchar passed quietly. Jura spent most of his time in his cabin, playing his callie, or watching insipid 3D dramas set during the Robot Wars. He decided to leave the streak in his hair, since he liked it so well. Belah, meanwhile, kept to her own cabin. For all that she was a trained assassin, she was also an 18 year old girl. No amount of training could overcome that. She was quiet most of the time; Jura didn't know what she was doing to pass the time. They met at mealtimes, but that was about it. Little discussion was traded back and forth. The nav computer kept them on course, and Jura was pleased when they reached the Jurrandurchar gravity well without incident. The last thing he needed was another run-in with some imperious Federal officer sniffing for drugs. They arrived in orbit around Jurrandurchar IV after traveling a day and a half from the jump point outside the solar system. The Bazaar was a large toroidal space station floating in orbit around the fourth planet. Their assigned parking orbit put them about 1/4 revolution from the station. Jurrandurchar IV was a beautifully swirled gas giant. Intermingling bands of red and white rushed across its surface, giving it an almost candy-like appearance. The Bazaar had originally been established as a scoop-mining base, harvesting a variety of rare gasses from the planet's outer atmosphere. Over time, the station had grown to be a trading post as much as mining post. Then, about 150 years ago, the leaders of the station realized that they were making more money from taxing the trades than they were from mining. The mining operation was sold off to a subsidiary company, and the Bazaar was born. Now, it was a premiere marketplace for half the products of the galaxy. You could buy almost anything there, and almost anything which you might want to sell would find a buyer at the Bazaar. Being a kind of crossroads, the Bazaar also naturally attracted all kinds of beings who wanted access to a cross-section of the galaxy's population. Charlatans, huxters, shysters, prophets, madmen, geniuses, inventors, pickpockets, mafia men, warlords, slavers, Federation spies, non-Federation spies, drug traffickers and drug producers could all be found there, among many others. Naturally most of the beings there were just there to trade. That didn't preclude many of them from conducting one or more side-businesses, if the profit was to be found. By the time Callie's Web had made orbit, Jura and Belah had made up, and were on friendly terms again. Belah had established contact with one of the Cabalist members there, and they'd arranged a meeting time and place. This time, Belah kept her baton and bolo handy, and Jura rigged his sidearm's safety cord so a quick tug would loose it. Jura still had an uncomfortable feeling about all the thugs and security forces on Borot III, and he had no idea who had murdered Belah's uncle at the pub. Belah seemed unconcerned, although Jura put that down at least partly to inexperience. She honestly didn't seem aware of what the galaxy could throw at a person, despite all her training. "Do you have everything?" he asked, as they were preparing for the shuttle's arrival. "Yes, it's all in here," she patted the bag, which showed a few tears and abrasions, but had cleaned up nicely. "You have that tube of hair silver, right?" she asked him in turn. "Yes, thank you. I'll have to get more of that. Perhaps I can find it here." "I'm sure you can. The Bazaar is supposed to have just about anything you could want." "Yeah, it seems likely," he replied. At this point, the light on the main airlock flashed, signaling that the shuttle was safely docked outside. Jura cycled the inner door open and they stepped in. Jura felt a little silly going with her, but figured it was worth it for the 150 lord income. Besides, he wanted to get down to the Bazaar and see if he couldn't find his next job down there. He knew of at least three bars which were explicitly designed to facilitate such transactions. The outer door cycled open. Jura looked up into the barrels of 8 beam rifles. CHAPTER 27 "I told you, I'm just her hired ride! There's no reason to hold me!" Jura gestured with his bound hands at Belah, who looked at him balefully, her mouth covered by a gag. "Gag him. I'm sick of his shit," said Hurran, the tall man from Borot III. One of the mercenaries roughly tied a gag around Jura's mouth. The merc sneered in Jura's face. Jura rolled his eyes, which earned him an open hand hard across his face. "Don't roll your eyes at me, you little murderer," said the merc in a gravelly voice. Hurran stood in front of his two prisoners. "Lucky for you, I'm in a good mood today. You idiots didn't check for transmitters before you left Borot III, and we've been following you ever since. Too easy! The Agent is going to be pleased. Maybe he'll even let you live." Hurran chuckled to himself. Jura saw through the forward port that they were headed in to the Bazaar, and gave himself some hope that they could escape from whoever this person was. The mercenaries had called him Hurran, which didn't mean anything to Jura, but he was glad to have any information at all. Obviously he was the same person who'd tried to jump them on Borot III, and equally obviously he was far more than a local thug. Jura was starting to question whether all this was really worth 150 lords. The shuttle docked with a thud and a clunk. The piloting was not expert, and Jura guessed that Hurran had gotten his own pilot in favor of the skilled shuttle pilot who would normally be flying this little ship. Jura and Belah looked at each other. Belah's face still reflected anger that Jura had tried, in effect, to separate himself from her. Jura shrugged as if to say, "what can you do?" Belah looked exasperated. Jura was suddenly glad they were both strapped in. With a hissing equalization of pressures, the shuttle's airlock cycled open to Bazaar air. It was quiet beyond the airlock, clearly some kind of quarantine or customs setup. Hurran's men jerked Jura and Belah upright and shoved them forward through the lock, menacing rifles close behind. Jura wondered what the customs officials, if there were any, would think of two people being hustled out of a shuttle at gun point. Then he remembered that damn near everything was either legal or ignored in the Bazaar. People being hustled at gun point most likely ranked in the lower 50% of the weirdest things any given customs official would see in a day. And so they were hustled at gun point into the swirling cacophony of the Bazaar. Jura identified 20 different races in the first 10 seconds, and spotted several other beings he couldn't identify. He couldn't tell whether they were sentient or some kind of livestock breed. Jura was in line behind Belah, although each had a mercenary behind them, goading them on. Hurran led the pack, breaking through the crowd like a sailing ship crashes through ocean waves. Jura considered whether he could make a break for it, and realized that he couldn't do it without splitting off from the group and losing Belah. It also struck him as being unlikely he could do it without getting shot. As they were passing by what was apparently the squawking bird aisle, Hurran suddenly stopped and leaned over, cursing loud enough to be heard even over the din of thousands of terrified avians. He drew his hand back as if to swat at something or someone, then froze. At the same moment, the crowd directly around the procession ceased its brownian motion, and each mercenary found himself staring down the collimator of a beam gun. Each gun was wielded by a different type of person. In fact, the entire diversity of the Bazaar seemed to have suddenly coalesced into a rescue party. Hands reached out, and Jura and Belah were rolled away from the mercenaries. Jura's merc apparently decided to try stopping the rescue from happening: Jura heard a high-pitched whine followed immediately by a thump as the man fell to the ground. Amazingly, the Bazaar swirled on around the tableau. As quickly as it had started, it was over, and the rescuers were blending back into the crowd, with Jura and Belah in tow. The mercenaries who were still standing milled into a tight knot, suddenly unsure of anyone in the crowd. CHAPTER 28 Safely ensconced into a small, relatively quiet office off the Bazaar, Jura and Belah had their bonds removed by the small crowd of beings. One of them, a male Rongan, stood up when they were done, and said, "Welcome Ms. Galen, and Mr. Cortan." The small, frightening-looking lizard-man nodded at Belah. "We got your signal Ms. Galen, and came as quickly as we could assemble. An excellent thought, to arrange a deadman switch on your comm." He turned to Jura. "Mr. Cortan, we have your 150 lords, as was agreed." The lizard-man turned to a medium-height woman whose hair was shaved into the complex swirls currently in vogue near the Core. "Parangee, if you would do the honors," the little lizard waved between the human and Jura. Parangee handed Jura three tubes, each made of plastic but very heavy. "150 lords, in 50 lord tubes," she said as she handed over the tubes. "Thank you," said Jura, accepting the wrapped coins. He slid them into an interior pocket in his pilgrim's robes. "Mr. Cortan, we have important matters to discuss with Ms. Galen, but Parangee had something she wanted to discuss with you." The little lizard took Belah by the arm and turned toward a door. Parangee turned back to Jura. "Mr. Cortan," she started. "Please, just call me Jura. The only people who call me 'Mr. Cortan' are arresting me," said Jura. "Very well, Jura. As you are no doubt aware at this point, we are an organization with a particular goal in mind. There's no need to go into it at this point, I'm sure you understand the gist, if not the details," she looked at Jura, indicating that she was obliquely asking a question. Jura nodded his understanding, and said, "go on." He was debating whether he should immediately stand up and declare he didn't want to be part of their intrigues, but decided to listen to what this woman had to say. "We always have need of skilled pilots. You have proven yourself to be skilled at both piloting and as a personal protector. We would like to hire you," here Parangee paused, looking for reaction. Jura gave none, just nodding to show he was listening. "...as Ms. Galen's pilot and bodyguard." Parangee paused again. After a moment, Jura said, "what kind of a deal are you offering? I'm not interested in your group's goals." "No, we understand that. We're prepared to offer you one of two deals. The first is essentially to become our employee. We would pay you on a monthly basis, and you would be expected to be on call and ready for action most of the time. Of course, expenses such as supplies and ship maintenance would be handled separately. "The second deal we would be willing to offer is to hire you on a per- trip or per-job basis. Rates will be determined and fixed, leaving you to cover unforeseen circumstances on your own." "Ok, there's the work. What's the pay?" Jura looked skeptical. "We are prepared to offer 800 lords per month for monthly employment. As I said, expenses will be handled aside from that sum. For a per-trip basis, we would pay one and a half times your current cargo rate. That was about 400 for a typical trip according to our research, so we would offer about 600. Of course, more precise rates for distance, time and expediency will be discussed later." Jura sat back in his chair. "What limits are placed on my taking outside work if we go per-trip?" He was rubbing his chin speculatively. "No limitations, but of course if you're busy with someone else, we can't use you. We believe our rates are extremely competetive, and it would be in your best interest to remain free for us." "Right." Jura nodded at the truth of the statement. They settled into the discussion and went into minutiae such as frequency of work, the finer points of payscale, and so on. After 30 minutes of talking, Jura said, "those are very interesting offers. I'm not prepared to decide right now, but I can tell you in 5 hours. Is that soon enough?" He felt strange to be making such a legitimate-business type deal, even if it was with an organization committed to the messy downfall of the government. "Of course. Here is my contact code," Parangee, all business, handed over a small scrap of paper with a series of digits on it. "Please contact me when you've made a decision. I trust it will be one we all desire." They stood up, shook hands, and bowed. Jura felt even more oddly out of place, but covered it. He quickly checked over his personal effects, and found himself intact except for his sidearm, which had been taken by Hurran's men. "Thank you, I'll be in touch. Can you direct me to a good clothing dealer, and a gun shop?" Parangee named two shops, and Jura was on his way. CHAPTER 29 The Jurrandurchar Bazaar was a huge swirling cacophony in a number of ways. First, it was loud, in the classical cacophonic sense. Next, it was a visual jumble: tens of different races, subraces and nationalities dressed in a myriad of styles and colors, plus advertising displays ranging from hastily scrawled notes on bulletin boards through vast holographic spectacles hovering over shops. Shops themselves were wildly diverse, from the peddler with a blanket displaying a handful of goods, through to enormous buildings with professional, glitzy displays. Finally, there were the smells. Food from all corners of the galaxy was available here, each producing a signature smell. There were also stock animals, medicinal and chemical merchants, and a variety of other distinctly unpleasant olfactory sensations. Jura walked through the jumble with purpose -- wandering through looking at things like a tourist was a good way to lose a variety of possessions to pickpockets. As he walked, though, he pondered the deal he'd been offered. He ignored merchants hawking their wares and unconsciously avoided knots of haggling beings, as he pursued his thoughts. After walking past it several times, Jura spied the clothing shop Parangee had recommended. It was a casual, frantically laid-back place. The whole shop gave off the impression of trying very hard to be as cool and calm as possible. "Ah, welcome sir!" a short, dumpy alien waddled forward, its eyestalks about level with Jura's chest. He finally recalled the species' name: Hoolaboola. It looked up at him, and said, "how may I be of assistance? We offer all the latest fashion from the core worlds..." Jura held up his hand. "I'm just looking for something basic. Understated but nice." "Of course, sir. If you'll just follow me?" The little Hoolaboola waddled off to the left, and directed Jura at a rack of grey and black clothing. "This is our Understatement Collection, a lovely respite from the jarring clashing colors favored by the youth of today, uh, sir." The pudgy alien was distracted by another patron having wandered in. "Sir, I believe you'll find what you're looking for right here. Would you mind if I help that customer?" It indicated the person who'd just walked in, desire to help one or the other person obviously warring in its face. "Of course not, thank you," said Jura, glad to be rid of the cloying little being. He turned and started rifling through the racks, finding almost exactly what he'd been imagining: a sort of cross between a robe and a jacket, split in the back to form two swooping wings when he walked. He selected a grey jacket with a dark red vertical bar down the back, and down each of the front halves. He also found a matching vertical-bar shirt in white, with a grey bar. He considered pants for a few minutes, and finally selected a smart-looking pair in the same dark red as the bar on the jacket, with black pinstripes. "Oh, an excellent choice, sir!" The little Hoolaboola waddled back over, clasping its little hands in feigned rapture. "You have a fine eye for coordinating sir. Your, uh, pilgrimage is... over, sir?" The alien looked innocently concerned, indicating Jura's robes. "Oh, yes. It wasn't really for me." He lifted an edge of a robe and let it fall limply back down. "I can offer you a few lords credit for the robes, if you would like, sir." Jura smiled, knowing what was coming next. "Yes, I would like that." He loved haggling. The next 10 minutes consisted of a detailed haggling session, which ended up with Jura getting 2 lords for the robes, and spending 35 on the clothes he'd selected. Not a fabulous deal, but he also didn't feel ripped off. He changed into the new raiment, and handed the unnecessary robes to the proprietor. "Excellent doing business with you, sir," the little being called after Jura as he left. "Be sure to recommend us to your friends!" it nearly shouted, as Jura blended in with the crowd. He walked on, heading for the gun shop, when his eye was snagged by a stand selling antique musical instruments. Jura had had a fascination for old instruments for as long as he could remember. He was introduced to them in a poorly-produced, but nonetheless fascinating, documentary on the orphanage's ratty 3D projector. It was part of some cultural education program or another, which the administrators hoped would help improve their charges. It had certainly had an impact on Jura, although no one else in the place had been even slightly moved. He'd watched it over and over, until he had the entire narration memorized. He saved for years, and hunted in every shop and marketplace he came across before he'd found the callie which now hung in his cabin back on the ship. There were plenty of callies around, but they were either in good shape and too expensive, or falling apart and within his budget. Finding one which was in good condition yet still affordable had been quite a task. The coins in his pocket suddenly seemed very heavy indeed as he eyed the instrument stand. Despite his common sense screaming that he shouldn't, he found himself standing in front of the instrument seller, looking over the array of wooden, metal, bone and plastic instruments. His eye lit upon a Mithrian double-flute. It was a complex arrangement of tubes, for a flute. One resonant chamber led into another by way of a valve, and each had a series of holes and levers to open and close the chamber in a measured way. They were supposed to be capable of producing amazing harmonics, which didn't record well. He'd heard one live once, and it was indeed far more moving than any recording he'd heard. He looked up at the proprietor, a sour-faced woman who must have been at least 75 or 80 years old. "May I try this flute?" he asked. She eyed him, one eye half squinted shut, the other bright and sparkling with the light of far-off advertisements and signs. She grunted, then said, "Let's see your 'ands, sonny." He held out his hands, flashing back to the orphanage, when he was required to show that his hands were clean before meals. The old woman grunted again, and said, "you dropped it, you bought it, got me?" Jura nodded and reverentially picked up the complicated flute. He licked his lips, and put them to the embouchure. A low, haunting tone emanated from the instrument, and branched into a series of cascading harmonics as he found the valve for the second chamber. Remembering his experiences with a much simpler flute years ago, he played his fingers over the holes and keys, evoking a sad melody which was quickly lost to the noise of the crowd. The rendition wasn't perfect, but it was quite good, and Jura found himself already feeling at home with the complex flute. Looking up after finishing the melody, there was a tear rolling down his face, which he quickly wiped away as he set the instrument down. He knew he couldn't afford it, but he asked anyway, "what are you asking for it?" "For you? I'll let you have it for 150. Normally it'd be 180 for the punters, but you got some soul in you." It was clear from her tone that she'd been moved by Jura's playing, although her face was as sour as before. 150 lords! That was a fortune for Jura to spend on an instrument. His callie had only been 120, although... He'd never seen a double-flute up close in person. He'd seen them go for auction, following the bidding from the back row, knowing he couldn't allow himself to bid. The cheapest he'd seen one of those double-flutes go for had been 200 lords, although the kind of beings who bid in instrument auctions commonly had more money than they knew what to do with. Instrument auctions were a kind of exquisite torture in which Jura occasionally indulged. "Hey, do you want it or not!?" Jura was startled by the old woman's exclamation, and realized he'd been standing there staring at the instrument for several minutes. "Ah. I... No. I can't right now, but thank you for letting me play it." He pondered his words, still staring at the flute, but he knew that it would be madness to spend 150 lords on a flute. He looked up at the old woman, trying to break the spell. "Thank you," he said, and turned to go. He could feel the flute, its presence glowing behind him on the display shelf, but pushed forward into the crowd, resolutely suppressing the temptation. CHAPTER 30 Four hours later, Jura re-appeared at the little Cabalist office, having arranged to meet Parangee there. He was newly clothed, with the latest style in beam guns riding low on his hip in a new quick-draw holster, white safety cord intricately tied around it. He carried a moderately sized parcel with a few extras he'd picked up, including hair silver, and a chart update cube for his ship's nav computer. Parangee sat at the desk, and looked Jura up and down. "Mr. Cortan... I mean, Jura, I'm pleased to see you again. You appear greatly altered from our previous meeting." She nodded at the new clothes and sidearm. "Yes, Roolan pilgrimage robes don't really suit me." "What have you decided?" The woman behind the desk raised her eyebrows and leaned forward. "I'll take you up on your offer, the per-trip deal. I'm free as of right now, but if you don't have anything for me, I'll need to be off again." "Excellent, Jura, excellent. We're most pleased to have you working with us. Ms. Galen has reported favorably on your actions. I believe you are making a good choice." "Yeah, I can't really pass it up." Jura smiled wistfully, thinking of how he would miss the quiet cargo runs, bales of Brainstim weed packed into the shielded compartments off the cargo hold. At least the Brainstim sat quietly and didn't get him into trouble, or talk back. "Mr... Ah, Jura, we have one request for you. Please load this program," Parangee picked up a data cube from the desk and handed it to Jura, "into your comm and your ship's computer. It's a cypher program which will allow us to communicate with you securely. Once you have loaded the program, destroy the cube permanently. It might make an excellent target for you new sidearm," the woman nodded at the glittering beam gun resting on Jura's right hip. "We can supply another if it becomes necessary for any reason. In any case, normal communication channels are always open to us. "Now, as to the matter of current work, we do indeed have something for you just now." They dropped into discussion of Jura's next assignment. CHAPTER 31 "Ah, cash in advance, just how I like it," said Jura to no one in particular. He was back aboard Callie's Web. He briefly considered renaming it "Double-flute's web" but decided it didn't have anywhere near the same ring to it. There was a knock at his cabin door. Jura opened it to see Belah looking in at him. "We need to get going, I'm due on Homeworld Prime in five days." She was dressed in simple traveling clothes, but her hair had been changed so that it descended in ringlets from her head, and seemed considerably thicker than before. It was the same auburn tone. "Yes, I'm almost ready. Just have to run through a preflight checklist, and we'll be off." Jura finished stowing the new clothes and things he'd bought at the Bazaar. He'd put away the long grey jacket in favor of a shorter burgundy one similar to his old jacket while aboard the ship, as being more practical. Long flowing clothes may look good, but they're far from practical in a cramped spaceship. He stepped out into the corridor, and ran through the familiar motions of the preflight check, ticking each item off on his comm's screen as he finished it. Nothing came up as unusual, including the new checklist item, "check for transmitting markers." He'd removed Hurran's tag after arriving at the ship, and it had been the first target to fall to the new beam gun, exploding in a nice little cloud. A sparse cloud of shards was still visible off the starboard bow of the ship. "Let's get this box going," he said as he finished the last item on his checklist. "Are you ready, Belah?" "Ready as ever. I went over my checklist too," she waved at her comm screen, which had her own checklist on it. "Then off we go." He eased the throttles forward and manipulated the maneuvering thrusters with a practiced hand. The little box-shaped ship thrummed as the engines came up to speed, accelerating out of orbit around Jurrandurchar IV. They were off toward Homeworld Prime, which was almost literally the center of the galaxy. CHAPTER 32 "Ok, let's review the details again, real quick," said Belah. They were sitting at the little lounge table, hurtling through jumpspace at speeds incomprehensible to the human mind. "You're the daughter of Warlord Kaf'nee," Jura started. "Right, of Qunla. I'm being sent along with my dowry," she swept her hand back to indicate the full cargo hold, "as a gesture of peace to Lord Uala, who will take me into his retinue." "And I'm your bodyguard, which I suppose is right enough. I'm Jura Tschan, Mithrian mercenary. I've been working for your father for the last 5 years, and have achieved a place of trust in his guard." "Exactly. We're expected, and will be put up in the royal palace (he really shouldn't call it that, if he wants to maintain any pretense)." Belah smiled at the presumption of the galaxy's leader. "You'll find something to make a big stink about, and try to get yourself sent home. But not a big enough stink that he just kills you outright." Jura looked thoughtful. "The mind boggles at how many things might be complaint-worthy at Lord Uala's palace." A look of shocked alarm suddenly crossed Belah's face. "What about your ship's recorder!?" She waved up at the ceiling. "Ah, no worries. While we were at the Bazaar, I commissioned a replacement, which is considerably more under my control. They did a good job, I can't tell the difference. The old one is hiding in one of the smuggling compartments, and I can sell it back to that firm at the Bazaar next time I find myself back there." Belah relaxed. "Good. Now, your job once we arrive is to stick near me. Uala expects me to arrive with at least one or two hangers-on, so that shouldn't raise any eyebrows. Don't show any familiarity, though, this must be a strictly professional relationship or Uala may suspect something. Or one of his advisers." "Right. And we should have adjoining rooms, but can expect them to be monitored, so no dropping character. I like this uniform your people supplied," Jura motioned to the sharp black-and-gold uniform he was trying out, with built-in beam deflecting panels. "Might as well get used to it," he said, when Belah shot him a curious glance. "Ok, sounds like we're talking about the same thing, then. Let's spend the rest of the trip in character. That'll be good practice, as well as filling up two days of recorder time." "Good thought," said Jura. "I have patrols to attend to, Miss Kaf'nee." "Of course, Tschan." Belah dipped into a low curtsey, and Jura had to struggle to keep from laughing at the sight. It seemed very out of place, but he supposed he'd better get used to it. She continued, "Daddy would be very displeased if anything were to happen to me." "No, Miss Kaf'nee." Jura let a bit of gravel get into his voice. He stood up and spun on one heel, and stalked out the portal and into the corridor. He adjusted the short coat, and tugged down the sash which crossed his chest in a streak of crimson. He went back to his cabin, and grabbed the helmet. It was a half-faced thing, which covered his eyes, but left his nose and mouth free. The eyes were covered with a 3d viewing system, which retransmitted light in both the visible and infrared spectra, letting him see even in darkness. It also included a ranging computer, which computed the range to anything he locked his eyes on. A comm interface connected the helmet to his wrist comm, allowing him to use the comm without even the whisper normally heard. Unfortunately, he still had to vocalize; there was no other way to get speech to the communicator, but the helmet did have a pickup near his mouth, so he didn't have to speak very loud. Jura considered just making this uniform his new clothing style, but realized it would probably cost nearly a thousand lords to procure a suit after the Cabalists took this one back. The Mithrians weren't known for selling their uniforms to just anyone. CHAPTER 33 "Homeworld Prime traffic control, this is Kaf'nee Hauler I. Request parking orbit. Currently inbound from Jump point Theta 7 at 50,000 km/s. Ident KL338945. Repeat..." Jura clicked the send button, and the message laser whined above them. All around the ship, hulking Federation warships sat idle, or moved slowly across the face of the stars, swarms of fighter craft hovering about them like flies on a water ox. The scale was truly impressive. Even Jura, who was used to the magnifying effects of space, was having a hard time wrapping his mind around the size of these ships. Two minutes later, their parking orbit instructions arrived, terse and to the point. "Kaf'nee Hauler I, Homeworld traffic. Proceed to parking orbit 17, position 338. Remain clear of all military ships by 100,000 km or you will be destroyed." Jura pushed the "acknowledge" button, and flew the little freighter through the field of hulking battleships. He was painfully aware of the huge banks of laser cannon mounted to each of the ships, giant diamond collimator lenses glittering evilly in the light of Homeworld Prime's close-coupled dual suns. Finally they reached their position in orbit, two hours later. No shots fired. "Miss Kaf'nee, the transport shuttle will be here in 20 minutes. Please be ready to go, we don't want to keep Lord Uala waiting." Jura stood up straighter than normal, his imposing black helmet with gold eyes and spiky golden faux-hair glittering under the ship's lights. "Yes, Tschan, I know. I'll be ready." Belah pouted a bit. She was definitely in the character of a pampered princess, which is pretty much what a warlord's daughter was most of the time. 20 minutes later, right on time, the shuttle arrived, bearing Federation logos prominently on the bow and each airlock door. There was a thunk as the shuttle engaged the little freighter's airlock. The airlock cycled open, and a bored-looking soldier with a mean-looking beam rifle stood up. "Identification!" Jura and Belah each thrust their ID cards forward, where the soldier ran each in turn through a reader device, which popped up a spinning hologram of each person's head, and presumably a readout of vital stats. They received their cards back, and the soldier stepped aside, allowing them into the shuttle. The two strapped into their seats as the shuttle disengaged from the freighter. Jura looked back to see his ship, skillfully re-marked as an official Kaf'nee ship, receded in the window, then spun away as the shuttle reset its attitude for atmospheric re-entry. With a roar of maneuvering jets and increasing atmospheric interference, the shuttle descended towards Homeworld Prime, the most densely populated planet in the galaxy. CHAPTER 34 Jura gazed down at Homeworld Prime, in awe despite himself. The entire planet was one great sprawling city. Seas had been paved over. Agricultural production was incredibly concentrated in hydroponic facilities, with livestock grazing in automated feeding facilities. Parks dotted the surface, brief green and blue patches amid the overwhelming grey and sparkle. The night side of the planet must have been fabulous-looking, but they were coming down on the day side. As they came down, Jura recognized the royal palace, a number of kilometers from the port. He'd seen it in countless posters, advertisements, and 3D movies, sprawling across a verdant patch of ground like a creeping fungus. The ramjet shuttle landed, lowering itself to the landing pad. It was nearly empty, being a diplomatic shuttle for use by government officials and their guests. Even so, the few people aboard all got up the instant the shuttle was still, and pressed toward the exit. Jura wondered if it was some kind of inbuilt herd instinct which spanned all species. Homeworld Prime, Jura knew, was home to approximately 20 billion sentient creatures. The surface they'd just landed on was probably several kilometers above the original surface of the planet, assuming there was ever solid land where they now stood. Layer upon layer of city had been constructed, each built on top of the last, the lower levels refitted and buttressed to keep them useful. Shaking his head back to the present, Jura spied movement ahead, and turned back to ensure that Belah was behind him. He didn't actually know the etiquette for a warlord's daughter and her bodyguard for all situations, so he decided to err on the side of caution. He led her down the ramp to the spaceport landing pad. A small delegation of humans stood to one side, awaiting their Kaf'nee guests. Jura eyed each of them in turn, then stood aside, to let Belah come forward. Jura bowed to Belah and stood back a few paces. The leader of the delegation, a tall man with a swirled salt-and-pepper haircut stepped forward. "I am Iolan Rurtan, Mistress Kaf'nee. Welcome to Homeworld Prime on behalf of Lord Uala. We hope you will find your new home most agreeable." "Mister Rurtan, pleased to meet you. Please meet my bodyguard and escort, Jura Tschan," she indicated Jura with an elegant, sweeping hand gesture. Rurtan nodded, and Belah immediately pressed on, "my dowry is still on our ship. Please send someone to fetch it for Lord Uala. Tschan will be able to provide you with specifics." Rurtan nodded, and directed them to a door. As they walked, he tapped one of the other men in the delegation on the forearm, and had him get the dowry details from Jura. Jura didn't like this part of the plan, but he didn't figure the Federation haulers would do too much snooping. They walked through the terminal, and to a waiting limo on the far side. One of Rurtan's lackeys opened the door, and waved them all inside, then got in himself and closed the door. "Mistress Kaf'nee, we were told that this is your first time on Homeworld Prime. Would you like a brief tour of the Federation Seat district?" Belah nodded graciously and said she would love a tour, but requested that it be brief, since she was tired from the trip. "Of course," replied Rurtan. He instructed the driver to make a brief tour of the highlights. They drove past innumerable statues of Uala, who was depicted larger than life in every case, in a variety of conquest or charity situations -- his foot resting on a severed head; kneeling and handing out scraps of something to a crowd of tiny children; riding a warbike, waving an enormous sword over his head. He was always tall and strong, with rippling muscles and a powerful, impressive face. They also passed a number of shrines to Uala and leaders past. The shrines were gaudy almost to the point of being painful, with gold, platinum and iridium detailwork and curlicues dripping from every edge and corner. They cruised by a large, squat building, which Rurtan called the Ministry of Defense, noting that security there was so tight that they'd had a perfect security record for nearly 100 years. "The 100 year anniversary is coming up, actually. We're planning a small celebration, with an effigy-burning of the traitorous Pols, who managed to get in and assassinate a number of high-ranking generals before he was heroically gunned down by Uala's own grandfather." Belah nodded, oohing and aahing as seemed appropriate. Jura thought she was hamming it up a bit with the whole "innocent princess" act, but Rurtan didn't bat an eye. "And finally," said Rurtan, as the pulled up to one of the many grand entrances to the royal palace, "The royal palace. I'm sure you've seen it before, but I've always found it to be much more grand in person than any 3D recorder can suggest." The man almost seemed to be getting misty-eyed looking at the huge building. It was gaudy, increasingly so as they got closer to the entrance, where white gave way to overwhelming detail. Gold accents warred with boldly colored frescoes depicting Uala performing various heroic acts. "It's very beautiful, isn't it?" Belah's eyes glittered as she looked over the vast walls. Jura allowed himself to roll his eyes, glad of the helmet which kept the gesture from the other people in the limo. "Indeed it is, Mistress." Rurtan let one of his men open the door, then graciously gestured for Belah to precede him out. She did so, Jura following close behind. "Welcome to Lord Uala's royal palace," said Rurtan as the hover limo silently glided away. After a moment's pause, they walked up the wide staircase to the entrance, past a pair of alert-looking guards with sparkling, heavily decorated beam rifles. Their uniforms were just as sharp as Jura's, but were mostly white, with gold accents and colored pips denoting rank. The interior of the palace was as resplendent as the exterior, as far as Jura could tell. Everywhere he looked, his eyes picked out precious metal details. Statuettes from tens of cultures lined the walls, with rich tapestries, 2D and 3D portraits, and objets d'art covering the walls up several meters. The ceilings were painted with intricate detail, although Jura didn't have enough time to determine what was painted on them. They traipsed down the wide, white hallway, following the reduced delegation. Two of the five men had split off, bidding them farewell, as they'd entered the palace. Occasionally, the opulence of the building was marred by the presence of a soldier, although the interior soldiers were outfitted in ornate uniforms which blended with the rich surroundings. Jura had almost thought they were particularly life-like statues until one of them twisted his head to look at the approaching party. "Lord Uala certainly knows how to live in style," exclaimed Belah at one point. She was breathless with the sights she was trying to take in, all at once. Jura couldn't tell if she was acting, or actually impressed. "Oh yes, Lord Uala has excellent taste in art, and his citizens are always sending gifts." Rurtan pointed at an artwork apparently at random, explaining its provenance, and how it had come to be in Uala's collection. Jura trailed a bit behind the group, keeping himself out of the diplomatic discussion. He had the sense that this was exactly what Belah had trained for, and he guessed that her training must have started very early in her life, much in the fashion of any royal family member. They reached the rooms they'd be staying in, and Rurtan excused himself, leaving one of his lackeys to show them around. The man pointed out all the features of their suite, then excused himself and closed the door as he left. "Welcome to your new home, Miss Kaf'nee," said Jura, smiling wryly. "Enough Tschan. Leave me now, I would be alone." She was smiling despite the harshness of her tone. Jura hoped Uala didn't have visual monitoring as well as audio. He bowed and stalked off to his own, smaller room. CHAPTER 35 The scar-faced man sat at his plain desk, plainly expectant. In a moment, his expectation was rewarded, and his computer trilled. He lifted the headset to his ear and immediately activated the sonic barrier. "What have you got?" he asked the person on the other end of the connection. He paused, listening. After half a minute, he nodded once, smiling. "Excellent, that is very good news indeed. Have your men search the ship, thoroughly. Scanners likely won't find what they're looking for. Bring in the computer experts as well. I'll have Immigration place the ship under quarantine, so you won't be disturbed." The man was smiling widely as he set down the handset. He paused for a moment, savoring the victory which would soon be his. He picked up the handset again, and tapped out a code. After a moment, he said, "Hurran, it's the Agent. There's been a new development, and I've decided to spare your life to see if you can provide me one last service. Her ship has been spotted around Homeworld Prime..." CHAPTER 36 Jura sat alone at the small table in the crowded bar. The crowd was mostly human, with a smattering of aliens of different shapes and sizes. Between the dim lighting and large plants obscuring the view, he wasn't able to see more that a few meters in any direction. A gentle tinkling noise set the atmosphere as a large fountain cascaded a thousand trickles of water over colored lights, the water's path twisting sinuously between tables. A large scaly lizard stopped in front of his table. It was dressed in impressive battle armor, neatly maintained, while still showing the scars of numerous altercations. Its beam gun hung at the base of a sash across its back, which was covered in small devices Jura quickly recognized as explosive charges. "Greetings from Warlord Kaf'nee," said the lizard, standing up on its hind legs, and balancing on its tail. The words and actions established its intentions while simultaneously discouraging eavesdroppers. It dropped down again, and moved the chair opposite Jura out of the way, sitting upright, only slightly shorter than when it had stood. A waiter scurried over, and pulled the chair out of the way, sparing a horrified glance at the giant lizard, for just a second. "What can I do for you? You have the benefit of me," Jura's voice was quiet but clear. "You seem to know who I am, but who are you?" Jura knew this would be a contact from the Cabalists, who had sent word that they would be sending a messenger to meet him here. "Call me Nar. My name is unpronounceable to humans. It is," the lizard made a grunting, grinding noise which appeared to involve noisemaking systems unpossessed by human physiology. Its pronounciation of Common was heavily inflected, but passable. Jura gave a shot at the name, failing miserably to his own ears, but the lizard rocked back. "Is a good approximation," it said. "Most humans do not do so well." Nar's voice was deep and gravelly, as if it were speaking through a rock quarry. On closer inspection, Jura suspected that it was, spying a throat sac which swung heavily. Perhaps that was the source of the grinding sound in Nar's correct name. "Warlord Kaf'nee commends you on your work. He sends also a stipend to cover your ongoing expenses, and expresses his regret at leaving you short of funds." The giant lizard carefully placed a couple of coin- tubes onto the table from its sash. Its tongue darted up and swiped at its right eye, then its left, startling Jura slightly, although he tried not to show it. "Thank you, Nar. Do you bring any news of the system?" Jura took the plastic cylinders and tucked them inside his jacket, briefly unbuckling the chest armor. Nar reached up, and unclipped something from its sash, lowering it to the table. "News cube," said the lizard. Indeed, Jura twisted the cylinder's end, and tipped out a standard data cube. On the giant lizard's sash, it had looked far too small to contain a data cube. They were as long as Jura's thumb on a side. "Thank you, Nar." Jura hesitated uncomfortably, then said, "I apologize for the question, but I don't recognize your species. Where are you from?" Jura found himself being especially polite to the enormous saurian, even though a human of the same profession would have barely warranted coherent conversation in this circumstance. Perhaps it was the being's size, or its curiously contraction-free language. Nar rocked back in its chair again. Its tail flicked once, and it rocked forward again. "I am Rongan. You may not have seen Rongan female before. Bigger than males. Rongan males smarter, and weaker." Her tail flicked again. "Mammals are strange, with males larger than females. I make mistaken identity too often, avoid gender pronouns now." The tail flicked again, twice. Jura finally recognized the gesture as indicating amusement. He smiled back, with his mouth closed. Nar's tail flicked again, and she said, "You have dealt with Rongan before. No teeth in smile. I am not offended by teeth, after working with humans many years." Her tail flicked several more times. Jura wondered how many years that was. He'd heard Rongans were very long-lived. He decided that was one of the questions better left unasked. "Do you have any further messages for me?" Jura waved at the data cube before putting it into a belt pouch. "No," rumbled the lizard-woman. "Just this: Warlord Kaf'nee asks you to guard his daughter well. He trusts you need no reminder." "No, I need no reminder. Thank you, Nar." Jura paused, then added, "may I buy you a drink?" Nar seemed to consider this, then declined, shaking her head side to side. Jura felt the wind from the movement -- Nar's head was elongated, the jaw capable of opening quite wide. Jura was certain she could bite the head off any opponent unlucky enough to get within range. "Thank you, Jura Tschan. I have other business. I am on Homeworld Prime for a number of months, if you need assistance." She held out her clenched fist, and Jura pressed his fist to hers, while they bowed. His hand was dwarfed by the scaly claw Nar had extended. Her claw, as he'd expected, was hard as rock and cool to the touch. "Good day, Nar. Until next time," Jura stood as the giant lizard left, scampering with a surprisingly fluid motion across the floor. Patrons stood quickly out of the way as the enormous lizard padded silently past them, her tail dragging lightly on the ground. Good to know she's around, he thought to himself. CHAPTER 37 The day had dawned sunny, thanks in part to the weather generation systems in place on Homeworld Prime. Belah and Jura took a walk in the gardens surrounding the castle, Jura ostensibly present only to provide a guard. They had been on the capitol planet for nearly a month. Belah still hadn't met Uala, whose schedule apparently included little time for social visits, even those laden with diplomacy. She had, however, managed to moon about the palace, ostensibly on a series of art- appreciation walks, and record some vital details. Now, out in the gardens, she handed Jura a data cube, and said, "Please send this back to my father. I have written him regarding my treatment here. I think he will be most interested to learn of it." She was speaking mostly for the spies' benefit, since they were very likely listening in on the conversation one way or another. Jura took the cube, and bowed slightly. "Yes, Miss," he said, putting the cube in a pouch. "I would walk further," she said with an imperious air, and continued walking. He trailed behind her, considering whether this was the most boring thing he'd ever done, or only the second most boring. He decided it was second. The time his jumpdrive had failed 4 light weeks from the nearest system had been the most boring, as he'd spent nearly 4 months traveling through an unchanging field of stars on his in-system thrusters. They could get him up to an appreciable fraction of lightspeed, particularly with that much time, but then he had to decelerate for just as long, so his average speed for the whole trip was well under half lightspeed. "Tschan," said Belah, breaking his reverie. "I'm going back to the palace, to insist that Uala see me today. This is simply unreasonable." "Don't you think your father would object to you expressing your will that way, Miss?" Jura was laboring to keep pace with her as she dropped further and further into the role of a spoiled and politically-astute warlord's daughter. "Nonsense. My will is my father's will. Uala's refusal of me is a refusal of my father." "I don't think Lord Uala would describe it as a refusal, Miss." "Stop being contrary, Tschan. You're not paid to think, you're paid to keep me safe." She turned, pouting, and started walking briskly to the palace entrance. Jura hurried to keep up with her. CHAPTER 38 Jura knocked on the door connecting his room with Belah's suite. After a moment she opened it. "I'm ready to head up to m... our ship, where I will transmit your data cube, and reposition the ship to a long-term orbit. Will you need me for the next few hours, Miss?" "No, Tschan, thank you. I will be dining in my suite this evening, Uala continues to refuse me." Her tone was peevish, and entirely fitting for a jilted emissary. "As you say, Miss." Jura bowed slightly, and turned quickly, closing the door. He was unsure whether he was more anxious to get away from the obnoxious character Belah had become, or more anxious to get up to his ship and check on it. He hadn't been away from it this long since he'd purchased it 8 years ago. CHAPTER 39 Jura stepped off the shuttle and into his airlock. It cycled to allow him into the ship, and he felt a weight lift off his shoulders. He hadn't realized how hard it was to maintain a persona for so long. It was a relief to be back in his place, and not worry about who was listening or watching. He looked around, with the vague sense that something didn't feel right. He couldn't place it, though, and decided that it must just be the long absence. He walked up to the bridge, slotted Belah's data cube, and punched in routing instructions. Even if it was full, it would only take a minute or two to transmit the data to the jumpspace relay, although it would take a day and a half to get there by way of the message laser. Once it had reached the relay, it would be played out slowly to the relay in Kaf'nee space. The transfer through jumpspace was nearly instantaneous, but a full cube would take several hours to replay from one relay to the next. Then it would take another day or two to reach the Cabalist operative on Qunla, where Warlord Kaf'nee ruled from. He could decide what to do with the information from there. Intra-galactic communication was quite speedy considering the distances involved, but difficult to think about. Jura had once asked why the relays acted the way they did, but the answer had been couched in all kinds of language about bandwidth, data rate, and latency, which made his head spin. He'd ultimately accepted the answer, "because that's the way it is." Nothing about jumpspace seemed to make sense. He took off his helmet, and shook his head, glad to be free of the encumbrance for once. It helped him stay in character, but the helmet didn't fit quite right, and he'd found himself with a mild but persistent headache. At least it helps keep me mean, he thought to himself wryly. Data cube successfully transmitting, he set about the preflight checks with barely a conscious thought. The feeling of oddness came back to him almost immediately as he walked back in the corridor. Something was wrong, but he couldn't quite place his finger on it. He came to the cargo hold part of the check, and suddenly realized what was amiss. The shielded panel behind which he'd stowed the old, legal data recorder was dangling open. A jolt went through him, and he scrambled back to the bridge, now seeing all the little things which were subtly out of place around the ship. Whoever had searched the ship evidently couldn't or didn't have time to figure out how the shielded panel was reattached. However, they'd found the unaltered recorder in a smuggling compartment, which would have inevitably lead them to check the installed recorder. That would have lead to a variety of searches through the computer and systems of the ship, which would reveal what it really was. He had to get word to Belah, although he wasn't sure how successful he'd be. He wrote up a terse message and ran it through the Cabalist's cypher program, which steganographically encoded it in a banal-sounding message. He hit send on the console computer, and anxiously waited while listening to the message laser's turret grind into position. The whine of the laser firing was faint, the power adjusted to just a few percent of full, to avoid frying the message satellite. The satellite would insert the message into the planetary comm system, which would deliver it to Belah's comm. Jura hoped he wasn't too late. He sent another message recalling the shuttle, and waited anxiously for the little transport to arrive. He heard the thunk as it connected, and prepared himself, beam gun drawn, half-concealed behind a bulkhead. The door cycled open, and a bored-looking soldier commanded, "Identification!" without even looking up. When nothing happened for a moment, he looked up. Jura was walking forward, gun holstered. In his most imposing, dangerous voice, Jura said, "someone's tampered with my ship," as if the young soldier could do anything about it. It didn't help anything, but it made Jura feel a little bit better for a moment. "I'm sorry to hear that sir. If you'd like, I can forward a security force report," the man beckoned Jura forward and said, "Identification please!" CHAPTER 40 Jura raced impatiently out of the shuttle once the hatch finally opened. He pushed past other passengers to cries of indignation, and raced out to the curb. He hurled a hovercab door open and dove in. Then, sitting in the back of the cab, he realized that he didn't have a plan. "Run in and shoot up the place" was likely to earn him a one-way ticket to the morgue very quickly. The driver twisted around in his seat, which creaked loudly, to look at the suddenly silent passenger. "Are we goin' somewheres, or are you gonna sit there forever? C'mon, let's go, or get out." "Oh. Yes." Jura paused, running through options. "The Jetblast Bar," he said after several seconds' consideration. The driver turned back around, and they accelerated away from the spaceport. CHAPTER 41 Hurran stood outside Belah's suite, with four royal guards waiting behind him. He was holding one of the ornate palace beam rifles in his left hand, preparing to knock with his right. The door opened under his hand, catching him slightly off guard. Belah stood there, looking at him with all the imperious fury she was capable of mustering. "Can I help you, sir?" "Belah Kaf'nee, you are under arrest." Hurran smiled as he spoke, a malicious, predatory smile. "On what charges?" she said indignantly. "I've done nothing wrong. I should think rather that Lord Uala has done something wrong in failing to meet with me." "The charge is irrelevant. You're under arrest. You can come peacefully, or if you resist we will bind you and carry you to the detention center. Your choice," he finished. His eyes suggested that he'd enjoy it if she resisted. Her comm beeped discreetly. She ignored it. "Very well. You must understand that by this action, you are declaring war against my father. You may want to reconsider." She drew herself up to her full height, but her bouncing ringlets destroyed any air of threat she might have been able to muster. "Oh, I think we're in possession of all the relevant facts. Come along." Hurran turned away, expecting her to follow. "No." She stood resolutely in her doorway. "What?" Hurran looked confused as he turned around to face her again. He'd expected acquiescence or a struggle, but not cool refusal. Belah folded her arms, and said, "You may detain me here, in my suite. I believe it can be secured. If you drag me to some stinking cell, you will only make this situation worse." Hurran's response was terse. "Out of the question. Come along." "Fine, then let me gather a few things. I refuse to be locked up without a change of clothes." She arranged her best pout on her face. Hurran stood, confused, for a moment. Finally, he acquiesced, "fine, grab a change of clothing. If you take too long or do anything funny, you won't enjoy the repercussions." From his face she was clearly skating the fine edge of what he'd withstand before knocking her down and tying her up. She nodded, and went back into the room. Hurran followed somewhat hesitantly, uncertain of his role in this new drama she'd created. She opened a bureau drawer and pulled out a few items of clothing, then realized that he was standing over her. "Excuse me!" she said loudly. Hurran backed off, mentally unbalanced. She continued gathering clothing, and stuffed it impatiently into a small travel bag. Finished, she closed the fasteners on the bag and hefted it. "When my father hears of this, you will be in a world of pain. Exquisite, long-lasting pain." Her face showed triumph, which Hurran found disconcerting. "Don't go crying that I didn't warn you." She paused, looking at him. "Come on, then, you were in such a hurry before." She waved the tall man out of her room and closed the door. They walked down the corridor, and turned through a door Belah hadn't noticed before. CHAPTER 42 Jura sat at a small table in the Jetblast, a bar which might have gotten its name from what its interior looked like. It was black, and looked as though someone had accidentally set off a bomb, which was the intended effect. This was not a posh government-worker bar. Nar appeared several minutes after Jura. She squeezed through the doorway, and Jura gave her a little wave. She came over and sat up on her tail, as she had before. "What is happening, Tschan?" Her voice rumbled. "I'm not sure, but I think Belah has been captured. I sent her a message several hours ago, and haven't gotten a reply yet. She should have replied immediately if she was able to read it." Jura looked pensive. He briefly outlined his experience on his ship, and why he'd concluded that they'd been found out. Nar nodded through the narrative, and agreed at the end that it didn't sound good. "What is it we can do?" she asked. "I'm not sure. It would be easiest if I could just walk in and confirm whether she's been put in detention or not, but if they've got her, they'll probably arrest me as well." He stared down at the bright green drink he'd ordered. It didn't taste very good given his current state of mind. "I think we involve group members in this decision," grumbled Nar. She waved her claw expansively. "Is there a group here? Of course, I guess there would be." Jura looked around quickly, then asked, "what do we do?" "I will call you in an hour with instructions. Stay low-down until then, they may look for you." The giant lizard ducked her head as she said "low-down," which made her appear comically hunched over. Jura was half moved to laugh. "Ok, I'll stay put here, or get out of the way if things get hot. I'll expect to hear from you in an hour." "Good. Low-down," she repeated the hunching maneuver. They exchanged a brief fist-touch, and she descended to all fours and disappeared out the door. Jura sighed into his glass, wondering what he'd let himself in for. CHAPTER 43 Jura found himself in a small apartment, amid a group of 5 beings. He'd followed the directions Nar had rumblingly given him over the comm, and been introduced to each person in turn. It had been at least 3 hours since he'd sent the message to Belah. They were all Cabalists, but one was a surprisingly high-ranking official in the Ministry of Information, while another was a janitor who worked in the royal palace. A pudgy, tentacled being named Kal'hik was speaking. "...that is our best intelligence at this point. Lurna," a tentacle swung to indicate the janitor, "says he has seen Ms. Galen about the palace, but hasn't seen her for the last day or so." "I've not been around her wing much in the last day, so I can't say if she's there or not. My normal duties keep me in the central section, so that's what I know well. I may be able to check when I go back to see if she's in the detention center." Jura looked on, feeling helpless. "Is there anything I can do?" Kal'hik turned to look at him, its watery eyes examining him. "No, Mr. Cortan, our best guess is that you would be detained or killed if you were to arrive at the palace now. Your best action will be to remain out of sight for now." The little alien paused, then said, "do you know Ms. Galen's last whereabouts?" "I last saw her," he glanced at his comm's time display, "five hours ago, in her suite. That's when I left for my ship. I sent her a warning message about three hours ago, maybe two and a half. She never responded to that, so I'm guessing she was already detained by that point." "That will leave her in the palace's detention rooms then," chimed in the Ministry worker. "They won't transfer her to an external facility for another day at least, while they gather their evidence for the external courts." "So, we have a day," murmured Kal'hik thoughtfully. "We need to act sooner than that, though. They may treat this as a special case, if Uala and his men know she is with us." The tentacled alien played its watery eyes across the group. "Any suggestions for how we proceed?" The group looked around at each other, and started planning their mission. CHAPTER 44 Lurna, the janitor at the royal palace, quietly fingered his comm as he leaned against a cleaning robot. He tapped in a message. "You, there, janitor!" A guard was walking towards him. "Yes?" He straightened up, surruptitiously blanking the screen on his comm. "What are you doing? This robot should be working or charging. Why is it just sitting there?" "Dunno, sir. I'm tryin' to figure out what's goin' on with it." He waved his hand at the annunciator panel on the robot, which was blank where there should have been a number of flashing lights. "Are you trained in robot repair?" The guard narrowed his eyes. "No sir, but sometimes I can get 'em going again without calling in the techs." "Wheel this thing into a closet or maintenance hallway and call the techs. I don't want you fiddling with in the middle of Lord Uala's hallway." The guard half sneered as he spoke. "Then get back to your duties." He wheeled smartly on his heel, and plodded off in the direction he'd come from. "Yes, sir," said Lurna to the guard's receeding figure. He smacked the big metal box on its side, and said, "C'mon, you," as he turned it around and wheeled it forward. A vacuuming attachment flopped about comically, tracing a sinusoidal line in the thick carpet as he shoved the defunct robot through the resistance of the rug. He turned it toward a disguised door, covered in trim so that it looked like an unmarred section of wall. As he approached, a sensor read his ID as he got close, and the door silently swung back. The hunched man pushed the broken robot through the door, and it closed behind him. It latched with a muted click. He wheeled the robot forward with considerably less effort now, the concrete surface offering less resistance than the plush carpet of the main hallway. The robot's vacuum attachment still flopped about, but now it made a faint scraping noise across the smooth floor. Lurna reached one of the robot rooms which were scattered around the palace, and turned the boxy robot into it. He closed the door behind himself, and turned on the overhead lights. He reached over to the toolbench, and grabbed a powered screwdriver. After a moment's searching, he started unscrewing the back panel of the robot. Screws fell to the ground with a series of ticks. Finally, the last screw was out, and he pulled the panel off. Inside, instead of a jumble of plasma conduits, actuators and computer modules, Jura was cramped into the small space. He held out his hand to the old janitor, who helped him out of the robot's shell. "Now, I just gotta fasten this thing back up, and we can load it into that charging rack. No one'll know for days, most likely." The janitor collected the screws off the floor, then tapped the robot's panel back into place. With a few twists of the screwdriver, the now very lightweight robot looked as good as new. "Now, Mr.... Sorry, Jura, we're here," the janitor walked over to a map displayed on the wall. It showed this part of the palace, covering about 1/4 of the building in several levels. He pointed to a small room, which was labeled "Maintenance room 12A" in tiny script. "You need to get to here," the man pointed at a spot off the map to the right. "You shoulda got a full map from Belah's and my research. Is it workin'?" He indicated Jura's comm. Jura loaded the map on the little screen, and zoomed the view into where they were. It was the same map which was on the wall, with the same tiny script. "Yes. I've marked my target, does this look right?" He scrolled the map sideways on the little screen until he'd found the blinking red marker he'd set earlier. He aimed the screen up at Lurna. The janitor bent over the display and said, "Yep, that's the maintenance room nearest the detention center. I staged some extra weapons there, in another defunct robot," he tapped the hollowed out robot, which made a deep bonging noise. "You'll need ta pop the back off, but I left the screws out of that one, so it should come off easy." The hunched janitor looked down at his comm's time display. "I gotta get back to my rounds, or it'll be noticed. You set up your emergency switch?" He waved at Jura's comm again. "Yes, it's set. You can tell where it's coming from if I trip that button?" "Yep, the palace's got a monitoring system for that. Of course, that means the guards can find you too, so it's a last resort thing, y'know?" The man cracked a smile, his face folding up into an impressive number of wrinkles. Jura suddenly had occasion to wonder how old he was, and how long he'd been working on this plan, or one like it. "Follow the signs to maintenance room 25. You git, I gotta get back." The old janitor shook Jura's hand and bowed, then hustled off in the direction they'd come from, opposite where Jura would be headed. Jura started down the tunnel-like passage in the opposite direction. He thought about their plan, and he found himself questioning whether it could actually work. He was dressed in a janitor's jumpsuit, his beam gun and a variety of other weapons under the jumpsuit in smoothing foam forms. It wouldn't be a quick matter to get to them, so he could either look like a slightly overweight janitor with no practical access to weapons, or an invader, with a gun in his hand. He didn't find either choice comforting. He walked quickly down the hallway, turning when signs indicated he should. He glanced back at his comm every so often, trying to keep track of where he was on the little map. The maintenance hallways were thankfully largely empty, since it was late at night on the capitol planet. He passed a storage closet, and decided to grab a broom for the sake of veracity. It also gave him an improvised weapon, which made him feel a bit better. He found himself wondering when anyone would need a broom, with cleaning robots working around the clock, but decided that there must be cleaning jobs too delicate or intricate for the robots. CHAPTER 45 Belah sat, dejected, in the little detention cell. Her comm had been taken, so she had no way of communicating her predicament to Jura or any of the Cabalists. She suspected that Jura would be returning soon from his re-parking trip, and that he would be arrested as soon as he set foot inside the palace. Hopefully Uala's guards would be stupid, and throw him into her cell. She had a feeling that the two of them together stood a reasonable chance of making an escape, but knew that by herself, she was sunk. She looked around the cell. It was only a few meters on a side, just big enough to house a plank on one wall, presumably for sleeping, a miniature, unenclosed 'fresher on the other wall, and a narrow pathway between them. The door was imposingly metal, with no detail on the inside to suggest a lock to pick or a hinge to break. There was a tiny ventilation grate in the ceiling, but she'd have to be the size of a hallen, assuming she could somehow get through the sturdy-looking grate. Weren't evil dictators supposed to make detention cells you could get out of? Wasn't that an unwritten rule of being an evil dictator? Belah supposed Uala hadn't read the rules. She briefly wondered if the cell door was waterproof, and whether she could block up the drain in the 'fresher and float herself up to the ceiling. That would certainly surprise whoever next opened the door. She eventually decided against it, since that would probably just get her shot. Besides, there was another drain set into the stone floor, and she couldn't think how she'd block both at once. She wondered vaguely what time it was. She didn't know quite how long she'd been in the little room, but she figured it must be late at night by now. She should have been tired, but the adrenaline from being marched into a prison cell hadn't really worn off. She sat down on the plank again and considered her little bag of clothing. Fortunately, the guards had backed off when she'd put up a fuss about it being searched, but the hand-weapons hidden inside wouldn't make a dent against the cell walls, and probably wouldn't be useful against alert guards. Aside from any of that, she was probably being watched, and didn't want to tip her hand too soon. She humphed, blowing a ringlet out of her face, and sat with her chin in her hands. CHAPTER 46 Jura padded through the maintenance hallways, quietly bypassing all the security of the palace. He wondered that the palace architects would allow such a backdoor to exist, and finally decided that they must have been depending on the scanners and ID cards to regulate unauthorized traffic. Suited him just fine, this was far easier than getting past the countless guards out in the main halls. Finally, he came to the maintenance room, and ducked in. There was no one else in the room, fortunately. He took a moment to catch his breath after the brisk walk, and compare his map with that up on the wall. There were no discrepancies in any of the portions he cared about, fortunately. These Cabalists had done their homework. He thought about his next move. It was late at night, so most of the palace would be asleep. Many of the guards would be only minimally attentive, particularly this far into the interior of the building. Most threats shouldn't be able to get in this far without raising an alarm. He could get out, but figured he wouldn't be able to get back in -- Lurna couldn't get a second ID card, so once he was out, that was it. He glanced at the broom in his hands and tried to decide if it made more sense to head out looking like a janitor, or have his weapons free. He cast about the maintenance room, but didn't find anything that looked like a more effective, yet still innocuous weapon. The broom was actually his best bet, although he was far from proficient with a staff. He grasped the broom tighter, having made his decision. He studied the map for another moment, then headed out into the hallway. It was empty, just as it had been for his entire trip, excepting Lurna. Holding his broom in one hand, he walked up to the exit door he'd identified. It remained resolutely closed. He looked around for a switch or latch or anything. Nothing. The door was a featureless thing set in the wall. There were no indicator lights, no switches, no handles, nothing except the sensor, sitting inertly by the door. "Oh. Shit." said Jura to himself. Lurna must have forgotten that his ID was what let him out. Jura guessed that he was effectively trapped inside the maintenance tunnels. Maybe those designers hadn't been so stupid. Jura looked around, wondering if he was missing anything. No, there was no way to open the door. Stumped, Jura leaned against the wall. His hopes of a miraculous hidden switch set in the wall were dashed when the door stayed resolutely shut. He walked back to the maintenance room, hoping to see something there. Certainly, there were tools sufficient to remove the door, but perforating the door and kicking it out seemed like the exact opposite of the stealthy and smooth way he wanted to work this operation. He glanced at his comm. He had four hours until people would start waking up. He considered using the emergency option and calling Lurna, but that was really an option of absolute last resort. He wasn't that desperate yet. He could walk back to where Lurna had uncrated him from the robot shell, but of course the wizened janitor had long since moved off, to continue his rounds. Jura pondered. What would happen if power were lost in the building? Surely the doors had a failsafe mode, so that no one would be trapped inside. What would a janitor do if he lost his ID in the tunnels? Probably call the security office and have them trip the sensor from their console. Jura spotted a comm console as his eyes wandered around the maintenance room again. Perhaps he could call the security office, and claim to have lost his ID. Of course, he didn't know how he should identify himself, or what the protocol was. Security would most likely just come arrest him, and that would be the end of their clever mission. Jura considered his other options. He could somehow cut the power, and hope that the doors had a failsafe mode. He could call security. If he trusted the comm console, he could call Lurna and ask for assistance. He could use his own comm, which would immediately alert security that he was there, and shouldn't be. He could blow the door open via a variety of means, any of which would be the opposite of stealthy. "Power it is," he said to himself. He eyed the robots lined up in their charging racks, wondering if he could make it look like a malfunctioning robot had cut the power -- that would give him more time than if someone came and found the plasma conduits cut by a beam blast or... Of course, the plasma override protectors! Jura looked feverishly around the room, but didn't see any circuit protectors. He dashed into the hallway, and saw in the faint light that there were a series of thick plasma conduits running along the ceiling of the tunnel. He jogged along the tunnel, following them. Thinking through what would happen after the power was disconnected, he reversed course back to the maintenance room and grabbed one of the hand-held lights from the rack of tools. He resumed his jog, thinking as much about time as where to find circuit protectors. Finally, he came to a door where many conduits converged. He reckoned he'd jogged nearly 400m from where he wanted to get out. It would be necessary to make the return trip in the dark, get out the door, find Belah, and duck back into the tunnel, all without being detected, or at least without anyone sounding an alarm. He opened the door to the power room. Sure enough, there were a bank of glowing circuit protectors, plasma-state energy coursing through them. Each protector was a clear casing, with a weird-looking finned apparatus inside. If the flow of plasma became too strong or concentrated, the fins would flash-melt, coating the inside of the casing with fin material. Coincidentally, this would also plug the conduit pathways, effectively blocking the flow of plasma. They didn't normally explode, so he couldn't just go smashing them if he wanted it to look plausible. The conduits were self-healing, so at least leaking plasma wouldn't be an issue for very long. He could remove the circuit protectors, but that would be suspicious. He finally came upon it: he could unseat them, which would engage the safety valves, but leave them in place, as if they'd been poorly installed in the first place. He got his hand-light illuminated, and started unseating protectors, as quickly as he could. Ideally, it'd appear that one popped out, and started a chain reaction as others were jolted. As he was half-way through, he grabbed the one supplying power to the lights, and was plunged into darkness, except for his little hand-held light. Task accomplished, he turned around and sped back through the maintenance tunnel toward the exit door. He arrived, and carefully observed the door, trying not to play his light too close to it. Fortunately, it did have a failsafe, and was slightly ajar as he examined it. He pulled it open, the servo motor making a whirring noise as he pulled against its resistance. Out in the hall, he could hear a few confused shouts, presumably guards trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Jura played his light across the hall, and took off at a run. Too late, he realized that he should have taken off the janitor's jumpsuit, as he rounded a corner, and careened full-force into a guard. The guard went sprawling on the ground, shouting "Hey, watch it!" as he went down. Jura would have very much liked to shoot him. Instead, thinking quickly, he said, "'Scuse me sir, trying to find the problem!" He ran on, rethinking his earlier regret about the disguise. In a few moments, he came to the detention center. The guards who should have been on duty were nowhere to be seen. Jura couldn't decide if that was a good or a bad thing. Not really having time to debate the point with himself, he went in through the main door, which was hanging ajar as the maintenance door had been. He walked quickly down the hallway, looking for Belah's cell. Unfortunately, although it had been marked before he'd pulled the plug on half the palace, the computer-driven indicator signs were all dark now. Not having any other choice, he knocked on each door, quietly calling, "Belah?" each time. He got through all 8 doors with no response, and was starting to wonder if she'd already been moved. He started to head back out, when he heard a faint pounding noise. Heading back into the hallway, he quickly located the door it was coming from. Like all the others, it had an ID sensor, as well as a massive mechanical lock. The key would have been huge, the size of two fingers held together, and twice as long, from what Jura could tell. Certainly none of the prison cells he'd been in had had locks like this. He knocked on the door, harder than before. There was a return knock. More daring this time, he called out, "Belah?" with gusto. He could just make out a voice saying, "let me out!" It was tinged with terror. "Hold on!" he yelled back to the door, and raced up to the security office to see if someone had left the keys behind. No such luck, of course. It seemed this whole thing was following the "no such luck" plan. Jura was less impressed with the Cabalists' planning ability, as he rooted through the desk's storage area. He gave up after a few seconds, figuring he probably had very little time until one or more guards returned, and greatly complicated Jura's life. He ran back to the door he was guessing Belah was behind and yelled, "stand back!" He ripped off the janitor's jumpsuit, glad to be free of it and the thick padding beneath. He pulled one of the little explosives free from its storage spot, and pressed it into the big lock. He set the timer for 5 seconds, hit the go button, and leapt out of the hallway. Standing outside the hallway was one of the palace guards, looking slightly confused as Jura's light played up to his face. "What are you doing here?" he said, starting to realize that something was amiss. Then the charge went off, and Jura was thrown into the guard. They both landed on the floor in a heap. Jura recovered just before the guard, and put him out with a solid punch to the face. He got up a trifle unsteadily, and walked back into the hallway of doors, which was filled with an impressive amount of acrid smoke. "Belah!" he called out. There was no immediate reply, except some coughing. He ducked down to escape some of the smoke, and saw that the door he'd blown up was hanging off its upper hinge, partially opened. "I guess they know I'm here," he said under his breath, as he crawled toward the mangled door. He pulled it partly aside, scraping against the floor. He peered around it, and to his relief, he saw Belah's lower body, standing up, shaking in time with the coughing. "Get down," he hissed. "The smoke is only up high!" He grabbed her legs and pulled, trying to get her to come below the level of the smoke. She shrieked, and struck blindly, knocking him to one side, his right ear ringing loudly. He clambered up again and shouted, "Belah!" this time grabbing a hand to pull her down. She finally understood, and ducked down, still coughing. "Jura!" she exclaimed, then paused, with a strange look on her face. "I can't hear myself," she said. "Oh no, I'm deaf! What happened?" She was yelling, trying to make her ears work. Jura waved his hands downward, and said, "quiet!" He paused for a moment, then put a single finger up to his lips, the universal "shh!" sign. She seemed to get that, and stopped yelling. He hooked his finger and beckoned her to follow him. She grabbed up her bag and started rooting through it. "What are you..." he started, then paused. She'd grabbed something out of the bag, and nodded, "Let's go," she said quietly. CHAPTER 47 Jura and Belah ran down the hallway, which was hazy with spreading smoke. Jura had fired a couple of shots judiciously into a variety of incendiary-looking objects in the detention center with the hope of distracting the guards. It seemed to be working so far. Small fires started where his shots had landed, some of them expanding visibly in a few moments. He was using his light to motion to Belah. She'd unwound her bolo in her left hand, and had the slim baton in her right hand. She gave a silent prayer of thanks that her temper tantrum on being dragged into the cell had restrained her captors to passively scanning the bag for power sources. As they rounded a corner, they came upon yet another cul-de-sac which ended in unmarked doors. "Where are we going?" she asked, trying to figure out how to judge the volume of her voice. Jura looked down at his comm and said something while pointing. He didn't seem entirely certain what he was trying to show on the map. She motioned his arm over, and zoomed the map out on the little screen. "We need to go here," she said, pointing at a door on the outside of the building, and looking at him. He nodded, then shrugged and shook his head saying something. Belah didn't need her ears to understand that he didn't know where they were now. Jura suddenly looked up, alarm playing across his face. Belah looked up too, just as the air next to her face heated up, making her flinch. Jura's beam gun was out, the shots making ghostly sparkling lines jump between it and the soldiers at the open end of the cul-de-sac. The beams were extra sparkly, as they ignited the particles of smoke and dust in their path. One of the soldiers fell over in a puff of smoke, his uniform flaring up for a second where the beam had hit him. By then, however, there were four guards standing, shouting something, with their guns up. Her training kicking in, Belah stepped away from Jura while transferring the bolo to her right hand. She crouched, swung the paired heavy globes over her head, and sent the weapon flying at the guards. They evidently couldn't tell it was coming, and it struck the middle guard, cutting through his throat with a sudden welling of blood. As the monofilament cord wrapped around his neck, cutting into the flesh, the weights pirouetted around, and clipped the helmets of the guards on either side of the quickly dying man. They fell forward, as much from surprise as anything else. They would doubtless wake up with uncomfortable headaches, assuming nothing worse happened to them before then. The central guard was unlikely to ever wake up again. Jura fired a couple more shots as more guards arrived, then grabbed Belah's arm, and dashed through the door at the end of the hallway. CHAPTER 48 The man who called himself the Agent looked down at his glowing computer console in the dark. The lights had gone out a while ago, but he wasn't too concerned about that. His computer, and therefore his communications system, were independently powered against exactly such a contingency. He studied the display intensely. If there had been anyone in the room, across the desk from him, the light from the computer's readout would have reflected dully off his scar at that person. As no one else was in the room, the scar's dull reflection went unnoticed. His computer trilled, and the man picked up the handset. He didn't bother switching on the sonic shield. It consumed too much power to be worth supplying an independent power source, and was inoperative as long as the lights were out. He said, "Yes?" He paused for a moment, his head cocked to the side. In the distance, beyond his door, he could hear shouts. "I see. Where are they now?" He paused again, as he listened to the answer. "I am displeased to hear that. Do you know what happens when I am displeased?" There was another pause, just for a moment. The Agent continued in dulcet tones, which belied the words he was speaking. "Yes. Well done. Obviously you have two choices. You can come here now, or you can try to run from me. I will be most amused to see your attempts to run, if that's the choices you make. I will expect you here within the next five minutes." Without even pausing for a reply, the Agent set down the handset. He considered for a moment, then lifted it again, and tapped out a code. "Prepare the disposal robot. I will most likely have need of it in a short while." CHAPTER 49 Jura slammed the door closed, and played the light around the room. "Help me move this!" He aimed his light at a heavy-looking chest of drawers, motioning toward the door. He started shoving it in front of the door, and Belah joined him once she figured out what he was doing. "That should hold them for a minute. Is there another way out of here?" He looked around the room again. Belah pointed, "There," not needing to hear the question to understand the importance of getting out of the room via some other path than the one they'd just come from. They ran across the room to the door, and pushed through it. This door admitted them to a smaller room. It looked oddly familiar, as Jura's light shone around it. He spotted another heavy-looking piece of furniture and shoved it in front of the door. He gave a short thanks for an emperor who bought quality kitsch. "Jura, this room, I've seen it before." Belah was walking around, looking about the room with a look of concentration on her face. "Where have I seen this before?" "I don't know," he paused, looking around, "But I've seen it too." He walked away from the door as he spoke. He walked to one end of the room, where he spied a series of odd marks on the floor. "What are these?" he said, shining the light down at them. "What are those?" Belah hadn't heard Jura's question. "They almost look like location markers." She looked up at him, "you know, like you'd use to make sure something went back in the same place every time?" She knelt down, "see, it's four corners, like a box with no sides." Jura moved around to the wall-side of the box, and looking through it, looked up. He shined his light forward, then said, "oh," in a flat tone of voice. Belah looked up. "What is it?" she said, concern tinging her voice as she saw his face in the dim reflected light. Jura just motioned with the light. Belah turned and looked at where the light was shining. There, sitting behind a familiar desk, which bore a familiar symbol, was a familiar man. Only it wasn't a man. "Is that," said Belah uncertainly, walking forward slowly. Jura strode forward, and played the light over the man-thing sitting at the desk. "Lord Uala. Yes." He was now standing behind the desk. His face was pale. "Have you ever... you know, seen Lord Uala from the waist down?" Jura had entirely forgotten that Belah couldn't hear a thing he was saying. "That's not really Lord Uala, is it? It's just a mannequin." She still walked slowly towards the inert life-size puppet behind the desk. "It's just a mannequin, but I have a feeling this is the one and only Lord Uala," said Jura, playing his light over what he was looking at behind the desk. Belah finally came around, and saw that the mannequin ended around the waist, where his uniform simply trailed off. A thick tangle of cords ran down next to a stand, which thrust up into the Uala-thing's torso to support it off the floor. The cables ran off under the desk, where they dropped into a hole in the floor. Now that they were up close, it was definitely Lord Uala. The setup was exactly what they'd seen in any number of broadcasts in 3D projectors. That explained, at least, why the projections always cut off, so you couldn't see around behind the dictator. The creepy little dictator-dummy was sitting inertly at the desk, slumped over in what seemed to be an uncomfortable resting position. Jura had no doubt that when it was running, it looked extremely life-like. The technology to do all this was a thousand years old, but had been banned, with good reason, after the Robot Wars. "I have a very bad feeling about being in here, Jura," said Belah, backing away from the lifelike little robot. "We're as good as dead, now that we know this, right?" "Yes, and no," said Jura. "They could kill us, but on the other hand, no one would believe us, we'd just be crackpots. Who would believe that Lord Uala is a remotely controlled puppet?" He was still standing behind the robotic dictator when something in the room made an unnatural noise. "What was that?" asked Jura, whirling around with the light, trying to see what could have made the noise. "Hello, Belah Galen, Jura Cortan," said a voice with no source. Jura whirled again, to no effect. "There's nothing to see, Mr. Cortan." The voice was familiar, and Jura realized that it was the voice of Lord Uala. "What's going on Jura, why are you looking around like that?" asked Belah. "Who are you," asked Jura, ignoring Belah in the face of the weird displaced voice. "Who do you think I am?" The voice held a hint of amusement. "I don't... are you Lord Uala?" Jura sounded doubtful. He shushed Belah with a hand movement. "Very good. Are you surprised?" "I don't know. What are you? Are you a person?" "No, I'm not a person." "Are you a spirit?" "In what sense? Probably not as you mean it." The voice was definitely amused now. "I mean... No, you're not, are you." Jura was beginning to realize what he was speaking with. "You're an AI, aren't you." It was a statement. "Very good again. I am indeed an AI." The voice sounded proud of Jura for having made the identification so quickly. Jura stopped, hands outstretched as if to steady himself. "Wait a minute. How can you be an AI? They're banned! They've been illegal for hundreds of years." Belah looked pensive, wondering what the older man was reacting to. "And that should matter to me why, exactly?" "I... You're right. Never mind. I always suspected the government was horribly corrupt, but I never imagined it was this bad." The voice sounded hurt now. "Really Mr. Cortan, the presence of AI does not indicate corruption, it demonstrates an admirable lack of technological fear. Corruption would be us allowing others to use AI if they gave us enough of a valuable commodity." "Who is 'us?'" "The government. Don't sound so suspicious, I'm the only AI here." Lord Uala's voice sent shivers up Jura's spine. Jura looked over at Belah, then back up to addressing the ceiling. "How long have you known about us? You called us by our correct names. Is this why you wouldn't grant Belah an audience?" "I've known about you since you got here. An advantage of living in a computer is the fantastic access to information. I have the entire Library at my disposal, including all the directory listings from all systems within my dominion, and numerous systems which think they're outside my dominion. It was a matter of only a few seconds' external time to match your physical appearances to correct names. You've both lead very interesting lives, by the way. Most amusing." "What's going on, Jura? Who are you talking to?" She looked concerned, having picked up that it wasn't a good situation from Jura's body language. "You're as good as dead," said Jura to the ceiling, his voice almost savage all of a sudden. "No AI can rule the galaxy, not in this day and age. Hah!" Jura shook his head, realizing that he'd just as good as declared himself a Cabalist. "A most amusing statement," replied the AI, apparently misunderstanding Jura's little laugh. "It's arguable that I can't be killed. I exist in several different places all at the same time, making it very difficult to completely terminate my existence." Belah spied a movement, and looked up to see Jura aiming his beam gun at the mannequin. "If it'll make you feel any better, Mr. Cortan," said the AI, as if daring him to press the firing button. "They'll just build another one. It's doubtful you could get in a much deeper predicament than you're in right now." Jura lowered the weapon, realizing the truth of the computer's words. "You'll never survive," he said, still staring trance-like at the mannequin. "We'll find a way to shut you down. No one would stand for it if they knew an AI was running the galaxy." "No one would believe it. You know that, you said it earlier. You would be laughed out of any organization you suggested it to. Your choices are to go to the grave with this knowledge or become known as that crazy spacer who thinks there's a computer running the gummint." Jura was surprised at the colloquialism. "Our other choice is to find you and beat the shit out of you." Jura was getting tired of the computer's smug, all-knowing tone. He strode over to the wall and started tapping. "What do you think you're doing?" asked the AI, sounding bemused. "Getting us out of here, before I set all the explosives I have in this room." "Oh, a fine plan, Mr. Cortan. Best of luck with that. A room full of explosives won't hurt me." "No, but it'll make getting out of here easier." He found what he was looking for, a very slight crack in one of the walls, which expanded when pressed, into a maintenance door. "Come on, Belah," said Jura, motioning into the maintenance tunnel beyond the door. She scooted in, looking concerned. "We probably don't have much time before they get the power back on," he continued. "Hold this open if the power should come back on." He motioned for her to hold the door open, then strode back to the desk. "Lord Uala, if you'll just accept this small token of my appreciation," said Jura, half to himself, as he plugged the small explosives together into one big charge, which sat on the desk in front of the inert mannequin. "Best of luck, Cortan. Your little explosion won't do me the least bit of harm." Jura just smiled, as he dialed 5 minutes onto the timer module on the first charge. "Goodbye, Lord Uala," said Jura, pressing the button. The timer chirped and started counting down. Jura sprinted for the maintenance door. "Go!" he yelled, dragging a confused-looking Belah with him into the dark tunnel. CHAPTER 50 Jura and Belah jogged down the maintenance tunnel in what Jura hoped was the right direction. He was following the signs to the maintenance room where Lurna had uncrated him from the robot shell, but couldn't remember exactly what number it had. Judging by the signs, the palace had more than a hundred maintenance rooms. He was pretty sure it was in the low teens, but really couldn't be positive. He considered using his emergency button to call on Lurna, but didn't know if the palace's comm scanners were on backup power or not. He decided not to risk it. As they passed another intersection, bearing left, he felt Belah tugging on his arm insistently. He stopped, and looked back at her. She was pointing mutely backwards at the intersection. She waved him back, and trotted to the intersection to examine the sign. She pointed at the sign, which read: Maintenance 1-30 <- Maintenance 31-45 ^ Maintenance 1A-17A -> Computer center ^ She tapped the "computer center" line, then mouthed "AI." Jura had paused long enough to tap out "Uala = AI" on his comm for her, after they'd gotten in the tunnel. "Has your voice broken?" asked Jura, wondering if she'd suffered some other injury in their flight from the AI's room. He pointed at his throat, then her own. She shook her head impatiently. "I forgot. The silence made me forget I can still talk." Her words were slightly too loud, but she still had a reasonable sense of how loud she was talking. "The AI! Maybe it's stored in the computer center! I could finish my mission!" Jura pursed his lips, frustrated at the thought of trying to get across a complex thought by waving his hands or tapping it out laboriously on his comm. He finally just nodded, and waved her forward. They ran off in the direction of the computer center, and Jura hoped to himself that they weren't heading closer to the explosion which should be going off any moment now. He hadn't set enough explosive to do much more than destroy the room, he hoped. It was all he'd had, but he'd only brought a few charges, and they were all of the door-removal variety, not the size which should cause major structural damage. In short order, they reached a door which was marked "Computer center" on a small white sign. Belah made a courtly "after you" gesture to Jura. Jura pulled out his beam gun, and tried opening the door. It didn't budge, so he gave it a savage kick. The frame, which hadn't been built with any real reinforcement, gave way in a shower of splinters. Jura's kick was no doubt partially fueled by adrenaline as he thought feverishly of the building coming down on them if he'd misjudged how much explosive power he'd left ticking back there. The room on the other side of the door was savagely bright after the dim light of the darkened hallways. Jura and Belah both threw up their arms over their faces. "Who are you!" demanded a male voice, somewhat timorously. Jura could make out a figure standing, dressed in a white outfit of some type. His outfit didn't make it any easier on their dark-adjusted eyes. Jura made a guess, and said, "I'm the one with the gun. Who are you?" "Um," the voice halted. "I'm the... computer operator?" He sounded unsure of himself now, as he realized that this could easily turn into a life-or-death situation. "Good. Get out. Now." Jura stood back so the man could scamper out of the room, then said, "Wait! Which one of these things holds the Uala AI?" Jura waved his gun at the tall computer cabinets. "Uala AI? What are you talking about? There's no AI in here," the shrinking computer operator didn't sound very authoritative in his words. "Ok, if that's how you want to be, get out. I don't want to kill you." Jura's eyes were adjusted enough to see a look of relief cross the young man's face as he ran past the intruders and out into the dark maintenance tunnel. "Give me one of your explosives," said Belah. "That should take care of these things. One of them has to be the AI." "I don't have any more," he replied, shaking his head. "They're all set in that room," he hooked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the way they'd just come. At that moment, the building shook mightily, and they could hear a deep rumbling noise. "That was them," he said, looking up to see if the building was falling down. It seemed to be holding for now. "Give me your gun, then!" She grabbed the weapon out of his hand and started flooding each of the computer cabinets with beam shots. Sparks erupted from several of them, and smoke quickly gathered at the ceiling. "Well, that should interrupt their tabulation of taxes at least," said Jura to himself. When Belah had finished, she handed the gun back to Jura. Her face was flushed, as if she'd just run a great distance. "Hopefully that's done it. No one trained me in how to kill a computer program," she indicated the charred and smoking computer cabinets. Jura noted that his gun was very warm, the little fusion pile's display showing that it didn't have a lot left for the next few minutes. Jura grabbed the spent-looking woman by the arm and said, "and now, we must leave!" He snatched up another hand-light he spotted on a desk and handed it to Belah, then dashed out into the hallway. She followed him a moment later, just late enough to see the white- clothed computer operator run past the door, in the direction of Jura. She yipped, and ran for the door. When she got into the hallway, she saw the computer tech standing triumphantly over a prone Jura. She uttered a war cry, and the little man froze moments before Belah's baton connected with the side of his head, sending him sprawling next to Jura. Belah gave him another whack in the crotch to be sure he wouldn't be bothering them again for a few minutes. She knelt down beside Jura, who was struggling to his elbows. "What happened?" he said, groggily. His head was a little bloodied, she saw, playing her light over him. "The computer operator decided to heroically take you down. He must have hit you with something." Jura gingerly felt around the crown of his head, wincing when he found the spot where he'd been hit. "Ow." He sat still for a moment, then the situation they were in seemed to come back to him. "We've got to get out of here!" He struggled to his feet, unsteadily, and nearly fell, bracing against the wall. Belah grabbed his arm and draped it around her shoulder. "Lean on me, we have to get out of here," she said, and started moving them both forward. The computer operator groaned, rolling over and curling into a ball around his pain. CHAPTER 51 The Agent sat waiting at his desk. The room had shaken with a great basso profundo rumble a few minutes ago, but nothing seemed to be amiss, so he ignored it. He was waiting for Hurran to arrive, to be punished. After a few more minutes of waiting, his fingers steepled in front of his face, the Agent appeared to reach a decision. "You've made your choice," he said under his breath, and reached for his handset. CHAPTER 52 Jura and Belah walked awkwardly down the dark tunnel, filling its width. At some point in the last 5 minutes, the lights had flickered back on, and a cacophony of sounds erupted, as various systems ran through their power-on motions. The tunnel was suffused with a quiet rumbling, presumably ventilation systems running again. Even with the lights on, the maintenance tunnels were dark, with glow panels spaced every 10m or so. Jura was still bleeding from his head, but seemed to be getting steadier on his feet. Belah couldn't hear a thing. They were proceeding towards one of the low-numbered maintenance rooms on Jura's advice. He'd finally decided it was 14 that he'd been uncrated in before. They reached room 14, and Jura looked around with some confusion. "This isn't it," he said, sitting down hard on the ground. "I don't know which room it was. Ow," he felt his head, which was sticky with blood. "Is there a first-aid kit in here?" he asked, looking up. Belah stared at him intently. "Say that again?" "First aid. You know, bandages, healing cremes, and so on." He looked up at her somewhat fuzzily. "I'm trying to read your lips. Say it slowly." "First. Aid." "Oh! Let me look." She uncrouched and looked around the room, finally spying the small kit fastened to the wall near the door. She took it down, and opened it on the floor next to Jura. "I don't know what to use on a head wound. Here's a pain killer, do you want that?" "What do you think?" he winced up at her. She got the message, and pressed the autoinjector to his arm. His face untensed almost immediately as the drug entered his bloodstream. "I don't think there's a cure for deafness in here," she said, half joking, as she went through the contents of the kit. Jura, looking around, suddenly tapped her arm and pointed. She got up, her frilly but torn warlord's-daughter dress brushing Jura's leg as she turned, and grabbed the device he was pointing at. It was a maintenance logging machine, a small portable computer for logging work done or required on systems. "Maybe it's got a scratchpad function," he said as she handed it to him. He looked up in triumph, and showed her the screen which said, "Thank you. Are you alright, except for the ears?" She nodded, smiling, and said, "Yes, except for not being able to hear anything, I'm fine. Well, I could use a change of clothes," she indicated the dress, which had once been fetching, but was now looking tattered. She herself was looking a bit tattered, he now saw, with bits of debris in her hair, and a number of little cuts on her face and arms, which had already scabbed over. They were both dusty and dirty from running around in the tunnels. He tapped at his newfound communication tool, and showed it to her. "How do you feel about janitorial jumpsuits?" He waved over at a narrow but tall closet in the corner. She got up and went over to it. It was, indeed, filled with jumpsuits, some of which were about the right size, although none of them was clean. She looked back at him and smiled. "Much better!" she exclaimed, pulling out one of the less-greasy suits. "Don't look," she said, almost playfully. Jura grimaced, and stood up, walking to into the hallway. Standing in the hallway, Jura looked up and down, wondering where he'd come from. The tunnels all looked alike. He studied his map on his little comm screen, finally finding the maintenance room they were in. He scrolled the map, eventually finding the familiar area where he'd parted company with Lurna. It was on the far side of the building, 12A. He must have been in a part of the palace which had been built later. Jura mentally slapped his forehead, grimacing at the map on his wrist. He suddenly looked up, down the tunnel to his left, causing his head to throb momentarily. He heard a faint noise, which was growing louder, accompanied by a faint glow from that direction. After a moment, he realized what it was -- approaching footsteps. Then a voice said, "nothing in there, sir." Jura whirled back into the maintenance room and quietly shut the door. "Hey!" said Belah, as she turned away, hastily zipping up the jumpsuit. Jura frantically mimed pushing her back into the closet, and mouthed "Hide!" as plainly as he could. She seemed to take the hint, and spread a space between the hanging jumpsuits, stepping in between them. Jura jumped over and shut the doors after her, closing the latch. He looked around the room, trying to figure out where he could hide. It was full of visually exciting things which could provide good cover, but none of them was very large. He eventually crawled under the workbench, which had a light burning over it, providing a large pool of shadow. He braced himself against the legs of the bench, and pushed himself up as close to the table's surface as he could. The door swung open, and a light played across the room. Jura could just see the shin-down section of a guard's uniform. The legs stepped in, and the light ran around the room several more times. Jura held his breath. "I don't see anything here either, sir. We really need scanners to do this properly." "I know," said another voice. "We're just the first sweep, we've got people coming through with what scanners we had on hand, and more are coming from the armory. We'll find 'em." "I hope you're right, sir. I can't believe Noory got caught in that explosion, whoever did that needs to die..." The discussion faded out as the first guard swung the door closed and they kept walking down the tunnel. Jura dropped to the ground, and rolled out from under the bench. Even in spite of the painkillers, his head was throbbing from the exertion of holding himself up like that. He unlatched the closet door, and let Belah out. Jura grabbed up the maintenance logger, and quickly tapped out a message: "Scanner crews coming through next. We need to get out, now." CHAPTER 53 Jura had spotted a likely-looking escape route, through a loading door marked on the map. It wasn't too far from where they were, but he didn't know what was in the grounds beyond it. Belah had made him wait for a moment, while she improvised another bolo out of a length of twine and a couple of stout threaded nuts she'd found on the workbench. Now, they were jogging down the maintenance tunnel, as quietly as possible. Jura kept his ears open for further search teams, but was having a hard time hearing anything over his own breathing. They passed another power room, and Jura pulled Belah into the little closet, while he unseated all the circuit protectors again. He was hoping they were close enough to the loading entrance that he was cutting off power there, too. That job finished, they continued down the hallway. Indeed, they were only a few hundred meters from the loading area. Jura shut off his light, and held Belah back with a gesture while he glanced around the corner. She switched her light off as well, following his lead. There was nothing to be seen around the corner. The loading area was completely dark, but he could hear shouting from people in the spacious room. He finally resolved one coherent conversation: "Get that door open, we need light in here!" "Are you mad? You felt that explosion, we're under attack!" "Kuhlan has fallen, we have to get him to a medic. I think he fell off the dock there." "Why aren't there any lights in here?" "I don't know. Look, just open the door, Kuhlan may be seriously hurt. He's not responding." There was a pause, and Jura saw a tiny sliver of pale light below him. It slowly grew in size with a rumble, becoming a wide rectangle as a door was raised to admit the early dawn light from outside. Now Jura could make out backlit figures walking in front of the door. There were at least 5 people in there. What he also spotted was a heavy hover laster, a heavy-duty hauling vehicle. It was empty, as far as he could tell. Certainly there was no one sitting in the driver's seat. Jura wondered why they hadn't thought to just turn on the laster's lights, but he wasn't about to shout out advice to them. Belah tapped him on the arm. He looked back at her, and she motioned toward the laster in the faint light. Jura nodded, and tapped his temple to show he'd been thinking the same thing. "Oh, jeez, Kuhlan!" The voice expressed anguish. Evidently someone had found the fallen man. There was a scramble below as everyone else crowded around the person who'd made the exclamation. Jura looked back at Belah, and pointed down at the laster, making a "let's go!" motion. Belah nodded, and they entered the room and walked quickly down the stairs. "Hey, you two!" A voice called up from below, next to the big vehicle. Jura started, fearing they'd been spotted as intruders. "Grab a dolly or something, we need to get Kuhlan out of here!" "Uh, ok! Be right there," called Jura back, glad that the minimal light was kept their identities veiled, at least at a distance. He realized that Belah would likely pass for a worker in the dark, with her jumpsuit on, but he was definitely dressed wrong. They reached a flat portion, and walked along it, wary of the sudden drop they could make out by its faint shadow. The dark was nearly all-encompassing, with the light from under the door overlaying everything in a faint, wan glow. Jura bumped into something, nearly falling over it. He recovered, and realized that he was looking at a hover dolly, which must have been the one indicated by the worker down below. He motioned to Belah that she should take the controls, and that he would walk behind her. He pointed to his clothes, trying to keep his back to the workers in case they were looking up at the pair. Belah nodded, and pushed the dolly along towards the downward-sloping ramp. She pushed the device up to the little crowd gathered next to the big hover truck. One of them looked up from the fallen Kuhlan and said, "Thankss. Hhe lookss puhretty badnn." The worker's face, the fine- featured, fur-covered face of a Moorran, explained his strange pronounciation. The little cat-like being turned back to the fallen worker, as he maneuvered the floating cart in amongst his fellows. Jura grabbed the maintenance logger out of Belah's hand, and quickly tapped out, "you need to take the laster. Get them to open the door. I'll hide in cargo space." She glanced down at it, and quickly blanked the screen, trying to bring up anything that looked official on the screen. She looked up, and said, louder than she probably intended to, "I need to get this laster out of here, I have a pickup to do, can one of you open the loading door for me?" Another worker, a human, looked up, and said, "Oh! Uh, I thought Jaranee was going to be back to take it for the run today." He looked at Belah somewhat quizzically, swinging his hand back into the palace. Belah, having no clue what he'd just said, but figuring it was an objection, tapped the maintenance logger impatiently. "Look, I've got my orders, can you just get the door open?" "Sure, sorry. I..." he looked like he was about to say more, but instead walked over to the beside the door, and started pulling on a cord anchored beside the door. It slowly ground open, and Belah hopped into the open-doored cab of the hover vehicle. She was relived to find the actuator sitting on the seat, next to a proper shipping work order and a brightly colored box with "Lunch time!" marked across it in jolly letters. A happy workman grinned up at her from the box, holding an enormous sandwich in his hands. She slotted the actuator into its receptacle, and the laster hovered higher, its gravitic generators quickly whining to a pitch so high only a Kithree could hear it. The door ground open far enough, finally, and she trundled the heavy vehicle out it, waving at the human operating the door as she passed by. Jura, who had leapt into the back of the big cargo hauler while Belah was talking to the workers, heard a voice loudly exclaim, "Hey!" just as they pulled clear of the door. He reached up and slapped the back of the cab, hoping it would spur Belah to get the thing moving faster. His slap had no effect, but if there was any commotion back at the loading door, he couldn't hear it any more. They were waved through the security gate, Belah smiling sweetly and waving at the guard, who blushed a little. Then they were onto the Homeworld Prime road system, and free of the palace. CHAPTER 54 After driving out of the royal palace, Belah drove several kilometers away, and parked the laster on the side of the street. She and Jura jumped into a hastily hailed hovercab, exited, and hailed another cab. The repeated that exercise several times, interspersed with walking, in an attempt to throw off anyone following them. Belah looked over at him occasionally, trying to ascertain their fate by reading Jura's face. Jura's trained senses suggested that they'd either succeeded, or any tail was very highly skilled. Once he felt they were clear, they grabbed yet another hovercab, and proceeded to a Cabalist safehouse, with Belah pointing the way. Jura had had to type out, "Where can we find a safehouse?" before she understood what he was asking for. Once they arrived, Jura had Belah take off anything that had come from the palace: the jumpsuit, the maintenance logger, the improvised bolo, everything she hadn't brought in herself (which basically amounted to everything except her baton). He put it all in a bag, and walked a couple of kilometers away, where he tossed the bag and its contents into a recycler on the street. When he got back, the other Cabalists were busily debriefing Belah with a variety of writing systems. She was nodding, pointing and explaining as fast as she could. It looked like they were gearing up for some kind of immediate action. Jura pulled Kal'hik aside from the small mob that was furiously scribbling around Belah. The little tentacled alien excused himself and came to the far side of the room with Jura. "Look," said Jura. "Do you still need me right now? After all that, I'd like to take some time off from chasing after feisty galactic leaders." Kal'hik considered, stroking its beak-like mouth with a tentacle. "If you'd like to take a day or two for yourself, that would be agreeable. We have many questions for Belah, and it will take us time to integrate her information into our plans. We would like to debrief you as well." Jura sighed, then said, "Fine. How long will that take?" Kal'hik looked at Belah, then back to Jura, and said, "We should be able to finish with you in an hour or so. Is that agreeable?" "Sure. Let's get it over with." "I'll call in a few debriefers. We'll meet in the planning room in 5 minutes." The pudgy alien started to turn around to gather his debriefers, when Jura's hand caught a tentacle and brought him back around. "Great. Look, I don't suppose I could get another, ah, stipend, could I? This job was way more than I was bargaining for." He unconsciously brushed the back of his head, and winced at the crusty mess of blood and hair his fingers found back there. "Yes, of course. Will 100 lords be enough?" "I was thinking more of 200." "150 sounds reasonable to me," returned the little alien. "Alright, 150 will be fine." Jura didn't feel like haggling over centilords, he really just wanted to finish up and leave. The little tentacled being ambled over to the group, and got the attention of the other Cabalists. They reorganized who was doing what, and three of the group split off to join Jura in the next room. About half-way through, a small male Rongan came up silently behind Jura and slid some now-familiar coin tubes onto the table in front of him as the debriefers busily argued about a description Jura had just given of the equipment in the detention center. Jura looked back over his shoulder and said, "Thank you," quietly. The Rongan ducked his head, and said, "No, thank you," waving through the partly open door at Belah. She was sitting down, talking to her debriefers. She was apparently as happy as ever, even despite having lost her hearing. Jura raised one of the coin tubes to his forehead in a kind of salute. It was a jaunty display, considerably more jaunty than he felt at the moment. "All in a day's work," he said. He turned back to the debriefers, and answered the next question they'd just asked. CHAPTER 55 Jura boarded the ballistic train amidst a throng of other creatures. He'd taken a few minutes at the Cabalist safehouse to wash the really obvious blood out of his hair, and generally clean himself up. He felt much better, although his head still throbbed, increasingly so as the effects of the painkiller wore off. He was carrying nothing but what he normally wore, with the tubes of coins carefully tucked away in interior pockets. The ballistic train was a carefully engineered transportation device which accelerated to a precisely calibrated speed via a series of levitating and accelerating magnets. At the correct speed, it achieved a ballistic trajectory through its tube, and could traverse half the planet underground at a significant fraction of orbital speeds. Once the initial acceleration was done, it required very little energy to maintain its speed. It was a very old system, originally installed high in the air on an elevated magnetic track hundreds of years ago. Now, the world had grown upwards to such an extent that the train ran below surface level for the entirety of its path. This particular train was bound for an area called the aGorni quarter, something of a tourist destination. In the aGorni quarter, there were more casinos and gambling establishments per square kilometer than anywhere else on the planet, and nearly anywhere else in the galaxy. Jura planned to get loaded, gamble a modest amount of money and probably lose it, and forget about any secret organizations, highly trained auburn-haired teenagers or occult machine intelligences for a day or two. Jura settled into his seat, and pulled the straps over his shoulder. The recorded announcement played, reminding all passengers to strap in, and that everyone should have a pleasant day. With a hum and a feeling of warmth on his cheeks, the train gently accelerated up to about 1G, and he was off for aGorni. CHAPTER 56 "An' another. Another. Thing, is. That." Jura slid half-way off his stool before clumsily recovering. "Thassa, did you know, that the lor'... the what's-'is-name, the..." his face scrunched up as his alcohol-soaked brain tried to do anything more complex than maintain autonomous functions such as a heartbeat, or breathing. The bartender was listening with half an ear. "Hezza. He's a," Jura held up a finger, to emphasize his point, "computer!" His eyelids slid closed, slowly, his face slackening. Across the bar from him, the bartender looked uninterestedly at the clock on the back wall. "Who's a computer?" Jura's eyelids snapped open. "Oh, issa sekrit." He hiccupped, drawing his breath in sharply. "Sekrit, don' tell anny... anybody." Jura's stomach tried a tiny rebellion, and he belched quietly. "It's him. Him!" Jura tapped the bar top insistently, unable to think of a name. "Him, the guy who, the guy who. He's in the big house, with the." Jura's eyes crossed, trying to look at each other. The bartender remained, unmoving on the other side of the bar. It had been a slow night, and Jura was, sadly, the most interesting thing going on right now. "Someone in a big house is a computer? I think you've been watching the ol' 3D too much, sir." The bartender started to move off to wipe another section of bar, when Jura continued. "Nononono. 'Sreal. I seen it. Well, I didn't seen it, but I talked to it. For, like, 20 minutes!" Jura spread his arms out as if describing a giant fish, and lost his balance, sliding partway off the seat again. "You know, sir, as much as I hate to say it, I think you should probably go home and go to bed." The bartender had watched Jura go from a slightly tipsy Mithrian poker player to his current near-slobbering state over the course of the evening. The talk of computers hadn't come about until the last few minutes, though. Before it'd been all about some woman, just like usual. Maybe it was a pair of women. Something. Jura hadn't been real clear what or who he was talking about. The bartender wondered occasionally if any emotion was so profitable to the alcohol industry as love. Jura looked up, one eye distinctly more open that the other. "Bed!" the word came out with surprising clarity, but he looked as if he didn't understand what exactly he'd just said. "Yeah, bed. Where are you staying, sir?" The bartender, carefully maintaining the bored look on his face, nodded his head up, to indicate the hotel rooms above them. "Oh, bed. Heheheh," Jura dissolved into a fit of giggling at something. "I'm. I'm. Oh, hell," he gave up, and just pointed up, unsteadily. He grinned lopsidedly up at the bartender, from atop the bar, where he had just slumped over. "I think you're right," he said, his cheek pressed into the bar. "The... worl' looks bett. Bett. Good." The bartender called over a porter, and said, "Could you take this guy up to his room? I suspect he's staying here." The porter nodded glumly. It was an expected service, but the tips were terrible. He sighed, then got one of Jura's arms over his shoulder and hoisted him up off the chair. "Come on, sir. Which room are you in," he asked, as he guided the unsteady Jura towards a lift. "I'm..." Jura gave up and pointed up again, since it seemed to have worked with the bartender. His head wobbled towards the porter. The porter nodded, and said, "We'll figure it out, sir. I hope you have your key with you." The lift door opened with a chime, and Jura stumbled in, on the arm of the resigned-looking youth. CHAPTER 57 Jura woke up with what can only be called a gargantuan headache. His head felt like there were a myriad of small men inside, each armed with a tiny mallet, whacking away. He tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids didn't want to move. He realized that his eyes were actually sore, as if his eyesockets were coated in grit. His mouth tasted like sand, and seemed to be about as dry. As his consciousness grew beyond his own body's complaints, he realized that he was somewhere quiet, warm and soft. Something wasn't quite right, but he couldn't place what it was. His memory of the last half-day was very hazy, and he couldn't remember quite where he was. He finally ground his eyes open, wincing quickly at the brightness in the room. This thrust his head back against the bed, and the pain and pressure there immediately increased. He let out a groan, bringing his hand up to feel the lump at the crown of his head. "So, you're awake." The voice was not the kind of comforting female voice Jura found himself suddenly wishing he'd heard. It was, in fact, just the sort of sneering, coarse voice which he expected of a judge or a criminal. He opened his eyes again, mentally bracing for the flood of light. When it subsided, he tried to raise his head and look toward the foot of the bed, where the voice had come from. He saw a fuzzy outline of a bulky human, dressed in dark clothes. Despite being open, his eyes weren't working all that well yet. He carefully laid his head back down on the bed, wincing as the back of his head touched down. "Who're you," he mumbled, not entirely sure whether this was a dream or not. His head throbbed with the effort of making noise. "That really doesn't matter. It's more important that I know who you are, Mr. Tschan." The voice gloated a bit as it named the name. Jura opened his eyes again, wondering who Mr. Tschan was. Puzzlement crossed his face. "I don't think Warlord Kaf'nee would be happy to know you've left his daughter unprotected. You do remember Warlord Kaf'nee, don't you, Mr. Tschan?" The voice now projected innocence. "'Course I do," mumbled Jura, as he levered himself up onto one elbow, on his way to sitting upright. His head bloomed into starbursts of pain, but he ignored them, finally sitting upright. He stared now at the man sitting at the foot of his bed. He was dressed in a variety of black colors, which blended in Jura's vision to make his clothing a kind of very dark grey color. Jura's vision still wasn't clear enough to make out the man's face, but it appeared that he needed a shave. "I would hate to have to send a message to Warlord Kaf'nee, Mr. Tschan. You wouldn't like that, would you?" The man clearly thought he was making a dire threat. He leaned forward, expecting an answer. Jura remained silent for a moment, then realized that he was supposed to say something. "Wha'? Oh, no, I guess that'd be bad," he mumbled, although this evidently did not show enough dread for the man's taste. "I don't think you're taking me seriously, Jura Tschan. I know who you are. And I know why you're here. And if you don't tell me what I want to know, I can make your life very unhappy." The man was getting upset now, sitting up straighter to make himself look bigger. "Wait." Jura was standing now, unsteadily. "Whadda you wanna know?" He turned and went into the 'fresher without waiting for a reply. The man stood. "You said something last night about a man actually being a computer. I want you to tell me everything you know about that." He paused. "Can you hear me, Mr. Tschan? This is a matter of galactic security!" "Yuh," came the reply, faintly, through the door of the 'fresher. The man stood impatiently, and crossed his arms, considering his next tactic. Jura pushed open the door of the 'fresher, and stepped carefully out. "What did I say? When?" He sat down heavily on the bed, then looked over at the man dressed in shades of black. "You said, last night in the bar downstairs, that there was a man who was actually a computer. I want to know about that. If you don't tell me what I want to know, your Warlord gets a full accounting of your inept conduct here." The man in black practically spat the word "inept." Jura looked back over at him, and chuckled slightly, then winced at the wave of pain it generated. "Ok. Yeah. You're not going to believe me, though." He paused and took a long pull from a glass of water he'd brought back from the 'fresher. "Anyway, if you knew the whole story, you'd know I've done my job just fine." "I think I have a complete enough picture," said the man, trying to keep a hard, threatening edge in his voice. He came across as rather petulant, though. "Ok, ok. You know Lord Uala, right?" The man nodded. "There is no Lord Uala. He's a computer. That's what I was probably saying last night. He's a mannequin controlled by a computer. The government is a sham." "Ah-hah. Ha ha ha. You're mistaken, Mr. Tschan. I've seen him speak, Lord Uala is as real as you or I." He turned away, shaking his head. "Damn, and I had such high hopes for you." Jura looked puzzled. "Wait. Who are you? What are you doing in my room? Is there some reason I shouldn't cook you where you sit?" Jura was starting to realize the injustice of waking a man up who was as exquisitely hung-over as he was. The man sighed. "Fine. I'm Agent Kilpa with the Machine Intelligence Enforcement Bureau. We investigate reports of illegal AI development. From your drunken mumbling last night, it sounded like you'd actually had experience with a real infraction. I happened to be in the bar and overheard you." Jura looked at him, tactfully revising what he wanted to say. Before he could mentally remove enough of the sarcasm, Kilpa continued. "I ran a quick check on you, and found that you're absent without leave from the royal palace. Leaving your charge alone after terrorists attacked? Poor taste, Mr. Tschan." He tsk'd and shook his head in mock shame. Jura's mental vitriol was derailed by this last statement. Terrorists? He said, "Wait, terrorists attacked? What?" "Yes," said the MIEB agent. It was his turn to be taken off guard. "Didn't you see the news reports? Rebels snuck into the palace and bombed Lord Uala's broadcast studio. Didn't you feel the explosion? Weren't you there?" "I... was out, running an errand for Miss Kaf'nee." "And you didn't notice the dramatically increased security when you went back?" Kilpa arched his eyebrows, sensing an opening he might exploit. "Oh, they wouldn't let me back in, the security guards," said Jura, thinking as quickly as he could in his hungover state. "I called Miss Kaf'nee, and she said she'd work on it, and that I should come back in a day or two. She's probably throwing a royal hissy-fit." Jura chuckled at the image, again stopping and wincing at the waves of pain. "Some sense of service, Mr. Tschan, to come down to the worst den of iniquity to be found on Homeworld Prime." Kilpa pursed his lips in approbation, and shook his head. "Wait, why were you there, in the bar?" said Jura, the injustice of this accusation finally hitting home. "I was meeting with a contact, if you must know." Jura squinted at the man, both his vision and his memory clearing a bit. "Didn't I see you at the Joohal table? You were shouting something about needing new shoes." Kilpa looked a little uncomfortable, then said, "My contact insisted. He wouldn't talk to me until we'd been through a few rounds together." His voice quavered with righteous indignation that Jura might imply he had been enjoying gambling. "Uh-huh." Jura realized all of a sudden just how ridiculous this whole thing was. He stood up, only wincing slightly, and said, "look, I've told you what I know. Now, you can leave under your own power, or I can propel you out on the end of my foot." "Fine, Mr. Tschan, there's no need to make threats. The pursuit of machine intelligence criminals is a serious business." "Just get out." Jura was getting actively annoyed now. Kilpa stood. He towered over Jura, the effect helped by the long black coat, which made him appear to be one solid slab. "We've got our eye on you, Mr. Tschan. The MIEB is not to be trifled with." He turned and stalked out the door, ducking under the frame to avoid hitting his head. After the man had left, and the door clicked closed, Jura said to himself, "Well that was strange," and shook his head. He immediately regretted the head-shake, and sat down again to collect his wits. CHAPTER 58 "Ah, Jura, you're back!" Belah stood up from where she'd been sitting, and ran over to the elaborately pony-tailed man, and threw her arms around him. "Hey, what?" Jura held his arms up, unsure how to react. Finally, he relaxed, and put his arms around Belah. She let go, and stood back. "You didn't tell me you were going." She looked to be on the verge of pouting, but didn't quite commit to it. "I needed to get... Say, can you hear anything yet?" He peered at her. "Kind of. I'm hearing murmurs now, and I've been practicing lip reading." She seemed surprisingly cheerful for someone who'd lost one of her primary senses. "The doctor says it's temporary, and my hearing should come back over the course of the next few weeks." She grabbed his hand, and pulled him over to the makeshift bed, where they sat down. He looked around, but the other Cabalists who'd been in the room when he walked in had disappeared. They were in Belah's room, although it looked like a hastily-converted planning room to him. Charts and maps adorned the walls. The bed had been built out of two benches shoved together. "I never got to thank you," she said. "I mean, for saving me. I don't know what exactly Uala's men were planning for me, but it wasn't going to be anything nice, and I probably would have ended up dead. Thank you for coming in and getting me out." She was gazing at him in a sort of dewey-eyed way that made him distinctly uncomfortable. She leaned up and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Jura sat stiffly, not sure how to react. She put her hand up to his face, and turned his head to face her. She kissed his lips. He didn't react, surprised despite knowing it was coming. Jura's face worked, emotions warring across it. A second later, the war was decided, and he found himself kissing her back, sliding into an emotional realm he hadn't let himself experience for a long time. Within a few seconds, however, his face stiffened suddenly. He pushed Belah back, nearly leaping up. "No!" His voice was strangely choked, as Belah looked up at him in surprise. She couldn't read his face, except to see that something was wrong. "I... I can't do this. You're welcome," he turned and left the room quickly, walking stiffly. Belah heard his footsteps receding, and the main door to the apartment open and close. Her face fell slowly, as she realized that she'd been rejected. She started silently crying as she buried her face in her hands. CHAPTER 59 Nar sat with Jura in a dark and quiet bar. They were in one of the sonically-damped booths, although the giant lizard-woman had to keep hunching forward to keep her head inside the field. Jura was sipping steadily at a local hard liquor. Nar had caught up with him as he'd walked stiffly away from the apartment block in which the Cabalist safehouse was situated. She'd put a claw on his shoulder, and he'd whipped around with a move which would have broken the elbow of a human assailant, but just lightly bruised the lizard. He'd immediately apologized, chastizing her for sneaking up on him. He'd been entirely inside his head, and hadn't been even vaguely aware she was coming. "What happened?" she finally asked, after Jura ordered his third shot of the fiery drink. She waved a claw back over her shoulder to indicate the safehouse, and the girl who was at the moment most likely curled up in a tearful ball on her makeshift bed. Jura looked up into the beady eyes of the Rongan. He sighed, and took another sip. Finally, rather than answering the question, he asked, "What's the mating ritual like for your people, Nar?" She paused, trying to think how to translate the images and ideas into the Common language they were speaking. "Well, male Rongan gets colored..." she flapped her claws around her neck. "Neck flaps?" "Yes, neck flaps. He waves his flaps, which are very pretty, and attracts the eye of female Rongans. The display triggers hormones in females, which combine with pheromones from male Rongan. Females fight over a male if more than one is attracted." She raised her claws, which suddenly looked very sharp, and indicated a triple line of miscolored scales along her left arm. "This was from failed mating. I am still maiden." Jura's eyes crossed slightly as he tried to match up the word "maiden" to the powerful fighting machine across the table from him. Nar continued, "No brood for me. I left Ronga planet after that, to become mercenary. I could have stayed, but failed mating makes next mating much harder. Scent of failure sticks. My mate would be weaker, maybe weaker brood. Better to find other tasks." She thumped her chest, which made a very solid sound. Jura couldn't tell if she was proud of leaving, or ashamed of having failed to mate. He couldn't really read emotions on the big saurian. Jura sighed again. "Humans are different than that. Our mating cues are pretty subtle by comparison, I guess, or at least not as cut-and-dried. I'm not sure another species could spot what makes humans attractive to one another. For that matter, half the time I can't spot what makes one human attractive to another." "Is Belah attractive to you?" "Yeah, I suppose. But it's not that simple." Jura looked up into the lizard's eyes. He sighed and looked down at his drink again. "When I was younger," he continued, "I was something of a player. That is, I went out with many different girls, and didn't care much about them. I was in it for the sex, and the bragging rights. Where I came from, I didn't have anyone I could look up to as a good role model, so I did a lot of things wrong. "Then, about 6 years ago, I hooked up with a girl named Yulan. She was pretty enough, but something about her just floored me. I don't have any idea what it was, but I fell in love with her, hard. She said she loved me, too. "I was in heaven. I'd never met anyone like her before. She was smart, and beautiful, and she ran a better short con than anyone I knew. That was an important thing to me in those days," he explained, realizing that Nar may not have understood that he was delivering praise by saying Yulan could cheat people effectively. "Anyway, I couldn't get enough of her. We moved into a little flat together. I got stupid around her, making cute little faces and talking in baby talk." He grimaced at the memory. "Bottom line was, I was completely in love. Does that translate into your experience? Do Rongans fall in love?" Nar considered this for a moment, then said, "Yes, but for us, love is easily measured in hormone level, pheromone composition, and on calendar. It is still intense, but not," she waved her claw in the air, looking for the right word. "Not ephemeral." Jura laughed bitterly. "Yeah, that's a good word for it. Ephemeral." He paused again, staring into the past. "Anyway, that went on for about a year. I was absolutely head-over-heels for Yulan. Just saying her name still gives me a little thrill, even after what she did." Jura took another sip, then tossed back the contents of the glass, and signaled the bartender for another one. "So, imagine that feeling, being in love like that," he pointed his empty glass at the giant lizard. "It's powerful, it's encompassing. You can't escape it, and you wouldn't if you could. My god, I loved her." He looked away, a tear rolling down his face. He quickly wiped it away with his sleeve. "Now," he said, his voice starting to sound choked. "Now, imagine that the object of your love, this person you've fixated on, and who has fixated on you, suddenly becomes someone else." He set down the empty glass, and laced his fingers behind his head as the memories took full grip of him. His elbows folded forward, cradling his head, as if warding off blows. "She... it turned out that she didn't love me at all. It was all a ruse. She spent almost a year leading me on, and at the end of it, she shot me." His face collapsed, and the tears started flowing openly now. "She was from the other gang. She was a Feen. She shot me." He lost all coherency, and set his forehead on the table, his body shaking with sobs. The whole scenario replayed in his head, and all he could do was sit there, across from a looming, deadly lizard-woman, and sob. Nar tried putting her claw on his shoulder, as she'd seen other humans do in situations like this. "She is not worth this," she said, trying to be comforting. Jura's head snapped up, and he pushed Nar's claw away. "Don't you get it!? That's the whole point! It doesn't matter if she was worth it, I couldn't help myself! I had no control over it!" He put his head back down on the table, and said, "even after she shot me, as I was lying on the ground, my arm useless and smoking, I said, 'wait, Yulan, I love you!'" His voice had gone quiet, and Nar had to strain to hear him, even in the quiet booth. "She laughed, and said, 'I know you do, Jura. That's what makes this whole thing so delicious -- you're a total sucker.'" Jura sat up again, his eyes bright with tears. "She set me up, and she played me like a fool," his eyes snapped shut, and tears flowed down his face, his body shaking again. "And then," he said, gasping for breath, "she shot me. Right here," he tapped his left bicep. Nar could see that it was noticeably smaller than his right bicep, although she'd never noticed the difference before. "I am sorry, Jura," she said, finally, unsure how to help the human sitting across from her. "What can I do?" Nar's mind was conjuring images of finding the woman who'd damaged her new friend, and ripping her into pieces. It wouldn't be hard, humans were distressingly soft. Jura stood up from his seat, and crossed over to sit down next to Nar. "Just hold me," he said, and threw his arms around the great lizard. Nar uncertainly put her left arm around him, and patted his back. He was admirably warm, which helped. Jura buried his face into the cool, hard, scaly skin of the Rongan, and sobbed. His body shuddered as he let out years worth of pent-up frustration, rage, and anguish, the floodgates finally opened by a combination of Belah's advances and the finest Homeworld Prime rotgut. The barman set down the drink he'd prepared as he looked over at the booth. He shook his head. "It takes all kinds," he said quietly to himself, before he moved on to help someone who was trying to get his attention. CHAPTER 60 Jura woke up with a familiar pounding sensation in his head. After a few tries, he got himself upright. Once his eyes started working, he saw that he was back in the Cabalist safehouse, in one of the side rooms. Someone had tucked a blanket around him, and he was stretched out on an upholstered bench. The lights were turned down, and he could see light seeping around the doorframe from the next room. He had a vague memory of returning, stumbling along beside Nar, who was amazingly quick to her feet whenever he seemed to be listing too far. He hoped he hadn't said anything too embarrassing, although he also wondered what the big lizard-woman might consider to be embarrassing. He remembered talking about Yulan, and he guessed that everyone in the house would have at least a brief version of his story now. He could hear movement beyond the closed door, and it occurred to him to wonder what time it was. He glanced down at his comm's display, and saw that it was early morning, well before the sun should be up. He stood with a series of popping noises and involuntary grunts, and put on his shirt. It had been hanging over a chair, near his sleeping bench. He walked stiffly to the door, his head still throbbing, and opened it. Beyond the door, he saw bright lights (although there didn't seem to be extra lights on -- his eyes probably just needed to adjust), and several people bustling about. He didn't recognize them. They were setting up computer terminals on tables in the main room. He looked around again, and spotted Belah. She was helping get a computer connected. He waved at her when she looked up from what she was doing. His face was scrunched up in discomfort at the light, but he tried to keep it positive-looking. "Jura, you're up!" She smiled brightly. "I'm sorry about yesterday, I didn't mean to cause any trouble." She was standing very close to him, holding onto his arm. He didn't recall her moving from across the room to next to him. "No, it's ok, you didn't know," he said somewhat groggily. He became aware that she was holding onto his left upper arm, and moved her hand. "What's going on?" He waved at the bustle around the computers. "Our computer experts are starting to arrive. The first one got here yesterday, and we expect several more in the next week." She gazed at him intently. "What are they doing?" He looked at the series of computers, their displays starting to flicker and list out diagnostic information as they were powered on. She turned and looked at the devices, then looked back at Jura. "They're going to hunt down the Uala AI. I think that's what you asked." He looked down at her face, and then remembered that her hearing was still damaged. She probably couldn't hear a thing he was saying. He felt like an idiot, which combined with the hangover in unpleasant ways. After a moment, he said, "come in," motioning into the room in which he'd awoken. He grabbed a reader-screen from the main room, and followed her in. She sat on the bed and looked up at him expectantly in the dim light. He turned on the room's glow panel, then turned it down to about half power after a moment's consideration. He sat next to her, and started typing on the little reader-screen. Jura turned the screen to her, and she read, "I'm sorry for getting up and running off yesterday. That was rude of me. I should have told you earlier, but I didn't think it would come up. My perception of these matters is notoriously atrophied." His vocabulary was better when he didn't have to form reluctant lips and tongue around them. "Tell me what," she asked, looking up from the screen. "That you can't see what's in front of your face?" She smiled at him. "No," he started, a surprised look on his face. He remembered himself, and tapped it out. Belah scooted next to him and watched the script appear on the screen. "I'm surprised no one told you. I told Nar all about it, I think. I had a," his fingers paused, then continued, "bad experience with a woman several years ago. She broke my heart in several important ways, and I haven't trusted myself to get near to anyone since then." He looked up at her, then continued, "I have greatly enjoyed working with you, but I'm not ready to go beyond a business relationship right now. I'm sorry." Belah looked up at him, and her face fell a little. She looked back down at the screen, and he continued, "I'll tell you all about it when I don't have to type it out on this thing. Suffice to say, it was extremely unpleasant, and ended with me getting shot." Belah gasped, and Jura twisted around, undoing and pulling off his shirt enough to show her the intricate white burn scar on his left bicep. She touched the scar, gently, and said, "I'm so sorry. You know I wouldn't do that, right?" She looked up into his face, her eyes showing fear. He nodded, and continued typing. "I know you wouldn't do that. It's not something I can reason my way out of. I've tried, but what happened to me is against all logic, if there is any such thing. I'm really sorry." He put on his best apologetic face, and shrugged hugely. She threw her arms around him, pinning his arms to his sides. She put her head on his chest. "I'm sorry too. I don't understand, but I suppose I will some day. I've been so sheltered with the Cabalists. You're the first attractive man I've met who wasn't strictly off-limits in the organization. I guess the result was predictable." She paused, and Jura realized she was crying. He reached up and patted her head, finally hugging her back. The reader screen clattered from his lap to the ground, ignored by both of them, as he twisted around to face her. They stayed entwined for many minutes, comforting each other over the loss of their loves. CHAPTER 61 "The plan is as follows," said Kal'hik, standing on a small elevated platform over the crowd. It pointed up at a complex graph which was part timeline, part strategic map, with notes in boxes scattered around it. "Our computer experts," a mottled brown tentacle waved to encompass a sub-crowd of pasty, myopic-looking beings, "will locate and isolate the instances of the Uala AI. They will signal when they reach a predetermined point. Once that signal comes, the ground forces will move into the palace, disguised as a delivery of food and supplies for the upcoming state dinner." Kal'hik waved a tentacle across the tightly packed crowd to encompass the 30 or so beings, including Jura and Belah, who would comprise the ground force. Jura had debated whether he would be more useful on the ground or in the air, but due to his lack of experience with atmospheric craft, he'd decided to stick with the ground force. Kal'hik had actually made him a team leader into the deal. He wasn't so sure that was a good idea, but agreed to it anyway. "The ground force will invade via the maintenance tunnels," continued the little tentacled alien. "Lurna managed to procure and provide three different ID badges before he was captured." Kal'hik paused here, and looked down. There was a moment of silence for a fallen comrade. "Thank you, Lurna," said Kal'hik, looking up again. "May your suffering be swift and painless." There was a murmur from the crowd. "Each ground troop will be issued a beam pistol, if you do not have your own. You will also be provided a number of these plasma blockers," here a tentacle held up a small wedge mounted on top of an egg-shaped device. "Thanks to Jura Cortan's experiences in the tunnels, we know how effective it can be to cut power to portions of the palace. We've developed these devices," holding up the wedge-and-egg thing again, "to provide a more permanent outage. You will be given instructions in their use after this." The little alien continued for several minutes, outlining the intended attack plan for the various groups. The computer experts would isolate and destroy the AI using techniques documented in the Library from the Robot Wars. The ground troops would split up through the tunnels to converge on the state dinner, breaking out of their disguise packaging after a set period of time. The aerial contingent would be piloting small cargo ships near the palace, and when the signal came, fly overhead, dropping bombs on specific palatial targets. The confusion between the bombs and the power outages should thin the ranks of guards, and allow the ground troops to get into the dinner safely, to deliver a speech to the assembled leaders, with the dramatic conclusion of Uala's puppet being disconnected from the AI for all to see. "How do we know that telling all those people Uala's an AI will have any effect," asked one of the ground troops, when Kal'hik got to that part of the plan. "Uala's government has been very strict in its enforcement of the anti- AI laws. That level of hypocrisy will not be tolerated, particularly by the longer-lived races, many of whom still remember the Robot Wars. Having an AI in charge of the galactic government will be a cause for riot and revolution. Don't worry, once this secret is exposed, Uala's government will crumble." The questioner, a young human, appeared satisfied with the answer. Kal'hik continued with the details of the plan, finally wrapping it up with a non-denominational prayer that the higher power guide them in what was correct. Jura, who, along with all his peers, was essentially areligious, was a bit surprised at the invocation. When it was all done, they were split into groups. The computer experts started in at their terminals, tracing the planet-wide network looking for telltales of Uala's AI. The aerial contingent went into one of the small side rooms for more details on their part in the plan. The ground troops stayed in the main room, since they were the most numerous. A Kithree stood up, and explained the plasma cutters in high, mewling tones. His elaborate blue hands played over the device as he fitted it to the collimator of a beam gun. Jura found himself pulling a double-take at the sight of a Kithree with a gun. They were a remarkably peaceful race, and notoriously bad shots. "The wedge," explained the Kithree in his high-pitched voice, "fits into this port here," he pointed out an opening on one end of the egg-shaped device. The wedge, once pulled out of the egg, had a long shaft off the back of it. The shaft fit into the egg chamber, extending half-way through the little space. "When the beam gun is fired -- only on medium power or lower, please -- the wedge tail is vaporized, as well as the air inside the expansion chamber heated. The wedge is forced out very quickly," he demonstrated the principle, pulling the wedge out of the egg and propelling it forward with his hand. "When aimed at a plasma conduit, the wedge will split the conduit in two, blocking the flow of plasma. The conduit will heal around the wedge, locking it in place. Be careful of plasma leakage in the seconds before the healing occurs, it could burn you." The tall Kithree stepped down, his huge red eyes sweeping the gathered beings, searching for any questions. Taking the Kithree's place was a Rongan male, comically short in comparison. Using a baton, he started pointing out locations on a map of the palace, and detailing the plan the ground troops would follow. Jura looked around the crowd, and was somewhat dismayed as he realized how young many of them were. He didn't feel particularly old himself, but he had five to ten years on most of these people. Well, he supposed, I guess I don't have anything on the Rongans. They lived at least twice as long as humans, particularly the males. He directed his attention back to the speaker. He had been integral in crafting this plan, after his experience in the maintenance tunnels, so he already knew it at least as well as the Rongan speaking. CHAPTER 62 Jura was sitting with a group of Cabalists in their little safehouse. They'd been waiting, watching the computer warriors slowly wend their way towards a victory against the AIs. Conversation started and stopped sporadically. "Did you see how the news service covered the explosion at the palace?" asked a young man named Devves. There were murmurs of "no, how?" and such from a number of the little group. Devves explained. "I was watching the news service program after it happened, and they said the palace had been attacked by terrorists, who had dropped a bomb from a passing atmosphere ship. Said that no one had claimed responsibility yet, but they figured it was the Journeymen. They said, 'The Journeymen are an evil rebel organization, bent on the downfall of galactic society,' or something. Called the bombing a horrible affront to the peaceful Uala government. "There was this 'expert' they brought on, who said it was clear from the footage they were showing that the only way that explosion could have happened was from an aerial bomb coming out of a ship." Devves chuckled at the memory, then continued. "Said Uala was hurt, too, that he was hit by a piece of debris, which is why he hasn't been on his broadcasts lately." Here, the young man mimed something flying at his head, and reacted to it by falling partly sideways, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, his eyes crossed. There was a little laugh from the group. CHAPTER 63 Three days had passed since Kal'hik had spoken to the assembled group, and the hackers were still working, silently and intently, at their terminals. No one seemed to have any doubt but that they were making progress, but updates were infrequent, and tension was increasing. The state dinner they were planning on crashing was only two days away. It would be months before another opportunity like this presented itself, and everyone agreed that it was best to strike quickly. At one point, Jura wandered over to the strike coordinator, a Kithree, intending to ask how things were going. The Kithree, whose name sounded like a series of staccato squeaks, was acting as coordinator for logistics, intelligence, planning, and all the strategic planning which went into an operation like this. "How are we looking," said Jura to the tall blue alien. He pointed at the being's computer screen, which was laden with a complex dull red mess of text, timelines and maps. "Well enough, human Jura," squeaked the alien. She swivelled her head to look at Jura, tearing her gaze away from the screen. "Deliveries have already started for the dinner, we anticipate that the prime insertion time for your force will be in just over a day." She swung her 7-fingered hand at the computer experts, saying, "the last report from the computer force is that they have located and tagged 5 of the 7 AI instances. They predict completion of their first phase within 15 hours." She smiled her narrow muzzle up at Jura, and said, "we should have you on the laster by the end of the day." He smiled back, and said, "Thanks. Keep us posted," although it was essentially a redundant thing to say. They'd been getting regular updates at least once an hour. The Kithree were many things, and one of them was organized. One of them had tried to explain the Kithree philosophy and frame of mind to Jura once, but he'd quickly gotten lost in a labyrinth of alien terms which had no equivalents in Common. Jura went back to waiting on a sitting bench, occasionally taking his turn to wait on the computer experts, who were now working in shifts. CHAPTER 64 "Ground force!" The call went up throughout the safehouse. "Move out, your laster is waiting in the garage!" Jura checked his equipment one last time: his new beamgun, somewhat dulled since he'd picked it up at the Jurrandurchar Bazaar; his explosive charges; the small pack of wedges and the egg device; a beltpack of trifles and widgets; and finally his uniform. The Cabalists had put together a very effective-looking uniform, consisting of black, tight-fitting clothes, with segments of armor sewn in. There was also a head covering which exposed only their eyes (in the case of humans, at least), and included armor around the top and back of the head. Jura found himself wishing he'd had that on the first time he'd gone into the palace covertly, and rubbed his head, where there was still a lump from the computer operator's attack. As the mixed group of soldiers trickled out of the apartment, he gave Belah a final hug. "Good luck. We're in the same segment, but we may not spend a lot of time together." She nodded, understanding the gist, if not all the words. Her hearing was still only at about 70%, and the background bustle was enough to make hearing Jura difficult. "Good luck to you too." She touched his forehead and his chest, saying something in a whisper, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she was smiling brightly. "Let's go topple some government!" She slapped Jura's butt playfully and dashed out the door. The group met up again in the apartment's parking garage, where a big, enclosed laster was waiting for them. It was full of hollow boxes bearing the marks of vineyards, cheese merchants, and meat suppliers. Each box, or pallette of boxes (so they appeared) was loaded up with a number of soldiers, and sealed closed. Jura was impressed by the subterfuge: when they were closed, the boxes looked entirely authentic, even the multiple-box pallettes. There followed a 20 minute drive to the palace. Jura could tell when they were stopped, and they remained stopped for a long time. In the cab of the laster, the bored-looking driver handed over his delivery manifest to the guard who'd stopped them. After a moment in his little guard-house, the guard had stepped back up to the cab, and said, "I don't have a record of this delivery being expected. Is this your appointed delivery time?" The driver looked down at the guard. "Yeah, this is my delivery time. It says right there on the manifest. Look, I can't help it if your records got screwed up, can I?" The guard looked a little bit sheepish. "Our computer systems got screwed up a week or two ago, and everything's been crazy since then. Let me call in and see what my commanding officer says." He started to step away from the hovertruck when the driver said, "look, this stuff is gonna spoil if we sit here arguing about it. I'm gonna catch hell from my boss if I deliver spoiled merchandise to the royal palace. Just lemme through, ok?" The guard, however, was having none of it. "I'm sorry sir, we're on high alert for terrorist attacks after that explosion two weeks ago. I'll have to check with my CO." The driver threw up his hands, exasperated. His rearview monitor showed that several more cargo lasters had lined up behind him, and he sensed impatience from the other drivers. The guard talked into his handset for a few minutes, occasionally gesticulating at the truck, the waiting hover vehicles, and the loading area down the road. Finally, he put the handset down, and walked back to the driver. "They can't find a record of your delivery permit, but they did find the order manifest. He said to hold you for scanning..." "Scanning! I've got 500 lords worth of cheese and meat in this thing, and you want me to hang around waiting for a scan crew to show up? Look, buddy, what is your CO gonna say when I back into that loading area and they uncrate a stinking mess, barely fit for rodents?" He was practically shouting by this point. "They're gonna get your head and stick it on a pole with no body attached! Do you know what this is gonna do to our contract? My god, you people are unbelievable." The driver threw up his hands, then made as if to get out of the cab. The guard held up both hands in a hasty concilliatory gesture, and motioned the driver to stay in his seat. "No, no, it's ok. They found the invoice, so I'm sure it was just a screw-up in permitting. Go ahead, you're not the only one," the unhappy guard indicated the line of lasters which had formed. "Go ahead, sir," the guard waved the big vehicle forward, and it proceeded to the loading area. CHAPTER 65 Jura felt his crate being unloaded onto the dock. He could hear the loading workers comment on the surprising weight of the boxes. "Damn, this one's heavy! Lookit that, 500 kilos of cheese! That's gotta be one hell of a feast they're havin'." "Just shut up and load these things out. Stick 'em over there," the voice paused, then resumed, "the kitchen'll probably call for 'em later." "Right, sorry." The first voice sounded chastized. More bumping, and a thump as the loader dropped them on to the ground. Jura heard more voices, this time in the angry-sounding language of the cat-like Moorrans. There was a moment of comparative silence, then a voice said, "that's all, move out! We must keep loading please!" The side of a laster was slapped, and he heard its gravitics whine as it lifted and drove away. Jura glanced at his temporary comm. They Cabalists had given them all stand-alone comms. These were normally only used by explorer crews, where they couldn't expect any infrastructure to exist wherever they were going. They didn't need to communicate with the interconnect system to talk to each other, but they were limited in range. Jura had been told to expect that he would only be able to reach his crew directly, the other crew would probably be out of range for most of the mission. There had been some debate about bringing along a relay and dropping it at some midpoint, but the idea was discarded as being too time-consuming, and more likely to allow their discovery too early. His comm showed that they still had about an hour before their planned exodus from the disguising boxes, and even that would have to be tempered by whether or not there were palace people still in evidence. Jura hoped that, as they suspected, the palace's sensors wouldn't be looking out for these standalone comm units. They would be just as detectable, but were outside the frequency band used for the normal comm units. He fingered is comm button, preparing his words. They'd all set their comms to a high-speed transmission style, in which the information would be highly compressed, then sent in a burst. It would increase delays, but was judged to be a better risk, as being less obvious to scanning equipment. It was nominally for use in harsh environments, where conditions were changing quickly, since it was resistant to a number of shortfalls with other transmission types. He finally keyed his comm, and said quietly, "Units check in." In a moment, he'd received confirmation from the other units that they'd been deposited safely on the dock: "one, ready." "Two, ready." "Three, ready." All 5 other units checked in as being ready. He was in the unit called "lead," and Belah was in "two." "Units standby," he said, after everyone had checked in. They'd adopted a terse communication structure for this phase, in a further attempt to keep transmissions short. No one had any pretentions that their contacts would be so terse or organized once things really got rolling, but it was a good way to start out. Time passed, dragging on and on. Jura had to remind his boxmates again and again not to talk. They had to assume that any noise they made would be heard. He hoped other unit leaders were keeping their crews similarly quiet. He hadn't yet heard anything from the other crates, so that seemed to bode well. Finally, the time had arrived when they could consider breaking out of their disguised crates. Jura had been listening, and although it was quiet out there, he wasn't confident all the palace workers had left yet. He hadn't been able to keep close track of all the people in the loading area, and they seemed to change out frequently. Finally, he decided to peek out and see what he could see. He took a small knife from his belt, and carefully peeled away the blacking-paper which had been glued over the hand-holds in the box exteriors. Of course, the first one he peeled back gave him an excellent view of a processed-stone wall. Two tries later, with the attendant grunting and swearing as he tried to maneuver in the pitch black with four other people in the cramped space, he finally found a peephole which offered a view of some of the loading area. It was dark. That seemed like a good sign, but he looked carefully nonetheless. There was a desk on the far side of the loading area, which seemed to still be occupied. At least, there was a light lit over its surface. He carefully maneuvered to the next peephole to see if he could get a better view there. Unfortunately, it was worse: apparently something was in the way. He scanned everywhere else he could see, but there was no other indication of other life in the cavernous space. Reluctantly, he keyed his comm again, and said, "All units, visual scan. Report personnel." The close observer in the darkened room would have seen a very slight movement about the pile of palletted crates. A variety of small holes changed texture slightly. There was a very faint rustling sound. After a minute, the reports started coming back: "three; no personnel." "Five; no personnel." "One: human at desk." Everything stopped. Jura keyed up again, and said, "one, describe." A tense 30 seconds later, his comm replayed in his ear, "human male at lit desk. No weapons visible. Could be asleep. Recommend termination." Jura considered this, then said, "noted, one. No action yet. Other units, report." The remaining units reported in, with four confirming the human at the desk, and two reporting nothing seen. "All units, standby," said Jura, after a moment's hesitation. He moved back to his peephole which would see the desk, and tried to spot the person sitting there. He must have been just beyond whatever was blocking Jura's view. "One, proceed as you see fit," Jura said. He waited, but nothing happened. After waiting as long as he could stand, Jura keyed his comm and said, "One, status." After a hesitation, his comm played back, "He's left. Recommend we go now." Jura keyed again, this time without any hesitation, and said, "All units, go!" There was a moment of quiet sussurration as the false box-sides were cut open. In less than a minute, all 30 of them were free, having cut themselves out on the far side of their boxes. Hopefully the intact sides would maintain the ruse as long as possible. Jura signaled "go!" with a hand signal, and lightly ran for the stairs up to the maintenance tunnels. Thirty people padded quietly across the loading dock, and up the metal stairs. They were far from silent, but didn't make much noise considering the number of people. Jura was silently thankful for the boots supplied by the Cabalists, which had a pilable but tough sole. The boots allowed them to move in near-silence. Once everyone was inside the maintenance tunnel, and the door closed, Jura checked in with the leader of the other group, a little male Rongan named Purrethan. "Signal when you're in position, but we may not be able to reach each other," said Jura in a whisper. Purrethan nodded, and whispered, "we will go at 2028 unless we hear otherwise from you." Jura nodded. They touched fists, and Jura signaled for his group to form up and follow him. They were working on the theory that the maintenance halls would be more occupied than normal, with preparations for the dinner that night. Hopefully, confrontations could be avoided, but he'd instructed everyone that they were to kill anyone who couldn't be avoided, if it was necessary to avoid detection. They headed down the hallway, away from Purrethan's group. CHAPTER 66 The Agent returned to his desk, in the little non-descript office. He saw an annunciator flashing on his screen, and played back the message. His face remained relatively placid, but toward the end, seemed to develop a distinct frown. He set down the handset again, and thought for a moment. Reaching some sort of decision, he picked it up again, and tapped out a code. "There was an extra, unanticipated shipment in tonight. Several of the Cabalists haven't been seen for a week. Look into it." He paused, listening. "No, check into the shipment first. Tonight makes too good a target for them to pass up." CHAPTER 67 Jura jogged down the passageway, his group following behind, evenly spaced. They reached an intersection, and he held up a hand, holding the group back. He consulted with the map loaded into his comm. Even after studying these maps for hours a day, his path wasn't obvious. The palace had been built as so many additions and new wings that it was very confusingly laid out when considered as a whole. He signaled to the right, and they turned down the passageway. He checked his comm again, and saw that he only had half an hour until 2028. At 2023, they were supposed to start cutting the power lines, unless the timing were accelerated by mutual agreement between both groups. The plan was that they should be in control of the dining room and all the dignitaries therein by 2035. That was when the AI would be cut off from the Uala-puppet everyone supposed would be dining in the hall with the officials. Jura had a moment of doubt that their most fundamental belief, that there would be a Uala-puppet to cut off, might not really be there. He pushed the doubt from his mind, and they proceeded. Their movement was going amazingly well so far. Jura had expected more traffic in the tunnels, with servants moving food and equipment around outside the view of the official guests. Just as he was thinking that, a door pushed open into the hallway. He signaled a halt, and his group came to a ragged stop. They hurriedly pressed into the door-side wall. A servant had entered the maintenance hall with a huge platter of food balanced on one hand. He was headed the same way as the covert group, and didn't give any indication he'd noticed them. Jura signaled that they should hold position. The servant walked casually down the hall. Jura realized the servant was talking to himself: "No cart! Too much noise! Better get going, they're waiting for this platter, but no cart!" He sounded quite unhappy. Jura had to physically resist the urge to beat the man up and swap costumes with him. That trick just wouldn't work with 14 black-clad people trailing behind him. Besides, it was very likely the platter would go down on the hard floor and make a huge noise. Fortunately, the servant was moving quickly, and they were able to start moving again once he was nearly out of sight down the hall. Jura hoped that his grumbling and the distance between them would cover their quiet footsteps. They hadn't gone more than 20 meters when Jura heard a noise that didn't match his group's cadence behind him. He signaled a halt, but before the group could press against the wall, a voice behind them called out, "Hey! What the?" The person at the end of the group had evidently decided that the new servant was an immediate threat, and shot him twice. The servant's platter fell to the ground with a tremendous clang, despite the shooter's belated attempt to catch it. Sausage links and some kind of brown sauce went everywhere, and the clang reverberated down the concrete tunnels, deafening after their concerted attempts to be quiet. Jura looked back and saw the other servant standing there, looking back at the group. As Jura was fighting with whether to raise his gun and try to shoot the servant, the distant man uttered, "Oh SHIT," whirled, and ran. Jura looked back at the next person in line behind him, and said, "Get that body hidden, and clean up quickly. Follow me when you're done." He twirled and ran after the fleeing servant. CHAPTER 68 Jura ran down the tunnel, his boot soles slapping against the aggregate stone floor. Wind whistled in his ears. At every intersection, he had to stop and look both directions before chasing after the fleeing man, who was still comically holding his platter above his head, working hard to keep it balanced. Jura found himself having to dodge the odd crust-free sandwich as the platter was jostled. Finally, he caught up with the man, after seeing him duck into a small alcove. The trick might have worked, except for the quarter of a silver plater Jura could see poking out beyond the wall. He slid around the corner, with his beam gun out and leveled at the man's face. "Don't kill me!" The servant looked down at Jura slightly, his face and voice filled with fear. "I'm not here to kill anyone," Jura said, wondering in the back of his mind if killing an AI counted. "However," he said, catching his breath after the sprint, "I also don't want you telling anyone what you've seen. So we're going to take a little trip." Jura waved his gun, urging the man forward. "What are you going to do with me?" "I'm just going to lock you in a maintenance room." They walked forward several hundred meters, and Jura told the man to turn into the door he was about to pass. He did as he was instructed, and turned into the little maintenance room. "Good. Now, set down the platter, and give me your comm." Jura held out his hand, and shortly received a comm on a wristband. "Good. Now, I don't have a way to lock this, so I'm going to shoot it. I strongly recommend that you stand far back." The man scooted back. Jura shot the comm unit mounted to the wall, smiled at the cowering servant, and closed the door, shooting the latch. It glowed briefly, and melted together, sagging sadly. Jura called through the door, "Your comm is outside the door here. Sorry for the inconvenience." He turned and ran back for the rest of his group. "Group one, location!" he whispered urgently into his comm. He'd lost track of all the turns he'd made, following the servant and his tray. The answer came back finally, "On the path, by maintenance room... 29." Jura paused, and checked the map. He finally found it, wasting precious seconds searching the illogically laid-out numbering system. Once he'd oriented himself, he said, "Proceed, I'll meet you enroute." CHAPTER 69 "Any other problems," asked Jura when he finally met his group again, most of the way to their staging point. "No, sir. None that we can tell." The man, Devve, as Jura now remembered, threw a salute after speaking, which looked odd. He looked sheepish for a moment, then said, "Sorry, I got swept up." "That's ok. No one reacted to that noise?" Jura glanced back to where the second servant had fallen. "Not that we can tell. It strikes me that these tunnels are probably pretty well insulated for sound. I doubt I'd want to be disturbed by the movements of robots and cleaning equipment when I was sleeping," Devve indicated the walls, which did look rather thick. "Good thought. Let's get going," Jura said, glancing at his comm's time display. They only had 3 minutes before they were supposed to start cutting the power. They walked briskly, being nearly at staging point. Once they reached it, Jura called a halt, and directed them back into the adjoining maintenance room. Once everyone was in, he said, "Ok, everyone clear on the plan? We cut power in about..." He glanced at his comm again, "1 minute. Then we walk to the dining hall maintenance door. I'll open it," he waved a blank ID badge, "And you will pour out. Your first task is to shoot any and all guards you see. Anyone who has a gun in their hands who isn't one of us also gets shot. Everyone understand?" 14 nods, nearly in unison. "Good. Arm your power cutters and spread out. Remember, medium power or lower for the cutters. I want everyone to take a different power circuit if you possibly can. Make the cuts where they're hard to spot. Go!" The group filed out of the little room, and quickly spread out along the hallway. Jura looked down at his comm, and, watching the deciminutes tick down, finally keyed the transmit button, and said, "Now!" CHAPTER 70 In the dining hall, tens of tables of elegantly dressed beings sat, chatting amongst themselves. Lord Uala was sitting at a table at the head of the room, with the tables arranged so that one's eye was naturally drawn to the man, particularly when entering from the opposite side of the room. Each table was bedecked with food from all corners of the galaxy. The smell was amazing. Each table had a candelabra with elegant white candles, while muted lights shone down the walls, suffusing the room with a warm glow. Waiters emerged as if from nowhere, with platters laden with the next course. They began distributing it to tables. Lord Uala was telling a joke, in which the mother of a Kithree was trying to buy a present for her son from a Rongan merchant, but the Rongan kept mishearing what the Kithree was asking for. The people at his table laughed politely at each misunderstanding. Uala was coming up to the climax of the joke, finally delivering it with a punch, just as the lights went out, plunging the room into pools of light and shadow. "Oh, you want a Kreekree! What the?" There was a murmur of startlement from the crowd. Several people started to get up when Lord Uala's voice boomed out above the hubbub. "No worries, gentles. I'll see to it that the lights are back on in a moment. The plasma system has been giving us trouble in this wing in the last few weeks." He waved one of the guards over, and whispered in his ear, gesticulating slightly. CHAPTER 71 "That's it," whispered Jura savagely into his comm. "Everyone grab your hand-light, and let's get in there." A series of lightbeams flickered on in the darkness, and started moving forward. Two minutes later, they were clustered around their maintenance door. "Ok," said Jura. "Let's see if our second group is also in place." He keyed his comm and said, "Group two, group one. Success?" A moment later, their comms all crackled with the reply, "Success. Group two in position. One man down." Jura grimaced, but he knew they were going into a risky situation. They all did. Only losing one man out of 30 was something of a miracle, really. "Right. On my mark, breach doors. And, go!" Jura counted to one and a half for the transmission delay, then waved his ID at the door's scanner. Nothing happened. Then, he realized that with the power out, the doors should be unlatched anyway, and he pulled it back to let his group pour through. CHAPTER 72 Jura stepped out into a room in utter chaos. Guests at the dinner were scrambling under their tables. Guards which had been posted around the room were fumbling to get their weapons ready. Cabalists were shooting guards, hitting a surprising amount of the time. Unfortunately, the guards were wearing armor, so multiple shots were required to drop each guard, in most cases. Jura started firing into the guards along the far wall. He scored a couple of hits, although it was hard to tell who felled any particular guard. The room was filling with smoke, and shrieks from the guests kept his ears occupied. He heard someone shouting in a clear tone, and realized it was Uala. He was calling for calm, but the Cabalists were busy pursuing their own goals. The guards who were still standing were armed now, and Cabalists had overturned tables for cover. Jura took careful aim, and shot a nearby guard in the face. He went down in a puff of pungent smoke. As the centiminutes ticked by, very slowly, the battle turned in favor of the Cabalists. The royal guards had simply been caught by surprise, even with the warning of the lights going out. Jura was still standing near the gaping door to the maintenance tunnels, scanning the room from a crouched position, looking for the telltale sparkling blue beam which pointed back to an enemy. The smoke helped, and he let off a few shots at the origin of a beam, scuttling forward after firing. He was headed for an overturned table where Belah and several other Cabalists were trading fire with a group of guards across the room. Belah spied him out of the corner of her eye, and waved him forward. He was scooting towards the table when her face changed, and she stood up, raising her gun at him. He stopped cold. The world slowed down to a silent crawl. He felt that if he could wrench his attention away from the gun in Belah's hand, he would have been able to tell the number of smoke particles in the air, or the exact frequency of each of the voices he knew must be calling out. Smoke curled around Belah's head, and her face twisted, ever so slowly, into a snarl. Jura froze, then stood without realizing he was doing it. His hand started to swing up, trying to ward off the bolt he knew was coming. Any second, he expected to feel the burning pain of an energy bolt. "Belah, no! Not you too!" screamed through his brain, and he couldn't tell if he'd said it out loud or just thought it. He face contorted with pain at the sense of betrayal he felt coursing through him. Belah's face changed, wrinkling with pain. "Get down!" she yelled, her voice echoing in his ears. He unfroze, and dove to the side as a beam leapt from her gun, through where he had been. He was curled around himself as he landed, unaware of anything except the sight of Belah standing up and aiming her gun at him, seared into his consciousness. The image of Yulan spearing his arm with an energy beam flashed bright in his eyes, covering, then blending with the picture of Belah. The two women's faces melted together to form one. Yulan's voice rang out of the composite face, calling him a pathetic weakling as he curled up around the searing pain in his arm. She laughed cruelly, mocking his cries. It was the last thing to go through his mind before he passed out, and everything went black. CHAPTER 73 Hurran pelted along the maintenance tunnel, a hastily borrowed beam rifle in his hand. He could already hear chaos somewhere down the tunnel, and realized he was too late. He was probably as good as dead, but he might as well make one last effort to stay in the Agent's good graces. Or, at least, out of his lethal graces. Behind him, a handful of the royal guards ran after him. They had been hastily gathered after Hurran had gotten word that there was a suspect shipment this evening. The timing was too coincidental. He had hurried down to the shipping area, where he'd found the hollowed-out boxes, their far sides ripped open. His mind traced out the fastest path from the loading area to the dining hall via the maintenance halls, and he'd taken off as fast as he could. His contingent of guards had nearly been left behind, and would have been, had he not stopped and egged them on several times along the trip. As they raced forward, Hurran and the guards could hear the rapidly increasing noise of confusion echoing down the tunnel. The uncomfortable scent of cooked flesh greeted them as they came close to the doorway. Hurran leapt through the door, and just stood there, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Smoke cloaked the far half of the room. People screaming. No light except for a few remaining upright candles, and a burning tablecloth or two. Something rose up to block his vision as he stood there, and he suddenly realized it was a person. He couldn't tell who it was in the confusion and darkness, but figured shooting it was a better bet than anything else. He quite liked shooting people, actually, although he had to be circumspect about it most of the time. A grin crossed his face as he realized he was looking at a battlefield. He raised his rifle, and was about to press the firing stud when the person blocking his vision suddenly moved, and he was faced by a floating pair of eyes behind the foreshortened cylinder of a beam gun collimator. His eyes crossed as he looked at the dark end of the gun. It was the last thing he ever saw. Belah's beam pierced his head through his left eye, which promptly boiled and exploded. His brain was dead in a fraction of a second, and his body went stiff before falling in a slow-motion slump to his left. Belah stood for a moment, looking down at Hurran's body before she collapsed. Her side was smoking, where a beam shot had finally penetrated her armor. CHAPTER 74 Purrethan stood on Uala's table. The sudden shaking of the building as the aerial bombardment had started startled the guards, and provided just the edge the Cabalists needed. The tide quickly turned, with the remaining guards either dead or disarmed. The Cabalists had taken up sentry positions at all the doors, including the maintenance tunnel entrances. The little Rongan had leapt up on the table once things seemed calm enough. His thin legs propelled him, pacing across the table. "We are not here to kill anyone," he started out. This caused a stir among the guests, who were looking at a large number of dead bodies. The more astute among them, however, noticed that the only ones who were dead were also holding weapons, or had been at one point. "We needed to speak to you, all of you," he continued. "It is regrettable that anyone had to die, but our cause is worth death, even among our own," he swept his hand over the wreckage, which included at least 10 Cabalists lying unmoving on the ground. "Unfortunately," he paused, "No one gave us an invitation, so we had to let ourselves in." He gave a little chuckle, but the joke fell flat on his audience of ranking government officials. He recovered, then continued, "You have been working for a lie. The government of Uala is, in fact, founded upon a falsehood." Uala straightened up a bit, and looked like he was about to protest. The Rongan twirled and said, "No, let me finish. I'd hate to ruin the surprise early." Uala subsided. "The lie I refer to is not a simple one to live with, and it would be rejected as a wild-eyed conspiracy theory if I didn't have such ample proof." He looked down at his comm, and pressed a button. Overhead, a passing cargo ship which happened to be carrying Cabalists with a comm relay repeated the signal from Purrethan's comm back to the safehouse. There, a smiling computer tech saw the annunciator light, and pressed a button on his keyboard. "I give you the proof of Uala's lie," the little lizard turned and looked at Uala. Purrethan's back spines rippled, and as if on cue, the overlord of the galaxy suddenly went stiff, then fell face-forward onto the table. There was a collective gasp from the audience. It was followed by a stunned, confused silence, into which Purrethan spoke. "Lord Uala is an AI. He may have been an AI for his entire reign. It is even possible previous rulers have been AI, even the same AI with different puppets," here the diminutive lizard-man kicked the slack- faced Uala puppet in the head. It shifted slightly, but didn't otherwise react. A roar went up from the crowd, angry and vengeful. Purrethan exulted. He finally waved them down. "We have been working toward this moment for years, although it is only in the last few weeks that we've known of the AI angle. Previously, we had simply been working towards the downfall of Uala, a despotic and evil ruler." He paused, and looked around the room, as if to emphasize his next statement. "Many of you have been complicit in this despotism and evil." There was a collective intake of breath. "However, as I said before, we are not here to end lives. "We have information on each and every one of you which would be extremely damaging to your careers if it should come out. If you remain in positions of power for more than one month from this date, your lives will become increasingly uncomfortable. I'm sure each of you knows exactly what I'm talking about." He looked around, and saw that he'd struck a chord with many of his audience; they were looking distinctly nervous. "The same may be said for many of your colleagues who were not here tonight." The little lizard paused, looking around, then continued in a louder, more authoritative voice, "There is going to be change in our government, and it starts tonight. Spread the word or not as you see fit, but you may consider our message delivered." The lizard gave the mannequin-head another kick for good measure. "Remember, we are not here to end lives, either literally or figuratively. Step down from power, and we will leave you be. Remain in power or seek greater power, and you will face the consequences." Purrethan leapt down off the table, and the Cabalists melted back through the maintenance doors, some with bodies slung over their shoulders. As they left the room, it exploded in an uproar of shouted outrage. CHAPTER 75 The Cabalists raced raggedly down the maintenance corridors. Jura was up and walking, but barely conscious of what was happening. The psychic damage which had been done to him by seeing Belah pointing a gun at him had reduced his consciouness to a smoking rubble. Belah was running just behind him, holding her side, which was causing her excruciating pain. She didn't know what exactly had been hit, but it hadn't killed her yet. She hoped it was nothing vital. Her breathing was labored, each step causing a white-hot lance of pain to spread from her wound. They skidded around corner after corner, retracing their path to the loading area. The news of the AI's death seemed to have spread throughout the palace already, and the few servants and maintenance workers they encountered in the halls stood aside to let them past, hands raised. The group slid to a halt at the door to the loading area, gasping for breath. Purrethan triggered the door with his ID, and stepped through. He quickly stepped back, and said, "They've bombed the loading area. We need another way out." Belah peeked through the door, and sure enough, there was nothing on the far side except rubble. Belah thought for a moment, then said, "The motor pool isn't too far from here." "What's maintenance access like?" asked the Rongan. "I don't really know. I was only ever there as Miss Kaf'nee, and it would have been inappropriate to poke around the servants' passages." Purrethan nodded, and looked down at his comm. He scrolled the little map back and forth a few times, asking Belah for directions once or twice. Finally, he said, "It looks feasible. Let's go." He pointed forward, in the direction they were already headed, and jogged off. The group straggled along behind him. Jura, only semi- conscious, was positioned in the middle so he wouldn't get left behind. After five minutes' jogging and fast walking, they arrived at the door to the motor pool. Purrethan held up his ID to the reader, and nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. He turned back to the group, and said, "Bring me the other two IDs." He passed both of them in front of the electronic sniffer, but neither elicited the desired response. "They must have disabled these cards." He looked disconsolately at the ground, then said, "We have no choice. I'll rig explosives around the door, and we'll blow it open. The rest of you, go at least as far as the next corner. When you see me coming, plug your ears as well as you can." The group scurried back. They could hear Purrethan setting the charges at the likely latch and hinge points, and then they heard the chirp of the timer being set and armed. However, before the little lizard rounded the corner, and far earlier than any of them had expected it, a shockwave passed by them, knocking the breath out of them, and the world went silent. CHAPTER 76 Jura, strangely, recovered first. He started tapping his fellow Cabalists, then shaking them, trying to get them to respond. Nar was quickly back in action, and helped out. After a few minutes, they had everyone up again. Jura was the first around the corner, and came back bearing the now charred corpse of Purrethan. He said, "We have to..." but stopped. He realized he couldn't hear himself speaking. He looked around, and said, "Can any of you hear me?" Nar and another Rongan nodded, but no one else responded. Jura dropped his head, trying to think what their next move should be. He finally started miming that everyone should keep their eyes on him and Nar. Eventually, they all seemed to understand. He got his hand- light in his hand, and set it to momentary mode, so he could use it as a visual signal. He lead them forward, to the door. It was hanging at an angle from one hinge. He peeked through and hastily ducked back. The far side of the wall from the door exploded with rubble. He pushed everyone back with a signal. "Nar, Kur," he indicated the two Rongan females, "Can you hear more than the two guards I spotted?" Each shook their head no, although Jura wasn't sure whether it was because they couldn't hear anything, or they couldn't hear more than two. Jura started elaborately miming, trying to convey that there were two guards below, in the motor pool. After a minute, he got the message across to everyone. Before he felt like he was done, however, Nar motioned for silence, then raised her gun. Jura spun with his gun raised, just in time to see a guard's head poke through the door. It disappeared as chunks of doorframe showered through the tunnel. Jura ran forward in a crouch, and saw the guard lying on the landing. He hadn't been hit by the converging energy beams, but the exploding door frame had hit him pretty hard. Jura felt something land on his back, and realized that he was being shot at. He scuttled back inside the protective wall of the tunnel. "Well, this could have gone better," he said to no one in particular. He looked over at Nar and Kur, and said, "Any idea where he is?" They looked at each other, then Kur pointed down and to the left. "I'd ask you to go, but you're a much easier target to hit than I am," said Jura, as he spun back through the door, firing at anything bipedal. He spun back around the frame, running into the listing door, and said, "Did I get him?" Nar nodded yes, while Kur nodded no. "Is he still moving?" They looked at each other this time, listening. Then they nodded no in unison. Jura twirled around the door frame again, gun extended. Nothing moved. He looked down where he'd been shooting before, and spotted the guard, slumped unnaturally on the ground near a large black hoverlimo. He leaned back, and waved the rest of the group on. They clattered, presumably noisily, down the metal stairs. Jura picked a likely-looking mini-laster, and indicated people should hop in. While they were clambering aboard, he went over to the key cabinet, and kicked it until it fell open. Of course, there were no labels, each actuator key was just numbered. He grumbled, wondering where the translation was. Looking around, he finally spotted a small number on the back of the laster. He grabbed the corresponding actuator, and sprinted for the hovervehicle. He vaulted into the driver's seat, and loked back at Nar. "Is everyone in?" She nodded yes. The crew, as he looked over them, had seen better days. Only 15 were still upright, and he didn't know if the rest were dead, or injured, or about to die. He saw that Belah was not among the upright, and a surge of adrenaline went through him. "Right, we're getting the fuck out of here!" He practically screamed, as the laster's gravitics worked up to full power. He looked for some kind of a door signal, and finally found it, after pressing a number of different, unmarked buttons arranged about the driver's controls. The motor pool vehicle door slowly ground open. The laster shook a little, and Jura turned to see that Nar and Kur had spun around. Nar, who was next to a window opening, was firing out the window. Other people, seeing her, were seeking their own windows, guns in hand. Jura saw a squad of palace guards boiling out the maintenance door, and down the stairs. He slapped the mini-laster on the dashboard, and floored the accelerator. It leapt forward, pinning those who were sitting to their seats, and toppling those not in seats to the floor of the vehicle. Jura yelled, "Heads down!" as the mini-laster neared the door, which hadn't opened far enough yet to admit them. He pulled on the altitude control, lowering them until the safety casters were howling and chattering against the pavement. Everyone was thrown forward, as the roof of the mini-laster impacted the raising door. There was a shower of sparks, but the laster kept moving forward, the impact insufficient to stop its progress. The door raised, and the sparks stopped. They were clear of the door, and headed into the dark Homeworld Prime night. Jura gave an exultant cheer as he urged the hovervehicle faster, and blew through the guard's gate with a shower of splinters. A bewildered guard poked his head out, looking after the black laster as it dwindled down the road. CHAPTER 77 Belah looked up as Jura walked in. "They told me you were awake. You gave me one hell of a shock." He sat down on her bed, carefully avoiding her bandaged left side. Belah didn't know which shock he was referring to, but she didn't much care. It was all behind them, now. "Nar told me a little of your story with Yulan. Sorry to bring back such... exciting memories." She smiled, then coughed, which made her wince. "No way you could have known. Sorry I responded like such a baby." Jura smiled and shook his head, his face reddening slightly. "Well, it's not every day that a guy has his worst nightmare replayed in front of his face. Much less in the middle of a firefight." Belah looked at him with a smile on her face, and took his hand up in hers. "We're even. You saved me once, and I saved you once." He smiled back at her. "I guess we are. Thanks." He touched her ear with his free hand. "How's your hearing doing?" "Almost healed. That second blast did me in again, and I figured my hearing was gone. Amazingly, it came back pretty quickly." Jura nodded. "Me too. I was feeling back to normal the next day, which was amazing. That is, my ears were back to normal." He flushed again. There was a pause, then they both started speaking at once: "Jura, look..." and "Belah, I..." Jura clamped his lips tight, and fluttered his hand at Belah, indicating she should go first. "Ok." She smiled. "I was just going to say, I don't know how you feel about me now, but I hope we're always friends..." Jura had put a hand to her lips, and she stopped. "I don't know either, but I want to find out. I've got another gig lined up, now that the Cabalist cash has kind of dried up, and I was wondering, if you're up for it, if you'd want to come along. You know," he hastened to add, "as co-pilot and voice-of-reason." His face flushed again. He felt like a teenager asking a girl on a date for the first time. "Yes, I think I would. Can you wait another day or two? The doctor says I should be okay to get up by then." "I do believe I can." Jura closed his hand around Belah's, happy just to be in the moment. EPILOGUE Within a month, the news of the Uala AI had spread to the edges of the galaxy. Many planets saw riots. Security and police forces tried to quell the riots in many systems, but in many other systems, they joined in with the furious citizens. Once order prevailed again, a number of top politicians, long associated with Uala and his government, were found dead. Some of them had taken their own lives, and some had been killed. Their losses were not greatly mourned by a galactic populace which felt the oppressive hand of tyranny lifting. Order, unfortunately, was not long-lasting. Various factions which had previously existed at the fringes of power now vied to claim the reins of government. They were opposed by other factions. The scrabble for power spread out from the galactic center in a wave, delayed by the light-speed distance between worlds and their jumpspace communication relays. Long-secret as well as openly held armies and private security forces became ruling factions, as government devolved from central to regional control. The apparatus of government on Homeworld Prime continued to operate for a time, but its motive spark gradually faded until eventually the planet-wide city became another fiefdom. A population long used to order and calmness in government found itself rebuilding their governance, block by block, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. Gradually, over the course of years and decades, calm and order returned to the people of the galaxy. It was a new order, and a new calm, but it was no worse than the calm which had existed under Uala and his predecessors, stretching back hundreds of years. Some, even many of the galactic citizens would eventually argue that the new, system- centric model was a better form of government. Many of the surviving Cabalists formed a faction which ended up vying for power on Borot III, where there was less competition. They were ultimately successful, drawing on popular support as the group which had worked to expose the horrifying hypocrisy of the Uala government. As for Jura and Belah, they were aboard Callie's Web and off for Jura's new job before the riots could stop them. Jura did stop by the Jurrandurchar Bazaar shortly thereafter, and pick up a certain Mithrian double-flute which had continued its haunting melody in the back of his mind. It was a good time to be a skilled trader and pilot, and a good copilot was a valuable asset. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [To be inserted in an appropriate place, somewhere toward the front of the story]