“Yes,” Commander Mehoff said. “Has something more come of it?”

“Well, possibly… I’ve had what we might call a ‘nibble’,” Asher said.

“A nibble?”

“A nibble,” he said. “I responded to the original query, and I haven’t had any further contact from the querent, but there’s a third party pinging me about it.”

“Well, that complicates things, doesn’t it?” the comander said. “If there are multiple partners in the vicinity interested in buying what you’re offering, then it’s probably not connected to our runaway, is it?”

“Well, that’s the thing, sir,” Asher said. “I still have yet to hear from more than one party at a time… I’d expect there to be something of a bidding war going on between the original buyer and the new one, if there really was more demand, but I think we’re still dealing with the same situation.”

“Do you think they’re moving her around, then? That’s thinner than thin,” Mehoff said.

“Well, yes, sir, but I don’t think it’s necessarily the case.”

“Yes,” the commander said. “That would be why I said it’s thin.”

“Sir, I think this is all a bit of misdirection, a bit of smoke and mirrors,” Asher explained. “And if I’m right about that, well… that just makes it less likely that this is just some adult tourist ’slumming it’, as it were, doesn’t it?”

“Well… that’s somewhere between very thin and thinner than thin,” Mehoff said.

“Very seriously, sir, it’s a classic dodge, and a fairly obvious one.”

“So it won’t be any problem seeing through it?”

“I think not, it’s pretty transparent,” Asher said.

“So you’ll be able to trace it to the actual buyer.”

“Well… not so much, no,” Asher said. “It is an obvious dodge, but seeing that doesn’t really help me figure out who’s doing the dodging. In our own space, with our own channels… we could intervene, we could run a trace. But this is all independent, anonymous trades on distributed networks.”

“What about when you make delivery? They’ll have to give you a destination ship,” Mehoff said.

“It won’t be the final destination, not if they have any interest in hiding their identity,” Asher said. “I could keep an eye on the traffic between other vessels and the destination, but if they pick a busy hub vessel… or arrange for multiple steps…”

“Just how much trouble do you think somebody’s going to go through to get something from our mess stores?” the commander asked. “I mean to say, there isn’t anything precisely wrong with our food, but it’s something of… an acquired taste, I suppose.”

“Yes, and somebody who’s acquired that taste wants a bit of ‘home cooking’ but doesn’t want to give their position away to a Confederation vessel,” Asher said. “It’s very suggestive.”

“But can you actually do anything with that suggestion?”

“There are a few things I could try,” Asher said. “I can’t afford to pull any shenanigans with the actual delivery… if I dropped a tracer into the package or something like that, it would reflect badly on the ship as a whole. There could be a bit of an incident. We do have legal standing to protect our citizens and our ships in interstellar space, but… well, like you said, it’s a bit thin as far as ‘probable cause’ goes. I’m going to try to poke the original buyer, suggest that he may wish to increase his offer… that should let me stall a bit without arousing his suspicions.”

“And stalling will…?”

“Give me more time to think about what I can actually do.”

“Well, if that’s all you can do… do it.”

“A nibble? Oh, well, I suppose I should be grateful,” Galatea said. “Perhaps in another six days you’ll have found a morsel for me, or even a bite.”

“I mean, I have a query from someone about my offer to trade for GC-friendly foodstuffs,” Lilliana said.

“Oh? Well, what in space are you waiting for?” Galatea said. “Issue a response at once!”

“I have my doubts about the source,” Lilliana said. “Remember how I said that no one trades in Confederation food?”

“Yes, well, let’s not dwell on how wrong you were, or why,” Galatea said. “The important thing is you seize the opportunity in front of you now, while you still can.”

“I’m really not interested in who’s right or wrong, but I’m very curious about the why,” Lilliana said. “I was expecting to have to really work this, but I got a response almost right away… and the source seems more than a little sketchy.”

“Do you suspect somebody may be peddling counterfeit Galactic goods?”

“No, I really don’t,” Lilliana said. “Because like I said, there’d be almost no demand… and besides, this guy would have plenty of access to the real thing. He’s an officer—quartermaster, probably, or whatever the equivalent would be—on a Galactic Star Ship.”

“Well, there you have it,” Galatea said. “I doubt you could ask for a more reputable source than that.”

“Or a less likely one,” Lilliana said. “I’ve checked out his trade record, and he has a decent rep… but it’s all for small trades involving only currency and personal goods. The guy’s a collector, but he’s not sniffing around for anything in particular in response to my request for food.”

“So? You said yourself that the man has a decent reputation,” Galatea said. “And you have no reason to suspect that he doesn’t have access to the items in question. What exactly is holding you back?”

“My gut,” Lilliana said. “But that’s reason enough for me to at least slow down and exercise caution until I have something more to go on, either way.”

“Yes, well, I’m very happy that you have the privilege of listening to your ‘gut’,” Galatea said. “Mine, on the other hand, refuses to tell me anything until it has a decent meal in it.”

“Galatea, tell me honestly: could you imagine an officer of the Galactic Navy trading away ship’s stores on the open market?”

“Perhaps he needs the money to facilitate his other trades.”

“Then why hasn’t he done anything like this before?”

“You said it yourself, there isn’t a thriving trade in high-quality precision engineered foodstuffs,” Galatea said. “He sees the opportunity you’ve created and he’s jumping on it with both feet. He has what you need, you have what he needs… isn’t that how this virtual marketplace is supposed to function?”

“I don’t need it,” Lilliana said. “And I don’t want it if it’s going to come back and bite me in the ass. I’ve got the computer running a search of any laws we might be running afoul of. In the meantime, can you think of any reason the Galactic Navy might want to trace traders interested in their food?”

“I don’t know, perhaps the navy is running a marketing survey!” Galatea said. “Do you really expect me to starve to satisfy your fit of paranoia?”

“I’m willing to get you what you want, but only if I can protect the ship as a whole while I’m doing it,” Lilliana said. “Don’t worry, I already have a plan for taking advantage of the offer… if it’s genuine… without exposing us. If there’s only a small number of people offering something, sometimes middlemen will jump in and buy it up so they can sell it to the final customer at an inflated price.”

“And you’re going to wait around to see if that happens?”

“No, I’m going to do it myself.”

The Galactic Confederation didn’t win space battles by making their ships easy to disable.

The theme of redundancy was carried forward to the point of having six separate parallel chains of command devolving from the commander. If the commander were rendered hors de combat or needed to be relieved of duty, a computer algorithm would automatically assign command to one of the six second officers, taking into account all current shipboard conditions.

It was neither necessary nor possible for the Stability’s commander to have a close working relationship with all of his individual seconds, especially as each one only had physical access to the ship’s central core for the four hours and forty minutes out of every day that he or she was acting as the primary secondary commander on duty.

Fourth Second Officer Lietuenant Commander Jacob Asher had occupied his current position for two years and had only visited the inner regions of the ship three times before, but on this day he hurried down the corridor towards the central command deck as soon as he came on duty and the physical connection between his point and the central compartment opened.

He identified himself outside the final moving bulkhead and was granted permission to enter the inner sanctum, where the commander sat alone in the middle of a bank of holoprojectors summarizing the ship’s status.

“What can I do for you, LC?” Commander Mehoff asked him.

“Well, sir… do you remember the bulletin we received last month about the missing child?”

“Yes,” the commander said. “The young woman with the class one personality disorder. I do remember. I’m sure she’s… well, someone like that’s easy prey.”

“Well, I was monitoring the local trade nets on my downshift and I came across something interesting,” the yeoman said. “There was a small offer floating around for Confederation foodstuffs.”

“Well, that’s interesting but not conclusive,” the commander said. “Someone could have been curious, or temporarily entertaining a citizen as a guest… that happens, you know.”

“I didn’t think that it was conclsuive, sir,” Asher said. “But it was interesting enough to make me curious, so I searched backwards to see if there had been any other inquiries or trafficking in Confederation goods.”

“And you found something more substantial?”

“Substantially more substantial, sir,” the second officer said. “Eight days before that there was a request going around for a utility suit, fitted to phenotypic specifications #c322b0.”

“And that would be the Adams girl’s size?”

“Yes, sir… I checked it against the bulletin.”

“Did these requests originate from the same place?”

“I can’t yet say, sir,” Asher said. “The trade boards are supposed to be anonymous. If you negotiate a deal, then you can exchange coordinates or direct exchange contact information…”

“I’m roughly familiar with the process,” the commander said. “Incidentally, what were trawling for?”

“BBs sir,” Asher said, blushing. “Er, that is… bound books.”

“Never mind that… I can see why you came here in person, though,” the commander said. “Odd hobby for an officer. The offer that’s floating around now… is that something that we could satisfy with our stores?”

“Yes, sir. Very easily.”

“Then I’d like you to make an answer to it. On your own time…. make sure you file an Orders Off The Record on this, of course, but let’s find out what we’re dealing with before we do anything too official.”

“How can you coninute to fill the galley stocks up with such perverse, disgusting fare?” the statuesque “young” runaway from the Galactic Confederation demanded when she finally cornered Lilliana.

“Nobody’s saying you have to eat it,” Lilliana said. “In fact, so long as you’re abstaining there’s that much more for everyone else.”

“I’m not talking about base matters of personal taste,” Galatea said. “This is a matter of principle. How can you expect the crew to eat that… that… sort of thing?”

“I thought you’d be in favor of more engineered food on the menu,” Lilliana said.

“‘Engineered’ implies some semblance of design and manufacture,” Galatea said. “It calls to mind images of scientific precision and sanitary sterility. Are you aware that products you’ve been purchasing are made from the DNA of common barnyard animals?”

“I can promise you the cultures being used haven’t seen the inside of a cow for centuries by this point,” Lilliana said. “Vat-meat has all the benefits of natural food with none of the drawbacks.”

“What benefits would those be, exactly?” Galatea said. “Nature is so… so… random, so disorderly… so natural. If you put something like that into your body, you might as well just eat something you found growing out of the ground.”

“Oh, yes… can you yust imagine where we’d be today if our ancestors had done something like that?” Lilliana said.

“You may laugh, but that is the sort of atrocious, ill-educated behavior that the Galactic Confederation has evolved past,” Galatea said. “I am accustomed to eating things that are designed to be eaten, not things that only just barely managed to become edible through the vagaries of pure random chance. As long as you’re throwing yourself into the shopping, I would like to see some real food, in designer colors and aesthetically pleasing geometric shapes.”

“Yes, well, you can’t exactly expect the crew to dine on Puce Rectangular Prism Number 8,” Lilliana said.

“I’m not talking about anything as extravagant as all that,” Galatea said. “A nice, respectable gray platonic solid would be sufficient.”

“Nobody on this ship is interested in eating platonic solids except you.”

“Those toroids you acquired went rather quickly,” Galatea countered.

“They’re called doughnuts, and if you hadn’t been so busy turning up your nose at them you might have found out why they were so popular,” Lilliana said. “Look, it’s not that I’m not willing to do you some favors. You are good at what you do. But I already found you a new GC-style utilisuit in your size…”

“In olive drab,” Galatea said scathingly.

“The only thing you said about color was to make sure it wasn’t anything too flashy,” Lilliana said. “I thought olive drab seemed safe enough. It has ‘drab’ in the name.”

“And olive. Did you know what’s a kind of green? I feel like a painted… lady. Of the night,” Galatea said. “One who has sex with strangers for money. Because she is a prostitute. A common whore. Sometimes I stay in my quarters for hours looking at myself in it, trying to imagine what kind of a woman would allow herself to be seen dressed so scandalously, what decent people would think if they saw me in it. Do you know, I’ve already had to alter the front access panel so that I can…”

“You’re welcome,” Lilliana said. “What I was going to say is that GC goods are hard to come by in the fringes. Galactic ships carry their own food supplies, and they prefer trading with other Galactic sources.”

“Well… you can keep your eyes open, can’t you?” Galatea asked. “You can at least do that much.”

“I can,” Lilliana said, biting back the urge to retort I do plenty. The truth was she already knew that she would find Galatea’s precision engineered foodstuffs if she possibly could. Like the utility suit to fit Galatea’s generous curves, it was almost an impossible challenge… which meant it was too good to pass up.

With the financial outlook so dire, austerity measures like rationing might have been excusable under the circumstances, except for the circumstance where no one who’d stayed would have excused them. So Lilliana made a point of buying luxury food items whenever their clients or the destination ships had any available. Mushrooms and hydroponic vegetables were both deep-space staples, of course, but they came in widely varying grades and she went for the good stuff. Meat cultures weren’t rare, but they were pricey, and she didn’t skimp there, making sure the ship’s baconesque dispensers were kept full. She even picked up a battered and second-hand cocktail shrimp extruder, which Regan was able to repair.

Her real coup came when she scored a batch of tofu made from real soy.

Lilliana fully realized that after her shipmates got used to eating like this, she couldn’t very well go back to the old practice of negotiating for whatever was available cheaply and in large quantities, with the occassional luxury item offered only when she was able to score a phenomenonal deal on it. That, in fact, was what she liked best about the situation: the food budget Shays would never have approved in ordinary circumstances would prove impossible for him to repeal once circumstances that could pass for ordinary returned.

He’d get his own back, of course. He would put his foot down and block expenditures or otherwise meddle in the ship’s operations out of spite. She was prepared for this and already had three different important-looking but inconsequential targets lined up for him to vent his ire upon, when the time came.

In the meantime, he simply took a tithe of the fruits of her shopping and said nothing. On a settled world he could get the best food money could buy, but out in the deep black, it took a certain way around a communication array to find the good stuff.

No, nobody who’s stayed with the Rebellion had any reason to complain about the food, which was why the only person who did was Galatea.

It came from being in a position of responsibility. Those who remained on the crew tended to see her as being in charge more than the man whose name was stenciled on the side of the ship, in letters that had a tendency to start immediately flaking off in little bits every time time they were re-applied. It was as though even an old, outmoded tramp freighter couldn’t stand the thought of being owned by such a man. Or as though what remained of the colony of repair nanintes that lived inside the ship’s skin identified the lettering as being a graver threat to the structural integrity of the hull than actual holes in it were. Either way, the crew thought about as much of Mr. Daniel Shays as the ship did, which was either not much or nothing at all.

When they did come to Mr. Shays with their complaints, it was only because they were dissatisfied with what Lilliana had told them. In these cases, he listened to each complaint with an attentive ear just long enough to confirm that someone was, in fact, talking to him, and then directed the speaker back to Lilliana. The system worked, in the same manner that all things worked on board the Rebellion: for him.

“Yes, I know you’re being worked hard,” Lilliana said in answer to Leo’s latest complaint, which was the same as his previous one, and all its ancestors going back a dozen generations. “We all are. We’re broke, we’ve lost a lot of good cargo, and we’ve got to make up for it by running shag for whatever fringe worlds and ships need a quick, short-range transport job along our way.”

“Right, and running shag means I have to bust my tail off loading and unloading while everybody else does the same amount of work they always do,” the catman said.

“First of all, I have to work much harder than usual to keep lining jobs up as fast as we can take them,” Lilliana said. “Second, your job usually doesn’t involve much except at the beginning or end of a very long journey…”

“Yes, exactly why I’m finding this glorified taxi service crap to be… crap,” Leo said. “Let’s go back to the long journeys.”

“Believe me, we will,” Lilliana said. “But we’ve got to get some cash flow going, we’ve got to hire some more people… I’ve already got everybody who can work a lift assigned rotations in the cargo bay for receiving and unloading, but you know we’re working on a skeleton crew right now.”

A spiky-blonde-haired head with the space where one eye had been covered by a black plasticine patch popped down out of an access hatch above them.

“Wait, we’re on a skeleton crew now?” Regan Bard said. “Did we lose the fight with the necromancer?”

“No, Bard,” Lilliana said, fighting the urge to smile.

Regan was the only one who hadn’t grumbled to her about the current working conditions. Part of that was because the job of keeping the ship’s ancient mechanical and electrical systems running was no more of a constant or thankless task if they were doing shag instead of making a cannonball run halfway across the galaxy.

The rest of it was because Regan always had other, more entertaining things to complain about.

“Good,” Regan said. “Though us bein’ some sort o’ unspeakable undead horrors would go a long way towards explainin’ the rats in the walls. Bulkheads, I mean.”

“What rats?”

“The ones with the relentless chitterin’ and scratchin’ and portendin’ madness an’ all,” Regan said. “I’ve seen this loads o’ times in other ships… the way I have it figured, they’re buildin’ towards some sort o’ dramatic personal revelation or other shockin’ twist that leaves someone completely and utterly twitched. That’s the way it goes, mostly.”

“Well, keep me posted,” Lilliana said.

“Will do, the Gypsy,” Regan said. “Less, o’ course, I’m the one who gets twitched.”

She pulled her head back up out of sight.

“If she is the one to go mad, how will we ever know?” Leo asked.

“Oh, that’s easy,” Regan said, dropping down out of the shaft, tumbling over in the air and landing lightly on her feet. She was dressed in a skin tight black suit. Less than a second after she landed an immense sword fell from above, right into her hand.

“How the hell do you do that?” Leo asked.

“The sword of the king always finds its way to the rightful king’s hand,” Regan said.

“Especially when Handy drops it there,” Lilliana said.

“Sometimes destiny needs a helping hand,” Regan said. “Or four. Anyway, as I was sayin’, I expect it’ll be easy to spot if I go twitched from the portents… ya’ll find me crouched over the dismembered an’ cannibalized form o’ my best friend. Which’ll probably be the cyborg. I’ve been feelin’ extra-friendly towards her lately. Plus, cyborg. Saves time on the dismemberin’.”

“Uh huh,” Leo said. “You have fun with that.”

When he arrived there, he did three things. The first was to start running the program he’d created for uncoupling his ship, the original Finger, from the rest of the complex. It would take a while for even the necessary maintenance checks to be completed. He then opened up his personal console interface, unlocked a shortcut icon he’d previously disabled, and then activated it. The program it ran was completed before he could even begin the third thing, which was to open up a line on the internal address systems of all the casinos and businesses.

“Attention, Gaming Commission, mobsters, and assorted lackeys… the last time my little partnership with the casino syndicates was reviewed, we left the door open for either side to buy the other one out… until quite recently, I’d hoped to come up with the funds to take back my station,” he said. “When that fell through, well… I went a little crazy. I admit it. I overstepped some boundaries. Well, now it’s time for me to step back. After much introspection, and having given the matter careful thought, I have decided to exercise my exit option.

“I know you’ve been eager to see me go for some time… even to the point of keeping a standing offer open in the hopes that I’d been enticed by it. I once laughed that off as being foolish optimism, but I’m man enough to admit that I was wrong and you were all right. Your foresight has paid off: I’ve sent my identity signifier to the escrow agent, and the funds have already been transferred. I was afraid that the value attached to the offer might have been based on an outdated figure of the Finger’s collective worth, but I see it was updated just a week ago… just one week. I’m sure things haven’t changed all that much in six days.”

He laughed, then glanced at the screen showing the progress of his decoupling program. It was fully initialized and ready to go. He gave it the final okay with a flick of his finger.

“Now under the terms of the deal, I am taking my ship and leaving you with the brand name and all that goes along with it. Yes, that’s right… I’ve decided to give you all the Finger,” he said. “I know you all have much to discuss in terms of new divisions of power, shares of profit, any deals that may have been made… and of course, crisis management, so I won’t be sticking around. I will, of course, wish you all the same good fortune that the Fickle Finger brought to me.”

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“Mass hysteria’s always a good start… what are you doing for an encore?” Lilliana asked Dick as she supported a still rather dazed Leo. “And do we have to pick Handy back up on the way?”

“If it all goes according to plan, she’ll be dropping in on us on the way out,” Dick said. “If not, there may be another rescue mission coming.”

“Not likely,” Cicada said. “If we manage to not botch this one, it’ll be a bleeding miracle.”

“Don’t you have another weapon with more ammo?” Lilliana asked her.

“I’ve a dozen,” Cicada said.

“Do you have any with you?”

“I do,” Cicada said. “But I don’t usually have to pop them out… Gossamer’s a ‘fire-and-forget-it’ kind of a gun. Before this new little to-do, the undead boarding party was the most ammo I’ve ever used in one go.”

“Don’t you think you should at least have a backup out?” Lilliana asked. “So it’s ready?”

“You’re worried over nothing,” Cicada said. “A cyborg’s never unarmed.”

All aboard the Finger, confusion and chaos grew. The fact that two of the main attractions really were already shut down didn’t help anything. The reports that came from those who had been present at the sight of Regan’s drinksplosion in The Meadows and from those who’d made it out of the waterpark before the quarantine also didn’t help.

Panic was quickest to take hold in the mall, where individual shops were owned and operated by tenants who weren’t employees of the casinos. Real estate within the mall was a prized commodity, and had to be paid for with steady profits… for any store to shut down for more than a fifteen minute cleaning and restocking cycle was unusual. The sight of multiple stores shuttering themselves unannounced… or simply being abandoned as staff hurried to get out… sparked interest that was quick to grow into concern, especially as those departing were not in a mood to wait around to explain themselves. Store managers who had not heard the rumors or who had heard and dismissed them as not being substantial enough to risk losing profits only spread the panic further and faster, by dint of prompting loud arguments with employees who wanted out but didn’t want to risk their jobs if they could avoid it.

The fire was a little slower to spread in the Royal Casino of Mount Charles of the Single Occupancy, where all employee-customer contact was monitored and controlled by a single source and all inquiries about overheard rumors and witnessed hasty departures could be met with bland dismissals.

But each such inquiry was itself capable of being overheard, and as the casino management recognized the trend and set out alerts to try to catch any similar rumors that might be germinating elsewhere, the panic started to spread throughout the rest of the complex as employees of each separate institution spread their own nervous rumors.

Within ten minutes of the Nicks’ initial bomb-dropping, things were already primed for when Handy, positioned at an abandoned switchboard and guided by Galatea, started randomly activating security bulkheads and locking entryways.

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“Bombs?” Lilliana repeated.

“I determined it would be easier fighting in than out, so I undertook to arrange for the powers that be to have other things to worry about on our way out,” Dick said.

“Aren’t you worried you’ll have a hard time getting out?” Lilliana asked Nick.

“No, don’t worry,” Nick said. “These are slow-burning fuses… we’re taking a page from your playbook.”

“Thank you for visiting Mount Charles,” the cashier told Nick Bradley as she transferred the meager balance of his credits. “Can I interest you in a discount suite?”

“No, thank you,” he said. “Honestly, I’d love to stay a few more hours, but I kind of just want to get out while I still can.”

The cashier laughed a mischievous, unofficially sanctioned laugh. “Probably a good call,” she said. “Mount Charles encourages you to gamble responsibly. Would you like to talk to an associate about setting up a regular pre-set daily limit for the remainder of your stay? We can arrange to put the credits into an account now.”

“Oh, no, it’s not… it’s just, I heard that the waterpark was put under medical quarantine,” Nick said. “I kind of want to get out before it spreads here.”

“Dihydrogen Monexcitement World has its own self-contained biosphere with its own water and air filtration systems,” the cashier said, reciting words from a scrawl across her eye lenses. “The situation in there, while inconvenient for our guests, is not in danger of inconveniencing anyone within the Mount Charles Casino or any of our other fine entertainment and shopping establishments.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that,” Nick said. “I’ve also heard that The Meadows is locked down and armed guards are turning people away from it.” He picked up his credit transfer slip. “Well, thanks all the same.”

He turned and headed for the exit, leaving the cashier looking worried and puzzled beneath her standard-issue smile. She had just opened her mouth for her greeting when the next man in line said, “What was he saying about The Meadows being quarantined, too?”

In a busy clothing boutique a short ways away from one of the exits of the mall, Nick Bradley lingered near a rack of expensive leather jackets made from the duplicated hides of several celebrities of the past few centuries. He caught a sales associate’s eye and shuffled towards her a little nervously as he approached.

“Yes, can I help you find something?” the associate asked.

“Yeah, um… I’m supposed to be meeting my co-clone here so I can see how these new jackets would look,” he said. “But I’m not sure how quick I can get here… do you have any idea how much longer you’ll be open?”

“Oh, certainly, sir… we’re open twenty-eight hours a day, six days a week. And if you’re a cloner, you’ll be interested to know that the entire Celebrity Skin line is buy one, get one half off. We know how popular that brand is with…”

“Well, yeah, I know you don’t normally close,” Nick said. “But they’ve already closed the waterpark and the Meadows, and I’ve heard that Mount Charles or Atlanticity might be next. I really wanted to get some jackets, but I don’t want to risk exposure… have they announced an emergency closing schedule for the shops, or are they just going to keep the mall open until the first signs show up here?”

“Signs?” the associate repeated.

“You know, I don’t need jackets that badly,” Nick said. “Thanks for your time, and you know, good luck.”

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“Understandable,” Cicada said.

“What?” Nick said.

“Shipmate, deadly enemy, locked door,” Cicada said. “She was just doing what came naturally to her. Obviously it’s a reflex.”

“I’m fixing this,” Lilliana said. “Right now.”

She went over to the console and undid her last lock on it, re-enabling communications between it and the interior one. Fortunato was ready and waiting to jump on the line as soon as it was open.

“Did we forget something?”

“Quite possibly,” she said.

“Are we having some regrets about walking out?”

“Are you?” she said. “Because you let me do it… you watched me go and you let it happen. I think if you look deep inside your… self… you’ll find that was the moment of your victory.”

“I think you’re right,” he said. “Because now I have one of your shipmates as a hostage.”

“Before, you had me and that shipmate,” Lilliana said. “Your victory was in learning to let me go. You could complete that victory by…”

“Oh, just shut up and get me out of here,” Fortunato said. “I don’t even care anymore.”

Lilliana was already working the keypad.

“I’m going as fast as I can, but I was trying to hobble the system so it would take longer to undo the lock then it would for… oh, there we go,” she said, and the door slid open.

Cicada leveled her GSMR at the opening as Fortunato came through, his sword out and his electrolaser pointed at the hulking woman.

“Your move,” Lilliana said.

“The hell it is,” Cicada said. “I’m hardened against electrics, and that sword’s not doing shit to my endoskeleton. I could drop him without spending a round.”

He shifted the gun to Lilliana.

“You’re still not doing anything especially worrying to me,” Cicada said.

“I mean to get the hell out of here,” Fortunato said to Lilliana. “I’m not saying you’re right… I’m not giving anything up and I’m not letting anything go. What’s mine is mine. I just don’t feel like fighting over it at the moment.”

“Are you talking about the Finger, or about me?”

“I’m talking about what’s mine,” he said. “Exact boundaries thereof to be established later, when I do feel like fighting about it.”

“You’d be an idiot to let him go after he says something like that,” Cicada said. “You’ll never have a moment’s peace as long as he’s out there.”

“Go, then,” Lilliana said, ignoring her.

“Idiot,” Cicada said. Fortunato slid around the outside of the small office, keeping his back to the wall and his weapons out until he disappeared through the door. Cicada aimed her pistol after him. “I could save you so much trouble, even now. I’ve got a siglock on the distinctive bastard.”

“Save your ammo instead,” Dick said. “We’ll need to make every last shot count.”

“I could make the last shot count now and get it over with,” she said. She put up her gun. “But I suppose he’s one more thing for everyone else to be shooting at, isn’t he?” She looked at Lilliana. “Get your fallen.”

“Nick, why don’t…” Lilliana said.

“Why don’t you?” Cicada said. “I’ve got one boomy bullet left, and right now I’m more confident of my ability to get myself out of here without it than I am of my ability to get the whole group out with it. I think that puts me in charge… ma’am, captain.” She nodded to Lilliana and Dick in turn. “Hop to it.”

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