Ring Rats by R. Garcia y Robertson

R. Garcia y Robertson's latest novel,Knight Errant (the first in a fantasy trilogy set during the War of the Roses), was recently published in hardcover by Forge. The reprint edition of another of his books,American Woman , is available in paperback. In Mr. Garcia's hair-raising new tale of murder and kidnapping, a desperate young girl and a gifted pilot must make a frantic attempt to outwit a brutal space pirate.

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Captain Kid

MORNING WATCH

04:37:12

Graveyard orbit circum Typhon

Great uncle Lyle has a ship like this.” Kay stepped out of the forward lock into a narrow tube lined with loose power cables and scraps of shiny insulation, showing that the ship was a work in progress. She wore an adult vacuum suit several sizes too big, cinched tight at chest, waist, and crotch, to keep her from tripping over it. Luckily, spin gravity was a relaxed.5 g. Seeing pressure was up, she undogged her helmet and lifted it off, shaking out straight blonde hair that fell to just past her small delicate jaw. Squared ends and razor bangs were edged in blue—matching her eyes. Filling her lungs with ship air, Kay found it musty, smelling of Chimps and solvent, way better than the stale stuff in her over-sized suit.

("Can you pilot her?") inquired a disembodied voice coming from the comlink clipped to her ear. Speed-of-light lag made the voice seem to hesitate, meaning that the signal came from a ways off. Hundreds of thousands of klicks at least.

“Sure, no sweat.” At thirteen standard years, Kay already knew better than to show an angstrom of doubt, not when money hung on the deal. “Just let me look her over.” Following the snaking power cables to the control deck, she brushed foam packing pretzels off the spanking new command couch, then climbed aboard, her small frame sinking deep into the crash webbing. “Centaurii Comet, right?”

("Serial number CC-8879442,") replied the voice in her ear.

If you say so. Finding the couch lead, she lifted the blue-fringed hair at the back of her neck and jacked in, running a swift systems-check. All green. Figures. Hardwired systems sit for centuries, waiting to spring to life—while the human parts wore down, or went to pieces. Lying back, she summoned up a virtual tour of the ship, a spherical pressure cabin married to a cylindrical antimatter drive, originally an insystem robo-freighter, presently being refitted by a SuperChimp crew, apparently for smuggling. She that noted the redone command cabin was a bit short, creating space behind the aft bulkhead. “So you need someone to make a shakedown run to Tartarus?”

("Yes, a pilot to check the work of the SuperChimps on the refit, then take the ship and SuperChimps to Tartarus.")

“Why take the Chimps?” She did not intend to lift ship until the refit was done—being desperate, but not clinically crazy. There were smarter ways of killing herself than taking a suspect ship deep into Typhon's gravity well, headed for Tartarus, an airless volcanic moon, torn by tidal forces and drenched in hard radiation from Typhon's Van Allen belts.

("These SuperChimps are needed on Tartarus.")

Poor Chimps. Poorher —she was headed for Tartarus too. Money can make you do ghastly things. Kay asked, “When will I be paid?”

("Payment in your name is waiting to be claimed on Tartarus, you need only go there.")

“Sounds great!” Actually, it sounded like a blazing lot of bullshit, but it did not pay to say so—in fact, the only way the excursion paid at all was to pilot this refitted museum piece safely to Tartarus. “Just let me go get my kit.”

("Be back before 1600.")

“Absolutely!” Kay did not let a scintilla of doubt into her voice, grinning idiotically, sounding as perky as she could while lying at the controls of a derelict robo-freighter, a cosmic packing crate discarded ages before she was born—being told that she had to see the ship to Tartarus, for reasons so dangerous she dared not ask. “No trouble at all,” she assured the invisible voice, checking the time in her head. It was 04:55:07. “I'll be back by the first dogwatch.”

Leaping up before the voice changed its mind, she waded through packing scraps to the airlock, clamping on her helmet, and returning to the stale stuffy air from Mom's worn recycler. Cycling through the lock, she emerged from the despin system onto an open docking port on the ship's main axis. Telling her boots to grip, she walked out to stand on the empty docking ring, surrounded by vacuum and starlight—all dressed up with nowhere to go. She just wanted to be out of the ship, before something screwed the deal. Silly, since the comlink was still in her ear, and the disembodied voice could call it off anytime, or demand she do it blindfolded. To which Kay would have to happily say, “Yes.” But she herself would not prolong the process one nanosecond. What was there to negotiate? She was being offered more credit than she had ever seen to pilot a ship—something she had known how to do since she was two. Kay had to accept, resolutely refusing to consider the risks, consequences, or glaringly obvious dangers. It was not as if she had a choice.

Putting the comlink to use, she hit the net, scanning frequencies, scamming a ride, talking to anyone who would talk to her, hoping to get back to The Hub as painlessly as possible. Telling all who would listen that she was “deep in the Graveyard, needing a ride Home.”

On the far side of her visor was one of the most awesome sights in Human Space, the Orion nebula from close up, great fingers of glowing gas tipped with stars in the making, seen through the young bright lights of Dawn Cluster, hundreds of suns crowded into a few score light-years, blazing at her out of the blackness. Starry nebula stretched from straight overhead almost to her feet, where it was abruptly cut off by the curved tawny-brown cloud tops of a ringed gas giant half a million klicks “below” her. This was Typhon, the huge Jovian world that everything hereabouts orbited, circled by immense silver rings taking up half the sky. By local convention, going deeper into Typhon's steep gravity well was “down,” and everywhere else in the universe was “up.” Somewhere “down,” there, between her and the rings, spun Tartarus, Typhon's innermost moon, a sulfuric volcanic slag heap, freezing cold and lava hot, bathed in Typhon's Van Allen radiation—that for some unknown reason urgently needed this ship and its Chimp crew. So urgently that they were willing to haveher pilot it, a sign of practically suicidal desperation on someone's part, or monumental stupidity. But who was Kay to question her luck?

Smiling into her helmet cam, she pictured the people she talked to—Mom's transceiver chip in the back of her skull let her see images projected directly into her optical lobes, so she could read faces. Someone had to burn mass and come out of their way to pick her up. Someone human. Chimps lacked the authority, and few cyborgs would give her the time of day—narrowing her choices alarmingly. CC-8879442 orbited deep in the Graveyard, a parking orbit for cargoless ships and airless hulks at the edge of Typhon's Van Allen belts. Scavengers, salvage crews, refit parties, ring-runners, and antique dealers all visited the Graveyard—if only sporadically. So that's who she appealed to, pleading patiently while the worn recycler on Mom's old v-suit labored in the background.

Finally, she found a guy who felt right, who had not only a ship but a job, a fat, friendly tug operator doing orbital maintenance, promising to fit her into his schedule as long as she paid for her mass. Since she massed next to nothing, it was a deal—though she still wished he were a woman.

Settling in to wait, Kay stood weightless in her mother's oversized v-suit, listening to the laboring recycler. Being on the axis of rotation made the whole ship seem to spin around her, but left her stable relative to the stars, pointed smack at Betelgeuse. But Typhon was the big attraction, blazing in half-phase with its giant rings, so huge that she couldn't see it all. She searched for Tartarus, but the tiny moon was too close in, blotted out by the bright rings. She was going to really be a ring rat now, close enough to file her nails on them.

It was 05:37:42. Waiting began to wear. Space travel had way too much dead time, even for little hops like here to The Hub. Nor did she like how Mom's recycler sounded—if it gave out, she had just a small reserve before the suit died.

Retreating to the net, she scanned for free feelie casts, finding a 3V ad for a resort and retirement aerostat in Typhon's upper atmosphere. Floating like a huge transparent bubble several klicks across, the aerostat hung from a giant balloon of heated hydrogen, suspended amid brown clouds of ammonium hydrosulfide hundreds of klicks above a grey-white sea of water ice clouds. Within the aerostat's protective bubble was a free-form world, where beautiful people flitted between aerial hamlets on gossamer wings and skycycles. Fairyland to a child raised in cubicles and corridors, breathtakingly wonderful no matter how often she felt it. She blended with the ad, riding a skycycle with wind streaming in a cool rush of feeling over her face, weirdly refreshing. She pedaled along, dodging skyships, pleasure barges, and colorful homes floating like open flowers, complete with hanging gardens and rooftop landing pads. Aerostat technology had been used by the first settlers to terraform Oceania and the inner worlds, then introduced to Typhon to provide living space in the outer system. Ice-mining and terraforming left colonies scattered about Typhon living off local resources and gravity advantage—not everyone could pick up and move to the wonderful new inner worlds. Kay was having her troubles just getting to The Hub.

Shooting through waterfall rainbows, she skimmed the surface of the warm ballast lake at the bottom of the bubble, feeling the splash of spray on her feet, all without fear of crashing—this was just a commercial. To prove it, she pulled back on the skycycle and did a perfect inside loop right into the lake.

Soon as she hit the water, she was swimming, no longer aboard a skycycle, but nude, wearing only swim fins, goggles, and a rebreather. Warm oxygenated water turned her into an aquatic creature, gliding at will over sunlit sand through schools of tiny silver fish, swimming effortlessly despite never having been in water deeper than a sponge bath—all thanks to the power of advertising.

Suddenly, she was back standing in her oversized suit, warm limbs still twitching from the swim. Suit alarms wailed as a tug came in to dock at the port she was standing on. Her ride was here. Clearing the docking ring, she waited until the locks matched, then entered the tug, finding it spotless compared to what she was leaving—usually a good sign. “Welcome aboard,” the tug operator called out from his command couch. “Crack your hat and have a seat.”

She had the usual split-second to decide about the man, while the lock cycled closed behind her and ships prepared to part. Was this guy going to hurt her? Should she go back? Risk the next ride instead? Half a dozen times, she had turned right about and been out the lock before her surprised ride said hello. And so far, she had always guessed right, since in hundreds of rides, nothing bad had ever happened. Notreal bad anyway—not yet. This guy had a comfortable slovenly appearance that did not match the clean cabin, giving him a sympathetic complexity, beefy and easy going, totally adapted to zero-g, yet not afraid to be neat. She relaxed a bit as the lock clicked shut behind her—for better or worse, she was aboard the tug. “Thanks,” she replied cheerfully, pulling off her helmet, “shan't mind if I do.”

His air tasted as neat as his cabin, not clean and free like on an aerostat, but well-preserved. Kay parked herself in the co-pilot's couch, snapping her belt to the crash webbing, as he asked her, “Where you from?”

Unsealing a glove, she pushed back her big suit sleeve, showing him her tattoo: K-9251949. He nodded at her crèche number, “So you got no family?”

“Just Mom's uncle Lyle.” Who didn't know she existed until she'd looked him up. “He has a ship of his own—but it's not as nice as yours.”

“Wishshe were mine.” The big man smiled ruefully.

“Well, you keep it real nice.” She laid on the compliments thick as she could. “Granduncle Lyle's is some mess.”

His jowly smile widened. “What was that ship I picked you up from?”

She shrugged, “Just there looking for a job.” She had never even asked the ship's name. “Didn't get it.”

“What kind of job?” Captain Inquisitive cocked an eyebrow.

She had not asked what she would carry to Tartarus, knowing it must be heinously criminal—otherwise, they would be idiots to hire her. Unlicensed pilots could cost you your ship; hiring a thirteen-year-old without formal training showed utter contempt for the law, meaning a cargo so despicable only a desperate teenager would haul it “no questions asked.” It hardly helped her to knowhow criminal, since bland ignorance was the best way to beat a brain-scan. She shrugged again, “Told you, I didn't get it. How hard is it to gun a rig like this?”

He laughed, “Not hard. Lookin’ for my job?”

“Sure thing!” She started asking dumb kid questions about orbital mechanics, getting him to talk tug operations, salvage hassles, ring-runner gossip, rumors of slavers insystem, family problems; he showed her happy waving holos of his three wives and seven kids. When conversation lapsed, she let her mind drift, hopping aboard a feelie ad for an starliner headed outsystem, hiding her absence behind blue-trimmed bangs and a spacey blonde smile.

StarlinerArtemis was built to pamper interstellar travelers with bars, casinos, lounges, and recreation decks, and a hollow core where garden balconies formed near-vertical cliff faces, seemingly klicks apart, enclosing a virtual space filled with winding trails and cascading waterfalls. Passengers could step from their stateroom terraces into hologram landscapes that were changed weekly—so that just finding your way to a favorite bistro became an adventure. Anything to fight boredom during the months of shiptime it took to see the stars. She sampled wind-surfing on the pool deck and the virtual world of Q-deck, popping back now and again to see if her ride was saying anything important. Each time she left the feelie, Orion Lines eagerly reminded her thatArtemis was nearing Typhon orbit, her last stop insystem—with SPACE AVAILABLE for outbound passengers! She wished that she could go, but she didn't have the credit to get to the Graveyard and back.

Abruptly, her ride was over—the tug pilot was telling her that they were at The Hub. Hurriedly unstrapping, she apologized for daydreaming. Several ships were docked in the torus station, making The Hub look like a rimless wheel with most of the spokes missing. Home sweet home. And time to pay up. Her ride calculated her mass cost, handing her the keypad so she could check his figures. They checked—it would cost all her credit, leaving her nothing for the trip back with her kit. Her bare thumb hovered nervously over PAY.

“Hey, kid,” the guy asked softly. “Want to save yourself the credit?”

“Sure,” she replied slowly, relaxing her fingers, letting the keypad float away from her hand. Somehow, she had to hustle the credit for a ride back to the Graveyard. Turn this guy down, and the next one might not be nearly so nice. “So long as I do not have to take off my suit.”

“You really like that v-suit?” He sounded disappointed at not seeing her naked.

She started to say how little she had to show under the bulky suit, then stopped, fearing it might queer the whole deal. Forced by circumstances to be a connoisseur of child molesters, Kay guessed that this guy was not the sort who got off on seeing girls suffer. He just thought of her as “young stuff” and wanted to get his a little early, making him more lazy than mean. Hell, she could tell that he liked her, though his way of expressing it was to take criminal advantage of her, showing a need for serious psych reprogramming. Pronto. But that washis problem. She just told him, “It belonged to my Mom.”

“Your Mom was a vacuum hand?” He sounded impressed, and a bit embarrassed at propositioning someone's baby girl.

“She was a pilot, and shipped out across half the galaxy.” Kay gave the tug captain her warmest, most dazzling smile. “Mom was born in Alpha C, right next to Old Earth—and this was her v-suit.” She did not mention that Mom had died in it—something Kay thought about every time she put it on.

“So you just can't stand to take it off?”

Kay smiled even wider, stubbornly determined to stay in the suit. “It was all she left me.” Not strictly true; the transceiver chip in her skull had been left for her too, along with enough credit to have it put into her as a toddler. It had originally been in her mother's head.

“So your Mom's dead? What about your dad?”

“Sperm donor,” she replied cheerfully. “MSS-789439-X18.”

“Guess that means you're on your own?”

“You bet,” she said it like she would not have it any other way.

“And how old are you?”

“Sixteen,” she lied to make him feel better, since it didn't matter to her.

“Earth years?” He looked suspicious.

She nodded eagerly. He gave in and let her keep the suit on. Adept at disconnecting parts of her brain, Kay put herself on automatic, sending her conscious mind on another visit to starshipArtemis —no wind-surfing or virtual-adventuring this time, just leaning on a terrace rail in the liner's hanging gardens, listening to night music and smelling jasmine in the dark air, while hologram fireflies blinked ancient come-ons to each other. Her ride ended up tipping her.

As soon as she was off the tug, Kay rinsed her mouth with chemical-tasting wash water, careful not to swallow, wishing she could afford bottled water from the bulkhead dispenser. Corridor taps were clearly marked NOT FOR INTERNAL USE.

To take her mind off her thirst—and her impromptu audition for wife #4—Kay tried guesstimating her chances. To be brutally truthful, she had signed on with hardened criminals who hoped to profit off her trip to Tartarus. Fortunately, payment seemed foolproof, since Tartarus confirmed the credit was hers, merely needing to be claimed. That payment was her lifeline, her chance to go somewhere for real, instead of hitching 3V rides on starliner ads. Best of all, no matter how she turned it over in her head, she couldn't see any real profit, in killing her. If they were blowing up the ship for insurance, why make it murder as well? And what idiot would insure an illegal ring-runner with a teenage pilot? They wanted the ship and Chimps on Tartarus for a reason, a seriouslycriminal reason—so they got a cheap pilot, who knew nothing and could not testify against them, whoeverthey were. Disposable but not doomed, that was her ticket. Just because her employers were hardened criminals, didn't mean they had to be completely heartless.

Squeezing past tired looking families camped in the passageways, she got to her storage locker, and found an aging shaven-headed vacuum hand sprawled in front of it, thin and gaunt, and reeking of potable coolant. Kneeling down, she shook him, “Hey, old-timer, wake up, I need to get to my stuff.”

His good eye flicked open, and he stared up at her, his questioning look turning into a lopsided grin. “Kay! I prayed you would come back.”

She smiled wearily. “And here I am.”

“Where did you go?” His questioning look returned. “No one knew where you went, like you had vanished from The Hub.”

Her fondest ambition. She sighed and sat down beside him, “I went to see about a ship.”

“What ship?” He started to panic. “You can't ship out. You're my angel, the only beautiful thing I see every day! If you leave, there will be nothing.” He waved at the blank passageway bulkhead to prove his point.

Pretty bleak, but that was why she was leaving. “Look,” she whispered, “there is good news, but you must keep it secret.”

“What good news?” He still sounded wary.

“Promise to keep this secret,” she insisted. “I'm signing on as captain.”

“Shit, girl, that's absolutely crazy!”

“Ain't it?” She nodded cheerfully. “And criminal, too. With an antimatter drive and a SuperChimp crew.My crew, pretty scary, huh? And I want you to go too, as my supercargo. Whadya say, will you come with me?”

He gave her a grateful, bewildered look. “Youare an angel. My golden angel!”

She laughed outright for the first time in what felt like forever. “Then move over, old-timer. This is Captain Angel speaking.”

“Aye, aye.” With difficulty, he slid away from her door. “Where are we shipping to?”

She arched a blonde eyebrow. “Does it matter?”

He laughed, shaking his shaved head sorrowfully, “Long as it's nothere .”

“There could be danger,” Kay confessed. “I mean, you know, any lift can be dangerous....” This one more than most.

“Dangerous?” He looked astonished. “Signing unto an unknown ship, sight unseen, for an illegal trip with an unlicensed underage pilot? Where's the risk tothat? ”

She laughed again. “When you put it that way, it doesn't sound nearly so bad. Be ready by the first dogwatch.”

He raised a crooked finger, reminding her. “Better to die in space than live in a box!”

“You wish.” She thumbed the lock, and her storage box sprang open. He just slept in passageways—she was the one who lived in a box. Crawling into her three-meter storage locker, she closed the door, shedding her mother's suit like a chrysalis in the darkness, followed by her sweat-soaked pants and tee, exposing her bare thin body to the safety of the dark locker. Finding her cooler by touch, she got out a packet of water, broke the foil seal and drank. By the next dog watch, she would be living on ship's rations, eating and drinking her fill for the first time ever.

Now she just felt drained. Lying curled in darkness, she let herself go, crying lightly at being alone, an ache so old that it seemed to always be with her. She thought about her dead Mom, and her dad, Male Sperm Sample-789439-X18. The X18 meant his name could not be released until she was 18. He only wanted to meet her as an adult. Five more years. How the fuck was she supposed to survive until then? Sometimes, she tried chatting with kids on Typhon or Oceania, real kids, on real worlds, with real lives, but speed-of-light lag made her look so hick and stupid, taking forever to answer simple questions. Too slow even for virtual sex, except for the crudest sort of show-and-tell—which she did not much like anyway. She wanted someone to hold her and touch her, and tell her she was not alone.

Her one ticket out of here was the chip put in her skull as a toddler; with it, she could pilot any conventional spacecraft. Mom's files were extensive and continually updated themselves, making for a weird upbringing. How many three-year-old girls had an “invisible friend” who was a gravity drive cyber-friendly, Centuarii Starcruiser? Being born in space, she could not afford to look back. Tartarus could hardly be worse than this, and on Tartarus, credit waited to take her somewhere else. Or so she hoped. Her employers were saving a fortune over the cost of a real pilot; would they kill her to save the littleshe cost? Unlikely. Or to shut her up? Possibly.

Better to die in space than live in a box. Setting her head for 0800, she closed her eyes, returning to starshipArtemis, to dance through a low-g lounge with handsome hologram officers in snappy Orion Lines uniforms. Movement and music soon lulled her to sleep. One more hitch to the Graveyard, then she would have her own ship—then look out, universe!

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MissBehavin

Second DOG WATCH

18:54:33

In constant-g transit to Typhon

Hardwired to her work station by superconducting cable, Heidi Van der Graf stared into virtual space, watching two lopsided moonlets tumble toward each other. Connecting her biocircuitry directly to the onboard systems, the cable plugged into a microsocket at the back of her head that was hidden by naturally pink hair. The two tumbling satellites were guardian moons—Aetna I and Aetna II—pockmarked cinders a hundred klicks across, on concentric orbits forty klicks from the outer edge of Typhon's A-ring. With an orbital separation well within their mean diameters, they seemed determined to collide, and Heidi aimed to putArtemis' passengers at the upcoming point of impact.

("Ship bearing ZERO-FOUR-FOUR plus TWENTY, looks to be a ring-runner.") Heidi thought heinous thoughts about her boss, having seen the ship already, a Centaurii Comet skirting the rings, making for Tartarus—too old and slow to be trouble. Heidi's whole job was seeing things before they happened; now she felt like her section head was sitting at her shoulder, willing her to screw up, and for no good reason. Sure, she was newly signed on, never serving on a posh starliner before. Worse yet, she had shocking pink hair, green eyes, and dimples when she grinned. So what? None of that made her an idiot; in fact, she could already tweak unrivaled virtual effects out ofArtemis' humdrum circuitry.

Gasps came over the comnet as Heidi zoomed in on the moonlets. Pick-ups on Aetna II let her plunge straight to the surface, then shoot upward. Passengers packed into lounges and staterooms tuned to 3V found themselves staring up from the airless surface of Aetna II. An astounding scene. Typhon's silvery A-ring rose right out of the short, pitted horizon, standing edgewise in space, neatly bisecting the great neon blotch of the Orion nebula. Six moons were up. Oceania, Typhon's largest satellite, hung like a powder-blue pearl amid the hot young stars of Dawn Cluster. All backed by synthesized accompaniment—Aretha Chou'sPleiades Symphony . Not bad for the new girl! Her Orion Lines contract read Signalsmate, Second Class, but Heidi rated herself a virtual artist, with the cosmos for her palette and music for a brush.

Obviously unimpressed, her supervisor broke into the music of the spheres, rattling off irrelevant info on the ring-runner. ("Ship isMissBehavin, anti-matter drive robo-freighter inbound for Tartarus.") Heidi swore silently at her immediate superior, Chief Signalsmate Marten DeRuyter, a pompous twit, breaking the flow of her act with authoritative announcements, blowing the mood she created. Shut up and enjoy the show! She desperately needed to shine—to go totally nova, showing Orion Lines what they were getting.

Slowly, Aetna I rose up over the stone's-throw horizon. Bigger and more menacing as it came on, the moonlet plunged straight at the smaller satellite, gathering speed. Tumbling toward the viewpoint, its cratered surface grew to fill the entire sky. Millions of tons of misguided rock and ice hurtled right at Aetna II. An unnerving sight, even in 3V. Virtual effects put anyone who'd tuned in smack at the point of collision. Pulses quickened. Music swelled to a crescendo, as passengers braced themselves, hugging loved ones, and hunkering deeper into body-couches. Heidi could hear sharp intakes of breath on the comnet. Heart-attack time. Catastrophic impact rushed at them, scary and awesome, threatening to send unstable personalities caroming about their staterooms.

At the last second, the cosmos flinched. Aetna I and Aetna II somersaulted in space. One instant, they were close enough together to see house-sized boulders on Aetna I's surface. A moment later, Aetna II swung completely around, switching orbits with Aetna I—a dance that the two guardian moons had been doing down through the ages as they swept the outer rim of Typhon's A-ring.

Instead of facing a shattering collision, passengers found themselves staring at Typhon's vast multicolored cloud tops, while Aetna I whirled off into space, a dwindling hunk of rock and ice. Great brown and yellow bands of ammonium hydrosulfides streamed across the face of the gas giant, whipped by white storm eddies bigger than planets, whirling one into another across a colossal disk spanned by silver rings, incredibly immense and breathtakingly unexpected. Stunned silence turned to cheers, showering Heidi in comnet applause. Chief Steward Taylor called to congratulate her. So did the First Officer. That ought to get DeRuyter off her back.

No such luck. Chief Signalsmate DeRuyter curtly took control, telling her via private back-channel. ("Daddy will do the encore.")

("Why?") Heidi hated men who called themselves “daddy"—especially to subordinates—one more warning that her boss was wired pretty weird. She wanted to keep going, straight down through the cloud tops to the aerostats floating in Typhon's upper atmosphere—contrasting the empty infinity of space with the endless cloud plain of the great ringed planet.

("You'll see, just lay back and learn.")

You wish! Giving up control, Heidi cursed DeRuyter for treating her like a trainee. Sure she was new, but she had given an orgasmic performance, on top of a résumé that read like she'd made it up herself. Her boss would be hard put to do better. She saw Typhon vanish, replaced by blank starscape. The image tightened. At the center of the starfield sat the Centaurii Comet, centuries old and hopelessly obsolete, with her round pressure cabin and stubby antimatter drive,MissBehavin bound for Tartarus, the ring-runner. So? Heidi saw the virtual audience ratings slip as staterooms went off-line. Sensors picked up random conversation in the L-deck lounge. Heidi smirked. We can't all be a hit. People drifted toward new pleasures, ignoring DeRuyter's virtual offering. Boredom was the bane of space travel. High-g drives and relativistic velocities had failed to erase the gulf between the stars, but people still wanted to “go there"—even if it took months of shiptime. Designed to meet that challenge,Artemis had every stateroom wired for 3V. Plus a pool deck and lounge deck. Another deck devoted to kids. Non-stop virtual shows. Hologram acts and gambling arcades. On-line orgies that would make Caligula blush. Anything to make light-years fly by.

Heidi unplugged. Her internal transceiver let her follow things without being wired into the work station; she used the ship to supply images and boost her signals, but the chip in her skull turned thoughts into actions. Her hand groped for a dopestick. Nasty habit, but she needed to even out the strain, mixing some yin in her yang, making life a little less like work. She inhaled sharply and the stick lit itself, filling her lungs with narcotic smoke.

Too bad she had to light up in a church. Her stateroom was set on bright summer day, showing a 3V interior of La Mezquita, the great mosque built by the Caliphs of Cordoba, converted after the Reconquest into a Christian cathedral. Colorful columns and arches plundered from Roman temples disappeared into virtual distance. Beyond an ornate inscribed archway—patterned on the Mihrab, a prayer niche built by Hakam II—perfumed water splashed on the sunlit marble of the Alhambra's Court of Lions. She wore silk harem pants under her ship's kimono to match the decor, her slippered feet resting on flagstones worn smooth by the knees of pilgrims. Not exactly the Sistine Chapel, but she called it home.

Staring into illusionary space, Heidi took a pull on the dopestick, reveling in her new job security. Orion Lines ought to be ecstatic. She was smashing—hitting MEMORY, she replayed the applause in her head. No matter how much DeRuyter sneered at her, she had sealed her cozy berth on a pleasure ship headed outsystem, going to see the universe in style. And she hadn't had to drop her harem pants to do it. Always a plus.

Alarm bells jerked her out of her euphoria. Snubbing out the dopestick, she returned to realtime.MissBehavin was broadcasting a MAYDAY—a persistent, repeated plea for help.

Closing her eyes, she shut out the Romanesque mosque-cum-cathedral, triggering her transceiver, staring into cyberspace. Traffic control showed a new ship: a sleek gravity-drive starship, swinging out from behind Typhon at high acceleration. Data banks tagged the newcomer as theHiryu, out of Azha system, Eta Eridani. The high-g drive, the silent rush to match velocities, along with Eridani registry—all shouted “Slaver.” Heidi heard the viewing lounge fall silent, recognizing the same expectant hush heard on a game park tour when someone spots a leopard or a sabretooth.

Pulling pink hair aside, she hurriedly plugged back in. Horrible things were about to happen. Happily, they would happen to someone else.Artemis had nothing to fear fromHiryu, or any outback predator. The starliner's energy shielding stood up to the storm of radiation at near light speed. Nukes could not even scratch the paintwork, and in centuries of operation Orion Lines had never lost a starliner. Which would not helpMissBehavin .Artemis was decelerating toward Typhon at 1-g, headed for an orbit inside the Roche Limit, planning a pass between the planet and rings, skimming the cloud tops.Hiryu and its prey were farther out, headed for Tartarus—the high-g slaver would be finished with the robo-freighter long beforeArtemis arrived. Any other help was even farther off.

Horrified, Heidi watched a winged gravity-drive gig separate fromHiryu, matching velocities with the fleeing freighter. As the gig attached toMissBehavin 's main airlock, DeRuyter fed the MAYDAY into the comnet, letting passengers see aboard the doomed ship. Meant to be crewed by SuperChimps and computers,MissBehavin turned out to have humans aboard. Her MAYDAY came from a gaunt ring rat, hands trembling, his aged face a mask of fear, beggingArtemis for help. “Signal to starliner, please render assistance. We are being boarded....”

Not your normal holoshow. This real-time drama had Heidi sitting paralyzed at her station, aghast at the expanding spectacle. Tapping intoMissBehavin 's onboard cams, DeRuyter broadcast the nightmare scene at the airlock. Alarms wailed hysterically. The narrow corridor filled with dancing sparks as an anaerobic torch cut its way into the ship. Suddenly, the lock burst open. Tripod-legged cyborgs with steel tentacle arms and twin gun-turret heads emerged from the shower of sparks, firing as they came. Crazed SuperChimps ran hooting in terror, unarmed and helpless. Appeals for assistance turned frantic. Heidi hardly believed what she was seeing.

And it got worse. Detecting more images tightcast to private staterooms, she tapped in, seeing the same ghastly scene from the cyborg's point of view—DeRuyter was reading the slaver control channels, a neat trick. Gun-cams tracked terrified Chimps banging off bulkheads frantic to escape the hail of fire. One by one, they were blown to bloody rags.

Wondering who got off on this live-action shooting gallery, Heidi backtracked one of the tightcasts to an A-deck holo-suite. By now, she knew all first-class passengers by name, face, and predilection. This one she had tagged as trouble, an insolent jerk-off who practically lived on the ship's S&M channel. Sitting cross-legged on his zero-g bed in a virtual stupor, he had a headset on, leaning and twisting with the action, mouth agape, sweat gleaming at his temples. Every so often, his fingers twitched. His teenage hired girlfriend lay beside him on the bed, wearing nothing but dead black lipstick and matching nails, looking almighty bored.

Heidi hit security override, blanking the signal to the stateroom. Swearing like a bosun, the punk tore off his headset, feverishly checking his connections, then jacked back in. His hired girlfriend smirked at his troubles. Heidi quit tormenting the little sadist, who was, after all, a paying passenger. Let him have his twisted fun. No sick jerk-off was worth a complaint in her file.

Returning to the tightcast, she saw something new. Mixed in with the signals from the cyborg's guncams was another set from a slaver wired for sensurround. Heidi could not see the slaver's face, just his hands and body, since she was seeing through his eyes, hearing through his ears. Uncanny, but thoroughly familiar to her.

Stepping lightly through the carnage left by the cyborgs, he looked happily about, carefully avoiding the gore and Chimp shit. Heidi could tell he was happy by the spring in his walk, and by the way he glanced around him carelessly, attentive and curious—not the least downcast or wary. His right hand held a recoilless pistol nonchalantly at his side. Making his self-satisfied way straight to the command deck, the slaver shut off the ship's MAYDAY. The old man was splattered across a bulkhead, blasted at close range by some uncaring cyborg. As the slaver knelt to examine the gory remains, Heidi shifted away.

Switching to control deck cams, she got a look at the slaver himself, a cheerful hoodlum with dark tousled hair and a keen, confident air, going casually through his victim's clothing. Clearly a bright, alert boy who enjoyed his work, and did not care who it hurt.Homo galactus, born in space, most likely raised a slaver. His uniform blouse was open to the navel, showing off a garish dragon tattoo that twined across his naked chest—Hiryumeant “Flying Dragon” in a dead language. Tattooed skulls bracleted his wrist, marking him as a veteran killer.

Done robbing the dead, the slaver straightened up, looking away from the human mess at his feet. His eyes swept the room. To see what he was looking for, Heidi switched back to sensurround, at the same time calling up the deck plan for a Centaurii Comet. He stared hard at the aft bulkhead, which looked to be half a meter closer than the deck plan warranted.

Walking to the back of the cabin, he ran expert fingers over the bulkhead. Heidi sensed the hands of a master smuggler-cum-slaver feeling for flaws in the smooth plasti-metal. His hand stopped. There it was. Jacking up the sensurround, Heidi felt an invisible vertical ridge, right under the slaver's fingers. Together they followed the ridge down to the deck, where the pressure seam felt wider than it should. Curiouser and curiouser. It was weird to be at one with this murderous felon, melding her senses with his. He called for a cyborg.

Heidi shifted to the cyborg. Sensors turned the invisible ridge into a hairline crease, pressure-proof, but real. Anything could be on the far side. Extending a pair of grapples, the cyborg grabbed onto the bulkhead, then pulled sideways. The hairline crease widened into a crack.

She shifted back to the slaver. Pistol leveled at the crack, he signaled the cyborg to pull harder. Staring over the pistol sights, she saw the bulkhead creep sideways, widening the crack. She could feel the slaver's finger tighten on the firing stud. His first sign of nervousness.

As the crack widened, a couple of centimeters of girl's face appeared. Heidi could see a blue eye, sharp-cut blonde bangs with a blue trim, a tear-stained cheek, and the corner of a mouth. “Out,” the slaver ordered. The visible tip of the girl's lip trembled, but she did not speak. He jammed the pistol barrel into the crack. The girl shrank back—wedging herself deeper into the half meter slot behind the bulkhead. “Out, or I shoot.”

He would shoot. Heidi could feel it in his gunhand—the readiness to kill if he didn't get his way. She tried desperately to will his finger off the firing stud, but sensurround didn't work that way. Instead, she felt the finger press harder on the stud. Another milligram of pressure and the pistol would spray explosive shells into the tiny space, ripping the girl to shreds.

Slowly, the panel slid back. Terrified and hollow-eyed, the girl stayed pressed tightly into the tiny space; she was twelve or thirteen at best, wearing a woman's v-suit several sizes too large, with the helmet tipped back off her head. Giving a satisfied grunt, the slaver reached in and grabbed her. As his hand closed on the girl's suit, Heidi unplugged, not wanting to feel his fingers seize the frightened child.

Sensesurround vanished. Signals still came in, beamed straight to the transceiver in her skull, but not with the same intensity. Plugging in was not a necessity—most folks lived fine lives without it—but having the plug in her head gave Heidi her professional edge. Superconducting connections sharpened sensurround and shaved off precious nanoseconds essential for 3V programming.

By now, most of the ship had tuned in. Way more people were on-line than had seen her cosmic tumbling act. Taking a peek at that A-deck asshole, she saw him still wearing his headset, with his girlfriend in his lap, her eyes shut, dead black lips pursed, head resting listlessly on her employer. He reached down between her legs. Heidi cut the signal to the stateroom. Let them put it in her file; she would not let the sadistic little scumbag get off on that girl's fear.

("What are you doing?") DeRuyter demanded.

Heidi did not answer. Screw DeRuyter. Picking up the dopestick, she breathed it back to life, thinking about the girl, trying to imagine what she could do—knowing that the answer was nothing. That girl was gone. Soon she would be headed outsystem in the hold of a slaver, never to come back. The Cosmos could be horribly cruel to the unlucky.

("Consider yourself on report.")

Consider yourself an asshole, she thought, but did not say it—noting that the signal to A-deck had been restored. Good to see someone getting something out of this fiasco. Snubbing out the dopestick, she shut off her cerebral transceiver, stood up, and stalked through the Mihrab gateway into the Court of Lions. Green Cypress tops poked up over the colonnade surrounding the fountain, a shallow basin supported by a dozen sculpted lions. Andalusian sunlight poured out of a hot blue hologram sky. She sat down on one of the lions, letting the water pour over her, soaking her harem pants and ship's kimono. Water and fountain were semi-real even if the sunshine was not.

Damn, what a disaster! DeRuyter had upstaged her, rubbing her face in what the paying publicreally wanted. Who needs art when you can have live-action horror? She stared at the slender marble columns surrounding the fountain: a hologram façade, like the hot blue sky above, 3V fakes hiding ship's bulkheads, giving depth and solidity to her compressed world. Reality was different. Reality was a terrified child turned into live passenger entertainment.

Was she wound way too tight? Probably—but with reason. Heidi could not walk away from her problems, no more than that girl could. Not aboard ship. She could not even walk away from her station. Only her resolution to stay shut down gave her a semblance of privacy. Calls were piling up. So what? Let them scold, let them scream. Home is where your head is, and right now, Heidi's head was not accepting callers.

With her head chip off, she was a normal, unaugmented woman, and she meant to make the most of it. Tossing away wet slippers, she struggled out of her pants and kimono, letting sunlit water cascade over her, cool and cleansing, mixing with her tears, then disappearing down concealed drains in the deck. When she gave in and checked her calls, she found herself summoned to a face-to-face with the Chief Steward—the surest sign of authority in a 3V society is the power to demand an appearance in person. Heidi ordered up a crisp starched Orion Lines uniform, figuring that if she couldn't really be a happy slave, she could at least look the part.

Her cabin door dilated ahead of her, and the painted archways of La Mezquita merged into K-deck corridors tuned to high summer in a cathedral pine forest. Giant gnarled sequoias rose up around her, lit by shafts of late afternoon sunlight pouring down through greenery from infinite space overhead. Birds flitted back and forth among the boughs, and animals moved between the trees. Trails connected cabins and staterooms. Stepping into a drop shaft in the forest floor, she told it to take her down to S-Deck. People in the shaft greeted her with broad smiles and shouts of, “What a show!”

Which she found humiliating, but she still smiled back—this was her public. Young and approachable, with her pink hair and ready smile, she had gotten tagged as “the new girl in the crew.” Nearly everyone outranked her, and anyone could accost her under the guise of “getting to know you.” She had enjoyed the pseudo-popularity—making her feel welcome—but now, it just felt stale, though that did not stop her from smiling. Her job was dedicated to the impossible supposition that everything could be fun! Even mind-numbing months in transit, locked in a metal ship so far from anywhere it took starlight years to reach them. Someone had to keep the passengers content, or at least catatonic, and she would shuck and hustle with the best; she just drew the line at kidnapping and murder. Heaven knows why.

Chief Steward Taylor held court in a tree, having an illusionary glass tree house at the top of a kilometer-high forest canopy—a favorite setting of claustrophobics. Immensity of distance hit Heidi as the corridor door vanished behind her; air and space stretching in every direction, filled with birds and blue day moths fluttering amid the sunbeams. Monkeys swung past, hooting and scampering along the branches. How Chief Steward Taylor passed the psych tests was anyone's guess, since the woman was a mass of nerves and denial who kept her 3V set at wide angle. Taylor loved Heidi's deep-space gymnastics. Instead of aging gracefully, Taylor had gone for the biosculpted look—relying on flame-red hair and slick glossy wrinkleless skin—something Heidi prayed that she had the sense to avoid when she was old and rich. Why would a borderline claustrophobic choose a starship career in the first place? To punish herself? Looking sharp was the least of this woman's worries.

DeRuyter was there as well, ungodly handsome in his better biosculpt job, a cool solid contrast to the Chief Steward's fragile authority. Taylor asked frostily, “Is it true that you cut service to an A-deck stateroom?”

Heidi admitted as much. “She's new,” DeRuyter explained, eagerly apologizing for her, putting her in the wrong under the pretense of protection. “She's fresh up from the inner system, and doesn't know we mean to show our passengers the real Outback—warts and all.” He offered her an out; admit her mistake, promise to be good, and Orion Lines would forgive. Chief Steward Taylor would be equally happy to see the situation go away.

Surprisingly, Heidi found herself standing up to her section head, in front of the Chief Steward no less, insanely demanding a full-blown inquiry. “Outback conditions are one thing—being accomplices to hijacking, kidnapping, and murder is another.”

“Accomplices?” DeRuyter looked taken aback. “You can't mean that.”

Again, the chance to back down—but she would not take it, charging straight ahead. “Ido mean it! You knew that slaver was coming. You gave the freighter no warning....”

DeRuyter looked to Chief Steward Taylor, who seemed to want to crawl into a hole—except for her deathly fear of confined spaces. Normally, Heidi was relentlessly upbeat in font of Taylor, not for fear of reprimand, but because she could not bring herself to add to the worries making this woman a nervous wreck. What was the point? Now wild accusations tumbled out of her. “That is abetting in a highjacking, and murder....”

DeRuyter sighed. “No. It's just good operating sense.”

“Good operating sense?” It was her turn to be taken aback.

He glanced at Taylor. “Of course we knew that the slaver was coming. It's our business to track their movements. Orion Lines has to know what the slavers are up to.”

“But a warning...”

“Would have done the freighter no good,” DeRuyter assured her. “And it would have let the slavers know that we had cracked their command and control codes—endangering our passengers.”

Taylor hurried to back him, seeing the line to hide behind. “This is a rough corner of the universe, and we cannot afford to put our passengers at risk.”

“There are no innocents out here,” DeRuyter added. “Class-C robo-freighters do not carry passengers; those were smugglers, ring rats—all aboard were breaking the law.”

Even the Chimps? “But you didn't have to broadcast it, turning terror and hijacking into a sideshow!”

“We're just reporting events as they happen,” DeRuyter replied, making it sound like a public service, “nothing illegal in that.” It's never a good sign when superiors insist that your job doesn'ttechnically break the law. “Our passengers pay to see the universe up close. Edit out the bad parts, and they might as well stay at home.”

“We cannot sugarcoat the cosmos,” Taylor added staunchly. Strong sentiments from a woman who turned her cabin into a treehouse. “Our broadcast will be evidence, to be used against the slavers when they are brought to justice.”

Fat chance of that! Heidi stared at them. There was more to it than this. Way more. What was a slaver doing hijacking some two-bit ring-runner? Right whenArtemis happened to be there? That could hardly be coincidence. But it was pointless to tell that to Chief Steward Taylor, who feared the forest, only wanting to see the tops of the trees. She and DeRuyter were dismissed.

Outside, Taylor's treetops vanished, replaced by S-deck's simulation of starry night in the Street of Dreams on Bliss. Happy holos gyrated atop glass and neon fun-palaces, dancing to low pulsing music that made you yearn to move with it. Laughter and squeals of delight came from the pleasure arcades—some of them real. DeRuyter seized her arm in his light authoritative grip. He was not just her superior, but was also bigger and stronger, looking down on her figuratively as well as literally—but she could not help being small, or having pink hair. “Listen,” he told her, “no one likes what happened to that robo-freighter.”

Heidi glared up at him. Really? She could see that he secretly loved it, feeling the excitement in his grip. Just talking about it turned him on. Her job was knowing people's pleasures, and DeRuyter was an easy read. Somehow he was in with the slavers—most likely paying theHiryu to put on a show. Perhaps helping to set up the target. Why else would a high-g slaver snatch up some random ring-runner? Hijacking and kidnapping were capital offenses, not done for nothing. Nor was it bad advertising—contrasting Orion Lines, immunity to the pitiful fate of the ring-runner. Taylor was clearly out of the loop, lacking the nerve for illegal deals with psychotic criminals.

“Technically, you are tops,” her boss told her, his fingers feeling her flesh beneath the fabric. “But you lack the killer instinct to make it big. Luckily for you, I could teach you.” His hand pulled her closer to him. “You and I could take some downtime together, making your job a whole lot easier.”

Instead of trying to shake off his hand, Heidi gave him her sweetest smile, asking, “Why don't I just sue you and Orion Lines for harassment? Then I wouldn't need a job.”

Fingers froze, and his hand dropped. “Consider yourself relieved of duty—until we get a replacement from Typhon.”

“Consider yourself one awfully sick fuck.” Heidi had nothing to lose now by saying it out loud.

Tourist Trap

MIDWATCH

00:00:01

Elliptical orbit inside Typhon's Roche Limit

Faced with unemployment, Heidi summoned up a five-star virtual vacation, courtesy of Orion Lines, assuming they would buy out her contract and strand her on Typhon, letting her sue in the local courts—with scant chance of winning. Until then, she rated the pampering given starship personnel “on leave.” PuttingArtemis out of her head, she made herself a Martian princess in full sensurround, suppressing her conscious memory, so she thought shewas Queen Heidi of Helium, trimmed in silk and gold, and ruling half a planet; looking forward to long lazy Martian days aboard her personal aerial barge, sailing where she willed, doing as she wished, righting wrongs and throwing parties at whim, without fear of consequences—the ideal balm for her frayed nerves and bruised psyche.

She began with a mid-air masked ball under strange stars, sending long lost music throbbing through the hot Martian night, mostly ancient mambo tunes along with “Light My Fire” by the Doors. At midnight—in the midst of the wild unmasking to the beat of “Devil in Disguise"—a single-seat flier streaked out of the night, slipping past her picket ships, pulling even with the bridge of her pleasure barge. Spotlights illuminated a bronzed young warlord in battle leather at the controls, his longsword hanging at his waist. Coolly, Queen Heidi—who everyone knew by her pink hair—doffed her black feathered mask and asked the intruder's business.

Leaping boldly from the deck of his little flier to the torchlit bridge of her flagship, the warrior landed at her feet, going deftly down on one knee. Amazon guards moved to protect her, but she stayed them with her hand. “We fear not him, nor his news. Speak your tidings.”

Looking insolently up at his Queen, the smug young warlord replied, “EMERGENCY ABOARDARTEMIS —ALL LEAVES CANCELED.”

* * *

Heidi sat up in her isolation tank, sirens wailing around her. Something horrible had happened, really horrible. She sensed it before she knew the details. Jerking out the contacts, she sprang out of the tank, tuning into the comnet as she dressed. Disaster had engulfedArtemis, so swift and deadly she could hardly believe it had happened. Intruders controlled the hangar level—she saw tripod cyborgs firing with turret heads and throwing gas grenades with tentacle arms, clearing a path for SuperCats with assault lasers.

Slavers, obviously, lots of them. But how? Checking traffic control, she saw theHiryu was still half a million clicks off, but closing rapidly, preceded by the gig that boarded the robo-freighter.Artemis was docked with nothing more dangerous than her own atmosphere-launch, returning tourists from Fantasy Island on Oceania. Only these “tourists” were shooting their way through the hangar deck, heading for the drop shafts and the starship's hollow center, totally overwhelming ship security, whose training was more suitable for dealing with drunk passengers and petty pilfering. That slavers had seized the launch and docked it with an unsuspectingArtemis proved that they had penetrated the onboard systems, “compromising” DeRuyter's precious codes. Traffic control showed three naval corvettes insystem, the nearest a mere fifty hours away—leaving her very much on her own.

She ran through her options, finding them amazingly few. Moments ago, she was a pampered princess, facing nothing worse than a hefty severance check and a chance to sue Orion Lines for harassment. Now she was no longer a princess, nor even an employee, but a victim-to-be, watching her murderers spread through the ship. Hall cams showed Orion Lines personnel being shot on sight, their pleas for mercy cut off in mid-sentence. Anyone who could use ship systems against the slavers was doomed. Facing multiple death sentences themselves, slavers were utterly ruthless, solely concerned with not getting caught.

So was she—only it was not possible. Command and power decks were already in slaver hands, so were the hangar-deck lifeboats and landers, leaving no way off the ship. Having sealed in their prey, slavers were moving out from the hollow core of the starship, hunting for passengers cowering in the staterooms, while methodically murdering the crew. Within minutes, she would be looking over the sights of a slaver weapon, waiting for the guy to fire. Somehow, she needed to stay his trigger finger. But how? Plugging in, she frantically searched for reasons why this bastard should not shoot her. Why would a slaver let a potential witness live?

Money, most obviously. Summoning up her personnel file, Heidi used editorial override to make drastic changes. First making herself a passenger, terminating her precarious employment permanently—she was never more happy firing anyone, nor being fired. Next, she gave herself money, staggering amounts of money, plus stock options, interstellar securities, and a grandmother on the board of Orion Bank. Sparing no expense, she made herself worth a monumental ransom, giving her the satisfaction of knowing that any slaver who shot her would be spaced by his infuriated comrades—though she hoped for better than that.

What else? Perhaps a saintly past? Vast charities dependent on her, and her alone? No. Slavers were not impressed by good conduct. Reminded of her past, she hastily knocked ten years off her age. Could she pass for that? She had better, because slavers were notoriously picky, seldom taking anyone over twenty, never over thirty.

Jumping up, she began furiously redoing her hair. She kept her pink hair pinned back, partly to compensate for the color. Nothing could be done about the color, but she let it down, teasing it out, trying to look young and stupid—a ghastly joke, after years of aching to be taken seriously. Through the open channel, she saw mayhem coming closer, deck by deck, while she hurriedly did her hair. What an idiot way to spend her last moments!

When she had her hair half-right, she ransacked her wardrobe for the matching outfit, something to pass off as billionaire shipboard wear. Anything with Orion Lines on it went straight to DISPOSAL, along with any incidental proofs of gainful employment. Slavers reached her deck, and began moving through the suites, shooting anyone who resisted, or just didn't look overly useful. Swiftly, she settled on her best handmade top, a sporty skirt and matching shoes, set off by expensive bits of jewelry, rich but casual, with a touch of spoiled brat. Switching to pale white lipstick and nails, she added to that fresh and confused look, adorably clueless—or so she hoped. Changing identity was at best temporary, meant to get her through the next hour or two alive. Sooner or later, the slavers would see through it—if only because she had no grandmother at Orion Bank eager to pay her ransom. They might tumble to it sooner if they searched coded files she could not change. Then what? She shivered.

With slavers outside her suite, Heidi retreated to the Court of Lions with its hot sun and cool fountain, where she had cried when she saw them take the ring-runner. What a fool, bawling like a baby, pitying those “poor unfortunates” while steadfastly refusing to take their last dying lessons to heart, totally sure of her superiority. How could their dismal fate possibly apply toher? Now she would find out. Calling up a chair, she sat casually staring into the illusionary forest of Romanesque columns hiding the suite door. Water splashed onto wet stone behind her as she waited. It was 00:21:13. Not bad. Get out of this alive, and she would market the twenty minute make-over.

Seeing a flash of tawny fur among the columns, she tensed. Here it comes. Forcing herself to smile, she cursed the unfairness of this. Please, notme —I don't want to die. What didI do? But she knew the answer. Ghastly as it sounded, she'dasked to be here, snapping at the chance to shill for Orion Lines, gladly obeying superiors she knew to be hapless idiots—so long as she was paid. When she'd found out they were in with slavers, she'd virtuously quit, going on mental vacation, trusting Orion Lines to see her safely to Typhon. This was the result.

The 3V illusion made the slaver seem to step from behind a column, appearing in the midst of the virtual colonnade. He was two meters tall and covered in tawny fur beneath his battle armor, with a cat-like face, luminous amber eyes, little round ears, and big curving upper canines that came down past his chin. He walked upright on humanoid legs and pawed feet. Supercat.Homo smilodon. SuperCats combined human and cat DNA, and were created millennia ago for situations needing brutal intimidation—for which this easily qualified. Beneath the fur and teeth he was nearly human, with some cat characteristics, like the tendency to play with prey, and total indifference to human sexuality—normal SuperCat males were only aroused by female SuperCats in heat. Clothes, lipstick, and her new hairdo meant nothing to him. He gave her a sabertooth grin, humanoid hands holding an assault laser pointed at her midriff, his finger on the firing stud. “Hello, human. Are you Heidi Van der Graf?”

Yes or no? Which answer would get her killed? Had this SuperCat seen her absurdly magnified résumé, or was he working off some stolen crew list? Cheerfully shooting anyone answering, “Yes.” Forcing herself to look into his amber eyes, and not down the muzzle of his assault laser, she smiled back brainlessly. “Guilty as charged.”

So would she be executed for it? His toothy smile widened, hopefully a good sign. He cocked his cat-like head toward the door, saying, “Come with me.”

Taking this as a temporary reprieve, she rose and strolled to the door, the laser muzzle never leaving her midriff. The 3V was off, and blood-flecked bulkheads had replaced the green pine forest. Struggling to stay in character, she stepped over the bodies of people she knew, pretending they were hapless strangers—Katie from kid-care lay alongside a cute comtech named Liam. Holding in her tears, she acted like she only feared bloodying her shoes—luckily it is easy to convince a SuperCat that you are just a walking hairdo. Most corpses wore Orion Line uniforms, but she saw live passengers, horrified and helpless, sitting in terrified silence while the slavers sorted through their catch, deciding who to keep and who to discard. Herding her into a drop shaft, the SuperCat took her to an A-deck suite with the 3V turned off, an ironic combination of gold-striped beach umbrellas shading handwoven hammocks hanging from bare bulkheads—showing the ship beneathArtemis' silken skin.

He prodded her at gun point into a posh dining nook with the 3V still on. She suddenly stood on a wide arc of sunlit beach, fringed with palms, with three gaudy-striped cabanas spaced around a luau pit and a huge carved driftwood bench. Tall dark wooden tikis marked the high-water line. Sitting on the driftwood and in the sand nearby were some of the most salable passengers, people Heidi knew at once—all A-deck, all good for megacredits. Sonya Hart, a favorite feelie star, her face instantly familiar. Anna Lu, twenty-something co-founder of Dawn Systems. Victoria MacEvoy, an Orion Lines owner's teenage trophy wife, holding his two year-old heir. And the remains of the Talik family, owners of a huge health-care cartel on Aesir II, a teenage heir and several smaller children. Next to them sat another truncated family, this time the youngest wife, and two small boys belonging to senior wives, both biotech heirs—throughout the trip, the family had shunned the new young wife; now, the two small scared survivors clung to their hated stepmother for comfort.

Hunched on a rattan beach chair by herself, arms hiding her breasts, was Megan Kalojanovec, the hired girlfriend to the trigger-happy A-deck sadist, still wearing nothing but black nails and lipstick. Simulated sea breeze raised tiny goose pimples on Megan's bare white flesh. Making a weird little tableau, with everyone else dressed in elegant pajamas and evening wear. Despite the sun and sand, it was early in the midnight watch, reminding Heidi of a childhood poem:

"The sun was shining on the sea, shining with all its might ... and this was odd because it was the middle of the night...."

Kids sitting in the sand sang out, “Hi, Heidi!” knowing her by her pink hair and the shows she put on, and the cheerful way she answered questions. Thank heaven that kids are tough, and used to getting guff from adults. Cautiously the oldest Talik asked, “Heidi, what's happening?

Scared faces looked to her, women and kids, expecting the worst, but hoping to hear better. Armed SuperCats stood by the cabana that hid the door to the suite, but no one asked them anything. Sonya Hart had been crying. Victoria MacEvoy looked angry. Anna Lu studied her intently. None of them knew about Heidi's fancy new identity—to them, she represented Orion Lines, the voice of authority, a slim hope in a world gone horribly wrong. She decided to get past the obvious bad news, “We've been captured by Eridani slavers.Artemis is totally in their hands. Our nearest hope of rescue is fifty hours away.”

That last at least was news, and faces around the firepit fell even further. “What do they want?” asked Anna Lu, who had made billions building and promoting Dawn Systems, blithely dictating terms to Orion Bank and system-wide governments. How hard a sell could these slavers be?

“You are all worth a lot of credit,” she reminded them hopefully. “Families and corporations will pay well for our safe return.”

Which provoked a flood of further questions, “How long will that take? What about the rest of our family? Where are the men? What about my dad? Where is my mother?”

Heidi lied, “I don't know.” Her best guess was that they were dead, or currently being murdered, but she would not say it. Not in front of the children. Anna Lu understood, sitting back, eyeing her coolly, trying to separate hard fact from hopeful fiction. Lu had two male partners, older and less shapely, but nearly as rich; neither was here.

“What about me?” asked Megan softly, sitting naked by herself, chewing busily on a black fingernail. Tears had made a mess of her heavy mascara. “I'm nobody. My boyfriend had credit—he offered them tons of it—but they shot him anyway.”

And Megan had had to watch. Heidi nodded silently, not wanting at all to go there. She had painted as pretty a picture as possible for these terrified passengers—sure, folks were dying around them, butthey would all be fine, sent home for whopping ransoms. That was her job, keeping the customers happy, or at least not hysterical. But Megan was right—why had they not shot her? Maybe they would. At any moment, slavers might come in and rectify the mistake—but Heidi doubted it. They would keep Megan for reasons that Heidi didn't want to think about, bringing up all the unsavory stories about slavers and their victims. The rest of them were in desperate denial, hiding behind megacredit fortunes—but not Megan, and not her.

“No one has been shot,” snapped Victoria MacEvoy, as if Megan were a naughty child. Which sounded especially absurd since Vicky MacEvoy was younger than Megan, wearing garish silk pajamas that matched her toddler's—making her own child look like a fashion accessory.

Megan stared open-mouthed at the trophy wife in her mom-and-toddler pajamas, while hologram gulls wheeled noisily overhead. Blood was smeared halfway down the rent-a-girlfriend's bare white thigh.

Young Mrs. MacEvoy shook her head violently, her voice high and hysterical. “No one shot your so-called boyfriend. No one at all has been shot!”

Megan rolled black-ringed eyes, “Listen, Lollypop, Isaw it hap...”

“Nonsense,” the trophy wife snorted. “How much are you paid to sit there naked, telling lies to scare people?”

“Not near enough.” Megan stared out to sea, giving up on trying to enlighten her betters.

“People have been shot,” Heidi insisted with soft certainty, having stepped over the bodies herself—merely remembering made her gag. “But please be quiet about it.” She nodded toward the children.

“Ridiculous!” Victoria MacEvoy would not be mollified, “I demand you end this virtual amusement at once!” Virtual amusement? Is that what wacky Vicky thought this was? Anything this horrible had to be 3V. Heidi sympathized, wishing to heaven she could stop it just by flipping channels. “If you will not,” the owner's wife declared, “I demand to speak to your supervisor.”

Good luck. Her superiors had been hunted down like vermin, so she could easily be the senior surviving crew member. Heidi blandly declared, “I have no superiors.” Not any more.

“Absurd!” Vicky MacEvoy denounced the whole mad business. “I demand to see your immediate supervisor at once.”

Paying customers get their way, especially rich demanding ones. As if in answer, SuperCats propelled Chief Signalsmate Marten DeRuyter out of a cabana into their midst; his hands were bound, and he was ashen-faced. Women and kids shrank back. Heidi didn't blame them. DeRuyter looked a mess; everyone was scared, buthewas absolutely petrified, standing out horribly in his Orion Lines uniform, the only adult male present, unless you counted SuperCats. “Thank Heavens!” Seeing the uniform, Vicky MacEvoy clapped her hands. “Now I demand that you end this charade.”

DeRuyter stared blankly at his boss's young wife, not knowing what charade he must end. All Heidi could think of was her grandmother's saying, “He who sups with the devil had best use a long spoon.” DeRuyter had been so sure he was using the slavers, while they were really usinghim —dooming all of them to this living hell. Heidi had thought DeRuyter comfortably dead, and had mixed feelings about his stumbling back from the grave, however briefly.

Before the conversation could get more confused, a hologram flickered to life—standing in the sand was an armed slaver, the same confident cheerful hoodlum with dark tousled hair that Heidi had seen aboard the robo-freighter.Homo galactus . He wore his uniform jacket closed, covering his dragon tattoo, but the bracelet of skulls still showed on his wrist. She was not the least pleased to see him again, even in hologram form, but DeRuyter's face lit up and he asked hopefully, “Hess?”

“How happy to see you.” Hess clicked his virtual heels. “And you too, ladies.” He bowed jauntily to his audience on the driftwood bench. Hess exuded a creepy genuineness, though speed-of-light lag made his speech and movements seem overly formal, full of restrained eagerness. Despite the distance, Heidi could tell that Hess was indeed indecently happy to see them, since they represented a job well done, leaving him scant reason to complain. Turning to DeRuyter, he declared, “It has been a absolute delight doing business with you.”

“Thank you,” DeRuyter looked hopeful, not in the least embarrassed by having been in business with the people who had massacred his shipmates. “Thank you, so very much....”

Hess waved his thanks aside. “Alas, our business is now at an end—but a suitable parting gratuity will be deposited in your name with Orion Bank.”

“That is hardly necessary,” DeRuyter smiled faintly, not wanting anything connecting him to this catastrophe, least of all slaver credit at Orion Bank.

“It is a done thing,” Hess insisted. “You need only name an heir.”

DeRuyter looked shocked. “Why?”

“Because otherwise, the credit will go to Orion Bank.” Hess grinned at Heidi—showing that he had seen her phony file—then he signaled to the SuperCats, saying, “Do it in the next room.” Not until the cats grabbed him did DeRuyter realize what Hess meant, then he begged for his life as they dragged him kicking across the sand into the cabana that masked the suite's master stateroom—there his cries were silenced. Hess turned happily to the horrified women and children, “Now we can get better acquainted. Commander Hess of theHiryu, at your service.”

Gulls screeched in reply, but no one on the driftwood said a word. Heidi had never seen people so scared of a holo—especially a handsome smiling one. Even Vicky MacEvoy took this hologram Commander Hess for the real thing, holding her little boy tighter. Looking away, Heidi saw beach and sea stretching in both directions, oppressive in its lying openness—the only real exit was through the cabanas, as DeRutyer had discovered. Being a pro herself, she had to say that the wretched scene only lacked a pirate galleon waiting in the bay to carry off the losers. Getting no volunteers, Hess asked politely, “Anna Lu?”

Slowly, the Dawn Systems director rose to her feet, turning out to be tall, with dark wide-set eyes, high cheekbones, acafé au lait complexion, and raven hair hanging to the waist of her handsewn jacket. “I am she.”

“But of course,” Hess bowed, thoroughly enjoying his courteous charade, “you are rightly famous. We use your micro-programming on theHiryu, whenever we can steal it. Will you come with me?” He indicated the smaller cabana, next to the one DeRuyter was in.

Anna Lu nodded, walking purposely across the sand, letting the door close behind her. Taking his leave, Commander Hess followed, strolling right through the cabana wall. Heidi sat down on the driftwood bench beside the Talik kids, waiting silently, staring out at wavetops sparkling under the midnight sun, remembering the rest of the poem; it was “The Walrus and the Carpenter” fromThrough the Looking Glass, which used to scare her when she was small, thinking of the poor little oysters being eaten alive. Now it pretty much petrified her, sitting under the midnight sun on a make-believe beach, guarded by a SuperCat who made a grim walrus with his tan fur and gleaming white tusks:

"I weep for you, the Walrus said, I deeply sympathize,

With sobs and tears he sorted out those of the largest size...."

Her forgotten fear had suddenly reached up out of childhood, becoming a relentless horror consuming her real life.

Anna Lu appeared at the cabana door, stepping barefoot back onto the sand, no longer wearing silk slippers or her handsewn jacket, just her red sheath dress. Without moving her head, the Dawn Systems director rolled her dark eyes, as if to say, “Bad, but it could have been worse.”

Heidi knew what she meant. Holo Commander Hess emerged from the cabana wall, looked them over, then casually asked for, “Heidi Van der Graf?”

Her turn. She stood up, thinking, “This is it.” Fool Hess, or die. Walking nervously toward the cabana, another line from the poem popped into her head:

“A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk upon the briny beach....”

She shivered, remembering how the slaver's hands felt, finding that microseam in the ring-runner's bulkhead. Hess would be looking her over for lies just as carefully.

The 3V was off inside, turning the cabana into bare bulkheads and a float-a-bed. Jerking people in and out of 3V was standard interrogation technique, shaking your hold on reality, or in her case, unreality. Determined not to be rattled, she shed all her training, “being” a brainless passenger, a granddaughter of Orion Bank, born to privilege, currently enduring the worst rudeness in her pampered existence. Seeing Anna Lu's slippers and jacket lying on the deck, she reached down, scooping up the silk jacket on impulse, ostentatiously trying it on as Hess stepped out of the wall. “What do you think?” Sticking her hands in the pockets, she turned slowly to model the too-big jacket, looking as clueless as she could. “Neat, huh?”

Hess grinned, “It goes with your hair.” Until the gig made contact, Hess could only be there in hologram, so he was taking his time, savoring his success. “Now take it off.”

Shrugging off the jacket, she let it drop to the deck. Hess nodded, still smiling, “Do not stop.”

Giving her most petulant look, she asked, “What do you mean?”

“Pray continue to undress,” Hess explained. “Unless you prefer being stripped by SuperCats?”

Probably—but her best chance was to cooperate. Pouting visibly, she kicked off her shoes, loosened the matching skirt, then let it fall, closing her eyes and telling herself she was in an empty room, with Hess thousands of klicks away, unable to touch her. When she was done, she stood with eyes shut, arms folded across her breasts, reducing Hess to a creepy synthesized voice. He told her, “Jewelry too.” She dropped earrings, rings, and an anklet onto the clothes and shoes. Hess thanked her. “So the hair is a natural pink. Is it hereditary?”

“Gene-splice generations ago.” Heaven knows why, someone wanted a pink-haired baby. “Grandma's was pink too, before it went white.”

Hess ignored her pretended tie to Orion Bank—a weird sort of slaver compliment, showing that he cared more for who she was than who she claimed to be. Orion Lines had taught Heidi that ransom was a sideline for slavers, there being safer ways to earn a living than hijacking starships.People were what slavers wanted—they just liked them valuable as well. People were among the rarest things in Human Space, and easily the most useful. Interstellar distance and Universal Human Rights made the usual means of human exploitation harder—so civilized society employed bioconstructs like SuperChimps and SuperCats. Slavers went for a simpler solution to the shortage of humans, taking the ones that looked most promising for ransom, resale, bioengineering, spare parts, or mere personal amusement. Pink hair might easily mean more to Hess than an imaginary megacredit ransom. “You are lying about something, or at least holding back,” Hess observed, not saying how he knew—if he had thought she was crew, he would likely have her killed her at once, pink hair or no. “Why are your eyes closed?”

“Embarrassed,” she admitted. That much was true, she did not like being naked in front of some strange slaver, even one thousands of klicks away.

“Are you really twenty-two?” Hess asked.

“Last April,” she lied cheerfully, imagining Hess scrutinizing her body, glad for once to be small in all senses of the word. “Just big for my age"—another arrant lie.

“Open your eyes,” Hess ordered. She obeyed, finding him right in front of her, asking a question she especially feared, “Why was your suite not on A-deck?”

Fortunately, she'd taken a passenger cabin to stay close to her audience, but her digs were not at all A-deck quality. Shrugging nude shoulders, she acted as if she could have had any cabin on theArtemis, and chose to go slumming. “I wanted to have fun.”

“We shall try to oblige,” Hess grinned and bowed. “Dress please—just the top and skirt, leave the shoes and jewelry.”

“Why?” she asked stubbornly, hiding her relief by being miffed, acting as if she'd never heard arbitrary orders before.

“You will not be needing them,” Hess explained evenly. She didn't have the nerve to ask why not, dressing silently instead. As she left the cabana, Hess stepped through the wall to call out, “Sonya Hart?”

Sonya Hart got up off the driftwood and headed for the door, arching an eyebrow as they passed, “Tough audition?”

Nodding, she gave the feelie star's hand a squeeze. “Knock him dead.”

Back to the beach. Anna Lu was gone, and Megan too, leaving only young wives and little kids waiting on the illusionary sand-spit. Before she could ask what had happened, SuperCats closed in, escorting her through the entrance cabana to a drop shaft. She tried to tell herself, “This is good. Really good.” Had they meant to kill her, they wouldn't be taking all this trouble. Dropping to the hangar deck, the SuperCats led her to a cargo box, unsealing the container and telling her to get in. She balked at the sight of the six cubic meter box, barely coming up to her breast, but it was impossible to argue with several armed SuperCats. Getting down, she crawled into the container, still telling herself—this is good, this is good.

Megan was already inside, doubled-up naked in one corner, blinking at the light. Heidi picked the opposite corner and settled in, saying, “Glad to see you.”

SuperCats sealed the box, shutting out the light. Megan laughed dryly in the dark. “Come on, Pink Hair, do younever go off duty? No one could pay me to be so perky.”

No mean compliment considering Megan's chosen profession. “But I am glad,” Heidi protested. “I was afraid you were dead.”

Megan snorted in disgust. “This is not what I call living.”

Too true. Still, Heidi had her hopes—but she was not about to spill them out loud. Slavers had centuries of experience with prisoners, and the box could easily be wired for sound. She and Megan were clearly doubtful cases, possibly put together to hear what they would say. She asked what happened to Anna Lu. “Saw her go into a lifeboat,” Megan sounded jealous. “We are the ones they have doubts about.”

Anna Lu had made billions before she was twenty, and now was the first one offArtemis alive—it did hardly seem fair. She reminded Megan, “We're not dead yet.”

“No, we still have that to look forward to.” Megan was not about to be cheered. Heidi couldn't blame her—now they could both sue Orion Lines for megabucks. Too bad the settlement wouldn't set them free. “Admit it,” Megan demanded bitterly, “we're screwed.”

“Nothing new toyou, ” Heidi observed tartly.

A laugh came out of the dark, and Megan's bare foot kneaded hers. “Pink, I'm way proud of you. You said something mean!”

“Been trying to broaden myself.” Resting her head against the wall of the box, Heidi closed her eyes and opened her mind, tapping into the shipboard channels. Not much. Computers were locked down tight, virtually shut off. Nor could she contact any crew members through transceiver chips or biophones. Here or there, she encountered a wired-in slaver, and steered clear, careful not to set off mental alarms. Plainly, she was the only one left. She thought about Chief Steward Taylor with her claustrophobia; killing Taylor was a mercy compared to stuffing her in this box. But Taylor must have been really scared. She started crying for the first time since catastrophe struck; who would have thought that it would be over her Chief Steward?

Megan heard her sobbing and anxiously apologized, “Hey, Pink, I'm sorry. Look, I know I got a mouth. We're not going to die, we'll get out of this, you'll see, somehow....”

“No, no,” she sniffled, feeling like an idiot. “It's nothing you said.”

“What are you crying for, then?” Megan asked—making her the first person in all this who wanted to know howshe felt. Unless you counted Hess.

“For an ex-boss,” she sighed and wiped her eyes, feeling the tears subside.

“Must have been a good one,” Megan ventured.

“Nope, pretty lousy,” she admitted, but she cried for her anyway.

Megan took her hand in the dark. “Yeah, I know how that is.” Megan's former employer had been no pearl himself, and Megan ruined her mascara over him.

Lacing her fingers into Megan's, she tried again, determined not to be sucked down a black hole of hopelessness. Giving up on the onboard systems, she sorted through signals between slaver ships, mostly in codes she had no time to break. She tried tapping into the ships themselves, searching out open systems, or breaks in encryption. Nothing. Slaver defenses were way better than they had any right to be, giving her no access to onboard systems. She could see how DeRuyter was so easily suckered.

Suddenly, she was in, hitting an uncoded transceiver. At first, she thought she was in some slaver's head chip, getting audio-visuals from the auditory and optical systems—but a closer look at the visuals showed that whoever's head she was in had thin girl's legs, baby-strapped to an acceleration couch so that she couldn't reach the buckles.

Pulling out, she backtracked the contact, finding that it came from a docking slaver, the sameHiryu gig that boarded the ring-runner—that made this the little blonde girl with the blue trim, that Hess had pulled from hiding. Slipping in again, she saw the gig through the girl's eyes, heard through her ears. She was looking silently forward, watching the slaver at the controls, following his movements as he guided the gig into contact withArtemis . Heidi realized that the girl was memorizing the controls and docking sequence, making sure she could fly the gig if she ever got the chance. Good girl. Deciding to see how far she could push the contact, she tried signaling the girl. ("Hi, my name is Heidi. Can you hear me?")

“What in hell?” Visuals blurred as the girl's head whipped around, giving Heidi a quick view of slavers and SuperCats packed into the gig like some bizarre armed tour-group. Seeing no one near her, the girl's gaze turned back to the slaver at the controls.

Heidi tried again. ("Do you hear me?")

“Shit, yes!” This time the head did not twitch.

("Shush, shush, please!) She had to keep the girl from attracting attention. ("Don't shout. I'm in your head.")

“No shit!” Settling deeper into the couch, the girl whispered, “Who are you?”

("My name is Heidi, and I want to help you. Don't say anything out loud, wink your right eye for yes, your left for no. Are you the girl from the ring-runner they hijacked?")

The girl winked right.

("Good. What's your name?") She forgot that that was not a yes or no question. But the girl was ready; unsealing her sleeve, she ran her thumbnail under the initial letter of her crèche ID, K-9251949.

("Kay? Is that what you are called?")

Another wink yes.Her nickname had been “Pooch.”

("So were you crew on that ring-runner?") Heidi remembered how the girl eyed the gig controls.

Pursing her lips, the girl whispered, “Pilot.”

("Perfect! Could you fly this thing if we got you to the controls?")

Wink yes.

("Great. We must wait for our moment, so keep this contact open. Okay?")

Two emphatic winks yes.

As the gig docked withArtemis, Heidi tapped back into the hangar-deck cams, watching more slavers come aboard. Hess led, arrogant as ever, and in the flesh this time—bad news there. He would be a hundred times as hard to fool in person. Kay was with them, looking small amid the men and SuperCats, walking silently, staring straight ahead from beneath blue-trimmed Dutch-girl bangs. Led across the hangar to a lifeboat, slavers ordered her inside. Heidi signaled her. ("Outstanding! Stay aboard that boat if you can—it means they are going to keep you.") She saw Kay smile and look around, then the hatch closed, cutting off her view—the lifeboat was not a part ofArtemis, and she could not access its onboard systems directly. Could she get Kay to plug into them? Probably. Then what? She called up a deck plan of the lifeboat, then settled back to think, sorting through options, trying to put a plan together.

Bright light stabbed at her. Shading her eyes, she saw that SuperCats had opened the box. They told her to get out—which she did. As she squeezed past Megan, their gaze met for a moment and she tried to think what to say. Megan's black lips curved into a rueful smirk. “Hey Pink, in case I don't see you again later, this cruise has been a real pleasure.”

“Thanks,” she returned Megan's wan smile, “we try to please.”

Taking that as her motto, she followed the SuperCats to a vacant casino bar on the lounge deck. Almost vacant—Hess was at the auto-bar, happily holding a bottle of two hundred-year-old whisky up to the light. Empty casinos always seem menacing; this one more than most—holos hung frozen and lifeless over gaming machines set to suck the credit out of whoever dared enter. Hess nodded at a slate black poly-carbon sofa across from him, telling the SuperCats, “Put her there, then leave.” They obeyed, and she sat surveying the sinister-looking lounge, finding it pleasantly corpse-free. Bringing over a pale pink drink, Hess told her, “Here, this is to match your hair.” She tried to protest, but he insisted. “Please, I want you to relax.”

Really? You're going about it dead wrong—Hess was, in fact, scaring her senseless. Taking the drink, she held it uselessly in her lap. Pouring a shot of whisky, Hess sat down across from her, happily announcing, “You know I could have you brain-scanned.” Always a catchy conversation-starter. “But I want to hear you tell the truth willingly,” Hess confided, “so I put something in your drink instead.”

“What?” She looked aghast at her pink drink, which could contain anything—poison, brain parasites—and she would have to drink it.

“Nothing harmful,” Hess assured her, “it won't kill you, nor even knock you out—it just lets you tell the truth.”

“Why?” Especially when you will shoot me if I do?

“For your own good,” Hess told her, leaning forward speaking earnestly. “Unless you are willing to trust me, you are useless to us. Which neither of us want.”

And she had so hoped to be useful. “So drink,” Hess told her, “or I will have it injected into you.” Seeing that she would not do it herself, Hess guided the glass to her lips. She sipped warily, feeling alcohol go straight to her head; her last meal having been a virtual feast on Mars. Megan was right, you could not keep up a perky pretense forever, not in the face of pure evil backed by brain-scans and truth drugs. Unbelievably weary of the whole sick charade, she wished that she could tell someone, even Hess—but damn, they'd murdered every other crew member.

Reaching over, Hess traced her cheek with his finger. “This is the real thing, not a stitch of biosculpt. That makes you young and pretty, though not as young as you pretend. You cannot really be fabulously rich as well.” Hess laughed. “Who is that lucky?” Anna Lu? Vicky MacEvoy? Having Hess inspect her for wrinkles did not make her feel lucky. It felt like the blind date from Hell, sitting in a turned-off casino lounge clutching her drugged drink, while her date tried to decide whether to take her home or kill her here.

“You are not really a granddaughter of Orion Bank—are you?” Hess asked casually, not looking the least upset at losing a megacredit ransom. She shrank back into the soft inflated sofa, hiding behind her glass, helpless terror rising inside her. Here it comes. He knows. Hess doesn't care about the ransom because he knows it's not real. He just wants to make sure, then he will kill me. Setting aside his own drink, Hess sympathized with her plight, “Come, you cannot lie forever—it slays the soul. I myself try to lie as little as possible. Having a life-or-death secret you can never tell must be terribly lonely?”

Horribly so. Hands shaking, Heidi nodded, not saying what she was admitting.

“There, isn't that better?” Hess steadied her hands, lifting her drink to her white-painted lips, using that sweet reasonable paternal voice that implies that you are childish to resist when you have no choice. “Here, a toast to the truth.” Tears welled up as she sipped the pink drink, not feeling a whit better. Hess asked her, “Now, why did you lie?”

Throat frozen in fright, she could not speak, so Hess answered for her, “You lied to appear more valuable to us. Natural, understandable, no one can blame you. I would have done the same.” Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she started to sob, not caring how it looked, just wanting the hellish business to be over—to be finished with fear and lies. She had not wanted any of this, not in the least.

Hess put his arm around her shoulder to comfort her. “You are crew, aren't you? An Orion Lines employee?”

Unable to say words that would doom her, she brushed at her tears, staring up into his smug heartless face, sounding as hollow as a cheap voice chip. “Are you going to kill me?” That was all that mattered, and Heidi had to know, even if the answer was yes. “Please tell me.”

Hess grinned heartily, “Why no. Not now anyway. I just wanted to hear the truth from you.”

“Thank you, thank you....” Collapsing into his arms, she sobbed with relief, not caring that Hess was a monstrous slaver who had murdered her boss, just utterly thankful that she was not going to die—not now at least.

“No, no, don't thank me.” Hess laughed, patting her happily. “You can thank your hair.” He signaled for the SuperCats, and she sat there with his arm around her, feeling like a sniveling fool, listening to him instruct the cats. “This female is crew. Keep her away from everyone and everything, and put her back in the container alone—leave her nothing. Nothing at all. And keep the container sealed until we get toHiryu .”

He helped her courteously to her feet, asking, “The truth wasn't so bad, was it?”

Compared to what? Being shot right here and now? She supposed that was so. Wiping her eyes, she smiled as sweetly as she could, saying, “Next time I'll take the brain-scan.”

Hess grinned, bowed, and bid her good day, letting the SuperCats take her back to the box. What an absolute bastard! Hess positively relished attempts at resistance, so long as they were futile. Stripping in front of SuperCats is not near as bad as it sounds, since they are utterly uninterested, wearing nothing but combat armor themselves, over tawny fur that she still found wonderfully beautiful. Humans—clothed or unclothed—were all the same to them, to be killed or obeyed as occasion demanded. Unsealing the box, they helped her inside, then shut the container behind her, giving her less consideration that a cat gives a mouse. Humans were not even their normal prey.

Megan was gone, leaving a whiff of perfume behind,fitnah, an aphrodisiac scent made from mimosa blossoms. Heidi hoped that was not all that was left of her. For the first time since the madness started, she was alone, in what passed for privacy, sealed in a cargo container on a doomed ship, about to be carried off by slavers. Saved by her hair color—what a colossal come-down! She should be happy, Hess could have taken tissue samples, but something convinced him to take her too, though he didn't turn a credit on the deal. Not even Anna Lu could say that.

But saved for what? Slavers were going to own her, body and soul. Once aboard theHiryu, she would give in totally, she could tell—she might sometimes fool others, but never herself. Had Hess even put anything in her drink? Probably not. Booze, sugar, pink froth, and the power of suggestion had her blubbering the truth to Hess. Faced with nothing worse than an empty casino lounge, she'd broken down totally, crying on his ghastly shoulder—absurdly grateful not to be murdered right away—stammering her thanks to Hess, just like DeRuyter did, with no guarantee that she would not end up worse than him. What would it be like when they had drugs, sensory deprivation, brain-scrub, and the leisure toentirely break her? God, was she ever going to sue Orion Lines!

Something shook the box, then lifted it up. Hangar cams showed a smart-lift loading her into the same lifeboat Kay was in, a lifting-body shaped, gravity drive lander, meant to evacuate passengers in emergencies—for which this certainly qualified. Slavers were using it to transfer their human catch to theHiryu, and as soon as the hold sealed, they lifted off. She called to Kay. ("Are you there?")

“Where else?” the girl asked under her breath, sitting in the lifeboat's main cabin amid theArtemis survivors. Anna Lu was in the seat ahead of Kay, with Megan beside her. Sonya Hart sat across the aisle, with one of the little Talik boys on her lap—all of them baby-strapped to the seats. Guarding the cabin door was a SuperCat armed with a stun grenade and a pair of riot pistols; hardly a promising picture, but they were headed for theHiryu, where things would only get worse.

("Good. I am in a sealed storage container in the hold below you. Check the armrest of your seat, there should be an emergency connection, a small coil of superconducting filament stored in a recess on the underside....")

“Got it,” Kay practically shouted, when a wink would have done as well.

("Quietly.") She repeated the word. ("Quietly, plug yourself in.")

Suddenly Heidi had total access to the lifeboat's onboard systems, lights, cams, seat controls, emergency exits, alarms, life support.... Only the main controls were off-limits, with the autopilot disabled and a SuperCat flying the boat manually. There were two cats aboard, the one in the cabin and another at the controls—but no other slavers. The slavers must have felt that that was sufficient for a cargo of unarmed women and children strapped into their seats, or stuffed in a box in the hold. She spoke softly to Kay. ("Listen, I'm scared, really scared. I can't let them get me on their ship....")

“No shit, Sheila,” Kay hissed back. “I'm not looking forward to turning fourteen aboard a slaver.”

Kay was thoroughly afraid as well, Heidi could feel her fear through the link, making her own heart sink. She struggled to keep them from amplifying each other's terror, dragging themselves down into black despair. ("Quiet, please listen to me. Wink if you think you can pilot this boat.") Kay winked. ("There is a chance I can get you to the controls, so we can make a run for it. It is risky, and could get you killed.")

Kay's eyes rolled, as if to say, “Riskier thanthis ?”

Heidi saw her point. Kay did not have a megacredit ransom on call either, and was rightly terrified about how she would be “useful” to the slavers. ("Wink if you want to do it.")

Kay winked twice.

Heidi took a deep breath and checked the cams. Hess was about to wish that he had put her box in a different boat. ("I'm going to start by unlocking your seat. Don't leap up, or react, just be ready.")

Another wink. She unlocked Kay's harness, at the same time disabling the seat alarm, so that the change would only show as an amber light on the main control board. Heidi also triggered the heat-shield alarm and HOLD DECOMPRESSION, glaring red lights and angry wails claiming hull integrity was compromised—insuring that the amber glow on the seat indicator panel got zero attention.

Spinning about, the SuperCat in the cabin dilated the door behind him, stepping into the suit locker, wedged between the control cabin and the main airlock—the lifeboat was built like a tiny starship, collapsed into itself. Heaving up a hold-access hatch, the SuperCat disappeared into the hold, where he started checking connections. Heidi signaled Kay. ("Go, now, get into a suit.")

Kay burst from her seat, diving past a shocked Anna Lu into the suit-locker, where she struggled into the smallest suit she could find, cinching it tight. As soon as Kay unplugged from the couch, Heidi lost direct control, and had to call orders to Kay. ("Close and seal the hold hatch!")

Kay kicked the hatch shut with her boot, and locked it manually, sealing one SuperCat in the hold, at the same time pulling on her helmet one-handed, setting an indoor record for donning an over-sized suit. Heidi shouted to her. ("Now get to the co-pilot's couch! Then plug us in!") Closing the suit locker door behind her, Kay dilated the command cabin door, scrambled onto the empty co-pilot's couch and plugged herself in through a suit jack—putting Heidi back in charge.

Sitting up on the command couch, the startled SuperCat snarled in protest, drawing his riot pistol. “Human,” he shouted, “return to your seat, or I will shoot!”

Before the surprised SuperCat could fire, Heidi by-passed two fail-safes and hit PILOT EJECT. His seat oxygen tent inflated around him as the deck flipped up, flinging the pilot into Typhon orbit. Air rushed out of the cabin after him.

Sealing her half of the cabin, Kay cut the false alarms from the hold, shouting, “What now!” There was no need to whisper anymore, since they had the lifeboat—aside from one angry SuperCat prowling about below. Who fortunately had no reason to suspect that the cause of his troubles sat huddled in a nearby container. “Where do we go!”

("Take her down! Straight for Typhon!") Safety lay in the gas giant's cloud tops, beyond the great rings. Starships likeHiryu were not designed to land on gas giants, and any slaver landers would be overwhelmed by Typhon-bound craft as soon as they entered atmosphere.

“Hold on tight,” Kay called to the horrified passengers over the boat comnet, “We are under new management! This is your captain speaking, brace for high-g maneuvers!” Ignoring shrieks of protest from the baby-strapped passengers, Kay whipped the boat about in a high-g turn, diving straight at Typhon's cloud tops, aiming to just shave the inner edge of the A-ring, shooting the gap in the rings swept out by Tartarus’ gravity.

Calls came from all directions, jamming the net: Typhon traffic control, naval intelligence, outraged slavers, news networks, concerned strangers. Kay clung hard to the controls, talking only to Typhon Traffic, ignoring or deflecting all other calls. “Heidi,” she shouted, “Hess is calling! Talk to him!”

Heidi made contact with the slaver back aboardArtemis . ("Commander Hess. How happy to speak to you again.") Especially at a distance.

Hess laughed. ("You were right, I should have had you brainscanned.") Which would have turned up her implant.

("Tried to tell you. But I hope we can part friends.") Or at least very distant enemies.

("Would that we could. We have two Hellhound hi-g homing missiles with anti-matter warheads locked on you. Return at once.") Hess was not lying—traffic control showed the two missiles separating fromHiryu, accelerating toward the lifeboat.

("Or what? You'll kill me?") Like he killed Taylor, DeRuyter, and lord knows how many others. Anger flared up, now that she was free to speak. ("You would kill me either way. At least those Hellhounds will cost you billions in ransom.")

Hess sounded wounded. ("That is hardly fair; had I wanted to kill you, I would have done it already. Save me my ransom, and I swear I will let you live.")

She snorted. ("So you may keep me in a cell and harvest my eggs, to raise pink-haired babies to sell? Is that your absolutebest offer?")

("Never fear, you have beaten me. Unfairly too, I might add, resorting to tears and lies. Women's weapons, but you wielded them well. Your performance in the lounge convinced me that I had nothing to fear. Forgive me for underestimating you. Brain-scan would have been better, but I thought I didn't need it, not with you at least. Had I taken even the minimal precaution of shipping you separately, we would not be having this conversation. So you and your little pilot are free to go, keeping your precious eggs and pink hair, just jettison the passenger section into Typhon orbit...")

("Then you would missile me for sure.") Dump her billionaire passengers, and Hess would have no reason to hold his fire.

("What? Waste expensive missiles out ofspite? ") Hess sounded hurt again. ("Hardly. Dump the passenger module and you will halve your mass and double your acceleration ratio, easily beating any missile to Typhon. I am offering a simple trade, your life for my captives. You release your load and I recall the missiles. Acceleration and orbital mechanics will keep us both honest.")

Damn, Hess actually had a plan—the bastard. She had been playing for time, getting closer to Typhon's cloud tops, never thinking that Hess would have a reasonable offer. Heidi had underestimated the man again. She was not going back, that was for sure. But what of the others? Guess wrong, and she would get them all killed. So what to do? Hold a vote? Hardly, but she couldn't just decide for them. Putting Hess on hold, she went on the lifeboat's comnet, telling the terrified passengers the good news first. ("We have seized this lifeboat, and are headed for safety on Typhon.") Feeble hurrahs came from the frightened passengers. ("But they have fired Hellhound missiles after us.") Gasps of horrified dismay. ("We will do our best to evade....")

“Get me to the command deck,” Anna Lu demanded. Heidi released her at once, and the Dawn Systems director dashed into the command cabin.

Heidi continued. ("We will try to evade the missiles, but Commander Hess has promised to spare anyone who surrenders now—to be released when ransom is paid. Does anyone want to go back?")

No one said a word. Fairly remarkable for a group of frightened, angry, opinionated, and royally put-upon women—but there was absolutely no interest in returning to the hell they had miraculously escaped from. Live or die, no one wanted to go back. Heidi put a call through to Hess. ("Don't take this personally, but everyone aboard prefers Hellhound missiles to your hospitality.") Unless you counted the SuperCat in the hold.

("Personally? Perish the thought. Those Hellhounds you wanted are on the way—Good luck, Heidi.")

Always the gentleman. Sitting in the blackness of her cargo box, she switched to traffic control, watching the missiles come on, accelerating so rapidly that the lifeboat seemed to stand still. Hess had not lied, the missiles were horribly fast. And less than 10K klicks away. Make that less than nine thousand. Eight thousand. Seven thousand....

Hellhounds had antimatter warheads designed to penetrate the lifeboat's shields.Artemis would have turned them aside easily, and sent something worse back, but the lifeboat could only run. And not all that swiftly.

“MISSILE IMPACT IN TWO MINUTES,” announced the autopilot.

Switching to the command deck cams, she saw Kay's head stuck in the Doppler hood, while Anna Lu crouched over the controls with a headset on, furiously reprogramming the lifeboat's energy shields for high density and sub-light speeds. Their lifeboat wasn't just a lander, but a mini-starship as well, with shields to withstand the rain of radiation at near light-speed. Anna was converting them to brush aside or annihilate smaller particles of ring material, while Kay prepared to dodge the bigger pieces, everything from eccentric ringlets to house-sized chunks of ring-ice and mini-moonlets populating the A-ring gap “cleared” by Tartarus’ gravity. If they even got to the gap.

Heidi went back to watching the Hellhounds come on; they were at five thousand klicks, then four thousand, then three thousand....

“MISSILE IMPACT IN ONE MINUTE,” announced the helpful autopilot.

Horrified, Heidi called to Kay. “We are never going to make the gap—they're gaining too fast!")

“No shit!” Kay shouted back. Without taking her head out of the Doppler hood, Kay yelled to Anna Lu, “Program to avoid the moonlets, I'll dodge the smaller stuff.”

“WARNING, THIRTY SECONDS TO MISSILE IMPACT,” chimed in the autopilot.

Thirty seconds. What could she do? Her head chip answered back—null program. Nothing. She had done everything she could, staying alive, hiding her talents, picking her time, seizing the lifeboat, doing the absolutely impossible, and she was going to die anyway—

“TEN SECONDS TO MISSILE IMPACT.”

G-forces threw her sideways, as the lifeboat did another high-speed turn. She called to Kay. ("What's happening?")

“Hang on to your toes,” Kay shouted back. “We're going in.”

“FIVE SECONDS TO MISSILE IMPACT.”

("Inwhere ?") Heidi braced herself, back against one wall, feet against the other, hands pressed hard against the top of the box. Five fucking seconds—she couldn't believe it.

“Into the ring.” Kay plunged the lifeboat into the broad flat A-ring, actually a vast array of frozen particles streaming in parallel orbits around Typhon, everything from micron-sized hail to great ice boulders and little moonlets. Shields flared bright with burning particles, while pebble-sized pieces burst like flashing sparks within the fiery corona.

“TWO SECONDS TO MISSILE IMPACT.”

Heidi saw the klicks tumble as the missiles streaked toward her—FIFTY klicks, then THIRTY, TWENTY, TEN....

Hundreds of thousands of klicks across, the rings were only a few hundred meters thick, paper-thin by cosmic standards. Bursting out the far side, the lifeboat tore on toward Typhon—blowing ring material in all directions. Still the Hellhounds came on. Heidi watched in horror as the twin missiles streaked closer, coming within five klicks, then four, three, two....

Both missiles struck the A-ring, instantly exploding in huge flashes of radiation that washed harmlessly over the lifeboat. Hellhounds had only rudimentary shields, and anti-matter warheads were useless against high speed particles and the relentless hail of ring material. Heidi gave a cheer, hidden in her dark box. Anna Lu answered her. Kay was still glued to the Doppler, dodging errant swarms of ring ice, and no one else realized what had happened. Almost no one. ("Heidi, are you still there? This is Hess.")

("Yes.") She answered warily, hoping he had not come up with yet another way to trap her.

("Congratulations. For having nothing to offer but a head of pink hair, you have turned out to be most challenging prey. May we meet again soon.")

("Not if I can help it!") Heidi broke contact, collapsing against the side of the box. She was alive, and free, headed for a soft landing at the hands of a hot pilot, backed by a programming genius on the onboard systems—maybe she could relax. At 03:57:46, there was not much left of the midwatch. In less than four hours she had lost her job, her shipmates, and nearly her life and sanity as well—one hell of a way to start the day. When she felt the buffeting from the first layers of atmosphere, she knew that she was safe; she had done it, bringing the luckyArtemis survivors back, alive and whole, with their fortunes intact—all without harming so much as a SuperCat.

Typhon Corporation cops unloaded her crate, armed policewomen helped her out and had a robe waiting, telling her that she had done wonderfully—saying it with that touch of thankful pride you never hear in men's praise, no matter how fulsome. And it was pretty fulsome. Once she was presentable, men clapped her on the back, and everyone cheered her. Her whole hijacking-escape ordeal had been broadcast live from the spaceliner's first MAYDAY to the fiery plunge into Typhon's cloud tops—including ongoing 3V fromArtemis, where slavers were finishing up their looting. System-wide audiences eclipsed anything anyone had ever seen, outdrawing even the recent Sonya Hart “Farewell Performance.” Aside from sheer entertainment value, she had saved the system from paying the major share of some staggering ransoms. Anna Lu's loss alone would have sent markets plunging.

Public thanksgiving paled before the private celebration thrown by Sonya Hart, who rented a floating aerostat to give a gigantic victory brunch for theArtemis survivors—with live chefs, and a dozen types of fresh fish flown down from Oceania. Sonya's studio beamed a star-studded show up from the inner system, and local celebrities danced with rich young widows like Victoria MacEvoy. Heidi found herself at a luxurious realtime event she didn't have to organize, supervise, or entertain—for once, she could sit back and please herself, without worrying if everyone else was having a good time.

This totally unnatural state lasted until she saw Kay alone on a bubble balcony staring out at the boundless cloud plain. She went to see if the girl was okay. Kay laughed at the question. “Okay? I've wanted my whole life to come here. I'm just hoping they'll let me stay.”

“Let you stay?” She saw real worry in the serious blue eyes beneath the blonde bangs. “What do you mean?”

“I have no credit, no job,” the girl explained. “Even lost Mom's v-suit. I was supposed to be paid for piloting that Comet to Tartarus, but that never happened....” Twenty-four hours before, she had been in the Graveyard, signing on to pilotMissBehavin .

Heidi took the girl's hand, thinking that there would always be a link between them—both their lives had turned on the last twenty-four hours, when they had saved each other time and again. Kay had told her about her dead Mom, and Male Sperm Sample-789439-X18. Though technically old enough to be Kay's mother, Heidi felt more like an older sister, stumbling on a long-lost sibling she'd never known she had. “Don't worry, you can stay with me—or wherever you like. You're rich. Incredibly rich, so rich you'll never have to have a job again, unless you want one.”

Kay laughed, “No, I'm the one person in this room who isnot incredibly rich, or even employable.”

Heidi shook her head. “We're both rich. Megan too. You were hired to illegally pilot that ship to Tartarus by an Orion Lines officer named Marten DeRuyter—making you a minor who was exploited and put at risk in order to profit Orion Lines.” She explained the whole scam to Kay, how DeRuyter had tried to use the slavers, and how the slavers had used him instead.

Kay stared wide-eyed at her. “But why me? What did I do?”

“I'm afraid you were picked for being photogenic.” And foolhardy. DeRuyter was free to cast anyone as the freighter pilot, so he'd picked the perfect slaver victim, young and vulnerable. Hess had no doubt approved.

“But I'm a damned good pilot,” Kay protested.

“No lie, little girl. They'll be telling this story forever.” How a teenage ring rat on the run rammed an Orion Lines lifeboat through Typhon's A-ring, with a fortune in ransom aboard and two slaver missiles on her tail.

“Un-fucking-believable.” Kay shook her head sadly. “So this was all planned asentertainment? ”

“Reality 3V.” It had been Heidi's specialty.

“Folks damn well got their money's worth!”

“Not yet,” Heidi explained. Not by a long shot. “There'll be a monstrous lawsuit, lasting well into your adulthood, and until it's settled, you'll be totally taken care of as both a major claimant and a star witness.”

“And after the settlement?” Kay asked nervously, glad to hear she wouldn't have to start supporting herself at once.

“Then you'll be fabulously wealthy. If you don't believe me, ask Anna Lu.” Heidi didn't even get into 3V rights and spin-offs, but Kay believed her, heaven knew why. When someone has been repeatedly in your head, seeing through your eyes and hearing through your ears, you do tend to trust them. What was there left to hide?

Together, they looked out on this sparkling new world they were entering—this world of having whatever you want. Sonya Hart stood on stage, enthusiastically introducing hologram feelie-star friends to her fellow survivors. Vicky MacEvoy had a man on each arm. Anna Lu sat in a long sparkling gown talking earnestly into her comlink, while a live waiter poured her green mint liqueur. And on the dance floor, rich young women were doing the latest Vanir dirty dance craze, happily humping the air, whether or not they had a partner. “No wonder Hess was driven to violence,” Heidi observed. “We have it, and he wanted it.”

Kay nodded, apparently unable to decide what was more astonishing, the vast expanse of real open space around her, bordered by endless cloud plain, or her appallingly strange future. Feeling her uncertainty, Heidi softly squeezed the girl's slim hand. “But best of all, you won't have to do it alone.”

Copyright © 2002 by R. Garcia y Robertson.