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CHAPTER NINE

As soon as Daslakh sounded the alarm Solana joined the others as they crowded around the front door. She managed to pull on her discarded suit liner, for modesty as well as warmth. The message on the front door of the medical center was a welcome distraction: she, and everyone else, could focus on the mystery and not think about the night before.

Pera suited up and went outside, checking the airlock and the surrounding area for any tracks or booby traps. After about half an hour she reported back.

“Nothing. No traps, which is good. No sign of entry attempts—but from now on we should lock the outer airlock door when everyone’s inside. No footprints or thermal traces.”

“How was the message even made?” asked Utsuro.

“Thermal spalling on the outside surface of the panes. I’d guess a laser tuned to hard UV.”

“Can your laser do that?” Jaka asked. Unlike Solana, she hadn’t bothered to dress beyond putting on her utility vest and gun belt.

“I can crank it down to a hundred nanometers, but it’s hard on the power cell. Why?”

“Just wondering.” She looked around. “Daslakh?”

“Right here,” said the mech, standing on the ceiling above her.

“Did you happen to see when this happened?”

“No. I noticed it right before I called everyone. Before that I was in the room with the emergency generator, charging myself.”

“Wouldn’t have made much noise,” said Pera. “And if they tuned the laser right, all you’d see is a little red patch tracing the lines.”

“Can any say with certainty that it was not inscribed upon the panes before we ever came to Safdaghar? For all of us have used the airlock rather than this door to come and go. I know that I myself have only looked upon this pane with the briefest glance, and might have missed these words,” said Atmin.

“I’m sure,” said Pera. “When we moved in I checked for cracks. I would’ve seen any writing.”

Solana saw Jaka and Adelmar staring at each other, and guessed they were using private comms. The chimp made a nodding motion with his right fist, and Jaka smiled at him.

“Never mind how it was made,” said Daslakh. “Pay attention to the message. Someone wants us to leave, and I second the motion. We’ve got some good loot—maybe not as much as all of us would like, but better than nothing. I say we take the most valuable items we can carry, and get out of here.”

“The mech’s right. There’s something weird here, and I don’t like it,” said Pera.

Jaka pushed through the crowd to Solana, and looked directly at her. She spoke by private comm. “Tell me the truth: is this a ploy by the bird and the dino to scare us away?”

Solana shook her head.

“Are you sure? Could they have cooked this up without telling you?”

“Atmin would never do that.”

“If you say so. Still, go along with what I’m about to say.” Jaka smiled again and turned away from Solana. “I think someone’s trying to scare us,” she said aloud.

“More accurate, I think, to say that someone has succeeded,” said Atmin.

“But that’s all they’re doing. Look at everything that’s happened: those ridiculously feeble traps, this warning. Some doubtful sightings.”

“Don’t forget the loss of a bot,” Yanai put in.

“Exactly! A bot, not a person. I think someone’s trying to scare us. Drive us away and get the good stuff.”

“Excuse me, but I think it’s important to remind you that I did step on a mine,” said Utsuro.

“What would have happened if it went off?” asked Jaka.

“Fill him with darts,” said Pera promptly.

“Would any of them even pierce his shell?” she asked triumphantly. “There’s lots of very efficient ways to kill people, even mechs and borgs. Why not use them?”

“Can’t use what you don’t have,” said Pera.

“Then we’ve nothing to fear. Let’s put it to a vote. Who wants to run away?”

Pera raised one hand, and Atmin, after a moment’s hesitation, spread his wings.

“Utsuro?” asked Pera.

“I’m not ready to leave yet. I still have questions. Maybe the rest of you could go back to Yanai until I’m finished.”

“The only answer you will find in Safdaghar is just a blank,” said Atmin.

“Looks like we’ve got a clear majority in favor of staying,” said Jaka.

“Solana?” Pera looked at her, head cocked quizzically. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Really? You’re still part of our crew. You don’t have to do what she says.”

Jaka kept silent and watched Solana with a faint smile.

“Don’t worry about me,” she said. As she spoke she realized she meant it. Ever since the Salibi soldiers had taken young Solana away from her masters, she had felt a constant nagging worry. Worry about what she should do. Worry about what other people would think. Worry about whether she could succeed at things. Worry about the future. Worry about past mistakes. It never ended. Apparently other people felt that way all the time.

But with her goggles off and Jaka’s face before her, all those worries vanished. Solana had only one concern again: obedience. It made everything simple.

At some level, in the most analytical part of her mind, she knew that sense of serenity was the result of genetic engineering and prenatal brain modification—a hardwired reflex to make her a perfect slave. It didn’t matter, though. The dopamine rush from obedience was very real, and drowned out those abstract concerns about free will.

“Let’s pair up and get to work,” said Jaka. “Anton, you accompany Utsuro this time. Adelmar, you go with Pera. Tanaca and I will tag along with Atmin. Ulan, you keep an eye on Solana.”

Solana could see a look of disgust on Anton’s face. Ulan wore a mix of amazement and glee.

They all suited up and left the medical center, splitting off in twos and threes as they headed for the shift’s search areas. By the time Solana and Ulan had gone about half a kilometer down the main road to spinward, they were alone together.

He managed to restrain himself for another ten minutes, then said, “Hey, c’mere,” and then half-dragged her into a house with walls made of woven living vines, now dry and brittle. “Get that suit open. Lemme see you.”

The desire to please drowned out her sense of disgust. She obediently undid her suit, smiling at him in the way she had been taught.

“Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.” He put his big hands on her bare skin. “I bet you’re gonna like me better than Jaka.”

With her goggles off she liked everyone. She loved Jaka’s masterful ways and diamond-hard will. At the moment she loved Ulan’s brute power. Even his clumsy fumblings were erotic.

There was no call for any skill on her part. He was too desperate, almost comical in his haste.

“Here, get on top,” he said. “How do you like that, huh? Bet you,” he said, and then stopped. Ulan’s eyes unfocused, then closed, and he flopped back onto the floor and began to snore.

Solana looked at him, puzzled, and then noticed the little orange dart sticking in the left side of his neck. She looked that way, toward the open doorway and the courtyard beyond. Without her goggles she could see only darkness—and maybe a quick movement of something blacker than the shadows outside.

She tried to wake Ulan but he was completely unconscious. With no way to please him she had to help him instead. He was too heavy for her to lift. What to do? She knew, intellectually, that she needed to do something, that there was danger, but her brain kept telling her to obey Ulan.

“Pera, are you there? I need help.”

“Situation?”

“I’m in a house, about six hundred meters west of the clinic, north side of the avenue. Ulan just went unconscious. I think he’s been shot. Some kind of dart. I can’t tell if it’s tranq or poison.”

“He stable?”

“I think so. His suit’s giving him something.” She could see the fabric of Ulan’s left sleeve flex and pulse as the suit’s support system hit him with different drugs.

“Get out of the building, get some cover. I’ll be there in two minutes.”

She stood and sealed up her suit, glad to shut out the chilly air. She’d have to clean herself and decontaminate the suit, too. No telling what kind of spores she had on her now. After a moment’s consideration she sealed up Ulan’s suit, too.

His needle rifle was beside him, within easy reach. Even with Solana for his plaything Ulan didn’t want to be unarmed. Solana considered the weapon. Should she leave it? Ulan would want it when he woke…

…But for now he wasn’t awake, and he hadn’t given her any orders about it. What would be the most helpful thing for her to do? Take it. Protect him. And protect herself from whatever was lurking in the shadows. She grabbed the needle rifle and slung it over her shoulder.

Outside the house, alone in the dark with nothing but an oval of light from her helmet lamp, she felt a shudder of revulsion. The urge to please faded with no humans in sight. It was still there—she even felt a pang of loneliness because there was nobody around to command her—but at the moment Solana could obey her own will instead of someone else’s.

After a moment an unstoppable wave of anger overwhelmed her sense of disgust. Solana wanted to get a heavy chair and bash Ulan’s face in. Jaka’s, too. Maybe even Tanaca, for her eternal acquiescence. Why hadn’t anybody done anything?

This wasn’t the first time she’d felt this way. At Jiaohui there had been a moment when Solana had looked back on her previous life and finally understood what had been done to her—done before she was even born, slavery literally built into her genome. She had spent weeks filled with rage, seething when she was alone and exploding when others were around.

Could she hide? Stay away from the others until they got tired and went away? Pera and Atmin could bring her food. She wished she had her goggles. Then she could sneak around in the darkness of the hab without shining a light and giving away her location. Go back to seeing human faces as blank ovals.

A noise made her start, and she spun to see Pera approaching, moving with obvious caution but covering the distance efficiently.

“Why aren’t you in cover? Whatever got Ulan could pick you off out here.”

“It could have shot me at the same time as him. He’s in there.” Nevertheless she crossed the street and crouched behind a sturdy-looking bench.

Pera went into the house, only to come bounding out again a second later. She reached Solana’s side in four strides, and touched one hand to her helmet to create a secure link.

“You really did a job on him. I don’t know how we’re going to hide that.”

“What?”

“Ulan. How’d you cut him up like that?”

“I didn’t do anything. He was unconscious when I left him, but he was alive. Good vitals.”

“Well, right now he’s in about eight or nine chunks. Blood all over the place.”

“Are you joking? He was fine just a couple of minutes ago. How could—” Solana felt a stab of panic. The two of them were very exposed out in the street. The darkness beyond her helmet lamp seemed infinite, full of dangers. She crouched, pulling Pera down beside her.

“Did he try anything?” asked Pera.

“I couldn’t say no.”

“How’d you break the conditioning?”

“I didn’t. I told you—he had his helmet off and his suit open. Some kind of dart hit him and he passed out. That’s when I called you.”

Pera finally understood her. The dino’s pose changed. She had been crouching next to Solana, offering comfort. Now she shifted into a combat-ready posture, scanning the area for danger. She drew her engineer’s laser in one swift motion. “Turn off your lamp.” She switched to public comm. “Ulan’s dead. At least one confirmed hostile in the hab. Location unknown. Get to safety. Use caution.”

Pera went back to her direct link with Solana. “Okay, safest course is to move fast, frequent changes of direction. We’ll move spinward to the next cross street, then cut south and double back along the next parallel road. Then—”

“I can’t go back. Not without my goggles.”

Pera lashed her tail. “You can’t stay out here! We’ll figure something out at the med center. Maybe a blindfold. Or maybe I’ll just tell Jaka that I’ll fry her unless she gives them back. Now come on.”

Solana followed Pera, running as fast as she could, aware that the dino was holding back in order to let her keep up. They followed a very roundabout course, crossing the main road twice and actually going beyond the medical center before doubling back.

A block away they paused at the corner of a building, all lights off, keeping still and silent. Pera watched for more than five minutes. “Final sprint. I’ll run ahead, then cover you. Ready? Move!”

The dino took off at maximum speed, covering more than two meters with each step. She reached the door of the medical center and turned, laser at the ready, scanning the rooftops…

Solana wasn’t there. As soon as Pera sprinted off across the street she ran as hard as she could in the other direction.

“Is your brain misfiring? Get back here!” said Pera over the private link.

“No. Even if I wear a blindfold she’ll figure out a way to make me see her.”

“Not going to happen. I’ll make sure of it. Jaka’s lost one of her goon squad; the male human and the chimp don’t look like they want to die for her. But you have to come inside. We don’t know what’s out there.”

Solana cut all her comm links and turned off her lamps. For a minute she stood in utter darkness and silence. As her eyes adjusted, she began to make out the faint glow of the medical center’s lights reflecting off the ceiling of the hab ring, a hundred meters above her. It wasn’t quite enough to see, but it did give the world a little definition: she stood in a black canyon under a barely perceptible sky.

During her years in Jiaohui, Solana had learned to orient herself in a rotating hab with a couple of head nods. Spinward was to her left, which meant she was facing south. The med center was behind her.

The buildings in this section were one- and two-story affairs built right up to the broad sidewalk, and were joined together or separated by narrow alleys. By trailing her hand along the wall she could follow the block. At the corner she stepped cautiously into the street, sliding her feet along the ground to avoid tripping over anything, and feeling ahead with outstretched hands.

With almost nothing to see her hearing felt hypersensitive. She could hear her feet sliding through the dust, and her own breathing, and the faint hiss of her helmet filters. With each step her water reservoir sloshed a little. She strained to hear anything beyond her own body.

She went another block south, then turned antispinward. She stopped and crouched down, listening for any sound of pursuit. Pera had excellent night vision, and might be out there without a light. But after several minutes Solana satisfied herself that nobody was nearby.

She activated the direct comm link to Yanai. “I need to get out of here,” she said. “I can’t go back without my goggles.”

“Of course,” said the ship. “Get back to me and I’ll print you a new pair. We’ll figure out a way to do the blocking software. You can stay on board as long as you need to. Nobody will argue about shares. I’ll see to that. Can you make it on your own?”

“I have to,” said Solana.

“Good. I’ve got a question for you: do you think Jaka’s crew would interfere if I tell Utsuro and Pera to start moving the salvage out of there?”

“Jaka wants her cut. She’ll do anything to get it.”

“We will have to find out what her price is. For now, you get to the elevator.”

Now that she had a goal and a plan, Solana wasn’t as fearful. She walked in the direction of the elevator to the hub. If she could make it to the shaft, she’d be safe. Just a one-kilometer vertical climb. She could do that. Her suit gloves and shoes could become sticky as needed, so there’d be no danger of falling. She was in good condition. She could do this. She had to.

When she had put a few more blocks between herself and the med center, she asked Yanai to send Pera a message and key to set up a new secure comm channel.

“Where are you?” the dino asked after a couple of seconds.

“I’m safe. That’s all I’m going to say. What’s going on?”

“Jaka tried to convince everyone that you and I murdered Ulan. Nobody believes it, but you can’t argue with her. Atmin finally admitted it was possible and Jaka started acting like we’d both been tried and convicted. She and the chimp went out—she said they’re going to bring back Ulan, but I think they’re looking for you. You sure you’re safe?”

“I’m well away from the clinic and I’m staying dark.”

“We still don’t know what’s going on. There’s something out there,” said Pera.

“I’ll be careful.”

“Do you have a weapon?”

Solana started to say no, but then realized that the weight banging against her side was a needle rifle. “Of course. You be careful, too.”

She shut down all her comms again. If she was going dark, no point in carrying around a big bright wireless beacon. The only part of the spectrum she couldn’t make entirely dark was infrared. Her body couldn’t stop generating heat.

Navigating entirely by touch and bearing, Solana crept down the side street. A few times her sliding feet bumped against dry corpses in the roadway. The second one had actually shifted a little when her foot bumped it. That inspired the horrible idea that some lurking killer might deliberately impersonate a dead body. Maybe more than one. She’d heard about military nanobots which could turn a corpse into a puppet, living off fat and dead tissue. Casualties turned into enemy combatants. They might be all around her in the dark.

She crouched and unslung the needle rifle, then activated her implant and tried to talk to it. If Ulan had been careful, the gun was security-linked to him and him alone.

He hadn’t, and it wasn’t. The gun powered up and informed Solana how many needles were in the magazine, how much juice was in the power cell, how many days it was overdue for maintenance, time-to-failure estimates, and all its mechanical twinges and gripes. It handed targeting information to her implant, which put up a little crosshair in her vision to show what the gun was pointing at. Unfortunately, the gun had no vision system of its own, so the icon just floated against a dark background.

Solana clutched the rifle and listened for a long time, forcing herself to breathe slowly until the feeling of panic subsided. Then she got to her feet and resumed shuffling toward the elevator plaza, holding the rifle at the ready, with her finger on the trigger.

Time check: her implant said it was less than three hours since she had left the med center with Ulan to begin the work shift. It felt like three days.

Groping in the dark made for slow progress, especially when she kept pausing, freezing in mid-stride trying to hear…something. Something maddeningly just out of hearing. It might be Jaka and Adelmar, it might be the mystery killer, it might be debris shifting, it might be all in her head.

After another hour of cautious progress she stood at the edge of the elevator plaza. The light from the medical center was barely visible here. The curve of the hab meant she could see it directly, a very faint cluster of lit windows far off above the nearer buildings. The elevator was a black shadow in the center of the dark plaza.

She waited, huddled against the corner of a building, watching and listening. Jaka had her goggles, and might be wearing them, but she didn’t know if the chimp had any kind of night-vision gear. If they were searching they’d have to be moving around. Surely she’d be able to hear them? She hoped so.

Five minutes passed and she saw no lights, heard no movement or speech. Time to move. She shuffled forward across the plaza, sliding her feet through the gritty dust and debris on the pavement, going as fast as she dared.

Her outstretched left hand touched the wall of the elevator shaft. She felt her way along it until she came to the little vestibule with benches for passengers to wait for the next car to the hub.

A light flashed on, nearly blinding her. Her finger tightened on the trigger of the gun and let loose a stream of needles into the wall of the elevator shaft. Jaka stood before her in the vestibule with a lamp aimed at her own face. She grinned. “Boo!” she said. “Don’t close your eyes.”

As she looked at Jaka’s face, Solana felt her anger and shame and worry diminish—as if those parts of her were locked in a tiny cell, screaming and banging on the walls, but they were so thick she could barely hear anything. None of that mattered, anyway. The only thing Solana could care about was the human in front of her, and how to please her.

“All better now?” asked Jaka.

“Yes,” said Solana, bowing her head.

“You know, you’re a much nicer person without those goggles,” said Jaka. “You’re not selfish or greedy or angry. I like you much better this way.”

The praise gave Solana a rush of happiness. The tiny screaming part of her mind couldn’t stop it. She smiled, and felt herself blush.

“Come along home,” said Jaka, and set out along the street toward the med center again. She kept her lamp on so they could walk normally. “It wasn’t hard to figure out where you’d be going, not really. Your ship was surprisingly quiet on the open channel. Now, a few days ago she was willing to let herself get blown up if anything bad were to happen to you, so obviously she cares about your welfare. Not like some digital minds I could name. I guessed the two of you were speaking privately, and that told me where you were going. Wasn’t I clever? Tell me how clever I was.”

“You were very clever to guess I was going back to Yanai,” said Solana. Jaka was always so smart, so wise. Her attention made Solana feel happy.

“Oh, by the way—did you kill Ulan?”

“No,” said Solana. “I was serving him when something knocked him out, and then I called Pera for help and when she got there she said he was all cut up.”

“Ah. Who might have done that, do you suppose? Maybe a large reptile with sharp claws? You, I can trust. She could be lying. Listen to me: when we get back to the med center I’m going to propose some changes in how we run things. I want you to support me. Never mind what Yanai says, or Atmin, or Pera. They didn’t go out in the dark to find you. I did. I’m the one you should trust. Keep me in sight at all times.”

They walked some more and then Jaka spoke again. Silence seemed to irritate her. “I’ve heard about Kumu hab and the Qarinas,” she said. “I can’t imagine some of the horrible things you must have gone through.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I understand,” said Jaka. She stopped and put her arms around Solana. “People can be awful. I’ve been through some tough times myself. The others don’t know, but my early years were as bad as yours. Maybe worse. The hab I grew up in was falling apart, almost like this place. Whole sections were uninhabitable. The place was controlled by gangs. They fought each other and preyed on everyone else. My parents died when I was little. Murdered. I can’t”—she choked back a sob—“I can’t remember their faces.”

Solana never had parents, but it sounded as though Jaka thought they were important, so she patted the other woman’s shoulder sympathetically.

Jaka rested her head on Solana’s shoulder, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “I had to sell myself to survive. Not like a Qarina. No super-rich owner keeping me as a pet. Just one dirty, brutal thug after another, using me and tossing me aside. I learned to steal, fight…even kill. Did you ever have to do that?”

“No. Not for real, anyway.”

“It does something to you, in your mind. I know that I look selfish to other people, or callous. Maybe even cruel. But I’ve been worse, and I don’t want to be that way. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” said Solana, and patted Jaka’s shoulder again.

“I just want my fair share,” said Jaka. “Just enough to live quietly. Someplace safe. That’s all.” She raised her head and looked into Solana’s eyes. “That’s why I need you. To help me forget.”

They remained that way for half a dozen heartbeats, and then Jaka turned at the sound of Adelmar’s approach.

“Ulan’s in a bag,” he said, and looked at Solana. “She do it?”

“She says she didn’t. Do you think the dino could have done it?”

The chimp shrugged, palms up. “Clean cuts. A blade, not a claw. Strong, too. Right through bone.”

“The dino and the cyborg are the strongest ones here. Nothing to prevent Pera from using a knife, especially if she didn’t want blood on her feet. She seems like a tidy kind of person.”

Solana couldn’t tell if Jaka actually believed what she was saying, or was merely trying to find a convincing argument. Her absolute confidence made it hard to oppose her. Solana found herself accepting Jaka’s reality even when she knew it was false.

The three of them reached the medical center and cycled in. Jaka went first. “Good news, everybody!” she called out as soon as she was inside. “I’ve got Solana back, and she’s all right. Whatever murdered Ulan left her untouched.”

Solana came in at the end of this, and stripped off her suit. She could see little black flecks on her suit liner and skin, and immediately got her cleaning goop to stop the mold before it could spread inside the building.

“With Ulan’s unfortunate death we need to make some plans,” said Jaka.

“I’m sure we all agree in light of that macabre event,” said Atmin. “The time has come for us to leave this hab of death.”

“You think so?” said Jaka. “I’m more interested in finding out who killed him.”

“Something’s in the hab,” said Pera.

“There are a lot of things in the hab, including us. I’m very sorry to have to point this out, but it’s very likely that Ulan’s killer is here in this room right now. Adelmar, you saw what happened to Ulan. He was killed by powerful strokes with a sharp blade, correct?”

“Right through bone,” the chimp repeated.

“I can’t do that. Neither can Solana. Nor Anton or Tanaca. Adelmar, you were with Pera when Solana called for help. I hope nobody thinks you can run faster than a dino, so you can’t have reached the scene before Pera. Utsuro was with Anton the whole time. The only person strong enough to kill Ulan, who also had the opportunity, is…you, Pera.”

“You’re crazy,” said Pera, slamming her tail down on a chair hard enough to shock the smart matter, so that it reverted to a simple cube. “Solana said he got hit by a tranq dart—while he was trying to rape her. Who shot him?”

Jaka looked wide-eyed and innocent. “That’s a good question. Maybe it was one of the booby traps infesting this place. As you say, he was quite irresponsible and may have overlooked a tripwire in his haste.”

“Doesn’t make sense. Why zero a trap on some random patch of floor?”

“It’s equally unlikely that your hypothetical lurking killer went to the trouble to tranq him, only to slice him apart a few minutes later. But someone outraged by his deplorable behavior might do it upon finding him helpless.” Jaka looked rather pointedly at the cube that had been a chair.

Solana watched the others. Utsuro’s face screen showed a question glyph. Atmin’s head was cocked to one side. Tanaca stood silently at Jaka’s side. The little mech Daslakh was stuck to the side of a planter, colored rescue orange. Adelmar had edged forward to have a clear line of sight on Pera. Anton stood off to one side, staring at the floor with a pained expression. Did they believe Jaka? Should she believe her?

“Not going to put up with this,” said Pera. “Where’s your proof? Scan me for blood, show me a blade big enough to cut through a man. Find the trap that shot him.”

“Daslakh, check her.”

“I live to serve,” said the mech, and scuttled over to Pera. It crawled over her, looking closely at the exterior of her suit and poking into pockets and pouches. “A little hemoglobin on the soles of her feet. Nothing on the claws. Tool kit has a five-centimeter multitool. You could certainly turn that into a blade, but there’s no way to cut a human in half with it. Laser hasn’t been used since its last recharge, and even a biological could see the difference between a laser burn and a blade cut.”

“These houses have cooking tools. There are plenty of knives about. Here’s a suggestion,” said Jaka. “Pera, prove me wrong. You and Daslakh go examine the crime scene and see if there’s a weapon. Look for something which might have launched the dart. Give us some facts to work with.”

The mech took up a position on Pera’s back, just behind her head, where she couldn’t reach. It changed color to resemble Pera’s black combat suit, then played a trumpet fanfare. “First Irregular Safdaghar Cavalry Regiment, advance!”


As soon as Pera and Daslakh cycled through the airlock, Jaka turned to face the rest of the company, smiling as always. “I think we all should cut our comms so we can speak privately. There are important things to discuss.”

“I cannot think of anything that we must speak about which can’t be heard by Pera or Yanai. What secret plot do you wish to concoct?” asked Atmin.

“Oh, it’s nothing like that. Put your mind at rest. I just want to talk about how we’re going to manage Pera when she comes back here with no evidence of any monsters hiding in the shadows.”

Solana watched her but followed orders and said nothing. It was really impressive to watch Jaka work the group.

“What do you mean by ‘manage’?” asked Utsuro. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Well, she’s gone off to look for proof that she didn’t kill Ulan. I don’t think she’s going to find any, because, well, I think she did kill him. Not that he didn’t deserve it, of course. But still—is anyone really comfortable with a heavily armed murderer among us?”

Atmin fluttered down to land on the back of the broken chair. “If Pera slew vile Ulan as he rested after rape I do not call that murder but think it justice done.”

“I’m certainly not going to defend his conduct, but even if Pera did believe she was dealing out some rough justice that doesn’t really make the rest of us any safer, does it? I mean, what if she decides someone else has violated her private moral code?”

“I see your point—and know an easy way to cure your fears. You and yours can simply leave. Take half of all we’ve found and then embark. Once in your shuttle and away from Safdaghar, you will be safe from any sense of right and wrong,” said Atmin.

Jaka never got to reply because just then everyone jumped at the sound of someone pounding on the diamondoid front doors of the clinic. They all looked, and all froze in amazement.

A man in a white environment suit stood at the door, banging with one fist. Daslakh stuck to the next pane over, displaying the words Open Up Idiots on its lower carapace. Pera leaned on the man for support, standing on her left leg. Her right leg was missing.


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