Farrell’s response was a lazy smile. “Takes one to know one, darlin’. Not that you’re crazy or anything.”

“And this is the point where I remind myself that I can’t kill you right now because we’re both working for the same guy.”

“That’s right,” he said. The waitress brought them their luncheon specials, and he paused for a moment until she had gone away again. As soon as the woman was safely back behind the counter, he dug into his bacon and sausages and continued, “I wouldn’t worry about the no-deal thing. The boss didn’t hire you to be his traveling saleslady.”

“Good thing, because she sure wasn’t buying.” Di finished her first cup of coffee and poured another. “On the other hand, the boss should appreciate my travel diary.”

Farrell raised his eyebrows. “Lots of pretty pictures?”

“And lots of notes. What about you?”

“I’m still waiting for the right moment to approach my target.” The raised eyebrows gave way to a disgruntled expression. “At least yours is an honest villain—”

“Villainess.”

“All right, villainess—who isn’t lying about anything and isn’t on anybody’s side but her own. I wouldn’t trust mine any farther than I could throw a BattleMech.”

“I wouldn’t trade with you, that’s for sure. Your target gives me the cold shivers—make a wrong move, and you could end up deader than yesterday’s breakfast.”

“Worried about me, love?”

Di shook her head vehemently. “Thinking that I’d be real sorry if somebody else put a knife into you before I got around to doing it myself.”

“Relax, sweetheart.” Farrell leaned back and gave her his most annoying and lascivious grin. “I’m saving myself for you.”

16

Balfour-Douglas Petrochemicals Offshore Drilling Station #47

Oilfields Coast

Northwind

December 3133; dry season

Night had fallen over Balfour-Douglas #47, drawing Ian Murchison once more out onto the observation deck for a few minutes of quiet solitude. He leaned against the deck’s metal railing and relaxed as best he could in the night air, his skin cooled by the breeze blowing across the open water. Neither of Northwind’s two moons was up, but the sky held a myriad of stars spread out against velvet black. Down below, in the water swirling around the legs of the drilling platform, floating bioluminescent jellyfish drifted and sparkled.

Murchison was tired, not least from the unremitting state of low-level anger and anxiety that he knew was worth his life to express, and the double cord on his left wrist was a constant irritant.

There was also the matter of his deal with Galaxy Commander Anastasia Kerensky.

He wanted to ask himself what had possessed her, but he knew better. The Steel Wolves’ commander believed, for some reason—for all he knew, it could be his open and honest face—that he was steady and reliable. More to the point, she saw in him someone steady and reliable who had not been part of the Steel Wolves’ military machine since the day he was decanted, someone with a fresh eye to look for signs of duplicity and betrayal.

My eye’s so damned fresh it’s never going to see anything, he thought bitterly. I’m not looking for a needle in a haystack, I’m looking for one needle in a whole bin full of needles.

The idea depressed him. Maybe Anastasia Kerensky would believe him when he said that he couldn’t find the traitor because all her Steel Wolves blurred together, for the most part, into one indistinguishable and largely unpleasant mass. More likely, she would think he was lying.

The murmur of voices around the corner of the observation deck broke into his thoughts, and stirred his curiosity in spite of his unhappy mood. He edged closer, keeping well out of sight, until he had drawn near enough to recognize the voices of Star Colonel Nicholas Darwin—the Galaxy Commander’s favorite—and Star Captain Greer. Both men ranked high in Anastasia Kerensky’s councils, which sufficed to lift them out of the general run of Warriors in Murchison’s recall.

Greer’s voice was the first to resolve into words. “…longer do we go on waiting like this? We need to bring up the DropShips and attack.”

“You have the wrong man for that question.”

“Do I? You are Kerensky’s darling.”

Darwin’s voice was slightly lower than Greer’s, and tinged with amusement as well as with a faint difference in the accent. “If you think that means I have any influence on the Galaxy Commander’s decisions, you do not know her well at all.”

Greer’s voice took on an ugly note. “And you know her better than you let on. I am not blind; I have seen you going about her work. If she had not given you the keys—”

Murchison eased forward, keeping himself in darkness, until he could see the two men standing outside the door to the stairwell. The small light over the door illuminated them: Darwin dark and compact; Greer tall, pale, and rawboned.

Their body language at the moment reflected the antagonism he’d overheard in their speech. Greer was trying to loom over Darwin, while Darwin was leaning back against the railing in a manner clearly meant to look annoyingly relaxed. The tense set to his shoulders, however, gave his posture the lie.

Murchison considered clearing his throat or dropping a writing stylus—anything to make a noise and break the tension. After reflection, however, he remained silent. If Anastasia Kerensky had made him into a spy; then he would play the spy and do nothing, only listen.

Darwin said, “What would you have me say to her, then? ’If I may distract you for a moment, Galaxy Commander, Star Captain Greer desires to know when it will please you to lift the DropShips?’” He laughed. “And when she says, ‘Star Captain Greer will know that the DropShips are lifting when Star Colonel Darwin learns about it and tells him so,’ do you think I am stupid enough to ask her anything more?”

“I think you are a nasty patch of freeborn scum, and the only good you are to the Galaxy Commander comes from your—”

“Be careful.” Darwin’s voice was quiet now and not at all amused. “You insult Anastasia Kerensky, which is foolish. And you insult me, which—considering that you and I are standing here alone together without witnesses—is even more foolish.”

Star Captain Greer took a step forward. “You are threatening me.”

“Well, yes. I thought you would notice it eventually.”

Greer made an inarticulate noise of disgust and slid his right hand down over his left forearm. When the hand came up into view again, twenty centimeters of knife protruded from his fist—not one of the clasp knives that Murchison had long been accustomed to seeing in use on the rig, but something double-edged and leaf shaped, a serious fighting knife. The metal was subdued, a matte black color that neither reflected nor shone in the light; the edges alone, where the blade had been sharpened, glittered.

“Then I will send the Galaxy Commander the part of you that she likes best,” Greer said. “In an extremely small box.”

“You are welcome to try, Star Captain.” Darwin pushed away from the railing and widened his stance, flexing his knees and bringing his hands up to waist level, palms open and empty. He made little “come hither” motions with his fingers. “You are very welcome to try.”

Greer didn’t answer. Not with words. He turned his left side to Darwin, empty hand up. The hand with the knife he lowered behind him, switching his grip on the blade from point up to point down. Then he stepped forward, his left hand grasping Darwin’s left arm high up as he turned and brought the knife in his right hand slashing up and cutting Darwin’s arm.

Unfazed, Darwin turned and grabbed Greer’s left hand with his own right, squatting at the same time to duck under his opponent’s outstretched arm. Then he straightened, and Greer’s left arm, extended over Darwin’s shoulder, broke with a crack when the elbow bent the wrong way. The knife clattered to the deck plates as Greer’s other hand went lax from the shock.