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By Root 487 0

urgent jobs were suspended. Some ship was being loaded on the far side of the dock, but it might as well have been on another planet as far as crowd protection went. The time had been well chosen. And the abductors had had access to the intramural passages that separated cargo areas. Alternately sniffing for the trail of gas and choking on the residue, the eye continued until there was no smell at all. She backtracked to where vestigial traces remained, used her special key to open the panel, and stepped out in a workshop area—empty, of course.

“I must have been out longer than I thought,” the operative murmured, keying into the security board in Commander an Hon’s office. “Charas here. There’s an unconscious man at Sector 45-Z-2, Cargo 30, and Marmion de Revers Algemeine and her guest, Colonel Maddock-Shongili, appear to have been kidnapped.”

“What did you say?”

Charas sighed and repeated the message.

“Are you sure?” This time it was the commander himself asking.

“Yes. Stop all outgoing vessels.”

“No implant messages?”

“Only the Mayday,” Charas said grimly.

“We’re instigating stop and search procedures.”

“Good. First check what was logged in at Bay 30-47-N.”

There was a brief pause. “A damaged pleasure yacht to be repaired, with a hole the size of a shuttle . . .” Some rather inventive cursing followed. “And a Shuttle is registered as pulling out of that sector.”

“Have the corvette pick me up here.”

“Since it’s only a shuttle, can do,” said the commander.

“And send someone to collect that idiot who was escorting them.” Charas gave the location. “I want a tape of the rescue. First impressions are invaluable. He may know something he doesn’t know that we can use.”

Charas waited impatiently until the corvette docked at the air lock through which the abductors had taken their victims. There was only the faintest whiff of the gas left.

The Security corvette was fast. Surprisingly, so was the escaping shuttle.

“I don’t believe these speeds,” the corvette captain said. “Everyone on board must be out!”

“Some of ’em are,” Charas said grimly.

The shuttle proved to be nearly as agile in space as the corvette and led them a chase through the storage pens that circled Gal Three at a distance: anything from recyclable debris to cold storage.

“We’ll get the buggers now,” the corvette captain said as the shuttle cleared the last of the obstacles. He signaled the helmsman for more thrust, and the corvette steadily gained on the shuttle. “Must have souped-up engines to do this. Halt and prepare to be boarded!” he announced over the comm link.

The corvette was matching speed and position, edging closer and closer when the shuttle exploded. The corvette was skewed sideways; any crew member not strapped down to something bounced about like a wad of plastic. The corvette had taken a broadside and would limp back on navigational thrusters alone. But the worst part of it—or maybe it was the best part of it—was that the implant in Charas’s mastoid bone had not rung the death knell of the person she had thought she was about to retrieve from the kidnappers.

“That shuttle was a decoy,” Commander an Hon told Charas when she got to his office.

“And Stop and Search has produced nothing?” she asked, slumping in the chair an Hon had gestured for her to take. She was very weary, and the effects of the gas, despite a marginal inhalation, could still be felt.

“Not yet, but there were damned near thirty ships leaving Gal Three within the target hour. You’re sure Marmion de Revers Algemeine is still alive?”

“Yes.” She touched the mastoid bone. “What about that faller?”

“Hmmm, yes,” the commander said. “Machiavelli Sendal-Archer-Klausewitch . . .”

“Say what?”

There was a twitch of a smile on his lips when an Hon repeated the name. “Recently appointed as CEO of a Rothschild’s subsidiary based here on Gal Three. Pharmaceuticals, mainly, but with broad powers. I’ve sent for background gen—an in-depth study, more than was initially received when he was assigned to the Gal Three offices. But let me just play back that rescue tape.”

That