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  He rose to the challenge magnificently. The hunting flitter went past above them, scant meters above the canopy, moving slowly as it searched. Cassie sank into the seat as Roger sent the flitter shooting upward. The other flitter was a dark hole in the pale expanse of the clouds, expanding with terrifying speed. The flitters collided, Roger timing it perfectly. The fuselage of Cassie's flitter hit the wing of the gray craft, and the gray flitter was knocked sideways and down. It plunged, already beginning to recover as it reached the canopy of trees.

  With even a few more meters of altitude the plan would have failed. The enemy skimmer would have had time to recover. Instead, the skimmer was down among the trees before it could level out. Blind luck put a trunk in its path before the flitter could recover its lost altitude.

  Cassie heard the impact, an echoing boom that mingled with the crackling sound of large branches breaking. There were smaller impacts that told her the skimmer was tumbling forward and down, hitting other trees and branches on the long fall to the forest floor.

  She checked the radar screen. There were no other flitters in sight, and she blew out a long, ragged breath. "You all right back there, Lark?"

  "Yes."

  "Good." Cassie rotated her shoulders, working the tension out of them. "We're safe, for now. But there's one more thing we have to do, and it's not going to be safe at all."

  CHAPTER 15

  Roger touched down in the empty parking lot of a shopping center on the edge of the city. Cassie disconnected him, put him into her shoulder bag, and led the way out of the flitter.

  The planet's short day made for some interesting patterns of sleep and wakefulness. Most of the shopping center was dark, and most of the surrounding buildings, but Cassie could see children playing zip ball under electric lights in a ball court in the distance. Occasional shouts or cheers drifted across the grass to her as she got her bearings.

  The flitter rental shop was dark, but lights came on as they approached, and a self-serve kiosk came to life. It was a different chain than the one they'd rented from before. Cassie gave a handprint, filled in a quick online form, and made a transfer from a credit crystal. The cockpit lights immediately came up in one of the flitters lined up beside the building.

  "There's our ride." She walked over to the flitter and pressed her hand against the panel beside the hatch. "Let's go."

  She told the flitter to take them to the city center, then hooked up Roger and let him take control. A police ship flew past, ignoring them.

  "There are three likely hospitals," Roger reported. "Two because of proximity, and one because it has an advanced trauma facility."

  "Tell me about the close ones," Cassie said. "I doubt he would have held out for a hospital across the city." That was a guess, of course. All they had was guesswork.

  "Saint Agnes is the closest," Roger reported. "But the hospital specializes in long-term care for cosmetic surgery patients. They only handle emergencies for regular clients. All Health is the more likely choice. They are the local hub for emergency vehicles."

  "Sounds good," Cassie said. "Take us there. Query the hospital for confirmation if you can, but don't attract any attention." She tried several ways of concealing her pistol under her jacket and finally stuck it in the bottom of her shoulder bag. With Roger removed from the bag there was plenty of room.

  "They're remarkably coy about medical records here," Roger said. "I can confirm that five people arrived by ambulance flitter at seven hours twenty local time, but I can't get names or any identifying details."

  "Well, that could be it. I guess we'll know soon enough." Cassie hung the bag over her shoulder and looked at Lark, who was strapped into the co-pilot's seat. "I want you to stay here, okay?"

  Lark nodded gravely. The mad chase seemed to have satisfied her need for excitement for a time.

  "Coming up on the hospital," Roger said. A few moments later Cassie felt a tremor through the seat as the flitter set down on the hospital roof.

  She bought a bouquet of flowers in the lobby, then headed to an information panel. She queried Wo by name. When that didn't work she looked around the lobby and selected a tired-looking man in an orderly's clothes. She approached him and led him to a quiet corner of the lobby.

  "I hope you can help me." She gave him a bright smile. "I'm here to see my uncle. He's sort of the dark star of the family. I can remember him from my childhood, but I don't really know his full name. My parents just called him 'Uncle Wo'. So I can't find him through the data screens."

  The man gave her a look that said he was much too tired to take an interest.

  "I bet you can find out where he is," she said.

  He shrugged. "I'm busy, lady. You need to go to the information counter upstairs."

  "I'm busy too," she told him, and his eyes narrowed in annoyance. "Time is money," she added as he started to turn away. He turned back, some of his tiredness falling away. "I don't expect you to help me for free."

  After a brief bit of haggling he led her to a banking panel in an out-of-the-way corridor. He looked nervously up and down the corridor as she transferred a couple of hundred creds from her own credit crystal to one of his.

  "Wait here," he said. "Don’t talk to me where anyone can see. I could get fired for this." He hurried away.

  Cassie loafed, fretting, wondering if he would return. She would have to track him down and threaten him with exposure if he didn't come back. She was shifting from foot to foot by the time the scuff of shoes on tile announced his return.

  "Your uncle's on the fourth floor," he said. "Four eighty-one. I can tell you his full name if you like." He leaned close. "It'll cost you another hundred, though."

  "Get lost," she told him sweetly, and headed for a bounce tube.

  There was a bodyguard in Wo's room, a broad-shouldered Asian man who widened his eyes in shock and then dropped in a limp heap as she fired a stun bolt into his chest. Wo was scrambling for a com panel beside his bed when Cassie put another stun shot into the back of his hand. He yelped and cringed back, his arm flopping and twitching.

  The side of his face glistened with skin sealer, and she could see more of it on his neck and shoulder. She dragged the bedclothes away from him. He wore a hospital gown. His legs, thick and short, seemed unharmed. She could see the square bulk of little medical mini-boxes all along his left side. They would be dispensing drugs, regenerating small patches of skin, and distributing nanobots into his soft tissues.

  His lips were moving as he subvocalized. There would be gangsters scrambling in response, but Cassie figured she had at least a few minutes. It was more than she needed.

  She hauled him out of the bed by his hair. He tried to fight her, but his right arm was stunned and his left side was damaged. He could do no more than scream profanities as she shoved him face-first against the window.

  "Who booked the contract on Cassandra Marx?"

  "I'm going to hunt you to the ends of the galaxy, you dirty—"

  She thumbed the pistol to explosive rounds and fired into the window beside his head. The round exploded, and he squealed as bits of shrapnel buried themselves in his face. A shard went into Cassie's hand, and she muffled a curse. There wasn't time to be careful, though.

  The window shattered, and Wo fell outward, screaming. He came to rest with his thick stomach draped over the window sill, jagged chunks of transparent plastic digging into his skin, his arms waving as he stared down at the sidewalk below.

  "Who paid for the booking, you bastard? Give me a name!"

  "You… You… You're crazy," he gasped.

  "Your men are on their way to this room," she said. "Would you like to hear my plan for evading them?" She reached down, caught him by one ankle, and lifted. He screamed as his weight shifted up and out.

  "I'm going to drop you out this window," she said calmly. "Then I'm going to take a bounce tube to the ground floor, walk outside, and ask you again. There's a better than even chance you'll still be alive." He caught the side o
f the window frame with his left hand, and she hammered him across the elbow with the butt of her pistol. He cried out as his hand was knocked free.

  She knelt and wrapped her fingers around his other ankle.

  "Armstrong and Noguchi," he gasped. "I swear! It was Armstrong and Noguchi."

  Cassie straightened. "Who in space are Armstrong and Noguchi?"

  "From Coriander. They're like their own coalition. They're huge. Very powerful. I don't know why they want you, but you're dead. They'll find you. You can't hide from people like them."

  She stared at him, wondering if he was telling the truth. She suspected he was. If he was lying, she wasn't going to get the truth out of him in the time she had left.

  "If I have to come back and talk to you again…."

  "No, I swear, it's true! I swear it, I—"

  She turned and hurried out of the room, shoving the gun out of sight. Someone would probably get to him in time to drag him back inside. If he fell, well, it no longer mattered to her.

  A couple of hospital security guards raced past her as she reached the nearest set of bounce tubes. An Asian man with one hand hidden under his coat emerged from the tube ahead of her. He ran past her without a second glance, and she took the tube up to roof level.

  Roger was lifting the flitter before the hatch finished closing behind her. She lowered herself into the pilot's seat and sighed.

  "Are you okay?" Lark asked, and Cassie smiled despite her weariness. Roger was good company in his way, but it was surprisingly comforting to hear honest human concern.

  "I'm fine," she said. "We need to get off-planet right away, and we probably shouldn't ever come back. But we won't need to."

  "You learned something?" Lark asked.

  "Well, I got a lead. I think we can stop running blindly and start figuring out what this is all about."

  Episode Five

  Raid on Ramses

  CHAPTER 16

  Lark sat on a rustic chair made of real wood, looking out across an expanse of short, wind-blown grass. The grass was brown and dry at the moment. Twice a year the rains would come, the grass would turn green and lush, and the resort would fill with people eager to see tens of millions of migrating birds. The sky would darken as the flocks came in at sunset, and darken again just after dawn as the birds took flight again. It was, by all accounts, one of the wonders of the galaxy.

  For the rest of the year the place was as boring as a paint factory, which made the resort the perfect place for a gathering of thieves.

  There were fifteen little cabins, each with its own walkway extending like a spoke from the central hub of the main building. Lark was staying in Cabin Two, with only Roger the AI to keep her company. As if that wasn't boring enough, she had strict instructions to avoid the front and sides of the cabin. She was to stay indoors or on the deck to the west of the cabin. Cassie on her own could rely on a simple disguise to keep from being recognized. One glimpse of Lark, though, and even the dullest thief might make the connection to the most wanted duo in the galaxy.

  Lark didn't mind too much, though. Cassie had given her some important work to do. She could feel her chest swelling with pride every time she thought about it. Sure, Roger was doing most of the work, but Lark was guiding the process. She was finally proving her worth to the woman she relied on utterly, and paying back some small portion of her enormous debt.

  "Here's another possibility," Roger said in her ear. "The Junior Citizens' League. They network with similar leagues in several systems. They would make an excellent clandestine network."

  "Forget it," Lark told him. "You don't get how funny people are about kids. Especially rich people." Her fingers moved to her ribs and arms. The bruises were gone now. She couldn't feel pain even when she pressed hard with her fingers. The memories were still vivid, though. Some incomprehensible cultural quirk made violence against children an invisible crime, a private matter to be ignored if at all possible.

  "Hurting kids is against the law," she explained. "So you can go ahead and do it if no one's watching. But when it comes to privacy, people go all weird." She rolled her eyes. "The Junior Citizens will be the most audited network on the planet."

  "I don't understand," Roger said.

  "That’s because computers don't have sex."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  She giggled. "They're afraid of pedophiles, silly." She'd been lectured about the dangers of sexual deviants for as long as she could remember.

  "That seems preposterous on the face of it," Roger said. "How can off-planet communication lead to sexual misconduct here on Ramses?"

  "It doesn't have to make sense," she told him patiently. "Not when it's about sex." She mimicked the hectoring tones of Miss Ngoru, her school supervisor. "The privacy of children is of paramount importance and it must be protected at all costs." When Roger didn't comment she said, "Just take my word for it. No one's going to use a kids' network for secret messages. It's the only place where you're sure to be caught."

  "Very well. That's the last major network."

  They were installing simple listening programs on many of the networks on Ramses that had off-planet communications. Not every network. Each listener was a risk, a trail of software that could be discovered and tracked back to them. They had all the public channels covered, and several private channels.

  If anyone on the planet sent a message that mentioned Lark, Cassie, the bounty, or Ancients technology, there was an excellent chance that Roger's listener programs would pick it up. If someone went past the resort in a skimmer and spotted them, or if one of Cassie's team of thieves recognized her, Lark and Cassie might know about it before the trap could snap shut.

  "I wish I could visit the rest of the resort," she said. "There's a pool and a holo-gym and everything."

  "You know that the danger would be too—"

  "I know, I know," she interrupted. "I'm not going to do it. I just wish." Aside from herself and Cassie, the resort had three other human guests, soon to be five. All of them were thieves or professional criminals, known to Cassie by reputation but not people she'd met in person. They were using the resort to prepare for some sort of heist. It sounded dangerous and exciting, and Lark was dying to know the details, but all Cassie would say was that she shouldn't worry, and she needed to keep out of sight.

  She sighed and settled deeper into her chair. "Let's go through the list of spaceports again," she said. "We better be ready for anything."

  ###

  The flitter came in low over the grasslands, the late-morning sun glinting on dark green paint. It was a sleek craft, built like a racer, a high-end rental of the sort that Cassie never chose because it drew too much attention. She stood at the edge of the landing pad, flanked by three men, watching as the last two members of the team came in for a landing.

  "About time," said the thick-chested man to her right. "I want to know what this nonsense is all about." Tarkin was a burglar of some repute, but he seldom worked on teams. She wasn't sure if he objected to women as leaders or if it was her in particular, but he challenged her at every opportunity and made no secret of his dislike.

  "A little mystery gives life some spice," said one of the men to her left. "You need to open your soul to the possibilities before you turn into a big obsolete dinosaur." Lagan was the opposite of Tarkin in many ways, a slim, wiry man with an easygoing nature and a ready smile. He needled the bigger man mercilessly.

  The third man just grunted. Lars had once spent six months planning the heist of a jewel from a museum on Chrysalis Seven, only to have Cassie steal it in transit. He didn't know who was responsible, and none of them knew who she was, so she wasn't worried that he had any hard feelings.

  The green skimmer touched down at last. It was a two-seater, and the cockpit cover slid back to allow a pair of slender figures to climb out. They were young women, quite short, in form-fitting jumpsuits and tall boots. Cassie watched as the nearest woman fit a toe into the indented foothold below the cockp
it and lowered herself to the ground. The other woman walked around the skimmer and stood beside her.

  One jumpsuit was emerald green, the other a swirl of colors. That was nearly the only visible difference between them. Both women were young, still in their twenties, with tilted eyes, high cheekbones, and long, straight hair. Cassie knew them as Samedi and Vendredi, a two-woman team that had pulled off a string of daring heists all over the galaxy. They were clearly sisters, and possibly twins. She hadn't known that before.

  "Welcome," said Cassie. "I'm Clara. If you'd like to follow me, I think everyone is impatient to learn what this mission is all about." She led the way back to Cabin Nine, her residence for the duration of the job. The others were checked into cabins on either side.

  They gathered in the cabin's small common room and exchanged quick introductions. Cassie gave them a few highlights from her career, not enough for anyone to identify her. Lars, it turned out, had met the sisters once before. Tarkin and Lagan had worked on some of the same worlds and knew each other by reputation. Among them they had a wide variety of skills and experience.

  "This is all lovely," Tarkin said with a sneer, "but how about you stop wasting our time. Why've you brought us here?"

  Cassie hid her irritation. "We're going to pull off a job," she said. "It's going to require all of us. And it's going to pay very well." She walked over to a holo tank in the center of the room and touched a button. The head and shoulders of an elderly man appeared. He had silver hair with wings of pure white over each temple and a fierce, hawk-like expression. "This is Peter Armstrong," she said. "We're going to rob his house."

  That set off a buzz of conversation and questions. It would have been quicker for everyone to listen quietly as she laid out the plan, but these were people accustomed to controlling their own destinies. They weren't followers, and they didn't trust easily. Cassie imagined how she would feel in their shoes and hid her impatience, answering their questions one at a time.