His smile faded with that thought. Clean Killer rested a hand lightly on the top of his head and made a soft, soft crooning sound in his ear, and the human inhaled deeply.

  No one could reasonably have described Damien Harahap’s life as uneventful or free of change, and he’d always been a survivor. From his childhood on Startman through his Gendarmerie career, he’d evolved into a tough, smart, competent professional who knew the value of his own skills and took pride in doing the job—whatever “the job” happened to be at any given moment—better than anyone else. At the same time, he’d always been aware that however good anyone might be, there was always someone better…or luckier, at least. And because that was true, he’d always known the odds of a long, peaceful retirement were lower in his case than in most.

  What he hadn’t known—or admitted to himself, at least—was how lonely he’d been.

  Mostly, he reflected, that was because a man in his line of work didn’t find many opportunities for deep, meaningful friendships. Not the kind that stayed with him, that really mattered to him. That was certainly what he’d told himself at the time, and it was true enough. For that matter, he had formed a few friendships that fitted that description. Ulrike Eichbauer, for example.

  And what had happened to her was exactly the reason he’d let himself form so few of them. That was what he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge to himself. What he’d refused to acknowledge to himself for so long. And he’d hidden that awareness from others—and himself—by how easily he assumed the trappings of friendship. The comfortable conversations, the sense of humor, the easy camaraderie. All of those came so naturally to him that not even he had realized how much they were part of his mask.

  Until Clean Killer. Until ten or eleven kilos of silky fur and hard-muscled bone and sinew had inserted themselves into his life in a way no other creature in the universe had ever managed. Until now, when the thought of how likely it was that the risks of his profession would catch up with him someday, as they’d already caught up with Ulrike and a dozen others he could have named, frightened him at last. Not for himself, but for Clean Killer.

  The treecat’s croon deepened. His soft warmth pressed comfortingly against the side of Harahap’s neck, and the human gave himself a mental shake.

  I hope this sort of…soulful introspection isn’t going to become the norm, he thought. Last thing anyone needs is for the fearless interstellar secret agent to go all soft and squishy!

  Clean Killer twitched, bleeking an approving laugh as his two-leg’s mind-glow returned to its properly wry, amused flavor. He’d never anticipated that he might one day bond with any two-leg, and certainly not with someone who had labored so long and—apparently—successfully for the same evildoers who had murdered Black Rock Clan. Indeed, if anyone had suggested that could happen, he would have been furious.

  Which only shows how little I knew, he thought. And how little I truly understood the…complexity of the two-legs. No wonder so many People have been drawn to their mind-glows over the turnings! They are so strong, so bright, and so different! Perhaps Golden Voice and Thought Chaser are correct. Perhaps they burn so brightly because they are mind-blind. Because they cannot taste one another, no matter how loudly they call out. And perhaps they are so complex—that, he reflected, really was the best way to describe it—because they cannot share the way the People do. Perhaps it is only the way in which each of them is shut up in his own little world that leads them to explore thoughts and ideas that would never occur to a Person. People do not need complexity, because mind-voices and mind-glows make everything so simple.

  He didn’t know about that—not yet. But he did know that Plays with Fire—he had no idea why so many of the other two-legs thought the name the People had bestowed upon his two-leg was so funny, but no other name fitted his mind-glow so well—had been even more alone inside his mind than most two-legs. And he had been that way for far too long. It had produced a rich, strong mind-glow—a strong person—but at the cost of more pain than Plays with Fire was prepared to admit to himself.

  He wished he could finger-talk with Plays with Fire the same way Laughs Brightly talked with Dances on Clouds, but that would have to wait. Clean Killer had never truly thought about how long it took a two-leg to learn any new thing. That, too, was because they were mind-blind, of course. They could not simply taste a mind song about a new thing and make that memory their own, which was perhaps the strangest thing of all about them. Despite his frustration, he had been assured by both Pounces on Leaves and Thought Chaser that Plays with Fire was a quick learner, by two-leg standards, and patience was a virtue any scout required.

  It was just that sometimes it was more difficult than others to remember that.

  They followed Dances on Clouds across the large chamber, and the other two-legs rose in greeting.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Honor said, “allow me to introduce tonight’s guest of honor.” Her lips twitched at the double entendre. “This is Mr. Harahap, known to some of you as ‘Firebrand.’”

  Harahap did a remarkably good job of looking unfazed as her other guests’ eyes swiveled to him.

  “Mr. Harahap, I know you’ve met some of these people before, but allow me to introduce, moving to my right around the table, Captain Rafe Cardones, my flag captain; Commodore Mercedes Brigham, my chief of staff; Captain George Reynolds, my staff intelligence officer; and Captain Andrea Jaruwalski, my operations officer. At the foot of the table, we have Commander Megan Petersen, CO of HMS Arngrim. I believe you know the next few people, continuing on around the table, but for the benefit of some of my other guests, they are Mr. Indiana Graham, of the Seraphim Independence movement; Lieutenant Abigail Hearns, tactical officer aboard HMS Tristram; Ensign Elijah Dimas, who’s recently joined Imperator’s company; and, last but not least, one of your colleagues, after a manner of speaking—Mr. Anton Zilwicki, late of Her Majesty’s Navy.”

  She paused for a moment, contemplating the eclectic mix with an inner smile, then waved at the empty chair between hers and Zilwicki’s. There was a treecat-style highchair set beside it, like the one in which Nimitz was already ensconced.

  “Please, everyone,” she said. “Be seated.”

  The stewards were smoothly efficient and the supper was excellent, Harahap decided. It was, according to Duchess Harrington, Grayson-style cuisine, which reminded him of a fusion of Old Earth Italian and oriental. In fact, it seemed to have quite a lot of Thai in its ancestry. Given what he knew of Grayson’s history, that seemed unlikely. He was almost certain they must have evolved independently, but the curries, especially, reminded him of the delicious food to which Indy and Kenzie had introduced him at The Soup Spoon back in Cherubim.

  He glanced across the table as that memory filtered through the back of his mind, wondering if the same thing had occurred to Indy. It was hard to be sure, since Indy’s attention was elsewhere, and Harahap suppressed a smile as he realized just how focused he was upon the evening’s other Grayson component.

  And good luck to him, Harahap thought. She looks every bit as toothsome as dinner…if in a somewhat different way.

  Clean Killer made the bleeking sound treecats used for laughter from beside him, and the smile he’d suppressed floated across his lips. He still couldn’t decide how Indy thought about him these days, but he’d discovered that his new allegiance simplified his own emotions quite a lot. In many ways, he regretted the false pretenses under which he and the younger man had met, but it was a mild regret. He supposed it shouldn’t be, but as he’d told Harrington, it had never been personal. In fact, he’d allowed himself to like young Indy and his sister a lot more than he ought to have. He was self-honest enough to admit that he’d have put that behind him, after the SIM was crushed. He would have felt a rather different sort of regret, but he would have brushed it aside, the same way he’d brushed aside so many other…regrettable consequences of his profession. In time—and probably not all that much of it, if he was going to be fully honest—he would have put it behind him and gone on.

  It surprised him how genuinely grateful he was that that hadn’t happened, but he wouldn’t blame Indy a bit for…holding a grudge against the man who’d planned to cold-bloodedly betray him, his family, and his entire planet.

  Funny how little things like that can sour a friendship, he thought.

  The Imperator’s stewards began clearing away the dessert plates under the eagle eye of James MacGuiness, Harrington’s personal steward. He was a slender man, rather shorter than his admiral, and obviously a first-generation prolong recipient, judging by the gray in his thinning sandy hair. He was also, according to the scant handful of facts Harahap had been able to glean, both a civilian and independently wealthy, at least by most people’s standards, which suggested he was rather more than a “steward.”

  She does gather interesting people around herself, doesn’t he? he reflected, watching as yet another steward poured wine.

  Indeed she did, and tonight’s guest list was a case in point. In fact—

  His thoughts broke off as Harrington touched her glass and looked down the table at the youthful ensign seated between Lieutenant Hearns and the man she’d introduced as Anton Zilwicki, although he looked very little like the imagery of Zilwicki Harahap had seen. Ensign Dimas looked back at her for a moment, then gathered himself visibly, picked up his glass, and stood.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said clearly, raising his glass, “the Queen!”

  Harrington and all her guests came to their feet, reaching for their own glasses. Harahap rose with the others, although he wasn’t sure how appropriate they might feel his participation was. Still, one had to be polite, and—

  “The Queen,” rumbled back to the youngster, and then, before they could resume their seats, Lieutenant Hearns raised her own glass.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “I give you Grayson, the Keys, the Sword, and the Tester.”

  “Grayson, the Keys, the Sword, and the Tester,” the others responded, and then everyone was sitting again and Harrington smiled at him.

  “And now that the serious business of eating is out of the way, Mr. Harahap, I suppose we might spend a little time on less important matters, like, oh, your take on the Alignment.”

  Harahap gazed at her for a moment, then raised one eyebrow and glanced in the direction of young Dimas. Not only was he younger even than Indy, he was the only person present—aside from the not-Zilwicki sitting to Harrington’s left—who didn’t already know one Dennis Harahap’s history. Or some of it, at least.

  “Ensign Dimas has been attached to Captain Reynolds’s department at my request, which means he has access to quite a lot of information someone his age might not,” Harrington told him. “He’s very good with computers and he’s already made a valuable contribution to our understanding of exactly what’s going on here. In fact, I think he may have the makings of a future ‘spook,’ so I think you may speak freely in front of him.”

  The ensign had turned an interesting shade of pink as the duchess extolled his virtues, Harahap noticed.

  “Of course, Your Grace,” he murmured. “just looking at the ensign I can see he has that steely glint that makes a true spy. I see it in my own mirror every morning.”

  Dimas twitched, then glared…and finally smiled as several of the other guests chuckled.

  “I’m astonished you actually recognize yourself ‘in the mirror every morning,’” Harrington said. “Considering all the other people you’ve been, I mean.”

  “It does get a bit difficult some mornings.” Harahap meant for it to come out lightly, humorously, and so it did…mostly.

  “I can imagine.” Harrington’s voice had shifted, as well. It would have been inaccurate to call her tone “gentle,” but that was moving in the right direction.

  Silence lingered for a moment, and then Harahap shrugged.

  “In answer to your question, Your Grace,” he said, “I’ve been giving that quite a lot of thought, especially since Clean Killer entered my life.”

  He reached out to run one hand caressingly down the treecat’s spine, and Clean Killer buzzed softly in pleasure. Harahap smiled at him, then looked back at Harrington.

  “I didn’t know anything about the Yawata Strike before I…made Commodore Zavala’s acquaintance, shall we say?” He shrugged “I’ve learned quite a lot about it since, though.” His hand stroked Clean Killer again, his eyes darkening. “Based upon which, I have to say it has all the hallmarks of an Alignment operation: ruthless, efficient, and damn the body count.”

  His voice had gone colder, harsher, and he looked across the table at Indiana.

  “What actually happened on Seraphim was bad, Indy,” he said, meeting the younger man’s eyes levelly. “What my employers wanted to happen would have been a hell of a lot worse. And what happened here jibes perfectly with the sort of minds that could come up with something like Operation Janus.”

  “And with the sort of minds that could implement Operation Janus?”

  The question rumbled up out of the massive chest of the mountain dwarf sitting beside Harrington. It was cold, challenging, and Harahap looked into the blue eyes which should have been brown.

  “Fair enough, Captain Zilwicki.” His own voice never wavered. “And I’m not going to beg for forgiveness, if that was your next question. I may regret the consequences of my actions, but they were ‘my actions,’ and everyone around this table knows it. I agreed to do the job, for whatever reasons, and I did it to the best of my ability. It’s easy to express regret, to pretend contrition. In fact, it’s something I’ve done dozens of times, and a good operative learns to do it with consummate sincerity. But I’m not going to do that this time.”

  “Why not?” Zilwicki challenged, his eyes intent.

  “Partly because if I were the one listening to me do it, I don’t think I’d believe me, and the last thing someone in my position should do is anything his audience might construe as, if you’ll pardon the expression, an attempt to blow smoke up their arses,” Harahap said candidly, and Zilwicki’s lips twitched. “But, having said that, there are other reasons I won’t. I won’t because that’s the easy, cheap way to dodge consequences.” His eyes moved back to Indy. “Because I’ve looked into too many mirrors, seen too many people, and I’ve decided I don’t like some of them very much. And I won’t because Clean Killer doesn’t seem to like hypocrisy any more than I do, and I’ve discovered his opinion matters. And I won’t because words are slippery things. I’m sure you know that as well as I do, Captain. That’s been my stock in trade for a long time, now. But I’ve decided that the only way I’m getting out of this alive—and maybe even starting to like my mirror a little more—is to…adjust my modus operandi.”

  “That’s an interesting way to phrase it,” Zilwicki said, and now his expression was simply thoughtful, his eyes measuring rather than challenging.

  “I’m an interesting fellow,” Harahap said with a lightness which fooled neither of them.

  “That’s one way to put it,” Indy said. All eyes moved to him, and he shrugged. “Part of me still wants to shoot you, you know, ‘Firebrand,’” he said. “It would be what I think the psychs call ‘cathartic.’ But you haven’t left me any simple ways out, including that one. Besides,” it was his turn to twitch a smile, “Kenzie would beat me up one side and down the other if I did.”

  “God bless her tender little heart.” Harahap’s tone was light, but his eyes had softened, and Indy shook his head with something between a grin and a grimace.

  “Actually, as I understand it,” Lieutenant Hearns said, and Harahap hid a smile of his own as he realized her left hand and Indy’s right were both out of sight under the table, “you didn’t exactly volunteer to help a cabal of lunatic genetic supermen take over the galaxy, Mr. Harahap.”

  “Kind of you to put it that way, Lieutenant,” he replied. “And I will admit there was a hefty element of that old cliché about ‘needs must when the devil drives.’ Or that other one about ‘any port in a storm.’” He shrugged. “When well-heeled assassins are out to kill you, you do have a tendency to catch the first shuttle out of town and think about destinations later. And I never heard anything about ‘genetic supermen’ until I fell into my present company. My employers on Mesa certainly never said a word about them!” He shook his head. “But, having said all of that, I didn’t tell them to shove the job offer where the sun doesn’t shine when they made it.”

  “If you had, you’d be dead,” Indiana said, and Harahap wondered if he’d heard the sharpness in his own quick riposte.

  “That would have been inconvenient,” the ex-Gendarme acknowledged after a moment. “And you’re probably right, Indy. But don’t be putting me up for any medals. I may not have liked all the things I did for Bardasano and Rufino, and I may not have thought I had a lot of choice, but I did do them, and I did my best to do them well. I suppose part of that was a sort of craftsman’s pride in his workmanship, and part of it was that it was pretty clear they’d arrange a nasty accident if I didn’t do them well. But never think I didn’t like the thought of all the credits they were contributing to my retirement fund.”

  “I haven’t met very many candidates for sainthood,” Zilwicki remarked to no one in particular.

  “Nor have I,” Harrington said with a curious serenity. Harahap looked at her, and she shrugged. “Mr. Harahap, I’ve hobnobbed with smugglers, spies, freedom fighters, and Ballroom terrorists. Most of us are some shade of gray.”

  “Indeed we are,” Zilwicki rumbled, then startled the others with a sudden, rolling chortle. They looked at him, and it was his turn to shrug. In his case, it was a rather more massive production than the duchess had managed.

  “I was just thinking about genetic supermen and changed people,” he said, blue eyes twinkling. “I know a batch of what you might call early-model genetic supermen—well, superwomen, in this case—who have developed a whole different attitude where the Alignment is concerned. If they can turn over a new leaf, anybody can!”