Then she saw the Marine, a flashback from one of their times together, sitting, books open, and some sort of sugary confections in their hands. They were smiling, laughing, as he taught her to read. As he helped her become something more than a Gut street rat.

  Her face hardened, and her eyes narrowed as she looked down at the helpless man.

  “No,” she said softly, grimly. “No way you live.”

  Her finger tightened on the trigger, and the gun fired. The bullet took the man in the side of the head, ripping through and exploding out the other side in a torrent of blood and brain.

  Then, she turned, even as she heard guards moving into the next room. She looked around, frantically searching for an escape, and she threw herself at the large picture window behind the desk, bracing for the cuts and pain she knew would come.

  Chapter Six

  “Spacers District”

  Vulcan City

  Planet Parsephon, Obliesk II

  Year 298 AC

  Andi leaned back against the cold stone wall. She was miserable, shivering, her entire body aching. The wound on her shoulder throbbed, and despite her best efforts to clean it out, it was badly infected. She’d done all she could, but beyond squeezing out an astonishing amount of pus every morning and engaging in yet another, extremely painful, effort at cutting out the infected bits, there wasn’t much she could do. Antibiotics and antiseptic creams were as out of her reach as the presidential suite on a five star liner to Megara.

  Her legs hurt, and her back, her arms. Her hands were still cut up from the barbed wire fence she’d climbed in her ongoing effort to escape pursuit. She was bruised and battered, and for all her natural stubbornness and determination, she was starting to lose hope. The depression from the loss of her only friend weighed her down, even as the grim reality of her situation slammed into her.

  She’d done what she’d sworn to do, avenged the Marine, and that provided some solace. Dying for something seemed a damned sight better than dying for nothing.

  Yet, as driven as she was to gain vengeance, she found it unsatisfying. She’d had to do it—she just couldn’t have lived with herself if she’d let the killers live—but now she was just worse off than she’d been, and the only person on the entire Godforsaken planet she cared about was still dead.

  Is he still lying where I left him?

  She didn’t know. In the Gut, it was possible, though more than likely, someone had at least hauled him out into the street and tossed him aside. Their spot, in the very back of the old warehouse, was too prime to stay long unclaimed.

  Such thoughts upset her, though her rational mind didn’t place much stock in the value of her friend’s dead flesh, and she couldn’t put it out of her mind. She’d even thought about going back herself, but that just wasn’t in her. She couldn’t bring herself to do it, just as she’d never gone back down the street where her mother had died. Andi had become cold, grim, unmerciful to her enemies and hardened to the images of suffering around her, but she had a weak spot for the very few people in her life she’d actually cared about.

  Four people had died to atone for their involvement in the Marine’s death, plus another three who’d carried no guilt save working as security guards and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She regretted that she’d had to kill them, but she didn’t dwell much on it. She’d escaped by the slimmest of margins as it was. If she’d delayed anywhere, hesitated to kill when she’d had to, she would already be captured. Or more likely, dead.

  Kill or be killed. It was a fundamental choice one had to make, at least those born into circumstances like hers.

  She wondered what would be worse, death or capture. She faced almost certain execution at the hands of Parsephon’s authorities, there was little doubt about that. Murder was tolerated sometimes, in places like the Gut, for example, where no one expended too much effort trying to track down the killers of a derelict or addict long written off.

  But killing the Niles O’Bannon was a capital offense on Parsephon, without question.

  She wondered if a jury of O’Bannon factory workers would convict her. She dared to imagine perhaps they wouldn’t, but then she realized the courage voting for acquittal would require. The O’Bannons could destroy the life of a normal Parsephonian worker in an instant, and she had no doubt, jurors who let Niles O’Bannon’s killer go would rue that decision.

  Not that it mattered. Confederation law entitled her to a jury trial, but she knew she’d never get one, and she had no doubt a panel of Parsephon’s judges would return a guilty verdict, along with the maximum sentence, as quickly as they could get away with. Most of the judges were owned more or less, by the O’Bannons and by the rival industrial dynasties. The magnates didn’t always get along—and she suspected more than a few had broken out cherished old vintages for toasts when they’d heard the news that Niles O’Bannon was dead—but as a group, on one front they agreed without exception, inseparable and totally united.

  Rabble from the streets who dared to inflict violence on one of their number could never be tolerated.

  The magnates owned the government and the judges, but the whole affair being in the public eye assured, at least, that execution by the judicial authorities would be quick and relatively painless.

  She expected far, far worse if the O’Bannon security forces or their underworld allies found her first.

  She’d been on the run for days. Hiding during the daylight, sneaking around at night. She had money, a little at least, but she didn’t dare go anywhere she could spend it. She’d gotten into the O’Bannon compound, and back out again. That had been miracle enough, but she hadn’t been able to prevent the security system from getting hundreds of images of her. She’d tried her best to disguised herself, but the hood covering her head had fallen off during the fighting.

  Her picture was everywhere, on the nets, on posters hanging on the streets. It was a cliché, but one based in fact…there was no place to run to, no place to hide.

  Almost no place.

  She’d worked her way down to the Spacer’s District, adjacent to the spaceport. Some lingering thought had driven her, some clinging recollection of her original plan, of the ship the Marine had told her to find, the captain who would help her.

  That was then…

  The Marine hadn’t imagined she’d be on the run, though, fleeing from every cop, thug, even bounty hunter, on Parsephon. No freighter captain would help her now. None could. Even if he was willing to get involved.

  There was only one way out. Besides surrender or death. She had to get them all off her tail, and the only way to do that was to convince them she was dead.

  But how? She could get a body, she was sure enough of that. Sadly, there was no shortage of deaths in places like the Gut. Disease, violence, overdoses…there were a hundred contributors to the grim death toll every day. It would be harder, certainly, to find the corpse of a girl close to her age, though in the Gut and the other slums of Vulcan City, depressingly, it wouldn’t be that much harder.

  She’d left DNA samples behind at the scene of her crime, there was no question about that. The blood from her shoulder wound, if nothing else, and probably a lot more. But there was one advantage to being born on the streets in the Gut and living her whole life there. She wasn’t in any of the planet’s extensive databases on its people. That thought had always pleased her somehow, supported her sense of herself as something other than a mindless sheep doing as she was told. This was the first time it had produced a tangible advantage, though.

  She had worked her way through her plan, pushing back her own thoughts when they cast doubt, or reminded her how many things had to go just right for it all to succeed. None of that mattered. She had no other choice, no other way out.

  Either she convinced them all she was dead.

  Or she waited until they came and found her. She was good, but she knew she couldn’t stay ahead of the manhunt forever. There were too many resources deployed, too many people after her, too many rewards offered, sums of money that seemed like a king’s ransom to the destitute and desperate people who inhabited the areas where she was hiding.

  She was out of time, almost. Someone would see her, turn her in. She had to execute her plan as soon as possible, three days, four at most.

  And that meant she had work to do.

  * * *

  Andi stood on the dank and quiet street. It was late, or more accurately, early, and the small side street was empty, save for her and the vehicle she had stolen and driven there. She’d been working feverishly, struggling to pull off the fraud she’d devised, the one intended to convince anyone interested in her that she was dead.

  She’d been going at it nonstop for hours, but now she needed a rest, just a few minutes. That was all she could spare, if she could even spare that.

  She focused on her breathing, inhaling deeply and exhaling, in a very controlled manner. She was trying to calm herself, at least to the extent that was even possible, considering what she was about to do. She managed some limited success. At least her heart wasn’t pounding like a drum in her ears at the moment.

  She’d even managed to relax her mind for an instant, and her thoughts drifted from intense analysis of her plan to more philosophical subjects.

  The Confederation Charter demanded that member worlds respect certain rights and privileges of its citizens. The Marine had told her that many times, espousing on his continued loyalties and insisting the Confederation was a beacon of freedom, despite the way it had treated him. She’d been skeptical, but she’d always listened, and wondered.

  Now, she knew for sure. Unlike almost everything else he’d told her or taught her, that was pure bullshit. At least it was on Parsephon.

  She’d killed Niles O’Bannon. To her, it had been simple, a deep need to avenge her friend. She hadn’t been trying to make a political statement, nor strike a blow for the workers in the O’Bannon factories. And she certainly hadn’t intended to bring every facet of law enforcement on the planet down on her head. But that’s exactly what she’d done.

  She had murdered O’Bannon. She realized that. It wasn’t the prospect of being held accountable for vigilantism that angered her, nor a system which would not allow one to avenge a friend or loved one. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that in a clinical sense, but she understood the advantages of retaining order. It was the difference in responses that infuriated her. People were killed in the Gut every day, and no one cared. Yet, the death of a magnate triggered a planetwide manhunt.

  Why were two killings treated so differently? Especially when O’Bannon almost certainly had it coming more than some vagrant in the Gut, murdered for his coat.

  She supposed there could be other worlds out there, ones that more closely followed the expressed ideals of the Confederation, but she was far from convinced. It seemed, at least, if a planet produced enough valuable exports, enough hulls for the navy, enough tax revenue for Megara, such lofty sentiments could be ignored easily enough.

  Kill a Marine veteran, a decent man living in squalor and poverty, and no one cared. Kill a corrupt magnate, a power broker in local politics, and someone deeply involved in the planet’s organized crime rackets to boot? Throw up barricades and send every cop and soldier available out into the street to hunt the villain down.

  Well, not this villain. They’ll chase me down, hunt me endlessly…but not if they think I’m dead.

  She glanced down at the body lying on the ground next to her. The woman had been a bit older than she was, at least that was her best guess—her murderers had worked her over pretty savagely, not leaving much in the way of identifiable features. Still, the only other candidate she’d found was considerably younger, likely no more than twelve or thirteen. Andi had been that age on the streets, alone, and perhaps it was as much desire not to use the unfortunate young girl’s body as it was anything else, but she’d opted for the older woman.

  She was far from knowledgeable at just what forensic abilities the police could employ, but she’d done everything possible to ensure the body would be completely incinerated, just enough left to make it clear there had been a victim of the crash she was devising. She wasn’t sure that would be enough to foil the DNA testing, but it was the best she could do.

  She reached down to her side, her hand clasping on the grip of the blade she’d carried for more than five years, pulling it free and looking down at it. She’d found it, restored it, carried it with her everywhere, and used it to deadly effect. It had saved her life, and it was precious to her, as much as any inanimate object she possessed.

  Now she had to leave it behind. She’d packed the stolen vehicle with every flammable substance she’d been able to steal, done all she could to ensure the remains of the body could pass for her. But that was a double-edged sword. The authorities had to believe it had been her in the car, without being able to prove it. She’d thought for days about how to achieve that result, and then she remembered the one thing that would have been captured on the surveillance vids, the only thing she’d had with her that could survive the blaze that would consume the body.

  The grip would be burnt to cinders, of course, everything but the blade. But that would survive, and when the authorities investigated, when they watched the surveillance videos, they would match it to the one she’d carried then.

  Her knife was going to save her one more time.

  One last time.

  She sighed softly, and she set the blade down on the top of the vehicle, bending over and grabbing the body, shoving her hands under the dead woman’s arms. The corpse was stiff, and she had a difficult time moving it, forcing it into the driver’s station of the small vehicle. The car was nothing special, just the kind of thing she might have tried to steal if she was on the run—which, of course, she was. She had it rigged perfectly, at least she hoped she did. The automated driving system would take the car out into the Fairmont, and then, if she’d changed the wiring correctly, it would accelerate to full speed and disengage.

  Then the small charges would go off.

  She’d gone well beyond her knowledge in rigging the whole thing, and she figured there was maybe a fifty-fifty chance it would work.

  But one chance in two looked damned good just then, considering her circumstances.

  If she pulled it off, if the vehicle crashed and ignited, if the inferno was hot enough to damage the corpse beyond the reach of DNA identification—and a hundred other ‘ifs’—she just might convince her hunters she was dead.

  Then, maybe, after a while, she would be able to find a way off Parsephon.

  And out into a universe just waiting for Andi Lafarge to blaze her trail, and win her fortune.

  Chapter Seven

  “Spacers District”

  Vulcan City

  Planet Parsephon, Obliesk II

  Year 298 AC

  “So, Chuck told you to come see me?” The freighter captain was an almost perfect cliché, weathered, rough, with a clear and attentive stare, though looking a bit worn out by life. He held the ID tags she’d handed him, the ones the Marine had given her. They were old and battered, and they bore no name, only a number. But the captain had recognized them immediately.

  Andi just looked back for a few seconds before she responded. She’d never had a name to call her friend, no labels at all, save for ‘the Marine.’ It seemed strange to suddenly assign a name to the face she remembered so well. Chuck…his name was Chuck…

  “Yes. He and I were friends. He told me to leave Parsephon…after he was gone.” She’d already told the captain the Marine was dead. He hadn’t seemed surprised, and she got the impression that her mentor’s friend had been aware of the drug habit that had led, indirectly at least, to his death.

  “Well, that’s just good sense. I make this run three times a year, but I don’t stay here any longer than I have to.” He paused. “This place is a disgrace. Worst shithole in the Confederation. If Parsephon didn’t pump so much tax revenue back to Megara, somebody would do something about what goes on here. But nobody wants to knock over the honeypot. And, this planet breeds a particularly skilled form of corrupt and immoral politician.”

  Andi lacked any knowledge of the rest of the Confederation, but she didn’t have any trouble believing Parsephon was near the bottom of the barrel, or dead center in it. No quarrel, either, none at all, with the designation, ‘shithole.’

  She turned her head instinctively, looking quickly to the left and then the right. It was the third or fourth time she’d done it, despite her attempts to look natural and relaxed. Her ploy to fake her death seemed to have worked, at least for a while, but she was far from sure deeper investigation would fail to reveal that the body that had been found—and touted on multiple media outlets as that of Niles O’Bannon’s killer—was not, in fact, that of the woman who’d invaded the family’s compound and murdered the industrialist.

  “So, tell me—what did you say your name was, Andi?—what kind of trouble are you in?”

  She felt a rush of anger at herself. She’d laid low, despite the apparent respite from pursuit, coming out only to check on the arrival schedule for Belstar. It had been a few weeks, and she’d been on edge every passing hour, jumping at every sound, real or imagined. If you screwed this up because you couldn’t stay calm for a few minutes…

  “Trouble?” She was annoyed with herself even as the word came out of her mouth. Couldn’t you even try to sound convincing?

  The captain sighed softly. “Andi, Chuck was a good friend, and I definitely owe him, and I know damned well he wouldn’t have given these…” He held up the ID tags. “…to anyone who wasn’t close to him. So, I believe he told you to find me, and I’m willing to help. But you’ve got to be straight with me, girl, or it’s no dice. Do we understand each other?”

  She nodded slowly, still trying to decide what to do. She’d gone in thinking of the captain as a means to an end, a way to get off of Parsephon. But she found herself liking the man, feeling as though she could trust him.