But the days were long, frequently hot, and consistently tedious. So when the bell rang, Alamy was happy to put a half-stitched sandal aside and carry the basket of finished footwear to the front desk, where the owner’s sharp-eyed wife inspected each pair of sandals prior to paying for them. And, because Alamy’s work was consistently good, all ten pairs of sandals were approved. The accomplishment earned the teenager an approving smile plus one Imperial, which Alamy hurried to tuck away.

  Then, when she had exited the building, it was time to make her way home, where all of the usual chores were waiting. At least half of them had originally been her stepmother’s responsibility but had gradually been delegated to Alamy after her father’s death. That was part of a larger pattern, because the moment Domna Alamy had legal ownership of her dead husband’s possessions, she’d been quick to sell his tools and bring in a male “boarder” who never paid rent.

  The arrangement was far from fair, Alamy knew that; but she had plans to leave on her eighteenth birthday, when she would become an adult and a Citizen of the Empire. Then, with the money earned as a sandal maker, it was Alamy’s hope to buy an apprenticeship as part of a plan to become a dressmaker.

  Such were Alamy’s dreams as she turned off Market Street onto a narrow passageway that led into the metalsmith’s quarter, where the clatter of hammers, the screech of power wrenches, and the rattle of rivet guns combined to create a familiar din. The Alamy home was five blocks back. It consisted of a ground-level shop, presently being leased by a coppersmith, second-floor living quarters, and a rooftop garden that had once been Roj Alamy’s pride and joy, but was presently turning brown as a result of Domna’s systematic neglect.

  Still, the whitewashed structure was home, and Alamy was happy to see it as she waved to the coppersmith and ran up a long flight of stairs to the second-floor entrance. It was cooler inside, thanks to the solar-powered ceiling fan that Roj Alamy had cobbled together for the living room, and that was where Domna and her guest were seated.

  Domna had been pretty once, but that was many years in the past. Now her hair was dyed an unlikely shade of brown, dark lines were drawn in where her overplucked eyebrows had once been, and an excessive amount of red lipstick had been applied to her mouth in a vain attempt to make her lips appear fuller. But Domna could be charming when she chose to be—and was quick to introduce her visitor. “This is Citizen Mortha, CeCe. He’s been looking forward to meeting you! But, before we get into that, how many sandals did you make today?”

  “Ten,” Alamy answered proudly, and produced the Imperial to prove it.

  “You see?” Domna said, as her plump fingers reached out to pluck the coin from the girl’s hand. “It’s just as I told you. . . . CeCe’s a hard worker—and that should be worth something.”

  “It is,” Mortha allowed indulgently. “It certainly is. But, if you don’t mind my saying so, I suspect she’ll spend quite a bit of time lying down on the job!”

  It was a wonderful joke, or that’s what Domna thought anyway, and she laughed uproariously as Alamy felt liquid lead trickle into the pit of her stomach. Mortha had shoulder-length white hair, a long, heavily lined face, and a sturdy body that was clothed in what the girl knew to be expensive fabric. Mortha’s calves were visible, however, as were his scrupulously clean feet, both of which were shod in the same type of sandals Alamy had been manufacturing earlier that day. “What do you mean?” the girl inquired anxiously, as she looked from face to face.

  Domna had been laughing so hard mascara-blackened tears had carved twin pathways down along her heavily rouged cheeks. She dabbed at the tears with a handkerchief before answering. “Citizen Mortha and I have finalized an agreement,” the older woman replied importantly. “He’s going to put you up for sale the day after tomorrow. And, if all goes well, I should receive around a thousand Imperials. Minus Citizen Mortha’s commission, of course, but a significant sum nevertheless. And a good deal better than one Imperial a day!”

  “But you can’t sell me!” Alamy objected desperately. “My father was free, and I’ll be free on my eighteenth birthday!”

  “Which is still more than a month away,” Domna reminded her sternly. “And until that time, you are my property. . . . To do with as I see fit. And it’s my intention to sell you! So skip the tears, spare me the drama you’re so fond of, and concentrate on pleasing your new owner. Who knows? Maybe you’ll enjoy your new line of work!”

  That produced another gale of laughter, which Alamy saw as her opportunity to escape, so she ran for the door. Domna couldn’t sell something she didn’t have, so if the girl could hide in The Warrens until her birthday rolled around, she could claim Imperial citizenship thereafter! Would the local magistrate support that claim? Or side with her stepmother? Alamy didn’t know, but figured that some chance was better than none, as she ran down the front steps toward the street.

  But Citizen Mortha had anticipated such a possibility, and two burly slave handlers were waiting to grab Alamy and secure her hands behind her. Then, once an iron collar had been secured around Alamy’s neck, a single pull on the six-foot-long chain was sufficient to jerk her off her feet. A demonstration all slaves were subjected to as a way to communicate how helpless they were.

  So there was nothing Alamy could do but lie there and sob, until Citizen Mortha emerged from the house five minutes later. Then, with his newest consignment in tow, the trader led Alamy through the neighborhood she’d grown up in toward Market Street and the slave pens located north of the slaughterhouse.

  Alamy looked back over her shoulder at one point, in hopes that Domna might change her mind, but the older woman was nowhere to be seen. The coppersmith was visible though—and he was the only person to wave.

  FIVE

  The Plain of Pain, on the planet Dantha

  THE SKIMMER HAD A CRACKED WINDSHIELD, HANDLEBARS rather than a steering wheel, and was capable of carrying two people with one seated in front of the other. Hot desert air pressed against Cato’s face as the vehicle’s cranky engine propelled it across the desert toward Station 3. Like the rest of the vehicles on Dantha, the EX-9 had been manufactured off-planet and shipped in. That made the beat-up skimmer valuable, even after fifteen years of hard service, which was why Cato had been forced to spend 556 Imperials on it. It wasn’t the way Cato had wanted to spend a large chunk of his remaining cash, but that was the way he’d had to spend it, since the planetary government was unwilling to provide him with any support.

  Was the lack of cooperation on the part of Nalomy’s government the result of the hostility that many rim worlders felt toward the Xeno Corps? Or did Centurion Pasayo and the people around him know more about the massacre than they cared to admit? There wasn’t any evidence of governmental involvement yet, but Cato was determined to remain alert to that possibility, as a dark smudge appeared on the shimmery horizon.

  Of course there had been other smudges over the last hour, all of which eventually morphed into rock formations, but thanks to the amount of distance Cato had traveled, he knew this one could be Station 3. The prospect opened up a chasm at the pit of his stomach because of what awaited him there. Especially after days in the hot desert sun.

  Fifteen minutes later it became clear that Cato’s journey was nearly over as the last smudge resolved itself into the now-familiar outlines of Station 3 and the defensive wall that surrounded it. A wall which, though not entirely intact, should have been sufficient to keep attackers out. Yet it hadn’t been. Why?

  With that question foremost in his mind, Cato reduced power and put the skimmer into a wide turn, so he could examine the surrounding area for telltale tracks. But as Cato circled the station, no footprints or vehicle tracks were visible. That wasn’t too surprising, however, given both the scouring action of the wind and the amount of time that had elapsed since the murders.

  Confident that he hadn’t missed anything, and reluctant to ride the skimmer into the middle of a murder scene, Cato brought the vehicle to a stop. The machine wallowed from side to side as it settled onto the sand, and the hot metal began to make pinging noises as it cooled. Cato was wearing his sidearm in a cross-draw holster, but because the empath could “feel” a second presence in the area, it seemed prudent to carry a weapon with more clout. So Cato removed the secondhand combat-style pump gun from its scabbard and carried the weapon one-handed as he made his way across the sand-drifted hardpan toward the fortresslike structure beyond. A hot breeze slid in from the west and brought the formerly limp Xeno Corps flag back to momentary life as two dozen stink birds exploded up out of the enclosure and circled above.

  The freshly repaired gate was wide open, but that didn’t mean much, since it had probably been left that way by the prospectors who called the murders in. As Cato passed through the opening, he was greeted by the throat-clogging stench of rotting flesh. He had encountered the odor in the past, but never as strong, and never in connection with people he had known.

  The first body Cato came across was that of Officer Kath Larsy. She was lying just outside the main entrance to the building, and it didn’t take a medical degree to figure out that she’d been killed by multiple energy bolts to the chest. Larsy’s once-shapely body was swollen by internal gases, and because her face had been made unrecognizable by scavengers, Cato would have been unable to positively identify the body had it not been for the name tag sewn to her uniform.

  The way Larsy looked, combined with the way she smelled, brought Cato’s breakfast up. He turned, walked a few feet away, and threw up. Then, having rinsed his mouth with water from his canteen, he made a conscious effort to enter the neutral-observer mode, and went back to work.

  After removing the camcorder from a cargo pocket, and clipping a wireless mike to his body armor, Cato began to narrate the video as he shot it. “Judging from the stains visible around Officer Larsy’s corpse, it looks as though the body is where it was at the moment of death, lying faceup in front of the main entrance to the building. That, plus the entry wounds on the front of her body, suggest that the fatal blaster bolts originated from inside Station 3. If true, it would indicate that the prisoner got loose somehow, or that a person or persons unknown were allowed to enter the building. A third, but less likely scenario, would be some sort of disagreement that resulted in a firefight between members of the team.”

  Having examined Larsy’s body, Cato pushed the door open, and was nearly overwhelmed by the stench that awaited him within. It was so bad that he was forced to back away and wait for the smell to dissipate before trying again.

  Based on the strength of the input from his sixth sense, Cato knew that while the “other” presence was still in the area, he, she, or it was a long ways off. So rather than take the shotgun with him, he left the weapon propped just inside the door as he reentered the building.

  Once inside, the first thing Cato noticed was the blaster burns on the inside surface of the front door. He brought the camcorder up to document the scorch marks while resuming the narration. “The burns visible on the inside surface of the door seem to support the thesis that the person or persons who shot Officer Larsy were already inside the building when they opened fire,” Cato said grimly.

  Then, having noticed the bloodstains near his feet, Cato tilted the camera down. “Here, just inside the front door, is what appears to be a large quantity of dried blood. And, given the absence of a body or bodies at this particular location, there is a distinct possibility that one or more of the intruders were wounded or killed and removed from the crime scene subsequent to a firefight. That theory will be confirmed,” Cato continued, “if I can account for the rest of the team members.”

  The next thing that caught Cato’s attention was the glaring absence of both Fiss Verafti and his containment. “The prisoner’s cage was located right here,” Cato commented grimly, as the camcorder’s light panned a section of empty floor. “And it’s missing, which would seem to suggest that rather than escaping on his own, Verafti was freed. Or if not freed, then removed to another location, cell and all! If that is true, it raises the question of why, given how dangerous the prisoner is, not to mention how since the cage is large and heavy.”

  But Cato knew that, fascinating as such questions might be, they would have to wait while he examined the rest of the crime scene. The nauseating task required him to cut fluid-soaked sleeping bags open in order to identify the bloated bodies cocooned within, then poke and prod at three rotting corpses to determine which ones were which.

  Finally, having positively identified Tonver, Batia, and Honis, Cato allowed himself to go back outside, both to get some fresh air—and to find more bodies. For, assuming his preliminary identifications were correct, both Sivio and Moshath were missing.

  It was midafternoon by that time, the sky was clear, and Cato could feel the heat that came off the stone stairs through the soles of his boots as he climbed onto the wall and paused to look around. It was quiet, almost eerily so, with nothing more than an occasional rumble of wind to break the near-perfect silence. But even though Cato couldn’t hear anything, he could “feel” the same presence that had been evident earlier in the day, and knew he was under surveillance.

  So Cato opened a pouch, removed a small but powerful pair of binos, and began a painstaking sweep of the horizon. At first there was nothing to see other than the shimmer of a distant mirage, but the moment Cato tilted the glasses upward, he spotted what looked like a black cross circling high above. Except that the object wasn’t a cross but a living being, and far too large to be a bird.

  Having seen them on other planets, Cato was fairly sure that the airborne creature was a Lir. This was sufficient to remind Cato of what Pasayo had volunteered back in Solace, that the massacre might have been carried out by Lir bandits. The theory made quite a bit of sense since the team had been largely unprepared for an attack from above.

  But what about Verafti and his cage? Both were far too heavy for the Lir to fly away with, unless they had some sort of transport, and where would a group of bandits obtain something like that? And who would put them up to such a thing since it was hard to imagine how the Lir would profit from such an abduction?

  Still, the presence of a Lir scout seemed to suggest that the mountain dwellers had some sort of interest in Station 3, otherwise, why keep it under observation? So Cato put the binos away and continued along the walkway until he came to what he immediately recognized as Sivio’s red caf mug. It was sitting on top of the outside wall.

  The sight of the common everyday object brought a lump to Cato’s throat, and he wasn’t surprised to see the body lying about ten feet beyond, right next to a service-issue flashlight. Unlike the corpses Cato had inspected earlier, Sivio’s body had been subjected to direct sunlight and nearly nonstop feeding by stink birds for the better part of four days. As a result, very little remained except for an eye-less skull to which a few tufts of hair still adhered—and a skeleton that was largely lost inside a puddle of beak-ripped clothes. But the mug, plus the silver comets on Sivio’s body armor, left little doubt as to who the dead man was.

  Farther on, Cato found the remains of Moshath’s body as well as his severed head. It had been picked clean by the birds and seemed to grin at Cato from where it lay on the walkway. “It appears that Moshath was on sentry duty,” Cato said for the camcorder’s benefit, “when he was taken by surprise. Quite possibly from above.

  “Judging from the presence of Sivio’s caf mug,” Cato added, “it’s my guess that he was out making the rounds when the intruders killed him as well. All of the team’s weapons are missing, so there’s no way to know if Sivio and Moshath were able to fight back, but it seems unlikely since the sound of gunshots would have brought the rest of the team out of the main building on the double.” It was a sad commentary, and one that Cato was happy to conclude, as he made his way down off the wall.

  The sun had started to set by then, and the air was beginning to cool, so Cato went out to bring the skimmer into the compound. With that accomplished, it was time to light a fuel tab and cook a simple meal as stars began to appear in the lavender sky. Cato couldn’t see the Lir spy anymore, but he could “feel” an alien presence, although the emanations had a different quality by then. As if another Lir had arrived to relieve the bandit spotted earlier that day. Not that it made much difference since Cato had a lot of work to do and lacked the means to blow the winged sentient out of the sky. Something he would have enjoyed had it been possible.

  Cato was tired by that time, very tired, but couldn’t bear the thought of leaving his friends unburied during another long, hot day. So that, plus the knowledge that it would be easier to dig graves at night, combined to send him out to the rise where he planned to bury his teammates. It was the beginning of a long, often frustrating, night. Because it wasn’t long before Cato discovered that while the surrounding hardpan was impossibly resistant to his shovel, the occasional pockets of windblown sand were too loose, thereby causing every hole he dug to cave in.

  Finally, in a fit of what amounted to an act of desperation, Cato returned to Station 3 and went looking for lumber. Then, when he had stacked a quantity of it near the front gate, it was time to carry the boards out to the lee side of the small hillock.

  Once the necessary materials were on-site, the blob of light produced by Cato’s headlamp wandered left and right as he went about the lonely task of constructing an enclosure large enough to contain nearly a dozen bodies laid side by side. Though time-consuming, that effort went well, so that by the time a long horizontal smear of pink light lit the eastern horizon, Cato was towing the last body out to the burial site on what had been Station 3’s front door. Silence closed around the Xeno cop as he shut the engine down, removed Sivio’s remains from the makeshift sled, and gently placed them to the left of the other team members in the location where the Centurion would normally stand had he and the other team members been in formation.