- Prologue

solved for string expansion and entropy resistance.

She still wasn't sure she wanted to risk her life on her computations, but just to be busy without having Chelly's quiet grief hanging over her head was good, not to mention being free of Asu's sulky nattering about her confiscated Checksec. Asu's paranoia hadn't been helped by Chelly keeping his secret until the second cup of tea—

'What kind of a senior are you if you don't keep us informed? Especially when one of our own . . . well, no, just because he'd slept in our pod doesn't make him ours—this Hap Harney—but Theo's ours and you didn't even tell me and she sleeps right over my head?'

'Chain of command,' he'd said quietly. 'You always have to remember chain of command, Asu. Suppose I'd told you everything and then they'd come for your Checksec instead of the other way around? You might have been in big trouble. And yeah, I think it's good that you didn't know Hap Harney's name until just now: again, think what it would look like if I'd have said something earlier and then you'd gone talking to those youngsters you've been coaching in bowli ball? The whole of Erkes could be under a cloud then. Now the news is out.'

Asu'd fumed and fretted; it had taken Theo explaining her view of the whole thing. 'I think he was trying to lose them,' she'd said, from her new, in-depth understanding of the wind shear problems right there. 'I think he knew the mountain from when he was at the academy and was figuring he could break away, gain time—for whatever he was trying to do.'

She hadn't explained that one of the planes had strafed the falling pieces, nor that she'd noticed that none of the military guys who'd landed with the copter had their sidearms on peace-bond. She'd come out from between her boulders when they landed, identified herself, and then had to listen . . .

'She's got guts and the goods, bringing that thing down in here with no auxiliary,' one had said, and then another, 'Right convenient it could have been, too, for Harney, heh? Drop himself off here, then glide off with a cutie while we're looking for his body?'

'You run the gonsarned thermal, then. There's nothing here but her and a cold ship. All pure.'

Volunteer nothing to an official, she'd remembered Father saying then, as he had several times when listening to her retelling of her time on Melchiza. When you're in their power, bureaucrats can be more dangerous than a loaded gun. A gun hits the target you aim at. Bureaucrats are another story.

She'd kept quiet, then, and was startled when the copter pilot asked if she'd like a turn at the controls once they'd left Slipper Fourteen and the mountains well behind. She'd been watching—what else was there for her to do?—and taking in the whole process, but . . .

'No, sir. I mean, yes sir—I would. But I don't have any power hours at all and probably I shouldn't.'

'Hah, that's great! No hours at all and they made you land that feather up there? Somebody's in need of pilot refresh if you ask me!'

There were chuckles from a couple of the others in the machine, and the pilot himself flashed a quick top landing, making sure she'd caught it before going into a monologue on the good and bad points of hovering vehicles . . .

But that would have been too much to tell Asu, and they'd told Theo not to talk about the questions they asked: had she known Hap Harney, had she been told to fly to the mountain, why had she selected that spot, why had she hidden in the rocks—which of course she hadn't, really. They'd gone on and on and on about how long had she been on-world and did she have any opinions on the coming elections and would she call someone who died stupidly a hero just because he'd died and . . . they were amused, somewhat, that the only drink she accepted was from the water fountain.

So she'd hoped Asu would give over on that topic and Chelly—well, he'd helped, actually. He'd had some idea of what she'd been through—apparently he'd had his time with the authorities when the security team came through.

'Asu, I didn't give them your Checksec, they turned it off the moment they saw it and said it was a potential violation of the privacy regs.'

'Violation? What's wrong with active protection? Everyone knows you have to take care of yourself! What about my privacy?'

That, it turned out, had been the rub.

Chelly's voice was low and firm while he was talking about it, and he lost some of the blotchiness that looked like it might have come from tears.

'Your Checksec's a pro model, Asu. It not only blocks within a perimeter, but it probes any signals it finds and records them. The thing is, it kept trying to connect to the network so it could report somewhere.'

Asu's face and neck darkened; her mouth opened as if she were going to say something, but it took several jaw movements and some hand motions as well before she could articulate anything more understandable than, 'Oh no. . . .'

Finally: 'I didn't even think! That's the Checksec Jivan gave me—she's head of Security for Diamon. You don't think it was trying to report, do you?'

Chelly's glance may have struck the ceiling before Theo's, but as they looked down at Asu they both shrugged.

Chelly's shrug had turned into a slow hand to the side of his face.

'Could have been calling in, what do I know? I do know that they came in here and swept the place three times, then ran off and did the rest of Erkes. Harney's time here—I guess they had to check everything, since he'd been senior when I got here.'

'Same room as us? Right here? In our beds?' Asu's eyes widened.

Chelly hand-talked, Yes, right, right, yes.

'I'll need to get some smutch in then. Bad luck to sleep in a dead man's bed, you know . . .'

It was then that the exhaustion really hit Theo, and she'd wished, very much that she'd had a certain Scout pilot to . . . talk to. Or something. Even Bek. He wouldn't have understood the piloting problems, but he would have