She was enhanced, then. I’d heard that the practice of increasing muscular strength with super-tendon connections and other augmentations was growing more popular, but this was the first time I’d seen anyone I could reliably judge as having an enhanced body. Clearly, she didn’t mind people knowing what she had done to herself.
I found it hard to look away from her, but then I saw Juliyana behind her and my attention shifted.
Juliyana did not wear dull spacer gear. I couldn’t say for sure what she was wearing, only that it was layered and detailed, it included fur trim and flourishes of embroidery and she looked…regal. Her hair was golden white and gleaming, and piled upon the back of her head and secured there with a glittering clip. She even wore makeup.
A stranger looking at the people walking into the room would have no trouble picking out who the leader was. Juliyana was no taller than the woman in front of her, but she looked half-a-head higher.
A shriver was strapped to her hip, a knife was tucked into her boot. They were the only weapons I could see, but I knew there would be more hidden about her outfit. Perhaps that was why it was so elaborate—it would distract the observer, so they would fail to notice what was hidden beneath the layers.
Behind Juliyana came two men, both in spacer gear and both heavily armed. The dark haired one had scars on his face, still red and healing. The grey haired one was overdue for regeneration therapy, but his gaze was alert enough as he sized up the room.
Behind the four armed people, Jai and Sauli and the others from the Omia filed into the room. They looked just as puzzled by the entourage before them.
Juliyana glanced around the room herself. When she saw Lyth, she smiled and went to him and kissed his cheek.
Dalton caught my gaze and lifted his brow. I knew how he felt.
Lyth didn’t quite reach for Juliyana, although I saw his hands shift and come back to his sides. He was making himself stay still.
Juliyana stepped back, still smiling. “I didn’t know you were on board, too.”
“I didn’t know you were even in this quadrant,” Lyth said. “What are you doing out here, Juliyana?” As he spoke, his gaze shifted to the woman standing just behind Juliyana, her arms on her hips.
The stance wasn’t a casual one, I decided. It was the ready position for her. She fought freehand. No weapons. She could leap in any direction, standing this way.
So why did she feel she needed to maintain a ready posture, in this room?
She sized up the room as I watched, then her gaze swung back to Lyth and her fists tightened.
Lyth was the key. Hmmm.
Juliyana glanced at me. “Danny.” She turned a little. “Dalton.” Quickly, she moved around the room. When she reached Yoan, she frowned.
“Yoan Saillins,” he said, his tone stiff.
“Sauli’s son, yes.” Juliyana gave him a great smile, turned around the room once more and said to me, “The gang’s all here. Only, why?”
“You go first,” I said. “Make it good, please.”
She frowned. “I know we startled you, but there is no need to be angry. We’re only doing our job.”
“Your job?” Lyth’s voice was strained.
Juliyana rolled her eyes. “And that tone, there, is why I didn’t tell you about my work, Lyth. Yes, this is my job. We took a contract, a very high paying contract, to find a missing ship. Actually, to find the people on that missing ship. A mother and son. Their family want to know what happened to them.”
“They went missing out here?” Jai asked, his tone reasonable.
“The nearest system to here, we think,” Juliyana told him. “It has taken me months to track them this far and I’m guessing that they dropped out of their wormhole somewhere near here for some reason. The ship was on its way to Rinaldi, and if wormholes curve the way physicists are starting to suspect they do, then the curve would have brought them to around here, right on the edge of the arm.” She looked around the room. “We’ve spent weeks on Blinni, where they left from, and more weeks on Rinaldi, where they failed to show up. There were stories on Blinni and Rinaldi about other ships gone missing out here, too.”
“That’s why we’re here,” I told Juliyana. “For those other ships, and a passenger on one of them.”
Juliyana turned to me. “You took a contract, too?”
“It is my son who is missing.” It sounded to me as though Dalton was holding his teeth together. He clearly didn’t like the changes in Juliyana either.
Juliyana’s lips parted. Then her expression softened. “I’m sorry, Dalton. Fiori.”
Fiori nodded stiffly.
“You brought a lot of firepower with you, to find a single woman and her son,” I observed.
Juliyana looked amused. “I’m not here to recover them,” she said. “Her family want vengeance. It’s been a year. They know she and the boy are dead. I’m here to shoot the fuckers who took her out of the sky.”
“Good luck with that,” Lyth said flatly, while Dalton breathed heavily, trying to contain himself.
Juliyana looked back at Lyth. “Luck isn’t required.”
“Normally, I would agree with you.” His tone was cool. His gaze flicked toward the woman with the gold streak in her hair. “I would put my money on you and your…team,” he told Juliyana, “no matter what enemy you took on, but you’ve dealt yourself into a game with different rules.”
Juliyana’s confidence showed the first hairline crack. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” I said, taking the pressure off Lyth, “that the enemy we are all facing isn’t human, doesn’t give a shit about humans, and has the firepower to
