Skater listened to the man talk for a while, then exhaustion finally had its way and sucked him down into a maze of dark dreams that promised no rest at all.

Whispering voices woke Skater and he lay still in the cot, peering through slitted eyes and kicking in the low-light vision enhancement.

A handful of shadows drifted to a stop in front of his cell. He was still figuring the odds when the lock on the cell door snapped open. It was probably harder to break into Lone Star than any other place in the whole Seattle sprawl, yet these people were doing it. Since he was in general lock-up waiting for his appearance in court and not one of the high-sec levels, it would have been easier. But not much.

And they were after him.

"Breakout!" he shouted as he rose to his feet in a defensive crouch. Then he yelled again to attract attention and alert the security systems, and to push up his adrenaline levels as he swung a bunched fist at the lead elf rushing toward him.

Flesh gave way under Skater's fist, and an elf howled a curse in Sperethiel as he dropped backward. All the elves were dressed in loose black clothing and moved like a unit. Their reflexes were military, concise and telling.

Skater caught a long leg speeding toward his face. Grabbing the elf's ankle over his shoulder, he dropped into a crouch and hammered his other hand home into his attacker's groin. He straightened and used the leg as a fulcrum, propelling die man back into his mates.

More confused yelling, angry and frightened, filled the slammer as other prisoners came awake.

Skater fought from desperation, the confines of the cell not permitting much skill. He punched and kicked, and clawed and bit, focusing all his energies on reaching the cell door. He sent a wheel kick rocketing, knocking an elf back into the arms of another behind him. For a moment, a path was clear to the door and he wasted no time making for it. He hurdled one elf who'd fallen and grabbed a bar to pull himself around the corner.

He didn't see the elf waiting for him until he was almost on top of him. This one was short and stocky, unusual for an elf, a few centimeters shorter than Skater and at least that much broader.

The elf came at Skater at a dead run, jamming a shoulder into his stomach, then crowding him up against the cell bars. Skater lost his breath as soon as the elf hit him, then heard the dull thunk of his head smashing up against one of the bars. A pyrotechnic display rattled the inside of his skull as his legs and arms turned rubbery.

"Secure him," the elf said, pushing back from Skater, barely breathing hard. "Let's get the frag out of here. The alert's gonna go off any minute now."

Skater felt cold steep clamp around his wrists and ankles, heard the ratcheting noises as they locked, then blacked out before he knew it.

Cold water splashed over Skater and brought him back to consciousness. This time he was handcuffed to a chair, his arms pinned painfully behind him and his ankles taped to the chair legs. A single bulb burned from a bell-shaped cover overhead, lighting up him, the chair, and the grease-stained concrete floor under them. People were in a ring around him. He saw their shoes just beyond the light's reach.

He didn't try to feign unconsciousness. He knew from the way the figures surrounding him shifted that they knew he was back on-line. A headache felt like a fusion processor reaching critical mass between his temples. His mouth was swollen, tasted of blood.

Fear filled him but he kept it under control. Whoever these elves were, they wanted something from him, and they wanted it bad enough to crack Lone Star to get him. Otherwise they'd have killed him long before now. As long as they wanted that something, he'd live. He hung on to that thought.

The smells of oils and fuels told him he was in a warehouse. And the smell of poverty-dust and dead meat- cutting through these industrial odors told him this was one that hadn't been used for any straight biz for quite awhile. Plenty of warehouses existed around the sprawl, some of them working and some empty. A lot of them changed hands regularly, few of them really traceable to an individual owner or a corporation through the straw companies that ostensibly owned them.

One of the elves moved forward, into the light. Judging from his build, Skater made him as the elf who'd put him down in the cell.

"Are you with us?" the elf demanded. "Or shall I have another bucket of water drawn?"

"I'm here," Skater said.

Besides being short and stocky, the elf appeared to be in his late middle years, with close-set charcoal eyes as polished as gunsights that marked him as a hunter. Scars crisscrossed his exposed flesh, including his face, war-maps of past battles he'd survived. His dark hair was cut short, not long enough to be grabbed, and was blistered with gray. One particular gray streak followed the jagged line of a knife scar along the side of his head to his right ear, which was missing at least three centimeters of its upper point.

He wore a gray pinstriped business suit, not too flashy, but not off-the-rack either. Navy suspenders held his pants up, as well as a shoulder holster containing a Seco pistol. His shirt sleeves were rolled to mid-forearm, but Skater didn't get the impression it was for appearance. The elf was a man who was used to work. He shook a cigarette from a pack in his shirt pocket and cracked a wooden match with his thumbnail to get it going.

Skater felt like he should know him. He was certain he'd seen the guy somewhere recently. But the cigarette pack was printed in Sperethiel, definitely an elven brand. Skater had never been to Tir Tairngire, and he sensed that was all this man had known.

"You took something from that freighter," the elf said. "1 want it back, and I want the names of everyone who has copies of it."

"No matter what I say," Skater said, "you're not going to believe me. You're going to have to make sure."

A thin, mirthless smile scarred the man's mouth, looking out of place. "Of course."

"Then let's get to it," Skater said. "We're wasting time here."

"You've an admirable spirit, Mr. Skater," the elf said. "I would enjoy crossing swords with you at some other time, both verbal and steel, and I'm assured that you're no stranger to either. But I, too, am pressed by time. 'Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.' Parkinson's Law. You've probably never heard that before."

"Not to know who it came from," Skater agreed. He shifted slightly, like he was trying to work the circulation back into his legs. At the same time he was pulling on the hand cuffs, testing the flex in the right one. "Did you kill Larisa Hartsinger?"

"No." The elf's face was stone, giving nothing away. Except that he hadn’t asked who Larisa Hansinger was, Skater realized. "Who tipped you to me?"

"We had your picture from the ship. A few offers of financial reward here in Seattle, we had your name."

'The yakuza were out there, too. They hit the ship's system, not us"

"They're hunting you."

"Maybe they'd like you to think so."

The elf took the cigarette out of his mouth and blew on it till the coal was bright orange. "However it turns out, we're going to start with you and see where that takes us." He waved another man forward.

The new arrival was taller by a head than the first elf, and built like a rail. His dark red mohawk stood at least twenty centimeters high, and glittered from jeweled dust. He was young, maybe as little as nineteen or twenty, though Skater knew it was hard to tell with elves. In a synch leather vest over an open black shirt and dark denims and wearing go-gang stomper boots, he looked like he knew his way around the sprawl. A series of hoops of increasing size ringed both pointy ears, alternating gold and silver. His black gloves had the fingers chopped out of them.