"And this is relevant to me how?"

Dreyden drew hard on his cigarette. "Because you're Earth Central Security, and don't tell me that ECS doesn't intend to subsume Elysium."

"Maybe so, but that has nothing to do with why I'm here," Cormac replied.

Dreyden looked doubtful as he went on, "You know, because of the security service I formed here, crime is down to Polity levels and the standard of living is very high. In fact higher than on many Polity worlds. A lot of people here are making a lot of money."

"Admirable," commented Cormac dryly.

"If ECS come in here then many people will die. They'll fight to keep you out; they like things the way they are," Dreyden told him.

Cormac twirled his glass on the tourmaline and noted that the biggest smelting complex in Elysium was Dreyden's property — apparently it could turn a million tonnes of asteroidal steel into foamed-metal construction members in less than a solstan day. Cormac was impressed, but no less irritable and bored.

"You're not listening to me," he said. "I'm not here to conquer your little empire, Dreyden." He looked up. "Though I may yet give the matter some consideration if I'm delayed any longer."

Dreyden stood, and Cormac observed the beads of sweat dotting his brow. The man was twitchy — either angry or scared — as revealed in his sneering tone when next he spoke.

"I have something to show you," he said.

With weary impatience Cormac followed him to the centre of the room, then up yet another spiral stair leading to a platform positioned directly below the chainglass roof. Climbing through the hatch and onto this platform, they came into a smaller glasshouse protruding up from the roof itself. All around, they had a perfect view of Elysium. Dreyden gestured to the ships crowding the floating docks, then beyond them to where the Occam Razor was clearly visible.

"Big bastard, that ship, but it probably doesn't mass much more than the asteroids we regularly bring in," he said. He now pointed to the habitats and smelting complexes that formed almost a tangled wall in space beside them. "You know, we don't have Separatists here because essentially most of Elysium is not actually in the Polity. Though being upon the Line as we are, we share many of the benefits of Polity membership. It's a situation we do not really want to change, either through annoying you people by harbouring criminals or by pushing for full membership."

"Your point?" Cormac asked.

Now Dreyden indicated the huge sun mirrors. "I have complete control over those now. The grabship captains have to buy time on them from me, as do those corporations that own the few furnace satellites that I myself do not own," Dreyden said.

Cormac remained silent, waiting for the man to make his point — he now had some intimation of what that might be, but he wanted it clearly stated.

Dreyden went on, "It only takes a minute to shift the focus of those mirrors. You can't see from here, but there is a ring of them, each capable of covering its nearest partner within a matter of seconds. They can also cover all possible approaches to our… community."

"Very cosy. So you would be well defended should a stray asteroid head in this direction," said Cormac sarcastically.

Dreyden dropped the butt of his cigarette and ground it out on the platform. After taking a swallow of his drink he glared at Cormac. "You know, we don't even use the tightest focus to melt asteroids. If we tried that on an asteroid it would vaporize and obliterate the furnace satellite it was lodged in. On the tightest focus we can get heat levels — if the conditions are just right — high enough to start a fusion reaction. There's no known substance that can endure that for long, and no field technology that can withstand it."

Cormac wandered over to the glass wall and gazed down at the Occam Razor. Dreyden's message was quite clear, but utterly irrelevant considering what he knew of ECS policy concerning this place.

"Last count as I recollect," said Cormac without turning from the glass, "there were two hundred million people living here." He turned now to face Dreyden. "ECS just isn't interested… you want the figures? AIs have calculated that with the people here living in such fragile circumstances the losses during a takeover would be something in the region of twenty per cent. And to gain what?" He gestured to the nearest giant smelting complex. "The whole infrastructure would probably be destroyed as well, and the Polity would basically end up with a refugee population in the tens of millions. Probably the smelters and mirrors would be destroyed too, so there would be nothing to gain, and anyway most of what is made here is sold to the Polity, and most of the money used to buy it is spent on Polity goods. I'm not here for this, Dreyden."

Dreyden continued to glare and Cormac realized that the man would just never believe what he was being told — he had too much invested here and was evidently too frightened of Earth Central Security to trust any of its agents. In reality his attitude was perfectly understandable: the Polity had without compunction absorbed worlds into itself when that best served the interests of its entire population, and for the same reasons empires like Dreyden's had been undermined, or obliterated.

"I've no time for this," said Cormac, heading for the hatch.

"What do you want with this Asselis Mika, the life-Coven woman?" Dreyden asked suddenly.

Cormac turned as he began to climb down. "Her expertise. And we will leave with her — understand that."

"So long as you do leave." Dreyden gulped the rest of his drink. "Perhaps, after you are gone, you can pass on the message that Polity battleships are no longer welcome here."

"Oh, I'll pass that on," said Cormac, departing.

Jarvellis was probably the most smoulderingly sexy woman Thorn had ever met. She had long straight black hair, a face that seemed perpetually cheeky, as if she was just about to say something quite shocking, and a figure that was well emphasized by the ersatz acceleration suit she wore. Thorn also understood, even on such very brief acquaintance, that she was completely and utterly in love with John Stanton. She did not give a swooning display in his presence, nor did she simper; it was just a sense of connection between the two of them. He had caught it in that one glance exchanged between the two when he and Stanton had entered the bridge sphere of this trispherical ship. It was a personal connection that completely cut anyone else out of the circuit.

After strapping himself in, Stanton gestured back the way they had entered. "That's cargo, as you saw, and the other sphere is the living quarters. We've got a small galley and a machine shop just behind here as well."

As he too strapped himself into one of the two acceleration chairs immediately behind Stanton and Jarvellis, Thorn considered the hold he had just seen. He'd noted the four cryopods fixed upright to one wall and been unable to miss seeing the racked cargo of weapons crates and other less easily identifiable items.

"What I could do with is an autodoc," he said, delicately probing his broken teeth.

"We've got one, but you'll have to wait. All consoles are DNA-keyed to me and Jarv. Also, Lyric II is run by an AI, and she tends to trust people even less than I do."

That figured.

Thorn turned his attention to Jarvellis as she piloted Lyric II up and away from the planet. The rumbling of acceleration through atmosphere was growing less now, and the middle one of the three screens showed whitish sky diffusing away over starlit space. The right screen displayed a view of the rapidly receding world.

"Ooh, those ECS boys know some dirty words," said Jarvellis, her head tilted towards her earplug.