“A TSI?” Dudley said, alarm leaking into his features. “No! Please, Mellanie. Don’t. Not one of those again. That’s just sex. That’s what they want you for. Don’t. I don’t care how much money they offered. I couldn’t stand it.”

There were times when she really hated how pitiful Dudley was. She was fairly certain that there was no more useful information to extract from that abysmal jumble of thoughts in his brain. After California she’d toyed with the notion of simply not coming back to Greentree, just tell the navy where he was and leave their psychologists to straighten him out. But given who she wanted to meet next, having the Dudley Bose in tow, and under control, would make success a lot more likely.

And she did like him in a way. She supposed. Occasionally. When he was calm he could be very lucid, providing her a glimpse of the intellect that had qualified him for his earlier academic life. A sort of sneak preview of what he could be like. Then there was Elan, and everything they’d gone through together there when the Primes attacked. That wasn’t a bond easily discarded, not even for her. If he could just get the idea of love out of his head…

“I turned it down,” she said. “I can’t afford that kind of time commitment right now.”

“Thank you.” He bowed his head to examine the rectangular meal packet he was holding, almost as if he hadn’t seen one before. “What were the others?”

She pincered a big chunk of chicken with the chopsticks and popped it in her mouth. “Reuters said they’d take me on as a junior associate. Bravoweb offered me a reporter’s slot on the Michelangelo show; he’s always been a big rival for Baron. They’ve been fighting over audience points for over a century.”

“What did you say?”

“I said I’d take the Michelangelo slot. I think he got quite a bang out of poaching one of her top people. They offered me a trial three-month roving brief; and they agreed to my first story proposal.”

“Right. So what was it?”

“An inside account about people who live on a world that’s probably going to be invaded by the Primes in the next wave. I said I’d travel out to examine communities that are too poor to leave, the ones that have to stay even though they suspect they’re in for hard times. It’s pretty horrendous for them, really.”

“Oh.” Dudley picked up a tall tumbler of water and stared morosely at the ice bobbing around on top. “How does that help us track down the Starflyer?”

“I know for certain that’s where we can meet some really strong allies in the fight against the Starflyer, and Bravoweb will pick up the tab. Which is handy, because it’s not cheap traveling there.” She fashioned a smug smile.

“See?”

“Right. What planet?”

“Far Away.”

***

Coming into the office every morning was getting to be a real drag. In the old days when it was the Directorate, Renne had often come in early, especially when they were on a major case. Now she had to force herself up out of bed when the alarm woke her. And cases didn’t get any bigger than this one.

Somehow, Alic Hogan was always there ahead of her. Like Paula used to be, except Hogan didn’t conjure up enthusiasm in the rest of the team. Having him watching you arrive was like an automatic reprimand. She knew she was going to have to make an effort to cycle down on the irritation she felt toward him. But that was the problem. It was an effort.

John King appeared in the middle of the morning and walked over to her desk. “That smuggled technical equipment you had shipped back from Boongate. My analysis staff have got a slight problem with it.”

“Goddamn typical,” she spat.

John gave her a hurt look.

“All right, I’m sorry. It’s just that nobody ever comes and tells me any good news these days.”

“This isn’t bad news, exactly, it’s just strange.”

“Go on then, what’s strange with it?”

“Same as the stuff from Venice Coast, we can’t understand what it’s used for.”

“John, come on! You must have some idea. I saw the manifest Edmund Li finally produced. There was nearly a metric ton of hardware.”

“A lot of it very similar,” he said defensively. “But given we don’t know what they’re building, it’s difficult.”

“I’ll settle for best guess. I trust you.”

He smiled sheepishly. “All right, based on these systems, and factoring in the surviving components from Venice Coast, assuming they were intended for the same thing—”

“John!”

“Force fields. Very high-density force fields. But the thing is, they’d use up a terrific amount of power.”

“So?”

He gave her an elaborate shrug. “On Far Away? Where are they going to get it from? I checked with the Commonwealth Civil Council. There’s five medium-size civic power stations supplying Armstrong City; they’re gas turbines running off a local oil field. The revitalization project imported some fission micropiles to power their equipment in the early days. And the Institute has three micropiles to power their facilities. That’s it. The rest of the planet gets by on solar panels, wind turbines, and a few oil wells. They don’t have anything like the power output one of these weirdo devices would consume.”

She stared at him blankly, waiting for a suggestion. None came. “Then what does produce that much power?”

“I haven’t got a clue. It’s not like you could have smuggled a fusion or fission generator through unnoticed even before we were inspecting every piece of cargo. And Far Away can’t be physically plugged into the Commonwealth power grid. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Right then.” She instinctively reached for her mug of coffee, only to find it was empty. “So what we have is an unknown force field device, or devices, which consumes a lot of power, on a planet that doesn’t have any.”

“Nicely summarized.”

“I look forward to seeing how the Commander treats that one when you submit it.”

They both glanced over at the door to Hogan’s office.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” John said. “This is just a technical appendix to your report.”

Renne’s e-butler informed her that a file from King’s forensic staff had just been deposited in her working case HOLD folder.

John cocked his fingers pistol style and aimed at her. “What you do with it is up to you.”

“Bastard.”

He gave her a cheery wave, and retreated back to his own desk.

Vic Russell returned from Cagayn half an hour later. The second lieutenant barely had time to kiss his wife, Gwyneth, before Renne hauled him off into a conference room for a debrief.

“The Cagayn police were very familiar with Robin Beard,” Vic told her. “He works in the motor trade. Good repair and service man, apparently. Which fits in with what Cufflin told us; they met on an electronics course a few years back.”

“Did you see him?” Renne asked. She thought Vic looked tired; he was a big man, well over two meters tall, and about as wide. His weekends were spent playing bone-cruncher games of rugby for a nonprofessional club outside Leicester. Renne had turned up with Gwyneth to support his team one Saturday, and had been intimidated by the amount of good spirits violence in the game. Cagayn must have been an exhausting trip for someone as fit as Vic to appear run-down.

“No, ‘fraid not. I was too late. Our Mr. Beard is a somewhat migratory character. According to his tax records he never stays at the same garage for more than a couple of years.”

“He pays taxes?”

“Not very often. But that’s not why the police have such a big file on him. If you’re looking for a getaway vehicle, word is that Beard’s the one you need to give it a good overhaul beforehand. Same if you have a warehouse full of hot cars that need rebranding; he knows how to replace and revise all the manufacturers’ security tagging.”

“Sounds like the kind of person who would have good reason to know our elusive agent.”