The darkened tool storage pod hanging from the aircon stack at the top of ring J normally smelled of packing foam and damp. Now it stank of silicone lube grease and fear.

A quiet voice recited a list of sins. “Let me recap. You hired ordinary goons who tracked the kid as far as a dead zone, but they lost her inside a derelict housing module. She was on her way to a fucking party, but nobody thought to trace her friends, find out where it was, and go there. Meanwhile, your other proxies liquidated her family, thus losing all possible links to the primary target and simultaneously warning her that her life was in danger. So tell me, Franz, how does a nineteen-year-old refugee manage to outsmart a pair of even remotely professional gangsters? And why did her skin traces show up all over the inside of the emergency lock leading into the depressurized cell?”

Pause. “Uh, would you believe, shit happens?” A longer pause. “The goons were tracking her via her interface rings. It’s my fault for not anticipating that she had evasion training; I expected it to be a straightforward track and tag. When she took off—”

U. Portia Hoechst sighed. “Give me some light in here, Jamil.”

The interior of the service pod lit up.

“Are you going to kill me now?” asked Franz. He looked mildly apprehensive, as if steeling himself for an unpleasant dental procedure. He didn’t have much of an alternative. Portia’s bodyguard Marx had done a thorough job of trussing him to a couple of anchor beams.

“That depends.” Portia tapped the end of her stylus against her front teeth thoughtfully as she stared at him. She narrowed her eyes. “There has been a culture of unacceptable slackness in this organization.”

Franz opened his mouth as if about to say something, then shut it again, slowly. A bead of sweat jiggled on his forehead, just below the hairline. It was growing visibly bigger, as she watched, held in place by surface tension, unable to run away in the milligee environment.

“What did you do next?” she asked, almost kindly.

“Well, I concluded she’d run. Either to the authorities for protection or somewhere outside the hab. So I sent Burr, Samow, and Kerguelen off to grab seats on the next departing ferry shuttles to other habs, with orders to do a full cap routine on her if she showed up, and I took myself and Erica down to the local cop shop to puppetize our way into their holding tank in case she turned out to have stayed home. As we only had the one puppetry kit in the entire system…” His voice trailed off.

“What other resources did you have? You only covered three shuttle flights with one finger on each. Isn’t that a bit thin?” Her voice was almost gentle.

“I was fully committed.” Franz sounded tense. “I only have six residents here, including me! That isn’t even enough to maintain a twenty-four-by-seven tail on a single individual, much less conduct a full penetration or cleanup. Why do you think I had to use paid muscle instead of properly programmed puppets? I’ve been requesting additional backup for months, but all that came down the line were orders to make better use of my resources and a 10 percent budget cut. Then your group…” He trailed off.

“Your requests. Were they at least acknowledged?”

“Yes.” He watched her warily, unsure where this chain of inquiry was leading. She watched him watching her, speculating. Franz was the resident in Centris, a station chief left over from U. Vannevar Scott’s operation, and therefore, automatically suspect. But he was also the only station chief in this entire system, the complex of orbital habs circling in the accretion belt around the brown dwarf at the heart of Septagon B. It was sheer luck that he’d even been able to move his team onto the right hab in the first place. If he was telling the truth, hung out to dry with six staff to pin down three hundred million people scattered through nearly five hundred orbital habitats and countless smaller stations and ships, he’d clearly been starved of support. While U. Scott had been pouring funds into his central security groups, snooping on his rivals within the Directorate. Portia stared at him. “I will investigate this, you know.” Franz watched her unflinchingly, not even sparing a glance for Marx. Marx was the one who’d pith him if it came to it, or even kill him, simply wasting his memories, leaving everything that he was to drain into nothingness. “Has your crew reported back about the loose end?”

Now his expression broke: irritation, even a spark of outright rebellion. “I’d be able to tell you if you’d unwrap me and give me a chance to find out,” he said waspishly. “Or ask Erica. Assuming you haven’t already decided she’s a broken tool and discarded her.”

Portia reached a decision. The practicalities of it were risky, but then so was life. “Release him,” she told Jamil.

“Is this wise?” Marx grunted, keeping his eyes focused dead center on Franz’s forehead. “We could repurpose him—”

“I prefer my subordinates to have free will.” Her smile vanished abruptly. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Just looking out for your safety, boss.”

“I’m quite sure that U. Franz Bergman will remember whose purpose he serves now that External Environmental Control Four has been, ah, absorbed by Group Six.”

Jamil produced a knife from somewhere and began slicing away at the tape fastening Franz’s arms to the support bars.

Franz’s eyes widened. “Did you say absorbed? What happened to Control Four?”

“U. Vannevar Scott has been an extremely naughty boy,” Portia trilled. “So naughty that Overdepartmentsecretary Blumlein saw fit to take all his toys away.” Slight emphasis on the all, a raised eyebrow, a pouting lip. “You’re on the gray list.” Gray, as opposed to black, whose status was pith and reclaim with extreme prejudice. “It’s not very big, but you’re on it. Who knows? If you work hard, you may even stay there.”

Franz slumped slightly, floating free of the anchor beams, nervously apprehensive. “What do you want me to do?” he asked. “Nobody told us anything about—” He swallowed.

“Indeed.” Portia nodded at Jamil, big and solidly muscled. “You and Jamil are going to go and do the rounds. You’re going to give me a sitrep, and Jamil is going to sit on your shoulder and see how you go about it. Think of it as an entrance exam.” She recognized his unspoken question. “You and your people, both.”

“I’m, uh, very grateful—”

“Don’t be.” The brilliant smile was back. “I want to know what’s going on out there in the wild. You’ve got two kiloseconds to find out. And believe me, until I decide to pass you, dying will seem like the easy option.”

By the time he got back to the pod, Franz was truly frightened. As if the mess he’d been holding together for the past nine months wasn’t bad enough, having the DepSec from hell descend on him with bodyguards and a full-dress away team was worse. Luckily Erica was with him, a calming influence. But the news -

He glanced over his shoulder at her. She stared back at him, trying to look unaffected. A competent deputy station chief, following her boss’s lead. Jamil followed them both, imperturbable, threatening. “I’ll handle this,” he reassured her.

“I understand.” He wanted to reach out and grab her hand, but he didn’t dare. Not in front of Jamil. She looked rattled enough as it was. Maybe it was because she’d figured out where they stood for herself, but he couldn’t be sure.

The DepSec was waiting for him like a spider at the center of her web, black and shiny and carnivorous when she smiled, disturbingly red lips parting to reveal perfect teeth. Sea-green eyes as cold as death watched him. Behind her, the bodyguard waited. “You made it with fifty seconds to spare!” She glanced at Erica. “So, you’re U. Erica Blofeld?”