He looked around the room. There was a brief mutter of comment, but no dissent. “And now for another matter,” he announced. “I’ve got a special message for Victoria Strowger, who I believe is in this room somewhere.” Wednesday jerked involuntarily, feeling Martin’s fingers dig into her wrist. “Your friend Frank is down on F deck. He sends his regards. As a rule we’re trying to keep everyone together at their designated evacuation stations, but if you want to see your friend again, you can step forward now, and I’ll take you there.” His smile widened. “This is your only chance, I’m afraid. Once we dock it’ll be too late.”

Wednesday glanced between Rachel and Martin frantically. She wanted to scream: What do I do now? Martin looked puzzled, but dawning horror was writ large on Rachel’s face. The man at the front was still talking, something about evacuation procedures. It was so slickly done, the message, that she half doubted she’d heard it.

“Go,” Rachel mouthed at her. A quick scribble on her paper pad: U GOT VALUE — PLAY 4 TIME.

“But—” Wednesday looked back at Martin, who was now clearly worried. They’ve got Frank, she thought frantically. They’ve got Frank! She’d been afraid, walking in there, that it was a trap, but she hadn’t realized just what kind it would be.

Rachel was still scribbling, OLD NF = UR HOME GRND. Realization dawned: Wednesday nodded, feeling sick in the pit of her stomach. “Okay,” she said, and before she could change her mind she began to shove through the crowd of bodies toward the front of the room, where the blackmailer was waiting for her.

“So who the fuck are you?” Wednesday asked belligerently. “And what do you want?”

The woman in charge of the hijackers smiled indulgently. “You can call me Portia, my dear. And all I want is a little talk.”

Wednesday sized her up suspiciously. The blond guy stood behind her blocking the doorway, and there were a couple of guards — one of them manning a comms console, the other watching her from behind the leader — but they’d made no move to search her or apply restraints or anything. This Portia woman wasn’t what she’d expected, either. She wasn’t angry, or evil-tempered, or anything. Nor was she wearing one-piece overalls with built-in pressure seals like the others. In fact, she seemed friendly and slightly indulgent. I’d be indulgent, too, if everything was going my way, Wednesday warned herself. “What do you want?” she demanded. “And where’s Frank?”

“Your friend isn’t here.” Portia sniffed. “He’s in a suite on B deck that hasn’t, ah, been evacuated.” She flashed Wednesday a grin, baring perfect teeth at her. “Would you like to talk to him? Just to prove that he’s all right? My offer was genuine, by the way, when I said you could see him again. In fact, I’ll go further; if you cooperate fully with me, then once our business is over you can have him back, intact.”

“You’re a liar. Why should you?” Wednesday regretted the words almost before they were out of her mouth: Stupid, goading her when she holds all the cards!

But Portia didn’t take it amiss. “Over the years I’ve found that a reputation for keeping my word is a valuable tool — it makes negotiating much easier if everybody knows you’re trustworthy. You, ah, don’t know that yet — but if you want to talk to your friend … ?”

“Ah—” Wednesday felt a sick tension in her gut. “Yeah. I’ll talk to him.” Shit! If he’s all right — A second interior voice kicked in, icily cold — They’ll be watching you both for leverage. Make no mistake, she’s not doing this just for you.

“Get the prisoner on the secure terminal,” Portia told the guard at the desk.

Wednesday moved to sit down in the offered chair. The camera’s-eye view certainly showed her Frank. Her breath caught; they’d put him in a chair and taped his arms down, and he looked ill. His skin was sallow and dry. He looked up at the camera, bleary-eyed, and started. “Wednesday, is that you?” he said, his voice rasping.

“It’s me.” She clasped her hands behind her back to keep from fidgeting. “Are you all right?”

He rolled his head sideways, as if trying to see something behind the camera. After a moment he replied, “No, I’m a bit tied up.” He shook his head. “They got you, too. Was it me?”

“No,” she lied, guessing what the truth would do to him. Behind the terminal she saw Portia make a little tight smile. Bitch.

Reality check. “What was the last thing I did the night before the, uh, accident?” she asked, hoping desperately that he’d get it wrong, that he was just a machinima avatar, and that she’d been caught but he remained at liberty.

“You made a phone call.” He closed his eyes. “They kept my throat under block too long,” he added. “Talking hurts.”

“That’s enough,” said Portia. The comms specialist leaned over and killed the connection before Wednesday could protest. “Satisfied?” she asked.

“Huh.” Wednesday scowled furiously. “So, you’ve got us.” She shrugged. “What do you fucking want?”

The blond guy at the back of the room, the smiling blackmailer from the evacuation bay, cleared his throat. “Boss?”

“Tell her, Franz.” Portia nodded agreeably, but Wednesday noticed that when she spoke to her soldiers her smile peeled away, exposing a frigid chill in her eyes.

“You misplaced something belonging to our, uh, predecessors,” Franz said. He looked uneasy. “We know you hid it on the station. We want it back. When you return it to us, we have a couple of errands to run, then we’ll be leaving.” He raised an eyebrow. “Boss?”

“Here’s the deal,” Portia said easily. “You take us to the items you left behind. We’ll bring your friend Frank along so you can see him, and those nosy diplomats you were hiding out with. No, we weren’t taken in by that business with the passports. Do you think we’re stupid? It was easier to leave you hiding out in their cabin; that way you immobilized yourselves, saving us the trouble. But I digress … if you give us what we want, we’ll leave you on board the station when we go. Our own ship will be arriving here soon. We’ll send a rescue and salvage expedition for the liner and everybody aboard it as soon as we’re clear. Despite what you’re thinking, we’re not interested in killing people, wholesale or retail: there’s been a change of management at the top, and our job is to clean up after them.”

“Clean up?” Wednesday said skeptically. “Clean up what?”

Portia sighed. “My predecessor had some rather silly plans to, um, build himself an empire.” She flashed Wednesday that grin again. “I’m not going to make any excuses. You wouldn’t believe them anyway. To cut a long story short, he succeeded in taking over some key members of the strategic operations staff in the Moscow government. His ambitions were bigger than his common sense — he wanted to short-circuit a very long-term project of ours, of the whole of the ReMastered actually, by developing a device that’s one of a class known collectively as causality-violation weapons. He also wanted to carve out an empire for himself, as maximum leader — an interstellar empire. It was quite the audacious plan, really. It’s a very good thing for all of us that he was no good at the little detail work. Unfortunately” — she cleared her throat — “the weapons lab on Moscow apparently tried to test the gadget prematurely. Something went wrong, spectacularly wrong.”

“You’re trying to tell me it was an accident?” Wednesday demanded.

“No.” Portia looked uncomfortable for a moment. “But the idiot responsible — the treacherous idiot, I stress — is, ah, dead. As a direct consequence of the event. In fact, it’s my job to mop up after him, tidy up the loose ends, and so on. Which includes stopping the R-bombs — I suppose you know about them? — by sending the abort codes. Which were in the bag you took, taken from the station administrator’s desk, along with a bunch of other records that are of no use to you but of considerable interest to me, insofar as they’ll help me root out the last of his co-conspirators.”