"Yeah, him. But I'm not sure he saw me as an actual person-he threat assessed, he moved on. Who'd expect to see Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr on a half-finished OutSector station? I suspect that, as much as economic factors, was why Craig chose it. Here, at Vrijheid, who we are becomes the larger part of our reason for being here and being that obvious will act like camouflage; all they'll see is the obvious-not the people behind it and certainly not a specific person glimpsed for a few seconds in another part of space."

The three members of her assault team stared at her for a long moment. Finally, Ressk said, "Maybe you could change your hair?"

Torin closed her fingers around the plastic vertical that held the padded arm to the pilot's chair. "The only reason I'd go anywhere near that man is if he ends up between me and Craig. Otherwise, I'll avoid him. It's a good-sized station, I'm willing to play the odds."

"Make your bet, then, Gunny. Long-range sensors just picked up a station." Werst swept his palm across the board. "No details, though."

"Distance?" Mashona asked.

"If we can ping them, distance doesn't matter. Not everyone sends out a tourist brochure, but, if nothing else, we should be receiving information about docking and fees. And what's more, I'm reading ships, but their registries aren't coming up. There's no way to tell if the Heart of Stone is there."

"It's there." The Heart was there, and Craig was there. Because they had to be.

"If we can ping them…" Mashona began.

"They can ping us." Werst agreed.

"And they'll get what I want them to," Ressk said, smiling broadly. "Which is the same as what they're giving out."

"I wonder how close they'll let us get?"

They were still moving fast, riding the exit surge, maintaining their emergent speed until they knew where they were going.

"No point in talking to us until they can stop us," Werst pointed out, "and unless they've got some big fukking guns, we need to be a little closer for…"

"Hi there." The young di'Taykan male on the screen had hair so light a blue it was nearly white and his pale eyes looked paler still given the amount of black they were lined with. Makeup had turned his skin the same shade as his hair-Torin assumed it was makeup-and he had two black rings piercing the center of his lower lip. "I'm pulling sweet fuk all off your signal, so you've got three minutes to make your case before I blow you to kingdom come. Which, by the way, is not an actual place but an oldEarth term meaning up. So, three minutes before I blow you up."

Torin centered herself on the screen. "I heard Vrijheid Station was a refuge from government bullshit."

"Really." He leaned a little closer to the pickup and grinned. Torin had never see a di'Taykan with dimples. "Who'd you hear that from?"

"Krai named Firrg."

"I don't think so."

"I had my foot on her throat at the time."

"Well, that endears you to me, trin, but there's…" His hair stilled and he frowned. "Wait, do I know you?"

Torin smiled.

"Fuk me. I do know you. You're that gunnery sergeant who had the little gray aliens in your brain and then got captured and found out the little gray aliens were in the plastic and actually making us all run around like we were neivins or something. I saw the vids. You were like crazy kick ass. Seriously, fuk me."

"Little hard from way out here."

"Right." His hair flipped forward over his face, then back-like his whole expression had blinked. "Okay, there's a lock free on the delta arm. You're going to have to give control over to the docking computer if you want to come any closer. We can't risk you ramming the station."

"That happens a lot?"

"Hasn't yet. But if it did, Big Bill would fukking space me."

"How do I know I'll get control back?"

"We start randomly taking ships over and it's bad for business, isn't it? Big Bill doesn't like things being bad for business. You leave here in good standing, and you get control back about when you would be leaving any station. Your standing ends up being not so good, well, you don't leave and you don't actually care about who's flying your ship." He glanced down at his screens. "Okay, really, you have to give control over now or you're fukked. And not in a fun I think you're fukking amazing because you did that whole plastic alien thing in your underwear kind of way."

Teeth gritted, Torin sighed and surrendered control.

The Second Star shuddered as her forward jets fired to slow her approach.

"Wow, nice firewalls. I can't get squat off you." He sounded honestly impressed. "Look, when you get in, I'm pretty much guaranteeing Big Bill's going to want to talk to you, being who you are and all, so if it takes a while to get the lock open, that's why. Oh and don't forget…" He leaned closer to the screen, one hand dropping down off camera into his lap. "… seriously, trin, fuk me."

And the screen went black.

"They listening in?"

Ressk snorted. "They're trying to."

"Sounds like you've got a fan, Gunny." Mashona stretched out her legs, crossed her booted feet at the ankles, and grinned. "He's kind of cute in a slightly crazy way. What's trin mean?"

"Beats me. Must be new slang."

"Context makes it sounds like sweetheart, or babe."

"Yeah, well, he's all yours," Torin told her, keeping most of her attention on the boards. "My focus remains on Craig."

"But di'Taykan don't count. They're like drinking that watery Niln beer-you get to have the experience with none of the effects."

"And if I have to fuk my way past him to get to Craig, I'll consider it for as long as it takes me to snap his neck."

It took her a moment to realize it had gotten so quiet she could hear one of the Krai scratching through the bristles on the back of his head. She could feel their eyes on her as she turned the chair.

"We'll get him out, Gunny." Werst had his lips pulled back off his teeth. So did Ressk. Mashona nodded.

"I know." Because to think in terms of anything less than one hundred percent would send them in handicapped. On his hands and knees, expecting to see chunks of his stomach lining hit the deck at any moment, Craig was vaguely aware of Huirre telling Cho he'd lost it again. Huirre was wrong. He hadn't so much lost it, as deliberately thrown it away. The work they'd done on the seal over the last few hours had proved Nadayki was almost as good as he believed he was. Although Craig had been as obstructive as he thought he could get away with, the kid had connected a few too many dots.

With sex off the distraction menu-Huirre was a verbal cold shower at the slightest innuendo-Craig had used hard and fast contractions of his stomach muscles plus the sense memory of cleaning the vomit to force his already unhappy system to rebel. It was a trick he used to use to get out of mandatory early morning classes when hung over.

Let's hear it for… Holy fukking crap! The vomiting had driven the red-hot spikes back through his temples… higher education "What I wouldn't do for even a KC-7 with a scope," Mashona muttered, tucking a third sheathed knife up against the small of her back. "I mean, I'm a sniper, right? You'd think they'd let you take something useful with you when you leave."

"Guess they figured there's not much use for a sniper in civilian life," Ressk said thoughtfully.

"And apparently, they'd be wrong."

Torin noted that Mashona still considered herself to be a sniper in spite of months out. Given that all three of them were still calling her Gunny that was hardly surprising. She needed them to think of her as their gunnery sergeant if this was going to work, so she let it stand.

"Not much use for a sniper inside a station," Werst pointed out. "Nothing like a hole shot through the bulkhead at high velocity to remind you that pressurized atmosphere is a good idea. Station work is up close and personal."