Sitting duck. Too punchy to move.

The Muscle’s silhouette was framed against the light from the open door. I waited for him to shoot again, put me out for good. Instead, he just stood there, face lost in shadow… till his breath slipped out in a sigh and he slumped like a tired child, toppling across my legs.

Someone was standing in the doorway behind him — someone who also held a stun-pistol. It took a second for me to muddle out what I was seeing. Then I realized the whir I’d heard wasn’t Muscle’s gun, it was the newcomer’s. He or she had shot Muscle in the back… and I was still conscious because I’d only caught the slop of the blast, the sonic spill that hadn’t been soaked up by Muscle’s body.

The newcomer stepped cautiously into the room. It was a woman, a human woman, but with the backlighting I couldn’t make out her face. She moved forward, quickly now, the yellowish hologram light slipping over her body as she strode through the projected images. When she stopped, I could only see her back; she stood over the Mouth, her stunner trained on him.

"Ten-hut!" she said in a calm voice.

The Mouth stared up at her, eyes squinting, trying to see who she was. Suddenly, his face bugged wide with fear. "Admiral!" he yelped.

"I bet that leg hurts," the woman told him. Her pistol whirred, and the Mouth slouched back limply. "Now it doesn’t," she said.

For a moment more, she stayed with the Mouth’s unconscious body — bending and running her hand carefully over his broken knee. Her back was lit now by the spill-glow of the hologram. Enough light to show she did indeed wear the gray fatigues of an admiral in the Outward Fleet.

Under the circumstances, I didn’t take much joy seeing another navy mucky-muck.

Without jarring Mouth’s leg, the admiral readjusted his body slightly, shifting him into something close to the first-aid recovery position — the safest way for an unconscious body to lie, insurance the victim won’t choke if he vomits. Then she tucked her pistol into a hip holster and came to kneel by me. Her hand gently swept a sweat-strand of hair from my eyes.

She was young for an admiral. Clear green eyes, very alive. And she had a furious port-wine birthmark smeared across the right half of her face.

"Hello," she said. "I’m Festina Ramos. Sorry I didn’t get here sooner."

Festina Ramos… a familiar name, thanks to Angie’s son Nate (age 13). Nate, Lord love him, had a whopping crush on the whole Outward Fleet — one of those obsessions some kids get, where they never seem to think of anything else. Drooling over schematic diagrams of star-ships the way a normal boy would ogle skin pix. Sending mail to active and retired fleet personnel all over the Technocracy. Subscribing to the Navy Gazette and keeping his own database of captains, ship postings, duty assignments.

So yes, I’d heard of Festina Ramos. Ad infinitum. She’d been an Explorer First Class till two years ago, when out of the blue she got vaulted to Lieutenant Admiral… a position that had driven Nate to cracked-voice fits (bass/soprano, bass/soprano) because it was some bastardization. ("It’s crazy, Mom-Faye! The lowest rank of admiral is rear admiral. It’s been that way for absolute ever! They can’t just invent ranks out of the blue!")

But the High Council of Admirals could. And did. After which, the shiny new L-Adm. Ramos was appointed to chair a board of inquiry for restructuring exploration practices. The media had gone into blood frenzy, convinced there had to be a lip-licking scandal behind Ramos’s promotion; but the blitz of attention had come to a screechy halt when the board hearings began. It was the press’s first chance to see Ramos in person… and she looked like an Explorer. Not only that, but the hearing room was full of people waiting to give testimony, and they all looked like Explorers too.

Harelips. Scabrous faces. Seal-flipper arms, like that cadet who talked to me the night Zillif died. A host of antiphotogenic physical conditions that were never seen on mainstream Technocracy worlds. Such peculiarities were what made these people expendable enough to be Explorers… and what made news directors scream, "Shut down the cameras! Turn them off now!"

From then on, Festina Ramos ceased to have "positive news value." At least in the lard-headed nicey-nice mainstream, where reality isn’t supposed to be so real it upsets people.

Personally, I didn’t see much wrong with Ramos’s face as she bent over me in that dimly lit room. Yeah, sure, she had that birthmark. But so what? If the mainstream found it so precious ghastly they couldn’t bear to look… well, this wouldn’t be the first time I’d wondered how mainstreamers came by such stunted brains. Demoth people would never react with such horror. As far as I knew, our planet had never forced anyone into becoming an Explorer: first, because we weren’t so weak-kneed as to ostracize folks who were different, and second, because there was no blessed way the Vigil would let public hospitals deny anyone the cosmetic surgery needed to fix the problem.

Not that I thought Ramos had a problem. In my eyes she looked fair presentable — attractive, going on handsome, going on a sweet sight more — and what kind of fool couldn’t see that, birthmark or no? I pegged her age at late twenties, early thirties, though YouthBoost always makes it hard to be sure. Her skin was a shade and a half browner than mine, her dark hair short and unfussy, her eyes that piercing green. An intelligent, no-nonsense face, pursed with concern as she cradled my head in her lap.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"Sure." Would have sounded more convincing if I could move my lips, my jaw or my tongue… but everything was still muzzy from the stun-blast. The word came out less like, "Sure," and more like, "Uhhhr."

"I’ll take that for a yes," Ramos said. "Next question: are you Faye Smallwood? Because if you’re some criminal or alien spy, and I just shot two men who’d arrested you legitimately… well, won’t my face be red."

I bet she used that phrase a lot. Preemptively. Mock yourself before someone else does. I ignored it, and just said, "I’m Faye." The words blurred out to I ay, but Ramos understood.

"Glad I found you," she said. "The police have been searching everywhere. They’ll be pleased to have you back." She patted my cheek with a warm hand. "Hold on a second."

Setting my head down carefully, she moved to the unconscious Muscle. It didn’t take long for her to check his breathing and pulse, then roll him into recovery position. As an afterthought, she pried the stun-pistol from his clenched fingers and slipped it into her own belt.

"Stunners are Explorer weapons," she said, turning back to me. "I hate to see one in the hands of these dipshits." She paused, then gave a soft smile. "Dipshit is a technical term — at least I’m trying to make it one. Short for diplomat. Officially, these gentlemen belong to the fleet’s Diplomacy Corps… which is mostly a cover for the High Council’s dirty-tricks brigade." She knelt beside me again. "How are you feeling now?"

I tried to say, "Great." It didn’t work, but at least a sound came out of my throat.

"Don’t worry," Ramos told me. "You only caught a light dose. Ten minutes and you’ll be ready to break more knees."

Sliding her hands under my armpits, she hiked me up and wrestled my flop-fumbly body onto her shoulder. Her strength impressed me — Demoth’s gravity might be mild, but I know how much I weigh. Ramos was almost a full head shorter than I, but she slung me into a fireman’s carry and began moving toward the door.

"Sorry we can’t wait till you recover," she said with a grunt of exertion, "but I don’t know whether there are other dipshits in the neighborhood. Best if we aren’t caught hanging around." Lifting her feet high, she stepped over the Muscle’s body. "I don’t know what the bastards would do if they nabbed us — they’d think twice about messing with an admiral, even a lowly lieutenant one — but this team hasn’t shown any scruples so far. Someday I must find out how the Admiralty trains them to the very edge of homicidal non-sentience without actually pushing them over."