Footsteps halted behind him. He knew without looking it was her. “Mister Pennington,” said T’Prynn.

Reluctantly, he turned to face her. “Yes, dear?”

“I wish to inform you our honeymoon is now over. And I wanted to thank you for your help.”

She offered him her hand. Shaking it, he asked, “That’s it, then?” Noting her confused reaction, he let go of her hand and went on. “I mean, sure, you’ve reached Ajilon. And knowing you, there’s probably some devious scheme already in the works. But do you really think you’re safer going it alone?”

“Safety was never one of my chief considerations,” T’Prynn said, shifting the bag on her shoulder.

He rolled his eyes. “Now you tell me.” He shook his head. “Never mind—what’s your next move?”

T’Prynn stepped beside him and gazed out at the bay. “Before leaving Vulcan I prepared an additional set of identity papers. I will use them going forward to obscure any link between the ruse that enabled us to leave my homeworld and my actions to come.” She threw a sidelong look at Pennington. “Logically, my best chance of preventing someone from linking my two false identities would be to part company with you.”

“Well, obviously,” he said, keeping his eyes on the water. “I know you probably won’t answer me, but I’ll ask anyway. What are you hoping to accomplish?”

An uneasy silence lasted for several seconds. Then T’Prynn said, “I plan to conduct a covert operation to gather intelligence against the Orion crime lord Ganz, his Nalori enforcer Zett Nilric, and whatever smugglers or pirates they have been aiding and abetting in the Taurus Reach.”

Pennington expressed his doubt with a sideways tilt of his head. “A useful goal,” he said. “Though not exactly the kind of high-stakes poker I’d have expected from someone like you. Why spend your time spying on a bunch of thugs?”

“Because I suspect Ganz’s organization serves as a cutout for the Klingons in that sector—and that he or someone who works for him had a hand in destroying the Nowlanand murdering Diego Reyes.”

While Pennington processed that bombshell of information, T’Prynn turned and walked away from him, across the landing field toward the encircling cluster of small buildings that passed for a town on this tenuously settled ball of rock.

“Hold on!” he called to her. He grabbed his duffel and jogged clumsily after her. “You can prove that?”

Over her shoulder, she replied, “Of course not, Mister Pennington. I said only that I suspectit. I intend to gather evidence so that I canprove it.”

“Right,” he replied, feeling like a bit of a berk. “You did say that, didn’t you? Sorry.”

As he fell into step beside her, she glanced at him through narrowed eyes. “Why are you following me?”

“Y’know,” the intrigued young Scot said with a shrug, “to help.” He omitted the fact that being able to publish a properly sourced story titled “Who Really Killed Diego Reyes?” would likely win him awards and pave his way to a lifetime of prestige. And adoring fans. Preferably young, female fans.

“I thought I had made it clear my best interests would be served by us going our separate ways.”

“You did. But the thing is, I’m not so sure. That you’re right, I mean. I learned a lot traveling with Quinn. Enough to make myself useful. Good in a pinch, that’s me. Handy.”

Christ,he fumed. I’m babbling. I need to keep cool.

“Would you perhaps have an ulterior motive for coming with me, Mister Pennington? For instance, a desire to chronicle our shared exploits in journalistic or literary form?”

“Well, I, uh …” He made half a dozen strange faces while he struggled and failed to conceive some means of evading her question. “Well, if I learn something newsworthy, I’m going to write about it, aren’t I? But I’m not a total sod, T’Prynn. I won’t publish something that’ll do more harm than good.”

Behind them, the shuttle’s engines whined and split the air. The small craft took off and ascended into the sky on its way back to orbit. When the din of its departure abated, T’Prynn replied, “Who determines the relative harm or benefit of one of your articles?”

“Well, I guess I do.”

“I see.”

Passing into the warren of narrow streets beyond the landing field, Pennington and T’Prynn cut through a mass of people. There seemed to be bodies moving in all directions at once, like threads being woven into a living tapestry. On either side, tiny shops stood edge to edge, as if huddled for warmth.

“Look, you can trust me,” Pennington said, still trying to plead his case. “And right now, it seems to me like you could use every friend you can get.”

As they turned a corner, she replied, “The mission I am about to undertake will be time-consuming, tedious, and at times extremely dangerous.” She stopped and faced him. “I am grateful to you for helping me escape custody on Vulcan, but the longer you stay with me, the greater your legal jeopardy becomes. I cannot ask any more of you.”

“You don’t have to ask,” Pennington said. “I’m offering.”

She made a small bow of her head. “If that is your choice, then I will not refuse your aid.”

He sighed and smiled. “You’re welcome.”

T’Prynn and Pennington lurked in the shadows on the edge of the town. Beyond the cluster of squat structures, many of the more transient visitors to Ajilon had parked their vessels. They were being tended by a small fleet of hovercraft that brought them fuel and expendable supplies and transported their cargo.

“Looks like a bloody smugglers’ cove if ever I saw one,” Pennington said, eyeing the line of small vessels and the rogues’ gallery of seedy individuals who lurked within and around them.

Pulling an illegal scanning device from under her tunic, T’Prynn said, “An astute observation.”

“Travel with Quinn long enough and places like this start to look familiar.”

“No doubt.” She aimed her scanner at the row of ships and adjusted the device’s settings. “Most of those vessels have been illegally modified.”

Even though they were concealed in the darkness between two buildings, Pennington felt exposed. Vulnerable. “What’re you looking for? Are we trying to link one of those ships to Ganz?”

“No, Mister Pennington. We are going to steal one.” She wasted no time selecting a ship. “That one,” she said, nodding at a teardrop-shaped craft with a protruding pod on the starboard side. “It will suit our needs well. It has been upgraded with a number of improvements that I suspect were acquired via the black market. It has stealth, speed, and superior offensive and defensive capabilities for a vessel its size.” Putting away her scanner, she added, “It also has three people aboard. If you wish to dissociate yourself from my plan—”

“I don’t,” he said. “I’m in.”

“Very well.” T’Prynn handed him a plasma blaster.

He looked at the weapon in his hand. Its potential excited and terrified him. He swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “Right. What do you need from me?”

She arched one eyebrow. “A distraction.”

Dochyiel stood under the bow of his employer’s starship and used a Klingon painstikto swat another nymock off the power cables attached to the forward landing gear.

“Damned pests,” muttered the Efrosian hired gun. He jabbed the painstikinto the fallen parasite—to make sure it was dead and to vent some of his anger. This isn’t even supposed to be my job,he brooded. But the chief engineer is the boss’s best friend, so we can’t have him doing scut work when there’s booze to be guzzled, can we?The nymocklet out a pathetic screech as it expired under the electrical torment of the Klingon prod.

As the Efrosian resigned himself to heading aft to check the other landing struts, a commotion from a few ships away caught his attention. It sounded like a cross between drunken singing and someone trying to strangle a small animal.