With a bucket of ice-cold water and a spin of the hammock, Zett Nilric rousted Cervantes Quinn from a drunken stupor aboard the Rocinante. The subsequent, heated exchange of exceedingly vulgar salutations led to Quinn’s quick beating by Morikmol, followed by a blurry drag through the corridors of the station. When the haze of Quinn’s minor battering began to abate, he blinked and realized that once again he was propped up inside Ganz’s dark sanctum on the Omari-Ekon, facing the big green Orion himself.

“I have a job for you,” Ganz said, reclined on his mountain of rainbow-hued giant pillows.

Acid churned, hot and sour, from Quinn’s stomach into the back of his throat. He couldn’t tell if the bile was the product of anxiety or of his hangover. With his hoarse croak of a voice, he said, “What kind of job?”

“A delivery,” Ganz said. “To the camp on Kessik IV.”

“The new dilithium mine?”

Ganz nodded, then surveyed his manicured fingernails.

Quinn continued, “What’s the cargo?”

“Hardware.”

“Hardware?” Quinn had a bad feeling about this. “Are we talking dynospanners, or the kind that’ll have Starfleet going up my tailpipe with a tricorder?”

“The kind that repays the debt you owe me,” Ganz said.

It’s contraband, huh? Whatever. “Where’s the pickup?”

Zett cut in, “We’re loading your ship now.”

“Whoa,” Quinn said. “I’m going out hot?”

Ganz leaned forward. “You have a problem with that?”

Quinn understood his situation clearly now: It was a setup. If I refuse it, he blasts me; if I take the job, I end up in jail. He sighed. It ain’t subtle, but I guess that’s the point. “No,” he said. “No problem.”

“Good,” Ganz said. “The payment will be raw dilithium crystals, six kilos. Make sure they’re pure.”

“Right,” Quinn said, even though he didn’t expect to get past his preflight check with a hold full of illegal cargo. “How do I contact the buyer?”

“Zett’ll fill in the blanks before you leave. Which would be right about—”

“Now,” Quinn said, “got it. See ya in a few days.” If you visit me in the brig, you green bastard.

Grateful that he was walking out of Ganz’s place this time instead of being dumped out like garbage, Quinn descended the curving stairs two steps at a time and strode across the smoky gaming floor. He shouldered past dense knots of people who crowded around the center stage to ogle the striptease show. As soon as he left the compartment, he sniffed and groaned to realize that the cloying perfume of debauchery clung to his rumpled clothes like a chigger on a bare leg.

He grew angrier by the minute. If he was gonna kill me, he could have at least been quick about it. That wasn’t how Ganz did business, though. The Orion merchant-prince had a knack for letting others do his dirty work for him.

If Quinn got arrested, he could try to implicate Ganz, but that would lead inevitably to Quinn’s “suicide” in the brig. He imagined how some intimidated medic would write up the cause of death: Subject snapped own neck in fit of depression. Instead, Quinn would play by the rules, keep his mouth shut, and spend the rest of his natural life in solitary confinement.

Conversely, if Quinn made it to Kessik IV only to be gunned down while delivering a shipment of small arms, Ganz would be light-years away, safely removed from any stain of impropriety. No matter how Quinn looked at the situation, the rules of the game were rigged in Ganz’s favor.

In the turbolift, his string of muttered curses bloomed into a shout of frustration. An irrational impulse drove him to kick the wall. Something went pop beneath his left kneecap. Hopping on one foot, he fell sideways as the door opened. He landed facedown in front of two young women, who recoiled with disgust, then stepped over him into the turbolift and shared a laugh at his expense as the doors began to close.

Lying on the ground and clutching his knee, Quinn decided—between expletives—that this was shaping up to be one of the worst weeks of his life.

The crawl to the bar seemed mercifully shorter this time.

He was nursing his second double of tequila when he faced facts. I can’t turn down the job. I can’t do the job. I can’t run. Circumstances had dealt him a losing hand. Recalling his father’s lessons about playing cards for money, he knew what he had to do. If all the rules work for Ganz, it’s time to cheat.

Swallowing his pride, he made the call.

An hour later, Quinn sat waiting in the meeting place, surrounded by every depressing shade of gray he could have imagined, and a few more to boot. The brig, he brooded. Not my first choice, but I have to admit it’s private.

He had entered through the front door. When the back door opened, he knew it must be T’Prynn. She walked in and was all business. “What is your ‘emergency’?”

It confounded him that a woman with a voice so warm could have a heart so cold. “Ganz is setting me up to take a fall.”

She arched one eyebrow. “Details.”

“His boys are loading my boat with enough guns to buy me twenty years in here.”

“So your difficulty is with Vanguard customs?”

“For starters. Knowing Ganz, even if I make the drop, the buyer’s got my number.”

T’Prynn looked away briefly, thinking. Quinn spent the moment admiring her gentle, innocent-looking profile. She reminds me of Molly, he realized. He hadn’t seen his third wife since she had tracked him down—on his honeymoon with his fourth wife, Amy—to remind him that their divorce wasn’t actually final yet. He shook his head and grinned at the memory of those roof-raising arguments. It was always something with Molly.

Turning back in his direction, T’Prynn said, “What is your destination?”

“The dilithium mine on Kessik IV.”

She nodded slightly. “Make the delivery.”

He blinked. “Maybe I haven’t made the situation clear.”

“I understand your predicament perfectly. Make the delivery and bring Mr. Ganz his payment.” She took a few steps toward the rear door, then paused and looked back. “Our meetings must become far less frequent, Mr. Quinn. Furthermore, in the future they will be set at my discretion. Do you understand?”

“Don’t call you, you’ll call me.”

“Precisely. Good night, Mr. Quinn. Safe travels.”

She left quickly, without sparing him another word or glance. Just like Denise, he reminisced, recalling his first wife with nostalgic fondness. Yeah, she ditched me with style.

Swaddled in dark clothes of an exotic alien pedigree, and tucked away in an inconspicuous corner of the enlisted men’s club, Tim Pennington sipped slowly at an orange soda.

As usual, he went unnoticed while he listened.

Surreptitiously adjusting the settings on his recording device, he aimed it slowly from one table to another, eavesdropping, seeking out tidbits of conversation. Most of what he overheard were run-of-the-mill grumblings—double shifts taken, priority work orders with conflicting needs, broken equipment, and the like. Every now and then, however, he caught something interesting.

“No telling what’s even in half those cases,” one stevedore groused to a table full of his comrades. “ ‘Category-one matériel, handle with care.’ That’s about all we ever get.”

“We loaded one on the Bombay last time,” another man said.

“I put a ton of C-1s on the Endeavour last month,” said one woman. “No bills of lading, though.”

“There never are,” said the first stevedore, and the conversation veered away once more into generalized complaints.

Pennington put away his recorder and slipped out of the bar. He had been hearing this kind of talk ever since he had first arrived on Vanguard. Throughout the lower decks, noncoms and enlisted personnel complained about work orders couched in secrecy, movements of shipping containers whose contents were all but unknown and therefore required the most stringent safety and security precautions, as a safeguard against every imaginable mishap. No one seemed concerned about the insistence on secrecy so much as they were vexed by the labor it added to their daily work schedules.