“I made your delivery to Broon. He didn’t want it.”

“Is that a fact.”

“Yeah,” Quinn said, “but don’t worry.” Using an old sleight-of-hand trick his uncle had taught him, Quinn produced a Federation credit chip from his right palm. He snapped his fingers and flicked it forward, onto the floor directly in front of Ganz’s bare green feet. “I got you a better deal.”

Ganz sat up, leaned forward, and plucked the chip off the floor. Holding it between his thick fingers, he stared at it for a moment. Then he looked at Quinn…and stood. Walking toward Quinn, Ganz’s every step projected strength and power. Lying down he merely seemed bulky; on his feet, in motion, the rippling movement of his muscles became much more apparent. He was heavyset in his torso, but not in a way that suggested softness; the added mass only made him more imposing.

The Orion merchant-prince’s chin was level with Quinn’s eyes. He spoke very quietly, but the deep register of his voice was such that Quinn felt every word tremble the air around him. “You know I sent you there to die, right?”

If street-fighting as a boy had taught Quinn anything, it was when not to blink or back down. “Yeah, I figured.”

“But you came back anyway.”

“You told me to sell your cargo,” Quinn said, quiet bravado masking the sick swirl of fear that was turning his guts to mud. “I sold it. Money from the job is yours. Deal’s a deal.”

“Good answer,” Ganz said. “I don’t know how you made it back here alive. I don’t even know how you got that hardware through Starfleet customs. I don’t want to know.” Leaning down, he filled Quinn’s ear with the most unnerving whisper he had ever heard. “But either you’re smarter than you look, or you’ve got powerful friends. Either way…you just made yourself useful.” Ganz withdrew and backed up half a step. “Come back in a few days,” he said. “I might have some work for you.” The Orion turned and walked back toward his mountain of pillows.

Taking that as his cue to leave, Quinn ambled casually away and descended the stairs like a man with nothing to fear. Less than halfway down, Zett was once again at his shoulder. “You’re probably feeling proud of yourself,” the Nalori said.

Quinn made a point of eyeing Zett’s suit again. “Have you considered patterns? Solids are very last year.”

“You should have killed Broon and his men when you had the chance,” Zett said.

“I don’t kill unless I have to,” Quinn said. “And I’ve yet to see a profit that was worth a man’s life.”

“That’s because you live small and have no imagination,” Zett said. “You humiliated Broon then sold guns to his rival. He’ll send people after you. Assassins. There’ll be nowhere you can go that he won’t find you.”

“You’re wrong,” Quinn said, bounding off the stairs and onto the gaming floor. “I have a very rich imagination.”

Zett sneered. “Your insolent japes won’t save you when Broon’s men come calling.”

“No, but they’ll make my death eminently quotable.” They passed a man who was facedown on the cards table, weeping into an empty stretch of felt where his chips used to be. Quinn adroitly snagged the man’s untouched cocktail, which even from more than a meter away Quinn’s nose knew contained tequila. He sipped as he stepped inside the turbolift. Making a broad shoulder-roll that sloshed booze on Zett’s perfect tan shoes, Quinn added, “Why’re you so worked up? Afraid I’m gunning for your job?”

“You could not do my job,” Zett said.

“Yeah, I hear being head waiter is hard work.” He guzzled the last of the booze and lobbed the empty glass at Zett. “Think fast.” The man reflexively caught it in one perfectly manicured hand. “Good catch,” Quinn said. As the lift door closed, he snuck in one last gibe: “Table four needs menus.”

The muffled crash of the thrown glass against the other side of the closed turbolift door brought a malicious smirk to Quinn’s face. Exiting through the airlock a minute later, he looked up at the two doormen, nodded his farewell, and received two polite nods in return. Sauntering away, he fished a cigar from his inside coat pocket, then found his lighter and ignited it. A thick plume of smoke lingered around him as he made the long walk back to the upper levels. I’m forty-nine, four times divorced, and one mistake away from waking up dead. But I’m still breathing, so here’s to me.

Several minutes later, he was ambling through the middle of Stars Landing. He ducked down a shortcut, a long and narrow sliver of space between two buildings. He was almost at the end when a large humanoid silhouette blocked his path. A stray shaft of light glinted off the man’s pistol, which was steadily leveled in Quinn’s direction. He considered turning tail and making a run for it, but it was a skinny straightaway with no cover and no doors. I’ll never make it, he knew. Damn, and this was a good cigar.

Quinn straightened his posture and chose to meet death with his eyes open. He put his cigar in his mouth and braced himself.

The gunman tensed, as if he had suffered a full-body muscle cramp. His knees wobbled, he crumpled downward, and then he fell on his face with a dull thud—revealing a tall and slender feminine silhouette behind him, one hand still extended to where the man’s shoulder had been. The woman stepped over the fallen assassin and strode forward, elegant and purposeful.

Grinning broadly, Quinn took another puff of his cigar.

T’Prynn emerged from the anonymity of shadow and looked at him with the most intense and beguiling dark eyes he had ever seen. “I have need of your services,” she said. “Come with me.”

Tim Pennington stepped through the door into his apartment. The sight of his wife smiling at him scared him half to death.

“Hi, honey! Surprise!” She stood in the middle of the living room, holding an ugly knickknack in one hand and his favorite pint glass in the other. Dozens of tiny bits of her tourist-trap junk from around the galaxy now littered his once-pristine shelves and tables. He stared at her, expressionless, like a man fresh from a difficult session at the dentist.

“Lora,” he said, shocked into a monotone. “You’re here.”

“I got a spot on an earlier transport,” she said, then tossed her bit of junk and his pint glass on the sofa and flung herself on top of him. Draping her arms over his shoulders and behind his neck, she said with a lascivious grin, “I insisted.”

His smile looked and even felt genuinely happy. It was a reflex. “And how could they say no, right?”

“Exactly,” Lora said. She kissed him, hard and hungry, with a passion that he was sure would swallow him whole unless he pulled back. He fought the urge and threw himself into the moment. The hesitation in his actions felt obvious to him, and he expected to be taken to task for it any second now. Instead, Lora broke away first, did a small pirouette, and laughed. “I saw a lot of cute little shops along the boulevards when I was coming in,” she said. “Restaurants, too. Want to get dinner?”

“I’m not really hungry,” he said, his melancholy slowly rising to the fore despite his conscious effort to suppress it.

“Quick, call security,” she said. “Someone must’ve stolen your stomach. You’re always hungry.” She shrugged. “Later, then. Whenever you like.” She began moving around the room, rearranging all her little bits of junk in ways that subtly eclipsed what few personal items he had chosen to adorn his living room shelves and tables with. It was as if he suddenly didn’t exist in the apartment he’d occupied alone for more than three months. “You’ve certainly settled in,” she said. Obliviously shifting and moving his life around, she prattled on, “If I know you, you’ve already got your routine all worked out. Up early, swimming laps, then somewhere obscure for a café con leche. A hard day chatting people up and trying to trick your editor into reimbursing your dinner checks.” She stopped messing with his things long enough to cast a playful, simmering glance in his direction. “Am I right?”