As she walked into the suite in the hotel where her special unit was quartered, Lieutenant Thandi Palane was also thinking about snakes and scorpions. Walking into that suite reminded her of walking into a nest of the dangerous creatures.

But, as she closed the door behind her, she forced the analogy out of her mind. It was unfair, she knew, and more a reflection of her own dark mood than anything about her...

Ah, "ladies."

Rozsak's clever quip brought a little smile to her face at the same time that it darkened her mood still further. One of the many things she liked about the Captain was his sense of humor.

Oh, give it up, Thandi. You could spend an hour listing all of Luiz Rozsak's fine qualities, come to the conclusion—again—that he's the sexiest man around, and wind up going to bed—again—alone and frustrated.

The worst of it was that she knew Luiz Rozsak found her sexually attractive also. The captain was very good at keeping it under wraps, and the Marine lieutenant was pretty sure that no one else, except possibly the XO, had noticed. But Thandi had no doubt at all that she aroused the man. She was not what anyone would call an experienced femme fatale, but neither was she a naïve virgin. Such creatures did not exist on her home planet of Ndebele.

After closing the door and making sure it was locked, she leaned back against it, crossed her arms, and sighed heavily.

Actually, that wasn't the worst of it. The real worst of it was that she also understood—was fairly certain she did, anyway—why Rozsak was making no attempt to pursue her. Which only increased her attraction to the man; since, in essence, he was looking out for her own best interests.

His too, of course. Thandi knew perfectly well that Rozsak was extremely ambitious and quite capable of being as ruthless as need be to advance that ambition. Some other young woman—probably most other young women—would have found that knowledge repellent. But those young women hadn't been born and raised on one of the worst hellholes in OFS territory. Men on Ndebele were either cold-bloodedly ambitious or, as was true of ninety percent of them, they were beaten into a lifetime of what amounted to serfdom. The same was true for women, except the percentages were even worse. By the time she was sixteen, Thandi had come to the conclusion that whatever else happened to her, she would not settle for being an OFS helot.

So, seeing no other option, she'd enlisted in the armed forces. The Solarian armed forces, not one of the auxiliary military units the League maintained, like the Frontier Forces. She wanted no part of OFS, despite their easier entrance requirements. Besides, Thandi was smarter than average and had applied herself in school, so she was angling for a career as an officer, not simply a grunt. The Solarian League's regular armed forces would accept officer candidates from protectorate planets readily enough, even if they rarely enjoyed much of a career. In the OFS, that would be impossible.

Even with her intelligence and grades, that hadn't been easy to swing, for someone coming from her background. Not to her surprise, she'd had to settle for the Marines rather than the regular Navy she'd have personally preferred. Not to her surprise also, she'd had to provide sex for the SLN recruiting officer during the weeks the process had required, before he'd agreed to make sure the thing went through.

She hadn't minded, particularly. It wasn't the first time she'd had to perform that service, since it was a common practice on many of the protectorate worlds under OFS jurisdiction. Certainly on Ndebele. And at least the recruiting officer had been a fairly pleasant man, who'd tried to be gentlemanly about the whole thing—quite unlike the brutish factory manager who'd made her one of his concubines as a teenager in exchange for allowing her to attend school at night instead of working. He'd also had her boyfriend beaten senseless when he tried to object.

Remembering that old boyfriend, Thandi's crossed arms tightened and, with an effort, she pushed the memory away. He'd been a sweet kid, true enough. And, by the time he was eighteen, had been hammered into proper helotry.

She'd left all that behind her along with everything else. There was no way a man like Luiz Rozsak could be described as "sweet," whatever his other fine qualities. By the same token, he was neither beaten down nor bore any resemblance to a helot. Thandi could accept the man's cold-blooded ruthlessness easily enough, since the alternative was far worse.

The problem was that the captain wasn't simply ruthless, he was also smart. And smart in a way that—at least in Thandi's admittedly limited experience—few ruthless men were. He could think like a chess player, not simply like a human shark. And for all his obvious self-assurance, he was even smart enough to understand that he could only rise so far on his own. So, he was one of those very rare people who could apply ruthlessness to himself as well as others, and made sure that he built a strong team around him instead of lessening them for his own narrow and immediate purposes.

And so it was, she sighed, that she'd spend another night alone. It was too bad, but...

Grow up, girl. It's just a crush, so forget it. If you're that frustrated, it's not as if you can't find other outlets.

Plenty of them, for that matter. The captain was by no means the only man in her vicinity who'd found her tall and athletic self very enticing. He was just the only one who didn't make any advances—and, alas, the only one she was interested in herself.

"Moping again, are we? Must be man trouble, comrades."

"Stupid, then. If you want a man, kaja, just take him."

"If you need help, we'll hold him down till you're finished."

Thandi looked up, scowling. Sometimes she appreciated the rough humor of her charges. Other times—this being one of them—she didn't. Not in the least.

Seeing the fierce scowl, the women who'd entered the suite's central room from their sleeping chambers backed up a step or so. The quickness with which they did so brought some good cheer back to Lieutenant Palane. Partly, because the grace of those steps illustrated their own athleticism, which was something any ground combat officer liked to see in her troops. Mostly, however, it was because the quickness of those steps was proof positive that none of those women had any doubts, any longer, that if she wanted to Thandi Palane was quite capable of hammering them into dog food.

Superhumans or not. They'd still be dog food when she was done.

"Just joking, kaja," apologized one of them.

Thandi uncrossed her arms and waved the apology away. "Never mind, Lara. Man trouble indeed, as you say. But since when are men really worth troubling about?"

They grinned at her. Despite herself, Thandi had always liked those grins. At least, after a few sessions in the full-contact court—and several broken bones—had removed the underlying smirks. Those weren't the expressions worn by snakes and scorpions, after all.

"My very own half-tame wolf pack," she murmured to herself. Then, struck by a thought, asked aloud: "Is there such a word as 'wolfess'?"

As Lt. Commander Watanopognse had forseen, the Mesans staying in the Suds Emporium were even more disgruntled by the news of Zilwicki's arrival than the Solarians had been.

"They're a pack of wolves, Unser, what do you expect?" Haicheng Ringstorff motioned toward the closed door through which they'd come. "Except wolves don't tell lies in their sleep. So..."

Ringstorff's lieutenant, George Lithgow, was already slouched in a chair. Ringstorff moved to another chair and did likewise. "Are they telling the truth? How am I supposed to know? All I can tell you is that I certainly didn't order Stein scragged."

Unser Diem glared down at his nominal subordinate. "A poor choice of words, Haicheng. What the hell are you doing anyway, letting Scrags into Security? We've always been careful to keep them at arms' length."

Ringstorff didn't quite sneer, but his facial expression made clear that he understood just as well as Diem did that his subordinate status was mostly fiction. Leaving aside a meaningless title, Ringstorff was essentially in charge of all Mesan security operations in and around Erewhonese space. He answered to Mesa's Council of Coordinators, not to any of the specific corporations represented on that council. And while Unser Diem's position as the Jessyk Combine's representative on Erewhon—roving troubleshooter would be a more precise term—meant he couldn't be openly ignored or shrugged off, his actual authority over Ringstorff was effectively nil. The more so since Ringstorff had Manpower's nod of approval, and Jessyk was in fact if not in name what amounted to a subsidiary of Manpower Unlimited. The ownership records were a closely held secret, of course, and the two corporations were officially unconnected. In practice, Jessyk served as a convenient way for Manpower to keep a large portion of its revenues hidden from public scrutiny.

"I don't much like it either, Unser. But in case you hadn't noticed"—here, his lip did curl a bit—"I'm not operating inside the Solarian League. Which means, on the good side, that I don't have to be as twitchy about appearances; but, on the bad side, means I have to take what I can get. You know as well as I do that most of the security contractors on Mesa won't sign up for extended duty outside League territory or the Silesian Confederacy. Sure as hell not after that fiasco we had with Gauntlet. "

Diem made a face, and slid into a chair across from Ringstorff. "Yeah, I know. Still... Scrags, for God's sake! Word gets out..."

"Gets out to who ?"demanded Ringstorff. "We're far enough outside the League here that damn few people remember any of Earth's ancient history. The 'Final War' is just a phrase they pick up out of history textbooks in school. It doesn't mean anything to them, really, much less the details. There aren't more than a handful who'd even recognize the term 'Scrag' to begin with."

He snorted sarcastically. "The truth is that we're running a lot more of a risk by having Masadans on our payroll. Those fanatics have pissed off people in this neck of the galaxy—and not more than a few years ago. Since it's the Masadans who want the Scrags, the only way to get rid of them is to get rid of the Masadans. Which—trust me!—I'd be glad to do in a heartbeat, if the Council tells me to. It was their idea to hire them in the first place, not mine."