Despite the presence of the Patrol fleet, landing on Vsuna proved uneventful. Except for having to make a minor course adjustment to keep out of the restricted area around the cruiser stationed above Tranur and being rerouted from the main city spaceport to a commerce port, everything went as expected.

  The commerce port sprawled along the southern shore of a large bay to the north of Tranur. Based on what Kressa was able to make out of the city and its port from the air, she was glad they rerouted her. She preferred the grittier appearance of the commerce port, with its surrounding trading establishments and warehouses, to the city’s flashy, ornate structures.

  “Connie, download an area map,” she said as soon as she got the ship docked in one of the port’s hangars. “Locate the address we were given for the meeting, and then see if you can find any references to the word Esora. I’d like to know if it’s the name of a person, a group, or something else entirely.”

  “Acknowledged. There’s an incoming call from the port authority.”

  “Probably just requesting an inspection. Put it through.”

  “Freighter Notti Girl, this is Port Supervisor Wendahl Jiunta. Prepare for inspection.”

  Kressa pursed her lips in concern. Supervisor Jiunta? What had she done to earn the attention of the boss?

  “This is freighter Notti Girl.” She used the name from the false ship’s ID she’d been given by the Arecian Guard. “We’re ready anytime you’d like to send someone over.”

  “We’re a bit short on personnel right now,” Jiunta said, “so I’m handling some of the inspections myself, and your number came up.”

  A personal inspection by the supervisor? Kressa’s worry grew. This was not looking good.

  “I’ll be there shortly,” the supervisor continued. “Jiunta out.”

  Kressa forced herself to relax. A personnel shortage was a perfectly plausible explanation. She hoped it was also the truth.

  “Connie, open the freight doors,” she said as she headed for the Conquest’s bay. She was waiting in the middle of the cargo area when the supervisor arrived.

  Jiunta was an older man with silver hair and pale gray eyes. Based on his features, Kressa thought he might be from the planet Sundara. He wore a dark blue uniform designed with more than a passing resemblance to the white, straight-tailored, padded-shoulder outfits worn by United Galaxy Patrol soldiers.

  He climbed the Conquest’s lowered freight ramp, paused to glance around the bay, and then strode to where Kressa waited.

  He gave her an amiable smile. “I need to see your ship docs and personal ID.”

  Kressa handed over the datacard that contained the details of the Conquest’s false identification and cargo manifest, and the counterfeit ID card that identified her as a twenty-six-year-old Terran trader named Deb Massera. The age on the card was right, and Kressa was half-Terran, so it wasn’t likely to be questioned. If it were, the Guard assured her that a matching history file existed in United Galaxy records. They had briefed her on the details of that history, just in case.

  Jiunta spent several moments comparing the holo-image of the fair-skinned, black-haired, dark-eyed woman from the ID to the real thing. His pleasant expression did not change, but Kressa knew what he was thinking: How did a woman with such elegant looks and obvious aristocratic breeding end up working as a trader? At least he had the courtesy not to look at her as if she were some sort of angel fallen from the grace of the United Galaxy elite.

  Jiunta finished his perusal and slid the ship’s card into the data pad he carried. He read down the information displayed on the pad’s screen, pursed his lips, made a few entries, and read some more.

  “You’ve come from Arecia?” he asked.

  Kressa nodded. She’d seen no reason to go through the trouble of changing the Conquest’s flight log as well as her ID transponder. It was not illegal for United Galaxy traders to do business on the Free Worlds; in fact it helped the United Galaxy’s image by providing difficult-to-obtain Free World goods to their citizens. One of the few powers the Free Worlds had over the United Galaxy was the ability to withhold those items. Unfortunately, exercising that power was often more trouble than it was worth, the trouble usually arriving in the form of Patty warships.

  Jiunta surveyed the bay again as if trying to place something. His gaze landed at last on the anti-personnel gun centered on the ceiling. The weapon’s barrel was retracted, disguising the full extent of its power, but some of the color seemed to drain from Jiunta’s face as he studied it.

  “It’s a pest-control system,” Kressa lied. She didn’t owe him an explanation, but he seemed like a nice enough guy, even if he did all but work for the Patrol. “It helps take care of the rats and crawlers and other undesirables that come on board with some of the cargo.”

  “Oh.” He sounded disappointed. He made an additional notation on his pad and looked at the readout again, graying brows pinched together. “This says the ship belongs to Damel Sana. Is he on board?”

  “That would be Damel Syana.” She had spent part of the hyperspace journey from Arecia memorizing the false ship documents. If Jiunta wanted to trip her up, he’d have to try harder than mispronouncing a name. “He’s just the owner. He never ships out with us. I’m the acting captain.”

  “The rest of the crew’s inside, then?”

  Kressa wondered at his question. The Conquest had been under port authority surveillance since she landed, so Jiunta knew damn well that no one had left the ship.

  She nodded. “They had a bit of a party on the way here, and they’re sleeping it off.”

  She had used that story dozens of times. So far it had gotten her out of having to explain how she piloted a four-man freighter by herself, something she wanted to avoid, for the Conquest was a special ship, and Connie was a very special computer.

  “Weren’t you invited to the party?” Jiunta asked.

  She forced indignation into her tone. “Of course I was, but somebody had to stay sober enough to land the ship.”

  “And your number came up, did it?” he asked, a strange lilt in his voice.

  “Yeah, I guess it did.”

  Jiunta studied her for a long moment, cast another look around the Conquest’s bay, and then ejected the ship’s datacard from his pad and handed it back to her. He replaced it with her ID. “How long are you going to be on Vsuna?”

  “A couple of days, at least.”

  He made another notation and returned the card to her.

  “I’ve imprinted your ID with a visitor’s permit. It will expire in three days. If you decide to stay longer than that, come to the port office to have it extended. You won’t be able to leave the port grounds or do any business off-site without it.”

  Kressa pocketed the ID. While she would almost certainly need the card to leave the port through any of the standard exits, she had strong doubts she would need it to do business in the surrounding establishments. When dealing with the sort of people who ran businesses that catered to traders, a few credits slipped under the table went a long way toward getting around the need for IDs, permits, and other official documentation.

  “If any of your shipmates want to leave the port,” Jiunta continued, “have them stop by the office first to get a permit.”

  “Will do. Anything else?”

  For a moment it looked as if there were, but then Jiunta shook his head. “No, nothing else.” He made another note on his data pad, took a final look around the bay, and headed out of the ship. He stopped at the top of the ramp and glanced back at Kressa. “Good luck here on Vsuna.”

  “Thanks.” She gave him a smile to send him on his way, closed the bay doors, and ordered Connie to seal the hangar.

  As she headed back to the Conquest’s bridge, she pondered her encounter with Supervisor Jiunta. The inspection, such as it was, had been remarkably brief, but she had the distinct impression that something else had happened, or tried to happen, and she had completely missed it. She asked Connie about it, but the computer detected nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Probably just a side effect of having a Patrol cruiser hovering a few kilometers over my head,” she mused aloud as she entered the bridge. “Did you find that address for the meeting?”

  “It’s a warehouse a few kilometers northwest of the port,” Connie said.

  “I’ll check it out this evening. Did you learn anything else?”

  “There has been a marked decrease in rebel activity since the arrival of the Patrol fleet, indicating that your conjecture about the warships’ presence is correct.”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Did you find any reference to the word Esora, besides it being the name of a Vsunan plant?”

  “The only other reference I was able to locate was to a drug made from the flower of the plant.”

  “No mention of it in reference to any rebel activity?” Kressa asked.

  “No.”

  “Good. With luck, the Patrol doesn’t suspect anything.”

  “Or the entire operation is a trap.”

  Kressa flashed a confident smile. “That’s why I’m going to check out the warehouse tonight, the night before the meeting.”

  * * *

  Kressa left the Conquest in the early evening and made her way to the bayside warehouse district northwest of the commerce port. She followed a convoluted route all but guaranteed to throw off anyone who might try to follow her. Darkness had fallen by the time she spotted her destination.

  Situated at the east end of a long row of ill-kempt, deserted buildings along the edge of the bay was a small warehouse. The shoreline curved around its east side and back, and a crumbling sea wall ran the length of the eastern shore. Two narrow roads led to the warehouse. The one Kressa was following paralleled the seawall and shore and ended at a row of freight doors across the building’s front wall. The second came in from the west—her left—to meet the first in a large loading area. Except for a few dim lights shining through the building’s high windows, the warehouse appeared as deserted as its neighbors.

  She moved closer to the structure, slipping from shadow to shadow along the dark street. A cool breeze off the water carried the odors of fish and brine, and the bay’s gently lapping tide kept perfect time over the hum of the nearby spaceports and city.

  Kressa reached the warehouse and crept down the narrow strip of pavement that ran along the building’s east side, beside the sea wall. She hoped to find some way to see inside, but only a few high windows opened toward the bay.

  She hurried to the back corner and peered around it. The breeze blew harder here, the ocean sounds and smells more intense. A tall, covered pier thrust into the water from the center of the back wall. It appeared to be the only way into the building from the back.

  Kressa retraced her route, made her way across the front of the warehouse, and ducked into the dark alley on the west side. An open metal stairway bolted to the side of the building led to a door near the top, then continued to the roof. A dim light shone above the door, and Kressa could just make out a small window on the barrier. Under the stairs, a large, grime-smeared window looked out from the ground floor. She ducked beneath the stairs and peered into a large, high-ceilinged storeroom. The room had been stripped bare except for a collection of mismatched chairs and benches. Dim light filtered down from the upper floor through the shaft of an old freight lift centered on the back wall and down a concrete stairway in the far back corner.

  The shadow of a single figure passed through the light from the lift shaft, but Kressa detected no other signs of life.

  She eased away from the window, crept up the metal stairs to the door, and peered through the tiny pane.

  A well-lit hallway stretched the width of the warehouse with several openings along it. A man stepped through an opening on the left and stood before one on the right. He wore a grease-smeared worksuit, and a number of tools hung from his belt. He spoke to someone beyond the opening, gesturing more than once toward the room he had come from, then he paused, shook his head, shrugged, and returned to the room from which he came.

  Kressa pulled back from the window. Were they building something to trap the rebels once they assembled inside the warehouse tomorrow night? Or—taking the less paranoid view and assuming this Esora thing was on the level—were they simply repairing some machinery?

  She looked through the window again.

  Two men were striding toward the door.

  She ducked away, thinking fast. She could head down the stairs and hope she made it to the bottom and found a place to hide before the men noticed her, or she could go up and find some cover on the roof. Then she recalled a simple fact of human nature: People seldom look up. Even if the men used the stairs to access the roof, which seemed unlikely, they probably wouldn’t look all the way up the stairway before climbing it. She was halfway up the remaining stairs before she finished the thought.

  She reached the roof just as the door opened below her. She ducked into a bank of deep shadows created by the blocky housing of a ventilation unit and drew the pulse gun she’d brought with her on the chance this turned out to be a trap. A single set of footsteps started up the stairs.

  Damn. Someone was coming to the roof.

  Kressa huddled deeper into the darkness beside the rusting ventilator and tried to ignore the adrenaline-induced tingle in her limbs. As long as no one looked directly toward her, it was unlikely she'd be seen, but it would be nice to have a way out, just in case. She peered across the dark roof, searching for inspiration in the clusters of equipment housing.

  The area flooded with light as several pole-mounted beacons came on. She blinked in the sudden, unexpected illumination. The man from the stairway stepped onto the roof and swept it with his gaze.

  Kressa froze. Had she been discovered already? No, the man was looking at the sky, scanning for something beyond the bright beacons that illuminated the roof.

  He appeared to be in his thirties, with a slender build, short black hair, and dark, attractive features. She didn’t know enough about the different Vsunan racial types to know whether or not he might be a native. He wore nondescript clothing that would go unnoticed on a dozen worlds. The only thing of real interest was a needler tucked into a holster beneath his left arm, but before Kressa could decide on the significance of the highly illegal sidearm, the hum of an approaching aircar drew her attention to the sky.

  The small, sleek craft circled over the bay, its running lights shining bright against the night sky. It slowed as it switched from airfoils to repulsors and then eased down to the roof beside the freight lift housing at the rear of the building. Before the craft settled fully onto its landing gear, a door on the car’s side opened and a cloaked figure stepped out. The door whisked closed, and the car lifted back into the sky.

  A gust of air from the repulsors caught the newcomer’s dark cloak and swirled it back, revealing a short-statured woman clad in the white uniform and silver insignia of a Patrol commander. A pulse gun hung at her side.

  “Hello, Nait,” the woman said, stepping toward the dark man. “Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner, but with all the meetings and troop deployment and planning for tomorrow night . . .” She shrugged. “You know how it is. Is the lift broken again?” She glanced back at the structure.

  “Yeah,” Nait said. “Clennan’s working on it.” He started back toward the stairway. Back toward Kressa. “He says he’s almost got it fixed.”

  The woman fell in beside him, and Kressa ducked farther into cover.

  “That’s good,” the commander said. “It’ll be a hell of a nuisance if it’s not working tomorrow night.”

  “Maybe you should choose a more modern place for your next little scheme,” Nait said with a smile in his voice.

  “I admit that age was not on my list of things to consider, but you’ve got to agree this place has everything else going for it: Limited access, no nosey neighbors, and no civilians around to get hurt if something goes wrong. What else could we ask for?”

  “I’m not suggesting it isn’t a good location,” Nait said. “It would just be nice if the facilities were a little newer.”

  They reached the stairs and started down.

  “We won’t need it much longer,” the woman said. “Has Dahl shown up yet?”

  “No. He called earlier and said he’d be late. He was checking on something that…”

  They descended below the roofline, and their voices faded.

  Kressa released a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, forced loose the death-grip on her gun, and breathed a tentative sigh of relief. The two had walked within a meter of where she hid and had not noticed a thing. She considered her next move. Obviously, getting off the roof and away from the warehouse was the first order of business, but then what? She would have to find some way to contact the people who had been invited to this charade and warn them it was a Patrol trap.

  She holstered her gun and started to rise, then she remembered the lights. Dare she come out of hiding into the glare of the bright beams? No one was around to see her, but—

  The lights went out.

  She smiled and crept through the darkness to the top of the stairs.

  A horrendous grinding and clanking rattled from the freight lift housing behind her. She glanced back, hand on her gun, but saw nothing of immediate concern. She started down the stairs. The scraping and clunking grew louder as the lift rose toward the roof.

  As Kressa’s foot touched the third step down, the door below her opened, and the workman she’d seen inside the building stepped onto the landing.

  “Turn the lights back on, Nait,” he called through the open doorway, and then shattered Kressa’s faith in human nature by looking up. Straight at Kressa. As the lights flared on behind her.

  “Hey! What are you doing up there?”

  She drew her gun and fired without bothering to take aim. The man ducked through the open doorway in time to avoid her wild shot. She fired a second time to let him know she meant business, and then dashed back up the stairs.

  “There’s someone on the roof!” the man said, his voice almost lost in the ruckus from the rising lift.

  Kressa cast about for a better place to hide than behind the ventilator. Behind her, footsteps pounded up the stairs, rattling over the continuing complaints of the lift.

  She spun and fired at the stairway, hoping a third shot would dissuade the man from following her.

  The clamor from the lift stopped and then started again.

  Kressa dashed toward the front of the building, trying to watch both the lift and the stairs, and then hesitated. Moving too close to the front would make her a target for anyone standing in the street.

  As if it really matters, she thought bitterly. Any second now, the Patrol commander could call for air support, and then it wouldn’t matter where Kressa was on the roof, which meant she had to get off quickly. Unfortunately, the only way down was a nearly three-story drop… unless she jumped down to the roof of the pier behind the warehouse. That was probably less than five meters.

  Easy, she told herself, hoping it would be. Either way, a twisted ankle from a bad landing was far better than anything she could expect from the commander and her cohorts.

  She dashed toward the back of the building, firing random shots at the stairs.

  She reached the edge and looked over. No one there.

  She fired a final shot toward the stairway, holstered her gun, and swung over the edge of the building. The lift door screeched open just as she let go.

  She landed hard but safely on the slightly sloped surface of the pier roof, then dropped over the east side to the rocky beach below.

  Shouts rang out across the roof.

  Kressa drew her gun again and ran along the back of the warehouse, east toward the sea wall. With luck, she could make it past the wall before anyone spotted her, head south along the shoreline, then find a way back onto the streets, get to the Conquest, and… figure out her next move.

  Less than a meter from the sea wall, a small pop issued from the darkness ahead of her, and something stung the back of her right hand. She recognized the sound of a needler and tried to bring her gun up, but the drug-tipped dart had already done its job. Her gun slipped from fingers gone suddenly numb.

  The needler popped again, and another dart stung her just above the collarbone. Then she was falling, helpless, unable to catch herself as she collapsed to the damp stones of the beach.

  Nait, the dark man from the roof, jumped down from the top of the sea wall, needler in hand. He kept the weapon trained on her as he picked up her gun and searched her, then he withdrew a commlink from his pocket and keyed it on.

  “Tell the commander I’ve got our prowler.”