Excerpt

The client was indeed waiting, and the others were there as well, so that she had to stop just inside the door to acknowledge their presence. Peace Malindy nodded to her from the head of the table, and Imre Vaughn wheeled in his pacing to give her a quick, crooked grin and the lift of an eyebrow. Jian nodded back, careful to include the third man—the redhead exactly as motionless and full of potential motion as a statue—but her eyes were on the client. The woman sat at Malindy's right hand, the ceremonial cup of tea acknowledged but untouched in front of her: a tall woman, dressed in rust-brown silk just darker than her skin, a woman with no marks of implants on her hands or face, just the wires wound through her heavy black hair to show she might—and only might—be herself on-line.

"This is the senior pilot of the team," Malindy was saying, and Jian hastened to obey the cue, easing herself into a chair at the redhead's left. "Reverdy Jian. Reverdy, this is Meredalia Mitexi, who's hiring."

For a job nobody's willing to describe, Jian thought, and Mitexi smiled as though she'd heard the unspoken words. Her face was rounded, unremarkable, a midworld face, but the smile changed it, redefined the broad cheekbones and the amber eyes. It was the smile of a woman who did not conceal or deny her own power, not complacent either, but dangerous and ambitious and amused in equal measures. Jian took a careful breath, keeping her own face polite and still. I wonder what she thinks of me.

"Hiring, yeh," Vaughn said, and stopped abruptly in his pacing. The flat yanqui accent—deliberately assumed, Jian knew—was harsh as a blow. "For what?"

Mitexi met his stare with the same smile turned bland, not—quite—contemptuous, and spoke to Malindy. "This is the full team?"

Malindy nodded. He was a smallish man, unimposing to look at, especially in the one-piece suits he habitually wore, but he seemed unaware of Mitexi's tone. "Yes. I understood you required pilots with experimental licenses?" His inflection made it just barely a question.

Mitexi sobered at once. "That's right." Having said that, however, she seemed disinclined to proceed, looked instead at the table in front of her. Checking her notes, Jian guessed: the invisible implants acceptable in the midworld were relatively limited, their internal projections only visible against a blank background. "I have some technical questions first, though."

"Go ahead." Malindy's voice was scrupulously neutral, as was the glance he directed at his pilots, but Jian understood the unspoken warning. She would behave, and see that Vaughn did the same.

"You're both licensed for experimental craft."

It was not a question, and had already been asked even if it had been, but Jian answered anyway. "That's right. Also for most starships built in the last thirty years, and for about half the mainline VWS-linked aircraft."

Mitexi nodded absently. "What's your system?"

Jian heard a sharp intake of breath from Vaughn behind her, laid her right hand on the table, palm down, fingers curved in private still-sign: shut up. Vaughn shifted again, subsided. Jian turned her attention to the woman, deliberately placed her left hand on the table as well, and wound her fingers together to make the wires stand out. The shadowy lines darkened, became distinct beneath her skin, woven into the nerves of her hands. Those molecular wires covered her body, made up her skinsuit, the skinsuit that allowed her to interact with the overseer programs and constructs and control a starship in the chaos of hyperspace. They also made midworlders uneasy, and Jian waited for the other woman to look away.

"What's your system?" Mitexi asked again, and Jian felt herself flush.

"Mostly Connectrix biofittings, with some Kagami IPUs. It's modified Yannosti wireware—it would class out as a private-label operating system. It meets Standard Access Requirements, though, no problems."

"And you?" Mitexi looked at Vaughn. Jian tensed, but the other pilot answered coolly enough.

"Pretty much the same. I like Hot Blue bioware, though."

The redhead said nothing, as usual, even when Mitexi frowned in genuine annoyance. Vaughn answered for him, "Red's is a standard tech's setup, Staryards fittings and Datachain wireware. Also modified, but it passes SAR."

Mitexi stared at the redhead for a moment longer, her face unreadable, then glanced at the table again. "What about overseers? I understand you provide your own."

Jian's hands released each other, the right-hand fingers once again enjoining silence. Vaughn made a soft noise, breath hissing between his teeth, but said nothing. Jian said, "Unless the contractor wants otherwise. Yes, we each have an overseer—top of the line, a Spelvin construct." How else would we fly the ship? Nobody can read hyperspace unassisted; you have to have an overseer—topline near-AI with plenty of power and memory and a whole flock of virtual-world subroutines—if you're going to fly at all.

Mitexi nodded again, almost to herself, still looking at the table. "Would you be willing to work with an experimental construct?"

Vaughn stirred again at that, and Malindy said, "That wasn't in the precis, Bi' Mitexi."

Mitexi slanted a smile toward him, unabashed. "No." She looked back at the pilots. "Would you be?"

"That would depend," Vaughn began, the yanqui accent forgotten in anger, and Jian cut in smoothly, "—on what the ship was like, how well tested your overseer has been, how easy it would be to dump and reload with our own constructs if yours turns out to have bugs.…" She matched Mitexi's smile. "So you see it's impossible to give you a solid answer."

Mitexi's whole attention was on her now, for the first time, and Jian found it an oddly disconcerting experience. The woman's eyes really were the color of amber, red-toned brown, and possessed of unexpected humor. There was something predatory in them as well, impatient and demanding, an urgency lurking in that glance, like muscles beneath the skin.

"If you had the appropriate assurances, then," Mitexi said, "you would be willing."

"I would consider it, yes," Jian answered, and saw the other woman's lips twitch into a fugitive smile at the changed verb.

"And Ba' Vaughn?" Mitexi seemed to have come to the realization that the redhead would not answer for himself if he could avoid it; her eyes flicked to the other pilot.

"We'd consider it," Vaughn answered. "But I want to know a lot more."

"Of course." The smile that seemed to be always close to the surface in Mitexi's expression broke free again. "As I'm sure Ba' Malindy will have told you, I have an unrated ship I need to have flown. It's old, but in good condition—an inheritance which has finally come fully into my control. It was built about fifty years ago, and at the time was considered highly advanced. I understand from the engineers that most of the systems developed for the Byron—the ship was commissioned Young Lord Byron—have since come into common use, so nothing should be too unfamiliar."

An inheritance, Jian thought. A whole starship. I knew there were rich people in the underworld, but— Even as the thought formed, it was rejected. Mitexi was not of the underworld, the richest classes who could afford to live in fully automated comfort far below Persephone's scorched surface. The clothes were wrong, for one thing, and the face—and, more than that, she's hungry still. There's nothing to be that ambitious for, not the way she is, once you get down to the sub-Exchange districts.

"Where would we be flying this ship of yours?" The yanqui notes were back in Vaughn's voice, a sure sign his annoyance was under control again.

Mitexi's lips twitched, but she did not succumb either to amusement or irritation. "Refuge."

Jian blinked at that, and then, when it became clear that Mitexi would not elaborate, could not help feeling a sneaking admiration for the woman. It took guts to say simply "Refuge" and not offer anything else, explanation, defense, anything at all to explain why anyone would willingly choose to go to Refuge, when there was anyplace else left to go.

Vaughn laughed harshly. "Not on your life."

The redhead stirred too, an infinitesimal movement of head and shoulders that shifted the coarse mane of his hair, but made no other comment. Jian glanced sideways at him, but his face betrayed nothing but his astonishing beauty.

Mitexi laughed back at them, the sound unforced music. It was the only thing pretty about her, and that prettiness was not intended. "I'm looking for someone," she said. "My brother. I have reason to think he's on Refuge."