Once she got her racing blood and adrenaline under control, she took stock. That last mad scramble had taken its toll. One elbow and the left knee were torn out of her natty black suit. Her last formal dress. Not to mention that her hair looked like something out of a horror holovid.

“You’d think I never learn,” she muttered to herself.

Well, hell, after an arrival like this, nothing the Maritime Unit could throw at her would come as a challenge.

11

Shinwua, standing in the Pod hall, gave Michaela a measuring sidelong glance. “Did we really see what we just saw? I mean the Board Supervisor just jumped out of a hovering shuttle. The woman was knocked off her feet. She crawled, made it to the landing pad access by fricking luck.” He shook his head in disbelief. “That’s the Board Supervisor? I expected . . .”

“What?” Michaela asked when he couldn’t finish.

“More decorum.” Shin stared thoughtfully at the women’s locker room door. “Listen, I’ve only met her a couple of times. So, like, she didn’t strike me as the kind who’d let herself be blown off her feet and walk in the door looking like she’d been dropped out of a rock tumbler. You know her, spent time with her in Port Authority. Is she mentally deficient to pull a stunt like that, or what?”

Michaela glanced down the level one hall and back toward the cafeteria where everyone was waiting. Like Shin, they would have been watching on com. Seen the Supervisor’s most undignified arrival. If there was anything that would lead her people to question Kalico Aguila’s leadership, that hellacious first impression might be it. She’d looked more like a demented buffoon than a self-possessed and dignified Corporate Board Supervisor.

Michaela considered her words. “The woman I spent time with in Port Authority struck me as a no-bullshit, tough-as-nails, jack-me-around-and-I’ll-kill-you hard-ass.”

“That’s not what I saw scrambling for the hatch.” Shin crossed his arms, expression skeptical. “And the scars, they creep-freaked me the first time I ever saw them. Makes her look like some kind of monster, all crisscrossing her face and hands. I mean, the woman’s a Board Supervisor, for God’s sake. Why doesn’t she have them fixed? Or does she keep them just for effect? You know, to scare people. Maybe because she needs all the help she can get?”

A pause. Then he added, “Like that big pistol on her hip? Come on! What’s she need that gun for? Here? On the Pod? We’re a bunch of scientists for God’s sake. What’s she expect? To get jumped by monsters in the cafeteria? Who’s she trying to scare, anyway? And what’s it say about her that she thinks she has to?”