“Yes. Don’t tell me if a thing I want to do is legal or not.”

“Amended. I have what we need. My analysis flagged information that is high value to you.”

“Tell me.”

“Maxwell is leaving on a starship called the Ragtime. He has a bodyguard called Vitality who is going with him. He is settling most of his current court cases, including his divorce from wife Gwendolyn.”

“Can you run probabilities?”

“Of course.”

“Run the numbers on getting him before he leaves, with whatever time we have left.”

There are guards shooting into the sky when Brisbane approaches. Across his vision, Carmilla scrolls what each person is armed with and brief personal histories. They are all professional conflict experts. Bodyguards. Killers. Donors of bad blood. But where is the target? They seem rather relaxed.

They fire again, twice, then focus on Brisbane.

“This is private property, sir. Please leave.”

“I’m here to visit Mrs Maxwell.”

“Nobody by that name here, sir.”

“I know she owns the property from the tax record, and I know she’s here by the signature of her Autonomous and the fact that this was its last destination. I’m just a guest. I’m a friendly.”

“She has as many friends as she needs, pal.”

A shout and frantic firing of guns. Attention shifts to the air as a barn owl dive-bombs them. Brisbane leaps aside to avoid sharp quills shot like darts from its feathers. One of the guards goes down.

“Shoot it!”

“It’s too fast.”

It’s not fast. It’s just calm and manoeuvrable. It’s also not organic. Brisbane picks up a rock and Carmilla gives him an intercept vector. He hurls, and it hits the owl between neck and body. The guards are astounded that it comes down. It’s durable enough that it twitches, but they pile on it, stamping with boots.

“You brought it down with a rock. That’s amazing.”

Brisbane did not bring it down with a rock. The stone throw was to impress the guards, establish rapport. Everybody likes a good throwing arm. It was Carmilla who sent a disrupting signal to the owl’s AI.

They search him thoroughly and scan him. “What’s this you have on?”

“It’s a prosthesis,” says Brisbane.

“I can’t get any X-rays through.”

“That’s a good thing. It means nothing bad is getting out.”

“Hm.”

“Just let me speak to her.”

“Speak. She can hear you.” The guard points to a camera.

“I’m one of the Tehani,” says Brisbane. “Do you know what that means?”

The gate opens and he is waved in.

Gwendolyn Maxwell is thirty years old. Brisbane knows this because Carmilla flashes it.

“What do you want with me, Jeremiah Brisbane of the Tehani mining community?”

“I want your ticket to the starship Ragtime. I want to confront your ex-husband, call him to account for the murder of my people.”