Private Danio, passing in the corridor, paused to salute. "Thanks for bailing us out, sir. I . . . really wasn't expecting that. You won't regret it, I swear."

Miles and Elli looked at each other as he lumbered on.

"He's all yours," said Miles.

"Right," said Quinn. "Next?"

"Have Thorne pull everything there is off the Earth comm net on this hijacking incident before we quit local space. There might be an odd angle or two not apparent to Imperial HQ." He tapped the data disk in his jacket pocket and sighed, marshaling his concentration for the task ahead. "At least this should be simpler than our late vacation on Earth," he said hopefully. "A purely military operation, no relatives, no politics, no high finance. Straight-up good guys and bad guys."

"Great," said Quinn. "Which are we?"

Miles was still thinking about the answer to that one when the fleet broke orbit.

Mirror Dance

For Patricia Collins Wrede,
for literary midwifery above and beyond
the long-distance call of duty

CHAPTER ONE

The row of comconsole booths lining the passenger concourse of Escobar's largest commercial orbital transfer station had mirrored doors, divided into diagonal sections by rainbow-colored lines of lights. Doubtless someone's idea of decor. The mirror-sections were deliberately set slightly out of alignment, fragmenting their reflections. The short man in the gray and white military uniform scowled at his divided self framed therein.

His image scowled back. The insignia-less mercenary officer's undress kit—pocketed jacket, loose trousers tucked into ankle-topping boots—was correct in every detail. He studied the body under the uniform. A stretched-out dwarf with a twisted spine, short-necked, big-headed. Subtly deformed, and robbed by his short stature of any chance of the disturbing near-rightness passing unnoticed. His dark hair was neatly trimmed. Beneath black brows, the gray eyes' glower deepened. The body, too, was correct in every detail. He hated it.

The mirrored door slid up at last, and a woman exited the booth. She wore a soft wrap tunic and flowing trousers. A fashionable bandolier of expensive electronic equipment hanging decoratively on a jeweled chain across her torso advertised her status. Her beginning stride was arrested at the sight of him, and she recoiled, buffeted by his black and hollow stare, then went carefully around him with a mumbled, "Excuse me . . . I'm sorry. . . ."

He belatedly twisted up his mouth on an imitation smile, and muttered something half-inaudible conveying enough allegiance to the social proprieties for him to pass by. He hit the keypad to lower the door again, sealing himself from sight. Alone at last, for one last moment, if only in the narrow confines of a commercial comm booth. The woman's perfume lingered cloyingly in the air, along with a frisson of station odors: recycled air, food, bodies, stress, plastics and metals and cleaning compounds. He exhaled, and sat, and laid his hands out flat on the small countertop to still their trembling.