No, those things he had earned himself, earned on the “field of honor” while he laughed at their pretensions.

He opened his eyes once more, staring at his reflection in the com screen, remembering the dawn quiet and the weight of a pistol. Remembering the seconds and the master of the list’s stern expression as he stared across thirty meters of smooth grass at a pale-faced opponent. It had been… Bullard? No. That first time had been Scott, and he shivered as his palm felt again the shock of recoil and Scott’s white shirt blossomed crimson and he fell.

He shook himself. It had been a business transaction, nothing more, he told himself, and knew he lied. Oh, it had been business, and the money his secret sponsor had slipped him had cleared his debts… for a time. Until the next time. But the sensual thrill of knowing, even as Scott crumpled, that his bullet had blown his target’s aristocratic heart apart—that had been his true reward. And the reason it had been so easy to accept the next assignment, and the next.

Yet in the end, the very people he hated with all his soul had won. “Professional duelist,” they’d called him, when all the time they’d meant “paid killer.” And they’d been right. He admitted that here in the quiet, empty room. But he’d killed too many of them, even when his sponsors would have been willing to settle for a wound. The blood taste had been too sweet, the aura of fear too heady, and finally the Corps had had enough.

He’d killed a “brother officer”—as if the uniform a dead man wore should matter! He wasn’t the first serving officer to do so, but there were too many bodies in his past, too many families that owed too many debts. They couldn’t try him for murder, for duels were legal. He’d faced his opponent’s fire, and they couldn’t prove he’d accepted money for it. But they’d all known the truth, and they could bring up his entire record: his gambling, his women, the adulterous affairs he’d used to lure targets onto the field, the arrogance he’d let color his relations with senior officers as the terror of his reputation grew. And that had been enough to find him “unfit to wear the Queen’s uniform” and led to that bright, hot morning and the slow, degrading tap of the drums.

And it had led here, as well. Here where the money was good, but even here the money was only part of it. Only the means to an end that let him sneer at their self-proclaimed nobility of purpose and avenge himself upon them again and again, even if they never knew it.

His nostrils flared, and he pushed himself up out of the chair.

All right. He’d been warned that the operation was in jeopardy, and its security was his responsibility. So be it. There were too many records, too much evidence, in this facility, and as his employer had said, the lab was only hardware.