“Putting Corporate contractees out at Tyson Station despite their rights?”

“They were cannibals!”

“Where does it say in the regs that a Supervisor can justify exiling people just because they’re cannibals?” She vented an irritated breath. “It’s coming to a head, Ghosh. One way or another. It’s just a matter of how hard they want to take me down.”

“Can Soukup decide that? Here? Now?”

“He has that authority. While I can’t know for certain, he may already have orders to do so.”

“With your replacement to be chosen from among the nobles?” Ghosh guessed correctly.

“Yeah, so what does that mean? Think, Ghosh. Chad was the most likely choice. He was the one with the most experience ensuring quotas were met in the Belt. Cinque Suharto is a logistics specialist and strike breaker, head breaker, and muscle for the Suharto industries. Bartolome? Systems management, behind the scenes. And then there is Falise; she could have something on the IG. But, hey, I’m ten years out of the loop. Any one of them might have qualities I don’t know about.”

“Maybe that’s Soukup’s game.” Ghosh kept glancing back to be sure they weren’t overheard. “His orders are to come, see, and choose the one who’s the best fit to take over Corporate Mine?”

“Might be.”

She could see the end of the tunnel, the doors closed at the decontamination chamber.

“So, what are you going to do about it, Kalico?” Ghosh asked.

“Haven’t a clue.”

Chapter 36

  36  

What the hell just happened? Falise tried unsuccessfully to bring it all into focus. Worse, she really wanted a drink, hard liquor, like a whiskey. And all she had was a two-SDR coin. Was that enough?

She stomped down the main avenue, rain beating on her bare head, hating Port Authority with a passion she’d never known she was capable of. Not only that, this miserable toilet sewage of a town didn’t even have working lighting. Only one out of every two or three streetlights cast a feeble cone of illumination down on the street. The rest of it was all shadows. Her feet, shod in expensive Son-Tay shoes, were soaked, and worse, the expensive fabric was now filthy.

Behind her, Clarice and Ednund didn’t utter a word, but kept pace, no doubt consumed with situational awareness as they scoured the shadows for danger. Even as they, too, had to be reeling from the events in The Jewel.

That that bearded, bug-eyed, flat-faced ruffian dressed in quetzal hide had been her brother? Not in a million years would Falise have believed that Derek, spoiled, shallow, whining, and craven, could ever have descended to such a brutish creature. That couldn’t have been her brother.

But it was!

And he’d played her masterfully.

I owe him money.

Pus in vacuum, but why hadn’t she played that last hand?