Kalico rubbed her tired face as she stared at the list. One hundred and thirty-two contractees. She’d sat down with each one of them in the cafeteria. Looked them in the scared, excited, disappointed, or anxious eyes. Soft meat. Clueless. The quetzal raid had finished what their first glance at Port Authority had started. All but a handful really didn’t want to be here. Didn’t want to ship up to Turalon and face another transit back to Solar System, not to mention that it would leave them in debt for the rest of their lives if they didn’t fulfill their contracts on Donovan.

On top of that, I have Soukup out there flying around in my old A-7, coming to who knows what sort of a conclusion?

At the soft knock, she looked up, seeing Shig Mosadek in the door.

“You asked to see me, Supervisor?”

He was wearing a wide-brimmed hat, his quetzal cloak, and knee-high boots. Shig’s favorite shirt was one Yvette had made for him; woven from claw shrub fibers, it sported colorfully embroidered squash-blossoms.

Speaking of which, here came Yvette, appearing in the doorway behind Shig. The tall and the short of it, was the old joke. Darkly complexioned Shig stood barely five foot three, and Yvette, at six feet, with her pale skin, silver-blonde hair and green eyes.

“Come in. Pull up a chair. I’ve been up to my ears in personnel assignments. Normally, I’d just tell them to go to work at whatever they’re contracted for, send them a salary for expenses, and call it even. With Soukup out sniffing around for reasons to declare me unfit, I’m going to have to come up with an agreement that can withstand scrutiny. One that justifies leaving seventy-two Corporate contractees in PA. It’s an entangled mess.”

“I can imagine,” Yvette said as she dragged the stained red plastic chair over. Shig chose the faded blue one, his round face pensive.

“Take Salassi Assanti, here. Twenty-eight. He’s a medical maintenance tech III, rated on the SEM, the spectroscopes, and whatever they call that big machine that analyzes blood and bodily fluids, the centrifuges, and protein synthesizers. According to the manifest, the parts are aboard Turalon, and Assanti assures me he can get our broken equipment working again.”

Kalico stopped, stared thoughtfully. “Our broken equipment. See how pervasive it is? It’s your broken equipment.”

“To be fixed by a Corporate tech,” Shig noted with a knowing smile.