Eris must have looked down on the Snarl, through breaks in the clouds, and thanked her stars she’d never had to live among the scum like Clo. Clo had told Eris where she’d grown up, late on those booze-soaked nights. It wasn’t until much later that Clo realized Eris had barely shared anything in return. That she’d said just enough about training and military to fool Clo into thinking she’d been a soldier.

A spacecraft flew low over their heads, the sound drowning out all thought. From above, they wouldn’t be seen. They would time their entrance with a big Tholosian carrier crawling with hundreds, thousands of soldiers and passengers.

Clo’s Pathos read the details of the spaceship—an Empusa V-900, nice—and fed it into their forged paperwork. The resistance had updated the Pathos since her last mission. Whoever designed their tech was brilliant. A Publican and a mechanic could now pretend to be on the passenger list.

“Hurry,” Eris said. “Let’s make this one.”

“Another one will come in less than ten minutes,” Clo grumbled, but Eris had already taken off, her steps quick and sure despite the slick sludge.

Clo forced herself into a run. Every step hurt. Some was the prosthetic, but mostly it was that ghostly feeling of a crushed leg, long gone, burned and scattered along the soil of Sennett. She placed her feet as carefully as she could. One wrong slip and her prosthetic could disappear down a bog, then Eris would have to carry her back to the craft, mission failed before it even began. And it’d be her own damn fault for lying to Kyla and Sher and downplaying the pain.

At hangar IV, they stomped the worst of the mud from their boots and crept around the back. They timed it perfectly. Floods of people from the Empusa streamed out, waiting for smaller craft to take them either to other planets or up to the floating palaces or resorts.

Clo had worked freelance jobs in these hangars when she was young. She’d hated being employed by the Empire—even briefly—but morality never entered into the choice between eating or starving. Her meals as a child had been meager as it was. No one would recognize her after being well fed for years. Her formerly thin arms were thick with muscle.

No one could call her scrawny. No one could call her weak.

<Two guards,> Eris said in her mind. <Palm panel entry. Retinal scan. Let’s hope the paperwork holds.>

<You’d know better than me if it will,> Clo said, and got a sharp look in return.

Eris adjusted her uniform, tightened her ponytail of long, dark curls. Clo felt drab in comparison but comforted by that. All eyes would be on Eris.