“Making friends already, huh?” An accountable sadness hit me as I spoke the words. Maybe something to do with the twin sibling pheromones coming off the Eishundo sleeves. “Wonder where he stole it from.”

“Who says it had to be stolen?”

“I do. These guys are pirates.” I stuck a hand up to her bunk. “Come on, let me have a look at it.”

She snapped the weapon back together and dropped it into my palm. I held it in front of my eyes and nodded. The Kal EM range were famed throughout the Settled Worlds as the silent sidearm of choice, and this was a state-of-the-art model. I grunted and handed it back up.

“Yeah. Seven hundred dollars, UN, minimum. No methhead pirate is going to spend that kind of money on a hushgun. He nicked it. Probably killed the owner too. Got to watch the company you keep, Jad.”

“Man, you’re cheerful this morning. Didn’t you get any sleep?”

“The way you were snoring up there? What do you think?”

No reply. I grunted again and drifted into the memories Murakami had stirred up. Kasengo, undistinguished little port town in the barely settled southern hemisphere of Nkrumah’s Land, recently garrisoned with government troops as the political climate worsened and relations with the

Protectorate deteriorated. Kasengo, for reasons best known to the locals, had stellar-range hypercast capacity, and the government of Nkrumah’s Land were worried that the UN military might like access to that capacity.

They were right to worry.

We’d come in quietly at hypercast stations around the globe over the previous six months, while everyone was still pretending that diplomacy was a viable option. By the time Envoy Command ordered the strike on Kasengo, we were as adjusted to Nkrumah’s Land as any of its hundred million fifth generation colonists. While our deep-cover teams fomented riots on the streets of cities in the north, Murakami and I gathered a small tactical squad and disappeared south. The idea was to eliminate the garrison while they slept and seize the needlecast facilities the following morning. Something went wrong, information leaked, and we arrived to find the hypercast station heavily defended.

There was no time to draw fresh plans. The same leak that had alerted the Kasengo garrison meant that reinforcements would be on their way.

In the midst of a freezing rainstorm, we hit the station in stealth suits and grav packs, sewing the sky around us with tinsel to simulate massive numbers. In the confusion of the storm, the ruse worked like a dream. The garrison were largely conscripted youngsters with a few seasoned NCOs riding herd. Ten minutes into the firefight, they broke and scattered through the rain-slashed streets in frantic, retreating knots. We chased, isolated, mopped them up. Some few went down fighting, most were taken alive and locked up.

Later, we used their bodies to sleeve the first wave of Envoy heavy assault.

I closed my eyes.