Serena turned to glance at me, too. She was dark-skinned, dark-haired, high cheekbones, and just radiated an atmosphere of calm. She was also a stunner who spent eight hours a day underdiving for Karma, dragging My Queen along to get him to Seven.

I clocked a thumb at the critter. “I’m delivering Trina here to you.”

“Mew?” it asked, looking at me.

“If you’ll jump out of my Null...” I prodded it, and it jumped gracefully down to his desk, making him pull his hands back as the butterfly-pattern wings flared out for an instant and it landed.

“An Aquatainian Fluttercat, which is not a cat, but people are stupid.” It had antennae, for starters, and the wings were not some cosmetic decoration gene-modded into place. It was rather catlike, but with a longer and somewhat thinner neck, longer-limbed and graceful, with very soft white fur and a poofy tail. “It’s about as intelligent as a two-year-old human, although most people don’t realize that. It’s also very empathic and psensitive.

“I gather it was a fad pet of one of the families at the Black Night event we just had. It came out of nowhere and jumped onto my shoulders to get away from all the violent emotions in the area. It also felt its adopters turned into puppets, but it couldn’t do anything about them until everything was all dead.

“It needs to be around people, as it feeds on residual emotional energy, among other things, but those people need to be generally calm or it gets very skittish. You’re the calmest normal person I know, so congratulations, you are now the proud owner of a pet which, if the prices on the Boole are to be believed, costs more than two years of your salary.”

His Band bleeped. “That’s an optimal diet, but it can eat dead rats without a problem.”

His pale brown eyes looked at me, then down at the cat standing on his desk, who was looking back at him.

“He good for you?” I asked. The cat looked back at me and mewed again. “Fantastic. He has problems sleeping, help him with that.”

The cat mewed again, and proceeded to walk up his arm, around his shoulders, and laid down around his neck as My Queen had the closest thing I’d ever seen to surprise on his face.

Yeah, he was more a dog kind of guy, but he was perfect for the cat, so why not?

-Hey girls, My Queen lives in Casperblok. That’s on the next wave of expansions, isn’t it?- I flicked through the community files they’d drawn up on next goals, having largely taken over all the mechanics thereof.

Confirmations rang in from girls busy flaming oozes, ganking morlocks, trolling spideroids, dodging zwilnik shooters, roaring through deathmatch races, shooting up a drug parlor, and otherwise engaged in peacetime activities.

-Let’s make that a priority, shall we?- There was a small blizzard of affirmatives, and I smiled and waved at Doris as I walked out. She smiled and waved back, beaming with her new haircut and manicure.

Joile Rantha had personally promised to perform the surgery to restore her face when she hit Eight, and was Doris’ most frequent escort home. The Mick had gotten himself certified as a Medicae Trainer, expanded his operation yet further, and fortified his credentials. He was also overseeing satellite clinics at all the bloks under G&G control, which still took gangers who came in under white flag. The availability of pain-free psionic healing was a huge draw and making good money, and if a bunch of nasty wounds popped up on me in the middle of something and were then healed away, well, that was me monetizing a healing factor.

The girls were getting to the level where they could start developing one, which was good, they were a must in our line of work, and the Regeneration/1 at Five even more vital. Coming back from an insta-kill would really annoy a lot of people...

I headed outside for a walk, looked both ways (and checked TC) before crossing the street.

Uh huh...

There was a Tekron hovering up there in a clear space between the traffic flows, looking at me.

It was out of phase with reality, and so undetectable without some really high-end tech... or True Sight, in which case it was bloody obvious sitting out there so confidently in plain sight.

I made no sign that I’d noticed anything, of course, but Grim still rode high in my hair on the back of my head, watching my flanks, and after five upgrades, had considerable visual range for a psicrystal.

Chalice silently moved into construct-cutting mode, in bodyphase and so unseen.

Okay, it was following me, too. That wasn’t too good. I could understand why they would be interested in me, a mere human professing to kill one of their stealthers, and probably wondering how and why, and wanting to verify if it were true.

This pyramidal wonder had a large eye on each facing, and swiveling energy projectors at each vertex. If it popped in and started releasing, I was pretty sure everything within a half-mile was going to die pretty quickly to some very high-end firepower.

But it was here to watch, and it was following me and matching my pace.

So, the thing to do was take it by surprise. I headed for the corner of the commercia building across from the Termite building in the government ward offices, and slowly picked up speed, first by lengthening my strides with lightfoot without actually changing my pace, and then going into skating and moving into the fast travel lane.

It started to swing out as it accelerated to match my pace, picking up speed as it rounded the corner... and paused, because I was not where I should have been.

Then my Interdiction slammed it out of phase and its roboeye jerked up even as its anti-grav failed it. The plasma ray burned me right across the chest as Chalice came ripping down on it in a full-out Spirited Charge, jumping up onto the side of the commercia, taking three steps to get fifty feet in the air, light gravity to go up too fast, and heavy gravity to come down too fast.

The Sun Strike and adamant orichalcum combined to blow through its necrochalcum hide, and vivic banefire mixed with the force-shredding power of Sundering and Breaking tore apart its inner systems in a spray of arcane and psionic energies.

It crashed to the ground as I drove down on it, nearly hitting a little old lady wandering by. She jumped in shock, was about to say something as I pulled a flaming golden Sword out of the burning attack bot, and decided that it wasn’t worth getting into a fuss over. She walked away as if nothing had happened, and I smiled to myself.

She probably hadn’t seen something die yet today, so she had to get in her count.

If they sent one, they’d send back-up. I dialed up my Band, and openly rang a call into the Umbran headquarters.

“This is the office of the Fallen Moon. Agent Rantha, why are you calling?” the electronic receptionist answered.

“If you’ll access my records, you’ll find that I killed a war-bot made outta some cool stuff a while back. Well, I got another one. Was wondering if the Umbrans wanted it again, or if I could auction it off this time.”

“One moment please, Agent Rantha.” I wasn’t even going to dare a direct /tellepathic link at this point, only background /tells between people were going on, basically undetectable by anyone. As I sat there with one foot on the razor-edged corner of the Tekron that had buried itself on one corner a couple feet into the duracrete, I eyeballed everywhere, looking for the backup that should have been trailing the spotter.

There it was. It looked like a twelve-sided die with recessed sides, and multiple lenses and antennae projecting from it. It was about a thousand feet up and a half-mile away, clearly keeping a safe distance, but doubtless it had just seen the whole thing of me rounding the corner and then abruptly coming off the side of the building from above to one-shot its companion.

“Agent Rantha, you are directed to secure the warbot. A Striker collection team will come promptly to pick up the specimen.”

“Mmm-kay. I’m gonna take some pictures and post them. This thing looks pretty cool. Who knows, there might be another one floating around.” Which should set off all kinds of alarm tonals up there.

Philius was knocking on my mental door within seconds. I directed him over to Sir Dorval without connecting, and thence to My Queen and Serena.

Ten seconds later Serena poked her head out the door to see me standing there with one foot on a dead Tekron, and then pulled back inside. There was a blitz of /tellepathic conversation ‘around’ me. Our eyes met, and she began to blink.

‘WHERE?’ her eyes spelled out. My hair curled up under my chin, just outside the watcher’s line of sight, and pointed up and behind her. /tellepathic notices flew out after she pulled her head back inside.

One minute later, as I was sure the hoverwagon was being boarded, I felt the surge of an Interdiction going off and brushing up against my own. Serena had moved to a higher floor and the end of the building closer to the d12 Tekron.

It was shunted into realspace, and then a needlebeam and a psionic pulse flashed in from way over yonder and hit it in the same instant. Spitting black lightning, it was slammed into the side of the building and lodged there, forced into the duracrete, a big hole in it from which nothing was going to come out intact.

The report was like thunder, but not many people actually saw it, only turning their heads at the flash. It was a thousand feet up, after all, but some people still made out something wedged into the side of the administrative building. Pictures would be going out quickly, without a doubt.

So now it would be established that the authorities here could also detect and take out Tekrons, which was also an important piece of misdirection.

Mithar, I hoped this wasn’t going to lead to a Tekron invasion. The planet was pretty much doomed if that happened. I didn’t have the tech in place to face them, we didn’t have the numbers, and there wasn’t a big enough presence in space as far as I knew. They would be irked that their dead didn’t auto-vanish, necrochalcum was not cheap to make, but thems the ropes. As soon as you throw psionics into the mess, all sorts of things like Interdictions were possible, if annoying to robots made from Weird Science.

Never a dull day, never a dull day. My payout should be much, much higher this time...

------

“What is this?” My smile grew wide despite myself.

I was looking at my bank account in a good mood, which rapidly evaporated as within about ten seconds of ordering ‘necessary stuff’, it was suddenly in dire need again, and I could only curse the black hole of equipment upgrades.

This physical letter was actually printed, delivered, required a signature and confirmation of receipt, and had to be witnessed by the opener. Niles winced despite himself as I turned it over.

“It’s a draft notice,” he whispered to me, and looked like he was ready to run.

“Really.” I eyed him. “Ah, some people want to shoot the messenger when they get these, huh?” I flipped him a ten-credit coin instead.

He slumped down in relief as he caught it nimbly. “I’ve almost been shot three times, Lady Sama. Citizens are supposed to have mandatory service, but they usually buy it off by paying someone else in their place.”

“Three people.” I held up three fingers as I popped the notice in front of him. “And the government sets the payout. It’s actually not that bad a deal for a Native who wants to get out of Downspire. Set up your family for several years, send your siblings to a decent school, a bunch of stuff, and at the end you can apply for Citizenship, if you meet the reqs.”