Tila stood up and stretched.

All around her, her team bent their heads over their screens, faces set in concentration.

She felt closed in and edgy. The air wasn't stale, exactly, but it seemed to press in on her.

“Anyone need anything from me for the next hour or so?” she asked. No one looked up, and there was only a single grunt of acknowledgment that she'd even spoken.

Good.

She grabbed her screen, stopped at the machine near the door to make herself a cup of jah, and then walked down the corridor.

She stood for a moment where the passageway kinked strangely, pretending to check something on her screen, and when she was certain there was no one around, she turned the protruding carving of a flower fixed to the wall to the right, and pushed. The wall swung inward, and she stepped onto a deep balcony, with its lush plants and careful screening.

She loved it.

Loved the little present Guan had created for anyone able to solve Freya's Puzzle.

It had taken her six months, but she had managed it in the end. Garma's Puzzle had taken less time, because she knew the way Guan thought by the time she'd managed to get an apartment in his other Puzzle, but this little haven was still her favorite.

She hadn't known the reason for the buildings' names, had only slowly over time noticed the references to Halatian myth and history in the carvings and murals, and had come to realize there was a trail to follow.

She'd kept it quiet when she'd first realized, a secret she'd hugged to herself with a sense of fun and excitement.

She had been such a serious child.

The trauma of her abduction by the smugglers, the death of her parents, the abuse she'd suffered as she'd circled Parn in the smugglers' ship, had led to her barely saying a word for years. Nortri's death had come just as she was emerging from her shell, and it sent her back there for a long time afterward.

But that hadn't been who she was on Halatia. It was hard to remember, but she had the sense she'd laughed more than she'd done anything else. She'd played with her friends. Cuddled with her mother and father.

She hadn't always been the kind of person Nick Bartega had to coax out of her shell.

She pulled one of the deep, comfortable armchairs into the sun, and then settled in, cup in hand, earpieces in place to listen to her favorite music. All set to get lost in her work.

* * *

All three of them were dressed as clients, their clothes smart, bags containing their screens slung over their shoulders.

It wasn't a natural fit for any of them, and if they hadn't have been here for three weeks already, and gotten used to the style of clothes and the way people carried themselves, Dun didn't think they'd have pulled it off.

Even so, he felt uncomfortable enough, and exposed enough, to have to concentrate on projecting calm.

This wasn't how they did things.

They worked at night, setting the explosives in advance, but that hadn't been possible last night. The building's increased security had made their planned infiltration impossible.

They were victims of their own success.

Their previous attacks on other buildings in the Hub had led to more vigilance everywhere.

In the case of this one, Freya's Puzzle, that had meant they couldn't get in under cover of darkness.

That hadn't gone down well with the boss.

He'd ordered a quick, unplanned hit on the head of the Protection Unit in angry reaction, but like anything not well researched, it had failed. They had been lucky to get away alive.

Jirmain would try to get to Drake again, though. Dun had seen that look of fanatical hatred on his boss's face before. And the same went for the attack on Freya's Puzzle.

Jirmain would not hear of putting it off, or choosing another target, even though getting in was pushing the edge of safety for his team.

Dun had tried to explain it was a much higher risk to go in so boldly, that if they chose somewhere else, they could come back for Freya's Puzzle another day, but Jirmain wouldn't even hear Dun out.

So now here he was, standing in front of the lifts, with a deadly cargo in his screen bag.

They'd had to assemble the bomb and carry it in already made, which had sweat popping up along Dun's hairline, and he wasn't afraid to admit it.

It was much safer to bring in the pieces separately, assemble it on site, but he couldn't do that in a place as open plan as the firm he had been told to target, in broad daylight, with all the employees present.

He drew in a deep, angry breath.

He was going to ask for double salary for this one. And maybe Jirmain would give it to him.

He knew well enough he had no recourse if Jirmain refused. And you didn't walk away from the organization, either, if you didn't like the terms. He'd seen the bodies of the few who thought they could. And as for the disaster on Cepi . . . he'd been on board the ship that had taken out the team that had failed Jirmain there.

They had been obliterated.

A chime sounded, dumping him back to reality, and the door of the circular lift spun left, opening up. He, Kirt, and Timbo stepped inside.

It felt like a trap, but no client would take the stairs.

“I hate these things.” Kirt's grip on his bag was white-knuckled as the lift whisked them upward.

They were all too used to ship life. Being in Var was both exhilarating and strangely nerve-wracking. Planet life was an adjustment for all of them, growing up, as they had, on the smuggler ships.

This was an easier life by far.

The famous citizenship dividend--whispered about in awed, hushed tones by some in the smuggler community, derided by others--was a revelation up close. Everyone had housing, even transportation was free and easy to find.

The downside, the reason two Breakaway planets had come into existence in the last fifteen years, was that no citizen of the Verdant String could horde wealth. Some earned more than others, due to the hours and complexity of their job, but the massive inequalities of the past had been over on the Verdant String for more than fifty years.

The philosophy had started when the first two planets of the Verdant String had sent out space ships and encountered each other. By the time they'd found all eight planets colonized by the same people, it was more than a philosophy, it was a political movement.

If they had all arrived in the five solar systems that formed the Verdant String together from some mysterious other world, and were all responsible for the development of their current successes, then they all had to benefit from its riches.

A tiny percent of the population could no longer hold on to the majority of the wealth.

The Breakaways were called the greed planets, and Dun couldn't disagree. Everyone there was looking for the big break, a pathway to massive power and wealth. Few, very few, attained it, and they did so more through viciousness and violence than any inherent genius or hard work. In the weeks he'd spent in Var, he couldn't swear the Verdant String way wasn't better. Much better.

Not an opinion he'd be voicing to Jirmain or anyone else.

The lift stopped and Dun stepped out into the soothing reception area of the business Jirmain wanted destroyed.

Two security officers were waiting for them.

“Apologies, but due to heightened security concerns, we're checking everyone for explosives,” one of them said, a wand in her hand.

Kirt looked over at him, panic on his face, and Timbo pulled his laz.

The lift door closed behind them, shutting them off from a quick escape, and with a sense of doom, Dun pulled his own laz and started firing.