Tila lost count of the hours she sat in the shuttle.

At some point she dozed off, fear and stress draining her of energy.

The thought that looped around and around in her head was that taking her didn't make any sense. They could have left her in the warehouse beside the shuttle, no one there had tried to stop them leaving.

There had to be another reason. Something to do with the way they'd stared at her in Freya's Puzzle.

Something to do with her being Halatian.

The thought ramped up her distress, because she didn't have to stretch her imagination very far to guess they were smugglers.

A new generation of them, around about her own age.

And she could imagine to some twisted mind, the decimation of the smuggler gangs after the Halatian Incident could be laid at the feet of the Halatians themselves.

They were distinctive enough, rare enough, to make a good scapegoat.

And while the smugglers may have reestablished a small foothold in the fifteen years since they'd chosen to make money out of massive tragedy and human suffering, their survival was only thanks to the establishment of the Breakaways.

They had been hounded after Halatia imploded, chased down in every corner of the Verdant String and beyond.

There had been nowhere for them to hide until the two planets that became the Breakaways were discovered ten years ago and claimed by two huge corporations willing to cut ties with the Verdant String for the promise of massive profit.

That hadn't worked out too well for them, but it had given the smugglers a place to hide. A lawless, unpatrolled area to hunker down, regroup, and use as a base.

She had a horrible feeling Dun was taking her to whatever dark corner of the Breakaways he called home.

They weren't out of Parn's sovereign space yet, though.

The Mother and Child were clear from the window beside her seat, the Mother blocking all but a slither of the Child from view, as if protecting it.

They were heading straight for the Mother, and she started paying more attention as they got closer and closer.

There was a strange sense of having been here before, as if time had wound back fifteen years.

The Caliope, the smuggler ship she'd been imprisoned on, had lurked here while the smugglers demanded ransom for the Halatians onboard, hiding in the deep chasms on the Mother.

If she'd had any doubt about who Dun, Timbo and Kirt were, it was put to rest now.

They dropped down toward the surface of the Mother as if they were planning to slam the shuttle into her barren wastes, but the closer they got, the more clear the topography became. Hills, mountains, valleys and deep gorges.

The shuttle dove down into a wide chasm fashioned from dull gray rock and then slowed, lowering down to land on the uneven floor of the canyon.

Dun cursed as the ship wobbled and then leaned a little to the side.

“What did you expect?” Kirt asked him. “That they would have bothered to set up a landing pad?”

Dun snorted out a cynical laugh.

Timbo said nothing, but Tila thought he looked like he shared the joke.

She had the sense whoever 'they' were wouldn't be that much of a joke to her.

They waited, and she wondered what for until she heard the whine of an engine. The sound of a clamp engaging echoed through the shuttle, and then Dun moved forward, waited for the lock-light to blink on, and hit the button to open the door.

All Tila could see was a circular tunnel.

Rather than put on suits and go outside under their own steam, they were being fetched in some kind of vehicle, she realized.

“Come on,” Dun said.

Kirt went down the tunnel first, and Dun waited for her to get up from her seat and step into the tube.

He was so close behind her she could feel his breath on her neck.

She flinched, and tried to move a little faster.

The tunnel was short, and she stepped into the back of what looked like an all-terrain vehicle with two rows of seats facing each other. Kirt was already sitting down.

Two people stood on either side of the doors, a man and a woman, and they reacted with surprise at the sight of her.

Dun walked through, gave them a nod, and when Timbo stepped in, the two newcomers tore their gaze from her and began unclipping the all-terrain from the shuttle.

“Sit,” Dun told her, and she moved to a seat in the middle of the row and did as she was told.

For now.

* * *

There were no windows at the back of the all-terrain, so Tila didn't know where exactly they'd brought her, but she assumed they had reached their destination when the driver swung around and reversed, and the two crew members reconnected the tunnel.

The trip had been teeth-rattling, but short. Too short.

She wanted more time before she faced whatever it was she had to face.

Something unpleasant awaited her.

She knew it. Everyone in the vehicle knew it.

The tension was palpable.

If her kidnappers were afraid for her, she honestly didn't know what to expect.

When she forced herself to stand, her legs felt unsteady, and she had to deliberately straighten her spine and push back her shoulders.

She put a hand out to steady herself as she walked down the thin, echoing metal cylinder and all but stumbled into a massive cargo space.

Dun was right behind her again, and his hand shot out to steady her, his hold solicitous rather than cruel.

A few of the waiting crowd gasped at the sight of her, and someone pushed through from the back, taller than most, and with the same striking hair color as her own.

“Dun.” His voice was neutral, but Tila could see Dun swallow nervously.

“Jirmain.” He inclined his head.

“Well?” Jirmain stared at her, eyes narrowed, and she watched him back.

She had to admit, seeing a Halatian had lifted her spirits for a moment, but then she'd noticed the way the others had reacted to him.

They were genuinely afraid of him.

Being Halatian herself, she didn't carry the baggage the rest of the Verdant String did about her fellow Halatians. They weren't just victims or delicate flowers in need of protection. They could be just as wonderful, and just as awful, as anyone else.

“Tila Del Rio worked at Freya's Puzzle.” Dun said nothing more.

Jirmain flicked his gaze over to Dun for a moment, then back to her. “How long have you worked there?” he asked her.

“Four years.” She would have liked to have told him it was none of his business, but it wasn't important information. She'd save her fuck-you's for when they really counted.

”Who did the recon for that building?” Jirmain asked. There was silence. And Jirmain pointed to one of the people in the crowd. “Who, Hart?”

Hart looked a little wild-eyed. “You, Jirmain.”

Jirmain lifted a screen from his pocket and flicked through, frowning. He must have found something he didn't like, because he seemed to stare daggers at the screen. When he looked up, there was something almost feral in his gaze. “Bring her, Dun. We'll talk somewhere more private.”

Dun clamped down on her upper arm again and moved her forward. The crowd parted, gazes avid as she walked between them.

They were a rag tag bunch. The slick clothes Dun and his two colleagues wore stood out in contrast to the majority of the onlookers, whose clothes were old, ragged and patched.

Dun marched her out of the loading area and into a long passageway. The metal was dark and dull, although clean enough, and their footsteps rang and echoed as they walked.

”A bit different to what you're used to, eh?” Dun said, looking over at her with a sly expression.

”No, I've been in a place like this before,” she answered. “My father and my aunt died in a place just like this, and when I was rescued, I weighed almost half what I should have weighed for my age. My cousin, the only family I had left, killed himself because the memories of his time in a place like this were too terrible to bear.”

His face went blank and he didn't talk again.

She didn't know if she should have provoked him like that or not. But she couldn't regret it. With every step she took deeper into the ship, more memories of her captivity assailed her.

Her breath was short, and her legs trembled by the time Dun touched a panel beside a door and then ushered her in when it slid open.

Jirmain stood beside a table, looking down at his screen.

”You did well to get her out, Dun. Is that why there was no explosion?”

”Yes.” Dun didn't seem to go in for long explanations. Tila wondered if it was his natural manner, or whether it was an attempt at self-preservation.

”I rushed you.”

”You did.” Dun didn't color his tone as he said it, walking a strictly neutral line.

At his agreement, Jirmain turned, eyebrow raised. Then gave a smile. “Occasionally someone does need to tell me I'm wrong. I forget that, sometimes. You must be tired after everything that's happened. I'll deal with Tila Del Rio from here.”

Dun nodded and walked out, abandoning her without a word.

She didn't have any reason to feel betrayed, but she did. She saw him turn just before the door swished closed behind him for one last look before leaving her with Jirmain.

So he felt it, too. That he was leaving her to her fate. And he felt a little bit bad about it.

She turned back to face Jirmain, and they stared at each other in silence.

”Which smuggler ship brought you to Parn?” he asked.

”The Caliope.”

He drew in a quick breath at that. “I don't remember you.”

”I was in a cell with some other girls my age most of the time.”

He gave a slow nod. “How old were you? Nine?”

”Ten,” she said. “You must have been about fourteen?”

He gave a nod.

”So how did you end up here, and not on Parn?” Tila hadn't known there were children who were never saved. It was almost inconceivable to her.

”The few smugglers who escaped took some of us as hostages.”

”But when they were out of danger, why didn't they sell you back?”

He lifted a shoulder. “It was too risky for them. The tide had turned so hard against them, there was no civilized place they could go to negotiate our release that would have been safe for them. They decided it was easier to just keep us.”

“How could that be? Surely you were missed?”

He shook his head. “It wasn't as if they had a passenger list.” His smile was wry, almost friendly. “No one knew we were missing, because no one knew we were there in the first place.”

”But they're not keeping you now,” Tila pointed out. “You seem to be in charge.”

”Yes.” He smiled again, and she saw a flash of something a little crazy, a little unbalanced, in his eyes. “That's the thing about child slaves, they grow up.”

”Are there others like you?” Tila asked.

”No.” He looked out of a window that showed nothing but black. “There were only two other Halatians, and they didn't survive.”

His voice was dismissive. He either didn't care, or cared too much.

”What has this got to do with you killing people on Parn? And why did Dun bring me here?”

Jirmain leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest, a smug smile on his face. “I'm dishing out some revenge. Fifteen years ago, while we lived and died in misery floating above Parn, the Parnian government argued and disagreed on what to do about us. They could have done the right thing, but it took pictures of our circumstances to convince them to act, and even then, Captain Drake had to go against orders to launch the first offensive.”

She looked at him with dislike, and he lifted his shoulders in answer.

“All right, so I'm not telling you anything you don't know from very personal experience.” His tone turned bitter. “Not that you suffered the full consequences, like I did.” He took a deep breath, and she wondered if he heard the accusatory note in his own words. As if he blamed her for being saved. The thought chilled her.

She was here, right in front of him, and the faceless councillors who'd dithered and prevaricated at the risk of her life and his were not.

If he was looking for an immediate target, she was a little too handy.

She looked up when he went silent, and found him watching her strangely. “My point is, who has paid the price for what they did?” He looked her up and down. “Certainly not the people who left us to die, that's for sure.”

“I still don't understand—”

“I'm targeting the business investments of the people who sat on that council. The men and women who served their five years and then went on their way, untouched by the tragedy they helped to create.”

Tila lowered herself into a chair. Her legs just couldn't hold her up any longer. “You may be putting a temporary halt to their businesses, but Parn is part of the Verdant String.” She looked at him in astonishment. He surely couldn't be so ignorant. “There will be no lasting economic consequences to them. There is no lavish lifestyle you'll be taking away. Economic equality is the watchword of the Verdant String. There's a limit to the amount of money any one person can amass. It was like that on Halatia before it was destroyed. You must know this. The only thing you've done is kill and maim innocent people.”

He stared at her for too long, his face blank. “I understand the concept of economic equality. I'm reducing the businesses they've touched to rubble to draw attention to them. I'm taking away their reputations. I'm reminding people of what they did.”

“A media campaign could have done that.”

He snorted. “No. The only way to truly ram it home was for innocents to lose their lives because of decisions they made. That is what will be remembered. A media campaign would be forgotten in a week, a month at most. Massive loss of life, as you know only too well, tends to linger in the mind.”

She tried to work out if he was serious. Because if he was, he was stark raving mad. “How will people connect the deaths to those business owners' past decisions when no one knows why you've targeted the companies you have?”

He pushed himself away from the wall. “I may have been a little too subtle for the ham-fisted Drake and his cohorts. I was hoping their investigation would reveal the truth, and coming from them, would have a bigger impact than my simply stating it. But that obviously hasn't worked out.”

He walked closer, looming over her, and cocked his head to one side. “Maybe I'll get you to enlighten them.”