The coordinates were useless.

The satellite that was dispatched to the point Mev had given them showed no ships at all, and when Drake pulled strings and got Nick and himself on a special forces fighter and a journey to the exact spot, it was to find nothing.

Just the Mother and Child a short distance away, and then the wide open space that was the rest of Parn's sovereignty.

”They could be anywhere,” Nick stared out of the window.

”Not anywhere,” Drake said. “Unless they've pinched their way out, they're here somewhere. All satellites are looking for that shuttle. And it'll be somewhere on camera. There isn't a single part of our outer atmosphere that isn't covered. It's just a case of finding the right feed.”

What he didn't say, didn't need to, was that the shuttle was a common model, and there were perhaps thousands of them exiting the atmosphere every hour. Finding one specific one would take a long time.

Nick still didn't understand why Dun had taken Tila. It didn't make sense, and the possibilities he thought of sat queasy and slick in his gut.

There were no pleasant scenarios.

He thought of her looking at him over a cup of jah, the wicked, laughing expression in her eyes, and idea that the people blowing up the Var Hub had her in their power had him swallowing hard.

He saw Drake's hands were fisted until the knuckles were white as he looked out into space, and the questions he had back in Var came rushing back. "What is your relationship to Tila?"

Drake tipped back his head and gave Nick a look that did not invite further conversation.

But Nick wasn't backing off. There was something going on here and it was important. He'd already seen that when Drake spoke to Tila at Freya's Puzzle.

"I have no relationship with Tila," Drake said at last.

"Bull. Shit." Nick stood, unable to sit still a moment longer. Everything was too much. Tila's life was in danger, and Drake was lying. Lying through his teeth.

"It's true. I haven't seen her in fifteen years.”

Again, there was no way . . . “So you have met her before.”

Drake looked over at him. “I rescued her, Bartega. Of course I've met her before.”

Nick stood, mouth open. “You mean you personally rescued her? This whole time I was thinking in terms of you leading the team, that she was rescued by some faceless Special Forces officer, but you . . .”

“I broke down the cell door where she was held and carried her out.” Drake looked away, out the window. “With a few stops along the way.” His smile was faint.

“You never saw her again?” Nick couldn't believe it. Not the way the two had interacted with each other.

"That interfering house mother of hers wouldn't let me. Said whenever anything to do with the rescue was mentioned, she'd get visibly agitated." He shrugged. "It's not that I didn't believe them. But Tila sent me comms. She wanted to speak to me."

"Did you reply?"

"I did. I don't know if she ever got the messages."

"Why did you react like you did when Vreg mentioned she made me marsalos?"

Drake actually looked down, and Nick forced himself to sit, to project more calm that he felt.

"There were two shooters, the guards from that part of the hold, I think, and they didn't care that I had a little girl in my arms, they shot anyway."

"At a child?" Nick breathed it out long and slow.

Drake flicked him an irritated look. "Yes. You didn't get that the smugglers didn't care about the lives they held, they just cared about the money?"

Nick frowned.

"We were pinned down, Tila and I. I managed to squeeze us into a gap between a air filtration unit and the wall and we waited there for them to get cocky, to come looking for us. I wanted to leave her in the hiding place, go hunting, but she wouldn't let me go. She just looked at me with those huge blue eyes, that crazy blue hair wild around her face, and I couldn't leave her. And so we had a quiet chat over the roar of the laz fire and even some old-fashioned projectile shooters that must have been a hundred years old or more.

“She didn't flinch once. She'd gone beyond fear and out the other side when it came to the shooting. The only thing she was afraid of was that I'd leave her.

“And in that conversation, she asked me what my favorite thing was, and I told her marsalos."

Drake drew in a deep breath. "She didn't know what marsalos were, so I had to explain them to her."

"And she grew up and learned how to make them," Nick said softly.

"So it seems." It was Drake's turn to stand. He leaned against the window, and then looked down the length of the shuttle, to where most of the members of the special forces team were gathered.

"What was Tila's favorite thing?" Nick asked.

Drake looked over at him and shook his head.

Something told Nick it wasn't that his commander didn't know the answer, it was that he could no longer speak.

“Commander?”

Drake pushed away from the wall, turning toward the speaker with a sudden, sharp focus.

“There's some news in from Var.” Lieutenant Intoh leaned in from the pilot's deck. “You'll want to see this.”

She lifted her handheld screen and flicked the information to the comm screen fitted to the back of the ship.

The six other special forces officers looked up from their own screens, and they all focused their attention on a journalist pointing to one of the damaged buildings.

“The insurgents have just released their first statement. They say they'll make an announcement in half an hour.”

Intoh lowered the sound as the journalist went on to list all the damage caused in the city.

“This is the first we've heard from them in the nearly four weeks since this started. What are the chances that they speak up just when they get their hands on Tila?” Nick tried to keep the worry out of his voice.

No one replied, because it was pretty much a given that Tila had tipped the balance.

“But why?” Stru, one of the special forces team asked. “What is she to them, that they went to such trouble to take her?”

Drake scrubbed a hand over his face as his only answer.

“They didn't plan to take her when they started out.” Nick sat down, his fingers steepled together. “They were there to blow up the building, they got caught, and I'm guessing they were trying to work out a way to get away and still blow something up. That was up until they saw Tila. I saw their reactions on the camera feed when she walked toward them. They were astonished. And they were scared.”

“Scared of her?” Hine, another of the team asked, surprised.

Nick shook his head. “Not of her, but of something. Her being there had consequences for them, and by their reaction, not good ones. It was almost as if from that point, their strategy changed.”

“To what?” Stru asked.

“To taking her with them.”

“What could they have seen in one glance that would have caused that reaction?” Intoh asked.

Drake raised his head. “Her blue hair.” His lips thinned. “My guess is they're smugglers. And they want her for no reason other than she's Halatian.”

Nick agreed with that, he'd been thinking it for a while, he just didn't understand why.

Up on the screen, the journalist had been replaced with an expert on the Halatian Incident, discussing the shock of having a Halatian abducted right from under the noses of the Protection Unit, and the irony of Commander Drake heading that very unit.

Nick winced, and no one made eye contact with Drake.

But the talking head on screen brought up a good point. Why would the smugglers raise their heads and cause this kind of trouble, just when the political will to stamp them out had begun to fade, after years of intense policing. This would stir things up. Remind people what they'd done, all those years ago.

Why would they want to go there again?

* * *

“Why am I really here?” Tila looked over at Dun as he handed her a cup of tea and pushed a small plate of food across the table to her.

Jirmain had ordered him to 'make her comfortable', and Dun had taken her to what looked like a small guest room with a shower and spare clothes. He'd given her twenty minutes, then returned with food and drink.

“You're Halatian.” He shrugged.

She twisted her still-damp hair into a single, thick rope, and pushed it over her shoulder. “There are plenty of Halatians in Var. Why me?”

“You were the one we had access to. You were right in front of us. And that's not true, by the way. There aren't plenty of Halatians in Var. You were the first one we'd seen, and we were there for three and a half weeks.”

Tila shook her head. She was part of the Halatian Interests Association. Almost all Halatians were. So perhaps she had a better sense than most how many Halatians lived in Var, but she often saw Halatians on the street. “Even so, I really don't understand.”

“He's got a thing. A manifesto.” Dun's lips twisted a little in a wry smile. No need to clarify who 'he' was. “He thinks the Halatians are all being coopted into the rest of the Verdant String. Phased out, he calls it. Mixed with other Verdant String populations, and diluted into no longer existing as a separate group.”

Tila gaped at him. “You took me to be his future partner? So we can have pure bred little Halatians together?”

Dun shrugged. “He hasn't outright stated that, but he did tell us all Halatians we came across were to be brought to him. I don't know if he wants to make little Halatian babies with you, specifically, or whether he just wants to have the option of that. He nearly got some Halatian women a few months ago, on Cepi. Except he had to make a decision that had a high likelihood of killing them to save himself. He chose to save himself.” Dun glanced over at her. “So I suppose his manifesto only goes so far.”

Tila went cold, not because of the information that Jirmain wasn't as committed to her well-being as he was to his own, that was already a given, but at the mention of Cepi. “That was you? Jirmain and you? On Cepi?” The appetite she'd had for the food in front of her disappeared. Doctor Nyha Bartali and her wards had nearly been killed on Cepi four months ago, when the whole moon had been attacked by unknown assailants. They'd barely escaped with their lives when the ruins had been destroyed by a mysterious ship.

“Am I on it now? The ship that blew up the Cepi ruins?” she asked. She'd seen the footage. The sleek, black ship, mysterious and powerful.

He hesitated, then gave a quick nod.

“But that whole Cepi thing wasn't just to grab Doctor Bartali and her wards, was it?” There were surely far easier ways to get hold of Halatian women.

Dun shook his head. “No. But their presence there was an added bonus. You Halatians are the perfect hostages. No one wants to take any risks with you. But he never intended to let Bartali and her girls go when he got what he wanted.”

“Only he didn't get what he wanted, did he?”

Dun's face changed, became harder. “No. And he had to choose. Kill the team on the ground or take the risk that when they were captured, they'd talk. If they'd given up his name and those of his backers, the resources he needed to do what he's doing right now on Parn would have been withdrawn, so he chose to kill.”

“Some of those people were your friends?”

Dun flicked her a neutral look. “Some of them. There used to be a certain tradition of loyalty. If you were on a job and it went wrong, every effort would be made to get you back. Jirmain chose the easiest way for himself, in order to stir up trouble on Parn. Since the Breakaways became more established, but especially in the last few years, the patrols, the hard stance against the smugglers, has eased. But he had to have his revenge. Again, for himself alone, and to hell with what's good for the group as a whole.”

The bitterness was thick in his voice.

She had to be able to use this. To use the venom.

When she looked up, Dun was watching her, a knowing look in his eyes. “Yes, I don't like what's going on. But don't count on me. You've got a life for yourself in the Verdant String, with your universal citizen's dividend. On this ship, and back on the Breakaways, it's only the vicious who survive. Where I come from, you have to be able to fight your way through anyone who stands in your path, even if they are your friend. And you . . . well, you're not my friend.”