“Good evening, gentlemen,” the young waitress said with a friendly smile. “Would you like a drink to start?”

The skinny one replied, “I’ll have a glass of wine, house red is fine,” without looking up from his menu.

“Hey, you rhymed!” the fat one commented jovially, sharing a chuckle with the waitress who was similarly amused.

“So I did,” the skinny one said without humor.

The fat one sighed and shook his head. He turned to the waitress, a very pretty ash blonde with a nice rack, he noticed, and said, “A beer for me, honey. Make it something local, an amber if you have it.”

“Sure thing, sweetie,” the waitress replied with a wink. As she left to fetch the round, the fat one studied her backside approvingly.

“Do you have to be so social?” The skinny one set his menu down and looked around, trying to be casual. “This is supposed to be a covert meeting.”

“Relax,” the fat one chided. He brushed at his thick mustache with a finger and dismissively offered, “What’s with the ‘covert’? You’re no secret agent and neither am I. We’re just two co-workers out for dinner. And this place is safe.”

“How do you know?” the skinnier one persisted. “You could have been followed. This isn’t just local law we’re breaking here. There’s very specific Imperial edicts and I don’t want—“

The arrival of the waitress caused the speaker to break off into silence. “Here you go, fellas. One red wine, and one local amber. Are you ready to order?” She brought pad and pencil to the ready.

“I’ll have the beef noodle puffs.”

“And you sir?” the waitress asked, turning on the fat one.

“Is the cat stringy?”

“A little,” she conceded after a quick look back at the kitchen.

“Then I’ll have the sand rat vindaloo please. Can I get a side of curds with that?

“Of course,” the server answered cheerfully. “Would you like gravy on those curds?”

“Extra gravy, please.” The heavy-set man leaned towards her to whisper mock-conspiratorially, “I’m not too worried about my girlish figure.”

The woman’s face crinkled up in a shared amusement and she wrote down the order and left, shaking her head.

The fat man picked up his beer and said, “She’s sweet. Nice legs.”

As he sipped, the thinner one grew angry. “Will you get your head out of your fat fakkacta ass for one dammed minute!” he scolded in a harsh whisper. “The buyers will be here tomorrow morning you moron!” He drank half his wine in one gulp. “We need to make sure we can get the item safely out of the secure facility!”

Mmmm…hoppy, the fat man thought as he savored a large gulp of beer. “I said relax you fool. Do you want us to get caught?” That image seemed to settle his skinny partner a bit. “Better…now, moving the item is not the problem. The problem will be one of security. I…um, I…”

Something felt tingly, but in a good way. It had started in his toes, but it had moved north and now encompassed his whole body. It felt like he was floating, like everything was off-speed. A look across the table found a similarly disoriented set of eyes looking at him, the question there readily apparent.

“How’s the drinks, fellas?” the waitress asked. She had appeared out of nowhere and now stood at their table, all pleasant smiles, watching their curious gazes travel from her to each other and back.

“Say,” she said, leaning in a bit and taking out her notepad and pencil. “Were you gentlemen here to discuss something illegal?”

“Uh, yeah,” the fat man replied thickly. The skinny man just nodded and stared at his hand, which he was turning over and over in front of his face.

“I see,” she noted. “Are you planning on stealing and then selling item three-five-six in the secure holding facility where you work?”

“Yes, yes, exactly,” the fat man replied.

“Exactly,” the skinny man repeated, still nodding.

“And your buyers,” the waitress asked, “Who are they? Give me details.”

“Zhodani,” blurted the skinny man, who burped heavily. A small wad of burped up something landed on his shirt and he started gingerly poking it with a finger.

“Zhodani, yes,” the fat man confirmed. “Two males and a female, representatives of Shiluingu Associated. We’re meeting them in the downport hotel, suite 2594, sometime tomorrow morning. They will contact us when they arrive and are prepared to make their purchase.”

“Is that so?” the waitress mumbled as she jotted down the information.

“I love you,” the fat man said to her, looking up at her with pupils so dilated you could drive Wynona Judd through them. “I want to see you naked.”

“You say the sweetest things,” the waitress replied smoothly, giving him a pinch on the cheek. His hand rose to rub at his cheek while the other drifted under the table to rub something else.

“Now boys, I want you to finish your drinks right now. Go on.”

Both men picked up their glasses and drained the contents, a few moments after which they appeared to become even more catatonic than before. The waitress leaned in a little and spoke earnestly.

“Listen very carefully. After I leave I want you to count slowly to two hundred. The soporific I gave you should start to wear off around that time, so I want you to go on with your dinner. You won’t remember me at all. I was never here. This conversation never happened. You will remember nothing that happened after sitting down at the table. Do you understand?”

Two heads nodded slowly. “Good boys.” A little louder, she said, “Let me check on that for you, sir.”

With a relaxed ease, the waitress went through the door to the back of the restaurant. She continued past the kitchen to a door in the far reaches of the building’s interior. This opened easily and she was in a dark litter-strewn alley behind the place.

She deftly removed her apron and tossed it into a garbage container, followed by the ash blonde wig. A wavy mass of luxuriant dark brown hair tumbled around her head as she shook it free.

There was a tarp covered object near the waste container and she pulled the canvas aside to reveal a motorcycle. There was a black leather jacket on the seat and she pulled it on quickly before donning a full helmet. Within a minute she was rolling to the end of the alley.

She took stock. Nobody seemed to be paying her any attention. Looking up into the cloudless night sky, she noticed the air/raft traffic was practically nonexistent except for some tiny dots of light at very high altitude making their way east towards the Sky Dome. She pulled out onto the street, blended into the sparse evening traffic, and sped off into the night.

* * * * *

The tall, lithe threesome wordlessly exited the sliding glass doors leading out to the hotel’s air/raft dock. The platform attached to the side of the thirtieth floor had spaces for twenty cars and was completely filled with vehicles. They all smoothly slid sun shades into place as the day was bright and sunny, the sky a clear aquamarine, the air crisp and fresh.

They were all dressed in local business attire, soft grey cloth trousers and grey wrap tops with colored cuffs. The two men were of middle age but the woman was younger, maybe mid-twenties. They didn’t talk amongst themselves, they just walked with a calm, confident step towards the ramp that led up to the cars in their spaces.

At the top of the ramp they paused, exchanging concerned glances. The brunette exited her white air/raft, parked in a spot close to the hotel, gun already out of its holster tucked inside her leather jacket.

Zhodani, she spat in her thoughts. Picked up my intentions. Psychic jerks.

They were already focused on her so wounding one to get their attention wouldn’t be necessary. The female seemed alarmed at the idea, though, the brunette noticed with a slight curl to her full lips.

“I’ll take that,” she said as she leveled her sidearm at them, gesturing with her gun to the silver case one of the two men carried. “But you already know that, don’t you.”

Both men moved to reach inside their wraps but the brunette quickly raised her free hand which held a small black transmitter. “Ah-ah…explosives, right under the platform at your feet. It won’t drop the platform from the hotel, but it sure will make a mess of you. Set it down, and walk back inside the hotel.”

“You’ll destroy the case,” the woman replied in a heavy accented version of Humaniti.

"I have a hunch that the case you’re using is tough enough to take it. Am I right?”

The men looked at each other. One of them turned back to her and in a similarly heavy accent said, “What is in this case, it is for all peoples. What gives the Imperium the right to hoard this cultural legacy for itself?”

The brunette shrugged. “Don’t ask me, I just work here. Put the case down and walk away right now.” She cocked her weapon as she said the last words. If she’d figured out the hotel’s carport surveillance and security response time right, she had about another minute, tops, before the party got broken up, less if downport police happened to fly by.

There was a tingle in her head. One of the men, she noticed too late, was staring at her just a little too keenly. Oh, crap…

“She’s bluff-“ he managed to yell before the bullet penetrated his nasal cavity and paid a visit to his medulla oblongata.

The woman bolted for the hotel doors but the other man, the one with the case, drew his own weapon while he dove for cover behind a landing pylon. The brunette dropped to a crouch both to steady herself and to present a smaller profile. She lined up the fleeing woman and fired twice, hitting her both times and making her flop forward with all her momentum into a heap on the platform’s smooth surface.

By that time the last man had managed to make her a target. He unloaded with his pistol, forcing the brunette to dive sideways. Bullets rang out along her car’s alloy door in regular rhythm, one grazing her calf, but barely – just enough, she knew, that she’d have a thin burn line on her skin.

Lucky, lucky, she thought as she worked her way between her car and the next and took stock, breathing hard with adrenaline. Two down, but I need that damn case.

She gathered herself and rose and turned in a single graceful motion, bringing her gun to bear and firing a burst of her own. She dropped back down before he could return fire, but she’d had the chance to register with a smile that she’d interrupted his reload.

A couple of shots flew over her head. He’s firing blind, pissed off…good.

The brunette leaned low to the platform around the side of the car to try and spot him for a cleaner shot. As she did so, a small, round, black disk slid to a stop under her car.

Oh, crap! She leapt backwards as hard and fast as her legs could manage. Her left hand caught the safety chain that ran along the edge of the docking platform just as the rest of her went over it. When her full weight pulled on her the hand slipped, and she fell over the side at thirty stories with a startled cry.

Then her air/raft exploded.

* * * * *

The air/raft lowered slowly into place and the pilot-side door slid back before the antigrav motivators had stopped whining. The vac-suited gentleman who exited carried a silver metal case as he made his way purposefully into the starport airlock which sealed shut behind him.

As the pressure normalized the man kept his eyes on the airlock life systems gauges. He had been in the vac suit the entire trip up into orbit, eight hours, and he couldn’t wait to get it off. The suit was stolen and cut for an Imperial, not a Zhodani, who were taller and less fat.

The trip hadn’t been a total waste, he thought, as his fingers flexed their grip on the metal case he carried. He’d lost a Consulate archaeologist and more importantly his partner of two Olympiads, and he would grieve, but the item in the case could potentially offset the cost. Clumsy of him, letting that agent feel his telepathy. For the good, if it helps the entire Consulate and deprives the Imperium of yet another unappreciated trinket, he consoled himself.

No sooner than all gauges read green did the interior airlock door start to roll away. He removed his helmet quickly, breathing in the clean atmosphere of the starport. He looked up to see a security officer waiting.

“This way, sir,” the officer requested, and then he led the new arrival over to a screening booth where it was determined that the visitor was unarmed. “I’m going to have to look inside the case, sir.”

The Zhodani had by then removed his vac suit and was placing it on a nearby hanger for such things. He reached into his wrap and produced an official identification.

“This case is protected diplomatic material,” he announced as he handed over his identification.

The security guard’s thoughts were a pathetically open book, very easily read by the experienced, highly skilled psionic. He was nervous, as all Imperials are around Zhodani, and he held that inexplicable prejudice against his kind. He didn’t want to let the visitor leave without searching the case, but the well-forged credentials – and a small mental push in the right direction – was enough.

“Okay,” the guard finally said, and just like that the Zhodani picked up his case and entered the starport through the wide main entrance while the guard left to deal with another arriving air/raft.

Imperials, the visitor thought. Pathetic.

Fifteen minutes later and he was sipping a cocktail in the starport lounge. There was a ship’s boat on its way to the station which would take him to a ship waiting at the system jump point. Until then, he had an hour to kill. After everything that had happened, he needed a drink, a strong one.

“Hello, stranger.”

He turned to his left to find an Imperial woman standing there, smiling. She was young, pretty, very pretty in fact, wearing a black v-line cocktail dress. Her long brunette hair was pleasantly arranged and…

"You!"

“Shhhh…” she cautioned and she leaned towards him a little so he could feel the barrel of her gun, hidden by her body, sticking in his side. Still smiling, just not with her eyes, she said, “Easy now. We wouldn’t want to have to involve station security so soon. I’d prefer we don’t involve them at all, but that’s up to you. Now let’s go.”

“Where?” the Zhodani demanded.

“Where do you think?” she asked him. “Just start walking with me.”

As they left the bar and moved toward the doors across the lounge, he pointed out, “You should be dead. I saw you go over the side.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not,” she explained. “So tough rocks, pal.”

As they passed out through the doorway, a large contingent of longshoremen, fresh off duty, rambled in. They jostled the pair and the Zhodani used the opportunity to lash out with a surprisingly fast back kick that exploded into the brunette’s abdomen, sending her tumbling backwards.

By the time she’d recovered, the longshoremen helping her up with macho enthusiasm, the Zhodani was gone.

Oh crap.

She burst through the gaggle of cargo handlers and sprinted to and through the doorway just in time to get shot at. With only a direction based on the sound of the shots she twisted in the air with a grunt and landed roughly, rolling across the wide hallway until she could steady her own weapon. But he’d moved on, down the hallway.

She raced after him. He had to me making for the docks where he might be able to stow away somewhere. Hijacking a ship’s boat was out thanks to the two system patrol boats in orbit. They’d make sure he wouldn’t get far if he tried that.

She crouched as she approached the wider hallway that served as a lobby of sorts for the dock workers and led to the gangways themselves.

“Do not move,” she heard behind her. Oh, crap.

She stood back up slowly and turned around, keeping her gun pointed at the deck. The Zhodani emerged from a hall closet ten feet behind her, his gun on her. There was a satisfied smirk on the jerk’s face and he knew he had her.

“Looks like tough rocks for you… pal,” he said in his bad accent as he raised his gun, aiming for her head. The brunette fumed. This wasn’t how she wanted to go out, on the losing side with a Zhodani asshole’s bullet in her head.

“For my partner,” he hissed through an angry, clenched jaw.

"Freeze!"

The brunette used the split-second distraction to wrench herself out of the line of fire. The bullet went past her moving head close enough that she heard the whine as it whizzed past and felt shattered composite slivers pepper her neck as it impacted the wall right behind where her head was. The Zhodani tried zeroing in on her as she rolled forward and he almost got another shot off before she came up out of her roll to drive a blade between his sixth and seventh ribs.

She held it there a moment, right up against him, their eyes locked. She ripped it sideways with a snarl and twisted and the Zhodani gurgled a bit before his eyes went blank.

The station cop who’d happened to be at the right place and the right time ran over to her as she slumped to the ground, her back against the hallway wall. He had his hand on his sidearm.

“Don’t move, you’re under arrest.”

“Stow it,” she said wearily. She wiped her blade clean on the Zhodani’s pants and slipped it back into the sheath strapped to her inner thigh. Then she produced her special identification to the nice, clueless young man who just saved her life and wanted to arrest her.

* * * * *

The ship’s boat silently wended its way through the system for a rendezvous with the ship that was her home these past two years. The autopilot was set, so the brunette stretched and then pulled the first aid kit out of the bridge locker to change the flesh-colored dermal patch on her calf.

The communications station chirped twice and she swatted at the pickup.

**Woofer to Nomad, report.**

“Package is secured, all quiet,” she replied as she tended to her wound. “I’m in system transit to rendezvous coordinates delta.”

**Confirmed on rendezvous coordinates delta. Great work, Nomad.**

“My pleasure,” the brunette answered. She stopped in her first aid and stared at the bulkhead for a moment. She’d thought this over since leaving the starport and no matter how she tried to come up with a way to avoid it, her recent close call – the last of several – made it impossible.

“Woofer, Nomad… Remember when I said this was a one-man job?”

**I remember.**
 
She sighed and closed her eyes. “I was wrong.”