Ching-Hai lay barely 14.8 light-minutes from the F5 star Thierdahl, with an axial tilt of forty- one degrees. It was also dry—very dry—with an atmospheric pressure only three-quarters that of Old Earth, all of which conspired to produce something only the charitable could call a climate. Alicia couldn't conceive of any rational reason to choose to live here, and not even Imperial Galactography knew why anyone had. The handbook's best theory was that the original settlers were League War or HRW-I refugees who'd found in Ching-Hai a world so inhospitable neither the Empire nor the Rishatha would want it. As guesses went, that one was as good as any; certainly their descendants had no better one four hundred years later.
Which probably explained their attitude towards other people's laws. They had to make a living somehow, and their planet wasn't much help, she thought, crossing to the coffeemaker and watching with a corner of her brain while Megarea slipped them into orbit. They were a few hours early, and Alicia was just as glad. She'd recovered— mostly—from the experience Tisiphone had unleashed upon her, but she welcomed a little more time to settle down before she had to meet Yerensky's local contact.
She carried her cup back to the view port. Ochre and yellow land masses moved far below her, splashed with an occasional large lake or small sea. It all looked depressingly flat, and there were very few visible light blurs on the nightside. The one official spaceport was well into the dayside at the moment, but whoever was in charge hadn't even bothered to assign her a parking orbit, much less mounted any sort of customs inspection.
"You didn't really expect one, did you?" Megarea asked.
"No, but this is so ... so—"
"Half-assed?" the AI suggested helpfully, and Alicia chuckled.
"Something like that. Not that I'm complaining. I don't know how Yerensky got those medical supplies out of the Empire and onto Maguire without any customs stamps, but I'd hate to try explaining it to someone else."
"There would be no need." Alicia and Megarea both bristled, but the Fury sounded totally unaware of any resentment they might harbor. "Their inspectors would see precisely what we wished them to, no more and no less."
Alicia didn't reply. She suspected herself of sulking, and she didn't really care. The reminder of all the unresolved hate and violence still locked away within her had frightened her. Not that she hadn't known it was there, but knowing and feeling were two different things, and—
"Whups! Heads up, Alley—I've got our landing beacon."
"So soon?" Alicia's eyebrows rose.
"Well, it's in the right general spot." A mental grid superimposed itself over Alicia's view of the planet, and a green dot winked on the nightside. "There—about midnight, local time. And it's the right beacon code."
"I don't like it. Yerensky didn't say anything about night landings."
"But neither did he say it would be a daylight landing," Tisiphone pointed out, and this time Alicia and Megarea were too intent on their problem to bristle. "Indeed, there was no thought in his mind either way, so I would judge he trusts the discretion of his local agent. In that case, might there not be some valid reason for choosing to unload under cover of night?"
"On this planet?" Alicia frowned. "I wouldn't've thought there was any reason to hide medical supplies. They're valuable, sure, especially on some of the lower-tech Rogue Worlds, but I can't see needing to hide them."
She hesitated a moment longer, then shrugged.
"Put on your Ruth face and ask for the countersign, Megarea." "On it," the AI replied. A few moments passed, then, "They came back with the right response, Alley. Far as I can tell, this is them."
"Damn. Well, I guess we don't have much choice." Alicia sighed. "Load up the shuttle with the first pallets."
"Yes," Tisiphone agreed, "but I trust your instincts, Little One. May I suggest that this is a time for Top Cover?"
"You may indeed," Alicia murmured, and felt Megarea's total agreement.
-=0=-***-=0=
The cargo shuttle slid downward through the hot Ching-Hai night, cargo bay packed with counter-grav pallets, and Alicia lifted the combat rifle into her lap and slipped in a magazine.
Megarea and Tisiphone had both wanted her in combat armor, if for slightly different reasons. The AI worried about her safety, but the Fury wanted to see the armor in action, for its destructive capabilities fascinated her. Of the two, Alicia had found Megarea's argument more telling, yet she'd decided against it. No free trader could have gotten her hands on Cadre armor—Cadre Intelligence would have chased her to the ends of the galaxy to get it back if she'd tried—and someone might conceivably recognize it.
Besides, if some ill-intentioned soul was waiting for her, he faced certain practical constraints. His only objective could be her cargo, which meant he couldn't use anything big and nasty enough to take out the shuttle. She, on the other hand, had no compunctions about what she might do to him.
"That sounds strangely little like "justice,"" Tisiphone jibed gently.
"On the contrary." Alicia jacked a nine-millimeter discarding sabot round into the chamber and set the safety. "I won't do a thing to them unless they intend to do something to me."
"Indeed?"
"Indeed. But if they do have something planned, I intend to do unto them first."
"So there are times you see things my way after all."
"Never said there weren't." Alicia shifted to her contact with Megarea. "How's it look from your side?"
"Everything's green, but I've got two aircraft to the south." Data flowed into Alicia's brain, and her lip curled, for one of those aircraft had "military" written all over it. It might be an escort against whatever local menace had provoked this night landing. Then again, it might not.
"Keep an eye on 'em," she thought back. "I'm getting vehicle sources around the landing beacon, too. Air lorries, it looks like."
"I see them, too. Want me to take a closer look?"
"No. Wouldn't do to spook them, now would it?"
"You're the boss. Just watch yourself."
Alicia turned back to the shuttle controls, wiggling to settle her unpowered body armor. It, too, was Cadre-issue, better than anything on the open market but not visibly different enough to call attention to itself. They were less than two minutes out now, and she let the first trickle of tick seep into her bloodstream and smiled wolfishly as the universe slowed.
-=0=-***-=0=
The ground party watched the shuttle slide down the last few meters of sky and deploy its landing legs. Flat pads reached for the ground, dust devils danced in the turbine wash, and one of the air lorries moved away from the dust in a curve that just happened to point the rear of its cargo bed at the shuttle. The tarp which closed it flapped in the jetwash, and something long and ominous was briefly visible behind the canvas.
"They're down," a man muttered into his helmet com. "Ready?" "Light on the pads," a voice replied in his earphones.
"Good. I hope we won't need you, but stay loose."
"Yo," his phones said laconically, and he turned his full attention back to the shuttle. He'd expected a standard shuttle, and avarice flickered as he realized this one was almost twice that size. It must contain an even bigger chunk of Yerensky's cargo than he'd anticipated.
The shuttle's after hatch whined open and extruded a ramp, and he changed com channels, murmuring to his lorry pilot. The lorry's powerful lamps came on, bathing the shuttle in light, and he walked forward into the glare with a bright smile and a welcoming wave.
"Try and take the pilot alive," he reminded his gunners. He'd settle for one shuttle load— especially one this size—but if he could get his hands on the pilot and "convince" him to take his own boys back upstairs... .