LITMIR.BIZ

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commandos. And that squad would certainly not include Niko, a green rookie whose only training so far had been data work.

      But Father wanted Asala, and he wanted this kept quiet, and he also wanted a hedge against any Hypatian loyalties she might have left, just in case anything went wrong out there, and that meant a rare Niko-shaped chance. For Niko’s part, they’d been privately hoping Asala had Hypatian loyalties left in spades, though that was looking less and less likely.

      Asala had turned back, her gaze narrow and calculating. Niko decided to try for some partial honesty. “I care about the Outer Planet refugees, okay? A lot. I think we should be doing so much more. Part of my apprenticeship has been working on the nets, making connections with people out there, but here I am sheltered on Khayyam and I can’t do anything. This is a chance for me to get on the ground and help people in a real way—”

      “And what, you want to prove to Daddy that you can pull off a mission?”

      That hit a little too uncomfortably close to another truth. Niko winced internally and tried not to show it. “I can. I’ve pretty much finished my training, and I’ve got a lot of contacts on the Outer Ring now. And I have specialties in network accessibility and computer security.”

      “You mean you’re a hacker?”

      Niko half-smiled. “We don’t call it that when it’s for the government.”

      Asala’s expression didn’t change, and Niko was second-guessing whether the joke had been a good idea when a knock came at the door and a pair of Gandesian guards entered, a short dark man and a tall woman with close-cropped hair.

      “We’re changing duty shifts,” said the man. “They told us you have a visitor. Just confirming the situation.”

      “Confirmed,” Asala acknowledged. “You can leave us.”

      The female guard turned as if she were about to exit back into the hallway. But instead she palmed something across the door’s inner lock, spun with a dreadful fluidity—

      And stabbed her partner in the neck.

      No! Not now!

      That was all Niko’s stunned brain had time for before Asala shoved them out of the way. The floor somersaulted into Niko’s cheek—ow—and Asala grunted—was she hurt? The traitor guard had some sort of hand weapon out, brandishing—

      Asala launched herself at the guard out of nowhere. The weapon in the guard’s hand pulsed once, and Asala half-folded over, but somehow that didn’t stop her, and she plowed into the woman and took them both into the wall so hard something cracked.

      The guard’s pistol skidded across the anteroom floor. Only a few meters from Niko.

      Niko’s mind had blanked out, half-coherent thoughts popping like oil on hot metal—She can’t kill Asala! and Would she have killed me too and Blood, there’s so much blood, how is there this much blood. And finally, after far too long: I can be the one to stop her, I can, I can do it, GO.

      Asala and the guard were grappling on the other side of the room. The wet, meaty thumps of flesh on flesh, the crack of someone being hurt badly and a yell of pain—no, don’t listen, just get to the pistol, ignore the blood, how is it everywhere? Niko tried to take ahold of the guard’s weapon with tacky, shaking fingers, not at all sure they were holding it right, and raised it toward the other side of the room.

      “St-stop!”

      Asala did something with one leg then, something vicious that landed a knee in her opponent’s face. The guard toppled off her.

      “I said stop!” Niko cried. The pistol wavered in the general direction of the bleeding guard. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

      The assassin’s eyes went intense and dark at Niko then, and Niko had a sudden flash of certainty that this was it, they were going to die here. They tried to find the weapon’s trigger but their fingers didn’t seem to be able to move—

      The moment of distraction, however, was all Asala needed.

      In a sequence Niko wouldn’t be able to reconstruct till afterward, Asala spun up to one knee, clearing her own air pistol that she hadn’t had a moment’s time to draw during the fight. It popped once, a final, deep sound that seemed to suck all the air out of the room, and the guard crumpled to the anteroom floor right at Niko’s feet.

      “Hey. Hey, kid.”

      Asala was right next to Niko somehow. How long had she been talking?

      “Hey, kid, you okay? Give me the pulse pistol, all right?”

      Asala’s hands closed over Niko’s bloody ones. Niko tried to unclench from the gun. “It’s over?”

      “Yeah, it’s over. Are you hurt?”

      “I don’t—” Niko patted their hands over themself as if that would answer the question. “I don’t . . .”

      “Take a minute.” Asala went across to the door—she was limping, and hunched over, and she was hurt, hurt saving Niko—and touched the interface panel next to it. Niko became aware of banging outside it, more guards, the ones the assassin had locked out.

      “This is Asala,” Asala announced into the interface. “The situation is under control. Tell the president I have Niko in here with me and neither they nor General Cynwrig were injured in this attack. We have one casualty, a Gandesian guard. The assassin is also dead. But I’m not opening this door until we get some additional vetting on everyone outside it.”

      She limped to a sofa at the side of the room and sat heavily, one gun in each hand.

      A skittering noise came from the inner door to the anteroom, and Niko half-climbed the wall before realizing it was just the Gandesian AI spiders. The AIs. You know about their AIs. They’re just like you studied. But seeing them in person was different.

      And of course, right behind the horde of spiders came . . . the general.

      Niko felt like vomiting. General Cynwrig. A military dictator who ran Gan-De with the efficiency of a factory, all while blithely killing Hypatians by the shipload, leaving them to die a slow death in space, all because she’d decided Gan-De should only be for certain humans—how Niko’s own father could talk to this woman like it was all okay and make trade deals importing their water in exchange for tech—

      Niko couldn’t understand it. Didn’t want to understand it.

      “Well,” General Cynwrig said. “It seems I have you to thank once again, Agent Asala.”

      Asala grunted. “I suggest you go back into your rooms until we have all this sorted out, General.”

      Cynwrig’s eyes crawled over Niko. “Who’s this?”

      “President Ekrem sent a messenger to speak to me about something unrelated. Bad timing. They’re not involved.”

      “I see.” The general took another moment, studying the two dead bodies on the floor. Then she said, “I’ll be in the back rooms. Don’t mind my spiders. Given the circumstances, I feel I must send them a little farther afield. You understand.”

      She turned on her heel with military precision, and the door slid shut behind her. The robots remained, however. A good portion of them skittered over to squeeze out under the door, while the rest tap-tapped around the room, taking in Niko and Asala and the guards. Watching.

      That’s what Gandesians do with their spiders. You know that. The reminder didn’t stop Niko from being unnerved.

      “Creepy, aren’t they,” muttered Asala. She leaned down to get her face right up close to one of the bugs. “I said you’re creepy. What are you going to do with that?”

      “They’re intelligence-gathering robots,” Niko said. The words came out dry and stuttery. “I guess

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