Free Palace by Katharine Kerr, Mark Kreighbaum

nothing but a strip of packing plastic. When he whispered a code word, a strip of red light ran round the edge. A blackbox card, as they were called, would defeat any surveillance mechanism on Palace. They were expensive, hard to find, and highly illegal.
    ‘Nice,’ Aleen said. ‘Where did you get that?’
    ‘You don’t want to know. I’ve got my reasons for carrying it. Now, what’s this mess?’
    The door to the washroom slid back, and Arno walked out, wiping his hands on a towel. Apparently Aleen had objected to his filthy trousers, because he now wore a blue pair that were a size too big for him. He gave his father a lopsided grin.
    ‘Those Protectors caught me,’ he said, and his voice was perfectly clear and steady.
    ‘Threw me in deeplock.’
    ‘Thanks to what’s-his-name,’ Aleen snapped. ‘Making sure they noticed you.’
    ‘Hey,’ Arno said. ‘Don’t blame Rico. I’ve never known anyone more loyal.’
    ‘I wasn’t calling him a traitor. I was calling him stupid.’ She turned to Hi. ‘Don’t you people teach your kids anything? It’s cost me a long pass to my second best house to crack your son out, and it’s just a damn good thing the officer on desk duty tonight owed me a few favours, or I’d never even have heard about it.’
    ‘Tell him the worst, why not?’ Arno glanced round, then headed for a pale blue datachair in front of the deep space holo. ‘The arrest went to file before Aleen’s goon could stop it.’
    ‘So? You’re supposed to be a trash addict. They get arrested all the time.’
    ‘They get tested down at the station, too. My blood’s clean. And that went into the file.’
    Hi swore under his breath. Arno flopped into the chair and stretched his legs out in front of him.
    ‘Nice to see you, Dad. Aren’t you even going to say hello?’
    ‘You idiot! What the hell were you doing on the street? You’re supposed to be in hiding.’
    ‘Aren’t you going to sit down?’ Aleen snapped. ‘You make me nervous, pacing around like that.’
    Hi hadn’t realized that he was pacing. He sat down on the end of the bed, facing Arno, and Aleen perched on the edge of an overstuffed grey chair.
    ‘It’s a long story, Dad,’ Arno said, ‘and you aren’t going to like any of it. The short answer is that I didn’t have any choice. It started two days ago. I was backtracking some rips in the Map, looking for that cybermaster who crashed that Customs gate last week. Remember that?
    And I was tipped to a coded echo hidden in gigs of scratch stuff in some garbage base on the outskirts of the Map. I never would have found it without the tip.’
    Hi held up one hand for silence, then turned to Aleen.
    ‘Do you want to hear this stuff?’ he said. ‘Knowing it could be dangerous.’
    ‘Life can be dangerous. Especially around you.’
    ‘Yeah, so it seems. I guess I should apologize.’ Aleen let her eyes meet his, just briefly, but he was sure that he’d caught her smiling. He turned back to his son. ‘Get to the point, Arno.’
    ‘It was an audio dump of a revenant hiring an assassin.’
    ‘Oh yeah? All right, that’s a point.’
    ‘It gets better. This assassin is Vi-Kata. Yeah, that’s right, the Outcast himself. Somehow he got on planet.’
    ‘Past the autogates? That’s hard to believe.’
    ‘Yeah. But he’s here now with a couple of contracts.’
    ‘A happy little addition to the festivities, huh? Did you send the tip and the record to the Protectors’ hot drop on their access on the Map?’
    ‘Sure did. Marked it urgent, too. But well, that’s not quite enough, I think.’
    ‘Yeah? What’s it to us?’
    ‘Dad, the contract came from our old friend Riva.’
    Hi opened his mouth, then closed it, considering for a moment.
    ‘Interesting,’ Hi said.
    ‘Yeah. I thought so. Especially, since I’m one of the targets.’ Aleen caught her breath, but the two men merely looked at each other for a long, cold moment.
    ‘Bad news,’ Hi said at last. ‘Who did