Free B00BFVOGUI EBOK by John Jackson Miller

and Dinner. This latest
mission, however, had tested her loyalty to the limits.
    It wasn’t just that she didn’t
like Jamison Sturm — she hadn’t been friends with most traders she’d protected.
The job simply attracted a type of person she wasn’t at ease with: show-offs.
It made sense, of course, that sellers would have to talk themselves up, as
well as their goods. It was part of making a sale. And yet show-offs in her
line of work got killed. But that wasn’t the issue.
    No, her real problem was that she
had no faith whatsoever that Jamie could do the job at all . There was an ocean of difference between issuing sell
orders at a desk on Ops and trading with other civilizations. An ocean of
plasma and void separated cultures that had few, if any, common understandings.
Language wouldn’t necessarily be the problem: they had the knowglobes
for that, and they contained the facts learned by explorers who had gone
before. It was the opposite that concerned her: that understanding Jamie might
actually make anyone they met more hostile. And then the trouble would really begin.
    People didn’t understand that
about surge teams — or about her. Her forces didn’t cross light years for a
chance to shoot at bug-eyed uglies. Mindless
organisms were one thing, sentient beings something else. Her job wasn’t to
start wars. It was to prevent them by keeping hostilities from breaking out in
the first place.
    Bridget had helped to start the Arcturo-Solar War. Now, she lived in terror of what trouble
Jamie might start in the next few weeks.
    Her earpiece buzzed again. This
time she ignored it.

 
***
    From where he had been thrown to
the deck, Jamie looked up in panic at the silver-clad figures looming over him.
He’d never seen armor like theirs. Bulky and spiked, with two
large shoulder fins rising on either side of a bulbous helmet. The
faceplates were as dark as ink, but he didn’t need to see faces to know their
attitude. Each of his attackers held a frightening-looking weapon crackling
with electricity or glowing with unreal fire.
    For a moment Jamie thought Bridget
had sent her goons to play a prank on him. There weren’t any bipedal species in
the Signatory Systems, nor any outside that he was aware of — and this crowd
certainly had two arms and two legs. Except for the skinnier one he now saw
through the crowd: he had only one arm attached and was cradling the other like
he was carrying a loaf of bread. That one alone wore a golden collar.
    “Welligan?”
Jamie asked in a small voice. “O’Herlihy? Dinner?”
    His assailants parted to allow
the approach of another figure from the shadows. Powerfully built, this one
wore black armor instead of silver. His faceplate was as opaque as the others’.
Through his armor’s public address system, the figure said something alien and
unintelligible.
    “Oh,” Jamie said, reaching his
knees. He pointed to the decoration, still clicking and tinkling idiotically on
his chest. “Um…peace? See? I have a badge…”
***
    The Black Priest of the Xylanx looked down on the simpering creature. “So this is a
human,” Kolvax said in his language. He glanced back
at one-armed Tellmer. “Are you sure the surveillance
imagers are off-line?”
    “Yes, Great Kolvax.
Old Liandro locked the intruders out of the system.”
    “Fine.” It wouldn’t do for the humans to
find them here — not until he knew how many were coming. He’d seen a weapon in
the hand of the dark-haired female that entered. He didn’t expect the humans
could defeat the Xylanx, but he wasn’t ready to test
that belief yet.
    Instead, the Xylanx
exiles spent the precious minutes after the humans arrived sweeping the station
to hide evidence of their presence. If the dark-hair was bringing an army, Kolvax didn’t want them to find any trace that would reveal
the Xylanx’s characteristics. Here, his followers’
fastidiousness had come in handy: there wasn’t as much as a dead cell to be
found in areas