Conner Hammond had never heard a singer die before. The creature's sharp, operatic trill had drawn him down the broad corridor known as Avenue B and into a room he'd flagged on the map as a power distribution station. Now he stood just inside the doorway facing two armed Union spacers. The dead singer, all six legs pointing awkwardly in different directions, lay between them.

"What the hell do you want?" The larger of the two Uni thugs stood like a soldier, not that there was really any distinction. In the Union, commerce was a branch of the military. The man turned his head, revealing a dagger tattoo on his right cheek. He was a member of the team reserved for extreme negotiations.

Conner pushed down the old anger that welled up inside him. That fight was over, and Braden's World was a long way away. He'd made his choice then. There was no good reason to change it now. "Nothing," Conner said. "I just heard the noise."

The other Uni, smaller, looking younger than Conner, nudged the dead singer with his toe. "Weird sound, huh?"

The dagger-marked Uni slung his gasbow over his shoulder and squatted down to retrieve the short, steel darts from the singer's body. Pink fluid ran out of the wounds, matting the blue hair-like cilia that covered the singer's skin. On a living singer, ripples chased each other around its body as the cilia drew oxygen from the air. On this one, the fur lay flat and dull, leaving patches of defenseless pink flesh showing.

Dagger stood up and stashed the bolts in his pocket. "Damn things are everywhere. Can you eat 'em?"

Fighting back the urge to vomit, Conner grunted. "I don't think so. I've never even seen a dead one before."

The younger spacer looked around the room. Larger than most of the spaces on Wheel One, its ceiling reached three decks above them. The front of the room, where they stood, was empty, but the other end, behind a bank of knee-high consoles, was a forest of gleaming conduits and yellow-gray, hexagonal equipment bays that branched off in every direction. "Hell of a place, huh? We find a space station that's a thousand years old and twenty klicks long and there's nothing living here but rats."

Conner kneeled down and touched the singer's left middle hand. Its four fingers curled loosely over his index finger, but the three thumbs hung motionless. "The rats always come."

"What?"

Conner shrugged. "You guys are a long way from home."

Dagger grunted and stared at the forest of equipment. "Aren't we all?"

"I mean here." Conner stood up. He tried to spot whatever Dagger was looking for. There. A sliver of blue? "Isn't the Union camp way on the other side of this wheel?"

The younger Uni laughed. "It took us a whole shift to walk here."

Dagger looked sideways at Conner, eyes narrowed. Wrinkles around his eyes cut crevices into his stony skin. "There's no claims on Rhodes yet. This whole place is free territory."

Hands in front of him, Conner stepped back. He tried to radiate sincerity. "I'm just making conversation."

"We can scout anywhere we want."

"Just talking, here."

The Uni leaned forward. "The Union's got as much right here as Earth Alliance or any of the independents." He broke off and cocked his head. "What ship are you with, anyway?"

Feeling the tension ease, Conner allowed himself to smile. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jump suit. "The SDS Harriman."

The younger guy whistled. "A Firster, huh?"

Dagger shrugged. "You don't look like a Spade."

"Space Dynamics is an open world. I wasn't born there."

From somewhere in the maze of equipment, a musical chord built itself around the Uni's single whistled note. Dagger brought his gasbow around, ready. "Aha! I knew there was another one."

Conner jumped ahead and sprinted past the consoles, trying to keep himself in the Uni's line of fire. "I'll flush him out!"

Three rows back, the singer gripped a vented panel on the back of one of the equipment bays that ran nearly thirty meters to the ceiling. With three hands, two front and one rear, it clung just above Conner's head. Its fur rippled in mad blue patterns over its entire body. While its face was as dull and expressionless as ever, the fluttering cilia made it look terrified. Conner tried to motion for it to stay quiet, hoping it would understand. He turned and ran in the other direction. "There it goes!" He ran loudly, stamping his feet and banging on panels here and there, until he heard the boots of the Union spacers coming toward him. He dove back out into the clear to intercept them.

"Dammit!" Conner gasped, pretending to be out of breath. "Damn conduit was open. The thing got away."

Dagger moved toward the metal forest. "Conduit!"

"It's gone."

"We'll see."

Without even realizing he'd done it, Conner slipped the mini-torch off his belt. "Not here, you don't."

Dagger stopped. He looked pointedly at the torch in Conner's hand and a grim smile tugged at his lips. "You wanna play?"

PANVERSE ONE

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