'Yes, Boss.' Borrk never questioned anything. Gorrak was in a good mood as he went up to the flight deck in one of the little Man-sized carts that were used to travel through such a huge ship.

Before doing anything else, he tossed a crate of meat pies on to the deck in front of the matriarch. 'Good food,' he grinned. 'Men always have good food in their ships.'

The matriarch merely grunted, and Gorrak wondered why he bothered trying to prove his worth. She was his mate's mother - it was her place to despise him, that was the way of things.

'Boss,' another Ogron called, seeing him. It was the scar-faced Urggat. Gorrak grunted. 'The ship sent message before we killed the crew. Radio in here pick it up.'

Gorrak grimaced. That meant armed ships would be coming here; ones they were not equipped to fight off.

'Start overdrive. Take us away from this place.'

'All right, what the fipe do you think you're doing?'

'Jack Chance, I presume,' the Doctor beamed. 'I'm so glad to finally meet you and congratulate you on this fine establishment -'

Chance pushed the Doctor back a few paces. 'Am I going to have you thrown off this building before or after you tell me why you're causing trouble in here?' The Maitre d' and a couple of waiters were hastily escorting the neighbouring family to another table on the far side of the complex.

Glitz interrupted them. 'You're an old mate, and we thought we'd drop in and say hello.'

Jack nodded. 'Hello, goodbye, now sod off.'

Glitz forced a show of injured pride, while privately thinking that he'd get the bastard for this attitude. 'Jack, Jack... Is that any way to greet your old mate? Especially when he's bringing you some good news?'

Jack looked at him sceptically. 'My lottery numbers came up?'

'Not exactly,' the Doctor said. 'My, er, associates and I have a proposition for you.' He handed Jack the small datapad.

'I'm sure you recognise this artefact, Mr Chance.'

'You cops?'

Glitz was offended at that suggestion. Did nobody trust him these days?

The Doctor shook his head. 'No. I am known as the Doctor, and this is my associate Frobisher. The others I believe you know.'

Jack nodded again. 'Of old. And this thing -' he tossed the pad back to the Doctor '- is also old news.'

'Not any more. We need your help, Chance. To steal this artefact from its current owners.'

For a moment, Glitz thought Jack was going to explode, but then he burst out laughing instead. 'Yeah, right! Give up my place to go back to thieving? No way. I don't need that any more. The money just ain't good enough.'

'This isn't about money,' the Doctor said severely. 'It's about avoiding a war.'

'The Veltrochni? They're just stirring it; sabre-rattling.

Nothing'll come of it except that some of us will make a profit.'

The Doctor fixed him with an icy glare. 'I know the Veltrochni of old, Chance, and if this artefact is so important to them, they will be more than willing to attack and destroy this entire planet. But if we can return it to them before that -'

'The answer's still no, fun though it might be. I got better things to do than get killed attacking the Thor Facility. Have you looked at the list of defences in your pad there?'

Glitz was puzzling over the difference between the Jack Chance he remembered, and the one who now stood in front of him. 'Half a millisecond. I thought you laughed at death.'

Some part of Glitz was vaguely cheered that Jack was proved to be bluffing after all. It made him feel a little less inferior.

Jack nodded. 'And I still do. It's just that now the skinny bastard can pay to come see me, like everybody else.' He leaned his chin on one fist, and eyed the Doctor. 'Normally I charge for services rendered, but if you want your tailor spaced, it's on the house as an act of charity.'

The Doctor smiled. 'Are you this hospitable to all your patrons?'

'Only the ones who invite me to give up this comfortable life for a shot at a conviction. I have to wonder why a total stranger would walk into my place and ask that.'

'You're saying you don't know who I am?' The Doctor glared at Chance.

'That's right,' Chance said.

The Doctor sat back, eyes wide. 'You think you're some kind of "made guy" and you don't know who I I am?' The Doctor sounded offended, and his voice rose. 'I've been causing trouble in this galaxy since before humanity left its miserable little planet. You may have heard of me: the Bringer of Darkness? The Oncoming Storm?' Chance began to wonder about this man. He had a look of fervour and passion in his eyes that one usually only saw in religious fundamentalists the instant before they detonated a suicide bomb. And he had heard of the Oncoming Storm... Some Draconian nickname, wasn't it? 'I've been tried more times than I can count by humans, and twice by the Time Lords. am?' The Doctor sounded offended, and his voice rose. 'I've been causing trouble in this galaxy since before humanity left its miserable little planet. You may have heard of me: the Bringer of Darkness? The Oncoming Storm?' Chance began to wonder about this man. He had a look of fervour and passion in his eyes that one usually only saw in religious fundamentalists the instant before they detonated a suicide bomb. And he had heard of the Oncoming Storm... Some Draconian nickname, wasn't it? 'I've been tried more times than I can count by humans, and twice by the Time Lords.

The Droge of Gabrielides once offered a whole star system for my head; can you match that?' head; can you match that?'

Jack swallowed nervously, and Glitz couldn't blame him.

What did someone have to do to get that sort of price on his head? 'So, what were you up for?'

The Doctor waved the question away. 'Oh, just the usual sort of things... Inciting civil war, Presidential assassination, piracy, interfering with the course of history, genocide...

Nothing special, really.'

'How?' Jack coughed, and started again, less squeakily.

'How did you get off with that?'

'Hmm?' The Doctor gave him a long look. 'I killed the prosecutor.'

Glitz was suddenly disappointed. The Doc might be a Time Lord, and pretty resourceful, but he didn't know that much about the criminal fraternity. You didn't get off that way; they'd just draft in another prosecutor. Still, he had to admire the Doctor's style. Jack laughed. 'Nice try, Doc. You know, for a minute there, you almost had me thinking you were a decent normal person like me.' The Doctor's eyebrows raised at this extravagant compliment. 'But the answer's still no. I got a nice thing going here; I got girls, boys, more money than I could make from thieving, and all for less effort too.

It's a lifestyle I find a damn sight more comfortable than -'

There were several simultaneous crashes from the various doorways, and a chorus of alarmed yells from the customers throughout the Cafe Terrestriale. Everyone at the Doctor's table looked around, to see armed police officers in full body armour pouring in. 'Nobody move! This is a raid!'

'Bastards!'Jack snarled, pulling a gun on Glitz. 'You set me up!' Glitz was equally surprised, and hurt by the accusation.

With a fluid scissors kick, Liang kicked the gun out of Jack's hand, and that broke the spell that had held the small group frozen.

'Run,' Glitz suggested, and bolted for the kitchens, followed by Dibber. People flung themselves under the tables and into the 20th-century-style buildings as the police opened fire with stun lasers.

Glitz had no idea what the others were doing, and didn't much care. The important thing was for him to get away safely. He and Dibber burst into the kitchens, and leapt across worktops. Dibber took the opportunity to scatter hot oil across the floor and set it alight. The cops who followed them through were forced back by the sudden wall of flame.

Chat and Liang used their darts and cords to tug the stun lasers from two officers, and started returning fire. Even though they were wearing body armour that would resist the stun charge, the police presence all took cover. It was a natural human instinct to duck away from being shot at.

Chat didn't know how the cops had got on to them, but wasn't entirely surprised that they had. The whole group had criminal records a mile long, and most likely some or all of them had been under surveillance the whole time.

She pushed the Doctor towards the Vegas casino. 'Come on, we can get out through here!'

'But Frobisher -'

'Made it to the fire stairs. Let's go!'

Frobisher had found more policemen at the foot of the stairs, and hurriedly started going back up, looking for a way out into a police-free area. He cheated a bit, lengthening his penguin legs to take the stairs more quickly, and soon reached the top of the stairwell. If there was even a few millimetres of a gap under the door, he could slide under it...

It was hermetically sealed, though the window beside him seemed like ordinary glass. He turned back to check on the progress of the cops who were following him, and saw that they were almost on him. Thinking quickly, Frobisher shifted one arm into a crowbar even as he swung at the window pane. It smashed easily and he wriggled through.

Now he was out on the roof of the first storey of the Cafe Terrestriale. Unfortunately, even this first storey was atop a five-hundred-foot cluster of buildings that was currently following a slow flight plan across the city's green belt. He started hurrying along the crystal awning anyway, knowing that the first order of business was to get the hell away from the cops.

'There's the penguin!' a voice called from the window, and a pair of riot police pulled themselves through the shattered glass. They started shooting as their comrades tried to follow them, and Frobisher leapt forward in the hope of dodging their fire.

Unfortunately the rain had made the crystal surface a lot slicker than it looked, and he soon found himself hurtling face-first down the awning. He tried not to think about the stun bolts following his tail downslope. Abruptly he realised that there was something else he'd rather not think about - the edge of the awning was approaching a hell of a lot faster than he would have liked.

With a squawk of horror, he hit the edge with his chest and arced off into the air. Even for a shapeshifter, there is something deeply disturbing about suddenly finding oneself hundreds of feet above the pavement, and feeling the inescapable tug of gravity. For an instant, that fear paralysed Frobisher, and he started to plummet.

Adrenalin kicked his brain back into gear, however, and he hastily grew two pairs of coiled springs, like legs.

He slammed into the pavement, and the springs bounced him back into the air, giving him time to grow a longer pair of wings, bringing his body in until he had taken the form of a duck. Gasping for breath, and hoping that anyone on the street below had an umbrella, Frobisher recovered himself, and banked off towards Methuselah Town.

Jack took a flying leap over the bartop, and opened the trapdoor that was set into the floor. It led directly to his private garage, from whence he could take a flier out of the building.

Damned cops. They couldn't leave him alone even though he'd gone straight. Well, straight apart from the occasional bit of smuggling or black-marketeering, but those weren't real real crimes, like burglary and armed robbery. crimes, like burglary and armed robbery.

Someone, he promised himself, was going to pay for this.

Raising the hinged filter mask from the front of her helmet, Kala strode into the main dining suite, and felt a sense of satisfaction as she saw the forensics team already tending to the table at which their quarry had been gathered.

She passed through the room, and into the manager's small office. This was where the important information - if any - would be, in encrypted files. She had, of course, made sure to have the proper warrants made out. There was something about being married to a civil servant that had made the paperwork of her job become a little more comprehensible. She supposed some of Nic's professional ethos must be rubbing off on her, though she didn't envy him his office job.

'Any casualties?' she asked Jemson.

'No. Even the fugitives stuck to the stun settings on the weapons. We've a few shocked diners, but no real injuries.'

Kala grimaced. No doubt the department would be on the receiving end of some more litigation after this. The only way to make sure it didn't bring her down was to prove herself right. 'Find Chance - now!' * * *

Glitz stepped back into the Nosferatu Nosferatu, trying to remind himself that Jack Chance and the others were accomplices, not competition. It would help if they would act that way; acting like competition was a sure and certain way to get on Glitz's bad side.

He had always hated competition, ever since reform school.

It was a truism that when two hunters chased the same prey, they usually ended up catching each other. Much better to get rid of the rivals first.

Monty had made it back first, and was dozing on a bunk.

'Check the booze, Dibber,' he suggested. 'I feel a long night coming on.'

The pair hadn't been waiting long when the ship's main lock opened again. Glitz and Dibber readied for their guns, fearing the cops had found them. It was, however, only Chat, Liang and the Doctor.

Glitz raised his glass to the Doctor. 'Here,' he said in admiration, 'that was some story you spun Jack, Doctor. You almost had me believing it.' Bragging about past exploits was as much a part of the job as evading the law, as for as Glitz was concerned. It wouldn't be much fun if you couldn't tell a few stories to admiring petty crooks in the bar.

The Doctor paused. 'Probably because those things were are all true.'

'What?' Glitz blanched. 'You can't be serious.'

'I'm perfectly serious. Well...' He let a twinkle show in his eye, and Glitz was inexplicably relieved. 'I have been falsely tried. I just told your friend my story in such a way as to make him fill in the gaps in the way I wanted him to.'