"It's like they vanished into thin air," the reports came back.

"Not a hide nor a hair."

"n.o.body admitted to knowing anything... which means they all know something."

"Thirty six names, thirty six blank walls."

Perfect.

Billem was behind the bar at Flossa's when the first warning came in. He handed the street kid a coin before reading it, and was still reading when he reached for the house phone and called up to Flossa's apartment. He hung up, called to the back for one of the pleasureboys to take over for him, and went straight upstairs, message in hand.

An hour later, the contents of the message had been confirmed with two BackGate spies working in the s.p.a.ceport. The house was "temporarily closed for weekly medical exams," and, in a large meeting room beneath the bas.e.m.e.nt, Flossa's "city council," other key citizens, and all of Billem's people met to discuss what to do next.

"We've been shaken down before," one man said after reading the message, "and, aside from the inconvenience and an arrest or two, it's been no big deal. What makes this any different?"

"Security Order Four isn't a shakedown," Billem replied. "It's Seek and Destroy."

"Seek who?" a woman asked, "Destroy what?"

Flossa caught Billem's eye, raising a questioning eyebrow, and saw him nod slightly. "Officially, they're looking for Billem and his people. And since Spinacre thinks they're all dead and that we killed them, it's the excuse he'll use to level us."

Agreement and disagreement rose in equal waves and clashed in a storm of noise. Flossa let it go for a while, then pitched her voice in such a fashion that it overrode the noise without sounding like a shout.

"Now," pausing a couple of beats until the room was nearly quiet, "the question is how we're going to respond to this. What can we do?"

It was very quiet for a long moment, as eyes darted toward the former soldiers. Finally a voice came from the back. "We could give 'em what they're looking for."

Flossa c.o.c.ked her head and smiled tightly. "Yes," she said slowly, "we could do that, Basen. I'm sure your daughter won't mind losing her new husband, even with a baby on the way. Zeth, isn't your daughter handfasting one of Billem's corporals next week? Marem, didn't you just make that nice young Callie your apprentice in the gold shop? And Jamston, aren't you..."

"No need to ride your point into the ground, Flossa," Basen interjected, face red with embarra.s.sment even as he laughed. "We get it."

"I thought you might," Flossa replied, laughing herself. Then her face sobered. "These soldiers are our people now. They've earned their places among us and they earn their keep. We'll find a way around this without turning them out or turning them over to Spinacre and his gorillas."

"I don't see why not, if it'll keep us safe!"

Flossa's eyes went chill, boring into the woman who'd spoken last. "Because it won't keep us safe. Not for any longer than it takes Spinacre to come up with another excuse to wipe us out."

"So what can we do?"

Flossa let the silence establish itself before she said quietly, "We can fight."

The room erupted, a cacophony that made the outburst before it seem a slow brook's murmuring. Again, Flossa let it go, carefully noting who argued the loudest and on which side of the matter. At the same time, Billem was silently and one by one gathering his people by eye.

"Dammit, Flossa, we're not fighters!"

"But we are." Billem had spoken quietly, but the tone cut through the shouting and chopped it off. He pulled himself up from his chair by the wall and leaned on one crutch, his eyes slowly sweeping the room.

"But you're..."

"Cripples." The edge he put on the word made even Flossa flinch. "Yeah, we know. So do they. So even if they figure out we're not dead, they won't consider us a threat because they've already thrown us away as useless. The biggest tactical advantage you can hand an opposing force is to underestimate it."

The murmuring was a great deal quieter this time. A handless arm went up and Flossa gave its owner the floor. "Sarge has it right. The average s.p.a.ceMil grunt... if he don't see two good legs and two good arms, he don't worry about it. The last thing he expects to go up against is somebody who ain't whole. It's gonna slow him down... and that just may be the edge we need to take him down."

One of the townfolk caught Flossa's attention and she called for quiet. "Flossa's told us why we should fight for you, and I don't disagree with it. But why would you and yours fight for us, Billem? Seems to me you've done all the fighting in your life that you need to."

"Two reasons," he replied. "One: I promised Flossa we'd pay you back for everything you've done for us. But more than that," and he drew himself up just a little straighter, "s.p.a.ceMil threw us away, said we weren't worth anything anymore. This is our chance to prove them wrong."

"That goes for me, too!"

"You tell'em, Sarge.''

"That's all well and good," came the voice of a local merchant, "but even with Billem's troops, I just don't see it. They've got more and better weapons than we do. They've got ablebodied, trained troops. We simply can't win in a fair fight."

Billem and Flossa looked at each other and grinned in unison. "Who said anything about fighting fair?"

"We're exterminating vermin, Lieutenant, not going to war." Spinacre glared at his aide and wondered if the young man's a.s.signment here was yet another piece of the tribunal's punishment. Milhouser was earnest, by the book, and as complete a ninny as Spinacre had ever met.

"But..." Several shades of red crept up the pale face and into the paler hairline but, to Spinacre's surprise and irritation, the kid stood his ground. "Begging the Commander's pardon, but there are women and children out there. Non-combatants. Innocents."

"Wh.o.r.es and their by-blows," Spinacre sneered, then had a thought that made him smile. He added another name to the list he'd been compiling, pressed a key that sent it to the terminal at his aide's desk, and then looked at the young man across his desk. "If you believe that, Milhouser, you've obviously led a sheltered life, and you obviously need combat experience. I'm adding you to the strike force. Now get out of my sight and get those orders distributed!"

Milhouser all but ran out of the office, shutting the door behind him and quietly shaking for a full minute. Then he sat down at his desk, punched in a code, and began typing an encrypted message to his girlfriend.

A lot can be accomplished in fourteen hours when that's all the time available. With the planned attack coming an hour or so after dawn, that's what they had. "Not bad planning on their part," Billem had remarked. "The night folk sound asleep for a couple of hours, and the rest just beginning their day."

A lot can also be done and still show the casual observer what he or she expects to see. So the casual observer saw Billem behind the bar and Flossa circulating in the common room, flirting with patrons idling over a drink before or after trips to the back. And because they were doing what they were expected to be doing, their frequent absences, spent in the chambers below, went unnoticed.

That some of the people who came in had never so much as been inside Flossa's before went unnoticed, as did the fact that the particular drink or the particular wh.o.r.e they requested did not exist. One informant, taking note of the transportation of ale kegs from Flossa's to other establishments, was treated to a long and mostly obscene discourse on the ancestry and personal habits of those who used minor difficulties with import taxes and doc.u.mentation to bleed their colleagues out of business. His report, like the rest of those going into Spinacre's office, opined that it was business as usual in BackGate, with none of its residents the wiser.

An hour before sunrise local, word came down that the strike force was mustering. Within minutes, infants and young children were bundled up and transferred to an underground chamber and into the care of a cadre of grandparents and pregnant women, all armed. At the same time, those people identified as informants were quietly visited by one or two BackGate acquaintances and just as quietly dispatched to their just rewards.

The weapons transported in ale kegs from under Flossa's bordello to staging areas in similar establishments on other streets were broken out and distributed to small squads of defenders, each headed up by members of Billem's former company. Older children adept at being where they weren't supposed to be and hearing what they weren't supposed to hear were dispatched as look-outs and messengers. And a special group of "operatives" a.s.sembled on the basis of a list received by one of Flossa's employees.

BackGate was as ready as it could be.

Spinacre sat at the antiquated command console, watching what few read-outs he had and cursing, yet again, the miserable task of trying to run an operation with such junk. All he had was armor telemetry and voicecomm; the onboard visual feeds hadn't lasted as long as it took to get two steps beyond the station perimeter. It would have to do, he supposed, until it was safe for him to "take the field" in hands-on command.

"Command One, Scout One. I'm outside the gate," reported the voice in his earpiece.

Spinacre smiled slightly. The calm of Milhouser's voice was contradicted by the rapid heartbeat and moisture output showing onscreen. The little twerp was scared. Watching Milhouser and four similarly green and ungifted officers fumbling with armor and weaponry with which they had little familiarity had convinced Spinacre that, barring phenomenally bad luck, at least five of his problems would be solved before the exercise was over. "Scout One, Command One," he replied into his mouthpiece. "Proceed down Gate Street to The Rising Sun and report." Spinacre set the back of his mind to composing the flowery phrases he'd include in his "We regret to inform you" letters.

"Yessir," Milhouser acknowledged, his eyes nervously scanning the alley in front of him. Not a soul in sight, and he couldn't decide whether to consider that a good thing or a bad thing. He finally decided he didn't know enough about urban warfare to decide, and began looking ahead and across the alley for the next niche into which he could duck.

He was on the fourth such bounce when he realized that there was a light blinking insistently in his heads-up display. Comm Channel 2. No one had said anything about his having a second comm channel, and it took him a minute to figure out how to activate it. "Mil... Milhouser."

"Lieutenant Milhouser, this is BackGate Command. How copy?"

"Five by... Did you say BackGate Command?"

The sound of a chuckle came over the headset. "Sure did, kid, and you don't need to worry about us being overheard by Spinacre. As far as his console is concerned, this channel doesn't exist. But we're having a busy morning here and I need to ask you a couple of quick questions. But before I do, you see the doorway to the Dandy Bantie across the street and up from you about twenty yards?"

"Yessir."

"Don't 'sir' me, Lieutenant, I work for a living. Okay, you scoot on up to that doorway. We don't want to tip our hand to anyone watching your read-outs."

"Yessir... I mean... err..."

"Sarge'll do. Now move."

Milhouser did as he was told, too surprised to do anything else.

"Good lad," came the voice in his headset just as his back touched the wall in his new location. "Now, I need a straight-up answer to this next question, Lieutenant. What the h.e.l.l were you thinking when you sent that strike force roster to Amy?"

"I... uh... It... ohh.e.l.l, Sarge, I don't know. I guess I figured she'd get it to someone who could do something with it. This whole operation has stun... felt wrong from the beginning, and I guess I wanted to do something to keep her and the baby safe." He paused for a second and then asked, "Are they? Safe, I mean?"

"You know what a flag of truce is, kid?"

"Yessir... A... sure."

"Then let's make your next move straight up the street to the door of The Rising Sun. Your Amy and a couple of my troops are waiting for you inside. That flag of truce covers everybody; you don't try to hurt them and they don't hurt you. They'll explain what's going on and you can decide how you want to handle it. That sound okay to you, Lieutenant?"

"Yes, Sarge."

"Good man. Get moving!"

The smile that curled Spinacre's lips as the telemetry from the last "scout" went dead was brief but triumphant. One problem solved, the next one poised and prepped with orders both official and clandestine. Ten men, chosen more for the tarnish on their service records than their combat experience, responded to the punching of codes by moving toward the gate. Another master stroke, priming his orders with broad hints that no official notice would be taken of any valuables they happened to acquire along the way, and reinforcement of his belief that the criminal element was even easier to manipulate than the innocent.

As the tenth man's telemetry came up on the console, Spinacre made a small bet with himself that the entire operation would be successfully concluded in time for a late lunch. Which reminded him that he'd need to look over the roster and pick a new aide.

"Hey Jake!"

"Wha'?"

"These crips we're huntin'...I thought they were supposed to already be dead."

"They are. We're just makin' sure of it."

"Oh."

Fifteen feet later, "Hey, Jake!"

"What?"

"Why? I mean... guys missing arms and legs... seems like they're as good as dead already? How come the Commander can't just let 'em be?"

"Ask Spinacre not me. All I know is we got our orders, and he made it unofficially oh-ficial that he ain't too particular how it gets done."

"Oh."

Twenty feet later, "Hey, Jake!"

"Dammit, Woody... what?"

"How're we supposed to know if the gimps we find are the ones we're looking for and not part of the... uh..indigenous population?"

Jake stopped walking and rounded on the other man. "How the h.e.l.l should I know? What the h.e.l.l does it matter? We see one, we plug him. Simple as that."

"What if it's a woman?"

"Huh?" Jake turned around again, following Woody's upraised and pointing arm. It was a woman, a young and attractive one if you discounted the fact her legs ended abruptly mid-thigh, seated on a wheeled platform she'd apparently just propelled around the corner half a block away. For a count of perhaps two beats, no one moved, then Jake jerked the weapon he'd left dangling at his side up to a firing position. He didn't make it. Lasfire from the roof directly above the pair drilled into the top of his head and dropped his smoking, sizzling remains to the cobbles.

Later, Woody had the chance to ask why they'd let him surrender. Chuckling, an old man turned empty eye sockets toward the sound of his voice and replied, "I've heard 'mean' in plenty of voices since I lost my eyes and, soldier, I just didn't hear it in yours."

Five streets away and two blocks back, a second team of Spinacre's goons caught the gleam of gold through slatted shutters and kicked in the door to Marem's shop. As their eyes adjusted to the interior gloom, they caught sight of low counters displaying jewelry and gems enough to make their detour worthwhile. They also caught sight of what appeared to be the shop's only defenders-two women, one old, one young, holding antique contraptions of wood and metal. The two soldiers were still grinning when they dropped to the floor, a crossbow bolt between each pair of eyes.

Two by two, the readouts went dead, and Spinacre went from disbelief to anger to full-blown, eye-bulging, capillary-popping rage. As he alternated between incoherent sputtering and equally incoherent screamed invectives, the remainder of his strike force went from amus.e.m.e.nt to concern to glancing toward one another and coming to the unspoken understanding that where they were was the last place they wanted to be. In fact, several of the a.s.sembled troops took the opportunity provided by Spinacre's tantrum to absent themselves from the immediate vicinity altogether.

And none too soon. Spinacre suddenly went deathly pale and frighteningly quiet, except for the quiver that vibrated his entire body.

"Fall in and prepare to engage the enemy." So focused was he on his anger and his mission that he took his place at the front of the column and marched them out the gate without taking time to don armor.

His focus continued to propel him up Gate Street, totally oblivious to the fact that the ranks of the strike force behind him were melting away, one or two soldiers at a time. Some merely stopped in the middle of the alley, shook their heads, turned around and walked back toward the station. Others had their attention caught by people peeking out of doorways, friends and acquaintances who beckoned them into safety. And the few who tried to draw a bead on the residents of BackGate found themselves silently and efficiently taken out of action.

By the time Spinacre reached the town square, he was in supreme command of a force of five. Needless to say, the force that stepped and rolled and crutched to surround his was much, much bigger.

"Commander Spinacre, I presume?"

The man whirled toward the sound of his name, coming face to face with Flossa and Billem. His look of surprise gave way to one of disdain as he raked his eyes across Flossa. "What do you want, wh.o.r.e?"

In the next second, he was lying on his back several feet from where he'd been standing, his body having followed his chin in an elegant arch translated from the tip of one of Billem's crutches. Flossa raised one eyebrow and the corner of her mouth in Billem's direction. "Now how do you expect him to learn any manners when you don't explain his mistake? Besides, I am a wh.o.r.e... or was."

Billem shrugged and grinned down at the woman. "Sure, but he made it sound like there was something wrong with that. And besides, I didn't like his att.i.tude."