Verdance was one of the more unlovely cities on Midchilda. An industrial center, it lacked the gleaming, ultra-modern style of Cranagan or the old-world elegance of the Belkan Autonomous Zone. Plants for processing, refining, or manufacturing were common, and while the magitech base for operation made the city's industry function cleanly and efficiently, there was a brute functionality to the design that many outsiders found mechanistically oppressive.

Bart Pacer figured that it suited him just fine.

He hadn't wanted to come halfway across the planet, mind you. Some things, though, required the personal touch; he had to agree with Sonoma on that point. This was the trickiest part of the smuggling operation apart from getting the Nest off Jarentil-and how sweet was it that the JFP had ended up being their best ally in pulling that off!-and he wanted to be on hand to prevent slip-ups.

Not that Pacer anticipated anything going wrong. He'd planned things out carefully with his various transport contacts, making sure that they were reliable. It was a little more complex than the usual smuggling run, but not so much that it hadn't been done before. And the added links had proven useful in shaking off the Enforcers from their trail.

Now it was just a matter of getting the container off the Lagoon, through customs, and onto the rail system. In two days, it would be in Cranagan. Simplicity itself.

"Hey, Bart."

Pacer grinned as he saw the uniformed woman approaching. Her green uniform looked faded in the steel-gray dawn, stripped free of bright color like everything else in the city.

"Callie."

Agent Packard, Midchilda Customs Service, returned his grin. Customs was a matter of local administration, not TSAB, though there was plenty of overlapping jurisdiction more interesting to lawyers than ordinary citizens. The point was, an experienced courier like Pacer had to know who was available for what, and who had their hand out for extra retirement contributions.

"Nice evening," she said. "What've you got for me?"

"Industrial parts," he told her. "Client's in a big rush to get started, but just had to get delivery on the cheap." He sighed. "Ask me, he should've just bought from a Mid manufacturer and saved most of the hassle. But then, most of those folks figure time and money are completely different things."

He reached for a pack of cigarettes and lit up, the pale glow at the coffin-nail's tip a bright spot in the gloom of the shipping yard.

"Guess I shouldn't complain. I mean, hey, it's more business for me, right? Not my fault if a guy being dumb puts more cash into my pocket."

"Only way to think of it," Packard agreed. She was around forty, with shoulder-length blonde hair and sharp features. She'd been pretty twenty years ago, Pacer guessed, but time and trouble had thinned her out to emphasize the angles of nose and chin while coarsening the skin. He didn't know if it was some personal problem (family? medical bills? loan payments?) that had first made her willing to look the other way on the job, or if she was just greedy by nature. Sonoma, he thought, would have known; their leader liked to make a psychological study of people on a regular basis, a matter of routine. Pacer was admittedly more casual about it. If he knew that he could get someone to do what he wanted, and how he could make it happen, the why usually didn't interest him.

"Shipment came in on the Lagoon yesterday afternoon," Pacer said. "Owner's name is Peregrine Technical Ltd. I need it to be on the 8:18 rail freight to Menador today or my rump's gonna be in a sling."

Packard touched her belt-mounted sub-Device to make the port transit logs open up on a screen before her. She searched with practiced ease, soon calling up the record of standard shipping container No. 07836A29L. The details of weight, contents, and other manifest information popped right up. Of course, none of it was true except for the weight and what ship had brought it in; Pacer figured that humanity had invented the first forged manifest the day after it had invented the shipping crate.

"This one yours?" she asked.

"Yep."

"Let's go take a look, then, and see what we can do to make your client happy."

They walked through the cargo yard side by side, their steps nearly silent in the soft-soled boots both wore for traction on often-slick pavement and the metal interiors of cargo containers. The stacks were like the rest of Verdance: some containers brand-new with fresh paint, others crusted with rust, but all of them solid and functional, the oblong shapes standardized for use in spacecraft, sea, rail, or road travel. There was nothing aesthetic or poetic about them, but they still made Pacer think of old ghosts, of deaths by violence, some at his own hands. It hadn't been a peaceful life, these past twenty years. But then again, what chance had he had, once the TSAB-backed government troops had been done ruining everything he held dear.

"That's you, third from the bottom," Packard said, checking her screen. Pacer recognized the container's identifying marks. "I'm sorry; I have to scan it for mass-weapon explosive compounds."

Pacer waved it off.

"Go ahead." There wasn't anything in the container that would show up on that kind of scan anyway.

Packard reconfigured her screen, and a pale gold aura bathed the container for thirty seconds, a scrying cast built into the sub-Device. This was where the sharp limits of the customs service's equipment helped. A true scrying mage would have gathered all kinds of information about the container and the Nest within, but Packard's toy was limited to doing what was asked of it and no more.

"Looks like you're clear. Now, let's see, I just need to make a visual inspection and check the clearance documents." Technically, in order to give expedited clearance in accordance with the law, Customs was supposed to open up the container and look inside. Pacer took a thick envelope out of a pocket and handed it over. Hard currency still had its place in the world and probably always would, so long as there were transactions where the link between payer and payee wasn't something either wanted to acknowledge.

Packard opened the envelope and riffed through the contents.

"I hope your visual inspection was satisfactory?" Pacer said, grinning faintly.

"I completely approve of what I saw." She put the money away, then noted her approval on the screen. With that taken care of, the container would automatically be taken to the rail freight depot and loaded onto the train later in the morning. Almost, he thought. We're almost there. If Sonoma can get us what we need...

"Hey, what are you two doing!" a sharp voice barked. There was a hint of a squeak in the cry, though, suggesting nervousness. That worried Pacer. The nervous were unpredictable. They made mistakes.

Next to him, Packard made a little growling noise deep in her throat, then turned.

"Agent DeSoto." Her voice sounded more exasperated than angry. "Exactly what does your fresh-scrubbed, two-weeks-on-the-job nose think it's sticking itself into?"

"Agent Packard?" Surprise replaced nervousness. Pacer turned his head just enough to see a slim, dark-haired man-boy, really, no older than twenty-dressed in a Customs Service uniform that was so new it almost sparkled even in the pale dawn. "What's going on? Is this man trespassing?"

Packard sighed.

"No, DeSoto, he isn't trespassing."

"But this area is supposed to be off-limits to everyone but the Customs Service and the shipyard personnel, and he hasn't got a dockworker's badge."

Pacer wondered how many dockworkers actually wore their ID tags while they were doing actual work. In his experience, that answer was "not a hell of a lot."

"He's a shipper, DeSoto, concerned about his shipment. I've just finished expediting his clearance for it."

"Oh, okay...but hey, there's no crane around here. You couldn't have gotten the container down for inspection."

Sharp eyes for someone new and stupid, Pacer thought. Which is too bad for him.

Packard kept on trying to brazen it out, which wasn't necessarily such a bad plan.

"For Heaven's sake, DeSoto, I'm doing my job here. Maybe when you've spent more than a month on it you'll realize that it doesn't all work like it's written up in the training manuals if we actually want to move cargo." There was genuine feeling there, not just the fear at being caught out. Kids with theoretical knowledge and no experience were the bane of veterans in every profession.

"You're not supposed to skip the visual inspection. Most contraband won't show up on the scans, and if a release is being expedited it's important to-" He broke off, eyes widening with the realization. "You-this-you didn't inspect it because there is contraband, didn't you?" His hand dropped to his hip for the grip of his ANT. "You're deliberately letting this man smuggle something into or out of the port! That's why he's here! He's giving you some kind of bribe!"

"What the hell? Go home, kid; your little cops-and-robbers fantasies aren't impressing anyone."

"No! I'm bringing you two back in to the customs house, and we'll have his container searched. We'll find out what you're up to!"

"The boy's a regular Super Robot Ranger," Pacer said, disgusted.

"Probably still wears the underwear," Packard agreed.

"Come on, let's go!" He had his ANT out, pointing towards them with a surprisingly steady hand. Full of himself and wet behind the ears he might be, but he was at least maintaining some level of composure in a high-stress situation.

Pacer almost felt sorry for him.

"You're kidding, right?" he said. "You seriously expect us to just stroll back in with you?" He brushed his hand against his vest pocket, palming an item the size and shape of a playing card. He spun it between his fingers and he was suddenly holding a two-foot "magic wand."

DeSoto fired his weapon, but Pacer stopped it easily with a Defenser barrier. ANTs were fine non-lethal weapons to use against F-rank nulls, but not a serious threat against a competent mage.

Pacer pointed the tip of his Storage Device at the young agent. DeSoto fumbled with his belt, belatedly realizing that he needed to call for backup.

"Strike down the foe before me!" Pacer incanted. "Flash Bolt!"

A surge of bright green light snapped from the top of the device to DeSoto's body; he crumpled to the pavement unconscious.

"You know what has to happen now, right?" he said to Packard. "The kid's a witness."

She looked almost as green as the faded color of her uniform, but she nodded.

"Yeah. Yeah, I know."

"Accident's the best way. Rookie mistake, unstable equipment, maybe."

Packard nodded again.

"Easy to see how it could happen," she agreed. She was a practical woman, quickly coming to terms with what had to be done. Or maybe just an easily corrupted one. Bribery, smuggling...and now murder?

Someone so false didn't make for a reliable ally unless some strong self-interest was involved, Pacer thought.

Packard evidently thought the same thing.

"Of course, two accidents on the same night wouldn't be particularly routine," she pointed out. "That kind of coincidence would make an administrator check the records, maybe take a second look at the last few things a person was doing."

"Relax. I've got better ways to keep you quiet. By this time tomorrow, they'll have no chance of finding me, leaving just you to look at for corruption charges and the death of a fellow agent. Yeah, I don't think you'll be all too motivated to open your mouth."

"Just so as we understand each other."

Pacer shrugged.

"Business is business, right? Everyone wants to know where they stand. Now come on. Kid's not going to nap forever, and the morning shift's going to be on soon enough."

He gave her another sharp look, and she nodded, accepting yet another piece of practical reality. It made Pacer perversely glad, seeing the faded-out customs agent with her faded-out soul, that he still had something he believed in enough to put his neck on the line for besides just money and self-interest.

~X X X~

Eileen McLaren shivered. Her prison wasn't cold or dank; rather it looked to be an ordinary basement, with brick walls and bare pipes and utility conduits, but to her it might as well have been the deepest, darkest hole on the planet, some medieval oubliette. The steel chain that manacled her right wrist led to a heavy staple embedded in the wall just like in some dungeon, as did the one that bound her son's ankle. It rubbed painfully at her wrist, but if she pressed her back to the wall and stretched, there was just enough length for her to be able to hold Billy's hand.

She'd spent a lot of their time doing that.

Often, the pounding beat of music could be heard. It was muffled, but even that told her how loud it truly was, louder and more forceful than from an ordinary sound system. She didn't have her watch, but it played for long hours, confirming that it was more than just from somebody's home, probably a stage or club DJ's system. Eileen didn't miss the irony of it: somewhere in the same building were people partying, celebrating, having a good time, while she and Billy were...

The music was silent now, though what that meant she didn't know. Across the room a door creaked open.

"Breakfast time for our guests," mocked the blonde woman who'd led the original kidnapping. She tossed a paper bag; it hit the concrete floor between two prisoners. At no time had anyone even approached within arms' reach of them; they took no chances.

"Please," Eileen said. "Please, for pity's sake, let me talk to my husband!"

"I don't think so. He's doing an important job for us, and we don't want him distracted."

An important job, she thought. What are they making him do? She knew that in his position he had access to sensitive data and important computer facilities. It didn't take a genius to figure out the general kind of thing they'd want from him. It made Eileen shudder. Espionage? Treason? Those were foul words, even sinful ones when one considered that the Church was a loyal supporter and key member of the TSAB.

Yet she was also a mother, and more than anything else she wanted her children to be safe, the living and the yet-unborn both. Where she'd have urged Georg to tell his superiors everything if it were only her own life at stake...

"Mom?" the boy whimpered. "Mom, are we going to be okay?"

"It's...we..." She wanted to reassure him, but the lies choked on her lips; she couldn't make herself believe them even for long enough to say them. "Pray," she finally said. "Pray to Her Majesty to keep us all safe."