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sounded like a woman with a really deep, grating voice who had just downed multiple cups of Duv’s heavily caffeinated Iram coffee—not a good combination. Reilly frowned. She’d ask Skeeter if he could take a look at the voice modulator program once they made port.
    The machine announced, “Complying. Records search underway.”
    Duv laughed. “Good thing it’s not a virtual. Don’t think I could stand looking at it! That voice could only go with a woman built like a linebacker, with an Adam’s apple and facial hair to boot!”
    “So she’d look just like that woman you fell in love with when we were based in Syon for eighteen months?”
    “Yeah, well, they all go up about five or ten points when you’re stuck in a barren wasteland surrounded by mutant hoards who are trying to kill you—she was the Queen of Syon, no I ain’t a-lyin’, and she stole my heart and my soul.” Duv began to sing one of the unit’s old drinking songs. “ We drank lots of whiskey, an’ then we got frisky, that big woman she took me just like a she-Wookiee, and now I’m just not the same! No, after that lovin’, you just keep on puffin, ‘cause three hundred pounds tends to crush your rib cage!” He gave a whoop and turned back to his console with a wicked grin.
    Reilly leaned back and swiveled her chair so she could look out the front deck windows. The stars glimmered brightly around them, and for a moment she just breathed it in. More than anything else, this was where she belonged, where she fit in. The military had suited her well and she had loved it, learned from it, survived because of it. But it had kept her on the move and no place was home. This ship was closest thing to a home she had, and her crew was her family. It wasn’t fancy, but it was work and life on her terms, and that sure as hell beat the last twelve years of touring the backside of the universe, living on the government’s time.
    “Records returned for Welch, Errat and Welch, Razam,” HAILE reported.
    “Bring them up,” Reilly ordered.
    The rear holo-display showed a photo of Errat Welch, their current employer. A thin, redheaded, weasel-faced man, complete with all personal specifics, education, work, residence. He held an official post with one of the lower ministerial offices on Arias only because his father was the financial minister for the planet forum and had seen fit to arrange a place for his youngest son. Unofficially, he traded moderately in black-market goods, mostly hard-to-come-by items, liquor, and some antiquities. So he was dirty, but on the lighter side of black.
    Reilly touched the screen and slid Welch’s files to the side, pulling up his brother Razam’s files. The records had the same personal specifics, education and residence information, but it showed that this brother had worked for his father briefly before taking off for the central planets to pursue a series of jobs with the Interplanetary Security Command on Sargon. The records tracked him up to five years back, when it was listed that he went missing in an attack while visiting one of the Outland planets to conduct a security inquiry. Reilly assumed that now that he was out of the picture, Errat had wanted to see if her team could penetrate his brother’s site security on Vervian. If they were successful, then she was sure that he would want to “consolidate” his brother’s possessions so he could appropriately administer them in the best interest of the family, meaning himself of course. She and the crew had hoped to get enough credits from the job to keep them from having to work for a bit. That of course was long before they had been introduced to Razam’s Enforcers. Reilly wondered if Errat knew about the presence of the machines. Either way, their return visit would not be very pleasant for him, even less so if he had intentionally let them walk into a death trap.
    “I have a jamming solution in place and ready to go,” Duv announced. “Want I should