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direction.
    Rya tucked away the L7 at the small of her back and didn't miss the low comment when they were a few steps away.
    “Striper? Shit.”
    No, not a striper. ImpSec Special Protection Service. Polite, professional, and prepared to kill.
    She sighed, caught the grateful gaze of the elderly woman with the sleeping toddler in her lap, and shrugged her acknowledgment.
    The shuttle delayed sign still flashed. Rya wandered away from the tubeway hatchlock and finally ended up leaning against the wall—holding up the bulkhead, as her father would say—where the corridor dead-ended into the waiting area. There was a heat vent overhead, the little warmth trickling out a pleasure almost beyond words at this point.
    A few more people stood and filed out, tired of waiting or hungry, or both. Or just needing to move. Mr. Wonderful and friend claimed two seats quickly, but she didn't intervene this time, because no one smaller, weaker, or older needed them.
    She glanced away from them and watched the corridor instead.
    That's when she saw him. A solitary figure in a bluish-gray thermal overcoat that her mind automatically tagged as Fleet-issue, moving with a determined but limping gait. He leaned on his cane with every other step, the wide strap of a duffel a dark stripe against the fabric of his coat.
    He was too far for her to see his face, but as he moved under the dim overhead lights, his short-cropped silver hair made her immediately tag him as a veteran. Not recent Fleet, then. Probably a casualty from the Boundary Wars twenty years ago.
    Officer? Yeah, she tagged that too. It was in the way that he held himself, in spite of the pain and his limp. The set of his shoulders. The lift of his chin. Retired officer, silver-haired, probably in his seventies. Coming here at Commander Adney's call?
    God, were they down to that now? Relying on rheumy old men to try to stop Tage's insanity?
    An end seat on the long bench bordering the bulkhead became available when a fidgety young man in plain green coveralls pushed himself out of it and loped for the corridor. She slid quickly into it, next to a dozing Takan shipyard worker on her left. She'd give the space to the old man when he passed by, as he'd have to given his current trajectory. Then maybe she'd splurge on another half mug of sweet tea to thaw her insides and her hands. It was only money, and the damned shuttle—
    The old man, about fifteen feet from her now, limped under a dangling spotlight, the harsh glow illuminating his face. And Rya, already rising to offer him her seat, was surprised to realize two things.
    He was not an old man at all. And he had the most incredible blue eyes she'd seen in years.
    “Excuse me, sir,” she said, because that's what she'd planned to say. And, old or not, he was still limping. Injured. Weaker than she was.
    He hesitated slightly, those marvelous blue eyes narrowing in a face that was masculine in a classic, rugged sort of way that set her body to tingling. Damn.
    “You want this seat?” she continued, tugging her duffel's strap over her left shoulder. “I was just leaving. The shuttle's delayed and seats are hard to come by in here. And this one's under the heat vent.”
    He stopped in front of her and leaned on his cane.
    Rya looked up. Yeah, up. Six-two, three. Stocky, maybe two thirty-five. Fleet thermal coats were a thin fabric. He had wide shoulders, a muscular neck, and a dual shoulder holster. She judged that too.
    Something flashed over his face, a wariness, then it was gone.
    Her beret. He was Fleet. He knew its significance: ImpSec. And if he'd ever worked out of Aldan Prime, he knew it could also mean assassin. But his features had relaxed, and he wasn't reaching for whatever rested snugly in his shoulder holsters. Not Fleet inner circle, then.
    A baby wailed somewhere behind her, its cry dissolving into a series of hiccups.
    “AWOL,” Rya said quietly in explanation of her headgear, because that wasn't all that far from