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an active and prosperous station on the opposite end of the B–C. She’d been there dozens of times. No wonder Tage was angry. “When?”
    “Shipweek ago, maybe less,” Pops put in. “Depending on which source you hear it from.”
    Aries turned her near-empty bottle in her hands. “I heard the Empire took it back again, but I think that’s just what they want us to believe.”
    “Like I said, depends who you hear it from.” Pops leaned forward, dropping his voice. “Right now I trust this new Alliance a hell of a lot more than I do our crazy emperor and his flunky. And sources I know
and
trust say Corsau joined up with Kirro, Umoran and the starports in Calth sector, and the rest of Dafir. Tage can’t risk losing more of Baris sector.”
    “And locking us in helps him how?” Aries grumbled.
    “The new Alliance has Ferrin’s
and
the shipyards there,” Ilsa said, with a vague motion of one hand, indicating something beyond Dock Five’s hull. “That puts the Alliance in the position to build more ships and then move into Baris from both ends of Calth.” She looked at her father. “Ain’t that right, Pops?”
    Pops sighed. “Sounds like you been listening in to my office when you were supposed to be working, girl.”
    Ilsa shrugged, then laughed lightly. “And you just figured that out?”
    “Just watch what you say and who you say it to.”
    Another shrug. “Can they really expect we’ll all sit here, happy as you please, without bitching? Without wondering what’s going on?”
    “My feeling is they’re looking for certain people. And they’re listening to the bitching to find out where those certain people are.”
    Kaidee could almost hear her father’s voice:
Time to run, girl
. Except the Empire had found him and killed him almost a year ago. No, this was some new project of Tage’s.
    Maybe that was why Frinks was suddenly pressuring her for the rest of Kiler’s debt. Orvis was smarmy enough to work for Tage as an agent. Kiler had probably blabbed about his “close personal contact” with the Guthries. It wouldn’t be hard for someone like Orvis to check that out, to verify that they’d flown for GGS for five years.
    But that didn’t mean she had Philip Guthrie in her cargo hold and Guthrie funds in her account.
    You’re hallucinating, Kaid. This has nothing to do, personally, with you or your family. And the Empire
knows exactly where Admiral Philip Guthrie is: in command of some Alliance warship that kicked the shit out of an Imperial cruiser out by the C-6 jumpgate
. Or so she’d heard about a shipmonth ago.
    So who did the Empire want badly enough to damned near bring Baris sector to a halt? Kaidee had a feeling Pops knew, but she wasn’t about to ask him. The last thing she needed was to get involved with volatile Imperial politics. She had enough problems on her own.
    She had to come up with thirteen thousand credits—and fast.
    They pored over the police reports from Aldan Prime and Montgomery University security for the better part of two hours. Ethan even dug out vids of his and Hannah’s visit to Trip’s apartment only two weeks ago and painstakingly went over every scene of every room, comparing it to the police images, looking for something the police might have missed. They came up with nothing.
    They viewed Rallman’s logs, again, in detail. “Professionals,” Jonathan said, as Ethan nodded in agreement. “It was done quickly, neatly.”
    Neatly, yes. But other than that, the data made no damned sense at all.
    Devin scrubbed at his face with both hands, then slipped his glasses back on. “I’m not ruling out that Tage may have had Halsey killed,” he said, leaning his elbows on his knees as he sat in the high-backed leather library chair near the polished gray stone fireplace. Jonathan, eyes still shadowed with worry, was in the matching chair on the other side. J.M. looked pale, his mouth pinched as he sat behind his large,ornately carved desk. Ethan lounged