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look at the rest of his crew. “Lay a hand on her,” he said in a pleasant voice, “and you’ll answer to me.”
    Though people nodded, their gazes flickered to her. She knew they were wondering if she truly merited special attention from the captain. But she’d prove herself his daughter in spirit as well as in blood, now that he’d let her join his crew.
    It was almost as good as having him acknowledge her as his own.
    He did not call her his daughter until a year and a half later, when she stole her first ship.

Chapter Three
    10 years later
    “Dearest daughter—”
    Shayalin turned away from the newsfeeds and cut him off. “What do you want?” Her father only called her that when he wanted a favor. She was convinced he was the most notorious pirate in the Wheel not because he stole things, but because he talked people out of them.
    “We have a commission.”
    Her father usually liked to pick out their targets himself, but he occasionally undertook special requests for the wealthy and unscrupulous. He rarely involved her though, knowing she preferred corrupt targets, or clever schemes with little damage. Squeamish , he called it. Discriminating , she liked to say, although she suspected the Steader principles her mother had instilled in her had as much to do with it. But she’d impressed him by how much she’d accomplished with her stubborn rules in place, and so he let her keep them.
    “Do we?” she asked with a skeptical lift of her brow. She’d learned the precise intonation and gesture from him.
    “Just you,” he conceded. “I’m busy with something else. You’ll need to handle this one.”
    “Sir—”
    “Do it as a favor for me. It’s a two-parter, anyway. The first is to talk to our client in person. That’s all I want you to do. He’ll tell you what he wants, and you can decide whether to do it.”
    “No strings?”
    “Believe it or not.”
    She didn’t, and let it show on her face. “Why do we have to meet in person? Smells like a trap to me.”
    “It’s not. I swear it.”
    Her father rarely made such assurances, but they were solid when he did. She sighed. “Fine.”
    He smiled, confident all along that she would say as much. “I think you’ll actually like this one. You’ll meet our client on the Ionia .”
    Through some quirk, the station was only a single slip away from three Hub worlds. As such, it was dead neutral ground, safe for anyone who set foot upon it. “All right,” she said. “Who is it?”
    “He’d rather not say at this point.”
    “Then how will I know who he is?”
    “He insists on a rather devious way of meeting. You’ll be picked up at the Questor Lounge with an End of Days.”
    It took her a moment to realize he was referring to the mixed drink. “He’s going to hit on me? Now that’s just degrading.”
    “How better to get complete privacy with a stranger?”
    “No wonder you wanted me to take care of this for you,” she said with a sigh. “Fine.”
    “You can drop off some cargo while you’re at it,” he said cheerfully.
    “I was planning on it.” They still had some loot from their most recent run that they hadn’t manage to offload in the black market. No one was dealing with bulk goods right now.
    The entire Wheel was in a state of disarray ever since first contact with an alien race had been made. Havoc had ensued, and the Senate had placed the involved planet, Albarz, under quarantine—and since Albarz was a Hub world, positioned near the major slip point for the entire spoke, all of Atia was closed to traffic. Some of the Rim colonies would be mostly unaffected—Centuris among them, self-sufficient as the Steaders prided themselves on being—but Albarz itself had attracted a number of scientists and was usually a major exporter of advanced tech.
    Shayalin and her father slipped around the barricade, finding the opportunities it provided by blocking other ships, although never quite reaching Albarz itself due to the heavy