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minute?” She had to shout to be heard above the music.
    Sean turned around and his eyes lit up. “Ally. Sure. Sit down.” He patted the stool next to him while the barmaid with the boobs scowled at her.
    “Outside.” She shot a glance at the barmaid. “Don’t worry, I won’t keep him long.”
    Sean followed her outside to a table in the square.
    “How’s progress?” he said, slouching onto a bench, his glass clenched in his hand.
    “Progress is good.” She took a deep breath. “Look, I’m just a little bit concerned about that InfoDroid.
    Did you know it was going to be a military probe class machine? The rest of this setup was pretty simple.
    But that thing… it’s taking me days. And it would have been much easier if they’d had it here to begin with, not as an add-on when I’d nearly finished.”
    “They did say an InfoDroid but I didn’t realise it was a probe droid until I saw it. Do you need me to help?”
    “No, I don’t need you to help.”Anything you know about InfoDroids you learnt from me. “I just want to know what’s going on here.I don’t mind if it’s not strictly to the letter of the law. Some of the stuff we did in Ullnish was a bit dodgy. But why would they need such a very high level of security? The place is a mine, for pity’s sake.”
    Sean drank another mouthful of beer. “Look, van Tongeren told me the mine has less viable ore than
    they were led to believe. They’re trying to expand their activity into other areas. His lot are GPR. They’re aiming to form a conduit between the GPR and the ptorix Khophirate, as well as some of the edge
    worlds like Rota Jengo and our own Qerran planets. They’ll be providing goods the Confederacy
    doesn’t want to sell them. Hardware, manufactured goods, mining equipment, that sort of thing.”
    She nodded. “Smuggling.”
    “They don’t see it as smuggling. It’s a trade opportunity, is all.”
    She didn’t know much about the GPR—the Galactic People’s Republic—just that it was another human
    political system, smaller than the Confederacy, with different values and cultures. As she understood it, they’d broken away from the Confederacy for some reason. There did seem to be a trading opportunity.
    But it still didn’t ring true.
    “But a military grade InfoDroid? It seems like overkill to me.”
    Sean leaned toward her over the bench, his breath wafting beer.
     
    “They’re astonished anyone can ‘crack’ it. They didn’t think it was possible.”
    “Oh, goody. I don’t need to be patted on the head, Sean.”
    He was a good engineer himself, one of the best but she was better. And not just because she could
    work with ptorix systems—which he couldn’t.
    “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? They want the authorities to think all they’re doing is mining, so anyone examining the system will see what they want them to see. The mountain graphic that shows the mining
    operation only; and inventory for mining and so on. So you integrate the ptorix systems to run the mine itself, and build the additional systems to hide what they’re really doing.”
    “Sure. Understood. But—”
    Sean waved a hand, irritated.
    “Van Tongeren says that the Confederacy Fleet enforces trade restrictions. If they turn up, that’s what they’ll have. And they don’t see it as smuggling to provide people with necessities, but the Confederacy has its own opinions on those matters and it has the military clout to try to shove its values down their throats. Why do you care? You usually see these things as a fun challenge.”
    She sighed. Shewas enjoying the challenge. But she didn’t like this place, didn’t like van Tongeren,
    didn’t like these lewd, crude miners and their attitude to women. Oh, well. The sooner she finished, the sooner she could go home. She started to stand.
    “How’s your boyfriend?”
    “What?”
    “Korns, that fellow you were seeing.”
    She pushed down the little pang of guilt. Of course he would have