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starting to gray a little, although he was still probably only in his mid-twenties. Life on the streets had given his eyes a hard, wary look. But he was good-looking, for an ork. His jaw was narrow and his nose straight. He wore jeans torn off at the knee and a black leather vest over a loose-fitting sweatshirt—probably to deliberately contrast with the carefully groomed reporters of the legitimate news stations.
    Yao sat on the other side of a small plastic table, watching Pita scarf down her second plate of noodles. There was no way to tell whether he had anything so fancy as an cybereye cam, but there a datajack showed in his temple and a mini-radio was clipped to one earlobe. When Pita asked what it was, he told her it was a Lone Star scanner and decryption unit. "Keeps me one step ahead of the cops." he explained, one arm draped across the back of the bench. She noticed he always kept one eye on the doorway, where his friend Anwar lounged.
    The second pirate wore jeans, a muscle shirt, and cowboy boots. He leaned against a wall next to the door, one arm cradling a bulky trideo camera whose size gave it away as being more than two decades out of date—nearly an antique. He grinned at Yao and gave him a thumbs-up sign indicating that none of the Underground’s security goons were in sight.
    Pita finished her noodles and drained the last of her soda. She toyed nervously with one of her chopsticks until Yao gently touched her wrist. The back of his hand was covered with a mass of spiky black hairs; he didn’t shave his hands to look more human the way some orks did. "Well?" he asked. "Are you going to tell me something about Chen? Or do you want to soak me for another plate of noodles first?"
    The chopstick in Pita’s hands snapped in two. "He’s dead." she blurted.
    "Yes."
    Pita looked up. "You knew?"
    Yao shook his head. On his trideo broadcasts, he was animated and expressive, but now his face was strangely still. Only a faint wince of his eyes betrayed what he must be feeling. "I didn’t know. But I could guess. I can read people. I can see that Chen meant a lot to you."
    Pita stared at the tabletop. Its edge was scarred with cigarette burns. The brown stains reminded her of the dried blood she’d found on her jacket the morning after Chen had . . . After the cops had . . .
    Tears dripped onto the bright yellow plastic. Yao reached across the table and lifted Pita’s chin with one massive hand. "What happened? How did he die? Was it a fight? An overdose? How?"
    "The Star." Pita answered. She had to swallow before she could go on. "They shot him. And two of his friends, Shaz and Mohan. We were hanging out, trying to boost a trideo feed to catch one of your broadcasts. Lone Star stopped us and—"
    "And Chen pulled a weapon. Stupid fragger. You’d think he’d know better."
    "No!" Pita protested. "It wasn’t like that at all. At first all the Stars did was smash the ’trode rig you gave him. But later, they came back in their patrol car. Shaz threw a rock at them, and they opened fire on us. But none of us had a weapon. Not in our hands. Mohan had a knife, but it was still in his pocket. The cops never even got out of their car or gave us a warning. They shot before we even had time to run."
    "But you escaped."
    Guilt washed over Pita like ice water. "Yes." she muttered, looking down at the tabletop once more. "But I came back, later, to see if the others were all right. That’s when I saw the cops cutting them up. And writing the Humanis slogans on the wall."
    "Humanis Policlub?" Chen leaned forward, a hard glitter in his eyes. "You mean fragging cops belong to that drek-eating hate club?" A muscle worked in his jaw. "Well, it figures. Orks represent sixteen percent of Seattle’s population, but nearly fifty per cent of the prison population is ork. Not only are we arrested and thrown in jail more often, we’re also under-represented as cops. Only one fragging per cent of the Lone Star cops patrolling