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flechettes, but he pulled the magazines from the two spetsdods he’d used and double-checked them. He’d canned two of the weapons after the station in the woods, but he’d kept the ammunition. He counted the remainder of those plus the ones he’d used later. Each magazine held twelve darts, so he should have, let’s see, minus two each from the first station, then two more, one from the left, one from the right…
    He finished the count. One short. Had he miscounted?
    He closed his eyes and replayed the stations slowly. The first one was okay, the second was right, it must be the third…
    He fired twice, caught Jason and the quad leader with the first two rounds, then fired both his handguns again. He got Janie, but missed Toomie…
    Ah. Yes. He’d missed the last quadman with his first shot, it had taken a second dart for him. Khadaji grinned wryly. He was getting careless. He reached up and pulled open one of the drawers in his desk. There was a second flash-rigged packet nestled in the corner, under a banded packet of standards. A thief who opened the drawer would see the money and likely not worry about the plastic packet under it. If he or she did try to open the case, there would be a hot surprise waiting; the thief would be lucky to escape with hands and face intact.
    He removed the second case from the drawer and printed it open. Inside were loose spetsdod darts; there had been a hundred of them. Ninety-three now, Khadaji knew. He had removed seven of them in five-odd months, once for each wasted dart he’d fired. There was a pair of tweezers inside the lid of the box and he used them to pick up a single dart, which he carefully loaded into the magazine of his right-hand spetsdod. There.
    He closed the flash-rigged packet and put it back into the drawer. His carelessness hadn’t been in missing Toomie, though that was bad enough; no, the problem was in forgetting that he’d missed. True, it had been in the middle of a heated exchange, but it was inexcusable.
    He put the weapons away and closed the store box. There was no rigged lock on the store box itself, even though a determined search of the cubicle would likely turn it up. That was all right, it was unlikely anybody would be in here while Khadaji was alive and if he were dead, well…
    He suddenly felt very tired. The Reflex had finally worn off and the Paco was still pulling at him. He stood and walked back to his bed. So very tired.
    He slept again, and if he dreamed, those dreams didn’t disturb him.
     
    “Good morning, Boss.”
    Khadaji nodded at Bork, the largest of his bouncers, one of the largest men on Greaves. Bork was of Homomue stock, from a world where the gravity was higher than normal and increased muscle mass was an asset. Here on Greaves, where the gravity was close to standard, Bork resorted to weight-lifting to keep in tone. He could have simply used electrostim but Bork preferred the barbells. More organic, he said.
    “Bork. Things peaceful last night after I turned in?” “Yessir. I had to warn a trooper to quiet down, but he didn’t cause any trouble after that.”
    Khadaji smiled. Bork was soft-spoken most of the time, but when he “warned” somebody, it could involve lifting them by the shirtfront with one hand until they were eye-level. He had seen Bork load a flexsteel bar with 275 kilos and then proceed to bench press it ten times; Bork himself weighed a good hundred and twenty-five kilos and stood close to two meters high. Most troopers smiled nervously when Bork passed.
    “You’re off at eight?”
    “Supposed to be,” Bork said, “but Sleel had to see the medic so I said I’d cover for him.”
    “Sleel sick?”
    The larger man looked uncomfortable. “Sir. Sort of.”
    Khadaji didn’t say anything, but he continued to stare at Bork. Finally, Bork shook his head and said, “You know how Sleel is, he thinks God created him personally to show the galaxy how to use a cock.”
    “He caught another exotic kind of