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travelers regrouping before heading for their trains.
    But they weren’t talking among themselves or looking at their tickets or admiring the brilliantly flashing Core-line that ran through the center of the Tube above our heads. Instead, they stood silently, their attention focused outward toward the rest of the crowd milling about the station.
    Even more interestingly, their carry-on luggage, instead of hugging their owners’ sides like well-behaved self-rolling luggage should, was gathered together in the middle of their circle like the women and children in an old dit rec western.
    The other lighted hatchway opened, and a third group of upper-class Bellidos started filing up into the Tube. “Wait here,” I told Bayta. Turning off the leash button inside my lapel to keep my luggage from following, I headed toward the hatchway, weaving in and out of the other travelers as quickly and unobtrusively as I could.
    Only five Bellidos got out of this shuttle, too. By the time I reached the waiting crowd the first five outgoing passengers had disappeared down the stairway and the hatchway’s rim lights had gone out. Picking up my pace, I hurried forward, and as the hatchway started to iris shut I jumped through the opening.
    The stairway had already retracted, and I dropped two meters straight down onto the folded metal. I hit with a rattling clang, nearly twisting my ankle on the uneven surface as I threw a hand against the side wall to steady myself. Recovering my balance, I lifted my eyes from my footing.
    To find myself staring down the muzzles of a dozen guns.
    Not the fake ones Bellidos were allowed to carry into the Tube, either. These were the real thing: large caliber, undoubtedly loaded, and gripped in very steady hands. Hands whose owners were furthermore encased in Belldic military uniforms.
    “Who?” one of the soldiers demanded.
    Somewhere deep in my chest, I found where I’d mislaid my voice. “Sorry.” I croaked, carefully opening both hands to demonstrate their emptiness. “Wrong shuttle.”
    There was a soft clanking from above me as the hatch opened again. “Go,” the Bellido ordered, twitching the muzzle of his gun upward in case my ears had stopped working the same time my voice had.
    I got a grip on the edges of the hatch, my eyes flicking once to the five wide-eyed nonmilitary Belldic passengers in the front row, and pulled myself up and out. The shuttle hatch irised closed, followed by the station’s own hatch, both of them nearly catching my legs before I could get them out of the way.
    “What in the world was that for?” Bayta demanded, hurrying toward me with my carrybags in her hands and her own rolling at her heels. “If Morse had seen you trying to get away—”
    “I wasn’t trying to get away,” I assured her as she set down my bags with perhaps a little more force than necessary. “Besides which, the shuttle was already full.”
    “With only five passengers?”
    “That’s right.” Turning my leash control back on, I let my bags roll into position behind me, then gave a casual glance at the—now—fifteen Bellidos who’d emerged from the three special shuttles. The original ten were still gazing outward, looking for all the world like a group of combat soldiers settled into a defensive ring around their clustered luggage.
    The five new arrivals, in contrast, were looking straight at me.
    “Come on,” I said, taking Bayta’s arm again and picking a random direction away from them.
    The Bellidos didn’t make any move to follow. I waited anyway until we’d built up some distance before speaking again. “Two reasons why the shuttles were already full,” I said quietly. “Reason one: they were military layout, with only twenty seats each. Reason two: the other fifteen seats were occupied by armed Bellidos.”
    Bayta’s eyes went wide. “They’re not supposed to bring weapons this close to a station,” she insisted.
    “They must have gotten special permission,” I