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spook branch always force-fed a case officer the natural history of the planet for which he or she was bound, its human history, and a dumbed-down helping of any science the case required.
    We got our physical exams updated and a comprehensive prick-and-swallow to immunize us against local diseases.
    The physical training and hand-to-hand combat segments of insertion prep were usually just to maintain established fitness and skills. But in my case they were a sweaty and necessary evil. Two years of saloon keeping, in the spun-up rotational gravity of a hollow meteor with a mass less than Manhattan Island’s, had been no health-club membership. Weddle kicked my butt daily in all phases.
    Running we did by laps around one of the outer decks, like hamsters in a cosmic wheel.
    Case officers ran wearing full rucksacks, to simulate field conditions. The only thing more precious to a case officer in the field than his or her partner and weapon was the equipment in his ruck. However, on the last lap packs were dropped for a final sprint.
    It was called the burn lap, but not just for what it did to your lungs and thighs. A case officer’s pack was only dropped if the bad guys in hot pursuit got danger-close. And only after yanking a timer cord that caused the pack, and its classified contents, to burn like Krakatoa. And, with luck, take down some bad guys.
    Kit and I had always run the burn lap competitively. If I won, we showered ensemble . Sometimes even if I lost. Though then I had to listen to her crow about how second place was just first loser. That was one of her favorite gungho–isms.
    But the part of prep I really cared about was the mission-specific case briefing. The CB began after Emerald River made her last jump through the temporal fabric, which left us a week of near-light travel away from Tressel parking orbit.
    The first thing that made this particular case briefing abnormal, considering Howard’s security fetish, was that the CB was conducted in the echoing emptiness of Emerald River ’s Bay Twenty-four.
    Cruisers were originally built as warships. But there were no other ships left in the universe to make war on. Lacking need to project military power, the Trueborns used their cruisers to project mercantile and cultural power across five hundred and twelve planets. All concerned got richer and smarter. However, the Trueborns got richest and smartest.
    Emerald River ’s belt line was ringed with thirty-six launch and recovery bays that had once housed interceptors and attack transports. In civilian service, most of the bays were empty. But the bays, and the C-drive engineering spaces in the booms behind them, were still sealed off from forward-area passengers, especially curious Yavi “civilians,” by a locked and loaded marine platoon.
    The second thing that made this case briefing abnormal was that the King of the Spooks himself had made the trip with us and was briefing us personally.
    Howard Hibble’s voice echoed in the hangar-sized, pie-slice–shaped bay, and nobody could hear it except me, Weddle, and the three cleared members of the insertion team.
    We sat, hands folded, around a table set up on the deck plates while Howard slid back and forth on his scooter the way a lecturer paced a stage. The only other things in the bay were three sealed plasteel cargo containers. Those were packed with mission-specific equipment. The stuff the spooks thought I needed to know about would be explained to me.
    Howard said, “Six months ago we developed intelligence that Yavet and Tressel intended to form a clandestine alliance.”
    I raised my eyebrows, but I didn’t ask how we came to know that. Spooks are closemouthed, even among themselves, about “sources and methods.” “Sources and methods” meant how and/or from whom raw information was obtained. “Developed intelligence” was what spooks made of all the information they assembled. It might mean that we had it all on holo. Or it might mean that