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Howard had a wild-ass hunch.
    I furrowed my brow. “Tressen’s a fourth-rate civilization stuck at the end of a jump line. What could be in that for the Yavi?”
    Howard pursed his lips. “Well, I have a hunch about that.”
    I knew asking what Howard’s hunch was would be as futile as asking about sources and methods. Howard’s hunches had proven world-savingly right often during the last half century. That’s why the tight-ass Trueborn military let him run his branch like a libertarian bus wreck.
    Howard made a thin fist. “But we need proof. That’s why we inserted Colonel Born’s team.”
    My heart skipped when he mentioned Kit’s name. Howard normally ignored rank and called people by their first names, just one of the anarchic quirks that drove the regular army bughouse. Calling Kit by her rank was, I think, his attempt to depersonalize the situation and keep me focused and quiet. It didn’t work.
    I interrupted him. “What happened to her, Howard?”
    “We don’t know, Jazen.”
    “What feedback have you gotten from the local contacts?”
    Howard shook his head. “None. The team went in barefoot. We haven’t had reliable human assets on Tressel for years. Kit freelances and improvises better than anybody I’ve ever seen. Well, almost anybody.”
    “Then you want us to follow her?” The only reason I was once again sitting in a starship, surrounded by spooks thinking up ways to endanger me, was Kit.
    Howard shook his head. “We don’t know what’s happened to her, but any step we followed when we inserted her team could have been the step that got them in trouble. So we’re changing everything up for you two. Except that once your feet are wet, you’ll be unsupervised, like she was.” He blinked. “Is.”
    My breath caught and my heart thumped. She was alive down there somewhere. I had to believe that.
    So I nodded at Howard. “Understood.”
    Weddle just sat, arms folded and eyes locked on Howard like a good junior. At my first briefing, as a good junior, I had done the same thing. Actually, my eyes had been locked more on my senior than on my briefer.
    Really, what I meant by “understood” was that whatever spy foolishness Howard wanted me to pursue, my personal first priority was Kit. The sheer hostility of the planet and society we were going to operate in would isolate me. I would be free to pursue my priority first and Howard’s spy foolishness second. I wasn’t sticking my neck out for some secret handshake. I was sticking my neck out for Kit. So my spy oath was a lie. But lying was what spies did.
    “How soon does our Scorpion drop?” I wrinkled my forehead and looked around the empty bay as I said it. It should have occurred to me sooner that the insertion vehicle wasn’t in the bay with us.
    Normally, a case-officer team entered an area of operations like any other cruiser passengers, except with phony ID. But in closed and hostile environments like Tressel, insertion was done by ferrying the team down to a planet’s surface at a remote location, unannounced and undetected, in a Scorpion T. Spook Scorpion transport variants were as fast and shifty as Scorpion fighters, but with a radar cross section smaller than the bluebird of happiness and a heat signature fainter than that of day-old pizza.
    From orbital strap-in to disembarkation on the ground normally took ten minutes. Things might get hairy later, but insertion by Scorpion had the drama of a limo ride from the airport.
    Howard frowned and shook his head. “We inserted Kit’s team by Scorpion. So that’s the first thing we’re changing for you.” He waved at the peephole in the personnel hatch that led into the bay from the passageway. The hatch undogged from the other side, and two more spooks, each wearing coveralls and paratroop jump boots, came in, walked to us, and saluted Howard.
    Howard returned the salute with a limp hand.
    The redheaded para turned to me and smiled. “Good thing you’re not afraid of