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and matching shorts. Her legs were long and tanned. Jason ran into her arms. "Can we ride the dasas this afternoon? Can we please?"
    The sleek six-legged animals known as dasas were native to Mechnos and occupied the ecological niche filled by horses on Earth. Melanie smiled serenely. "Of course, dear. Right after your music lesson. Run along now ... Mommy has a headache."
    Jason was more than a little familiar with his mommy's headaches, and the multiplicity of pills, capsules, and shots that she used to fight them. He skipped toward the entry hall. Orr kissed his wife on the cheek, nodded to her bodyguard, and strode toward the front door. The schedule called for a beautiful day on Mechnos, and why not? Orr Enterprises had manufactured the components for the weather management system. It was programmed to produce rain between the hours of 2:00 and 5:00 a.m. Malfunctions were rare.
    Three identical limos were waiting under the portico in front of the mansion. Logic dictated that Orr and son would be placed in the middle car where the other vehicles could shield them, which explained why the industrialist's security chief, Ari Gozen, directed her clients to the last car, and took the shotgun position. She was thirty-something, had a long lean body, and a face to match. She waited for the privacy screen to fall and wasn't surprised when it did. Orr spoke first. "So? What's happening?"
    Ari knew what he meant and activated her implant. Information flowed into her mind. "We have the Traa under biological as well as robotic surveillance... and they are monitoring our movements via airborne spy-eye and an Orr Enterprises security agent."
    Orr nodded grimly. Double agents were an ongoing threat. No one trusted anyone else. Not with billions on the line. "Good. Tell the driver to take us to the clinic, and when the meeting is over, send the double to Reon IV. When the traitor arrives... fire him."
    The bodyguard nodded as the partition whirred upward. Reon IV was a frontier world located along the axis that connected one end of the Confederacy with the other. Once dirt-side, cut off from his employers, the agent would be lucky to survive, much less return. It was a rather generous parting of the ways, since many of Orr's peers would have insisted on a more debilitating sendoff.
    Ari checked her link, got a green on the route, and gave the necessary orders. The motorcade whispered along the carefully maintained drive. Topiaries passed to either side. Their foliage was lushly green. Jason bounced up and down. "Can I play with the console? Huh, Dad? Can I?"
    Orr started to refuse, remembered what the doctors would do, and nodded instead. Video blossomed and stuttered from one channel to the next as his son played with the remote. Jason didn't know it, but he was about to become collateral for a business deal worth billions of credits and, depending on how things went, control of the Confederacy itself.
    The ship, the only vessel not seized by the Voss Line's creditors, rumbled in on commercial approach vector one-zero-niner, dropped into channel number six, and hit the water with a thump. Spray flew as the Class II freighter dropped water brakes, dumped forward momentum, and coasted toward a well-appointed data dock. Had the spaceship been larger, a tug would have sallied forth to bring her in. The vessel was relatively small, however, and continued under her own power. Due to the fact that the pier had been designed to handle data ships, rather than free traders, it was clean and tidy. Like all ships of her classification, the freighter required little more than a bank of fiber-optic cable ports to load and unload cargo, cargo composed of knowledge, plans, designs, entertainment, and other forms of digitized data. A camera focused on the "Orr Enterprises" sign and sent the image to the bridge.
    Howard Voss sat toward the rear of the control room behind the three-person bridge crew. He spotted the sign on a forward vid screen and