Sera left immediately for the Castile Spaceport. She didn’t dare go back to her apartment to pick up her weapons and armour. She bought a small black shoulder bag at a stand inside the spaceport to hold Roth Amaden’s tablet. On impulse she also snagged a tube of lip colour, fire red. 

Any tool at my disposal, she thought.

There had been no sign of the olive groundcar, or of anyone else following her. Maybe fortune was on her side. Maybe she had lost her pursuers.

She used the Dione Systems pass to purchase a ticket for Nerrivik, with a stopover on Valdres. More good fortune; there was a ship leaving in two hours. She found a discrete place to wait, then boarded the commercial flight to Valdres.

Hundreds of years ago, a mathematician named Einstein had theorized that t...

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