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(Not bad though, considering.)
    The hit-merc dropped.
    Maximus scanned the skyline for his saviour, spotting her. Anneke threw him a mock salute, which he returned, though his gesture was more heartfelt than hers.
    While he attended to business, Anneke used her new field generator to jump to Black’s rooftop. He had dropped, panting, behind the parapet when she came up from his blindside.
    ‘Better get away from there. If they pick up your heat signature through the wall,’ she said, ‘you’ll be toast.’
    Maximus snorted but crab-crawled to a safer spot.

    ‘You’re sure it was Anneke?’
    The young RIM captain, Arvakur, nodded. ‘My team was detailed to act as witnesses to the IMC-Quesadan confrontation. We have pictures.’
    Commander Jake Ferren, head of RIM and the nearest thing to family that Anneke had since the death of her Uncle Viktus nearly two years ago, smiled. ‘Thank god she’s alive.’
    But his smile turned to puzzlement. ‘You say she saved Brown’s life?’
    ‘Yes.’ Arvakur was having a hard time with this, too.
    ‘Then she’s working undercover, that’s the only explanation.’
    Arvakur raised his brows. ‘Un-renovated? Brown would know her immediately.’
    ‘This is Anneke Longshadow, Captain. And if Anneke wants to walk around stark naked, she’s got my support.’ He sighed. ‘I just wish I knew what was going on.’
    ‘Then I take it I shouldn’t try to bring her in?’
    ‘Let’s monitor the situation, but keep a Combat Retrieval Team prepped. Just in case. Oh, and put somebody on her. Somebody from outside the agency.’
    Arvakur got to his feet. ‘I know just the person,’ he said.

    Hacker, PJ, stepped out of the Dyson jump-gate and went straight to the ladies’ restroom. The arrival facility was bustling with the morning crowd of interplanetary commuters. No one took any notice of PJ, which is how she liked it. She did not kid herself that the Imperial Myotan Combine was unaware of her mission. They might know when and where she was arriving.
    That’s why she had assumed a temporary renovation before meeting with Nathaniel Brown. Now, in the privacy of a restroom cubicle and with the usual toolkit designed for the job, she peeled off the removable parts of the ‘jacket’ and reversed others, such as hair and eye colour. A tailored drug cocktail did the rest.
    When she was done, she no longer looked blonde or merc-ish. Now she appeared several years younger, with luxurious black hair tied in a knot. There was an old scar on her left cheek. She was slim, fit and Asian by ancestry. Her real name was Hatsu Kaan.
    Hatsu exited the arrival facility by a side entrance reserved for staff. Her eyes never stopped panning the street or the skyline. Air traffic was a problem, but she planned to get indoors and travel underground as much as possible. She felt too exposed outside, like a rabbit hunted by eagles.
    An hour and a half later, after she had cleaned her trail, she took a room in a dingy lodging house that bordered the port district and stood opposite a bar frequented by longshoremen and guest factory workers from nearby worlds. There, dressed in worn dungarees and a cap, she blended in.
    Rising above the port was the great stone Fortress of Kestre, an imposing edifice raised over a thousand years ago which sat on a low hill like a huge old toad turned to stone.
    Hatsu spent the first few hours checking out the Fortress. She had the building’s internal layout downloaded into her implant and the beginnings of a plan of attack. She would penetrate the Fortress that night. IMC agents aware of her presence would assume she would spend time tactically assessing her target – standard operating procedure, not to rush in where angels feared to tread.
    But Hatsu was no angel.
    Besides, she wished to get off that planet as soon as possible. It gave her odd feelings she couldn’t explain. Earlier, sighting the esplanade and the harbour and a certain café, she had felt