“Humm.” Joshua looked at Melvyn. “You?”

“My communications block had a five-second dropout.”

“Some of my memory cells went off-line earlier, too. I should have paid more attention. Shit. We’ve been here barely three hours, and we’ve each been close enough to one to be affected. What does that come to in percentages of the population?”

“Paranoia can be worse than real dangers,” Melvyn said.

“Sure. If they are here, they’re obviously not strong enough to mount an all-out takeover campaign. Yet. That gives us a little time.”

“So what’s out next move?” Melvyn asked.

“Other end of the spectrum, I suppose,” Joshua said. “Contact someone in government who can run discreet checks for us. Or maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to let slip the Lady Mac is for hire. If Mzu is here to get help, the only place it’ll come from is the nationalist community. They might even wind up trying to charter us to deploy the damn thing.”

“Too late now,” Ashly said. “We’re officially here to buy defence components for Tranquillity. And we’ve been asking too many questions.”

“Yeah. Jesus, I’m not used to thinking along these lines. I wonder if any of my fellow captains have been approached for a combat charter?”

“Only if she’s actually in this asteroid,” Ashly said. “Nothing to stop the Samaku docking at one of the others when it arrived. That’s even if she came here in the first place. We ought to be checking that.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Joshua moaned. “Sarha’s working on it.”

Sarha’s smile appeared a little frayed after the third time Mabaki bumped against her. The crowd in the Bar KF-T weren’t that excitable. She could certainly thread her way through without jostling anyone.

Mabaki waggled his eyebrows when she glanced back. “Sorry.” He grinned.

It wasn’t so much that he bumped her, as where. And how the touch tarried. She told herself a pathetic middle-aged letch was probably going to be one of the smaller tribulations they would encounter on this crazy course Joshua had set.