She had been raised in a freighter, though, and craved a life in space. Trying to raise enough money to get out, to get to Pilot’s School and earn a rating, she’d sold her body in spaceport dives. In due course, she’d met and married a spacer captain who made his real money at sophisticated burglary. He’d given her that life in space, a ship, a rating, and a career in burglary along with a thin veneer of culture. When sponge syndicate bosses killed her husband, tiny, beautiful Mavra Chang tracked down and killed them all, one by one. She then continued alone on her freighter and on her burglaries.
Because of that record, she was picked by a moderate Comworld to represent them at Trelig’s unveiling of Obie’s powers. Hired was the better word—she was hired to get Nikki Zinder out, in order to break Trelig’s hold over the older scientist.
Trelig had run all the spectators through Obie, giving them all horse’s tails so they would be living proof of his power. But Obie had also given Mavra the means and methods to allow escape with Nikki. She almost made it, getting away with Nikki, a ship, and even the computer’s formula for an arresting agent that would break the sponge syndicate’s stranglehold on its addicts.
But Trelig had moved up the test, whereupon they had all been translated to the Well World along with New Pompeii, and there they crashed.
A tremendous tribute to her ancestors, Ortega thought approvingly. She always coped with adversity, never quit in the face of impossible odds, never admitted defeat—and she always came through.