Even before she stepped from the shower, she knew the attacker would be waiting. No words formed in her mind, or thoughts that might be put into words-it never happened that way. Only a vague feeling that danger waited beyond the shower door.

She slid the door back and gazed at the man. His stance was that of a well trained fighter, and although he stood only six inches taller than five feet, his frame was layered in tectonic slabs of muscle beneath a black, tight-fitting jumpsuit. The gold sword and shield of Base Security was emblazoned on the glossy fabric over his heart, and a pink scar an eighth of an inch wide ran from the outside of his left eye, down his cheek, to the corner of his mouth, standing out against skin tanned nearly black. All facial hair-including eyebrows and lashes-was absent, and his bald head reflected the bathroom's overhead light as if oiled.

A belter, she thought as her gaze darted to the stun pistol holstered on the man's left hip, then to the pendant suspended from a fine silver chain about his neck. The shape of a hen's egg and half the size of a closed fist, the pendant was fashioned from pitted dull-gray metal. Somewhere, sometime, she had seen another like it, but she could remember neither where nor when.

"How did you get in here?" she demanded.

The dark-skinned man did not respond. Instead, he looked her nude body up and down, as if sizing her up for strength and ability. What he saw was a six-foot- four-inch tall woman, apparently thirty years of age (actual age: forty-two), her body glistening with water droplets. Her breasts were high and firm, her hips not much broader than they had been twenty years before. Coal black hair falling to mid-back, eyes brown, features slightly Oriental.

What he failed to see were her prosthetics, and a fighting ability honed to perfection through years of training and discipline.