"It’s quite the profitable market niche," Uclod explained. "You’d be amazed how few crooks actually keep their word… and the same with so-called honest people, lawyers and banks and all. Lawyers will always buckle under to something, whether it’s bribes, violence, court orders, or the weight of their own bullshit. Same with banks — they turn tail and run the instant something upsets the stockholders. But we Unorrs do what we’re paid to do, even when things get hot. Especially when things get hot. Which is why York hired us to take the High Council down."

As soon as the Unorrs heard York was dead, they assembled the information they had received from the admiral and prepared to deliver it to the most irresponsible journalists they could find. But they also delegated junior family members (such as Uclod) to collect extra evidence of misdeeds that were not perfectly documented.

Therefore the small orange man had come to Melaquin. Until four years ago, my planet was used as a dumping ground for individuals the Admiralty wished to make disappear — Persons Who Knew Too Much, Persons Who Broke The Unwritten Code, and Persons Who Did Not Do Anything Specifically Wrong But Were Strongly Disliked Anyway. My clever Festina had forced a stop to this practice, but part of her agreement with the High Council was that she would keep the matter a secret. Everything had been hushed up and nobody breathed a word… except Alexander York, who wrote down the story and passed it to the Unorrs.

"The sticky point," said Uclod, "is that York’s only evidence about Melaquin was Festina Ramos’s statement. He didn’t bother getting substantiation — no footage of folks actually marooned here, no outside corroboration, no smoking gun…"

"The gun did not smoke," I said, "it whirred."

"What gun?"

"The one with which I was shot. Repeatedly. By a wicked man." (This was the same wicked man whom I later killed — he had a Pistol Of Inaudible Sound that wreaked hypersonic mayhem on the crystalline parts of my body. He thought his weapon would shatter me, but I am not real glass, so I survived. Shortly thereafter, I shattered him. Hah!)