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it, "lone," or "single," or "one."
    In some of the other languages the word could have been "power," or "evening," perhaps "party," or even "earlobe."
    Moja. Could have even been the guy's name.
    Not a whole fucking lot of help, that.
    Taz finished packing her travel bag. Looked around the guest room in Saval's place, saw nothing she'd missed. She drew her pistol, popped the magazine, and checked to see that it was fully loaded, the battery and capacitor diodes green. The magazine was a blue code, the entire chunk of plastic and each dart a bright and unmistakable azure. That meant each needle collected a less than lethal electrical charge as it zipped through the muoplastic barrel, somewhere around seventy-five thousand volts with moderately low amperage. The needle would punch through clothes or even lightweight body armor to deliver its charge to bare skin or muscle, and the juice was almost always enough to knock a roegg off his feet. Blues were what the Leijona police were allowed in their duty weapons. Like most of the cools she knew, Taz had a couple of magazines of reds tucked away. A normal man or mue shot with a red needle wasn't going to get up on his own afterward.
    She reholstered the pistol. This whole thing kept getting nastier and nastier, and she didn't have a good feeling about it. Not like she could do much other than what she already doing. At the very least Saval was going along. That was something.
    She slung her bag. Time to go. Saval was down the hall, telling his wife goodbye in the way Taz had heard them communicating almost every night since she'd been here. She grinned. Well. Nobody had ever accused the Borks of being antisex.
    She moved toward the door. Maybe she'd have time for lunch while she waited for Saval and Veate to finish.

Chapter FOUR
    FROM LOW ORBIT Bork thought Raion looked something like a lopsided boomerang, fatter on the bottom than the top, thick with greenery. Taz had told him there were four major land masses on the planet, the continent of Raion being the second largest. The convex curve of the land was to the east, and even though much of the southern portion was obscured by clouds, it appeared that a range of fairly high mountains ran the length of the west coast. As the boxcar dropped in its spiral to the spaceport in Leijona, Taz pointed out other features on the seat's holoproj viewer.
    "That's the Mafalme Ocean to the east, the Gulf of Pagotono to the west. The Tabik Coastal Range stops a lot of the weather, so there is some desert between them and the more temperate side of the island.
    Most of the civilization is on the east coast. Leijona is the biggest city, million and a third population, Shaba City is next with half that-to the south on Mkia Bay, see there? That's Shaba. Tibois is a timber town, and pretty much the southernmost civilization on the east side of the island."
    Bork nodded, letting the names soak into him. He had a pretty good memory, if he thought stuff was worth keeping, and since this was going to be work, everything about this world was potentially useful.
    Emile used to teach them at the Villa that you never knew what tiny scrap might save your neck, so it was best to file it all away.
    "We're coming in from the south, over Ini Bay," Taz said a little later. "The Rubani Spaceport is just offshore from Central City in beautiful downtown Leijona." She waved her hands over the holoproj and a map lit the air next to the nosecam view. Ini Bay was shaped sort of like a foot in a sock, with a bump on the front of the ankle. Leijona lay along the western shore of the bay, cupping it like a fat crescent.
    The middle of the city was at the confluence of two rivers.
    "There are the Zonn Ruins," she said, pointing at the 'proj.
    Even under full magnification, there wasn't much to see at the boxcar's height. Dark lines against the greenery.
    "I didn't know you had any of those on your world," Bork said.
    She shrugged. "We knew they were there, but the Confed