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passageways of the Tower.
    "Spaceport," said the cabdriver.
    L'Wrona looked up from his notes. The lights of K'Ronarport filled the right window. "Drop me at facility thirty-eight, please."
    The cabbie's eyes flicked to the passenger monitor, reassessing his fare. Facility 38 was the private docking area, reserved for the space yachts. Only the heads of industrial combines and the wealthiest members of the old aristocracy could afford even the smallest of starships and their upkeep. A Fleet captain's annual pay would cover about a quarter of the monthly maintenance fee on a one-man flitter.
    "You own or just leasing, sir?" said the driver, bringing the craft in on the roof of facility 38.
    "Own," said the captain, putting away his notes. "What happened to the lights?" he asked as they settled with a whining of ngravs. Facility 38 was never busy, but before the war the entryway had always been brightly lit. Now only a solitary light shone, far in the distance near the lift.
    'Some crazy idea during the war," said the cabbie, gunning L'Wrona's chit through the meter. The fare duly processed, the passenger bubble swung open. "Cut all the rooftop lights in case of a S'Cotar raid—as if anything could get past Line." He handed back the chit. "Safe trip, Captain."
    "Thank you. Good night." -
    It started to rain as L'Wrona began the long walk across the rooftop—rain from the violent sort of fast-moving storm that swept in from the desert. Lightning and thunder flashed and boomed around L'Wrona as he hurried through the sudden sheets of rain, using the brief illumination of the lightning to search the shadows. The rooftop to either side was a maze of ventilator shafts and instrument arrays vaguely perceptible as low, hazy humps.
    This place is a Tugayee's delight, thought the captain, jogging for the lift.
    The next lightning bolt was seconded by a much smaller but well-aimed bolt that snapped just over L'Wrona's head, sending him diving for the cover of an instrument pod as two more weapons flashed, fusion bolts knifing through where the captain had just been.
    Two ahead, one to the left, he recalled, low-crawling from the pod to a ventilator shaft. Listening intently, he first heard only the sound of his own breathing and the dying thunder as the storm moved back out into the desert. Then he heard the birdcalls—low but distinct, one chirp answering another from three different directions.
    Tugayee, thought L'Wrona. Assassins' guild journeymen, trained from birth and screened through long years of deadly assignments.
    A capable officer and a crack shot, L'Wrona was no match for three of the Confederation's most adept killers. He realized that, even as the chirps ended and the Tugayee closed in, his position fixed.
    Hunching cold and frightened on the rooftop, L'Wrona did something no margrave had done for centuries: pressed the hidden switch beneath his sidearm's grips and pulled forward the trigger guard. The coat of arms set in the grips—crossed sword over spaceship, rampant—glowed softly in response.
    "Torgan," said L'Wrona softly, weapon to his mouth. "Astan holga shakar."
    Responding to the old High K'Ronarin, the weapon rose, hovered over the ventilator for a second like a scenting hound, then was gone, leaving L'Wrona pressed against the shaft, armed only with a boot knife and a deep faith in the lost technology that had forged his pistol.
    Two blasters fired almost together, somewhere off in the darkness, then a brief silence followed by the shrill and explosion of one more shot, this time nearer.
    Something dark dropped from the top of the ventilator housing, landing a few feet in front of L'Wrona—a slight figure swathed in black from head to toe, only a pair of wary eyes exposed. "Drop the blade," she said with a slight flick of her blaster. It was an M59A—a section leader's model, L'Wrona noted, dropping his knife—a top line infantry weapon supposedly in the hands of only the Fleet Commando.
    "I don't know