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building now. Target apartment will be just inside the northwest entrance in
ninety seconds.
    And Natch? asked the team leader.
    We saw him enter the building last night at approximately ten o'clock local
time. He's been active in MindSpace ever since. There are human and data
agents watching every exit.
    Magan and Gonerev exchanged looks of cautious optimism. So far,
so good. Let the Blade call the plan overkill; once they had the fiefcorp
master safely onboard a Council hoverbird en route to Melbourne, this
whole operation would be yesterday's lessons learned.
    Rey Gonerev Joined Magan at the command console. The yellow
triangles were rapidly converging on a blinking red star. A sixth triangle hunkered down beneath the building in the pipes of the city's
underground transfer system. That would be Papizon and his technical
crew.
    Magan switched the rear windows of the hoverbird to battlefield
display, blocking out the rapidly receding December landscape. Perspectives from six different soldiers filled the screens: here a man rubbing the barrel of his multi disruptor with a soft cloth, there a woman
stretching her calves and muttering about the cold. Following regulations, Magan flipped through each of the twenty-five officers in turn to
verify the connections. He found Ridgello calm and collected and not
the least bit nervous; operations like this were his gruel.
    The hoverbirds zipped over a large hill and went into a steep, nosebleed descent behind a copse of trees. The pilot cut the inertial cush-
ioners to stifle the noise. Rey Gonerev grunted as her head bounced
against the low hoverbird ceiling, but Magan remained composed. He
thanked a thousand generations of Chinese heritage for making him
too short to worry about such obstructions.

    They touched down in the snow with a soft thud. All five yellow
triangles were now clustered on a slope next to the blinking red star.
    Seconds later, the doors whooshed open and the Defense and Wellness Council was on the move.
    A disciplined sprint up a snow-covered slope, dartguns drawn. A
building that curved atop the next hill like a natural extension of the
landscape. Two dozen figures in white fatigues with muted yellow stars
edging through a small huddle of fir trees. The fog of heavy breath.
    About ten meters up, a door opened and spat forth a middle-aged
woman holding a mug of steaming nitro. A black platform slid
beneath her feet in the blink of an eye to serve as balcony. She yawned,
stretched, cracked her knuckles.
    Take her down, snapped the team leader.
    Six pinpricks of light slid across the woman's torso. The dart-rifles
sang. The woman collapsed, ceramic mug of nitro tumbling after.
    Magan watched from his ship as Ridgello's team zipped across the
snow and dashed through the building's northwest entrance. Rey
flipped a window to focus on one of the three soldiers ascending the
unconscious woman's balcony via magnetic cable. One of the officers
glanced back over his shoulder at the copse of fir trees, which looked
perfectly undisturbed. Ridgello was good. Magan felt confident that
nobody inside the building had noticed anything unusual.
    The interior hallway was brightly lit. Ridgello's team flew down
the corridor, swift as ghosts, until they reached the first door on the
left. Two officers lined up on either side of the door, dartguns drawn
and needles loaded. Ridgello blasted the apartment security with a
Defense and Wellness Council priority override, and the door slid
open. A dozen troops swarmed into Natch's apartment.
    Rey Gonerev let out a gasp.
    The apartment was empty.
    A half-eaten sandwich lay on the kitchen counter alongside a cold
mug of nitro that had obviously been untouched for hours, perhaps days. One of the viewscreens was broadcasting a spirited melee from a fencing
tournament on 49th Heaven. A triangular blob of code rotated inside a
MindSpace bubble in Natch's office with no hand there to rotate it. Even
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