When This Goes Wrong ...

"Of all your fucking appalling ideas, farmboy, this one takes the prize for une assiette pleine de merde."

Lieutenant Charles Etay shrugged a little, having, Capitaine Elienne Desorlay thought sourly, clearly developed an immunity to even my best glare.

Fortune me forniquer.

"What's your better idea, Eli?" Etay asked. "Go back and knock on the front door? Say 'Excusez-moi, s'il vous plaît, je vous ai entendu gardent esclaves ici.' Like that?"

"Better than getting podders mixed into it." Eli shook the last cigarette out of the crumpled pack. "This one especially."

"Because ...?"

"Don't play dumber than you are, Charlie," Eli snapped. "You think he's all post-Sansha and reformed? Really?"

"Now you sound like Proleque."

"And baiser vous with a splintery stick too." She found her lighter and set fire to the cigarette with more vigour than was perhaps necessary. "You think about how our careers are going to look when this gets back home?"

Etay looked down. "I have," he admitted quietly.

"And?"

He paused, and then looked back at her, eyes a little narrowed against the smoke drifting into his face. "I can't just leave them there, Eli."

Merde.

She flicked ash at him for the small, vindictive pleasure of seeing him flinch. "When this goes wrong, farmboy ..."

The corner of his mouth twitched up. "You'll say I told you so?"

Eli snorted. "You'd better believe I will," she said. "If we both live long enough, you'd better believe I will."

Avec grandes cloches sur le dessus.

If I get the fucking chance.

After

Nolikka Toin was running, and then she wasn't.

The bit in between never did come clear.

A lot of the rest came back. Slowly, but it came back.

One morning she woke from a dream about swimming with a million fish turning and diving in perfect concert, and found the memory, clear and hard as a pearl in the palm of her hand, of Haraila swearing like a dockhand as the calm voice of the newscaster talked about Noir, about Malkalen, about war.

That was the first time she had anything in between brushing her teeth at the basin, shrip-flavoured toothpaste sharp on her tongue, and the crushing pain as  they showed her how the collar worked.

She'd been told about the war, of course. It was why she was there, the pallet thin between her spine and the concrete floor every night, scooping the scant mouthful of sour casein meal from the bowl they dropped in front of her every morning, shuffling with the others to the laboratory.

Remembering it didn't make it feel any more real, even if now it was something she'd heard on the news rather than something someone had told her. War. Ships firing on each other and exploding in the deep dark of space.

Insane.

But here she was.

Haraila swearing and the recall order and the noise breaking out all around them in the corridors as they ran for the ship, voices raised, Gallente accents ...

Running.

And then not.

Lying in the dark with a headache making spots of light pulse and dance behind her eyes. A man saying Lie still. They hit you. Do you remember?

Not that she could tell it was dark, of course, except she could. She'd always been able to, although neither she nor the doctors could ever explain.

The man - Oinola, he said his name was, a doctor - thought it was the blow to the head. Nol was too dizzy and sick to correct him.

He swore at their guards ... their wardens. Called them war-criminals, told them You've blinded this girl.

She heard the dull slap of the shot and the heavier thud as he fell.

No-one else spoke.

Useless, one of them called her, and Nol felt the gun come up. A surge of terror got words past the thickness of her tongue.

Her name.

Her rank.

Her speciality.

Not, most definitely not, useless.

The gun went down.


The guards put the collars on them, after that. And showed them all what the collars could do.


Time passed, measured by bowls of gruel, by cold nights, by loosening clothes and stinging sores. In the laboratory, though, time didn't pass. In the laboratory Nol could disappear into the equations and the harmonics as she always had, could slip away from the guards and the cowed whispers of the others who, like her, had not been quite fast enough to reach their ships before the captains blew the docking clamps and lit out for safer space.

She tried, when she could, to bend things just a little, just enough so there would be some small, fatal problem down the line.  It was hard, though. She wasn't always Caldari first and scientist second.

There had been a time when those two things were a perfect complement.

Before she had been running, and then not.

Not after.

Cross Jurisdictional Issues

"This had fucking well better not be another fucking F.I.O. mindfuck," Capitaine Elienne Desorlay said sourly, grinding her cigarette out beneath her heel.

Lieutenant Charles Etay glanced at her, the corner of his mouth twitching up. "One way to find out."

Eli grunted, and followed him up the steps to the entrance of the S.C.I.D. office. Office was a little grandiose, perhaps, for what was two rooms and three people crammed up the side of a Republic Justice administration building, but law enforcement agencies had their priorities, and so this was a Liaison Office, not a Liaison Converted Stationary Storage.  And it was there to deal with Cross Jurisdictional Issues, not Potential Political Clusterfucks.


Thirty seconds into the meeting and Eli was sure this wasn't another F.I.O. mindfuck. Sixty seconds in and she was starting to wonder if she might not have been better off if it had been.

Fed stations in the Republic, jurisdictional headache number one. Still, that was one reason why she and Etay were there, that and his pretty podder girlfriend and all her ISK, and why there were little converted stationary cupboards tucked away here and there throughout the Republic and the Federation and no doubt the State and Empire too although if Fortune loves me I'll never find out. 


Usually the stations took care of their own problems, with a little help when necessary from whatever their native law-enforcement might be. In this case, on the particular Gallente station in question stuck like a pimple on an asteroid in the ass-end of Metro low-sec, that would be S.C.I.D.

Except the Republic Justice Liaison Broomcloset out there had come to the conclusion, and the S.C.I.D. Liaison Stationary Cupboard here obviously agreed, that the S.C.I.D. officers there were compromised.

Bought off, that meant. And Republic Justice wouldn't normally give a flying fuck at a rolling peshorky if a Fedo station couldn't keep its officers on the straight and narrow, but the Republic was a tiny bit sensitive about some issues.

Like slaves.

Even if they are Caldari.


Eli kept her mouth shut until the meeting was done, let Etay do what little talking there was to do. Not much. S.C.I.D. and Republic Justice had done most of it beforehand, that was clear. She and Etay were there to be told what someone snug behind a desk had decided they were going to do.

Go in without backup, where we can't trust our own people, where we can't flash tin to get out of trouble without getting in worse, and find out what's the truth behind these rumours of Caldari on a Gallente station ...


With collars around their necks.


On the sidewalk outside, however, was a different matter. "Fortune fuck me sideways, you fils de putain de merde," she snarled. "This is on you, farmboy, you and your pretty podder who thinks she can change the Cluster to suit her fancies. Look at us! Stuck out here in the cul of the Republic and about to get ourselves killed cleaning up some political shitstorm, or killed for cleaning it up if Fortune fucking smiles on us."

Etay put his hands in his pockets and smiled at his shoes. "Don't hold back," he said mildly. "How do you really feel about it?"

Eli swatted his arm, hard enough to make him wince and make her swear with the sting of her palm. "Get us out of this. Get your podder to pull some strings and get them to send someone else."

"Mmm," Etay said, and Eli could tell from long experience that her partner meant no by that, meant that's a line I won't cross, meant I'm not going to be moved on this one. "If they're right, Eli, this is pretty ugly. Those people ..."

"Fuck 'em, they're Callies, I'm not looking to get shivved in an alley for a pack of people who'd like to shoot me as soon as see me."

"Eli," Etay said patiently. "I'm Caldari."

She snorted. "One of your ancestors got cunt-struck by a piece of Callie tail back in the hither-and-yon, doesn't make you fucking anything. Don't even try that shit. You don't even drink fucking tea!"

"Still," Etay said. "Still. They're people. And Repub Juice can't sent anyone themselves. You heard them, the station is almost entirely Fed hires. Minmatar agents would stick out like sore thumbs."

"Oh, and you won't?"

He gave her his best sunny choirboy smile. "You just said I wasn't Caldari."

"Farmboy," Eli said, and stopped.  You could be the purest Gallente off the Crystal Boulevard and you'd still catch every eye in every crowd.


Oh, fuck it. Dying in bed surrounded by fat, happy grandchildren was never more than a pipe dream, anyway. Not for someone like me, anyway. 


And certainly not for pretty boys who catch the eye of pretty podders.

She lit a cigarette.  "Fine. Fucking fine. Let's go. Save your ancestral cousins from their probably just deserts, or whatever. We live through this one, farmboy, though, you will talk to that girl of yours."  She exhaled a gust of smoke, and whatever Etay had been going to say was cut off in a fit of coughing. "Doubt she wants you dead, Charlie, whatever else I think about her. Doubt she wants you dead."

Yet, anyway.

Yet.

The Consultation

"Do you know why you're here?"

Capitaine Elienne Desorlay took out a cigarette and lit it, ignoring the wrinkled nose of the man across the desk. "We'll ask the questions, M'ser Proleque," she said on a gust of smoke.

Beside her, Lieutenant Charles Etay coughed politely.  "What my partner means to say," he said smoothly, "Is that we're eager to hear how we can assist the F.I.O. in this matter of ...?"

Tomas Proleque ran his hand over his bald head. "You can assume I'm more than immune to your provincial good-cop bad-cop routine," he said, and genial as his tone was Eli felt the hair lift on her arms. "And you should assume that the last thing, the very last thing, Capitaine Desorlay, that you want, is for me to answer your questions."

Eli couldn't bring herself to nod. She drew on her cigarette instead, started at Proleque through the smoke, and waited.

Been waiting all Fortune-fucked day, after all.

Called back to the Fed on five minutes notice for a consultation, that had been the first sign something was wrong. S.C.I.D. didn't spring for interbus tickets when a comm call would do.

The only reason to haul us over here is so we're in arm's reach when they decide they don't want us leaving again.


That hadn't been good, no.

Discovering that S.C.I.D. had yanked them back to hand them over to the F.I.O. with a bow on top, just about ...


Eli had been searching her memory for what she or Charlie might have done that had the F.I.O. sniffing after them for the hours they'd been cooling their heels in a blank grey waiting room.  The Eletta business, maybe, had been the best she could come up with.

Until  Proleque looked at her, looked at Etay, and smiled. "You know Ciarente Roth," he said.

Fortune fuck me and fuck him and especially fuck all podders everywhere, good and hard.

I knew that girl was trouble. 

Etay made a mild, non-committal noise, and Eli was impressed despite herself by his restraint.

Proleque's smile widened. "Captain Roth is not the subject of today's discussion, Lieutenant Etay. Nor are her children. Your children."  Unspoken, That could change hung in the air. "I simply need to know how her father is doing."

Her ... "Father?" Eli asked.  Well, clearly, she had one, Eli, good thinking there. 

Had one, has one ... a father the F.I.O. care about. 


"I'm afraid I can't help you," Etay said. Proleque opened his mouth to speak and Etay went on, his slightly raspy voice mild and even. "I've never met the man. I don't think I've heard Captain Roth mention him more than once or twice."

"And what did she say?" Proleque was equally mild and even. Nonetheless, the air in the room seemed to chill a little. Eli felt as if she was watching a particularly fierce mindclash match, the opponents testing each other's weakness. And the first mistake will be the last.


"That he was travelling," Etay said. "That they were estranged. That she didn't know where he was and didn't care to find out."

Travelling.

F.I.O. 

Travelling.

Deep undercover, more like. 

Or ...

Dead.  

Proleque looked at something on the screen of his terminal, touched a key. Probably his shopping list, Eli thought. Trying to make us think he has some sort of incriminating transcript. She might be provincial but police-work had its universal patterns. "Has he been in contact with her?"

"She hasn't mentioned," Etay said blandly.

Proleque looked at the screen again. "That wasn't what I asked."

Don't lie for her, Charlie, Eli willed him. She's safe from men like this. You aren't.

Nor am I, for that fucking matter. 

Etay shot his cuffs and folded his hands on one knee. "I don't believe he's been in contact with her, no."

"Why?"

Etay smiled, very slightly. "Estranged."

Proleque matched the smile. "Do you know why?"

"It's not something we've discussed."

"Again, you answer a question I haven't asked," Proleque said. "Do you know why Captain Roth and her father are estranged?"

"I don't, no," Etay said, and Eli felt her heart sink as she heard the flat note of a lie in his voice.

"Would it surprise you to learn that it is due to her membership of Sansha's Nation?" Proleque asked genially.

"It would surprise me to learn that Captain Roth is a member of Sansha's Nation, yes." There was no inflection to Etay's voice.

"But not that her father objected to such an allegiance?"

Etay smiled, bland and sunny. "I imagine many fathers would."

"But you still say you have no knowledge of Captain Roth's contact with her father," Proleque said.

"I have no knowledge that Captain Roth has had any contact with her father," Etay corrected.  He smiled again. "Does M'ser Roth say they have?"

 "M'ser Roth - " Proleque said, and stopped. Eli saw the faintest flicker in his gaze, and knew, and felt Etay know beside her as well.

The match was over. And farmboy wins.

"You've misplaced him, haven't you?" Etay asked kindly.

Like he's slipped down behind the couch cushions, Eli thought, and then, on a fresh chill, they haven't 'misplaced' him.

They think the podder has.

And ... 

Not by accident.

Wish You Were Here.

Tomas Proleque looked at the screen in front of him, frowning.

The message blinking on his screen wasn't, on the face of it, any reason for a frown.  A bet laid on the fourth match in a mindclash tournament, for fifteen  ISK, on Kurstan Ardmugar to win in twenty two minutes or less.

Tomas frowned, nonetheless.

Frowned, and reached for his comm handset, and punched in a number and then a code.

He had to wait a moment before the call went through. Even a section manager in the F.I.O.'s Anti-Piracy Division doesn't get automatic clearance to the division head's private line.


A click, a familiar voice. No need for introductions, not on this line, with this code.


"I think we've got a problem," Tomas said, instead of Hello. 


He glanced back at his screen, and his frown grew deeper. There was absolutely nothing wrong with that message as a response to a recall signal.  None of the signals that the message had been sent under coercion - a bet on an odd numbered match, for example. Agent wishes to stay in place, the message said to anyone who knew how to read it. Cover not compromised, intel forthcoming. 


Except that this was the fifth time this particular agent  had refused recall and the last two times had been orders, not suggestions.


Tomas rubbed a hand over his head, the habit his wife blamed for his baldness, and sighed. "I think we've got a problem," he said again.  "With Jory."

Flash Flood

((co-written with Stitcher))

Helmi Alpassi knew that she'd originally been tapped to train into Pilot Roth's personal security detail because Sarge had known she could keep her head when it mattered.

Had known it from the first moment they met, after all.

And if there ever was a moment not to panic, Alpassi, this is fucking it.

"Pilot, Lieutenant Etay," she said calmly, "if you'd come to the front of the house with me now, the shuttle is on approach."

Charles Etay was carrying one of the babies in a safety-capsule. Amieta Invelen had the other. Helmi couldn't tell which was which and really didn't give a shit, so long as the total number of babies equalled two and they were each in the most expensive and sophisticated piece of protective child-transport equipment available in the Cluster. Helmi had picked those capsules herself, after a lot of research.

Finding out they were tested by dropping them out of a second story window with an actual child in them had sealed the deal.

Still, she would have preferred them to be carried by her people, would have preferred all the civilians to be hoisted up and hauled at speed to the assembly point, really.

If speed had been an issue, Pilot's feet wouldn't have touched the ground. But the shuttle won't be here for another three minutes anyway.

And Pilot was prone to panic. Helmi knew that part of her job description was making sure Pilot felt safe, as well as was safe.

So she let Etay carry one of the twins. And she didn't take Pilot's elbow to hurry her along, even when Pilot paused and said something about flowers and the nursery.

"I'll make sure they're packed," Invelen said reassuringly, and Pilot started moving again. Helmi scanned the sky, looking for spikey sansha shapes, saw none, saw ...

The sky.

It was wrong in a gut-wrenching way, the familiar off-black interstellar dust clouds of New Eden as seen from Debreth at sunset shifted towards an ugly yellow-green, like a gathering storm of forces Helmi didn't want to guess at. The Intel suddenly went from an intellectual threat to a real and immediate one. Adrenaline pulsed her implants to a higher pitch, burning copper on her tongue.

And on the horizon, burning rain. Five stars, moving as stars shouldn't, glowing like a banked furnace in the fading light as they twisted and writhed, shedding speed. Almost hidden behind the wind, the banging of the air as it raged  impotently against this supersonic violation swept across the valley, echoing like a distant battle.

Nothing so clean and wholesome as thunder and lightning rode on the winds of this storm.

And the floods it brought were not the kind Debreth was build to withstand.

Implants on her retinas read the friendly, so that's fucking something IFF broadcasts from the falling constellation as it shed the last of its speed in one low looping bank over the river and swept in towards the estate.

A surface-to-orbit shuttle painted in the livery of Re-Awakened Technologies Inc settled in the wide avenue as three of the remaining ships – angular Caldari gunships bristling with weapons - screamed overhead, their hulls bearing a blue starburst on bare gunmetal. The fifth, much larger ship settled in to a relative stop above the Roth estate and the grounds thrummed with the subsonic rumbling of immense graviton pads keeping the staging platform aloft. A percussive blast rattled the windows as explosive bolts blew along its flanks and four humanoid giants, armoured and massive, dropped from the flanks of the the thirty meters to the ground and landed in a blast of pneumatic gas. Within a second their guns and sensors were tracking the skies as they fanned out, covering the grounds.

Only a moment behind them were the ropes, ten of them, and before those ropes had even finished uncoiling to the ground, the first of the troopers was on it, her arrestor hook buzzing harshly as it slowed her descent. She hit the ground and rolled, moving aside with only a heartbeat to spare before the next trooper, and the next after him hit the deck, rolled and bustled to cover, each claiming three drones from the swarm that swept from the dropship's bays. Almost-white painted ceramic hardsuits, each with that blue starburst splash and a mirrored visor covering the face, Kaalakiota assault rifles. Airtight, nanite-proof, damn near bulletproof, but still light and clean-lined enough to allow the soldiers to move with grace and ease in Debreth's low gravity.

The flurry of activity swept towards the little knot of people on the lawn, parted around them, and left them untouched, except for the wind whipping their hair.

One of the troopers, the first one out, jogged towards them, heading unerringly for Pilot Roth. No rank insignia, Helmi noted, just a blue sunburst, and the words Hakatain Dynasty Holdings and A. Sihayha. I.D. confirmation spooled across her retinas and Helmi stopped the instinctive reach for her sidearm before it was more than a flicker of muscles as Captain Hakatain's personal bodyguard tapped the side of her helmet to clear the faceshield, saw a corresponding flicker in the other woman's eyes.

"Captain Roth," the woman said. "Chief Aato Sihahya. Captain Hakatain sends his regards."

Pilot - surreally, given the circumstances - extended her hand and said with a smile, "I'm very pleased to meet you. I hope you had a safe trip?"

"Safe enough, ma'am," Sihahya said, returning the handshake with a gauntlet that could probably have crushed Pilot's hand flat if she wanted. "With your permission, we'll see to the defence of your estate and the town in your absence."

"With my ... " Pilot's voice trailed off, and Helmi suppressed a sigh. One day she'll learn that she's in charge.

Her mouth was open to translate Pilot-speak into marine, one more part of her job, Pilot Roth appreciates your offer and certainly extends all the permissions you need to carry out the protection of the Roth property and surrounding area, when Pilot surprised her.

"Thank you," Pilot Roth said, quietly but clearly. "That would be appreciated. Please do anything you feel required."

One day turns out to be today, Helmi thought, as Sihahya saluted and re-opaqued her visor with a brief nod to Helmi. Either the the Ancestors are with us, or the world is about to end.

Or both.

"Pilot, we need to be getting you on the shuttle," she said. Invelen was already moving. Helmi herded Pilot and Etay up the ramp as armoured forms set up defensive positions around them, mostly missing the flower-beds.

One baby started wailing, then the other. Pilot tried to comfort them as Invelen secured the capsules but the twins refused to be consoled and their piercing screams were a counterpoint to the rumble of the shuttle engines as it lifted off. Helmi linked her optical implants into the shuttle's external cameras and watched as two of Hakatain's gunships escorted the shuttle into high atmosphere, then stalled into a graceful backwards dive towards Debreth again as the shuttle raced towards its rendezvous with the Feather.

As the gunships shrank to invisibility against the blue-green globe below them, Helmi let the connection fade. Spirits watch over you, she wished the men and women they were leaving behind.

And Ancestors sharpen your aim.

Welcome To The Future

Section F -  F-for-Freedom, F-for-Future, it said right there in big letters over the section ring seal - was the part of the station which housed returnees from the Empire, the State and the Federation until they'd found jobs and clans and homes.

And it stank.
 

Too many people for the space, for the waste services, the air-cyclers, Capitaine Elienne Desorlay thought.

She'd seen the ads on the holo, back in the Federation, a tall Brutor woman whose deep brown skin picked up the colours of the Minmatar flag  on the wall behind her, her faintly-accented Gallantean vibrant with hope and promise. Come home, children of the Republic! Home to lives of freedom, the lives of your ancestors.


Eli snorted at the memory.  If your ancestors lived on tubes of casien protein, maybe, ten-to-a-room in the bowels of a space station with the perpetual hum and thud of the biomass processors on the other side of the wall.

Still, it doesn't smell as bad as it did last time.

Or maybe I'm getting used to it.

She lit a cigarette anyway, sour local Republic tobacco but better than nothing, as Lieutenant Charles Etay hitched the knees of his trousers and crouched by the body lying against the wall.

Eli was pretty sure it was a body, although without the medtechs' identification of the stained and crumpled rags wrapped around oozing meat as human, she would have had her doubts.

She exhaled a lungful of smoke. "Well?"

"No ID," Etay said, turning to look up at her. "Might not have had any before the beating."

"If he's registered with - he?" Etay nodded confirmation and Eli went on, "Registered with Resettlement, they'll have his DNA on file."

"If he was registered. And if they'd gotten around to testing." Etay looked back at the body. "Dental, maybe. If there's anything left of his teeth."

"If he ever saw a dentist," Eli said. "Fortune fuck me, it's not like his own mother would know his face."

"No," Etay said soberly. He rose to his feet with the easy grace of the young and strong, the fils de putain de merde, and adjusted his cuffs. "Morgue services'll have a better idea, but what do you think? Four of them? Five?"

Eli dropped her cigarette and crushed it with a toe. "At least. Fists and feet. But I don't see much blood on the walls, not that you could tell in this shithole."

"Somewhere else, then?"

"Could be. Or else ... more than five. A lot more. Packed in around him."

Etay put his hands in his pockets and looked at the walls assessingly. "Splashes on them, not the walls."

"Yeah." Eli shook another cigarette from the pack. "A lot more than five. Fifteen, twenty. More."

"Five is a gang," Etay said thoughtfully. "But twenty, Eli. Twenty is a mob."  He tilted back his head to look up at the walls rising on either side of them, vanishing somewhere twenty stories up into the clouds gusting from the over-worked envirosystems. Heads disappeared from sight as he did, windows banged shut. "Mobs don't come from nothing. Inter-tribal? Some sort of feud?"

"No reports of anything like that," Eli said. "Not that I've seen. Some shoving in the lines at supply, name-calling. Big jump from that to this."

Etay looked around the grimy alley with its grisly contents, and then slid Eli a sideways glance, one eyebrow raised. "Such a big jump, someone would have seen it, non?"


Four hours later Eli lit her last cigarette and thought sourly, 'Non' is just about fucking right.

Someone had seen something, she would have bet her pension on it, more than one someone, too, but those witnesses, whoever they were, weren't talking. Not just the usual 'no love lost for the long arm o f the law' either. She flicked ash down-wind.

The closest they'd gotten to an answer had been We take care of our own from a skinny Sebbie woman with the fish-belly pale skin of a life-long station dweller, the words spoken with the flat contempt of someone who'd long ago lost faith in the tender mercy of those in authority to take care of anyone but themselves.

"Something that never got reported, maybe," Eli said aloud, and Etay nodded. "Could be some tribal thing even, for all we know - "

She felt a tug at her sleeve and turned fast. Just a kid. A snot-nosed Vherry kid of indeterminate gender, pulling on her arm with fingers black with dirt.

"That's bad for you," the child said solemnly, pointing at her cigarette. "It'll make you die. We learned in school."

"That's you told," Etay murmured, the corner of his mouth twitching up.

Eli gave him her best glare, the one that had sons and husband backing towards the door when she used it at home, and Etay ducked his head and got very interested in his shoes.  Eli turned the glare on the kid, but the miniature Minmatar was made of sterner stuff.

"It is, though," the - boy? girl? - insisted. "Bad for you."

"I'm Gallente," Eli said. "It's different. But yes, it would be very bad for you. I'd have to arrest you."

Etay, the salaud, was laughing at her, almost soundlessly but I can fucking well tell. Eli put a hand on her hip, showing the child the ID pinned to her belt. "See? Republic Justice. So beat it before I put you in jail for loitering."

The kid moved back, just out of arm's length, and stopped there. "Are you here because of the Sansha?"

That sobered Etay. "No," he said, and Eli shook her head as well. "The Fleet and the capsuleers will make sure the Sansha never come here, okay?"

"No," the kid said patiently. "Not the ones out there. The one here."

Etay hitched up the knees of his trousers and crouched. "What one here, hmm?"

One skinny little arm lifted, and one filthy finger pointed, past Etay, back down the alley to the temporary barrier already beginning to sag on one side, marking the place the body had lain. 

Eli looked, then looked back at the kid. "How do you know he was Sansha?"

A shrug that said as clearly as DNA testing that the kid had some Gallente blood was her only answer.

"Did someone tell you he was?" Etay asked, and got a nod. "Who? Do you remember?"

Another shrug. "Everybody," the kid said. "Everybody was saying it."

Etay met Eli's gaze over the top of the child's no-doubt  lice-ridden head. "Everybody was saying it," he said quietly.

Words. Words and fear, at first. Until more and more people hear it, repeat it, and then it's words and fear and fists and feet.

And some poor bastard is little more than a smear on the sidewalk. 

Etay produced a bar of sweetened gelatine from a pocket, and offered it to the child. "Do you know who it was, who was saying it?" he asked. "Names?"

With a shake of his head, the kid snatched the bar and bolted.

Eli burned her cigarette down to the filter with a final drag. "You have to hold it out of their reach," she said. "For future reference."

Etay didn't smile. "We should make sure they check the body for any extras," he said, getting to his feet.

"You know they're not going to find any, farmboy, don't you?"

He looked at his feet, golden hair falling across his forehead and hiding his face from her. "I know. But we should make sure they check."

"And you know we're never going to get a name, or names, don't you? Who ever it was, they're local heroes now."

"Defending against the Sansha threat," Etay said quietly.

Eli shrugged. "Welcome to the future, farmboy," she said. "This isn't going to be the last time someone's suspicions get some poor fucker lynched. Anyway, it could be worse."

Etay raised an eyebrow at that.

Eli shoved him towards the exit, towards off-shift and home and a bottle of wine and some cigarettes from the Fed that don't taste of armpit. "He could have actually been a Sansha," she said. "Think about that, why don't you?"

"They've never set foot on a station," Etay said. "Cia said that."

"That she knows of," Eli said. "That she knows of, farmboy."

Etay let her herd him along. "The capsuleers are driving them back."

"Until they get bored," Eli said.  "Oh, I know, I know, your pretty girl podder will put her ship on the line to save the innocents, you've said, more than once in fact you've said. They're all like her, are they? You know they aren't, and one day you'll realise she isn't like that either, not really.  Podders, Charlie. Not people."

Etay looked down at her, and then back the way they'd come.

"Maybe they aren't," he said quietly. "Maybe not. But Eli - can you honestly say, today, that being people like the people back there who kicked a man to death because someone whispered 'Sansha', can you honestly say that people is always something worthwhile to be?"