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  “I’m not sick and I’m not stressed,” Bianca told her. “There’s no need for a biodraw.”

  The tech’s smile turned a shade brittle. “It’s company policy, M’Ross. StarLine med must take a biodraw from every passenger upon arrival at Pavonis.”

  “When was this policy implemented?” And why did no one tell me about it?

  The woman shifted her eyes a little. “It’s very recent.”

  “How recent?”

  “Look, Victoria Ross herself ordered these tests. If you have an issue with that, take it up with her.”

  Another of Victoria’s maneuvers? That clinched it. She definitely wasn’t giving in now. “If Victoria ordered it, then I should be able to revoke the order,” Bianca said reasonably.

  The tech eased to her feet, and tried for another placating smile. “I’m afraid I can’t make any exceptions, even for you. It wouldn’t be fair.” She gestured to the crowd of passengers who had begun to gather around them, watching speculatively.

  Bianca folded her visor up and fixed the tech with a steady look. “You’re right. It wouldn’t be fair for everyone else to have to give a biosample.” She took a deep breath, her heart suddenly pounding at the audacity of what she was about to do. “That’s why I’ve decided to suspend this policy pending review. As of now, no one needs to give samples unless they wish to.” All around her, her fellow travelers began murmuring to each other in surprise, and if she wasn’t mistaken, relief. Evidently no one else was any more eager to submit to the med’s poking and prodding than she was.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see cams appearing as if by magic, all trained on her. A couple of StarLine sec began moving toward them, as if to monitor the situation. Bianca gritted her teeth and gazed at the tech with a show of cool authority.

  The woman’s professional smile had vanished. “You can’t do that!”

  Legally? Probably not. Can’t back down now, though. Time to bluff.

  “I’m a principal of StarLine, and I’ll take full responsibility for this decision. You don’t need to fear any reprisals.” She gathered herself to move around the station.

  The tech put a hand out as if to grab her, her other hand clutching an injector gun in a white knuckled grip. She slid a glance at the crowd of passengers, and then at the StarLine sec, her eyes narrowed. A sheen of sweat appeared on her face. “I can’t let you go without a biodraw. Put your arm in the sling and we’ll get this over with.”

  Bianca stared at her, a strange sensation beginning to prickle up the back of her neck. This was all...wrong, somehow. Something about the edgy note in tech’s voice, the hard light in her eyes had every one of Bianca’s instincts on alert. She found herself wanting to edge back, as if she were facing a cornered animal that might lunge for her at any moment.

  But she refused to let her sudden nerves show. In freezing tones, she said, “I’ve made my decision.” With that, she pulled down her visor to hide her face again and walked calmly past the med station, staying out of arm’s reach. The two sec guards shifted uneasily, and Bianca paused to address them. “Please see to it that all passengers are informed that they may decline the biodraw if they choose.” Without waiting for a reply she swept past, leaving them, the med tech and the group of travelers staring in her wake.

  By the time she entered the gigantic space of the main terminal, she was nearly shaking with reaction. She could hardly believe her play actually worked. It just goes to show what you can get away with if you act like you know what you’re doing.

  Even if she couldn’t ultimately make the suspension of this idiotic new rule stick, it was still worth the try, she told herself. It would spare a few people unreasonable biodraws at least. And it was a decent shot across Victoria’s bow.

  She lost herself in the crowd again, trying to put the whole unpleasant episode behind her. But there was still one thing that niggled at the back of her mind.

  That med tech had called her by name even before she had put up her visor to show her face, she realized. It was as if the woman had been expecting her.

  Executive Habsuite, Eris Space Elevator Station

  “More whiskey, Cesare?”

  “Got plenty, thanks,” Cesare said. He held up his nearly full glass of amber liquid that, he had been told, was old, imported from Earth and obscenely expensive. Much like everything else in Victoria Ross’s suite.

  The silk-covered settee where his arse was parked was a prime example. As was the gold-framed mirror that took up one whole corner of the room. And then, there was the huge, ornately carved bed looming off to one side, its gold cloth covers turned down and pillows plumped. Cesare shifted his eyes away from that, only to catch sight of the floor to ceiling viewport at the other end of the room, looking into the endless starry void. He jerked his gaze away with a shudder.

  On the seat next to him, Victoria crossed her legs, her thigh brushing his. “I’m glad we have this chance to get to know one another away from all this unfortunate RedIce business,” she said, her voice a sultry caress. “I’ve taken a special interest in you, Cesare.”

  “Really.” He surreptitiously looked at the timer on his cuff pad. It was already hour thirteen, the single thirty-eight-minute long hour in Mars’s twenty-five-hour day. Midnight, for feck’s sake. He ought to be sleeping right now. It had been a long day of sitting in offices and playing games with numbers. And now it was shaping up to be a long night playing games of a different sort with Victoria. Mining uranium by hand would be less draining than this.

  Victoria said, “Why yes. You might even consider me a family friend.”

  “Huh. Aside from you, M’Ross, I can’t say that the Ross family has been particularly friendly.”

  Victoria let out a tinkling little laugh. “I take it you’ve met dear Max.”

  “In a manner of speaking.” With a great deal of perseverance, Cesare had finally managed to get the bloke on the com earlier today. But he soon learned how pointless the effort had been. Ross just stared out of his vidscreen with distracted annoyance and referred everything to his wife. The entire conversation lasted less than five minutes.

  “You can’t mind Max. He’s is a true genius you know. But there’s not much room in that magnificent brain of his for business, or...personal relationships.” She wet her lips and slid him a glance, leaving no doubt which “personal relationships” she meant. “It’s just as well I had to send him off on his jaunt to Earth before you got here. He’d be rather in the way of our private negotiations, don’t you think?”

  Cesare gritted his teeth and forged on. “And I haven’t even had the chance to meet Bianca Ross yet. For some reason, she’s been difficult to get a hold of.”

  “Ay. Bianca.”

  He looked at Victoria sharply, alerted by an odd, harsh note in her voice. But she smiled at him, all charm. “I’m not sure what she’s gotten herself into lately. The child has always been a little...well, erratic. Something she inherited from her mother along with her poor health, I’m afraid. I try to keep her under control, but her father’s indulgence makes it difficult,” she sighed.

  Cesare mulled that over. His research so far had turned up surprisingly little about the StarLine heir. He knew her basic bio, but there was no vid feed, not even any decent stillvids. That was something of a feat—keeping such a low profile when every moment in public was likely conducted in view of several cams. But if she was as sickly and spoiled as Victoria was implying, it was no wonder her family went to such lengths to keep her out of the public eye.

  “But enough about Max and his daughter,” Victoria said with a graceful wave of her hand. “You can consider me your friend, Cesare. Your father and I have always had a very good relationship, you know.”

  Cesare didn’t trust himself to answer that.

  “It was gratifying that he agreed to let StarLine take his
company into the future. I have to say, it was rather a surprise to learn that you weren’t happy with our arrangement.”

  “Ay, well, my father and I disagree on this issue.” And on every other issue.

  She tilted her head, her hair falling in a spill of gold over her shoulder, and smiled. “Perhaps you and I can develop our own relationship without your father’s involvement. Tell me, how can I sweeten this deal for you Cesare?” she murmured.

  Now there’s an opening wide enough to drive a rover through. He mouthed a token sip of whiskey, giving himself some time to think of an answer.

  It wasn’t too hard to figure out what kind of “sweetener” the chic had in mind. In return for giving up on RedIce, he would get a few extra points in his bank account and the opportunity to drill Victoria until she got bored with him. She had all but drawn him a diagram.

  But Cesare’s agenda for tonight did not include playing thump-and-suck with the enemy. He had accepted Victoria’s invitation for only one reason—to find out how much she knew about the Earthers hiding in the RedIce mines.

  So far, she hadn’t given him any hints that she even remembered the existence of the Earther slaves who had escaped from her and her partners ten years ago. No indication she knew about the part Cesare and his brother had played in the escape.

  He didn’t see how that could be possible. But if she knew, then why not skip this seduction routine and go straight to blackmail? And why wait all this time to act?

  If this takeover wasn’t about the Earthers, what else could it possibly be about? It sure as hell wasn’t a legitimate business venture. If Victoria Ross actually wanted to expand StarLine into mining interests, he’d eat that gilded mirror. StarLine had never displayed the slightest interest in mining until two weeks ago, when out of nowhere their lawyers appeared at the RedIce headquarters in Pavonis with an offer Shen Chan evidently couldn’t refuse.

  Shen had refused to discuss it with his son, however. When Cesare stormed into the old man’s office to put a stop to this insanity, he found his father had vanished to places unknown, leaving the takeover of his company already underway. And leaving his workers to Victoria Ross’s non-existent mercy.

  He finally said to her, “I think the real question is why you think a midsize mining company like RedIce is worth so much, uh, sweetener.”

  Victoria smiled slowly. “Even little companies sometimes have big treasures hidden inside them.”

  That sounded cryptic, but not particularly threatening. “Treasures?” he said carefully.

  “Ay. But what does it matter why I want the company, Cesare? I’m offering you an excellent price. And with the controlling shares out of your hands, you’ll have much more time to devote to...other pursuits.” She moved toward him a little, her waist a sinuous curve. She murmured, “A man of your notorious appetites ought to welcome the chance I’m giving you.”

  He blinked. Notorious appetites? He never thought his well-earned cowboy reputation would come back to bite him in the arse quite like this.

  “What do you say, Cesare? Shall we set aside business matters and move along to more interesting topics?” He felt her breath hot on his ear.

  He turned his head and ran his eyes over her blond beauty, giving the idea a moment of hard consideration. He could give her the drilling of her life. Put her off guard, get information out of her. Maybe even seduce her into letting RedIce go. And if it was the only way to protect his people, perhaps he should. And she did have all the right bits in all the right places. He should have no problem with the physical part of this farce at all.

  So what if she was an evil, scheming puta who sold human beings for money? So what if he hated the thought of touching that overripe flesh?

  He tried to picture himself taking her to the gigantic bed, looking down into those cold, pale eyes...

  Suddenly, the eyes in his imagination weren’t blue, but brown touched with gold, laughing up at him with a heat and light as genuine as the sun in the sky. For a second, he wondered how those eyes might look at him if he went and whored himself out on that bed over there.

  Fecking standards. Didn’t think I even had any.

  He knocked back his whiskey and set the glass down on a gilded side table with a thump. “Sorry, I’m exhausted. Long workdays with the lawyers.” He got to his feet. “Thanks for having me over. It was very interesting.” He turned toward the door.

  “Are you sure you want to leave right now Cesare? You’ll come to regret it later, I think.”

  Something in her voice made him stop and look back at her. Her body was coiled in her seat, her hooded eyes glittering. Seemed Victoria did not like being turned down one bit. Inexplicably, a chill slithered over him as he stared back at her. He shook the weird feeling off, and smiled. “Don’t worry yourself, bird. I’ve had practice with regrets,” he said, and left.

  RedIce Main Office, Pavonis

  Bianca leaned back from her workstation and smiled wryly to herself. It seemed her first morning at RedIce was a complete waste of time. She glanced around at the people seated at the long conference table with her, all tapping industriously at their datapads.

  To one side were the lawyers and accountants from StarLine who had been handling the acquisition process up to now. These blokes evidently neither wanted nor expected a new manager. Even though she’d been in contact with them for several days, they appeared downright shocked when she presented herself to them that morning. But they got over the surprise, their attitudes quickly settling into steady resentment.

  She turned away from them to eye the other problem group in the room—the RedIce team. Over the last several hours, while she had been trying to sort out the mining company’s snarled up accounts, these people had methodically led her on a little-green-man hunt through equipment insurance, mineral claims and, in one memorable instance, catering expenses from Erotic Cakes, Inc.

  Camouflaging files was easy enough to do. She fancied herself a fair researcher, but the company’s data chamber was an immense place within the infinitely vast DataCloud. It would take time for even the most skilled tracker to find deliberately hidden information.

  But what is RedIce hiding? Bianca was half afraid she knew the answer.

  Ten years ago, two prominent Martian companies, Arescorp and Qin, had been caught in a serious labor scandal. Earthers would contract to work with the companies and ship over, only to find themselves crammed into barely livable habitats, or going unpaid. Even denied Correction treatments.

  When the abuses were exposed, Arescorp and Qin were censured by the Mars General Assembly and the workers were compensated. That was supposed to be the end of it. But rumors persisted that several other companies had been involved. Now, Bianca was beginning to suspect that RedIce was one of them.

  Over the course of her research, she had found a number of Earther employees on the company payrolls whose records were patchy, or even nonexistent. There were numerous labor expenses that vanished into a mess of confused data. Most damning of all, these accounting problems seemed to have begun about ten years ago.

  She couldn’t jump to conclusions, though. These glitches could conceivably be due to clerical bungling and managerial neglect. After all, she thought with a grimace, Shen Chan had clearly let his company slide for the past few years.

  But whether the issue here was mendacity or incompetence, Bianca had to fix it. She was going to prove herself and force Victoria to let her come home, regardless of how much rat shite she had to wade through to do it.

  She raked her gaze over the hostile people around her and smiled a little. “Resistance is futile,” she whispered.

  Next to her, Piat Singh, the RedIce office manager, lifted her dark head from her datapad and stared at her. “What?” she said.

  “Nothing, nothing.” She pushed away her own pad. “Everyone, why don’t we break for lu
nch? We’ve all been working pretty hard,” she said with as straight a face as she could muster.

  She nearly lost it when she saw all of them practically bolt out of their chairs and stampede for the doors of the conference room. Not even trying to pretend, were they? She shook her head and looked toward her StarLine team. The four blokes were getting up, murmuring something between themselves about having tea.

  Tea does sound good right now, Bianca thought. One of the accountants, Tanaka, turned toward her as she stood. “Are you going to join us, M’Ross?” he asked with grudging politeness.

  Bianca hesitated. This might be a good opportunity to establish some kind of relationship with her new team—smooth ruffled feathers and so forth. But after one careful look at the closed faces half-turned away from her, she lost the nerve. “Na, thank you,” she said. “I have a few things to catch up on before we get back to work.”

  All of them looked relieved at her refusal, and they filed out of the conference room quickly, as if afraid she might change her mind. She thought she heard one of them mutter “ice princess” as they left.

  She turned away with a wince. It wasn’t the first time she had heard that phrase whispered behind her back.

  She wandered over to the viewport windows, absently looking out over the great volcano to the southern rim, where the elevator cable spiraled up into the deep violet sky.

  Ice princess? When did I become so unapproachable?

  She hadn’t always been this way. When she was in school she had friends. Not close friends, not like the soul-bonded buddies on a video comedy, but still, people who would welcome her to join them for tea. But in the last few years, her plan to get back home to Eris began to consume all her time. She drove herself to be the best engineer, the best businesswoman on every one of the piddling jobs she was handed. She worked tirelessly to earn a position on the elevator.

  Meanwhile, all of her friends just slipped away.

  Now that she thought about it, she realized that the most natural and relaxed interaction with another human being she had had in years was...well, the exchange with that bloke at the café up on Eris.