They clustered around the long, sweeping polished wooden table of the lounge, staring at the paltry material remaining from their mission for Merez. The tag he had given them with the data about Lavim Tamm, which they now knew also held some kind of surveillance software, and the tag he had exchanged for the statuette, lay on the gleaming dark brown wood, simple grey plastic memory chips holding all the information they had on the man.

  “Let’s do this first,” Siladan suggested, and connected the second tag to his tablet. A small window flashed up, and he grunted with satisfaction. “There really was money on the tag!” He announced. “Two thousand birr, just like he promised. Very strange to be so honorable just before he tried to kill us.”

  “I guess he gave us real money in case we wanted to check it before we gave him the statue,” Adam mused. “Keep us guessing right up to the point Al Haish and his rafiki fried our brains.”

  “True, it doesn’t matter what’s on the tag if he’s just going to get it right back. Siladan, get that money off there first of all. Then we check for his surveillance software.”

  Siladan grunted agreement and with a few flicks of his finger they were two thousand birr richer. Next he connected the other tag, flicked through the pictures of Lavim Tamm they had already seen, the grainy surveillance footage and the background documents, all material he had already read. He fiddled a little more, muttering to himself as he did so. “I’m no Arkial, but now that we know it’s in here…” he muttered, and after a few minutes of concentration grunted in satisfaction. “Got it!” He declared. “He had a tracking device installed on it. Connects to local web services and updates him about its location. I guess he was tracking us as soon as we left the ship.”

  “Is that kind of tech expensive?” Al Hamra asked, but Siladan shook his head.

  “Almost off the shelf,” he replied. “A little tricky to hide it like system software, but easy to find if you expect it to be there.”

  “Let’s add screening every tag our clients give us to our list of rules,” Adam suggested, “Along with never going unarmed on this station, and trusting nobody.”

  “Let’s make a list,” Saqr added, not entirely unserious, and Siladan made some notes. “And delete that tracking software.”

  “Not yet Siladan,” Al Hamra said, and when Saqr opened her mouth to object added, “Right now he thinks we’re dead, but if this software gets deleted maybe he’ll notice.” She nodded, and with a sigh he picked up the tag and sat down on one of the luxurious armchairs. “I’ll search for him now,” he told them. “It won’t take long and you won’t notice anything, I think. Then let’s go and get him before he gets a chance to realize we’re not dead.”

  They waited, watching quietly for signs of his power in action, but after a few breaths he opened his eyes and announced the result. “Ozone plaza,” he told them. “In a small souk on the rimward side.” He stood up, smiled at their disappointment. “What were you expecting, smoke and visions of the Icons? Let’s go!”

  “This time, armed!” Adam reminded them, and they began their preparations, such as they were when they only had two stolen accelerator pistols, Al Hamra’s pistol and Olivia’s carbine, which was definitely too large to carry through the station. “Should have taken those thermal pistols,” Adam muttered as he looked at their bare armory. Al Hamra slapped him on the shoulder and handed him an accelerator pistol, and then they were off.

  Ozone plaza was one quarter of the Ring around from the Neoptra spaceport, just three stops on the tube but easy walking distance. They decided to leave Olivia on the Phoenix of Hamura and walk, on the assumption that weapons checks would be more likely on the tube, and after several minutes and multiple changes of elevators down the face of the promenade they reached the lower walkways below Ozone plaza, where the crowds were thin and the Guards both less numerous and more easily bribed. They reached the elevator for Ozone plaza easily enough and ascended to the vast, open dome of the plaza, which was renowned as a huge bazaar for dealing in every form of electronic and electrical device known to humanity. Half a kilometer in diameter and rising a hundred meters up to meet the arcing translucent dome of the Ring itself, Ozone plaza was famous for its incredible views of Kua, which currently stretched in a golden-green arc across a thin sliver of the right hand side of the dome. The rest of the dome showed a vista of stars and darkness, the galaxy viewed from orbit around Kua. Looking down from the stunning beauty of the stellar expanse, they could see layers of deck protruding from the edge of the plaza in multiple levels, a series of mini-souks on ten layers of mezzanine overlooking the plaza itself. In the shadows of those platforms on the ground floor of the plaza was a complex series of smaller marketplaces, crowded stalls separated by narrow alleys and walkways. The center of the plaza, underneath the stars and the distant dome, was taken up with larger, more luxurious stalls, some in the form of desert tents and others shaped like cantina or pleasure houses, young men and women in stylish caftans holding tablets and calling out to passing customers. If anyone came close enough they made flicking gestures with their tablets, sending advertisements for their business to the datajacks or tablets of the passing clientele. These were the sales houses of starship companies, fabricators, and electronic companies, drawing attention to the latest ship designs from Chelebs, Harima or Halgria shipyards, vehicles from the many different manufacturing arms of the Consortium, and bespoke technicians and bio-sculptors associated with all the major Factions. The Firebirds ignored them, following Al Hamra’s directions out of the plaza’s huge rimward gates into a bustling neighborhood of narrow streets and small souks. Merez’s office was in a small demountable building in the centre of one of those souks, reached through narrow alleys that wound past mercenary brokers, Syndicate fronts and gambling dens. It was a nondescript affair, a building with no sign, a simple door flanked by large tinted windows, and no guards. The door was open, the view inside blocked only by a beaded curtain. From within they could hear Merez on his communicator, yelling at an underling. “What do you mean they’re not at the ship? They have to be!”

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  “… I don’t fucking care! They stole my statue! Get in there and find it!”

  “How can I fucking know?! I know their fucking ship is big, it’s a converted yacht you gandu, you’ll just have to search it! And make it snappy, I pay you no-good shits by the hour!” When he addressed his underlings Merez’s voice was harsher, far less cultured, and rich with the accent of Dabaran, rolling and spitting his ‘r’s like a miner. As they paused outside to listen to his conversation Al Hamra grinned at the others. Merez was certainly a deceptive little kahlet, but they had the measure of him now.

  “… Yes! And if they come back I want you to fuck them up! Those fuckers stole my statue!”

  Adam tilted his head when he heard that, gesturing wordlssly to the others. Why did he think they had stolen his statue? Al Hamra shrugged, and they pushed their way in.

  Merez was still yelling on the phone, but their entrance stopped him dead. After a moment he said, in a desultory voice, “Forget it. They’re here now,” and put the phone down. They spread out in his small office, Adam standing directly in front of him with Al Hamra and Olivia flanking him, Saqr and Dr. Delecta further away in the corners of the room. Fading light from the souk outside fell through the cheap pearlescent windows of his office, casting Merez in the shadow of Adam’s bulk.

  “Surprised to see us?” Adam asked him in a hard, quiet voice, as the man flicked his phone off, cybernetic eye twitching across the three of them.

  “Where’s my fucking statue?” Merez demanded, pushing his chair back and standing up as he did so. At full height he only measured up to Adam’s clavicle. “Why aren’t you dead?” He added desultorily when he realized the difficulty of his situation.

  “You tell us,” Al Hamra offered reasonably. “We came here to get it back, since you haven’t paid for it.”

  “What do you mean?” Merez demanded. “I don’t have it! Someone stole it from me an hour ago.”

  They stared at each other for a moment, realizing simultaneously that someone had interceded in their business.

  “Lavim did say someone was watching him,” Saqr pointed out from the corner, and then the windows exploded inward in a hail of gunfire. Merez dropped below his desk, laughing maniacally as shards of glass and cheap plastic blew into the room. Everyone ducked, somehow miraculously untouched by bullets, and Dr. Delecta rolled away from the door, screaming in panic as Al Hamra sprung to cover her, firing his pistol through the door. Adam duck-walked to the wall and sprang up, firing randomly through the shattered window into the street. From behind the desk Merez began crawling away towards a side door when Saqr, braving another burst of gunfire, darted forward from her place in the corner of the room and kicked him as hard as she could in the face. He shrieked as his head snapped back in an explosion of teeth and with a scream of pain and fear Saqr stumbled over him into the cover of the desk. Siladan tried to follow her and landed in an inelegant heap at the base of the desk, his foot a bleeding mess, while behind him Adam fired more shots blindly into the street. Dr. Delecta crawled over the glass- and plastic-strewn floor to her injured comrade, dragging a small medkit from her satchel as soon as she reached him. Against the backdrop of Siladan’s urgent screams Adam and Al Hamra continued firing into the street, while behind the desk Saqr pummeled Merez into bloody unconsciousness with a spanner she found beneath the desk, whipping it up and down over the stunned old man in a blur of spindly tattooed arms.

  After a few minutes of gunfire the street turned silent, Siladan’s whimpering the only sound. Adam ventured to look over the sill of the shattered window sill, pistol at the ready. “Clear!” He announced, and he and Al Hamra stood up, moved to the doorway to look outside. A man lay dead in the street, his chest pierced in two places, but nobody else was visible. Adam prodded his body with one foot and took his carbine. Satisfied, he and Al Hamra retreated to the office.

  “Who were they?” Saqr asked, as she picked herself up from behind the desk.

  “His bodyguards, I think.” From her position on Merez’s broken body Saqr pointed to a button under the desk. “I think he pressed an alarm button when he stood up.” She pulled herself out from under the desk, holding a handful of tags. “I found his safe key in his pocket,” she told them. “I guess this is all the money he has.”

  “We better get out of here then,” Al Hamra said. “I don’t know what is going on with that Icons-forsaken statue, but somebody else has stolen it and the Judicators are going to be here very shortly asking Merez some difficult questions. Let’s be gone when they arrive.”

  Dr. Delecta helped Siladan up from behind the desk, propping him up on his one good leg, and together they hobbled out of Merez’s small office. The street was silent and still, any possible witnesses hiding well out of sight. They took one look around, and shuffled hurriedly away from the souk, to lose themselves in the lower decks of the Ring and hustle back to the Phoenix of Hamura.