gaze

* * "—got

* *
"—got them, kaja. They put up a fight, so there's not much left. Scrags, by the look of the remains. Two of them."
"Don't touch anything," Palane snapped into the com. "We don't have much of a forensic capability, but I want the media to get recordings while the scene of the crime is still undisturbed by investigators."
She rose to her feet, glanced down at Cassetti's corpse, and stalked toward the crowd of reporters.
"It's over," she announced.
"Who was it?" cried out one of them. "Mesan agents?"
"Don't know. I doubt if we ever will. There were two assassins and they put up a fight. The unit who took them out are special commandos, not cops. They didn't leave much, it seems." Thandi shook her head. "You'll be allowed to record whatever there is. The unit commander tells me she thinks they were holdovers from Templeton's gang. Whether they were operating on orders or just trying to get revenge . . . who knows?"
And nobody ever will, Rozsak thought with satisfaction. The Erewhonese, he was quite sure, had already erased any evidence that two Scrags had been captured on the space station. The same two Scrags that Thandi's Amazons had just blown away, after one of the Amazons shot Cassetti. It was a nicely planned, well-executed operation.
Nobody? Well . . . except for the ones who mattered.
"Quits, Captain," Berry repeated.
"Yes. My word on it."
He meant it too. Very, very sincerely. Everybody on the terrace was rising to their feet, holstering whatever weapons they might have drawn. Everybody except Jeremy X, who was still prone on the floor and still had his hand pulser in his grip.
True, it was not pointed at Rozsak. Not exactly. But the Ballroom leader's gaze was pinpointed on the captain. That flat-eyed, empty, killer's stare.
"My word on it," he said again.

Epilogue
Michael Winton-Serisburg smiled. "So she lost, huh?"
His daughter Ruth nodded. " 'Lost' is hardly the word. She got smeared. Flattened. Nobody agreed with her—not even me. But I will say she put up one hell of a fight. And—Berry's a lot slyer than most people think—she got what she wanted out of it in the