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“A plasma pistol?” he scoffs “Clumsy weapon Loud Indiscriminate Hardly an improvement over—”

I pull out un

“An Oun Titan Areable ion cell to drive the round along patented parallel reactive conductors Adjustable internal diaoes hushed—“an autonomous

forge in the oes in Death comes out”

“No need to get dramatic”

“Only twenty thousand were ever made Where did you find one this side of the Belt?”

“A otta have his secrets”

“I will buy How much?”

“Not for sale What I need is one of these” I walk to a rack of glistening titaniuines and a neurotoxin deliverer concealed in their front faceplates It is an assassin’s machine “How small can you make it?”

OUR DROPSHIP SETS DOWN in a fortress carved into the heart of a lonely ray stone juts up out of the frozen Ionian waste like a toar, cut into the top of the un bartizans, is vast and scored black fro ships

A coterie of reet us She’s lean, ithered patience, a pinched mouth, and a methodical, droll disposition Her hair is chopped short, a cut that looks self-administered Vela au Raa, sister of Rorandmother Her ave uerrilla warfare as I watched from afar on Luna

My neck aches fros they pumped into reet Seraphina with a chilly touch of their foreheads

Seraphina does not look like the girl I rescued The griirl replaced by a woman alks with a storhtly hooked, her dull Gold eyes sleepy and large, with thick eyelashes Her hair is buzzed and notched on the right side She is not beautiful by the standards of Luna’s courts There’s so wild beneath the laconicface

Little Hawk indeed

Cassius catchesSeraphina “What did he do to you?” he whispers, hunched in his manacles