Chervaz sat at his desk, with his face resting on his crossed arms. He wouldn't have looked up if Jaff had rushed in to say Major Jax's girls were about to stage a nude protest in the middle of the Plaza and that Station Security planned to break up the demonstration by spraying them in whipped cream.

Not that Jaff would come here if that was about to happen. He'd be too busy stealing some industrial adhesive to glue his boots to the floor of the Plaza.

Even these foolish thoughts couldn't raise a smile from Chervaz. He missed Maiga. Almost a week had passed since she left the station and he missed her so much. Not only in his bed and in his arms, but the feeling she gave him. Of safety. That someone would sort it all out in the end. Would slap down the people acting like idiots. Now everything felt out of control, as if it had started to build up to something. Something big.

A bleep from his console made him open his eyes to look at a panel only an inch or two from his nose. A message. He went almost cross-eyed reading the details and at once sat up. He'd had messages like this before. The source obscured, anonymous and yet always accurate. The title of this message read. 'Bara news. IMPORTANT.'

He thumbed the message open and read it, and gasped, actually gasped. Could it be true? These anonymous messages usually were, but he didn't just go to press without some kind of confirmation. And there was only one place to get confirmation of this. A few taps on this console and he heard Chief Neex's voice.

"Hello, Mr Chervaz. What can I do for you?"

"Chief, I would like confirmation on some information I just received. Is it true that the Trebuchet has been banned from the station?"

There was a silence on the line for a moment.

"Chief?"

"You certainly are quick with the news, Mr Chervaz. How did you find this out?"

"I have my sources." Now if only he knew who they were.

"Wait a moment." Neex put him on hold and a moment later came back on the line. "Would you please meet me at my office, right away? I will give you further details."

"I'll be there at once." Chervaz grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair even as Neex signed off. How many times had he asked Neex for an interview? And now Neex was asking him.

Locking the office door behind him, he hurried to the Plaza and, though he couldn't really afford it, took one of the electric pedicabs. That would get him there quicker. Wixa, Jasini and the rest of them sat at their usual tables in Chullan's and he waved at them, grinning, and wondered if they'd heard the news yet. They waved back, looking puzzled by his enthusiasm. No wonder. He'd been mooning around the place the last few days, sometimes just staring at a coffee in Chullan's for hours, opposite an equally glum and silent Wixa.

When he reached Station Security he found Neex waiting outside. Paying off the cabbie, he stepped up to the chief.

"Come this way, Mr Chervaz." Neex led him along a corridor marked 'Private', towards a lift.

"We're not going to your office?"

"No."

Chervaz felt nervous for a moment, fearing that he was about to be arrested for the crime of "knowing stuff", something journalists had been persecuted for down the centuries. Were they heading for the holding cells? Well at least when you went to a holding cell they took down your name. You couldn't just vanish.

Enough paranoia, he thought, as he stepped into the lift car. The Klaff are good guys. Neex is a good guy. The good guy tapped his blue skinned fingers on the panel and the lift moved off.

"You may take notes. But you may not use any recording devices. "

"I see. Where are we going?"

Their arrival gave him his answer. CCC. Command and Control Centre. The heart of the station. The very hub of the core itself. Chervaz stared around the large circular room. It had three levels, connected by steps, manned... staffed that is, by Klaff exclusively.

The three levels opened onto a central well, with a core of its own, a circular three level tower with a flat top that ended some metres short of the high ceiling. Chervaz had heard a description of this place, from technicians who'd been in here to fix things. The station manager occupied that central tower. Strange looking thing though, it had no windows. Did he monitor everything on video screens?

In his whole time here, Chervaz had seen the station manager all of twice, and then only from a distance. He gulped a couple of times and combed his fingers through his hair as Neex led him to the tower and pressed a panel on the wall. A moment later a door opened and he followed Neex inside.

Chervaz gasped as he stepped inside the tower. From inside, the walls were as clear as glass. A person could stand here and watch someone only a metre away, yet remain unseen outside. Chervaz knew this design. Humans had used it too. A panopticon. Created for prisons, he remembered. One guard could watch dozen of prisoners from a central tower and because they couldn't see the guard they could never know if they were being observed or not. The same here, the manager could watch any part of his control room at any time. Observing, yet unobserved.

A lift, just a rising circular platform in a frame sat in the middle of the tower and Neex gestured to him to board it. It rose up, passing through a room full of monitors on the middle level and on up to the top floor of the tower.

This design made sense for these people, Chervaz thought. The Klaff loved circles, so they'd hit on the panopticon structure naturally enough. Circles, perfect, orderly circles. The Klaff's love of order contrasted with the disorderly mix of the rest of the station. But perhaps that made them the perfect people to hold it all together. While the rest of the station roared and brawled around the core, the Klaff just quietly kept the whole thing running smoothly in their perfect circles.

Neex and Chervaz stepped off the lift to find Mahtani, the station manager standing by a small round table, pouring tea.

"Ah, Mr Chervaz. How nice to meet you. This is one of your human beverages I have acquired a taste for. Please join me." Mahtani handed Chervaz a small white cup with no handle and Chervaz sipped the hot green tea. A little bitter, the Klaff brewed it too long.

"Thank you, sir."

"That's one of the great things about living at such a hub of commerce, don't you think? One has a chance to try so many new things in the way of food and drink."

"Yes, sir."

"Neex, you must try it too." He handed the security chief a cup. Neex took the cup, but eyed the tea as if he suspected it of masterminding a series of armed robberies. "We shall sit." Mahtani led them to a couch.

Not his desk, Chervaz thought. Ah, we're all terribly friendly and informal here. Off the record? Do they know what that term means? He'd bet Mahtani did. Mahtani's face stayed impassive, as always with a Klaff, but his skin stayed constant too, where even Neex showed continual small fluctuations in colour. Perfect control.

"Now, Mr Chervaz, Chief Neex tells me you know that Captain Bara's ship has seen banned from docking here at the station. You found that out very quickly. The decision was taken only a short time ago."

"I try to be good at my job, sir."

Chervaz looked around for a table to put down his cup so he could take out his notebook and pen. No table. For a moment he almost put it on the floor. But he recalled the Klaff considered that an insult. Something you put on the floor was considered garbage. So instead he managed to extract the notebook one handed and balanced it on his knee.

"I thought I would give you the correct details, rather than your having to rely on rumour," Mahtani said. "I am told that many human residents of the station consider Captain Bara something of a hero and may be very unhappy about her being barred."

"That's quite likely," Chervaz agreed. "Can I ask what led the decision? You so rarely restrict the free flow of trade, especially not at the request of others, and I understand you have been under some pressure from various powers."

The two Klaff looked at each other. Surprised that he knew that? Wixa had told him. He'd learn not to ask about her sources.

"We have had previous requests, and accusations about her activities. Of course you accused her yourself of ordering her men to assault you and damage your office."

As much as Chervaz wanted to pursue a subject so close to home, there were more pressing matters.

"But you didn't ban her then."

"We lacked evidence, but that has changed. The station owners have received footage of an attack by Bara's ship on a Kitsnujitar freighter, and their government has made a formal request to ban her from conducting any business here on Olojimi, or docking here at all. The owners have agreed to this ban and it takes immediate effect."

Chervaz nodded as he completed his shorthand notes of Mahtani's words.

"Mr Chervaz," Mahtani went on. "I asked you here to ensure you have the truth and to ask that you report this news in an unbiased and non-inflammatory way."

"You can be reassured of that with every edition of my paper." Chervaz took on a haughty tone. He did not need to be told this.

"There was a rather inflammatory story printed about the assault on yourself in one edition."

He had it in his hand, making it appear from a file by his side. They keep them? The Klaff actually keep copies of the Chronicle on file? Chervaz wondered if he should be worried or flattered. He went for flattered. The fact he sat here getting the whole truth, right from the top man proved that they believed the Chronicle was important. That it could have an effect. The edition Mahtani held did fall below Chervaz's usual high standards though.

"I didn't write that story. I was still in the clinic at the time. It was written by... a friend of mine, who was angry."

Mahtani put the paper back in the file. "Of course. I understand."

"Could I possibly see the footage of the attack on the freighter?"

"I'm sorry, we don't have it here. In fact I haven't seen it myself. But my superiors assure me they believe it is genuine."

Chervaz drank the last of his green tea, which had gone cold, and stood up. As exciting as it was to get an interview with the station manager, he needed to go. He had to get a Special Edition out fast.

"Thank you for seeing me, sir, but I need to go and work on this story now."

Neex and Mahtani rose too.

"Thank you for coming, Mr Chervaz," Mahtani said. "I look forward to reading your report. In fact I always look forward to reading the Chronicle."

"Thank you. That's good to hear."

Should he be feeling resentful? Chervaz wondered as Neex accompanied him out of the control centre? Oppressed? They hadn't threatened him. They hadn't said if he didn't report the way they wanted that they'd close him down. They just wanted the real truth out there and not a lot of rumours. Assuming the truth was what they'd told him. Not hard to check though. If there had indeed been a "formal request" by the Kitsnujitar, that had to be on record. He'd find that.

So no, he wasn't bowing to any pressure from them, he'd report in the way he always did. Plain facts, no attempt to make things look better or worse than they were. Certainly no pro-Bara rabble rousing.

His hands still hurt.

~o~

Maiga sat up quickly when the door to the brig opened, but didn't see the person she hoped to see. Bara walked in.

"Leave us," Bara said to the guard. "Wait outside." He left and Bara walked to the front of Maiga's cell.

She looks tired, Maiga thought, her eyes dark-circled. But she wore a smile and had a spring in her step. Glancing at her watch, Maiga saw it was morning, ship time. A few days had passed now since the battle and she'd settled into a routine. Bara had allowed her reading material, but hadn't been to see her.

"I've worked something out, Maiga."

"Can you work out when they'll bring my breakfast?" Maiga asked.

"Soon. But first I have something you may find more appetising."

"Sorry, you're not my type."

Bara gave a thin smile, but didn't react to the provocation.

"I've been going about things all wrong with you, haven't I? Trying to recruit you to work under me, to take my commands. How could I believe that you would want to do that?"

"Because you're an idiot?"

Bara laughed. "Oh I have been! I have been. No, what I didn't take into account is that someone like you, older, more experienced, wouldn't want to take orders from me."

"I'm not certain age and experience is the big issue here."

"I know that I have a natural aptitude for command," Bara said, not apparently listening. "And I'm not boasting there, I've seen my records. That's been noted in them since training. But the fact is, you have too. I can't expect someone like you to be second in command to me."

"Is there a point to this?" Maiga yawned and lay down again. "Because if not, can you come back when I've had some coffee?"

"The point is the space station. The point is Hollow Jimmy."

Maiga stiffened, but didn't move. Now we're getting to it. Keep the voice casual though.

"What about it?"

"You like it. Perhaps you even love it, as I love this ship. So if you like it so much, then join me and you can have it."

No way to control the reaction now. And it would be foolish to anyway, Bara would know she was faking. Maiga swung her feet off the bunk, sat forward.

"Have it?"

"I have my plans for the station. But I have no intention of going to live there, or sitting in an office all day. Can you see me in an office?"

"If it had semi-naked slave-boys chained to the wall, perhaps." And perhaps I'm turning into Wixa, Maiga thought. No time for that nonsense. Let her keep talking. That wasn't a problem. Ignoring Maiga's remark, Bara lifted a hand and stroked it down the wall, fingers trailing sensually.

"I belong in space, on this ship. I'd need someone in charge back on the station that I can trust. That someone could be you. You like the station so much, it can be yours."

"Are you talking about making me... Governor of Hollow Jimmy?"

"Governor. Yes. Military Governor. If that's the title you like."

Well there it is. She admits it. She wants control of the station.

"You hold the station," Bara continued, "and meanwhile I will continue my work out here."

Her work. Right. I must keep her talking, Maiga thought. Have to find out her exact plans.

"How do you intend to seize control? When?"

Bara lost her dreamy expression and looked hard at Maiga, who tried to calm her own intense look, tried to look less hungry.

"Well, you don't need those details yet," Bara said, frowning. "Not until you pledge to join me. Now I know this is a big decision, so I don't expect your answer now. I'll give you time to consider it."

"Well, I will certainly think about it," Maiga said.

Which was nothing more or less than the truth.