“Could you please state your full name, rank, and station for the Committee?” Her questioner was a stern woman with short gunmetal-grey hair called Senator Monroe. It was standard procedure, and it didn’t bother Arin. Its complex neuranalysis algorithms would reveal even the slightest hint of a lie. To her left, a holoscreen displayed her neural signals as indecipherable colored squiggles. “I understand.” A monitoring cap covered her cropped hair, capturing her brain waves. “Sergeant Varga, do you understand that you are under Truth Monitoring, and that you are under oath for the purposes of this interview?” A couple of years patrolling a gigantic mining station on substandard space rations could do that to a body. She’d never expected she would have to dust it off to front up to a Senate Committee, and she’d been surprised to find it tight at the shoulders but a little loose around her waist and ass. Her formal military suit was stiff and uncomfortable, and she thanked the stars she only had to wear the damn thing once every few years. Sergeant Arin Varga resisted the temptation to adjust her collar as she sat in the witness stand. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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