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Negin Mal was as perturbed as Victus had ever seen him. "Is this really necessary?" he spat, his single-minded resistance against the inevitable reminding Victus of the time he had given Master Uhlu's cat a flea bath.

Leland took his attention away from the financial figures scrolling across his pad and focused on the negin. "The harvest ceremony has been a tradition for many generations, Negin. Your father, his father and all of the other Negins Mal since the founding of the colony have participated in the harvest festival. It may not seem important to you, but it's the biggest day in these people's lives."

"Those poor bastards," Mal muttered under his breath as he watched the fields they sped past. "Aren't you the one who is always telling me to embrace change?" he said more loudly, his warm breath fogging the window. "Let's start now."

Leland took the bottle of wine from its chilling station and poured Mal another glass, hoping that alcohol might temper the man's foul mood. "It's only for a single hour, and then we can go home. That hour of labor builds support and lends credibility to the house, and ties House Mal to the land like nothing else does. Our contracts with the vintners don't just provide the house with income, they bring considerable prestige as well."

Lucas made an honest attempt to disguise his chuff of laughter underneath a dry cough, but very little escaped Leland's attention. "You have something to add, Lucas?"

"No sir," Lucas said, straightening his back and standing tall. "Nothing."

Victus waited for Leland to return to his pad, then quietly nudged his protégé. "Stand still and be quiet," he admonished.

Lucas leaned towards Victus and pitched his voice low. "The way they're talking about Mal's wine you'd think it was the nectar of the gods or something, but it's not anywhere near that good."

"You don't want to attract Mal's attention when he's in a mood like this," Victus reminded him.

"Yeah, right," Lucas whispered back. As comical as he might find the negin's conversation, he knew that Victus was right. When Mal was in a foul mood like this, he was almost impossible to deal with.

Mal sipped the sweet, red wine that often took the place of his breakfast, but took no satisfaction from it. The prospect of toiling under the sun like a common field hand, even if it was still early in the morning and quite cool, wasn't the slightest bit appealing. Just because some idiot in his family history had started a tradition didn't mean he had to follow it. "Who gives two shits whether or not I pick a basket of grapes?" he complained. "Likely nobody will even notice."

"Not true," Leland corrected, mildly. "The picture of the soon-to-be Grand Negin sharing in the toil of the people always makes front-page news. Your picture will be on every news outlet on the continent." he said, hoping that Mal's ego would come when called.

Mal gave a sarcastic grunt of disgust. "Do you really think I care who sees my face on the vid? I'm not that shallow."

The gleam in the negin's eye told Lucas that he was indeed that shallow, and that Leland was slowly winning him over in the most skillful of ways. Mentally, the fighter was taking notes. He still considered Leland to be a slimy little toad, but he couldn't help admiring a job well done.

The majordomo's careful machinations were successful in calming the negin for only a few moments before Mal's face screwed up in infantile rage. "God fucking damn it!" he raged, glaring at Leland. "I missed my treatment this week because YOU couldn't schedule around it! Now my skin looks like I fell off the back of a truck face-first, and everyone's going to see it! I'll be humiliated!"

"You own the news outlets," Leland reminded his employer. "They can't post a picture that we haven't approved." He shrugged carelessly. 'You want to look like Jason Starwood, we'll make you look like Jason Starwood.

"And you know," he said, lowering his voice in the hopes that Mal might lower his own to match, "this would be an excellent time to reveal that you have not one Protector, but two. You are the only negin in history who has ever been awarded a protection contract," he reminded Mal, "and now you will appear to have two."

Mal's face illuminated with the possibilities. He turned to Victus. "Is he ready?"

Victus looked at Lucas carefully. "Four months of training hardly qualify him to be a Protector," he said, carefully, "but he is competent as a bodyguard, and is capable of maintaining the illusion you seek. Of course," he added, "that illusion can only be maintained as long as you refrain from using the collar to discipline him."

At this, Negin Rudex Mal had to pause. He found it satisfying to shock the high-and-mighty pit fighter until he shit his pants, but in this case Victus was right. They had to begin building the illusion now if Lucas was to be taken seriously as his bodyguard after the Kenzine left. "Fine," he said, regretfully. "I won't make him piss himself in front of witnesses." He smiled at Lucas malevolently. "If you misbehave, I can always shock you blind once we get home."

Showing atypical restraint, Lucas maintained his silence.

***

An hour later they were flying back to the main house at a considerably higher rate of speed than they'd left. "That's it!" Mal proclaimed, for perhaps the fifth time, 'The first thing I'm going to do after I ascend is abolish that barbaric practice!"

"You're over-reacting." Leland was beside himself. "It was a worm, Mal, a tiny little worm, and you're going to abolish one of the few events that keeps us in the landholder's good graces because it dropped onto your hand? You can't be serious."

Mal glared at his majordomo. "Watch me!"

Leland gave up. "Fine. Do what you must." He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to maintain his air of calm reserve. "I'll find a way to explain it to the landholders so that we don't have them leaving in droves."

"God, can't this bucket move any faster?" Mal whined. "I'm filthy, and you know I hate getting dirty!"

Lucas looked toward Victus, hoping to share a significant look with the other man, but he was standing stock still, as silent as a stone. Just as lively as always, Lucas thought, as his eyes traced the Lupine's strong jawline. In any other situation, he would probably have considered the Kenzine to be a dashingly handsome man, but it was awfully hard to see him that way through his self-generated haze of pompous propriety.

"You'd be considerably less dirty if you had just flicked the worm off instead of smashing it into a pulp," Leland said, practically. "It's a good lesson, you know. Think before you act."

***

The dinner party had been in full swing for almost two hours, yet Lucas could detect no reduction in the flow of food and drink. Victus had spent those hours standing behind the negin's seat and to his right, Lucas mirroring him on the left. To the fighter, the evening had been a challenge in any number of ways. Unlike his Kenzine instructor, who had ice-water running through his veins, he was not a man who enjoyed standing in one place for long periods of time. Lucas was a man of action, and continually scanning the small crowd of dignitaries with his eyes did not qualify as 'action'.

The enormous quantity of food passing practically beneath his nose presented a different set of challenges. The daily torture session that Victus disguised as 'training' had left him feeling hungry and mean. Although the two varii had had time for an abbreviated dinner before dressing for the negin's party, the Kenzine-approved meal of lentils and leafy greens had proved to be anything but long-lasting, especially given the amount of roasted meat that was being paraded in front of him. Platter after platter had emerged from the kitchen, at least half of which had gone back untouched. The amount of waste was staggering, and made Lucas's mouth water all the more.

To make matters worse, Victus had caught him drooling. A friendly fight when he was still in school had left an irregularity between his teeth and lips which occasionally leaked if he wasn't paying attention, and tonight he was paying more attention to the cornucopia of savory-smelling food than he was to keeping his lips tight. Victus had discreetly punched out the code for 'check yourself' on the ultrasonic beepers they used to communicate when verbal conversation was impossible, and Lucas had quickly realized his error. He hoped no one else had seen his indiscretion, but could not know for certain.

For the rest of the evening, he felt self-conscious about his lack of propriety. Protocol and appearances, he knew, were everything to these people. The order in which you entered the room, the location of your chair, when you seated yourself, how much you ate and when you were finished had all been carefully scripted weeks in advance of the event. If a guest commanded sufficient status and there were few enough people invited, they might remain seated long enough to enjoy dessert. Those who hadn't clawed their way up through the Galisian social strata would barely be able to finish the soup course before it was time for them to bow their obeisances and head for the door. Any negin worth his or her salt would have jumped at the opportunity to use Negin Mal's idiotically drooling guard against him in whatever way they could, in the hopes of bettering their own position in their complex social hierarchy.

Lucas had poked fun at the high-standing collar of the Kenzine dress uniform, but he appreciated the way it concealed the discipline collar. It might be a small thing, but to know that others believed you to be a free man felt surprisingly empowering.

He had been standing in one position for so long that his back was beginning to ache before he realized what was happening. The flow of food had all but stopped. The guests at the table were stirring uncomfortably, and the servers carrying the next course were backing up into the kitchen. "Who seated last?" he signalled, through his transmitter. The abbreviated grammar of varius milspeak came in handy in cases like this.

"Negin Woodruff's consort," Victus signalled back. "Suspicion?"

Lucas smiled to himself. It pleased him to think that he was finally one step ahead of his teacher. "No leave, block exit." Since Woodruff was not following the script, nobody else could, either. The man was apparently using the strict protocol to make some sort of political statement, not caring that he annoyed everyone else as he did so.

"Correct," Victus signalled in return, "He will leave soon."

Lucas turned his head and looked at his instructor, wondering if he would see some hint of why the Kenzine sounded so certain, but the other man's face was blank. "How you know?"

Inside the folds of his robe where no one could see, the lupine's thumb busily beeped the code. "Purgative herb."

Lucas's brow furrowed in confusion. Had he decoded the message correctly? What did Victus mean by, 'purgative herb'? He looked down the table at the obstreperous dignitary, and the way he was squirming in his seat answered his question. In spite of the fact that Lucas hadn't been the one to discover the man's duplicity, he smiled. Watching this minor, upstart negin struggle not to soil himself while everyone else at the table pretended to ignore his physical condition was utterly comedic. Lucas had to admire the man's tenacity. Long past the point of physical discomfort, he was still attempting to press his political position.

A handful of minutes later Negin Woodruff gave up and made his hurried departure, doing his best to maintain what dignity he had left while virtually rushing to the door in an unusually stiff-legged gait. Relieved to finally be allowed to leave, the other guests returned to protocol and filed out in the scripted order, and eventually there remained only those people who were directly involved in the business Negin Mal wished to conduct that evening. "Let us retire to my office," he announced, as he gathered himself and rose from his seat. "Bring your glasses," he said, brandishing his own in example, "we have much to discuss, and I wouldn't want you to get dry."

"Victus! Lucas!" he called, treating his Protectors like serving boys, "Bring three...no, four bottles of..." he looked at the bottle he was carrying, then blinked his eyes hazily when the label refused to come into focus, "whatever this is. And don't forget to taste it!" he admonished, his voice slurring slightly. "Someone wants to kill me, you know!"

Without comment, Victus walked to the kitchen with Lucas in tow. "Not that I want to spend time in his company, but...shouldn't one of us stay with him?" Lucas asked.

"Leland is with him, and I need you to help me carry these" Victus said, as he pushed through the swinging double doors. "This won't take long. Estello?" he called, to the overworked wine steward. "Have you four more bottles of the last vintage?"

The steward rolled his large, soulful eyes. "Crates of it." He levered himself off of the stool where he rested and stumbled down into the cellar. He emerged a few seconds later carrying four bottles, then pulled two small tasting glasses from the serving station. He opened the first bottle with weary efficiency, then poured a small amount into both glasses. He presented one to Victus and tasted the second one himself. He swirled, slurped and spat with an almost robotic air, and Lucas found himself pitying the man. Good wine was one of the universe's great pleasures, but the steward's job had reduced its consumption to just another task.

Estello was opening the second bottle before Victus had finished testing the first one with his electronic straw. The light on the stem of the straw glowed green, and Victus was about to draw the liquid into his mouth when an intruding handpaw plucked the straw from his lips. "Hold on," Lucas murmured, as he examined the bottle more closely. Something about the bottle's shape struck him as odd. The way his thumb fit into the bottle's punt didn't feel quite right, and the glass had an odd color to it. "Bring me the empty bottles, would you please?"

Estello looked at Victus for confirmation, then shrugged and trudged out to the recycling bin. While he was gone, Lucas picked gently at the bottle's label. It was quite well adhered to the glass, and his dedicated picking had done nothing but tear off tiny bits of paper fluff.

"Do you think someone tampered with the bottles?" Victus asked, doubtfully. "My analyzer did not detect anything odd."

"Your mouth is the best analyzer in the world," Lucas muttered offhandedly.

"That's what I was about to do when you pulled the straw out of my mouth," Victus reminded him.

Lucas took a slurping sip of the wine in the Kenzine's glass, swished it around in his mouth for a few seconds, then spat the wine into the bucket the steward had used. He opened his mouth and slowly inhaled the vapors. "You tasted the rest of the wines tonight, right?" Lucas asked. Receiving a puzzled nod, he asked, "Does your fancy little gizmo test for precursers?"

The question made Victus look slightly nervous. "It is a field unit," he admitted. "It tests for common toxins, but there are an almost infinite number of ways to split those toxins, so it might not find all of them."

Lucas looked at the door the steward had exited through. "Where's Estello?"

Victus spared his student a glance, then charged for the door. The two men broke into the small courtyard behind the kitchen, to find the white-smocked figure slumped halfway into the recycling bin. "He got both of the precursers," Lucas said, unnecessarily. "Help me get him inside."

They laid the inert figure on the central prep station and Victus checked his pulse. "It's weak, but steady," he reported. "He absorbed enough of both chemicals through the lining of his mouth to knock him out, but I don't think he ingested enough to hurt him."

"Lucky him," Lucas drawled. "What do we do? Should we tell Max?"

"I don't think so," Victus answered, slowly. "Not yet, at least. As soon as he knows, he'll feel compelled to tell the negin, and our best chance to catch the killer is to stand back and watch the people he's with. Someone is expecting the negin to die soon after he drinks his wine, and we need to watch for a reaction when that doesn't happen." He spared a glance at the inert body lying on the prep table. "But we do need to call the doctor." He pulled out his comm and dialed the doctor, staring at the tainted wine bottle as the line connected. After the brief conversation concluded he turned to Lucas. "Can you tell if it's tainted or not?"

Lucas had as much faith in his ability to detect toxins as he had in everything else he did. "Child's play," he smirked.

"I hope you're right," Victus said, as he poured a small amount of the second bottle into a clean glass. "Because if you're not, you'll probably end up lying next to Estello."

"I've got a better idea,' Lucas said, calling over his shoulder as he headed for the cellar. "Rinse out four old bottles!"

"Now that I've tasted the swill he's drinking..." He muttered to himself, as he carefully examined the options available to them. His running commentary helped him focus. "Too light...too woody..." He carefully examined the labels one-by-one, looking for a compliment to the one the negin had been drinking all night long. He grimaced as he passed over a bottle from Teldex 3. "That one's like horse piss...that one's even worse...Aah! Here we go!" he pulled a bottle from the racks and looked at it carefully. It had all the right characteristics, and they'd never know it wasn't what they'd been drinking all night long. He pulled out three of its mates and vaulted up the stairs.

"They've had so much already they'll never know the difference," he said, as he sauntered into the kitchen, "only this one was bottled a hundred light years away from the first one. And by the dust on the bottle, I'd say it's been in there for quite a while."

Victus pulled the cork, sniffed at the contents, then handed the bottle to Lucas. "Anything?"

Lucas took a cautious sip of his own, considered it carefully, then pronounced it clean. "Go for it. Pour it into the empties and let's get the hell out of here."

***

Four hours later, the guests had all departed and the negin was secured in his quarters. The attempt on Mal's life had caused a stir of activity among the staff, putting everyone aside from the negin himself on guard. Estello was resting comfortably in the town's hospital, and, given his employer's advanced state of intoxication, would probably awaken feeling more refreshed than the negin would.

Thankfully, Leland had backed Victus's decision not to tell the negin immediately. Amusing as it may have been to watch Mal run around the house in a blind panic, that would not help them catch the killer. All of the senior members knew, though, and to Victus's eyes, all appeared as eager to cooperate with his investigation as they were to conceal the attempt from the negin. None stood out as likely subjects for investigation.

Lucas yawned and stretched, "Come on," he said, rising from the small desk chair in their room to slap Victus on the shoulder. "I'm brain dead. Let's go downstairs and get something to eat."

Victus thought to deny his request, but agreed after only a moment's consideration. "The staff have gone to bed," he reminded his student.

Ever so slightly, Lucas's tail began to wag. "Good! That means there's nobody down there to stop us from raiding the refrigerator."

Before they left their room, Victus took a moment to check the negin's condition on his chron. Vital signs were all normal. the man's doors were securely locked, and the only other life-sign in the room was that of a sturdy young woman named Elma who actually seemed to enjoy the negin's lecherous advances.

Lucas waved on the kitchen lights and made a beeline for the refrigerator. Throwing open the double, stainless steel doors, he stood transfixed by the impressive array of food left over from the previous night's dinner party. "Oh my god..." he said, not caring that the space between his tooth and lip had grown slack again. Victus moved up beside him, and Lucas felt a pang of dread that his teacher might put the kibosh on this little 3 am midnight snack.

"Do not lose control," Victus advised. "If you gorge yourself, you're going to vomit on the practice field again."

A devilish smirk sneaked across Lucas's face. In his world, what wasn't expressly prohibited was allowed, and Victus had, very clearly, not prohibited him. "Who doesn't throw up every now and then?" he said, as he removed several platters of refrigerated meats from their storage racks. He put the trays down on the counter and returned to the refrigerator for cheese, pickles, some sort of green, leafy vegetable, and a condiment that looked like a mixture of mayonnaise and ketchup. He plucked an overly-crusty brioche roll from the bread basket, sliced it in half, and got to work assembling his heroically-proportioned sandwich.

As a reward for his student's impressive performance, Victus allowed Lucas free rein to eat whatever he wanted, relying on the other man's good judgment to keep him from overindulging. He did feel compelled to step in when Lucas loaded a spreading knife with the pink-ish condiment. "Have you tasted that?" he asked, stopping Lucas before he slathered his bread.

"No," Lucas said, looking at the spread with sudden suspicion. It looked perfectly innocent to him. In fact, it looked creamy and delicious. "Why?"

"Because they keep that little jar for Miss Ofeibea, on the cleaning staff."

"It's just a little bit," Lucas shrugged, but he guiltily returned half of the dollop to the jar. "She won't mind if I have a taste."

"Probably not, but she's from New Santiago," Victus said, meaningfully.

Lucas's eyebrows raised in comprehension. "Oh." Very carefully, he put back all but the smallest of portions and returned the lid to the jar. Sniffing gingerly at what little remained on the knife brought on a sudden fit of powerful sneezes. Most of the soil on New Santiago grew vegetables which had a conspicuously high capsaicin content, leading to residents who could eat Scotch bonnet peppers as if they were salad olives. "Thanks," he said, trading the jar for a less incendiary condiment.

"Think nothing of it," Victus said, casually, as he pulled out a picked-over cheese and fruit tray for himself. "I need you fully functioning, and you can't do that while attached to a commode."

"Still," Lucas said, as he capped off his sandwich with a pickle and sat at their table, "I thank you, and my butthole thanks you."

Victus sighed quietly and considered his companion. "Why must you be vulgar?" he asked, joining Lucas at the table.

Lucas thought that the Kenzine seemed genuinely curious. He shrugged and smiled. "I like to watch your eye twitch." His smile faded slightly when he saw that Victus hadn't taken the bait. He took a large bite from his sandwich and talked as he chewed. "When you're a grunt in the army, and varius, and a mutt to boot, you do whatever you can to fly under the radar." He licked a dollop of mustard from his thumb. "The other guys would've given me hell If I talked pretty like you do." He shrugged. "After a while it was just second nature."

Lucas looked consideringly at the Kenzine sitting across the table, at the man who was obviously purebred and had probably received every privilege growing up. "After a certain amount of time, it became as much a pattern of speech as any other regional dialect," he said, properly. "Cursing seems no more alien to me than it seems for a Southern Brit to speak Welsh. It might not sound correct at first," he said, "but it's right and acceptable vernacular to him, so why should anyone else concern themselves as long as they can decode his meaning?"

Victus looked at him carefully. The pit fighter, it seemed,was somewhat brighter than he had first appeared. "I take your point," he said, picking a grape from his plate and popping it into his mouth.

"What gave away the fake bottles?" he changed the subject. "I would not have expected you to know anything about wine."

Lucas grinned, but the smile did not reach his eyes. "Surprised you, huh?" He waggled his eyebrows. "The mutt actually got one right." He felt an old, familiar anger rising inside him. "I might be mixed, but I'm not stupid."

Surprised by the sudden change in Lucas's attitude, Victus quirked his head in confusion. "I don't know what I did to offend you, Lucas, but I apologize for my actions." He shook his head fractionally, never breaking the other man's gaze. "Whatever I did, it was not intentional."

Lucas slowly shook his own head. The hard look was draining from his eyes, replaced by a measure of sadness. "It's me who should apologize, Vic. My brothers never missed a chance to stab me in the back, and that left me with a hair-trigger about some things."

"Like wine?" Victus asked.

The mild jest fell flat, and the look Lucas shot back was almost a glare. "Like my intelligence," he retorted, "or my bloodline. But you're pure-blood and from a good family, so I doubt you'd understand."

He squared his shoulders and looked into Victus's golden eyes. "Maybe that explains why you're always so damned stuffy. People like you..." he trailed off, struggling to put his thoughts into words. "You've always had the world by the neck, so you don't understand how good you've got it." The look on the other man's face gave Lucas pause. "What?"

Victus smiled quietly. "Your deductive abilities are remarkable. You have pieced together my personal history without knowing any of it."

"Pretty close?" Lucas smirked.

"Not at all."

Lucas looked comically crestfallen. "No? What was I wrong about?"

"Nearly everything. But then," he said, scrutinizing the other man, "I think you know that."

Lucas shrugged diffidently. "You caught me." He traded the look for one more serious. "You know everything there is to know about me, but I hardly know anything about you. So tell me."

Victus sighed, quietly. His instructors had stressed the necessity of maintaining an emotional distance from the people he guarded. In spite of their close association, Lucas McKenzie was not his peer, and was certainly not his friend. In six months time, perhaps even less, he would be waving goodbye to House Mal and everyone in it, leaving no ties behind. Lucas, if he lived that long, would be left behind, bound to the negin as much as Victus was to his duty.

This thought decided the matter for Victus. Although Lucas might not share his path in life, the man did share his duty. And something about this coarse, brash, ill-considered man inspired his trust. "All right," he started, then was momentarily tongue tied. Where to begin? Old advice from his father came to mind. 'When in doubt about where to begin, start at the beginning.'

"I was born on Earth, and my parents and I came to Galise on a family trip when I was five. They died in a plane crash, and I lived in an orphanage for two years until Master Dagen found me." From that point the telling was much easier, and for the first time, Victus unfurled the tapestry of his life for another person. Dagen knew it all, of course, but he was so tightly interwoven with the fabric that he could no more see the overall picture than a thread could see the hem. Little by little, he told of his training and experience, sharing stories of his more interesting clients while omitting sufficient detail to protect their privacy.

Lucas sat very still, silently absorbing the tale of Victus's life with rapt attention. He was quite surprised to learn that almost everything he'd assumed about life among the Kenzine was dead wrong. History and myth had combined to constrict the public's view of the Kenzine into an inflexible box whose walls were cold and gray. Seeing Victus's eyes light up when he talked about growing up inside the fortification of a Kenzine monastery helped Lucas see those walls as a protective shelter rather than an impenetrable barrier.

He spoke for nearly an hour before coming to the end of his story. "...and then they dropped you off," Victus finished, looking at the other man. "What about you?"

Lucas stared at him. He felt like someone had just told him a bedtime story full of adventure heroes and crazy villains, and one of those superheroes had just jumped off the screen, sat down across from him and asked, 'So...what did you do today?' "Uh..." he mumbled self-consciously, "I grew up in Chicago?"

Victus smiled. "That's a good start," he encouraged. "Your family?"

"Yeah...I had one," Lucas rolled his eyes at the memory. "All of 'em strung waaaay too tight."

"Would you rather not talk about them?" Victus asked, gently.

"Nah," Lucas shook his head, "But how 'bout I give you the condensed version. My father got married to his first wife right out of college. They had three pure-bred sons before she grew some bizarre tumor and died. He managed to survive the shock of separation, then he went back and married his high-school sweetheart, who was starting her own career in politics." He waved his hands around vaguely. "He's a rottie, she's shepherd, there was a lot of family bullshit to work out... whatever. I guess they wanted something to prove to both sides of the family how much they loved each other so they had a baby, and...boom!" he held his hands up triumphantly. "Here I am!

"My brothers are three of the most over-bred, ass-kissing goliaths who ever walked the planet, and even though they can't take a shit without expecting dear old daddy to come running up behind them and wipe their asses with hundred credit bills, they're convinced that my presence in the universe has somehow ruined their lives." He looked at Victus meaningfully. "I'm fourth in line of succession, so there's not going to be anything left for me to inherit anyway. How the hell am I any sort of threat to them?"

Victus gave an ambiguous shrug. "Go on."

"So from day one, they rode my back." His face screwed up in distaste, as if he'd just sucked a lemon. "I remember the first night I was home, they thought it would be funny to put a bunch of matches and plastic bags in my crib." He visibly shook off the bad memory. "Whatever. That was a long time ago. The best way I could think of to get away from them was to join the military."

This time, his smile seemed genuine. "Three years in, and I was a pilot. Top of the class and riding high on luck and talent." He pulled a small handful of grapes off Victus's plate and popped them into his mouth as he talked. "They sent a bunch of us grunts into a skirmish around Venoco, and just told us to fly around and look intimidating. Turns out it was some sort of labor dispute they wanted to put down." He shrugged. "Okay, fine. No big deal, that shit happens all the time.

"So we're flying around in our big birds, kicking in the 'burners every now and then so they can see us in the night sky, making a big show of it. But then the locals started feeling like studs, and they sent up their version of an air militia." He shook his head at the pitiful attempt. "Not like they could do anything, right? It's like trying to stop a tank by throwing kittens at it. And that's when things started getting interesting, and by 'interesting', I mean 'falling straight down the shithole'."

Food all but forgotten, he toyed with his water glass. "We got a transmission, from one of the local enforcers who was safe on the ground," he emphasized, "not even from our wing commander, ordering us to open fire on those little birds." He spread his hands, helplessly. "What the hell was I supposed to do? All we needed to do was pull out of the atmosphere, and they couldn't follow us. But some pencil-necked little douchebag of a junior commissioned officer, on the ground! - was ordering us to kill them. He sounded incredulous. "Little fucker wasn't even part of the fight!

"I couldn't do it," he said, his eyes looking off into the distance at something only he could see. "Most of the guys on my squad just pretended they didn't hear the orders and headed for the far side of the moon, but a few of the guys thought it might be fun to light up the locals." His fingers worried at the paper napkin under his plate. "I didn't let them," he said, quietly. "I tried to run defense while the little birds got away, but some of them just kept trying to get themselves killed."

He sighed. "Maybe I should have just let them do it," he said, sounding conflicted, "I don't know. I guess I did the right thing."

"What did you do?" Victus asked, with equal solemnity.

Lucas stiffened. His ramrod posture made Victus think, for a moment, that he'd inadvertently insulted the other man. "I fired on my own people," Lucas said, staring straight into the Kenzine's eyes. "I shot down two of my own pilots so a bunch of stupid little militia members who got in over their heads could get away and sleep in their own beds that night."

"I know very little about military procedure," Victus admitted. "What did they do to you?"

"It took them a while, but they finally hit my ship with the override codes and towed me back home, at which point they courtmartialed me. Did you know," he said, in a tone suggesting that he was dishing juicy cocktail gossip, "that if you sell a prisoner off instead of incarcerating them, you can make money instead of spending it? It's a wonderful system," he said, sarcastically. "The government gets extra income, the colony worlds get cheap labor, and I learn new skills!"

"Like pit fighting?" Victus asked, acerbically.

"Like pit fighting." Lucas nodded his head. "That's the sort of job skill you can take back into the real world if you ever get out. And if they get lucky, I might even die before I work my way free and they never have to deal with me again."

Victus had known about the program, but only from the perspective of the politicians who endorsed it. They had made it sound eminently practical, but now that he knew the details, it seemed barbarously close to slavery. "Had I known, I would not have participated."

Victus's sense of justice left him feeling soiled by association with Lucas's effective enslavement, but the fighter was having none of it. "Don't worry about it," he waved the Kenzine's concerns away. "You didn't have anything to do with it. And you've treated me better than anyone else has."

The subtle gratitude made Victus uncomfortable. "I have only given you what you've earned," he said, stiffly. "And you have not told me what tipped you off about the wine."

Lucas was pleased to be the instructor for once. "Something about the punt - you know, that little dent in the bottom? Seemed like it wasn't the same as the other bottles they'd brought out." He reached for a cube of cheese from the platter Victus was working on, and the Kenzine accommodated by pushing the platter towards him. "That got me thinking," he said, as he chewed, "and the label looked like it was stuck on there too evenly. Like someone was really trying to make it stick instead of just slapping it on there on an assembly line. And the print looked wonky, too."

Victus nodded his head. "I understand. But you failed to..." he cut himself off, wanting to be more affirming and positive. "In this case you were absolutely correct, but remember that here in the colonies, recycling is paramount. Those bottles in the recycler won't get melted down and re-formed, they'll be sterilized and refilled. It's rare that any two of them match."

"But they weren't drinking the local stuff tonight, were they?" Lucas said, smugly.

"No,' Victus admitted, "They were not. How did you learn so much about wine?"

Thinking back to his informal education, Lucas smiled. "Between mom and dad, they threw about a dozen parties a month. Everybody brings wine to the hostess, right? So we ended up with a ton of it. They hired a guy to come in to pick through the bottles and pull out the crap. I thought it was interesting, so I hung out with him while he worked. 'This, you drink!'" he said in a horrible imitation of an Italian accent, "'and this-a, you save-a for a nice dinner with some-a-one you love.'"

He smiled at the memory. "That was always a lot of fun. He loved to talk, and I think he thought it was cute that I was interested. Anyway," he said, returning to the present, "I got an education, and I got access to everything before he threw it away! Trust me," he said, grinning knowingly, "having access to an endless supply of cheap wine when you're sixteen is a major social asset."

"My social life at that age was rather limited," Victus admitted. "We had other resident students, but they lived in a different building."

Lucas looked surprised. "Why couldn't you just... I don't know, walk over there and socialize?"

Victus felt his ears droop slightly at the eminently logical suggestion. "I suppose I could have," he said, realizing for the first time that it really would have been that easy, "but interacting with other children always seemed like a step down. I already had everything I could want at home, so why go to excess lengths for something I didn't really want?"

"Not much for making friends, were you?" Lucas observed.

Victus opened his mouth, closed it, then said quietly, "I guess not. I never really felt like I had a peer group. I don't identify with other varii, I don't identify with sapiens... The only group I feel common to is other Kenzine, and even so, to this day it feels as if I have to work twice as hard to progress half as far."

"Nobody thought you could do it, huh?" Lucas asked.

"Some did," Victus replied, thinking of all the times Master Dagen and Sister Caroline had come to his aid. "I continue for them."

"Why don't you continue for yourself?" Lucas asked, quietly. "You're worth the effort, I think."

Victus considered the suggestion. It rang in his ears like uncomfortable truth often did, but he knew that facing that truth tonight was not going to happen. "Let's clean up and go to bed," he said, abruptly changing the subject. "We have much to do tomorrow, and the night is short."