Hunt the Heavens: Book Two of the Shadow Warrior Trilogy by Chris Bunch

face of the moonlet was studded with solar energy cells, and the receptors were shielded. On the “outward”-facing surface, where a jutting crag spoiled the illusion of a beef tenderloin abandoned on a grill, the rock had been cut away and a small domed outpost built.
    The top of the crag was beveled flat, and the tiny world’s single weapon installed there. It was a massive sun gun, hardly the most sophisticated of weapons but effective in defense, and was manned by hastily trained Garrapatian recruits.
    Orbital Defense System (Manned) (Solar) Number 386.
    Other planets in the Federation were given equivalent defense systems, while the Outlaw Worlds, officially called the Frontier Systems, were ignored, left open to not infrequent Al’ar assaults and even conquest.
    With peace, no one wanted or needed ODS(M) (S)-386, but it was only abandoned for three years. Jalon Kakara needed a base for his merchant fleet, where the hastily converted transports wouldn’t be troubled with registry, safety, or crewing regulations.
    The barracks area was extended and became first docks, then shipyards. On the far side of the peak the sun gun had once topped, converters churned the rock into soil, added nutrients, and a park was sculpted. Then the entire planetoid was domed and given an atmosphere.
    Where the sun gun had been, Kakara built his great palace. Energy was free, and so antigrav generators held the soaring, sweeping arcs of buildings, terraces, and decks above the ground’s defiling touch, curving ramps connecting them, a dream of flight in stone and steel.
    On one of those terraces Joshua Wolfe, obsequious in white coat, black trousers, and a disarming smile, polished the last glass until it gleamed, and set it with its brothers on a shelf.
    He was on a verandah that opened on a swimming pool artfully made of rock so it looked like a sinuous forest pond. To his right was the lushness of Kakara’s park, to the left the black-and-gray industrial boil of Nepenthe’s heart.
    Above and behind him, accessible by a seemingly unguarded ramp, were the multilevel rooms that made up Jalon Kakara and his wife’s private apartments.
    He had been on Nepenthe for almost a month and had yet to meet his master.
    “Hey, friend. How’s about some service?” The voice was, at the same time, tough and tentative.
    The man it belonged to was medium size, overweight, and wore a lounging suit that had been custom-made for a bigger man, then hastily retailored.
    “Good morning, Mister Oriz.”
    The man eyed him with the cold look of a toad considering a fly’s vitamin content. “You know me, eh?”
    “Yes, sir. The agency was kind enough to provide a description of all members of Mister Kakara’s immediate staff.”
    “First mistake, Taylor. You
are
Taylor, right? I ain’t staff. I’m Mister Kakara’s friend. That’s all.” The cold eyes waited to be believed, looked away when they were satisfied, then returned to check.
    Wolfe had been warned about Jack Oriz. Friend he might have been, as much as Kakara recognized the term. He also provided security for the magnate and, like many hangers-on, had a fine-honed sense of paranoia. One of the maids had said Oriz’s first name had been different, but he’d changed it to wear Kakara’s monogrammed hand-me-downs.
    “My apologies, sir.”
    “Too early to drink?”
    “The sun’s up, sir. And I’m on duty. What can I bring you?”
    “You know how to do a Frost Giant?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Wolfe took five bottles from a freeze cabinet, poured measured amounts into a double-walled glass, then unlocked another cabinet. He pulled on insulated gloves, took out a flask, opened it, and with tongs dropped a purple-streaked, hissing bit of nastiness into the mixture. What appeared to be flame shot up, then swirling mists rose around it.
    He set it in front of Oriz with a flourish.
    “Not bad,” the man said without the slightest note of approval. “Mix yourself whatever you’re having.”