He’d got nothing like enough rest, and fatigue still gnawed at him. Some of the others in the aircar - all hard-looking mercenary types - were giving him looks that made it clear they weren’t sure what he was doing on their mission. They had a point. They looked pretty tough, but the local honour system meant they were armed only with heavy-duty dartguns. This tapu thing managed to be both anachronistic and adaptable; the locals harked back to a bloody warrior culture back on Old Earth, but attitudes and practices that would’ve resulted in brutal battles between villagers armed with stone axes made for mayhem and genocide once you brought corporate politics and hi-tech weaponry into the equation. When the aircar picked him up at the harbour, he’d been introduced to the mission leader, a heavily built woman of mixed blood called Quin, and to Yenemer, a lithe, dark-skinned young man heading the team of three who’d been detailed to search for Taro - and Nual, if she really was in there.
