“Sure,” Kyra said in a neutral one, sipping at the synthetic whiskey without particular relish. She had drunk much better stuff but she had drunk worse as well. At least they bothered with the flavoring here, on Harbriger they had just bled ethanol right out of the hydraulic lines. Newcomers sometimes died from gulping the stuff down without realising that it would suck all the moisture out of their throats. Drinking was a useful addition to almost any cover, but typically she would have had a neutralizer tab in her stomach to suck the kick out of whatever she was forced to drink.

“Anyway, what is the worst thing that can happen? You accidentally shoot a bunch of law enforcement officials?’

Augustine snorted in what might have been amusement or disgust and then raised his glass in salute. Kyra clinked the plastic tumbler against his and took a drink. She didn’t know quite what to think of the man. When they had first met his mind had been open to her, guarded in the way that a man who keeps his own counsel is guarded, but now he was shielding his thoughts, hazing her out as it was termed. That implied a remarkable degree of paranoia, even if, in this case, it was justified.

People had funny ideas about what ‘witches’ or ‘jaysers’ were capable of. The later name was derived from the technical name of the condition Jayeen-Sarkova Syndrome though it was still a derogatory one. Alot of that was Union misinformation, put out to both scare and mislead the public. The condition was poorly understood other than it passed through mitochondrial DNA and was thus passed down by the mother. Males with the defect were unknown, victims of spontaneous abortion during the early stages of fetal development. While abilities varied in strength Kyra was at the higher end of the spectrum and had sufficient control to keep things under wraps. Some jaysers were terrifyingly powerful, but borderline insane, unable to control their access to the thoughts of others. Most of those were indefinitely incarcerated in special Union psychiatric facilities, kept comatose except when they were needed. It was another reason she didn’t drink too much, losing control was a very bad idea.

“I would have said that the Union working with the Great Houses was impossible, but I know that they would do just about anything to prevent another war,” Kyra said, mentally running through the various intelligence reports she had read before taking her leave of her former employers. Though the Union was technically a kind of federal republic, years of warfare had concentrated powers in a junta of senior fleet and army officers. The SAC, or special advisory committee, ran Union policy by the simple expedient of controlling the armed forces and were wise enough not to make too much of a point of it. The Sack, as they were commonly known,   were concerned that the economic burdens of renewed war would bring down both the Union and its opponent in a galactic collapse that might hurl humanity back into the dark ages before interstellar flight. That meant that if there were Fleet vessels in orbit, it was either the unlikely or the unthinkable. Kyra was an optimist in her way.

“They got any warrants out for you in particular?” she asked, getting to the point of the conversation at last.