The footsteps ceased and the silence filled with the drip of ruptured containers and the hiss of recharging plasma cells. They became aware of the smell accompanying the guard – a composite of plastics, oil and slightly rancid meat. The odour was distressingly penetrative.  There was another moment’s pause as they held their breaths, and then Bensen heard the distinctive click-whine that preceded discharge.

Roughly shoving his captive ahead of him, Bensen steered them from cover to cover from the renewed fusillade. Around them, furniture and table settings cracked and fused in the super-heated streams lancing acorss the restaurant. He hissed despite himself as one of the bolts clipped his back, sparking a spray of ablating armour plating but he at least now knew where the guard was firing from – a window that had been behind them as they entered.

Bensen waited, counting under his breath. On ‘five’, he stood and flipped a grenade through the window, before stepped back and to one side, crouching out of sight next to his trembling captive. The detonation belched a tongue of shrapnel and debris through the air and drowned out all other sound. There was no return fire.  After another pause, he started assembling a rod with a small mirror on one end, slapping his captive when he whimpered in shock.

The Assassin most regularly went by the name of Bensen, and it was that name that most here knew him by. They of course had no idea who he really was; false papers had seen him assigned to the unit two weeks ago, just as they were sent through the Temburg Pass towards Gurran City. Had anyone thought to check up on his papers when he joined their billet, they might not have been so ready to share this latest foxhole with him, or to invite him to their tables. They might instead have assumed that forged papers made him an agent of the enemy, or at the very best some sort of covert agent.

This latter interpretation would have been nearer the truth, as he had every intention of using the troop movements to get far enough into enemy territory that his subsequent disappearance would be relatively unremarked. Gurran was the unit’s destination, but as far as Bensen was concerned, it was just the first part of his journey to his ultimate target. A complex system of underground railways would lead him onward from there.

Somewhere into the third bottle, and the twentieth poker hand, as the gaps between bombardments were noticeably longer than the bombardments themselves, Bensen threw in his hand and declared that he was going to quit while he still had some money left.

In a rising babble of protestation, the other players tried to call him back – not wanting to deprive themselves of someone who lost so well and so consistently while still being such good company. The usual appeals to bravery, masculinity and the rejection of recent history and the laws of probability were met with apparent good humour. All the same, Bensen continued to gather coin and script into his pockets. Seeing that he was not to be dissuaded, most of the players turned back to the hand in question, though a few mildly barbed comments followed his back as he stepped out into the acrid night air.

“He talks a lot”

“Hmmm?” Krisla-Tenu looked round at the speaker to see a tall Njereen ambassador in formal robe-draped encounter suit proffering a glass of wine. Evolved in a lower-gravity environment than many, his ornately enamelled suit supported his physiology at these events. The ceramic and overlapping laminates comprising the visible surfaces blurred the distinction between hard and soft materials while masking the mechanics of the suit’s articulation; while the ornamentation was designed to misguide and waylay the eye with its intricate ribbing and interleaving of features.

“I’d have thought he would be a bit more of a cipher really, given what he does.”

“Hah! You’ve not been listening too closely, have you?”

“What do you mean?” The elegant masque inclined in query.

“His speciality is up-close wetwork – he’s a master of infiltration – so he’s learned to be very good at being a mimic.”

“So when he’s here among the gossips and rumour mill..?”

“Correct. He’s got to be good at small-talk, but you’ll notice over time he’s never consistent in his stories about himself. It’s a smokescreen – it’s something we all do, but he’s quite deliberate about it.” Out of the corner of her eye she could see the emaciated form of Ambassador Torshan weaving through the crowds in her direction.

“I don’t get it – surely that would be quickly noticed at gatherings?”

“With respect, you didn’t notice.”

“I’m not a suspicious security type though.”

“Ah, but you are the type of person he’d be contracted to hit.”

“Oh.”

The princeling moved on after that, leaving her alone again to circulate around the edge of the crowd. She tapped the rim of her glass absent-mindedly and let her eyes scan across the assembled dignitaries. A small blue light pulsed twice in her peripheral vision to remind her that Bensen should be getting his private hearing about now.

“Ah – there you are – a moment of your time?” Krisla-Tenu turned to see Torshan approaching, and her heart sank. A native of the Belet system, his fragile appearance and sparse fine hair slicked across his skull made a powerful juxtaposition with his rich formal Court dress that he knew made many people uncomfortable. It was widely noted that Torshan found human discomfort at his appearance rather entertaining. It was also noted that he was not averse to publically puncturing the pride of people who fell to their own prejudices in their reactions.