Looking into the sky, Bea, formerly Beatrice Lienhard, illegitimate daughter of Desmond Lienhard, cursed her fate once again. There was another capsule descending, the second she had seen. That meant, she had been on this hellish planet for two years. If she hadn’t messed up and gotten herself shafted by the system, she would likely be on her way to an early release.

Thinking back, to her monumental mistake, she was still bitter.

Growing up had been easy for her, her mother had been the lover of Desmond Lienhard, an affair that had caused her to become pregnant with Beatrice. Even now, contraceptives were not perfect, at least that was what her mother had always claimed, Bea thought that between a one-in-a-million contraceptive-failure and her mother getting pregnant on purpose for a permanent link to the Lienhard-Fortune, well, Bea wasn’t willing to bet more than a Federation-Centum on the contraceptive failure.

For years, her father had been content to pay her mother off, and, in turn, her mother had been happy to give her daughter all the education she needed to trip up some young, wealthy second or third son, miraculously managing to land under him. Some of the tricks she had been taught had probably been old when the Sumerians started out, but even in the Hyperspace-Age, they still worked, showing that, when the chips, or clothes, were down, humans were still the apes they always had been, happily grunting and rutting away.

Sadly, her pleasant youth had only lasted to her seventeenth birthday. Shortly afterwards, her father had decided that he wanted to go into politics and that a lover and an illegitimate daughter could be used against him, so mother and daughter were shipped off into the boonies, out of sight and out of mind.

Her mother had quickly ditched her, once her value as a connection was gone, hitching herself to another hapless fool.

What was left to do for an educated young lady, accustomed to the lap of luxury? Simple, she used her education and started her very own, covert data-acquisition service. Data-security had been paramount for a long time, at first, there was the danger of electronic intrusion and later the danger of psionic attacks. So, the vast majority of security was against those avenues of attack, leaving the oldest trick in the book open, for, say, a young lady, exquisitely educated and supremely cultured, to exploit. That trick, obviously, was to seduce some feckless fool, using them to gain access to the data to be acquired, and let them take the fall while she was out, scott-free.

And it had worked, she had quickly gained a bit of an reputation for both excellence and discretion that allowed her to regain the status she had been accustomed to.

All had been well, until something had gone wrong on her last job, the police had believed her dupe far faster than ever, she knew that they must have started after her before fully arresting him. And thus, she had been caught, trying to get off-world, using a different false identification, locking her up. She had cooperated, even managing to fool the psion they had brought in, letting him think that it had been her first attempt to steal data. It was a rare skill, difficult to learn and pull off, but it had worked, causing her to have the sympathy of the defender and even the prosecutor, while she shed tears on the stand, showing all kinds of remorse, playing the desperate young woman to the hilt.

She had thought herself home free, maybe being locked up for a few years, getting out early with good behaviour. She had thought herself so damn smart, having gamed the system and gotten away with it.

Until the Judge read the verdict, giving her the maximum sentence, going even higher than the prosecutor had suggested. She had talked to her lawyer but there seemed to be nothing to be done, going to a higher court would likely take years, but he promised to get the gears turning.

It had only been on the prison-transport that she had managed to convince a guard to let her see the full trial file, and that had been when she realized just how badly she had screwed up. Her dupe, the fool she had set up to take the fall, had been married. Married, to the Judge’s daughter.

That information had caused her to curse up a storm and to make plans for her retrial, plans to crucify the Judge, nailing him for miscarriage of justice, humiliating him for all the world to see.

She had been a little confused when she and her fellow convicts had been herded into a strange-looking dropship, with locking harnesses in which they were secured. Her confusion hadn’t lessened when the guards had carried a few guys in, all of them comatose, placed them into a couple of seats, strapped them in and placed an infusion into their arms.

And finally, it had peaked when the guards had all left the compartment, leaving the convicts and the sleepers alone.

There had been some vibration, some turbulence and a lot of shaking, until they stopped with a bone-jarring landing, still locked into their seats, some shouting, some yelling, some praying and all of them clueless.

That had changed when the hatch was opened and a group of rough looking guys, led by a black-clad figure appeared and started to open the harnesses. To Bea, they didn’t look like guards, they looked more like convicts than the convicts she had been with, and when one of those who had been on the shuttle with her tried to attack one of them, Bea’s blood started to run cold. The scruffy looking guard simply glanced at the attacking convict and the attacker crumbled, blood seeping from his eyes and noses. Part of her wondered what the chances were that it was only a single psion, but the uniformity in their looks, and the self-confidence they all radiated made her realise that it wasn’t one psion, they might all be psions.

The newcomers were herded through a primal looking forest, away from the large meadow on which the strange capsule had landed, while the scruffy looking guys loaded a few crates into it, before stepping back and watching the capsule rise again, flying into the clear sky like a homesick meteorite.

The surroundings had flabbergasted Bea, a pristine planet, used to house convicts instead of feeding the ever-thriving expansion of the Federation? There were limited directions the Federation could expand, she knew that, even if the general public did not, so who would do such a thing.

When the revelations started, she had balked a little. At first, she had wondered if it was all a huge prank, some sort of reality programm, to provide entertainment to those who could afford it. Next, she had doubted her own sanity, wondering if she had cracked.

Finally, she had accepted the reality on Verdun. And that had been when she had gone to work, doing what she did best. Make friends and influence people.

As she watched the capsule descend, her mind went back to her first night in the room she had been assigned, mentally assessing those with her in the room. Judging them, their worth and how easy it would be to manipulate them.

One had stood out, tall and muscular, looking so very masculine that she had wondered at first. She had forced herself to keep her face expressionless when she had learned that the woman was called Butch.

It hadn’t taken her long to manipulate Butch, getting her to dump her girlfriend, an annoying harpy named Aida, and get her all caught up with herself. Once she had that muscle at her disposal, she managed to bring those in her room into the fold, following Butch as their leader. Of course, being the leader’s girlfriend brought quite a few perks as well, even if she couldn’t get out of the various tasks that had to be done.

After the capsule vanished from her sight, she started to wonder if the last bed in their room would be filled. She wasn’t sure where the woman had vanished to, or rather, what had killed her. There were a few ways to die on Verdun, some avoidable, others not so much. Getting killed by one of the strange monsters was avoidable by always staying behind one of the psions.

Getting killed by one of the other convicts was avoidable by giving them the sex they so often desired, convincing them to think that you enjoyed it and making sure that they knew that you would be willing to go again. Killing a willing and enthusiastic sex-partner was an easy way to get killed in a messy and brutal fashion, after all, there were only so many females on Verdun.

It was similar with the male psions, only that they could be even more dangerous. Some of them had slightly strange tastes, using their powers to abuse their partners, but if you managed to suppress yourself to the point of being their happy puppet, it worked out. Luckily, there were only few female psions, they were harder to manipulate, but also less prone to violence. Four of them had banded together, making their own house, leaving only one in the barracks. That one was a bit of a pain in the ass, even if only indirect. Those sleeping in her room used her presence to dump their tasks on others, threatening force during the night while having the safety of a room with a psion to retreat back into. Trying to mess with them during the night was a good way to disturb the psion and that would leave to painful and likely messy object lessons.

She shook those thoughts off, getting back to her work, washing dirty clothes. Dreaming of the past would only bring her pain. She needed to plan for the future. Maybe, that capsule had brought change.