Life was strange. Just a week ago, she'd been unhappily working her way through life over a hundred light-years away, drinking heavily to avoid thinking about what she did for a living, while simultaneously mostly enjoying her work. She was seriously considering getting a cat, as the highlight of her year.

  Now... she was laying in bed inside what felt like a posh hotel room, but was really a guest room at an embassy. Looking at options for what she could look like in the future. She was literally choosing what her body was going to be... and none of this getting injected and dealing with a slow, painful process, no. She'd fall asleep, get stuffed into a machine... and over the next few days, her whole body would be completely reworked, top to bottom, to match her new genetics.

  When she left.... there would be nothing connecting her to Seraph Glass at all, unless she did something stupid.

  She... would have to abandon her ranger. All of her online accounts, really. Fortunately, she'd get a little cash to start some new ones.

  So. Options. The whole 'shapeshifter' deal was out. Those people had to be trained for years, and could never fool scanners... and the whole process was intensely painful. Pretty much all drug addicts, after a while. The same thing for the ones that could just change skin color and pattern to help blend in; without suppressing drugs or decades of training they were always unconsciously changing them without trying.

  The one which would give her the absolute most possible choices later would be if she picked one of the Empire combat augmentation versions. They all shared the same ethnic origin in ancient Japan, and immigration was free if you were of that ethnicity; not that any nation had only one nowadays, but that was literally the only country where your skin tone or facial structure mattered... aside from the Alliance, which she would never go back to.

  She didn't plan on becoming a soldier, but learning how to defend herself wasn't a bad thing, and having a genetic advantage on it certainly wasn't either. She wouldn't mind sticking with the augment Tyler had jabbed her with, but if there were newer, better options....

  The simulation playing out in front of her currently had over a hundred versions of herself standing there in skin-tight vacuum suits... it was like the character creation menu for a game, right down to attribute adjustments and special traits.

  The various heavy-world augments? Ranged from just about normal sized and eight times as strong, but with slightly worse reflexes and a much higher metabolism... to far smaller and stronger variations. She could lose a few centimeters of height and come out able to pick up a car, and punch like a train.

  The space-augment ones were huuuuge. Almost three meters tall. But... hairless. She could still go with darker skin, and she'd tower over everyone... and even better, she'd be able to live... uncomfortably... in a vacuum. Which... yeah, never gonna happen.

  The 'Berserkers' had better reflexes... and on top of just baseline stronger, faster performance than a normal human, when the adrenaline was flowing, they got even stronger than that. The absolute best ones could almost match one of those heavy-worlders for a little while.

  She didn't even look at the cat-girl. She knew the sort of people that were into that, and... not her thing.

  She decided she wanted to have just slightly darker skin, and of course make herself just a little bit prettier, in her own opinion; and narrowed it down to four choices.

  The tallest version of the heavy-grav augment. Being super-strong and tough was just amazing, but she liked being tall, and this would at least keep her within the realm of 'average'. This was probably her favorite. There was even an Empire version on file... but no. Still wanted the darker skin.

  One of the core combat-augment variants was just even tougher than them, though not as strong... and had so much organ redundancy that they had to vary the installation of brain chips because their brain was partially distributed into their torso. It was almost impossible to kill them in one shot. The only downside was that they'd need to uninstall hers... and start from scratch.

  And the last was the Berserker augment. Supposedly, if it came down to a fight, they were the absolute best, so long as it wasn't a long, drawn-out conflict. If you could end the fight in less than two minutes, they could outfight anyone.

  After quite a bit of thinking, the decision wasn't too hard. After all... she didn't expect to be getting into many fights unless something went terribly wrong. She fine-tined it a bit; making sure she was as tall as that heavy-grav augment allowed... but no. Her current 1.7 meters of height was taller than the tallest of this genotype could be and still work properly. And if she went for the absolute max of it, it'd be obvious she was artificial.

  No.... she'd settle for about 1.6. She did a bit of fine-tuning of her work... and resolved to get a new tattoo while she was still here. She could attend the convention... learn about the most recent scanners and sims... and make sure she could tell if she were in a sim going forward.

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  Once she had the new her designed... something that just felt crazy, since it was about as complicated as designing her ranger... she made the call. Time to make sure the Alliance would never be able to track her again.

  ***

  The Anti-Slave Union wasn't a monolithic organization; but rather a loose group of hundreds of cells, working with anyone it could It owned its own stations and colonies, yes; but each was as independent as possible, and most of its military forces didn't know who or where each other were, so that anyone who was captured couldn't reveal the location of more than their own cell.

  And, of course, technically, they had no allegiance to any specific outside nation. The current meeting was purely a mercenary talking to his employer, not an agent of a government speaking with his superior.

  As Adrian Proxima leaned back in his seat, shifting to rub at his eternally itching back from the constant applications of cream to keep himself bald and normal-looking, the bridge abuzz with activty behind him, the holo-emitter activated, and he checked his systems for the seventeenth time; not only was the call encrypted, but it was being routed through a variety of different sources... at least two of which should be untraceable. Still. While he might be on an ASU ship lurking on the periphery of the Tybalt system, and the person calling him inside a UW embassy, it was always possible someone could listen to one end...

  He trusted his people. But one might be bugged.

  When the image of Cricket popped up on-screen, he blinked... the space-aug man was wearing some sort of headset as he sat behind the desk, completely covering his eyes and part of his forehead. "....Everything okay, Ambassador?"

  ~Getting another round of implants installed, so I'm blind at the moment. I've got good news, great news, and bad news. Naturally, we'll start with the bad news.~

  An abrupt nod. "Always the best policy."

  ~The Alliance has started up a program on multiple worlds, harvesting brain-chips and putting them into simulations, making them think its all real, for data extraction purposes. They've captured an unknown but extensive number of your people, and have been gathering data for over a year now. We have a program like that of our own we've used for some of the Alliance chips your people have captured, but, well. A thousand light-years away, slow turnaround and all that.~

  Adrian blinked. "Ahh, fuck. That explains a few things, we actually had one of our retrieval teams run into an ambush. How are they getting them out intact? We didn't know about this but have... means of frying ourselves in those cases."

  ~Training and tools, Prox. Training and tools. I'll pass over any data I can get. Which actually brings us to the good news.~

  "With a bombshell like that, I can use it."

  ~First of all... We've already paid out a bounty on your behalf, out of the escrow account, for 14 recovered ASU operatives whose brain-chips were in Alliance custody. It won't be the same as having them back physically, of course, but having them back and able to drive combat drones, fly ships... will still be good.~

  He nodded. Bittersweet. Some of those people would think that they'd died when their bodies did, and get depressed. Others would turn out okay. "Anyone I know?"

  ~You could say that.~

  A sudden snap... and a new figure appeared. Covered in a fine layer of blue hair rather than shaved down bald like he usually was, but immediately recognizable. "...Motherfucker. Tyler!? you died?"

  The figure blinked. ~Ahh... yes. Sorry? I was on a... wait. I need you to tell me something the Alliance wouldn't know. Prove this isn't a sim.~

  "Birthmark you said looked like a swastika. The reason aunt Joyce left you. Prove you're you."

  ~....Why'd it have to be that? It didn't really look like a swastika, and it wasn't a birthmark, it was actually an old stab wound. And... I slept with my nephew's girlfriend. She caught us.~

  Adrian turned back to cricket. "Get him off the line, please. I suppose that fucker being dead qualifies as good news, of a sort."

  The man vanished... and he sighed. "Okay. That recovery is... great news. What's the other bit?"

  Cricket looked at the void where his uncle had been standing moments before. ~...Well now. Didn't know about that. I just knew he was your uncle.~

  Adrian rubbed his forehead for a moment, shaking his head. His uncle always gave him a headache. Why would it stop when he was dead. "Okay. Well, was there other good news?"

  ~Yep. The other good news is that the person who rescued them... who also hates your uncle, by the way, because he shot her cat... was part of the Alliance project I mentioned, and would like to help the ASU setup exactly the same sort of operation with recovered brainchips, out here on the frontier... let you get actionable intelligence faster than we can.~

  A defector. It happened, all the time; a solid third of the Alliance didn't think being augmented made you a soul-less monster, which made operations in Alliance space much easier than they would be if the whole country were hardliners. "...Can we trust her?"

  ~She's being gene-tweaked right now, and we're getting her a new identity. So... if she tried to go back, she'd face slavery or death. I wouldn't bet the farm on her, but... definitely not a true believer. And they did try to kill her. So... purely coincidentally, I've got an offer for a mercenary contract, an ongoing one, for any data that can be pulled from Alliance minds. I'll forward it to you now.~

  This sounded too good to be true. He'd need to be cautious with her; but nothing wrong with letting her interrogate Alliance people. Just... best not to rely only on whatever she learned. "Would I be correct in assuming that it would be enough to pay for setting her up to setup these sims you're talking about?"

  ~That would certainly be possible.~

  "Alright. We'll be by to pickup my people. Once she's out, pass us the new girl's contact information. Obviously we'll need to offer her the job ourselves."

  ~Any progress we should know about on your side?~

  "Oh, good lord, yes. Those Alliance fuckers tried to get by our encirclement tactic by stretching a line of colonies out further into the frontier.... but never officially claimed them to avoid our attention before we could cut them off. The surveyors Corps just got a call to come out and survey the Libertine Pact... a set of three brand-new colonies, all of them which just happened to have a slave rebellion. You'll be getting a request for a mutual defense treaty from them alongside the surveyor paperwork."

  ~Standing policy of the United Worlds is to grant any request for a mutual defense treaty from any democratic state that guarantees the freedom of all of its people. I strongly suspect that I'll just be signing it the moment it arrives. Excellent work, Prox.~

  "It might take another century, but we'll get these Alliance fuckers. One way, or another."