nd a cure; according to their
medical people, it caused permanent physical changes. That was fine
with Cortin. She'd put a lot of time and effort working for the social
changes the plague had made necessary; she had no particular desire to
have that work wasted, and she wanted even less for her Family and
herself to go back to their pre-plague selves.

To Cortin's amusement, when Conley was introduced to the rest of the
Family she developed an almost instant crush on Tony Degas, the most
classically handsome of the Family men. That, since Degas enjoyed the
attention, kept them both busy while Cortin was working, and often
afterward.

There were only two untoward incidents during the three weeks before
Medart's arrival. The first was the arrival of a prisoner for
execution, which wasn't at all unusual in itself--but the interrogation
report she got with him didn't feel right, and the prisoner had been
muted, which, with the other, could mean someone didn't want her
questioning him. She didn't normally do that with execution
subjects--they'd been questioned and sentenced before coming to
her--but she decided to delay executing this one until Medart arrived.
Mike said the Empire had something called a mind-probe, and thought it
likely a battle cruiser would have one, unlike a scout; with that, she
should be able to question the prisoner and get responsive answers.

The other was an attack on half a dozen Imperials and two Strike Force
troopers on the way back from town, by twice that many Brothers of
Freedom. There were casualties on both sides, but to Cortin's
unconcealed delight, no fatalities on either. She left interrogation
of all but the leader to the Detention Center's staff of Inquisitors,
since they were unlikely to be either knowledgeable or particularly
difficult to break. Even the leader wasn't too promising, given the
Brotherhood's secretiveness, but Cortin took him anyway; these
Imperials were her responsibility, and she wanted to personally punish
the one in charge of harming them.

And she did get some useful information from him. The Brotherhood's
still-anonymous new leader was no fonder of the Empire than she was,
but instead of bowing to the inevitable and making the best of it, he
vowed to destroy all he could. Killing Imperials was to take priority
even over killing Strike Force members, including Cortin the Bitch
herself. When Cortin passed that information along and it reached the
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