It happened right after we did a “fuel mission.” We got put on these jobs every so often; they involved rounding up a couple hundred people and carting them off in buses. The usual dodge was that we were evacuating the area because of a chemical leak.

I never had been sure what mass kidnapping had to do with fuel. I supposed that we held those people hostage until the government supplied us with fuel tankers as ransom.

Tasha and I worked together with a number of bot/human teams to round up all the residents of several blocks of houses in a small suburb. I dressed in my police uniform and herded the men, women, and children into “evacuation buses” with my brightest, reassuring smile.

After the roundup was over, speaking of fuel, Tasha declared her fuel gauge was getting low—so we decided to stop in at the Marauder refueling base ourselves.

And I had noticed something interesting in the base’s profile—it housed the Lorduns’ main metallurgical research lab. That had to mean I would get to see Phil again!