After Jesper had vanished in one of the tents not to come out again, it became quiet inside the camp. Vera was sorry for that. She wouldn't have minded some company. Only Sykes came over to her, not saying anything, but with an evil growl. Vera was afraid she would do what she hat threatened her with before, or worse, stick a knife into her. But none of that happened - Sykes merely checked if the ropes around Vera's hands and feet were still tied tightly. Satisfied she nodded and went back to the campfire without saying one word.

Since time was passing very slowly for Vera and she became very tired, no matter the circumstances, she could at least try to find some sleep. She rolled around, headed for the blanket Jesper had brought her, and accomplished somehow - she didn't even know how afterwards - to cover herself with it. It was getting cold out here, and although the blanket reeked unpleasently of Whitmore, it did help. With her head rested on the backpack Vera closed her eyes.

She couldn't sleep. It was no wonder, though. Beside the rope being wound so tighlty around her wrists that it literally dug into her flesh, and her shoulders starting to hurt due to this unnatural pose, it was the tension that kept her awake. It was like Tammy once told her: It was not excitement like in an amusement park. It was the uncertainty of what would become of her and whether she would make it out of here alive. According to Whitmore's and Sykes' behavior she probably wouldn't. But since Johnson was in charge... She wasn't certain at all.

The next hours, or at least that was what it felt like to her, she had nothing better to do than to go through her options in her mind. Just to come to the conclusion that there were none. Still, while she was lying there, with her eyes closed and her breath going demonstratively calm just to make it believable to the criminals that she was indeed asleep, she noticed that one of them tramped over to her, but returned to the fire after a few seconds. Those heavy steps gave away what Vera could have guessed from the stench alone, that it had been Whitmore. The fire was quietly crackling in some distance, and in a normal situation she would have understood nothing that the scoundrels were talking about. But Vera had a good sense of hearing - while she pretended to be asleep on the outside she focused with all her might on listening in.

"Well?" That was Johnsons calm, modulated voice. It was barely hearable over the crackling of the fire. In clear contrast to that she would have heard Whitmore's bellowing answer even from another mile away: "Like a log."

"I think your nephew has the hots for this monkey." Sykes also was very easy to understand, but rather due to her penetrating and unbearable voice than to her volume. Now Vera was absolutely sure that she hated children.

"That's not gonna be a problem, is it?" Johnson asked with a lurking undertone sending a shiver down Vera's spine.

Whitmore snorted. "He knows what's in for him when he does something stupid" he replied. "Then I'll rip his head off."

"Now what are you going to do with her?" Sykes wanted to know. Judging by her tone she had exact notions about what should happen to Vera.

"That's not your business, Sykes" Johnson responded with pungency in his voice. "And for fuck's sake, stop putting this crap into you before you lose it, or I will have to gun you down!"

"Whitmore's boozing is no better" Sykes grumbled, but way more sheepishly than before. Vera was impressed. Johnson used few words, but he had his two henchpeople fully under control.

That last comment though didn't suit Whitmore at all. "Yes, it is, cause I'm not going completely stupid from it."

Sykes let out a shrieking, derisive laughter. "Oh really?"

"Enough!" Johnsons yell went like the blade of a knife between them. Vera flinched involuntarily. Then she held her breath to hear whether they had noticed it. But the three of them were to busy with themselves. "Sykes, keep your hands of the Clocdrazyn, and Whitmore, I'm not fond of your drinking either. We're not out for a picnic here."

The other two went silent over this. Until Whitmore talked again: "Then I don't see why we just don't get rid of this gal."

"Because we have an agreement" Johnson explained - more calmly, but with noticable tension in his voice. Vera wondered how long it would take until he pulled out his laser and shot one of the two. "And we will keep our end of it. As long as she's not causing any trouble I don't see any reason to risk it."

Sykes kept grumbling to herself before she spoke up again: "Sometimes I wonder if it's worth all that trouble. I mean, we land on planet Children's Paradise, and first thing is we run into some little pain in the neck disrupting our entire plan. And we aren't even allowed to kill her?"

Vera kept her mouth shut with all her might, so she wouldn't give herself away by the shout she was about to utter. Don't call me little!, she yelled in her mind at Sykes. "She's not disrutping anything" Johnson countered. "If it's true what she said, and she has simply run away from home, then it doesn't matter that she is here. After all we can see to it that she doesn't bother us. And when we have found what we are looking for we can get out of here before she'll be able to tell anyone what happened here."

"Why do you care so much about what happens to her?" Sykes asked puzzled. "Usually you're not that squeamish, deal or no deal."

Johnson remained silent for a while. "Not my idea" he then explained, and he seemed to be peevish. "Foster came up with this condition. Otherwise he could blow this whole thing wide open."

Whitmore whistled between his teeth. "Quite the big mouth on someone expecting a big paycheck from this whole thing."

"That's the deal, and we will keep it" Johnson said decisively. "You got a problem with that, then you can make it like the girl and disappear somewhere in the wild. But until we have the booty, we will stick to the plan." A short moment there was silence until Johnson raised his voice again: "Damn it, Sykes, leave that stuff alone!"

"All right" Sykes caved in. Apparently she did so also concerning that stuff she was taking all the time. How did Johnson call it? Clocdrazyn? Vera had never heard of that before. But that might explain why Sykes was behaving so strangely. "You haven't told us yet what's in it when we deliver. What did your client say to it?"

"The client offered twenty thousand" Johnson answered. He sounded very pleased telling them this. "For each. If there is an extraordinary big and pure stone with it, he will even go up to thirty grands. That should be more than enough for us and for Foster."

"If we can find them" Whitmore gave cause for concern. But his leader didn't share his pessimism.

"Don't worry, we'll find them" Johnson put his mind at easy. "The tunnels go further than I had expected, but I have a plan to locate them. At dawn we will depart. Whitmore, you will put your nephew to some use this time. Sykes, you know what we discussed."

"What about her?" Vera couldn't see whom Whitmore was referring to, but it could only be herself. "Leave her or take her with us?"

"I'll decide at dawn" Johnson returned. "Until then you see to it that nothing happens to her. And I mean neither good nor bad. Got that?"

"Got it" Whitmore mumbled.

"Twenty thousand..." That came out of Sykes, and even her penetrating voice was only a whisper now. Still Vera could hear her well. "You never mentioned that it would pay of that well."

"I didn't know either" Johnson defended himself. "Only when I had talked to the client I knew it. To be honest, I have no clue why these stones are supposed to be that valuable, and I don't care either. Even if there is something about those rumors that they contain some sort of magic... ach, it's all nonsense anyway."

"Right!" Whitmore confirmed. "With payment that good we don't have to care about the rest."

"But we can't stay here forever to look for them" Sykes said. "Should the security forces on this planet find out that we're here..."

"That's what Foster has taken care of" Johnson cut her off. "That is why you won't harm one hair on that girl's head until I say so. And just to make it perfectly clear to both of you: You don't need to know every detail of this plan. As long as you do your job in it, you can leave the rest to me."

Vera rememberd in this moment having listened to a similar discussion at the academy. Back then a mercenary group had started an inside quarrel while she was standing right in front of them as victim in her bomb vest. The leader of that group had shown a very similar behavior, expecting his people to be completely obedient. Just that his deputy didn't agree to it at all, but all of a sudden had smashed his fist into the leader's face during the exchange. Although, it had not come completely out of nowhere, as Igor later on had explained to her - the words the two had exchanged in advance had predicted it. One thing led to another, and while the two mercenaries were still brawling, the first shots were fired. On that day the vest had not exploded - but the entire mercenary team had gone down. They were gunned down by their own weapons - having fired upon each other while totally ignoring Vera and her two "captors".

Much later Vera came to understand that this group had never worked together before and would never do so again. A lot of mercenaries didn't care for much else than themselves - they worked in groups when they thought it would give them an advantage, but only few of them considered more than their own interest and were ready to blindly follow anyone. A leader who achieved to gather the most diverse mercenaries under his command and gained their unconditional loyalty had to be extremely convincing. Or the group had been together for so long that each member knew of the other's abilities.

One of those things had to go with Johnson, because on his last words the discussion was over. And Vera began to feel a little safer again. There was a reason for Johnson to keep her alive, and he would enforce it upon the others. And whoever this Foster person was they were talking about - he didn't seem to be such a bad guy if he had set the condition that she stayed alive. Although, when she thought about it, she was surprised. How would Foster be able to know that she was here? That was outright impossible! And if this was the general rule that children should not be harmed, then Vera had to agree with Whitmore: Why did Foster care about that, whoever he was?

The chats went on, but turned to more trivial topics. Sykes thought out loud what she would do with her share. Whitmore let out a belch, making Vera grimacing in disgust, but no one noticed. Johnson eventually stood up and slowly walked over to Vera - she could hear it. Even his steps sounded like under control, like he planned each one of them carefully. A few yards of her he stopped. Her heartbeat went faster. She was afraid he might find her out. She kept her eyes closed, breathing quietly and regularly. Johnson said nothing. After a few more heartbeats she could hear him turn around and walk back to the camp.

"See you at dawn" he said to the others. "Whitmore, you keep watch. I won't have any more surprises tonight."

"Sure thing" Whitmore answered, belching again. Sykes apparently retreated to her tent as well. All that remained was a campfire quietly crackling away in the night, with Whitmore near it who took a hearable gulp out of his bottle. And Vera, lying helplessly in the darkness, fortunately far enough away so she didn't have to endure his presence.

Some time later when everything went quiet enough for her to gather her thoughts Vera realized how revealing it was what she had heard. Not only did she know now what the three were doing here - there was a lot of money at stake, and someone else was involved, pulling the strings from behind the curtain. Or at least supporting them. No one knew of these people being here or of their plans. It was likely that the tunnels Johnson had spoken of were equally unknown. And they had not expected some like Vera to suddenly turn up. If the shuttle had not crashed...

With a shock Vera grasped that the shuttle crash had been no accident! The impacts she had felt in the shuttle had to have been weapons' fire. When she had started the scan to find that energy source she had discovered before... If Johnson was afraid that someone might find him and his gang, he would have taken precautions to prevent that. The scan had to have triggered this mysterious wepon that had shot them down. She had triggered it. She had convinced Tammy to follow up on this lead. She was to blame for everything.

No!, she thought gloomily. Not my fault! It had been Johnson. Or maybe one of his people, but one of them had set up this trap. Without the trap Vera would have long returned home, had delivered her report to the academy and would have been paid 350 credits, and she would not have cared about some soldiers of fortune doing something in the middle of nowhere. Whatever happened here, and whatever else Vera would have to go through, these three had brought it upon her. They were criminals and fully aware of that fact. For what had happened to Tammy they deserved to be beaten. But Vera felt even more that they had to be stopped.

No one else but her could do it, though. Just that she had to be free first. Her fingers had gone completely numb, and she twitched her shoulders beneath the blanket without it getting her anywhere. Take it step by step, she told herself silently. Get out! Then get away! Then get even! One thing was for sure: This would be a really tough job.

And one badly paid for, too.