Her words stung like gas-hail slashing down upon Pluto. Jarl felt his breath quicken. "Who are you, to talk of the outlaw worlds and their plunder?" he lashed back at her fiercely. "What of your father's own fleet; your thrice-cursed Federation?"
The girl blazed. "The Federation brings order!"
"And what is your order but another name for plunder—the great planets' power to take what they choose from the lesser?" Jarl choked on his anger. "To you, I'm a pirate, because men like me sweep the void in our own raider ships to keep our people from starving. What else can we do, living on these barren rocks in the Belt, charred fragments of worlds that should never have been colonized? But your father—with no right on his side but the Federation fleet's might, he's named high commissioner—sent out to tear even our bleak asteroids from us by conquest—"
"Jarl—!" burst out Ungo.
"I'm coming!" Jarl towered over Ylana. "Get ready!"
The girl sat up in her bed. Her fists gripped the covers. "I warn you, Jarl Corvett: You'll curse the day that you took me—"
"Because of your father?" Jarl laughed, short and curt. "I'll still chance it."
"No." The girl's grey eyes seethed, dark and dangerous. "Because of me, Ylana rey Gundre! Because I'll see you and your men die in torment, a thousand times worse than the flame-death at Horla—"
"I'll chance that, too." Jarl jerked back the covers.