Thorn studied the man across the table. Two years ago, he’d been one of the million or so viewers who’d watched him on the trid, leading a house-to-house through the crumbling streets of Tripoli. Colonel Steely Sam Hampton had made it to the top of the mercenary heap in that corpwar: leading his troops to win a 250-million nuyen settlement for EBMM against Mitsuhama and achieving the highest audience ratings in history on the battle channels. Now he was sitting in a sleazy dive negotiating a deal that might get him killed for a few thousand nuyen.