She's the most notorious bounty hunter in the Federation. Her predation of pirates, criminals, and New Hollywood executives have made her the nightmare bogeyman of any who dare to target the weak and helpless.

The Overone of the Fey fears her as the harbinger of mass resistance against its telepathic domination of enslaved species. She shoots first, and rarely asks questions.

She eats a kilogram of meat in a single sitting, and likes her tools oversized, overpowered, and crammed into tight packages. But none of that will help her this time.

Lisa might be adept at tracking down fugitives and winning firefights against entire crews of gun toting pirates, but this time the job is a criminal investigation. The case: the murder of an alien ambassador.

The stakes: the future of an entire colony. The bounty hunter: an amazonian introvert with a panoply of social anxieties and self-doubts, a sick certainty that the locale gendarmes would rather arrest her than solve the case, and an archive of ancient detective stories for inspiration.

It's a bad joke, and Lisa's about to get acquainted with an entire species of aquatic comedians. Excerpt"The Federation investigation team put their ship on hover above the ocean, and sent down a probe on a cable.

It went down. .

. oh, about three, maybe four kilometers.

. .

and then a giant tentacle grabbed it. "Lisa had munched on noodles and listened with interest, despite the headache from her injuries.

"It shook the probe like a rattle," Patrick had continued, while she ate. "Then it tied the cable in knots.

. .

and then. .

. " Patrick paused, frowning at the recollection.

"And then it gave the entire thing a sharp yank. " He snorted, shaking his head in wry amusement.

"Probably would have pulled the ship under, if they hadn't detached the cable. ""So what happened to the probe?" Lisa had asked.

"A couple of smaller Octopussies returned it. Dumped it on the docks like they were tossing out garbage.

""So that's what convinced everyone the Octopussies were sapient," Lisa mused. "Well, that and the knots in the line.

Perfect bowline on a bight. ".