Previously...

 Three inept vriks who fulfil their impossibly well bankrolled lives by adopting silly names and recklessly endangering and killing innocent women under the guise of protecting them from great harm (which they hire) have decided that Professor Bernice Summerfield - renegade archaeologist, university lecturer, freelance time traveller and universal rescuer, divorcee, bar fly and all around sex on legs - is their latest damsel in need of rescuing.

 Benny was, needless to say, impressed. Had she been her friend Dorothee, or her one time would-be killer, Kadiatu, this story would have ended with the first chapter and several bodies.

 Unfortunately, it didn't.

 Even more unfortunately, more than the 12 groups of assassins hired by the three vriks are showing an interest in Benny. Some of them were hired by her sometimes employer and dubious 'friend', the unimaginably rich collector Irving Braxiatel - who absolutely does not, at all, ever, come from a world with orange skies and silver leaved trees in the Kasterboros system - to deliver then retrieve an unimaginably valuable dagger belonging to some long dead and improbably named religious group that was thought lost when nasty little blobs in bonded poly-carbite armour - who of course do not come from a world that may or may not have been destroyed or not destroyed by a renegade and very old piece of stellar manipulating technology that, of course, doesn't share a common origin with Irving - carpet bombed Irving's storage facility (the planet formally known as Neptune).

 Keeping right up there in the improbable, silly and legally dubious stakes are a - of course - dark and secretive cabal of people with improbably, silly and legally dubious non de plumes, who also seem to be showing an unhealthy - for Benny - interest in Benny's activities.

 So, having evaded paid and unpaid assassins - and the latter are always by far the most dangerous because it means they're a bit pissed off with you about something - intent on killing Benny and the three vriks, our heroine and her unwelcome entourage have ended up in a hole of a space port on a hole of a terraformed moon orbiting a hole of a planet. With them - having been sent along by Irving who seems to have rather sneakily and suddenly procured by unknown but probably dubious means an office in the university of Dellah - is one Doctor Bethany Robinson, who has nothing in common with Benny /AT/ all.

 Apart from being: female, sharing the same taste in clothes and accessories and hair styles, an employee of Dellah University, currently at the beck and call of Irving, /really/ enjoying her alcohol, complaining a lot, teaching students, having lots of papers that need marking and reports that need writing, not being adverse to shagging her students, and being stuck in the same hole because Irving wants his damn knife back but is being typically sneaky about it.

 Oh, yes. She and Benny - and the vriks, and two of Irving's pet assassins - are all currently surrounded by very nasty, very xenophobic, very heavily armed cybernetic tortises that aren't from Mars but are called Chelonians.

 And you thought you wouldn't miss much by skipping class.

 Well, you /did/ manage to miss all the really crap jokes, puns, fanwanky references and /really/ groanworthy nonsense. But fear not, there's more to come.

 Bet you're wishing you'd started reading an IA instead.

 "Oh good," says Benny in that precise way that says 'Oh bugger, I realised something nasty'. "Just one thing."

 "What is in /now/," Beth complains.

 "Who was Mr Raiph working for?"

 At that very moment the spaceport falls silent as fifty rather vicious-looking, two-tonne bipedal tortoise creatures, known as Chelonians, all armed with heavy shells and plaser cannons, burst into the arrival lounge and aim their weapons directly at Benny and friends.

 "Oh bugger," Bethany and Bernice say in unison.

 The Chelonians continue to point their vicious implements of painful demise at the hapless group.

 The hapless group - even the two viciously, highly trained and highly paid assassins - remain very still. No need to aggravate the 50 viciously highly trained, highly cybernetic galactic gardeners who see the vast majority of life as less than weevils.

 The Chelonians suddenly flicker and become bright purple with green go faster stripes.

 Then they de-rez altogether.

 A sharp squeal of pre-juvenile pain shatters the stillness. It draws everyones attention to the orange-haired toddler getting soundly cuffed by her father. The Home-Movie-O'Matic with which the cuffing is being done explains it all. Seeing everyone glaring at them, he grabs his daughter's ear and drags her away, being very impolite in the process.

 The group all turn back to regarding the pretty knife that has been so much trouble.

 "Well, thank goodness that's all over," Benny says, returning the hideously over-named dagger to the secret Stash-O'Matic pocket sewn into her jacket, a pocket normally reserved for smuggling inebriatingly potent alcohol into faculty meetings. "I'm off to get pissed before the next shuttle back to Dellah and St Oscars. Who's up?"

 "Honestly Summerfield!" Bethany exclaims in disgust. "Is alcohol your answer to everything?"

 "I'll take that as a no," she smiles winningly back, hooking her arm through that of the Deadly Assassin's. Despite the fact that he'd shot her some indeterminate but recent amount of time ago, and was of extremely medium /everything/, there wasn't actually anything going against him.

 "Oh I say, that sounds excellent!" Arthur grins.

 "You're /not/ invited," she says coldly, so coldly she can picture the icicles dripping off her words.

 Robin sniffles.

 Shrugging, Benny and Irving's two hired lackeys walk off towards the airport bar, leaving Beth and the three very rich kids of the Noble Chivalric Society to mill around.

 "We'd better follow her," Beth says, awkwardly putting an arm around Robin's shoulder - well, around the one that doesn't have Arthur's engaged in a similar comforting effort upon it. "No telling what she'll get up to without someone responsible."

 "Last time a trush a herstory profeshor," he slurs, making his way over to the urinal and making the appropriate fumbling motions. Pink Lemonade non-alcoholic. /Riiiggghhhhhhtt/.

 "Urine should only be green if you're Mr Spong," the darkly complexioned young man standing next to him remarks as he zips his pants and walks over to the basin.

 George just nods and washes his hands, then leans down to splash his face. As he does so, his dragontooth falls forward and out of his shirt, dangling down into the plastiformed basin.

 "Excuse me?" the young man says, stepping closer. "You wouldn't happen to be called George, Named for the Dragon, by any chance?"

 "Of coursh," George beams proudly. Obviously, tales of his heroic daring do have spread even to this dull little place.

 The punch, while unexpected and propelling George into the far wall, does have the beneficial side effect of making the accidental serial killer and would-be hero very instantly sober.

 "My name," the young man says, pulling a vibroshiv from a pouch on his utility belt, "is Sam Francisco. You killed my sister. Prepare to die."

 To Be Continued...