On the outer Scutum Arm, dead west of the galactic core, a Siberia of empty space to the nearest Rusky base on the Norman Arm, sat Magadan, lonely and forlorn.
The Magadan base was a precarious foothold at best, so utterly far beyond the edges of the Chin Empire that they regarded its Rusky occupants as ignorant and crazy. Forty-five thousand light years from the galactic core, Magadan possessed the strategic value of absolute Kelvin, or about the IQ of the idiots who"d claimed it for Rusky in the first place. Inward along the broad arc of the Scutum Arm toward the Centaurus interior were the next major population centers belonging to the Chin. Usually the first stop for involuntary vacationers from Moskva, Magadan was infamous for the tight security of its perimeter and for the informati
