The image of Mele Darcy on Commander Rob Geary’s display had taken only a second traveling at the speed of light to reach the destroyer Saber where the ship rested in the repair dock at Glenlyon’s orbital facility. Rob studied Mele as she talked, marveling at the way she could act and speak so calmly and coolly even after what she’d just witnessed and experienced. He knew Mele better than anyone else on Glenlyon, but even Rob couldn’t be sure whether she was really that composed inside or if she was bottling it all up until it could be released in a night of drinking.
“The truck apparently tried to drive on through the gate when the sentries ordered it to stop for inspection,” Mele told him. “Automated barriers stopped the truck, but then it blew up. Improvised explosives, but a lot of them, and very well screened from the sensors in the gate and along the road. The ground forces lost thirty men and women, including both sentries at the gate. Their base took some damage, but nothing like what would have happened if that truck had reached the main buildings before exploding. Colonel Menziwa is all right, but mad as hell.”
“That sounds like a professional job,” Rob said. “Not the work of amateur terrorists.”
“Whoever did it was well trained. It looks like Old Earth is deporting its professional saboteurs to the stars. I guess the mother world is glad to have some distant places to dump all of its problems.” Mele paused, her eyes clouded with thought. “Why didn’t those saboteurs try to take out Saber and my Marines at the same time as they hit the ground forces base? Why warn us with one attack on one target?”
“Maybe they intended to hit Saber,” Rob said. “One of the shuttles up here was taken off-line this morning when a systems check showed something odd in the autopilot software. When the autopilot was isolated and our code monkeys started a close look, whatever was in there ran a suicide subroutine that wiped the system clean.”
“Software suicide?” Mele nodded. “What would’ve happened if that shuttle had suddenly gone to full autopilot, and then accelerated at Saber?”
“If the pilot aboard didn’t manage to disable the autopilot in time, Saber would’ve been badly damaged,” Rob said. “There’s a chance it would’ve aimed at the facility, though. The enemy might have heard about the role you and your Marines played in stopping them at Kosatka.”
Mele shrugged, as she usually did when someone tried to make a big deal out of her fight aboard Kosatka’s orbital facility. “I think it would’ve gone after Saber. My guess is they still want to take Glenlyon’s orbital facility intact, so they’re willing to kill Marines one at a time to do that. But when it comes to you and Saber, I think they’ll do all they can to blow you both to hell. Be careful, boss.”
“Understood. They might be targeting you, personally, as well. Maybe they sent in that truck because they heard you were at the ground forces headquarters.”
“I’m not that special,” Mele said. “But I’m keeping my eyes out, and acting unpredictably. You know how good I am at the unpredictable thing.”
“That’s true. Still, I’m glad they didn’t get you in that blast.” Rob heard his voice waver a bit on the last words. “You care about them too much,” his wife’s voice sounded in his memory. “You can’t afford to let it hurt you so badly when they die, because that’s the business you’re in. But you can’t change that about yourself, can you?”
Instead of showing any reaction to Rob’s inadvertent display of emotion, Mele grinned. “Heaven won’t take me and hell doesn’t want me.”
“That I can believe. How long until you’re back up here?”
“As soon as they clear shuttles to lift again.”
Rob Geary grimaced, and forwarded the message to his executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Vicki Shen. There wasn’t anything else he could do.
Rob sat in the captain’s stateroom, a grand name for a compartment about the size of a large closet in a building on the surface of a planet. In addition to being captain of Saber, he was also the Commodore in charge of all of Glenlyon’s space defenses. Since those defenses consisted solely of Saber, and the small force of Marines commanded by Mele Darcy, the Commodore title was also a grand name for something fairly small in reality.
Victory at Kosatka had come at a price for Saber. The damage was still being repaired, even though the worst of it had been fixed. Trained personnel would have been harder to replace than equipment, if not for the survivors from Saber’s sister ship Claymore. Plenty of those experienced men and women had been eager to join Saber’s crew, most of them motivated by a desire to avenge shipmates lost in the destruction of Claymore.
“We can replace the people we lost in terms of skills,” Rob had explained to his wife Lyn. He rarely called her by that name, since Lyn much preferred her professional software engineer nickname Ninja. “But it’s a lot harder to replace the people as people. Those men and women we lost are gone, and every time I see one of the replacements I remember the people they replaced.”
And Ninja, knowing that there were no words adequate to the need, would simply hold him until the darkness inside him faded.
The blare of an alarm shocked Rob out of his reverie. His desk display lit up, revealing an emergency alert. After an agonizing couple of seconds, the image of Council President Chisholm appeared. She had a grim set to her mouth, slightly tousled hair, and a red scrape along one cheekbone. “I am making this announcement in person to ensure that everyone knows the assassination attempt against me that took place a few minutes ago did not succeed thanks to the efforts of my bodyguards. The alleged attacker has been captured, and will be questioned. Rest assured that the government of Glenlyon remains strong and stable. Our enemies will not triumph. We will not fail.”
Rob smiled as Lieutenant Commander Vicki Shen ran up to the stateroom hatch. “What do you want to bet Chisholm left that scrape untended until after she made that broadcast?” he said.
Shen raised her eyebrows at him. “Do you think she faked it?”
“No. Not for one moment. But our president knows how important image is.” A soft ding announced the arrival of a high-priority message. Rob tapped “receive,” reading rapidly. A tasking order for the Marines, sent to him because he was in overall command of them. “Like Chisholm said, they caught the would-be assassin alive.”
“A Red.” Shen, bending slightly to read Rob’s display, didn’t sound surprised. “Mars must have an inexhaustible supply of thugs and murderers for hire. Why do they want Corporal Oshiro to assist in interrogating the killer?”
Rob frowned in thought, tapping in a command that brought up a list of Mele’s Marines to help jog his memory. “Oh. Yuri Oshiro. He came from Mars, too.”
“One of our Marines is a Red?”
Shen looked ready to say more, so Rob forestalled her. “Mele and Gunnery Sergeant Moon approved Oshiro joining. It’s possible for me to imagine someone fooling one of those two. I can’t believe anyone could fool both of them.” Since Mele was still down on the planet, he tapped the command to call the Gunnery Sergeant, and wasn’t surprised when the call was answered almost instantly. “Gunny, Corporal Oshiro’s virtual presence is desired for the interrogation of President Chisholm’s would-be assassin. Here’s the link. Set that up, and let Captain Darcy know when she gets back.”
“Yes, sir,” Moon said, somehow appearing to look simultaneously both calm and alert for danger. “Do you know anything specific they want from Oshiro?”
Rob checked the message again. “The prisoner has gang tattoos. Torquas?”
Sergeant Moon nodded. “One of the three big gangs on Mars. Oshiro was a Thark before he got off the planet, so he might know what buttons to push on the Torquas guy.”
Vicki Shen leaned closer so that Moon could see her. “What was Corporal Oshiro’s position in that gang?”
“He was a Calot, ma’am. Entry-level strong arm. But instead of trying to get a spot on an enforcement team, he went for a low-prestige, low-chance-of-promotion assignment guarding warehouses.” Moon grinned. “Because he was smart enough to know that’d let him get to know the people running the shuttles smuggling goods, so he could work out an escape from Mars.”
“And keep his hands clean until he did get off-world?” Rob asked.
“Yes, sir. Believe me, we screened Yuri Oshiro so thoroughly that we could’ve spotted if his mother ever told a lie.” Moon gave them both a reassuring smile. “Marines are rarely recruited from the ranks of angels, but it doesn’t matter what they were before. We make ’em Marines, and then they’re all equal. Well, equal to other Marines, that is.”
Rob returned the smile. “Thank you, Gunnery Sergeant. Go ahead with setting up the link so Oshiro can assist in the interrogation, and either you or Captain Darcy let me know if there are any problems or concerns.”
The call ended, Rob looked at Vicki Shen, who shook her head.
“It’s hard to trust a Red,” she said. “But the crews of the warships ranged against us include men and women hired from former Earth Fleet personnel. Just like me. You’d have every reason not to trust me, wouldn’t you?”
“That’s what happened to Danielle Martel,” Rob said. “She died fighting for Glenlyon, and even that didn’t satisfy some people.”
“Like President Chisholm?”
“President Chisholm,” Rob said, choosing his words carefully, “took a while to make up her mind about Danielle. But she’s ordered that Lieutenant Martel’s name be included in the official histories. If you haven’t figured this out about Glenlyon’s president, she’s both smart and determined. Smart enough to know that ethical behavior, treating people right, pays off in the long run. She’ll make compromises when she thinks it’s necessary, but I’m still in command of Saber because President Chisholm made the decision to overrule everyone who wanted to fire me for leaving Glenlyon undefended while we saved Kosatka.”
“That’s true,” Vicki Shen said, smiling. “It’s her fault I’m not in command of Saber!”
“Yeah. She owes you one.” Rob glanced at his display, shifting to a wide view of the entire star system. “I wonder what’s next? At Kosatka, they followed up their other attacks with a big strike.”
“Hopefully they can’t swing a big strike after their losses at Kosatka.” Shen paused, her expression sober. “But even if they can’t launch another invasion of Kosatka right away, they might have enough to hit us hard.”
“See if we can get those final repairs done a little faster. If those terrorist attacks were a precursor to something else, we might need Saber at one hundred percent a lot sooner than we’d hoped.”
Less than two hours later, Rob winced as another alarm sounded, this one from Saber’s own sensors. He stared at his display as more information accumulated from the sensors aboard both the ship and the orbital facility. “Damn.”
As commander of Glenlyon’s space forces he had a special link, direct to President Chisholm. Rob tapped the link and waited.
Chisholm’s image appeared in a small box on one corner of his display. “What is it?”
“We’ve got company. About four and a half hours ago, two enemy warships arrived at the jump point from Jatayu.”
“Two?” Chisholm paused, her expression fixed, but thoughts swirling behind her eyes. “You can hold off two, can’t you?”
“If it was two destroyers like Saber, maybe,” Rob said. “But one of the enemy ships is a light cruiser.”
“A light cruiser?” Chisholm sighed. Rob noticed the background of her image. She was out in the open somewhere. He spotted the corner of a familiar-looking building, and realized she was visiting the ground forces headquarters in a show of support and resolve. “They’re planning to bombard us. How much damage can they do?”
“If they have concentrated targets, a lot of damage. The bombardment projectiles will destroy anything they hit. But they can’t do wide-area damage, so they’ll aim for targets such as critical manufacturing sites, government offices, and groups of military forces. I’ll do everything I can to disrupt their actions,” Rob said.
“Disrupt. You can’t stop it?”
“Barring a miracle, no. Not against those odds.” Another alarm sounded. Rob watched a third symbol appear, that of a freighter, more data scrolling into place next to it. “A freighter arrived on the heels of the warships. It’s modified to carry a lot of people.”
“A troop carrier?” President Chisholm frowned. “Only one?”
“No more have shown up yet,” Rob said.
“They used, what, a dozen troop ships to invade Kosatka?”
“Roughly, yes. One modified troop carrier can’t be loaded with nearly enough soldiers to capture Glenlyon, even if both of the warships bombard the planet to support them.” Rob paused. “Oh, hell. I know what they’re planning. They want to eliminate Saber, and any chance that Glenlyon will interfere when they strike at Kosatka again. They want to force us to engage with them by threatening to eliminate our means to support a warship.”
Chisholm’s eyes widened. “The orbital facility. They’re planning to capture it.”
“Yes, I think so.” Rob studied the images on his display of the enemy ships more than four billion kilometers from Saber. Empty space offered no obstacles to visual sensors that could spot objects even across such immense distances, though even they were limited by the speed of light. The images that Rob could see were of where those ships had been four hours ago. “With warships to provide support fire, there should be enough soldiers on that freighter to overwhelm any defenders of our orbital facility.”
“Captain Darcy and her Marines saved Kosatka’s orbital facility!”
“The situation wasn’t the same,” Rob said.
“You’re right. Darcy only had six Marines at Kosatka.” Chisholm nodded to Rob, her expression as hard as steel. “We can’t afford to lose Glenlyon’s link with space, Commander Geary. We will repel this attack, both the warships and any soldiers sent to capture the orbital facility.”
“Those are my orders?” Rob said, feeling a heavy weight settling in his gut. “I’ll do my best, but the price we’ll pay is sure to be a high one.”
Chisholm paused. Geary had to give her credit for that. She’d had a lot more experience in the last few years with sending people into life-or-death situations, and hadn’t become jaded about what that meant. “Those are your orders,” Chisholm finally said. “Regardless of the cost. You know why I have to demand that of you and the other defenders of Glenlyon. Commander Geary, you’re to assume immediate command of everyone and everything on the orbital facility under terms of the planetary emergency authority. Evacuate everyone who won’t be contributing to the defense of the facility and to keeping Saber able to fight. How long do we have until those enemy ships reach us?”
“We don’t know yet what velocity they’ll accelerate to, but the freighter is going to slow them down. It’ll probably be ten days before they get here.”
“Ten days. All right. Let me know what you need. Glenlyon is counting on you, Commander.”
“I understand.” The call ended, Rob sat, slumping in his seat, trying not to let despair overwhelm him. What I need is an entire squadron of destroyers, and a couple of light cruisers. Hell, as long as I’m wishing, how about some heavy cruisers, and a thousand Marines?
I don’t know any way to win this. But I have to act and speak as if there is hope, because if the crew sees me despondent they’ll lose hope, and our defeat will be quick and certain.
“Captain?” Lieutenant Commander Shen stood in the hatch to his stateroom, gazing at him with a somber expression. “I saw the new arrivals. What’s the word for us?”
“Fight to the death to stop this attack,” Rob said, straightening from his slouch. With Shen he could be candid, but he still didn’t want to project despair.
Vicki Shen closed her eyes, took a slow breath, and then shrugged. “Fine. Our orders suck, but at least they make sense.”
“Yeah.”
“Where the hell did they get a light cruiser?”
Rob grimaced. “It’s a Leader Class ship. So they got it from Earth Fleet.”
“Decommissioned and disposed of as surplus,” Shen added, her bitter gaze fixed on Rob’s display. “Sold cheap to warlords many light years from Earth, so no one there has to feel guilty about fueling wars on the far frontiers.”
“You’ll have to let me know everything you can about Leader Class ships. Anything that might help us in a fight with one.” He paused, thinking. “If Leigh Camagan can make it to Old Earth, she’ll get us at least one light cruiser as well.”
“It’ll take her months, and months more for the trip back here,” Shen said. “How are we going to cope with this threat we’re facing now?”
“I don’t know.”
“We can’t beat those odds, sir.”
“Not in any way I know of,” Rob agreed. “But we’re going to go down fighting.”
Being commodore in charge of space defenses and being captain of the Saber had been more than enough work for Rob. Having control of the entire orbital facility handed to him could’ve been overwhelming.
Fortunately, he knew most of the important people on the facility from his years working in charge of the space dock. The officers in charge of Life Support and Structure Maintenance. The people running the space dock, who’d once worked for him. The warehouse managers. The company officials in charge of enterprises ranging from variable gravity manufacturing to nanomechs to the meager offerings of the small food court. The head of the station’s school for the children in the families that lived up here. The local civilian representative of Glenlyon’s government. Orbital facilities weren’t ships. Once they were positioned near something, they tended to stay in about the same orbits. But they needed many of the same specialists as ships did, while also serving as the equivalent of small towns, bigger towns, and, in places like Old Earth and the Old Colonies, massive structures that could be considered cities in space.
Rob knew which of those people he needed to talk to. He also knew how to delegate, a task made easier since most of the people he talked to had to be given the same orders to carry out. Identify those critical to the operation of the facility, those who couldn’t be spared until the last minute. Prepare everyone else for immediate evacuation down to the planet. Make sure families went first. Provide lists of anything that might help in defense of the facility. Get everything else that could be moved in the time available down to the surface. Request civilian volunteers with critical skills to stay on the station right up until the fighting started in order to keep things working as long as possible.
Once Mele Darcy had arrived at the facility, he put her in charge of planning and organizing the defenses, as well as maintaining order and commanding all security personnel. Since she’d run the facility’s small police force for years Rob knew Mele could get that done without his worrying about any of it.
Messages started coming in from the planet below, where the government had begun the same process in the towns and one city that made up the human presence on the surface of that world. So far warships owned by Apulu, Scatha, or Turan hadn’t been caught carrying out indiscriminate bombardment of towns and cities. They’d used the sort of small projectiles dropped from orbit that could annihilate whatever they hit, but weren’t big enough to cause widespread damage. No one was supposed to use large projectiles that created massive destruction and could turn an entire city into a crater. Those sorts of weaponized meteors had done enough havoc at a few places on Old Earth to scare even violence-prone humanity enough to ban such weapons.
But legally banning something wasn’t the same as getting rid of it. Someone had used weapons almost that bad at one settled world, employing an old Warrior Class destroyer, and just who had been responsible was never determined. As unthinkable as such an atrocity should be, Rob knew why the government had to consider the chance it might happen.
And Rob knew that in part the government had to think about it because as commander of space defenses he was supposed to prevent such a thing from happening, and could not. The guilt tore at him as he viewed the images from the planet below, a distraction when he needed to focus on what was happening and what needed to be done.
Vehicles were being mobilized, anything that could move overland and carry any people or cargo. Warehouses were being emptied out, and food supplies dispersed into the forests that would hinder any attempts to spot targets from orbit. News reports showed people preparing to evacuate, most looking worried. Rob wondered how long it would be before their resolve to stay free withered under hardship. The Glenlyon Homeland Party that advocated “necessary compromises” with Apulu, Scatha, and Turan had been growing in support despite widespread rumors that it was being secretly funded by those enemy star systems. Would this give another boost to that group by bringing home the cost of continuing to resist a takeover?
Or would the resolve to keep fighting strengthen? From what he knew of Old Earth’s history, people were often pretty irrational when attacked and bombarded. Instead of giving in, they became more determined to keep fighting.
But being determined to fight and succeeding in that fight could be two very different things.
Rob finally tore himself away from his other responsibilities to hasten through the facility to his living quarters.
He found Ninja sitting in front of her work screens, their daughter Dani, who only answered to Little Ninja, playing nearby. “Hey, sailor,” Ninja greeted him.
Rob didn’t waste time he didn’t have. “The government has ordered—”
“I know,” Ninja said, waving one hand at her displays. “It’s still way too easy to crack into the government’s comm systems.”
“Why aren’t you getting ready to go?”
She threw a flat look at him. “I’m essential personnel.”
“This isn’t the time to—!”
“Yes, it is!” Both noticed Little Ninja staring and lowered their voices. “I was in Alfar’s fleet, Rob,” Ninja continued. “Before you helped kick me out, remember? I can see what we’re facing and I know what that means. Your chances of stopping those guys with Saber are pretty much zero, right?”
“Yeah,” Rob admitted, feeling his guts tighten again.
“We have to even the odds, and the only additional weapon you have to do that with is me.”
He shook his head. “I know you’re the best hacker in this star system—”
“I’m the best anywhere.”
“Fine. It’s still long odds that you’ll be able to crack into the enemy systems. They’ve been strengthening those ever since you helped us capture Squall.”
She surprised him with a smile. “Oh, Rob, you still have no idea what I can do when I’m properly motivated.”
Frustrated, Rob pointed to her swollen abdomen. “You’re not much more than a month away from being due. And what about Little Ninja?”
“I can do a lot in a month. And the Parentis can take Little Ninja down with them. Sort of an extended sleepover for her with their daughter.” She said it lightly, as if it were no big deal to send their daughter down to the planet without either of them while enemy warships approached, but Rob saw the fear Ninja was trying to hide.
He felt that same fear, magnified by his failed responsibility for preventing such things. “I don’t have time—” Rob began, trying not to sound angry.
“Then why are you wasting time on an argument with me that you know you can’t win?” The unspoken message behind her words couldn’t be clearer. Ninja hated this, too, and didn’t want to debate it. But she wouldn’t give in.
He gazed at her, knowing who he’d married, grateful for that, but also at the moment extremely aggravated by his fears for her and their daughter. “I guess we’re going to fight this battle together.”
“Damn right we are. Get back to work. I’ll let you know when Little Ninja is heading off on her long-term playdate so you can help send her off.” Ninja let her facade drop for a moment, worry openly flashing in her eyes as she gazed at him. “Don’t be a hero.”
“You’re telling me that? When you won’t evacuate to the surface?”
“I’ll go when they’re getting close,” Ninja conceded. “Mele already told me if I didn’t she’d personally drag me onto the last shuttle down. Little Ninja won’t be alone down there for very long.”
Relieved, Rob headed back to Saber, wishing that Leigh Camagan had left months ago, and hoping that she was still all right.
There wasn’t any way he knew of that Leigh could bring help in time to save him. But maybe she’d be able to bring help to someday avenge him and the others who’d very likely soon die trying to defend Glenlyon.
Lochan Nakamura nerved himself to walk onto a waiting shuttle at Eire’s orbital facility. After the assassination attempts and the security officer’s concerns about sabotage to shuttles, Lochan wasn’t feeling particularly secure. Even worse, memories of the shuttle crash that he and Carmen had endured when first arriving at Kosatka kept jostling to the front of his mind.
“Nervous?” Freya Morgan asked Lochan as he strapped into his seat on the shuttle. They along with Leigh Camagan were the only ones in the passenger compartment, but none felt any urge to spread out, instead sitting close together.
“Yes,” Lochan admitted.
“So am I. But the nice thing about shuttles is that if something goes seriously wrong we’ll probably be dead before we have time to realize we’re in trouble.” Freya paused. “That’s not really reassuring, is it?”
“Sometimes shuttles crash,” Lochan said, gazing around the rows of empty seats. “That can take a while.”
She eyed him curiously. “Are you speaking from experience?”
“Yes.”
“Damn. And you still in one piece and all. You’ll have to tell me about that.”
Lochan forced a smile. “I will, if you’ll tell me something. Why’d your father disown you?”
Freya frowned. “That’s a personal question.”
“I know,” Lochan said. “But it bears on my mission, doesn’t it? If I’m to get help from Eire for Kosatka.”
“True. And I owe you for saving me from that freighter in league with the pirates.” Freya leaned back, her brow furrowed in thought. “Long story short, Dad likes people to do as he says. He likes being in charge and pulling all the strings. I’m not good at following orders without question. Maybe we’re too much alike that way. When given the choice of following the path he’d laid out for me or finding my own, I walked. In my father’s eyes, that was unforgivable.”
“That does match what I’ve heard of Donal Morgan,” Lochan said. “Do you have any advice for how to deal with him?”
“You’re asking the girl he disowned?” Freya laughed. “Don’t crawl. He needs to respect you. But acknowledge his power as well. Can you do both?”
“Maybe,” Lochan said. “Maybe not. I haven’t had a successful marriage yet.”
She laughed again. “There’s a good metaphor. Hey, Alice Mary,” Freya said to Leigh, using the false name that she’d been traveling under. “How long are you staying on Eire?”
“Just long enough to say my piece and then on to Earth, where my mission is,” Camagan said.
“Who represents Glenlyon while we try to get more allies for you?”
“I was hoping that Lochan would,” Camagan admitted. “By now, Kosatka and Glenlyon should be formally allied at last.”
“Assuming Kosatka is still free,” Lochan said, his mind calling up a snapshot of the invasion fleet to temporarily shove aside memories of the shuttle crash. Between his experiences and the pictures created by his fears, his mind these days seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of horrific images to draw on.
“Assuming so,” Leigh conceded. “Would you trust me to represent Kosatka if that was true?”
The question should have been a hard one to answer. But he’d had time to get to know Leigh Camagan, and more importantly his friend Mele Darcy had told him Leigh was trustworthy. So, instead, the answer came to him the moment the question was asked. “Yes.” Lochan looked over at her. “I’ll do my best. The fates of Kosatka and Glenlyon are linked by circumstance, but also by friendship.”
Freya made a scoffing noise. “You’re better off trusting in self-interest than friendship. Such as, Catalan is aware that Kosatka and Glenlyon are the only two star systems near us that won’t stab us in the back.”
“And here I thought we were friends,” Lochan said, doing his best to sound disappointed.
“Oh, Lochan, if I stabbed you in the back, Brigit would never forgive me!”
The conversation had wandered into the ridiculous, but Lochan welcomed the distraction that offered from worrying about their flight to the surface. “Does Brigit know how much you think she likes me?”
The shuttle lurched away from the facility and began its controlled fall toward the planet below. Lochan stared at the display on the bulkhead facing his seat, momentarily distracted by the beauty of the view downward.
From orbit the planet named Eire seemed tranquil and impossibly green. As with any other place where humanity had found a home, the serenity was an illusion born of distance. But the color held truth in its emerald shades.
More of Eire’s surface was land than on far-distant Earth, with vast continents sprawling among smaller oceans that on other worlds might be called seas, a weave of rivers and streams feeding them. Lochan knew the world had small axial tilt and thus little seasonal variation through the year, and it orbited its star at the right distance to receive the right amount of warmth. As a result, much of Eire basked in an endless summer, the grass ever green and the trees forever cloaked in their own verdant foliage.
Had the people who came here from an island nation on Earth chosen the planet before they’d known how it looked? A place that evoked the “cool, green hills of Earth,” as an old story had put it? Remembering the brilliant green streaks that adorned the hair of Brigit Kelly, Lochan felt certain that they’d deliberately sought out a world like this.
He knew they’d also sought peace far from the ancient feuds that haunted Old Earth. But war had already found others, and would soon come here as well if Lochan couldn’t convince Eire’s people to join the apparently hopeless cause of the worlds of Kosatka and Glenlyon. “I hope Brigit is all right,” he murmured.
“I know what you mean,” Freya said. “There’s someone on Catalan I’m worried about. How about you, Leigh?”
Leigh Camagan shook her head. “No one that close. I lost that person quite a few years ago. What I do have is a number of people whose fate I care about.”
Their shuttle had made it only halfway to the surface when an alert tone sounded and the pilot called back. “Weren’t you guys originally intended to come down on Eleven Oh Six?”
“Yes,” Lochan said. “Your security chief changed that, though, so that shuttle could be thoroughly screened for problems.”
“They launched it after us, loaded only with cargo and using uncrewed auto-descent even though the security search didn’t turn up anything.” A pause. “Turns out they did miss something. That shuttle blew up barely fifty kilometers from the facility.”
A moment of silence was finally broken by a murmur from Leigh Camagan. “I need to buy that security chief a drink.”
“A drink, hell,” Freya said. “I’ll buy the man a house if he asks for it.”
On the surface of the planet, their shuttle was met by a strong force that included a couple of platoons of soldiers and several armored vehicles. As a curious crowd watched from a distance, Lochan, Freya, and Leigh were hustled from the shuttle’s ramp to an armored limousine. Inside, four guards watched over them silently as the limo raced from the spaceport to the planetary government complex.
Another hasty movement from the limo to a side door of an impressive structure, and then Lochan and the others found themselves being led through the building until they reached a large reception room whose walls were lined with pictures and cases holding artifacts that appeared to be extremely old. Lochan stole glances at some of them, seeing ancient weapons including a long sword and a spear, a small harp whose wood bore the marks of exceptional age, and an old, squared-off stone that might have come from a home, a mansion, or a castle, one edge of the stone cracked and scorched by intense heat that must have been born of whatever destroyed the structure it had once been part of.
“Hi, Kyna,” Freya greeted the older woman ensconced behind a large desk. “How’s the old one?”
“It really is you,” the woman replied with a disapproving shake of her head. “He’ll be spitting fire when he hears.”
“I’m here representing Catalan. Make sure he knows that.”
“I can do my job without prompting from you,” Kyna replied.
“Do you make friends like that everywhere you go?” Lochan asked.
“Only here,” Freya replied. “There’s no place like home. He’ll keep us waiting awhile, by the way. Just to emphasize who holds the power here.”
They stood in a group off to one side of the room. Lochan looked about again, realizing that there were no couches or chairs in the waiting room to make the waiting any easier. He recognized that tactic, a way of tiring out and making irritable those wanting to see the prime minister so that the visitors would start out at a disadvantage. It also emphasized in a very unsubtle manner that visitors forced to wait were not particularly welcome here.
But Lochan barely had time to become impatient before the same door they’d entered through opened again, this time to let in a group of five people who approached Kyna’s desk and engaged in a low-volume conversation from which he could only hear occasional words such as “urgent,” “regrets,” and “unable.”
The five newcomers stepped back from the desk, their carefully controlled expressions revealing little, but their movements carrying the jerkiness of frustration. As they turned to leave, one of the women in the group took a long look at Lochan and his friends. She spoke hurriedly to one of her male companions, who also studied Lochan before walking over and making a small bow from the waist to him, Freya, and Leigh. “You have recently arrived on Eire?”
“Yes,” Lochan said.
“The emissaries from Kosatka, Glenlyon, and Catalan?”
“Word travels quickly,” Leigh observed. “Where are you from?”
“Benten Star System,” one of the women in the new group replied. “My name is Yukino Nakamura. This is Lawrence Sato. We’re the leaders of our delegation.”
“Nakamura?” Freya asked, amused. “Is she a cousin of yours, Lochan?”
“It’s possible,” Lochan said. “My ancestors immigrated to Brahma a long time ago, though.”
“Most of us on Benten came from Old Earth and Amaterasu,” Lawrence Sato said. “But perhaps your ancestors are the same and brought us together here. You have come seeking help for your worlds? Perhaps we can make common cause.”
“Why does Benten need help?” Leigh Camagan asked.
“Benten,” Yukino said, “can see farther than the orbits of our most distant planets. We see the dangers in the distance, and seek to prepare. But other star systems do not share our sense of urgency.”
“They worry about giving up their freedom,” Lawrence said.
“It’s a lot easier to negotiate without giving up things when your back isn’t against the wall,” Lochan said.
“That is our reasoning. We seek agreements before crises force our hands.”
A moment of silence was broken by Leigh Camagan. “What are the chances that Benten would consider lending aid to Glenlyon and Kosatka?”
“That would depend on many factors,” Yukino Nakamura said.
“It’s not out of the question?”
A long pause ended as Yukino spoke again. “If fighting is wise, then it is wiser to fight far from home than it is to fight at our front door. But whether fighting is wise remains to be determined.”
“What could you bring?” Lochan asked, trying not to let his hopes get too high. “If you decide, I mean. Does Benten have any warships?”
“We came on a warship,” Yukino said, gesturing upward. “The Asahi.”
“We didn’t see any foreign warships present in this star system when we came in,” Lochan said, surprised.
She smiled. “When you see the stars through another’s eyes, you see only what they wish you to see.”
“Eire’s systems screened out the Asahi?” Freya shook her head, transforming the gesture into a glare aimed at the door to her father’s office. “He thinks if he doesn’t want to see some things he can make those things go away.”
“How many other warships does Benten have?” Lochan asked, trying to divert the discussion to a safer topic.
“Asahi is our only warship,” Lawrence said. “We traveled on her to ensure that the seriousness of our work would be made clear. That does not appear to have impressed Eire, though,” he added, a trace of bitterness entering his voice.
One of the other members of Benten’s delegation murmured something that caused both Yukino and Lawrence to pause before shaking their heads. “We can’t leave yet,” Lawrence said. “We must make a few more attempts to present our proposals.”
Lochan paused to think, realizing that if he could convince Benten to help, a star system still far enough from the conflict to not be in immediate danger, it would be a powerful example for others. They weren’t here to speak with him, though, but with Eire. How could . . . ?
He glanced over at Kyna’s desk as the secretary nodded in response to some message only she could hear.
“You can go in,” Kyna said to Freya. She tapped something on her desk, causing the heavy wooden door adorned with carvings that led into the inner office to swing open.
Lochan felt something else opening, not a physical thing, but a possibility that hadn’t existed a few moments earlier. A risky idea, something that could blow back on him and his mission to get help for Kosatka. Something that could kill his chances of getting aid from Eire. But, if it worked . . .
Make the big decisions. Mele Darcy had told him that just before they parted.
“Hold it,” Lochan said, holding out a hand to keep Freya from moving, and drawing a startled and disapproving glare from the prime minister’s secretary.