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you.”
    “Will you wait for me?” I asked, blurting out the words. I hadn’t meant to say it that way. It sounded weak and pleading. I’d meant to indicate that I barely cared—but I did.
    “William…” she said slowly. “I don’t know what to say.”
    Suddenly, I understood. She’d already moved on. She’d made up her mind during the months I was away in space.  Not knowing if I was alive or dead had been too much for her.
    Possibly, she’d taken on another lover to speed things along.
    “I see,” I said stiffly. “I’m sorry to have troubled you with this call.”
    “Don’t be like that, William. We can still be friends.”
    “Of course.”
    “Be well, be safe. Come home to Earth again.”
    “I fully intend to. Goodbye, Chloe of Astra.”
    “Goodbye, William of Sparhawk,” she responded automatically, with equal formality.
    The connection closed. I took a deep breath. I felt irritated and saddened all at the same time. But part of me felt liberated as well. Since Chloe had taken over her mother’s position as a Public Servant, she’d grown steadily more preoccupied and distant.
    After a brief internal struggle, I managed not to curse aloud. I told myself sternly that it might all be for the best.
    Forcing myself to get moving again, I refused to sit in my office and brood. I found Durris in my chair, and relieved him with a tap on the shoulder and a friendly nod. He was red-eyed, and his head hung from his neck like a drooping plant.
    “Are you sure you’re all right, sir?” he asked me, looking me over with a tired, but critical, eye.
    “Better than you, by the looks of it,” I told him. “You’re to report to your bunk for at least twelve hours.”
    “Yes, Captain—and thank you, sir.”
    He left, and I watched him walk away. I had no doubt he’d spent virtually every hour I’d been absent at his post. It gave me a guilty pang to think of it.
    “Oh, by the way,” he said in passing, “the ambassador is on C-deck. She’d like to meet with you and have a formal dinner gathering.”
    “Right…” I said, having almost forgotten about carrying an emissary to the stars, “I must welcome her aboard. But she’ll have to wait for now, I must get this ship underway.”
    He left, and I turned back to my duties. I was full of questions about the ambassador, naturally. I knew she was a she, but that was about it.
    I didn’t ask Durris any more questions about this ambassador as I had too much to do. Pleasantries would have to wait.
    Once I was sure Defiant was ready to fly, I had the helmsman back her away from Araminta Station. A few minutes later we zoomed away under heavy acceleration.
    The sensation of a moving ship under my feet caused me to smile. It was good to be back in business.
    Our real acceleration rate was around thirty Gs, but due to our dampeners, we felt only a fraction of it. Still, the weight of our own bodies was uncomfortable.
    “Let’s head for the departure point,” I ordered, and the navigators laid in an appropriate course.
    Defiant was Earth’s only ship capable of interstellar travel. We’d long been out of contact with our colonies—it had been nearly a century and a half, in fact. It was something of a thrill for all aboard to know that history was about to be changed dramatically.
    Using Defiant’s sensors, we’d previously identified several possible ER bridges out past Jupiter. In the past, before solar flares had ruptured the existing network of bridges to other systems, these bridges could be found closer to the Sun. The Cataclysm had washed away those easy-to-reach links like sand bars in a flood.
    “ETA to the departure point?” I asked the helmsman.
    I frowned in surprise when I saw who was in the pilot’s chair. Rumbold had spun around to face me.
    “Sixteen hours, sir,” he said. “We’ll barely make it. I suggest we give the inertial dampeners a workout.”
    “Rumbold? Didn’t I assign you to the damage control deck?”
    “You did