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disappear for a day as the viewing angle changed. The sky of Amaterasu’s single terrestrial planet was a constantly changing enchantment, Amaya thought grudgingly. She could not help the swift thought that her own life might have been very different if New Earth, the First Colony, had been a kinder world. But no, it had been biology--her own--not planetary topography, that had caused her to be sold to the syndics of the Gloria Coelis . Unable to produce female offspring by the politically correct in vitro method, she had been offered a choice between a sex change and assignment to the permanent labor force or immediate sale to the syndics at that moment fortuitously present in the Proxima Centauri System. New Earth was perennially strapped for the hard currency of Goldenwing syndic goodwill, and Amaya had no love of physical labor, so her choice was ordained. “In the stars,” Dietr Krieg liked to say. At first terrified, she came to treasure the memory of the day she boarded Glory and was socketed.
    She had been listening to the conversation between Minamoto Kantaro and Duncan. It had been terse and laden with meaning until a few moments ago, when it became apparent that Kantaro-san had said all of substance he was authorized to say. From that point on the talk became fitful and Amaya lost interest.
    She regarded Duncan covertly, as she often did. The Master and Commander was a man of hidden depths, but the intimacy among Wired Starmen allowed her to know him well. Much of what she knew was physical, but not all.
    Starmen tended to have unusual--even bleak--childhoods. Her own among the cadres of New Earth’s feminist hegemony was similar to most. Dietr was a product of Earth, the home-world, and it was significant that his only comments about his early days were statements of his delight at being recruited as Neurocybersurgeon of the Glory . Damon Ng had been a frightened child in the branches of the treeworld of Nixon, bred to an impressive number of phobias that he was only now, after nearly a dozen shiptime years in space, beginning to shed. And Broni and Buele were, by any standard Anya Amaya would accept, refugees from a deeply troubled world consumed with ancient racial problems.
    That left Duncan, and he was both the most interesting and the most baffling of the lot. He had been found on Search by the last of the former generation of syndics who had brought Glory out from Earth. The practice of Search was rare now among Goldenwing syndics. It had once been the only way of selecting young recruits to man the sailing starships. The Searchers looked for physical skills and stamina, that was a given. But they also sought empathy, a quality that was as difficult to define in Starmen as it was to find among colonists. By recruiting Duncan the old ones had achieved a triumph. Under his command, the Wired Ones of Glory 's crew combined with their ship to form a remarkable entity. And this entity had, in the last years, been strangely enhanced by the cat Mira and her progeny. There were now a dozen cats capable of connecting with Glory by interfacing with the ship’s computer.
    And I feel incomplete here, away from my fellow syndics, Anya Amaya thought. Duncan is my strength . In a cold, shuddering mental wind, the reality of the Terror seemed to brush her mind with pallid fire....
    Duncan turned to look at her. Empathically linked to her Commander, Anya felt a protective presence ready to defend her--to the death if need be. The psychic signature of the Master and Commander of the Gloria Coelis, once a fisherboy of Thalassa in the Wolf Stars.
    He regarded her soberly and then returned to his murmured conversation with Minamoto Kantaro. In the years that Anya Amaya had served as Sailing Master aboard Duncan’s ship, she had never been able to truly fathom his depths. But she loved him, as only a syndic could. Mother, sister, lover, wife, companion. Wired Ones developed powerful ties.
    Under the tilt-rotor’s wing, the