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the risks he knew he would soon take.
    “ I’ll do my best,” he told
her. It might not have been the most comforting answer, but it was
certainly the most truthful.
    His father gave him a parting handshake.
“Take care of yourself, son.”
    “ I will.”
    “ Be sure to keep your eyes
and ears open.”
    “ Of course.”
    “ I mean it,” said his
father, looking him in the eye. “Conference or not, this smells of
centralist politics.”
    James frowned. “But the patrician—”
    “ The patrician is the
servant of the people, nothing more. He doesn’t have any more power
than we give him, and if you ask me, he already has far too
much.”
    Yes, James wanted to say, but the Corps
isn’t run by popular vote, and if it were...
    There were a number of ways he could have
finished that statement, all of them colorful, but instead he kept
his political views to himself.
    “ I’ll do my best,” he said,
bending down to pick up his bag. “Don’t worry—I won’t fail
you.”
    His father smiled and wrapped an arm around
his tearful mother. James turned and held his wrist console up to
the computer terminal. His ID cleared, and the gate opened to let
him onto the concourse.
    “ We love you,” his mother
called out one last time. He stepped through, then turned and
waved.
    “ I love you, too,” he
called back. “See you in a few weeks.”
    Biting his lip, he turned and headed toward
his terminal, passing over the giant mosaic image of the star
system. Karduna was a golden nub at the very center, coordinate
lines radiating outward. A giant pink and red mass off to the right
marked the Good Hope Nebula, the imposing cloud of gas and dust
that marked the edge of the frontier this side of settled space. On
the other side, a gold nub bigger than the first marked Gaia Nova,
the seat of galactic civilization.
    Before the Hameji slagged it, that was.
    “ Hey, Lieutenant!” came a
familiar voice from behind him. James turned and saw Ensign Jones
running up to him.
    So much for formality.
    “ Sterling,” said James. A
grin spread across his face at the sight of his boyish
copilot.
    “ It’s good to see you, sir.
Need a hand with those bags?”
    “ Sure. Thanks for the
help.”
    He gave Sterling the
lighter of the two bags, and they soon fell into step, walking past
the half-empty shops and vendor kiosks toward the boarding area. It
wasn’t uncommon to see soldiers in this part of the station, though
the two of them did turn a few heads. A quick glance at the cluster
of enormous holoscreens overhead showed that the Freedom Star was
scheduled to depart in twenty-five minutes.
    “ So what do you think of
that girl?” Sterling asked.
    “ Girl? What
girl?”
    “ You know, the one we’re
supposed to protect.”
    “ You mean the patrician’s
daughter?” said James, picking up the pace. He shouldered his way
through a crowd heading in the opposite direction and got a handful
of dirty glances. Deal with it,
people.
    “ Yeah,” said Sterling.
“Isn’t she something?”
    James’s cheeks reddened. “Now isn’t the time
to talk about that, Ensign.”
    “ Oh? Why not?”
    Because she might be somewhere in this crowd
right now.
    “ Because it’s too damn
distracting,” he said instead. “We have a mission to perform, and
ogling her halfway across the galaxy is not going to accomplish
that.”
    Sterling covered his mouth and suppressed a
laugh. “Sorry, sir—that’s not what I meant.”
    “ Of course not.”
    Compared to the rest of the station, the
spaceport was extravagantly spacious. The ceilings were high and
vaulted, while the walls and floors were made of high-grade basalt
from the nearby asteroids. Every surface was polished smooth, so
that the place still looked new. The architectural engineers had
done a good job: the veneer of prosperity was convincing enough to
fool just about anyone.
    But in truth, the spaceport was little more
than an imitation of what it had once been. The spacious concourse
was