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more empty than full, with only a handful of people returning
from the terminals. Along the walls, far too many caged and
boarded-up doors marked where shops and restaurants had once
flourished. The Colony, once an attractive, thriving settlement,
was now an isolated outpost in a system that had been utterly
ravaged by the Hameji.
    “ Is this your first time
out of the system, Sterling?” James asked. He couldn’t help but
notice the quickness in his copilot’s step.
    “ Oh, yes, sir. I’m not much
of a pilot—never have been. I’m more of an engineer.”
    James raised an eyebrow. “An engineer?”
    “ That’s right. Back when
the mining industry was still profitable, I used to work at the
shipyards repairing broken equipment. When most of the workforce
got laid off, I joined the Corps for the steady
paycheck.”
    “ Right,” said James. He
didn’t bother to point out that the payroll office was four
standard months behind.
    “ So really,
sir—”
    “ Call me James.”
    “ Yes, er, James—really, I’m
not much of a pilot.”
    “ No, but you’re a fine
copilot and the patrician chose us both for a reason. You’ve got a
unique skill set, and that might just help us get out of a tight
spot. Don’t put yourself down.”
    Sterling grinned. “Thank you, sir.”
    James checked the displays
and led them to the right, toward their terminal. “So what can you
tell me about the Freedom
Star , Ensign?”
    Sterling’s eyes lit up, just as James
expected they would. “Gaian Enterprises deep space luxury yacht,
Dolphin class—latest model, too. One hundred and twenty meters stem
to stern, with room for six crew and eight passengers. She’s one of
the few civilian ships left at the Colony with a functioning jump
drive—two, in fact.”
    “ Two?” That wasn’t a common
feature on civilian ships.
    “ Yeah. The dual drives
don’t add much to the distance rating, but they more than double
our jump rate in deep space.”
    “ Which means we don’t have
to rely on the starlanes for transport,” said James. “If we have to
make it back on our own, we can do so quickly without having to
worry about being interdicted.”
    “ Right,” said Sterling,
“though that won’t help us much in-system, since the reactors
aren’t significantly boosted.”
    Still, at least we won’t
be stranded. That was the problem with
sublight engines—if the political situation was unfavorable, you
were at the mercy of whoever controlled the local system. When the
Hameji had invaded nearly five years ago, virtually every starship
with a working jump drive had fled, taking hundreds of thousands of
refugees with them. Only a handful still remained at the Colony,
and almost all of those belonged to the Corps now. The Freedom Star was one of
the rare exceptions.
    “ Are you worried about
something?” Sterling asked.
    “ No,” James muttered, “but
it bothers me that the patrician’s putting us under the command of
a civilian.”
    “ A civilian?”
    “ Captain Allie Jarvis,” he
said, leaning in a little closer to speak under his breath. “She’s
the captain of the Freedom Star. Her family has no military background that I could
find, but she’s distantly related to the patrician.”
    “ That explains why she
didn’t run with the rest of the refugees.”
    “ Yeah. It also explains why
the patrician went outside of the normal chain of command to brief
us—he wants to keep the Corps out of this mission as much as
possible.”
    Sterling frowned. “But why would he want to
do that?”
    “ I don’t know. That’s what
I want to find out.”
    A chime from the loudspeakers interrupted
their conversation, followed by the tinny, feminine voice of a
recording. “Attention, passengers,” it said, “Tram approaching. For
your safety, please wait until the car comes to a complete stop
before boarding.”
    “ That’s us,” said James. A
glance at the holoscreen displays over the main concourse showed
the Freedom Star leaving