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brought to them.
    The yards restored her to her original appearance, four hundred meters of first-generation gravtech beauty that gleamed under the work lights of the platforms still arrayed around her.  The rest of the squadron looked just as beautiful to his eyes, long fins and curving armor reminding Malcolm of a time when starships were works of art, not simply one more cog in a giant war machine that no one would miss when their time came to die.
    “That’s your ship?” John asked from the other seat in the shuttle’s cockpit.
    “Yes,” Malcolm answered with a smile, considering once again that the Peloran did good work when it came to restoring art.
    “She’s beautiful.”
    “Thank you,” Dawn said from behind them, voice betraying pleasure at John’s reaction.
    The shuttle’s engines flared brighter for a moment, and Malcolm felt them shed the last of their speed relative to the shipyard.  They came to a stop, drifting next to the eight warships and one colonization ship that would soon be the only home that mattered to him.  Thrusters came to life and the shuttle moved towards Normandy’s bow.  He glanced at Dawn and she smiled.  Then the bow split open to reveal a hangar bay just large enough to accommodate the Peloran shuttle, and the thrusters fired again.  They drifted there, holding station off Normandy’ s bow until four tractor beams locked onto them.  The thrusters shut down, and Malcolm relaxed as Normandy tucked them inside her bay with a precision only cybernetic intelligences could match.  The tractor beams dropped them on the deck just as the outer doors shut, and Malcolm felt the clang through the seat of his pants.
    “Nicely done,” Malcolm whispered and unbuckled his five-point harness.
    “Nothing to it,” Dawn answered and he heard the hatch screw open behind them.
    He rose out of his seat and walked into the shuttle’s rear compartment, eyes scanning back and forth on instinct.  Yesterday, passenger seats filled the shuttle from side to side and fore to aft, with only a narrow aisle splitting them.  Now Malcolm’s last shipment that Michael Callahan had acquired on such short notice filled the compartment from one end to the other.  Almost everything on board was illegal in the Alpha Centauri A star system, but Malcolm wasn’t concerned about that.  As far as he could tell, if something made him giggle when he thought about doing it, somebody had already made it illegal in Alpha Centauri.  And using what was in these crates gave him a serious case of the giggles when he thought of the probable response any enemy would have.
    The shuttle’s rear ramp clanged against the deck, making way for a procession of Normandy crewmembers to walk on board.  They quickly went to work, lifting the heavy crates with an ease that labeled them as members of the cybernetic segment of the crew.
    Dawn looked around, waving a hand to catch the attention of one of the cybers before she could reach a crate.  “Kara, could you take Pastor Parker to his quarters?”
    “Of course,” the cyber answered and walked over to the preacher.  “Would you follow me?”
    John turned to Malcolm with a calm smile.  “Malcolm?”
    Malcolm returned the smile, knowing exactly what John was asking for.  This was his ship after all.  Well, his and Dawn’s.  And maybe a few hundred crewmembers’.  And Captain Wyatt’s.  Malcolm felt a smile take over as he realized just how many people had a claim to the old bucket of bolts.  Not that he would ever call her that when Dawn could hear.  But John was most certainly the newest visitor to the ship, and it made sense that he would want to ask the one person he knew before taking a step into her.  “Make yourself at home, John.”
    The preacher nodded and turned back to Kara with a broad smile.  “Lead and I shall follow,” he said in a magnanimous tone.
    Kara gave her head an amused shake and turned to lead the man away, exactly as he’d