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to fly the shuttle, but I was able to sit up front with the Pilot and watch as we descended through the atmosphere of Terra Nova. It reminded me of travelling up from Earth on the orbital tower, back when I had been accepted into the Academy, but descending in a shuttle was somehow more exciting. Terra Nova looked a lot like Earth – it had the same mixture of green land and blue seas – but it was lacking the clouds of pollution that infested Earth’s upper atmosphere. The Political Officer had waxed lyrical about how pristine Terra Nova had been before humanity had landed on it, and how it was still a paradise, without the wrecking effects of capitalist terrorists.
     
    Despite his words, I was actually looking forward to visiting the planet, although I was starting to realise that anything that was described in such glowing terms probably had a nasty sting in the tail. It was a lesson the Senior Chief had hammered into our heads repeatedly, starting with a lesson on space helmet safety that had included retch gas seeping through ‘sealed’ spacesuits and dozens of others since. The promises the manufactory people had made, the Senior Chief had warned us, could never be taken at face value. Checking and rechecking the inventory was part of our duties as Ensigns. Nothing could be left unaccounted for, even the merest item.
     
    “That’s Landing City,” the Pilot said, as we continued to fly down the coastline. The city spilled out over the land ahead of us, somehow subtly different from any city on Earth. It took me a moment to realise what was missing. There were no towering mega-skyscrapers, each one holding thousands of people in a self-contained environment, but merely smaller blocky buildings. They all looked to have been turned out at the same manufacturer’s complex and they probably had been. I recalled reading that most colony worlds developed their own housing style pretty quickly, but the core city always kept the original settlement design. I couldn’t understand why. It looked pretty ugly from high overhead. “Do you know how many Landing Cities there are in the entire galaxy?”
     
    I shook my head. “One hundred and seven,” the Pilot informed me, with a grin. He wasn't – technically – in the chain of command, but we’d been taught that it was wise to listen to all of the department heads. They knew their own specialities and not much else, according to the official statements, but they’d been in space longer than any of us Ensigns had been alive. “Humans are not known for their imagination, eh?”
     
    “No,” I agreed, as two silvery shapes shot past us. “What are they?”
     
    “Fighter jets intercepting us and escorting us to the spaceport,” the Pilot said, checking his display. “The damned flyboys haven’t bothered to check in with us yet, either. They’re damn lucky I didn’t have my lasers on a hair trigger.”
     
    The radio buzzed an inquisitive statement. “Shuttle One, UNS Jacques Delors,” the Pilot said. I lifted an eyebrow in his direction. I didn’t understand how he’d made sense out of that racket. “We are landing at the main spaceport, over.”
     
    There was another burst of talking from the radio. “Understood,” the pilot said. “Altering course now to compensate.”
     
    He grinned at me as the shuttle yawed through a long curve that took it around the city. “They’re going to escort us down to the spaceport,” he said. “It seems they’re having some trouble down there and perhaps we’ll need some help from them.”
     
    I stared as the fighters closed in around us. They were crude aircraft, but the missiles and bombs they carried under their wings were clearly deadly. I couldn’t understand why they were carrying so many weapons. Even if there was trouble down on the planet below, the enemy couldn’t have any aircraft, could they? Enemy? The Political Officer had told us that the world was peaceful and tranquil.
     
    “Here we