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Satyana could name. The picture had stayed in her office all of this time, had even been cleaned and restored twice. Even though she had created the buzz that made Ruby famous all of those years ago, Ruby had given her purpose. Satyana often used her memories of Ruby’s reactions to moral dilemmas to help guide her own choices.
    Ruby would be most unhappy with the current state of affairs. In addition to freeing the poorest of the poor, Ruby had been the first to befriend a Next.
    There were no windows in Satyana’s inner office, but she could feel the ship around her. When it was new, she had piloted the Star Bear through adventures. For the last hundred years, it had been a small, still part of the behemoth that was the Diamond Deep. It had been her home, a stage for her performers, and the first stage Ruby the Red sang on. From here, Satyana had built an entertainment empire. She knew every piece of metal, every bolt, every strut, every communications system.
    All of it was at risk right now.
    For years her physical world had remained basically the same. Her own power had waxed slowly, and certainly the wild young ship’s captain who had docked the Star Bear at the Deep all of those years ago wouldn’t recognize—or even like—the woman she had become. It had been a slow change, a good one, full of risk and hard work.
    One of her current risk factors burst through her office door, ducking and turning slightly sideways to manage it. Gunnar Ellensson bulked four times her size, dark skinned and dark eyed and full of so much power that most people acted cowed around him.
    Satyana didn’t suffer from the same nerves he brought out in most people. She rose and glided to him, using every piece of training she’d ever had in both control and seduction. He took her in his arms, folding himself around her from the sides and the top until she nearly suffocated in the scent of his musky soap and the rich pile of yellow and gold that counted as his shirt of the day.
    In spite of the warm hug, she wasn’t comforted. Their relationship was built more on balance and lust and need than on comfort. She pushed back away from him. “I understand you’re bargaining with the Next.”
    He smiled. “Of course I am. Weren’t you the one who first taught me to think of them as something other than pirates?” He went to her sideboard and poured them each a glass of red wine from a deep blue decanter decorated with opals from his mines on Mammot. He had given her both—the decanter for their tenth anniversary as lovers and the wine from his private stocks just last week.
    He handed her a glass. “I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m meeting two Jhailing Jims at Pearl Gate in two weeks. It’s just at the right place in its orbit to be directly on the way to Mammot.”
    Mammot. His personal planet. More accurately, his bank. While no one could own the planet itself, Gunnar owned most of the mineral rights. She found it hard to trust him on matters of money. “I heard they’ve agreed to give you some of the secrets to that flowing metal that they use for robot bodies.”
    He raised the wine glass. “To a series of good trades.”
    â€œAnything we get from the Next needs to be for everyone,” she declared, keeping her glass in her hand and close to her stomach.
    He raised an eyebrow. “I’ll share. For a fee. Besides, that’s not what I want at all. Well, I do want that. Who wouldn’t? Although we have materials almost half as good. I think they stole the idea from us.”
    She laughed at his expression. He could almost always make her laugh, the bastard. “Could be.”
    â€œWhat I really want is their navigation AIs. That and the algorithm for the Wall on Lym. You’ve heard about that?”
    She didn’t have time to let a wall distract her. “You know we need the other stations. We’ve got to hold the