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“Transmitted, ma’am,” the comm tech reported. “It’s an eleven-minute delay one-way.”

“Very well.” Markham returned to her seat to wait as the bridge crew rotated from the fully manned transit-arrival stations to the ordinary watchstanding team. Sikander was not on duty, but out of curiosity he decided to wait and see what the Dremish ship had to say. While he waited, he activated his console again and called up the ship-recognition function to study the few details available on the Dremish warship. Panther seemed quite comparable to Hector—a little bigger, but the two ships possessed similar armament and they were closely matched in speed and maneuverability. The info assistant had little else to offer, since it was a new class and the database had to rely on public-domain sources from Dremark. At least sharing an orbit would give Hector plenty of opportunities to record close-up vid of Panther and add to the Commonwealth Navy’s database on the Dremish cruiser.

Twenty-two minutes after Hector’s arrival in the system, the communications tech announced, “Incoming message from SMS Panther, ma’am.”

“That was pretty quick,” Captain Markham observed. Panther could not have observed Hector’s arrival until eleven minutes after the Old Worthy actually terminated its warp, and any message she sent would of course have the same delay to reach Hector. “Put it on-screen, please.”

A window opened on the main vid display, showing the face of a middle-aged man in the uniform of a Dremish naval officer. Lean and dark, he had a hatchet-like nose and a close-cropped beard, but his smile was surprisingly warm. “Welcome to Gadira, Hector,” he began. “I am Fregattenkapitan Georg Harper of His Imperial Majesty’s warship Panther. My compliments to the commanding officer; we are maintaining a high orbit above Gadira II and do not expect to maneuver for some time. SMS Panther, out.”

“They must have transmitted as soon as they saw us arrive,” Sikander observed.

“The Dremish are nothing if not punctual.” The captain shrugged and stood up. “Well, we’ve observed the formalities. I suppose we’ll be sharing orbits for a while. Call me if anything interesting happens, Mr. Randall.”

8

Tanjeer, Gadira II

Three days after Hector’s arrival in Gadira, Sikander jolted and bounced his way down to the planet’s surface in one of the ship’s shuttles as the dazzling waters of the Silver Sea raced by underneath its stubby wings. The inertial compensators could not quite mask out all the sharp maneuvers; Sikander, seated in the passenger cabin, felt his seat restraints tightening automatically in response. He glanced around. Dr. Isaako Simms, the cruiser’s medical officer, looked faintly green, but Magdalena Juarez only raised an eyebrow in response, and Captain Markham seemed perfectly at ease, reading her dataslate without even looking up. She’d chosen three officers to accompany her down to the planet’s capital, leaving Peter Chatburn in command of Hector, which now circled Gadira II a few thousand kilometers overhead.

The shuttle leaned into a steep, banking curve. The captain didn’t seem to take notice, but she finally spoke. “Petty Officer Long, are you in some special hurry to land the shuttle?”

“Sorry, Captain!” Long called down from the cockpit. “Tanjeer Traffic Control sent us a minimum-time approach vector and included some steep evasive maneuvers. Apparently they have some concerns about potential ground fire.”

“The controllers think someone might shoot at us?” Dr. Simms asked. He was a short, dark-haired young man with a wide face and very dark eyes. Other than a certain professional coolness toward Sikander over Hiram Randall’s dislocated shoulder, he struck Sikander as a decent fellow. Like many medical officers, Simms was a doctor first and a naval officer second.

“I’m afraid so, sir,” Long answered him. “Don’t worry too much. We’ll be on the deck in just a minute.” Sikander could see the pilot through the small companionway between the cockpit and the cabin; Long’s tone revealed no concern, but his head swiveled left and right as he brought the shuttle down, and his copilot kept busy with a constant stream of tower instructions.

“Just a precaution, or have they had some trouble with shuttles making descent?” Magda wondered aloud.

“They would have routed us to another landing zone if they were really worried,” Sikander pointed out. He tried to shrug in his seat restraints. “Good practice for our pilots, at any rate.”

He glanced out his viewport, and saw the glittering waters of the coast give way to dun-colored tarmac. The shuttle streaked past a row of old hangars, then suddenly slewed into one velocity-killing turn and deployed its landing struts with a mechanical whine. Long expertly cut the power, bringing the shuttle to a sharp landing in front of a concrete revetment. “You can unbuckle, ma’am,” the pilot called. “But let me crack the hatch for you. The skin’ll be blistering hot after that descent, so make sure you keep your hands off the doorframe.”

“Very good,” Captain Markham replied. She, Sikander, and the other two busied themselves with removing their restraints and gathering their things as the pilot came back to the shuttle’s passenger hatch and cycled it. Bright sunlight flooded into the cabin, along with a wall of humid heat that instantly reminded Sikander of home. There were plenty of warm Aquilan worlds—even New Perth had its tropics, of course—but most big cities and naval installations were located in middle latitudes. It was refreshing to feel air that was as warm as it was supposed to be.

One by one, they filed carefully down the shuttle’s steps and moved away from the sizzling hull to stand blinking in the sun. In deference to the Gadiran climate, Hector’s officers wore their summer dress whites, almost painfully bright in the brilliant daylight. A small group of people stood in the shade of the revetment, alongside a long, sleek ground transport. In addition to a pair of fit-looking Aquilans who wore light jackets despite the heat—security specialists, or so Sikander guessed—a short, balding, middle-aged civilian waited for Hector’s officers to debark.

The older man strode briskly out to greet them. “Captain Markham?” he asked. “I’m Franklin Garcia, Commonwealth system consul. Welcome to Gadira.”

Markham shook his hand. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Garcia.” She motioned to the others in turn. “Lieutenant Commander Magdalena Juarez, our chief engineer; gunnery officer Lieutenant Sikander North; and Lieutenant Isaako Simms, Hector’s medical officer.”

“It’s good to see some faces from home,” Garcia remarked. A quick round of handshakes followed; Sikander noted that the security agents deliberately averted their attention from the introductions, keeping an eye on the surroundings. “I took the liberty of arranging ground transportation for the ride over to the palace. The Royal Guard is very touchy about anything flying near the sultan’s location, which is why they had you land out here in the commercial spaceport.”

Garcia motioned to the ground limo, and they climbed inside one by one; the security agents took their places in a chase car. The car hummed into motion, and accelerated away from the revetment. Sikander gazed out the window at the striking palmlike trees and brass-colored sky. The Aquilan consul must have had some sort of special clearance for his vehicle; as they left the spaceport and ventured into the city’s boulevards, traffic halted to let them pass. He had an impression of streets crowded with old ground cars and pedestrians, and cluttered storefronts marked with foreign lettering.