The Outback Stars

CHAPTER


SEVENTEEN





C

olby’s sofa was fine to sit on but hell for sleeping. Myell punched his pillow and tried to make himself comfortable on a frame that was just a few centimeters too short. He kicked off the blanket and sheets. To the accompaniment of the grandfather clock—had the damn thing always been so loud?—he pondered the presence of Jodenny Scott in the next room. Just when he’d begun to put Underway Stores out of his mind, she had to show up. Sure did look beautiful in Dottie’s nightclothes, though. Or maybe it was the fact she wasn’t wearing lieutenant bars that made him realize how attracted he was to her. And how much trouble that could cause. Sergeants were not sup-posed to lust so completely over their lieutenants.



He really should have gone AWOL back on Kookaburra.



Myell got up to use the bathroom and found himself standing out-side the guest room. He wanted, more than anything, to open the door and see that she was sleeping okay. Of course she was. She was an adult, and she’d done a lot of sleeping in her life. All he needed to do to cement his sordid reputation was to be caught leering at her while she slept.



Back to the sofa he went. And punched his pillow some more, un-til sleep took him away. Somehow Colby and Dottie kept the kids quiet in the morning, because he didn’t awaken until well after sun-rise. Bleary-eyed and groggy, he padded barefoot toward the kitchen in search of coffee. The kids, Jodenny, and Dottie were in the back-yard, playing softball with the basebot. He stepped out onto the back porch to watch them.



“Morning, sleepyhead,” Dottie said.



Jodenny took her position at the plate. The basebot threw a pitch. She swung, but the ball sailed safely past her bat into Jake’s glove.




“You swing like a girl,” Jake said.



Myell choked on his coffee.



“Hold it higher,” Jake said helpfully. “Swing from your hips.”



Such attractive hips they were, too. Jodenny had borrowed pants and a short-sleeved shirt from Dottie. Her loose hair, freed from its customary braid, fell halfway down her back in dark, luscious curls. Jodenny’s next swing sent the ball sailing into left field. Adryn sprinted to second base.



Jake pulled off his mask. “Come on, Uncle Terry! You’re up!”



He stayed where he was. “I don’t think so.”



“We need another runner, and Mom won’t do it,” Adryn said.



“Yeah, come on,” Jake wheedled.



Myell waited for Jodenny to join in the persuasive attempts, but she only smiled at something across the field. He ambled to home plate and hit the first pitch the basebot threw. The ball sailed high and landed somewhere near the barn. While the basebot hurried to re-trieve it, Adryn, Jodenny, and Myell all crossed home plate.



“Apparently, you don’t swing like a girl,” Jodenny told him, smiling.



Erma fixed breakfast. Colby’s came in from the pasture to partake of soy sausage and pancakes. Myell sat across the table from Jodenny and tried to keep the conversation focused on the kids’ school proj-ects, but Colby’s and Dottie’s curiosity wouldn’t be denied.



“So what do you do, Kay?” Colby asked.



“Paperwork. Lots and lots of paperwork.”



Jake speared his soy sausages with a fork. “When I grow up I’m go-ing to join Team Space like Uncle Terry.”



Dottie asked, “Have you ever been in space, Kay?”



Jodenny replied, “Yes. It’s lovely. Adryn, what about you? What are you going to do when you grow up?”



Adryn chewed her food before answering. “A vet. I have a horse. Want to see?”



“After breakfast,” Colby said.



“I’ve only been in space once,” Dottie said. “Colby and I emigrated from Baiame.”



Jodenny reached for her glass. “You didn’t like it there?”



“More infrastructure and opportunities here,” Colby said.

“Inex-pensive land, good programs for farmers. Baiame’s a tough place to raise a family and keep a farm going.”



“My grandparents had a farm there,” Jake offered. “Everything went to seed after Grandma killed herself and Grandpa started to drink.”



Myell shot Colby a frosty look. He had always figured Colby had told the kids about his childhood, but those particular details hadn’t really been necessary. All they needed to know about their grand-mother was that she had come from Australia as a little girl, had been pretty and smart, and that she had died. The Myell family story de-volved quickly after that, and it was not one to be shared with chil-dren at bedtime or lieutenants at breakfast.



Dottie said, “I think both of you kids are done eating. Get to your chores.”



“I’m going to clean off and go pack,” Myell said to Jodenny. “After that we can be on our way back to New Christchurch.”



He showered quickly, hoping Dottie wasn’t explaining to Jodenny exactly what Jake had been talking about. She might be his division officer, but his family’s history was none of her business. Myell rinsed off, threw on clean clothes, and went to pack his things. Dottie was in the guest room with his mother’s teak jewelry box in hand.



“You should take this,” she said.



Myell grabbed his rucksack. “You keep it.”



“It’s not—” Quite unexpectedly, she threw her arms around him and murmured, “I know it’s hard. But she loved you.”



He squeezed her tight. “Give it to Adryn. Honestly, what would I do with it on a starship? Someone would probably steal it, anyway.”



Dottie didn’t argue with him, but she didn’t look happy, either. “I’ll go make you some lunch to take with you.”



He finished packing, made sure he had left nothing behind, and brought his rucksack outside. Colby had driven the flit up from the lane and was sitting on the hood, twisting a piece of straw between his fingers. Myell dropped his bag into the backseat.



Colby said, “Jake has a big mouth. But there’s nothing wrong with talking about it.”



“There’s a time and a place,” Myell said.



“Not with you,” Colby replied. “There’s never been a time or a place.”



Myell didn’t answer. The screen door on the porch swung open as Dottie, Jodenny and the kids appeared. Jake and Adryn carried a large picnic basket to the flit and argued over where best to put it. Colby got to his feet and said, “We’ll send pictures soon as the baby’s born. Make sure you get back here before your namesake gets too old, right?”



“I will,” Myell said. “You take care.”



Jodenny again thanked Colby and Dottie for their hospitality and got into the flit. Myell gave Dottie and the kids hugs and shook Colby’s hand.



“Promise you’ll write,” Dottie said, and he did.



Myell climbed behind the steering controls and started the flit down the lane. Jodenny said nothing in the seat beside him, and for that he was grateful. Both his gib and pocket server were at the bot-tom of his rucksack, far from any useful implementation.



When they reached the main road he asked, “Why didn’t you want them to know who you were?”



“It was easier if they didn’t know I was your boss.”



Easier for her, maybe. Now that they had left the farm, he was incontrovertibly under her command again. That, if anything, was a reminder of why he wanted to leave Team Space. In truth, she had still been his superior officer when she was in that night-gown.



“How did you get stranded out of town?” he asked.



Jodenny rolled her window down. “It’s not important.”



One of the scenarios he’d envisioned during the long night kept gnawing at him. “Did someone just dump you in the middle of nowhere?”

he asked.



“No, but that was the story I was going to tell anyone who asked too much.” Her tone indicated that was all the answer he was going to get.

“Once we get back to the ship, you shouldn’t mention this to anyone. It wouldn’t be in either of our best interests.”



“Should I give you the car and walk back into town on my own, so people don’t see us together?”



She sounded annoyed. “You know as well as I do what damage gossip does.”



“I know what damage lying does,” he answered.



She didn’t answer. Myell gave up trying to pretend they were two normal people having a normal conversation. Kay, the woman who’d played baseball and admired a little girl’s horse, had been left behind at the farm. If she had ever existed at all.



“What was said about my mother…” Myell kept his eyes on the road.

“I’d appreciate it if that didn’t get repeated.”



Jodenny made a small surprised sound. “I wouldn’t. Never.”



He nodded. Another kilometer passed before Jodenny said, “I read the report from Loss Accounting about the missing dingo. Sergeant Rosegarten confirmed that it wasn’t your fault.”



“Good,” Myell said.



“I heard Chief Chiba’s been giving you trouble.”




Myell turned south onto Bethlehem Parkway. The local Spheres appeared, solid and unyielding against the sky. “Nothing that you need to worry about, Lieutenant.”



Jodenny made a small skeptical sound.



“Chiba just likes to show off,” Myell insisted. “Has the power and likes to use it. Don’t tell me there aren’t officers who do the same thing, because we both know differently.”



“There’s a difference between showing off and bullying. That fight last week between the two divisions—someone could have gotten se-riously hurt.”



Myell hadn’t forgotten about the clash. “I didn’t ask anyone to get involved.”



“If you knew someone in your division was being harassed, you wouldn’t take the initiative to intervene?”



Damn her for making it sound so easy. Myell decided silence was his best strategy. Jodenny turned her head to the window and, after a moment, said, “Stop for a moment, will you?”



Warily Myell pulled the flit over.



“Do we have time to swing by those Spheres?” she asked.



He checked the clock. “If you want. The next birdie doesn’t leave until late this afternoon.”



Myell angled the flit across the fields and parked in a dirt lot. Jo-denny said, “I’ll be back in a few,” and headed off with a water bottle in hand. He sat on the hood with his arms crossed, glad for the shade of the Father Sphere. Two eagles chased each other across the sky, but the grandeur of the site was ruined by overflowing trash bins and graffiti on the historic site marker. That was a shame. Like the pyra-mids of Earth, the Spheres deserved to be protected and preserved. But then again Spheres had never held archaeological treasure or dead pharaohs. They were as much a mystery as the Alcheringa itself, and such mysteries lost their allure as decades passed.



“Lieutenant?” he called out. ‘Anything in particular you’re looking for?”



Jodenny emerged from the Mother Sphere. “No. Someone told me a theory, that’s all. A stupid idea.”



A low, mournful sound filled the air, like someone blowing an animal’s horn. The noise stiffened the hairs on the back of Myell’s neck. He slid off the hood and scanned the horizon, but it seemed to be coming from the interior of the Mother Sphere. Jodenny turned toward it.



“Careful, Lieutenant.”



“It must be a trick of the wind,” she said. “Spheres don’t make noise.”



The horn died away, leaving his ears ringing. When Jodenny started toward the arched entrance he said, “You sure that’s a good idea?”



Jodenny gave him a considering glance and headed inside. He grabbed the torch from the flit and followed her under the arch in-scribed with Wondjina runes. He had been inside Spheres before, of course. Sometimes, when Daris was in a particularly bad mood, he and Colby had taken refuge in the group a few kilometers from their farm. Once inside this one, it took a moment for Myell’s eyes to ad-just to the darkness. As he played the light over its interior he saw a large metal ring lying in the dirt. It was some kind of welded sculp-ture, at least three meters in diameter. The sight of it made him dis-tinctly uneasy.



“This wasn’t here a minute ago,” Jodenny said.



“We should leave,” he said.



Jodenny tilted her head at it, stepped back, then crouched down and put her hand on the ring. “It’s an ouroboros. A snake eating its tail.”



Myell wanted to backtrack to the flit, but he wasn’t about to leave her alone. He bent low and thumbed the metal. It was roughly the width of his forearm and was faintly warm, as if it had been sitting in the sun and not inside a stone structure. He cocked his head, noting scales and wings, swirls and whorls.



“It’s a Rainbow Serpent,” he said.



“A what?”



Old childhood stories came to mind, along with the unsettling vi-sions he’d had of the shaman. “Created the lands and rivers and all who live in it. Made the world itself.”



“My mythology’s a little rusty.” Jodenny gingerly stepped inside the ring.



“Lieutenant,” he warned. “I really think we should get out of here.”



She probably thought this was one big adventure. Something to tell the wardroom about, or put in her performance evaluation. Sup-ply lieutenant discovers ancient sculpture. But the weight of the Sphere pressed down on Myell and he could almost feel the shaman’s glare on the back of his skull. “Lieutenant,” he said again as she crouched down to the inside of the serpent.



“There are two symbols here. Like Wondjina runes.”



Swallowing hard, he forced himself into the ring alongside her. The symbols were deeply etched into the metal, and spaced just a few centimeters apart.



Jodenny pointed at the first one. “At the risk of sounding caffeine-deprived, that looks like a cup of coffee.”



Myell squinted. He supposed she could interpret it that way, though he wasn’t so sure. The symbols weren’t like any Wondjina runes he’d ever seen.



“And this one could be a slice of pie,” Jodenny said, indicating the second symbol but being careful not to touch it.



The horn sounded again. This time it sounded like it was coming from the dome of the Mother Sphere itself, and the vibrations rattled the back of his teeth. “It’s a warning,” he said.



“Maybe just some kind of announcement.”



“Or a General Quarters alarm—” Myell started, but then a wall of yellow light swept over them and cut off his words. The light shoved him hard through what felt like a brick wall. When his senses re-turned he was on both knees, dazed and coughing. The serpent ring was intact and the Mother Sphere unchanged around them.



“What was that?” he asked.



Jodenny grabbed his arm, barely able to stand. “Let’s get out of here.”



They mutually supported each other out of the Sphere and into the muted green sunlight of a tropical jungle. Humid air redolent of dirt and rot pressed in on Myell from all sides. He slid bonelessly to his knees, sweat already beading between his shoulder blades.



“Shit and spice,” Jodenny said, staring into the distance.



The Mother Sphere they’d emerged from was just one of several Mothers trailing away like a line of old gray soldiers. Many of them were broken or crushed. Though the jungle was teeming with growth, the dirt and airspace around each Sphere was barren in all directions. Maybe it was radioactivity, maybe poison, but someone or something had tried to destroy these Spheres and left them so damaged that nothing alive grew near.



Myell didn’t know what exactly had happened, he didn’t know if he felt numb or dull with surprise, he didn’t know what to make of any of it—but he knew one thing for sure.



They weren’t on Mary River anymore.



* * * *



D

elayed reaction set in, making Jodenny vomit into the dirt. She heaved for a full minute, the acid of semidigested breakfast burning her throat. Afterward she wiped her mouth with her sleeve. Myell looked pale and shocky, almost as bad as she felt, but as she groped for the bottle hitched to her belt she was selfishly glad she wasn’t alone. She took a sip of water, spat it out, took another, and swal-lowed. Her mouth tasted fuzzy.



“This isn’t Mary River,” Myell said when she passed him the bottle.



“No.” Jodenny gazed at the row of Mother Spheres with a leaden feeling in her stomach. “It’s nowhere in the Seven Sisters. We must have found some kind of Wondjina transportation device that’s still working after all these years.”




“Maybe it’s simpler than that,” Myell said. “We’re hallucinating.”



She toed the dirt beneath them. “Most vivid hallucination I ever had.”



A few more moments passed before Jodenny was able to stand without feeling faint. She had spent time in the rain forests of For-tune and recognized kauri trees, several red cedars, and a mammoth cathedral fig. Daisies and bluebells, snails and bees—she didn’t have to look far to confirm this was a world with a familiar ecosystem.



“You sure we’re not in the Sisters?” Myell asked.



“If we are, it would have to be some remote corner of the tropics that no one has charted yet. No one ever reported this kind of formation of Spheres.” Jodenny couldn’t help but smile. “I think we’ve discov-ered another kind of Alcheringa.”



Myell didn’t answer. Already sweating from the heat, Jodenny turned in a circle to take in every detail she could. Green, green, green, as far as the eye could see. Birds of paradise sprouting amid gi-ant tree roots. Mushrooms wider than the spread of her arms. She wrapped her arms across her chest and gave herself a gleeful hug. Jackie MacBride had discovered the Little Alcheringa, and others had discovered the river between the Seven Sisters, but she, Jodenny Scott, had discovered the secret of the Spheres.



“Maybe we’re not supposed to be here,” Myell said. “If the Wondjina meant for us to use the Spheres, then people would have found snake rings a long time ago.”



“Ouroboros,” Jodenny said, because that sounded more scientific.

“Let’s explore some more.”



“No,” Myell said. “We should see if the ring will take us back.”



“But the potential here—”



“Means nothing if we can’t get home,” he said, and pushed her back inside the Mother Sphere.



By the faint light that fell through the archway she saw the ouroboros was indeed still in place, with Myell’s torch abandoned near one edge of it. Cautiously he leaned over and snagged it. He played the light over the walls around them, but they were as smooth and unmarked as any she’d ever seen before. He studied the symbols on the ring.



“Maybe one’s for Mary River, the other for here,” Jodenny said.



“Or maybe it’s a warning,” Myell said. “Stay away, don’t use this. The thing is, Lieutenant, you can’t really trust snakes.”



He spoke as if the ouroboros had a mind of its own. Jodenny said,

“We need to investigate those other Spheres. Get some plant sam-ples, some—”



The horn sounded again, low and mournful. Myell stepped into the ring. “Come on.”



“But we don’t have any proof—”



“If we don’t take our chance now, we might never get back.”



“We can try—” Jodenny started, but Myell grabbed her by the arms and pulled her inside the ring just as the yellow light swept down out of nowhere.



* * * *



J

odenny regained consciousness with Myell slumped in the driver’s seat beside her. The Mary River sun had set, leaving the Father, Mother, and Child Spheres before her as silhouettes against the red and purple sky. She had only vague memories of Myell half carrying, half dragging her from the Mother Sphere to the flit.



“Sergeant.” She touched his hand. Cool, but he had a strong pulse.

“Sergeant,” she repeated, more loudly, and he shifted in his seat.



“Ouch,” he complained.



“We’re back.”



Myell’s head lolled. He opened his eyes. “Hell of a trip.”



They sipped at their water bottles for several minutes. The sky faded to dark and the air grew cold. The Spheres were dark against the stars.

“We have to tell someone,” Jodenny said. “Otherwise the next person who walks in there will get a hell of a surprise.”



“Tell who?” he asked.



“Fleet, for starters.”



Myell snorted. “The organization that has a monopoly on all travel down the Alcheringa? If it is some kind of galactic trans-portation system, Team Space won’t want anyone to know until they figure out how to control it and profit off it. That trip you and I just took might cost fifty thousand yuros, probably. Maybe a hun-dred thousand. They’d really have every colonist or traveler by the throat then.”



Jodenny gazed in consternation at the Mother Sphere. “You’d rather tell the media? Who knows what might happen. People would come try it, and end up marooned or dead. We have a responsibility to our chain of command.”



Myell sipped at his water and didn’t answer.



She took that as acquiescence. “Do you have your gib? Mine’s at my hotel. We need pictures, some kind of proof.”



Myell reached into the backseat and rummaged around in his rucksack. He pulled out something small and wooden, a box of some kind.



“What’s that?” Jodenny asked.



“Nothing.” He sounded annoyed. He shoved it back into the sack, took out his gib, and stepped out of the car. “I’ll get the pictures.”



“Wait for me.” Jodenny opened her own door, but her legs were still wobbly and threatened to give out if she took more than three steps. Myell eased her back to the seat.



“I’ll be back soon, Kay,” he said.



“Sergeant Myell,” she said, making it a command. She didn’t want him to go alone. Myell ignored her and went back to the Mother Sphere. He returned a few minutes later.



“It’s gone,” he said.



Jodenny went to see for herself. The ouroboros had disappeared completely, without even an indentation on the ground to mark its prior existence.



“They’re going to say we made it up,” Myell said, and almost sounded relieved.



“But we didn’t!”



He spread his hands in a not-my-fault gesture.



“If we wait long enough, it’ll come back,” Jodenny predicted. But several minutes passed, then a half hour, then an hour, and still the ring didn’t return. They didn’t even hear the horn. Jodenny was cold and had a headache and Myell, sitting in the archway with a torch in hand, didn’t look much better. She took pictures of the dirt, hoping that perhaps a computer could pick out what human eyes couldn’t see. Finally she said, “I suppose we should go.”



The drive back to New Christchurch passed in silence. The Bethle-hem Parkway was nearly deserted. Jodenny tuned the radio to the lo-cal news but heard nothing about her being wanted by the police or strange occurrences noted near Spheres. As Myell took the exit to-ward downtown she told him where her hotel was and said, “I think we should both keep quiet until we can figure out more about what happened.”



“No problem.” Myell stopped the flit around the corner from her hotel.

“It’s probably best you get out here.”



Jodenny stepped out to the curb. Her leg ached and her eyes had a gritty, sandpapery feel to them. She wondered if she should order both of them to the hospital, to investigate any lingering medical ef-fects of being pushed and shoved through space. “What about you? The birdie left hours ago.”



His voice was neutral. “I’ll check into the barracks.”



She wished she knew what he was thinking. “I’ll see you back on the ship, then.”



Myell drove off without a backward glance. Jodenny walked around the corner to her hotel and decided that if she was arrested, she had to keep Myell and his family out of it. The lobby was empty, however, and the clerk at the front desk ignored her. At the public kiosk in the lobby Jodenny put a call through to the ship. Vu’s agent said she was busy but Strayborn answered on the first ping.




“Hey, Lieutenant,” he said. “Enjoying your liberty?”



Strayborn might be under orders to lull her into a false sense of se-curity, but she sensed nothing amiss about him. “It’s been interesting. Anything going on up there?”



“Nothing we can’t handle.”



Still wary, she signed off and took the lift to her floor. Her thumb-print opened the door lock, and when she inched inside and flipped on the lights she saw that the room was as perfectly ordered as she had left it. Too perfect, perhaps. The bedspread was unwrinkled and tight, though she had been lying on it before she went out for dinner. The cleaning bot, she told herself. But she didn’t rest easy until she opened the wall safe. Inside, untouched, were the diplomatic pouch, her gib, and her wallet.



“Holland,” she said to the gib. “Are you there?”



“Good evening, Lieutenant. How may I be of assistance?”



She sat down on the edge of the bed. “Anything trigger your secu-rity alerts lately? Any inquiries or data trespassing?”



“No, ma’am.”



Try as she might, Jodenny couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had been in the room. Maybe it was silly, or maybe instinct. She packed up her things and went to check out. Down at the front desk, the clerk said,

“Did you enjoy your stay, Lieutenant?”



Sure she did. She had enjoyed it so much she was thinking of recommending Mary River for anyone who enjoyed conspiracies, para-noia, and leaping onto mag-lev trains. Maybe they could package danger, sell it like a theme park. Throw in an unexpected journey to the other side of the universe with a handsome sergeant and they’d be sure to have a surge in customers.



Jodenny took a cab to the officers’ barracks at Fleet and rented a room. She barely slept at all. In the morning she skipped the first birdie so she wouldn’t see Myell and opted for the second flight in-stead. At the port she had a brief moment of panic when the security guard ran her ID through his machine and frowned.



“Something wrong?” Jodenny asked.



“Not quite.” The guard’s gib rang and he answered it with a dis-tracted, “Johnson here.”



She vowed to go quietly, no argument, let the lawyers figure it out. As long as they didn’t handcuff her when they dragged her away, she figured she could live with the humiliation.



“Hey, Lieutenant!” someone called out cheerily. It was Erickson, standing with Minnich. “You’re holding up the line!”



She held up a hand. A wave or a surrender, depending on what came next. The guard hung up his gib and whacked the scanner solidly with the palm of his hand.



“You’re all clear, Lieutenant.”



Until the very moment the birdie departed, she expected police to board and haul her away. While the ship arced toward the Aral Sea, she envisioned guards waiting for her in the docking bay. The skittishness made her angry. Why should she be so worried? Sure, she’d destroyed a secbot, but unknown men had been chasing her. Then a Wondjina transportation device had pulled her from Mary River to God-knew-where and back again. And she was fairly sure she was falling in love with Sergeant Terry Myell.



Unexpectedly she began to laugh.



“Lieutenant?” the RT beside her asked. “You okay?”



“Fine.” Jodenny stifled a giggle. “No worries.”



When the birdie landed she expected Commander Picariello to be waiting for her with his one blue eye and one brown eye, but there was only the normal security checkpoint. Jodenny went directly to her cabin. It was as clean and orderly as she had left it. She took a long hot shower and told herself to relax, but when she checked her imail there was a summons from Commander Al-Banna.



The message wasn’t marked urgent, but she headed for the Flats anyway. One of the AMs from Flight Services was sitting behind the counter.



“Hi, Lieutenant,” she said cheerfully. “Go right in.”



The mate’s easy manner was obviously a ploy. No doubt a dozen armed security techs were waiting in Commander Al-Banna’s office. His hatch was open, though, and he was propping his prayer mat up in the corner. Muslims always knelt toward the bow while in space.



“Sir? You wanted to see me?”



“How was Mary River?”



She chose her words carefully. “It was interesting, sir.”



“I don’t see how. Mary River’s probably the most boring patch of self-righteous prudishness in the galaxy. You going to stand there or do you need an invitation to sit?”



Jodenny sat.



Al-Banna took his own chair and leaned back in it. He squeezed a hand vise in his left hand, methodically working the muscles. “Kal Ysten has asked to be transferred out of Food Services to Flight Support.”



Jealousy stabbed through her. Ysten didn’t deserve Flight Support.



“Don’t look so envious, Lieutenant. I told him he’s going to you in-stead. Apparently he’s desperate enough to get out of the galley that he accepted. If you can train the idiot properly, he’ll make a fine as-sistant for you.”



She was so alarmed that she lost her sense of tact. “Sir, I have enough idiots of my own.”



Al-Banna grinned and squeezed the vise a few more times. “You don’t have a choice. The minute we leave Mary River, he’s yours. Take young Ysten and mold him into a fine officer. Either that or beat him until he bleeds. I have no preference.”



“Yes, sir.” She didn’t know whether to be pleased or annoyed, hon-ored or burdened. The aches of the trip through the Mother Sphere still lingered in her bones and muscles, and she had hopes of crawling into her bed for about twenty hours’ sleep. She remembered the strength of Myell’s hand in hers, and a row of broken Mother Spheres in the green-tinted sunlight.



“Lieutenant.”



“Sir?”



Al-Banna put the vise down. “If Ysten gives you serious trouble, you can come to me. I hope you know that’s true about anything at all. You have questions, you have doubts, you tell me. Understood?”



She swallowed past a suddenly dry throat. “Yes, sir.”



“Good. So what did you really think of Mary River?”



For a moment she was tempted to tell him everything.



“Just another day, another planet, sir,” she said, and left it at that.



* * * *