- Prologue

Aelliana had been a courier pilot, as well, and they both read the words and the visible codes with no problem, she computing ahead of him to inform—

Second seat on a working courier, with a box on Staederport! She's—

'. . . a nexus of violence!'

Jen Sar was already at Kamele's side, who sat, white-faced, letter crumpled in hand.

'By the mothers, they've destroyed her!'

'Surely not,' he said, easing her hand open to rescue the precious paper.

He wasn't certain how long it took, or whether it was his gentle insistence or Aelliana's firmer explanations that finally brought the rage to anger, the anger to acceptance. The wine sat forgotten for a while, and when recalled, was aimed at relaxing a mother's unrequited fury.

'Kamele,' Jen Sar said, finally, 'I swear to you this is true. The barbarians have not won. Theo may lack her degree, but she holds what she wants. She has her wings.'

Thirty-Three

Primadonna

Alanzia Port

Tranza was off on another binge, Theo realized darkly; she'd be lucky if she saw more than a passing wave of the hand acknowledging her dinner arrangements or that he'd be prepared any time soon to 'study on' her proposed course and timelines. This time, besides laying out the course and schedule, she'd already had to balance the official delivery loads in their outboard minipods and fine-tune the more sensitive high-value stuff in the pressure pallets. Was that enough? No, then came the rebalance because the local office was shipping 'internal matter' set to arrive after they were moved to hotpad, which meant it would have to find space in the tiny passenger cabin.

The last time they'd had 'cabin goods,' as Tranza would have them, it had been a load of fron, a spice so rare and potent that an amount matching Theo's own mass was sufficient to sustain the Howsenda's needs—the final destination—for a period of years. Whatever it was, it was probably the one thing that had gotten her outdoors—

That was another thing. When the trip came across the board originally it was a straight orbital pick-up from the outermost of the four transfer stations. So, she'd calculated for that on the Jump, getting nothing but an 'I can get by with this, I guess' from Tranza. Then, he'd told her to push Jump and she brought them through a day later, within hailing distance and all he had to say while they normalized the orbit was, 'Hey, if we can get down there's usually some good play'—and he'd gone off to make a crew-rest request.

Crew rest was a joke; that meant Tranza got to visit friends and influence people while she tended the ship. If she was lucky, he'd bring back a new language module, and they could practice against each other.

If she wasn't lucky, he'd haul in a new set of silhouette training vids, not that she couldn't already identify forty-seven major ship styles and thirty-six uniques, including the top ten trade ships. Diamon Lines Chanticleer City? No problem. Korval's Dutiful Passage? She knew it from six directions, even though she'd never really seen it, either. Scout ships? She had them down by the dozen. Fah! That's what came of telling Tranza she'd caught a ghost ship in the screens when he was off-board and asleep. He wasn't going to let up until they found it all legal and ID'd in a sanctioned pack, since he'd taken polite leave to doubt the lacework sketch she'd provided.

Well, at least she hadn't had any repeat sightings in—well, in a good long while.

Once they'd dropped off their initial minipods they got that rest order, so on short notice she'd managed to cut to an inner orbit, and from there to the ground, with Theo getting a grand total of a walk to the local crew store and cafeteria and a visit to the pet library where she got to talk to a norbear for a few minutes between crowds of littlies on a field trip. That'd made her wonder why she'd never seen a norbear on Delgado but it was probably rules made up by the Safties.

The other good thing was that, after she visited the norbear, she'd gotten to see the birds, flying free, something that made her startlingly happy. Birds were oddities on Delgado, and the ones on Eylot were all tiny and stupid, but here on . . . wherever they were—Alanzia it must be. Here on Alanzia birds were protected as treasures, with even ship landings following paths strictly set to avoid nesting areas. Many of them had amazing wingspans and soaring habits that made them look like undergrown sailwings. Only good hearing had prevented her from being run down on the pathways, since she so often just stopped to take in the sight.

And then it was back to the ship, and now she could name Alanzia as planet number twenty-two that she'd set foot on, and likely number fourteen that she'd sat board for liftoff. Somewhere in her personal log she had a complete list of the ports, orbiting or not, and her time at the board and all that—but mostly she was keeping busy.

As for Tranza's binge, who could tell what it would be this time around? No doubt, it was something he'd picked up on Alanzia. He'd rushed back with several packages, asking after messages and delays, offering up advice to pull trip info on half a dozen potentials assuming a run to Volmer, of all places.

No, maybe she could guess. Her first trip out he'd mentioned music archives on half a dozen planets, Alanzia among them, since he'd just bought a run of a hundred different songs without instruments. He'd spent the first twelve-day with her breaking into what he assumed was singing at the oddest moments, and then he'd shown up for dinner with a tablet drum and some chimes so they could play music together, in between bouts of her learning, of course.

And that's the way it had been, him insisting that a pilot who wasn't learning was wasting what the universe was about, and periodically going off on tears of this or that amusement or pastime, in between bouts of sim flying, math games, and the like. He'd insisted that she keep up the ship-spotting regimen, saying that sometimes you needed to know without waiting for a computer to tell you, exactly what ship it was you'd got on the screen, or in your cross hairs. Some trips he'd spend all his time behind her shoulders, watching every move, and others he turned off the outer world and binged on drawing, or playing the flute. He'd tried to emulate her needle-play, but as good as he was at it, he didn't find it engaging. In fact they didn't agree on much in the way of music or art or theater or restful pastimes.

'Oh no,' he told her the one time she dragged out a bowli ball, 'not even a little bit, not on board Primadonna. We get to some place with room, I might play, but you come with a reputation, so maybe not. That goes away and I don't see it.'

If Tranza was anything, it was protective of his ship.

'This vessel was first put in service the very day I got my jacket,' he'd told her before she sat second board for