He disengaged from the destroyer then steered the craft down towards the planet below. Asher Dales looked like any other blue-and-green world, although he thought there was more green than blue. A glance at the shuttle computers told him that there was definitely more land surface relative to water than the average human-compatible world. It was unlikely that Asher Dales would have a problem with living space anytime soon.
“I’ve locked onto the beacon,” he said, as the shuttle flew into the atmosphere and headed north. “Is that the capital city?”
“Yep,” Tanya said. “We don’t have a particularly big spaceport. The original one was smashed during the occupation, and the bastards weren’t interested in repairing or replacing it.”
“We’ll manage,” William assured her.
He had to smile as Landing came into view. The city was relatively small for its importance; it was centered around a single colony ship and a handful of orbital dumpsters that had been dropped to the surface. The spaceport itself was nothing more than a large field covered in concrete. William thought he would have missed it if there hadn’t been a couple of other shuttles sitting in the open. There was only one hangar, which didn’t look to be large enough to take more than one full-sized shuttle.
“Most of the population lives outside of Landing,” Tanya commented as William carefully landed the shuttle on the concrete pad. “That made resistance easier, apparently. The Theocrats couldn’t pen most of the inhabitants into the cities.”
William glanced at her. “How many people live on Asher Dales?”
Tanya bit her lip. “The last census claimed three million,” she said. “But that was before the war.”
And it might have dropped since then, William thought. Barely a tenth of Hebrides’s population remained alive, thanks to the war. Asher Dales had been luckier, in some respects, but unluckier in others. It will be a long time before any of the inhabitants will trust the skies again.
He shut down the shuttle, then stood. The local gravity felt a little stronger than the gravity on Tyre—he made a mental note to adjust the gravity on the destroyers to match—but wasn’t enough to slow him down. Tanya seemed to be having more trouble, for all that she’d been born on Asher Dales . . . William puzzled over that for a moment, then reminded himself that she’d left her homeworld when she’d been a child. She probably remembered almost nothing. He wondered, as he opened the hatch and stepped outside, if that was a good thing or not. He’d take the memories of Hebrides, as it had been before the war, to his grave.
A small welcoming committee was waiting at the edge of the field. Three men, two of them carrying rifles slung over their shoulders. William waited for Tanya to step out of the shuttle, then allowed her to lead the way towards the committee. Up close, he could see that their clothes were homemade, perhaps on Asher Dales itself.
“Captain McElney,” the first man said. He held out a hand. “Richard Barrington, Planetary President.”
William studied him for a long moment. Richard Barrington reminded William of his brother, something that wasn’t entirely a good thing. They had the same roguish scoundrel look, the same devil-may-care attitude towards life, the same smile . . . He reminded himself, sharply, that Richard Barrington had done a lot more for his homeworld than Scott McElney had ever done for his. Richard Barrington had worked tirelessly to free Asher Dales from foreign occupation. He deserved credit for that, if nothing else.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said, shaking Barrington’s hand. “And your friends?”
“Andrew Gellman and Jackson Ford, both members of my cabinet,” Barrington said, with a hint of a smile. “Their roles keep changing, for better or worse. Things are still a little unsettled here.”
“I see,” William said.
“If you’ll come with us, we have a meal prepared,” Barrington said after a moment. “And we have much to discuss.”
William wasn’t sure if he should be charmed by what he saw as he walked through the streets, such as they were, or deeply worried. Asher Dales looked more like a new colony than one with a population of three million people, although he had to admit that spreading three million people over an entire planet would leave them pretty scattered. Barrington and his subordinates kept up a constant running chatter, telling William about their small industrial base and their long-term plans for the future. They had big plans.
“We always intended to move into space,” Barrington told him as they reached a small cottage. It took William a moment to realize that the building was Barrington’s home. “The Theocracy got there first.”
William smiled. “And now you plan to make sure you can never be conquered again?”
“Essentially,” Barrington said. “As I believe Tanya told you, our long-term goal is to develop our own space-based industry.”
“That will take some time,” William said.
“There are shortcuts,” Barrington said. He jabbed a finger upwards. “The real problem is getting to orbit. Once we’re there, we’re halfway to anywhere.”
That wasn’t particularly accurate, William thought as they sat down at the table, but he understood the man’s point. Getting heavy payloads out of a planet’s atmosphere had been a problem that had bedeviled mankind until antigravity drive fields had been invented. Asher Dales could put together the technology to build a lunar base without many problems and, once they solved the problem of getting the base to the moon, they’d have no trouble turning it into a mining center. William had no idea if they really could build something to rival Tyre, one day, but he admired them for trying.
“You’ll notice that much of our food is very simple,” Barrington told him. “But feel free to eat as much as you like.”
William felt an odd burst of nostalgia. He’d taken part in enough barn raisings as a young man to remember how the men would do the outdoor work while the women would lay out a fantastic spread. The meal in front
