She was. The Omia Zaos had crescent arms well forward of the center, where many ships had them mounted. Her arms were folded back into a crease in the fuselage, so they merged with the lines of the ship instead of jutting above it.
Lyth tugged on my sleeve. “Come on.” He ran over to the small manhole on the platform that the ground crew used. We followed him down metal stairs to a gantry network running beneath the platforms, that gave the city’s ground crews access to all of them.
Crew people in their distinctive coveralls were moving along the gantries just as we were and gave us startled looks as we dashed between the Lythion and the Omia Zaos.
Up more stairs onto the Omia Zaos’ platform. Now we could feel the heat and sniff the lingering navigation engine exhaust fumes. But already, the city ground crew was coupling the ship to the supply lines and moving around the landing struts.
As we circled around the ship, a set of stairs lowered down from underneath the ship. It was a private yacht and didn’t have a huge freight bay and ramp servicing it.
The first person out of the ship was Venni. She was black, white and grey all over, with startling blue eyes amongst all the monotone fur. She shot down the steps with a little yip, dashed over to me, and reared back and planted her forepaws on my shoulders.
I staggered under the impact and the weight, as Venni tried to lick and nuzzle my face. Rich, aromatic breath fanned my skin.
I managed to stay on my feet and even got a hand up to scratch at her tummy—which was as far as I could reach with her paws holding down my shoulders.
“Here, let me. Sorry about this. Venni!” The male voice was not Sauli’s, but I couldn’t peer around Venni to see who it was. From closer to us, he said, “Venni, down. You’ll squash her.”
Venni got in a last lick and dropped to the ground. The relief to my shoulders was vast. I rubbed them and smiled down at the parawolf, then looked at my savior.
He was Sauli’s double, except his hair was a deep brown, and his eyes were the same black as his mother’s. But he had Sauli’s rangy build, high cheekbones and thin cheeks, and the determined chin, which most people overlooked. No freckles, though.
“Yoan?” I said, staggered.
Yoan grinned and thrust his hand into Venni’s scruff. “Colonel.”
“You’ve grown up!” My response was a mindless reflex.
Jai swayed closer to me. “They tend to do that,” he pointed out. Then he smiled at Yoan. “Are you working with your father now?”
Yoan nodded. “Learning the trade. Although I’ve learned a lot just sitting at the family dinner table and listening to them talk.” He cocked a brow as Sauli and Kristiana came up to us.
Kristiana Saito was a delicate, petite brunette, with short, no-nonsense hair, sharp black eyes and a pointed chin. She grinned at me. “You were an excuse, that’s all, so don’t bother yelling at us about obligations.”
Was I that predictable? I had been juggling guilt for pulling them away from their very busy lives, even though it hadn’t been me who had done the yanking.
I hugged her, instead, then pulled Sauli away from Marlow and did the same to him. I had got used to hugging, over the last thirty years. It was a pleasant custom that more people should adopt.
While we were all busy saying hello to each other, which included Venni dancing around all of us, more people, none of them wearing the ground crew coveralls, came up and surrounded us. They didn’t give off security vibes, or even ex-Ranger vibes, which most security staff had once been.
Sauli untangled himself from the greetings and turned to a squat man with pale hair, sensuous lips, and a keen gaze. “Everything under control, Captain Truda?”
Truda glanced around. “Well…it isn’t a landing bay, is it?” He looked overhead, at the landscape painted upon the far side of the cylinder.
Sauli clapped Truda’s shoulder. “We’re heading to the Lythion, over there.” He nodded toward the other platform.
“I’ll let you know when the ship is ready to leave,” Truda said. He gave a half turn and smiled at Lyth. “Hello, old friend.”
Lyth gripped his arm. “Hello, Baha. It is good to see you.”
With a jolt, I realized that Truda was a digital sentient.
The Humanists insisted that digitals were faint copies of real humans, and left spore which marked them indelibly as not good enough. Yet I could not differentiate between digital and bio people, and I had known the very first digital person the longest of anyone in the galaxy except Dalton.
I turned to Kristiana. “You left the rest of the family on Darius?” Sauli and Kristiana had married—yes, the actual old Terran rite. I had watched it myself. Then they proceeded to have children one after another, while also building a shipping business. Oh, and while also building a city station in orbit over Darius III.
Darius—the planet—was one of the tragedies of the Shutdown, thirty years ago. While everyone in the galaxy had been incommunicado, thanks to the array, Darius had been hit by an ELE-sized asteroid. Like Nijeliya, Darius’ atmosphere had become hostile to life. Millions had died because no ships could take them off the surface.
Kristiana had been born on Darius III and was one of the few natives to survive, for the Darius way of life had been conducive to remaining on the planet. To mark the disaster, so that no one would forget, Kristiana—who was also a politician par excellence—had rounded up influencers and businessmen, while Sauli co-opted construction firms and experts. Between them, they had directed the building of the star city.
Darius City was now the center of crescent ship technology, and Kristiana the president of the Shipping Guild, which she had also built, in between having children.
Kristiana smiled at me. “I would have left Yoan behind, too, but I thought it prudent to
