One such café came with a great view out over the bay Alliance City sat on, and it was there that Mitsuko took her friends for a bite to eat and a drink before they headed home. She had, rather dutifully, taken them up to the gallery to watch the council’s proceedings first. Melissa and Rochester were the most interested, and even they could only manage to keep that interest up for a couple of minutes. There was nothing of great political interest happening and the huge, tiered hall where the General Assembly of the Clans met was more than half empty.
‘My parents brought me here when I was… ten,’ Mitsuko said. ‘Father was on shore leave, but he was not getting much time off his ship, so Mother and I came out to meet him and we had lunch in this café. I say lunch. It was mostly sticky pastries. This place makes pastries from all over the Alliance and they’re all good.’ She put down her own plate of flaky, sticky goodness and settled into one of the seats at a table facing the ocean.
Nava had asked Mitsuko to pick something out for her because she had no clue what any of the sweets were. Whatever the thing was she had been given – it had almond slices on it and looked nice – she was going to eat it and say she enjoyed it. She sat down beside Mitsuko, not particularly worried that her view was not especially good. She was, in fact, happier with the arrangement; she could see the door from her seat.
‘The assembly was a little… underwhelming,’ Melissa commented. She barely appeared to notice that Rochester held her chair for her as she sat down, though she did give him a quick, slightly nervous smile.
‘Somehow, I expected something more momentous,’ Rochester said. ‘I suppose I should have known better.’
‘When there’s something important going on, it gets more exciting,’ Mitsuko said. ‘I remember, that first time I came, the place was heaving. Everyone was there discussing something or other.’
‘Five years ago?’ Kyle asked. ‘There was a big Redwing Faction attack on Hamilton’s Star around then. A lot of rumours that they were planning assaults on other worlds. That might’ve been why your father was shorted on his leave too.’
‘They mostly attacked orbital facilities,’ Nava said. ‘There was some guerrilla activity on Hamilton’s Star Four. Civilians died. Any real chance of continued operations was negated by the loss of almost the entire Redwing attack force. They did do significant damage to some of their targets before the ASF and local defence forces destroyed them or drove them off.’
Kyle raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m a little surprised you know about that. You tend to be, um, uninformed about Clan Worlds history.’
‘Yes, I do. I am, mostly. I happened to meet someone who was on Hamilton’s Star Four at the time while I was being acclimatised to the culture here. In the end, the attack put more of a dent in the pride of the Hamilton clan than any physical damage caused.’
‘The Hamiltons do tend to be rather fanatical about wiping out the Redwings,’ Mitsuko said.
‘It was a Hamilton who came to take Tracey Spears into custody,’ Courtney said. ‘Uh, Fawn Tyrell, first lieutenant.’
‘Oh,’ Mitsuko said. ‘I suddenly feel almost sorry for Tracey.’
‘I don’t.’
‘I did say “almost.”’
The Trenton Mansion.
Courtney slid the Daison-Musck GravCruiser into a perfect, gentle landing on one of the mansion’s landing pads. She sighed. ‘Daison-Musck really know how to make a contragrav. I don’t get to fly many with this quality very often.’
‘I’ve only ever flown Avorn-Devin models,’ Melissa said.
‘You can fly contragrav?’
‘Anyone can fly contragrav, but I did have a permit on Avorna. I never bothered to get one here because I figured I’d never get to use it.’ It was true that pretty much anyone could fly a contragravity vehicle; the flight controls were meant to be easy to use because they were meant to be used by the general public. More or less everywhere had a permit system, however, and restricted use of the vehicles to those who had passed a test because that extra dimension of freedom made them more susceptible to pilot error than ground vehicles.
‘Kyle actually has a licence for operating spaceships,’ Courtney said, a hint of pride in her voice.
‘Not that I get to use it much,’ Kyle said. ‘What’s the plan for this afternoon?’
‘Pool?’ Mitsuko suggested.
‘You mean you want me to dip you in sunblock again so you can roast,’ Nava said.
Mitsuko grinned. ‘Pretty much.’
‘I’m feeling a little tired,’ Rochester said. The colour in his cheeks suggested something else. ‘I believe I’ll lie down in my room for a while.’
‘We’re here to relax. If that’s how you want to relax, far be it from me to force you onto a lounger.’ Mitsuko turned slightly so that she could give Melissa a pointed look and, for once, Melissa actually got the meaning.
‘I’ll see what I feel like when I’ve got changed,’ Melissa said.
‘Good plan,’ Nava said. ‘Flexibility in planning is a very useful habit to get into.’
‘Flexibility is always good,’ Mitsuko said as she stepped out of the car. Nava suspected that planning was the last thing on her mind when she said it.
~~~
‘Do you think she’s chickened out?’ Courtney asked. She was lying on a lounger on the patio in a bikini which managed to be conservative and risqué at the same time. The briefs were high-hipped and thong-backed, but the top was a moderately covering sort of bandeau-with-halter-string affair. However, the material was a fine-weave nanofibre which was not entirely opaque. Kyle seemed to like it. Quite a lot.
‘Who?’ Kyle asked. ‘Mel?’
‘None of your business.’
‘Huh.’
‘It’s been thirty minutes,’ Mitsuko said, rather giving the game away. ‘I’d have expected her here if she wasn’t going to try.’
‘I think you’re underestimating her capacity for prevarication under these kinds of
