Artifact Space

by Miles Cameron

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Military Sci-Fi; Space Exploration

Synopsis

Out in the darkness of space, something is targeting the Greatships.

With their vast cargo holds and a crew that could fill a city, the Greatships are the lifeblood of human occupied space, transporting an unimaginable volume - and value - of goods from City, the greatest human orbital, all the way to Tradepoint at the other, to trade for xenoglas with an unknowable alien species.

It has always been Marca Nbaro's dream to achieve the near-impossible: escape her upbringing and venture into space.

All it took, to make her way onto the crew of the Greatship Athens was thousands of hours in simulators, dedication, and pawning or selling every scrap of her old life in order to forge a new one. But though she's made her way onboard with faked papers, leaving her old life - and scandals - behind isn't so easy.

She may have just combined all the dangers of her former life, with all the perils of the new . . .

Release date: June 24, 2021

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 576

Sample

1

‘Someone’s birthright,’ the pawnshop’s owner said. He didn’t say it with any particular tone of judgement or moral responsibility. He just said it, and rubbed the top of his head. ‘It’s real?’

Marca Nbaro tried to force herself not to snarl. ‘Yes.’

‘Like I can trust a junkie,’ the man said, but with no more tone than before. He had terrible cerisus and what little hair he had was lank; a failed rejuv.

Nbaro hadn’t realised that her stolen ‘social assistance’ clothing was so bad.

The man pressed a tab in the little statuette. It was of a winged lion, in gold and enamel. A holographic coat of arms sprang into existence.

‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘I guess I could loan you two thousand. Or I’d buy it for three, right now, in cash.’ He nodded, coolly, but a faint note of emotion had crept into his tone for the first time, and the emotion was greed. ‘Someone would kill for this.’

No shit, Nbaro thought.

‘Pawn only. I’ll be back.’

He shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. Not a lot of junkies with patrician patents, eh?’

She held out her tab – a cheap thing, but the best she could afford that wasn’t controlled.

‘Pawn,’ she said.

He shrugged. ‘Retinal scan. Or half the amount in cash.’

Retinal scan would leave a real trace. On the other hand, if she’d been tracked as far as the pawn shop, Nbaro was fucked anyway.

‘Retinal scan,’ she said.



The hacker was next. A former classmate … Sarah flashed to mind and Nbaro swallowed, hard.

A former classmate had found her the hacker. A former classmate who’d been sold to a brothel, and wasn’t broken. Yet.

Nbaro walked briskly among the Gothic pillars of the restored palazzo under the xenoglas dome. It was the most beautiful place in the world, or at least in her world, which was City, the greatest orbital in Human Space. She was terribly out of place here in her trashy recycle clothes – the kind of clothes that were given away at the care centres, by Social Care and Assistance, to non-citizens, and mendicant citizens, who everyone called SCAMs. She walked quickly and with purpose, because that was her only defence.

If I’m a mendicant, I’ll look like a busy one.

Nbaro passed under a light, with its embedded PTZ cameras and an audio link. She put the hood of her recycle jacket up and wondered if every mendicant she’d ever seen was on the run from someone.

If the Dominus is already looking for me, I’m going to show up on every camera in the City.

She might as well have worn her uniform. It was in the disposable spacer’s helmet bag she carried. Her Orphanage uniform. It was really the ‘Academy of the Hospital for Wards of the State,’ but everyone called it the ‘Orphanage.’ It was supposed to be a finishing school for children orphaned by their parents, dedicated service to the DHC.

In fact, it was hell.

Maybe I’m a fool, Nbaro thought.

But if she was in Orphanage whites, she’d stand out even more.

A Security officer glanced at her and then turned for a better look. He wore dark blue, a flightsuit not unlike those worn by Service, and he had a winged-lion badge.

He waved a hand casually and stepped towards her, and she stopped.

He smiled. ‘No begging here, OK?’ His voice was pleasant and low.

Nbaro nodded.

‘Need me to walk you somewhere?’ he asked.

She wasn’t taken in by his appearance of friendliness and she ducked her head, shook it, and walked away. She didn’t look back, and he didn’t follow her.

And there, at the end of the piazza, was her man. He was short, and somehow looked too old and too … dumb … to be a famous criminal hacker. But he was at the right table and he had the Old Catholic Bible next to his coffee.

He looked up as Nbaro sat down.

‘Hells, kid, you stick out like a fucking starliner in a navy dock.’ He looked around. ‘I should just leave.’

‘I have the money.’

He held up his tab.

Nbaro thumbed hers and the money was transferred. Just like that – two thousand ducats.

Her tab beeped, and he was up.

He glanced at her. ‘I did it inside the shore establishment,’ he said. ‘That ship has a fucking AI. A little advice? Don’t fuck with the AIs, sister. A ship AI will protect its own like a mother with a missing child. If that thing gets on to you, you’re fucking dead. So I didn’t touch the ship. Katalaveno?’ he asked in Greek. ‘Got me?’

‘I understand.’ Something else to fear.

‘Good. This is a favour for your friend. The favour is done. Ciao.’

Favour my ass. I paid you for this.

Shore Establishment?

That worried her. The Service had a gigantic headquarters, a small orbital of its own, near the New London shipyards. How …?

He turned and walked away into the vast crowd.

In happier times, Nbaro and Sarah had sat here in their uniforms and watched the crowds. Patricians. Spacers. Service. All kinds of people, shopping and chatting, flirting …

Before the Dominus sold Sarah to a brothel.

Before …

Fuck.

Nbaro saw the two men emerge from the web of lifts and alleys behind the facade of ancient Venice across the square. She knew them both. They were part of the Orphanage ‘Security’, the thugs who roamed the corridors and did as they pleased.

Was it bad luck? Or had they followed her from the pawn shop?

Nbaro dropped her tab on the ground and got down to retrieve it, but instead of standing, she started crawling between the tables towards the arcade of pillars. A tourist noticed her and grabbed her fashionable little backpack away, afraid that the SCAMer would take it; another, a ’gyne from the stations, put their hand on their tab.

Nbaro kept crawling.

I’m so fucking close.

If the hacker had done his job …

It was all insane. The risks were insane, but … No one is taking this away from me. I’ll die fighting for it.

Nbaro needed to get to the main drum of the Old City – to the space-side end. It was a single long lift ride away. That’s the way she’d planned it. And she could change in the lift car.

But those two bastards were between her and the lifts.

The dome that held the square of San Marco, as well as most of the original buildings that had surrounded it, sat in its own xenoglas bubble on the outer walls of the cylinder that was the Old City, where it got the full benefit of spin gravity back in the old days before large-scale artificial gravity came in. Every lift and train from the two docksides at the ends of the cylinder ran to San Marco, because that’s where every spacer and tourist wanted to be. Underside, with its seedy bars, brothels, and nightlife, was almost directly under their feet, ready to relieve them of their digital ducats in a variety of ways.

Nbaro reached the arcade of pillars and stood up behind one. No security, no thugs. A couple of interested tourists. And the cameras, of course.

She walked along the arcade, head down, trying to blend in. She glanced sidelong at the two Orphanage officers, and kept moving.

They began to scan the piazza. So … they didn’t have a tracker on her and they weren’t watching her on remotes or using the cameras.

Still in the game.

Nbaro changed her plan. She could go all the way along the arcaded walk to the far end, and then take a tourist lift downstation to Underside. She could catch a lift for Dockside from there, and leave them …

Shit.

They both saw her at almost the same time, and they both smiled.

Nbaro knew what those smiles meant.

This isn’t how I want to die.

She dropped caution, and ran.

She was running along the arcaded shopfronts and coffee houses towards the ancient cathedral itself, its strange domes silhouetted by floodlights against the darkness of space. The planet beneath them was just coming into view, the reflected sunlight almost dazzling after the artificial light. The square to her right was full of people, and now she was running away from the lifts.

Marca Nbaro was long-legged, and fast, and neither of the Dominus’s bruisers was particularly gifted at running. But in three steps, she saw one on his tab, and she knew that her options were narrowing.

I have to try for Dockside, she thought. Now or never. They can get fifty friends on me in Underside.

Nbaro put a pillar between herself and her pursuers and turned into a service corridor marked Emergency Personnel Only. She got through the door and already felt she’d made the wrong decision; the door was taking too long to close. And she was taking an absurd risk: she was guessing that there were service corridors behind the shopfront facade.

I’m an idiot.

Nbaro ran. She was behind the row of shops that catered to spacers and tourists in the square, and heads turned, but she ran until she reached a cross-corridor, and then she turned, again, functioning on some innate understanding of how the station was constructed and that there must be some access to the spaces between compartments …

A ladder, and a lift down. A woman coming out of the lift.

Nbaro leapt past her and pressed the stud and the mesh doors hissed shut. She could hear pounding footsteps, and Bruks, the terror of the hallways back at the Orphanage, appeared around the last corner.

‘Nbaro, stop. We can talk this out.’ He had a tab in one hand … and a small sub-lethal in the other.

‘Talk this out’ meant he beat the crap out of her, or he and his partner raped her. Both, probably. Nbaro knew the drill.

The big woman frowned and pressed her override button. The lift sank away into the floor.

For absolutely no reason, the big woman by the lift had just saved her life.

As Nbaro sank away, she heard the woman say, ‘You got some ID, buddy?’

The lift had only two stops – up and down – and it sank into the main cylinder of the Old City. For a moment she passed through the old armour plating – massive plates of cerocrete and steel. Then the lift burst into brilliant light and stopped, and the door opened.

A cargo elevator. From an internal loading dock on one of the City’s magnificent vacuum canals. Nbaro stepped out onto the loading dock and someone shouted on the dock, but she just kept moving, out through the open hatch and …

‘Hells!’ she spat.

Nbaro was a long way up in the drum, and from here, with the artificial gravity, the ‘sky’ was now below her. Which meant that her loading dock was now upside down, and ten thousand metres down.

There was a space skiff, a little hob boat with a simple hydrofus engine sitting against the airlock, dogged in, and being unloaded – recycle crates marked for shops. Nbaro was tempted to steal the boat; she suspected she could.

But that way madness lay. The canal control AI could shut her down in seconds.

This is insane.

Instead of stealing the boat, Nbaro crossed the airlock-bridge and walked out into a street in Underside. When she let the hatch close behind her, the artificial sunlight of the main drum vanished, to be replaced by brilliant LED lighting, and the mixed smells of urine and food.

Back in Underside. The last place she wanted to be.

Nbaro blinked. Her stomach growled, despite everything. But it wasn’t a time to hesitate.

She crossed two passages without incident, and she was one short alley from the Underside square when the blow took her in the side of the head.

It hit her hard. Pain flared, and anger with it, and Nbaro rolled as she’d been taught even as a hard hand clenched on her collar.

She went limp. She was, at best, semi-conscious, and it wasn’t hard to play to worse. She knew they’d want her alive. He would want her alive.

‘I got her,’ the man said into his tab.

Nbaro rammed her shiv into his groin and ripped up, avoiding his body armour, and severing the artery where the leg joins the trunk. Blood seemed to explode over her outstretched hand, and the man died against her. Nbaro breathed in the exhalation of his last breath; they were close as lovers.

Karlo. Now that’s …

No heads turned.

… satisfying …

Nbaro let him fall off her. She was covered in his blood, slick with it. Hands sticky.

I killed him.

I killed him …

No time for that shit now.

Nbaro was behind a restaurant, or a taverna; it was an alley she’d used as a short cut to the square before, and the litter of condoms and other toys suggested that other people used it for various other purposes, too. But the taverna had a kitchen, and the kitchen door was open so the cook could smoke something.

By luck, he stepped out. He glanced her way … and then deliberately turned his back on her and lit something.

Nbaro was tempted to cross herself. Instead, she slipped past him and inside – kitchen, washroom. It was tiny, and filthy, and she didn’t have time to be careful.

The dirty little washroom didn’t have a camera. That much she checked before she stripped and pulled on the Service Blue coveralls of the very lowest ranking officer. A midshipper. She washed her face as fast as she could, attempted to dry it with a recycle towel that did nothing to take water away. She got her feet into the regulation boots she’d bought on the black market. They were too big.

The little stall had a mirror, and she looked in it. There was blood beside her mouth, and three spots like caste marks on her forehead, and she cleaned it again.

No time. No time. Once they find the body …

There was blood under her nails.

Nbaro pulled on her Orphanage gloves, which were white, and correct with the coverall.

‘Midshipper Marca Nbaro,’ said the woman in the mirror. ‘Reporting aboard.’

She sounded good. She was surprised at herself; ninety seconds ago, she’d ripped the life out of a man she hated.

‘Reporting aboard,’ she said again.

Nbaro walked right out the front of the restaurant, and her Service Blue was suddenly like armour; Security didn’t even look at her. Spacers smiled, or frowned, but they got out of her way.

She walked two shabby blocks to Underside Square, pushed through the crowd, and boarded a lift.

Should have worn this from the start.

I over-thought it. As fucking usual.

In ten minutes, Nbaro collected the rest of her baggage at a locker in Space Side – a duffel and a longer, non-regulation bag – and then, without letting herself think about it, she was at Dockside. She saluted the Shore Patrol station and was passed without an ID check; the Marine on duty saluted.

That stung, somehow.

All her bags had to go through sniffers and scans, and the sailor at the security scanner grinned.

‘Nice swords, miz,’ she said.

Nbaro tried to smile back, but the fear was too much. She heard the lift doors open behind her, and she made herself collect her bags, nod to the sailor, and moved to the nearest brow in near zero g, a long umbilical of reinforced plastic running through the vast open space of the Docks to the matt black of the ship that hung above her by a hundred such connections.

‘Officers’ brow, miz,’ the sailor on the security sensor said. ‘That’s for enlisted.’

Nbaro could barely see the greatship; the thick plastic umbilical hadn’t been built for tourists. And she had a moment of panic, because this wasn’t in any sim, and she didn’t know which brow to take.

Another spacer in a bright yellow harness for moving cargo raised an eyebrow.

‘First time, miz?’ he asked. ‘That one.’

Nbaro gave him a grateful, distracted nod.

Christ.

She couldn’t stop herself from looking back at the lifts.

No one she knew. But three men, heavy …

Keep going.

Nbaro entered the access tunnel and it seemed to run forever, rising above her in the very low gravity. She climbed hand over hand, keeping one hand for the ship at all times as she’d been taught remorselessly. Her duffel bobbed along with her, accelerating when she moved too fast and then tugging at the short tether that held it to her like a faithful pet in a holo performance. Her sword bag looked as if it might hold a musical instrument – broad like the bell of a trumpet at one end, tapering away to narrow enough for the neck of a guitar.

It was surprisingly cold in the plastic tunnel. Simulations never seemed to match reality; in the sims …

My experience in sims is going to be the death of me.

Nbaro had expected everything to be … cleaner. Neater. And warmer, to say the least.

At least there was air. Very cold air.

She looked back down the long tunnel to the Dockside. She half-expected pursuit, or arrest, or an announcement …

Maybe, just this once, something worked.

Nbaro smiled nervously, and continued to tug herself along. She was alone in the brow; it was a routine dockside day, and the vast cargo ship wasn’t even loading for its next run yet. Most of the crew would still be in City with their families.

She’d timed it that way. Sort of.

The spin of City was imparted to all of the habitable portions, but the greatships docked at the non-spin ends. Nbaro had grown up watching them from the Orphanage; they were so large that they were visible from almost anywhere, extending for kilometres past the City’s docks and drum. And they were distinctive. Greatships were shaped like sword blades, needle-sharp at the bow where their railgun tubes opened, and tapering to broad hilts to support the massive engines. They weren’t aerodynamic, precisely, but they were built to support enormous velocities – up to 0.3c – when even interstellar particles and monatomic hydrogen needed to be brushed aside. They were so big that at sub-light speeds they had drag, and needed to be shaped accordingly. City might have hundreds, even thousands, of ships in its merchant and military fleets, but there were only nine greatships, and she knew all of them: Dubai and Athens, New York and Venice, Hong Kong and Tokyo, London and Samarkand and Tyre.

And now Marca Nbaro was going to serve on one.

Imposter.

She looked back again. She was going to make it.

Maybe.

At last, Nbaro got to the end of the tether and linked her feet to the little platform. Despite the presence of atmosphere in the long plasteel tunnel, there was an airlock. Of course. She felt foolish for not imagining an airlock. But there wasn’t a sim for boarding. She had to play this by ear. Her one ride on a Service warship had been completely different, and she’d gone aboard while it was hard-docked to station.

She put a hand on the amber plate beside the lock. It was cold, right through her uniform gloves, but the chip in her palm was read by the device, and the airlock hissed open. Her big duffel coasted past her from some motion of her shoulders, and then fell to the airlock deck with a thud.

Artificial gravity. The boundary felt funny as she crossed the line from the brow to the deck.

And then Marca Nbaro was aboard the Athens.

She couldn’t budge the grin from her face, despite the conflict between delight and anxiety. The lock closed behind her and she glanced up at a beautiful tell-all, a baroque brass or bronze instrument that looked handmade, and was fitted with a cut crystal screen. The instrument, and the inner hatch, radiated age and craftsmanship. And careful maintenance.

I’m here.

The telltale went from red to amber to green, and as it passed into green Nbaro put her gloved hand on the inner plate and was rewarded with a deep, musical sound like a bell.

The inner hatch, etched on every brazen blade with a pattern of acanthus leaves like something from a museum, irised open, the blades sliding over each other almost instantly. It took Nbaro’s breath away, and with it what remained of her composure, so that she eventually went through the inner airlock like a startled rat, clumsily dragging her duffel.

Training and constant repetition saved her, and she faced aft automatically and snapped a crisp salute, despite the fact that she couldn’t see anything like the banner of the DHC floating in the hard vacuum of space. That salute was a ceremony older than space, and she knew it.

Nbaro relished it, just a little.

I’m doing this.

Salute complete, she turned to face the officer of the deck, who stood casually in a shipboard uniform of midnight-blue coveralls just like hers, except with two thin gold lines at each cuff.

‘Midshipper …’ Nbaro’s voice came out like a pen nib scratching paper, and she cleared her throat. ‘Midshipper Marca Nbaro reporting aboard,’ she said.

Here we go.

The officer’s mouth twitched – not quite a smile, and yet quite friendly, in a military way.

‘Welcome aboard, Ms Nbaro,’ he said. ‘You’re very early.’

He was a first lieutenant, and thus far enough above her that she had to be careful.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said.

Nbaro was tempted to say, ‘Sir, I overthink everything and I’m not always the best with people and a lot of what you’re about to read is a lie and I may be pursued so I thought I’d come aboard all by myself, and you know, the Orphanage is a wretched place and I’ve waited my whole life to be here …’

She was distracted and missed what he was saying. Her brown skin flushed.

I am an idiot. This isn’t going to work. This is insane.

The lieutenant smiled. ‘He’ll be here in a moment. First time aboard the Athens?’ he asked, as if she was a person.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said.

He’s going to see through me.

‘Tab, please,’ he said.

Nbaro fought down her terror.

What can they do to me if they catch me? Throw me out? To the hells with them all if they try.

She stripped off her uniform glove and saw there was still blood under her nails, but it was too late. She reached into her coverall pocket and produced her tab – the smallest and cheapest authorised by the Service: no AI; barely capable of reading all the required systems. Far more expensive than she could afford. And it carried the big lie. The hacker’s lie.

Poverty, pawnbroker’s records, a tab ducat balance of minus 6. And a criminal hack job.

Why?

Oh, right: no choice.

Nbaro waited for some little dig about her cheap tab, or for his keen eyes to take in the dried blood, but he took the tab and looked it over.

‘Codes, please,’ he said.

Same as the Orphanage; not that she’d ever owned such a device as an orphan. A few others had.

The ones who co-operated.

Nbaro typed in the code.

He ran the screen across some sort of reader. He made a face.

She could smell her own sweat.

‘You’re not in the system,’ he said. ‘AI says …’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Ah.’

Nbaro couldn’t breathe.

Oh. Fuck.

‘Ah, I see. Morosini just updated from the Shore Establishment and there you are.’

He shrugged, as if this sort of thing happened every day, and handed the tab back.

‘Now you’re in the system. Your tab has your codes, your stateroom location, your workspace, your battle station, and a whole lot of SOP that I recommend you read as soon as you have a chance.’

Nbaro nodded. Incredulous.

‘Yes, sir.’

That’s all? It worked? Some two-bit hacker in Castello made it work?

‘We’ve downloaded your retinal scan, fingerprints and palm print. Any door that ought to open to you will. If it doesn’t, it shouldn’t. You can no doubt find your own way to your stateroom on O-3, but I’m getting you a guide. Athens is a lovely ship, but she’s had several hundred years to become a labyrinth.’

Now her brain was starting to function, and so Nbaro began to take in the formal quarterdeck: the magnificent bronze statue of Athena, an ancient Terran goddess; the dark blue velvet that covered the protective matting that lined every bulkhead and every corridor on any City ship; the crisp bronze edging, sometimes intricately decorated with acanthus leaves; the oil paintings of past Masters of the Athens, more than twenty of them. At some point in the testing for her assignment she’d memorised all their names, but they were gone now, learnt and dumped like a lot of celestial navigation and a whole pile of mathematics.

It was all old. And unbelievable.

I’m here.

The officer of the deck was smiling broadly.

‘We’re so glad you like our ship,’ he said.

‘It’s incredible,’ Nbaro said. ‘Sir.’

‘You don’t know the half of it,’ he said. ‘It really is incredible. I’ve been aboard four years and I’m not sure I’ve seen her stem to stern.’

She was looking at the paintings. One of Elena Svaro was quite old, done in an impressionist style no one would use any more, and she had been painted in powered combat armour, faceplate open, the hump of her armoured air tank rising over her left shoulder like a wing. Nbaro thought Svaro had been the second captain; certainly the Svaros were one of the most powerful patrician clans. Ancient, too. Powered armour had gone out when EMP beams came in.

‘My ancestor.’ The officer offered her his hand to clasp. ‘I’m Anthony.’ Nbaro flinched, and then took it. ‘Anthony Svaro,’ he added. ‘You may call me Anthony off duty.’

She nodded, overwhelmed. ‘Sir.’

She glanced at the sixth captain.

Ricardo Nbaro. My own ancestor.

His blue-black African face held an open friendliness that carried across the centuries and accused her of being too closed, too reticent.

Guilty, ancestor, but also here to make changes. I can do this. Let me try.

The aft compartment hatch chimed, its crystal tell-all flashing through the cycle, and a small man in a tight jumpsuit came through, his sleeves rolled up to reveal intricate tattoos, some of which moved, and all of which defined muscles that spoke of constant training in high g.

‘Petty Officer Locran, if you’d be so kind as to take Midshipper …?’

‘Nbaro, sir,’ she said.

He really was treating her like a person. Nbaro wasn’t used to it and she was suspicious. What did he want?

‘Just so … Midshipper Nbaro to her stateroom, please.’ He paused.

Here it comes.

‘Where’s the rest of your kit, Miz Nbaro?’

I have no kit. I have sixteen demerits and I’m not even a cadet any more. If they catch me, I won’t be disciplined, I’ll be sold. Or killed.

Stop that.

‘I’ll bring it aboard when I settle in,’ she said. ‘Sir.’

The duty officer nodded. ‘Carry on, Miz Nbaro.

The rating smiled affably. ‘Come with me, Miz Nbaro.’

She hefted her duffel, which was much harder to move in artificial gravity. Weight and mass – they were not the same thing at all. She got it on her shoulder with the other bag, which was strapped to her back. Naturally, it caught in the hatchway.

‘I can take one of those, miz,’ Petty Officer Locran offered.

Nbaro bent over enough to get the tapered end of the bag through the hatch and also managed to get her legs over the knee-knocker. Every compartment was airtight, and the bulkheads that held the hatches rose as much as twenty centimetres above the deck; she heard the hatch iris close behind her, and the flash of light reflecting from it threw a brilliant spray of colour over the bulkheads, which were themselves covered in decoration.

‘I’ve got it,’ she said.

Locran said nothing; just led her along a series of passageways. The tiles and carpeting changed under her feet, and the straps of her luggage and the management of it kept her from seeing much else, so she watched as the green and white parquetry tiles gave way to black and white, and then dark blue and gold.

Locran paused in the hatch, which was dogged-open, an old sea-cant phrase that meant the iris was locked wide, only the knife edges of the xenoglas gleaming in the golden light of the overhead lamps.

‘Blue-tile,’ he said quietly, with something that sounded like reverence.

Marca Nbaro had passed every examination they could throw at her, done every simulation available, but she didn’t know what ‘blue-tile’ meant, beyond that it was the most luxurious combination so far. Even the ducts running along this passageway were brightly polished; old alloys of copper and brass that pre-dated the xenoglas tubes that glowed overhead. Scenes from ancient Terran mythology were painted along the bulkheads as murals, the florid style somehow at peace with the polished brass and copper. Right in front of her, a fire hose access port, polished like a beer tap in a very expensive taverna, emerged from a Satyr’s loins, and she grinned at the visual joke.

Nbaro considered asking about it, but Locran hurried along. The opulent passageway wasn’t wide, by any means, and every frame of the ship had its own dogged-open iris and its own bronze battle lantern, perfectly polished and throwing the same golden light as the modern xenoglas.

‘Shit,’ Locran whispered. ‘Brace!’

That was one command one heard all too often at the Orphanage. Nbaro turned and stood at attention against the muraled bulkhead, shoulders pressed in between two fauns.

Three officers came through a dark bronze hatch. Two of them were commanders – beings so senior to Nbaro as to be both perilous and alien – and the third was a captain, the highest rank in the DHC Service. They were all tall, all dark-haired; one strongly male, one androgyne, and one female. The woman had been speaking, and was caught in mid-sentence.

‘… nothing if we go back in the green,’ said the lighter voice.

‘Nah,’ the ’gyne said, navigating the knee-knocker.

They stopped.

‘Locran?’

‘Sir?’ her guide responded.

‘And who’s this?’ the softer-voiced androgyne asked. They had wide shoulders, a hint of breasts, narrow hips. And long legs and torso. Most ’gynes came from orbitals.

‘New midshipper, tir.’

Locran spoke over her, using the respectful ‘tir’ for the non-gendered, thus relieving Nbaro of making any hasty decisions.

The tall m