The pilot stirred, beside him, and he slitted open his eyes as the deceleration pressed him against his seat straps. They were coming up on the Ariel. It grew from a dot to a model to a ship. The Illyrican-built light cruiser carried a crew of twenty, plus room for supercargo and a commando squad. Heavily powered for its size, an energy profile typical of warships. It looked swift, almost rakish. A good courier ship; a good ship to run like hell in. Perfect. Despite his black mood, his lips curled up, as he studied that ship. Now I take, and you give, Naismith.

The pilot, clearly quite conscious that he was conveying his admiral, brought the personnel pod into its docking clamps with a bare click, eat and smooth as humanly possible. “Shall I wait, sir?”

“No. I shouldn’t be needing you again.”

The pilot hurried to adjust the tube seals while his passenger was till unbuckling, and saluted him out with another idiot broad proud mile. He twitched a returning smile and salute, then grasped the handlebars above the hatch and swung himself into the Ariel’s gravity ield.

He dropped neatly to his feet in a small loading bay. Behind him, he pod pilot was already re-sealing the hatch to return himself and iis pod to its vessel of origin, probably the flagship Triumph. He looked up — always, up — into the face of the waiting Dendarii officer, face he had studied before this only in a holovid.

Captain Bel Thorne was a Betan hermaphrodite, a race that was remnant of an early experiment in human genetic and social engineering that had succeeded only in creating another minority. “home’s beardless face was framed by soft brown hair in a short, ambiguous cut that either a man or a woman might sport.