At the wheel of the hover limo, Maria Della Fanatico watched them go, with a sigh. Phule rarely got this angry.

She was almost sorry not, to get a chance to see the inevitable explosion. She wasn't at all sorry that she was not the one her boss was mad at. She'd risked her life plenty of times on the racetrack, but there were some things far more dangerous than that. Getting one of the richest men in the galaxy mad at you was one of them.

The Reverend Jordan Ayres ("Rev!' to his friends and followers) wore a pens~ look, somewhere between' a" sulk and a pout. A casual observer might have taken this to mean that something was bothering the Chaplin of Omega Company. But no-the pout was merely his normal expression when he was calm or thoughtful. It was a direct and intentional result of the extensive facial remodeling that all devout members of the Church of the King underwent in order to more perfectly resemble their prophet. In any case, to someone meeting Rev for the first time, the pout was probably less off-putting than the sneer that his; face assumed when he was actually in a cheerful frame of mind.

Rev's initial success in converting the members of Omega Company to the Church of the New Revelation-, or, as it was often known, the Church of the King-had been nothing short of phenomenal. But; as even he had to admit, recently the stream of converts had slowed to a trickle. For various doctrinal reasons, particularly the strong pressure for church members to have their face remodeled in the image of their prophet, Rev's denomination was somewhat lacking in appeal to the nonhuman sophonts among his larger flock. And even among the humans,. a fair number were attached to some other denomination, while others were frankly uninterested in any religion per se. While the company had been stationed on Lorelei, or on Landoor, this had not been of particular concern to Rev.