That was why The Mountain also had living quarters for almost a thousand men, women, and children. Whole families were there; they met, married, and procreated in the main forward area of the vast two-point-five kilometer rotating cylinder. That was the Mount Sinai. A smaller ship actually was contained inside the nose, and was launched only when The Mountain was safely docked in stable orbit around an inhabited planet. This was called, when separated, Mount Olivet. Joined, they were always just The Mountain. The pattern and layout were similar enough to that of a freighter that it was clear that the big ship had been adapted from one, but it looked nothing like a standard freighter now.

Mount Olivet was small by comparison to Mount Sinai, it was true, and was designed to land on worlds even if they had no spaceport. In truth, it was an impressive, oblong-shaped craft of creamy white material over a thousand meters long and six hundred meters wide, and it descended on a flat base that was itself a hundred or more meters high. It was powered by a magnetic field drive and was designed for a totally self-contained landing. Indeed, its shape and size made it unwelcome at conventional spaceports, which was just fine with the crew that would take it down to surface after surface. They required a huge flat area not far from some population center yet far enough so that such a landing was practical and the ship, after that, would be accessible.

Finding that type of space, and a crowd that didn’t also come well armed and ready to tar and feather at the minimum was a job in and of itself.

As soon as The Mountain cleared the automated wormgate the first order of business was to pull up and scan the entire region.