The shuttle was a Gelt design. I’d seen enough of them both in combat and on Hanar. I’d even flown on one or two during my time in the Navy, seven years at that point. Eight, if you counted my time in the resistance, but technically I was a Marine back then. Actually, I was a child soldier. We didn’t really have a hell of a lot of choice.
This shuttle, however, was clearly a civilian model. It had no weapons, no crest of any houses in the Realm. The shuttles on Hanar of Gelt origin always had the symbol of the “Foundation,” their word for their polity. These days, the Foundation encompassed a lot more than Hanar. It had more humans than Gelt now.
This ship did not even have a commercial logo on it. It had writing on the side I recognized as a call sign, one its transponder no doubt broadcast as the ship was in flight. For a Gelt shuttle, this was about as generic as you could get.
I suppose that should have set off some warning bells. Shrian, however, seemed so earnest, wanting to show me something.
And let’s be honest, she had succeeded in seducing me. Not that I minded. I just hoped I wasn’t committing treason or some sort of felony in the process.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
She smiled as she placed her hand on the biometric scanner on the hatch. “Where would you like to go? If there’s any place in the universe you’d like to go, where would it be?”
As the hatch opened, I thought about that. Out of an abundance of snark, I said, “Always wondered what the Gelt homeworld looked like. Not Hanar. That’s a new world. It was new even when it was invaded. Now it’s even newer. But the Realm. What does the Throneworld look like? Think you can arrange that?”
As we ducked through the shuttle into its cramped cockpit, she gave me a smile I misread. I realize now she was trying to warn me to be careful what I wished for. “Don’t be surprised if I actually show that to you. Let me check something first.”
She tapped out something on her console. The controls and displays were in the Mother Tongue, so I couldn’t read any of it. She seemed to breathe a sigh of relief after a few seconds.
“Good,” she said. “He’s still asleep.”
“Who?” I asked.
“My employer. I’m not really supposed to be doing this. But you need to see it, and I think it’s important someone besides me and my employer knows about this. In fact, I would say it’s very important. I need you to believe me, Duff. I’m not just some woman out for a thrill sleeping with aliens. If I was, I could have made my way through half this station.”
I managed a weak laugh. “If the stories I’ve heard about this city are correct, you’d also need a year’s supply of nano-biotics doing that.”
The joke fell flat. She probably thought I was making fun of her promiscuity, and not the almost legendary promiscuity of the population of Armaneya. I’m no prude, but Marilyn, did these people have anything better to do while waiting for their transports?
She tapped her board and put on a headset. I didn’t want to call the device a p-com, since that was Compact technology, but the headset resembled the comm devices we used. “Armaneya Control, this is the Vandu setting out for an unscheduled trip.”
She listened to a voice I couldn’t hear, then tapped something out on the back of her hand. “Deposit made. Thanks again.” As she tapped more controls, the ship moved forward out of its dock. “Pleasure cruise. If I drop some Realm daqrani into the controller’s bank account, my employer need not find out.”
“How much trouble would you get in,” I asked, “if he found out?”
Her eyes became huge as her hand absently went to her throat. “It would not be good.”
“Fired?”
“Worse.”
“I thought that kind of abuse was illegal in the Foundation, especially after merging with the Republic.”
She turned away, guiding the ship into the gap between cylinder slices. “My mas—My employer is from the Realm. And we’re in Laputan space, where they honor Realm law.”
They honored Foundation law in the Guardianship, too, but something told me that would not calm her down.
As we cleared the outermost cylinder, she relaxed. “This is just a simple pleasure flight.”
“Are we going to go out in the middle of nowhere and have zero-G sex?” It was a rite of passage for the Navy I hadn’t passed yet. Tripod suggested that was the reason I had not made lieutenant commander yet, which I found silly. A full lieutenant at twenty-four was unheard of, so my career track had less to do with tradition and more to do with having shaved for the first time after receiving my commission.
Shrian laughed, which sounded more and more beautiful every time I heard the sound. “How would the mechanics of that work? Never mind. Plenty of time to find out after we’re done.” Once clear of Armaneya, she said, “So, you want to see the Throneworld?”
Seemed like an odd question. “Someday.”
She pulled up what looked like the Gelt version of a pad and began tapping it, its screen jumping as she did so. “Someday is today.”
“What do you…?” Something like an electrical charge swept through me. My hair stood on end. “What just happened?”
Outside, the stars had shifted. In fact, I recognized none of the constellations. Ramcat, the planet Armaneya orbited, wasn’t my homeworld, but I had been there often enough to orient myself by the stars. I recognized none of them.
And the planet below us sat too far away in space to be Ramcat. Plus, the continents and oceans looked wrong.
“Wait. This is…?”
She leaned over and kissed me. “You wanted to see the Realm Throneworld. Congratulations, Connor Duffy. You’re behind enemy lines, and the Sovereign’s Fleet has no idea we’re here.”