“Strange how that works, Jim,” said Grace. “You go to some other planet and it’s full of off-worlders.”

“Chato, Jobe, Grace, you all take care,” Wilson said, offering his hand. His son stood beside him, a newer copy of what life was like on Alkalurops.

This is worth fighting for, Grace told herself. I will find a way to defend what is ours.

3

Steerage-Class Accommodations

DropShip Star of Dyev

En route from Alkalurops to Galatea

18 April 3134

The Star of Dyev was the kind of tramp DropShip that bothered to stop at planets like Alkalurops. Tramp ships had cargo holds, crew quarters and maybe some spare cabins for passengers. Star of Dyev had only one spare, so Grace would have to share tight quarters with Jobe and Chato.

“Too bad I did not bring my second wife,” Jobe said. “This could have been a fun time.”

“I thought your second wife was the one who talked too much and argued even more,” Grace said.

“Yes, she does that. But she can be very nice when she chooses to be,” he recalled with a sigh.

Chato handed him a reader. “I downloaded everything about ’Mechs, battles and the old wars on Alkalurops. Most of it is political commentary, but there are a few schematics and tech readouts. Maybe if we put our heads together, we can make sense of what’s been written.”

“Warriors who survive battles have nothing but boasts,” Jobe said.

“At least they survived,” Chato pointed out.

“Gentlemen, we’re stuck in this tin can for the next month,” Grace reminded them. “Let’s not kill one another too early. I understand the crew has set up a pool on who dies first and how soon.”

“That is inconsiderate of them,” Jobe said.

“I thought you would bet on anything,” Chato said.

“Yes. That is what I mean. It is most inconsiderate of them not to offer us a chance to join the pool.”

“Scan your reader,” Grace said, ducking into her bunk.

Liftoff was noisy and heavy. The trip out was at a solid 1G acceleration. That was fine, but the company! What was it with men? They made the cabin unbearable! At first she joked about the betting pool, but after two weeks, she was ready to start her own by asking the crew to come up with creative new ways for her two companions to kill each other. Grace took to long walks in the cargo hold to read about war and avoid the warring men.

But the information in the reader left her more frustrated. Most of the histories were just glosses: Someone did this; someone else did that; someone won because of this other factor, which left Grace wondering if battle leaders really controlled what caused them to win. Other accounts about a great man’s BattleMech were so technically detailed that Grace could not tell what was going on. She’d pushed a MiningMech most of her adult life, and Jobe had done the same for either an Agro or MiningMech as well, but neither of them could figure out how these MechWarriors handled their machines. Was driving a BattleMech all that different from driving Pirate?

Grace felt as if she was trying to understand mining operations by reading one of the journals she subscribed to. Yes, she learned a lot from them, but if Pop hadn’t spent years teaching her everything he knew and her mom hadn’t insisted she sit her young butt down and learn all the basic stuff, most of it would have gone right over her head, the way this was.

“Who can teach me the basics?” she asked the huge gray hydrocarbon tank she was sitting under. It had no answer.

Spacesick, Grace watched on the mess deck screen as the Star of Dyev buried itself in a docking collar of the JumpShip Brandon’s Leviathan, also known as “Big Lug.” They were thirty-seven days out from Allabad: twenty-eight days climbing to this jump point at 1G, then twiddling their weightless thumbs for nine days waiting for a JumpShip to come by. JumpShips running between important points like Terra or Skye kept to schedules. Ships to out-of-the-way places like Alkalurops maintained a looser schedule. This one had been delayed four jumps back, waiting for a business deal to go down. The story around the Dyev was that the Big Lug would be back on schedule in another nine jumps. Until then DropShips could just drift and passengers puke. Maybe the reputed stink of Alkalurops’ air wasn’t the only reason big companies went elsewhere; the erratic JumpShip schedule was a real deterrent. If LCI moved its headquarters here, that might change. And that would probably lead to a whole lot of other changes.

Grace didn’t much care for all that change.

Nine days later Big Lug’s jump sail was recharged and Grace was up on all the news of the Sphere. She knew who had divorced whom on what thrilling vid. She knew what important people had been found sleeping in the wrong beds. Oh, and there seemed to have been a big fight on Terra. Specifics on that one would have required paying for some talking head’s opinion. Grace saved her money. That even ancient Terra was the scene of fighting was all she needed to know. Things were bad all over. Sick of waiting, if not sick of weightlessness, Grace, Chato and Jobe were in their tiny cabin, waiting for the jump.

A knock at the door was followed a second later by a spacer sailing his weightless body in. “Cap’n wants you to take some sleeping pills. Jumpsickness can be a real mess. People who sleep through it are better off,” he said, handing pills all around and a bulb of water.

Chato and Jobe dutifully took their meds, but Grace just smiled nicely, palmed the pill, and took a long swig of water. As a rule, she did not take any pill until she read the full list of possible side effects. But being a woman, she knew how to smile and let a man think he had won.

Besides, she’d heard that jumps gave the best hallucinations this side of banned drugs. Be nice to see them legally.

Grace kept her eyes closed as the countdown to jump reached zero. The men snored noisily as she’d discovered they always did. She felt a lurch, got a minor aurora show on the inside of her eyelids, and seemed to be pushed against the restraints holding her to the bunk. Nothing much else. She wondered who she could talk to about getting her money back.

There was a jiggle at the cabin’s lock, and the door opened on its noisy hinges. Grace started to look, but something about the way the hairs were standing up on the back of her neck told her that lying still was the better option. Sneakers scraped on a wall as someone pushed off. She heard a thump as that same someone hit her locker. When a key started jiggling in its lock, she slit her eyes open. The spacer who had given them the pills was going through her underwear drawer. He lifted the sack of diamonds with a happy sigh.

“What the hell are you doing?” Grace demanded.

“Huh,” was the only answer she got as the guy grabbed the other sack and pushed off for the door. Grace hit the quick-release on her bunk harness and lunged for him. He batted her away, and she bounced off the wall screaming, “Stop, thief!”

The guys slept through it all. “Sleeping pill in a pig’s eye,” Grace said as she steadied herself and discovered her inner ear really had taken a couple of rolls during the jump. Reeling, she pushed for the door and spotted the spacer headed aft. “Stop! Somebody get that spacer!” she shouted and took off after him, not nearly as quickly as she wanted to.

Her pursuit consisted of bouncing from one side of the hall—or as the spacers called it, passageway—to the other wall, or bulkhead. Damn—why did every Guild have to have its own set of words for the same stuff? “Stop, thief!” meant the same thing everywhere, so she kept shouting it as the guy went through the bulkhead at the end of the hall, closed the hatch, and dogged it.