Change of Command

Chapter Two

The day of Bunny’s funeral dawned clear and cold. Miranda woke before dawn, and watched the light seep into the eastern sky. She lay still beneath the covers, feeling the weight of them, reluctant to leave that warm nest and face what would be a long and difficult day. Their room—her room—was not cold, but she had not felt warm since that first horrible moment when they’d told her Bunny was dead.

A faint click, then music so soft she could barely hear it—the music she had chosen herself. She reached over and punched up the volume—no sense in that slow crescendo if she was already awake—and threw off the covers in one angry gesture.

Bunny was dead. Nothing would change that, not the music, not the dawn, not whatever mood she was in. Beneath her feet, the carpet was still soft and thick. Around her shoulders, the fleecy jacket warmed her.

Bunny was dead. She was alive, and beautiful (she heard people whispering, and after all it was true) and very, very wealthy.

Faintly, through the closed door, she heard a lusty cry.

Wealthy, and the grandmother of bastards whose fathers were, if not dead, criminals and no doubt partners of those who had killed Bunny.

Miranda had not told Bunny how she felt about those babies. Grandmothers were supposed to have a natural love for grandchildren, but she could not see those boys as anything but vandalism perpetrated on her daughter.

Bunny had seen it differently. Bunny had assumed she would love them, if Brun couldn’t; Bunny had assumed she would organize their care.

Bunny was dead.

She stood, unable to move for a long moment. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. People their age were supposed to be adult, mature, stable . . . they were resigned to loss, said the books she’d read.

She wasn’t resigned. She wanted to shake her fist and scream at the sky; she wanted to fall off a cliff and drown. The secret was that the rich had hearts too . . . she had loved Bunny the way girls in romance storycubes loved their heroes, and forty years of marriage had not changed that.

And he was dead.

And she was alive, with children and grandchildren and bastard grandchildren who were not at fault for their fathers’ sins, and a daughter still healing from what had been done to her, and all Bunny’s hopes and dreams for the peace of the world crashing down around them, shattered.

When her maid knocked, Miranda smiled and calmly accepted a cup of tea, which she drank with perfect composure while her maid ran her bath.

Brun Meager had wakened even earlier, when the twins cried, as they often did, in the middle of the night. They should be sleeping through the night, the nursemaids said, but they hadn’t done so more than one night in four since they were taken from Our Texas. And Brun had discovered, to her annoyance, that when they woke, she also woke, even if someone else was doing the feeding and cleaning.

She used the time to exercise, the exercises she never skipped these days. By the time her maid knocked, she had already worked herself into a sweat, and showered herself back to normal. In the mirrors of the bath, her face stared back at her, strange after nearly two standard years without a mirror . . . an older face, a harder face, but—in spite of everything—a face of memorable beauty.

Something would have to be done about that . . . but not today. Today she would walk with her mother, her brothers, her older sister, in the funeral procession; today she would hold her head high in the face of the universe. They had forced her to bear their children. They could not force her to hide.

Colonel Bai-Darlin had not slept all night. Organizing a state funeral had always been—would always be—a nightmare of protocol and endless complicated detail, but ordinarily a state funeral was not mixed with a top-level security concern. Even when a head of state was assassinated, that usually ended the threat. Only 23.87 percent of political assassinations in the past five hundred years had been followed by subsequent assassinations.

But this was different. The other branches of the New Texas Godfearing Militia had specifically threatened Lord Thornbuckle and his family, with additional threats to Hazel Takeris, the Rangers’ wives and female dependents, and several members of the Regular Space Service, including Admiral Vida Serrano. Fleet, Colonel Bai-Darlin thought, could protect its own. His responsibility was the safety of the civilians, specifically those who would be present, vulnerable, in the funeral procession.

His predecessor, Colonel Harris, was even now trying to explain why they had not taken sufficient precautions, why Lord Thornbuckle had died, and no one—not one single Militia member or sympathizer—had been captured.

He would have to assume they’d try again. He would have to assume that everything Harris had done was wrong—that Harris had missed something vital.

Unless it wasn’t the New Texas Godfearing Militia after all. Bai-Darlin’s head lifted, as if scenting game. What if it were someone else, someone trying to use the hotheaded NewTex as a cover?

In that case, the funeral would probably go off without a hitch. Which, at the moment, was all he cared about.

Brun eyed her mother as they came out onto the porch, into the cold sunlight. Security, dark-uniformed and obviously armed, hovered around them. Five cars, all identical polished burgundy with black and gold trim, awaited them.

“Five?” Brun said.

“Security,” her mother said. “Four of them are drags.”

“Ah.” Four would lay false trails, though since everyone knew where the funeral would be held, she didn’t see how that would help.

She could at least notice who was here, and who had not been able to—or wanted to—come. No Lady Cecelia . . . well, it was the Wherrin Trials, after all, and she might not even have heard yet. Her sister Berenice, though, and her brother Abelard. No Raffa or Ronnie—absurd how she had missed them. Raffa’s Aunt Marta Saenz, such a support to her father while she was missing—her mother’s report of that had been just a touch acidic—had gone back to her own world as soon as Brun returned. No George—but of course the odious George had his own critically wounded father to watch over. Of their own sept, her father’s younger brother Harlis, and his son Kell, who didn’t look to have improved from her last memory of him. A whole raft of Consellines, most of whom she didn’t know well enough to put names to, and Venezia Morrelline.

In ordinary times—not that the death of her father would ever have been ordinary—Kevil Mahoney would have given the eulogy. Instead it was her Uncle Harlis, and the eulogy slid into a subtle critique of her father’s policies. A fine man, a man with strong family loyalties . . . to his children, a man of great abilities who had perhaps not quite lived up to them . . .

“Bollocks!” That low mutter was a great-great-uncle in the Barraclough main line. He took the floor next, praising Bunny the way Brun had expected him to be praised. That was the father she remembered: generous, loyal, intelligent, capable.

Others followed. Political friends, describing how Lord Thornbuckle’s tactful but firm handling of the government had held it together when Kemtre abdicated. Political enemies, praising with delicate cuts at her father’s occasional mistakes, and being so tactful in ignoring the obvious one that Brun found herself the target of one covert glance after another.

If it hadn’t been for her—if it hadn’t been for her idiot rashness—her father would still be alive, and in power, and these sly critics would be silent. She glanced down at her mother’s hands, and saw the knuckles whitening the skin, though Miranda’s face betrayed nothing. Guilt, sorrow, shame . . . and a deep, deep anger. It was her fault—in part—but it was not all her fault. Their maneuvering, their use of her misfortune and her father’s death—that was their responsibility.

She had been determined to go away, to change herself into someone else, and break the connection with the rash young Brun who fell into captivity; but watching her father’s enemies—enemies she had not known he had—at her father’s funeral, that resolve weakened.

Prima Bowie sat embroidering a collar with a row of tiny green leaves, and kept a sharp eye on her household. It was hard to realize that only a short time ago she had been Prima Bowie in truth, Mitch’s first wife and mother of nine children, with a real household to manage, a household with a garden and weaving shed, with courtyards for the children, and servants and tutors. Now she was Prima Bowie on her new Familias identity card, because that’s what Hazel had told them, and even Hazel didn’t know that wasn’t a name but a title. She had been called Ruth Ann in childhood, long before she was any man’s prima, but no one had called her that since her father died. And Mitch’s last name wasn’t Bowie—that was his title. He was really a Pardue. So her name ought to be Ruth Ann Pardue.

Should she tell someone? It would not be fitting to be called Prima Serrano, when that young woman became his first wife. She knew that, even as she hated the thought of being second or third behind such a young thing—and, what was worse, a heathen abomination who was actually in the military.

“Prima?” She looked up, to see Simplicity in the doorway. “Hazel’s here, Mama . . . Prima . . .”

Simplicity had never learned not to call her Mama. Prima wished again that Mitch had not made such a fuss about it, but he had, and she’d had to send the child to the servant’s hall even before she was out of the virgin’s bower. It occurred to Prima that now she could reverse that decision.

“It’s all right to call me Mama here, Simplicity,” she said softly. The girl’s expression relaxed.

“Mama! But the Ranger—”

“Isn’t here. You may say Mama.”

Simplicity ran over, just like the small child she was inside, and hugged Prima clumsily. “Love you, Mama.”

“I love you, Simplicity,” Prima said, greatly daring. She patted the girl on the shoulder. “There now. Go to the kitchen and bring us some lemonade.”

“Yes, Mama.” Simplicity had always been biddable and sweet; Prima could not help wishing Mitch had appreciated that sweetness more.

Hazel tapped at the doorframe. “Prima?”

“Yes.” Prima pushed the needle through her work, and laid it aside. “Come in, have a seat. What is the news?”

Hazel looked at her. “You could turn on a vid.”

“Full of nonsense,” Prima said. “All that arguing, and bad language, too.” She didn’t mention the other things she had found there by accident. Men and women with no clothes on, doing things she had never imagined they could do.

“Lord Thornbuckle’s funeral was today,” Hazel said.

Prima knew that. Everyone knew that. Even with the vid turned off, there was no way to avoid knowing that the Speaker of the Table of Ministers, whose daughter had started all the troubles, had died and was being—not buried, because they didn’t do that here, but . . . but whatever they called it, today.

It was all his fault, really. Prima wanted to believe that, wanted to believe that if that one arrogant blond man had not been so bad a father that his daughter had fallen into captivity, then she would still be Prima Bowie, first wife of a Ranger, safe and happy in the household she had known—had helped make—since her wedding.

That was a comfortable thought. All his fault, and Mitch the innocent dupe of heathens. Herself an innocent victim. The children . . . Prima sighed. Try as she might, she could not convince herself—quite—that it was all Lord Thornbuckle’s fault. Or even his daughter’s, though she loathed the tall yellow-haired woman.

“Prima—” Hazel was leaning forward. “I’m sorry, but—I really need to talk to you about your plans.”

“My plans?” Prima stiffened, her fingers pausing for a moment in their busy work. “What do you mean?”

“Everyone wants to know what you are going to do—about the children’s schooling, about supporting yourself—”

“Supporting myself!” Prima fastened on that; she was not about to discuss sending the children out to one of the heathen schools. “But the Serranos promised protection—”

“Protection, yes. But there are hundreds of you, all told—they can’t afford to support all of you, not like this—”

Like this, in a warren of indoor rooms in a tall building, with windows that looked out on more tall buildings. Prima would have given anything for a bit of ground to walk on, sky to look at.

“And there are laws about the children, about schooling.”

That she could answer. “I am not sending my children to some heathen school to be taught vileness—”

“There are religious schools,” Hazel said. “I brought you a cube—”

A cube. Which she could access only with a cube reader. A machine. Machines, the parsons had always said, would make women lazy.

“I need to change my name,” she said abruptly. Hazel looked surprised. “I’m not Mitch’s Prima anymore,” she said. “Ruth Ann was my birth name, and I should be Ruth Ann again.”

“Ruth Ann,” Hazel said softly, tasting it in her mouth. “It’s a pretty name.”

“It sounds strange to me; no one’s called me that since my parents, years ago.”

“Didn’t they keep calling you—?”

“No, it wouldn’t have been fitting. I was Prima Pardue from the day I married Mitch, and Prima Bowie from the day he became Ranger.” She fidgeted a bit, wishing she didn’t have to ask what she wanted to know. “Hazel . . . I never see anyone like Simplicity, even on the vid, when I do watch it. Surely your people have children that turn out . . . not quite . . . right?”

“Not many,” Hazel said. She flushed; Prima knew something forbidden was in her mind. “I know you don’t like to hear it, but—people do tests and medical treatment even before babies are born, to be sure nothing is wrong with them. Then, if something happens during pregnancy or birth, they fix it.”

“Fix it.” Like a door? But people weren’t doors and shutters and shoes and . . . “How can you fix a mind?” she asked, greatly daring.

“I don’t know.” Hazel’s flush faded. “I’m still young; I haven’t finished my schooling, and I never studied any medicine.”

“Could they fix . . . Simplicity . . . now?”

“I don’t think so,” Hazel said. “I can ask. But I think they have to be younger.” She cocked her head. “But Prima—Ruth, I mean—there’s no need to ‘fix’ Simplicity. She’s a sweet, loving person the way she is.”

“Your people don’t value sweetness,” Prima said. “They value intelligence.”

Hazel paused, looking thoughtful. “There are many places in the Familias where that’s true, but there are also many places that will value Simplicity for her gentleness, her kindness. I think you misjudge us. If you want to find a place—”

“No. I don’t want to send her away! That’s what Mitch said!” That’s what Mitch had done. It still hurt her, that Simplicity had had to endure months in that nursery away from the home she loved.

“I didn’t mean send her away. I meant go with her to a place where she’d be welcome.”

“I can’t go anywhere without my—without Ensign Serrano’s permission.”

“You could tell him what you want.”

“Hazel—you know I can’t do that. He’s my—well, not husband, the way he should be, but he’s our protector. It is for him to decide what to do with us.”

“That’s not how it works, here,” Hazel said. Prima had heard that before, but it was hard to believe. Ensign Serrano was her protector, on the guarantee of his grandmother; he had the right to decide where they would live, and how. “He’d probably be delighted if you found a place where you and the others could be happy.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” Prima said. “I don’t know where to start.”

“You could ask Professor Meyerson.”

“Waltraude?” This had not occurred to Prima; she knew that Meyerson claimed expertise in Texan history—though a very strange version of it, from Prima’s viewpoint—but what could she know about other worlds?

“She’s a professor—finding things out is what she does best.”

“Could you explain it?” Prima asked. She was much more comfortable with Hazel, even Hazel in men’s pants, than with Waltraude in a dress. Waltraude looked at them all as if they were carrots and beets and potatoes on the kitchen table—as if she were considering how they would fit in a stew.

“If she comes back in time. Prima—one thing I came to tell you—I’m leaving later today. I should be on my way to the ship now—clearing customs is going to take longer than usual. I’m going back to my family.”

“Oh.” She had known, in a way, that Hazel would leave, as the former captive women had left. Those women—she still worried about them, but they had all insisted on going, some to restorative surgery, others with voice synthesizers, back to their families if they had any, or a life of independence that Prima could not imagine wanting. “I’ll miss you, Hazel,” Prima said, feeling the hot tears rise.

“You were good to me,” Hazel said, and came to hug her. Prima could feel the girl’s young breasts now . . . Hazel was breeding age, but she would not breed. She would do—might already have done—terrible things to herself so that she would have no babies until much later. She might already be an Abomination.

Yet Hazel was a good girl—honest, kind, gentle. She had been so desperately worried about the two little girls, in the beginning; she had been so sweet to all the children. If she’d been Prima’s daughter, Prima would have been proud of her. But now she’d go off to some school, or fly on a ship, or—Prima could not even imagine all the possibilities, and knew she couldn’t. How could a child like this know what she wanted, what was right?

“God’s blessing on you,” Prima said, greatly daring in offering a blessing to a heathen. She wanted to tell Hazel not to use any abominable technology, but she knew that was futile. The girl was the product of that technology; her family used it, she would use it too. She prayed silently that God would keep Hazel safe.

“We now know what happened, Admiral.” The chief medical officer touched the display controls, and blurred blots of color sharpened into focus. “The Surgeon General’s office sent this out by ansible; the research labs finally figured it out. In a normal rejuvenation, on the left, the metabolites of the rejuv drugs are each involved in scavenging specific degradation products.”

“In plain language?” Vida Serrano asked. She knew, and knew they knew, what was meant, but she was determined to make them say it in language that anyone could understand. She had already been briefed, very secretly, by Marta Katerina Saenz.

“The rejuv drugs break down in the body into other chemicals, and those chemicals—metabolites—bind to and remove the chemical compounds characteristic of aging.”

“Very well.”

“In a normal rejuvenation, that leaves only healthy, undegraded tissues as a matrix for replication, the second part of the rejuvenation process.”

“So the first part throws out the old, as it were, and then the second part builds up the new?”

“Yes, Admiral. But on the right—if you’ll look right here—you can see that these tissues, which stain green, are not being removed. No green on the left, and green—”

“On the right. Yes. And I presume that means that age-deteriorated tissues are left in the matrix when the rejuv proceeds.”

“Exactly. Which replicate into age-deteriorated tissues, so that after some years—it depends on the amount of deterioration in the original as well as the exact kind of faulty drug—the deterioration affects brain function like any other senile dementia.”

“So—how do you fix it?”

“Unfortunately, we don’t know. It appears that if no actual functional degradation has occurred, then a rejuvenation with good drugs produces a fresh start. But when we tried that on one of the first patients, it didn’t work. The body rejuvenated to a young age, but the mental function stayed the same. We have been observing him for months now, and while the deterioration has not progressed, it has also not improved.”

“What about other treatments? Surely you had something for this kind of problem before rejuv?”

“No, not really. Admiral—I know that nobody likes to hear this, but medical miracles are rarely miracles.”

Marta had told her the same thing, but she’d hoped for better news.

“How early can you detect the problem?” If they couldn’t reverse it, perhaps catching it early would work.

“Within a year of a bad rejuv, which is plenty of time to correct it. But the tests take weeks—maybe we can speed it up later, but not yet—and we have a lot of people to test.”

What were they going to do with those whose rejuvs had failed, who had already been damaged . . . Vida shuddered. Rejuvenate them to youthful bodies and senility of mind? Who would take care of them? For how long? Or . . . let them die? Neither horn of the dilemma seemed tenable, and for once she was glad that it wasn’t her decision. Let the Grand Admiral and the Surgeon General figure it out; the mathematics of equity in this escaped her.

For dinner, Pedar had chosen Raymond’s, that year’s fashionable restaurant. She steered him away from discussing the Trials—he wanted her to dissect all the other competitors for his amusement.

“It’s not right,” she insisted. “They’re my friends as well as my fellow competitors; it’s not honorable to pick them apart like that.” She touched the table controls and brought up the chessboard. “Let’s play.”

“Don’t be naive, Cecelia,” Pedar said. Had he rejuved yet again? She couldn’t tell. He still dressed more like an actor in some deep-historical play. Her interest in history didn’t extend to clothing styles, so she wasn’t sure what period. “There’s no place in real life for honor. In sports, perhaps—” He picked up a black knight and a white, and made them bow to each other. “But even you know that what really matters is winning.” He clashed the pieces together.

“If you break the rules,” Cecelia said, trying to be reasonable, “they eliminate you.”

Pedar tilted his hand. “Then you might say that Bunny broke the rules.”

She could not believe what she was hearing. “You—”

“Cecelia—the rules are on a different level, when you’re talking about realities . . . surely you know that.” His tone indulged her, the knowledgeable adult to the ignorant adolescent. “Men like Bunny make the rules . . . until someone else displaces them.” He pushed the white king along the board, knocking the other pieces askew, until it rested on the edge of the board. “Yet there are always rules beyond rules . . . the rules that keep a man in his place—or move him away.” His finger touched the game piece; it teetered a moment on the edge of the table, then fell.

Her body tensed, as if she had seen an unexpected ditch looming beyond a jump she thought she knew. His expression shifted, reflecting hers; she hated that he had noticed. But he kept smiling, waiting her answer. She couldn’t think what to answer. She had to say something, though; she could feel his smile beginning to stiffen in place, like overbeaten egg whites.

“I see,” she said, buying time. She didn’t understand about Bunny yet, what rules he had broken that brought this man and his faction to the desperate action they had taken. She didn’t understand why he had hinted so broadly, or what he expected her to do about it. But she did see that none of it was accidental, not Bunny’s death, or this dinner meeting, or anything else Pedar did. Perhaps as far back as the Trials several years ago, her first ride in years. He had tried then to talk to her about the politics of the Rejuvenants, and she had dismissed it as mere fashion. “I do wonder,” she said after a long pause, “what, if anything, the New Texas Godfearing Militia has to do with Rejuvenants.”

He relaxed just that fraction which told her she had chosen the safer alternative at that conversational fence.

“People need something to blame for their disappointments,” he said. “As some opportunities are foreclosed, others must be seen to open. Or unrest might become general.”

Cecelia puzzled at this. Again, he waited for her, that indulgent smile which told her he expected her to be slow to understand. She hated that patience; if this was what she would become, as a Rejuvenant, she might just as well run her horse over a cliff and be done with it. Opportunities foreclosed—that had to be because Rejuvenants could live well-nigh forever, and who was going to give up power and privilege while still young and capable? Mentally, she transferred the problem to horse breeding, where it made more sense to her. If the old horses didn’t die off, and you kept breeding at the same rate . . . well, of course.

“I wonder if rejuv drugs would work on horses,” she said, before she could get a lock on her tongue.

Pedar burst out laughing, and the bald man at the next table looked up. “Cecelia, my dear! Only you would think of rejuvenating a horse!”

She could feel the heat in her face. Yet—if he laughed at her like that, he was not afraid of her wits. She allowed her voice to carry a little sting. “I see what you mean, Pedar. Those who cannot afford rejuvenation, or who are simply impatient, see ahead of them a lifetime of blocked opportunities—blocked by the Rejuvenants. But the universe is large—if they are discontented and ambitious enough, there are colony worlds—”

“Theft is always more profitable, until the thief is caught,” Pedar murmured.

“That’s—” She was about to say ridiculous, when a tension in Pedar’s face silenced her.

She had too much to think about, and she did not really want to think about any of it. Of what use were her wealth, and her skills, and her rejuvenated body, if she couldn’t do what she liked without having to worry about the rest of the universe? What she had wanted—what she hoped to gain—was a long life full of her own particular pleasures . . . which began, though they did not end, in that stable block on Rotterdam. Which centered on horses and the people who had identified themselves as horse people since long before humans left Old Earth.

She reminded herself that she had time for both, now. No longer need she fear the advancing years, the aging of joints and bones that would make her slower, clumsier. She could afford to spend a few months now dealing with whatever complication Pedar meant, without losing it.

But she didn’t want to.

And Pedar knew that. As she dipped the asymmetrical spoon always used with Biaristi cold soups, as she refreshed her mouth afterwards with a sip of Eran ale, and went on to the crunchy-coated strips of spiced rock grouse, she was aware that Pedar, in sounding her out, was expecting exactly the retreat she most wanted to make. He had turned the conversation back to the Trials, to her chances, and his. She answered automatically, but watched as from a distance the subtle signals of his expressions.

What a toad the man was, after all. He would dangle some conspiracy in front of her for his own amusement, sure that she could not concentrate on anything but horses for long enough to learn anything dangerous, or do anything . . .

“I think you’re quite right to ride anyway,” Pedar said. “After all, it’s too late to attend any ceremony.”

“The horse is ready,” Cecelia said, fighting back an urge to change her mind and not ride after all. “And so am I. You’re staying too.”

“For the same reasons,” Pedar said. “I’m ready; my horse is ready, and my competition . . . is here.”

And because it gave him a strong apparent alibi. While someone had plotted Bunny’s assassination, Pedar had been very publicly visible a very long way away, supervising his horse in training for the Senior Trials. Cecelia knew it would have been possible to have it done—anyone knew that—but finding and proving the links would be more difficult. And dangerous.

She was, she discovered on the day, more ready than she knew for this particular event. While nothing could make the Senior Trials effortless, she was hardly aware of the effort she exerted. Seniority reacted well to her detached calmness, and put in faultless cross-country and stadium rounds . . . which, in the end, were enough to win, when the dressage leader (also faultless in cross-country) had a rail down the next day. Liam Ardahi had to withdraw during the cross-country, when Plantagenet refused the water repeatedly. Cecelia wondered if that were entirely an accident; Plantagenet had always been bold into water. But if Pedar wanted her distracted by a major win . . . he was ruthlessly competitive, but he had won a much larger competition—as he saw it.

She smiled for the press on her victory gallop, and remembered to thank all her staff, enclosing a personal note with the bonus credit each received. At the reception that evening, she wore her amber necklace carved in the likeness of Epona. Like that enigmatic goddess, she smiled and accepted congratulations, finally pleading a sore elbow in order to leave before midnight.

An hour later, wearing a groom’s overall, she was hacking down the dark road to the spaceport on Max, whose alert ears and brisk movement revealed that the horse, at least, thought this was a fine idea. If anyone asked, her groundcar was parked in the stable lot, and everyone knew that she was likely to have gone to the stables to end the night’s celebration there. Colum had had Max saddled for her—an extra hack would do that one no harm—but had been out of sight when she led the horse out.

Five kilometers away, where a service road met the tracks of A Course, Phase C, Dale waited with the truck and trailer, in which a horse stamped its impatience; Roz had driven her own battered little groundcar. Cecelia swung off Max, helped load him in the trailer beside Dulcy—Max could be difficult to load in an empty trailer—then struggled with the car’s cranky driver-side door. Roz slammed it from outside, and climbed into the truck; Cece drove off alone to the regional airport.

The advantage of piloting her own ship was that her flight plan and her actual destination need have nothing to do with each other. She had discussed with her staff the training schedule for Seniority and Max for the rest of the season, and told them she was going to visit EquiSite’s lab before returning to Rotterdam, to check on a new gene-sculpting technique only recently applied to horses.

Then she filed a flight plan for Rotterdam, knowing that her staff would not comment.

Her new planet-to-jump craft allowed her to bypass Zenebra’s crowded station. She expected Pedar to check on her flight plan, and her jump vector. Fine. Let him check. The exit vector for Rotterdam actually led to the first intermediate jump point, and from there she could route to Castle Rock easily. She spared a moment to thank Heris for suggesting that she get a license and learn to pilot her own craft.

Though she did miss the luxury of Sweet Delight, and the deference accorded a full-size yacht. What she really wanted was another long, hot bath and a massage. She had managed to cram in a small wet-bath facility and the necessary recycling gear by eliminating any possibility of inviting someone else along. So a shower and no massage, and she would expect to wake up stiff in the morning. Even a rejuvenated body couldn’t do the Senior Trials without strain.

Still, it was worth it. Pounce had more speed than her old yacht, as well as the ability to land onplanet. She was past the orbital station now, following the beacons out to the system’s jump point.