Clancy watched him. “Don’t drink, huh?”

“Corrupts the body, and the mind.” He glanced at the captain. “No offense.”

“None taken. I’m pretty durned corrupted all right.” He raised the bottle to Ulysses, then took another swig.

Ulysses dropped a tea bag into his cup, and then looked back at Clancy. “What’s this all about, Captain?”

Clancy turned two chairs around to face each other, then sat down in one and put his feet up, legs crossed, in another. “Shop talk, I guess. You and me are pretty much in the same business now. Different ways of doing it is all. Both of us moving the Duke around, trying to keep his hide in one piece.”

Ulysses watched as the cup filled with steaming water. The scents of orange and cinnamon filled his nose. He took the cup and sat down at one of the empty tables near Clancy. “You just called him ‘Duke’.”

“So? He is one, ain’t he?”

“Yeah. But you called him, ‘Duke’.”

Clancy grinned. “You mean, instead of ‘Duck’?”

“Yeah.”

Clancy’s grin got even bigger. He made a show of looking around the empty room. “Well, he ain’t here, is he?”

Ulysses smiled and shook his head. “You should really show him more respect.”

“If I didn’t respect who he was, and what he could do, he wouldn’t still be on this ship.”

“Then why not—?”

“Kowtow to the big man, like the rest of you? Because he’s a giant walking ego who needs somebody to keep him in line. He knows that—part of him, anyway. That’s why he puts up with me.”

Ulysses sipped his tea. He was too discreet to say that Clancy was right.

“So,” said Clancy, “as one fellow in the same business to another, what do you think our chances are?”

“Of keeping the Duke safe?”

“Yeah, I reckon.”

He took a deep breath and considered. Finally he said, “My professional opinion is that the Duke is a dead man. It isn’t a question of if, but of when.”

The captain nodded. “That’s what I figured.”

“You? Same opinion? As a professional, of course.”

The captain held his bottle up to the light, and studied the little drops running through the condensation on the sides. “My brain says that, but my gut says different. Duke Sandoval, he’s harder to kill than a Chichibu cockroach. He won’t go down easy.”

“No,” agreed Ulysses, “he won’t.”

“But this big plan of his, I don’t see it ending pretty. Things are going to get messy.”

Ulysses nodded slowly. “Agreed. It all ends badly.” He took another sip of tea.

Clancy took two big swallows of his ale.

“So,” said Ulysses, “if that’s the way you feel, why are you letting us stay on this ship?”

Clancy shrugged. “Nobody lives forever. My worst nightmare is to die old and in bed—that the day will come when me”—he glanced upward—“and this ship have to part company—by hook, or by crook—or I just can’t handle her no more. Whatever happens with the Duke, I reckon it’s going to be interesting.”

“I’d say so.”

“What about you? Man with your skills, he could find some rich guy who only thinks everybody is out to get him. Get set up real sweet.”

Ulysses grinned. “Well, I do want to live forever…”

Clancy held up the bottle. “Drink some of this; you won’t live forever, but you won’t care.”

Ulysses chuckled. “It’s like you said. It’s going to be interesting. Maybe I’ll come out on the other side, maybe not. If I’m as good as I think I am, I’ll survive. Can you understand that?”

“You ever see a rodeo, Paxton?”

“As a matter of a fact, I have.”

“Cowboy doesn’t prove nothing riding on a broke-down nag. Man wants to ride a bronco breathing fire, with blood in his eye and murder in his heart. Anything else just don’t count.”

“Well. I guess we’ll see who gets bucked off first.”

“We will at that.” He raised his bottle to Ulysses. “Toast.”

Ulysses raised his glass in return.

“To the ride,” said Clancy.

“And,” added Ulysses, “the inevitable fall at the end.”

Clancy laughed as bottle clinked against teacup. “I’ll drink to that.”

Just then the intership link on Clancy’s belt activated. “Bridge to Captain. The Duke wishes to speak with you.”

Clancy held the device to his ear. “Well then, put him through.”

“Clancy, we’ve run out of time. An incoming ship has just reported that Liao is in place on St. Andre. Get ready for immediate takeoff—and I need all the Gs you can muster getting us back to the JumpShip. It may already be too late.”

St. Michael Station, St. Michael

St. Andre system

Prefecture V, The Republic

17 December 3134

For Erik, it was four days of agony as the liner made its way from the jump point to St. Andre. Along the way, he could do little except read faxed battle reports—all of them bad.

The liner didn’t have the kind of facilities he would have needed to assume proper command of the SwordSworn forces on the planet. He did have limited ability to confer with Campaign Commander Justin Sortek and offer advice, but even Erik had to question its value, given his limited access to current intelligence.

Liao forces had appeared at the zenith jump point days earlier. Their DropShips immediately began high-G burns toward St. Andre. While SwordSworn forces had landed near the old Star League base on the polar continent of Ravensglade, House Liao had put down on the more populated desert continent of Georama and attacked the capital city of Jerome.

Fearing the attack was only a distraction, Sortek had been afraid to commit significant forces to the fight. The city fell in only two days. Now they were moving their forces to cut off ports of supply to Ravensglade. The freshly landed SwordSworn were short on fuel and food, having counted on the ready availability of local supply.

Erik’s pleas to the liner’s captain to shorten the trip, by increasing the acceleration beyond the standard one G, were ignored. In fact, only repeated insistence by Erik and other passengers kept him headed to the embattled planet at all. The captain was prepared to turn back, and still refused to land on the planet itself.

Instead, the passengers would be unloaded at a station on St. Michael, the planet’s only moon, and left to find their own transportation to the planet’s surface.

For Erik and Clayhatchee, at least, that shouldn’t be a problem. The SwordSworn had a shuttle available, and promised that it would be waiting.

St. Michael Station was little more than an outpost on the moon’s airless surface, with no more than a few thousand permanent inhabitants at the best of times. Now it was a ghost town, with most of the inhabitants having retreated to the greater security of the planet’s surface. The harbormaster at the little spaceport was one of the diehards who simply refused to leave.