"I'd say that was a masterful bit of understatement," Maneka replied in judicious tones.

They stood side-by-side on Thermopylae's command deck, gazing into the visual display along with every other member of Hawthorne's bridge crew as the big transport ship settled into orbit around the planet they had come so far to find.

The G0 star they had named Lakshmaniah blazed with fierce, life-giving light and heat, bathing not one, but two habitable worlds in its brilliant glare. At the moment, Thermopylae was approaching the innermost of the two, the one they had named Indrani, which orbited the primary at just over nine light-minutes. The average planetary temperature was a bit higher than Maneka would have preferred, but, then, she was a native of Everest. The other habitable planet, the one they had named New Hope, with an orbital radius of just under fifteen and a half light-minutes, was much more to her taste.

Which, she thought wryly, puts me in a minority of one.

She couldn't really blame the rest of the expedition, from Adrian Agnelli down to the youngest child, for preferring Indrani. After over a full Standard Year and a half packed into the overcrowded confines of their transports, that planet looked like Heaven made real. With a climate most resort worlds would have envied, a gravity of 1.05 Earth Standard, and a surface that was eighty-two percent water, it floated against the blackness of space like a huge, incredibly gorgeous, white-swirled blue and green marble.

Even without the endless, wearying journey which had brought them here, that planet would have been one of the most beautiful things she'd ever seen in her life.

"In position, sir," the helmsman announced from Astrogation, and Hawthorne nodded.

"Ms. Stopford, please signal done with engines," he said.

"Aye, aye, sir," Thermopylae's engineer said, and Hawthorne looked at his communications officer.

"Inform the Governor and Brigadier Jeffords that we're preparing to deploy the pod," he said.

"Aye, aye, sir."

Maneka listened to be crisp rhythm of orders, the instant snap with which his people responded to his commands, with what she realized had become rather proprietary pleasure. As her senior Navy deputy, Hawthorne had taken over almost all of the unending details of managing the convoy's ships. Like her, he'd had no choice but to grow into the responsibilities which had landed on his shoulders, and she was devoutly glad she'd had him. He was actually much better when it came to dealing with people than she was, and she'd come to rely upon him as a quasi-ambassador, as much as her senior naval officer.

The way she'd come to rely upon him in a much more personal sense, as well, was simply icing on her cake.

And a rather nice cake it is, too, she thought wryly. Because he really does have an awfully nice butt. Among other things.

She'd decided that their relationship wasn't quite against Regs. Lazarus had helped her research the Articles of War and relevant regulations, and she'd found at least three loopholes which might plausibly be stretched to cover the situation. But all of them had to be stretched rather industriously to pull it off, and even so she knew they hovered on the brink of an outright violation, so the two of them had very carefully not moved their things into the same set of quarters. Everyone knew, of course, but this way everyone could pretend they didn't, and that made them all much happier. It was wonderful that humans were such ... adaptable creatures.

"Well," she said, quietly enough that his bridge crew could treat it as a private conversation between the two of them, "I guess I'd better get saddled up for my perilous mission."

"Yeah, right!" he snorted, equally quietly. "If I thought you might really end up in some sort of trouble down there, I'd probably be nervous. As it is—"

He shook his head, grinning, and she smiled back.

"Don't tell the Governor it's all really just a trick to let me be the first human to ever set foot on Indrani," she told him, half seriously, and he gave her a sharp look.

"I thought you and Guthrie cut cards to see whose Bolo pulled the survey duty?"

"We did." She smirked at him. "But we used my deck. Rank hath its privileges, after all. And," she added in a more steely tone as his eyes narrowed, "if you ever tell him I admitted that to you, I'll have Lazarus run over your toes!"

"My God, the perfidy of the woman!" He shook his head. "You realize, of course, that I'll never be able to trust you again."

"Hah! If you're only figuring that out now, you're a lot slower than I thought you were."

She gave him another smile, then turned and made her way quickly down the interconnecting passages to the assault pod Lazarus rode. Her personal quarters were also located in the pod, which had the advantage of keeping her close to the Bolo, although it also explained why she didn't have very much space, given the way the pod had been modified. The standard pod ought to have given her plenty of room, since it was big enough to transport an entire battalion of heavy, manned tanks. But a single Bolo—even mounted semiexternally—used up close to half of its total available volume, and half of the rest had been given over to the automated Bolo depot the Brigade techs on Sage had somehow fitted in and the spares to support that depot.

The "depot" had been specifically configured so that Lazarus could operate its remotes and service mechs, making him effectively his own Bolo tech. Maneka wasn't sure she approved of that. On the one hand, his onboard diagnostic programs, coupled with his ability to access the "depot" AI, allowed him to take care of all of his maintenance and service needs with a precision and dispatch even the best trained, most experienced human technician would have been hard-pressed to equal. On the other hand, if he suffered damage sufficient to incapacitate his own systems, he would need that same trained human technician to make the repairs he would no longer be able to direct for himself.

The convoy did have one fully trained, veteran Bolo tech, but Sergeant Willis had been assigned to Stalingrad, along with Guthrie Chin and Mickey. The decision had been made at a much higher level than Maneka Trevor, but she understood the logic behind it. She might not like it, but it actually did make sense.

The logistical planners for the colony had been extremely ingenious when it came to cramming the necessary people, supplies, and equipment into the available space. Thermopylae's capacious internal cargo holds—designed to provide the lift capacity for up to three battalions of infantry or air cavalry in addition to supporting the external assault pods—had figured prominently in their plans when they started cramming. That was true of all the convoy's ships, including Stalingrad, but in Thermopylae's case, they'd opted to utilize the space for heavy construction and earth-moving equipment, some of which filled the other half of Lazarus' pod not occupied by the Bolo himself. Stalingrad, on the other hand, had been fitted out with a considerably more capable and much more conventional version of a standard Bolo depot.

he had replied with one of his soft electronic chuckles.

"'Old soldiers never die, they just fade away,'" he'd said.

"That sounds like one of your quotes," she'd replied suspiciously.

"It is. From General Douglas MacArthur, an ancient pre-space officer. He would, I fear, have served as an excellent example of the sort of military ambition Governor Agnelli once feared you might exhibit.

Nor was he ever particularly afflicted with the Human virtue of modesty. Yet he was an undeniably capable strategist and commander with what was, for his era, an extraordinarily long military career."