STARLINER by David Drake

The line of cars advanced again. The stuttering motion was masked by Shockwaves reflected as the starship and its tugs neared the ground.

Hilda turned her head, breaking the kiss but continuing to hold Ran cheek to cheek with her. “That and other things,” she said. “Sven isn’t pleasant to be around when he’s on a mission. If things aren’t going well, he takes it out on whoever’s closest. After a while, I decided that that wouldn’t be me anymore.”

“Well, ambassadors have a lot on their minds,” Ran said. He twisted slightly to watch the sunroof through the blond halo of Lady Bernsdorf’s hair.

A spot on the clear panel darkened. The limousine’s sensors had noted potentially dangerous actinics and polarized against them before human retinas could have reacted. “This may be it,” Ran murmured.

“Umm?”

“My ship. The Empress of Earth,”

Hilda stiffened, then relaxed and very deliberately released Colville. She straightened on her side of the car and touched a control. The limousine’s windows were opaque to outside eyes; now the inner face of the windshield mirrored as well. She adjusted the angle of reflection and began fussing with her hair.

“I, ah . . .” Ran said awkwardly.

He wasn’t sure what the woman wanted, but he knew he’d screwed up that time. She was a nice lady. She shouldn’t feel that he didn’t care about her when they parted, and he did care. But it had been a long road from Bifrost to Third Officer, Staff Side, of the Empress of Earth . . . .

“If your . . . if Count Bernsdorf is coming home early,” Ran continued, “does that mean he’s brokered peace and the emergency is over? Or, ah, that it’s war for sure between Nevasa and Grantholm?”

“You’re asking the wrong Bernsdorf,” Hilda said curtly. She cleared the windshield as spaceport control jogged the limousine forward again. They were nearing the head of the queue. “Not that Sven would tell you anything. Or tell me anything. He’s very professional. In five years, he’ll be heading the Ministry of External Affairs.”

The limousine shuddered from the hammering roar of the incoming starship. The eye-saving filter in the sunroof had expanded to the size of a gravy boat. It was almost black, indicating a near-uniform intensity of flux between the starship’s own motors and those of the eight tugs aiding its descent. The vessel’s mass was such that her own motors were being run at high capacity despite the large number of tugs adding their thrust.

“This is a—”

Ran Colville looked at Hilda in sudden confusion. Until she spoke, he’d forgotten she was present.

“—considerable promotion for you, isn’t it, Ran?” the woman continued smoothly, as though her clear blue eyes had failed to notice her ex-lover’s abstraction. “This ship is bigger than any of the others you’ve served on.”

Ran gave a wry chuckle. “A Planet-Class liner is bigger than anything I’ve served on,” he admitted. “And the Empress of Earth, well, she’s the biggest there is, my love . . . . Except maybe for the Brasil, and that’s a matter of how you measure the two of them. Yeah, this is a promotion.”

Without changing her neutral expression, Hilda said, “Since Sven is coming home from Nevasa, that means he’s failed. If there’d been a realistic chance of Nevasa agreeing to peace talks, he’d have gone on to Grantholm. Federated Earth doesn’t want an interstellar war to break out, but since both the principals do—they’ll fight, won’t they? Because they’re fools.”

“I don’t figure it either,” Ran said, staring upward toward the Empress of Earth. “Nevasa and Grantholm have everything they could want already. It’s not like B-B . . . It’s not like some of the fringe worlds, where people don’t have anything to lose from a war.”

Not like Bifrost.

The Empress of Earth’s descent had been braked to a near hover by thrust at high altitude. Now she was dropping again, supported primarily by the tugs. The limousine’s filters paled, permitting details of the huge vessel to show through a gray haze. Landing outriggers extended from the cylindrical hull, and the panels concealing the lifeboat bays were withdrawn.

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