STARLINER by David Drake

“I’ve got no problem with that,” Ran said. “Well, maybe you can look me up when you get free. Colville out.”

Wanda snorted. “I’m not into threesomes,” she said. “Holly out.”

Ran didn’t have problems with much of anything, not since Hobilo. The shadow of his father’s past had been lifted—burned away as though by the metal-charged flame of Chick Colville’s weapon. Seeing the actual place didn’t make the events less horrible, but it proved they were over . . . as they had never been over for Ran’s father, or for Ran until that moment of catharsis.

The taxi rank was empty, but a cab returning from Tidal had turned into the approach road. The noise of machinery chuckling as it shifted beef aboard the Empress of Earth seemed thin in the breeze and open spaces, but it completely covered the sound of two late-leaving passengers until they fell into step with Ran.

He turned in startlement. “Good morning, Lieutenant Colville,” said Franz Streseman. The young Grantholmer held two overnight cases in his left hand. “May I present my friend Miss Tranh van Oanh? Or have you met?”

“Formally only,” Ran said, “and barely that. Very glad to make your acquaintance, ma’am.”

He bowed to Oanh. The girl looked like a lute string tuned a key above normal, but the problem wasn’t between her and Franz. They’d been holding hands until Ran turned.

“Would you care to share a cab into Tidal, sir?” Franz offered.

“If you’ll call me ‘Ran’ instead of ‘sir,'” Ran said, and he opened the taxi’s door for the young couple.

* * *

The prairies of Calicheman were covered with grasses close enough to those of Earth that some botanists claimed to have cross-bred the strains. These claims were disputed by others. Now that panspermia was no longer a hypothesis but simple observation, nobody familiar with the vast adaptability of plant species denied that it was theoretically possible.

The road from Longleat to Tidal, the largest of the nearby towns, was undermaintained, and quite a lot of the planetary traffic was off-road entirely. Local vehicles were designed for the prevailing conditions.

This cab, driven by a dour woman who carried her pistol in a cross-draw holster, rode high over large wheels. The vehicle gave the three passengers in back a good look at the rolling terrain of grasses, flowering shrubs, and small trees—not stunted, but saplings whose lifespan was limited by frequent prairie fires. From a non-specialist’s standpoint, the landscape could have been the next panel from the hologram of the North American Midwest in Ran’s cabin. Only the profusion of animal life provided an obvious difference.

Tidal was five kilometers away from the port. The trip was a panorama of brindled cattle, mixed in approximately equal numbers with a score of native herbivores.

Halfway along the jolting, swaying journey, Oanh leaned forward to look past Franz toward the Trident officer. “Are there proper docking facilities on Szgrane, sir?” she asked.

“They haven’t docked anything our size,” Ran said, stifling a wince at being called “sir” as if he was the girl’s grandfather. “But then, neither had Grantholm until the Empress touched down on her maiden voyage.”

He mentally reviewed the pilotry data. “They’ve got four modern tugs,” he went on. “That’s enough if they don’t mind us digging a bit of a hole with our own motors at three-quarters power, which Trident will pay to repair.”

“A backwater,” Franz said, “but the port averages three landings a day. I’ve been there.”

“No doubt a very suitable place from which to ferry all the soldiers returning to Grantholm to kill my compatriots,” Oanh said. Her tone was noticeably cooler by the end of the comment than it had been at the beginning.

“Szgrane has an established trade with Grantholm,” Ran said carefully, staring out the window so that he wouldn’t have to notice the expressions on the faces of the young couple beside him. “But there’s absolutely no possibility that the authorities on Szgrane would permit any insult to our Nevasan passengers. They’re very—punctilious about their honor, the Szgranians.”

The highway, such as it was, paralleled the railroad tracks. A twelve-car train howled by in the opposite direction, carrying more beef toward the Empress at 150 kph. Ran’s teeth grated, and portions of the taxi moaned.