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Her invitation had arrived that morning as an attachment to electronic orders from the Admiralty. The Navy, she knew well, was at pains not to cross the oligarchic plutocracy that was the Terran government...and that meant the social strata forming the political base for that government, the Illiminati—the Latin meant, roughly, "those without limits."

Koehler grinned. "The Logans are throwing this fest for 'us,' didn't you know? For the superiors of the Grand Fleet before our heroic embarkation for Abyss!"

"No, I didn't."

"It's all politics," Captain Harrison said, smiling. He was big, heavyset, and the current commanding officer of the cruiser Endymion. "Senator Martin is afraid we're going to make the Galactics angry. And Brandt here is terrified of something upsetting his negotiations with them."

"Hardly terrified, Captain," a nude man standing nearby said. He wore a complex filigree of silver down his left arm, and his elaborately coiffed corona ID'ed him as Dr. Feodor Brandt of the UE Foreign Service. Like the rest, he looked no older than thirty, but his electronic credentials suggested an age of several centuries. "The Dr'kleh faction possesses minds that are brilliant...brilliant. They're so intelligent they grasp every side of a problem at once, without emotion or prejudice. Our talks with them are already bearing fruit." He smiled at Morrigan, lifting his crystal in salute.

"Senator Martin may be right," Captain Jobert, of the fleet monitor Erebus, added. "I'd hate to be on the wrong side of those... people."

"Senator Martin," yet another fleet captain, Ellen Carter, chimed in, "is an idiot. Peace at any price...and to hell with our extrasolar colonies."

Carter, Morrigan knew, was from Pavo, an Earth colony almost twenty light-years from Earth. The undeclared war with some of the Galactics' clients had consumed Delta Pavonis IV twenty-three years ago, and she would not be happy with the rumors circulating about the Joining. Currently, she was CO of the light cruiser Invincible.

Koehler patted the cushion next to him. "Here, pet. Sit yourself down!"

She sidestepped the invitation, blocking her corona from broadcasting her annoyance. The admiral's words hadn't exactly been a direct order...

She and Koehler had been lovers on and off for the past century. They'd met while she'd been a civilian consultant in D.C. and he'd been the XO of the Port Diego, a fleet escort carrier. They'd been close...very close, close enough that they'd discussed a formal long-term union. More, Koehler had been responsible for getting her to reenlist in the Navy after an extended sabbatical, a service hiatus of some fifty-four years. Twenty years ago his patronage had nailed down her promotion to captain.

She knew she should be grateful. Usually she was.

But she was not his "pet." She was 135 years older than Koehler and well on in her eighth lifetime. She was older than most of the people here, including sweet little Lady Daphne. They, all of them, could take their righteous Homo superioris attitudes and stuff them up their condescendingly righteous asses. Illiminati indeed...

"Tell me, Captain," Brandt asked her. "What do you think we'll find out beyond Abyss?"

Foreign Service meant diplomat, which in turn meant patrician. Obviously wealthy, obviously superior. That could scarcely ingratiate him to Morrigan.

"The Sirius star system, of course," she replied. "What else?"

Was he testing her? Brandt's emotil simply said [INTERESTED], but if he was prying or trying to goad her, she doubted that his corona would give that away. To hide her nervousness, she lifted her mist close to her face. Sensing the movement, the crystal sphere split across its top, emitting a curling cloudlet of pale gas; as she inhaled it, she felt a heady surge of pleasure sweep up her spine and across her scalp, a ripple of pleasant gratification, of a cheerful confidence edging out her self-doubt.

She also realized with a tingling rush how much she still wanted Koehler, and in that realization she noted an alarming fading of her inhibitions. Whoa! Not too much of that!

She surreptitiously placed the globe in the planter of a bright red-orange tropical shrub beside her—Canna coccinea, according to her corona. Voluptastims like mist, fog, and feelgood all were perfectly acceptable, both socially and legally, but she wanted a clear head tonight—a clear head and no pre-mission entanglements.

 

"Actually," Brandt was saying, "I was thinking about the Galactics. They've offered us a chance to join their community. The Joining, right? It's what Humankind has been dreaming of for centuries."