“First Deputy Trevor Stallion. If we’re going to be partners, I’d prefer Trev. I hear people aren’t quite as formal in Haven.”

  Hoshi tucked her hands behind her back.

  “We try to keep it casual here. It’s not like Harmony Sector. We don’t engage with diplomats and IC reps all day.”

  Did he detect a hint of jealousy? If only she knew ...

  “Right. Just ordinary folks here. The backbone of Amity.”

  He didn’t think the line was funny, but Hoshi laughed all the same.

  “I’ve been doing this job for a year, Trev. Trust me, there’s nothing ordinary about the people of Haven.”

  He saw her point.

  “True. Ordinary people don’t choose to spend years inside a giant canister fifty light-years from the nearest planet. I’ve been here so long, I tend to forget. Shall we?”

  Trevor allowed his escort and new partner to lead the way from Haven Security Administration toward the rifter docks. She didn’t condescend by pointing out who occupied what office or any routines that matched his years of experience in Harmony.

  Good, he thought. One less embarrassing moment.

  “I heard you’ve been at this for some time, Trev.”

  “Oh, yes. A lot of life poured into this station. I understand you’re coming up on your second year.”

  “Tomorrow, actually. Three hundred standard days.”

  “Two-year rotation?”

  She nodded with a sharp, military assent.

  “UNF deferment. I also applied for an IC grant, but the UNF came through first. Plus, it sets me up for a nice career.”

  Oh, yes. She’d fit in well with the United Naval Forces. No doubt she developed that disciplined gait after a monthlong stint in Basic Training School.

  “Good timing. This is their first expansion since the war. Heard last week they’re recommissioning three warships.”

  They exited the office complex near the bow of Haven Sector and approached the docks.

  “I’m surprised it took them so long,” she said. “What with the way things have been going out there.”

  Trevor didn’t want to get into the weeds on this issue, but his previous assignment gave him insight most people outside Harmony Sector lacked.

  “Nobody expected Black Star to become such a menace. But money and politics delayed the response. Usual.”

  “I try to steer clear of those conflicts.”

  “Smart, Hoshi. Ever heard of the Marshall Group?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Hardliners. They believe UNF expansion is a slippery slope toward killing their Rights of Sovereignty. They tried to hold up the appropriations bill.”

  As they reached the docks, where twenty dual-frame rifters hovered, Hoshi pointed to the one they’d use for today’s tour.

  “We have people like that back home on Hokkaido. They’re cudfrucking morons.” She caught herself. “Excuse my bite.”

  “Excused.”

  Hoshi revealed a bit of an edge. He liked it. His superiors in Harmony Sector never appreciated colorful language while on duty. Though that was only part of what did him in.

  “And what truly spins me up, Trev? After all the UNF did for my people, and all we contributed to the Collectorate – the heroes of the war, and then President Aleksanyan – you’d expect them to show nothing but gratitude.”

  Hoshi broke into a sheepish grin.

  “Oh. So sorry, Trev. How did we get from introductions to politics in less than two minutes?”

  “Blame me. I used to spend my days around people who talked of little else. It’s second nature.”

  They hopped aboard the open-air rifter. Each pressed a thumb against the Nav bank. The AI verified their Amity LinkPass through their gene stamp; the bank’s green display unlocked their vital data.

  “ALP confirmed,” the AI announced in a tone-neutral voice. “Level Five certified operators.”

  He pointed to her steering arm.

  “You have the honors, Hoshi.”

  “You’re the senior officer.”

  Trevor tried not to sound annoyed.

  “True, and I’ll pull rank when it’s warranted. But you’re officially my tour guide, so I defer to your expertise.”

  She mumbled her thanks and grabbed the wheel. The rifter’s safety cascade flickered around them in a blink. Hoshi set her course deep into Haven Sector, but not without a little snark.

  “Chief Dorrit said you might not cooperate today. He said your nose might be a touch on the high side for Havenites.”

  Trevor never had much use for that overstuffed bastard. Chief of Security Hannibal Dorrit didn’t disguise his indignation at Trevor being appointed his First Deputy without consultation. Trevor was already devising ways to avoid the man. No sense pissing off another superior – at least not in the short term.

  “One thing to know about me, Hoshi. I’m the model of cooperative until I’m not.”

  She chuckled. “What happens then?”

  “Desk work and regrets, mostly.”

  Hoshi nodded. She had yet to accelerate the rifter.

  “Ah. Yes. I heard a little something about the incident. Sorry.”

  “A little? No need for apologies. Everyone in Sec Admin knows at least a little. If you don’t mind, I’d rather not discuss details.”

  “Of course. Before we head out, can I ask one tiny question?”

  OK. Here it comes.

  “Tiny? As in what? Two words? Three?”

  “Chief Dorrit let slip you’ve served several rotations. Most deputies move to Central or rotate out of Amity in two years. What holds you here?”

  He kept his irritation bottled but slipped her the side-eye.

  “That’s what you call tiny? Oh, well. I can see you didn’t inspect my profile. It’s all there.”

  “Dorrit gave me ten minutes heads-up.”

  “Sounds about right. Hoshi, I don’t serve terms. I’ve lived more than half my life on Amity. Grandfathered in, so to speak.”

  Her eyes grew in sudden revelation.

  “Oh, it’s you! The Lifetime Deputy.”

  That label again? He really needed to make a change.

  “I dearly hope not, Hoshi. I’m only thirty-five and free to book passage on a transport today.” Under his breath added: “Maybe I should.” Effie warned Trevor: His reputation would precede him. “I was deputized fifteen years ago. I moved here with my brother when I was sixteen. What can I say? I got used to the place.”

  More to the point, had nowhere else to go and was damn lucky to be anywhere after the war.

  “Nineteen years,” she gushed. “That means the station wasn’t finished when you arrived. You must have a million stories.”

  “Only four worth telling. Maybe someday after we’ve settled into a nice routine, I’ll bore you with them.”

  “You have a deal, Trev. Ready for the tour?”

  He oozed in sarcasm: “Can’t wait.”

  Hoshi would point out nothing he didn’t already know, but the tour would give him a couple hours downtime. He needed it to think through his next strategy – how to repair the shit he’d made of his family.

  Visualize sitting down with Ana to help her through the confusion. She thought he didn’t love her anymore.

  It was a great plan. Naturally, it went straight to hell.

  3

  HAVEN SECTOR IN SOME WAYS reminded Trevor of his childhood home, Philadelphia Redux. The residential towers and wide avenues – in this case, moving walkways called Swiftraks – clustered together in tight formations along a grid pattern. They formed canyons, at the bottom of which green areas created the illusion of nature. That’s where the similarities ended.

  The parks lacked trees, and the manufactured streams ran on recycled water. The sun and moon were nonexistent inside this cylinder, which extended two kilometers bow to stern. In its place, stationary glowdrones dotted Haven like the brightest evening stars. Collectively, they generated enough light to mimic the effect of a far-north city where the sun hovered for months above the horizon.

  Neither cold nor warm. No wind, no fragrance, a perfectly unnatural balance of aesthetics. Haven, like companion sectors Harmony and Episteme, simply was.

  The shift to sterile and cloistered both fascinated and unsettled Trevor when he arrived as a boy. Now, he’d long forgotten what it felt like to shiver on a January morning or sweat on a July afternoon. If he ever returned to Earth, natural sunlight would damage his eyes unless he wore dark glasses for a few days.

  The gravitational transition would be more stressful.

  “The longer we stay, the more likely we’ll never leave,” he once conceded to Effie. “Planet life is so messy.”

  Was he building a case to remain the Lifetime Deputy? Or had the continuity of Amity Station softened him? Trevor didn’t want to believe he was afraid of reassimilating to terrestrial life.

  Effie had resided here almost as long, building a career in the Diplomatic Resolution Corps. Yet duty called his wife off-station a few times every year, just enough to keep her firmly planted in both worlds. She had no plans to leave the DRC, but bureau postings occasionally opened on Collectorate member planets.

  The future seemed simple in the first years of their marriage. Effie made a smart, practical case.

  “It won’t be as difficult as you think,” she once said, cuddled in his arms after making love. “We’ll live in a city with a great transit system. We’ll have a comfortable high-rise flat with the best blackout curtains. You’ll find an executive job in corporate security. Could be worse.”

  “How?”

  She blew in his ear.

  “We could buy a farm. Raise animals. Plant things.”

  “In the dirt, you mean?”

  “That’s usually where they go, last I checked.”

  He imagined himself wielding a hoe to break up soil.

  The horror.

  “I walked in mud once when I was a kid,” he told her. “My parents took us on an excursion outside Redux. I forget exactly where, but I recall having the best time.”

  “And now?”

  “Oh, I’d be disgusted.”

  Effie wasn’t surprised. She sniffed under his arms.

  “Not even a slight musk. We could make love for another hour, and you’d still be odor-free. You’re unnatural.”

  “Or maybe,” he said with a wry grin, “I’m the only natural one.”

  “I blame the showers. You take too many.”

  They’d gone down this verbal riff often.

  “I cut back.”

  “Only after they threatened to slice our water ration.”

  “Fine. You win the point. But I’m down to one water and one steam per day, three minutes max.”

  “You,” Effie said between a long, deep kiss, “have a problem. There should be a support group for people like you.”

  “The sanitary?”

  “A more accurate term is obsessive-compulsive.”

  “I wasn’t aware wanting to be clean was a disorder. OK. Fine. I’ll start a support group myself. Our motto will be ‘happily odor-free.’”

  Trevor enjoyed that banter. The rigid formality of life inside Harmony Sector was a heavy load to bear. He loved those moments when they could set free their private faces.

  He missed Effie. She hadn’t touched him in weeks. These days, she found pleasure in another bed.

  Trevor lost track of what Hoshi was telling him as they ventured into the heart of Haven. Assuming she said anything worth hearing.

  “Swiftraks?” He asked.

  His guide steered the rifter toward the main walkway between the mid-level residential towers.

  “Yes. Um. The leapers. You’ve heard about them, I assume?”

  He decided not to sound ignorant to the issue.

  “Leapers. What sort of problem are they causing?”

  “Most of the time, it’s no more than a nuisance.” She pointed to the crowded Swiftrak, on which pedestrians moved at three times standard walking speed. “When they come out and leap off-shift, they pose less of a danger. But they prefer the challenge of leaping over a crowd.”

  Oh. That.

  They never had such an issue in Harmony, but he heard about the practice in Haven, where ninety percent of Amity’s children resided. The lighter gravity meant anyone who got a good running start on a Swiftrak could push off and leap forward in ten-meter bounds. The thrill made sense; who didn’t want to feel superhuman? But gravity had its limits. The leaper often did not stick the landing. Bruises and broken bones, along with the occasional tussle, caused considerable consternation.

  “How many incidents on average?” He asked.

  “Four to five calls a day. Half are after-the-fact, disgruntled eyewitnesses. They wonder why we don’t coffin the practice.”

  “The others?”

  She settled the rifter into the transit lane between walkways.

  “Sprains, minor phasic triage, a few bruised egos.”

  Trevor saw no one in either direction misbehaving. Good. He’d caught a quiet moment.

  “To be fair, I understand why people are disgruntled. They shouldn’t have to put up with it. HVSA can stamp it out. Why hasn’t that happened?”

  Hoshi said something under her breath. Trevor didn’t catch it.

  “We could, but we’d have to patrol the Swiftraks constantly. We don’t have enough bodies to cover off-shift. Frankly, it’s all we’d ever do, Trev.”

  “In theory, yes. What about punishment? The regs allow for fair penalties.”

  Her frown spoke loudly: No, it said, you don’t understand how life works here.

  “Ninety-nine percent of the violators are kids. Four out of five of those are Natives. They’re hands-off. Chief Dorrit’s orders.”

  The haze cleared away. Trevor wasn’t surprised.

  “He’s afraid of them, isn’t he? More specifically, their parents.”

  “Them and the paperwork. We send them on their way with a stern warning.”

  “An empty threat. Yes?”

  Her sigh confirmed his suspicion.

  The population of children born to Amity Station had grown in recent years. Seven hundred fifty as of a week ago; an engineer in Episteme Sector expected twins in a few days. Natives – which included his seven-year-old Ana Marie – represented a shift from Amity’s original mission concept.

  At first, the Amity Charter ruled out anyone making a permanent home here. It assumed diplomats and Interstellar Congress reps, as well as scientific, engineering, and support workers would rotate through the station. Even elected positions were term-limited, ensuring a steady turnover that allowed new opportunities from applicants across the forty Collectorate worlds.

  Five percent of the population had lived here more than a decade. Only seven others surpassed the Stallion brothers for longevity. Most parents of Natives were influential or knew the proper contacts to run interference should their children get into trouble.

  “Chief Dorrit doesn’t like confrontation,” Hoshi said.

  “Huh. Especially when it comes barging into his office.”

  “You understand, Trev.”

  “What I understand is that he’s begging for trouble. There’s going to be a serious accident someday. The kind you can’t look past. Will it take someone’s death to change policy?”

  She held up a hand as if to stop his protest cold.

  “You’re not wrong, but we do things differently here. Dorrit says punishing children is a bad look for the HVSA.”

  He had to chuckle.

  “Bad look? I thought wanton law-breaking was a bad look. Perhaps I’m too anal.”

  “They’re kids, Trev. They’re searching for an outlet to have fun in a place where there isn’t much, if we’re being honest.”

  Hoshi pointed toward the far end of Haven, where the sector’s energy plant loomed beyond a mile of additional housing, restaurants, shops, and clubs.

  “I once saw a Native enter the Swiftrak right about here and leap in ten-meter bounds nonstop. It was incredible. He reached the Crossway lifts in under a minute. I’m actually surprised more people don’t do it.”

  Trevor’s eyes followed the fabled course to those lifts, which rose fifty meters in white columns up to transit stations inside the Crossway, one of two enclosed ribs that linked the three sectors. The double-layered Blue Line provided dedicated tubes for passengers and cargo. In one direction, Harmony Sector. In the opposite, Episteme.

  “Perhaps it’s my age talking, Hoshi, but this problem needs to be managed. If it’s sport they want, then let’s set aside dates for Swiftrak races off-shift. Cordon sections and establish rules.”

  “Could be a reasonable compromise, Trev, but I doubt these leapers will be mollified.”

  Lovely. Less than an hour on the new job, and he was already proposing change. Old habits ...

  “I should take a proposal to Dorrit.”

  Hoshi shook her head.

  “As First, that’s your prerogative, but I’d recommend you hold off a few weeks. Give the Chief time to accept you.”

  “Oh. What qualifies as acceptance? Will I have to pass an unspoken test?”

  “Dunno,” she snickered. “It’s unspoken. What do you say we continue on? I want to show you through some of the trickier neighborhoods. There’s a lot to learn, Trev.”

  He very much doubted that. The residential blocs were largely indistinctive by design. No one here lived in luxury penthouses while looking down upon hardscrabble unfortunates. The Amity Charter mandated equity in housing, even among the Harmony elites and the command staffs of the three sectors. The President of the Collectorate enjoyed only a few more square meters than the lowest-tier maintenance technician. Turnover through two- and three-year rotations ensured the neighborhoods remained diverse and unable to form insular traditions.

  Or so Trevor had assumed.

  “Some changes are subtle,” Hoshi explained as she piloted the rifter into the Justinia bloc. “Took me a few months to notice.”

  “Such as?”

  “Take Justinia. There are eight hundred residents in these five buildings. Forty percent came from the Dark Quadrant.”