“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Vice President of the Confederation of Planets: Ezra Samuels.”

  So saying, Parnashikan stepped down from the dais in order to make way for their visitor.

  Ezra Samuels? The Vice-President? What was he doing here?

  Samuels, dressed in a sharp blue suit, was tall by anyone’s standards but he towered over everyone in the press area. There were three drone cameras on him now, each one struggling to keep up as the president strode purposefully towards the stage while the Confederation anthem played in the background.

  Ardent couldn’t believe what she was seeing. No wonder the Apex people had been so touchy about her earlier comments. No one had even hinted at a warming of relations between the company and the leaders of the Confederation. Something significant must have happened to warrant this. And was it significant that it was the vice president and not the president himself taking the stage?

  Samuels was in no hurry to get there though, enjoying the uproar his arrival had caused. According to the political commentators, Samuels was considered to be a journeyman politician at best though he’d somehow managed to succeed where more seasoned politicians had failed. He’d managed it through a mixture of political machinations and old school glad-handing but there was nothing to suggest that here. He moved with such assurance and vigor that you could have been forgiven for thinking that you were in the presence of the president himself.

  Ardent knew that she’d been out maneuvered when she saw the Apex executives getting to their feet. The next thing, they were breaking into applause.

  Ardent could see Panjar, her hands thrown wide as if to say: what the hell is going on?

  As he mounted the stage, Samuels raised a hand in for silence.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Devereaux,” he said, as if this was all part of some extended press briefing. “Would you like to ask your question, now?”

  “Yes, of course, Mr Vice President,” she looked at her tablet, seemingly having forgotten what she’d been about to say. “Only, I was reflecting on the incredible cost of all this construction work and I was just wondering why people would want to come all the way out here when there are so many other colonies already available.”

  Samuels nodded sagely before answering.

  “That’s a good point. And you’re right, of course. But I think it’s this which makes us so different to the Yakutians. On their side, economic growth is carefully restricted. There is no expansion – none whatsoever – without the direct approval of the palace. They have their Homeworlds of course and a heavily regulated number of secondary planets but they aren’t committed to expansion. Not in the same way that we are. And that’s what makes our two peoples so different.

  “The Confederation is all about expansion and innovation, as my friends at Apex here will attest. While people have been telling them that an engineering project on this scale is impossible, they’ve managed to build a new gate along with a way station capable of supporting it. They’ve been out here turning their plan into a reality and they deserve a huge amount of credit for that.”

  When Samuels turned to applaud the Apex execs, Ardent thought he’d gone too far, but then the journalists did an odd thing. They started to join in. There was a subtle change going on here and she didn’t like it. Samuels was stating his claim.

  “You mustn’t forget that we are and always will be a frontiers people,” he continued. “Our ancestors have always looked to the heavens. Initially, we might have been constrained by circumstances - only the lucky few were gifted the opportunity of traveling into space - but, in the last century, all that has changed. Now, anyone with a willingness and determination to do so can earn their place among the stars.

  “And, as we come to migrate outwards, each new star system presents us with tremendous opportunities. Fortunes are out here waiting to be claimed but, make no mistake, this is not a place for the meek. The right people will be drawn here, as they always have throughout our proud history. So, in answer to your question, it’s not a question of whether people will come, Miss Devereaux, rather it’s a question of how will we cope with the demand?”

  How will we cope?

  That sounded ominous. At what point had Apex and the Confederation’s interests merged?

  Ardent was so disturbed by this that she barely heard the questions that followed with Samuels, so assured in his presentation, that he made the whole thing look effortless.

  Even when he pressed the button to trigger the main event, he needed no prompting, positioning himself perfectly for the cameras so that he didn’t obscure their view of the gate.

  The view they’d all travelled millions of miles to witness.

  As the first of the mighty cardinal nodes surged to full capacity, the light was so intense that, for a moment, Ezra Samuels was eclipsed by one of mankind’s greatest achievements.

  The other four nodes came on-line in quick succession thereafter. The glare so bright that it quickly became uncomfortable to look at directly. But Ardent had prepared for this eventuality. There was a white pouch on the back of each chair, inside which was a very special pair of glasses.

  She took hers out now, standing up before she slipped them on, prompting the others in the room to do likewise.

  “I could do with a pair of those myself,” Samuels said, wincing against the light.

  And then, something extraordinary happened. The cardinal nodes started to shift slightly, moving in a clockwise direction, all the while maintaining their own unique orientation. It was remarkable to see such an unadulterated display of sheer power as they began to spin, each strand of light seeming to chase the others around as their colours changed from violet, to blue and finally to gold. At the centre of all this an ice-white fire crackled about a central orb which seemed to bulge and contract as if ready to explode.

  All around her, Ardent could hear the growing sense of awe. This was like nothing they’d ever seen before and little could have prepared them for what they were about to experience.

  It was like being given ring side seats at the birth of a new star.

  What happened next was always going to seem anticlimactic by comparison.

  The first sign of what was happening was when a pinpoint of light at the very centre of the nodes glittered for a moment before seeming to disappear. They had to switch their attention to the screens as the cameras struggled to pick it out against the brightness of the spinning nodes. They watched as a white mark slowly transformed into a star cruiser.

  The Heart of Maine, a humble Class II cruiser, had passed through the gate’s transition point and successfully entered their system. Even then, the resolution wasn’t particularly clear, so it wasn’t until the ship started its dazzling laser projections of a bounding cheetah – the Apex company logo – that the people around Ardent realised what had just happened. The threshold had been crossed. The gate established.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Samuels lowered his voice as if announcing the birth of a much-anticipated grandchild. “I give you the Henrietta Gate.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  3054 PRIME STANDARD

  Sigrid Ardent took a moment to gather herself before approaching Faulkner’s cabin.

  A lot had happened in the past few days and she was still coming to terms with most of it.

  When the Gate had opened all those years ago, she had known that they were on the brink of something inordinately huge but she could never have guessed the extent to which it would impact on her personally. In retrospect, the accumulation of vast wealth had been the easiest part. Despite her falling out of favor with the Apex execs, she’d retained her position on the council. And this had left her perfectly poised when, in turn, the mining contracts were being handed out. She’d had geologists reconnoitring the various planets for years and so was intimately aware of which contracts were worth pursuing and which weren’t. Even so, no one could have envisaged how rich the reserves on those first mining operations would prove to be. The profits had flooded in so quickly that she hadn’t had enough time to come to terms with her own burgeoning wealth. She’d been too busy protecting her assets to think much about that. It had been a lawless time and she’d done well to hold her own against some of her more unscrupulous competitors.

  They’d tried everything to try and undermine her operation so that, in the end, a large part of her outlay had gone on security rather than on the actual mining operation itself. The necessity of that still irritated her but that was just the way of things. What mattered most was that her work force were properly protected and so could go about their day-to-day work in relative safety. The same couldn’t be said for some of the other teams who tried to make a go of it with threats and intimidation being a part of daily life. She’d lost count of the number of firms who had to shut down because of the threats faced by their workers. The whole thing had devolved into a very dirty business in the end but Ardent had stood firm. The more pressure her rivals put her under, the more resilient she had become.

  Samuels had been right about one thing.

  This was no place for the meek.

  Long term she realised that the way to protect her investment was through legislation and, while that sometimes meant unpopular restrictions it did help to level the playing field. The level of bureaucracy necessary to run such an operation made it difficult to get set up initially but, once you were underway, you could at least go to sleep at night without fear that your mine was going to be the victim of some inexplicable disaster.

  Ironically, it had been at the point where she had started to invest more time into her political career that the shares in her company had boomed. Investors seemed to relish the security a stable legislature promoted. She’d never set out to become a politician, it had simply been a means to an end but now here she was, on the brink of returning to power almost by default.

  But the more she became involved in the politics of Blackthorn, the more she’d come to resent the influence of the big players, namely the Confederation and the Empire. Because, regardless of their larger aspirations, in the end, it always came down to money. Or rather, taxes.

  Both had seen how the system had prospered under her and both had been eager to court her favor. Each knew that it was in their best interest to offer her protection against the other, knowing that, whichever side she chose to ally herself with, each one would be looking to level taxes on Blackthorn, of that there could be no doubt.

  In an effort to delay the inevitable, Ardent had managed to drag out the negotiations for ten years but ultimately, the two rivals had grown impatient. It had been the appearance of the Daal which had forced her to reassess her relationship with both sides so that now with her on the brink of setting up a formal agreement she was still second guessing herself.

  Things had been so much easier in those early days, she reflected. When her only allegiance had been to herself.

  She was adjusting the ring on her finger when the door to Faulkner’s cabin opened and Katherine Schwartz stepped out, followed a few seconds later by Faulkner.

  He seemed unsettled but quickly gathered himself when he saw Ardent, indicating for her to stay where she was.

  Schwartz, for her part, looked furtive, as though embarrassed to be found here. If the woman hadn’t been so heavily pregnant, Ardent might have suspected that the two were having an affair, although when Schwartz turned to say her goodbyes, there was an unmistakeable sense of animosity between them.

  Schwartz briefly acknowledged her. “Governor.”

  “Lieutenant commander.”

  All very terse.

  “Sigrid, how are you?” Faulkner asked, waving her forward. “Won’t you come in?”

  Ardent smiled but didn’t move straight away, preferring instead to watch the departing figure of Schwartz.

  Only then did she allow herself to be led into his quarters. Once inside, he indicated for her to sit down.

  It was the first time she’d been inside the captain’s cabin since she’d come aboard the Renheim and she was surprised at how comparatively luxurious it seemed. Though that was hardly surprising considering who the previous occupant had been. Klaus Meyer was not the type of man to deny himself anything and she briefly pictured him in his new quarters, down in the brig.

  Ardent chose to sit on one of the paired leather sofas and immediately felt like curling up and going to sleep. The cabin came with its own virtual log-fire. It didn’t give out a great deal of heat, but it certainly was convincing. Faulkner went over to the wine rack, another relic from Meyer, and held up a bottle for her perusal.

  She nodded at the bottle of chianti. He poured two glasses and brought one over to her, standing there with his hands behind his back like some uppity sommelier while she tasted it. She indicated to show that it was acceptable and he withdrew.

  He picked up his own glass and then went and sat opposite her. They sat in silence, both of them savoring their wine though Ardent could see that something was bothering him.

  “Is everything alright?” she said. “She can’t be far from having it now, surely?”

  Faulkner rolled his eyes. Ardent knew that technically he shouldn’t be disclosing confidences about crew members, but he was also out of his depth with this new team, and he knew it. It would probably do him good to be able to confide in a third party.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I was trying so hard to be considerate. We are heading into a combat situation, after all. But now I think I’ve ended up insulting her.”

  “Is it to do with the baby?”

  Faulkner sat across from her, considered his drink.

  “I told her right at the start that it was not my intention to discriminate against anyone.”

  “So, what did you do?” she said. “Ask her to step down as XO?”

  “Worse! I suggested she abandon ship!”

  Ardent sat up straight. “What? You were going to stick her in one of those escape pods?”

  “No. Give me at least a little credit. Normally, such a thing wouldn’t be possible but the Renheim comes equipped with its own high velocity shuttle. It’s there to help get critically ill patients out of harm’s way. I’m hoping to get it filled with largely non-essential staff. About fifty in all.”

  “Non-essential staff?” Ardent couldn’t contain her smile. “You didn’t say that to her, did you?”

  “I didn’t say that she was non-essential. I was hoping she’d take charge of it. Is that such a terrible idea?”

  She took a sip of her wine, savoring the peppery taste. “I’m sure you meant well.”

  “Here I am with a woman who’s seven months pregnant and we’re going up against an alien battlecruiser! It seemed like the obvious thing to do.”

  Ardent studied his hands as they held the wine glass. They looked firmer, stronger somehow and the palsy which had plagued him since his operation now appeared to have completely disappeared.

  “It might seem that way to you, Robert, but you have to consider her take on this. She’ll have been working towards this position for years. And if she thinks she can balance her work commitments with the demands of being a mother then it’s really up to her.”

  “I should never have said anything. I just had this mad idea that she might like to start her maternity leave a few weeks early.”

  “It’s her decision and we just have to respect that.”

  “Well, thanks,” he said sourly. “I think I’ve realised that now.”

  They sat there for a long minute, but there was no sense of awkwardness. They were surprisingly relaxed in one another’s company.

  “I should have come to you, first.”

  “What? You want to get rid of me as well?”

  Faulkner pulled an awkward face and it took her a moment to realise that he was serious.

  Ardent was suddenly serious. “You really think it’s going to be that bad?”

  He brought the glass to his lips. Took a sip. “I’m afraid so. A pursuit like this – where the other guy’s desperate with nothing to lose – these things never end well.”

  “So, you think I should go. Is that it?”

  Faulkner let out a long sigh.

  “Sigrid, don’t hate me for saying this but we both know it’s what should happen. There’s no good reason why you should put yourself through this and every reason why you should get on that shuttle. Blackthorn’s in turmoil right now. They desperately need someone to take hold of the situation and that person looks very much like you,” she went to interrupt him but he stilled her by holding up his hand. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do, I’m just giving you my opinion. For what it’s worth.”

  “It’s odd. The crew have been looking at me oddly for the last few days and I suppose that’s it. They can’t believe that I’m still here, and I sort of see their point. Problem is: how am I going to make it back to Blackthorn in time to make a difference? I mean, we’re way off the space lanes out here.”

  “Ah, well, that bit at least I can help you with. In a few hours, we’ll be passing the Botany Bay and she’s currently on-course for Blackthorn. Slower than us, obviously, but I’ve spoken to Milton Darnell and he’s agreed to the transfer. If you should decide to go, that is.”

  She nodded numbly. It seemed like he’d thought of everything.

  “Besides, you’d be doing me an enormous favor.”

  “How’s that?”

  “The members of the Mantis crew that Captain Meyer managed to recover. I was told that they’d been transferred to another ship with a view to them being taken over to Blackthorn.”

  “Actually, yes. That’s right,” Ardent said. So much had happened in the interim that she’d almost forgotten. “We were having a problem storing them all. It was thought they’d be safest over there.”

  “Then, that’s marvellous,” he seemed genuinely thrilled. “If I could impose on you to oversee their rehabilitation, then that would go a long way to easing some of my guilt.”

  “Robert, you’ve got nothing to feel guilty about. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of people on Blackthorn who wouldn’t be alive right now if you hadn’t done what you did. So, yes. It would give me a great deal of pleasure to make sure that’s all taken care of.”