During decades of travel, while the Kanaka searched for a planet to colonize, the passengers had built a self-contained society. At one point, their resources stretched and dwindling, they had stopped off in a rubble-strewn debris cloud around the red-dwarf Meyer to scavenge water ices, minerals, and metals from the asteroids, enough supplies to last them for another few decades.

There, some of the innovative colonists ran calculations, floated designs, and convinced themselves they could use the large-scale construction and mining equipment carried aboard the Kanaka to build and survive in an artificial substation among the rocks, close to the weak crimson radiation of the tiny star. The Meyer belt offered enough raw materials to give the small group a fighting chance, and decreasing the population aboard the generation ship would help all the other passengers.

The Kanaka remained around the red dwarf for a decade, making sure that the hardy Meyer volunteers would find the means to grow food in underground asteroid chambers and gather power from the dim light of the sun. Though to any other settlers it might have seemed hopeless—a fledgling colony on a desert island in space, doomed to dwindle and die—yet this place they named “Rendezvous” was their choice, and the volunteer families gambled on this small chance.

That colony had survived, and thrived, eventually forming the foundation of Roamer culture. Who was Jess to say that these resilient people could not be just as successful on a hellish world like Isperos? Especially with Kotto Okiah running the show.

Trapped in an electromagnetic loop, gouts of stellar material rushed upward like an incandescent locomotive, spewing hard radiation more insidious and more destructive than the heat itself. Cancerous sunspots looked like black oases on the star’s surface, but they were just as dangerous as the hotter chromosphere, anchor points for the violent eruptions.

Jess fought with the ship, not wanting to think of the hull damage they were incurring. “Kotto—”

“I’ve got the data I need.” The engineer sounded pleased with himself. “We should return to Rendezvous now, so I can put together my analyses.”

Jess looked down at the stress readings edging toward overload. “Yes, that would be a good idea.”

Streaking away from the churning sun and its blistering planet, Jess thought of Cesca again, hoping she would be back at the asteroid cluster by now. Even as they fled the solar storms and entered the cold of space, Jess found that he was sweating more than ever.

20CESCA PERONI

Ever cautious, Cesca Peroni piloted the space yacht on a leisurely course through several star systems en route to Rendezvous. She doubted Reynald, the future heir of Theroc, would follow her, or that any Goose security ships had placed spy tracers on their path, but Roamers covered their tracks out of habit.

For a century and a half, they had kept their hideouts from the prying eyes of other humans. All the clans remained concerned by the power exerted by the Terran Hanseatic League. Lately, the machinations of Chairman Wenceslas to tighten control on ekti processing had forced the Roamers to grow even more suspicious.