Stunned unconscious, Raymond Aguerra was shouldered into the vehicle. The door slid shut, and the men whisked him away.

26: CESCA PERONL

26CESCA PERONL

No matter how much outside people and events pummeled them, Roamers always fought back and remained strong. Inspired by rigorous circumstances, Roamer culture blossomed with ideas, some of which were impractical or eccentric in the extreme; other schemes were innovative enough to let the fiercely independent clans thrive in places where most humans would find existence impossible.

Within the rubble belt around a dwarf star, the Roamers had expanded from the first tiny foothold left behind by the Kanaka. Rendezvous was a wonderful medley of space habitats and hollow asteroid living quarters, a scattered rocky archipelago around a bloodred sun.

The asteroids were detritus from the collapsing protostar, insufficient material to coalesce into a planet. Rendezvous was designed with numerous places to dock spacecraft, ships both large and small, as well as camouflaged depots for storing ekti.

Roamers were comfortable with low-gravity environments, suiting up and bounding from one rock to another using jetpacks. Some of the cluster’s inner asteroids were strung together with cables that flexed and extended and retracted, like cablecar strands. Dim sunlight shone upon reactive films and solar-wind collectors that provided enough power for the settlement.

Cesca Peroni had lived here much of her life. She considered Rendezvous not at all strange.

She and Jhy Okiah sat inside the Speaker’s office chamber hollowed out from the largest rock of Rendezvous. While much of the Speaker’s business involved mitigating clan squabbles, accounting for profits, and studying resource distribution among the widespread settlements, she also heard proposals and assessed the merits of ambitious new ventures.

These meetings with engineers and clan speculators were the most enjoyable of Cesca’s duties. All Roamers were encouraged to develop new concepts and consider different techniques for exploiting resources, however unlikely they might seem. Inventors modified standard equipment and vessels already in use, improving them to incredible efficiency, far beyond anything the Hansa had achieved. Nor would the Big Goose ever know.

The curly-haired engineer Eldon Clarin sat in a low-gravity seat, controlling his enthusiasm as Jhy Okiah and Cesca stared at his beautifully drawn plans for two new spacecraft designs. Clarin and his team of specialists had done their work admirably well, and he waited for the old Speaker to either make suggestions or grant him approval to pursue his new concepts.

Jhy Okiah looked over at Cesca, waiting to see her protégée’s assessment. The young woman bit her lower lip, putting her mind into sharp focus. “As clearly as I can understand it, your modification increases thrust efficiency, minimizes ekti consumption—”

Eldon Clarin interrupted. “Yes, yes, and still we retain navigational accuracy. That has been a problem in the past.” He sat back and looked at the two women, hoping for their acceptance. He scratched his curly hair, which hovered like a corona around his head.