I left the hovercart to stare up at the fleeing spaceship. How beautiful, I thought. I must have said it aloud, because the mechanic next to me remarked sarcastically, “Yeah, just like a giant bird.”
“No,” I said to her without moving my eyes, “precisely unlike one.”
A moment of silence passed before she said, in a much warmer voice, “Alicia DuBarry. Never call me a grunt and we’ll get along fine. I’m a mech.”
“June Bulmer,” I returned, “and don't call me a groundhog.”
We both stood transfixed at the departing ship, waiting for the tell-tale green-shift smear as it hypered away. I never wanted to see a launch from indoors again.
The noise from the landing ship stopped abruptly, interrupting my daydreaming. “They’ve cut the drive and are landing with just the a-grav,” Alicia explained.
“What is it?” I asked. “It’s so small, and I don’t recognize the markings.” The ship was a tenth the size of any Jeffersonian ship I’d seen. And it was dirty. All the Jeffey ships were polished until they gleamed. They have flags and banners and insignia on their sides. This ship was scorched and scored. I could see different colored layers of paint peeling off.
“It’s not one of ours,” Alicia answered. “It must be a Free Spacer.”
A Free Spacer. In the universe beyond New Bohemia there is this three-way game between the Federation, the Jeffersonians and the