The third planet in orbit around the young star Eros, a little rock, a grain of sand caught in the currents of space, was seen through the eyes of an unmanned probe during universal cycle 20862.59. The Earth, and by extension her inhabitants, the Terrans themselves, looked upon this grain of sand as they did upon all things, as an investment.

  —Abalone Shell on the White Beach, A New History Of Theta Mars

  The second lieutenant now understood the volume of habitable space, oxygen and stable rations requested by the delegation from Theta Mars.

  The wyrm was a large animal, the shuttle cabin close with the faint smell of it. Heat emanated from its form with every breath. It filled the space within the vessel, wings brushing the low ceiling, tail coiled around its claws. The pilot was unaffected, in the closed bow. The engineer kept one eye on his instruments, the other on their passengers.

  The second lieutenant sat in the passenger bench at the viewport, beside the human woman. The wyrm crouched at her side, chin resting on the paneling beside her seat. Both watched the sky of their birth world give way to the void of space.

  The woman had one small bundle of dark leather that contained her possessions. Her bare feet shifted and pawed at the panels beneath her seat, as though unfamiliar with their smoothness. Her hands in her lap faintly trembled, her face twitched slightly and her eyes flickered to the corners of the cabin as the hull creaked.

  “This vessel is state of the art launch craft, very safe,” said the second lieutenant, as the atmosphere gave way with a lurch. Planets were clingy lovers, in his experience.

  “We are no strangers to flight,” said the woman, glancing towards him with a flicker of a smile. “Nor to danger. Only it is strange to be without our own power here.”

  He nodded, gaze seeking the wyrm, who had not stirred. “Yes, I suppose it must be.”

  She reached her hand out and lightly brushed the transparent viewport. She spoke softly in a language of clicks, trills and glottal consonants. It did not resemble any of the myriad human tongues he had heard in his astral career. It was the language of the wyrms.

  “The ship is on the far side of the planet presently,” said the second lieutenant. “We will see it over the horizon soon.”

  The blue swell of the planet passed beneath the flight path of the shuttle. The woman and the wyrm watched as the single continent turned, down beneath the swirling clouds.

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  “What is your name?” she asked, turning to the second lieutenant. Something of the wyrm speak obvious now in her shaping of the words.

  “Christoph Grenlivt,” he answered.

  “You are starborn?”

  “Yes.” The second lieutenant had been born on an orbital colony. His parents mined ice from asteroids.

  “Is Mozark VII starborn also?”

  The second lieutenant did not know. The Empress of the Universe simply was.

  “We understand. We will have to ask her ourselves.” The woman turned back to the viewport as the shuttle approached the hull of the ship.

  Divine Messenger was a beautiful ship. A voyage class courier of the Imperial communications network. Sleek and powerful, it was manned by a sparse crew, and carried only a few passengers. The second lieutenant was proud of his posting in her crew, and could not help but to glance at the emissaries, as they approached docking. There was no wonder in the woman’s eyes, as a human ought to show in the face of this pinnacle of engineering. Her brows were drawn together, eyes skipping from thruster columns to solar sails. Her lip twitched around syllables she spared no air for. Her disdain bruised his pride, though he tried to soothe it with what he knew of her history.

  The human emissary was one of the ransomed children. No other humans had been left on Theta Mars after the Expulsion. One hundred stolen infants and a terrorist who called himself the Teeth of the Lion. She had been raised by wyrms, the second lieutenant assumed. Her manner was uncanny, even in his experience. Lost colonies often became strange in isolation.

  The circumstances of Theta Mars were different. Her manner was the product of a precise education.

  The shuttle docked against the side of Divine Messenger. The emissaries stood shoulder to shoulder as the cabin pressure was matched to the ship interior. The wyrm’s long tail scratched against the far walls of the cabin as it swished behind the animal. The engineer tucked his feet behind the stem of his seat to keep his boots out of reach of the scaled appendage. The second lieutenant wondered if the rippling spasms that twitched across the wyrm’s skin were from the changing in the gravity, the temperature or some internal feeling he was unaware of.

  The hatch opened, the lights of the shuttle bay poured in. The Captain had come from command to greet them.

  “We are Abalone Shell on the White Beach, emissary of Theta Mars. On behalf of our mother, Inferno That Consumes All, her heart brother, the Teeth of the Lion, and the People of Theta Mars, we accept your invitation to board,” the human said to the Captain. She did not accept his offered hand, nor did she seek to make physical contact with him in any other gesture.

  Behind the Captain were three of the ship’s other passengers. Sarah Young, monk of the order of the Saint of Learning, Scholar Liam Felsdam, and his common law wife, Journeywoman Madeline DuCourt. The latter two were expatriates of the defunct colony of Theta Mars.

  The wyrm rumbled, fixing its crystalline gaze upon the two. “Ah, the bonded pair,” said the human emissary.

  Even through her accent, the second lieutenant could hear it was not a friendly statement.