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I frowned slightly. “The
Admiralty
? If you mean Admiral Crow, then you’re right. I haven’t had contact for a few weeks.
We are out on the frontier, with no direct way to signal Earth. I imagine you came
out on a small scouting ship?”

“Yes,” Marvelena said. She picked up a shell and fiddled with it. “Have you broken
off relations with Earth, Colonel? Have you declared your independence?”

“What?” I laughed. “Why would I do that? Don’t tell me people are saying that back
home. I’m a loyal Star Force officer.”

She nodded vaguely and looked away toward the sea again. “Interviews only work if
the subject opens up, you know.”

I frowned at her. “This isn’t going to be an interview, exactly,” I said. “This is
an exchange of information. It’s time for you to give me some. What’s going on back
home? Do you know why Crow hasn’t contacted me? He hasn’t even acknowledged my transmissions.”

Marvelena looked troubled. “That’s exactly what he said.”

“Who?”

“The Admiral. He told me he was your commanding officer and you hadn’t reported in
as required. He wasn’t sure, he said, if you were unable to comply or simply unwilling
to.”

“What else did he say?”

“That you and your team out here—that you were technically rebels.”

“Rebels?” I asked, surprised. I reflected immediately that I shouldn’t have been.

“There are hints and rumors all over Earth, Colonel. They say you have been forming
deals with aliens, fighting wars independently of any Earth sanction. You are doing
as you please out here, causing Earth no end of future harm. They call you
dangerous
and
unrepentant
.”

I stared at her, and I could see in her face she was troubled. The façade of the bouncy
news reporter was gone. She knew she was in the middle of something big.

“So,” I said. “Why did you come out here then?”

“To get the truth—or at least, your side of things. That’s my job.”

I nodded and we started walking again. I didn’t trust her, of course. But it was hard
not to. She was lovely and charismatic. I’d never been so close to a media person
of her stature before. It was true that such people exuded a powerful presence, and
I felt myself caught up in her aura.

“We’re
not
independent,” I said firmly. “We’re part of Star Force. We have sworn to defend Earth,
and all humanity. We’re out here because this is where the dangerous aliens are. I
hope those details can find their way into your report when you go back home.”

She slowly led me farther down the beach to an outcropping of dark rocks. The sun
was a huge, bluish-white disk behind the clouds. The air was warm and humid and the
breezes coming off the ocean ruffled our hair. Already, I could taste the salt on
my face, despite the fact I hadn’t set foot in the water yet.

“Let’s go swimming,” she said. She didn’t wait for an answer. She stepped backward
into the water, where it lapped up over her ankles and then her knees. She reached
up to remove her flimsy garments, clearly planning on swimming without them.

I glanced back toward the bunker on the hillock, and immediately noted that I couldn’t
see it. We were out of sight of the rest of the inhabitants of this lovely island.
There was no one out here except for a few alien fish that probed the surface nearby
with curiosity. The humps on their backs looked like wet stones in the water and their
bulbous eyes watched us. Supposedly, they were harmless.

Marvelena reached out her hand toward me, and I took a step forward. She smiled. It
was impossible not to smile back at her.

I almost did it. I almost followed her into the water for a swim, but somehow I stopped
myself. I don’t know how things might have ended if I
had
followed her. I don’t know who might have witnessed the transgression, or at least
see enough to tell a sordid tale. Star Force had always been small and full of gossips.

I stopped and put my hands on my hips, rather than taking hers. I looked at the water
and shook my head. “Not here,” I said. “There are dangerous tides around these rocks.
This isn’t Venice Beach, miss. Let’s head back. You can swim near the bunker if you
wish, it’s safe there.”

Standing there in the water, nude and wet, she appeared to be heartbroken, but I remained
firm. A few minutes later found us walking back toward the bunker together. She tied
up what passed for her swimsuit into knots around her breasts with prissy movements.

The interview, if that’s what it really had been, was at an end.

-12-

The day-night cycle on Eden-6 was different than Earth. The days were much longer
here—about forty hours long. The cool night breezes were a welcome relief by the time
they came. Twenty hours of diffuse sunlight was more than enough. I soon fell into
a pattern that humans who came here tended to adopt: We awoke in the predawn glimmer,
excited and slightly chilled after a long slow night of some twenty hours. Then if
the sun broke through, there was often a few glaring hours before the mists returned.
The star was so big and bright, it was painful to look at. Viewed just after a long
period of darkness, it seemed cruelly intense. Shades were mandatory, so that our
optical nerves weren’t damaged in those early brilliant hours.

By mid-morning, the ocean heated up and produced the traditional shroud of mist. The
sun was soon obscured, but still visible as a large pale disk in the sky. I thought
these were probably the best hours, trumped only by sunset.

At about midday, we grew sleepy and tired of relentless heat and light. We took naps
then, as I suppose people in tropical climates often did. Siestas had become part
of the culture here on Eden-6. A big meal and a couple of hours in the cool gloom
of the bunker made the rest of the long day tolerable.

When the sun did finally sink into the sea, the sunset was spectacular. The mist often
burned off as evening approached, and the sky was streaked with lavenders, oranges
and pinks. These sunsets trumped those of my homeworld in every way: the sun was bigger
and brighter, the ocean was endless and unspoiled, and the sunsets took nearly an
hour from start to end. They were almost like sweeping, nightly ceremonies.

When night finally did cloak the land, we welcomed darkness with relief. Every day
felt endless, and was too much of a good thing. I felt a certain lethargy come over
me as day after day passed by.

On the fifth long day, in the midmorning when the mists first came up from the seawater,
I went to talk to Marvelena. Our interviews had progressed and become more informal—almost
personal. She took pictures, followed me on my routine duties and asked me dozens
of questions. She wanted to know what I ate, what I slept in and who I slept with.
I found myself answering her questions with increasing candor, despite my reservations.
It was hard to think of her as anything other than a new, fascinating acquaintance.

After breakfast and an inspection of the new blast pans for the planetary spaceport
I had Kwon constructing, I made my way back to the bunker entrance. There, instead
of Marvelena, I found Sandra. She was crouched on the roof of the bunker, a pose I
found very familiar. I narrowed my eyes at her, and thought I saw a strip of pink
cloth in her hands.

“What did you do with the reporter?” I asked.

“I drowned her in the ocean. Does that break your heart?”

I opened my mouth, the snapped it closed again. “Sandra, have you lost it? You haven’t
been this jealous since—”

Sandra jumped down and stalked toward me. She tossed the pink strappy garment into
my face. The nanocloth writhed there, and tried to encircle my head. I pulled it away.

“Don’t bring up Jasmine,” she said. “And I’m not crazy. Follow me.”

Frowning deeply, I had to hurry to keep up with her. We marched down to the beach
to a familiar spot. To my surprise, she continued marching, right into the water.
She was clearly looking for something.

“Is this where you stashed the body? These fish will eat a corpse within hours. I
can’t cover for you this time, Sandra. Do you know that? I’ll have to send you back
to Earth in disgrace.”

She stared at me in surprise. Then she burst out laughing. “I didn’t
really
kill her,” she said. “I just said that. I can’t believe you bought that one.”

I chuckled uncomfortably and breathed a sigh of relief. I had taken her at her word,
as I’d seen her kill before. She liked it, and she didn’t need much provocation.

“Of course you’re joking,” I chuckled uncomfortably. “Now, tell me what you’re looking
for.”

“It’s out here somewhere. Walk around in this area. You’ll find it with your toes.”

Reluctantly, I waded out into the water and marched around with the fine sand squelching
up around my feet. I felt something almost immediately. At first I thought it was
a rock, but it had a distinct shape with hard linear edges. I reached down and felt
around.

Sandra splashed over to me. “You’ve got it, don’t you?”

I pulled something up. Sandra helped, and in a moment, we had a box out of the water,
dripping sand. It looked like a suitcase made of metal and black polymers.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“She put it out here a few days back. I saw her do it, but couldn’t find it the first
time. Last night she came to check on it. I marked the spot with that stack of rocks.”

She pointed and I saw a grouping of black rocks forming a marker on the beach. I nodded.

“What do you think it is?” I asked. I found the handle and dragged it up to the beach.

“Careful, it could be a bomb. I ran scanners over it and got a lot of electronic and
chemical signatures.”

We didn’t have an actual bomb squad out here on the frontier. We’d never found it
necessary. Today, however, could be the exception.

“If it was a bomb,” I asked, “why would she plant it out here in the ocean? Why not
in the bunker?”

“Maybe she’s worried about our systems detecting it. Maybe she wants it to be out
here, hidden until she’s ready.”

I stared at her, then the metal case. I wasn’t sure what to think. I left the box
on the beach near the marker, and headed back toward the bunker.

“Where’s Marvelena?” I asked.

“She’s trying to find her bathing suit—I stole it to keep her in her room for a few
minutes. I told her I would come back with another one.”

I smiled at that. I knew that Sandra could have stirred up any pool of spare nanites
and ordered them to form nanocloth. They were a specialized variety, but there were
plenty of them around. Marvelena wouldn’t know that, however.

We returned to the bunker wondering what she would have to say for herself. There
in the doorway of the bunker stood a familiar shapely figure. She had one arm across
her chest. She was glaring at the two of us.

“This sort of mistreatment of the press will not go unnoticed,” she said.

I threw her the top, and she turned around to put it on. Sandra smirked at her as
she did so, and she spoke to me in a low voice. “Stop staring. They’re fake, anyway.”

Marvelena turned toward us with a suspicious eye. “What was that?”

“I said the surgeon should lay off the gin next time and give you a break.”

Marvelena’s mouth fell open, and she advanced in a rage. Her top was on, but not quite
perfectly. I realized as the reporter advanced that the idiot might try to slap Sandra.
That would be a very bad idea, and might even be exactly what Sandra wanted. I took
a step forward and lightly caught Marvelena’s upraised, open hand in midair.

“Let go of me!” she said, struggling.

My hand stayed frozen in position, holding her wrist high. I knew that under no circumstances
could I allow her to strike Sandra. My girl had a temper, and if she lost it, there
might not be anything left of Marvelena to apologize to.

“Settle down,” I said, putting on my deepest commander’s voice. Both of them glared
at one another and ignored me.

“We’re here to ask you about the contraband you’ve hidden out in the surf,” I said.

Finally, that got through Marvelena’s celebrity rage. She turned back to me, and I
released her hand. She rubbed her wrist and glared at both of us in turn.

“That’s my property. Don’t touch it.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry. This isn’t some public beach back home. This is a military
base in a war zone, no matter how beautiful it might be. Answer my question or you’ll
be placed under arrest.”

Marvelena’s face underwent a transition then. Her rage faded, and she took on the
look of a lost victim. I was immediately impressed with her ability to shift expressions
like a chameleon and her range of emotive displays.

“You can’t arrest me! No wonder you get endless bad press. Take me to an embassy,
or something.”

Sandra chuckled. It was a mean sound.

“Marvelena,” I said. “Have you been in trouble spots back on Earth? Areas that are
lawless and in the midst of an upheaval? Something like a civil war?”