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The Brittanic Avionics Scramjet 989 was back to subsonic speed and descending through sixteen thousand meters of altitude when it made a bank to the right and brought the city of Diphen into view of the passengers sitting on the right side of the aircraft. Gath, Taz, Fears No Darkness and Catches No Fish were sitting on that side. All of them—the two natives in particular—looked down in awe at the metropolis below.

Unlike space cities and groundport cities, which were compact and dense, taking primary advantage of vertical space, ground cities of the colonized planets tended to sprawl out horizontally since virtually limitless real estate was available for that. Diphen was a particularly fine example of the concept. It stretched out in every direction, from the seaport where the Diphen River emptied into the Northern Bay; along both major globes of the bay itself; all the way to the coastal region on both sides of the narrow Billings inlet where the bay emptied into the Western Ocean; and for dozens of kilometers on both banks of the Diphen River all the way into the gently rolling foothills of the Redding Mountain range two hundred kilometers to the east. The downtown business district was located near the seaport and it was primarily here where high rise buildings were found, most of moderate height between one hundred and two hundred stories tall. Everywhere else was a mixture of medium rise commercial buildings where commerce, hospitals, schools and rental stays were housed interspersed amid huge expanses of landscaped lots upon which sat single family homes where permanent residents lived. Grids of streets subdivided the sprawl into large squares, rectangles, triangles, and other geographic shapes. Within those shapes were smaller grids of feeder streets and large areas of green that were parkland. To the north and south of the city proper were hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of farmland where the majority of the food that fed the planet of Brittany and the spacies who lived above it was grown.

“That’s my home,” Gath told his guests as he looked nostalgically upon the view. He knew the shape of the city intimately, the way he knew the shape of his hand or the curve of Taz’s breasts. “Over there, where the river makes that long curve just before the straight stretch that heads into the bay, that’s the River District. That’s where I grew up.”

“It’s immense,” said Fears No Darkness. “I never imagined a city could be so large.”

“How many people live down there?” asked Catches No Fish.

“Around twenty-three million or so,” Gath said.

“Twenty-three million,” whispered the warrior. “I cannot even comprehend a number that large.”

“Is the temperature going to be cooler than it was at the groundport?” asked Taz hopefully. Though they had only ventured outside at Brittany Ground for a few minutes, it had been enough to make her uncomfortable. That city was, of course, equatorial since that was where the space ladder was anchored. The equator on Brittany was hot and muggy. The temperature had been 38 degrees with ninety-six percent humidity—about the average.

“The weather in Diphen is usually quite pleasant year round,” Gath assured her. “It rarely gets warmer than 28 or so and rarely gets less than 18 at night. The humidity usually hovers around forty percent and the wind is usually a nice, gentle onshore breeze.”

She thought that over for a moment and then reluctantly nodded. “I guess I can tolerate that,” she said doubtfully.

“They day/night thing does take a little getting used to though,” Gath told them.

“Oh yeah,” Taz said. “I remember hearing about the long days and nights. That’s going to be odd.”

“Long days and nights?” said Fears No Darkness. “What do you mean?”

“Brittany rotates kind of slow compared to what you’re used to,” Gath told him. “That makes the days and nights a lot longer.”

“That’s why the space ladder was so long,” Taz told the quarterback. “Isn’t it the longest one in human space, Gath?”

“It is,” he replied. “That was why they didn’t settle Brittany until AZ Prime was already well established. We have the nice weather, but the long nights and the length of the ladder that needed to be built kept humes away at first.”

“Exactly how long is a Brittany day?” asked Fears No Darkness.

“Just a little more than twenty-six metric hours,” Gath said. “That’s about...” He did some quick calculations in his head, “ ... oh, about seventy-two Earth hours.”

“Three days?” the quarterback asked incredulously. “It takes three of our days for one of yours to pass?”

“Give or take,” Gath said.

“That means it is dark for a day and a half and light for a day and a half?” asked Catches No Fish.

“Pretty much,” Gath said. “We don’t have much seasonal change because our planet is not tilted much on its axis, but we do get a little bit. Right now, it’s the middle of summer—as much as something like summer exists here anyway—so the day period is about fifty minutes longer ... metric minutes that is.”

“Amazing,” said Fears No Darkness. “How do your people deal with that? Do they remain asleep all through the night hours and awake all through the day hours?”

“No, not at all,” Gath replied. “That would be both impractical and unhealthy. We’ve just learned to not differentiate much between night and day when it comes to work, recreation, and all the other things that go into running a society. We divide the day up into three and a quarter hour chunks—a little less than nine Earth hours I think—and go from there. Each chunk is called a eighthday, or, usually, just an eight for short. First eighth, second eighth, third eighth, fourth eighth, etcetera. You follow me?”

“I think so,” the Quarterback said slowly, his brow scrunched in concentration.

“Okay,” Gath continued. “Now, a typical workday on Brittany is that someone will work one eighth, get the next off, work the next one, and then get the next five off. That gives you thirteen metric hours a day of working. A Brittanic week is six days long. You work on two of those days—and the law states you must have two complete days off between your days unless otherwise agreed upon—and that’s your week. Twenty-six hours of work out of one hundred and sixty-two. After three such weeks you must have one complete week off. That’s in addition to the regular vacations you have a right to under the constitution.”

Taz was just as fascinated by this conversation as the natives. “You’re saying that people work their shifts during both the day and the night?”

“It works out that way a lot of the time,” Gath said. “Like I said, we don’t differentiate much between day and night here. Most offices and manufacturing plants are open twenty-seven/six. The farm industry, naturally, works a different schedule since they have to be up during the day, but that’s just the way we are.”

Taz was shaking her head. “I’ll never understand you groundies,” she said.

The scrammer circled in and landed into the onshore breeze at the airport just outside of the downtown district. The two Modoc, who were becoming a little more comfortable riding on aircraft and surface to orbit craft, nonetheless really hated the take-offs and the landings. They sat with their eyes closed as the aircraft turned and banked, lifted and sank, and made strange mechanical noises. When the wheels thumped down on the ground they both breathed a sigh of relief.

They exited the scrammer into a huge terminal crowded with hundreds of people moving this way and that, waiting in lines, sitting in chairs, and babbling all the while to each other. The smell of marijuana smoke reached them as they passed an intoxicant club that catered to waiting area passengers.

“Ganja!” Fears No Darkness said excitedly. “Can we go get some, Gath?”

“Yes!” agreed Catches No Fish. “If I’m going to walk about on a strange planet, I prefer to do it in a proper state of mind.”

Gath looked at a time display on the wall and gave them an apologetic look. “We’re kind of pressed for time, humes,” he told them. “We have to get all the way to the other side of the airport and catch our magna train in fifteen minutes or we’ll have to wait another fifty minutes for the next one.”

“Aww,” the quarterback said, a pout on his face.

“What a rip,” Catches No Fish added.

“Don’t worry though,” Gath told them. “They sell ganja on the train and it’s a forty-minute trip out to the River District station. We’ll load you up there.”

“Fuckin’ A,” the Quarterback said happily, giving a grin.

The airport magna train terminal was a major hub of Diphen’s public transportation system. As such, it was even more crowded and chaotic than the airport itself. The two natives looked around nervously at all the people moving to and fro. Neither of them had ever seen so many human beings in one place before.

“There are more people in this terminal building than in our entire village,” Catches No Fish said.

“By far,” added Fears No Darkness.

The train, like all public transport on Brittany, was free of charge. They walked aboard the 717 train of the Blue Line with only two minutes to spare. Once aboard they made the intoxicant car their first stop. Gath was able to purchase cups of genuine Diphen Brew Company Golden Ale for himself and Taz and two bonghits apiece of Brittanic Bourgeois, the finest variety of cannabis available for commercial sale in human space (in Gath’s opinion, anyway) for the natives. The ganja put Fears No Darkness and Catches No Fish in a more introspective mood for the next leg of their journey and they spent most of it staring at the viewscreen as the magna train made its way through the city. They were particularly fascinated by the towering high-rise buildings as they passed through the downtown district.

“You humes sure you won’t try a beer?” Gath asked them as they cleared the final downtown stop and headed for the outlying districts. “This stuff is some of the best ever made.”

Fears No Darkness shook his head sternly. “Alcohol consumption is one taboo we will absolutely not break,” he said.

“It is one of the primary means by which your people subjugated ours,” Catches No Fish reminded him. “We will not trifle with it.”

“Fair enough,” Gath said amicably. “A pity though. This really is some good slag.”

“It’s okay,” said Taz, who had only taken a few sips of hers. “It’s nothing like a Stellar Ice though.”

Gath did not even favor that with a response.

Taz herself seemed fascinated by the sights as well, not so much the buildings and the landscape, but the people. Brittanic men all wore their hair long—shoulder length was the current custom—and sported neatly trimmed mustaches and goatees. The women also wore their hair long and elaborately styled. In addition, fashion was a thing on Brittany among both sexes. Clothing was colorful and sophisticated, with care taken to match colors in an aesthetically pleasing manner, and to display certain parts of the body while hiding others. Cleavage was in among the women these days and most of their shirts and blouses were designed to accent and display it. Legs of both sexes were also in so the shorts that most people wore tended to be very short indeed, rising to the level of the lower swell of the buttocks in most cases, though wearing the shorts tight was considered gauche. Bare bellies, on the other hand, were considered risqué currently, so the shirts were all designed to make sure that even an accidental flash of midriff would not occur.

“I feel a little out of place here,” she told Gath at one point, noting that people were giving them sideways glances of disapproval at their short hair and their long, moderately tight shorts.

“They know we’re spacies,” Gath told her. “Or at least they assume that I’m one because I’m bald and don’t have facial hair. I would be interested to know what they make of our friends here though.”

“I do feel their eyes upon me,” Fears No Darkness said.

“They’re just curious,” Gath assured him. “Nobody will approach and ask you about who you are and why you’re here though. It’s considered rude on Brittany to intrude into someone else’s business when not invited to do so.”

“A good custom,” Catches No Fish said.

They arrived at the River District South station precisely on schedule—it was a rare event indeed for a modern transport of any kind to be late or early—and made their way into a smaller, less chaotic environment than the terminal hub had been. Just outside the station itself was a long line of Uber autotransporters of various size. On Brittany, these were hover cars that used a weak antigravity field that kept them slightly elevated above the pavement and were propelled in a manner similar to the magna trains—alternating magnetic fields that were generated by buried conductors in the streets.

“This one oughta do,” Gath said as he put his fingerprint on the pad of a mid-sized model that had a trunk for their luggage.

They climbed aboard—Gath and Taz in the front, the two natives in the rear—and the canopy slid down and closed them in. Gath told the computer to take them to 913 Eastview Place West, the address of the home he had lived in his entire childhood. His mother still lived there, though his father had moved out cycles before when they’d dissolved the marriage.

The Uber slid neatly out of its parking space and pulled out onto the main road, quickly accelerating to its cruising speed of thirty-five meters per second. There was no inertial dampening field in the vehicle so they felt the accelerations, decelerations, and centrifugal force of the turns quite easily. Gath was afraid the natives might get motion sickness from this but a glance back showed them still staring around at the passing scenery in fascination. He looked over at Taz and saw she was doing the same, though not quite with the same emotion. They were currently driving on Riverview Expressway which, as the name suggested, hugged the bank of the river. She was staring at the immense volume of moving water with fearful awe.

“You used to actually swim in that river?” she asked him, shaking her head in wonder. “You weren’t just torking with me when you said that, right?”

“I was not just torking with you,” he assured her. “Look...” He pointed across to the other side where a group of people could be seen in the water in one of the recreation areas. “There’s some kids swimming right over there.”

She looked at them and shuddered a bit. “They’re not wearing any sort of flotation gear or anything?” she asked.

“Unlikely,” he said. “Brittanic kids learn to swim like fish by the time they’re four years old.”

“It’s unnatural,” she said firmly. “I would never let any child of mine within a hundred meters of that river.”

“So ... I guess a little trip on my uncle’s sloop out into the ocean is out of the question then?” he asked her.

She gave him a look that could have melted ice. “That is not even funny, Gath.”

The uber pulled off the main road and began traversing increasingly less crowded side roads lined with single family houses and dotted with the occasional commercial complex. Aguva trees, the native, rich evergreen foliage that dominated the northern mid-latitudes, dotted every lot and lined the center dividers of most of the streets.

“Everyone has so much space,” marveled Taz as she watched the residential lots go by.

“Are you kidding?” asked Catches No Fish. “I was wondering how anyone lives on a territory so small.”

Finally, they arrived at their destination. It was a modest four bedroom, single level house in the middle of an unassuming block of similar homes. The lot was not particularly large compared to some of the others, nor were there any views of the river or anything else. There was the requisite Aguva tree in the front yard and another, older tree in the back. There were no fences dividing the property from the neighboring one—that was simply not done on Brittany.

No sooner had the uber come to a stop than the front door flew open and three people came rushing out—two women and a man. They ran to Gath and took turns giving him hugs, handshakes and—in the case of the women—kisses on the mouth. Gath returned their greetings enthusiastically, strong emotion clearly on his face. Taz noted a few tears running down his cheeks.

He made the introductions as soon as they got their baggage out of the uber and it drove off empty, headed for its next mission. The older of the two women was Zilcholeous Stoner (Zilch for short), Gath’s mother. She was attractive, her long brown hair styled immaculately, her simple blouse a solid teal with pleasantly matching shorts and moccasins. She had earrings in her ears and a matching hair tie that complimented her clothing. Tears were running down her face as she took in the sight of her strange son who had been inflicted with the wanderlust.

The man was Greeve Stoner (Stoney for short), Gath’s father. He too was an attractive representative of his sex and the familial resemblance was quite plain to Taz despite the long head of hair on his head and the goatee on his face. A few tears ran down his cheeks as well.

The other woman was Gath’s younger sister, Aberdeen Stoner (Abs for short). While her parents and sibling were merely attractive, Abs was stunning—a true Brittanic beauty. Her dark hair, by contrast, was almost carelessly styled and her clothing was not quite the fashion statement that was the Brittanic norm. She had on a simple pullover shirt (no restraining garment, Taz could not help but notice) and a pair of denim shorts. Her moccasins were plain brown artificial leather of the sort that could be acquired for free at any constitutional store. She did not cry at Gath’s presence but it was plain to see she was happy to see him. She did wrinkle her nose at his lack of hair.

“It is so weird to see your head like this, Gath,” she told him, running her palm over the smooth bare flesh.

“When in space, do as the spacies,” Gath said lightly, giving her another hug and accepting yet another kiss on the mouth from her.

Gath then introduced his family to Taz and the natives. All seemed quite fascinated with the natives—they had, of course, seen them on the holo news reports and knew what they were all about—but they seemed puzzled, perhaps even a bit hostile, at Taz’s presence.

“How, exactly do you know Gath?” his mother asked her, quite pointedly.

“Gath and I are good friends,” Taz replied lightly. In space culture, that would have been the end of the discussion. Not so in Brittanic culture.

“Good friends, huh?” Zilch said, her eyes boring into her. “Didn’t you say you were married? To that captain who runs the ship that brought you here?”

“I am married,” Taz said, growing more uncomfortable by the second. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Taz is one of the med techs I worked with every day in the clinic on Earth,” Gath said. “We got to be good friends even before the concluding resolution slag started hitting the intake. She and I have been through a lot together. We went out on some pretty hairy missions, including that mess in Bakersfield where some marines were killed by the homers. It was her and Ox—the captain of whom you speak—who were integral in getting us here after it hit the intake.”

“Yes, I’m sure you’ve been through a lot, but to be friends with a married woman, Gath?” his mom was unable to get past this point. “I mean ... what will people think?”

“They’ll think we’re friends, mom,” Gath told her. “That’s all there is to think.”

“Well ... it is a bit ... uh ... unusual though, isn’t it?” Stoney put in.

“Mom, Dad, come on,” said Abs with a roll of her eyes. “I’m sure Gath isn’t torking her or anything.”

“Abs Stoner!” Zilch barked, shocked. “How dare you even suggest such a thing!”

“I wasn’t suggesting it,” Abs replied with another eye roll. “I was telling you the idea was ridiculous. You two are the ones who are suggesting it.”

Zilch began to get red in the face. “Now you listen to me, young lady,” she barked. “You may be twenty-one years old now and living out on your own, but you’re still not old enough to talk to me or your father in that manner. If you think for a metric minute that we’re going to...”

“Mom, Dad, Abs,” Gath said, stepping into the middle and holding up his hands for peace. “Really, there is no reason to argue. I assure you, Taz and I are only friends. I am friends with her husband as well. In spaceborn culture it is okay for a man to be friends with a married woman, and visa-versa. I was one of the witnesses at their wedding. I was the medic who harvested Taz’s eggs for their reproductions. She just wanted to come and see where I grew up. There’s nothing more to it than that.”

“Why didn’t her husband come with her then?” asked Stoney.

“He gets terrible ground sickness,” Taz said. “He’s up on Topside with the other two natives and Yank the cultural anthropologist. We’ll meet back up with him when we leave.” She did not mention that Manny, his good friend of the opposite sex, was up there with him as well.

“Oh...” Stoney said. “I see.” He turned to his ex-wife and daughter. “You see? There is a reasonable explanation. I knew there would be.”

Now that that was settled, they went inside the house and met Andronicus Dealerman (Andy for short), the forty-four year old woman who would soon be married to Gath’s father, thus becoming his secondmom. It was their wedding, scheduled for third eighth on the next day, that Gath had come to Brittany to attend. She was a light skinned woman, quite attractive for her age, with tremendous breasts that Gath felt pressing into his chest as she gave him a hug of greeting and a kiss on the mouth.

“It is so nice to finally meet you, Gath,” she beamed, wiping a tear from her eye. “I’ve seen all of your holos that you’ve sent to Stoney since we’ve met, and, of course, I’ve seen you on the media holos about this terrible situation in the Sol, but it’s so nice to finally lay eyeballs on you. You’re so handsome! Just like your father.”

“Thank you,” Gath said. “It’s nice to finally meet you as well. I’m glad I was able to break away from my legal troubles to come out and attend the wedding.”

“Me as well,” Andy assured him.

Gath then made the introductions of the natives and Taz. Andy’s first question after this was: “You’re ... uh... friends with a married woman?”

The meal that was eaten during fourth eighth, the time of the Brittanic day when the sun set and night fell, was called supper (as opposed to dinner, which was the meal taken midway through fifth eighth, or lunch, which was the meal during second eighth) and was traditionally the biggest, most elaborate meal of the day. Gath’s mother—the host of the gathering since it was her home—showed off her cooking skills for her guests. The main course consisted of pork loin that had been slow smoked with aromatic zinder tree wood in a carbon fiber barrel out in the back yard. It was served with homemade pasta cooked with tomatoes and garlic and fresh phisa—a flavorful root native to the planet. Gath’s contribution to the meal was two bottles of white wine from AZ Prime he had brought just for the occasion.

Taz was very impressed with the meal. She ate everything that was put before her and then asked for seconds. Her host’s opinion of her climbed considerably because of this.

“I’m telling you,” she told Zilch after finishing her second helping, “I didn’t think there could be anyone who cooked as well as Gath, but you’ve V-wasted him right out of space. This was, hands down, the best food I have ever eaten in my life.”

Zilch beamed at these words. “It wasn’t much,” she said modestly.

“Now you know where I learned how to cook,” Gath told her. He then amused his family with a few tales about how the spacies actually considered food prepared from the skimpy, sparse ingredients found in a base BX to be good.

“You actually made caruba out of processed chicken meat?” his father asked at one point, laughing and appalled at the same time.

“There was nothing else available,” Gath told him, shaking his head at the primitive conditions he was forced to live under. “And they didn’t even have fresh garlic for the caveat sauce either. I had to use garlic powder.”

“Whoever wept,” his mother intoned at this culinary blasphemy. “I don’t know how you survived out there, Gath.”

Eventually, as the plates were taken away and put in the autowasher and they poured glasses of ten year old malt whiskey from the local distillery, the talk turned to Gath’s troubles.

“How bad is it?” asked Stoney. “Some of the media services say you might be looking at some prison time.”

“That is possible,” Gath said. “I’m out on my own recognizance now while they try to shake out the whole issue of whether or not the concluding resolution constitutes a crime against humanity.”

“Of course it is a crime against humanity,” Abs said righteously. “They were planning to sterilize your two friends here and every other male on that planet. How can they rule it as anything else?”

“I know that and you know that,” Gath told her. He turned to his native friends. “Fears No Darkness and Catches No Fish know that as well.”

“Those really are the most demonic names,” Abs said for perhaps the fifth time.

“It is a crime before all that is sacred in life,” Fears No Darkness said firmly.

“Fuckin’ A,” agreed Catches No Fish.

“The problem, however,” Gath went on, “is that it is not Brittanics or any other groundborn people who are making the decisions here. It’s spacies and their thinking is not quite the same as ours—no offense, Taz.”

“None taken,” she said sourly.

“The important thing is that we put a stop to it,” Gath said. “All aspects of the concluding resolution have been put on hold by the preliminary injunction and no matter what else happens with me, with Ox, with Taz, it is very unlikely that they will start the program up again no matter how the legal issues turn out. I was willing to risk going to prison to put a stop to it. If that’s the price I have to pay, then so be it.”

“But how long is it going to take them to rule on the concluding resolution?” his mother asked. “It seems pretty black and white to me. Why is it taking them so long to decide it’s wrong?”

“Because not all of the spaceborn believe it is wrong,” said Taz before anyone else could. “And of those that do, they’re too busy trying to spread the blame around. It’s a clustertork—excuse my language.”

Her language was excused, mostly because she was completely on target. It really was a clustertork, one that had started almost the moment the preliminary injunction had gone out.

Once that was done and it was verified that it was being enforced, the entire Peacekeeper battle group berthed at Belting Naval Base and surrendered themselves to Fleet authorities. The entire crew of the Magnum as well as Admiral Goon and her entire command staff were immediately arrested and processed into the brig at the base. Ox had the most serious of charges. He stood accused of making a mutiny, operation of a Fleet warship outside of command authority, discharge of offensive weaponry outside of command authority, destruction of Fleet property, and insubordination. Gath was charged with making a mutiny, insubordination, and absence without leave. Admiral Goon and her command staff were charged with participation in a mutiny, insubordination, and unauthorized occupation of transit space. Under the rules of law, however, all of them were released on their own recognizance pending trial—a right an accused enjoyed as long as there were no compelling factors to keep the accused in lockup. Though the prosecuting officer—a captain from the Judge Advocate General’s office—had argued for just such a stipulation, the military judge running the tribunal had been unconvinced that any of the suspects in the matter posed an immediate threat to anyone’s life or would possibly flee to uncivilized space to avoid answering for their actions.

That had been more than a cycle ago. Though justice under common sense constitutions was supposed to be speedy, the tribunal did not want to put any of the mutineers on trial until the primary question of whether or not the concluding resolution constituted an illegal order was answered by either a judge of the legislature or, hopefully, both.

And that was where the clustertork really began.

The Speaker of the Lower Legislature had been suspended from office pending investigation into crimes against humanity. The two legislative members who had written the concluding resolution and introduced it to the full body had been suspended as well. Admiral Rook had put in his computerwork for retirement from the Fleet but the Executive Council refused to approve his retirement, instead suspending him from duty pending an investigation into his role in the concluding resolution. Admiral Zeal and Doc Bookender had both been suspended from duty as well and were currently being returned to the AZ system by the fastest available transport to be questioned by the Lower Legislature Subcommittee on the Concluding Resolution, the investigative group that had been formed to hold hearings on the matter.