My debriefing was more painless than any debriefing had a right to be. Captain Dany masterfully avoided the awkward questions like why Zia and I murdered the entire crew of the airship we liberated, or how many galactic treaties I’d broken using the FYT suit.

  Instead, I was treated to tea and cakes, homemade ones too, as Captain Dany was a keen baker. That said, the Captain was no fool and intently questioned me on the settlements we’d visited, making copious notes. He was especially interested in the ones that had given us trouble and the ones we’d been warned away. He also intently questioned me on the operation to extract Vanessa from the Corp’s clutches and how we’d made our getaway.

  The debrief ended mainly because we’d consumed all the cakes, and Captain Dany took me down into the bowels of the alien ship to the quartermaster's department. The Captain charmed the staff while they measured me up for uniforms and allocated me temporary accommodation, which, was rather nicer than the usual temporary accommodation.

  I was then subjected to a lengthy meeting with a sour-faced JDF lawyer who proved immune to even the Captain’s charm. With bad grace and much complaining about irregular procedures she completed the paperwork to officially make me a Jeckon citizen and a Captain in the JDF, then flicked a massive file to my wrist-com, informing me that this had been specially collated for me due to the unique circumstances of my recruitment and I better absorb every detail it in its entirety before I start duty.

  “I’m sorry we had to put you through that,” Captain Dany apologised to me as soon as we’d escaped the lawyer’s clutches.

  “Doesn’t she have any idea who I am?” I said in a mock offended voice. The Captain laughed.

  “I don’t think she does. I’d like to be a fly on the wall when she realises. You’re officially on leave for fifteen days now,” they checked their wrist com. “I take it you’d like to see Vanessa before she’s put in the pod?”

  “I suppose I better. She’ll only have the hump if I don’t.”

  The Captain drove me through a maze of corridors to the hospital which was unlike any hospital I’d ever been in. Individual treatment alcoves opened into a central atrium overlooking a spectacular view of a coastal scene that looked familiar. It took me a few moments to realise it would have been the view overlooking the Ice Plains from Death to All Humans if Jeckon had been a sub-tropical paradise. It was an impressive illusion, not only could I feel a sea breeze, I could smell it and hear the faint cry of seabirds.

  A robotic porter led us to Vanessa’s treatment alcove where a tired-looking Zia was going through what I assumed was a treatment plan with Vanessa and a couple of serious-looking doctors. Vanessa who was now dressed in a hospital gown, her ears back and tail hanging limply as she looked nervously down at a treatment pod. They looked up as we approached and Vanessa actually smiled when she saw me.

  “Well, it’s been a pleasure, Brandel. I’ll leave you here,” Captain Dany said, shook my hand and nodded formally to Vanessa and Zia.

  “Wait, how do I find my accommodation?” I asked. The Captain laughed.

  “Oh, yeah, better forward you some directions. Kacke’s changed quite a bit in the last century,” they flicked some details from his wrist-com to mine.

  “Actually, it’s been over a century and a half since I was last here,” I admitted, deciding not to mention the last time I’d been on Jeckon I’d been liberating spaceships for the newly formed Centauri Republic.

  “Wow, back in the cold rush days. Were there really pitched battles between salvage gangs on the streets?” Captain Dany asked, sounding genuinely interested.

  “It could get a bit rough,” I admitted with a grin. The Captain grinned back, said their goodbyes again and left. I entered the treatment alcove that must have been protected by a sound field.

  “... we can’t give you an exact timeframe but it shouldn’t be more than five days. You won’t notice any time has passed,” one of the doctors said to Vanessa reassuringly. Vanessa looked to Zia who nodded in confirmation.

  “I suppose I better get in then. Give me a hand Bran,” Vanessa said. I picked her frail body up as one of the doctors opened the pod. Vanessa held me tight for a second then allowed me to lower her into the pod. “See you in five days,” she said nervously as the pod closed around her. I put a hand on the clear lid and watched Vanessa’s face relax as she lost consciousness.

  I stepped back out of the alcove as Zia and the other doctors fussed around the pod’s control panels for a few minutes, then satisfied with whatever they’d done, they all pressed their fingerprints onto the main control panel, had a brief conversation, then the two doctors left and Zia came up to me.

  “All done. She’s going to be fine. They’ll let you know when she’s out and you can pick her up. Where are you going now?”

  “I’ve had some accommodation assigned. Do you know where this is?” I showed her the address Captain Dany had forwarded to me. Zia took hold of my wrist, pressing up close to me as she got some more details up on my wrist-com.

  “Ooo, nice, right in the centre. I’m going to Kacke too, I’m staying with some… umm… friends. If you want I’ll come with you and point you in the right direction.”

  “Sounds good,” I said, not particularly wanting to venture into Kacke alone. We made our way through the ancient alien spacecraft, following the well-signposted directions to the station somewhere in the front lower part of the vast craft. It must have been shift-change because the platforms were crowded with uniformed people talking and laughing amongst themselves, a few glanced at us in our white shipsuits and smiled. I was about to ask Zia what the white shipsuits represented when a sleek JDF liveried train pulled up and Zia dragged me on board to claim a couple of seats next to each other at the back of a suddenly crowded carriage. She pulled up the armrest between the two of us, rested her head on my shoulder and yawned.

  “I’m tired. You don’t mind if I lean on you?”

  “Err… no,” unable to think of a good way of refusing her, and to be honest, her easy familiarity was quite nice.

  “Good. I don’t think I’m going to get much sleep tonight. At least, I hope not. Wake me up when we get there,” she said, and before the train had even left the station, she was asleep. I glanced around the carriage, its occupants were showing a remarkable degree of sociability, talking amongst themselves although a few people were reading or watching stuff judging by the flickering of their wrist-coms. I settled back in my seat as I half dozed while watching the silent information stream on the headrest in front of me.

  The stream was mostly advertisements for products I’d never heard of, plays held in Kacke theatres, public events being held and entertainment programs. One of the entertainment programs caught my eye, the advert showed a handsome man and a female Neko, both dressed in white shipsuits for what the advert claimed was the Galactic smash hit ‘Centauri Dawn’. I used my free hand to tap the advert to find out more, but left it a moment too late, almost accidentally purchasing a membership to somewhere claiming to be ‘Kacke’s Premier Sex Dungeon’. I glanced down at Zia to check she was still asleep.

  “I know a far better one. Take Vanessa, it’ll be great fun, I’ll show you the ropes… and the whips,” she murmured sleepily, snuggling up to me, before falling back asleep. For the rest of the journey, I kept my fingers well away from the advertisement stream and listened to the buzz of conversation.

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  There was very little shop talk and the main subject of conversation was what everyone was doing over the weekend. Either the occupants of the carriage were the wealthy elite of Kacke, or it was considered normal to attend a couple of events on your day off. Either way, Kacke had changed greatly since I’d last been here when the wealthy elite had hidden themselves away on salvaged spacecraft and anyone who lived in Kacke kept their heads down and didn’t venture out unless they had to. The journey took around an hour or so and I estimated at the speed the train was shooting through the ice tunnel, Death to All Humans must have been well over 300 kilometres from Kacke.

  We pulled into the station, and all the carriage occupants leisurely made their way out, most of the grey and red JDF uniforms had changed into something more colourful and I realised this was a one-stop train used exclusively by JDF staff. I woke Zia and we followed everyone out, down a corridor protected by two blast doors and a couple of discrete security drones. Despite there being no physical barrier, I was pretty sure anyone attempting to access the station without permission would be firmly turned back.

  The corridor led to another, more public station, decorated to look like it’d been built during the Industrial Revolution. Now that was a time I was glad I hadn’t been frozen in. In one lifetime, humanity had progressed from steam trains to space flight. A naval Captain from the end of the industrial revolution wouldn’t have even been able to guess how to pilot an aeroplane, or spacecraft, a mere century later. They probably wouldn’t even be able to hazard a guess as to what they were looking at. At least my skills were still relevant, not that, that didn't mean I was immune to culture shock.

  Zia grabbed my hand, and, ignoring the dumpy two-carriage trains, led me to a crowded glass elevator which, as soon as we boarded, shot upwards, stopping briefly at a couple of random levels to let people on and off before we got to our floor.

  “This way’s a bit further, but I think you’ll like the view,” Zia said, leading me down a brightly lit tunnel with shops on either side. Still not relinquishing my hand which was pleasant but I was starting to wonder if she planned on letting me go at any point. Glancing around I noticed couples and groups of all sexes arm in arm and hand in hand. Quite a few of them were wearing cat ear headbands and I even saw one or two fake tails. I shrugged to myself and let Zia lead me onwards, out onto a balcony halfway up the deep canyon that Kacke had been built in. I stopped.

  It was Kacke but not that Kacke I remembered. For a start it was warm so the blue sky above us was fake and the city was no longer open to the elements. The huge dark rock outcrops of the canyon were still there but they were the only familiar point of reference, the rest of the city was an unfamiliar, glittering, utopian idea of a city, immaculately clean, the people happy and brightly dressed not a piece of rubbish or graffiti anywhere. It was the sort of place the Corps promised but only delivered on a few exclusive space stations.

  And Kacke was vast, the canyon was a vast fault over a hundred kilometres long and over two kilometres high, and from the wide lake at the bottom of the canyon to the overflowing green balconies up near the ‘sky’, as far as the eye could see, was all city. Impossibly skinny bridges crossed the canyon allowing the dumpy little trains to cross, but there could see no sign of any aircraft or any other private vehicles.

  “Are you okay?” Zia asked after I’d been staring at the view for a while.

  “It’s changed,” I said. “The last time I was here I flew a D-Wing freighter down the canyon and landed it where the end of the lake is now.”

  “You were allowed to fly spaceships into the canyon back then?”

  “I never said it was allowed, I just said I did it,” I admitted.

  “Did you get into a lot of trouble?”

  “I didn’t stick around long enough to let trouble catch up with me,” Zia smiled and shook her head, obviously wondering whether to believe me, then her wrist-com buzzed and flashed.

  “My friends are waiting for me, we better hurry,” she said. We walked along the balcony for a bit until we reached a small station where we caught one of the dumpy little trains which took us back into the canyon wall for a few minutes. As the journey progressed Zia got tenser and grabbed my hand again, she was trembling.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Nervous. I haven’t seen them for over a year. I hope there’s no one new who spoils the dynamic.” The little train pulled into a small station and there, standing on the platform were a group of colourfully dressed men and women holding a banner that read ‘Welcome Home Zia’ The doors opened and Zia stepped out, the people cheered and ran to greet her, a black-haired, green-skinned, mini-skirted woman wearing black cat ears and an orange fox tail got there first and kissed Zia full on the mouth, then a man grabbed her, and Zia was bounced around the group who all seemed to be extremely good friends with her. Eventually, she bounced back in my direction, smiling, flushed with the front of her shipsuit half undone.

  “Guys, this is Captain Bran, he’s my new boss,” Zia introduced me to her friends who commented on our matching shipsuits, most of them shook my hand but the green-skinned woman with the cat ears kissed me on the mouth and asked Zia if I was coming back with them.

  “Put him down, I don’t think his wife would appreciate it,” Zia said grinning at my discomfort. The woman gave me a mock sad face, then squealed when someone pulled her tail and turned away to berate the culprit.

  Zia hugged me. “See you in a few days, give me a call if you want to talk,” she said, then she and her friends got into an elevator and disappeared upwards leaving me alone on the suddenly quiet platform.

  I checked the directions to my accommodation and found it to be a short train ride away. The next train quickly arrived and I rode it the few stops to my destination, watching the futuristic city pass and thinking about Zia and her ‘friends’. They were all in their mid to late twenties and I thought back to how I’d been expected to act, even when I’d been much younger. Not that my upbringing had been in any way normal but I could imagine what my parents, my tutors, and later, my superior officers would have said about Zia and her ‘friends’. I hadn’t been expected to have fun. I was expected to fulfil my dynastic duties and marry some noble or corporate scion sight unseen, once I’d got this ‘space captain’ thing out of my system.

  “Lucky gits,” I muttered, getting a startled look from the other two passengers on the train.

  Fortunately, my stop was next and I got off at another quiet but noticeably posher station and took a gilded lift up several floors then followed my wrist-com directions to a white stone, double height, elegant, tree-lined corridor, the ceiling the projection of the blue sky they were so fond of here. I passed a couple of people who greeted me in a friendly manner, then I was standing in front of my door, a solid, real wood affair which swung open as I approached. I was home. Or at least home until someone left a spaceship unlocked in my vicinity.

  I entered a wide corridor with a dark wood floor and with cream walls. Pictures of old Kacke lined the walls. To either side of me were dark wood doors and at the end of the corridor was a double door with an arched window above.

  “Welcome, Captain Hawk, I am the house. If you require anything, please say ‘House,” a pleasant artificial voice said.

  “Hello house, it’s rather nice in here. Does everyone here live like this?” I asked, opening one of the side doors to a bright, well-equipped kitchen/dining room. The other led to a cosy bookcase-lined study which looked like it had real books on the shelf.

  “Thank you, Captain, I am the transient senior officer’s quarters for up to two people and as such I am ten per cent bigger than the standard two-person accommodation. The furnishings are standard but I like to think I have curated what is available to achieve the most aesthetically pleasing and relaxing environment possible. I also have The View which I am told is much in demand.”

  I walked to the end of the corridor and threw open the double doors. A double-height living room ran the width of the apartment, the entire back wall was glazed and overlooked Kacke. It was indeed a View with a capital V. To one side of the living room was a spiral staircase that led to a mezzanine with two luxurious bedrooms and a large bathroom which included an actual bath.

  “If you wish to change there is a selection of clothing in your size in the bedrooms and I have taken the liberty of preparing a light meal for you as well,” the house informed me.

  “Thank you house. I don’t suppose you can play the entertainment series Centauri Dawn?”

  “I will have episode one ready to play in the living room when you are ready.”

  A few minutes later I was lounging on one of the huge sofas in the living room, a large platter of food in front of me. I told the house to play, the view of the city disappeared and the windows turned black, Music started to play, and the words ‘Centauri Dawn - The Memoirs of Vanessa Van Dack’ appeared.

  I swore and fell off the sofa in a shower of snacks.