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she met his eyes. ‘I have no special requirements or requests. Perhaps we
should waste no more time and just get started.’
    Lampard smiled tightly and nodded, with a look in his eye that might have meant nothing to Gabrielle if Karl hadn’t already described in detail the fate intended for her.
    If Thijs should to be the first to die, she decided, then it was only right that Lampard should be second.

THREE
Gabrielle
    The day was bright and chill, small airships and null-g platforms floating above Port Gabriel’s skyline, as Gabrielle and her entourage exited the People’s Palace.
They were protected from the freezing weather and the unbreathable native atmosphere by a containment field that moved along with them, making breather masks or any other kind of respiratory aid
unnecessary.
    The voices of the choir were amplified across the plaza surrounding the palace as Gabrielle, Thijs, Lampard, Abramovic and an accompanying entourage of nearly a hundred made their way towards a
bulk transport waiting just outside the palace gates. Parts of the transport’s transparent hull had been painted over with broad gold and black stripes. Further away, close to the shores of
the Ka River, Gabrielle could see the monument to the Port Gabriel massacre of two centuries before, towering over the surrounding buildings.
    The details of the journey lying ahead of her had been drilled into Gabrielle from such a young age that she could visualize almost every step of the way. A barge would carry her a few hundred
kilometres downriver, to the mouth of the Ka River and the city of Dios, not far from the Demarchy of Uchida’s disputed border with the River Concord States. And, once there, she would be
transported to her ultimate destination: the ancient Magi starship known to the Demarchy’s citizens as the Ship of the Covenant. The alien vessel still lay half buried where it had fallen
from orbit, centuries before, on the slopes of Ascension Peak, a stub of volcanic granite standing guard over the city below.
    But there were other things she knew about the Ship of the Covenant that were not public knowledge, and were in fact known only to very few of the high officials accompanying her. The
Demarchy’s own long-term and highly secretive research project had demonstrated almost conclusively that, by the time the next Speaker-Elect was due to depart for Dios in another twenty-one
years’ time, the Ship of the Covenant would have nearly finished the centuries-long process of repairing itself – and, when that day came, there was nothing Thijs’s or
Lampard’s successors could do that might prevent the alien craft’s inevitable departure.
    On that same day, the Demarchy of Uchida would, in one swift stroke, lose the technological and military advantage it had held over the River Concord States for so very long. There would no
longer be any reason for the Accord to maintain its military orbital presence, and war between the Demarchy and its neighbours was only one possible outcome.
    Given all that, there was a very real chance Gabrielle might be the last of the Speakers-Elect. It was therefore imperative for the Demarchy that they grab whatever data they could from the
alien craft, which could then be traded to the Accord in return for continued protection, not only from rival states but from the renegade Freehold camps hidden deep in the Montos de Frenezo.
    Even though she, like all the other Speakers-Elect who had come before her, was outwardly exalted by the Demarchy, Karl had taught her that it was solely because of the advanced scientific data
they could each bring back from the Ship of the Covenant that they were in any way valued. And if that ship had only flown off long before now, Gabrielle might never have been forced to undergo
this whole insane charade.
    But then again, she reminded herself, if it hadn’t been for the Ship of the Covenant, there would never have been a reason for her to be born in the first