The sparring session at the palace gymnasium complex ended when his partner read his feint. Instead of blocking and counter punching, she switched forms and twisted his right arm leveraging his weight to slam him down onto his back.

Rory Demaris looked up to see the face he most loved in the world.

Jade Coriander, quantum champion of her house, one of only twelve in all human space, smiled and told him. “You led with the spear hand when you should have used the knife hand.”

Incensed, he sprang to his feet on the exercise mat. “You surprised me.”

“Don’t blame me for your lack of focus. Think," she said.

The mat's depression bespoke how hard he had fallen. “It is good to see you again.”

“Don’t,” she said.

“Don’t what?” he said.

They walked towards the lockers at the back of the gymnasium. On the way out to the atrium leading to the air car port on the palace grounds, he stopped her.

Twirling a finger around her ear as she dodged, he unfolded a pink rose from his fingers. “See, I conjured this just for you.”

“There’s no such thing as magic, she said.

“Not even love?”

“I am headed out on the battlestar Eye of Indra tomorrow.”

Another quick turn of his wrist, another flower. “Marry me.”

The flower passed to her hands, her eyes moist. “That isn’t how it works in our society, Rory.”

“One day you will step down from your post to marry.”

“And the paramani will pick a suitable husband,” Jade said.

“What’s so unsuitable about me? Not blue blooded enough? Seventh son’s curse? It’s not my fault I don’t have an inheritance.”

She pursed her lips in a hard frown. “Don’t be an ass.”

He fairly danced around her like an overwrought puppy. “Why not? I’ve the best transport record in the merchant guild. No shipments lost to pirates.”

They stepped out onto the pavilion outside the gymnasium complex. She looked at the sky as if to appeal to a higher power. “You might someday be a lucky catch for the right woman.”

Air cars raced by at intervals across the 6000-acre grounds of the paramani’s palace on the planet Coriander, one of the twelve major houses of the Altari republic.

“Aagh. I don’t want any other women.”

“Everyone knows what a partier you are.”

“So what if I like a game of snapdragon now and then? Make friends and influence people. I haven’t looked at another woman since I can remember.”

“Drinking clouds your memory, I imagine.”

“Maybe. But I’m clear about you, Jade.”

Cypress trees bordered the broad boulevard where civilians walked towards their duties at the various buildings of government and administration.

A contrail of a hyperloop transport flared in the stratosphere at the top of a loop. A bright star hung near the horizon. In the clear morning air, the light shone steady, the spaceport.

Jade glanced back a him. The conversation always ended badly. The obstacle to his desire had been set in place by a rash word as a youth, and now that he was more circumspect there was no remedy.

Rory pressed his case. “My father married for love, you can too,”

“Your house is a minor one, and proscribed since your father lost his duel.”

“You bloody nobles. Why do you all look down your noses at everyone else? “

“Look what happened to your father. Do you want a repeat of that?” Jade said. Putting a fist to her head, she shut her eyes. “Why do we always do this to ourselves?

Rory turned his face away. The Altari republic gave justice based on rank. There could be no recourse. Only a duel could satisfy honor after Rory blurted out the insult, and his father had lost, and triggered the reprisal that made him and his mother a pariah. If Jade’s mother hadn’t defied another house to show them mercy, what would have become of them? It didn’t stop his mother from dying of grief. And now he felt as if he carried her grief with him and it would never end.

He sighed. “Why join a Battlefleet unit? Isn’t your job to put out fires at home?”

She shrugged. “Home has a wide definition for house politics. I’m just following your hunch.”

The Altari Republic ruled mankind across through twelve fiefs governed from a dozen worlds and many more tributary colonies, yet the billions of humans were only a fraction of the sapients that made up the vast galactic civilization of the Commonwealth of Stars.

“My hunch?” he said.

“About space-time distortions affecting the jump lanes.”

His heart pounded. Jade might be the paramani’s right hand on Coriander, but she hadn’t traveled the space lanes like he had, not to mention smuggling. “That’s just a theory. Scoutfleet can check it out and you can examine the report.”

"House Zayan is mucking up the administrative chain with red tape and bureaucratic obstacles. I have to see for myself.”

“By all the seven mirrors, Jade. Pirate raids are boiling on the frontiers, some of it sarpan, stay home and let underlings like me handle it.”

The sarpans were the warlike saurian aliens who regarded all other sapients as potential prey. Their government abided by the Commonwealth Articles but their pirates didn’t for the same reason human ones didn’t. It was a matter of debate among the more pacifistic races which species was the most bloodthirsty. Yet humans were the newest and most suspect race to join the Commonwealth. Other aliens seemed to fear them more than being eaten by sarpans.

“I’m taking the Cormorant out to the Arch Radiant.” Rory said.

“Oh? What trade score are you planning this week?”

“I’m taking a shipment of vaccines to Angyran Secunda.”

Jade shook her head. “It can’t be worth the risk. Better for a House guard unit to do it.”

“Sending the militia, even if it’s Battlefleet? They won’t dispatch a big enough ship for this, and the Cormorant’s got faster legs since I paid the filtrigs for her overhaul.”

“The Cormorant is still a bucket of junk. I’m sorry, just a merchantman," she said.

He whistled.

“You didn’t bootleg illegal hardware off the filtrigs, did you?”

Plying a thin smile. “It’s goya work I needed.”

Her eyes widened. “You didn’t?”

“I did. They have nothing against defensive weapons.”

The filtrigs, humanoid of ratlike demeanor and intrepid engineers vied with the shy goya, who hid within their clown like methane environmental suit. The two species vied for dominance in specialized starship technology.

“Someday, Rory, your deviousness is going to get the better of you.”

No problem, if I can just keep my mouth shut. “Jade, don’t go. I have a bad feeling about this.”

She patted him on the cheek. “Don’t be superstitious, you just want to seduce me.”

He gripped her wrist and pulled her hand to his lips to kiss it. “True, but marry me first and we’ll make our own dynasty.

She pulled her hand away and sniffed. “Incorrigible romantic.”

“I just know what I want.”

She sighed. “Then let a House guard unit take the vaccine and come with me to investigate your bogeyman theory.”

“It’s just a hunch. Let the Scouties help Battlefleet do their investigation, and you can come help me deliver the vaccine.”

“Be well, Rory Demaris ni Coriander.”

The formality was a dismissal. He stared into her green eyes, taking in the sight of her, unwilling to answer.

She turned and walked away.