We landed on the northern landmass, a plateau of some half-a-million square kilometers, above a slowly churning, pale-yellow sand sea.

  More dust than sand. Remba was dry, but according to the 'pedia we'd copied off the Belithain, the two highland plateaus had some rain, and minor seas bordered by mountains that forced any evaporation down as rainfall. The average temperature hovered just above freezing.

  The port was several square kilometers of black concrete, painted with yellow landing patterns and raised, glow-white, reinforced ship holds. You'd have to hit individual holds in order to destroy the ships inside. Most of them were small, sized to hold light ships, short haulers and pleasure craft. Only three were occupied, by two tramp freighters and a luxury yacht. Next to them lay a pair of dry-docks, big enough to refit a carrier.

  But several of the holds were too narrow to host ships.

  Missile packs.

  Stupid way to defend a planet. Anyone in orbit could capture a choice asteroid and drop it down the gravity well. No need to get close enough for missiles. Use a large enough asteroid and it didn't matter that you missed by a hundred kilometers. The results would still be near-nuclear.

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  Missiles were great at chasing escaping ships, though, pursuing them into low orbit and higher. I'd expected one or two missile packs to deter mutinies. The Remba space port had twenty packs, each with a hundred launch tubes. Two thousand missiles. Who did they defend against? The cruisers? Unlikely. One cruiser mutiny, the remaining three destroy it. All cruisers mutiny, and everyone on the planet is void-feed, unless they can fire before the cruisers escape from orbit. Which might be why the cruisers held such a strange, low orbit. More time to destroy them.

  Or maybe it was something completely different.

  Questions, questions, and more questions. I probably wouldn't enjoy the answers.

  "Welcome to City, Bucket of Gold," the port authority controller said. Woman, nice voice. Sounded certain, in control. A recruit then, not a slave.

  "Thank you, Port control," I said. "Control, this place have a name? It's marked as city on my maps."

  That got me a short laugh.

  "That's what it is, Bucket," the port authority woman said. "The only city on Remba. Welcome to luxury."

  "Copy that, City," I said. "Bucket shutting down."

  "Enjoy yourself, and please remember Alia Woundiver for all your hunting needs."

  The voice clicked off. Commercials in the landing protocols. Welcome to the Syndicate, please leave all your money. I shut down the engines, feeling the slight twinge as the wards holding my warpstones stable settled, but I left the power plant hot. It might not make a difference, should we need to flee, but it made me feel better.

  "That's it," I said to Hao. "Get the crew, we're going into character."