This horde seemed to be the Empire entire, assembled to send off the Lynx's crew.
Master Private Saman grasped his arm and pointed into the crowd.
"She's got something for you, Bass!" (The single name indeed didn't bother his squad: They'd shortened it already.)
Bassiritz's keen eyes followed Saman's gesture, and spotted a woman among the ecstatic dancers in the front of the crowd. She had removed her jacket and tunic, ignoring the autumn chill, baring flesh pale enough to shine like a ray of sun among the gray throngs of the faithful. Then others followed her example, men and women dancing out of their clothes, euphoric and supplicant before the towering, mock totem of the warship. Bassiritz shook his head in bemusement. The gray religion took on many forms throughout the Empire, but here on Home all its strangest versions were clustered together, as if the planet were a curio cabinet stocked for the amusement of the Risen One himself. The ecstatic dancers had seemed like monks to Bassiritz at first. He had watched them over the last few days, encamped in the square before the rising dummy ship. Their gray tents and clothes, shaved heads, quiet prayers, and diet of cold field rations had given them a solemn dignity. But now he saw that the purpose of these privations had been to secure a position in the front of the crowd. To dance and scream wildly--now nakedly--before the crew and the onlooking masses. To become part of the spectacle of christening a new class of Imperial warship.
To pay their. . . respects.
"You'll catch flies, Private Second Class."
Bassiritz closed his mouth, and smiled to echo the laughter of his squadmates.
"Bass's never been to a christening, I suppose."
"Neither have you, Astra!"
"But I've seen war prizes presented. The dancers were there."
"The dancers are everywhere."
"There were a couple in your room last night, I overheard."
"Those were honest surrogates, Private."
"I'm sure you kept them honest."
"I kept them awake."
The squad laughed again. Bassiritz felt warm in their company, even in the chill wind. It was new and wonderful to be here up above a crowd, arrayed with his crewmates on the slender beams of the gantry, almost flying over the press of people. He had never felt so ... exalted before.
His eyes scanned the buildings that rose as straight as cliffs around the square. The wide balconies were full, glittering with the reflective clothes of the wealthy, as if the city itself were bejeweled for this event. Bassiritz had heard fantastic stories about the cost of rooms on the square, which could not be owned, only leased from the Apparatus or temporarily bequeathed to high officeholders, such as senators and visiting planetary governors. Wealthy families exhausted whole fortunes to rent them, if only for a few days, in hopes of establishing connections, rising a little higher in the social order, nearing the ultimate prize of elevation. They were all out to gaze upon the mock ship, glittering and awestruck, yearning for immortality.
And with that thought, Bassiritz realized why his crewmates were so deliriously happy here. Suspended above the horde, under the gaze of the Empire's plutocrats, they felt their true value as soldiers, saw a prefigurement of their true reward. For their grueling service-- the years confined on tiny ships, the decades lost to theTimeThief, the constant danger of sudden obliteration--they were granted the one prize that even the wildest wealth could not absolutely guarantee.
If they could just die in combat, cleanly and without too much brain damage, or enjoy long and exemplary careers, Bassiritz and his squadmates might live forever.
Forever. A period not even the Time Thief could steal.
He could see the Emperor's promise here, from this vantage above the crowd.
As his incredibly sharp eyes scanned the balconies of the powerful, Bassiritz's elated thoughts were suddenly interrupted. Alone on a small veranda were two figures, one wearing civilian white, the other military black. An odd couple.
The man in black seemed familiar. Bassiritz squinted, focusing on the pair. The man turned to profile, making some comment to his companion, and the young private started.
"It's the captain!" he cried.
"Where?"
"Not a chance."
"Won't be here for hours!"
Bassiritz pointed. "There on that balcony. With that woman in white."
The others followed his gaze, cupping their hands against the glare of the sun now spilling into the square.
"That's the Secularist senatorial block. You wouldn't catch the Old Man in those abodes." Master Private Saman had served with Laurent Zai before.
"Zai's Vadan, Bass! Not some pink."
"But it's him. I can see him clearly."
"It's at least a klick away, young man. You're hallucinating." The two figures on the balcony grew closer, first hands touching, then bodies drawing near against the cold. Then white and black intertwined.
"He's kissing a woman up there," Bassiritz announced.
"Hah-hah!" Saman yowled, almost doubling over against the gantry's handrail. "The captain kissing a pink senator!"
"Kissing anyone at all!" Astra added in amazement.
The squad laughed at Bassiritz's fine joke on them, slapping his back again, full of good humor and intoxicated by their imperious position above the crowd, above the naked and gyrating dancers, above the grasping wealthy. Above everything but the huge false ship behind them, and its real and lethal double in high orbit above, where they would soon be lofting to join it, to journey toward the rumored troubles of the Rix frontier.
They laughed that the possibility of death awaited them.
But Bassiritz frowned. He alone could see that it was, in fact, the captain. He could see that it was a long and vigorous embrace. And in his small village the elders had taught Bassiritz one certain rule: Never laugh at a kiss. A kiss was mysterious and powerful, fragile and invincible. Like any spark, a kiss might fizzle into nothing, or consume an entire forest. A kiss was no laughing matter. Not for the wary.
A kiss could change the world.