Jeridan fidgeted on the other side of the customs gate. Negasi had gone in just before him. What was taking so long? The process had only taken about thirty seconds between Nova and Mason, and even less time between Mason and Negasi.

Since then, the clock had run through a full five minutes.

I knew that idiot would screw things up. I'll have to beat him up in chessboxing again to teach him a lesson.

Assuming we don't both get beat up by the king's soldiers.

He glanced at Helen, who was trying to put on a poker face and failing, and then at Aurora, who had her arms crossed and looked like a bored and annoyed teenager.

The customs gate opened. Jeridan jerked with surprise.

"Captain James Nelson, enter."

Jeridan licked his lips, wiped his sweaty palms on his pants, and passed through the gate.

He found a soldier with a scanner on the other side, a scanner that looked too advanced for this planet.

The king has been making some investments.

Jeridan wondered if he had improved prison conditions. Added a holocabin and a swimming pool. Probably not.

Beyond him stood Negasi. The gunner still had his disguise activated and wasn't on the floor getting beaten. That was a good sign. Two soldiers flanked him. That was not a good sign.

Jeridan gave the soldier one of his winning smiles, made even more effective thanks to his oh-so-handsome disguise, and waited as the man scanned him from head to toe.

The guy took his time. Jeridan stayed still and tried not to fidget.

At last, he finished.

"Just had to run a few extra tests with you because neither of you are in our records. You pass. Welcome to Eridanus Delta."

Jeridan could have sobbed with relief.

"It's great to be here!" he said with more enthusiasm than he meant.

"Helen Wallace, next!"

Jeridan moved over to Nova, who gave him a sour look.

"I'm excited to visit Eridanus Delta for the first time," he told her, flashing his winning smile and getting no response. "We need a ground crew to do some serious work on the Antikythera."

While they had patched the hull breach, there was only so much they could do on a spacewalk.

"We'll have a crew from the League go over it."

"Good."

He doubted a local ground crew would be nearly as skilled, even with the improvements in their navy.

"We need to make a ton of arrangements for the S'ouzz," Negasi said.

"Let's go through that with the guards," Nova said.

They went over and spoke to one of the officers.

Helen's scan took a while as the soldier stared curiously at the readout for all her implants, then Aurora came in, looking pissed off at being left for last.

Finally, they were done, and with a light heart Jeridan joined the others in leaving the spaceport. A customs team would set up a tent next to their ship to process their astronavigator with the minimum amount of stress.

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A small bus waited for them outside. It was a primitive vehicle with wheels and a fossil fuel engine. Mikael, the archaeologist running the dig on the dinosaur planet, stepped out.

"Welcome to Eridanus Delta, everyone!" His eyes settled on Jeridan and Negasi. "Oh, hello."

There was a question in his voice.

"I'll explain on the way," Nova said.

They all piled in. Nova explained, with some assistance from Jeridan when her explanation got too cynical. Why did everyone have to mistrust his intentions?

Mikael listened in silence, then chuckled and said, "Well, we hired a pilot/gunner team, not a pair of Earth pilgrims. Putting one over on that tyrant doesn't exactly count as a bad deed. Still, it might upset operations. He's indulgent with us because he fears the Rimscourge and we feed him some minor technologies. Try not to get in trouble while you're here, OK?"

"We wouldn't dream of it. I'm surprised you're not still on Yavari Prime."

Jeridan wondered what "minor technologies" Mikael was referring to. He knew better than to ask. He'd never get an answer.

Mikael let out a sigh. "I could have stayed there excavating those ruins the rest of my life. There must be so much more there! We found what we came for, though. Not only did we get to make a full battery of tests on that experimental jump gate, but in the underground warehouse we found heaps of spare parts for more."

"How many more?"

"We're not sure yet. Some of the parts have decayed or appear not fully constructed. We're reverse engineering them now. The team estimated we have at least three functioning units."

Jeridan gasped. The potential those things would have!

"We need to run through a second analysis of the data were received," Mason said. From his tone and the set on his face, Jeridan could tell Derren had come to the fore.

Derren/Mason then launched into a long technical discussion with Nova and Mikael. The archaeologist didn't seem disturbed at all that a ten-year-old boy had his father's mind in his head.

Monsters.

Jeridan promised himself for the hundredth time that he would make sure they saw justice.

First, they needed to save the galaxy. They might all die in the attempt and then there would be no justice for anybody.

He tried to tune into the conversation Mikael, Helen, Nova, and Derren/Mason were having. It was way over his head and of course they didn't explain. From what he could tell, they had done a full analysis of the jump gate while enroute, as he already knew, but some insights Mikael's team had discovered from the smaller, experimental models meant they had to reassess their findings. With the full team working on it, they should complete that soon.

The van passed along a four-lane highway through open fields toward the low skyline of a distant city. Jeridan knew from experience that this was one of the few four-lane highways on the planet, and those advanced robotractors working the fields were the only examples he had seen here. Also, those fields were royal property. The king wanted to impress interstellar visitors.

No visitor stayed impressed for long. You didn't have to scratch too deep below the surface before you discovered just how primitive and brutal this place could be.

Before reaching the city, Mikael took an offramp and they headed down a country road.

"Your headquarters is out here?" Jeridan asked, looking around at the fields.

"A couple more kilometers."

A couple more kilometers was far enough that they got out of sight of the main highway linking the spaceport to the capital. The farmhouses began to look shabbier, the fields less well-tended, and the robotractors vanished, replaced by rickety old models that belched pollution from their fossil fuel engines.

Jeridan wondered how many robotractors the government could have purchased instead of investing in those two destroyers, and how much that would have increased production and improved the peasants' quality of life.

Obviously, those weren't the king's priorities.

Jeridan realized that scamming him with the Sagittan whiskey would not only be profitable, it would be a good deed.

I love it when that happens.

Up ahead he saw a large compound enclosed by a concrete wall topped with razor wire. A rooftop equipped with a large satellite dish poked above it, otherwise he could see nothing of what lay inside.

"There it is," Mikael said with obvious pride. "Here you'll find the most advanced archaeological labs in the known galaxy. We've been analyzing Imperium technologies for years, especially jump gate technology. Now it's all coming to fruition."

"I'm surprised the king is so supportive."

"He's an ass, but he's practical. He wants to see the jump gates come back online as much as anyone. We established this base under his father's regime. The man dreamed of repairing the jump gate at the edge of this system, no doubt with plans of conquest. What the fool didn't realize was that it had been scavenged beyond repair generations ago."

"He couldn't see that?"

"There's an old Earth saying: 'greed makes all men blind.' He thinks we can fix it. No way. It's too far gone."

"I'm sure he charged you high rent."

"He did, plus the gift of lots of tech toys for him and the royal family. His son became even more supportive when the threat of the Rimscourge emerged. The royal family may be greedy and shortsighted—they could have developed this planet to something beyond a backwater years ago—but they do have a knack for self-preservation. They've held power for more than a hundred and fifty years."

As they drew closer, the compound's steel entrance gate came into view. Two armored cars flanked the entrance.

"That's odd," Mikael said, his brow furrowing.

"Those aren't yours?" Jeridan asked.

"No, look at those markings. They're from the Eridanus Delta army. Something's up."

Jeridan and Negasi exchanged a look. This was not a positive development.

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