The survey ship came in on the far side of the gate ring from the Tern and docked without asking.
Mara watched it from the gate bay, through the small port beside the ring, with Sera at her shoulder. It was a compact ship, half the Tern’s length, white-hulled and clean, the Compact’s circle of nine stars painted on its flank in gold. It never wobbled on its approach, or held its nose up by force. It slid in along the gate’s surface and stopped exactly at the ring’s second docking point, as if it had been built for that point and nowhere else, and the gate’s clamps closed on it with a soft heavy sound that Mara felt through the deck.
The ring’s lights came on around its rim. Both handholds rose. Nobody touched them. The ring opened anyway.
“Inspection code,” Orison said from the bay’s ceiling, its voice pitched low. “Valid. I am letting them in. I do not believe I am permitted not to.”
The link on Mara’s collar chimed. Nemi’s voice, relayed from the dome through the Tern’s antenna, thin and steady.
“They broadcast a manifest when they came onto the Lorn approach,” Nemi said. “The dome picks up anything on the approach band. I’ve been counting.” A pause. “Six guards. One auditor. One specialist. That’s the manifest. Count them as they come through, and tell me if it’s different.”
