By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3 by Debra Doyle, James D. MacDonald Page A

crowded streets outside the spaceport. Telabryk Field on Gyffer wasn’t as big as the port complex of Galcen Prime, but as far as Llannat Hyfid was concerned, once the industrialization and urban sprawl reached a certain point she couldn’t tell the difference. She liked her cities small—Namport was about her upper limit, or the Galcenian village of Treslin in the shadow of the Adepts’ Retreat. Nothing on her homeworld of Maraghai was bigger than either of those.
    Country girl , she thought. At least that hasn’t changed.
    She found the idea comforting. This morning’s sessions at the Ministry—a debriefing, really, with voice-stress analyzers and other verification equipment set up and running—had made it clear that a number of other things about her had altered beyond recovery. The very young Llannat Hyfid who’d left Maraghai to join the Space Force would never have noticed the equipment in the first place; and the older Llannat who’d come back to the Space Force from the Adepts’ Retreat would never have evaded its detection.
    I had to do it. If I told the Ministry about everything that happened on board Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter, they’d lock me up and wipe out the keycode.
    At least they still consider me Space Force. If I had to stay at the local Guildhouse, I’d wind up spilling my secrets to somebody before long. The Prof’s staff raised enough eyebrows around there the last time I was on Gyffer, with Ari and the rest of the ‘Hammer’ s crew .
    The hovercar paused at the main gate to the Field proper. A heavy-duty force field made the air in front of the entrance waver and ripple like a mirage on a hot day. A guard in the uniform of the Gyfferan local defense forces stepped out of the field’s generating kiosk; when the Ministry driver flashed an ID at him, he waved at his partner inside the kiosk and the field went down long enough for the hovercar to pass through.
    In spite of the inconvenience—not to mention the outright distrust with which she and Lieutenant Vinhalyn had at first been received—she was glad to see that Gyffer was taking its resistance to the Mageworlders seriously. The Daughter and RSF Naversey had been met in force by in-system ships almost as soon as they crossed the planet’s nearspace threshold; if it hadn’t been for the presence of the Space Force courier, Llannat suspected, the Gyfferans might well have destroyed the Magebuilt raider without bothering to ask questions.
    So the war isn’t lost yet. If Gyffer holds firm, the rest of the Republic still has a chance.
    Of course, if a medic from the backwoods can figure that much out, then so can the experts. Which means that the whole enemy fleet is going to show up on our doorstep any day now.
    “Welcome to the war,” she muttered under her breath.
    Next to her in the back seat of the hovercar, Vinhalyn nodded. “Just so.”
    The hovercar glided on across the vast plain of the landing field. Compared with the first time she’d been in Telabryk, the place was almost empty. After what she’d learned during the conference at the Defense Ministry, Llannat wasn’t surprised. Most of Gyffer’s usual merchant traffic would have cleared out as soon as word hit the planet about the fall of Galcen Prime. The ships that had stayed behind—either voluntarily, or caught by the Citizen-Assembly’s closing of the port—would be up in the orbital yards, getting fitted out with shields and weaponry.
    The dark wing-shape of Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter loomed up over the tarmac ahead, and beside it the thin bright needle that was RSF Naversey . The low, blocky buildings of the Space Force installation stood nearby, their abandoned state made more obvious by the presence of the two vessels. Llannat grimaced. The Gyfferans at the Ministry had not been happy about the way the Space Force had left Telabryk, even though they’d conceded the possibility of standing orders that had to be obeyed.
    “ Somewhere out there ,”