"My Queen."

  After the initial introductions to the Holifanian entourage, the group all meandered down to the motorcade whilst Donovan hammered out some details and fabricated a few pns with their engineering delegation. What she found waiting for her at the rugged looking 'cars' while some of their stuff was ferried off the Pegasus was something she hadn't been expecting - a familiar face.

  "Please, Leno, there is no need for that here." Well, she couldn't actually see his face, but the patterns in his hair and scars on his arms told her all she needed to know. "Is your mother well?"

  "I do not know, my Queen. She was in good health when st we spoke, but it has been about a month." The orange and bck haired Nekh retained the traditional dogeza posture, tail ying straight behind him on the ground whilst his hands were (mostly) covered by his ears. "I am sure you need no reminding how rapidly one's condition can deteriorate."

  "Please stand, Leno." Titanyana really didn't enjoy speaking to her friends in this manner. "Please."

  "If that is what you wish." Leno obliged his queen, slowly pushing himself up off the ground. "I . . . I apologize for my unsightly attire."

  He stood just as tall as Titanyana remembered, maybe even a little bit more if she squinted, and remained just as much of a behemoth as he had been before she left, closer to Wall than Donovan in terms of size. This, of course, would not come as a surprise to anyone who saw his stripes or heard of his reputation. Leno was a chief and named successor of the Grandmaster position for the Red-Striped Cn, a promising young man who had from a young age trained under the King and served as her bodyguard outside of the pace. He was also the most fit to be her sparring partner, though the innumerable scars that could be found on his forearms and legs were the proof of his retive inadequacy. Those could not be considered a fault of his, though. Titanyana was a Strapper, one who practiced a technique generally considered a counter to the Red-Striped style of combat, and he was a year or so younger.

  His ability to continue acting as her partner despite those troubles only served as evidence of his prowess.

  "I don't care much about the dirt, Leno." She hadn't even noticed the mud on his pants, her eyes too focused on his upper body and eyes - themselves a fiery red. "I have neither the time nor energy, at least for the moment."

  "Your grace is appreciated, my Queen." He bowed at a perfect 90 degrees, the pne of his back still rising to Titanyana's ribcage. "To, um, to whom do I owe the pleasure?"

  "Diana Helmsguard, but Diana is fine for the time being." She offered a hand, which Leno stared at. ". . . do you not do handshakes?"

  "N-no, it is just that, well, um . . ." Rather than expin anything, Leno instead dispyed the palms of his hands. They were dirty, though it did not appear as though the dirt was fresh. "I had been aiding the construction efforts before this, and I had no time to wash my hands."

  "Don't worry about it!" Diana grabbed his hand and firmly shook it in spite of the grime. Titanyana noted that, despite Diana's hands being a bit rger than her own, it seemed to disappear in his loose grip. "How could I expect anyone to take me seriously if I faltered in front of some dirt? And at a time like this, no less!"

  Titanyana was shocked by this dispy. She wasn't concerned about Diana getting dirty, that was fairly expected if she was being honest with herself. What came as a surprise was how effective this was. In just a few moments, she had witnessed Leno's impression of Diana go from uncertain to unrelentingly positive, all without Leno knowing who Diana actually was. It was like she figured out the perfect combination of words and expressions that would please his character instinctively, and had formuted a method through which she could develop her desired impression in mere seconds.

  "Diana is-" Titanyana almost stopped herself, worried she might interrupt Diana's pns somehow. A subtle wink was all the reassurance she needed to move forward. "She is one of the Terrans, out benefactors and future rulers. Her . . . husband to be, Donovan, is discussing something with the Holifanians. He will be returning to space for a week or so in order to sort some things out. Please treat them with respect, they have done more for us than you can imagine."

  Leno's ears perked up for a moment before he looked back at their handshake with a newfound sense of horror.

  "I-I am so sorry!"

  "Don't be! It honestly means nothing, just a quick rinsing of my hands in the river." Diana smiled back at him, a bit softer than she might normally. "I'm much more interested in getting things done. If that means dirty hands, then so be it."

  "It's fine, Leno. If she had a problem, she would let you know." Leno would definitely be at a disadvantage against Diana in a contest of courtesy. "Let us go to the camp. I want to see everybody."

  "Of course!!!"

  - - - - -

  Diana had never seen a homeless encampment, nor had she heard reporting of it. She recognized that they had, to some extent, existed on Terra, but they were mostly a result of natural disasters destroying homes rather than economic factors, the governing body taking great care to never let the popution grow beyond a certain extent. This made the sprawl of tents before her a new experience.

  "There's a lot of them." She wasn't stupid enough to believe that all of these tents, somewhere in the hundreds, were housing exclusively Nekh refugees. Even if they were on the smaller side, each tent had cots for five or six people crammed beneath the fabric, and there certainly hadn't been enough time for that many to be evacuated. There were Holifanian workers among their number. "Tents, I mean."

  "I thought the same. They certainly aren't as uncomfortable as I had imagined, but I would definitely prefer a proper bed." Leno frowned, possibly reminiscing about home. Or maybe he was just concerned about Mercedes' proximity to Titanyana. "I suppose we should be thankful we have something covering our heads. The rain would be a nightmare to live in without them."

  "Then I guess we should prioritize more permanent housing!" Diana was reminded of Donovan's mannerisms and expressions just as they left him behind. She didn't know what was going on just yet, but from his behavior she surmised it wasn't as good as they were hoping. "I take it those huts are said housing?"

  Diana referred to the series of rectangur wooden structures at the far corner of the encampment, almost identical in appearance. They had wooden logs at the corners standing vertical to support the roof, with some sort of pnks making up the walls.

  "Indeed. I've been told they are a bit drafty and not the best in terms of construction, but they are warmer than tents and keep the rain out."

  "They're an old barracks design we had lying around in some records repository." Seppard, who was acting in the capacity of chauffer, filled her in further. "They require the least amount of effort for the greatest amount of housing, with a smaller nd usage than tents. Nobody has much in the way of privacy, but you can fit forty to fifty beds in the space of five tents. Of course, we have built a more private domicile for you and your husband, as well as one for Titanyana and her entourage, however it doesn't hold up to the standards of the Sanctum."

  "I . . . get a house?"

  "Of course. Would you have preferred a castle?" Diana almost snorted at Seppard's ft sarcasm. He had been incredibly professional with them, however he clearly had a limited tolerance for stupid questions.

  "N-no, I just thought I would be with Donovan and Diana considering our status and retionship."

  "You may choose to stay with them if you so please, but we designed the additional rooms with children in mind rather than adults." Titanyana blushed. "You might find them to be a tad cramped."

  "Uh, I'll keep that in mind." Diana bit her lips as Titanyana's ears fttened, completely aware of her motives. Mercedes propped herself up to lick the Nekh's face in response, incentivizing a worried response from her bodyguard in the passenger's seat.

  "So what is the pn for housing, exactly?" Diana brought the conversation back to a more relevant topic. "I mean, I understand the general idea is 'as many as possible', but how are we going about that? Are there any problems we should be aware of?"

  "Nothing our engineers won't be discussing with Lord Strauss, but I can give you a run-down once we get to my command center. We have a few rudimentary maps with expansion pns, as well as a host of reports suggesting possible improvements. Would you like a basic run-down?"

  "While we've nothing else to do. I want to get on top of everything as soon as possible."

  "Then let's start with our resource gathering operations, which currently consists exclusively of lumber. We have a camp a few miles up the river where the forest line edges a bit closer to the water. Our team up there is felling trees suitable for construction and cutting them into uniform log-lengths before dragging them down to the river. Once they are down there, we tie them up into something like a raft and have a group of people ride them down the river and making sure they don't snag or beach. Once they reach the lumber mill, which is . . . there," Seppard pointed to a structure along the river some distance away, "they hop off and stock them on the bank. Individual logs are then fed into the mill to be processed into pnks and such."

  "We get enough materials for six or seven houses per day at the current rate, which I am told will increase once more of these 'mills' are completed." Leno sounded moderately disappointed in this, despite his eagerness to participate in the conversation.

  "More or less what he said. Structural logs are floated down river past the mill and dragged to the construction site, while pnks and sawdust are loaded onto trucks and driven."

  "Sawdust?" Diana wasn't much of a construction person, but she knew that sawdust didn't have much use even as a fuel source. "What are you using that for?"

  "Great question, because it leads into the next pnned resource. The soil around here might be some of the most fertile you could ask for, but we can't drive our vehicles over the same pce repeatedly when the ground is wet. Everything turns into a muddy hellscape we aren't equipped to handle, so we use sawdust to soak up the water and stabilize the soil. It's a great stop-gap measure, don't get me wrong, but it is far from perfect. What will act as a more permanent solution until we can get some proper roads in pce would be gravel. It drains itself, and a two or three inch yer of the stuff will reduce the ground pressure the trucks exert enough to stop everything from sinking - or so I'm told. It's also what we use in concrete, but that's beyond our current timeline."

  "You don't have anywhere to quarry it from, right?" Diana thought that was obvious. Finding an exposed rock outcropping around here would be difficult.

  "No, we can dig just about anywhere around here. Once we clear the trees and topsoil the bedrock is good enough for use in most applications. The problem we are facing is that we don't have a way of getting the heavy machinery needed to grind rock and carry gravel onto one of our boats." Seppard shook his head in frustration. Clearly this had been a persistent issue.

  "How did you get all of these vehicles here then?"

  "I think you'll agree that there's a bit of a difference between a lightweight utility vehicle that has been disassembled to spread it's weight between multiple ships and a vehicle with an engine twice as heavy as this buggy." Seppard let off the gas pedal, letting the natural resistance of the ground slow them down. "That doesn't even take into consideration fueling and maintaining the bastards."

  Diana's lips pursed as she furrowed a brow. This type of problem solving simply wasn't her forte.

  "What if . . . what if you disassembled them brought them over? Like the trucks?" Titanyana offered her solution to the problem.

  "We'd be idiots to have not thought of that already, no offense, but it's more like we physically can't fit these vehicles onto any of our galleys. Some components - single pieces that can't be taken apart - are just too heavy or rge. Trust me, we've tried. We've lost two galleys on nding trying to get those parts ashore, and we aren't eager to lose any more." Seppard put the car into park in front of the small cluster of structures. "The intent of this operation is to save lives, not waste them."

  "I see." Titanyana too sank into thought. This was definitely a Donovan problem.

  "Don't be discouraged, my Queen. Your people are willing to produce this gravel by hand if it is necessary, you need only give the word."

  "T-thank you Leno, but our efforts would be better focused elsewhere. We will need to begin farming as soon as possible, if only to reduce the amount of food the Holifanians need to import." Titanyana had stolen Donovan's words to improve her leaderly appeal, but Diana doubted he would mind. "The less shipspace they dedicate to food, the more stuff they can bring in, stuff we can't manufacture quite yet."

  "Too true, Lady Strapper. Too true." Seppard offered his hand to help Diana out of the vehicle, Leno taking his lead with Titanyana on the other side.

  "Even so, would it not be worth sending the Marble Cws and Iron Backs to assist in the quarrying endeavors? Even if they do not know how to use this 'machinery', their calling is to the pnet's bowels." Petunia, for the first time this conversation, made her presence known. "Surely we do not need everybody to farm, correct?"

  "They are welcome to join our excavation crews." Seppard answered as though the question was directed towards him, which might have been Petunia's intention to begin with. "It would reflect poorly upon us to do deny such a request given the situation, though I must say such operations will be dangerous for those unaccustomed to complex machinery."

  "More dangerous than living on Nekh?" Titanyana challenged Seppard's inadvertently condescending warning, earning a smirk from Diana.

  "No. I suppose not." Seppard sighed, recognizing his faux pas.

  "Then my people will be just fine." Titanyana smiled as if to forgive the transgression. Their joint lessons on communication were paying off. "Shall we move our luggage inside?"

  "If you so please." Seppard nodded, subtly calling over a few of his subordinates. "I will be waiting in my command center, which is right there. I would humbly request that you join me so that we may continue this conversation, though I must admit we are in no particur rush."

  "Of course. I'd like, mm, half an hour to unpack everything and familiarize myself with my new abode. Would that be fine with you?"

  "Certainly. Shall I have one of our chefs prepare lunch?"

  "Please."

  "I would love that, thank you."

  "Then we shall converse over lunch." Seppard bowed, turning his back to them only when his men arrived.

  "Um, please, let me take that for you, my Queen."