Honor nodded again. Nimitz was too preoccupied with Samantha for Honor to sample the engineer's emotions, but she didn't need her link to the 'cat to recognize his frankness. Like many of her officers, he was young for his rank, and, as he'd said, this was the first time he'd held full responsibility for running his own department. He clearly felt his inexperience, and she suspected that what he really wanted was for her to tell him that whatever he had in mind was an acceptable answer, not for her to reach out and solve his problems for him herself.

"All right," he said in a more normal tone. "Like all our departments, I've got a lot of newbies, and the ship's sheer size exacerbates the problem. With Fusion One tucked away at the center of the hull and Fusion Two still in its original position, it takes me almost fifteen minutes just to get from one power plant to the other, and both of them are an awful long way from Main Hyper, the impeller rooms, and Damage Control Central. For the first few weeks, I was spending way too much time trying to shuttle back and forth between widely dispersed work sections, and my a.s.sistants were taking their cue from me. I'm pretty sure a big part of that was the fact that I know how new most of my people are, and I wanted to be available to them if a problem came up. Unfortunately, all I was really accomplishing was to try to be in too many places at once. I was a moving target, and when trouble did crop up, I was almost always in the wrong place."

He shrugged and rubbed one eyebrow with a wry smile.

"That part of it's being taken care of. I've had extra com links run to Fusion One, and we've built complete repeaters of the master control panels from Fusion Two and Hyper in One, as well. That should let me monitor them directly and give me face-to-face capability with every station simultaneously, if I need it."

Honor nodded once more. She'd known Tschu was making modifications, but she hadn't realized they were as extensive as he seemed to be suggesting. She approved, however, and she made another mental check mark by the engineer's name. People who dug right in to solve problems instead of standing around wringing their hands were unfortunately rare.

"My biggest current problem is that I'm not seeing the increased efficiency I antic.i.p.ated from the new arrangements. Part of it's to be expected, with so many newbies still learning their jobs, I suppose, and it's taking longer to get all the cla.s.sroom c.r.a.p out of their brains because we're so thin on experienced people to serve as mentors. But part of it's the nature of those 'experienced' people, too. Frankly, I've got some really bad apples down there, Ma'am."

Honor let her chair swing upright once more and folded her hands on the table. So far-thanks, no doubt, to Sally MacBride-Wayfarer had experienced few of the discipline problems Honor had half-expected. The bosun wasn't the sort to put up with any nonsense, and Honor was reasonably confident she'd settled a few personnel problems with direct intervention of the sort Regs didn't envision. As Wayfarer's captain, Honor could live with that, but it sounded as if Tschu had problems of his own. And, she thought guiltily, she was the one who'd deliberately handed Wayfarer's officers more than their fair share of potential troublemakers.

"I've got about a dozen genuine hard cases," Tschu said. "Two of them are particular problems. They've got the training and experience for their jobs, but they're troublemakers, pure and simple. They sit around on their b.u.t.ts if someone doesn't stay on top of them every moment, and they pressure the newbies to do the same. I can't bust them, because there's no place to bust them to-they're already at the bottom of the heap."

"Do you want them removed?" Honor asked quietly.

"Ma'am, there's nothing I'd like better," Tschu said frankly, "but I think it would be the wrong move. What I've got to do is get them off their b.u.t.ts and keep them there-and make sure everyone knows I did it."

"I see." Honor nodded in agreement, pleased by Tschu's response.

"The problem is that some of my senior petty officers aren't getting the job done. My problem children are careful not try any c.r.a.p whenever an officer's around, but the watch logs tell me they're giving plenty of trouble when we're not there. The worst problem's Impeller One-the drive room chief on first watch doesn't have the guts to face the troublemakers down without commissioned support-but the situation's almost as bad on third watch." The engineer paused, then shook his head. "In a way, I understand why the chiefs in question are running scared," he admitted. "Engineering can be a dangerous place, and to be perfectly honest, I think at least the two I've already mentioned are capable of arranging 'accidents' for someone who ticks them off."

"Anyone who arranges an 'accident' in my ship will wish to heaven he or she had never been born," Honor said grimly.

"I know-and you'll only get them after I'm through with them," Tschu said. "But until they actually try something, all I can do is warn them, and I don't think they really believe me. Worse, the two senior chiefs who seem to be caving in don't think they believe it, either."

"So what do you want to do about them?"

"Well, Ma'am," Tschu glanced at Cardones, who nodded, then drew a deep breath. "What I want to do, Ma'am, is relieve both senior chiefs I've mentioned. I'll find some c.r.a.p a.s.signment for them-one that will both keep them out of other people's hair and make it clear to their people that they've been removed for lack of performance. But I'm already one senior chief short of establishment. If I boot them, I'll have to replace 'em with someone with the guts to do the job, and I'm fresh out of people with the seniority and att.i.tude for it."

"I see," Honor repeated, and her mind flickered over options. Given the rush with which her ships had been manned, they were stretched tight for personnel, and Tschu was right about his lack of senior petty officers. Nor did anyone else have equivalent personnel to spare the engineer.

"What about Harkness?" she asked Cardones after a moment.

"I thought about him, Ma'am. One thing I know for sure is that he wouldn't take any c.r.a.p off anyone, and only a lunatic would push him. The problem is that Scotty needs him. He may technically be a missile tech, but he's also the best small craft flight engineer we've got. He's not only keeping the pinnaces on-line, but spending a lot of his time on loan to the LAC squadrons, as well. If we pull him from Flight Ops, we're going to leave an awful big hole in that department."

"Point taken," Honor murmured, and looked back at Tschu. "I a.s.sume, Harry, that since you're making this proposal you have candidates of your own in mind?"

"Yes, Ma'am, but none of them have the seniority for the jobs. That's my problem. CPO Riley's already holding down a the chief of the watch's slot in Damage Control Central, and I figure I can b.u.mp him to senior chief and give him Impeller One on third watch. But that still leaves me needing someone for first watch, which is the real hot spot, plus a replacement for Riley in DCC. I've got two people in mind, but they're actually on their first deployments. I know they can handle the responsibility and do the job, but they're both only second-cla.s.s techs."

"You want to put a second-cla.s.s tech in a senior chief's slot?" Honor asked in a very careful voice, and Tschu nodded.

"I know it sounds crazy, Ma'am, but my watch bills are awful fragile. I've already made a lot of a.s.signments based on capability, not grade, because it was the only way to get the job done, but there's a limit to how much readjusting I can do without actually making the problem worse. If we b.u.mp the people I'm thinking about, it'll do the least overall damage to my a.s.signments."

"You don't have anyone senior you think could handle the slots?"

"No, Ma'am. Not really. Oh, I've got some really good people down there-I'm not trying to say they're all, or even most, a problem. But we're spread so thin-and spread out so widely-that, like Chief Riley, the ones with the necessary experience and, ah, intestinal fort.i.tude are already in essential spots. I can't pull one of them without making another hole, and I don't have anyone to replace them with to plug the holes."

"I see. Exactly which second-cla.s.ses are we talking about here?"

"Power Tech Maxwell and Electronics Tech Lewis, Ma'am," Cardones put in, keying his memo board and glancing down at it. "Both have first rate marks from school, both have performed in exemplary fashion since coming aboard, and both of them are a bit old for their rates. That's because they only enlisted after the war started," he added by way of explanation. "Maxwell's a drive specialist; he was merchant service-trained, a drive room chief with the D&O Line, and he really just needed the Navy course for certification. He's good, Ma'am, really good. Lewis is a gravitics specialist. She doesn't have any prior experience, but I've taken a hard look at her record since coming aboard. She's solid, and Chief Riley speaks very highly of her, especially as a troubleshooter. Harry wants her to replace Riley in DCC and Maxwell for Impeller One. Frankly, I think they'd do very well in those slots, but neither one of them is anywhere near having the seniority to justify it to BuPers."

"The Exec's right there, Ma'am," Tschu said, "but they're both really good, and they both have backbones. Neither one of them would back down from the bad apples."

Honor rocked her chair back again and glanced at Nimitz and Samantha without really seeing them while she considered. The problem, as neither Cardones nor Tschu needed to tell her, was that she couldn't just take two second-cla.s.s ratings and make them acting senior chiefs. If they were going to discharge their duties, they not only deserved the official grade to go with them, they needed it. There would be resentment enough from people they'd been jumped over, whatever happened; if they didn't receive the imprimatur of the rockers which normally went with the job, their moral authority would be suspect. But if Honor gave them those rockers, she'd have to be able to justify her actions.

The captain of a Queen's ship had broad authority to promote in the course of a deployment. Such promotions were "acting" until the deployment's end, as the one she'd given Aubrey Wanderman. But their confirmation by BuPers at deployment's end was almost automatic, with only the most cursory inspection of the individual's record and efficiency ratings, on the theory that a captain was competent to judge her people's suitability for promotion.

Yet if Honor jumped a technician second-cla.s.s clear to senior chief, BuPers was going to ask some very tough questions. Some captains had been known to play the favoritism game, and that sort of sudden elevation was unheard of. She'd have to be able to justify it by the results she obtained, and that justification had better be strong. Worse, the only way BuPers could rectify any mistake on her part would be to reduce Maxwell and Lewis to what it considered appropriate rates, which would equate to demotion for cause. It wouldn't be called that in their personnel jackets, but that demotion would follow them for the remainder of their careers. Any officer who ever read those jackets would be likely to a.s.sume they had been promoted out of favoritism, and they'd have to work far harder than anyone else to prove they hadn't.

She pulled her eyes back from the 'cats and focused on Tschu once more. He was watching her anxiously, and his anxiety was a sign he fully recognized the implications of his request. But he also seemed confident he was on the right track, and, unlike Honor, he knew the individuals in question.

"You realize," she said, since it had to be said, "that you'll put these people-Maxwell and Lewis-in a very difficult spot?"

"Yes, Ma'am." Tschu nodded without hesitation. "I'd really prefer to simply make it an acting position, but-" He shrugged, indicating his own awareness of what Honor had already considered. "As far as Maxwell is concerned, he knows his stuff A to Z, and my enlisted people know he does. They also know where he got his experience, and he's a big, tough customer. I doubt even Steil-" He paused. "I doubt even the worst troublemaker would want to push anything with him. Lewis isn't all that imposing physically, but I honestly believe she has the greater leadership ability, and she's some kind of magician at troubleshooting. She's weaker on theory, but she's stronger than ninety percent of my other people even there. I wouldn't be surprised to see her go mustang in another ten years and wind up doing my job, Ma'am. Maybe sooner, with the quicky OCS programs BuPers is talking about setting up. She's that good."

Honor simply nodded, but she was astonished by Tschu's estimate of Lewis's potential. The RMN had more "mustangs" who'd started out enlisted and earned their commissions the hard way than most navies with an aristocratic tradition, but it was unheard of for someone to single out a mere second-cla.s.s on her very first deployment as a future officer. A brief suspicion that Tschu might have personal reasons for pushing Lewis flickered across her brain, but she dismissed it instantly. He wasn't the sort to get s.e.xually involved with his enlisted personnel, and even if he had been, she surely would have sensed something from him through Nimitz.

The bottom line was that Harold Tschu was asking her to put her professional judgment on the line for two people she didn't even know. That took guts, since many captains would have delighted in taking vengeance on him if BuPers came down on them over it, but it didn't necessarily mean he was right. On the other hand, it was his department. Unlike Honor, he did know the people involved, and something had to be done. Every other department in the ship depended upon Engineering, and Damage Control would be absolutely critical in any engagement.

What it all really came down to, she mused, was how much faith she had in Tschu's judgment. In a sense, he'd backed her into a corner. She didn't blame him for it, but by proposing his solution, he'd given her only two options: agree with him, or disagree and, in so doing, indicate that she lacked faith in him. No one would ever know except her, Rafe, and Tschu himself . . . but that would be more than enough.

"All right, Harry," she said at last. "If you think this is the solution, we'll try it. Rafe," she looked at Cardones, "have Chief Archer process the paperwork by the turn of the watch."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Thank you, Ma'am," Tschu said quietly. "I appreciate it."

"Just go back down to Engineering and show me it was the right move," Honor replied with one of her crooked smiles.

"I will, Ma'am," the lieutenant commander promised.

"Good."

The two officers rose to leave, and Samantha hopped from the table top to Tschu's shoulder. But she didn't swarm all the way up it. She paused, clinging to his upper arm, and looked back at Nimitz-who turned and glanced at Honor with laughing eyes.

"Are you up to carrying two 'cats, Mr. Tschu?" she asked dryly.

"I'm a Sphinxian, Ma'am," the engineer replied with a small smile.

"That's probably a good thing," Honor chuckled, and watched Samantha flow the rest of the way to his right shoulder. Nimitz followed a moment later, perching on Tschu's left shoulder, and a sense of complacency suffused his link to Honor.

"Just don't stay out late, Stinker," she warned him. "Mac and I won't wait supper-and we're having rabbit."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

The freighter shouldn't have been there.

The dead hulk drifted in the outer reaches of the Arendscheldt System, so far from the G3 primary no one should ever have found it. And no one ever would have if the light cruiser had been less busy hiding herself. She'd taken up a position from which her sensors could plot the commerce of the system, evaluating the best locations in which to place other ships when the time came, and she'd detected the wreck only by a fluke. And, Citizen Commander Caslet thought coldly, because my resident tac witch had "a feeling."

He wondered how he could phrase his report to make it seem he'd had a concrete reason to chase down the faint radar return. The fact that Denis Jourdain, PNS Vaubon's people's commissioner, was a surprisingly good sort would help, but unless he could come up with some specific reason for making the sweep, someone was still going to argue he should have tended to his own knitting. On the other hand, the Committee of Public Safety didn't trust the military to ride herd on its own. That meant the people who pa.s.sed ultimate judgment upon its actions, by and large, had no naval experience . . . and that most people who did have that experience were prepared to keep their mouths shut unless someone screwed up royally. It should be possible to come up with the right double talk, especially with Jourdain's covert a.s.sistance.

Not that it mattered all that much to Caslet right this moment as he watched the secondary display which relayed Citizen Captain Brans...o...b..'s video to him. The citizen captain and a squad of his Marines were still sweeping the cold, lightless, airless interior of the ship, but what they'd already found was enough to turn Caslet's stomach.

The ship had once been a Trianon Combine-flag vessel. The Combine was only a single-system protectorate of the Silesian Confederacy. It had no navy-the Confederacy's central government was leery about providing prospective secessionists with warships-and it was unlikely anyone was looking out for its commerce. Which might explain what had happened to the hulk which had once been TCMS Erewhon.

He turned his head to glance at the main visual display's image of Erewhon's exterior, and his mouth twisted anew as he saw the ugly puncture marks of energy fire. The freighter had been unarmed, but that hadn't stopped whoever had killed her from opening fire. The holes looked tiny against her five-million-ton hull, but Caslet was a naval officer. He was intimately familiar with the carnage modern weapons could wreak, and he hadn't needed Brans...o...b..'s video to know how that fire had shattered Erewhon's interior systems.

Why? he wondered. Why in h.e.l.l do that? They had to know they were likely to wreck her drive and make it impossible to take her with them, so why shoot her up that way?

He didn't have an answer. All he knew was that someone had done it, and from all the evidence, they seemed to have done it simply because they'd felt like it. Because it had amused them to rape an unarmed vessel.

He winced at his own choice of verb as Brans...o...b.. led his Marines back into what had been Erewhon's gym and the pitiless lights fell on the twisted bodies. Whoever had hit Erewhon had been unlucky in their target selection. According to the manifest in her computers, the ship had been inbound to pick up a cargo from Central, Arendscheldt's sole inhabited world, and she'd been running light, with little in her holds but heavy machinery for Central's mines. Loot like that was low in value, and the raiders' fire had crippled Erewhon's hyper generator. There'd been no way to take the ship with them, and it seemed they'd had too little cargo capacity to transship such ma.s.s-intensive plunder. But they appeared to have found a way to compensate themselves for their loss, he thought with cold savagery, and made himself look at the bodies once more.

Every male member of the crew had been marched into the gym and shot. It looked like several had been tortured, first, but it was hard to be sure, for their bodies lay in ragged rows where they'd been mowed down with pulser fire, and the hyper-velocity darts had turned their corpses into so many kilos of torn and mangled meat. But they'd been luckier than their female crewmates. The forensic teams had already compiled their records of ma.s.s rape and brutality, and when their murderers were done with them, they'd shot each woman in the head before they left.

All but one. One woman was untouched, her body still dressed in the uniform of Erewhon's captain. She'd been handcuffed to an exercise machine where she could see every unspeakable thing the raiders did to her crew, and when they were done, they'd simply walked away and left her there . . . then cut the power and dumped the air.

Warner Caslet was an experienced officer. He'd seen combat and lived through the b.l.o.o.d.y horrors that were part of any war. But this was something else, and he felt a cold, burning hatred for the people behind it.

"We've confirmed it, Citizen Commander," Brans...o...b.. reported, and Caslet heard the matching hatred in his voice. "No survivors. We've pulled her roster from the computers and managed to ID all but three of the crew from it. They're all here; those three're simply so torn up by what the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds did to them that we can't positively identify them."

"Understood, Ray," Caslet sighed, then shook himself. "Did you get their sensor records?"

"Aye, Citizen Commander. We've got them."

"Then there's nothing else you can do," Caslet decided. "Come on home."

"Aye, Citizen Commander." Brans...o...b.. switched to his Marine command circuit to order his people back to Vaubon, and Caslet turned to Citizen Commissioner Jourdain.

"With your permission, Sir, I'll report the hulk's position to the Arendscheldt authorities."

"Can we do that without revealing our own presence?"

"No." Caslet managed not to add "of course not," and not just out of prudence. Despite his role as the Committee of Public Safety's official spy aboard Vaubon, Jourdain was a reasonable man. He had an undeniable edge of priggish revolutionary ardor, but the two and a half T-years he'd spent in Vaubon seemed to have dulled it somewhat, and Caslet had come to recognize his fundamental decency. Vaubon had been spared the worst excesses of the Committee of Public Safety and Office of State Security, and her pre-coup company had remained virtually intact. Caslet knew how lucky that made him and his people, and he was determined to protect them to the very best of his ability, which made Jourdain's reasonableness a treasure beyond price.

"If we report it, they'll know someone was here, Citizen Commissioner," he said now. "But without an ID header they won't know who sent it, and by the time they receive it, we'll already be over the alpha wall and into h-s.p.a.ce."

"Into hyper?" Jourdain said a bit more sharply. "What about our scouting mission?"

"With all due respect, Sir, I think we have a more pressing responsibility. Whoever these butchers are, they're still out there, and if they did this once, they'll sure as h.e.l.l do it again . . . unless we stop them."

"Stop them, Citizen Commander?" Jourdain looked at him with narrowed eyes. "It's not our job to stop them. We're supposed to be scouting for Citizen Admiral Giscard."

"Yes, Sir. But the Citizen Admiral's not scheduled to begin operations here for over two months, and he's got nine other light cruisers he can send to take a look for him before he does."

He held Jourdain's gaze until the citizen commissioner nodded slowly. There was no agreement in his eyes, but neither was there any immediate rejection of what he had to know Caslet was about to suggest, and the citizen commander chose his next words carefully.

"Given Citizen Admiral Giscard's other resources, Sir, I believe he can dispense with our services for the next few weeks. In the meantime, we know there's someone out here who deliberately tortured and butchered an entire crew. I don't know about you, Sir, but I want that b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I want him dead, and I want him to know who's killing him, and I believe the Citizen Admiral and Commissioner Pritchart would share that ambition."

Jourdain's eyes flickered at that. Eloise Pritchart, Javier Giscard's people's commissioner, was smart, tough-minded, and ambitious. The dark-skinned, platinum-haired woman was also strikingly attractive . . . just as her sister had been. But the Pritcharts had been Dolists, living in DuQuesne Tower, arguably the worst of the Haven System's housing units, and one dark night a youth gang had cornered Estelle Pritchart. It was Estelle's brutal death which had driven Eloise into the action teams of the Citizens' Rights Union and from there into the Committee of Public Safety's service, and Jourdain knew as well as Caslet how she would react to an atrocity like this. Yet for all that, what Caslet was suggesting made Jourdain uneasy.

"I'm not certain, Citizen Commander. . . ." He looked away, unwilling to maintain eye contact, and took a quick turn about the command deck. "What you're proposing could actually go against the intent of our orders," he went on in the voice of a man who hated what duty required him to say. "Our whole purpose out here is to make things so much worse the Manties have to divert forces to deal with it. Killing off homegrown pirates is going to lessen the pressure on them, at least a little."

"I'm aware of that, Sir," Caslet replied. "At the same time, I think we both know the task force's operations will to have the pressure effect we want, and the way they shot Erewhon up and deprived themselves of the ability to take her with them, not to mention what they did to her crew, suggests that these . . . people . . . are independents. I can't see any of the major outfits supporting a bunch of loose warheads like this, if only because of the lost prizes their actions must create. If they are independents, taking them out won't decrease the Manties' total losses in the Confederacy significantly. More than that, remember our orders concerning Andermani shipping."

"What about them?" Jourdain asked, but his tone told Caslet he'd already guessed. If everything went perfectly, Citizen Admiral Giscard's Task Force Twenty-Nine was supposed to remain totally covert, but in a burst of all too rare realism, someone back home had realized that was unlikely to be possible in the long run. It hadn't prevented them from ordering Giscard to do it anyway, but it had caused them to consider how the Andermani were likely to react if the Empire realized what was going on. The diplomats and military were divided over how the Andies would respond. The diplomats felt the longstanding Andermani-Manticoran tension over Silesia would keep the Empire from complaining too loudly on the theory that anything which weakened the Star Kingdom gave the Empire a better chance to grab off the entire Confederacy. The military thought that was nonsense. The Andies had to figure they were next on the Republic's list, and, as such, were unlikely to pa.s.sively accept the extension of the war to their doorstep.

Caslet shared the military's view, though the diplomats had triumphed-in no small part, the citizen commander knew, because of the Committee of Public Safety's lingering distrust of its own navy. But the admirals had been tossed one small bone (which Caslet suspected they would have been just as happy not to have received), and the task force's orders specifically required it to a.s.sist Andermani merchantmen against local pirates. Doing so would, of course, make it impossible to remain covert, but the idea, apparently, was that the gesture would convince the Andies the Republic's motives were pure as the snow where they were concerned. Personally, Caslet thought only a severely r.e.t.a.r.ded Andy could think anything of the sort, but the clause about protecting imperial shipping gave him a tiny opening.

"These people took out a Silesian ship here, Sir," he said quietly, "but it's for d.a.m.ned sure they wouldn't turn up their noses at an Andy. For all we know, they've already popped a dozen imperial freighters. Even if they haven't, they will if they get the chance. If we take them out and can prove we did, that gives us some extra ammunition for convincing the Andermani that we're not their enemies if they tumble to our presence."

"That's true, I suppose," Jourdain said slowly, but his gaze was shrewd as he looked into Caslet's eyes. "At the same time, Citizen Commander, I can't avoid the suspicion that the Empire isn't really paramount in your own thinking."

"It isn't." Caslet would never have admitted that to another people's commissioner. "What's 'paramount to my thinking', Sir, is that these people are s.a.d.i.s.tic b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, and unless someone takes them out, they're going to go right on doing things like this."

The citizen commander gestured at the scene from the gym, still frozen on his small display, and his face was hard.

"I know there's a war on, Sir, and I know we have to do a lot of things we don't like in a war. But this sort of butchery isn't part of it-or it shouldn't be. I'm a naval officer. It's my job to prevent things like this if I can, whoever the ship in question belongs to. With your permission, I'd like a chance to do something decent. Something we can feel proud of."

He held his breath as Jourdain's shoulders tightened at his last six words. They could easily be construed as an oblique criticism of the entire war against Manticore, and that was dangerous. But Warner Caslet couldn't let people who did something like this escape unpunished to go on doing it-not if there was any way at all he could stop them.

"Even a.s.suming I agreed with you," Jourdain said after a moment of pregnant silence, "what makes you think you can find them?"

"I'm not certain I can," Caslet admitted, "but I think we've got a fair chance if Citizen Captain Brans...o...b..'s people really have gotten us Erewhon's sensor records. The pirates had to be well within her sensor envelope when they fired into her. I don't expect military-grade data from a freighter's sensors, but I'm confident they got enough for us to be able to ID the emissions signature of whoever did it. That means we can recognize them if we ever see them."

"And how will you find them or even know where to look for them?"

"First, we know they're pirates," Caslet said, ticking off his points on his fingers as he made them. "That means we can be confident they're working another system somewhere. Second, we can be fairly certain none of the major outfits are funding them, since not even one of the Confederacy's system governors would be willing to look the other way for people who do this kind of thing. That means they're probably operating from a system no one else is interested in, one where they could move in and set up basing facilities of their own. Third, they seem to have come up dry here in Arendscheldt. We can't be certain they didn't pick someone else off the very next day, but shipping is spa.r.s.e out here, and Citizen Surgeon Jankowski's best guess is that they hit Erewhon less than two weeks ago. To me, that suggests they probably didn't get anyone else, in which case they've no doubt moved on to find richer pickings. Fourth, if I were a pirate moving from here, I'd go either to Sharon's Star or Magyar. Those are the next two closest inhabited systems-and of the two, Sharon's Star is closer. If they did go there, they may still be there, given how recently we know they were here. What I propose to do is inform Arendscheldt of Erewhon's location and move immediately to Sharon's Star. With luck, we may catch them there. If not, we can move on to Magyar, and since we'll be going straight through without hunting for prizes, we can probably beat them there."

"A star system is a big area, Citizen Commander," Jourdain pointed out. "What makes you think you'll spot them even if they're there?"

"We won't, Sir. We'll convince them to spot us."

"Excuse me?" Jourdain looked puzzled, and Caslet smiled thinly and waved for his tac officer to join them.

Citizen Lieutenant Commander Shannon Foraker was one of the very few officers who'd actually been promoted after the disaster of Fourth Yeltsin. It was she who'd spotted the trap into which Citizen Admiral Thurston's fleet had strayed, and it wasn't her fault she'd spotted it too late. Caslet knew Jourdain's report had had a great deal to do with Shannon's promotion, and the people's commissioner had come to share the rest of Vaubon's crew's near idolatry of the tac officer. She was one of the very few Republican officers who refused to feel despair over her hardware's inferiority to the enemy's. Indeed, she took it as a personal challenge, and the results she sometimes obtained verged on outright sorcery. She was so good, in fact, that Jourdain had decided to overlook the frequent lapses in her revolutionary vocabulary. Or perhaps, Caslet thought wryly, he'd finally realized Shannon was so deeply involved with her computers and sensors that she had no time to waste on little things like social nuances.

"Are you up to speed, Shannon?" the citizen commander asked as Foraker stopped beside his chair. She nodded, and he tipped his own head at Jourdain. "Then tell the People's Commissioner why we can count on the bad guys finding us."

"No problem, Skip." Foraker gave Jourdain a bright smile, and Jourdain smiled back, almost against his will. "These b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are on the hunt for merchantmen, Sir. What we do is tune in our EW, take about half our beta nodes out of the wedge to drop it to an energy signature a merchie might have, and come in where they expect to see a freighter. If they're out there, they'll have to come to within, oh, four or five light-minutes, minimum, to see through our EW and realize we're a warship. By the time they do, my 'puters and I'll have their emissions dialed in to a fare-thee-well. If they're the people who did this, we'll know it."