Then he hadn't heard. Barin felt a chill. He didn't want to be the one to tell the captain about Esmay's stupid explosion, or the quarrel they'd had.

"Brun is . . . like Esmay-Lieutenant Suiza-with the brakes off. They're both smart, both brave, both strong, but Brun . . . when the danger's over, she's put it completely aside. Lieutenant Suiza will still be thinking it over. And Brun would take chances, just for the thrill of it. She was lucky, but she expected to be lucky."

"Well, I know who I'd want on my ship," Escovar said. Then he touched a button on his desk.

"Ensign, what I'm going to tell you now is highly sensitive. We have some information on the young woman's condition after capture, but that information must not-must not-spread. It will, I think, be obvious to you why, when I tell you about it. I am doing this because, in my judgement, you may be able to help us concoct a way to help her, if you have enough information. But I warn you-if I find out that you've slipped on this, I will personally remove your hide in strips, right before the court-martial. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir." Barin swallowed.

"All right. The raiders left behind a vid they made of her after the capture. It's one of the ugliest things I've ever watched, and I've been in combat and seen good friends blown to bits. It is clear from this vid that the raiders intend to take her to one of their home planets and keep her there as breeding stock-"

"What!" That got out past his guard; he clamped his teeth together again. He'd thought of rape; he'd thought of ransom; he'd thought of political pressure, but certainly not that.

"Yes. And they've mutilated her: they've done surgery and destroyed her vocal cords." He paused; Barin said nothing, trying not to think of voluble Brun silent, unable to speak. Rage rose in him.

"We do not at this time know where she is; we do not know if she is still alive or not-though we suspect she is. We do not know her physical condition at any time subsequent to the vid left by the raiders. It may be impossible to find her."

Barin wanted to argue, to insist that they must-but he knew better. One person-even Brun, even the Speaker's daughter-was not enough reason to start a war.

"I see no reason for you to view the vid," Escovar said. "It makes voyeurs of us, who would least want to participate in something like that. But this may be a requirement later, and you need to know that for calculated cruelty without much actual injury, this is the worst I've seen. The important thing is that what you know about her might make rescue possible. We don't want to shoot her by accident because we failed to understand her way of thinking."

"Yes, sir."

"I would like you to record every detail you can remember about her-anything, from the color of her underwear to every preference she ever expressed. We're trying to get more information from other people she knew, but you and Lieutenant Suiza have the advantage of understanding the military perspective, and having known her in a dangerous situation."

"Yes, sir."

"I put no deadline on this, but I do consider it urgent. The longer she is in their hands, the more likely that permanent damage will result, not to mention political chaos." Barin digested that in silence. He dared not ask how her father was taking it-the little bit that he knew.

"Is her voice-permanently gone?"

"No way to tell until she's retrieved. The surgeon who viewed this tape says it depends on the exact type of surgery they performed. But she could always be fitted with a vocal prosthesis. If the only damage is to the vocal cords, she can whisper-and a fairly simple prosthesis will amplify that. However, they may have done more damage that we don't know about, and since their intent is to silence her, they may punish any attempt to whisper."

"But how are we going to find her?"

"I don't know, Ensign. If you come up with any ideas, be sure to share them. We have been assigned to the task force charged with finding and rescuing her."

Only a day later, Escovar called him into the office again. "They found the yacht. It was dead in space, tethered to an unmanned navigation station; local traffic hadn't noticed it. It was found by the maintenance crew that went out to service the station. Empty, and so far no idea where it came from. Forensics will be all over it . . . there is evidence of a struggle inside."

Barin's heart sank, if possible, even lower. A vid of Brun was one thing, but her yacht, empty and bearing signs of a fight, was not something likely to have been faked.

"Did she say anything to you-anything at all-that might give us a clue to where she could have been when she was attacked?"

"No, sir. I brought the notes I've made-" Barin handed them over. "Mostly we talked about the courses, about the other students and instructors. Quite a lot about Lieutenant Suiza, because Brun-Sera Meager-asked about her."

Escovar flipped through the pages, reading rapidly. "Here-she mentioned owning a lot of stock-did she ever say in which companies?"

"Not that I remember," Barin said. "She may have, but that didn't really interest me. She talked about hunting-on horseback, that is-and bloodstock, and something about pharmaceuticals, but I don't know anything about that, so-"

R.S.S. Shrike

They had been in jump for eight standard days, and Esmay had spent much of the last two shifts in the SAR ready rooms, briefing the specialist teams on the wonders of EVA during FTL traverses.

Solis had asked her to work up a training syllabus. She would have expected this to take only an hour or so, but the teams had ever more questions-good questions. If it had been possible, they would have gone EVA on Shrike; Esmay was glad to find that the fail-safe of the airlocks worked here as well as on Koskiusko, and no one could get out.

"We really should practice it, though," Kim Arek said. She had the single-minded intensity that

Esmay recognized as her own past attitude. "Who knows when we might need it?"

"Someone should develop suit telemetry that works outside the jump-space shielding," someone else said. "The temporal distortion could kill you if you didn't know when your air was running out."

"What techniques do you use when your air is running out?" Esmay asked. "I know what the manuals say, but the only time I saw my gauge hitting the red zone, I found 'stay calm and breathe slowly'

wasn't that easy."

"No kidding." Arais Demoy, one of the neuro-enhanced marines, grinned at her. "Imagine what it's like when you're not even on a ship, but knocked loose somehow. That happened to me one time, during a ship-to-ship. That's why we have suit beacons in the space armor. Try to go limp, if you can-muscle contraction uses up oxygen-and think peaceful thoughts."

The ship shuddered slightly, and everyone swallowed-the natural response to a downjump insertion; the insystem drive had been on standby for the past half hour, and now its steady hum went up a half tone.

"Prayer doesn't hurt," added Sirin. "If you're any sort of believer."

Esmay was about to inquire politely which sort she was, when the emergency bells rang.

"XO to the bridge; XO to the bridge-" She was moving before the repeat.

"Captain?"

Solis was glaring at her as if she had done something terrible, and she couldn't think of anything. She had been in his good graces; he seemed to have put aside his earlier animosity.

"We have received a flash alert, Lieutenant."

War? Esmay's stomach clenched.

"Lord Thornbuckle's daughter has been taken captive by an unknown force which threatens reprisals against Familias should any action be taken to rescue her. She has been mutilated-"

"Not . . . Brun!?" Esmay could feel the blood draining from her head; she put out a hand to the hatch coaming.

"Yes. There is, apparently, incontrovertible evidence of this capture. All ships are to report any trace of an Allsystems lease yacht Jester . . ." Solis shook his head, as if to clear it, and gave Esmay another long challenging look. "You don't seem pleased that your prophecy that Sera Meager would come to grief has been fulfilled-"

For a moment she could not believe what he said. "Of course not!" she said, then. "It has nothing to do with-I never wanted anything bad to happen-"

"You had best hope, then, that she is recovered quickly and in good health," Solis said. "Because otherwise, what everyone will remember-as I'm sure her father remembers-is that you bawled her out and she stormed away from Copper Mountain in a temper. You might as well realize, Lieutenant Suiza, that your future in the Regular Space Service depends on her future-which right this moment looks damned bleak."

She could not think about that; it was too dire a threat to think about. Instead, her mind leaped for any useful connection. "That trader," she said. Solis looked blank. "The little ship," Esmay said. "The one that trailed it in, the five bodies that weren't crew, but had been mutilated. That could have been Brun's ship."

Solis stared at her, then blinked. "You . . . may be right. It could be-could have been. And we sent the tissue for typing-"

"Sector HQ forensics-but they'll be coded as related to the Elias Madero. And we don't have any beacon data on the little ship."

"No . . . but we have a mass estimate. All right, Suiza-and now, one more time, and I want the truth: is there even the slightest glimmer of satisfaction?"

"No, sir." She could say that with no hesitation. "I was wrong to lose my temper at the time-I know that, and I would've apologized if she'd still been there when we got back from the field exercise. And I would not wish captivity on anyone, any time, least of all someone like her . . ."