The Shadow of Saganami

Chapter Fifty-Three

HMS Ericsson erupted over the hyper wall into the Spindle system in a starbust of blue transit energy twenty-seven days after leaving Dresden.

She sent her identity and notice that she carried dispatches to HMS Hercules via grav-pulse as soon as she made translation, and a trickle of consternation flowed uphill as the news of her arrival wended its way towards the superdreadnought's flag deck. Ericsson was a depot ship. She wasn't a dispatch boat, and she was supposed to be permanently stationed in Montana, supporting the Southern Patrol.

No one knew what she was doing here, but no one expected it to be good.

"Dispatches?" Captain Loretta Shoupe frowned at Hercules ' com officer. "From Montana?"

"That's what I'm assuming at the moment, Ma'am," the lieutenant commander said. "But assume is all I can do. Unless you want me to send a query back?"

Shoupe considered. According to the time chop on the arrival message, it had been receipted nineteen minutes before it was actually delivered to her. Allowing for decryption time and the fact that the communications officer had hand-delivered it to her, which had required him to walk it up six decks and down the next best thing to a quarter-kilometer of passages, that wasn't too bad. But the total transit time for Ericsson from the hyper limit to Flax orbit would be approximately two and a half hours, which meant it would be another two hours and fifteen minutes before she reached Hercules .

She scanned the brief message again. Whatever dispatch Ericsson was carrying, it was obviously important, since she'd listed it as Priority Alpha-Three. That called for it to be delivered via secure recording medium rather than transmitted.

"Yes," she said. "Ask them to confirm the originator and the addressee of their dispatches."

"From Terekhov, you say?" It was Rear Admiral Augustus Khumalo's turn to frown. "Aboard Ericsson ?"

"Yes, Sir." Shoupe stood just inside the hatch of his day cabin, and he beckoned for her to come further in and take a seat. "It's from Terekhov," she continued as she obeyed the silent order, "but she didn't come direct from Montana. According to her arrival message, she's inbound from Dresden."

" Dresden? " Khumalo sat straighter behind his desk, and his frown deepened. "What the hell was she doing in Dresden?"

"I don't know yet, Sir. I'm guessing Terekhov sent her there for some reason before she came on to Spindle."

"But she's carrying Alpha-Three priority dispatches from Terekhov , not from anyone in Dresden?"

"That's correct, Sir. Lieutenant Commander Spears requested and received confirmation of that."

"That's ridiculous," Khumalo fumed. "If his message is so damned important, why send it so roundabout? Going by way of Dresden added almost three weeks to the direct transit time! Besides," his frown became an active scowl, "there's a dispatch boat assigned to the Montanan government, and she could have made the trip direct from Montana in ten days, a fifth of the time he he took sending it this way!"

"I know, Sir. But I'm afraid I don't have enough information even to speculate on what's going on. Except to say we'll know one way or another in about-" she checked her chrono "-another hour and fifty-eight minutes."

"He's done what ?"

Baroness Medusa wasn't doing any frowning. She was staring at Rear Admiral Khumalo in stark disbelief.

"It's all in his dispatch, Milady," Khumalo said in the voice of a man still dealing with his own disbelief. "He's come up with some wild suspicion that the Republic of Monica- Monica , of all damned places!-is preparing some lunatic military operation here in the Cluster."

"So he stole a merchantship-a Solarian merchantship-put a Navy crew on board her, and sent her off to violate Monica's territorial space?" the Provisional Governor demanded.

"Ah, actually, Milady," Shoupe said a bit nervously, "that part of it makes a certain amount of sense."

" None of this makes any sense, Loretta!" Khumalo snarled. "The man's chasing phantoms!"

"That's obviously one possibility, Sir," Shoupe acknowledged. "But it's not the only one," she added stubbornly. Admiral and Provisional Governor alike turned to stare at her, and she shrugged. "I'm not saying he's right, Sir. There's no way for any of us to know that at this point. But if he is right, the sooner we confirm it, the better. And if we can possibly keep the Monicans from realizing we have confirmed it, the advantage could be enormous. And-"

"And going to call on Monica to investigate with a Queen's ship would make that impossible," Baroness Medusa finished for her.

"Exactly. A freighter, on the other hand, especially a Solly freighter, probably has a pretty good chance of getting in and out without arousing any suspicion."

"But if it does arouse any suspicion, and it's stopped and searched, the discovery that it has a Navy crew-a Navy crew that stole the ship in the first place-will make the situation ten times as bad as if he'd sailed straight through Monica in Hexapuma !" Khumalo threw in.

"Excuse me," Gregor O'Shaughnessy said, "but I came in on this late. What makes Captain Terekhov think the Monicans are up to something in the first place?"

"That's… a little involved," Commander Chandler said. Khumalo's intelligence officer glanced at the rear admiral considerably more nervously than Shoupe had. "He's included a summary of all the evidence which forms the basis of his analysis, and he's copied his intelligence files for you and the Provisional Governor, so you can check both the evidence and his conclusions for yourself. The short version's that he and Van Dort have an informant who claims the Jessyk Combine delivered a large number of shipyard technicians, well versed in naval applications, to Monica. Apparently, according to this same source, Jessyk's sending in a flock of freighters configured as minelayers, as well. At Jessyk's cost, not Monica's. And the same ship that delivered the technicians saw what looked like two very large repair or depot ships in Monica, at Eroica Station, its main naval yard, when it dropped off the techs. And it was also the ship used to run arms to Nordbrandt and Westman."

"Westman!" the baroness said suddenly. "That's another thing. What's happening with Westman in the middle of all this?"

"That's actually one of the bright points, Milady," Chandler replied. "Apparently, Westman's laid down his weapons and accepted an amnesty offer from President Suttles."

"Well, thank God there's some good news!" Khumalo grated.

"Forgive me, Admiral," O'Shaughnessy said, "but assuming this merchantship- Copenhagen , you said it was called?" Khumalo nodded, and the civilian intelligence specialist continued. "Well, assuming Copenhagen gets into and out of Monica without being intercepted or boarded, where's the problem?"

"Where's the problem?" Khumalo repeated. "Where's the problem ?" He glared at O'Shaughnessy. "I'll tell you where the problem is, Mr. O'Shaughnessy. Not content to steal a Solarian-registry freighter-a fact which is going to come out, eventually, you may be sure-and use it to violate a sovereign star nation's territoriality, Captain Terekhov's also seen fit to order every unit of the Southern Patrol in Tillerman, Talbott, and Dresden to join him in Montana. He's assembled himself an entire squadron-somewhere between eight and fifteen Queen's ships, depending on who was in-system and who was in transit between-and, assuming he kept to the schedule which he so kindly provided to us, he left Montana with that squadron ten days ago."

"Going where?" O'Shaughnessy was noticeably paler than he'd been a moment before, and Khumalo seemed to take a certain gloomy satisfaction in the change.

"His immediate objective is a point approximately one hundred light-years from Montana-thirty-eight light-years from Monica-where he expects to rendezvous with Copenhagen sometime in the next ten days to two weeks."

"Jesus Christ," O'Shaughnessy said prayerfully, "please tell me he's not going to-?"

"It's the only explanation for why he chose this peculiar way to get his dispatches to the Admiral in the first place, Gregor," Shoupe said heavily. "He's made it physically impossible for us to stop him."

"He's a frigging lunatic!" O'Shaughnessy snapped in a horrified voice. "What kind of loose warhead is the Navy giving ships to, goddamn it?"

Shoupe glared at him, anger sparkling in her dark brown eyes, and even Khumalo gave him a dirty look. The rear admiral opened his mouth, but Dame Estelle's raised hand stopped him. The Provisional Governor gave O'Shaughnessy a stern look, and pointed one index finger at him like a pistol.

"Don't let your prejudices run away with your mouth before you engage your brain, Gregor." She didn't even raise her voice, but it stung like the flick of a whip. O'Shaughnessy flinched visibly, and she gave him a cold, level stare. "Captain Terekhov's intentionally arranged matters so that he becomes the obvious sacrificial lamb if one becomes necessary. I once knew another Navy captain who would've done precisely the same thing if she'd believed what he apparently does. He may be wrong, but he is not a lunatic, and he's deliberately placed his career on the chopping block. Not simply to back up what he believes in, but so that the Queen will be free to court-martial him if she needs to prove to the galaxy at large that her Government had nothing to do with his totally unauthorized foray."

"I- " O'Shaughnessy paused and cleared his throat. "Forgive me, Admiral. Loretta. Ambrose." He bowed to each uniformed officer in turn. "The Provisional Governor's right. I spoke before I thought."

"Believe me, Mr. O'Shaughnessy," Khumalo said heavily, "I doubt very much that you could possibly think of anything unflattering to say about Captain Terekhov's mental processes which hasn't already passed through my own mind. Which isn't to say the Provisional Governor's wrong in any way. It's just that the entire notion seems so preposterous, so bizarre, I simply can't believe it's possible."

"I think… I think I can, actually," O'Shaughnessy said after a moment.

"Excuse me?" Khumalo blinked at him.

"If- and I say if- someone in the League's been deliberately stirring up and arming people like Nordbrandt and Westman to destabilize the Cluster, and if that same someone's prepared to upgrade the Monicans' naval capabilities, then it could actually make sense," the civilian said slowly.

"If they expect Monica to take us on, it had better be one damned massive upgrade of their capabilities!" Khumalo snorted.

"Granted. But maybe not quite as massive as you're assuming, Admiral."

Khumalo started to say something quickly, but O'Shaughnessy shook his head.

"I'm not questioning your naval judgment. But if Terekhov and Van Dort have put this together the way it sounds to me they have, then this is essentially a political operation which simply happens to have a military component. Oh," he waved both hands, "it's far too complicated, and it requires a degree of confidence verging on blind arrogance, but God knows the Sollies have demonstrated plenty of arrogance in the past. I think it's literally impossible for the sort of people who'd try something like this to conceive of a situation they can't control-or at least spin the way they want it-because they're so confident they have the power of the entire League behind them."

"Maybe so, but it's still ridiculous," Khumalo said. "Let's say they've tripled the Monican Navy's combat power." He barked a harsh laugh. "Hell, let's say they've increased it by a factor of ten ! So what? We could still wipe them out in an afternoon with a single division of SD(P)s or a squadron of CLACs!"

"Possibly. All right, probably ," O'Shaughnessy amended at the rear admiral's exasperated look. "But it's entirely possible that whoever put this thing together doesn't really care what happens to the Monicans. All they may care about is creating a pretext-an armed clash in the Cluster-that gives the Monicans an initial victory or two. Are you going to argue that an upgraded Monican Navy couldn't defeat your presently deployed forces? Especially if it caught them dispersed, by surprise, and engaged them in separate, isolated actions with its own forces concentrated for each attack?"

Khumalo glared again, but this time he was forced, grudgingly, to shake his head.

"Well suppose the Monicans did just that, and then called in Frontier Security, claiming we'd started it and asking for Solarian peacekeeping forces. What do you think would happen then?"

Khumalo's jaw clamped hard, and O'Shaughnessy nodded.

"It sounds to me as if Terekhov's already neutralized the terrorist movements which were supposed to destabilize things from the civilian, political side," he said. "If the Monicans or their Solly partners are looking for something they can use to spin the Solly media, they may already have everything they need, but at least it's not going to get any worse. And if he can neutralize the Monican Navy-assuming the Monicans really are part of a coordinated operation-he may just manage to stall the entire operation."

"Then you think he's right?" Shoupe asked.

"I don't have the least idea whether he's right or not," O'Shaughnessy said flatly. "In fact, I'm busy praying he's dead wrong. But I think it's possible he isn't, and if there really is something to his suspicions, then I hope to God he manages to pull this off."

"I don't know what I think," Khumalo said after a few heartbeats of silence. "But if he is right, we're going to need more firepower than I have right now. Loretta," he turned to his chief of staff, "draft a message to the Admiralty, highest priority. Attach copies of Terekhov's dispatches- all his dispatches-and request immediate reinforcement of the Lynx Terminus. Further inform them that I'll be ordering the remainder of my present forces to concentrate to cover the southern edge of the Cluster and that I'm moving on Monica personally with every ship available here in Spindle as soon as possible. Inform them," he looked across at the Provisional Governor, meeting her eyes levelly, "that although I remain uncertain of Captain Terekhov's conclusions, I endorse his actions and intend to support him to the best of my ability. I want that off by dispatch boat to Lynx and Manticore as quickly as humanly possible."

"Aye, aye, Sir," Shoupe said crisply, eyes gleaming with approval.

"It's going to be too late to make very much difference to Terekhov, either way, Loretta," the rear admiral said quietly.

"Maybe so, Admiral," she replied. "But maybe not, too."

"I sure hope this is going to work, Sir," Aikawa Kagiyama said quietly.

He and Ansten FitzGerald sat on Copenhagen's flight deck as the freighter accelerated steadily inward from the system's hyper limit. The merchantship's bridge was actually smaller than Hexapuma's, but it seemed incredibly vast because it was uncluttered by the elaborate plots, data displays, weapons consoles, and multiple command stations of a warship. It had been rather nice, in many ways, to have the space during the thirty-three-day voyage from Montana. At the moment, however, it simply served to remind Aikawa that he was aboard an unarmed, unarmored, absolutely defenseless, slow merchant vessel about to enter a potentially hostile star system under false pretenses.

It was not a pleasant thought.

"Well," FitzGerald said thoughtfully, glancing across at the midshipman manning the freighter's sensors, such as they were and what there were of them, "it's got a better chance of working than a visit from the Nasty Kitty would have, Mr. Kagiyama."

Despite the tension, Aikawa actually chuckled, and FitzGerald was glad to see it. The young man's humor still lacked the spontaneity and edge of mischievous wickedness which normally typified it, but at least he was no longer troubled by obvious bouts of depression. The Captain had been right. Assigning him to Copenhagen and working his posterior off had done wonders. And FitzGerald was also grateful for the time it had given him to get to know the youngster better. With only five officers, including Aikawa, in the entire ship, he'd learned more about each of them in the last T-month than in the previous six.

Not that learning more about some of them had been as pleasant as learning about others.

The freighter's acting captain glanced at the small com screen which showed the view from the optical pickup mounted on Lieutenant MacIntyre's skinsuit helmet. The engineering officer's personnel management skills impressed FitzGerald even less here in Copenhagen than in Hexapuma . The smaller ship's company only magnified her ability to irritate and annoy the experienced ratings and noncoms under her command, and FitzGerald was beginning to question whether or not his and the Captain's original theory about the reason for that was accurate. Lack of self-confidence was one thing, but some people-and FitzGerald was starting to think MacIntyre might be one of them-simply had too much little-tin-god in them to ever make good officers. She was actually a superior technician, and it had shown as she and her skinsuited work party prepped the recon drone in Copenhagen's cavernous cargo hold, however-

"Just hold it a minute, Danziger!" he heard the lieutenant snap suddenly. "I'll tell you when I'm ready to kick it loose, damn it! Don't you people ever pay attention to what you're doing?"

"Yes, Lieutenant. Sorry about that, Lieutenant," the senior sensor rating replied, and FitzGerald winced. Calling an officer by his rank was certainly proper procedure, but it could also become a backhanded swipe at one as junior as MacIntyre was. Especially when it was used in every single sentence… and delivered in the elaborately correct tone Danziger had just employed.

I'm going to have to have a little talk with her once we get back to Hexapuma. I hope it'll do some good. Although I'm not all that confident it will.

"All right," MacIntyre said more calmly a few minutes later. "All systems check. Let's get it out of here."

The working party lifted the massive drone-well over a hundred tons-easily in the depressurized cargo hold's micro-gravity. They walked it aft to the gaping hatch, big enough to engulf some destroyers bodily, and used presser-tractor jacks to kick it clear of the ship. MacIntyre kept her eyes on it, which had the effect of holding it in the center of FitzGerald's display, and the commander felt a flicker of relief as the drone's emergency reaction thrusters flared. Its onboard programming obviously had it, and it was adjusting its position to be certain it passed cleanly through the open kilt of Copenhagen's impeller wedge before lighting off its own very low-powered wedge.

"Drone successfully deployed, Sir," MacIntyre announced over the com channel dedicated to her link to FitzGerald.

"Very good, Ms. MacIntyre. Get the hold secured, if you please."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"Well, Aikawa," FitzGgerald remarked as he returned his attention to the midshipman, "so far, so good. Now all we need to do is recover it again before we leave the system."

"We've been challenged by Monica Astrogation Central, Sir," Lieutenant Kobe announced.

"And about time, too," FitzGerald replied with just a bit more studied calm than he actually felt. "Even a light-speed system should've been asking us who we are before this," he added, and Kobe grinned.

"Shall I respond, Sir?"

"Now, now, Jeff!" FitzGerald shook his head. "This is a merchie, not a Queen's ship, and merchies don't do things the way men-of-war do. Let's not make anyone suspicious by being too on the bounce about all this. Astrogation Central will still be there whenever we get around to answering them."

"Uh, aye, aye, Sir," Kobe replied after only the briefest of pauses, and FitzGerald chuckled.

"At least a third of the freighters in space leave their com watch on auto-record, Jeff," he explained, "and Sollies are even worse about that than most. Generally, there's an alarm set to alert the fellow who's supposed to be keeping an eye on communications that a particular incoming message is important. More often than not, though, the computers aboard a ship like this are too stupid to make that kind of evaluation reliably, so the system simply records anything that comes in and otherwise ignores it until a message has been repeated at least once. At that point, it figures someone really wants to talk to somebody and sounds an alarm to get the com officer's attention. That's why we often have to hail merchantships two or three times."

Kobe nodded, obviously filing away another one of those practical bits of knowledge that places like the Island so often forgot to pass along. FitzGerald nodded back and turned his command chair to glance at the midshipman.

"Anything interesting showing up, Aikawa?"

"Sir, if someone were obliging enough to set off a ten- or twenty-megaton nuke at a range of ninety or a hundred klicks, this ship's passive sensors might actually be able to pick it up."

FitzGerald snorted, and Aikawa smiled.

"Actually, Sir," he said more seriously, "I am picking up a few impeller signatures now. Not very many, though, and I can't tell you much more than that someone's moving under power out there. If I had to guess, I'd say four or five of them are LACs, but there's at least a couple acting like bigger warships. Maybe destroyers or light cruisers."

"What do you mean, 'acting like bigger warships'?" FitzGerald asked, curious about the midshipman's logic chain.

"It looks to me as if they're carrying out maneuvers," Aikawa replied. "Two of the ones I think are LACs are moving along under only about two hundred gees with a current velocity of less than twelve thousand KPS. From their vectors, it looks like they're pretending they just crossed the alpha wall and they're heading for Monica. And with that acceleration, they almost have to be playing the roles of merchantmen. Meanwhile, these other impeller signatures over here-" he indicated a pair of unidentified icons on the freighter's deplorably detail-free "tactical plot" "-are chasing after them from astern. Looks to me like they're pretending to be commerce raiders, and effective commerce raiders would just about have to be hyper-capable. Which probably makes these two destroyers or cruisers."

"I see." FitzGerald nodded in approval. "Are any of them in a position to pick up our drone?" he asked after a moment.

"I doubt anything in the system has the sensors to spot our bird at anything over five kiloklicks, Sir. And these fellows are so far off the drone's programmed track they couldn't pick it up even with Manticoran sensors that knew exactly where to look."

"I'm glad to hear it," FitzGerald said. "But don't get too confident about the quality of the other side's sensors. If somebody really has been upgrading their naval capabilities, they could have a lot more sensor reach and sensitivity than ONI's estimated."

"Yes, Sir," Aikawa said, just a bit stiffly. FitzGerald only smiled. The youngster's stiffness was directed at his own overconfidence, not at the commander for having pointed it out to him.

FitzGerald tipped back his command chair and glanced at the time display. Copenhagen had been in-system for almost thirty-five minutes. Her velocity was up to 14,641 KPS, and she'd reduced the range to the planet Monica by well over twenty-six million kilometers-down to 9.8 LM. And it had been about six minutes since Kobe received Astrogation Central's challenge. So in another three or four minutes, the people who'd sent it would realize Copenhagen hadn't replied. Call it five minutes to allow for the usual Verge sloppiness. Copenhagen would have traveled about another 4.5 million kilometers during the interval, which would reduce the light-speed transmission time by only fifteen seconds, so it would be roughly another sixteen minutes before the second challenge arrived. The time dilation of Copenhagen's velocity-her tau was barely.9974-was so low as to have no effect at all on message turnaround.

Which meant he would enjoy the entire sixteen minutes worrying about whether or not the Captain's stratagem was going to work after all. Taken all in all, that might not be so bad a thing. After all, it meant he'd get to use up sixteen minutes of the six hundred or so he intended to spend in the system worrying about something besides that damned reconnaissance drone.

The reconnaissance array in question proceeded along its preordained path in sublime electronic indifference to any anxiety which might afflict the protoplasmic creatures who'd sent it on its way.

It was a very stealthy array, the hardest to spot, lowest-signature drone the Royal Manticoran Navy was capable of building, which was very hard to spot, indeed. It was equipped with extraordinarily capable active sensors, but those were locked down-as, indeed, they almost always were when the drone or its brethren were deployed. There was very little point in being undetectable if one intended to flounder around shouting at the top of one's lungs. The drone's creators had no intention of allowing their offspring to do anything so gauche, and so they had also equipped it with exquisitely sensitive passive sensors, which produced no telltale emissions to give away the drone's position.

Or, in this case, the simple fact of the drone's existence.

It sped onward, under the paltry acceleration (for one such as itself) of a mere 2,000 KPS. Because of the profile on which it had been launched, and the need to avoid the fusion-fired furnace of the system's G3 primary, which lay almost directly between it and its intermediate destination, it would find itself forced to travel two light-hours in order to cover a straight-line distance of only a little over forty light-minutes. After that, it would be required to travel an additional thirty-one light minutes in order to rendezvous once more with the plebeian ship which had launched it upon its journey. Thus its pokey rate of acceleration. It had ten hours to kill before it could possibly be collected once again, and its languid acceleration would give it almost twenty-four minutes to look around at its intermediate destination before it had to get back underway if it was going to keep its rendezvous schedule.

The drone didn't care. At such a low rate of acceleration, it had a powered endurance of nearly three T-days, and if it couldn't begin to match the massive acceleration rates of ship-to-ship missiles, unlike those missiles, its far lower-powered impeller wedge could be turned on and off at will, extending its endurance almost indefinitely. Besides, the far weaker strength of its wedge, combined with the stealth technology so lovingly built into it, was what made it so difficult to detect in the first place. Let the glamour-hungry attack missiles go slashing across space at eighty or ninety thousand KPS, shouting out their presence for all the galaxy to see! They were, at best, kamikazes anyway, doomed to Achilles-like lives of brief, shining martial glory. The recon drone was an Odysseus-clever, wily, and circumspect.

And, in this instance, determined to get home at last to a Penelope named Copenhagen .

"Sir, Astrogation Central's repeating its challenge. And, ah, they sound just a touch testy about it," Lieutenant Kobe added.

"Well, we certainly can't have that, can we?" FitzGerald replied. "All right, Jeff. Turn on our transponder. Then give it another four minutes-long enough for the com officer to get to his -station, turn off the alarm, and get a response from whoever has the watch-and send the message."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

The communications officer pressed the button that activated Copenhagen's transponder, squawking its perfectly legal ID code. Four minutes later, he pressed his transmit key, and the prerecorded message went zipping out at the speed of light.

Aikawa Kagiyama muttered something under his breath, and FitzGerald glanced at him.

"What is it, Aikawa?" the commander asked, and the midshipman looked up with an embarrassed expression

"Nothing, really, Sir. I was just talking to myself." FitzGerald raised an eyebrow, and Aikawa sighed. "I guess I'm just a little worried about how well all of this is going to work out."

"I hope you won't mind me pointing out that this is a hell of a time to be just getting started worrying about that, Aikawa!" Kobe said with a chuckle, and the midshipman smiled wryly.

"I'm not just getting started, Sir," he told the lieutenant. "It's just that the worrying I was already doing has suddenly taken on a certain added emphasis."

Everyone on the bridge chuckled, and FitzGerald smiled back at him. It was good to have something break the tension, he reflected. And, in all honesty, he shared some of Aikawa's trepidation. Not about the message itself, but about who might be receiving it.

Thanks to the manner in which Hexapuma had taken possession of Copenhagen , all the freighter's computers had been intact and undamaged. True, the secure portions of their databases had been protected by multiple levels of security fences and protocols, but most commercial cybernetics-even Solarian cybernetics-simply weren't up to the standards demanded by governments and military forces. There were exceptions, of course. Without De Chabrol's assistance, for example, it would have been effectively impossible for Hexapuma's technicians to break into Marianne's secure systems. A proper team of ONI specialists could have managed it, in time, but it wasn't something to be lightly undertaken under field conditions.

But a run-of-the-mill , honest freighter like Copenhagen neither needed nor could afford the same degree of security, and Amal Nagchaudhuri and Guthrie Bagwell had hacked into the ship's computer net with absurd ease. Which meant Lieutenant Kobe had access to Kalokainos Shipping's basic house encryption and authentication codes. With those in hand, he and Nagchaudhuri had crafted a totally legitimate message in the company's encryption format. The message content was just as totally bogus, of course, but there wouldn't be any way for anyone to realize that until it ultimately reached its final destination-which happened to be the office of one Heinrich Kalokainos on Old Earth herself.

When old Heinrich finally opened and read that message, he was likely to be just a little bit irritated, FitzGerald reflected. But the fact that its addressee was Kalokainos Shipping's CEO and largest single stockholder ought to discourage any officious underling from fiddling around with it in the meantime. And that message was Copenhagen's ostensible reason for being here.

The fact that Kalokainos didn't maintain an office of its own on Monica might have been a problem, but there was a gentleman's agreement among the shipping agents of the dozen or so most powerful Solarian shipping lines to act as one another's representatives when circumstances required. Although Copenhagen's message didn't carry any sort of emergency priority (aside from its intended recipient), FitzGerald didn't doubt the Captain was right-the Jessyk Combine agent on Monica would normally accept it and forward it Solward. The only question in the commander's mind was whether or not the Jessyk agent would be feeling equally helpful in light of whatever deviltry Jessyk was up to here.

Well, that, and the question of whether or not he'll ask any questions about it-or us-that we can't answer.

The problem was that while, as nearly as they could determine from Copenhagen's logs, she'd never visited Monica, those logs were unfortunately far from complete. And even if they hadn't been, Copenhagen had worked the rest of the Talbott Cluster for over five T-years. The ship herself might never have visited Monica, but that was no guarantee the members of her crew hadn't, or that the Jessyk agent in the system didn't know her legal skipper. Or, at least, what the legal skipper's name was.

Only one way to know , he told himself, and settled back to find out while Copenhagen continued toward Monica orbit.

"So, of course I'll see to it your message is forwarded, Captain Teach," the man on FitzGerald's com said. "You realize, I hope, though, that it may be some time before I'm able to get it aboard a ship headed for Sol."

"Of course, Mr. Clinton," FitzGerald said. "I never expected anything else. Frankly, it's an unmitigated pain in the ass, but the damned Rembrandters insisted that I relay it to our home offices. And you can guess how often Copenhagen sees Sol!"

"About as often as I do," the Jessyk agent agreed with a chuckle.

"If that," FitzGerald replied. "At any rate, Mr. Clinton, let me thank you once again." He paused for a moment, then shrugged. "I'm afraid I'm not familiar with Monican customs procedures. Since we're only passing through, will there be any problem with my sending a shuttle down just long enough to hand over the message chip to you or one of your representatives?"

"As long as you're not landing or transshipping any cargo here, I shouldn't think so," Clinton assured him. "If you'd like, I can have my secretary meet your shuttle at the pad. If your crewman hands it to him through the hatch while the pad Customs agent watches to be sure we're not smuggling any laser heads or nukes back and forth, there's no reason for him to even board it."

"I'd deeply appreciate it if you could do that," FitzGerald said with absolute sincerity.

"No problem. Our offices are right here at the port. My secretary can hop over to the pad in five, ten minutes at most. I'll contact traffic control to get your pad number and have him waiting."

"Thank you again," FitzGerald said. "Kalokainos is going to owe you a pretty sizable return favor someday. I'll instruct Lieutenant Kidd to pass the chip to your man." He paused again, then cocked his head. "Tell me, Mr. Clinton, how do you feel about Terran whiskey?"

"Why, I'm quite partial to it, Captain Teach."

"Well, I just happen to have a case of genuine Daniels-Beam Grand Reserve in my personal cabin stores," FitzGerald told him. "Do you suppose your Customs agent would object to Lieutenant Kidd's passing a bottle of that along to you with the chip?"

"Captain," Clinton said with an enormous smile, "if he were so foolish as to object to an innocent little gift like that, he'd be off my payroll in a heartbeat!"

"I thought that might be the case." FitzGerald grinned. "Consider it a small token of my appreciation for your assistance."

It was obvious Clinton found the "small token" eminently acceptable, and no wonder, FitzGerald thought as they completed their conversation with protestations of mutual respect and indebtedness. A bottle of Daniels-Beam Grand Reserve went for about two hundred Manticoran dollars. This particular bottle came from Captain Terekhov's personal supply, and FitzGerald hoped Clinton would enjoy it thoroughly.

Especially in light of what was probably going to happen to the Jessyk agent's career when his employers figured out what Copenhagen had really been up to in Monica. It wouldn't exactly be fair of them to blame Clinton for not realizing what was happening, but Mesan-headquartered businesses weren't particularly noted for their passionate attachment to the concept of fairness.

He glanced at the time display again. Right on schedule. In fact, they might be doing just a bit too well, especially if the Customs agent was going to be as obliging as Clinton thought. Well, that was all right. He could always find some reason to spend an extra few minutes in orbit before heading back out for the hyper limit. Or to accelerate just a tad more slowly than he had on the way in.

Copenhagen wouldn't be leaving on a direct reciprocal of her arrival vector. Instead, she would head away from the system primary almost at right angles to her initial approach. There was no reason anyone should be suspicious, since he'd be filing a flight plan for the Howard System, but it would substantially reduce the total distance the recon drone would be forced to travel to return to the ship which had launched it.

The recon drone continued upon its unhurried way. Its passive sensors quivered like enormously sensitive cat's whiskers, and evasion programs waited patiently to steer it away from any vessel or sensor platform it detected which might have detected it, in turn. No such threats revealed themselves, and the drone brought its forward progress gradually to halt, fifteen light-seconds from the naval shipyard known as Eroica Station.

The tiny, stealthy spy hovered there in the vast emptiness, imitating-with a remarkable degree of success-a hole in space. Passive sensors, including optical ones, peered incuriously but painstakingly at the bustling activity around the space station. Ships and mobile spacedocks were counted, emission signatures (where available) were meticulously recorded. Moving vessels were scanned most closely of all, and careful note was taken of the two enormous repair ships sharing Eroica Station's solar orbit.

The drone spent fifteen of its twenty-four available minutes in silent, intense activity. Then it turned away, activating its impeller wedge once more, and went creeping off towards its scheduled rendezvous with Copenhagen with nine precious minutes in reserve against unforeseen contingencies.

Had it been capable of such things, it would undoubtedly have felt a deep sense of satisfaction.

But it wasn't, of course.