Once a Hero

Chapter Thirteen

“We have a problem, Suiza,” said the voice in her ear. Esmay thought they could have said something more helpful. She knew they had a problem—she had a problem. “If that’s the only mine, if it blows it will probably damage only those forward compartments, which as far as anyone knows are empty anyway. And you, of course.”

No comment seemed necessary.

“We haven’t spotted any other mines—but we can’t figure out why there’s only one. If there is only one.”

Did they expect her to figure it out?

“It’s not like the Bloodhorde, but there’s no doubt that the ships that attacked were Bloodhorde ships. Came right in for the kill—Wraith got unequivocal scan data—and then broke off when Sting and Justice closed and started raking them.”

Esmay wondered about that. By rumor, if a Bloodhorde group closed with prospect of a kill, it would not break off just to avoid contact with another ship. Unless its ships were having trouble . . . she wished she could see the scan data herself. Not likely, if the mine blew. But . . . she dared a transmission. “Were they close enough to plant the mine by hand?” she asked.

“Don’t transmit,” the voice said. “If it hears you—”

“You wanted to know why,” she said. “Is Wraith’s scan tech available?”

“Wait.”

She could imagine the scene in Koskiusko’s communications shack—perhaps Major Pitak was there; certainly the captain was. A different voice came with a tiny physical tap on her EVA suit. “You’re going to upset ’em, Lieutenant.” That voice sounded amused; she wasn’t sure what it meant. She shrugged enough to move the shoulders of the suit; a chuckle came through the link. “You got an idea, huh? Good for you. I can’t figure out why that thing hasn’t blown us both—but I’m willing to live with that.” Another chuckle. Esmay felt her own stiff face relaxing into a grin.

“Suiza, just in case you’ve got an idea, we’ve patched you through to the Wraith senior scan tech. Just try to keep your transmissions short, do you understand?”

“Yes, sir. Did the Bloodhorde ships come close enough for an EVA team to plant the mine by hand, or by pod?”

A pause. Then yet another voice. “Uh . . . yes . . . I suppose. We were trying to rotate, because of the damage to the starboard shields and hull. They got pretty close . . .”

Esmay wanted to yell “NUMBERS, dammit!” but she could hear a roar in the background that might be the scan tech’s supervisor saying the same thing, for the next transmission gave her the figures she wanted. Close enough indeed; her mind raced through the equations for both EVA and pod movement . . . yes. “How soon after that did the Bloodhorde ships pull away?”

“As soon as Sting and Justice came back,” the tech said. Esmay waited, confident in that background bellow. Sure enough, the tech came back on with the precise interval. Esmay felt as if someone had run a current down her spine. Maybe they’d spotted the Fleet ships before they were fired on, or maybe they hadn’t. They’d planted a smart mine, programmed for a specific task, and then they’d gone away, leaving Wraith damaged but not killed. And why?

What did the Bloodhorde expect to happen next? A damaged Familias military vessel would not be abandoned, so they couldn’t have hoped to capture it—in fact, if they had, why mine it? Damaged Familias vessels . . . went to repair facilities. Either dockyards, in this case too far away for a cripple like Wraith to reach, or the mobile dockyards called DSRs . . . Koskiusko. What would the Bloodhorde know about DSRs? Whatever was in the public domain, certainly—and Esmay knew that the public knew DSRs were capable of taking the smaller Fleet ships into the DSR’s vast central repair bay.

That made sense. She thought it all through, then transmitted it. “The Bloodhorde chose a small ship to disable, planted a smart mine, then withdrew, so that Wraith would lead the way to a DSR. The mine’s programmed to go off when Wraith enters the repair dock—disabling the DSR. It’s not strong enough to destroy it, but it would probably be unable to make jump—”

“Certainly unable to make jump,” came Pitak’s voice in her ear.

“And thus would be immobilized for attack.” Esmay paused, but no one said anything. “Either they followed Wraith and her escort to this system, or the mine will also have a homing module to lead them here. They want the DSR, almost certainly for capture, since they could have covered Wraith with enough mines to blow the whole DSR if they’d wanted.”

Another long pause, during which the contact hissed gently in her ear. Then: “It makes sense. Never thought the Bloodhorde were that sneaky . . . and what they want a DSR for, unless they’ve got significant battle damage somewhere . . .”

Esmay rode the wave of her confident intuition. “They lack technical skills they need; they don’t have a military-grade shipyard. They want a DSR to upgrade their entire space effort. In one blow they get manufacturing facilities, parts, and expert technicians. Given a DSR, they could upgrade any of their ships to Fleet equivalency—or quickly learn to manufacture their own cruisers.”

The long hiss that followed conveyed both horror and respect. “Of course,” someone said softly.

“Which means,” Esmay said, “that this thing won’t go off until the parameters match whatever they think the inside of a repair bay looks like, or until someone tries to remove it. It doesn’t know it’s been detected until we try to do something about it.” Relief weakened her knees; she leaned back against the unseen person behind her. “Which means we can walk away and it won’t blow—as long as we don’t put Wraith in the repair bay.”

“Not so fast,” said Pitak, over a gabble of other voices. “You still need to get good scan on it.”

“Not active,” Esmay said. “But yes, I can do vidscan.” Without waiting for orders or permission, she moved, leaning over to aim at it. There it was, the blunt-ended cylindrical shape, the little sensor pod on its wire now retracted to form a knob on the cylinder. She could pick out a serial number, and one of the swirling shapes that meant something in the language of Aethar’s World. Probably something rude; the outside of Bloodhorde ships were usually decorated with slogans intended to shock and frighten their neighbors.

She patched the vidscan signal to her headset, and waited for Pitak to say they had enough data. Finally she heard, “That’s enough—now the guy behind you is going to withdraw—” A final tap on her shoulder, and then she saw the shadow cast by Koskiusko’s light waver as he left. The smart mine’s sensor pod didn’t move. Curious, but welcome. She waited a little longer, watching her oxygen display count the seconds and minutes, then lifted one stickpatched boot from the hull. The sensor pod stirred, rotating on its wire stalk.

“The sensor pod’s moving a bit,” Esmay said. “How about dousing the light while I get loose.”

“We were afraid the change might trigger something,” the voice said.

“If it’s programmed for repair bays,” Esmay said, “then light will activate the matching program, but dark will turn it off.”

The light behind her vanished, and with it the crisp shadow she’d cast. She turned up the sensitivity of her helmet scan, and just made out the mine . . . the sensor pod did not move. Slowly, she folded herself up as much as the EVA suit allowed, so that she could grip her safety line close to the pin and kick the other boot free. No movement from the sensor pod. Slowly, she worked herself hand by hand backwards, around the curve of the hull, until she was out of sight of the mine. Then she stuck her boots onto the hull and walked back to the line connecting Wraith to Koskiusko. There the specialists of the bomb squad waited for her, in the strange bulky suits she had seen only in training cubes.

“Suiza, come back to Koskiusko,” she heard.

“Yes, sir.” She wanted to know what the bomb squad was going to do about the mine; now that she was here, she might as well stay. But the voice in her ear had left her no options. And she’d need another auxiliary tank to stay out longer.

“Good job, Lieutenant,” said one of the bomb squad. “Glad you figured out it was safe for me to come back.”

“Me, too,” Esmay said, then hooked herself to the transfer line and pushed away.

By the time she had clambered out of her EVA suit, she felt like collapsing in a heap on the deck. The undersuit clung to her nastily; she hated having to stand around in it while the chief in charge of suits examined and checked off the condition of the one she turned in. After one glance, she ignored the big mirror at the end of the bay; her hair looked like dirty felt glued to her head.

Showered and properly dressed once more, she headed to the compartment number waiting in her message bin. T-1, Deck 9, number 30 . . . that was in the administrative area of the Senior Technical Schools, down the passage from Admiral Livadhi’s office.

The conference, when she got there, consisted of Captain Hakin, Admiral Dossignal, Admiral Livadhi, Commander Seveche and Major Pitak from Hull and Architecture, and two lieutenant commanders she did not know. One wore the insignia of the 14th Heavy Maintenance, with the collar flashes of weapons systems; the other, also with weapons collar marks, wore the armband of ship’s crew. The captain spoke first.

“Well, Lieutenant . . . glad your guess about the mine’s programming turned out to be right. At least as far as you were concerned.”

“Me, too, sir.” Esmay hoped the edge in the captain’s voice had as much to do with the situation as with her.

“I don’t suppose you’ve had time to figure out how we’re going to evacuate Wraith and repair her without triggering the mine’s recognition program?”

“No, sir.” He was definitely displeased with her; that frosty glare could mean nothing else.

“What I’d like to know is how much time delay is built into that program,” said Commander Seveche, after a quick glance at Dossignal. “Would they have sent it open-ended, or would they have built in a hard delay, for just this situation?”

Eyes shifted to Esmay but she had nothing to say. Shrugging was inadvisable in the midst of that much brass, so she simply didn’t say anything.

“Do we have any Bloodhorde analysts aboard?” asked Dossignal, looking at Admiral Livadhi.

“Not really, Sy. They pulled the best for some sort of policy/strategic planning thing back at Rockhouse, and the next best is on the flagship with Admiral Gourache. I’ve got an instructor for the tactics course, but his specialty is Benignity history. He’s hitting the databanks . . .”

“Abandoning Wraith is not an option,” the captain said. “The admiral’s made it clear that we’re not to give the Bloodhorde any chance at advanced technology, and even stripped, that hull has too many goodies to let fall into the hands of the Bloodhorde, or even a random pirate. If she can’t be repaired well enough to get her back to safety—”

“She can be,” Admiral Dossignal said. “This is exactly the kind of damage we’re equipped to repair. The only question is how to do it safely, without risking the integrity of this ship.” He glanced at Commander Seveche, who took over.

“We have to repair that hull breach, and reset the engines, or she won’t make jump again . . . and that means working all around that mine, even if we don’t stick her into the repair bay. I’d like to hear from the weapons experts.”

The captain nodded, and the crew weapons officer spoke. “Given the kind of mine, there are several approaches we can use, depending on the amount of damage tolerable on Wraith . . .”

“Wraith’s already got enough damage—” Pitak sounded outraged. Dossignal held up his hand and she subsided.

“We realize you want to minimize any further damage, but there’s a trade-off between speed and safety here. We can get the remnants of Wraith in to repair faster if some additional damage is acceptable; if not, we’re looking at a long period of preparation in an already damaged ship—dangerous time, for both the workers and both ships—to attempt something which may not be possible.”

“Explain what procedures you might use,” the captain said.

“Ideally, we’d detach the mine, enfold it in a foam-mold casing, and set it off at a safe distance. However, we—Lt. Commander Wyche and I—believe that there’s considerable risk of detonating the mine if we try to detach it. So the next best thing is a foam bed both interior—behind the hull where it’s attached—and on the exterior. Here the problem is how much of the interior needs to be foamed. And that homing signal we suspect, though that depends on which kind it is.”

“How long before you can set it off?”

“That depends on what H&A tells us.” He turned to Commander Seveche. “Will we need to foambed the interior as well? How much additional damage would such a mine cause?” With a gesture, Seveche passed the question to Pitak.

Pitak scowled; Esmay recognized thought in progress. “There’s already so much damage forward—we’re going to have to replace most of the structure anyway. On the other hand, it’s stretching our resources, especially if we expect an attack. Do you think it’s an aimed charge, or just a straightforward blow-em-up?”

He shook his head. “If they went to the trouble of hand-placing this thing, I’d bet on a directed charge, probably with substantial penetrating power. It’s definitely a hull-cracker.”

Someone down the table stirred. “But if they wanted to disable the DSR, wouldn’t the charge be directed outwards?”

“Not necessarily,” Pitak said. “An explosion of that magnitude, in the repair bay, could be expected to damage sensitive equipment—certainly enough to keep us from withdrawing Wraith and closing the bay.” She paused, and no one interrupted. “Sorry, but I think you’d better foambed the interior, at least these compartments—” She called up a display, and highlighted some of the forward compartments. “If we can possibly save these: seventeen A, eighteen A and B, and twenty-three A, it’ll save us considerable time on the repairs.”

“Then—with the precautions we need to protect personnel—we’re talking 96 hours to foambed those compartments and the exterior—”

“Why the exterior?” asked someone else.

“Because we don’t want pieces flying around hitting us,” Pitak said. “Or the rest of Wraith.”

“And I’ll need additional squads,” he said. “The more people, the faster it’ll go. As long as they’re not working in close, it should be safe enough.”

“Unless it has a fixed delay of some kind—”

“Unless stars sprout horns . . . sure, that’d kill us all, but there’s no way to know but go.”

“Very well, commander,” the captain said. “I presume damage control would have personnel trained to spray a foam bed?”

“Yes, sir.”

Captain Hakin turned to his exec. “Make sure he gets what he needs. Major Pitak, can H&A do anything to expedite this?”

Pitak nodded. “Yes, sir. With the captain’s permission, I have construction crews standing by to widen access to the compartments that must be foamed; they’ve been clearing debris already—”

“I thought we pulled everyone out,” the captain said.

“We did, sir, but when tactical analysis concluded that the mine had its programming set for our internal bay, I sent them back over.”

“Very well. Keep me informed.” With that, the captain rose; everyone stood as he left. Pitak beckoned to Esmay.

“Lieutenant, you’re not ready to direct a crew in this kind of situation; I want you to hold down the office—be my communications link. I’m going over myself.”

“Yes, sir.”

Pitak started down the passage; Esmay followed.

“You’ll be in charge of expediting the transfer of materials and tools as we need them. I’ve set up a model in my office, but it’ll need modification—they always do. Keep in mind the limited staging area on Wraith. We don’t want things backing up there.”

The model lasted only about an hour, then Pitak was calling in changes, and Esmay thought of nothing but her assignment. She relayed requests for tools, for materials, for personnel. Several glitches required intervention from above; she sicced Commander Seveche’s office on the stubborn senior chief in the Technical Schools who didn’t see why an instructor in weapons systems should dismiss a class and go help deal with the mine. He’d argued that the 14th was supposed to have its own bomb disposal squad . . . but polite requests through appropriate channels soon produced a cheerful woman with one prosthetic hand and her custom EVA suit slung on her back. Esmay directed her to the right EVA hatch, and went back to work.

She would like to have watched the work on Wraith; she knew only vaguely what a “foam bed” was, and what it was supposed to accomplish. But Pitak’s construction teams had found more casualties in the forward compartments, most dead and the rest unconscious.

“The artificial gravity failed up here, along with the communications lines—some shrapnel, probably, sliced them like a hot knife. It’s a wonder any of ’em are alive, and I don’t know how many will survive—they look pretty bad. But they’re all out now, so you can send over the next load of stuff as soon as they’re logged clear of the lanes.”

Esmay looked at the cluttered screen that now represented everything between Koskiusko and Wraith. A query to the scan supervisor tagged the medical evac pod on her screen; when it was out of the way, she put a priority tag on the shipment Pitak had asked for, and talked to the sergeant minor in T-3 responsible for sending it off.

She was concentrating so hard on keeping up with Pitak’s requests that she jumped when the sergeant at the other console said “Wow!” and then “Good thing they foamed it . . .”

“The mine?” she asked, when she got her breath back.

“Yeah. Want a replay?”

She couldn’t resist; he transferred the replay to her console. Wraith’s hull breach no longer faced Koskiusko; she could just see the edge of it. That meant the mine was out of line of sight; the viewpoint shifted. Now, where she remembered the mine should be, an irregular grayish blob strongly side-lit by Koskiusko’s floods.

“They took this from a pod,” the sergeant said. “Relayed on tightbeam . . . they had several out there watching.”

This view closed in, until she could see that the blob looked like whipped cream or icing piped into a slumpy cylinder. As she watched, another blob of foam appeared, rising then slipping sideways to seal off the end of the cylinder.

“They foamed all the compartments inboard,” the sergeant said. “And foamed a cylinder around it, aiming it away from us . . . then finally put a lobe over the top. That’s when . . .”

It blew; the blob of the foam bed burst apart, and something shot out the top, away from Wraith.

“All the ejecta went the right way,” the sergeant said. “Good design. Reports are that very little blew in the interior. All they have to do now is get all that foam back out, and we can do that in the big bay.”

“I don’t understand how it works,” Esmay said. “I thought if you confined an explosion, that only made it worse.”

The sergeant shrugged. “I don’t really understand it either, but I had a buddy back in Sector 10 who was in their bomb squad. He said you had a choice—you could try to aim it somewhere, and let all that energy escape in a direction that didn’t bother you, or you could put enough padding around it to absorb the force.”

“But the foam bed blew apart—”

“Well, maybe it needed to be thicker . . . but it was thick enough to aim the ejecta in a direction that doesn’t bother us. Notice where it’s going?”

“Away from Kos is all I know or care,” Esmay said.

“Toward the jump point exit,” the sergeant said, grinning. “We can always hope some fool Bloodhorde ship comes roaring in here and gets a mouthful of its own bullet.”

“Suiza!” That was Pitak, wanting to know if she could find someone to go into inventory and get the lights and limbs of the idiot who insisted they didn’t have any more temporary hull curtains in stock and would have to wait until more were fabricated. “I know what I’ve used,” Pitak said. “And I know what I put into stock, and what was on the inventory when we left Sierra Station. There ought to be sixteen more of ’em, and I want ’em two hours ago.”

“Lots of blood,” said the nanny at the forward triage station.

“At least they’re breathing.” The extrication team rolled the slack shape in blood-soaked uniform off the board and onto a gurney with practiced skill, then reached for the next. “They’re all unconscious; we did a quick-scan of the first two and found blood levels of slow-oxy . . . probably someone popped the emergency supply when the hull blew.”

“So you don’t have a survey?”

“No—if they aren’t missing limbs, we’re just bringing them out with all due precautions.” All due precautions to preserve whatever spinal cord integrity was left.

“Number?”

“Thirty or so, I think. I’m not sure yet. We’re just now getting access to the most forward compartments.”

The extrication team turned away, heading back for another load.

Esmay watched as Wraith’s damaged bow edged into the repair bay. It was easy to forget how large that bay was, empty, but the ship gave a reference for the eye.

“Suiza!” That bellow had to be Pitak. “Quit looking at the view, and give me a readout.”

“Yes, sir.” Esmay glanced at her board. Pitak’s concern was the change in center of gravity as Wraith entered Koskiusko’s artificial gravity field. Rapid changes could stress the internal structure of Koskiusko beyond safe limits. “Is Wraith’s artificial gravity on in any part of the ship?”

“No, it’s not.”

“There’s a torque force developing in the contralateral midsections . . . only 5.4 dynes right now, but it’s increasing in a linear relationship to the mass of Wraith within Kos’s field.”

“That’s expected . . . not desirable, but expected. Transfer a plot of that to my screen and to Power.”

“Yes, sir.” Esmay locked in the curve, keyed for the transfers, and continued to watch her board. Her gaze kept twitching upward to the view of Wraith’s approach, but she yanked it back each time. The strain she’d noticed dipped below the curve; she called Pitak. “It’s dropped below line—”

“Good. That means Power is compensating. But watch for that bulge ahead of the damage—that’s something we can’t really model for the field generator.”

Centimeter by centimeter, Wraith edged in. When the mooring lines were secured, warning bells rang throughout the DSR. “Cradles shifting in T-minus 15 minutes. Cradles shifting—”

Esmay transferred her final readouts to Major Pitak and Power, then withdrew to a monitoring station behind the double red lines. Only a few essential personnel would ride the cradles during shift.

“I hate to think what that mine would have done to the cradle mechanisms,” someone said behind her. She glanced back. Barin Serrano, his dark brows lowered.

“It’s taken care of,” she said. She wondered what he was doing there; his assignment, in scan, wasn’t needed at the moment.

“Lieutenant Bondal sent me down here to see if Major Pitak had decided where to put the new RSV units,” he said, anticipating her question.

“She hasn’t told me—but I’ll check for you. Have you heard anything about Bloodhorde ships coming in?”

“No . . . and I’m sure I would have, because . . . well, anyway, I would have. But I do know that Sting and Justice have jumped out.”

“Why?”

“They delivered Wraith . . . and they’re supposed to be patrolling out wherever they were. Maybe they thought they’d spot anyone following Wraith’s trail in.”

Gar-sig (Packleader) Vokrais woke to the bustle of a medical ward; when he turned his head, he saw his pack-second Hoch staring back at him.

“What happened?” he asked, in his best Familias Standard.

“Effing sleepy gas,” Hoch said. “We got hauled in as casualties . . . I don’t think this is the same ship.”

They lay, listening to the chatter around them.

“We’re on the DSR,” Hoch said finally, with a wolfish grin. “Right inside.”

“All two of us,” Vokrais said. He lifted his head cautiously since no one seemed to be paying any attention to him. He was wearing a clean pale blue shift of some crinkled fabric, and all up and down the rows of beds were the rest of his assault team dressed the same way. Most of them, anyway. He counted only twenty-five of the original thirty, and Tharjold wasn’t there—their technical expert, the one who knew most about Familias technology. Nor Kerai, nor Sij . . . his mind ticked off the missing, and consigned them to either of the two possible eternal destinations. The rest were there, all butt-naked in hospital gowns . . . but all awake now, staring at him in wild surmise.

Before he had time to worry about how he was going to get his team clothed and out of medical, a heavyset man with a scowl worthy of a Bloodhorde senior sergeant bustled down the aisle between the beds.

“All right, sleepyheads,” he said. “You’re awake, and none of you got worse than a dose of trank. Come with me—I’ll get you clean clothes and put you to work . . . we’ll need your help to get Wraith repaired.”

“Our IDs?” Hoch asked. He sounded half-strangled, but it was probably just his attempt to control his accent.

“I’ve got ’em—already passed on the stats to Supply, so you’ll have something close to fitting.”

Vokrais rolled out of bed, surprised to find that he wasn’t at all dizzy. The others followed; he saw arms twitch as the automatic habit of saluting conflicted with awareness of their position. Their guide didn’t notice; he was scowling at a list in his hand.

“Santini?”

Vokrais scrabbled through his memory of the alien vocabulary, and finally remembered that the nametag on the uniform he’d stolen had been something like that, in their misbegotten tongue. “Uh . . . yes, sir?” Someone sniggered, three beds down, to hear him say “sir” to a Familias enemy. Someone would feel the lash for that later.

“Wake UP, Santini. Listen—says here you were a specialist in ventilation?”

“Sir,” Vokrais said, wondering which of several meanings he knew for that word mattered here. Ventilation? As in, artificial breathing? As in, perforating?

“That’s good—I’ll send you over to Support Systems as soon as you’ve got your gear. Oh, and Camajo?” Silence again. Vokrais prayed to the Heart-Render that someone would have the sense to say something.

After too many heartbeats, Hoch coughed—an obviously fake cough, to Vokrais’s ear—and said, “Yes, sir?”

“I guess you’re all still a bit dazed—they told me to give you another hour, but we need help now. Camajo, you’ll report to Major Pitak, in H&A. Now, let’s see . . . Bradinton?”

This time, the others caught on quicker, and someone said “Yes, sir,” almost brightly. Vokrais wondered if the others remembered the names on the uniforms they’d stripped from dead men, or if they were just answering blind. It probably didn’t matter. Supposedly the Familias ships had a fancy way of figuring out who was really one of their own, but so far he hadn’t seen any sign of it.

Eventually all of them had answered to their new names—names which felt uncomfortable even held so lightly, names with no family chant behind them. For a moment Vokrais wondered if the strangers had families . . . if those families had chants of their own . . . but this was not the right kind of thought for the belly of an enemy ship. He pushed it away, and it fell off his mind like a landsman off the deck of a dragonship in rough seas. Instead he thought of the battle to come, the hot blood of enemies that would soak his clothes, not cold and clammy this time but properly steaming. He had not minded stripping the dead and putting on their blood-soaked uniforms . . . not after the rituals of the Blooding . . . but it had been distasteful to feel it already cold.

His pack followed him through the enemy ship; he could feel their amusement even as his own bubbled just beneath the surface. The enemy . . . more like prey than enemy, like sheep leading a wolf into the fold in the mistaken notion that it was a sheepdog. Even as he accepted a folded pile of clothes, he was sure that his pack could have taken this ship bare naked, with only their blood-hunger. Instead . . . he dressed quickly, carefully not meeting anyone’s eyes. He had worn Familias clothing before, in his years as a spy . . . the soft cloth, the angled fastenings, felt almost as familiar as his own.

The lack of weapons didn’t. He missed the familiar pressure of needler and stunner, knocknab and gutstab. Familias troops carried weapons only into battle . . . and DSRs didn’t fight.

The helpful enemy had leapfrogged them over the first two phases of the plan, handing them the chance to disperse throughout the ship. With any luck at all—and the gods definitely seemed to be loading luck upon them—no one from Wraith would notice that the men wearing the uniforms of shipmates were not shipmates at all.

Vokrais followed the route displayed on the palm-sized mapcom, sure that he could deal with whatever he found when he arrived.

“No, I’m not going to send anyone from Wraith back over there—not after they’ve been knocked out for a week or so with sleepygas. Their cogs won’t be meshing for another two shifts, and we don’t want accidents.” Vokrais heard the end of that and wondered whether feigning mental illness would do anything useful. Probably not. They might send him back to the medical area, where he could end up in bed with no pants on. Better to seem dutiful but slightly confused—the confusion at least was honest enough.

Familias technology impressed him as it had before—so much of it, and it worked so well. No familiar stench of sweat and gutbreath. Clean air emerged from one grille, and vanished into another; the lights never flickered; the artificial gravity felt as solid as a planet. The little communications device and the data wand he’d been given were smaller and worked better than their analogs on the Bloodhorde ships.

This was what they had come for, after all. The technology they had not been able to buy or steal or (last and least efficient ploy) invent. Bigger ships, better ships, ships that could take on Familias and Compassionate Hand cruisers and win. The technicians to keep the technology working . . . Vokrais eyed the others around him. They didn’t look like much, but he had somewhat overcome the prejudice of his upbringing; he knew that smart minds could hide in bodies of all shapes. But hardly one in fifty looked like any kind of warrior.

Meanwhile . . . meanwhile his pack was dispersed throughout the DSR, very handily. Probably several supervisors would decide, as his had, to assign them simple duties. Eventually a meal would come, and they’d have access to eating utensils, so easily converted to effective hand weapons.

An hour . . . two. Vokrais worked on, willing enough to sort parts, package them in trays, stack them on automatic carriers. There was no hurry; they had gained time by being put to sleep and admitted as casualties, an irony he hoped to be able to share at the victory feast with his commander. Once he caught a glimpse of another pack member, carrying something he didn’t recognize; for an instant their gazes crossed, then the other man looked away. Yes. Huge as this ship might be, they would locate one another, and their plan would work. And the longer they had to explore it, to learn its capabilities, the easier to slit its guts open when the time came.

Esmay glanced up as a shadow crossed her screen. camajo, the nametag said, clipped to a uniform that fit its wearer like a new saddle . . . technically fitting, but uneasy in some way. The insignia of a petty-light had been applied recently, and not quite straight, to his sleeve.

“I was told to report here,” the man said. “To Major . . . Major Pitak.” His eyes roved the compartment as if scanning it for hidden weapons; his glance at Esmay had been dismissive. Her skin prickled. He reminded her of something—someone—her mind, suddenly alert, scrabbled frantically in memory to figure out what. She looked back at the screen before she answered.

“She’s in with Commander Seveche. Are you from Wraith?” She couldn’t imagine anyone from Koskiusko giving her quite that look. It wasn’t the “you’re not really Fleet are you?” look, or the “you’re that kid who commanded Despite, aren’t you?” look, or any of the others she’d have recognized.

“Yes . . . sir.” The pause snagged her attention away from the screen graphics again. “We were . . . in the forward compartment . . . the sleepygas . . .”

“You’re lucky to be alive,” Esmay said, instantly forgiving the man’s odd behavior. If he’d been through all that, he could still be affected by the drug. “We’ve got Wraith in now; work’s already started. You can wait here for Major Pitak, or at Commander Seveche’s office.”

“Where’s Commander Seveche’s office?” the man asked. The shipchip in his pocket bleeped, and he peered cross-eyed at a space between him and Esmay. She knew what that meant—the shipchip was projecting a route.

“Just follow your shipchip,” she said. He turned, without the proper acknowledgement; Esmay started to say something, but . . . he had been gassed, and might be still a bit hazy. Something wasn’t quite right . . .

“Petty-light . . .” she said. He stopped in mid-stride, then turned jerkily. Something not right at all. His eyes were not the eyes of someone dazed by drugs . . . his eyes had a bright gleam half-hidden behind lowered lids.

“Yes . . . Lieutenant?”

She could not define what was wrong . . . it was not anything so positive as disrespect, which she had experienced often enough. Respect and disrespect occurred in a relationship, a connection. Here she felt no connection at all, as if Petty-light Camajo were not Fleet at all, but a civilian.

“When you do see Major Pitak, tell her that the simulations for fabrication have arrived from SpecMat.”

“The simulations have arrived . . . yes . . . m . . . sir.” Camajo turned, moving more decisively than someone fogged on sleepygas, and was gone before Esmay could say more. She scowled at the screen. Yes . . . m . . . sir? What had he been about to say?

She felt uneasy. Had Wraith had traitors on its crew? Was that why it had suffered such damage? Why was Camajo alive, uninjured, after such a hull breach between him and the rest of the ship?

This was ridiculous. She had not noticed anything amiss in Despite, had not recognized that any of the traitors were traitors. She had not been uneasy this way then. Perhaps that experience had made her paranoid, willing to interpret every discrepancy as ominous. Camajo had been lucky, that was all, and now he was disoriented, on a strange ship with none of his familiar companions.

That didn’t work out. The casualties on Despite, traitor or loyal, had none of them stumbled over the familiar Fleet greetings and honorifics. With blood in his mouth, as he died, Chief Major Barscott had answered “Yes, sir . . .” to Esmay. How many of the survivors in those forward compartments had been lucky? How lucky? And was it luck?

Camajo’s eyes . . . his gaze . . . reminded her of her father’s soldiers. Groundpounders’ eyes . . . commandos’ eyes . . . roving, assessing, looking for the weaknesses in a position, thinking how to take over . . . Take over what?

Scolding herself, Esmay flicked to the next screen, but her mind wandered anyway. In the civil wars—she called it that now, though to her family it was still the Califer Uprising—both sides had tried infiltrating the others’ defensive positions with troops wearing stolen uniforms, using stolen ID. It had worked a few times, even though both knew it was possible. She’d never heard of such a thing happening in Fleet. Ships weren’t infiltrated by individuals . . . they were attacked by ships. Very rarely in Fleet history were attempts at hostile boarding mentioned; battle zones were too dangerous for EVA maneuvers. Pirates sometimes boarded individual commercial vessels . . . but that wasn’t the military. It would take . . . it would take a single badly damaged Fleet ship, one that could not detect the movement of individuals in EVA gear . . . a hull breach that let them in . . . a way to get the right uniforms . . . no. She was being silly.

Major Pitak came in while she was still arguing with herself. “That Camajo fellow from Wraith must be still half-tranked,” she said, dropping a half-dozen cubes onto her desk. “I couldn’t get out of him which simulations were in . . . sent him on down to E-12; they can use him for a runner if nothing else. Can’t cause much trouble that way.”

Esmay lost her argument with prudence. “Major, I was wondering about a security breach . . .”

“Security breach! What are you talking about?”

“Camajo. I’m not sure, but . . . something wasn’t right.”

“He’d been out for a week; that scrambles anyone’s brain. How could he be a security breach?”

“He just didn’t react the way he should,” Esmay said. “The way he looked at me—it wasn’t a tranked-out sort of expression.”

Pitak looked at her, alert. “You’ve been through one mutiny; if it hasn’t made you paranoid, maybe you would notice something wrong. So you think he might be a traitor, like Hearne and Garrivay?”

“No, sir. I was thinking . . . what if someone infiltrated Wraith. Through the hull breach maybe. Couldn’t Bloodhorde troops have gotten in there, before Wraith jumped out?”

“You mean like boarding a watership in a pirate story? Nobody does that, Suiza, not in real life in deep space. Even pirates send people over in pods. Besides, how would they survive through jump?”

“Well . . . there were survivors in the forward compartments.”

“But those were Wraith crew, in Wraith uniforms, with their names on the crew list. I was there myself, Suiza. I didn’t see anything that looked like Bloodhorde commandos, just wounded who’d been knocked out by sleepygas to conserve oxygen.”

“You’re sure.”

Pitak looked at her with a combination of exhaustion and irritation. “Unless you’re suggesting that the Bloodhorde cleverly dressed their soldiers in our uniforms—uniforms that just happened to have the right ID patterns in the cloth, and the right nametags on the pockets—and wounded them, drenched them in their own blood, then left them there to jump in a damaged ship—?”

“I suppose they really were wounded?”

Pitak snorted. “I’m no medic—how would I know? They were unconscious and covered with blood, wearing our uniform. What more do you want?”

It was a silly question, but Esmay didn’t bother to point that out. The itchy feeling between her shoulders wouldn’t go away. “Camajo wasn’t wounded . . . I think I’ll check with sickbay, if you don’t mind.”

“Snarks in a bucket, Suiza, why don’t you keep your mind on your work—or am I not giving you enough? Let Medical worry about the wounded, unless you want to transfer over there—”

“No, sir.” Esmay heard in her own voice the stubborn conviction that she was right.

Pitak glared at her. “You’re worried about something.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Spit it out then.”

“Sir, I . . . I have a bad feeling—” Pitak snorted and rolled her eyes like a skittish mare; Esmay persisted. “The thing is, sir, if they could get close enough to hand-plant a mine, they could have put some troops aboard.”

“Without anyone noticing? That’s—”

“Sir, Wraith was isolated at the time of the attack; individuals in EVA gear—or even in small pods—wouldn’t have shown up on scans by Justice and Sting; Wraith’s own scan was badly damaged. The tactical analysis suggested that the Bloodhorde might want to capture a DSR, not just destroy one. I know we don’t usually consider the Bloodhorde as having this sort of planning ability, but consider: if they can get a commando team aboard the DSR, they could cause enough disruption to make it easier for a follow-up ship or wave of ships to board and capture it.”

“I can see where that might be a plan, Suiza, but I repeat: those wounded wore our uniform. Our uniform, with the Fleet recognition code in the weave . . . you think they stole a bale of our cloth and made up uniforms, then stole Wraith’s personnel list—”

“No, sir.” Esmay’s mind raced, trying to catch up to her intuition. “Suppose . . . suppose they boarded, forward of the breach, counting on the confusion. Communications to the forward compartments failed, with the damage . . . so whatever they did up there wouldn’t be known aft. They could have overpowered any uninjured crew, killed them, put on their uniforms, spaced their own uniforms and the dead—”

“It still sounds like something out of an adventure cube, Suiza, not like real life.” Pitak chewed her lip. “Then, on the other hand, the Bloodhorde go for the dramatic. You would argue then that the blood belonged to the real RSS personnel, now dead—and that inside those bloody uniforms, the enemy were unwounded?”

“Yes, sir, unless jump transit did them some harm. Those compartments weren’t any too sound, you said.”

“No . . .” Pitak glowered at her. “I must say, Suiza, your passion for completeness can be a real pain sometimes. We had enough to do already.” She reached for the comm switch. “But I’ll check.”

For the time it took for Pitak to work her way through the obstacles the medical section put in the way of the merely curious, Esmay tried to settle to her own assignment. The lines and figures blurred on the page . . . she kept seeing in her mind what she had not seen with her own eyes, the dark compartments of Wraith’s bow section, cluttered with debris and unconscious men and women. Men and women with Camajo’s—or whatever his name really was—eyes, the alert eyes of those on a mission. She ran her stylus along a column of figures, trying to force her mind to some useful task.

A change in the tone of Pitak’s voice brought her upright, fully alert.

“Oh?” Elaborately casual, that. “Interesting—I helped evacuate some of them, you know, and they were covered with blood—yes. I see. Just the effect of the sleepygas? Are they still in sickbay then?” Her voice sharpened. “When?” Her eyes met Esmay’s. “I see.”

Esmay waited, as Pitak closed the circuit.

“If you retain this habit of being right, Suiza, you’re going to be hated.” Esmay said nothing. “They weren’t wounded, any of them. Twenty-five males . . . seemed a little dazed and confused when they woke up, and three hours ago they were sent off to various workstations around the ship. Camajo, as we both know, was sent here, to H&A. If they were Bloodhorde . . . that many Bloodhorde loose in our ship could do us real damage . . .”

“Yes, sir.”

“And I don’t even know where they are. A petty-chief named Barrahide, from Personnel, came and got them. Not somebody from Wraith, because all Wraith personnel who aren’t in sickbay are busy helping our people with damage assessment.” As she talked, Pitak was scrolling through the communications tree. “Ah. Here we are. Extension . . . 7762.” Another call, but this time Pitak talked as she waited for someone to pick up on the other end. “That’s if they’re Bloodhorde. They might not be. We need someone from Wraith . . . or rather, the captain does. But I’ll see what Barrahide can tell me.”

“Someone might take a look at the communications lines from the forward compartments to the rear in Wraith . . . was it explosive damage or were they cut?”

“Good idea, Suiza. You call my chief and tell him to check—Oh, Chief Barrahide? Listen, about those Wraith crew you took out of sickbay . . .”