Sporting Chance

Chapter Thirteen

Naverrn Station expected ships to arrive and depart on their own power—a fortunate circumstance. With Kulkul and Petris on the boards, the Better Luck powerup went smoothly, the displays rising through orange and yellow to the steady green of full insystem power. The FTL drive next—it was only slightly risky to powerup the jump units while docked. Using them was another matter; Heris had no intention of risking another near-planet jump.

“Weapons?” Heris asked. Arkady Ginese flashed her a wicked grin.

“Code Two,” he said. “We’ll go three once we’re outside the near-scans.” Bringing their weapons to full readiness might set off the Station’s own defensive armament. Too many bloody results had taught Stationmasters to take no chances with ships in dock.

“Nav?”

“Ready, ma’am,” Sirkin said. Her voice was steady; she had plotted an unusual course around to the Guerni Republic. They both hoped it would confuse any chance encounter, and avoid any confrontation with ships of the Compassionate Hand.

“Naverrn Station, the Better Luck requests permission to undock—” Still formal.

“On the count, Better Luck . . .” On the count, the cables and umbilicals detached, some coiling back to the Station and others to the ship. Tiny attitude controls nudged the ship back, away from the rotating Station. With the power on, the ship’s own artificial gravity created their internal field; they felt none of the change in acceleration so visible in the external monitors as Heris brought in the main drives and began the long curve out toward the safe jump radius. Naverrn shrank visibly, the terminator creeping along its blue—and-white ball as they swung toward the nightside. An hour passed, then another and another.

“Station scans faded below detection; no other scans detected,” Ginese said. He glanced at her, brows raised.

Heris had considered whether to wait until they made the first jump transition to bring the weapons up, but that had its own risk. If they were unlucky, they could come out of jumpspace into trouble. “Weapons to Code Three,” she said.

“Sir,” said Ginese; now his board had a row of scarlet dots at the top, with green columns below. He grinned. “The tree’s lit, Captain.”

“Thank you, Mr. Ginese,” said Heris formally; she grinned back at him. “Now if we—”

“Oh, shit.” No one had to ask what had happened; all the boards showed it. A ship—a large ship, armed, its weapons ready, had just dropped into the system and painted them with its scans. And there they were, their own illicit weaponry up and active, as detectable as a searchlight on a dark night. “Douse it?”

“Too late,” Heris said. “We’d look even more suspicious if we blanked. We shouldn’t be detecting their scans. What is it?” Their scans should be as good—and the other ship wouldn’t know they had such accurate scans. She hoped.

“Big—military—armed to the teeth, light cruiser. If we’re lucky it’s a Royal ASS ship full of rich playboys. Lemme see—”

“Dumping vee like anything,” Oblo commented. “They came in really hot, and they don’t care who knows it. That turbulence pattern’s a lot like—”

“Corsair class. Not Royals. Regs. Standard assortment up—” Which meant about half the total armament. Heris felt a pang of longing and pushed it away. She had had the bridge of a Corsair Class cruiser . . . she knew exactly what that captain would be seeing. And thinking.

“Time to jump status?” she asked.

Sirkin glanced at her. “Emergency, like at Rockhouse?” She didn’t wait for an answer; her fingers were flying on her board, calling up the data. “Naverrn’s a little more massive, and there’s that satellite; we should use their combined center of mass for the calculation . . .” Heris didn’t interrupt; she had her eye on the other ship’s plot as the data points multiplied.

“She’ll have her data coming back from us,” Ginese said. “She’s still on course for Naverrn.”

“The angle isn’t wide enough yet,” Heris said. “Got a beacon strip?”

“Just—now. Fleet beacon . . . now let me see, what did they say the encryption key was?”

Even in the crisis, that got Heris’s attention. “You got the encryption key as well as the other stuff?”

“Wouldn’t be near as useful without. Ah. Yes. Regular Space Service, we knew that. Corsair Class light cruiser, we knew that. Martine Scolare, we didn’t know that, and commanded by Arash Livadhi. Worse luck.”

“Too true.” Heris stared at the scan, and wished it different. The Livadhi family had as long a history in the Fleet as Serranos; a Markos Livadhi had commanded through most of the campaign that established the Familias Regnant.

“Arash Livadhi,” said Petris. “That means Esteban Koutsoudas as scanner one. We are really in a nest of comets.” Koutsoudas was himself a legend, known for building up entire ships from the faintest data.

“Fourteen minutes, seventeen seconds,” Sirkin said. “At our present acceleration and course.”

To run or not to run. With Livadhi commanding, with Koutsoudas on scan, the Fleet vessel could not miss them and would not ignore them. The Fleet vessel had a considerable excess of vee; it might find maneuver difficult. Or it might not; a cruiser was by no means as clumsy as a freighter of the same mass.

“Eleven minutes, twenty six seconds at maximum acceleration,” Sirkin said, answering the next question Heris would have asked. Good for her, Heris thought. If we get out of this I’ll tell her so.

If they ran, they’d look guilty. But they looked guilty now—she could easily imagine what Arash Livadhi was thinking, arriving insystem to find an absurdly small freighter lighting up his scans with weapons that belonged on his own cruiser. He’d be asking Naverrn Station about them, and Naverrn Station wouldn’t have any answers to satisfy him. His curly red hair would be standing up in peaks already; the incredible Koutsoudas (she remembered coveting Koutsoudas for her own crew) would be checking their signature against his personal memory of tens of thousands of ship signatures. Had he ever scanned Cecelia’s ship? If so, he would know who they really were. Or did they already—had they been sent here to intercept?

If they ran, they might reach a safe distance for jump transition before Livadhi’s equally trained weapons crews could get them. Especially since he’d have to contact them first. But if they ran, he’d follow. If they didn’t run, maybe they could brazen it out.

“They have nothing against us,” murmured Petris, not giving advice but stating his knowledge.

They could answer the hail that was surely coming; they could spin out a plausible story long enough to make the jump point . . . maybe. Livadhi had always been one to check every detail; he would want not only code but voice communication; not only voice but visual—and there it would all fall apart. Heris felt cold all over. No mere change of uniform would work with Livadhi: he knew her. They had served together as junior officers on the Moreno Divide. Moreover, he knew Petris and Ginese by sight; he had been aboard her ship several times, and they’d both been on the bridge. And if he had followed the courts-martial (or any of his bridge crew had) he would know every face on this ship but Sirkin’s. Could Sirkin play the role of captain for the time it would take? No. Heris could not ask that.

“Arash Livadhi knows us,” Heris said. She advanced power, pushing the insystem drive to the limit listed for the Better Luck. She had another ten gravs of acceleration in reserve, but using them would reveal that the beacon data were false. She saw on every face but Sirkin’s the recognition. Then came the hail she expected, as if in response to the change in acceleration, though she knew it had originated before. She sent in reply the standard coded message. Oblo grunted.

“They’ve stripped our beacon. Took ’em long enough.”

“I wish I knew if they’d queried the Station yet.” Livadhi tended to do things in order, but he had his own flashes of brilliance. If the delay in stripping their beacon meant he’d tight beamed the Station and waited for a reply, he could have known about the disappearance of the prince and his double . . . although Heris hoped no one had noticed yet. The shuttle to the planet wasn’t supposed to leave for another eleven standard hours, and she had expected no real search for him until a few hours before boarding. She’d counted on that delay to get out of reach. But he would have the ship’s identity as they’d given it to the station; he would have something to compare that beacon blurt with. Worst case, the station might even have sent visuals of the Better Luck’s captain.

Heris stared at the display, which attempted to simplify the complex spatial relationships of both ships and the Station, and the planetary mass. The cruiser decelerating relative to the planet; the Better Luck accelerating away; the interlocking rotations of planet and satellite and Station. Once the scan computer had plotted the cruiser’s course and decel pattern, it displayed blue; changes would come up highlighted in orange. She hoped to see nothing but blue until they jumped, but she expected at any moment an ominous flare.

“Time?” she asked Sirkin.

“Ten minutes four seconds,” Sirkin said. Blast. Livadhi was reacting as quickly as ever. And why was he here, anyway? No R.S.S. presence had been expected; nothing the king had given her showed any planned activity near Naverrn at all. Unless this was the king’s double cross. It seemed entirely possible.

There. The blue cone caught fire; the tip burned orange. If she were Livadhi, she’d go ballistic, using the planetary satellite’s mass to redevelop velocity and swing around, then push the cruiser’s insystem drive to its limit to catch up with the trader. That is, knowing what she wanted him to know; Better Luck, as built, could not possibly outrun the cruiser to the standard jump distance. Why stress his ship and waste power, when the easy way would work?

But if he knew all of it—if he knew what ship this really was, and who captained her, and what she’d done leaving Rockhouse Major . . . I do wish we’d been able to mount really effective screens on a hull this size, she thought. To Sirkin she said, “Display the remaining time to the closest computed jump distance, and give me thirty-second counts.” Then, to Ginese, “I expect pursuit and warning. I prefer not to engage at this time.” She preferred not to engage at any time, certainly not with Arash Livadhi’s cruiser. By any sensible calculation, he could blow them away easily. The orange-tipped blue cone, she saw, was now leaning drunkenly to one side as the scan computer calculated new possibilities. He wasn’t going to do it the easy way; he was wasting considerable power to make the course correction necessary for a direct pursuit. That suggested he knew too much already.

Another hail, this one demanding voice communication. Heris grimaced. “At least he’s still calling us Better Luck,” she said. “There’s a chance—”

But there wasn’t. The scan display showed a white star where the last fleck of orange had been: a microjump. It lit again to show the cruiser much closer, its vector now approaching theirs. Heris admired the precision and daring of that maneuver, even as she wished his navigator had miscalculated.

“Nine minutes, thirty seconds,” Sirkin said.

Heris sent a voiceburst, the reply expected from a ship requested to give voice communication, in a directional beam aimed toward the cruiser’s previous course prediction but intersecting the new. Livadhi couldn’t know about their new scans; he would expect that. He might pick up the reply, or he might hail again. The seconds crawled past; the displays showed their velocity increasing, the distance to a safe jump point decreasing, and the cruiser coming up behind them with a clear advantage in acceleration. Only five gravs, but enough to cut their margin to the jump point dangerously close. Moreover, he had more in reserve once past the kink of the course change, and onto the flatter curve of their own course.

“Nine minutes,” said Sirkin.

If he knew, if he guessed, that the ship he chased was Sweet Delight, he’d know she had more acceleration in reserve. He’d account for that. But if he thought he was overhauling a ship already at full power, he might not expect that last burst; she might be able to get into FTL before he got her. Heris weighed possibilities. His aggressive pursuit suggested he knew; his use of their faked identity suggested he didn’t . . .

“His communications to the Station should be blurring out,” Oblo said. “Screens are up, half-power, and his own turbulence is in the way.”

“He got something,” Heris said. “Something he didn’t like.”

“Yes, but they’re not shooting at us.” The unspoken yet rang in her ears.

“There might be another reason for that,” Heris said, putting her worst fears out for them all. “If they’ve missed the prince, onstation . . . and if they told Livadhi . . . he won’t blow us away, but he’ll be on our track forever.”

“So the good news would be a shot across the bows?” asked Ginese. Sirkin gave a sudden twitch, as if she’d only now realized what was going on.

“In a way. Thing is, if he knows who I am, then he knows how I would’ve reacted—”

“Would have?”

“I’ve changed,” Heris said. “So have we all.” The veterans settled; without a word spoken, she knew she had reassured them about something no one could articulate. Sirkin glanced at the display.

“Eight minutes, thirty seconds.”

Another request for voice communications, as if he had not received the first; he might not have, if his shields distorted the angled beam. Heris checked. If she had the standard civilian-quality scans, would she have had time to notice the new position? Yes. She sent the same packaged burst. It didn’t sound much like her, she thought, though a comparison to her own voiceprint would show that it was. At the least, the accent suggested someone with years of spacer experience, commercial or military. Heris wondered how long it would take him to react to this. Several seconds to arrive, several seconds to decompress and play—she had made the message longer than strictly necessary. A few seconds for the return . . . any additional time off the clock was his reaction time.

“His optical weapons are just within range,” Ginese reported. “They still have active scans on us, and theirs are hot, but I’m not detecting the targeting bursts I’d expect.”

Would he wait until he could deliver more firepower, or would he act now? It was harder to deliver a warning shot from behind but easier to blow someone away . . . was he wondering which to do? He would need to be much closer to deliver a warning in front of them; he had to be sure it went off far enough in front. The seconds ran on.

“Eight minutes,” said Sirkin.

This time it was a voiceburst hail; Oblo had it running almost as Heris saw the communications board flicker.

“F.R.C.S. Better Luck,” came the voice. “This is the Familias Regular Space Service frigate Skyfarer. You are suspected of carrying contraband. Heave to for inspection.” An old term, and not what they would do if they were going to comply . . . and . . . frigate? Named the Skyfarer? Heris stared across the bridge at Oblo, who shook his head.

“No, sir—ma’am—that’s no frigate. But look at the old scan.”

On the original scan board, which they’d left in because it was the standard required, the R.S.S. ship’s profile did indeed resemble a frigate—half the mass of a cruiser. That made no sense. Why would a captain misrepresent his ship that way? Did he expect her to willingly engage a frigate? Surely in attempting to stop a civilian vessel, it was better to claim all the ship size you had . . . she’d always done so.

“Our weapons profile should look to him about even, if he were a frigate,” Ginese pointed out. “If we engaged, then he’d be legally in his rights—”

“To blow us away,” Heris said. “I do remember that much. But if that’s his game, he can’t know the prince is aboard.” Or can he? she wondered. If the king—or anyone else—wanted to get rid of the inconveniently stupid prince, this would be a way . . . a tragedy of course, but one to be blamed on the unstable Captain Serrano. And perhaps on her employer or the employer’s family.

“You’re going to tell him?” Petris’s eyebrows rose.

“Of course not. We’re not supposed to have tight beam capability; it would be telling him and everyone else in this system.”

On the tight beam, Livadhi’s familiar face had an earnest expression that sat oddly with the rumpled red curls she remembered. Behind his head was the curved wall of the communications booth, which meant he hoped his crew wasn’t spiking into this conversation.

“Captain Serrano, it is imperative that we keep this as short as possible.” His stubby hands raked his hair again, so that one lock stuck straight up. “You have . . . er . . . the wrong person aboard your ship.”

“Four minutes,” Sirkin said.

“I know you can make jump inside the usual radius; you did it before. But don’t do it now. Please.”

Fleet captains rarely said “please” to civilian captains they had already ordered to heave to.

“I don’t want to have to fire on you,” Livadhi said. “But under the circumstances, it would be necessary. I say again, you have the wrong person aboard. You must not complete your mission.”

Great. He knew about the mission and the prince, which meant he’d been sent here to intercept her. So much for the honor of kings, Heris thought, and wondered if he knew the actual radius at which she would risk jump. They had the data from her earlier jump, but . . . would that give them the same figures Sirkin was using?

And she had no tight beam for response. Anything she sent would be available to other listeners in time.

Carefully, weighing each word, she composed her response. “All persons aboard this ship have His Majesty’s permission to be here.”

“Captain Serrano—Heris—you know me!” Livadhi was sweating. And since he could be a coldhearted bastard when he wanted to—he had not been sweating when they’d stood before old Admiral Connaught to answer his questions about the alleged massacre of civilians on Chisholm Station—something about this bothered him. “You have the wrong . . . er . . . individual; it’s not Mr. Smith, but a . . . er . . .”

“I have two individuals,” Heris said. “Both carry legal identification which matches their descriptions; neither is a fugitive.” Captive, yes, but not fugitives. And of course they both fit the description of the same person, but that was another problem, not his. Would he realize from what she said that she meant the prince and his double?

“You have two clones,” Livadhi said. “I have the real prince, and we need to get him aboard your ship. Without anyone noticing, although the way you’ve been behaving, anyone would . . .”

“Captain Livadhi—” Had she ever called him Arash? Had she ever really run her fingers through those rumpled red curls, and felt a thrill? If so, it was the thrill of being noticed by someone slightly senior, the thrill of ambition realized, not the thrill of passion. She could remember that bit well enough. “We received departure clearance from Naverrn Station; our course since then has been in accordance with the filed plan. We took on only a single bin of cargo, the Outworld Parcel shipment, for which we hold a legitimate subcontract. All personnel aboard have been identified by legal methods and none is a fugitive from justice.” More than that she could not say. Would not say.

“Three minutes,” said Sirkin.

“We cannot let you continue with clones in place of the prince,” Livadhi said. “It would embarrass the Crown—”

It would more than embarrass the Crown; the illegality of using unmarked clones as royal doubles would throw a political bombshell. Heris could not begin to imagine what would be destroyed.

“They’re in easy range now,” Ginese put in. “Not just the OR weaponry, but the overboosted missiles, too. Either boost us out of here, or we’re dinner on the table.”

“Heris, you have to trust me,” Livadhi said. “I know it’s hard; I know about the . . . er . . . problem you had, but you have to ignore that. You know I wasn’t part of that.” But did she? Ambitious, hard-driving: how could she know that Livadhi hadn’t been part of Lepescu’s clique?

“We have to talk,” Livadhi said. “Face-to-face—or I’m sorry, but—”

“Meet you at the Tank,” Heris said. Would he remember, and understand, that reference? It was worth a try. To her relief, his face relaxed.

“Deep or shallow?” he asked.

“The orange bucket,” she said, hoping for the best.

“Two minutes, thirty seconds,” Sirkin said.

Livadhi’s face constricted in a mass of wrinkles, as he seemed to pry the memory out of some corner of his brain. Then he grinned. “Your honor, Heris?”

“Absolutely.” With the word, she called in the last acceleration in reserve, and the Better Luck aka Sweet Delight skipped forward, momentarily outranging the cruiser. Livadhi’s tight beam lost its lock, and before he could reestablish contact, they had reached the jump threshold. Heris held her hand up, waiting precious seconds, until the beam found them, only then chopping a signal to Sirkin. The ship flipped into FTL space.

Petris let out a whoosh of breath. “You cut that fine,” he said.

“Should I give them more accurate data?” Heris asked, with relief now that it was over. “He’ll assume I jumped as soon as I could—why else accelerate like that? And that’s our safe margin now—what I just made for us.”

“But how’d you know he’d try to talk again and not shoot?” asked Sirkin.

Heris shrugged. “It was worth a try. Either we have the prince, or just clones, as he said. If we have the prince, I doubt he’d fire on us without fire from us. That would create a lot of records to be faked. If we don’t—if the prince is somewhere else—that’s another set of problems. Suppose Livadhi has the prince aboard . . . he must look out for his welfare . . . he will not invite attack. He was in our range by the time we broke the link. If he doesn’t have the prince, there’s still the clones . . . I would imagine he’d like to bring them back where they came from.”

“What’s that business about meeting at a tank?” asked Petris.

“Well . . .” Heris rubbed her nose absently. “It’s true, in a way. I did promise to meet him, and I do feel bound by that promise, but it should work out all right.”

“Care to explain?”

“Don’t look down your nose at me. You know perfectly well it’s officers’ slang; you’re about to find out what it means.” She put the Reference Quads up on the secondary screen. “In every sector, there’s a mapped set of coordinates called the Tank. If one wants to meet somewhere discreet, for any reason, that’s where one goes . . .”

“And every Fleet officer knows it, so it’s about as secret as how many royals it takes to screw in a lightbulb?”

“Not quite that bad. Not just one set of coordinates, actually, but one for each combination of officers. It starts in training; each class has its own definition. Then once you’re out in the Fleet, it’s a matter of relationships. If you become friends with someone, you may choose to share your definition of Tank. For one sector, or several, or all. In fact, it’s always shifting, because we use it even within a single ship, or on a Station. Lazy people might give the same set to everyone, but neither Livadhi nor I were lazy—not that way. Orange bucket, to him, means a particular set of coordinates—” She highlighted them. “In this sector, and not a difficult jump away. Nor out of the way to where we want to go.”

“Weapons?” asked Ginese.

“Oh, live of course. Just in case he’s got someone with him, or we hit bad luck again. Sirkin—what’s our onboard time going to look like to reach those coordinates?”

“Thirty hours, give or take—what insert velocity?”

“I’d like to come in slow, minimal turbulence. We’ll be on a similar vector, unless he double-jumps, which will give us even more time. Work out the details.” She pushed herself to her feet. “And now, if you’ll join me, Petris, we’ll have a word with our passengers.”

The first passenger had improved the shining hours since they left Naverrn by going to sleep. He snored, curled on his side in the sleepsack. Heris listened awhile, and decided the snore was genuine, not faked. No one could create all those little gurgles for punctuation on purpose, not without giggling.

“Let him complete his slumbers,” she said. “We’ll have a word with the other one.”

The other one glowered at them from the sleepsack he had folded into a seating pad. “This is unconscionable. Not even a bed.”

“I know,” Heris said. “It’s so sad that both of you must suffer. But your father expects you will understand.”

“My father!” That with a snarl. “Easy enough for him to send me off without even my servants.”

“If either you or your . . . double . . . had been cooperative, we might have been able to improve matters,” Heris pointed out. “Now that we’re under way, suppose you tell us which you are.”

“Which?”

Heris wished she dared smack him. “Whether you are the prince, or he’s the fellow down the corridor,” she said.

“Oh.” He appeared to ponder that much longer than necessary. “I . . . don’t think either of us is the prince,” he said.

“You don’t think,” Heris said. Was he trying to be cute, or could he possibly not know?

“No . . . I’m not entirely sure. I mean, I know I’m not the prince. But we switch around so much, you know, that I rather lose track.”

“All clones?” Heris asked. “All his clones?”

“I suppose so,” the young man said. “I never really thought.”

“And do you have a name? When you aren’t using the prince’s, I mean?”

“Mr. Smith,” he said, with a grin. “Gerald Smith. It’s all I’ve ever been called. We all use it—his name is Gerel, so ours had to be close enough that his would be familiar, and yet not the same. My middle initial’s B, and I’m the second one.”

Heris wanted to ask him if they were all as stupid as the prince himself, but thought better of it. More important at the moment was the size of her problem. “How many of you clones are there?”

“Three, at least,” he said promptly. “I went through the first stages of training with two others; our fourth had a metabolic problem and died early. But we might not have been the only cluster. On the other hand, we’re almost never all together, so if one of us died in the line of duty, the others wouldn’t know.”

If there were three clones—or more—then the putative prince Livadhi had might not be the prince at all. “Why so many? I thought clones were expensive, and the confusion must have been difficult—”

He shrugged. “We’re also prone to losses in the early embryonic stages, just as nonclones are. Given the expense, they don’t take chances; they bring a cluster along together. If it’s absolutely necessary to have a clone in place—as it is here—it’s much safer to have a spare or two.”

“Or three,” Heris said. Where was the prince himself? With Livadhi? Somewhere else? “By any chance, was another clone on Naverrn? Or the prince himself?”

“No—I was primary, this trip, and Gerald C. was secondary. At least, I think that’s Gerald C. you’ve got in the other room. I don’t know where Gerald A. or Gerel Prime is.”

“Gerel Prime being your code name for the prince?” The clone nodded. Heris could not see any difference between him and the prince she had transported from Sirialis. If that had been the prince—she had a sudden chilling suspicion that maybe her passenger had been one of the other clones, and the prince himself not involved in any of that mess. Yet the king clearly thought that had been the real one.

“How are you briefed about the prince’s activities?” Heris asked. A minor matter now, but it might provide useful information. “Surely all of you must be kept up-to-date on his recent actions—and he on yours. Who monitors your . . . ah . . . personal interactions, and your personality profile?”

“We all carry implanted recorders,” the clone said. She had trouble thinking of him as Gerald B., but she made herself repeat it silently. This was Gerald B., an individual, though genetically identical . . . “They’re harvested regularly, by a Crown-certified technician, and we’re retaped with the others at the same time. Usually takes a couple of hours. I’ve been told the prince is also equipped for retaping.”

“Like training tapes?” Heris asked.

The clone—Gerald B., she reminded herself again—frowned. “I’ve been told it’s like the military training tapes, the ones used before simulator training.”

“Ah.” With the right drug induction, those were powerful—one could almost believe one had already been through the simulators.

“As for the personality profile, we’re evaluated on that at every retaping, as we are for physical parameters.” Heris noted that Gerald B. seemed a lot more cooperative now than he had been, and wondered why. Did he have some conditioned response to a phrase she’d used, or was the admission of his clone identity a releaser for more cooperation? “That’s why I’m not sure about the others,” he went on. “We’re not encouraged to concern ourselves with the actual identity of the person presenting himself as the prince. Nor are we encouraged to form independent relationships with each other. We’re just doubles; our value lies in being mistaken for the prince, not each other.”

What a sad life, Heris thought. But as if he’d read her mind, Gerald B. grinned at her. “Don’t pity me,” he said. “I see so many singletons trying to be mistaken for a parent, a mentor, a patron . . . they, who could be themselves wholly and freely, choose to copy another almost as closely as I must. So it can’t be that bad. Besides—my prime is a wealthy, privileged young man. I enjoy those advantages even when I’m not on.”

True, but such a philosophical outlook was nothing like the prince as Heris had known him. Were they as bright as the prince should have been? And if so, how did they feign stupidity? Did they know it was stupidity they were feigning? “Have you been retaped on what happened at Sirialis?” she asked.

“Oh, yes. A courier brought both physician and tapes . . . it was an emergency, such a dramatic break. Actually there was some concern that Gerald A., who had been first doubling right then, should have broken his role to inform the authorities when the prince left, but it was decided once more that our role should be confined to doubling, not surveillance.”

Curiouser and curiouser. Gerald B. began to sound more and more intelligent and mature. That alone made it likely he wasn’t the prince; he could feign stupidity more easily than a stupid person could feign intelligence. But—again she wondered if the real prince had been the one drugged.

“So . . . you would not know from seeing someone on a ship-to-ship video if it were the prince or another clone?”

“Nor just from seeing him. Only if he broke role, and revealed himself.”

Livadhi arrived at the rendezvous an hour after Heris, weapons dark to her scan. A good sign, if he hadn’t managed to fox her scans. Nor did his weapons light, though he must have known hers were hot. Slowly, they brought the ships close, cutting the delay in communication so it was hardly noticeable.

“You don’t entirely trust me,” Livadhi said.

“No—should I?” Heris gestured around her. “You know these people—members of my crew, court-martialed with false evidence, imprisoned. Too many of them died. Where were you, Livadhi? When I needed friends in the Fleet, when I needed someone to testify at my own hearing?”

His eyes fell. “I was . . . convinced you had done what they said. Sorry, Heris, but that’s the truth. Your own cousin Marlon—your uncle Sabado—I thought if they spoke against you, with such sorrow and regret, it must be true.”

“Yet you had known me.” She wasn’t as angry as she’d expected to be. His lack of support hurt, but it had melted into the general pain that none of her friends at Fleet had come to her aid. She shrugged, putting aside that aspect of the situation. “You wonder why I don’t trust you now? That’s the smallest part of it. You’ve heard about Lepescu?”

“Only that he died, and rumor said discreditably.” His eyes glittered; she could almost see the questions struggling for precedence in his head.

“He was involved in a group that hunted humans for sport,” Heris said. His eyes widened; even with what he knew of Lepescu that shocked him. “He was killed, and the surviving victims freed. More than that I should not say.”

“You—were there?” A transparent attempt to be indirect. Heris could not contain her laughter. He scowled.

“I was there,” she said. “I witnessed it.” Let him wonder if she was one of the hunted, or there in some other role. Right now he did not deserve to know more. “He’s definitely dead,” she went on. “And so are his associates on that trip, while records have been found listing those who accompanied him other times.” Livadhi stirred. Heris searched his face, finding nothing certain.

“If you have such experience,” she went on, “it’s one more reason I should not trust you. Although . . . I myself suspect he sometimes lured officers into it, and then blackmailed them later.” Livadhi flushed. Heris simply looked at him until his color returned to normal. So. Now she knew. But what would he do?

“I suppose . . . the Crown knows all about it.” His voice was low, hoarse.

“I would imagine so,” Heris said carefully. She didn’t actually know what the various investigators had turned up, but if Livadhi wanted to think she did, that suited her purpose.

“Nobody said anything—I mean, I haven’t heard any rumors.”

Heris shrugged. “I suppose the investigations aren’t complete, and they’re not moving until they are. Besides, why ruin the careers of good officers for one mistake?” That came out a little bitter, and she meant it to. Her one “mistake” had saved lives and won a battle, but still cost her a career.

Livadhi looked at her oddly. “I hope that attitude prevails,” he said. “Though I’m surprised to find you so lenient.”

“You mistake me,” Heris said. “I’m not lenient at all. This is not my fight. Carrying out the king’s request is. I will not let any . . . old grievances get in my way.”

“I see.” Livadhi’s face was carefully neutral again. “And you have no interest in rekindling an old friendship? You would prefer that . . . former shipmate?”

“My former shipmates suffered considerably on my behalf,” Heris said, ignoring the implication. If Livadhi had heard about Petris, it was still none of his business. “They proved themselves trustworthy. Can you blame me for wanting to put trust where it’s been rewarded before?”

“No, I suppose not. Well, then what about the mission?”

“You tell me what your mission was, and I will decide if you’re a potential help or hindrance to mine,” Heris said. Livadhi’s stare took on new respect.

“You’ve acquired an even keener edge to your blade,” he said. “You know the regulations—”

“And the realities,” Heris said. “Come, now—if you are loyal to the Crown and the Familias, you know why I have to hear your mission, and before I tell you of mine.”

“All right.” Livadhi sighed, and Heris sensed that his resistance had ended. “I was told that you were going to Naverrn Station to take the prince to the Guerni Republic, but that by a mix-up, the prince’s double was there instead. I was supposed to transport the prince and intercept you, ensuring that you had the right person aboard. I was to do this not while you were onstation, but in deepspace, to avoid detection. We expected you to be there another day or so, and I was going to hang about insystem—as you know, R.S.S. ships do sometimes observe in that system. My . . . er . . . sources told me that one of your crew had obtained, if that’s the right word, a tight beam receiver, so I planned to contact you before you left Naverrn Station, so that we could rendezvous at a distance, making it look like a routine inspection.”

“Except that there are no routine inspections out here,” Heris said. “As you well know.”

“It was all I could think of,” Livadhi said.

Heris would like to have made a sharp comeback, but she couldn’t think of a better plan herself, not off the top of her head.

“What were you supposed to do with the double I had?”

“Take him to Xavier, where he’s booked on a commercial liner, and put him aboard.”

“I see.” How much to explain? “You’re right: we were supposed to impersonate a small independent cargo vessel, and transport the prince to the Guerni Republic.” She was not about to explain for what purpose. “I was told his double would take over on Naverrn.”

“But you snatched his double—”

“But only because he was refusing to come, and I could not distinguish them . . . since they were clones.”

“That should have told you they were fakes, neither of them the prince.”

“Not . . . necessarily. After all, they matched the prince’s ID specs.”

Livadhi looked startled. “They can’t. They’re clones of each other, not of the prince.”

“Let’s check that out,” Heris said. She spread out the hardcopy of the identification specs in front of the scanner. “Is this what you got?”

Livadhi peered at it. “Yes . . . close, at least. I’ll need to check mine.” He touched one of his screens, and pointed a wand at the input screen from Heris. After a moment, he blanked his screen. “The same, our computer says. And our man matches. That means—”

“Three clones. One of them the prince.”

“Maybe,” Livadhi said. “And maybe not.”

“There’s only one thing to do,” Heris said. “Get all three of them where we were supposed to take the prince and let the medical personnel sort it out.”

“But that will risk detection,” Livadhi said.

“So would taking in a vat-grown clone as the prince,” Heris replied. “Do you think they couldn’t tell? The clones tell me that there is a technique, not part of the identification scan, but something to do with leftover markers of accelerated growth.”

“But I can’t take my ship off to the Guerni Republic. I have another assignment.”

“Then send your putative prince over here, and I’ll take all three of them.”

“But—alone?”

“You said it yourself. If you show up there in a Familias R.S.S. cruiser, it’ll be an Incident with a capital I. It’s safe enough for me; I’ve never been there, and neither has this ship.”

“I don’t like it,” Livadhi muttered. “But I can’t think what else to do. I suppose you have a shuttle lock on that thing?”

“Yes,” Heris said. She nodded to Petris and Kulkul, who picked up their weapons and left the bridge. “You can send your pinnace over and swim him through the tube.”

“By the way,” Livadhi said a few minutes later, when the pinnace was on its way. “I am authorized to tell you that a certain Lady Cecelia disappeared from an extended care medical facility a few weeks after you left Rockhouse Major. Would you like to explain that to me?”

“No,” Heris said shortly. “I would not.” But that wouldn’t do; Livadhi would pursue the mystery eagerly, just to annoy her. “She was my former employer,” she said. “You may have heard—she had a stroke, and her family blamed me. That’s why the king thought my leaving with the yacht wouldn’t be connected to any plan of his.” That far she could go.

“But why was I told to tell you?”

Heris shrugged. “I can’t imagine. I can’t say I think much of her family, keeping her in a place with no better surveillance than that. I hope she’s in good hands.” What could she say to change direction? The obvious topic came to her. “Who’s your new admiral?”

Livadhi grimaced. “Silipu, remember her?” His comments on the changes in command since Lepescu’s death filled all the time it took to unload the prince and retrieve the pinnace. When he signed off, she wondered just how much she’d fooled him.