Sporting Chance

Chapter Nineteen

Although it was nighttime, the shuttleport looked dark and almost deserted. Heris wondered what had gone wrong. Then someone came out of the dimly lit terminal and leaned into the driver’s side of their car. “Ah—it’s you. Just go on out to the runway . . . follow the yellow lights.”

In this way, the caravan trundled down a long runway to a dark shape bulked at the end of it. Heris felt she’d fallen into some surrealistic action-adventure. She had never, even in dreams, imagined herself sneaking along a darkened runway toward a clandestine shuttle. And she had a burning curiosity about what Cecelia could possibly have done to generate this level of loyalty on the planet.

She had no time to ask while the truckload of gear was put aboard the shuttle’s cargo bay, while she and the medical team carefully eased Cecelia and her attachments into the shuttle’s shabby passenger compartment. They were not the only passengers, either. After Cecelia and her party were aboard, half a dozen others climbed up and settled themselves at the back of the passenger space. Perfectly ordinary, the sort of people you’d expect to find taking a shuttle flight up from the surface of any planet . . . except, Heris noticed, they all had remarkably similar bulges in their clothes.

At the Station, Heris noticed that one of the chartered passenger ships had gone, and the corridors were almost deserted. Everyone—including the shuttle’s other passengers—helped unload the shuttle and move its cargo to the yacht. There Heris found Annie—offduty, as she explained—and Oblo lounging in the loading area.

“I thought I told you to stay aboard,” Heris said to Oblo. He gave her his innocent look, and she winced inwardly. What had he been up to?

“I am aboard,” he said. “Legally—there’s the line.” He stretched. “I was chatting with Annie here on the Station com, and we discovered some mutual interests, so when she got offshift, she came over . . .”

“Right. Fine. Now let’s get our owner aboard, and her gear installed.” Oblo looked hurt, another of his certified expressions, and vanished up the access tube. Annie gave Heris a cheerful grin, intended to disarm.

“Thought you wouldn’t mind if I came around and made sure your lady’s ship was secure. Just in case those lawyers snooped, although since all our exterior videos seem to be on the blink right now . . .”

Heris found herself smiling in spite of her annoyance. “Amazing how equipment around here seems to behave,” she said. “For instance, the shuttle tonight—”

“Had a block in the hydraulic line to the steering of the nosewheel,” Annie said promptly. “They couldn’t seem to get it to roll into the usual parking slot, and decided it was safer to keep it on the straight runway.”

“And yet they felt it was safe enough to fly . . . ?”

Annie shrugged. “It got you here, didn’t it? And if any nosy person was looking for unusual activity, all they saw was a dark field.” Heris nodded, not bothering to mention that any decent surveillance gear would pierce the darkness like a needle into wax . . . but Annie must know that.

“It was most convenient,” Heris said instead. Annie chuckled.

“We hoped so.” Then her expression sobered. “By the way, that tech you had running errands for the ship—Skoterin, isn’t it?” Heris nodded. “One of those lawyers stopped her and talked to her a few minutes. I’d given her warning they might be coming through, but I guess she was curious or something—”

“I’ll talk to her,” Heris said. “They’d been briefed, of course; I’m sure she said something appropriate, but I’ll check.”

“Do that,” Annie said. Then, looking past Heris, her eyes lit up. “Milady—it’s good to see you again. And you do look so much better.”

To Heris, Cecelia looked pale and exhausted . . . but Annie would have seen her the first time she came through, she realized. She must have looked much worse then. Now Cecelia struggled and achieved a smile.

“Thank . . . you . . . Annie . . .”

Behind Cecelia came the trail of people pushing dollies loaded with equipment, luggage, odds and ends. Heris left Cecelia with her medical people and Annie, and went on into the ship to get the crew ready for departure. To Oblo, who had been hovering in the access tube as if afraid he’d miss something, she gave the task of directing traffic.

“Brigdis, we’re going to want a fast, but very safe, course back to the Guerni Republic,” she said, coming onto the bridge. She was glad to see that Sirkin looked bright-eyed and capable again; she had done much better on the trip from Guerni, and Heris hoped whatever had been wrong was now over and done with. “We don’t want to take any chances with the Benignity, not with our decoy clone and Lady Cecelia aboard.” Not ever, but especially not now. “Methlin—” Arkady was offwatch at the moment, “—I want our weapons ready, but not lit. If we do run into trouble, I want to be able to surprise them. Make sure standby mode is really standby.”

“I’ve got this course plotted already, Captain,” Sirkin said. She sounded a bit tentative, but presumably her confidence would return in time. Heris looked at the string of numbers, and the display. She realized she was too tired to follow through all the calculations.

“Did you check this with Oblo?”

“No, ma’am, not yet . . . he’s not been back to the bridge this watch. Vivi got me the latest data from the Stationmaster’s nav file—I thought if she went for it, instead of calling in, nobody could tap the line . . .”

“Good idea.” For an instant, Heris wondered why Annie hadn’t mentioned that when she was talking about Skoterin . . . but Annie was offwatch now, and might have been when Sirkin requested the data. It didn’t really matter. The outside communications board blinked, and Heris reached for it.

“Captain Serrano, this is Stationmaster Tadeuz.” His voice sounded as friendly as Annie’s. “If Annie’s still over there, would you ask her to step ’round the office? I’ve got a question for her.”

“Of course,” Heris said, wondering why he hadn’t used the Station paging system.

“Sort of a confidential thing,” Tadeuz said in her ear. “Nothing to worry you, though. More like a filing problem.”

“I’ll tell her right away,” Heris said. “What about clearance for departure?”

“I’d like five minutes, just to make sure nobody’s coming up for a shift change, ten if you can give it to me, otherwise you’re cleared.” Just like that. Heris had never heard of anything so casual, anywhere.

“I’ll tell Annie,” she said again, and went off shaking her head.

Annie was still chatting with Cecelia; the tail end of the equipment train was just about to enter the access tube.

“Stationmaster Tadeuz asked me to tell you he’d like to see you in the office,” Heris said to Annie.

“Then why didn’t he—oh. Sorry, milady, but I’d better scoot. Hope to see you again soon, in even better health. Bye, Captain . . .” And Annie took off down the corridor much faster than her looks suggested.

“I’ve got to go back aboard, milady,” Heris said to Cecelia. “We’ll be able to depart once everything is aboard and stowed.”

“And how long will that be?” asked the woman with her.

“I’m not sure,” Heris said. “I’d guess less than an hour; Lady Cecelia can come aboard now, but there’s no place to sit, really. No furniture except what’s just come aboard.”

“Better . . . there . . . than . . . here . . .” Cecelia’s hands moved on the hoverchair controls and the chair lifted, swaying slightly.

“Good idea,” Heris said. She felt stupid not to have realized that Cecelia didn’t need any other chair to sit on.

Inside, the ship was still in chaos. The woman with Cecelia locked down the hoverchair in the lounge, and went to help the others arrange Cecelia’s suite. Heris saw the clone looking out of his quarters and beckoned. “Here—why don’t you keep Lady Cecelia company until we’re ready to leave. Lady Cecelia, this is Gerald B. Smith, one of the prince’s doubles.” She didn’t want to explain the clone business now. “Mr. Smith, Lady Cecelia de Marktos.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Gerald B. smiled at her, and gathered some bright colored pillows to make himself a soft seat on the bare decking. “Lady Cecelia, I’m delighted to meet you again. We’ve met, though I was at the time impersonating my prime, the prince.”

“I . . . shall . . . call . . . you . . . Mr. . . . Smith . . .” Cecelia said. Heris decided they’d do well enough alone, and went back to her own work. Petris had the engineering figures ready for her; Haidar had computed the new load on the environmental system (well within its capabilities) and had a projection for the supplies that would be needed at Guerni. Meharry and Ginese were discussing the exact amount of power necessary to keep the weapons just below scannable levels.

“Not Guerni scans, of course,” Meharry said. “We know about them now. I think they’d know if the toothpick in your pocket was intended for offensive use . . . maybe they read minds, do you think?”

“I don’t think. Mind reading is a myth. I just wish we had their capability,” Heris said. “But you think our stuff isn’t scannable by normal means?”

“We could ask the Stationmaster to look us over,” Meharry said.

“No . . .” Heris thought about it a moment longer, then shook her head. “So far I’ve seen no sign that anyone on this Station—or this planet—wishes Lady Cecelia ill, but why take chances? I’ll trust your judgment.”

She reminded herself that she wanted to speak to Skoterin, but Skoterin was busy in the guts of the ship, resetting flow rates to accommodate the larger load on the environmental system. Haidar, on his way to help her, said he’d give her the word once all the chores were finished. No hurry, Heris thought. In fact, it was a duty so low in priority that she didn’t put it into her deskcomp for a reminder request.

Getting the Sweet Delight back into deepspace and a jump or so away from Rotterdam was all that really concerned her. She did a final walk-through inspection after the last loaders left and Lady Cecelia was settled in her bed in her own suite. Everything looked as it should, her crew alert and at their stations, and nothing lying around where it shouldn’t be. Undock had none of the ceremony she was used to . . . no financial records to clear, no lists of regulations to follow . . . she wondered what would happen if any sort of government inspection ventured this far from the center of Familias space. Did they ever? Could Annie or Tadeuz adhere to rules (what rules?) if they found it necessary?

But with the yacht in insystem drive, and the Station receding in the distance, she put that out of her mind. However it was run, by whatever gang of independents, that Station wouldn’t be there without some kind of discipline. Its air had been good, its water plentiful, its power supply and gravity controls steady. The docking collars had held pressure—so what was she fretting about? Heris grinned as she realized what it was . . . she had spent so many years putting up with boring, routine double and triple checks, because she had believed them necessary. Without them, stations would fall out of the sky, air would fail, spacecraft would go boom. And here was someone ignoring—or at least seeming to ignore—the usual precautions, and doing very well anyway. She resented the time she’d wasted.

She also resented the return of Sirkin’s mysterious problem. Nothing happened on her first shift, but as they were approaching the first jump point, Oblo reported that Sirkin had left an open circuit in the communications control mechanism. Not a fatal error—yet—but a sign of carelessness. Heris was furious when he called her about it. Enough was enough. She’d replace Sirkin when they got to Guerni. She flung off the covers and dressed, thinking how to say it, and how to explain to Lady Cecelia. It was simply too bad to have to bother her now, in her condition.

When she was dressed, she went to the bridge, where the tension needed no words to express. Ginese nodded at her, and Kulkul handed her the log, with Oblo’s entry. All three of them looked as upset as she felt. Heris read it, and looked at the circuits herself. Anger and sorrow both—she hated to see someone with potential go bad, but that’s what Sirkin was doing.

“Have Sirkin report to my office,” she said to Kulkul, the watch officer.

The Sirkin who appeared seemed to be the bright-eyed, alert Sirkin she had first worked with, the young woman who should have had a successful career ahead of her.

“Yes, ma’am?” She was even smiling, and nothing in voice or manner suggested any concern about her own duties. Heris handed her the log.

“Can you explain that entry, Ms. Sirkin?” The formality wiped the smile from Sirkin’s face; she reached for the log with the first signs of uncertainty. As she read it, her face flushed.

“But I—it can’t be!”

“I assure you, Ms. Sirkin, that Mr. Vissisuan neither lies nor makes elementary mistakes. You signed off your shift; he found the open circuit. Those are facts; I asked for an explanation.”

Now Sirkin looked as miserable as she should. “I—I don’t . . . know how it happened, Captain. I didn’t—I swear I didn’t leave any circuits open, but I know Oblo wouldn’t . . . wouldn’t make it up. I—I don’t know—”

Heris picked up the log Sirkin had dropped. “Ms. Sirkin, my patience has run out. Whatever your problems, I don’t want them on my ship. You will be released from contract when we arrive at Golan. Until then, Mr. Vissisuan will serve as Nav First; you will perform such duties as Mr. Vissisuan and Mr. Guar can oversee. You can expect to have your work checked very carefully, and any more lapses will be reflected in my statements to any future employer. You have done good work in the past; I hate to handicap you with a bad reference, but I’m not going to risk lives . . . do you understand?”

Sirkin had gone so pale Heris was afraid she might faint. “Yes, ma’am,” she said in a voice empty of all emotion.

“You may go,” Heris said. “You’re offshift now; see if you can pull yourself together in time to be of some help to Issi Guar next shift.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Sirkin left with the gait of someone who has just taken a bad wound and hasn’t felt it yet. Heris wanted to clobber the girl and cradle her at the same time. What a waste of talent! If she could only clear her head . . . but she’d learned early in her career that you could spend only so much time trying to rehabilitate losers. Get rid of them, and get on with the job—which, right now, meant getting Lady Cecelia and Mr. Smith safely to the Golan Republic.

She went back to the bridge. “Oblo, you’re now Nav First and Issi’s your second. I don’t want Sirkin standing any watches alone; she’s to back up Issi during the jumps next watch, and do any other routine work you and Issi can check.”

“Yes, Captain.” He looked angry, but she knew it was more with circumstances than either Sirkin or herself. He had liked Sirkin—they all had—and they all felt betrayed by her failures. Padoc Kulkul, who rarely said anything at all, spoke up.

“Good idea, Captain. I know you and Petris both liked her and I had nothing against her before . . . but we can’t risk anything now.”

“Meharry’s really mad,” Ginese said without turning around. “She thought a lot of the girl.”

“So did I. Now, with Sirkin off any solo watches, Nav’s going to be as short as the rest of you—” A general chuckle. Navigation/Communication had had three to the other sections’ two, but no one had minded. “If you need help up here, grab Skoterin from Haidar. She’s capable of watching a board for a few minutes.”

“And she’s Fleet,” Ginese said, this time looking at Heris. “We know we can trust Fleet—at least our old crew.”

“Right. Now—I think whatever’s wrong with Sirkin is psychological, personal, but there’s the smallest chance it’s not. We know her lover was killed by Compassionate Hand bravos. We know her lover may have been recruited by that woman you saw, Oblo—”

“That counselor—”

“Right. It’s just barely conceivable that Sirkin was recruited too—then or later, perhaps terrorized after Yrilan’s death—and if so, she could be working for the Benignity. I don’t want her near the communications—they’ll have a hard time finding one little yacht bouncing around jump after jump, but not if someone’s got us lighted up for them.”

“What about that course she laid out?” Oblo asked. “What if it’s wrong—takes us into C.H. space or something?”

“Check it. She said . . . let me think . . . that Skoterin brought her up-to-date chart data from the Stationmaster’s office. Let’s ask Skoterin.”

Skoterin, roused from her offshift sleep, arrived on the bridge looking only mildly puffy around the eyes, and answered Heris’s questions readily.

“Yes, ma’am; I did go over to the Stationmaster’s office for Ms. Sirkin. Made sense to me we didn’t want to use the Station voicecom without knowing if anyone could listen in. That other shuttle had come with the lawyers from Lady Cecelia’s competency hearing.”

“Ah—yes. Annie mentioned that you’d talked to one of them. What happened?”

Skoterin grinned. “One of ’em stopped me, and wanted to know what ship I was off of. Guess they’d noticed the Station employees’ uniform on the way down or something. I told ’em just what you had said was our story. ‘We’re the Harper Valley,’ I said, and told ’em we were an independent freighter picking up a load of frozen equine sperm and embryos. Wanted to know where we were bound next, and I said ‘Wherever the captain wants, I reckon. I’m just a mole.’ They didn’t know what that meant, and I told ’em environmental tech, and they said what was our captain’s name, and I said he was a sorry sonuvabitch named Livadhi, which was all I could think of at the time. They said did we work for Lord Thornbuckle, and I said I wished! and they said oh never mind, she doesn’t know anything we want to know, and I thought to myself, little you know, and they went off and so did I.”

“I wonder why they asked about Lord Thornbuckle,” Heris said. “Unless they’ve figured out that it was Brun who brought Lady Cecelia here. Good job, Vivi; they may find out that Livadhi is an R.S.S. captain but it won’t do them much good. Now—about the charts and things you picked up—”

“Yes, ma’am. Got those from the Stationmaster, and came back without running into any more of those people, and gave the data to Ms. Sirkin.” Heris noted that the formality in referring to Sirkin came easily to Skoterin.

“Is this what you gave her?” Heris asked, pointing to the data cube and hardcopy on Oblo’s desk.

Skoterin looked. “Yes, ma’am. ’Course, I don’t know what it means. Jump points and stuff, but not what.”

“That’s fine, then. Go on back to bed.” When Skoterin had left the bridge, Heris turned to Oblo.

“Check the course Sirkin laid in against those sheets, and make sure she actually used the current data. I don’t want us stumbling into Benignity space because of Sirkin’s carelessness.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Oblo went to work. Heris sat there, wishing she were back in bed with Petris, but knowing it was too late. It seemed their jinx had returned. Besides, something nagged at her. Skoterin’s story had been plausible—and Skoterin wasn’t the problem anyway—so what could Sirkin have been up to, besides getting current data? Had she known the lawyers were aboard the Station just then? Had she wanted Skoterin to be seen and questioned? If—somehow—she had managed to let them know that the ship in dock was Cecelia’s yacht, then getting Skoterin out there to be seen was one way of giving the enemy a complete crew list. They already knew about the others; she had counted on Skoterin going unrecognized—and now they knew about Skoterin, too.

That didn’t satisfy her either, but she could not reconcile the two Sirkins, the two possible explanations for sending Skoterin out.

Next mainshift, Cecelia sent for her. Heris came into Cecelia’s suite to find her sitting up in the hoverchair, an attendant with her.

“We didn’t have time to explain all Lady Cecelia’s signal system to you,” the attendant said, before Heris could even greet her employer.

“Lady Cecelia,” Heris said pointedly, “Always good to see you.”

“Bev . . . will . . . help . . . you,” Cecelia said.

“Fine; I’ll be glad to learn whatever I can. Are you interested in what’s been happening with your ship?” Cecelia’s shoulder jerked. Was that a response?

“That is Lady Cecelia’s easiest way to say ‘yes,’ ” the attendant explained. “Lady Cecelia, show her ‘no.’ ” That was the other shoulder. Heris realized that what she had taken for uncontrollable twitching in the shuttle on the way up had been Cecelia “talking.”

“Right shoulder for ‘yes’ and left shoulder for ‘no’?” Heris asked. Cecelia gave a quick jerk of her right shoulder. “I got that. What next?”

What next took longer to learn, but an hour later, Heris was a good bit more comfortable with twitches, jerks, hand clenches, and the timbre of the synthesized voice. Cecelia had even allowed her to hear her own voice—distorted, uneven in volume and pitch, but her biological voice.

“I’m amazed,” Heris said. “I confess I hadn’t imagined anything like this. It’s so different from—” From the inert helplessness she’d been told of, or the full recovery of a feisty, healthy woman that she’d hoped for.

“We didn’t dare try a regen tank,” the attendant said. “Use of regen tanks with neurological problems is tricky at best. You sometimes get good responses, but more often the deficit ‘hardens,’ as it were. Much safer not to try it until neurochemical repair’s been done. Then it’s fine for dealing with residual physical deficits.”

“I . . . see.” Heris remembered that she had more information on the techniques the Guerni Republic doctors had suggested. “I’m going to download everything I got in the Guerni Republic to your deskcomp . . . or . . . ?”

Yes. A firm response. Heris wondered if the visual prosthesis allowed her to read displays, or could be hooked to a computer output, but she didn’t like to ask. The attendant seemed to recognize her discomfort.

“I can read it to Lady Cecelia; her visual capacity is fairly blunt at this time.”

“Mr. Smith . . . is . . . prince?” Cecelia interrupted. Heris was surprised.

“No . . . he’s the prince’s double. Didn’t I say that? I’m not sure where the prince is.”

“Not . . . double. He . . . is . . . prince.”

“Lady Cecelia . . .” Even though several dozens of people now knew about the clones, Heris was reluctant to discuss them in front of an attendant she didn’t know. She picked her words with care. “Even though I admit he looks like the prince, and sounds like the prince, I have been informed by . . . er . . . reliable sources that he is not the prince.”

“C.l.o.n.e.?” That came out spelled, letter by letter, in the synthesized voice; evidently no one had thought she needed the whole word.

“Er . . . milady, clone doubles are, as I’m sure you know, illegal.”

“Not . . . my . . . question . . .” Whatever her employer had lost, none of it had been intelligence points. Or the determination to find out what she wanted to find out. Heris mentally threw up her hands and answered.

“Yes, milady, he’s a clone. Moreover there are several clone doubles.” Quickly, as clearly as she could, she explained the king’s mission, her problem with the clones on Naverrn, and the discovery that Livadhi’s ship had yet another one. “And we don’t know which, if any, is the prime—the prince. They call him their prime. They all have the same memories: they’re given deep-conditioning tapes after each separation, so that they’re up to date.”

“If . . . all . . . alike . . . doesn’t . . . matter.” Heris had privately thought this for some time; why not just declare one of the capable clones the prince, and quietly retire the damaged prince? The answer, of course, was that someone might have planned just that, and the apparently capable clone could be someone’s pawn. So might the prince.

“We left two of them at Guerni, and brought one along as a decoy, for the safety of those in the medical center. If Sirkin hasn’t botched our course, we’ll have them all back together and then let the doctors sort it out. If they can.”

Cecelia scowled, as difficult an operation as her smile. “That . . . nice . . . Sirkin? What . . . is . . . wrong?”

“I don’t know. You remember her lover was killed—well, I made allowances for that. She seemed to be coming out of it, doing better, until after we’d left Naverrn. Then she started making careless mistakes, doing sloppy work.” Heris paused. She still couldn’t reconcile the Sirkin who did the calculations for those emergency jumps with someone who would forget to make necessary log entries, leave switches on the wrong settings and so forth. She took a deep breath. “I’m cancelling her contract when we get to Guerin. I won’t risk your life—or mine, for that matter—on someone like that.”

No. No mistaking that answer.

“Lady Cecelia, I must. I liked her too; you know I did. But a navigator’s error can kill the whole crew. I’ve talked to her, Oblo’s talked to her—we’ve all tried to help her. She made another serious mistake after we left Rotterdam. I can’t take the chance.”

No. “Wrong . . . you . . . are . . . wrong.” Lady Cecelia’s synthesizer had little expression, but there was no way to miss the strong emphasis of that shoulder jerk.

“I wish I were,” Heris said. She debated telling Cecelia of her other suspicions about Sirkin and decided against it. If the girl merely had personal problems, she would not want to have planted other ideas. Time would tell. Besides, Cecelia was a fine one to give warnings—she had ignored Heris’s warnings, and look what happened. She glanced at the wall display. “I’m sorry, but I need to get back to the bridge. We can discuss Sirkin later. We’re coming into a series of critical jumps to circumnavigate Compassionate Hand territory.”

When she returned to the bridge, Skoterin smiled at her from the secondary Nav board, and Sirkin was nowhere to be seen. Fine. If Issi and Oblo felt more comfortable with an old crewmate there instead of an unstable civilian, she’d accept that.

The first three jumps went without incident. Here the Benignity had thrust a long arm into former Familias space, but since there were no habitable worlds in the area no response had been made. It was easy enough to jump over the Compassionate Hand corridor; in fact, it set up a nice series of jumps to avoid the rest of the Benignity. The only tricky bit was a rotating gravitational anomaly in the neighborhood of the fourth jump point. After bouncing through the first three jumps, it was necessary to drop into normal space and time the next jump to avoid the rapid G changes of the anomaly’s active arm. Current charts—such as those Skoterin had picked up from Rotterdam Station—gave ships the best chance to get through that fourth jump with the least wasted time. A mistake in timing could send a ship directly into the Benignity—and the Benignity was known to take advantage of any such lapses.

Heris reviewed the charts several times before that critical fourth jump to make sure their course would not take them too close to the Benignity. Even if it did, they should be safe: they were small, fast, and it would be sheer bad luck if anyone were patrolling the area where they might emerge. She had Oblo check and recheck the course too, both against the charts and against older references.

“The new one’s a bit closer, but the border shifts over there, with the anomaly and all. I’d say this was fine.”

“Very well.” They dropped back into normal space on the mark; Oblo pulled up scan data at once, and began cursing. Heris didn’t have to ask. Something—and she wouldn’t wager it was sheer bad luck—had gone wrong.

“We’re off course—way off course.” He threw the display up on the main screen. “We should be there—” A green circle, fairly near the red dashed line that represented the border of the Benignity. “And instead we’re here.” Another green circle, this one not so close to the red dashed line, on the opposite side. “And we’re entirely too near a gas giant to play games with jumps out. We’ll have to crawl it.”

“Just what system are we in?” Heris asked.

“Nothing we want to be in.” Oblo was scrolling past entries in the reference library, looking for a chart with more detail. “Ah. Not good. Not good at all. The Benignity has bases on the larger moons of this big lump of gravity we’re too close to, and the way we dropped out of jumpspace on their doorstep, they could hardly miss us.”

“It can hardly be an accident,” Ginese said. Neither he nor Meharry turned from their boards. “Coming out right on top of a Benignity base . . . it has to be . . .”

“I know,” Heris said. She swatted down the last of her regrets, and touched the control that would lock Sirkin in her quarters, for all the good that would do now. At least she couldn’t cause any more mischief. Then she opened the ship’s intercom and explained, as briefly as she could, what had gone wrong. “I want Mr. Smith and Lady Cecelia protected, while we have any options at all.” There weren’t any options, if the Compassionate Hand responded. She would ask Lady Cecelia, out of courtesy, but was sure she’d prefer death to being a Compassionate Hand captive. As for Mr. Smith, he could not be allowed to fall alive into their hands.

“Captain—” That was Ginese. “Ships are on us, and their weapons are hot.”

“How many?” she asked.

“Only two,” he said, sounding surprised. So was she. If she’d been that base commander, if she’d known (and he must have known) such a prize was coming, she’d have had a net of every available craft, just in case.