Weber David. On Basilisk Station

   "I—" Canning stood and crossed abruptly to the liquor cabinet. He poured himself a martini with hands that trembled slightly, took a swallow, then turned back to the admiral.
   "I have taken some precautions, Sir, whatever you may think. Admittedly, they were long-term, routine measures, and I'll concede I was slow to realize what was happening and adjust to Harrington's presence, as well. But I've been here over six local years, and this is the first Manticoran officer who's even bothered to check manifests against canister numbers in all that time."
   "If that were all she were doing, Mr. Canning, or even if she were just arresting smugglers, I would be far less concerned," his guest said with deadly precision. "But that isn't all she's doing, is it? She's actively supporting Matsuko and the NPA. The local manpower she's released from customs and space control duties alone would constitute a major threat to operational security. When you add the overflights she's ordered to what your informants are reporting—" He shook his head sadly, and Canning took another long swallow of his drink.
   "We're not exactly completely naked, Sir," he said. "I know it's only a matter of time before her recon flights hit pay dirt, but as I've said, and despite any overconfidence on my part, we do have a multi-level cover in place against exactly that eventuality. And despite her activities in space, she hasn't even come close to bothering Captain Coglin. As for the rest of her actions," he added a bit more defensively, "I've done everything I can to get her recalled. I've lodged over twenty individual protests, now, and I'm using my contacts with other off-world merchant factors to generate more of them. The Manticoran Admiralty has to be feeling the heat, particularly in light of the political ramifications."
   "I know about the protests, Mr. Canning. But while you're no doubt correct about the pressure they're placing on their admiralty, have you considered the fact they've no doubt also given her superiors ample confirmation that she's doing something we don't like?"
   Canning flushed, and the first slow flickers of anger burned through his anxiety. All very well for the admiral to waltz in here after the fact and criticize, but what else did he expect Canning to do? Damn it, protests were the only offensive weapons he had! And, he thought resentfully, if he hadn't lodged them, the admiral would be chopping his ears off for that!
   "Well, so much for spilt milk." The admiral sighed, setting his glass on a small table and rising. "Why don't you tell me what's gone right, instead?"
   He crossed to Canning's desk and bent over the unrolled map spread across the blotter. The paper chart was far less detailed and much more difficult to manipulate than a holo map would have been, but it had never entered the consulate's electronic data base, either. And, unlike an individual holo map reader, it could be rolled up and shoved into a vault with a thermal-destruct security system. Those were considerations that made any incidental inconvenience unimportant.
   Now the admiral frowned down at the map, tracing terrain features with a fingertip. Unlike the majority of his naval contemporaries, he was as comfortable with planetary maps as with star charts, for his particular nameless branch of NavInt was more concerned with Trojan Horses than open warfare. Now he tapped the map and looked up at Canning.
   "The lab here on the plateau. It has a direct up-link to our orbital collector?"
   "No, Sir." Canning crossed to the desk and managed his first smile of the interview. "It relays through ground stations here and here—" he indicated two mountain peaks in the Outback "—and the initial ground station doesn't link to our collector at all." He met the admiral's inquiring gaze, and his smile turned into something like a grin. "We've been tapping into Dame Estelle's own backup collector."
   "You mean you're drawing your power from the Manticoran grid?"
   "No, Sir. It never enters the grid. This is their secondary collector, for use only if the main goes down for maintenance or repairs. Aside from their regular demand tests, we're the only station on it. Even if they find our tap, it won't tell them who set it up, and trying to figure out how it got there should point their attention in some very ... interesting directions."
   "I see." The admiral nodded with the first, faint signs of approval. "But, of course, if they do find it, they'll also find the ground station it feeds, won't they?"
   "Yes, Sir, they will, but that's where the cover plan I mentioned comes in. Colonel Westerfeldt has operational responsibility for the field activities, and he's done an excellent job of hiding our tracks and planting red herrings. In fact, we want them to find the ground stations—and the lab—if they look hard enough."
   The admiral raised his eyebrows, and Canning felt himself smile almost naturally as he continued.
   "We've set up a fallback lab that uses its own hydro generators, and if they do find this one, it won't tell them much—unless they pick up some of our personnel, of course. But even if they do, none of the equipment was made in the Republic. In fact, most of it was built by ... a certain Manticoran merchant cartel, shall we say?" He paused, and this time it was the admiral's turn to smile faintly in understanding. "More importantly, the local security man and the techs operating it are also Manticoran, and they have no idea they're working for us. They believe they're working for a domestic criminal syndicate. We've had to bring in some of our own people to operate the backup lab if it comes to that, but even there, almost all the equipment was manufactured in Manticore. Finally, we've had our Manticoran fall guys maintaining a meticulous set of books for their fictitious employers. If the NPA hits the lab, they'll find records the people working in the lab fully believe to be genuine and which point directly away from us."
   "I see," the admiral repeated. His finger drew idle patterns on the map, and his smile faded as he frowned down at it. Then he tapped a spot far south of the vast plateau. "And the main site?"
   "Completely secure, Sir," Canning said confidently. "Every bit of it's underground, and there's never been any direct contact between it and either of our lab facilities, even by air. Every shipment's routed through this staging area—" his own finger tapped a spot well to the west "—and shipped in from there on the ground using Stilty caravaneers. In addition, Colonel Westerfeldt's on-site personnel were all very carefully chosen for deniability, even if the NPA should stumble right over them. Unlike our backup lab techs, all of them are Manticorans with long criminal records, and none of them knows exactly whom the colonel is working for."
   "Indeed." The admiral cocked his head, then allowed a fresh smile, much stronger than the first, to cross his own face. "I may, perhaps, have been overly pessimistic, Mr. Canning. You seem to have built in more security than I'd anticipated."
   "It wasn't all my doing," Canning replied. "As I say, Colonel Westerfeldt's our field man here, and your own people, picked an excellent cover for Coglin's presence. And, of course, Ambassador Gowan has actually coordinated most of the operation from Manticore." He hid an inner smirk as the admiral nodded. Gowan was a very big fish, a retired Dolist manager with powerful friends back home on Haven. It never hurt to spread the credit (and any potential blame) over broader shoulders than one's own, and even NavInt would hesitate to antagonize Gowan.
   "So," the admiral said after a moment, crossing back to his chair to reclaim his drink. He sipped thoughtfully, staring out the office windows into the night and the floodlit brightness of the consulate's grounds. "Your ground-side security is in better shape than I'd feared, but that still leaves the orbital side wide open, and that's where this Harrington can hurt us worst."
   "Yes and no, Sir." Canning moved up to stand at the admiral's shoulder and gaze out into the grounds. "It's too late for her to intercept any of the really critical shipments. Everything we need is already down and in place, except for the mekoha we're still manufacturing, and I canceled the last two off-world shipments on my own initiative when I realized what was happening. I'd really prefer to have them down here, but we can live without them, and having them spotted in transit would be far too revealing. As for Coglin, he should be completely secure as long as he just sits tight aboard ship. If there's no contact with the surface, Harrington will have neither cause nor justification for interfering with him at all."
   "Good." The admiral sounded markedly less hostile, and Canning let himself relax a bit further. But then the admiral pursed his lips again. "Still, even if everything else goes perfectly, Fearless's mere presence in Medusa orbit could derail the entire operation when it kicks off. I don't like how tightly Harrington is integrating her own operations with the NPA. She's got the better part of a company of Manticoran Marines up there, with enough combat equipment to make a real difference."
   "With all due respect, Sir, I think that's unlikely. They'd have to know what was coming and lay contingency plans ahead of time to affect the actual operation in any material way. Oh, I don't deny they can probably limit the damage, but I don't see any possible way that they could limit it enough to make a real difference. As long as they can't stop it entirely, we still have our opening, and not even a full company of Marines already in place in the enclaves can do that."
   "Perhaps." The admiral rocked on his toes for a moment, rubbing the rim of his glass with a fingertip. "And perhaps not. What do your sources in Manticore have to say about Young?"
   "He's got his ship at Hephaestus, and our network's a lot weaker on the military side, but all the indications are that he realizes he's screwed up. I'd guess—but it's only a guess, of course—that he's making every effort to get back here before Harrington makes him look any worse."
   "It would be difficult," the admiral observed with a cynical smile, "for anyone to make Pavel Young look worse than he is."
   He rocked in silent thought for a few more seconds, then nodded to himself.
   "Find out how long he's going to be there, Mr. Canning. I have no doubt his first action on returning here will be to send Harrington as far away from Medusa as the limits of Basilisk Station permit, and I'd far rather have him in Medusa orbit when the penny drops. If he'll be back in less than—oh, another Manticoran month or so—I want the operation delayed until he returns."
   "That may be difficult," Canning said cautiously. "We've got almost everything in place, and our shaman is primed. I'm not positive he can hold them in check that long. The actual H-hour has always been rather indeterminate, you know. Then, too, there's probably a limit to how long Coglin can sit up there without someone like Harrington getting suspicious."
   "Perhaps. But, as I say, I don't want Harrington close to the planet when it kicks off. If at all possible, I want her several hours away, far enough for us to get the running start we need. As for Coglin, I think his cover will hold a while longer, and I can arrange to hold our other assets on station for up to three or four Manticoran months if I have to."
   "I'll see what I can do, Sir." Canning still sounded doubtful, and the admiral smiled.
   "I'm sure you will, Mr. Canning. And, in the meantime, I'll see what we can do to ... redirect Commander Harrington's energies."
   "I've pretty much exhausted the diplomatic options, Sir," Canning pointed out.
   "No, Mr. Consul. You've exhausted Haven's diplomatic options." The admiral turned to face him with a much broader smile, and Canning's eyebrows rose.
   "I'm not sure I see what you're driving at, Sir."
   "Oh, come now! Haven't you just been telling me how hard you've worked to provide the Manticorans with a culprit closer to home? Well, what use is a cat's-paw if you don't use it?"
   "You mean—?"
   "Of course, Mr. Canning." The admiral actually chuckled. "I'm quite certain Harrington has irritated the Manticoran merchant cartels as badly as she has us. From what you've reported about her operations, she's already cost them a bundle, and that doesn't even consider the humiliation she's no doubt inflicted by catching them with their hands dirty. I suspect most of them are just as eager as we are to see her teeth pulled, wouldn't you agree?"
   "Yes," Canning agreed with a slow smile. "Yes, I imagine they are. But by the same token, Sir, doesn't it seem likely they've already put all the pressure they can on the Government and Admiralty?"
   "Perhaps. But I was thinking about something a little more direct than that," the admiral said unpleasantly, "and I've been studying our dossier on Commander Harrington since I learned of the situation here. As I say, it's not as complete as I might wish, but it does offer some potentially useful information. For example, did you know that her father and mother are both doctors?" Canning shook his head. "Well, they are. In fact, they're both senior partners in Duvalier Medical Associates on Sphinx. It's an excellent outfit, with a high reputation in neural and genetic surgery ... and it just happens that seventy percent of Duvalier Medical's public stock is held by Christy and Sons, which, in turn, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Hauptman Cartel." The admiral smiled almost dreamily. "I always knew keeping an eye on Hauptman would be useful some day, even before this operation came up."
   "But does Hauptman even realize it, Sir?"
   "Perhaps not yet, but I'm sure we can call it to their attention—discreetly, of course. But, then, we've already called several items to Hauptman's attention, haven't we?"
   "Yes, Sir, we have," Canning agreed. He furrowed his brow as he considered ways and means. "My regularly scheduled courier to Ambassador Gowan leaves tomorrow morning," he said thoughtfully.
   "An excellent suggestion, Mr. Canning." The admiral nodded and raised his glass in a toast. "To Commander Harrington, may she have other things to concern herself with very shortly," he murmured.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

   Scotty Tremaine hit the powered adjustment button and stretched hugely as the purring motor moved the copilot's seat back from the pinnace's console. He rotated his shoulder joints, grimacing as he worked the stiffness from them, then rose.
   "I'll be back in a few minutes, Ruth," he told his pilot.
   "No sweat, Mr. Tremaine." Coxswain Third Class Ruth Kleinmeuller grinned. "I don't guess the planet's going anywhere till you get back, Sir."
   "Probably not," he agreed, and opened the cockpit hatch. He made his way down the cramped passage (pinnaces were little larger than pre-space jumbo jets) to the flight engineer's cubicle and poked his head in.
   "How's it going?"
   "Nothing, Sir." The rating manning the sensor equipment wrinkled her nose at him. "As far as this outfit's concerned, we're flying over lots and lots of nothing."
   "I see." Tremaine smothered a smile at her tone. Her reply was respectful and reasonably cheerful, but he heard the disgust under its surface. His people had been less than pleased to be detached to customs work at the outset, but that had changed over the past few hectic weeks. They'd learned to take a positive glee in making a major bust, and what it was doing to their bank accounts back home didn't hurt. Now they actively resented any diversion from the steadily thinner pickings of the orbital traffic.
   "Y'know, Sir," a voice said from behind him, "without more pinnaces, this is going to take a long time."
   Tremaine turned to face PO Harkness.
   "Yes, PO, I do know," he said mildly. "But unless you happen to have a half-dozen more of them tucked away in your locker, I don't see anyone else we can assign to it. Do you?"
   "No, Sir," Harkness said. The ensign, he reflected, had come a long way since that first contraband discovery. Harkness liked Tremaine—he was neither an arrogant snot, like too many ensigns who were afraid of betraying their inexperience, nor the sort to avoid responsibility—but he'd been testing the youngster. There were many ways to find out just what an officer had inside, and there were depths to young Mr. Tremaine the casual observer might not suspect.
   "I was just thinking, Sir," the petty officer went on after a moment.
   "About what, PO?"
   "Well, Sir, it occurred to me that we're diverting one pinnace full-time from customs work, right?" Tremaine nodded. "With the close passes we have to make, this is going to take days then," Harkness went on, "but what about all the other boats?" Tremaine cocked his head and made a little "go on" gesture with his fingers. "The thing I was thinking, Sir, is that each of those other boats is making at least six space-to-ground passes every day—down and back every time they change off crews—and that got me started wondering. Couldn't we maybe reroute their landings and liftoffs? I mean, they've got the same sensors we've got, don't they?"
   "Hmmmm." Tremaine rubbed his chin. "That's true enough. We could lay off flight paths to cover this entire hemisphere, couldn't we? And that would free us up to cover the other side of the planet." He nodded slowly, eyes narrowing in thought, and Harkness nodded back.
   "This, PO," the ensign said judiciously, "bears thinking on. Thanks."
   "You're welcome, Sir," Harkness said, and Tremaine headed back to the cockpit and the pinnace's com.
 
   Lieutenant Commander Santos stepped into the briefing room and paused behind the captain's chair. Honor was busy perusing the latest data on planetary power usage and didn't hear her come in, but she looked up at the sound of a sudden, juicy crunch.
   Nimitz's buzzing purr confirmed her suspicions, and she shot a humorous glare at Santos as she saw the celery stalk clutched in the treecat's right hand-paw. Nimitz's carnivore fangs weren't designed for vegetable matter, despite his tree-dweller origins. Treecats were the top of Sphinx's arboreal food chain, preying on the smaller vegetarians and omnivores who inhabited their domain, and his needle-sharp teeth shredded the celery into stringy green strands—wet, stringy green strands—as he chewed.
   Santos gave her a half-apologetic glance as she watched the 'cat make a blissful mess, and Honor shook her head.
   "You know that stuff's bad for him, Dominica," she chided.
   "But he likes it so much, Skipper," Santos excused herself.
   "I know he does, but he can't metabolize it—not fully, anyway. He's got the wrong enzymes for terrestrial cellulose. It just fills him up, and then he picks at his supper."
   Nimitz paused in his chewing. His vocal apparatus might be utterly unsuited to anything resembling human speech, but he understood a surprisingly large vocabulary, and he'd heard this particular speech from his person too often over the years. Now he gave her a disdainful glance, flirted his tail, and rose on his rear feet to rub his head against Santos's arm, making his views on the subject abundantly clear. The engineer was his favorite among Fearless's officers—probably, Honor reflected darkly, because she always had a stash of celery somewhere about her person these days—and Santos grinned down at him.
   "Well," Honor sighed finally, "I guess I should be used to it. The little devil always finds someone to pander to his vices."
   "He is kind of cute, isn't he?" Santos agreed. She gave the 'cat an affectionate chin rub, then sank into an empty chair at the table, and Honor smiled. She was, she reflected, a terrible sucker where people with a kindness for treecats were concerned.
   "You wanted to see me about something?" Santos asked after a moment.
   "Yes." Honor tapped her data display with a stylus. "I've been looking at Barney's figures on probable power usage. They seem awfully vague to me."
   "Well, it's not an easy thing to quantify, Skipper." Santos ran her fingers through her hair and frowned thoughtfully. "He doesn't have very solid data on what they've got to use their power on, so his people have had to make a lot of WAGs." Honor raised an eyebrow, and Santos grinned. "That's a technical term we engineers use. It means `Wild-Assed Guess,'" she explained. "They can feed in some hard figures from outside observation—things like exterior lighting, com traffic, and heat exchangers—but without complete specs on an enclave's interior hardware, they're shooting in the dark. Just knowing whether or not a given set of people remember to turn the lights off when they leave the room could throw any estimate off by a pretty wide margin."
   "Um." Honor rubbed the tip of her nose and leaned back in her chair, listening to Nimitz crunch and slurp away at his celery. "How are we coming on the collector taps?" she asked suddenly.
   "We've got three—no, four—to go," Santos replied. "Sorry it's taking so long, but with just the cutters—"
   Honor waved a hand, cutting her off, and smiled.
   "Don't apologize. You're doing well, especially since we're trying to keep anyone from noticing what we're up to." She rocked her chair slightly, still gazing at the data on her terminal, then shrugged.
   "All right, let's see if we can come at this a different way, Dominica," she murmured, and pressed her intercom key.
   "Officer of the watch," Lieutenant Webster's voice replied.
   "Com, this is the Captain. Is the exec on the bridge?"
   "No, Ma'am. I think he's down in Missile Two. Tactical's been having some problems with the magazine feed."
   "I see. Well, buzz him, would you? If he's free, I'd like to see him in my briefing room. And ask Lieutenant Cardones to come in, too, please."
   "Yes, Ma'am." The intercom was silent for a few moments, then spoke again. "They're on their way, Ma'am."
   "Thank you, Samuel." Honor keyed off and looked at Santos. "If Barney can't give us hard numbers, maybe we can make his WAGs work for us, instead."
   "How?"
   "Well, it occurs to me that—"
   Honor broke off as the briefing room hatch opened to admit Cardones. The lieutenant nodded just a bit shyly to Santos, then looked at Honor.
   "You wanted me, Ma'am?"
   "Yes. Have a seat, Guns. I've got a problem I need you and the exec to help me solve."
   "Problem, Ma'am?" Cardones sounded a trifle wary, and Honor smiled.
   "Nothing to do with your department. It's just—"
   She paused again as the hatch opened once more. McKeon wore coveralls over his uniform, and there was grease on them. That was one thing Honor unreservedly approved of in her prickly executive officer; he was never above getting his own hands dirty.
   "You sent for me, Captain?" he asked, far more formally than Cardones. Honor nodded, feeling her own face stiffen with a chill of answering formality, and pointed at the chair opposite Santos.
   "I did," she said. McKeon sat. "How's the missile feed problem?" she asked, trying—again—to draw him out.
   "Nothing major, Captain. I think it's pretty much solved," he replied crisply, and she hid a sigh. Behind her, Nimitz stopped crunching his celery for a moment, then resumed with more restrained gusto.
   "Well," she said, "as I was telling Rafe, we have a problem. We're trying to spot unusual power flows, and we don't have a reliable base usage to pick them out of." McKeon nodded, gray eyes thoughtful but cool in his expressionless face.
   "What I want you and Rafe to do," Honor went on, "is take all the input from the solar collector taps and compare it to Major Isvarian's rough estimates. What I'm looking for is a total usage figure over several days' time for each enclave, one we can relate to his estimate on a proportional basis."
   She paused, and Cardones glanced at the first officer, as if waiting for him to ask a question. When McKeon only nodded, he cleared his own throat.
   "Excuse me, Ma'am, but what good will that do us?"
   "Maybe not a lot, Rafe, but I want to see how close Barney came in his original estimate. If he's close, or if he's off by the same proportion in each case, then we'll have both an indication of his numbers' reliability and some idea of what a given enclave's power needs should look like. If he's close in most cases but off by a large factor in one or two instances, we'll have an indication that the ones outside his estimate bear closer examination."
   Cardones nodded. McKeon simply sat silently, waiting.
   "In addition," Honor went on, "I want the changes in power demand tracked on an hourly basis. Get a feel for the pattern. In particular, I want to know if any of them use large amounts of power during local down periods—especially late at night, for instance. Compare the fluctuations in power usage between all the enclaves on a time basis. If demand drops by a lower percentage in one or two of them, I want to know about it. From what Major Isvarian and his NPA types tell me, a mekoha lab wouldn't be able to shut down in mid-process, so if someone's power levels remain high when all their neighbors' drop, we may have an indication that we're closing in on the lab."
   Cardones nodded again, eyes bright with interest. Unlike, Honor noted, McKeon's.
   "I'll get right on it, Ma'am," the exec said after a moment. "Will there be anything else, Captain?"
   "No," Honor said quietly, and McKeon rose with a quick nod. He beckoned to Cardones, and the two of them filed out. Honor watched the hatch close behind them and sighed.
   "Skipper?" It was Santos, her voice soft, and Honor flushed. She'd forgotten the engineer's presence, and she castigated herself silently for betraying her concern over McKeon in front of one of her other officers. She made herself turn to Santos, hiding her chagrin.
   "Yes, Dominica?"
   "I—" The engineer paused, looking down at her hands on the edge of the table, then squared her shoulders. "About the commander, Ma'am," she said. "I don't—"
   "Lieutenant Commander McKeon isn't your concern," Honor said quietly.
   "I know that, Ma'am, but—" Santos drew a deep breath, disregarding her captain's clear hint to drop the subject. "Skipper, I know you're concerned about him. For that matter," it was her face's turn to darken, "I know you were concerned about all of us. We ... weren't exactly on the top of our form when we got here, were we?"
   "Have I complained?" Honor asked, and met Santos's eyes levelly when the engineer looked up.
   "No, Ma'am. But, then, you wouldn't, would you?" Santos's voice was as level as Honor's eyes, and Honor made a tiny, uncomfortable gesture with her hand. Nimitz swarmed down into her lap, still clutching the stub of his celery stalk, and lifted the front third of his body onto the table to look back and forth between the two women.
   "The thing is, Skipper, I've known Alistair McKeon for a long time," Santos went on quietly. "He's a friend—and I'm your next senior officer."
   Honor sighed and leaned back. She ought to shut Santos up, she thought. If there was one thing she hated, it was discussing an officer behind his back, especially with one of his juniors. But she was very nearly at the end of her rope where McKeon was concerned. She'd tried everything she could think of to reach him—to make him the true second-in-command she needed, not simply an efficient, perpetually unengaged automaton—and failed. And there was no malice or spite in Santos's voice, only concern. Besides, Dominica was right; she was Honor's next most senior officer, third in Fearless's chain of command, with not just the right but the duty to speak up if she saw a problem.
   The engineer's expression relaxed a bit at her captain's reaction, and she reached out to stroke Nimitz's ears, keeping her eyes on her fingers.
   "Alistair is a good officer, usually, Skipper," she said. "More than that, he's a good man. But if you'll pardon my saying so, it's pretty obvious the two of you just aren't on the same wavelength, and I don't think it's because you haven't tried. I've never seen him like this, and I'm worried about him."
   Honor watched Santos thoughtfully. There was no self-serving edge in the engineer's voice, only concern. This was no attempt to curry favor with her commander or cut her immediate superior's throat when he was absent and unable to defend himself.
   "And?" she said, unable—and unwilling—to criticize McKeon by agreeing with Santos's statement and voicing her own concern.
   "I just—" Santos paused, staring down at the fingers caressing the treecat. "I just want you to know that whatever's wrong is hurting him, too, Skipper," she said finally. "He tries not to show it, but I think he thinks he's letting you down—letting the ship down. And he is, in a way. I don't know why, but he's just not involved the way he was under Captain Rath, and he loves every scrape and dent of this old ship." She raised her head and looked around the briefing room, eyes slightly misty, and smiled. "So do I," she admitted. "She's old, and they raped her when they gutted her armament, but she's a grand old bitch. She won't let us down in the crunch, and—" she met Honor's eyes again "—neither will Alistair. Whatever his problem is, he won't let you down when it really counts, Skipper. That's—" She paused again, then waved her hand. "That's all I wanted to say."
   "I understand, Dominica," Honor said softly.
   "Yes, Ma'am." Santos stood and inhaled sharply, then gave Nimitz one last caress and squared her shoulders. "Well, I guess I'd better get back on those taps, Skipper," she said more briskly, and followed McKeon and Cardones out the hatch.
   Nimitz settled down in Honor's lap to finish his celery, and she leaned back, running her hand down his flank in long, slow strokes while she considered what Santos had just said. It must have taken guts—and deep concern—for the engineer to risk exposing herself that way. (It never occurred to Honor to wonder if her own actions or example might have had anything to do with Santos's openness.) Most officers, she reflected, would have taken great care to distance themselves from an executive officer they suspected was in bad odor with his CO, lest any of the captain's displeasure splash on them. And how Dominica had said it was just as important as what she'd said. Her concern was obvious, and it was for the ship as a whole first and for McKeon as a person second, but the fact that she cared about McKeon was clear.
   And important, Honor decided. It spoke well for any officer that one of his juniors would speak up for him, especially when it was the junior who stood to gain the most if he fell short of his commanding officer's standards. More than that, Santos's remarks reinforced her own judgment that McKeon was grappling with something inside himself, something that even the engineer didn't fully understand.
   Dominica Santos would not have spoken for an officer she didn't believe was worth defending, however much she liked him. Honor was certain of that, and as she replayed her own encounters with McKeon, she realized the engineer was right. Whatever his problem was, however hard it seemed for him to meet his captain halfway, he was doing his job. Not as well as he could have, not without a distinctly dangerous disengagement and brittleness, and definitely not the way Honor would have preferred, but he was doing it. He was making himself do it, even while it was obvious that something was tearing him up inside.
   She sighed and rose, transferring Nimitz to her shoulder as the 'cat popped the last half-centimeter of celery into his mouth. He pressed his chin into her short hair, chewing happily, and she folded her hands behind her and started for the hatch herself.
   It wasn't fair. She shouldn't have to make allowances for her executive officer, shouldn't have to worry about his support or what inner problems were affecting his duty. But no one had ever said life was fair, and the RMN tradition was that there were no bad crews, only bad captains. That applied to the captain's officers, as well. Much as she might want, even need, for McKeon to drop his barriers, it was her job to work with him—or to replace him. And she couldn't replace him. Not simply because the "chemistry" between them was bad.
   And not, she thought as the hatch opened, when Santos was right. Somehow, Honor knew, whatever might be bothering Alistair McKeon, he wouldn't let her down in the crunch.
 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

   "Well, now, Mr. Tremaine. Would you look at that?" Sensor Tech 1/c Yammata tapped his display, and Scotty Tremaine leaned close. To the untrained eye, the faint blotch of light in the center of the screen could have been anything; given what they'd been looking for, he knew it could be only one thing.
   "How big?" he asked.
   "Well," Yammata manipulated controls and frowned thoughtfully, "I figure they're shielded, Sir—I sure can't get a good read on the user end— but the feeder beam seems to be peaking at about two hundred kilowatts." He looked up and met the ensign's eyes expressionlessly. "That's a lot of juice for a bunch of Stilties."
   "It is, indeed, Hiro," Tremaine murmured. "It is indeed." He shook himself. "What's the location?"
   "Sixty-three klicks west-southwest of the Muddy Wash Valley, Sir," Yammata replied. He tapped another light blotch, smaller but much brighter. "That's their direct feed station, but it must be a relay. It's on the side of a ridge, well below its crest, and I don't see any up-link."
   "Um-hum." Tremaine watched the display for a few more seconds while the pinnace's low-orbit sweep took it towards the horizon. Then he nodded and clapped the sensor tech on the shoulder. "Good job, Hiro. I'll make sure the skipper knows who spotted it."
   "Thanks, Sir." Yammata grinned, and Tremaine turned to his NPA com officer.
   "Punch up the ship, Chris. I think the Old Lady will want to know about this."
 
   "It looks like you were right, Honor." Dame Estelle Matsuko's face was distinctly unhappy on the com screen. "There's something there, anyway, and whatever it is, it certainly isn't legal. The entire Mossyback Range is off limits, and so is the Mossyback Plateau."
   "It doesn't necessarily follow that it's a drug lab," Honor pointed out, and Dame Estelle snorted.
   "Of course it doesn't—and if you can say that three times in a row with a straight face, I'll buy you a five-course dinner at Cosmo's."
   Honor chuckled at the reference to Landing's most expensive, and exclusive, restaurant, but then she sobered.
   "You're right, of course," she admitted. "And even if it isn't the lab, it's still illegal. The question, I suppose, is what you want to do about it, Ma'am."
   "What do you think I'm going to do about it?" Dame Estelle's expression was grim. "Barney Isvarian is putting together a raiding party right now."
   "Do you need any additional manpower? I could land some of Captain Papadapolous's Marines—?"
   "I expect we've got all the troops we need, but thanks. I'll check with Barney. If he thinks he needs some help, I'll certainly let you know," Dame Estelle said gratefully.
 
   Major Barney Isvarian, Medusan Native Protection Agency, slithered forward through waist-high knobs of shemak moss and tried to ignore the chemical stench of its sap. His mottled fatigues and body armor weren't as good as the Corps' reactive camouflage, but they blended well with the monotonous background. The hugely out-sized insects that served Medusa as "birds" swooped and darted above the moss, and he made himself move even more slowly to avoid startling them. Unlikely though anyone was to be looking this way and notice a sudden eruption of bugs from the moss, it was still possible, and he had no intention of blowing this operation now.
   He reached the crest of the rise and paused to catch his breath as Sergeant Danforth eased up beside him. Like Isvarian, Danforth was an ex-Marine, and he unlimbered his massive plasma rifle with reassuring competence. Alloy and plastic clicked as he mounted the one-hundred-fifty-centimeter weapon on its bipod, inserted the heavy power pack, and snapped the electronic sight into place. He hit the self-test switch with his thumb, then nodded and burrowed the stock into his shoulder, peering through the sight at the buildings below.
   Isvarian checked his own sidearm, then raised his electronic binoculars to survey the same scene, and his lips pursed in grudging admiration. No wonder the aerial shots hadn't shown anything. The Corps itself couldn't have done a better job of concealing the place.
   The structures were clearly off-world in origin—sturdy pre-fabs that might have come from any planet—but they were buried almost to the eaves, and their roofs had been covered in sod. Rolling knobs of shemak grew across them, completely breaking up their outlines, and he was willing to bet there was a hefty layer of insulation under each of those roofs to prevent any betraying heat signature. That would only make sense, particularly with the volcanic springs two klicks east of them. Waste heat could be ducted to them and lost forever in their natural cover.
   He swallowed a sour curse as he reflected on the fact that the whole damned base had been built right under the NPA's nose. Admittedly, their hands had been full with other matters, but this was more than any single night's work. His people had had every opportunity to spot it going in, and they hadn't.
   Well, they were about to make up for that, he reflected with a certain grim satisfaction.
   He lowered his glasses and keyed his com twice without speaking, then waited. No one answered with the matching double click that would have indicated a perimeter team not yet in position, and he raised his glasses once more.
   Not a sign of life, he mused. Just the silent, moss-covered roofs and walls. That showed more confidence—or stupidity—than he would have allowed himself. There should have been at least one lookout, however good they thought their camouflage was. But Isvarian wasn't the sort to look a gift horse in the mouth; if his opponents chose to give him the advantage of complete surprise, he certainly wasn't going to object.
   He raised his wrist com to his mouth, never letting his eyes waver from the scene before him.
   "Go," he said quietly, and idling turbines screamed to life fifty kilometers to the south. Six armed NPA skimmers rose on their counter-grav, pointed their noses north, and leapt ahead at full power.
   Isvarian held his glasses steady as the mounting roar of turbines swept up from behind him. It was faint, at first, little louder than the distant wind, but it grew by leaps and bounds as the skimmers roared forward at over nine hundred kilometers per hour. They exploded over Isvarian's perch in a wave of man-made thunder, battering him with turbine wash, and made one screaming pass above the outlaw base. Two of them killed velocity with savage power, going into a perfect hover directly above the buildings, and the other four peeled out to the sides, spreading to encircle the base before they grounded and popped their hatches.
   Armed NPA cops poured out of them, eight from each grounded skimmer, and moved rapidly forward under cover of their transports' dorsal turrets, spreading out as they went. They advanced warily, half-crouched, weapons at the ready, but still there was absolutely no response from the structures, and Isvarian frowned. Half-buried or not, the occupants of those buildings would have to have been stone deaf to miss that thunderous arrival. Surely at least one of them should have poked his head out to see what as going on!
   He was raising his com once more to order his strike commander to hold his positions when something cracked viciously from his left. He wheeled towards it as a terrible, gurgling scream sounded over the com, and a second flat, sharp explosion echoed over the rolling terrain. He saw a spurt of smoke this time—gray-white smoke, surging up out of the moss—and then the echoes of the two explosions were drowned in the rippling whine of pulse rifles on full auto.
   Bright, spiteful flashes of white fire blossomed as the pulse darts shredded the moss about the burst of smoke like some crazed threshing machine, and Isvarian shook himself out of his momentary paralysis.
   "Check fire!" he barked. "Check fire, damn it!"
   The pulse rifles fell silent in near-instant response, and he darted a glance back at the base. Still no sign of life, and his strike party—frozen as the crackle of combat erupted behind them—began to move forward once more as it ended. They moved more quickly now, rushing to close with the buildings before anyone else got any ideas about opening fire, and he turned back to the flank. The stinking smoke of burning shemak floated on the wind, rising from the moss the darts had torn to ruin, and he coughed.
   "This is Leader-One," he barked into the com. "What the hell happened over there, Flank-Two?"
   "Leader-One, this is Flank-Three," a voice replied. It was flat and tight, over-controlled, and it wasn't Flank-Two. "Matt's dead, Barney. Don't know what it was. Some kind of projectile weapon, but not a pulser. Blew a hole the size of my fist through him, but it didn't explode."
   "Oh, shit!" Isvarian groaned. Not Matt Howard. He'd been due to retire in two more years.
   "Okay, Flank-Three," he said after a moment. "Make a sweep of the area and find out what the fuck happened. And be careful, we don't want any more sur—"
   The terrible, end-of-the-world concussion blew him flat on his back as the entire base erupted in a red-and-white fireball of chemical explosives.
 
   "Holy Mother of—!"
   Ensign Tremaine swallowed the rest of the phrase as a towering plume of smoke and dust spewed up from the base. An entire NPA skimmer cartwheeled away from it almost lazily, bouncing end-over-end across the ground for fifty meters before it disintegrated in a fireball all its own. One of the hovering skimmers vanished, plunging straight down into the inferno as some flying projectile smashed into its counter-grav coils and it lost lift. A fresh explosion roared up out of the chaos, and the last of the six skimmers staggered drunkenly across the sky. It careened downward, barely under control, and its port engine ripped away as it hit. The pilot lost it—dead, unconscious, or simply overpowered by the uneven thrust that spun his crippled mount in a wreckage-shredding ground loop over the rough terrain—but at least it neither exploded nor caught fire.
   "There, Skipper!" Hiro Yammata snapped. "Oh-six-five!"
   Tremaine ripped his gaze from the deadly chaos below him, and an ugly light blazed in his normally mild eyes as he saw the sleek, high-speed aircar darting out of its camouflage. It rocketed forward, accelerating madly as it streaked away, using a knife-edged ridge of rock for cover against Isvarian's stunned perimeter force.
   "Ruth! Get me a pursuit vector on that son-of-a-bitch!" Tremaine snarled, and the heavy pinnace dropped like a homesick rock as Kleinmeuller chopped her counter-grav back to zero. She did more than that; she dropped the nose almost perpendicular to the ground, lined it up on the fleeing aircar, and gave her air-breathing turbines full throttle.
   The pinnace shrieked and bellowed down the sky, and Tremaine hit the arming button. He'd never fired a weapon at another human being in his life, but there was no hesitation in him as the targeting screen flashed to life. Nor did he even consider calling upon the aircar to halt; he was no policeman or court of law, and its sudden flight on the heels of the explosion was all the proof of murder he needed. His lips drew back over his teeth as the target pipper moved steadily towards it, and his finger caressed the trigger grip.
   The fleeing aircar's pilot probably never even realized the pinnace was there—not that it mattered one way or the other. His craft had the speed to out-distance anything the NPA had, but no pure air-breather could run away from a Fleet pinnace.