Planet Pirates Omnibus Part 9

Wefts, as aliens, irritated many human commanders, but again Sa.s.sinak had the advantage of early friends.h.i.+ps. She knew that Wefts had no desire for the worlds humans preferred - in fact, the Wefts who chose s.p.a.ce travel were sterile, having given up their chance at procreation for an opportunity to travel and adventure. Nor were they the perfect mental spies so many feared: their telepathic powers were quite limited; they found the average human mind a chaotic mess of emotion and illogic, impossible to follow unless the individual tried hard to convey a message. Sa.s.s, with her early training in Discipline, could converse easily with Wefts in their native form, but she knew she was an exception. Besides, if any of the Wefts on board had identified a subversive, she'd already have been told.

After several weeks, she felt completely comfortable with her crew, and could tell that they were settling well together. Huron had proved as inventive a partner as he was a versifier - after hearing a few of his livelier creations in the wardroom one night, she could hardly believe he hadn't written the one about the captain's son and the merchant's daughter. He still insisted he was innocent of that one. The weapons officer, a woman' only one year behind her at the Academy, turned out to be a regional sho champion - and was clearly delighted to demonstrate by beating Sa.s.sinak five games out of seven. It was good for morale, and besides, Sa.s.sinak had never minded learning from an expert. One of the cooks was a natural genius - so good that Sa.s.sinak caught herself thinking about putting him on her duty s.h.i.+ft, permanently. She didn't, but her taste buds argued with her, and more than once she found an excuse to "inspect" the kitchens when he was baking. He always had something for the captain. All this was routine - even finding a homesick and miserable junior engineering tech, just out of training, sobbing hopelessly in a storage locker. But so was the patrol routine . . . nothing, day after day, but the various lumps of matter that had been mapped in their a.s.signed volume of s.p.a.ce. Not so much as a pleasure yacht out for adventure.

She was half-dozing in her cabin, early in third watch, when the bridge corn chimed.

"Captain - we've got a s.h.i.+p. Merchant, maybe CR- cla.s.s for ma.s.s, no details yet. Trigger the scan?"

"Wait - I'm coming." She elbowed Huron, who'd already fallen asleep, until he grunted and opened an eye, then whisked into her uniform. When he grunted again and asked what it was, she said, "We've got a s.h.i.+p." At that, both eyes came open, and he sat up. She laughed, and went out; by the time she got to the bridge, he was only a few steps behind her, fully dressed.

"Gotcha!" Huron, leaning over the scanner screen, was as eager as the technician handling the controls. "Look at that ..." His fingers flew on his own keyboard, and the s.h.i.+p's data came up on an adjoining screen. "Hu Veron s.h.i.+pways, forty percent owned by Allied Geochemical, which is wholly owned by the Paraden family. Well, well . . . previous owner Jakob Iris, no previous criminal record but went into bankruptcy after . . . hmm ... a wager on a horse race. What's that?"

"Horse race," said Sa.s.sinak, watching the screen just as intently. "Four-legged mammal, big enough to carry humans. Old Earth origin, imported to four new systems, but they mostly die."

"Kipling's corns, captain, how do you know all that?"

"Kipling indeed, Huron. Our schools had a Kipling story about a horse in the required elementary reading list. With a picture. And the Academy kept a team for funerals, and I have seen a tape of a horse race. In fact, I've actually ridden a horse." Her mouth quirked, as she thought of Mira's homeworld and that ill-fated pack trip.

"You would have," said Huron almost vaguely. His attention was already back to his screen. "Look at that - Iris was betting against Luisa Paraden Scofeld. Isn't that the one who was married to a zero-G hockey star, and then to an amba.s.sador to Ryx?"

"Yes, and while he was there she ran off with the landscape architect. But the point is - "

"The point is that the Paradens have laid their hands on that s.h.i.+p twice!"

"That we know of." Sa.s.sinak straightened up and regarded the back of Huron's head thoughtfully. "I think we'll trail this one. Commander Huron. There are just a few too many coincidences ..." Even as she gave the necessary orders, Sa.s.sinak was conscious of fulfilling an old dream - to be in command of her own s.h.i.+p, on the bridge, with a possible pirate in view. She looked around with satisfaction at what might have been any large control room, anything from a reactor station to a manufacturing plant. The physical remnant of millennia of naval history was under her feet, the raised dais that gave her a clear view of everyone and everything in the room. She could sit in the command chair, with her own screens and computer linkages at hand, or stand and observe the horseshoe arrangement of workstations, each with its trio of screens, its banks of toggles and b.u.t.tons, its quietly competent operator. Angled above were the big screens, and directly below the end of the dais was the remnant of a now outmoded technology that most captains still used to impress visitors: the three-D tank.

Trailing a s.h.i.+p through FTL s.p.a.ce was, Sa.s.sinak thought, like following a groundcar - through thick forest at night without using headlights. The unsuspecting merchant left a disturbed swath of s.p.a.ce which the Ssli could follow, but it could not simultaneously sense structural (if that was the word) variations in the s.p.a.ce-time fabric ... so that they were constantly in danger of jouncing through celestial chugholes or running into unseen gravitational stumps. They had to go fast, to keep the quarry in range of detection, but fast blind travel through an unfamiliar sector was an excellent way to get swallowed by the odd wormhole.

When the quarry dropped out of FTL into normal s.p.a.ce, the cruiser followed - or, more properly, antic.i.p.ated. The computer brought up the local navigation points.

"That's interesting," said Huron, pointing. It was more than interesting. A small star system, with one twenty-year-old colony (in the prime range for a raid) sited over a rich vein of platinum. Despite Fleet's urging, FSP bureaucrats had declined to approve effective planetary defence weaponry for small colonies . . . and the catalog of this colony's defenses was particularly meager.

"Brotherhood of Metals," said Sa.s.s. "That's the colony sponsor; they hold the paper on it. I'm beginning to wonder who their stockholders are."

"New contact!" The technician's voice rose. "Excuse me, captain, but I've got a Churi-cla.s.s vessel out there: could be extremely dangerous - "

"Specs." Sa.s.sinak glanced around the bridge, pleased with the alert but unfrantic att.i.tudes she saw. They were already on full stealth routine; upgrading to battle status would cost her stealth. Her weapons officer raised a querying finger; Sa.s.sinak shook her head, and he relaxed.

"Old-style IFF - no beacon. Built forty years ago in the Zendi yards, commissioned by the - " He stopped, lowered his voice. "The governor of Diplo, captain."

Oh great, thought Sa.s.s. just what we needed, a little heavyworlder suspicion to complete our confusion.

"Bring up the scan and input," she said, without commenting on the heavyworlder connection. One display filled with a computer a.n.a.lysis of the IFF output. Sa.s.sinak frowned at it. "That's not right. Look at that carrier wave - "

"Got it." The technician had keyed in a comparison command, and the display broke into colored bands, blue for the correspondence between the standard signal and the one received, and bright pink for the unmatched portions.

"They've diddled with their IFF," said Sa.s.s. "We don't know what that is, or what it carries - "

"Our pa.s.sive array says it's about the size of a patrol craft - " offered Huron.

"Which means it could carry all sorts of nice things," said Sa.s.s, thinking of them. An illicitly armed patrol craft was not a match for the Zaid-Dayan Zaid-Dayan, but it could do them damage. If it noticed them.

Huron was frowning at the displays. "Now ... is this a rendezvous, or an ambush?"

"Rendezvous," said Sa.s.sinak quickly. His brows rose.

"You're sure?"

"It's the worse possibility for us: it gives us two s.h.i.+ps to follow or engage if they notice us. Besides, little colonies like this don't get visits from unscheduled merchants."

Judging by the pa.s.sive scans, which produced data hours old, the two s.h.i.+ps matched trajectories and traveled toward the colony world together - certainly close enough to use a tight-beam communication band. The Zaid-Dayan Zaid-Dayan hung in the system's outer debris, watching with every scanning mode it had. Hour by hour, it became clearer that the destination must be the colony. They're raiders, Sa.s.sinak thought, and Huron said it aloud, adding, "We ought to blow them out of the system!" For an instant, Sa.s.sinak let the old fury rise almost out of control, but she forced the memory of her own childhood back. If they blew these two away, they would know nothing about the powers who hired them, protected them, supplied them. She would not let herself wonder if another Fleet commander had made the same decision about her homeworld's raid. hung in the system's outer debris, watching with every scanning mode it had. Hour by hour, it became clearer that the destination must be the colony. They're raiders, Sa.s.sinak thought, and Huron said it aloud, adding, "We ought to blow them out of the system!" For an instant, Sa.s.sinak let the old fury rise almost out of control, but she forced the memory of her own childhood back. If they blew these two away, they would know nothing about the powers who hired them, protected them, supplied them. She would not let herself wonder if another Fleet commander had made the same decision about her homeworld's raid.

She shook her head. "We're on surveillance patrol; you know that."

"But, captain - our data's a couple of hours old. If they are raiders, they could be hitting that colony any time ... we have to warn them. We can't let them - " Huron had paled, and she saw a terrible doubt in his eyes.

"Orders." She turned away, not trusting herself to meet his gaze. She had exorcised many demons from her past, in the years since her commissioning: she could dine with admirals and high government officials, make polite conversation with aliens, keep her temper and her wits in nearly all circ.u.mstances . . . but deep in her mind she carried the vision of her parents dying, her sister's body sliding into the water, her best friend changed to a s.h.i.+vering, depressed wreck of the lively girl she'd been. She shook her head, forcing herself to concentrate on the scan. Her voice came out clipped and cold; she could see by their reactions that the bridge crew recognized the strain on her. "We must find the source of this - we must. If we destroy these vermin, and never find their master, it will go on and on, and more will suffer. We have to watch, and follow - "

"But they never meant us to let a colony be raided! We're - we're supposed to protect them - it's in the Charter!" Huron circled until he faced her again. "You've got discretion, in any situation where FSP citizens are directly threatened - "

"Discretion!" Sa.s.sinak clamped her jaw on the rest of that, and glared at him. It must have been a strong glare, for he backed a step. In a lower voice, she went on. "Discretion, Huron, is not questioning your commanding officer's orders on the bridge when you don't know what in flaming gas clouds is going on. Discretion is learning to think before you blow your stack - "

"Did you ever think," said Huron, white-lipped and angrier than Sa.s.sinak had ever seen him, "that someone might have made this decision when you were down there?" He jerked his chin toward the navigation display. She waited a long moment, until the others had decided it would be wise to pay active attention to their own work, and the rigidity went out of Huron's expression.

"Yes," she said very quietly. "Yes, I have. I imagine it haunts that person, if someone actually was there, as this is going to haunt me." At that his face relaxed slightly, the color rising to his cheeks. Before he could speak, Sa.s.sinak went on. "You think I don't care? You think I haven't imagined myself - some child the age I was, some innocent girl or boy who's thinking of tomorrow's test in school? You think I don't remember, Huron?" She glanced around, seeing that everyone was at least pretending to give them privacy. "You've seen my nightmares, Huron; you know I haven't forgotten."

His face was as red as it had been pale. "I know. I know that, but how can you - "

"I want them all." It came out flat, emotionless, but with the power of an impending avalanche ... as yet no sound, no excitement . . . but inexorable movement accelerating to some dread ending. "I want them all, Huron: the ones who do it because it's fun, the ones who do it because it's profitable, the ones who do it because it's easier than hiring honest labor . . . and above all the ones who do it without thinking about why . . . who just do it because that's how it's done. I want them all." She turned to him with a smile that just missed pleasantry to become the toothy grin of the striking predator. "And there's only one way to get them all, and to that I commit this s.h.i.+p, and my command, and any other resource . . . including, with all regret, those colonists who will die before we can rescue them - "

"But we're going to try - ?"

"Try, h.e.l.l. I'm going to do it." The silence on the bridge was eloquent; this time when she turned away from Huron he did not follow.

The scans told the pitiable story of the next hours. The colonists, more alert than Myriad's, managed to set off their obsolete missiles, which the illicit patrol craft promptly detonated at a safe distance.

"Now we know they've got an LDsl4, or equivalent," said Huron without emphasis. Sa.s.sinak glanced at him but made no comment. They had not met, as usual, after dinner, to talk over the day's work. Huron had explained stiffly that he wanted to review for his next promotion exam, and Sa.s.sinak let him go. The ugly thought ran through her mind that a subversive would be just as happy to have the evidence blown to bits. But surely not Huron - from a small colony himself, surely he'd have more sympathy with them . . . and besides, she was sure she knew him better than any psych profile. Just as he knew her.

Meanwhile, having exhausted the planetary defenses, the two raiders dropped shuttles to the surface. Sa.s.sinak s.h.i.+vered, remembering the tough, disciplined (if irregular) troops the raiders had landed on her world. The colonists wouldn't stand a chance. She found she was breathing faster, and looked up to find Huron watching her. So were the others, though less obviously; she caught more than one quick sideways glance.

Yet she had to wait. Through the agonizing hours, she stayed on the bridge, pus.h.i.+ng aside the food and drink that someone handed her. She had to wait, but she could not relax, eat, drink, even talk, while those innocent people were being killed . . . and captured . . . and tied into links (did all slavers use links of eight, she wondered suddenly). The two s.h.i.+ps...o...b..ted the planet, and when this...o...b..t took them out of LOS, the Zaid-Dayan Zaid-Dayan eased closer, its advanced technology allowing minute hops of FTL flight with minimal disturbance to the fields. eased closer, its advanced technology allowing minute hops of FTL flight with minimal disturbance to the fields.

Their scan delay was less than a half-hour, and the raiders had shown no sign of noticing their presence in the system. Now they could track the shuttles rising - all to the transport, Sa.s.sinak noted - and then descending and rising again. Once more, and then the raiders boosted away from the planet, on a course that brought them within easy range of the Zaid-Dayan Zaid-Dayan. Huron only looked at Sa.s.s; she shook her head, and caught her weapons officer's eye as well. Hold on, she told the self she imagined lying helpless in the transport's belly. We're here: we're going to come after you. But she knew her thoughts did those children no good at all - and nothing could wipe out the harm already done.

Chapter Nine.

All too quickly the transport and its escort showed that they were preparing to leave the system. Powerful boosters shoved them up through the planet's gravity well - a system cheap and certain, if inelegant. Sa.s.sinak wondered if the transport that had carried her had had an escort - or if Fleet activities in the past twenty years or so had had that much effect. Considering the cost of each s.h.i.+p, crew, weaponry ... if Fleet had made escorts necessary . . . then either the profit margin of slavers should be much narrower, or the slave trade brought even more money than anyone had guessed. And why?

"Commander Sa.s.sinak - " This mode of address, perfectly correct but slightly more formal than usual to a s.h.i.+p's captain on board, made it clear to her just how upset her bridge crew were. She glanced at Arly, senior weapons officer, who was pointing at her own display. "We finally got a good readout on their weapons systems . . . that's one more hot s.h.i.+p."

Sa.s.sinak welcomed the diversion, and leaned over the display. Since the escort vessel had tampered with its own IFF transmission, they had had to use other detection methods to figure out its cla.s.s and armament . . . methods which were supposed to be indetectible, although they'd not yet been tested against any but Fleet vessels. Now she'd find out - in the fabric of her own s.h.i.+p if the designers were wrong - just how accurate and indetectible they were.

"Patrol cla.s.s: 'way too big and too hot for anyone but Fleet to have legally," Arly went on, pointing out the obvious. "Probably modified and refitted from a legal insystem escort or patrol vessel . . . although it might be a pirated hull from something consigned to sc.r.a.p."

"I hope not," said Sa.s.s. "If there's a hole in our sc.r.a.p and recycling operation, we could find ourselves facing a pirated battle platform - "

"Best fit of hull and structure is to a Vannoy Combine insystem escort. Then if they retrofitted an FTL drive component - " The weapons officer's fingers danced over the controls, and the display split, one vertical half showing a schematic with the changes she proposed. " - and beefed up the interior a good bit - they'd lose crew s.p.a.ce, but gain the reinforcement they need to mount these these." A final flick of the finger, and the armament that the Zaid-Dayan's Zaid-Dayan's detectors and computer had come up with came up as a list. detectors and computer had come up with came up as a list.

"On that that!" Sa.s.sinak stared at it. A vessel only one third the ma.s.s of her own was carrying nearly identical weaponry, with a nice mix of projectile, beam, and explosives.

"Just as well we didn't sail in to take an easy kill," said the weapons officer quietly. Her expression was completely neutral. "Could have been messy."

"It's going to be messy," said Sa.s.sinak, just as quietly. "When we catch them."

"We are following - " It was not quite a question.

"Oh, yes. And as soon as we have their destination coordinates, we'll be calling in the whole b.l.o.o.d.y Fleet."

But it was not that easy. The two s.h.i.+ps moved away from the planet they'd raided, boosting toward a safe range for FTL flight. Sa.s.sinak would like to have checked the planet itself for survivors (unlikely though she knew that to be) and evidence, but she could not risk losing the s.h.i.+ps when they left normal s.p.a.ce. She waited as the s.h.i.+ps built speed, until their own scans must be nearly blind as they approached their insertion velocity. The Ssli had queried twice when she finally gave the order to s.h.i.+ft position and pursue. Just before they entered FTL flight, she had a burst sent to Sector HQ by low-link, explaining what happened to the colony and her plan of pursuit.

Then it was the same blind chase as they had had following the transport in the first place. Sa.s.sinak could only imagine how it must seem to the Ssli on whose ability to sense the trace they all depended. Their lives were hostage to the realities of such travel . . . the Ssli concentrated so on the traces of their quarry that it could not warn them of potentially fatal anomalies in their path.

With the Ssli controlling the s.h.i.+p's movement through its computer link, the crew had all too little to do. Sa.s.sinak spent some time on the bridge each s.h.i.+ft, and much of the rest prowling the s.h.i.+p wondering how she was going to find her subversives - without driving the perfectly loyal and honorable crew up the walls in the process. Dhrossh, their link to their quarry, would not initiate an IFTL link without her direct command, but someone still might loose a message by SOLEC or high-link, not to warn the raiders, but their allies. That would require knowing the coordinates of either a mapped Fleet node or receiving station, but an agent might. She considered sending regular reports to Fleet by the same means, and decided against it. Better to have some conclusion to report, after that disaster at the colony.

Sa.s.sinak worked out a duty schedule that involved keeping a Weft on the bridge constantly - at least they could contact her, instantly, if something happened, and they were exceptionally able in reading the minute behaviors of humans. She had to hope that her human crew would not guess her reasons.

She was acutely aware of the crew's reaction to her decision not to engage the raiders before they attacked the colony, or during the attack. She imagined their comments . . . "Is the captain losing it? Has someone bought her off?" Volume 8 of the ma.s.sive Rules of Engagement managed to be lying around the senior officers' wardroom more than once, although she never caught anyone reading the critical article. Some of the crew sided with her, and she heard some of that. "Pretty sharp, figuring out we were outgunned before we'd come in close-scan range," one of the biotechs was saying one day as Sa.s.sinak pa.s.sed quietly along on a routine inspection of the environmental system. "I wouldn't have guessed that the initial readouts were wrong . . . whoever heard of someone fooling with an IFF?" Sa.s.sinak smiled grimly: that wasn't a new trick, and bridge crew all knew it. But it was nice to have credit somewhere. Too bad that she discovered a minor leak in the detox input filter line, and had to file a report on the very tech who'd been defending her.

The environmental system was, in fact, a nagging worry. Among the modifications made on station, a rerouting of most of the main lines had meant s.h.i.+fting them into cramped, hard-to-inspect compartments rather than out in the open where inspection was easy. Sa.s.sinak remembered her first cruise, and the awkwardness of it. Supposedly the equipment now mounted in midline was worth it, in the protection it gave from enemy surveillance, but if the environmental system failed, they would have a miserable trip back - if they survived. Sa.s.sinak glared at the big gray cylinders that lay in recesses originally meant for pipelines. They'd better work. In the meantime, either because of the less efficient layout, with its more variable line pressures, or because the line was harder to inspect, minor leaks repeatedly developed in one or another subsystem.

Of course, it could be sabotage. That's why she walked the lines herself, struggling to relearn the details of the system so that she knew what she was looking for. But in any complicated system of tubing and pumps, a thousand opportunities exist for subtle acts of sabotage, and she didn't expect to find anything obvious. She was right.

As the s.h.i.+p's days pa.s.sed in pursuit, with the Ssli certain that it had a lock on the s.h.i.+ps ahead, Huron finally came around. Literally, as he appeared at her cabin door with a peace offering: wine and pastries. Sa.s.sinak had not realized how much she'd missed his support until she saw the old grin on his face.

"Peace offering," he said. Typically, he wasn't trying to pretend they'd had no quarrel. Sa.s.sinak nodded, and waved him in. He set the basket of hot, sugary treats on her desk, and opened the wine. They settled down in comfortable chairs, one on either side of the pastry basket, and munched in harmony for a few minutes.

"I was afraid they'd split up, or we'd lose them," he said with a sideways glance. "And then when we got the final scan on the escort - that it might have been fatal to take it on - I knew you were right, but I just couldn't - "

"Never mind." Sa.s.sinak leaned back against the padded chair. Just to have someone to talk with, to relax with - it wasn't over, and it was going to get worse before it got better, but if Huron could accept her decision . . .

"I wish we knew where they're going!" He bit into his pastry so hard that flaky bits showered across his lap. He muttered a curse through the mouthful of food, and Sa.s.sinak chuckled. Problems and all, life was more fun with Huron in her cabin some nights.

"Huh. Don't we all! And I don't dare send anything back to Sector HQ in case something intercepts it. . ."

"Remember when Ssli and the IFTL system were new, and we were sure no one else had them?" He was still swiping crumbs from his lap, and looked up at her with the mischievous lift of eyebrow she'd come to love.

"Sure do." Sa.s.sinak ran her hands through her dark hair, and flipped the ends toward him. His eyes widened, then narrowed again.

"One track mind." He shook his head at her.

"You're any different?" Sa.s.sinak pointed to the now-empty pastry basket and the bottle of wine. "Think I can't recognize bait when I see it?"

"Brains with your beauty - and a few other things ..." His eyes finished what she had started, and they were more than halfway undressed when Sa.s.sinak remembered to switch the intercom to alert-only. The bridge crew knew what that meant, she thought with satisfaction, before dragging the big brilliantly rainbowed comforter over the pair of them.

"And what I still don't understand," said Huron, far more awake than usual for 0200, "is how they could mount all that on a hull that size. Are they crewing it with midgets, or what?"

Sa.s.sinak had taken a short nap, and wakened to find Huron tracing elaborate curlicues on her back while he stared at the readout on the overhead display. She yawned, pushed back a thick tangle of hair, and reached up to switch the display off. "Later ..."

He switched it back on. "No, seriously - "

"Seriously, I'm sleepy. Turn it off, or go look at it somewhere else."

He glowered at her. "Some Fleet captain you are, lazing around like someone's lapcat after a dish of cream."

Sa.s.sinak purred loudly, yawned again, and realized she was going to wake all the way up, like it or not. "Big weapons, small hull. Reminds me of something." Huron blushed, extensively, and Sa.s.sinak snapped her teeth at him. "Call your captain a cat, and you deserve to get bit, chum. If we're going to go back to work, I'm getting dressed." She felt a lot better, relaxed and alert all at once.

Now that she was awake, she realized that she had not followed through on the a.n.a.lysis of the escort vessel as carefully as she could have. She'd been thinking too much about her main decision and its implications. Together she and Huron ran the figures several times, and then adjourned to the main wardroom. She called in both Arly and Hollister. They arrived blinking and yawning: as mains.h.i.+ft crew, they were normally asleep at this hour. After a cup of stimulant and some food, they came fully awake.

"The question is, are we sure of our data, even that last? Is that thing built on a patrol-cla.s.s hull, and if so does it really carry those weapons, and if so what's their crew size and how are they staying alive?" Sa.s.sinak took the last spiced bun off the platter the night cook had brought in.

Hollister shrugged. "That new detection system isn't really my specialty, but if that's the size we think - dimensional and ma.s.s - then it'll depend on weaponry. With up-to-date environmental, guidance, and drive systems, they'd need a crew of fifty to work normal s.h.i.+fts - plus weapons specialists. Say, sixty to seventy altogether. If they work long s.h.i.+fts, maybe fifty altogether, but they'd chance fatigue errors - "

"But they don't expect to need top efficiency for long," Sa.s.sinak said. "They come in, rout a colony, escort the transport to their base, wherever that is ... and most times they never see trouble."

"Fifty, then. That means . . . mmm ..." He ran some figures into the nearest terminal. "'Bout what I thought. Look - " A s.h.i.+p schematic came up on the main screen at the end of the table. "Fifty crew, here's the calories and water needs . . . best guess at system efficiency . . . and that means they'll need eight standard filtration units, eight sets of re-op converters, plus the UV trays - " As he talked, the schematic filled with green lines and blocks, the standard representation of environmental system units. "This is a.s.suming their FTL route doesn't take more than twenty-five standard days, and they've got the same kind of oxygen recharge system we do. Most surveyed routes come in under twenty days, as you know. Now if we add the probable drives: we know they have insystem chem boosters as well as insystem mains, and FTL - " The drive components came up in blue. "And minimum crew s.p.a.ce: access and living - " That was yellow. "Weapons?"

Arly took over, and the schematic suddenly bled with red weapons symbols. "This is what we got off the scans, captain. Their IFF was a real nutcase: no sense at all. But the pa.s.sives showed two distinct patterns of radiation leakage: here, and there. And we saw how they knocked out those ground-s.p.a.ce missiles . . . they do have optical weapons."

"And it doesn't fit," said Huron, sounding entirely too smug. "Look." Sure enough, the display had a blinking symbol in one corner: excess volume specified.

Arly looked stubborn. "I could not ignore the scan data - "

"Of course not." Sa.s.sinak held up her hand for silence when both mouths opened. "Look, Huron, both the scans and this schematic come in part from a.s.sumptions we made about those criminals. If If they crew their s.h.i.+p to a level we think safe, they crew their s.h.i.+p to a level we think safe, if if they aren't stressing their environmental system, they aren't stressing their environmental system, if if a few extra particles means that they've got a neutron bomb ... all if." a few extra particles means that they've got a neutron bomb ... all if."

"We have to make some a.s.sumptions!"

"Yes. I do. I'm a.s.suming they sacrifice everything else to speed and firepower. They want no witnesses: they want to be sure they can blow anything - up to a battle platform, let's say - into nothing, before it can call in help. They want to be able to escape any pursuit. They're not out on patrol as long as we normally are: they sacrifice comfort, and some levels of efficiency. I will bet you that they're under-crewed and carry every sc.r.a.p of armament our scans found."

"Less crew means they could have a smaller environmental system," said Hollister.

"And with any luck less crew means they're a little less alert to a tail."

"I wish I knew how good their fire-control systems were," said Arly, running a finger along the edge of the console. "If they've got anything like the Gamma system, we could be in trouble with them."