by David Weber
A signal chimed, and Giolitti glanced at the view screen as his vessel began its docking sequence on Star Runner's sole unoccupied shuttle rack. A somewhat battered cargo shuttle occupied one of the other two racks, not that old but clearly a veteran of hard service to collect so many dings and scrapes. Yet it wasn't the cargo shuttle that caught his attention.
Another shuttle loomed on the number one rack—a needle-nosed craft, deadly even in repose. He was familiar with its basic stats, but he'd never seen one, and he wasn't quite prepared for its size. Or its color scheme.
Giolitti winced as he took in the garish crimson and black hull. Some unknown artist had painted staring white eyes on either side of the stiletto prow, jagged-toothed mouths gaped hungrily about the muzzles of energy and projectile cannons, and lovingly detailed streamers of lurid flame twined about the engine pods. He had no idea how Mainwaring had gotten her hands on it, though she must have done so in at least quasi-legal fashion, since the Empies had let her keep it when they suggested she explore new frontiers, but the visual impact was . . . extreme.
He grinned as the docking arms locked. The Bengal looked out of place on its drab, utilitarian mother ship, but free traders tended to find themselves back of beyond with only their own resources, and he suspected ill-intentioned locals would think twice about harassing a cargo shuttle with that thing hovering watchfully overhead. Which, no doubt, was the idea.
The personnel tube docking collar settled into place, and Giolitti gathered up his notepad, nodded to his pilot, and opened the hatch.
Alicia watched the heavyset young customs officer step through Megaira's port and hoped this worked. It had seemed simple enough when she was thinking it all up, but that was then.
Giolitti was a bit surprised to find only the captain waiting for him, but he had to give her tailor high marks. That severe, midnight-blue uniform and silver-braided bolero suited the tall, sable-haired woman perfectly.
"Lieutenant Giolitti, MaGuire Customs Service," he introduced himself, and the woman smiled.
"Captain Theodosia Mainwaring."
She had a nice voice—low and almost furry-sounding. He found himself beaming back at her and wondered vaguely why he felt so cheerful.
"Welcome to MaGuire, Captain."
"Thanks."
She released his hand, and he brought out his notepad.
"You have your crew's updated med forms, Captain?"
"Right here."
She extended a folio of chips, and Giolitti plugged them into the notepad, punching buttons with practiced fingers and scanning the display. Looked good. He supposed he really ought to insist on meeting the others immediately, but there was time for that before he left.
"Ready for inspection, Captain?" he asked, and Mainwaring nodded.
"Follow me," she invited, and led him into the lift.
The customs officer's vaguely disoriented eyes were a vast relief, but Alicia made a point of punching the lift buttons. Tisiphone chuckled deep inside her mind, enjoying herself as she worked her wiles upon their visitor, yet Alicia knew the fewer perceptions the Fury had to fuzz the better, and there was no point letting Megaira move the lift without instructions.
She escorted Lieutenant Giolitti into her quarters and watched him carry out his inspection. He clearly knew the best places to conceal contraband, yet there was a mechanical air to his actions. His voice sounded completely alert as he carried on a cheerful conversation with her, but its very normality was almost bizarre against the backdrop of his robotic search.
He finished his examination with a smile, and she drew a deep breath and led him back outside. She paused for just a moment, watching his eyes go even more unfocused, then turned and escorted him right back into her cabin.
"My engineer's quarters," she said, and he nodded and went to work . . . totally oblivious to the fact that he had just searched exactly the same room.
Alicia hardly believed what she was seeing. She'd counted on it, but actually seeing it was eerie and unreal, and she felt Megaira's matching reaction. Tisiphone, on the other hand, took it completely for granted, though she was obviously bending all her will upon the lieutenant to bring it off.
Giolitti completed his second examination and turned to her.
"Who's next?" he asked cheerfully.
"My astrogator," Alicia said, and led him back out into the passage.
Giolitti made the last entry and wished all his inspections could go this smoothly. Captain Mainwaring ran a taut ship. Even her cargo hold was spotless, and Star Runner was one of the very few free traders whose crew hadn't left something illegal—or at least closely regulated—lying around where he could find it. Which made them improbably law-abiding or fiendishly clever at hiding their personal stashes. Given his impression of Mainwaring's people, Giolitti suspected the latter, and more power to them.
It was funny, though. He'd been impressed by their competence, but they hadn't really registered the way people usually did. Probably because he'd been concentrating so hard on their captain, he thought a bit guiltily, and glanced at her from the corner of his eye as she escorted him back to the personnel lock. It was unusual for a captain to spend his or her precious time escorting a customs man about in person. Even the best of them seemed to regard inspectors as one step lower than a Rish, an intruder—and, still worse, an official intruder—in their domains. Giolitti didn't really blame them, but it was a tremendous relief when he met one of the rare good ones.
And, come to think of it, it wasn't really all that strange that the rest of her crew seemed somehow faded beside her. He'd never met anyone with quite the personal magnetism Theodosia Mainwaring radiated. She was a striking woman, friendly and completely at her ease, yet he had the strangest impression she could be a very dangerous person if she chose. Of course, no shrinking violet would be skippering a free trader at such a relatively young age, but it went deeper than that. He remembered the grizzled petty officer who'd overseen the hand-to-hand training of the "young gentlemen" at OCS. He'd moved the way Mainwaring did, and he'd been sudden death on two feet.
The lieutenant shook the thought aside and ejected the clearance chip from his notepad. He held it out to the captain, then extended his hand.
"It's been a pleasure, Captain Mainwaring. I wish every ship I inspected were as shipshape as yours. I hope you do well in our area."
"Thank you, Lieutenant." Mainwaring clasped is hand firmly, and for just an instant, he seemed to feel an odd, hard angularity in her palm, but the sensation vanished. A moment later, he didn't even remember having felt it. "I hope we run into one another again," the captain continued.
"Maybe we will." Giolitti released her hand and stood back, then raised an admonishing finger. "Remember, any of your people who come dirtside will be subject to individual med-scans to confirm their certification."
"Don't worry, Lieutenant." Mainwaring's rather amused smile made him feel even younger. "I don't expect we'll be here long enough for liberty—in fact, most of my people are going to be busy running maintenance checks on the Fasset drive before we pull out—but we'll check in with the medics if we are."
"Thank you, Captain," Giolitti gave her a crisp salute. "In that case, allow me to extend an official welcome to MaGuire and bid you good bye."
Mainwaring returned his salute, and the lieutenant headed back for his shuttle. He had two more inspections to make by shift end, and he wished, more wistfully than hopefully, that they might go as smoothly.
Alicia let herself sag against the bulkhead and sucked in a d
eep, lung-stretching breath. Dear God, she'd known Tisiphone was good, but the Fury's performance had surpassed her most extravagant hopes.
She doubted they were likely to meet a brighter, more conscientious customs inspector than young Lieutenant Giolitti, and she no longer doubted their ability to razzle-dazzle him if they did. It had been unnerving enough to watch him "search" her quarters five separate times, but that had been nothing compared to watching him walk right past the feed tubes from the main missile magazine without even batting an eye. He'd had to climb a ladder to cross one of them, yet it simply hadn't been there for him, and neither had the energy batteries or the armory. He'd seemed perfectly content with his "inspection" of the control room, as well, though only an idiot—or someone under Tisiphone's spell—could have looked at those blank gray walls and the alpha link headset without realizing what he was seeing.
"Yeah." Alicia drew another breath and straightened. "Still, you seemed to be concentrating pretty hard. Could you have handled more people?"
"I know." Alicia stepped back into the lift and punched for the flight deck. "Are we clear on our docking and service fees, Megaira?"
"What about service personnel?"
"You're a sweetheart," Alicia said fervently.
She'd been astounded by the verisimilitude of the computer images and voices Megaira could produce. It was a good thing the AI could, too, since they had to convince anyone who got curious—No, scratch that. They had to keep anyone from getting curious, which meant they had to provide crewmen other than Captain Mainwaring in one form or another. Megaira's ability to carry on com conversations, or even several of them at once, would be invaluable in that regard.
"You got that right, Lady," Alicia agreed. "But I take it no one raised an eyebrow over your faces?"
"Sure." The lift slid to a halt and Alicia stepped out onto the flight deck. "Let her roll."
The flat screen flickered for just an instant, then cleared with the face of a thin, auburn-haired man with heavy-lidded eyes.
"How do I look, Thir?" the image asked, and Alicia grinned.
"I think maybe you got the lisp down a little too pat, Megaira."
"That'th eathy for you to thay," "Lieutenant Chisholm" returned aggrievedly. "You haven't been teathed about it all your life. I tell you, it'th been a real pain in the ath for me!"
"Do you say that, or do you spray it?" Alicia giggled, and the image raised a hand into the field of the pickup and made a rude gesture.
"Oh, that's perfect, Megaira! Of course, I imagine poor Chisholm won't be handling much of the com traffic, given his lisp."
"No." Chisholm's baritone was replaced by a soprano and the image changed to that of a square-faced, silver-haired woman Alicia recognized as Ruth Tanner, her purser. "Poor Andy hates it when he has to talk to strangers. That's why I usually handle the com watch when you're not aboard, Ma'am."
"So I see," Alicia propped a hip against a console and grinned. The AI had outdone herself. No one who spoke to any of Megaira's talking heads would suspect there was only a single human aboard Star Runner. Coupled with the AI's ability to handle both shuttles through her telemetry links, Captain Mainwaring's crew would be very much in evidence—so much so that no one would ever realize that they'd never actually laid eyes on any of them.
"Okay, I think we're set. But if it's all the same to you two, I need a good night's sleep before I get started hunting up a cargo."
The screen blanked as Megaira returned to direct contact, and Alicia started back towards her quarters, shedding her tight jacket as she went. She tossed the garment to one of Megaira's waiting remotes, which whisked it neatly into a closet.
"You know I haven't." Alicia paused with her blouse half off. "Why?"
"What do you mean, 'we'?"
"Meaning what?" Alicia asked sharply. "That they know where we're headed or something?"
"What last little bit?"
Alicia sat down on the bed with a thump as Megaira finished her report.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Benjamin McIlheny racked his headset and stood, rubbing his aching eyes and trying to remember when he'd last had six hours' sleep at a stretch.
He lowered his hands and glowered at the record chips and hard-copy heaped about his office aboard the accomodation ship HMS Donegal. Somewhere in all that crap, he knew, was the answer—or the clues which would lead to the answer—if only he could find it.
It seemed a law of nature that any intelligence service always had the critical data in its grasp . . . and didn't know it. After all, how did you cull the one, crucial truth from the heap of untruth, half-truth, and plain lunacy? Answer: hindsight invariably recognized it after the fact. Which, of course, wa
s the reason the intelligence community was constantly being kicked by people who thought it was so damned easy.
McIlheny snorted bitterly and began to pace. He'd seen it too many times, especially from Senate staffers. They had an image of intelligence officers as Machiavellian spy-masters, usually in pursuit of some hidden agenda. That was why everyone knew the civilians had to watch the sneaky bastards so closely. And since they were so damned clever, obviously they never told all they knew, even when they had a constitutional duty to do so. Which, naturally, meant any "failure" to spot the critical datum actually represented some deep-seated plot to suppress an embarrassing truth.
People like that neither knew nor cared what true intelligence work was. Holovid might pander to the notion of the Daring Interstellar Agent carrying the vital data chip in a hollow tooth, but the real secret was sweat. Insight and trained instinct were invaluable, but it was the painstaking pursuit of every lead, the collection of every scrap of evidence and its equally exhaustive analysis, which provided the real breakthroughs.
Unfortunately, he admitted with a sigh, analysis took time, sometimes more than you had, and in this case it wasn't providing what he needed. He knew there was a link between the pirates and someone high up. It was the only possible answer. Admiral Gomez's full strength would have had a tough time fighting its way into Elysium orbit against its space defenses, yet the pirates had gotten inside in the first rush. McIlheny had no detailed sensor data to back his hunch, but he was morally certain the raiders had slipped a capital ship into SLAM range under some sort of cover. The shocked survivors all agreed on the blazing speed with which the orbital defenses had been annihilated, and only a capital ship could have done it.
But how? How had they fooled Commodore Trang and all of his people? Simple ECM couldn't be the answer after all the sector had been through. No, somehow they'd given Trang a legitimate cover, something he knew was friendly, and there was simply no way they could have done that without access to information they should never have been able to reach.
