Wasteland of flint

These are nearly dreadnaught-strength mounts!'

Susan nodded, finding a page she recalled from the Seeking Eye – Fleet Intelligence – report. 'Pursuant to the Treaty of Rostov,' she read, 'the macehualli pochteca – or industrial combines – have been required to turn all armaments and munitions factories, orbital yards, workshops and other means of naval production to nonmilitary use. This they have done.' A brief, fierce smile flickered across Susan's face. 'In the case of the Tyr-class mobile ore refinery, the core of the civilian ship is a stripped down Kaiserschlacht-class heavy cruiser. Some of the early refinery models, in fact, are physically built around decommissioned K-schlacht hulls.'

'Sister bless!' Hayes tabbed to the same page. 'They didn't leave the original sensor net and ECM intact, did they?'

Susan pursed her lips and pointed with her stylus at another section of the report. 'Navigating in an asteroid belt, or an Oort cloud, is a tricky business. This requires the refinery to carry advanced avionics and sensor equipment. The targeting systems and main comp aren't supposed to be military grade, of course. Just civilian models.'

Hayes leaned back against the bulkhead, his broad face looking tired and pudgy. 'Easy enough to replace from the black market – if the originals were ever actually removed in the first place.'

'Or to upgrade,' Susan said quietly. 'K-schlacht hulls are over a hundred years old. Even a modern civilian rig would be superior in head-to-head with the old Royal Navy gear. And these ships are straight out of the Norsktrad yard at Kiruna – which means they have the very latest comp and scan on board.'

Hayes rubbed his face and made a groaning sound. Kosho wanted to laugh derisively, but she felt a certain sisterly affection for the senior lieutenant. He was quick on his board, and quite adept at handling dozens of incoming threats and targets in the thick of the action – but he hadn't quite the taste for the hunt a commanding officer really needed.

'So,' she said, in a brisk voice, 'how do we kill this thing?'

Hayes stared at her, then leaned his chin on clasped hands. 'Right. Kill it…well, the firing aperture of those mining beams is restricted – they can't have full traverse with the ore carrels in the way – so there are blind spots if we can get a target lock and proper orientation.'

'Good.' Susan laid down her comp pad and fixed him with her full attention. 'And?'

'And…they probably don't have any missile capacity, unless they're hiding some kind of pods in the carrels – which they could be! But that wouldn't pass muster anywhere they docked – and they did come here to mine, didn't they?' He seemed to perk up at the thought.

'Yes, they did.' Susan rolled her stylus between middle finger and thumb. 'The ship's power-to-mass ratio is also against them – they will have a hard time outmaneuvering us, and a harder time hiding from us if they do move.'

'Yeah.' Hayes made a face. 'So we have to maneuver for position, get into one of their blinds and just hammer them, knock out engines, break through the armor… Could be messy.'

'No, we can't be messy,' Susan said, flipping the stylus deftly in her hand so the sharp point pointed down at the table. 'We must be exact -' she made a sharp stabbing motion with the writing tool '- and swift. One blow, thrust past all that armor will -'

'- not be necessary.' Hadeishi's voice was soft from the hatchway. Susan stiffened, aware her hair was unbound, her uniform jacket untabbed at the neck, and she sat up straight. Hayes had also come to attention. The chu-sa stepped into the room, nodded to them both, and drew a tea from the automat. 'You two should get some sleep. We will be busy later.'

'What about the Tyr?' Hayes said, betraying a little confusion. 'We have to be ready to deal with this brute when we -'

Hadeishi waved him to silence, settling into a chair at the end of the table, hands curling around the warm cup. 'If we engage the refinery in any kind of shooting match, we've failed. I am under strict orders to secure the miner without the use of any kind of missile, beam weapon or weapon producing an electromagnetic signature.'

He smiled gently at both of them – particularly at Hayes, who was staring gape-mouthed.

'What is the pinnacle of a warrior's skill?' Hadeishi turned to Susan, his mellow brown eyes capturing hers. She felt a chill shock, as if he'd splashed ice water on her face. But her mind was quick, and she remembered both the question and the traditional answer.

'To subdue the enemy without fighting.' She frowned in distaste. 'You're quoting from -'

Hadeishi raised an eyebrow and finished his tea. 'That does not mean,' he said quietly as he stood up, 'it is not true. Good night.'

Kosho watched the chu-sa leave and wondered how he'd gained access to a copy of the Ping Fa. She was a little disturbed. I'm very sure all those books were destroyed.

In Geosync Over Ephesus

Pacing was almost impossible with the bridge of the Palenque in z-g, so Gretchen resorted to staring moodily at an image of the planet filling the main display. Parker and Magdalena were working under the main control board – grunting and cursing by turns as they rewove the power and data fibers snaking up from under the floor and into the control surfaces.

Anderssen had rarely felt such distaste for another human being. Even the thoughtless racism of her instructors at university had not inspired such a bleak mood. I will find some way, she thought, letting fantasies of outlandish torture devices blossom in her mind's eye, to make him suffer. What an arrogant bastard!

Gretchen had been annoyed when Hummingbird took the remains of Russovsky away into 'Imperial Custody,' though her reaction had been mild compared to Sinclair's. The xenobiologist had begged to examine the strange dust, but the Imperial judge had flatly refused. The rest of the scientists were confined to quarters, which greatly reduced the possible range of disputes. Gretchen had been a little smug – she could go where she wished – but all of her good humor had evaporated when she finally made her way down to airlock number three.

Which was empty. The steel cradle remained, but her good field comp, the jury-rigged sensor panel, the cylinder and its attendant limestone block were gone. For once, when she turned around snarling, Fitzsimmons was nowhere to be found. But Gretchen still knew who'd stolen her artifact.

'What does he think is down there?' Gretchen rattled her feet noisily – now in stiff-bottomed shipshoes – against the railing separating the captain's station from the rest of the crew positions. 'Leave no trace of our visit? It's just not possible.'

Magdalena peered over the top of the navigation panel. Her yellow eyes were bare slits. 'What a whiny kitten you are,' she declared with a sharp yrroowl in her voice. 'Either ask him yourself or be a good packmate and help pull cable.'

Gretchen ignored her to stare sullenly at the planet. Most of her hair was twisted into a thick corn-tassel plait. She started to bite at the braid, head cocked to one side. 'He must believe something's down there, something that can see us…' She paused, thinking. 'No – it can't see us now, but it might see us in the future? Something which will notice satellites, spacecraft…but why wouldn't his precious something find the observatory camp?'

Magdalena's tufted ears disappeared with a disapproving growl. Parker managed a subdued laugh, but his hands were filled with bundles of conduit. The power leads to the navigator's station were proving difficult to restore. The substandard cables had ended in metallic connectors, which were still embedded in the panel sockets. Sitting flush, without the usual cable run to grasp hold of, Parker was forced to remove them one at a time with a hand tool. He'd already wrecked one panel by shorting the connector with too much pressure.

'Maggie? How did Russovsky communicate with the Palenque when her ultralight was on farside?' Gretchen poked some of the buttons on the captain's panel and a variety of plotted routes, icons and little winking glyphs appeared across the live image of the planet. The routes of the geologist's flights vanished over the curve of the world, then looped back again. 'Does she have some kind of a relay station?'

A low, ominous growl trailing away into a hissing snarl answered Gretchen's question. Magdalena crawled out of the utility space under the floor, her fur slick with sweat and snarled with bits of wire and the particular brand of sealant grease used by the Imperial Navy. The Hesht shot Anderssen a fierce, quelling look – an effort entirely lost