On Basilisk Station

Haven's plans if she did expel Sirius, she would neither learn what those plans might have been nor insure that they couldn't be reactivated some other way. And it seemed likely that anything as involved as this appeared to be—whatever it was!—would have built-in backups, and that meant—

'Captain?'

She opened her eyes to find Webster standing beside McKeon.

'Yes, Mr. Webster?'

'Excuse me, Ma'am, but I thought you'd want to know this. There's a three-cornered secure com net between Sirius, the Haven consulate, and the consulate's courier boat, Ma'am.' Honor cocked her head, and Webster gave a small shrug. 'I can't tell you much more than that, Skipper. They're using mighty tight-focused lasers, not regular com beams, and there's not much traffic. I've deployed a couple of passive remotes, but they're just catching the edge of the carriers. I can't tap into them without getting a receptor into one of the lasers itself, and they'd be sure to notice that.'

'Can you tell if it's scrambled?'

'No, Ma'am. But given how tight their beams are, I'd be surprised if it wasn't. They don't need whiskers this tight for any technical reasons at this piddling little range. It has to be a security measure.'

'I see.' Honor nodded, and her indecision vanished into tranquillity. 'Mr. McKeon, as soon as Mr. Tremaine returns aboard, I want us returned to our original orbit, but put us back into it astern of the Havenite courier boat.'

'Aye, aye, Ma'am.' McKeon responded automatically, but Honor saw the puzzlement in his eyes.

'Keep a close eye on Sirius, but see if you can determine whether or not the courier's nodes are hot, too,' she went on. 'I think we've pretty definitely established that something strange is going on out here, and that Haven is at the bottom of it, but we still don't know what. I want to know that, Exec. I want to catch them with their hands dirty and nail them in front of God and everybody.'

'Yes, Ma'am.' McKeon's puzzlement had turned to understanding, and Honor nodded.

'In the meantime, I want Fearless held on standby for impeller, as well. If either of those two start going anywhere, I want to be able to go in pursuit. Clear?'

'Clear, Ma'am.'

'Good.' She turned back to her com officer. 'Mr. Webster, I need a secure link to Dame Estelle.'

'Aye, aye, Ma'am. I'll get right on it.'

Honor watched her two subordinates return to their stations and leaned back, rubbing Nimitz and looking back down at the frozen imagery of Sirius's impeller node with distant eyes.

'You're right, Honor. They're definitely up to something.' Dame Estelle looked tired on the com screen, and Honor wondered if she'd gotten back to sleep at all after their midnight conversation.

'I don't think there's any doubt,' Honor agreed. 'Especially not now that we've confirmed the courier boat's drive is hot, too. I hate to say it, Dame Estelle, but I really don't like that.'

'Don't blame you.' Matsuko rubbed her eyes, then lowered her hands to her desk with a sigh. 'They wouldn't be on standby if they didn't figure there was a pretty good reason to be going somewhere, and that damned courier boat has diplomatic immunity. We can't touch it if it starts to leave.'

'I'm less worried about whether or not I can touch it legally than I am about the fact that there are two of them, Ma'am,' Honor said bleakly. Dame Estelle looked at her sharply, and she shrugged. 'I'm not looking forward to any diplomatic incidents, but my big problem is that I only have one ship. If I've got two targets headed in different directions, I can only chase one of them.'

'But what's the point?' the commissioner almost groaned. 'I've got drug-crazed natives armed with black-powder rifles and primed to slaughter off-worlders in job lots, and you've got two starships with drives on standby! Where's the connection?'

'I don't know—yet. But I am certain there is one, and all this com traffic seems significant to me, too.'

'I have to agree with that.' Dame Estelle sounded glum. 'I'll see what I can find out for you.'

'Find out?' Honor raised her eyebrows in surprise, and Dame Estelle produced a tired smile.

'I'm afraid I'm not quite as trusting as my exalted superiors in the Ministry for Medusan Affairs would like. My people and I have, ah, acquired a few communications devices not on the official equipment list for my compound down here. We keep a pretty close watch on the message traffic from the off-world enclaves.'

'You do?' Honor blinked in astonishment, and Dame Estelle chuckled.

'You don't have to mention that to anyone, Honor. There'd be all kinds of repercussions if you did.'

'I imagine there would,' Honor agreed with a slow smile of her own.

'You imagine correctly. But as far as the Havenites are concerned, we can keep an eye on their traffic volume, but we can't do much with specific transmissions. They not only scramble their signals but routinely encrypt them, as well. We've managed to break their latest scramble codes—unless they've shifted them again in the last day or so, and I just haven't heard yet—but we can't do much with their encryption.'

'Do you think they know you're doing it?'

'Hard to say. They may, though, particularly if there's direct traffic between their courier boat and this freighter of theirs,' Dame Estelle said thoughtfully. 'We can't touch their ship-to-ship traffic from down here, so that would give them at least one secure com channel.'

'But that would assume their mastermind is up here,' Honor pointed out. 'Otherwise, they'd still have to pass all their command signals through the consulate.'

'True.' Matsuko's fingers tapped a nervous syncopation on the edge of her desk, and she made a face. 'I hate all this guesswork,' she sighed.

'Me, too,' Honor agreed. She rubbed the tip of her nose. 'Well, whatever they're up to, they've obviously been working on it for a long time, and your clan chieftain said his relative warned him the Delta would be a bad place to spend the winter. That's—what? Another two months from now?'

'About that. So you think we've got that long to get on top of this?'

'I don't know. But I do know that we're just beginning to put the pieces together, and that's bound to give us a sense of urgency whether they're really on the edge of activating their operation or not. On the other hand, we've already turned up enough for me to go official with it.'

'Go official? How?'

'I'm putting together a dispatch, complete with all of my facts, suspicions, and conclusions, for the personal attention of the First Space Lord,' Honor said grimly. 'He may think I'm crazy—but he may also just get some help out here.'

'How long would that take?'

'At absolute best, given the tenuousness of our information, it would probably take something like fifty hours, and that's assuming he doesn't just decide I'm crazy and he has someone he can divert straight out here. Frankly, I'd be surprised if we saw any useful reaction in less than three or four days, but at least it'd be a step in the right direction.'

'And until then, we're on our own,' Dame Estelle observed.

'Yes, Ma'am.' Honor rubbed her nose again. 'What's the status on Barney's patrol?'

'They should be pulling out in about—' Dame Estelle glanced at her chrono '—twenty minutes, now. Barney's down at the hangar for their final brief; then he'll come back here. They're under express order not to land anywhere without checking back in, but he's going to have them keep a close eye on everything they overfly en route to the target area. At least we should be able to determine where this shaman and his parishioners aren't, anyway.'

'Good. I'd like to add his findings, good or bad, to my dispatch to Admiral Webster. And I'll feel a lot more comfortable personally once we have some sort of accurate idea of just how bad the situation ground-side really is.'

'So will I.' Dame Estelle shook herself. 'All right, Honor. Thanks. I'll get on my end of things. Keep me posted if anything breaks up there.'

'I will, Ma'am.'