The Shadow of Saganami

'You do realize, Skipper, that you're shooting craps with your career?'

'Nonsense, Ansten.' Terekhov shook his head with a half-smile, but FitzGerald wasn't buying it.

'You told me, once, that you might need me to warn you that what you had in mind was a little risky,' the XO reminded him. 'Well, the Sollies're going to go ape-shit... and that may be the good news!'

The captain and his exec sat in Hexapuma's number two pinnace, and FitzGerald pointed out the viewport at the mountainous bulk of the Kalokainos Shipping-owned freighter Copenhagen .

'I think the admiralty courts call this 'piracy,'' he said.

'Nonsense,' Terekhov replied airily. 'This is a simple and obvious case of salvage of an abandoned vessel.'

'Which you arranged to have 'abandoned' in the first place!'

Terekhov was gazing out the viewport, watching Copenhagen draw steadily closer. Privately, he was prepared to admit FitzGerald had a point. Several of them, in fact. But what he was prepared to admit to himself was quite different from what he was prepared to admit to anyone else.

'Another thing you might want to think about, Skipper,' FitzGerald said, in the tone of the man looking for a telling argument, 'is the amount of grief you may be buying for Montana when the Sollies find out the part Suttles agreed to play in this little charade.'

'President Suttles is showing a perfectly reasonable and prudent concern, under the circumstances, Ansten.' Terekhov's expression was that of someone widows and orphans could safely trust with their final penny. FitzGerald's expression, however, only got more skeptical, and Terekhov smiled again, a bit more broadly than before.

'Given the fact that a Solarian-registry vessel was apprehended in the very act of supplying illegal weapons to terrorists on his planet, President Suttles has every right to be concerned. Since there was a second Solarian- registry vessel in orbit at exactly the same time, and since Kalokainos Shipping and the Jessyk Combine are known to have coordinated their interests in several areas of the Verge, the discovery that Marianne belonged to Jessyk amply justifies his decision that Copenhagen merits investigation, as well. And since the entire Montanan navy consists of LACs, without a single hyper-capable unit, he obviously couldn't count on preventing Copenhagen from fleeing the system to avoid investigation if, indeed, her ship's company had been involved in this nefarious plot. So he clearly had no choice but to remove Copenhagen's crew for interrogation.'

'And you think that... fairy tale is going to convince the League Suttles didn't have a thing to do with the rest of this?' FitzGerald gestured at Copenhagen again, as the pinnace decelerated to rest relative to the big freighter.

'I think that, either way, it isn't going to matter,' Terekhov said much more seriously. FitzGerald looked at him, and he shrugged. 'If the annexation goes through, the League won't be looking at a single, unsupported Verge system; it'll be looking at a member system of the Star Kingdom of Manticore. At which point, it will become our responsibility to protect Suttles from Frontier Security. And,' his tone turned more serious still, almost grim, 'if you people find what I'm very much afraid you're going to, Suttles and everyone else who ever favored the annexation are going to find themselves in much worse trouble than anything this could produce unless we do something about it.'

The pinnace pilot was playing his maneuvering thrusters with a skill which reminded Terekhov of Ragnhild Pavletic. The memory sent a fresh stab of pain through him, but he allowed no trace of it to shadow his expression as he gazed back out through the port again. He watched as the pilot carefully aligned the pinnace's airlock with the freighter's emergency personnel hatch. A single skinsuited crewman stepped through the airlock's open outer hatch and drifted gracefully across to Copenhagen's hull, where he opened a small access cover and tapped a command sequence into the keypad behind it. The personnel hatch considered the command ('unofficially' acquired from Trevor Bannister after Copenhagen's crew accepted his invitation as involuntary guests of Montana) and obediently extruded its boarding tube to mate with the pinnace's lock.

FitzGerald sat studying the captain's profile and trying to think of a fresh argument which might bring Terekhov to his senses. It wasn't that he didn't understand what the other man had in mind, or even that he disagreed with Terekhov's suspicions or the captain's conviction that something had to be done to prove or disprove what he feared. It was the method Terekhov had selected... and, perhaps even more, what FitzGerald suspected the captain had in mind if his investigation confirmed his worst fears.

The green light came on above the airlock's inner hatch, indicating a good seal and pressure in the tube, and Terekhov nodded.

'Time to get your people on board.'

'Skipper, at least send one of the other ships straight to Spindle,' FitzGerald half-blurted, but Terekhov shook his head.

He was gazing back along the center aisle, watching Aikawa Kagiyama. The midshipman looked better, but his shoulders still hunched, as if they were bearing up under a burden of guilt, and Terekhov was worried about him. That was one reason he'd assigned Aikawa to FitzGerald's party.

Lieutenant MacIntyre would be along as FitzGerald's engineer, with Lieutenant Olivetti as his astrogator and Lieutenant Kobe to handle his communications. That was as many officers as Terekhov could spare, but it was still going to leave FitzGerald shorthanded, since only Olivetti was watch-qualified. MacIntyre and Kobe were both junior-grade lieutenants, capable enough in their specialties, but with limited experience. In fact, MacIntyre had something of a reputation for being sharp-tongued and waspish with enlisted personnel and noncoms. Terekhov suspected that it sprang from her own lack of self-confidence, and he hoped this assignment might help to turn that around. But he'd also decided FitzGerald needed at least a little more support, so he'd attached Aikawa. The midshipman wasn't watch-certified, yet, but he was a levelheaded sort who was actually better at managing enlisted personnel than MacIntyre was. He could take on at least some of the load... and getting him out of Hexapuma would also get him out of an environment where every single sight and sound and smell reminded him of Ragnhild's death.

'Admiral Khumalo's going to think you should've sent word directly to him, Sir,' FitzGerald said flatly, in his strongest statement of disagreement yet.

Terekhov looked back at him, touched by the concern in his executive officer's expression.

'Thank you for worrying, Ansten,' he said quietly, 'but the decision's made. I only have three hyper- capable units, aside from Hexapuma herself-and, of course, Copenhagen . I can't spare any of them for a direct flight to Spindle, but Ericsson will continue on to Spindle from Dresden. She'll deliver my complete report to the Admiral and the Provisional Governor.'

'But— '

'I think we should move on to something else,' Terekhov said firmly, and FitzGerald closed his mouth. He looked for a moment at the CO about whose resolution he'd nursed such reservations when they first met, six months before, and knew there was no point in arguing.

'Yes, Sir,' he said finally, and Terekhov smiled gently and patted him on the forearm.

'Good. And now, let's get your people aboard your new command. You've got a lot to do before you break orbit.'

* * *

Aleksandra Tonkovic stood with a welcoming smile as her butler ushered Tomaz Zovan into the library of her Karlovac townhouse.

'Tomaz,' she greeted, holding out her hand.

'Madam President,' he replied as he took it, and her smile turned into a slight frown at the unexpected formality. Zovan was a Democratic Centralist and a forty-T-year veteran of Parliament. She'd known him literally since childhood, and if he'd never been one of the most brilliant intellects Parliament had ever known, he'd always been a loyal, dependable wheel-horse for the Party and her own administration. As such, he was accustomed to