The Shadow of Saganami

rely on that. It only takes one lunatic holdout with a grenade or a pulse rifle to kill you or an entire work party. And it won't make you, or your parents, feel one bit better to know whoever killed you was shot himself five seconds later. Do you read me on this one, People?'

'Yes, Sir!' they'd replied in unison, and he'd nodded.

'All right.' He'd jerked his head at the waiting pinnace boarding tubes. 'Get aboard, then.'

Now Helen looked out the port beside her as Commander Lewis' pinnace held station to port of and just below Anhur's broken hull. It was the closest Helen had ever come to a Havenite- designed vessel, and her blood ran cold as the damage the ship had suffered truly become clear. There was a difference, she discovered, between floating here beside the wreck, looking at it with her own eyes, and even the best visual image on a display. The shattered cruiser was just to sunward of the pinnace, and drifting -wreckage- some in chunks as large as the pinnace itself-drifted hard-edged and black across Nuncio-B's brilliance. Her mind replayed Commander FitzGerald's warning, and she knew he was right. It was going to be worse than she could possibly imagine inside that murdered ship.

She listened to the rattle of orders as Lieutenant Angelique Kelso's First Platoon's shuttles docked. Only Anhur's forward boat bay would hold atmosphere, and Captain Kaczmarczyk was obviously disinclined to take any avoidable chances. Kelso had her first squad in full battle armor, and he sent them in first to secure the bay galleries before the remainder of the skinsuited Marines boarded.

* * *

Aivars Terekhov stared at the main bridge display. Its imagery was relayed from Angelique Kelso's helmet pickup as she and her Marines took control of Anhur's single functional boat bay. There were no signs of damage in the immaculate boat bay. Or, at least, not of physical damage to the ship. The white- faced, shocked officer waiting to greet Kelso as she came aboard was another matter. His left arm hung in a blood-spotted sling, his crimson uniform tunic was torn and covered with dust, where it wasn't dotted with dried fire-suppressive foam, his left cheek was badly blistered, and the hair on the left side of his head was singed. At least half the personnel with him showed greater or lesser signs of the carnage which had been wreaked upon their ship, but that wasn't what made Terekhov stare at the display in disbelief. Only two of the crewmen in the boat bay were in skinsuits; the others still wore the uniforms in which they'd been surprised by his crushing attack, and those uniforms didn't belong to the Republic of Haven.

Or, rather, they no longer belonged to the Republic of Haven.

'Well,' he said after a moment, as the first, sharp astonishment eased, 'I have to admit this is... an unexpected development.'

Someone snorted, and he glanced up. Naomi Kaplan stood beside his command chair, watching-along with the rest of Hexapuma's skeleton bridge watch-as Kelso finished securing the boat bay gallery and the rest of her Marines followed First Squad aboard.

'State Security?' The tac officer shook her head, her expression an odd combination of surprise as deep as Terekhov's own and profound distaste. 'Skipper, 'unexpected' is putting it pretty damned mildly, if you'll pardon my saying so!'

'Maybe.'

Terekhov felt himself coming back on balance, although the sight of the uniforms which had filled any citizen of the People's Republic of Haven with terror had brought something much stronger than distaste back to him. For four months after the Battle of Hyacinth, he and his surviving personnel had been in StateSec custody. Only four months, but it had been more than long enough, and a fresh, hot flicker of hatred pushed the last wisps of surprise out of his mind.

The State Security thugs who'd run the POW camp which had engulfed his pitiful handful of survivors had treated them with the viciousness of despair as Eighth Fleet smashed unstoppably into the People's Republic. They'd taken out their fear and hatred on their prisoners with a casual brutality not even the foreknowledge of inevitable defeat had been able to fully deter. Beatings had been common. Several of his people had been raped. Some had been tortured. At least three who other survivors swore had been captured alive and uninjured simply disappeared. And then, in rapid fire, came word of the cease-fire High Ridge was stupid enough to accept... followed eight local days later by news of the Theisman coup against Oscar Saint-Just.

Those eight days had been bad. For those days, StateSec had believed in miracles again-had once again believed its personnel would never be called to account-and some among them had indulged in an even more savage orgy of vengeance upon the hated Manties. Terekhov himself had been protected, at least, by his critical wounds, because the People's Navy had run the local hospital, and the hospital commandant had been a woman of moral courage who refused to allow even StateSec access to her patients. But his people hadn't been, and all the evidence suggested that the two men and one woman who'd vanished had been murdered during that interval... probably only after undergoing the sort of vicious torture certain elements of the SS had made their chosen speciality.

The Peeps had conducted their own investigation afterward, in an effort to determine exactly what had happened, and despite himself, he'd been forced to believe it was a serious attempt. Unfortunately, few StateSec witnesses had been available. Most had been killed when Marines from the local naval picket stormed the SS planetary HQ and POW camps and the howling mobs of local citizens lynched every StateSec trooper, informant, and hanger-on they could catch. The local SS offices had been looted and burned, and most of their records had gone with them. Some of those records had probably been destroyed by StateSec personnel themselves, but the result was the same. Even the most painstaking investigation was unable to establish what had happened. In the end, the military tribunal impaneled on Thomas Theisman's direct authority for the investigation had concluded that all evidence suggested Terekhov's people had been murdered in cold blood by unknown StateSec personnel while in Havenite custody. The captain who'd headed the tribunal had personally apologized to Terekhov, acknowledging the People's Republic's guilt, and he had no doubt that, had the cease-fire ever been transformed into a formal treaty, the new Havenite government would have echoed that acknowledgment and made whatever restitution it could. But the people actually responsible were almost certainly either already dead or had somehow evaded custody.

And now this.

He closed his eyes for a moment, face-to-face with a dark and ugly side of himself. The hunger which filled him when Kaplan told him Bogey One was a Mars -class heavy cruiser, for all its strength, couldn't match the hot, personal hatred that uniform kicked to roaring life. And the man wearing it, like everyone else aboard Anhur , was Aivars Terekhov's prisoner. A prisoner who was almost certainly a pirate, not a prisoner of war whose actions had enjoyed the sanction of any government or the protection of the Deneb Accords.

And the penalty for piracy was death.

''Maybe'?' Kaplan turned to look at him. 'Skipper, are you saying you expected something like this? Or that anyone should have?'

'No.' Terekhov opened his eyes, and his expression was calm, his tone almost normal, as he turned his chair to face the diminutive tac officer. 'I didn't expect anything of the sort, Guns. Although, if you'll recall, I did caution at the time that we couldn't afford to automatically assume we were dealing with Peep naval units.'

Despite herself, one of Kaplan's eyebrows tried to creep upward, and he surprised himself with a genuine chuckle.

'Oh, I admit I was mostly throwing out a sheet anchor just to be on the safe side and protect the Captain's reputation for infallibility. I expected either regular Navy units, or else that these ships had been disposed of through a black-market operation-either by the Havenite government or by some Peep admiral looking to build himself a nest egg before disappearing into retirement. But we've known for a long time now that some of the worst elements of the People's Navy and StateSec simply ran for it when Theisman pulled Saint-Just down. At least two of their destroyers and a light cruiser eventually turned up in Silesia, and there have been unconfirmed reports of other ex-Peep units hiring out as mercenaries. I suppose what surprises me most about this is that anyone would take the risk of continuing to wear StateSec uniform.'

'Pirates are pirates, Skip,' Kaplan said grimly. 'What they choose to wear doesn't make any difference.'

'No, I don't suppose it does,' Terekhov said quietly. But it did. He knew it did.

* * *