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CHAPTER TWO

Lieutenant Commander Sarah James tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair and recrossed her long legs yet again. She knew her fidgeting was distracting to the captain's secretary but simply couldn't stop it; waiting in offices wasn't her forte.

Odd, considering that as a WACCI pilot (the acronym stood for Warning, Assessment, Control, Command, Information) a lot of her working life demanded waiting in perfect stillness. And James was extremely good at her job.

But waiting in an office for an appointment was just dead time. It made her think guiltily of reports that she should be working on, or frustratedly of things she wanted to check on her craft, or her equipment. She put both feet flat on the floor, tapped her toes for awhile, then crossed her legs. There was a muted chime and the captain's voice said: "Send Lt. Commander James in now, Lieutenant."

James and the secretary looked at each other with Thank God! written on both their faces. Sarah rose and tugged at her midnight blue uniform, brushed one hand through her short auburn curls, then with a nod to the lieutenant she walked to the door and entered the eagle's nest.

Captain Roger Knott's craggy features did put one in mind of an eagle. Especially the piercing glare of his pale eyes and his aquiline beak of a nose. Right now she was getting the full value of that famous glare of his. He returned her crisp salute more casually and indicated a chair before his desk.

"Have a seat," he said.

"Thank you, sir."

Knott studied her for a moment. He saw a competent young woman in her mid twenties, with a lean intelligent face and warm, sherry brown eyes. He liked James, he trusted her work, and he wasn't especially happy about the reason that brought her here.

Ordinarily he wouldn't be taking appointments this late in the day. But he needed distraction from Grettirson's board of inquiry and he saw no reason to keep either the lieutenant commander or himself in suspense regarding her request.

"This is sudden," he said, tapping the document displayed on the screen built into his desk.

"I've been considering it for several weeks, Captain, and this seemed like an excellent time to request a change of this nature."

Knott raised his brows and leaned back in his chair.

"It does?"

"Yes, sir." Sarah leaned forward. "There are a number of vacancies in the Speed squadron and I'm a qualified Speed pilot."

"You haven't flown a Speed in four years, Commander," Knott demurred.

Sarah nodded. "But I've hardly been in dry dock, sir. I'm prepared to take a simulation exam." She met Knott's eyes calmly and when he nodded she went on. "In addition, there's a pilot officer on Ontario Base that's amply qualified to replace me. I'd like to commend to your attention Lieutenant Barry Chueng. He was scheduled to head the Dauntless's WACCI crew." She stopped.

The Dauntless no longer had a WACCI division, nor any Speeds of her own. Those that hadn't been blasted apart by the Mollies or their Fibian allies had, perforce, been left behind in Mollie space while the Dauntless made the desperate leap to Ontario Station. Subsequent missions to that area had found nothing but some charred debris.

"But the Dauntless might very well be decommissioned," she continued, "and in any case she's in no condition to do anything right now. A good many of her people have already been reassigned. Chueng is in an odd place, though. He hasn't been able to present his orders to Captain Montoya and so he can't be reassigned as yet."

Knott permitted himself a small smile.

"And you recommend that I put in a request for his services?"

"Immediately, sir. He's good." Sarah began to allow herself to hope that the Old Man would allow her to do this. Meeting Barry Chueng had given her the impetus to get rolling on it, and now that her mind was made up she was impatient to make the change.

Knott looked down at her transfer request and pursed his lips.

"I thought that you enjoyed what you were doing, Lt. Commander," he said quietly.

"I have, sir. I've learned a lot and I've enjoyed every minute of it." She hesitated. "But I think it's time to get my career back on the fast track. I don't think I'd like to be a WACCI pilot for the next twenty years. There are other things I want to learn and to do, sir."

Knott leaned back and tapped his desk thoughtfully. He was disappointed. After a lot of effort he'd obtained, in almost every instance, exactly the people he wanted. He'd been pleased at the way they worked together, respected and liked one another. Naturally he'd hoped to keep them together for a longer period of time; they'd help prove that fast light carriers were a worthwhile use for scarce antihydrogen and shipyard space. He'd fought hard to prove the concept, and having the right people was a big part of it.

As well, James was a known factor and he didn't relish giving that up. By the same token, if he trusted her judgement, then he should accept her word when she said Lieutenant Chueng was a suitable replacement. He should also trust her judgement if she said it was time for her to move on. Stepping on a request like this was no way to nurture a junior officer. And she had to do it this way. She was taking a step sideways, surrendering command of her highly specialized group, in order to be in line for a step up in a more general command position. WAACI pilots didn't become ship commanders; Speed pilots did. One hoped in the near future.

He met her eyes. Hers were calm, confident.

"It does seem that Speed pilots get promoted faster, doesn't it?" he said with a smile.

She smiled in return. "Yes, sir."

"All right." He nodded decisively. "If you'll agree to, and pass, a flight-simulation test, I'll approve your request for a transfer to the Speed squadron." He rose and extended his hand to her. "Good luck, Lt. Commander."

Sarah rose and took the captain's hand. "Thank you, sir," she said, barely able to contain her joy. She saluted, and he returned it, crisply this time. She pivoted neatly and left his office. Inside she was turning handsprings.

Sjarhir suggested that they walk. It didn't take a genius to figure out why.

"It's halfway across the station," Peter protested, half amused. "I'm not drunk, y'know."

The Indonesian smiled, a mere quirk of the lips.

"I do know. But when dealing with the Marine general it's always best to have as many of your wits about you as you can manage to scrape together."

Raeder gave him an old-fashioned look. "Oh, yeah? Well, I've never heard a story about someone who'd scraped together enough to outsmart him."

"That's because," Sjarhir said, starting off, "it takes more than intelligence." He stopped and looked over his shoulder. "You coming?"

Peter frowned and looked around. Not that he wanted to get into Scaragoglu's hands any sooner than necessary, but a five-klick walk would just prolong the agony. He grimaced. There weren't any cabs available anyway. And Sjarhir was already sauntering off. Raeder watched him go, certain the captain would turn around again. But he didn't.

With a soft hiss of impatience Raeder started after him. Why should he wait for me? He knows I've got nowhere else to go. 

They walked in silence for awhile. Peter trying to square what seemed to be a desperate move with himself, and Sjarhir thinking whatever dark thoughts spooks think.

"All right," Raeder said, "what does it take besides intelligence?"

Sjarhir's lips quirked.

"Not that it will do you any good to know," he said. "But it takes sheer ruthlessness and a great deal of power. The general can do almost anything he wants with, or to, almost anyone he wants." He cast a sideways glance at Raeder. "I say almost because it seems logical that there would be some limitations on his power." He smiled. "But I could be wrong."

Raeder grunted and picked up the pace.

"And for all I know," the captain said, easily keeping up with him, "it could well take more than that. Because to the best of my knowledge, which is extensive, no one ever has gotten the best of him."

Raeder glanced at him, and grunted skeptically.

"Why does the high command put up with that sort of thing from a lowly line general?"

"Because he takes the dirty little jobs nobody else wants, and gets them done—successfully, so far."

"God help him if there's a major screwup, then."

"Oh, yes. But I wouldn't bet the integrity of my hull seals on that happening, if I were you, Commander."

Raeder considered that. Then he marched resolutely down the cool, night-dimmed corridors of Ontario Base, his arms swinging freely at his sides. He looked like a man with a purpose instead of a man running from one doom into another.

Raeder's lurid imagination had clothed Scaragoglu in a burgundy satin smoking jacket, seated him in a deep armchair in a dimly lit, luxuriously furnished room and given him a brandy to swirl around a balloon goblet. Maybe there had been a pipe or a cigar in there too.

The reality was a rather spartan, well-lit office with the general wearing a slightly rumpled undress Marine uniform.

And it was whiskey.

Raeder saluted and the general returned it without looking up from the document he was scanning. He indicated a chair before the desk and Raeder, with a glance at Sjarhir, sat down.

After a moment Scaragoglu sighed and turned off the screen. He kept troubled eyes on his desk as he raised his whiskey for a sip. Then he leaned back and looked at Peter.

"The results were good," the Marine general said without preamble. "I commend you for that." And he raised his glass to the commander. "But you were very much out of line." He gave Raeder a level stare.

Raeder returned the general's stare without comment.

"Personally," Scaragoglu went on, "I believe you need a little more seasoning before you take on that flight engineer's job. I'd be interested in your take on that," he said after a moment's pause.

Raeder looked down at his hands, loosely folded in his lap, and gathered his thoughts. He assumed that he'd be made an offer of some kind. But it was dangerous to make assumptions with a man like Scaragoglu. I hate it when someone wants something from you, but they just have to give you a test first. I want something, he wants something. Let's get to the horse-trading part, already. 

"You may well be right, sir," he said at last. "But the point is moot since I'll be relieved of that command and shipped Earthside come morning."

Scaragoglu took another sip of his drink.

"Is that why you accompanied the captain here? So that you could tell me you're going back to Earth?"

Raeder had to suppress a smile. An inconvenient, fey part of him had always found that there was something inherently ridiculous in almost any crisis situation. Even when it was his career in the balance. But Peter doubted that the general, like every other authority figure in his life, would appreciate, or understand if he showed his amusement.

"I followed the captain here, sir, in hopes that you'd have a more attractive proposition."

Scaragoglu's Turko-African face might have been carved out of scarred basalt, but Raeder thought he detected a smile in the slight narrowing of the dark eyes. The captain shifted his stance as though uneasy, and Scaragoglu's glance found him. Peter wondered if they'd had a bet riding on his reactions.

"I don't think `attractive' is quite the word I'd have chosen, Commander. Your report says that you are, basically, sane. But I do have an alternative. Are you interested?"

"Very."

The general smiled. "What I have to show you is highly classified. Nothing that I tell you, regardless of whether you decide to accept this mission or not, is to leave this room. Do you understand?"

Unless you're planning to use me as a human hand grenade, I'm in, Peter thought. So discretion won't be a problem.

"Yes, sir."

Scaragoglu gave him an appraising look, then activated a holo display. The room lights dimmed automatically and a view of an asteroid field snapped into clear focus.

Tumbling rocks scanned by, sixteen centimeters above the surface of the general's desk. A little scale marker at the bottom of the image told Raeder that they ranged from palm-sized to the magnitude of small moons. And those were just the ones that could be seen at this magnification.

Raeder winced. Messy, he thought.

"This asteroid field is in Mollie space," the general explained. "No habitable planet in the system, but plenty of nice rich rocks with shallow gravity wells. Used to belong to the Consortium, but it's been abandoned since the Commonwealth won the war." He shrugged. "You can see why; it's in the middle of nowhere. There are always a few misanthropic miners that are looking for a berth like this, but the proximity of Mollies drove even them away."

Peter smiled at the mild joke.

"There's still a lot of palladium to be harvested there, but it will have to wait until we've won the war."

The general did something and the recording speeded up, then stopped. Scaragoglu touched one particular asteroid with a laser pointer, and the computer brought the undistinguished lump of rock into magnified view. The scale made it three klicks long, approximately, and a half a kilometer wide. It looked vaguely like a sausage.

"This was the miners' hutch." The general touched the nose of the big rock with his pointer and the view switched to give Peter a head-on view of the asteroid. As usual with holos taken in space there was no sense of depth to the huge black circle on one end. "This shadow indicates the opening to a rough, but endurable base."

Peter nodded thoughtfully. It would be rough, the Consortium wasn't inclined to coddle the miners they'd all but enslaved. But there would be perfectly reasonable conditions for a covert military operation.

"You want to put a spy post there?" he guessed.

Scaragoglu shook his head.

"We have every sophisticated spy device known to man deployed in that block of Mollie space. They're extremely efficient and damn near undetectable. There's nothing that could be learned from this base that they wouldn't find out just as well as a human operator. Less, actually, since this field is in proximity to a spinning neutron star. It's far enough away from the hutch that hard radiation shouldn't be a significant problem, but close enough that it will play merry hell with sensors. Ours as well as the enemy's." His lips quirked in a smile. "Think bigger."

Bigger, Raeder thought. Rescue mission? His mind went to the missing WACCI crews and maybe even some of the Speed officers from the Dauntless. Naw, we're looking at a permanent base. In Mollie space. The hutch was too small for a ship like the Invincible. So it must be for . . .

"You mean to harry the enemy. You need a base for a small squadron to launch on hit-and-run missions." Raeder looked away from the holo to meet Scaragoglu's approving eyes.

"Not unlike the privateers in the ancient Caribbean," the general confirmed. "You'd harry their shipping. Interrupt their supply lines and in general wreak havoc on their morale. These are damned suspicious people, Commander. Not knowing how ships that lack interstellar capability are showing up to destroy their supply lines is going to make them even more paranoid. You'll make it look like their pirate allies. I'd just love to drive a wedge between the evil and the insane."

Raeder grinned. It was an appealing thought. Then his face sobered.

"And my place in this mission, sir?"

"You'd be in command." The Marine general's eyes sparked, but his dark face was unreadable.

"Why me, sir?" Raeder asked. The obvious and unattractive answer was that he was exceedingly expendable. He didn't particularly relish the idea of being a human sacrifice. They hadn't yet talked about how he and his people would be evacuated. Maybe after the Dauntless thing he thinks I'm too gung ho to even ask sensible questions and won't notice we're as likely to be recalled as a plasma beam once it's fired. 

"Because you're the only hero I happen to have on tap at the moment," Scaragoglu said dryly. "You've proven you can think fast in a tough situation. That you're willing to take risks without being overly concerned with intangibles like, `Will the admiral approve?' " He smiled thinly. "But I don't think you're going to throw your life away. Or anyone else's for that matter. And I need a cool, clear-headed leader who can think on his feet, not a berserker. I think that makes you my man."

"I'm not cleared to fly a Speed," Raeder said. Might as well be up front about it. 

"I'm aware of that, Commander." Scaragoglu glanced over at Captain Sjarhir.

The captain had gone so still that Peter had almost forgotten him.

"I mentioned it to the general earlier, Commander," he now said.

Peter nodded. Glad I mentioned it then, he thought.

"However, thanks to an innovation by my second, Lieutenant Cynthia Robbins, I now can fly. Without the slightest difficulty."

The general frowned and looked at Sjarhir, who shrugged.

"Unfortunately, we've never heard of this invention and therefore it hasn't been approved for use by Space Command, and therefore might as well not exist," Scaragoglu said, giving Peter a cautionary look. "Which means you are not cleared to fly for the foreseeable future. I would describe that as a slight difficulty."

"The patent has been submitted, sir. And since it works I'm sure it will be approved. We're likely to lose too many highly trained pilots otherwise." Read expensive, Peter thought. Expensively trained pilots. Space Command is going to be screaming for something like this and soon. "Therefore you might say it would merely be a formality to give me permission to fly a Speed, sir."

For the first time in years Scaragoglu felt his chin loosen preparatory to dropping. The brass of the man! Clearly it wouldn't be an easy ride having a muntu like this under his command, but it certainly wouldn't be boring.

He leaned forward and gave Raeder a steely eye.

"A formality?" he asked coldly.

"Yes, sir. On a mission like this it's only logical that I be cleared to fly."

"Oh, really?" The general's eyebrows were almost up to his receding hairline. He leaned back with a sigh and stared at the ceiling for a moment. "I see you haven't learned anything from your recent adventure with the Dauntless," he said casually.

Raeder flinched within.

Scaragoglu flicked off the holo and, drawing his chair in to the desk, leaned forward again, fixing Peter with a glare the way a bug collector pierces a butterfly with a pin.

"A commander . . . Commander, doesn't leave his or her post to go haring off to hell on a whim. That is what being in command is all about. This is why we delegate tasks, even when we'd rather do them ourselves." He set his teeth. "It's hard. It's not going to make you popular. It will be misunderstood at every turn. But it's what makes a leader. I thought that you might have picked up on this little lesson by now." His voice deepened to sarcasm. "Or was Grettirson right in his assessment for a change?"

Raeder swallowed. Captain Knott's angry words came back to him. "If you don't know that yet you've risen as high as you're going to, or ought to." But that isn't the only reason I'd want to fly. 

"Sir, I wasn't necessarily saying I'd like to regularly fly a mission. But I feel that on an assignment like this everyone should be cross-trained and cleared to perform any task. Otherwise an individual could become dead weight at any moment. I've no desire to find myself in such a situation." Sounds plausible to me, Raeder congratulated himself. Now to see if the Spider bought it.

Scaragoglu stared at Raeder expressionlessly. Then he glanced at the captain, then back to the commander.

"Cleared to fly a Speed in an emergency," he conceded.

"Emergency to be defined by me," Raeder countered.

The general allowed the moment to stretch. It didn't do to let a subordinate think they had you. And it would be very unprofessional to let Raeder see I like him. How much better to be forced to restrain the noble stallion than to prod the reluctant mule! It was going to be enjoyable having Raeder on board; a challenge, but enjoyable. Finally he gave a curt nod of consent.

"Will I be allowed to pick my own people?" Raeder asked.

"I'd like to recommend a couple of Marine flyers, if you don't mind," Scaragoglu murmured. "This could turn out to be a plum assignment if it's handled right."

"Very true, sir. I'd welcome any suggestions you may have. Especially since it's essential to match personalities in a case like this to minimize friction in close quarters." There goes Paddy, Raeder thought with regret. The big New Hibernian couldn't abide a Marine.

Scaragoglu rubbed his hands together and conceded to himself that Raeder's comment was well phrased. He'd let the general know that he expected to have final cut regardless of anyone's preferences, however highly placed they might be.

He nodded briskly and stood.

"All right," he said. "We'll work out the details later. But if you work for me you have to understand two things, Commander. One, I will not tolerate any willfully self-aggrandizing stunts." Like the one that got you into my hands in the first place, went unsaid. "And two, this is my mission you're on. However far away from this base you may be, you are under my direct command, representing me in the field. I expect you to behave accordingly." He stared into Raeder's eyes for a long moment. "Is that clear, Commander?" he barked.

"Yes, sir!"

"Is that acceptable?" he asked more softly.

Raeder paused a moment before answering.

"Yes, sir."

Scaragoglu's lips quirked. Brass balls, sure enough, he thought—he knew full well how intimidating his presence could be, especially backed up by his reputation. I wonder if the commander's aware that he's already picking up some of the Spider's tricks? 

"Dismissed," he said. Raeder snapped to salute and Scaragoglu returned it with an economical precision.

Peter turned on his heel and strode from the office, buoyed by hope for the first time in days. Rescued in the nick of time, he thought happily.

It didn't occur to him—then—that there was a certain irony in thinking of this mission as a rescue from a safe, comfortable staff post on Earth.

* * *

The door closed behind Raeder, and Sjarhir and Scaragoglu looked at one another for a long, silent moment.

"I like him," Scaragoglu said at last.

"Is that because you think you can predict what he'll do?" Sjarhir asked.

"Hell, no. It's because I've no idea what he'll do. Although I was right about his wanting to fly," he said smugly.

Sjarhir nodded, sighed, and slipped his currency card into the desk reader, wincing as it clicked away a fair portion of his last month's pay.

"Why do I keep offering to bet you on things like this?"

"It's a futile attempt to keep your self-esteem intact," Scaragoglu said, as he accepted it with a chuckle and a thumb on the screen's surface.

"That boy is going to work out just fine," he went on happily. "I'm looking forward to seeing the expression on Admiral Grettirson's face when I tell him the good news," he said.

"Now that," Sjarhir said, "makes losing the bet really worthwhile!"

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