"How?" Monkoto demanded. "How did you find them?"
"I'm afraid I can't reveal that, Sir," Alicia replied carefully. "I have … a source I must protect, but my information is solid."
"I would certainly like to believe that, Captain Mainwaring," Esther Tarbaneau said in a soft soprano, "but you must realize how critical your credibility is, even with Inspector Ben Belkassem to vouch for you. How is it that a single merchant skipper could locate them when the Empire, El Greco, and the Jung Association have all failed?"
"Captain Mainwaring is more than she seems, Captain Tarbaneau," Ben Belkassem put in.
"Indeed?" Tarbaneau arched politely skeptical eyebrows, and Alicia sighed. She'd known all along it would come to this.
Cut the holo, Megaira.
Are you sure, Alley? the AI asked anxiously. I don't like the thought of doing that with you over there all alone.
I'm not "all alone," and we don't have a choice. Do it.
There was no response, but she didn't need one. Every eye jerked to the view screen in a single, harsh gasp, and most of the mercenaries hunched convulsively forward-O'Kane actually jerked to his feet-as the "freighter" vanished. The lean wickedness of an imperial alpha-synth could not be mistaken, even with splotches of titanium marring its immaculate hull.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Ben Belkassem said quietly, "allow me to introduce Captain Alicia DeVries, Imperial Cadre." Eyes whipped back to her, and he nodded. "I assure you, Captain DeVries's … instability has been grossly exaggerated. We've been working together for the past several weeks," he added, which was true enough, though Alicia hadn't known it at the time.
The mercenaries sank back in their chairs, eyes narrowed, and he hid a smile as he watched them leap to the conclusion he'd intended. Alicia really did have a marvelous cover-even if no one had set it up on purpose.
"So," Monkoto said forty minutes later, drumming his fingers on the conference table while he stared at a holographic star map. AR-12359/J burned a sullen crimson at its heart, and a computer screen at his elbow glowed with all the data Alicia had been able to supply on the "pirates' " strength. "We know where they are; the problem is what we do with them."
He pinched the bridge of his nose as he met his colleagues' eyes, then turned to Alicia, smiling grimly as he recognized the questions in her eyes.
"Neither you nor the Inspector are Fleet officers, Captain, but that's what we do for a living, and I'm afraid this-" he gestured at the star map "-is a classic nasty fleet problem."
"Why?" Impatience burned in Alicia's blood once more, yet Monkoto's obvious professionalism-and matching hunger-kept it out of her voice.
"Put most simply, they're in n-space and they'll see us coming. Ships run blind in wormhole space, but their gravitics will pick us up long before we arrive, at which point they'll simply run on an acutely divergent vector. By the time we can kill our velocity and go in pursuit, they'll be long gone."
Alicia stared at the admiral, stunned by how calmly he'd said it, then jerked around to glare at Ben Belkassem. He'd been so glib about "getting help"-had he known how hopeless it was?!
"The classic solution is a converging envelopement," Monkoto went on, "with someone coming in at high velocity on almost any possible escape vector, but that also requires an overwhelming numerical advantage. We-" he waved at his fellows "-can probably take these bastards head on, though that Capella-class'll make things tight, but not if we spread out to envelope them."
Alicia dropped her eyes to the star map, fingers curving into talons under the table edge as she glared at the crimson star.
"We could call in the Empies for more ships," O'Kane suggested.
"Somehow I don't think so," Monkoto murmured, watching Ben Belkassem's face. "If we could, you wouldn't be talking to us, would you, Ferhat?"
"No," Ben Belkassem said unhappily. "We have reason to believe there's a leak-a very, very high-level leak-from Soissons."
"Well, isn't that a fine crock of shit," Westfeldt muttered softly.
"Isn't there anything we can do?" Alicia almost begged, and Monkoto leaned back in his chair and met her eyes with a cool, thoughtful gaze.
"Actually," he said, "I think there is … especially with an alpha-synth to help." He swept the others with a shark's lazy smile. "Our problem is that they can see us coming, but suppose we were the ones in normal space?"
"You've got that evil gleam in your eye, Simon," Falconi observed.
"It's very simple, Tad. We won't go to them at all; we'll invite them to come to us."
Chapter Sixty-One
The green-uniformed woman rapped on the edge of the open office door, and the massive, silver-haired man behind the deck looked up. He grunted in greeting, waved at an empty chair, and returned to his reader, and the corners of the woman's mouth quirked as she sat and leaned back to wait.
It wasn't a very long wait. The silver-haired man nodded, grunted again-a harsher, somehow ugly grunt this time-and switched off the reader.
"Took your time getting here," he rumbled, and she shrugged.
"I was running that field exercise we discussed. Besides," she pointed at the reader, "you seemed busy enough." She spoke lightly, but her eyes were worried. "Was that about Alley?"
"No. Still not a sign of her."
Sir Arthur Keita sounded oddly pleased, for the man whose iron sense of duty had started the hunt for Alicia DeVries, and he smiled wryly as Tannis Cateau inhaled in wordless relief. She couldn't very well say "Thank God!" but she could think it very loudly. Then his smile faded.
"No, this is about our other problem," he said, "and I'm afraid it's coming to a head. I'm placing Clean Sweep on two-day standby."
Tannis twitched upright, eyes wide, and Keita watched her mind race, following her thoughts with ease. She'd been kept fully briefed on his downloads from Colonel McIlheny, and she knew something McIlheny didn't-that his reports to Sir Arthur had been quietly received on Old Earth, re-encrypted, and starcommed back across the light-years to Alexandria, just over the Macedon Sector border from the Franconia Sector. And they had been sent there because that was as far as Sir Arthur Keita had gone when he took his leave of Soissons.
The brigadier rocked gently in his chair, reexamining every tortuous step which had brought them to Clean Sweep. It would be ugly even if it went perfectly, but McIlheny and Ben Belkassem had pegged it; someone far up the chain of command had to be working with the pirates, and that made very officer in the Franconia Sector suspect. No doubt most were loyal servants of Crown and Empire, but there was no way to tell which of them weren't, which was why Keita hadn't gone home-and why an entire battalion of drop commandos had been gathered in bits and pieces from the most distant stations Keita could think of to the remotest training camp on Alexandria.
Countess Miller had wanted to send Keita a full colonel to command them, but he'd refused. The Cadre had so few officers that senior, he'd argued, that the sudden disappearance of any of them was too likely to be noticed. Which was true enough, though hardly the full story.
Major Tannis Cateau's fierce resolve to protect Alicia Devries was the rest of it. No one else would be allowed to serve as Alicia's physician if she could be brought in alive … and, Sir Arthur knew, Tannis hoped-prayed-she'd be there when Alicia was found. If anyone could talk her into surrendering, that anyone was Tannis Cateau.
Keita understood that, and he owed her the chance, threadbare though they both knew it was, almost as much as he owed Alicia herself. But that wasn't something he cared to explain to Countess Miller, and so he'd kept Tannis here by pointing out that a battalion was a major's command and insisting that Major Cateau, already on the spot, was the logical person to command this one. The Fleet or Marines might have questioned one of their medical officers' competence in such matters; the Cadre did not.