“And an important Fleet family. Even though he’s only an ensign, that’ll make them take notice.”
“If he knows enough,” Hoch said. “He’s only an ensign. The lieutenant I found in Hull and Architecture isn’t an expert . . . the junior officers can be sent here for short runs.”
“If he doesn’t know enough, we can snatch another from scan—the family connection alone will be useful.”
“Hostage or vengeance?”
“Well . . . we tell them it’s a hostage.” Another low chuckle; they understood that. This Serrano cub would go back to his family—if he did—toothless and tamed, a warning not to interfere with Bloodhorde nobles. “Now—have you all used the mapping function on these things?”
Heads shook, and Vokrais glared at them. They’d come for the technology; they should be learning to use it. The data wands weren’t difficult. He put his own in the port this time, telling them about the fast and slow ports as if he’d known all along. Then he switched to the open display, and the ship graphics glowed before them.
“We need a higher access probe to find everything we want,” he said. “So we need to kill someone in ship security—with lots of stripes—and use theirs. But here you can see . . .” He pointed out the bridge, the secondary command center tucked in between the two FTL drives, the medical decks and the ship security offices on T-5. “They’ll have weapons in security—even these sheep must run amok sometimes—and if we knock out their security personnel, we’ve eliminated resistance.” All that counted, all that knew how to fight in any organized way. “In medical, they’ll have more of that sleepygas, and the antidotes—”
“Eye for eye,” murmured Hoch, grinning. Bloodhorde tradition, to return insults as exactly as possible, before the final bloodletting.
The loud blat-blat-blat of some alarm made them all look around. Then the muffled voice that must be a transmitted announcement. Hoch stuck his data wand back in the ’port, this time choosing the faster display, which only the user could see.
“They caught on,” he said after a moment. “They’re pulling everyone in for identification checks, full-scale . . . whatever that means.” Vokrais was impressed. After that sloppy beginning, he’d expected to have days to wander around unnoticed before being found out. But this was better. He grinned at his pack.
“They know something’s wrong, but they don’t know where we are. It’ll take them awhile to do the checks and issue new ID tags. Hours, probably. In the meantime, they won’t even know how many of us there are. Vanter, Pormuk—” These were not their Fleet names, but their own. “You’ll get us new tags. Try to dispose of the bodies where it’ll take awhile to find them. Get the data wands, too. If you see any more of our people, sweep them up. Hoch, take two—three if you must—and get those contractors; we need to know where the self-destruct is, and be sure the captain can’t use it. The rest of you, come with me. We need weapons, especially as we’re shorthanded right now.”
“We come back here . . . ?”
“No. They have gardens on this ship, if you can believe it. Maybe more than one, but at the top of T-2, Decks 16 and 17. Lots of places to hide, and many ways in and out. There’s a big tree—you can’t mistake it—and an assault wall.”
“If we’re seen . . . ?”
“Capture or kill, and don’t capture more than you can handle on the move. They know they’ve got trouble; we’ll show them how much.” Low growls answered him; they liked this much better than pretending to be softbellied Fleet techs. “Go.”
Captain Hakin, wearing his own new ID tag, looked as grim as expected when he met with the other senior officers aboard. He had called them to the officers’ lounge nearest the bridge, where officers just going off or coming on duty met informally. Now the room was guarded by security personnel, their wary eyes watching everyone in sight.
“The Wraith crew members who came aboard as casualties from the forward compartments have not appeared for ID checks,” he said. “We have forwarded what little videoscan we have to Captain Seska aboard Wraith, and he is sure that at least eight of those were never his personnel. He is showing every image to his remaining crew, to check on the ones he said he wasn’t sure of. But we must assume that all twenty-five Wraith casualties who were not injured, and who were sent to work assignments by Chief Barrahide, are actually impostors. We do not know where they came from; I understand that Lieutenant Suiza had a notion that they might be Bloodhorde intruders. If so, this ship is in even more peril than we thought.”
“Any sign of a Bloodhorde ship?” asked Admiral Dossignal.
“No, Admiral. However, the situation with regard to our escort is . . . tenuous.”
“Tenuous?” asked Admiral Livadhi.
“Yes . . . Sting and Justice, as the admiral recalls, were assigned to patrol the same area as Wraith. Their captains insisted on returning to that patrol area, arguing that they could then guard the exit jump point there if the Bloodhorde tried to use it. That made sense, before we knew about the mine on Wraith; they’d been long gone by the time we suspected that intruders had come aboard.”
“And our present escort?”
“Is useless if the intruders gain control of this ship—they could destroy Koskiusko, of course, if they were ordered to do so, but who is to give the order? I have made it clear to both captains that they should do precisely this, if they think the ship has been captured, but they have not yet agreed. Captain Plethys said he did not feel certain he could know that the ship had been irrevocably lost, even if he could not make positive identification of an officer on the crew list on a comlink. He argued that communications capacity might be interdicted by the intruders without their actually gaining control—”
“Which is quite possible,” Admiral Livadhi put in.
“Quite so. In fact, any type of signal which I tried to imagine could, in theory, be interdicted by the intruders before they gained control. Captain Martin agreed with Captain Plethys, and added that he did not wish to be responsible for the considerable destruction of life and materiel, even if the intruders did appear to control this ship. He argued that the rest of the wave will no doubt return to guard us, and offered his ship to go and explain the situation. I insisted that he stay, but I’m not sure he will.”
“You think he’ll desert us in the face of enemy attack? That’s treason!”
“There are no enemy ships on scan,” Livadhi pointed out, hands steepled. “And he knows he can do nothing about the intruders already aboard. He probably thinks that will clear him with a Board.”
“Not if I’m around to argue it,” Dossignal growled.
“I agree . . . but if I remember Captain Martin, and I believe this is the same Arlen Martin I once attempted to teach Military Justice to, he’s got a mind like an eel. Twisting and slithering away is his nature. I never did understand why he was given a ship.”
“So you think he’ll go,” Captain Hakin said.
“Probably. Certainly, if his scan techs can locate an enemy ship at a distance where he thinks we can’t . . . and then he’ll claim he didn’t know it was there. He doesn’t make mistakes, you see.”
Hakin looked even grimmer. “Then, sirs, I’m faced with a dilemma which you have probably already anticipated . . . when do I throw the switch?”
“The switch?”