“For me to return with your shipmates,” Bradamont corrected.
“If it can be done, you’ll do it,” Marphissa said. As she stood to accompany Bradamont to the shuttle, Marphissa was surprised to hear the senior watch specialist call out to Bradamont.
“Good luck, Kapitan!”
“Yes,” another specialist agreed. “One of those guys from the Reserve Flotilla owes me money. I hope you bring him back!”
Bradamont grinned, waved, and followed Marphissa off the bridge.
“That was surprising,” Marphissa muttered, as they made their way toward the air lock.
“They must be getting used to me,” Bradamont offered. “And they idolize you—”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“They do. So when they see that you trust me, it rubs off a little on me.” They reached the hatch, and Bradamont paused. “If Admiral Geary is already at Varandal, this will be a piece of cake.”
“And if he’s not, you said this Admiral Timbale will cut a deal,” Marphissa said. “Be careful. I don’t want to lose you. And you and Colonel Rogero behave yourselves once you’re on the same ship. No sneaking off for a little private recreation.”
Bradamont laughed. “That’s unlikely. You are the only other person in this flotilla who knows about Donal Rogero and me. He thinks his soldiers will take it all right, but we don’t want to create too many problems with the Reserve Flotilla survivors when they get on the same ship with us.”
“Smart move.” Marphissa hesitated, feeling unusually diffident. “What do you say? May the stars protect you? Something like that?”
“Something like that. May the living stars watch over you.”
It was only after Bradamont had sealed the hatch behind her that Marphissa realized that she had not simply given Marphissa the correct phrase, but spoken the wish on her behalf as well. Good luck, you Alliance scum. Come back safely to us.
Several hours later, Bradamont called Marphissa from the freighter she was on. The freighters and their escorts had left the two heavy cruisers behind, plodding at the best rate the freighters could manage for the jump point for Varandal.
Bradamont looked unhappy. “The courier ship confirmed that Admiral Geary has not yet brought the fleet back through Atalia en route to Varandal. That’s not unexpected since he had to go to Sobek, then transit a number of star systems and jumps before getting here, but it means we’ll get to Varandal before he does. We can’t wait around since it could be days or weeks before Admiral Geary makes it here hauling along that Kick superbattleship, which makes these freighters look like racing yachts by comparison. We’ll continue on to Varandal.”
Black Jack is taking longer to get back? Marphissa thought. We did expect that. But I’m worried. The Syndicate wanted him to go to Sobek, and the Syndicate never plays fair. Ha! Listen to yourself. You’re worried about the safety of an Alliance fleet.
But I am. Things have changed.
Colonel Rogero had been careful to act toward Bradamont only in the most professional and impersonal of ways. But once they returned to her tiny cabin on the freighter after sending her message to Kommodor Marphissa, alone with no one else around, he gave her a concerned look. “You’re worried.”
“I’m some Alliance officer that you never met before, remember? You’re not supposed to know me that well, Colonel,” Bradamont replied with a small smile.
“But I do, Honore. Do you expect trouble in Varandal?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “There shouldn’t be. But. These freighters are Syndicate Worlds’ construction. You and your soldiers are former Syndicate. Someone might throw up obstacles.”
“What are you still not saying?” Rogero pressed.
“Oh, hell, why do I try to lie to you?” She sat down on the single chair in the cramped cabin. “You’re the senior officer. You may have to sign for the released prisoners. And you’re . . .”
“A man in whom your intelligence people might be interested?”
Bradamont nodded unhappily. “If they have files tying Colonel Donal Rogero to the Alliance source known as Red Wizard, they might insist on taking you into custody. They wouldn’t call it that, but that’s what they’d be doing.”
“But what of you? What did Alliance intelligence call you?”
She rolled her eyes. “White Witch.”
“Seriously?”
“Don’t. Make. A. Joke.”
“I wouldn’t,” Rogero protested. “But that means that Alliance intelligence might have a great deal of interest in you as well.”
“Yes.” She grimaced. “I’m going to need to communicate with Admiral Timbale. Admiral Geary provided me with some special codes I can use to do that. But it would be wise to avoid letting anyone else in Varandal know that I’m along for this ride. The wrong words in the right ears could cause me and you to be hauled off and detained, along with perhaps all six freighters. It’s going to be interesting, Donal. And even though we’re on the same ship, I can’t even touch you.”
“Our dreams kept us going for a long time. What’s a little longer? Do you think that Alliance intelligence or the snakes can beat me and you together?”
Bradamont smiled and rendered him a casual salute in the Alliance style. “No, sir. We are going to get this done.”
It was hard leaving behind the light cruisers and HuKs when the freighters entered the jump for Varandal. They were, after all, not just jumping to an Alliance-controlled star system but one that was a military stronghold crawling with defenses. Even though the freighter supervisors and crews were not military and usually regarded Syndicate mobile forces as only one step better than Alliance warships when it came to rapacious threats, even they were rattled by the prospect of arriving at Varandal completely unescorted.
Colonel Rogero listened carefully to the conversations around him during the four days in jump space required to reach Varandal from Atalia. He tried to talk to the freighter supervisors about jump space, but they knew little of the theory behind it and the jump drives. Practical men and women, they knew how to keep their equipment working and what that equipment should do. But they didn’t know whether jump space truly was a different universe in which no star or planet had ever formed and in which distances were much shorter than the human universe. It was something they went through to get where they needed to go within a reasonable period of time. That was all they needed to know.
He didn’t have a lot of ground forces on each freighter, just a platoon per ship. As much room as possible had to be left open for accommodating freed prisoners. Rogero’s troops were leery of Bradamont, but the knowledge that General Drakon had ordered her to be along on this mission (for that was what Rogero told them) led the soldiers to accept the odd presence of an unconfined Alliance officer among them.
Bradamont had also arranged to “accidentally” reveal in the presence of some of the soldiers the place on her arm where the Syndicate labor-camp mark was still visible. Anyone who had been through a labor camp and survived automatically earned some degree of sympathy and respect from those like Rogero’s soldiers, who had lived under the Syndicate.
But now that period of waiting was coming to an end. Rogero had escorted Bradamont to the cramped bridge of the freighter, where the freighter executive waited with ill-concealed nervousness for the exit from jump space.