Fleet captains rarely said “please” to civilian captains they had already ordered to heave to.
“I don’t want to have to fire on you,” Livadhi said. “But under the circumstances, it would be necessary. I say again, you have the wrong person aboard. You must not complete your mission.”
Great. He knew about the mission and the prince, which meant he’d been sent here to intercept her. So much for the honor of kings, Heris thought, and wondered if he knew the actual radius at which she would risk jump. They had the data from her earlier jump, but . . . would that give them the same figures Sirkin was using?
And she had no tight beam for response. Anything she sent would be available to other listeners in time.
Carefully, weighing each word, she composed her response. “All persons aboard this ship have His Majesty’s permission to be here.”
“Captain Serrano—Heris—you know me!” Livadhi was sweating. And since he could be a coldhearted bastard when he wanted to—he had not been sweating when they’d stood before old Admiral Connaught to answer his questions about the alleged massacre of civilians on Chisholm Station—something about this bothered him. “You have the wrong . . . er . . . individual; it’s not Mr. Smith, but a . . . er . . .”
“I have two individuals,” Heris said. “Both carry legal identification which matches their descriptions; neither is a fugitive.” Captive, yes, but not fugitives. And of course they both fit the description of the same person, but that was another problem, not his. Would he realize from what she said that she meant the prince and his double?
“You have two clones,” Livadhi said. “I have the real prince, and we need to get him aboard your ship. Without anyone noticing, although the way you’ve been behaving, anyone would . . .”
“Captain Livadhi—” Had she ever called him Arash? Had she ever really run her fingers through those rumpled red curls, and felt a thrill? If so, it was the thrill of being noticed by someone slightly senior, the thrill of ambition realized, not the thrill of passion. She could remember that bit well enough. “We received departure clearance from Naverrn Station; our course since then has been in accordance with the filed plan. We took on only a single bin of cargo, the Outworld Parcel shipment, for which we hold a legitimate subcontract. All personnel aboard have been identified by legal methods and none is a fugitive from justice.” More than that she could not say. Would not say.
“Three minutes,” said Sirkin.
“We cannot let you continue with clones in place of the prince,” Livadhi said. “It would embarrass the Crown—”
It would more than embarrass the Crown; the illegality of using unmarked clones as royal doubles would throw a political bombshell. Heris could not begin to imagine what would be destroyed.
“They’re in easy range now,” Ginese put in. “Not just the OR weaponry, but the overboosted missiles, too. Either boost us out of here, or we’re dinner on the table.”
“Heris, you have to trust me,” Livadhi said. “I know it’s hard; I know about the . . . er . . . problem you had, but you have to ignore that. You know I wasn’t part of that.” But did she? Ambitious, hard-driving: how could she know that Livadhi hadn’t been part of Lepescu’s clique?
“We have to talk,” Livadhi said. “Face-to-face—or I’m sorry, but—”
“Meet you at the Tank,” Heris said. Would he remember, and understand, that reference? It was worth a try. To her relief, his face relaxed.
“Deep or shallow?” he asked.
“The orange bucket,” she said, hoping for the best.
“Two minutes, thirty seconds,” Sirkin said.
Livadhi’s face constricted in a mass of wrinkles, as he seemed to pry the memory out of some corner of his brain. Then he grinned. “Your honor, Heris?”
“Absolutely.” With the word, she called in the last acceleration in reserve, and the Better Luck aka Sweet Delight skipped forward, momentarily outranging the cruiser. Livadhi’s tight beam lost its lock, and before he could reestablish contact, they had reached the jump threshold. Heris held her hand up, waiting precious seconds, until the beam found them, only then chopping a signal to Sirkin. The ship flipped into FTL space.
Petris let out a whoosh of breath. “You cut that fine,” he said.
“Should I give them more accurate data?” Heris asked, with relief now that it was over. “He’ll assume I jumped as soon as I could—why else accelerate like that? And that’s our safe margin now—what I just made for us.”
“But how’d you know he’d try to talk again and not shoot?” asked Sirkin.
Heris shrugged. “It was worth a try. Either we have the prince, or just clones, as he said. If we have the prince, I doubt he’d fire on us without fire from us. That would create a lot of records to be faked. If we don’t—if the prince is somewhere else—that’s another set of problems. Suppose Livadhi has the prince aboard . . . he must look out for his welfare . . . he will not invite attack. He was in our range by the time we broke the link. If he doesn’t have the prince, there’s still the clones . . . I would imagine he’d like to bring them back where they came from.”
“What’s that business about meeting at a tank?” asked Petris.
“Well . . .” Heris rubbed her nose absently. “It’s true, in a way. I did promise to meet him, and I do feel bound by that promise, but it should work out all right.”
“Care to explain?”
“Don’t look down your nose at me. You know perfectly well it’s officers’ slang; you’re about to find out what it means.” She put the Reference Quads up on the secondary screen. “In every sector, there’s a mapped set of coordinates called the Tank. If one wants to meet somewhere discreet, for any reason, that’s where one goes . . .”
“And every Fleet officer knows it, so it’s about as secret as how many royals it takes to screw in a lightbulb?”
“Not quite that bad. Not just one set of coordinates, actually, but one for each combination of officers. It starts in training; each class has its own definition. Then once you’re out in the Fleet, it’s a matter of relationships. If you become friends with someone, you may choose to share your definition of Tank. For one sector, or several, or all. In fact, it’s always shifting, because we use it even within a single ship, or on a Station. Lazy people might give the same set to everyone, but neither Livadhi nor I were lazy—not that way. Orange bucket, to him, means a particular set of coordinates—” She highlighted them. “In this sector, and not a difficult jump away. Nor out of the way to where we want to go.”
“Weapons?” asked Ginese.
“Oh, live of course. Just in case he’s got someone with him, or we hit bad luck again. Sirkin—what’s our onboard time going to look like to reach those coordinates?”
“Thirty hours, give or take—what insert velocity?”
“I’d like to come in slow, minimal turbulence. We’ll be on a similar vector, unless he double-jumps, which will give us even more time. Work out the details.” She pushed herself to her feet. “And now, if you’ll join me, Petris, we’ll have a word with our passengers.”
The first passenger had improved the shining hours since they left Naverrn by going to sleep. He snored, curled on his side in the sleepsack. Heris listened awhile, and decided the snore was genuine, not faked. No one could create all those little gurgles for punctuation on purpose, not without giggling.
“Let him complete his slumbers,” she said. “We’ll have a word with the other one.”
The other one glowered at them from the sleepsack he had folded into a seating pad. “This is unconscionable. Not even a bed.”
“I know,” Heris said. “It’s so sad that both of you must suffer. But your father expects you will understand.”