"A goddamned Manty cruiser ?" Duan Binyan stared at her, still trying to scrub the last rags of sleep out of his brain.
"A Saganami -class, no less!" De Chabrol snarled. "The son of a bitch is sitting in a parking orbit less than a thousand kilometers from us right this instant!"
"All right. All right! Calm down," Duan urged. She looked at him out of his cabin com as if she thought he were an idiot, and he shrugged.
"So there's a Manty cruiser in orbit with us," he said, just a bit more calmly than he actually felt. "So what? We're a legitimate merchantship, certified by the locals' own customs inspectors, and we're here to pick up and drop off a half-dozen small consignments and a dozen passengers. It's all logged with Traffic Control— and with Customs and the KNP-and it was set up months ago. There's absolutely no reason for these Manties to be any more suspicious of us than the Kornatians are."
De Chabrol stared at him for three seconds, then shook -herself.
"That's all well and good, Binyan," she said in a marginally calmer voice. "But it overlooks one little point. The Kornatians' sensors suck; Manty sensors most empathically do not . This cruiser's a helluva lot more likely to spot anything out of the ordinary we might do... like landing, oh, I don't know-say, another thousand tons or so of prohibited military-grade weapons for a bunch of murdering terrorists."
Her tone was withering, and Duan was forced to admit she had a point.
"I don't have any more desire to stick my reproductive equipment into a power outlet than you do," he said. "Unfortunately, we may not have a lot of choice. Nordbrandt's people have already set up tonight's delivery, and we don't have any way to tell them we're not coming. We can always simply scrub the delivery without telling them, of course. But there's no telling how they'll react if we don't show up."
"What? You expect them to call the authorities and say, 'Hi, this is your friendly local terrorist organization speaking. Those nasty people in the Marianne were supposed to deliver a thousand tons of weapons and explosives to us so we could kill more of you, and they didn't. So we're ratting them out to you. Go arrest them'?"
"No," he said with considerable restraint. "What I'm afraid of is that if we don't make the delivery, someone in their part of the pipeline is going to ask one question too many, stay in the wrong place just too long, or panic and start trying to contact their own leaders— something that ends up drawing the local cops' attention. And if that happens, and they get busted, and the locals roll up the delivery chain and find us at the end of it, I don't doubt for a minute that Mr. Saganami -class cruiser will very cheerfully board us or blow us out of space at their request."
"So why don't we just leave ? Let them go ahead and roll up the locals! It's no skin off our ass if they do."
"Oh, yes, it is. Nordbrandt's contact for this shipment's the Jessyk agent here on Kornati. If we pull out, and Nordbrandt's people get nailed, there's no way they won't tell the authorities exactly who was supposed to deliver their weapons... and didn't. And if it's escaped your attention, our agent doesn't have diplomatic immunity. The locals will bust him in a heartbeat, and when they do, they'll hand him over to the Manties. And the one thing we can't afford is for the Manties to start wondering why the Jessyk Combine-a Mesan transstellar corporation-is shipping weapons to terrorists in the Talbott Cluster. Believe me," he looked into her eyes, "there's more going on here than just a weapons drop to a bunch of lunatics. If you and I do anything that compromises the rest of Bardasano's operation, we'll be lucky if we manage to kill ourselves before her wet work teams catch up with us."
De Chabrol had opened her mouth in fresh protest. She closed it again.
"Yeah," Duan said dryly. "What I thought myself."
"So we go ahead with the drop as planned?"
"Only the next scheduled phase. Between what we already have down and the next load, they'll have almost a third of the entire consignment. That's a hell of a lot more than they had before, and we'll explain that the arrival of this Manty cruiser means we have to haul ass. I'm pretty sure Nordbrandt will understand. And even if she doesn't, even if we wind up ratted out, Bardasano won't blame us for it. Or, she probably won't, at least. She came up through covert ops herself, and they say she's got enough experience to recognize what field ops realistically can and can't do when Murphy turns up. If we manage to make that much of our drop and get away clean, I think she'll agree it was the best we could do under the circumstances."
"I hope you're right. And I hope we do get away with it."
"So do I. But the bottom line is that Bardasano's more likely to order us popped if we screw up this operation than the Manties are, even if they grab us under the equipment clause."
"What a charming incentive," De Chabrol muttered, and Duan chuckled in sardonic agreement.
Chapter Forty-Two
"Thank you for coming, Captain Terekhov. And you, Mr. Van Dort."
In person, Helen thought as Darinka Djerdja led them into the Vice President's presence, Vuk Rajkovic projected even more sheer presence than he had over the com. He was scarcely a handsome man, but, then, neither was Helen's father, and no one had ever accused Anton Zilwicki of weakness.
The Vice President stood at the head of the long, wooden table in the palatial conference room one floor down from the Executive Office in the Presidential Mansion of Kornati. The paneled wall behind him bore the great seal of Kornati above the crossed staffs of the planetary flag and the presidential standard. The chairs around the table were old-fashioned, unpowered swivel armchairs which, despite their obsolete design, looked almost sinfully comfortable. The carpet was a deep, cobalt blue, with the planetary seal in white and gold, and old-fashioned HD screens lined one entire wall.
There were no windows. This room was located near the center of the Presidential Mansion, deep enough inside to defeat most external listening devices.
"We wish no one'd had to come, Mr. Vice President," Captain Terekhov said gravely. "But we'll be delighted to do anything we can to assist you."
"Thank you," Rajkovic repeated, and quickly introduced the other two men and one woman already present.
Secretary of Justice Mavro Kanjer, of average height, average build, and medium complexion, stood before the chair immediately to the Vice President's right. Of all the Kornatians, physically he was by far the least prepossessing. Colonel Brigita Basaricek, tall and fair-haired in the gray tunic and dark blue trousers of the Kornatian National Police, rose from the chair to Kanjer's right as their off-world guests were ushered into the conference room. General Vlacic Suka, in the dark green tunic and cherry-red trousers of the Kornatian Defense Forces, stood to the Vice President's left. Suka was almost as dark as Rajkovic, but taller, with grizzled gray hair, thinning on top, and a VanDyke beard considerably more aggressive and bushy than the Captain's. His face was lined with age, fatigue, and worry.
"Captain Terekhov," the Vice President continued, "I've met over the com, and Mr. Van Dort's familiar to all of us, of course. However-"
He looked past Van Dort and arched his eyebrows politely.
"Mr. Vice President," the Captain said, "this is Captain Kaczmarczyk, commanding officer of Hexapuma's Marine detachment. And Midshipwoman Zilwicki, who's acting as Mr. Van Dort's aide."
"I see." Rajkovic nodded to Kaczmarczyk and Helen, then waved a hand at the waiting chairs. "Please, be seated."
His visitors obeyed, and he and his subordinates settled back down in their own chairs. The Vice President looked around the faces at the table, then back at the Captain.
"I can understand why you'd want Captain Kaczmarczyk present, Captain. I'm sure he, Colonel Basaricek, and General Suka have a great deal to discuss. I understand," he smiled thinly, "that the Captain's Marines have already made quite an impression on our citizens."
"I hope not a bad impression, Sir."
"Oh, I suspect it made a very bad impression on a certain segment of our population, Captain," Colonel Basaricek said with what Helen thought was an evil smile. "I can't begin to tell you how bad an impression I hope you made on them."
"That was one of the objects of the exercise, Colonel," the Captain acknowledged, and smiled back at her.
Ragnhild Pavletic and her pinnace were parked prominently on one of the central pads of the Karlovac spaceport. The dorsal turret's heavy pulse cannon were manned, and the entire pad was ringed by two full squads of battle-armored Marines, complete with heavy weapons. And as an additional touch, two full-spectrum battlefield sensor drones floated overhead on their counter-grav. One was high enough to be immune to virtually any man-portable weapon Kornati might possess; the second was much lower, deliberately exposed to possible hostile fire in order to make sure everyone could see it and know it was there.