"That doesn't matter," FitzGerald told him. "What matters is that you did it."
"Even that wouldn't have mattered if you hadn't had Abigail and me pull in everything we could while we were in Kornati orbit, Skipper," Kaplan pointed out.
Terekhov nodded almost absently, his mind busy.
Whoever that was over there, he doubted very much that the ship's real name was Golden Butterfly . And he was quite certain the other vessel's commander had no idea Hexapuma had gotten a complete emissions map off of her before she left Split. If he'd even suspected that, he would never have been stupid enough to try using a false transponder code.
"Whoever that is, he's gutsy," FitzGerald remarked. Aikawa looked up at him, and the XO snorted. "Coming right up on us this way takes about a kiloton of nerve. We've been squawking our transponder ever since we went into orbit, so he has to know who we are."
"Might be nerve," Kaplan said. "But it could be desperation, too. I'm betting there's either something here on Montana he absolutely has to do, or else he didn't realize we were here until it was too late to do anything but come on in and ask for a parking orbit of his own."
"I'm inclined to think you're right, Guns," Terekhov said. "Or even that it's both-something he has to do and a late pickup on our presence. The question is what we do about it."
"Well, Sir," Abigail said, "we know one of the two transponder codes they've used must be false. For all we know both of them may, but at least one has to be bogus. That's sufficient reason to board and examine her under interstellar law, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is," Terekhov agreed. "And I think that's what we'll do." He turned to FitzGerald. "Get hold of Tadislaw, Ansten. Tell him I'll want a boarding party ready to go within the next fifteen minutes."
"Skipper, you know she's armed," FitzGerald said. "We picked up that much in Split, and look how quickly she got here. Whatever else she is, she isn't a standard merchie. We don't know what else they may have hidden away over there."
"Can't be helped," Terekhov replied. "According to this," he tapped the detailed readout from the Split data, "she's got two lasers in each broadside plus some point defense. It'll take her at least five or ten minutes to clear away the broadside weapons, and there's no way she can do that at this range without our seeing it coming. Same for anything she has hidden, except that she'll have to take the time to clear away the false plating or whatever over it first, as well. Her point defense could come up faster, but it's not going to hurt us if we clear for action ourselves before we tell her we're coming to visit. Unless they've got some sort of death wish, they're not going to argue with a heavy cruiser that's obviously ready to turn them into drifting wreckage."
"Flight Ops, Hawk-Papa-One is ready to depart."
Ragnhild Pavletic heard the edge of excitement sharpening her tone and forced herself to step back from it just a bit.
"Hawk— Papa-One, Flight Ops. You are cleared to depart. No traffic, repeat, no traffic."
"Flight Ops, Hawk-Papa-One copies no traffic on flight path and cleared to depart. Departing now."
The sharpness had smoothed back down into properly crisp professionalism, she was pleased to note as she fed power to the thrusters. They goosed the pinnace sharply, pushing the small craft clear of Hexapuma's radar shadow, and she watched her proximity radar. Hawk-Papa-One cleared the pinnace's impeller wedge safety perimeter quickly, and the pressure of acceleration vanished as she brought the wedge up and went to four hundred gravities.
She'd left the flight deck hatch open, and she glanced over her shoulder through it, past the small cubbyhole of the flight engineer. Lieutenant Hedges and a full squad of his platoon occupied about a third of the passenger compartment.
"Attention freighter Golden Butterfly !" She heard the Skipper's voice come up on the com as she settled down on course for the freighter. " Golden Butterfly , this is Captain Terekhov of Her Majesty's Starship Hexapuma . You are ordered to stand by for boarding and examination. My boarding party is en route now. You will open your hatches immediately."
"— will open your hatches immediately."
" Jesus Christ! " Egervary gasped, and Duan Binyan snapped upright in his chair. He heard Annette De Chabrol inhale sharply, but it scarcely registered. He was staring at his plot, where the Manticoran heavy cruiser's impeller wedge had just snapped up. Even as he watched, her sidewalls were coming up, as well, and her broadside energy mounts were training out as she went to battle stations.
"So much for they'll never suspect anything!" Egervary half-shouted, wheeling towards Duan. "They knew all along, goddamn it, just like I said! They were fucking waiting for us and we fucking well sailed right up to them!"
"Shut up!" Duan snapped.
"Why? What the fuck does it matter now? We're dead-we are fucking dead ! When they come aboard, find out what we are, they'll-"
"He said to shut up, Zeno," Annette said viciously, turning on the security officer with a snarl, "so goddamn shut your face !"
Egervary managed to clamp his jaws together, but his facial muscles twitched and jumped and a thick sheen of sweat oozed down his forehead. His hands trembled visibly, and he turned back to his console with something almost like a whimper.
Duan Binyan wanted to whimper himself.
The money was always good for someone willing to serve on one of the Jessyk Combine's "special ships," and the risks weren't really all that great. Despite the best efforts of people like the Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven, no more than five percent of slave ships were ever apprehended. Most were stopped by people like the Solarian League, where, by and large, the worst a crewman had to worry about was a brief incarceration before the Combine or Manpower bribed him out of jail. No more than a handful were stopped by the Star Kingdom or the Republic in any given year. But the crews on that handful were seldom ever heard of again. Manticore and Haven, for all they hated one another, both took genetic slaving seriously, and the penalty under the law of either star nation was death.
But the odds against being one of those handful of ships were so high, and the money was so good, Jessyk could always find someone to take the chance. Someone like Duan Binyan, who suddenly realized all the money in the galaxy was no use at all to a dead man.
"What are we going to do, Binyan?" De Chabrol asked urgently, her voice lowered so only he could hear.
"I don't— " Duan broke off and wiped perspiration from his own face. "I don't think there's anything we can do, Annette," he admitted hoarsely. "That's a heavy cruiser . She can turn us into vapor anytime she feels like it. If we don't open the hatches, she may just decide to do it. Or, just as bad, she'll blow her way in, and her Marines will come in shooting. Do you want Marines in battle armor burning down that hatch?" he demanded, jerking a thumb at the bridge lift hatch.
"But they're Manties ," she protested, her eyes desperate. It was all she had to say, and Duan's mouth tightened.
"What do you want me to say, Annette? If we let them in and they find out what we are, they may kill us-all right," he said quickly as she opened her mouth, "they probably will kill us! But if we try to stop them, there's no question what'll happen. At least if we open up, we'll live a little longer!"
"I say blow the fucking ship and take the motherless bastards with us!" Egervary said. Duan wheeled towards him, and the security officer bared his teeth in a rictuslike grin. His dark eyes were huge, and his nostrils flared. "Those holier-than-thou motherfuckers are all so hot to kill anyone who does anything they don't approve of! Who the hell died and made them God? I say we take as many to hell with us as we can!"
"That's the stupidest thing you've said yet!" Duan snapped. "You may want to die, but I sure don't!"
"Like what you want's going to make a difference!" Egervary jeered. "We're dead , Binyan. That's what happens when the Manties come on board. Well, if I've got to die, so do they!"
The security officer hovered on the brink of outright madness in his terror, Duan realized. And that terror, as all too often happened, was feeding his rage, fanning it like a furnace.
"No," the captain said flatly, forcing his voice to project a calm he was far from feeling. "We're going to do exactly what they tell us to, Zeno. Exactly ."
"You think so?" Egervary's grin was wider and more maniacal than ever, and he whipped back around to his panel.