"Did you find this out the hard way at Dagoola IV, Admiral Naismith?" the engineer inquired in a tone of genuine interest.

"Yeah. We lost . . . personnel. I was damned near one of them."

"I see," said the engineer respectfully. But his brows quirked.

How dare you be amused. . . . Fortunately for his health, the engineer did not smile. A thin man of slightly above average height, he reached up the side of the shuttle to run his hands along the slot in question, pull himself up chin-up fashion, peer about and mutter notes into his recorder. Miles resisted an urge to jump up and down like a frog to try to see what he was looking at. Undignified. With his own eye-level even with the engineer's chest, Miles would need about a one-meter stepladder even to reach the ramp slot on tiptoe. And he was too damned tired for calisthenics just now, nor was he about to ask Elli Quinn to give him a boost. He jerked his chin up in the old involuntary nervous tic, and waited in a posture of parade rest appropriate to his uniform, his hands clasped behind his back.

The engineer dropped back to the docking bay deck with a thump. "Yes, Admiral, I think Kaymer can take care of this for you all right. How many of these drop shuttles did you say you had?"

"Twelve." Fourteen minus two equalled twelve. Except in Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet mathematics, where fourteen minus two shuttles equalled two hundred and seven dead. Stop that, Miles told the calculating jeerer in the back of his head firmly. It does no one any good now.

"Twelve." The engineer made a note. "What else?" He eyed the battered shuttle.

"My own engineering department will be handling the minor repairs, now that it looks as if we'll actually be holding still in one place for a while. I wanted to see to this ramp problem personally, but my second in command, Commodore Jesek, is chief engineer for my fleet, and he wants to talk to your jump tech people about re-calibrating some of our Necklin rods. I have a jump pilot with a head wound, but jumpset implant micro-neurosurgery is not one of Kaymer's specialties, I understand. Nor weapons systems?"

"No, indeed," the engineer agreed hastily. He touched a burn on the shuttle's scarred surface, perhaps fascinated by the violence it silently witnessed, for he added, "Kaymer Orbital mainly services merchant vessels. A mercenary fleet is something a bit unusual in this part of the wormhole nexus. Why did you come to us?"

"You were the lowest bidder."

"Oh—not Kaymer Corporation. Earth. I was wondering why you came to Earth? We're rather off the main trade routes, except for the tourists and historians. Er . . . peaceful."

He wonders if we have a contract here, Miles realized. Here, on a planet of nine billion souls, whose combined military forces would make pocket change of the Dendarii's five thousand—right. He thinks I'm out to make trouble on old mother Earth? Or that I'd break security and tell him even if I was. . . . "Peaceful, precisely," Miles said smoothly. "The Dendarii are in need of rest and refitting. A peaceful planet off the main nexus channels is just what the doctor ordered." He cringed inwardly, thinking of the doctor bill pending.