“At least,” McKeon agreed. “He had a real nose for spotting contraband,” he explained to the other two. “Made him very popular with his crewmates when the Admiralty started handing out the prize money.”

“I imagine it would!” Benson laughed.

“But he’s a levelheaded young man, too,” Honor said, and her grin faded as she remembered a time that “levelheaded young man” had saved her career.

“I can believe that, too,” Benson said. She glanced at Honor as if she’d caught a hint of what had been left unspoken, but she chose not to push for more. Instead, she shook herself, and her expression became much more serious. “How badly is this likely to affect our plans?”

“If nothing happens to Shuttle One’s beacon, it won’t affect them at all,” Honor replied. She held out her hand to Nimitz, and the ’cat rose and limped over to her. She lifted him down into her lap and leaned back, holding him to her chest while her good eye met the gazes of her three senior subordinates. “We were always going to have to task one of the shuttles to deal with the courier boat,” she reminded them, “and an IFF beacon won’t matter one way or the other for that part of the operation.”

“And if something does happen to Shuttle One’s beacon?” McKeon asked quietly.

“In that case, we either figure out how to take a supply shuttle intact, or else we abandon Lunch Basket entirely and go for a more direct approach,” Honor replied, equally quietly, and the living side of her face was grim.

None of her listeners cared for that, yet none of them disagreed, either. For all its complexity, “Operation Lunch Basket,” as Honor had decided to christen her ops plan, offered their best chance of success, and they all knew it. In fact, it was probably their only real chance. Trying any of the fallback plans was far more likely to get them killed than get them off Hell, but no one mentioned that either. After all, getting themselves killed trying was better than staying on Hell.

“In that case,” McKeon said after a moment, “I guess we’d better just concentrate on not having anything happen to One’s beacon.” His tone was so droll Honor chuckled almost despite herself and shook her head at him.

“I’d say that sounds like a reasonable thing to do,” she agreed. “Of course, exactly how we do it is an interesting question.”

“Shoot, Honor—that’s simple!” McKeon told her with a grin. “We just sick Fritz on it. He’ll set up one of his famous preventive care programs, prescribe a little exercise, schedule it for regular office visits, and we’ll be home free!”

This time Ramirez and Benson joined Honor’s laughter. Fritz Montoya had already proved worth his weight in anything anyone would have cared to name to Camp Inferno. Relatively few medical officers got sent to Hell, and of those who had been sent there, none had been further exiled to Inferno. For the most part, the local germs tended to leave the indigestible human interlopers alone, but there were a few indigenous diseases which were as stubbornly persistent in attacking them as shuttlesquitos or bearcats. And, of course, there was always the potential for food poisoning, accidents, or some purely terrestrial bug to wreak havoc. More than one of Hell’s camps had been completely depopulated between supply runs, and Montoya had found himself with a backlog of minor complaints and injuries to deal with.