“He’s got a point, Ma’am,” Caslet said with quiet diffidence, and his mouth quirked wryly. “I realize I’m sort of the odd man out on this planet right now, but I’d certainly like to see you with a force whose loyalty and unity you can rely on… if only to protect me from some of the people who want to lump me in with the garrison!”

“Um.” Honor swung her chair gently from side to side, chewing on her thumbnail, then nodded. “All right, Alistair. You’ve got a point. But I want to discuss it with Jesus and Harriet before we move on it. I don’t want them thinking we’re trying to sneak something past them because we don’t trust them.”

“I agree completely,” McKeon told her, and she nodded, but her mind was already reaching out towards the next worrisome point.

“Have we picked up any more of Proxmire’s crew?” she asked.

“Not that I’ve heard about in the last couple of hours,” McKeon replied with a grimace. Metcalf and DuChene were still depressed over the destruction of the courier boat. They knew they’d had no real choice, yet the failure of the boat’s fusion bottle had destroyed her with all hands, and they carried a heavy load of guilt. He was confident they’d work through it, and they weren’t letting it keep them from doing their duty, but he hated to see them punishing themselves for it this way.

In the meantime, however, they’d picked up seven members of the boat’s crew who’d been dirtside when it all hit the fan. Some of them had stubbornly refused to give more than name, rank, service branch, and serial number, but others had been so stunned by the cataclysmic upheaval in their fortunes that they’d started talking as soon as someone asked them a question. Unfortunately, none of the talkative ones were officers, and they didn’t really know all that much beyond what their own duties had been. From what they’d told him, he knew there had been eight more crew members on Hell, and he still hoped to pick them up—or identify them from among the mass of other prisoners—but it was entirely possible that all eight were dead. Honor’s assault force had taken over a hundred casualties, fifty-two of them fatal, including two of the escapees from Tepes. He knew Honor had been privately devastated by the deaths of Senior Chief Halburton and Senior Chief Harris. She’d fought not to show it, yet losing them after they’d come through so much together had struck all of them as bitterly unfair. But StateSec’s losses had been at least three times as high as the attackers’. Or, at least, their known losses so far had been, he corrected himself. They were still finding bodies and pieces of bodies in the wreckage.

“Keep on that, Alistair,” Honor told him. “Without Tresca—” it was her turn to grimace, for Camp Charon’s CO had set the standard for his personnel, and his personal slaves had literally ripped him to pieces before he could be taken into custody “—or his exec, we don’t have anyone who can tell us how much longer Proxmire was supposed to be assigned here or if he already had orders for another station. If he did have orders and he doesn’t turn up on schedule—”