Javier Giscard looked up as Citizen Vice Admiral Tourville, Everard Honeker, and Tourville’s chief of staff and ops officer entered the briefing room. He saw Tourville’s dark eyes narrow as he noted the ice water carafes, glasses, coffee cups, and other paraphernalia of a formal staff meeting and hid a mental smile.

“Please be seated,” he invited his guests, and waited until they had taken the indicated chairs. Then he glanced at Pritchart, seated in the chair beside him, before he returned his attention to Tourville.

“As I’m sure you’ve just realized, Citizen Admiral, we will shortly be joined by the Fleet’s other squadron and division commanders. At that time, Citizen Captain Joubert and Citizen Commander MacIntosh will present our general ops plan to all concerned. However, Citizen Commissioner Pritchart and I wanted to speak to you and your senior officers first, since your role in the coming campaign will be particularly critical.”

Giscard paused, head cocked slightly to one side, and Tourville fought an urge to squirm in his seat. He glanced at Pritchart, but her face was almost as expressionless as Foraker’s, and he repressed a shudder. He’d heard stories about Pritchart. She was supposed to have ice water in her veins and a zealot’s devotion to the Committee, and he was devoutly grateful that she wasn’t his people’s commissioner. Honeker had become even more human in the last endless months, but even at his worst he’d never radiated the sort of blank-faced menace which seemed to stream off of Pritchart like winter fog.

“I see,” the citizen vice admiral said at last, before the silence could stretch out too far, and Giscard smiled thinly.

“I’m sure you do, Citizen Admiral,” he said, with what might have been just an edge of gentle mockery, and then a star chart blinked into existence as he entered a command into his terminal.

“Twelfth Fleet’s operational area,” he said simply, and Tourville felt Bogdanovich stiffen at his side. Honeker wasn’t sufficiently familiar with star charts to realize what he was seeing quite as quickly as the chief of staff, but Shannon Foraker sat upright in her chair, blue eyes narrowing with the first sign of interest she’d shown.

Tourville could understand that. Indeed, he felt his fingers twitch with the desire to reach for another cigar as his own eyes studied the glowing chips of light and read the names beside them. Seaforth Nine, Hancock, Zanzibar and Alizon, Suchien, Yalta, and Nuada. He knew them all… just as he recognized the bright scarlet icon of the Basilisk System.

Chapter Thirty

THE lift doors opened, and Citizen Captain Joanne Hall—known to friends and family as “Froggie” for reasons which remained a deep, dark secret from the officers and crew of PNS Schaumberg—strode briskly through them.

“The Citizen Captain is on the bridge!” a petty officer announced, and Citizen Commander Oliver Diamato, who had the watch, looked up, then rose quickly. Hall gave him a level look, and he swallowed a mental curse. He should have seen her coming, or at least heard the lift door, before the citizen petty officer announced her presence, and he felt quite certain she would find some way to make that point to him in the very near future. She had a habit of doing things like that.