“Got something else interesting here, Gerry.”

She turned, pulled back out of her thoughts by Lethridge’s voice, and raised an eyebrow. His tone was very different this time, and his expression could have indicated excitement, trepidation, anticipation, or a combination of all three.

“What is it?” she asked, walking back across the control room towards him.

“The computers just finished decoding the next message in the queue,” he told her, “and it looks like we’re about to have company.”

“Company?” her voice was sharper, and he gave her a tight smile.

“Company,” he confirmed. “The Peeps have hit the Alliance again. This time they took back Seabring, and it looks like they’re going to try to hold it. They’re planning to ship in a shit pot full of mines and energy platforms to thicken the defenses, anyway, and they need a lot of workers to put them on-line.”

“And?” Metcalf encouraged when he paused.

“And StateSec has decided to temporarily ‘rehabilitate’ some of the politicals here on Hell. They’re planning to stop by with a flotilla of transports and collect seventy thousand or so of them as a deep-space work force to emplace all that hardware for them.”

“Transports?” Metcalf straightened, eyes bright. “Hey, that’s great! Exactly what we need!”

“Sure,” Lethridge agreed grimly. “Except that they’re not coming alone.”

“What do you mean?” Metcalf’s brows furrowed as his tone registered.

“I said they were planning on holding the place, Gerry,” he reminded her. “And one of the things they seem to be worried about is that the locals apparently preferred our occupation to the old management. So StateSec is sending in one of its major generals with the equivalent of two divisions worth of intervention battalions supported by full combat equipment, including battle armor, assault boats, and heavy tanks, to ‘repacify’ them if necessary. And since the entire force is being dispatched under StateSec control from their sector HQ at Shilo, they figured they might as well keep everything together so they could send it with a single escort force.”

“You mean we’ve got two divisions of SS goons headed here?” Metcalf asked very carefully.

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Lethridge said flatly. “And they’ll be arriving with an escort of StateSec battlecruisers and heavy cruisers.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Metcalf murmured prayerfully.

“I hope He’s listening,” Lethridge told her with a mirthless smile, “because we’re going to need Him. According to the alert message, we can expect them within three weeks. And with that many senior SS officers all in one place, somehow I don’t think they’d settle for long-range virtual handshakes with our cyberspace version of Brigadier Tresca even if they didn’t expect us to be ready to hand seventy thousand slave laborers over to them!”

Chapter Forty-Four

“THAT’S a lot of firepower, Honor,” Harriet Benson observed soberly. “And a lot of chances for something to go wrong if even one unit doesn’t do what we expect her to.”

“Agreed,” Honor said.