The citizen general fell silent, hands clasped tightly behind him while he paced faster and harder. Therret watched him moving back and forth, back and forth, until he felt like a spectator at a tennis match. Finally he cleared his throat.

“So what are you saying, Sir?” he asked.

“I’m saying something is wrong on Hades,” Chernock said flatly. His voice was decisive, and he turned to face Therret as if grateful to the citizen colonel for pushing him into stating his conclusion out loud.

“But what could be wrong, Sir?” Therret asked, honestly bewildered. “Heathrow was just there. Surely he would have known if anything hadn’t been kosher!”

“Not necessarily,” Chernock said in a more reluctant tone. “He would have known if anyone had attacked the planet from space and captured it, yes. I’m sure there would almost have had to be gaps in the orbital defenses, wreckage, any number of things to suggest combat, if that were the case. But if the attack didn’t come from outside…”

His voice trailed off, and Therret blanched.

“Sir, are you suggesting the prisoners somehow—? But that’s impossible, Sir!”

“I know. But so is the idea that Dennis didn’t send me a chess move—or at least a reason for why he didn’t send it. I’m telling you, Brigham; something had to happen to prevent that. And if it wasn’t an external attack, then somehow the prisoners must actually have gotten to Camp Charon. And they must have done it successfully, too. If they’d attacked and been suppressed, Dennis—or his XO, if Dennis had been killed—would surely have reported it to the next competent authority on Heathrow’s flight plan. And that competent authority would have been Danak HQ, which means me.”

“Sir, you realize what you’re saying here?” Therret said very carefully. “You’re telling me, on the basis of a chess move that wasn’t sent, that the inmates of the most escape-proof prison in the history of mankind have somehow overpowered their guards and taken possession of the planet.”

“I know it sounds crazy,” Chernock admitted. “But I also know it must have happened.”

Therret looked at him for a small, endless eternity, then sighed.

“All right, Sir. I don’t know if I agree with you—not yet, anyway—but I can’t refute your reasoning based on anything we know at this moment. But assuming the prisoners have taken the planet, what do we do about it? Alert Nouveau Paris and the other Sector HQs?”

“No,” Chernock said decisively. “We move on this ourselves, Brig. Immediately.”

“Sir, we only have two or three of our own ships here in Danak right now. And if the prisoners have managed to take Styx, I think we have to assume they’ve also taken over the armories, the battle armor storage and vehicle parks… We’ll need troops and additional firepower, not to mention a way to deal with the orbital defenses.”

“Orbital defenses?” Chernock looked startled by the citizen colonel’s last remark.

“Sir, it’s a logical consequence of your basic assumption,” Therret pointed out. “Assuming they’ve actually taken Styx, then they must have taken the central control room pretty much intact—and broken most of the security codes—because they were able to receive, read, and respond to the message traffic Heathrow delivered. That being the case, can we afford not to assume they have control of the orbital defenses, as well?”