The chirp of his com interrupted his thoughts, and he hit the acceptance key. Lieutenant Robards’ face appeared on it, but White Haven had never seen his aide with an expression like the one he wore. His eyes were huge, and he looked as stunned as if someone had used his head for target practice with a blunt object.

“Nathan? What is it?” the admiral asked quickly, and Robards cleared his throat.

“Sir, I think—” He stopped, with an air of helpless confusion which would have been almost comical if it had been even a trace less deep.

“Go on,” White Haven encouraged.

“Admiral, System Surveillance picked up a cluster of unidentified hyper footprints about twelve minutes ago,” the Grayson lieutenant said.

“And?” White Haven prompted when he paused once more.

“Sir, they made transit quite close to one of the FTL platforms and were identified almost immediately as Peeps.”

“Peeps?” White Haven sat suddenly straighter in his chair, and Robards nodded.

“Yes, Sir.” He glanced down at something White Haven presumed was a memo pad display, cleared his throat once more, and read aloud. “Tracking made it five battlecruisers, four heavy cruisers, a light cruiser, and two of their Roughneck-class assault transports.”

“What?” White Haven blinked. He couldn’t possibly have heard right. That was a decent enough squadron for something like a commerce raid, or possibly even a strike at some lightly picketed rear system, but twelve ships, without even one of the wall among them, wouldn’t stand a snowflake’s chance in hell against the firepower stationed here at Trevor’s Star. And what in the name of sanity would a pair of transports be doing here? They’d be dead meat for any decent warship—even one of the old-fashioned, pre-Shrike LACs!—if they moved inside the hyper limit.

“I assume they hypered back out immediately?” he heard himself say. The only logical explanation was that someone on the other side had made a mistake. Perhaps the Peeps were planning a major attack on Trevor’s Star and the transport echelon had simply arrived too soon… or the main attack force was late. In either case, the sensible thing for the Peep CO to do would be to flee back into hyper-space—at once.

“No, Sir,” Robards said, and drew a deep breath. “They didn’t do anything at all, Sir. Except sit there and transmit a message to System Command HQ.”

“What sort of message?” White Haven was beginning to be irritated. Whatever ailed his flag lieutenant, prying the facts out of him one by one was like pulling teeth. What in God’s name could have someone normally as levelheaded as young Robards so off-balance and hesitant?

“They said— But, of course it can’t be, only— I mean, she’s—” Robards broke off again and shrugged helplessly. “Sir, I think you’d better see the message for yourself,” he said, and disappeared from White Haven’s terminal before the earl could agree or disagree.

The admiral frowned ferociously. He and Nathan were going to have to have a little talk about the courtesy due a flag officer, he thought thunderously, and after that they’d—