She shuddered at the thought, but she rather thought she could face the fallout if it came to that. Lord knew some of the news services back home had already had some fairly terrible things to say about her—especially the ones Hauptman and his cronies controlled! Yet the real cruncher was that while she might put a crimp into Haven’s plans if she did expel Sirius, she would neither learn what those plans might have been nor insure that they couldn’t be reactivated some other way. And it seemed likely that anything as involved as this appeared to be—whatever it was!—would have built-in backups, and that meant—

“Captain?”

She opened her eyes to find Webster standing beside McKeon.

“Yes, Mr. Webster?”

“Excuse me, Ma’am, but I thought you’d want to know this. There’s a three-cornered secure com net between Sirius, the Haven consulate, and the consulate’s courier boat, Ma’am.” Honor cocked her head, and Webster gave a small shrug. “I can’t tell you much more than that, Skipper. They’re using mighty tight-focused lasers, not regular com beams, and there’s not much traffic. I’ve deployed a couple of passive remotes, but they’re just catching the edge of the carriers. I can’t tap into them without getting a receptor into one of the lasers itself, and they’d be sure to notice that.”

“Can you tell if it’s scrambled?”

“No, Ma’am. But given how tight their beams are, I’d be surprised if it wasn’t. They don’t need whiskers this tight for any technical reasons at this piddling little range. It has to be a security measure.”

“I see.” Honor nodded, and her indecision vanished into tranquillity. “Mr. McKeon, as soon as Mr. Tremaine returns aboard, I want us returned to our original orbit, but put us back into it astern of the Havenite courier boat.”

“Aye, aye, Ma’am.” McKeon responded automatically, but Honor saw the puzzlement in his eyes.

“Keep a close eye on Sirius, but see if you can determine whether or not the courier’s nodes are hot, too,” she went on. “I think we’ve pretty definitely established that something strange is going on out here, and that Haven is at the bottom of it, but we still don’t know what. I want to know that, Exec. I want to catch them with their hands dirty and nail them in front of God and everybody.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” McKeon’s puzzlement had turned to understanding, and Honor nodded.

“In the meantime, I want Fearless held on standby for impeller, as well. If either of those two start going anywhere, I want to be able to go in pursuit. Clear?”

“Clear, Ma’am.”

“Good.” She turned back to her com officer. “Mr. Webster, I need a secure link to Dame Estelle.”

“Aye, aye, Ma’am. I’ll get right on it.”

Honor watched her two subordinates return to their stations and leaned back, rubbing Nimitz and looking back down at the frozen imagery of Sirius’s impeller node with distant eyes.

“You’re right, Honor. They’re definitely up to something.” Dame Estelle looked tired on the com screen, and Honor wondered if she’d gotten back to sleep at all after their midnight conversation.