“I don’t think there’s any doubt,” Honor agreed. “Especially not now that we’ve confirmed the courier boat’s drive is hot, too. I hate to say it, Dame Estelle, but I really don’t like that.”

“Don’t blame you.” Matsuko rubbed her eyes, then lowered her hands to her desk with a sigh. “They wouldn’t be on standby if they didn’t figure there was a pretty good reason to be going somewhere, and that damned courier boat has diplomatic immunity. We can’t touch it if it starts to leave.”

“I’m less worried about whether or not I can touch it legally than I am about the fact that there are two of them, Ma’am,” Honor said bleakly. Dame Estelle looked at her sharply, and she shrugged. “I’m not looking forward to any diplomatic incidents, but my big problem is that I only have one ship. If I’ve got two targets headed in different directions, I can only chase one of them.”

“But what’s the point?” the commissioner almost groaned. “I’ve got drug-crazed natives armed with black-powder rifles and primed to slaughter off-worlders in job lots, and you’ve got two starships with drives on standby! Where’s the connection?”

“I don’t know—yet. But I am certain there is one, and all this com traffic seems significant to me, too.”

“I have to agree with that.” Dame Estelle sounded glum. “I’ll see what I can find out for you.”

“Find out?” Honor raised her eyebrows in surprise, and Dame Estelle produced a tired smile.

“I’m afraid I’m not quite as trusting as my exalted superiors in the Ministry for Medusan Affairs would like. My people and I have, ah, acquired a few communications devices not on the official equipment list for my compound down here. We keep a pretty close watch on the message traffic from the off-world enclaves.”

“You do?” Honor blinked in astonishment, and Dame Estelle chuckled.

“You don’t have to mention that to anyone, Honor. There’d be all kinds of repercussions if you did.”

“I imagine there would,” Honor agreed with a slow smile of her own.

“You imagine correctly. But as far as the Havenites are concerned, we can keep an eye on their traffic volume, but we can’t do much with specific transmissions. They not only scramble their signals but routinely encrypt them, as well. We’ve managed to break their latest scramble codes—unless they’ve shifted them again in the last day or so, and I just haven’t heard yet—but we can’t do much with their encryption.”

“Do you think they know you’re doing it?”

“Hard to say. They may, though, particularly if there’s direct traffic between their courier boat and this freighter of theirs,” Dame Estelle said thoughtfully. “We can’t touch their ship-to-ship traffic from down here, so that would give them at least one secure com channel.”

“But that would assume their mastermind is up here,” Honor pointed out. “Otherwise, they’d still have to pass all their command signals through the consulate.”

“True.” Matsuko’s fingers tapped a nervous syncopation on the edge of her desk, and she made a face. “I hate all this guesswork,” she sighed.