“Captain?” It was Webster, and her nerves tightened as she heard the anxiety in his voice. “Priority signal from Lieutenant Stromboli, Ma’am.”

“Put him through.”

“Aye, Ma’am.” Webster vanished from the screen, replaced by Max Stromboli’s worried face.

“What is it, Lieutenant?” Honor deliberately pitched her voice lower than usual and spoke slowly, and the lieutenant swallowed.

“Ma’am, I thought you should know—we copied some message traffic from an NPA skimmer about fifteen minutes ago. They said they were under fire from Stilties and going down. Then they went off the air. Air Control is still trying to raise them, but we’re not getting anything back.”

“Was it Major Isvarian’s patrol?” Honor’s voice was suddenly sharper, despite her self-control.

“Yes, Ma’am, I believe it was. And—” Stromboli broke off and looked away for a few seconds as someone said something from off-screen, then he turned back to Honor. “Ma’am, I don’t know if it’s connected—I don’t see how it could be—but that Havenite freighter, the Sirius, just started to move out of orbit, and she sure didn’t clear it with us.”

Stromboli looked more puzzled than concerned by his latest datum as he gazed into his own com screen at his captain, but Honor felt her skin twitch. The same humming certainty that filled her as she grappled with a complex tactical maneuver filled her now as all the pieces snapped instantly and intuitively into place. It couldn’t be. The whole idea was preposterous! Yet it was also the only answer that even began to fit the known data.

Stromboli flinched back from his com as her eyes hardened in sudden understanding. She noted his reaction and made herself smile at him.

“Thank you, Lieutenant. You did well. I’ll take it from here.”

She cut the circuit and flipped up a clear plastic shield on the side of her terminal. Only the captain’s cabin terminal had that shield, and she jammed her thumb down on the big, red button it had covered.

The ululating scream of Fearless’s battle stations alarm wailed through the light cruiser’s hull. Crewmen rolled out of their bunks, dropped cups of coffee, jumped up from mess tables, threw down playing cards and book readers, and bolted for their stations. That shrill, electric sound was brutal, designed to get inside a person’s bones and snarl there, and only a dead man could have ignored it.

Honor let the alarm shriek and punched the intercom for the bridge. Panowski was officer of the watch, and his eyes were wide and stunned as he recognized her.

“Bring the drive up—now, Lieutenant!” she snapped.

“Aye, aye, Ma’am!” Panowski actually saluted his pickup, then licked his lips. “What are we doing, Captain?” he blurted, and she chopped her hand at him.

“I’ll explain later. Have communications raise Dame Estelle. I’ll speak to her when I reach the bridge. Now move on that drive, Lieutenant!”

She cut the circuit and whirled to her own locker. She jerked it open and yanked out her vac suit and shed her kimono in one flowing movement, then sat on the edge of the bed and shoved her feet into the suit. The Navy’s skin suits were little more cumbersome than pre-space scuba suits, unlike the hard suits of meteor miners and construction workers, and Honor was glad of it as she made the plumbing connections with painful haste and hauled the suit up over skin still wet from the shower. She thrust her arms into the sleeves, then sealed it and grabbed her helmet and gauntlets from the locker even as her eyes checked the suit telltales and found them all green.