“I understand,” Dame Estelle broke in, “but there’s something you should know before you do anything else, Captain.” Honor cocked her head and gestured for the commissioner to continue. “We picked up a transmission from the general area where our patrol went down just after we lost contact with Lieutenant Malcolm,” Matsuko said quickly. “It was scrambled but not encrypted, and we just broke the scramble. The transmitter didn’t identify himself, and he used a code name for his recipient, but we detected a transmission to the freighter from the Haven Consulate immediately afterward, so I think we know who it was intended for.”

“What did it say?” Honor demanded. Dame Estelle didn’t answer in words; she simply played the message off, and Honor’s eyes went cold and flat as a male voice gasped over her com.

“Odysseus! It’s Odysseus now, damn it! The frigging Shaman’s lost his goddamned mind! They’re boiling up out of the caves, and I can’t hold them! The hopped-up bastards are kicking off right fucking now!”

A surflike roar of Medusan voices and the whiplash cracks of countless rifles echoed behind the words, and then the sounds cut off as Dame Estelle stopped the playback.

“Thank you, Dame Estelle,” Honor said flatly. “I understand what’s happening now. Good luck.”

She killed the circuit and bent over her maneuvering display, ignoring McKeon as she punched in the parking orbit pattern and laid vectors across it. It was going to be close, but there was far less orbital traffic than there had been, and if she could pull it off…

“How long for impeller now?” she asked without looking up.

“Four minutes, twenty seconds,” McKeon said tightly, and Honor nodded to herself. She could do it. Probably. She fed McKeon’s readiness numbers into her display, and a time-to-execution readout began to blink its way steadily downward.

“Thank you. Are the Marines away?”

“Yes, Ma’am. And Commander Suchon. Lieutenant Montoya came aboard an hour ago.”

She did look up at that, and her stony face flared with a brief but real smile as she saw the amusement in McKeon’s eyes. Then the smile faded, and she bent back to her maneuvering display.

“We’ll be going in pursuit of Sirius, Mr. McKeon. It’s imperative that we stop her from leaving the system. What’s her current heading?”

“She’s steadied down on two-seven-four by zero-niner-three true from the primary, Captain,” Lieutenant Brigham’s crisp voice replied for the exec.

“What’s out there, Mercedes?”

“At her current heading and acceleration she’ll hit the hyper wall about one light-minute this side of the Tellerman wave, Captain,” Brigham said after a moment, and Honor swallowed a silent curse. She’d been afraid of something like that.

“Impellers in three minutes, Ma’am,” McKeon reported.

“Mr. Webster!”

“Yes, Ma’am?”

“Stand by to record a signal to Lieutenant Venizelos at Basilisk Control for immediate relay to Fleet HQ. Fleet scramble, no encryption. Priority One.”

Heads turned, and Webster’s swallow was clearly audible.

“Aye, aye, Ma’am. Standing by to record.”