Trudeau shook his head in disgust. When he and the rest of DB 17025’s crew had been designated for this operation, he’d thought it was a particularly…ill-advised notion. He’d even said so—tactfully, of course—although no one had paid him any attention. Which just went to show that brain power wasn’t necessarily a requirement for high rank. They were a miserable dispatch boat, for God’s sake! Even assuming Junction ACS would be willing to let anyone make transit through the Junction at a time like this, a dip-shit little courier boat wasn’t going to be very high in the queue. Which completely overlooked the fact that DB 17025 was a Solarian vessel. Of course, the geniuses who’d come up with this had probably done it before they realized the Manties were closing every wormhole terminus they could reach against Solarian traffic, but still…

On the other hand, we’re not just any Solarian dispatch boat, he reflected.

“Stay on it, Brynach,” he said. “Sooner or later, they’re going to start taking calls from somebody, so lean on them. Remind them about our INS credentials.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Lacharn nodded, although he had even more reservations about their orders’ basic assumptions than Trudeau. One of his sisters worked for the Ministry of Education and Information, which meant he knew exactly how the “independent reportage” of the Solarian media worked, and in his opinion, Sloarian newsies were the very last people the Manties ought to be allowing to use the Junction. For that matter, the Interstellar News Service Corporation had never been high on the Manties’ list of favorite people—something to do with INS’ “accommodations” with the People’s Republic of Haven’s Office of Public Information. Still, it might work, he supposed, since—unlike the League—the Manties actually gave at least a little more than pure lip service to the concept of a free and independent press.

And if it didn’t work, it was no skin off Ensign Brynach Lacharn’s nose.

* * *

“Fleet Admiral, we’ve got impeller signatures!” William Daniels reported sharply, and Filareta nodded as he saw the crimson codes of starship impeller wedges appearing in the plot. They weren’t moving, just sitting there.

“CIC’s identified two separate groups,” Daniels continued. “The larger group—designate Tango One—is about midway between Sphinx and Manticore, range approximately two-seven-zero-point-niner million kilometers. Call it fifteen light-minutes. The smaller group—designate Tango Two—is a lot closer. Range one-five-point-one million kilometers, about two million klicks this side of Sphinx. All we’ve got right now are the signatures themselves—they just lit off—but preliminary count makes Tango One approximately sixty sources. Tango Two’s only about forty and—”

The operations officer paused for a moment, listening to the earbug linked to Oppenheimer’s Combat Information Center, then nodded.