The dispatch boat was small enough for Tsiang, who enjoyed being hands-on whenever possible, to take the helm herself instead of simply passing orders to someone else, and DB-17025 accelerated smoothly, sliding out of the mass of waiting freighters and passenger liners. Trudeau suspected there were some alarmingly high blood pressures on the bridges of the ships they were leaving behind, but that was fine with him. He only wished he had some better intelligence—like any intelligence—on how the rest of Operation Raging Justice was making out.

Somehow, he felt sure, Admiral Tsang would probably wish the same thing.

* * *

“Are we sure this is a good idea, Ma’am?”

Christopher Dumbrowski tone sounded more than a bit doubtful as he watched the dispatch boat’s icon moving towards the terminus to Beowulf.

“Define ‘good idea,’” Admiral Stephania Grimm replied with a wry smile.

“Well, it just seems to me it would have been simpler all around to sit on them,” Captain Dumbrowski said. “I mean, they wouldn’t be going anywhere without our permission. We could’ve just kept them cooling their heels right here until it was all over one way or the other, without ever bringing the Beowulf end into it at all. Seems to me that keeping Beowulf up our sleeve as a holdout card in case we need to play it even worse later on might have a lot to recommend itself.”

“In some ways, I’m inclined to agree with you,” Grimm acknowledged. Given their positions and the role they had to play, she and Dumbrowski knew quite a lot about the thinking behind this part of the plan. And in Grimm’s opinion, the captain had a very valid point. But…