“When I was there? No,” Wilson said, glancing over to Basquez. “But they were some very clever kids. And we were decoding some of the latest technology we’d stolen from the Consu, who are at least a couple millennia ahead of us in these things. And I was there a couple of years ago.” His gaze went back to the pinprick. “So they could have had time to perfect this little baby, sure.”

“You couldn’t take down the whole ship with that,” Balla said. “Antimatter or not.”

Wilson opened his mouth, but Basquez got there first. “You wouldn’t need to,” he said. “All you have to do is rupture the conduit and the energy inside would take it from there. Hell, you wouldn’t even need to rupture it. If this tore up the inside of the conduit enough, the disruption of the energy flow would be all you need to make it burst apart.”

“And that has the added advantage of making it look like an explosion based on material failure rather than an actual bombing,” Wilson said.

“Yeah,” Basquez said. “If the black box survived, it would only show the rupture, not the bomb going off.”

“Time this thing so it goes off right before a skip, when you’re feeding energy to the skip drive,” Wilson said. “No one would be the wiser.”

“Rigney said we needed to keep to a schedule,” Basquez said, to Coloma.

“Wait, you don’t think we planted this bomb, do you?” Balla asked.

Coloma, Wilson and Basquez were silent.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Balla said, forcefully. “It makes no sense at all for the Colonial Union to blow up its own ship.”

“It doesn’t make sense for the Colonial Union to put fake Earthlings on the ship, either,” Wilson pointed out. “And yet here they are.”

“Wait, what?” Basquez said. “Those diplomats aren’t from Earth? What the hell?”

“Later, Marcos,” Coloma said. Basquez lapsed into silence, glowering at this latest twist of events. Coloma turned to Wilson. “I am open to suggestions, Lieutenant.”

“I have no answers to give you,” Wilson said. “I don’t think any of us have any answers at this point. So I would suggest we try finding alternate means of acquiring answers.”

Coloma thought about this for a moment. Then she said, “I know how we can do that.”

*   *   *

“Everything’s ready,” Coloma said, to Wilson, via her PDA. Her words were being ported into his BrainPal so he’d be the only one to hear them. Wilson, on the floor of the shuttle bay with the fake Earthlings, glanced over to the shuttle bay control room and gave her a very brief nod. Then he turned his attention to the Earthlings.

“We’ve already seen the shuttle bay, you know, Harry,” Marlon Tiege said to Wilson. “Twice, now.”

“I’m about to show it to you in a whole new way, Marlon, I promise,” Wilson said.