“That’s all right,” Rigney said. “My bosses aren’t very pleased that a mole in the Department of State told whoever was using our own missiles against your ship where that ship was going to be and with whom it was negotiating.”

“You have evidence of that?” Egan asked.

“No,” Rigney said. “But we have pretty good evidence that the Utche sprung no leaks. The process of elimination applies from there.”

“I’d like to see that evidence about the Utche,” Egan said.

“I’d like to show it to you,” Rigney said. “But you have a mole problem.”

Egan looked at Rigney narrowly. “You better smile when you say that, Abel,” she said.

“To be clear,” Rigney said, “I would—and have, you’ll recall from our combat days—trust you with my life. It’s not you I’m worried about. It’s everyone else in your department. Someone with a high enough security clearance to know about the Utche talks is engaging in treason, Liz. Selling us out to our enemies. Which enemies, we don’t know. But our friends don’t blow up one of our ships and try to go after a second.”

Egan said nothing to this, choosing to stab a fry into ketchup instead.

“Which brings us back to the Clarke,” Rigney said. “How is the ship?”

“We’re trying to decide which will cost less, a complete rehaul or scrapping it and building a new ship,” Egan said. “If we scrap it, at the very least we recoup the salvage value.”

“That bad,” Rigney said.

“The CDF makes excellent ship-to-ship missiles,” Egan said. “Why do you ask?”

“For a B-team, Abumwe and her team were pretty impressive, don’t you think?” Rigney said.

“They did all right,” Egan said.

“Really,” Rigney said, and held up a hand to start ticking off points on his fingers. “Wilson and Schmidt develop a new protocol for locating powerless CDF black boxes and retrieve data revealing what happened to the Polk. Then Wilson takes multiple spacewalks clad only in a CDF combat unitard and discovers a plan to destroy the Utche diplomatic mission with our missiles. He destroys four of those missiles and then Captain Coloma sacrifices her own ship to make sure the last missile doesn’t hit the Utche. Coloma then flat-out lies to the Utche about the state of her ship to make sure Abumwe has a shot at the negotiations, and Abumwe basically strong-arms the Utche—the Utche—into completing their negotiations. Which they do, with only a day’s preparation.”

“They did all right,” Egan said again.

“What more would you like them to do?” Rigney asked. “Walk on water?”

“Where is this going, Abel?” Egan asked.

“You said the most notable negotiation these folks did before this was another situation where they were forced to think on their feet and improvise,” Rigney said. “Has it occurred to you that the reason Abumwe and her people are on your B-list is not because they’re not good at what they do, but because you’re not putting them in the right situations?”