“I was reading through those reports Grayson Naval Intelligence copied to us,” Harkness said, his own eyes watching approvingly as Baker adapted to the new parameters of his problem. “I know everyone knows the Graysons don’t know squat compared to our own all-knowing intelligence pukes. But I gotta tell you, Skip, I didn’t like what the GSN had to say about Andy ’tronics systems.”

“What?” Tremaine turned to look at the CWO in surprise… and chagrin. “I must have missed that one, Chief.”

“Well, there’s a lot to wade through,” Harkness told him. “And I have to admit the indexing system they used seems kinda skewed. This one was tucked away under an engineering head, not tactics, which is probably why I noticed it and you didn’t.”

“Thanks, but stop making excuses for me and tell me what it said,” Tremaine commanded with a lopsided grin, and Harkness shrugged.

“Like everything else, it’s all a matter of interpreting a mighty slim data sample, Skip. But the Graysons managed to ‘acquire’ access to a confidential report from the Confed Navy. Looks to me like they probably crossed a couple of palms with good old-fashioned dollars.”

“Anyway, however they got it, it’s a report from one of the Sillies’ cruiser captains. Seems he happened along just as a ‘privateer’ the entire Confed Navy had been trying to catch up with for over six months sailed straight into an Andy ambush. This particular Confed skipper seems to me to’ve been a couple of cuts above the average for a Silly officer. He’d already IDed the pirate, and he was busy sneaking up on it, using his own stealth systems, when a pair of Andy destroyers and a heavy cruiser just ‘suddenly appeared’ and blew the raider into dust bunnies.”

“ ‘Suddenly appeared’?” Tremaine repeated, and Harkness nodded.

“His exact words, Skip. Now, I know the Sillies’ sensors aren’t worth a hell of a lot, and I know their sensor techs aren’t usually up to our standards, or even the Peeps’. But from his report, this bird runs a mighty taut ship for a Silesian, and he was real careful to emphasize that none of his people got so much as a sniff of the Andies until all three dropped their stealth and opened fire.”

“What was the range?” Tremaine asked intently.

“That’s what bothered me the most,” Harkness admitted. “It looked to the guy writing the report like the pirates never saw the Andies at all, but those bastards tend to be even slacker than most Confed navy crews, so that don’t necessarily prove a thing. But the Silly cruiser was only about four light-minutes from the nearest Andy ship when she opened fire, and she hadn’t seen a damned thing, either.”

“Four light-minutes, huh?” Tremaine chewed his lower lip unhappily for a moment. “I can see why you didn’t much care for that one, Chief,” he said after a moment. “Go ahead and copy the same reports to my mail queue, would you?”