Seventeen-Alpha was even rarer than a straight Code Seventeen, however. Seventeen-Alpha didn’t mean “I am being boarded by pirates;” it meant “I have been boarded and taken by pirates.” Frankly, Glockauer couldn’t remember a single instance outside a Fleet training exercise in which he’d ever heard of anyone squawking a Seventeen-Alpha.

“Still,” he went on after a moment, putting his thoughts into words, “it’d be risky. If the pirates’ prize crew activated the transponder while their own ship was still close enough to pick it up, they’d spot it in a heartbeat, however the merchie’s own communications software might have been buggered up. Even if they didn’t bring the transponder up while their buddies were still in range, eventually they’re going to make port somewhere, and when they do, someone’s going to pick up the code. Which would almost certainly entail some seriously unpleasant consequences for whoever activated the booby trap software.”

“There’s not much question about that,” Engelmann acknowledged with a small shrug. “On the other hand, it could be that whoever thought it up figured that between the possibility that the crew would already have been massacred, or that they’d be massacred anyway whenever they reached their final destination, the risk was worth it if it gave any of their people even a tiny chance of being rescued.”

“Fair enough,” Glockauer conceded. “And I suppose they could have built a few additional precautions into this hypothetical software we’re theorizing about. For example, what if the program was designed to delay the activation of the Seventeen-Alpha? If it squawked a clean transponder for, say, twenty-four or thirty-six hours before it added the Code Seventeen, the odds would be pretty good that the original pirate cruiser would be far out of range when it did. And the program could also be set up to terminate the Code Seventeen after a set period, or under specific circumstances—like after the ship translates back out of hyper the first time.”

“It could be.” Engelmann nodded. “Or, it could be even simpler than that,” he pointed out. “The only reason they squawked their beacon at all was because we requested an ID, Skipper. And we identified ourselves as a warship when we did.”

“Now that, Binyan, is an excellent thought,” Glockauer approved. “If the software’s set up to automatically append the Seventeen-Alpha to any ID request from a warship, but not under any other circumstances…”

“Exactly,” the exec said. “Although, it would have been nice—assuming that there’s anything to this entire theory—if Reichenbach had bothered to warn us that they were going to do something like this.”

“Might not be a line-wide decision,” Glockauer replied. “Mind you, Old Man Reichenbach was born with a poker up his ass, and he runs his company the way he damned well pleases. I wouldn’t put it past him to have come up with the idea and ordered it implemented without even discussing it with his skippers. Or, on the other hand, it might be that this was the bright idea of some individual captain. A one-time solo shot, as it were, that Reichenbach himself doesn’t know a thing about.”