“Well,” Marquette said with a crooked smile, “that’s knocked that objection on the head, too. You do seem to be in fine form today, Linda.”

“Yes, you do,” Theisman agreed. “Mind you, I’m still far from convinced that splitting our forces in the first place would be a good idea. Especially when we don’t know which way the Graysons are likely to jump. But if we did decide to do any such thing, I think the arrangements you’ve sketched out would probably work.”

“I’m fairly certain they would, Sir,” Marquette told him. “And as far as the Graysons are concerned, at the moment Janacek and High Ridge seem to be almost as intent on pissing them off as they were on firing all of their best admirals! According to all our sources in the Star Kingdom, it’s pretty obvious Janacek doesn’t trust Benjamin Mayhew as far as he could throw him in a two-grav field. Which is uncommonly stupid even for Janacek, but let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“Admiral Marquette is right about that, Sir,” Trenis observed. “And for that matter, right this minute, Grayson has just sent a sizable chunk of its total navy off on some sort of long-term, long-range training deployment. According to NavInt’s sources, they’ll be gone for at least the next four to five standard months. If the balloon should happen to go up during that time period, well…”

She shrugged, and Thomas Theisman nodded slowly and thoughtfully.

Chapter Thirty-Four

“HARVEST Joy, you are cleared to proceed. Good luck!”

“Thank you, Junction Control,” Captain Josepha Zachary, commanding officer of the improbably named survey ship HMS Harvest Joy, acknowledged the clearance and the good wishes simultaneously, then turned to Jordin Kare and quirked an eyebrow.

“Junction Control says we can go now, Doctor,” she observed. “Do you and Dr. Wix agree?”

“Captain, Dr. Wix and I have been ready to go for days!” Kare replied with an amazingly youthful looking grin. Then he nodded more seriously. “Our people are ready to proceed whenever you are, Captain.”

“Well, in that case…” Captain Zachary murmured, and crossed the three paces of deck between her and her command chair. She settled into it, turned it to face her helmsman, and drew a deep breath.

“Ten gravities, Chief Tobias,” she said formally.

“Ten gravities, aye, Ma’am,” the helmsman confirmed, and Harvest Joy began to creep very slowly forward.

Zachary crossed her legs and made herself lean confidently back in her comfortable chair. It probably wasn’t strictly necessary for her to project an aura of complete calm, but it couldn’t hurt, either.

Her lips tried to twitch into a smile at the thought, but she suppressed it automatically as she watched the navigation plot repeater deployed from the left arm of the command chair. The com screen beside it showed the face of Arswendo Hooja, her chief engineer, and she nodded to the blond-haired, blue-eyed lieutenant commander. Arswendo and she had served together often over the years, and Zachary was grateful for his calm, competent presence at the far end of the com link.