But those outlawed vessels wouldn’t normally have been found in a system like Horus. Unlike altogether too many other star systems in the Saginaw Sector, Horus had that rarest of Silesian phenomena: an honest system governor. The sector had enjoyed more than its share (even for Silesia) of corrupt and venal sector governors, and the current holder of that office was no exception to the rule. But Horus had lucked out somehow in the man sent to administer its internal affairs. Pirates, smugglers, and slavers found a most unpleasant welcome in Governor Zelazney’s jurisdiction. Besides, these two ships—obviously operating in company—were much too new to be pirates. Neither of them could have been more than one or two T-years old, at most, which meant they’d been launched and commissioned only after Thomas Theisman overthrew the Committee of Public Safety.

So what were a pair of brand spanking new destroyers of the Republican Navy doing in a parking orbit around the planet of Osiris?

Fortunately, Bachfisch had excellent contacts in Horus. None of them had been able to answer his question for him, but they’d been able to tell him that the Havenite tin cans had arrived less than three days before Pirate’s Bane. And they’d also been able to point out to him that because of its reputation as a law-abiding star system, Horus was one of the handful of Confed systems which boasted a Havenite trade legation and diplomatic mission.

To Bachfisch’s naturally suspicious mind, there had to be a connection between the existence of that diplomatic mission and the presence of the two destroyers. Given the fact that the destroyers in question seemed to be doing absolutely nothing beyond orbiting the planet, he’d come to the conclusion that he must be looking at some sort of communications rendezvous. But that raised another interesting question. Why in the world would the Republican Navy, which everyone knew was girding for a possible confrontation with the RMN closer to home, be wasting a pair of modern destroyers as courier vessels rather than using a normal, unarmed, and much cheaper dispatch boat?

He hadn’t been able to come up with an answer for that question, but he’d had an unpleasant suspicion that if he had been able to, he wouldn’t have liked the explanation. Still, that hadn’t meant he wasn’t determined to discover what was going on if he possibly could, which was why Pirate’s Bane had diverted from her planned course and schedule.

Thomas Bachfisch was fully aware that Gruber wasn’t the only member of Pirate’s Bane’s company who wondered what in hell their captain was playing at. All of them knew where the ship was supposed to be by now, just as they were aware of the astronomical late delivery penalties Bachfisch was busy piling up for himself. And most of them had to be at least a little leery of getting themselves involved with warships of foreign powers—especially of foreign powers so recently at war with their captain’s birth nation.