Dumais wasn’t at all sure what was in the sealed dispatches Jackson had instructed him to deliver to Admiral Tourville this time. Nothing the ambassador had said had given him any impression that they were truly vital, and he would really have preferred not to be sent off to play postman with some routine message. On the other hand, he supposed it did make sense to use his ship rather than risk hiring a commercially available dispatch boat and giving it the coordinates for Second Fleet’s hiding place.

Which was how he found himself out here with that incredibly irritating sensor ghost dogging his heels.

“We don’t have any idea of what his sensor capabilities might be, do we?” he asked Singleterry after a moment.

“Assuming he’s hanging back at the very edge of his ability to hold us on his scanners,” the tac officer replied, “I’d say that they aren’t quite as good as ours are.”

“Which would seem to suggest that there’s a better chance it’s a Silly than an Andy,” Dumais mused aloud.

“Or,” Singleterry countered, “that it’s a merchie with a really good commercial-grade sensor suite. Given how risky a neighborhood this can be, a lot of the merchant ships that spend time out here have much better sensor packages than anything we’d see closer to home.”

“Definitely a point to bear in mind,” Dumais acknowledged. He thought for a few more moments, then grimaced.

“I don’t think we can risk making any assumptions where this bird is concerned, Stephanie. I suppose it still possible that it’s pure coincidence that he’s back there, but it strikes me as unlikely. And the one thing we can’t do is lead anybody straight to the Fleet. Unfortunately, we’re already close enough to the Fleet rendezvous that anyone with half a brain should be able to narrow the volume down without much difficulty. So we’d better go see who it is.”

“What do we do if it turns out it is a warship?” Singleterry asked.

“If it’s a warship, then it’s a warship.” Dumais sighed. “There’s provision in the ops order for the Admiral to shift to another star system if he has to. We don’t want to do it, because it’s always possible that the jump off order could reach Horus before we got Ambassador Jackson and Hector informed as to the new rendezvous point. Unfortunately, if this is a warship, we won’t have much choice, unless I want to risk creating a fresh interstellar incident by opening fire.”

“Even if it’s a Manty?” Singleterry asked in a deliberately expressionless voice, and Dumais grinned crookedly.

“Especially if it’s a Manty,” he replied. “Not that the Admiral would thank us if we shot up an Andie or a Silly, either. And,” he added conscientiously, “let’s not forget that we don’t know what size this fellow is. If he’s a heavy cruiser, or a battlecruiser, then it might just be a bit… foolhardy of us to cross swords with him, don’t you think?”