“So if they’re operating outside their normal parameters, using heavier forces, despite the fact that threat levels have remained basically unchanged, that brings me back to my original question,” Ackenheil said. “What do you think they’re really up to?”

Zahn gazed at the plot for several silent seconds. The captain didn’t think she even saw it, and he could almost physically feel the intensity with which she pondered. Whether she was thinking about the raw data or considering whether or not to tell him what she really thought was more than he could say, but he made himself wait patiently until she turned her head to look back up at him.

“If you want my honest opinion, Sir,” she said quietly, “I think they want us to know they’re transferring steadily heavier forces into Silesia. And I think they want us to know that they’re conducting active operations—against pirates… for the moment—all along the periphery of our own patrol areas.”

“And they want us to know that because—?” Ackenheil arched one eyebrow as he gazed down at her somber expression, and she drew a deep breath.

“It’s only a gut feeling, Skipper, and I don’t have a single bit of hard evidence I could use to support it, but I think they’ve decided it’s time to press their own claims in the Confederacy.”

Ackenheil’s other eyebrow rose to join its fellow. Not in rejection of her theory, but in surprise that so junior an officer, even one whose ability he thought so highly of, should have come up with it. He’d considered the same possibility himself, and he wished he’d been able to dismiss it out of hand.

“Why do you think that? And why should they decide to push it at this particular moment?” he asked, curious about her reasoning.

“I guess one reason the thought has crossed my mind is that I’m from Sidemore,” Zahn admitted, turning her gaze back to her plot. “We were never directly in the Andies’ path, but before Duchess Harrington came through and rescued us from Warnecke and his butchers, the Empire was the only real interstellar power in our neck of the galaxy. We sort of got used to looking over our shoulders and wondering when the Emperor was going to make his move in Silesia’s direction.” She shrugged again. “It didn’t really threaten us directly, because we didn’t have anything anyone wanted badly enough to make it worth the Andies’ while to take us over. But even as far off the beaten path as we were, we heard enough to know that the Empire has wanted to bite off chunks of the Confederacy for as long as anyone could remember.”

“I can’t argue with you there,” Ackenheil said after a moment, remembering the intelligence reports he’d studied both before LaFroye deployed to Sidemore and since arriving. No one had officially suggested that the Andies might be contemplating making a move, however long-standing their ambitions in Silesia might have been, but he supposed it made sense for Zahn to consider the possibility very seriously. As she’d just pointed out, she was from the region herself, with a sensitivity to the nuances of its power structure, such as it was, that any outsider—even an outsider who served in the Royal Manticoran Navy—would have to work long and hard to match.