He would have felt happier with a stunner, but Bothari had

insisted that Miles present a front of maximum authority when

moving prisoners about. "Saves argument," he'd said.

The miserable Captain Auson, with two broken arms, nose a

swollen blot on his face, did not look very argumentative. But the cat-like tension and calculating flicks of glance of Auson's first officer, the Betan hermaphrodite Lieutenant Thorne, reconciled Miles to

Bothari's reasoning.

He found Bothari leaning with deceptive casualness against a wall

within, and the mercenaries' frazzled-looking medtech preparing for her next customers. Miles had deliberately saved Auson for last, and toyed with a pleasantly hostile fantasy of ordering the Captain's arms, when set, immobilized in some anatomically unlikely position.

Thorne was seated to have a cut over one eye sealed, and to receive an injection against stunner-induced migraine. The lieutenant sighed as the medication took effect, and looked at Miles with less squinting curiosity. "Who the hell are you people, anyway?"

Miles arranged his mouth in what he hoped would be taken for a

smile of urbane mystery, and said nothing.

"What are you going to do with us?" Thorne persisted.

Good question, he thought. He had returned to Cargo Hold #4 to

find their first batch of prisoners well along to having one of the bulkheads apart and escape manufactured. Miles voiced no objection

when Bothari prudently had them all stunned again for transport to

the Ariel's brig. There, Miles found, the chief engineer and her assistants had nearly managed to sabotage the magnetic locks in their cells. Miles rather desperately had them all stunned again.

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Bothari was right; it was an intrinsically unstable situation. Miles could hardly keep the whole crew stunned for a week or more,

crammed in their little prison, without doing them serious

physiological damage. Miles's own people were spread too thinly,

manning both ships, guarding the prisoners around the clock—and

fatigue would soon multiply error. Bothari's murderous and final

solution had a certain logic to it, Miles supposed. But his eye fell on the silent sheeted form of the mercenary pilot officer in the corner of the room, and he shivered inwardly. Not again. He suppressed

jittering panic at his abruptly enlarged troubles, and angled for time.

"It would be a favor to Admiral Oser to put you out now and let you walk home," he answered Thorne. "Are they all like you out there?"

Thorne said stonily, "The Oserans are a free coalition of

mercenaries. Most captains are Captain-owners."

Miles swore, genuinely surprised. "That's not a chain of command.

That's a damned committee."

He stared curiously at Auson. A shot of painkiller was at last

unlocking the big man's attention from his own body, and he