each one. He made an elaborate show of noting each substandard

item and checking it off against a list of the owners. Exhilarated and inspired, he waxed wonderfully sarcastic; the mercenaries squirmed.

They inspected the arsenal. Miles took a plasma arc from a dusty

rack, closing his hand over the control readouts on the grip.

"Do you store your weapons charged or uncharged?"

"Uncharged," muttered Auson, craning his neck slightly.

Miles raised his eyebrows and swung the weapon to point at the

mercenary captain, finger tightening on the trigger. Auson went

white. At the last instant, Miles flicked his wrist slightly to the left, and sent a bolt of energy sizzling past Auson's ear. The big man

recoiled as a molten backsplash of plastic and metal sprayed from the wall behind him.

"Uncharged?" sang Miles. "I see. A wise policy, I'm sure."

Both officers flinched. As they exited, Miles heard Thorne mutter,

"Told you so." Auson growled wordlessly.

* * *

Miles braced Baz privately before they began in engineering.

"You are now," he told him, "Commander Bazil Jesek of the Dendarii Mercenaries, Chief Engineer. You're rough and tough and

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you eat slovenly engineering technicians for breakfast, and you're

appalled at what they've done to this nice ship."

"It's actually not too bad, near as I can tell," said Baz. "Better than I could do with such an advanced set of systems. But how am I going to make an inspection when they know more than I do? They'll spot me

right away!"

"No, they won't. Remember, you're asking the questions, they're answering them. Say 'hm,' and frown a lot. Don't let it start going the other way. Look—didn't you ever have an engineering commander

who was a real son-of-a-bitch, that everybody hated—but who was

always right?"

Baz looked confusedly reminiscent. "There was Lieutenant

Commander Tarski. We used to sit around thinking up ways to poison

him. Most of them weren't very practical."

"All right. Imitate him."

"They'll never believe me. I can't—I've never been—I don't even have a cigar!"

Miles thought a second, dashed off, and galloped back moments

later with a package of cheroots abstracted from one of the

mercenary's' quarters.

"But I don't smoke," worried Baz.

"Just chew on it, then. Probably better if you don't light it, God knows what it might be spiked with."

"Now, there's an idea for poisoning old Tarski that might have worked—"

Miles pushed him along. "All right, you're an air polluting son of a bitch and you don't take 'I don't know' for an answer. If I can do it," he uncorked his argument of desperation, "you can do it."