"But we're different?" the captain asked.

I spread out my hands. "We're a fragmented race, which means we're warlike, and we've gotten into space, which means we're flagrant violations of accepted hivey theory. Maybe the Drymnu has decided that the combination makes us too dangerous to exist and is beginning a campaign to wipe us out."

"Starting with Messenia?" Wong interjected from the bridge. "Why? To show that his war machine can blow up a couple hundred Services men, developers, and scientists? Big deal."

"Maybe it wasn't the entire Drymnu mind behind it," I pointed out. "Each ship is essentially autonomous until it gets within thirty thousand klicks or so of another Drymnu ship or planet."

"Could this one part of the mind have gone insane?" Kittredge suggested hesitantly. "Become homicidal, somehow?"

"God, what a thought," Wong muttered. "A raving maniac with eighteen thousand bodies running around the galaxy in his own starship."

I shrugged. "I don't know if it's possible or not. It's probably more likely that Messenia was an experiment on his part."

"A what?" Kittredge growled.

"An experiment. To see if we could handle a sneak attack, with Messenia chosen because it was small and out of the way. You know—club a sleeping tiger or two first to get the technique down before you tackle one that's awake."

Wong and Kittredge started to speak at once; the captain cut them off with a wave of his hand. "Enough, everyone. As I see it, we have three possibilities here: that the entire Drymnu mind has declared war on humanity; that this one ship-sized segment of the Drymnu mind has declared war on humanity; or that some portion of the Drymnu mind is playing war with humanity to see how we react.

Does that about cover it, Travis?"

My mouth felt dry. There was a glint I didn't at all care for in the captain's eyes. "Well... I can't see any other alternatives at the moment, no."

He nodded, the glint brighter than ever. "Thank you. Any of the rest of you?

No?

Then it seems to me that we've got no choice—ethically as well as legally.

Halveston said it himself: if that ship gets back to one of the Drymnu worlds and reports how easy it was to club this sleeping tiger to death, we may very well find ourselves embroiled in an all-out war. Wong, pull the raider's direction from those tapes and get us in pursuit."

There was a moment of stunned silence. None of the others, I gathered, had noticed that glint. "Captain—" Wong began, and then hesitated.

Kittredge showed less restraint. "Captain," she said, "the last time I checked, the Volga was not a warship. Doesn't it strike you as just the slightest bit dangerous for us to take on that ship? Our chief duty at this point is to report the attack."

"And if Messenia was merely a single thrust of a more comprehensive and synchronized attack?" the captain said quietly. "What then?"

She opened her mouth, closed it again. "Then there may not be any human bases left anywhere near here to report to," she said at last, very softly. "Oh, God."

The captain nodded and started unstrapping himself from his chair. "Bear in mind, too, that even if we're able to guess where he'll come out of hyperspace, we'll have a minimum of several days to prepare for the encounter. Travis, as the nearest thing to a military expert we've got, you're in charge of getting us ready for combat."

I swallowed. "Yes, sir."

The wrong place, the wrong time. Twenty minutes later we were in hyperspace, in hot pursuit of the Drymnu ship, and I was in my cabin, wondering just what in hell I was going to do.

A Drymnu hive ship. Eighteen thousand—call them individuals, bodies, whatever—there were still eighteen thousand of them, each part of a common mind.

The concept was bad enough; the immediate military consequences were even worse.

No problems with command or garbled orders. Instant communication between laser operators and those at the scanners. Possibly no need for scanners at all at close range—observers watching from opposite ends of the ship would give the mind a binocular vision that would both make scanners unnecessary and, incidentally, render useless many of the Services' ECM jammers. The ship itself would be a hundred times larger than the Volga, with almost certainly the extra structural strength a craft that big would have to have. More antimeteor lasers.

More speed.

In other words, warship or not, if we went head-to-head against the Drymnu, we were going to get our tubes peeled.

What in the hell were we going to do?

The smartest decision would be to quit right now, try to talk the captain out of it, and if that didn't work, simply to refuse to obey his order. Mutiny. The memory of the Burma incident made me wince. But this wasn't the Services, and it was nothing like the same situation. Mutiny. In this case, it was far and away the best chance of getting all of us out of this alive. And that, it seemed to me, was where my loyalty ought to lie. I respected the captain a great deal, but he had no idea what he was getting all of us into. These people weren't trained—weren't volunteers for dangerous duty like Services people were—and sending the Volga out to be point man in this war was mass suicide. Maybe Captain Garrett felt legally bound to carry out Colonel Halveston's dying order, but I didn't feel myself nearly so tied.

In fact, it occurred to me that by refusing the captain's orders, I might actually be doing him a favor. Halveston's order had been directed at him; but if he was prevented from carrying it out, he would be off the legal hook. Any official wrath would then turn onto me, of course, but I was prepared to accept that. Unlike Captain Garrett, I was used to having my career dumped out with the sawdust. Surely enough of the others would back me in this, especially once I explained how it would be for the captain's good, and we could just head to the nearest Services base...

Assuming there were still Services bases to head for. Assuming the Messenia attack had been a one-shot deal. Assuming the Drymnu had not, in fact, launched an all-out war.

And if those assumptions were wrong, running from the Drymnu now wouldn't gain us anything but a little time. Maybe not even that.

Which was where the crux of my dilemma lay. Saving the Volga now for worse treatment later on wouldn't be doing anyone a favor. I was chasing the logic around the track for the fifth time when my door buzzed.

"Come in," I called, the words releasing the lock.

I'd expected it to be the captain. It was, instead, Kittredge. "Busy?" she asked, stepping inside with the peculiar gait that rotational pseudogravity always gives people in ships the Volga's size.

A younger man might have expected it to be a social call. I knew Kittredge better than that. "Not really," I said as the door slid closed behind her.

"Just plotting out the victory parade route for after we've whipped the Drymnu's sauce. Why?"

The attempt at humor didn't even register on her face. "Travis, we've got some serious trouble here."

"I've noticed. What do you suggest we do about it?"

"Call the whole thing off," she growled. "We can't take on any Drymnu hive ship—it's completely out of the question."

If it had been Wong who'd tossed my own ideas back at me like this, we would have been off to lay out our ultimatum before the captain in thirty seconds.

But Kittredge was so intense and by-the-book... Perversely, my brain shifted into devil's advocate mode. "You're suggesting Captain Garrett disobey a duly given and recorded order?"

She snorted. "No one in the Services would even think of holding us to that.

What, they'd rather we go in and get blown up for nothing than come back with valuable information?"

Maybe it was a remnant of my Services pride come back to haunt me, or maybe it was just Kittredge and the fact that I was the one in charge of planning this operation. Whatever it was, something like a psychic burr began to work its way under a corner of my mind. "You assume the outcome would be a forgone conclusion."