"I understand," Holloway nodded. "I'd better be getting back to Dorcas, anyway."

"I can't say I envy you your post," Williams said candidly. "Playing sitting duck on a rock like Dorcas isn't my idea of a fun tactical stance."

"I could think of better positions myself," Holloway agreed. "Somewhere in Orion Sector springs to mind. You think you'll be able to find all the bodies?"

"Probably," Williams said, the bulk of his attention clearly on the task at hand. "The battle was pretty well localized—it was over too fast for much drift. Why?"

Holloway looked out at the field of junk floating off to their right. "Just wondering if maybe they weren't all killed."

Williams shook his head. "The watchships didn't leave until all the locator beacons had been silenced. And those things don't break down by themselves."

"Yes, I know," Holloway said. "I was just thinking that if I'd just had a run-in with an unknown race, I'd make sure I got at least one live prisoner to take back for study."

Williams shrugged. "You can't count on them thinking like humans."

"It still wouldn't hurt to mention the possibility in your report."

"Frankly, Colonel, I've got better things to do right now than add stuff to my file work," Williams said. "If you want it put in, write it up yourself."

It wasn't until he reached the NorCoord Parliament chambers that he had his first inkling that the rumors might for once have been understated. The smiling young pages who normally stood by the doors to the observation balcony had been replaced by a pair of armed and decidedly unsmiling Peacekeeper Marines. They checked Aric's ID carefully, double-checked it against their list, and finally let him in.

He walked down the short entrance corridor to the rear of the balcony proper. Kolchin was waiting there, leaning against the wall with his usual deceptive air of carelessness. A dozen other men and women loitered nearby, all exuding the same aura of alert competence as they gave Aric a thoughtful once-over. Apparently, CavTronics Industries wasn't the only big gun of Commonwealth industry and business represented here today.

"Mr. Cavanagh," Kolchin nodded as Aric came up to him. "Good to see you, sir."

"You too," Aric nodded back, noting peripherally that with Kolchin's identification of him the other bodyguards seemed to lose interest. "Where is he?"

"Down there," Kolchin said, pointing toward one of the lower tiers of seats.

Aric looked. The balcony was barely a quarter full, his father's white hair instantly recognizable in the subdued lighting. He was sitting alone, and even at this distance Aric thought he could see a slump in the older man's shoulders. "Melinda hasn't arrived yet?"

Kolchin shook his head. "No, but she should be here soon. She was doing an operation on Celadon that couldn't be rescheduled and had to catch a ride with one of our transports. They got in to Cheredovat about half an hour ago. Parian's bringing her in."

Aric nodded. "Okay. Send her down when she gets here, all right?"

"Sure thing."

Parlimin Hurley Maxwell was on the podium down on the floor below, speaking passionately about Peacekeeper preparation and funding as Aric walked down the aisle. "Hi, Dad," he said as he reached his father's row and sat down beside him.

"Aric," the elder Cavanagh said, giving him a poor attempt at a smile as he gripped his son's hand. "Thanks for coming."

"Sure," Aric assured him, studying the other's face in the subdued light. There were new lines there, lines of fatigue and grief that he hadn't seen three weeks ago. The old man was taking this hard. "How are you doing?"

"No worse than you'd expect," his father said, trying the smile again with the same lack of success. "Of course it's hard; but it's not like we never knew that this day might someday come. Pheylan knew there were risks that came with the uniform, and he accepted them."

"It was more than just acceptance, Dad," Aric reminded him. "He'd wanted to be in the Peacekeepers since before he was seven." He smiled as a stray memory clicked. "Wanted it about as badly as he didn't want an office job."

His father threw him a sideways look. "Told you about that fight, did he?"

"We told each other most things," Aric said, swallowing through a suddenly aching throat. He was going to miss Pheylan, too. More than he was willing to admit even to himself. "I remember him storming into my office right after that particular argument and announcing that he'd rather join a pirate gang than disappear like me behind a desk somewhere in CavTronics. It took me half an hour to calm him down."

"That sounds like him," the elder Cavanagh said, shaking his head. "Strange, isn't it. He hated the idea of a desk job; but even in the Peacekeepers that's where he would eventually have wound up. Maybe it's just as well he didn't get that far."

"Maybe," Aric said, looking down at the chamber floor and searching for a way to change the subject. His father was putting up a good front, but beneath the calm words Aric could see an all-too-familiar pattern beginning to form. The downward emotional spirals that followed Aric's mother's sudden death had plagued his father for months afterward, taking a harsh toll on his health and threatening to turn him into a recluse. Now, five years later, Aric suspected he would be even less capable of handling that kind of stress. "What's the big debate down there today?" he asked. "Some fallout from all of this?"

"More than you know," his father said. "I couldn't put it into my message, but your brother didn't just die in an accident or minor skirmish. The Kinshasa was destroyed in a full-blown battle. Along with the rest of the Jutland task force."

Aric swiveled in his seat. "The entire task force?"

The other nodded. "All eight ships. No survivors."

An unpleasant tingle ran through Aric's body. The shipboard rumors had indeed been understated. No wonder the Marines were on guard duty out there. "Where did it happen?"

"Dorcas. A few light-years outside the system, actually."

"Do we know who hit them?"

"All we know is that it's someone new," his father said. "That much was clear from the watchship data. Who they were, or where they come from, we still don't know."

Slowly, Aric turned back and settled again into his seat. A brand-new self-starfaring race... and already blood had been drawn. "What's Peacekeeper Command doing about it?"

"Preparing for war." His father gestured toward the chamber floor below. "And I can't say that everyone is upset at the prospect."

Aric focused his attention on the podium. "—and will furthermore cement our position once and for all within the Commonwealth and among the nonhuman worlds," Maxwell was intoning. "For the past decade the policies of the Northern Coordinate Union have been treated with thinly veiled contempt by more and more member states of the Commonwealth. Particularly those policies involving the organization and philosophy of the Peacekeeper forces that protect them. It's high time we demonstrated to the critics that their taxes and young people have not been simply disappearing into some soft, bloated military bureaucracy. The Peacekeepers are hard and lean and ready to fight. It's time they proved it."

He picked up his plate and stepped down from the podium to a ripple of applause from the rest of the chamber. "He's sure ready to go," Aric murmured.

"He's not the worst, either," his father said. "There's a small but vocal faction that's convinced on philosophical grounds that a strong common enemy is exactly what the Commonwealth has been missing lately. Something to pull humanity together, get us all going in the same direction again."