She fell silent for a moment, brooding down at the table once more, then shook herself.

"The point is, these aren't rational people. They don't even live in the same galaxy as the rest of us. I can't build a nice, neat enemy intentions analysis, but from what we've seen of them so far, I think—no, I know —they won't change now."

"Not even if the Peeps pull Thunder of God out on them?"

"Now that," Honor admitted, "is the one thing that might stop them. But the question is whether or not the PRH can pull her out, and after what happened at Blackbird, I'm not too optimistic on that point." She shook her head again. "No, I think she's coming. And if she is, we should be seeing her soon. Very soon."

Cramming them in had been even harder than Yu had expected. Every spare compartment was packed to the deckhead with Masadan soldiers and their personal weapons. A man couldn't turn around without stepping on one of them, and Yu would be vastly relieved when he off-loaded the first consignment.

Their numbers put a strain on Thunder's environmental plant, as well, which was what had prompted the current meeting. Yu, Commander Valentine, and Lieutenant Commander DeGeorge, Thunder's purser, sat in the captain's day cabin, going over the figures, and DeGeorge was an unhappy man.

"The worst thing, Skipper, is that most of them don't even have vac suits. If we suffer an enviro failure, it's going to be ugly. Very ugly."

"Stupid bastards," Valentine grunted. Yu gave him a reproving glance, but he couldn't get much voltage into it, and the engineer shrugged. "All they had to do was put them into vac suits for the trip, Skipper. Their equipment sucks, and the poor pricks would've been miserable, but at least they'd have it with them!" He scowled. "And another thing. We're taking all these ground pukes out to their asteroid bases, right?" Yu nodded, and Valentine shrugged again. "Well, don't tell me they've got this many spare suits in stores out there!"

Yu frowned at that, for the engineer was right. They were hauling all these men out to hostile environment bases, and there wasn't a single vac suit among them. That was unusually stupid even for Masadans, and he wondered why that fact hadn't occurred to him sooner.

"Well, anyway," DeGeorge said, "I'm keeping a close eye on the enviro monitors, and we're okay so far. I just hope we stay there!"

George Manning sat at the center of the bridge and concentrated on duplicating the confidence the Captain projected. Not that he felt particularly confident, but he'd had plenty of time to adjust to his own inner sense of doom, and it wasn't as if he had a lot of options.

He checked the time. They were running over a half-hour behind schedule for their first delivery, and he turned his head.

"Com, contact Base Three and update our ETA."

"Aye, Sir," Lieutenant Hart, his Masadan com officer replied, and something about the man's response nudged at Manning. There was an odd note in his voice, one that went deeper than the background anxiety all of them were feeling, and the exec gave him a sharper glance.

Hart seemed unaware of his scrutiny. He leaned to his left to bring up his com laser software, and Manning's eyes suddenly went very still. There was an angular shape under the Masadan's tunic, and there shouldn't have been—especially not one the shape of an automatic pistol.

The exec made himself look away. He might be wrong about what that shape was, but he didn't think so. Of course, even if he wasn't, there could be another explanation for its presence. Hart might be overcompensating for his own anxieties, or it might be a simple case of aberration, a single man about to snap under the strain. That would have been terrifying enough in the close confines of the bridge, but Manning would have infinitely preferred it to what he knew had to be the truth.

He pressed a stud on his intercom panel.

"Captain speaking," a voice said, and Manning made himself sound very, very natural.

"Commander Manning, Sir. I just thought you'd like to know I'm having Base Three updated on the arrival of their bounty of troops."

Alfredo Yu's face froze at the word "bounty." His eyes snapped up to his companions' faces, and he saw exactly the same shock looking back at him. He couldn't think for a moment, only feel the pit of his stomach falling away into infinite distance, but then his brain began to work again.

"Understood, Mr. Manning. Commander Valentine and I have just been discussing the environmental requirements. Do you think you could drop by my cabin to go over them with us?"

"I'm afraid I can't get away just now, Sir." Manning's voice was steady, and Yu's jaw clenched in pain.

"Very well, George," he said. "Thank you for informing me."

"You're welcome, Sir," Manning said quietly, and the circuit clicked.

"Jesus, Skipper!" Valentine began in an urgent voice, "we can't leave George up there by him—"

"Shut up, Jim." The very lack of emotion in Yu's voice only made it more terrible, and Valentine closed his mouth with a click. The captain shut his eyes in thought, and his subordinates sat in tight-faced silence.

Yu felt their fear and cursed his own complacency. He'd been so damned pleased when all Simonds wanted to do was reinforce his asteroid garrisons! Why in hell hadn't he thought about what putting that many more armed Masadans aboard Thunder could mean?!

Panic threatened, but he fought it back. At least George had been more alert than he had, yet his contingency plans had never contemplated having this many armed hostiles aboard. Barely a third of Thunder's regular crew were still Havenite; with all the Masadan soldiers packed aboard, they were outnumbered by over five-to-one.

He stood and crossed quickly to the hatch, opened it, and drew a deep breath of relief as he saw the Marine sentry in the corridor. The corporal looked up as the hatch slid open, then stiffened as Yu beckoned to him. He stepped closer, and the captain pitched his voice very low.

"Get to Major Bryan, Marlin. Tell him it's Condition Bounty."

Yu hated to send the corporal in person, but he had no choice. He'd managed to hang onto his original Marine officers and most of his noncoms, and every one of them had been briefed on Bounty, but almost half Thunder's enlisted Marines were Masadans, and they had the same personal com units as Yu's loyalists. If they were in on this (and they had to be) and one of them heard Marlin passing coded messages ...

Corporal Marlin's face went white, but then he nodded, braced to attention, and marched briskly down the passage. Yu watched him go, hoping they had enough time for him to reach Bryan, and then withdrew into his cabin.

He thumbed a wall locker security plate, and the door swung open as the scanner recognized his print. The racked sidearms were in police-style shoulder holsters, not standard military ones, and he tossed one of them to each of his officers, then unsealed his tunic. He jerked on the shoulder rig and looked at Valentine as the engineer shrugged out of his own tunic.

"We're in deep shit here, Jim. I don't see any way we can hold the ship after I let the fuckers fill us right up." The engineer's nod was jerky but not panicked, and Yu went on grimly. "That means we have to cripple her."

"Aye, Sir." Valentine slid his tunic back on over his own shoulder harness and started shoveling magazines into his pockets.

"Who's got the Engineering watch?"

"Workman," Valentine replied in disgust, and Yu's face tightened.

"All right. You're going to have to get in there somehow and throw the fusion plants into emergency shutdown. Can you do it?"