"Sir, there was no message from Citizen Brigadier Tresca," he said. "We receipted only a single transmission from Camp Charon, and it was directed to Citizen Major General Thornegrave in Shilo."

"Are you positive about that? There couldn't have been some mistake in the routing?"

"I don't see how, Sir. It wasn't addressed specifically to Citizen Major General Thornegrave, just to 'Commanding Officer, State Security Headquarters Shilo Sector,' but the destination code was clear. That much I can pull up for your review if you wish."

"Please do so," Chernock said, and for the first time it actually sounded like a request.

"Make it so, Citizen Ensign," Heathrow said quietly, and Howard complied instantly. The record was part of the information she'd already pulled together at Heathrow's instruction, and they watched together as Chernock considered it on his own com screen.

"I see," he said after what seemed a very long time to read such a short string of letters. "There appears to have been some confusion here, Citizen Lieutenant Commander. Do you have any idea what this message concerned?"

"None, Sir," Heathrow said very firmly indeed. Even if he'd had any idea, admitting it would have been a very bad move. Regular Navy courier COs who waxed curious about secure StateSec communications tended to end up just plain waxed. "All I can tell you," he went on, trying not to sound cautious, "is that one of the messages in the Hades queue specifically requested a response. It's SOP for the courier to be informed whenever that's the case, Sir, in order to ensure that we don't hyper out before someone groundside reads all of his or her mail and realizes a response is necessary. We aren't normally informed which message requires an answer or what that answer's content or subject might be, of course, and never when the subject is classified. In this case, however, my assumption would be that, since the only message we received from Camp Charon was coded for delivery to Shilo, Citizen Major General Thornegrave must have requested the response."

"I see," Chernock repeated. He gazed unreadably out of the screen for several seconds, then nodded. "Very well, Citizen Commander. You've been most responsive. I believe that will be all... for the moment."

He added the final qualifier almost absently, as if the need to intimidate regular officers was so deeply ingrained it had become reflex, and Heathrow nodded.

"Of course, Sir. If I can help in any other way, please let me know."

"I will," Chernock assured him, and cut the circuit.

"My God," Justin Bouret said fervently from where he'd lurked outside the pickup's range. "I thought for a while they were going to come up here and demand to take the message banks apart!"

"Wouldn't have done them any good, and Citizen General Chernock knew it," Heathrow said in an oddly detached tone. He felt the tremors of relief tingling in his fingertips and toes and raised one hand to mop sweat from his forehead without even trying to conceal it from his subordinates. "Even if they did take the banks apart, they couldn't make any sense of them," the citizen lieutenant commander went on. "Unless they have either Shilo's authentication codes or a copy of StateSec GHQ's override software, that is."

"You know," Bouret said thoughtfully, "I'll bet that if they did have it, they would have been up here."

"Maybe." Heathrow tried to make his tone final enough to end the conversation before Bouret said something unfortunate, then shook himself and smiled at Howard. "You did well, Irene. Very well," he said, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder.

"Thank you, Sir," she said softly, looking at the deck. Then she raised her eyes to his and smiled suddenly. "And you did pretty well yourself, Sir!" she added daringly, and blushed dark crimson.

"Do you think they're telling the truth, Brig?" Citizen Major General Seth Chernock asked.

"I think... yes," Citizen Colonel Therret said after a moment. Chernock's eyes asked the silent question, and he shrugged. "Everything Heathrow said or offered can be checked from hard records, Sir—if not here and now, then certainly as soon as his other messages are unlocked for delivery." He shook his head. "I don't see him exposing himself that way if he were actually up to something. If he hadn't known it would all check out—which it wouldn't, unless he was telling us the truth—he would've made us dig it out of him rather than offering it before we could even ask."

"But that's impossible," Chernock said. "It was Dennis' move."

"Sir, I realize how important your chess games are, but—"

"You don't understand, Brigham. Or you're missing the point, at least. Dennis and I have been playing chess by mail for nine T-years. It was his move, he knew Heathrow's routing would bring him here, and he would never have passed up the opportunity to send it."

Therret kept his mouth shut. He had never understood the odd bond between Chernock and the brutish, self-indulgent Tresca. Obviously Tresca possessed both patrons and an excellent performance record, or he would never have been selected for a post as sensitive as Camp Charon's warden. But Therret had seen enough evidence to make some pretty accurate guesses about the sort of gross sensuality and permissiveness Tresca had extended to his Hades personnel. Nor did the citizen colonel doubt the rumors of prisoner abuse and mistreatment. And while Therret would shed no tears for enemies of the New Order, he considered that sort of behavior destructive of discipline.

None of that should have been tolerable to Seth Chernock. The citizen major general was an intensely self-disciplined man, and one of the few true intellectuals who had served State Security since the very beginning of the New Order. He'd been a sociology professor before the Harris Assassination, with a tenured position as assistant department head at Rousseau Planetary University in Nouveau Paris. As such, he'd needed all his self-discipline under the old regime to conceal his disaffection with the Legislaturalists and his disgust over their insistence on propping up the moldering remnants of capitalism and its unequal distribution of the fruits of society's productivity. Not only had the RPU faculty senate never realized his true feelings, but he'd also managed to conceal his membership in the Citizens' Rights Union from Internal Security. After the Harris Assassination, he'd emerged as one of the leading intellectual supporters of the Committee of Public Safety, although Therret suspected his enlistment in State Security represented a sense of disappointment with the Committee. Chernock obviously realized that Citizen Chairman Pierre was unwilling or (more probably) unable, in the middle of a war, to complete the sweeping program of change Chernock had endorsed. But his own zealous commitment to it had never wavered, and State Security was certainly the logical place for someone committed to preparing the groundwork for his grand plan.

Since joining StateSec Chernock had become even more disciplined... and much colder. Therret had known him for only six T-years, but he'd seen the change in him even over that time period. The citizen major general remained capable of astounding warmth and friendship, but it was as if he were rationing the ability to feel human emotions solely to those in his inner circle. As far as the rest of humanity was concerned, he had retreated behind the icy armor of his intellect and his commitment to the ends of the Revolution, deliberately making himself hard as the accepted price of achieving his goals.

All of that should have made Chernock loathe Tresca, who was certainly no intellectual, about as undisciplined as a man could be, and (as Therret felt certain Chernock recognized) far more committed to the cause of Dennis Tresca than that of the People. Yet the citizen major general had taken to the ex-noncom the first time they met. In fact, Chernock was one of the patrons who had gotten Tresca his current assignment, and he looked forward eagerly to the slow, stretched-out moves of their interstellar chess games. And crude as Tresca might be, he did play an extremely good game of chess, Therret admitted. But then, the citizen colonel had never thought there was anything wrong with Tresca's basic intelligence; Therret's problem was with how the citizen brigadier used it... or didn't.