She hoped not. She hoped they would never have to know[*oslash] She shook herself mentally and stepped from the car.

Hangchow ran to about ten percent more gravity than the one standard G all TFN ships maintained--enough to make the one-gravity field restful--and Hah moved with a dancer's gracer hiting a familiar wry smile as she passed through the side party. The top of her cap was below shoulder level on the sideboys, and she wondered if they found her small size amusing? Probably. Han's diminutive size dogged her career like a shadow. She'd probably always be remembered as the smallest midshipman ever to enter the Academy, rather than as the woman who graduated with the honor sword by her side, but the fact that she stood just under 107 centimeters hadn't kept her from showing the whole pack her heels, she thought cheerfully. And captain's rank in Battle Fleet at thirty-seven was no mean accomplishment, either.

She returned the salutes, and the cutter's hatch slid shut as she dropped into the cushioned chair.

And so, she thought, off to another scintillating courtesy call... but this one might be more important than most.

The cutter idgged clear of Longbow, and Han allowed herself a moment of pride as she studied her command through the port. The huge, ungainly bulk of Skywatch Three, the orbital headquarters of Galloway's World System Defense Command, made a perfect foil for the battle-cruiser's elegance. Light from the system's Gbled primary glittered on Longbow's graceful flanks and turned her recessed weapons bays into sooty ovals of shadow, hiding the deadly devices crouching within.

Han sighed and looked away. Beautiful, yes, but still a killing machine. A weapon of war to engage and destroy humanity's enemies. It passed belief that Navy personnel might someday have to decide just which humans were enemies.

Air screamed past the cutter's hull as it skipped into Galloway's World's atmosphere, and the little boat banked gently as it headed for the Yard's landing pads. Han watched the Jamieson Archipelago grow, amused as always by the anomaly which left the Fieet's fourth largest shipyard the only Navy base in existence without a name. It was just

"the Yard," as it had been since the First Interstellar War, when Galloway's Wodd was the navy yard for the Federation -comj as the sprawling kilometers of dependent housing around it were simply "the Reservation." There were larger bases now, Zephrain for one, but no other planet rivaled the sheer numbers of hulls which emerged from the military and civilian building slips of Galloway's World.

The cutter swooped over the innocent weather domes that hid the Yard's missile silos and projector pits. As a rule, the TFN preferred to defend inhabited planets with orbital forts, sparing civilians the incidental destruction attendant upon modern combat, but there was no point pretending about the Jamieson Archipelago. The Yard alone made the island chain a priority target for any enemy, and the Yard wasn't alone.

It crowded shoulder-to-shoulder with the Taliaferro Yard; the Kreuger Space Works; Viekers-Mitsubishi-Galloway "s World; General Dynamics of Terra; and a dozen other major building centers. Coupled with the orbital facilities where the ground-built components were assembled, the Archipelago represented the largest concentration of industrial might in the known galaxy.

The cutter dropped quickly for its landing circle, and Hah watched the ground rush up to meet them, but her thoughts were on her meeting with the Port Admiral. She drew a deep breath, concentrating on the mental diseil pline that calmed the pulse, and glanced at her watch. Right on the tick. Good.

"Good afternoon, Captain Li." The yeoman in the outer office stuffed respectfully as the tiny captain entered. "Please have a seat. Admiral Rutgers" last appointment is running a little over." Han settled in a comfortable chair and checked her watch again, hoping Admiral Rutgers wasn't going to be tied up long. She was due to ship out for Christophon in two hours, and there were always last-minute details to crowd a departure time. It was well known that Port Admirals' whims had much the same force as direct decrees from God, but that never seemed to help when the admiral at the other end wanted to know where you'd spent that extra hour or two.

The door slid open and Han glanced up--then came quickly to her feet at the sight of a vice admiral's sleeve braid. The tall, dark-faced man with the neat beard nodded to her.

"Captain." "Admiral Trevayne." "Another penitent here to see the Admiral, Captain Li?" "No, sir." Han hid a smile. "Just a courtesy call before departure." "Ah!" Trevayne nodded and turned away.

Li Hah regarded his broad shoulders thoughtfully. Now what did that "Ah!" mean? There was something hidden behind it; she could almost taste it. Did he know something she didn't? Possibly. Quite possibly. Trevayne was a marked man in the service: the youngest man ever to command a monitor battlegroup, and no question that he was headed for CNO and possibly even Sky Marshal before he was dong If there was any loose information floating around, it would have come to his ears long since. Rumor credited the man with an uncanny ability to read the future.

Hah didn't know him well enough to be certain, though she knew his son quite well. It was always easier to know one's juniors than one's seniors, but even if it hadn't been, Lieutenant Commander Colin Trevayne of the scout cruiser Ashanti was a highly... visible personality within the Fleet.

Centuries of tradition decreed that the Federation's widely-diverse military people must be nonpartisan.

In a sense, accepting a TFN commission was to take a vow of political celibacy--or so it had been until very recently--and Ian Trevayne honored that tradition. Colin, however, was as fiery as his father was calm and controlled. His outspoken sympathy for the Fringe put him firmly in the "Young Turk" camp, and Han wondered if rumor exaggerated the rift between father and son.

The veoman's panel beeped gently, and he spoke into his hushphone, then listened briefly.

"Admiral Trevayne, Captain Li; Admiral Rutgers would like to see you both, ff you please," he said, and Han felt her eyebrows rise. There was something in the wind! She waited courteously for Trevayne to lead the way into the sanctum, and her nerves were strung to fever pitch.

Fleet Admiral William Rutgers was a bulky man of indeterminate ancestry, and Han smiled warmly as a paw like an Old Terran bear's enveloped her tiny hand in greeting.

Rutgers, once her father's chief of staff, had been her own fifth-year tactical instructor almost left-brace 'ffteen years ago.

'lhank you both for being patient," he said, sitting back down and waving them to chairs. Han waited until Trevayne sat before she followed suit. It was just a little awkward to be so junior to the only other two people present... especially after coming straight from her own ship, where she was mistress after God and even that precedence was a bit blurred.

"Patient, Biffful?" Trevayne chuckled.

"Junior officers are always patient--or they bloody well better learn to pretend they are!" "Except for the ones like you, Ian," Rutgers said, shaking his head in mock sadness.

Trevayne laughed easily. His elegant frame--noto proly iems with hsts tailoring--was seated casually, almost carelessly, right ankle on to eft knee. To sit like that in the presence of an admiral, you had to be an admiral. But Trevayne had something else, something beyond even his membership in one of the "dynasties" of the Federation's Navy. His rapid rise wasn't due solely to birth or brilliance. Han's father had been an admiral before his retirement, and his father before him, yet she lacked that not-quite-arrogant "something else," Charisma, perhaps?