He whirled, murderous rage causing him to level the rifle at the man.To his credit, the officer paled but stood his ground. "They need an order," he said.

Chaison cursed and grabbed him by the throat. "Don't ever," he hissed, "make the mistake of thinking I can't fight and plan at the same time." Then Chaison dove past him, making for the bridge.

The way was blocked. He blinked in surprise at the staved-in beams and boards that filled the narrow passage beneath the centrifuge. That didn't look like rocket damage. A prow? Had they been rammed while he was looking the other way?

It hardly mattered. He pried some planks out of the way and stared out at the dark.The battle was going much as he'd expected; the pirates had the advantage of available cover and were using it shamelessly. But the five ships on the other side of the mined zone were making mincemeat out of them anyway. They don't need my help, he decided. Taking a moment to run down his list of priorities, he turned to the staffers and said, "Where's my wife?"

"Uh, the bridge, sir."

"All right. We're going to have to get there, that's where the scuttling triggers are located. Time to do a little outside climbing, boys."

He kicked at the broken planking and soon had made an opening big enough to worm through. The staffer who'd confronted him earlier put a hand on his arm as he made to go through it. "Let me go first, sir. We don't know what's out there."

Chaison looked at him in surprise. "What's your name?"

"Travis, sir." He looked more like an actor playing some idealized naval officer than a real man. Why, they were in the middle of a battle and his uniform wasn't even scuffed! But he looked calm and composed, unlike the rest of his team.

Chaison grinned at him. "You've got a fine sense of propriety, Travis, but you're a bit impertinent." Travis looked crestfallen and Chaison laughed. "Get going! We'll talk later."

Travis made it outside and apparently didn't the; his hand reached back through the gap to help Chaison and the other staffers clamber out. They found themselves at the bottom of a huge dent in the Rook's hull. Nothing that the carpenters couldn't take care of. Chaison looked out and saw that both the Rook and the pirate had stopped spinning. They were lashed together now by dozens of ropes. The nearest hatches on the pirate were twenty feet away, and while men were popping out of those every few seconds, none looked forward and spotted Chaison's small group. It was tempting to start picking them off, but that would be a fool's game; they wouldn't last a minute before somebody sniped them from behind a porthole.

"There's a fine irony," commented Chaison as he groped for purchase on the streamlined hull. All around was nothing but air, the endless abyss of Virga; a misgrab here would send you on a slow trip around the world, with the birds, bugs, and fish making a moving feast of you along the way.

"What's that, sir?" Travis appeared next to him. Both of them clung by their fingernails to the gaps between hull planks, moving themselves forward with slow swings so as not to lose that purchase.

Chaison shrugged and said, "We came out here to find a pirate's treasure, but it looks like we're going to become such a treasure instead."

Travis nearly lost his grip. "Pirate's… treasure? Admiral, sir, what are you talking about?"

Chaison gazed past him. Another of his ships was disappearing behind a pall of smoke. He doubted that it was a deliberate ploy, it wasn't evenly enough distributed. That did not look good.

They were approaching the portholes to the bridge. There was an impenetrable hatch there; they would have to talk their way in. Shouldn't be hard, Chaison thought absently. Venera's not mad at me for anything at the moment.

He risked another glance at the battle. Yes, that was definitely the Clarity on fire out there. Three pirates had it under sustained attack. They were using a wheel formation, he saw—that was far too sophisticated a maneuver to be undertaken by untrained privateers. The three ships had let out ropes and tied them together at a central point. With their engines on full they'd begun to spin around that central pivot point. Spinning up like that was easy; it was a standard way for groups of ships that lacked centrifuges to create gravity while on long voyages. What was hard was spinning and twisting while you spun to present a difficult target to attackers. These ships were doing that.

Two-thirds of the wheeling formation were inside the cloud-bank. The net effect was that a pirate would swing out of the white wall at a fierce clip, fire a volley of rockets, and then dive back into the mist in a much steeper turn than would normally be possible. The Clarity was firing rockets at the center of the formation, hoping to cut the ropes that held the three ships together. That was a long shot, however.

Travis had given up asking about the treasure and was pounding on the armored hatch. Chaison hardly noticed, mesmerized as he was by the drama unfolding in that distant patch of sky. Get out of there, he willed the Clarity, but its engines must be damaged. It was a hanging target, like a driver fallen off his bike and vulnerable in clear air. In seconds it could all be over.

The cloudbank pulsed orange once, twice, then dozens of times in rapid succession. Chaison had seen fireworks reflecting off clouds; that was what this looked like. He'd been mentally timing the appearance of each ship from within the clouds, and the next one was late. No, not late—it wasn't coming out. Seconds passed, and the second of the three should have appeared, but it didn't.

Finally one appeared. The pirate left the cloudbank in an uncontrolled tumble. Flashes of rocket fire showed long streamers of rope trailing behind it.

"They hit something," he said. Travis looked up, puzzled. Chaison pointed, and as he did so another flash lit the clouds, this one miles away.

"Somebody moved the icebergs," he whispered. Then he started to laugh. Two spokes of the wheel had been lost within seconds—two pirate ships flown at full speed into an unexpected obstacle. The fools were too confident in their charts, and now they were blindly running into the mountains of ice they had been using to hide their maneuvering. It served them right.

"I don't see what it is you find so amusing about the situation," said a cold voice behind Chaison.

"Travis, cease your work," he said quietly. Turning, he raised his hands. "We have visitors."

VENERA FANNING CROUCHED on the inside of the bridge's hatch. She could hear voices outside; one had sounded like her husband's. Captain Sembry refused to undog the hatch, however, and she didn't have the strength. The damn thing was designed to resist an invading force. Opening was about the last thing it was capable of doing.

Rhythmic pounding came from the inner doors as well. A minute ago an explosive charge had gone off behind one of those doors, but it hadn't been enough to break the hinges. It was only a matter of time, though.

Well, she thought, this will be an interesting new chapter in my life. Captured by pirates! The prospects of various fates worse than death outraged and angered her, but Venera wasn't afraid. She was already wondering what leverage she could use to make the best of the situation.

"The gas?"

Venera came alert at those words. She looked over at the bridge crew, who were clustered around a set of valves and pipes at the back of the can-shaped chamber. Captain Sembry was shaking his head at whoever had spoken.

"Too late for that," he said. "We'd kill the boarders, but the rest of the pirates would just blow the stuff out and come in again."

"The charges, then."

Sembry nodded, reaching into his jacket for something.