"Galaxy Caravan , we're not going to tell you again," the harsh voice said over the com. "Cut your drive and open your hatches, or we'll blow your ass out of space!"

"Are there actually people this stupid in the galaxy?" Lieutenant Betty Gohr demanded under her breath as she watched her display.

"It would appear so," someone replied, and she looked up quickly. Apparently, she hadn't spoken quite as softly as she'd thought she had, and Commander Joel Blumenthal, Gauntlet 's tactical officer, gave her a crooked smile.

"I'm sorry, Sir," she said. "It just... I don't know, offends my sense of professionalism, I suppose, to see even a pirate do something this stupid. I like to think that it takes at least a modicum of intelligence to be able to figure out what buttons to push on the bridge."

"He does seem just a tad less than brilliant," Blumenthal acknowledged. "On the other hand, we are doing our best to encourage him to screw up by the numbers."

"I know," Gohr said. "But still, Sir..."

Her voice trailed off, but Blumenthal understood exactly what she meant.

HMS Gauntlet wasn'teven coming close to setting a passage record for the voyage from Manticore to Erewhon. Exactly whose idea it had been to assign the cruiser to ride herd on the unofficial convoy was something the captain hadn't discussed with any of his officers. For all Blumenthal knew, Oversteegen might have arranged it himself. After all the casualties they'd taken in Tiberian, not to mention the routine transfers which always afflicted a ship's company when she was put into yard hands for major repairs or a refit, they needed all the exercise and drill time they could get. So it would have made sense for the captain to arrange—or at least to cheerfully accept orders—for Gauntlet to make this long, slow, circuitous trip, trundling along with half a dozen lumbering freighters. It had certainly given them plenty of time to train!

And he might just have seen the merchies as bait in a trap, Blumenthal thought privately. Especially if he still has as many questions as I do about what happened the last time we were out this way.

If that was what the captain had been thinking, it seemed to have worked... sort of. At least they appeared to have caught a pirate of sorts, although judging from the emissions signature Blumenthal's tracking section was picking up, whoever this was certainly wasn't whoever sent out heavy cruisers to do his dirty work.

"We're getting a better read on them, Sir," he said, turning his chair to face the command chair at the center of Gauntlet 's bridge. "Judging from the impeller signature, CIC makes her tonnage around eighty to ninety-five thousand tons. Her active emissions seem to fit fairly well with something that size, too. From what we're picking up, her sensor fit is pretty close to completely obsolete, though."

"How close?" Captain Oversteegen asked.

"It's almost certainly inferior to prewar Peep hardware," Blumenthal replied.

"In that case, Sir," Commander Watson put in, "calling it 'obsolete' is entirely too kind."

"I'm inclined t' agree." Oversteegen studied his own repeater plot for a handful of seconds, then shrugged. "If his sensors are that bad, then I suppose we really shouldn't blame him for fallin' for our little ruse. On the other hand, even the worst sensors in space are goin' t' see through our EW if he gets much closer."

"Sir," the com officer said, "whoever it is is hailing us again. Basically the same demand as before. Should I keep stringing him along?"

"Still no identification from his end?" Oversteegen's tone seemed almost disinterested, but his eyes never left the red icon on his plot.

"No, Sir."

"Well, that certainly seems t' establish that he's not anyone with official standin', doesn't it?" the captain murmured.

Which it did, Lieutenant Gohr conceded. Of course, the fact that Gauntlet—Galaxy Caravan , as far as the other ship knew—had so far refused to obey its orders ought to have suggested to anyone with the brains of a rutabaga that she wasn't exactly what she seemed to be, either. The pirate vessel had been within its missile range of Gauntlet for well over twenty minutes, during which time Oversteegen had steadfastly declined to cooperate. Instead, he'd continued to "run" deeper into the Shadwell System's gravity well, drawing the other ship steadily farther and farther away from the G5 system's twenty-light-minute hyper limit. Any genuine merchant skipper would have been trying to break back out across the hyper limit, since her only possible hope of outrunning the smaller, handier vessel would have been to escape back into hyper. But the legitimate merchantmen under Oversteegen's escort had crossed the hyper limit a half hour after Gauntlet , and the warship's apparently suicidal course was designed to suck the pirate after her, instead of them, while Lieutenant Cheney, her com officer, did an excellent imitation of a frightened merchant skipper doing her very best to talk herself out of trouble.

If Gohr had been in command of the pirate, she would either have gone ahead and fired into Gauntlet long since, to show she meant business, or else have broken off entirely on the assumption that only a warship trolling for pirates would deliberately court a missile attack by refusing to comply with instructions. Of course, Gauntlet 's EW was undoubtedly better than anything the pirate had ever imagined might exist, which helped to explain how he could be so unwary, but even so...

"All right, Guns," Captain Oversteegen said finally. "I believe it's time we convinced this gentleman of the error of his ways."

"Aye, aye, Sir!" Blumenthal said with considerably more enthusiasm, and Oversteegen smiled thinly. But then the captain shook his head.

"Under the circumstances," he said, "I think this might be an appropriate time for our Assistant Tac Officer t' try her hand at pirate swattin'. We've already established your own bona fides in that regard, I believe."

"As you say, Sir," Blumenthal allowed only a trace of disappointment to color his tone, and Lieutenant Gohr felt herself sitting suddenly straighter in her own chair as she sensed the captain's eyes on her back.

"All right, Lieutenant," he said calmly, "I want this fellow discouraged from harassin' legitimate merchant ships. I intend t' give him an opportunity t' surrender. If he declines, however, I want him discouraged as permanently as possible. How would you recommend we accomplish that?"

"Are we interested in capturing or examining his vessel if he declines, Sir?" she heard herself ask in an equally calm voice.

"I think not," the captain replied. "It's unlikely the Admiralty would be interested in buyin' her into service, and it's even less likely that we'd learn anythin' useful from her records."

"In that case, Sir, I recommend we make it short and sweet. With your permission, I'll set up a double broadside. At this range, and given the crappy hardware he seems to have, that ought to do the trick in a single launch. We may waste a few birds on overkill, but it certainly ought to discourage him as permanently as anyone could ask."

"Very well, Lieutenant," Oversteegen said. "Set it up and prepare t' launch on my command."

"Aye, aye, Sir." Gohr's fingers flew as she punched commands into her console. The weight of the captain's eyes urged her to hurry, but she took the time to make sure she did it right. She tapped in the final targeting code, then ran her gaze rapidly over the entire set up. It looked good, she decided, and punched the "commit" key.

"Firing sequence programmed and locked, Sir," she reported.

Oversteegen didn't say anything for just a second, and she realized that he was reviewing her commands. There was a brief silence, and then she heard a soft grunt of approval from the captain's chair as he reached the end. It was, she decided, a good thing she had included not only the enablement of Gauntlet 's point defense against the possibility that the pirate might actually get a few missiles of his own away, but also had a dozen follow-up salvos programmed to cover the highly improbable chance that the other ship would survive Gauntlet 's opening broadsides.

"Very good, Lieutenant," Oversteegen approved. "Stand by t' engage as programmed on my command."

"Standing by, aye, Sir," she confirmed, and the captain glanced at Lieutenant Cheney.

"Live mike, Com," he said.

"You're live... now, Sir," Cheney replied, and Oversteegen smiled unpleasantly.

"Pirate vessel," he said flatly, "this is Captain Michael Oversteegen, of Her Majesty's heavy cruiser Gauntlet . Strike your wedge immediately and surrender, or be destroyed!"

At such a short range, the communications lag was negligible, and every eye on Gauntlet 's bridge watched the tactical display while they awaited the pirate's response. Then, abruptly, the red icon altered course, clawing frantically away from Gauntlet even as it rolled in a feeble effort to interpose its wedge between it and the cruiser.

"Pirate vessel," Oversteegen's harsh voice was as unyielding as battle steel, "strike your wedge now . This is the only warnin' you will receive."

The pirate's only response was to push his acceleration still higher. He must be riding the very brink of compensator failure, Gohr thought, watching her display with a sort of icy detachment. Another twenty heart beats sped into infinity.

"Lieutenant Gohr," Captain Oversteegen said formally, "open fire."

"Actually, I think she's working out quite well, Sir," Commander Watson said. Michael Oversteegen leaned back in his chair in his day cabin aboard Gauntlet , his expression an invitation for his executive officer to continue, and Watson smiled.

"All right, I'll admit it," the dark-haired exec said, with a chuckle which few of Oversteegen's officers would have been comfortable emitting in his presence. "When you first came up with the notion of asking for a 'spook' as an ATO, I thought it was... not one of your best ideas. But Lieutenant Gohr doesn't seem to have forgotten which end of the tube the missile comes out of, after all."