"Wayfarer, this is LaFroye. Our pinnace is closing from your six o'clock and low. ETA is now twelve minutes."

"Understood, LaFroye. Ah, may I ask just what it is you're concerned about?"

Jason Ackenheil sat back in his command chair, watching Lieutenant Gower, his com officer talking to one Captain Gabrijela Kanjcevic, mistress after God of the Solarian-flag merchant ship Wayfarer, and smiled thinly. It was safe enough, since he was far outside the range of Gower's visual pickup. Wayfarer wasn't that huge for a merchie—a fast freight hauler configured for relatively small cargos (by the standards of the leviathans which roamed the interstellar deeps) and limited passenger service—although she still dwarfed LaFroye to minnow-status. But the minnow had teeth and the whale didn't, so the whale had better be extremely polite to the minnow. On the other hand, some merchies were more equal than others, and Wayfarer undoubtedly felt reasonably secure in her League registry. After all, no Manticoran captain in his right mind wanted to provoke a career-ending incident with the League. Which explained why, so far at least, Kanjcevic sounded wary but not truly concerned.

But that was about to change . . . assuming, of course, that his information was accurate.

Which, all things being equal, it had damned well better be.

"It's only routine, Captain," Gower assured the face on his com screen. Then he glanced over his shoulder, as if checking to see if anyone were in proximity, and leaned turned back towards Kanjcevic's image.

"Just between you and me, Ma'am, it's pretty silly, actually. We've had reports of a rash of merchant losses in this sector over the last few months, and Intelligence has decided someone's using an armed merchant raider. So orders came down from Sidemore to make an eyeball check on every merchant ship we can." He shrugged. "So far, we've checked eleven without finding a thing." He did not quite, Ackenheil noticed, add "of course," but his tone made it superfluous, anyway. "Shouldn't take more than a few minutes for our pinnace to dock, come aboard, make sure you don't have any grasers hidden away, and let you go on about your business. But if we don't check it out, well . . ."

He shrugged again, and Kanjcevic smiled.

"Understood, Lieutenant," she said. "And I don't suppose I should complain about anything designed to make life harder on pirates. We'll give your people full cooperation."

"Thank you, Captain. We appreciate it. LaFroye, clear."

Gower cut the connection and turned to grin at his captain.

"How was that, Skip?"

"Perfect, Lou. Just perfect," Ackenheil assured him. Now let's just hope Reynolds knew what he was talking about in that intelligence brief, he added very quietly to himself.

Captain Denise Hammond, RMMC, stood and moved to the center of the pinnace troop compartment. Quarters were more than a little cramped, given that she had two entire platoons of battle armored troopers.

"All right, People," she told them. "We're docking in five mikes. You know the drill. No nonsense off anyone, but no bloodshed if we can help it either. Copy?"

A chorus of assents came back over her helmet com, and she nodded in satisfaction. Then she turned back to the hatch and waited with a hungry grin of anticipation. If the Skipper was right about what they were about to find, then this would be one of the best days she'd had in months, possibly years. And if he was wrong . . . Well, she was only a Marine. None of the crap was going to splash on her for following orders, and she'd never much liked Sollies, anyway.

The pinnace settled into the docking arms, the personnel tube mated with the lock, and the Solarian merchant marine lieutenant Kanjcevic had sent down to greet their visitors straightened into what might charitably have been called a posture of attention. He didn't much care for Manties—damned arrogant upstarts; that's what they were, crowding Solarian shipping lines all the time—but he'd been ordered to make nice this time. Given the circumstances, he thought that was an excellent idea, however much it might gripe him to do anything of the sort, and he pasted a smile on his face as the green light of a good seal showed above the tube hatch.

The smile disappeared into sickly shock as that same hatch slid open and he suddenly found himself looking down the business end of a stun rifle. One held in the powered gauntlets of a Royal Manticoran Marine in the menacing bulk of battle armor. A Marine, a corner of the lieutenant's stunned brain noted with something almost like detachment, who appeared to be followed by dozens of other Marines . . . most of whom appeared to be armed with things considerably more lethal than stunners.

"My name is Hammond, Lieutenant," the Marine behind the stun rifle said over her armor's external speakers in a soprano which would probably have been pleasantly melodious under other circumstances. "Captain Hammond, Royal Manticoran Marines. I suggest you take me to your captain."

"I—I—" The lieutenant swallowed hard. "Uh, what's the meaning of this?" he demanded. Or tried to demand, anyway; it came out sounding more like a bleat of terrified confusion.

"This vessel is suspected of violating the provisions of the Cherwell Convention," Hammond told him, and felt a profound sense of internal satisfaction at the way his face went suddenly bone-white. "So I suggest," she went on as the rest of her boarding party swiftly and competently secured the boat bay, "that you see about getting me to your captain. Now."

"It's confirmed, Skipper," Denise Hammond told Captain Ackenheil. There was no visual, because she was speaking to him over her helmet com, but he didn't need a visual from her. He'd already seen the imagery from the external cameras of the Marines who'd forced the hatches into Wayfarer's "passenger cabins." Even in Silesia and even aboard freighters with strictly limited personnel space, passengers were seldom packed in twelve to the cabin.

Of course, Wayfarer's crew had managed to save a little space for them in their quarters. After all, they didn't need much space to store their personal belongings when they didn't have any . . . including clothing of any sort.

The expressions of abject terror on the faces of those naked, hopeless "passengers" had been enough to turn a man's stomach. But the moment when they realized they were looking at Royal Marines, not the bully boy guards of the owners to whom they had been consigned, had been something else again. Indeed, seeing it had given him almost as much pleasure as the sick, stunned expression on Kanjcevic's face when she realized what had happened. And when she remembered that under the terms of solemn interstellar treaties, the Star Kingdom of Manticore equated violation of the Cherwell Convention's prohibitions on trafficking in human beings with piracy.

Which was punishable by death.

"Good work, Denise," he said sincerely. "Very good work. Keep an eye on things over there for another twenty minutes, and I'll have the prize crew across to you."

"Aye, aye, Sir. We'll be here."

"Do you know what I hate most about our political lords and masters?" Dr. Wix demanded.

Jordin Kare tipped back his chair and cocked his head with a quizzical expression as he regarded the astrophysicist who'd just burst unceremoniously through his office door. It was very early in the day—which was the only reason Wix had gotten past the secretary who would have intercepted him during regular working hours—and Kare's coffee cup sat steaming on the corner of his blotter beside a half-eaten croissant.