The older Admiral stepped forward. “Your Excellency, we have to assume that Father Captain de Soya and the other mutineers are hostile to the Pax and that this theft of a Pax archangel-class starship was premeditated. We also have to assume the worst-case scenario that this theft of our most secret and lethal weapons system was carried out in coordination with the Ousters.” The Admiral took a breath. “Your Excellencies… Your Holiness… with the Gideon drive, any point in this arm of the galaxy is only an instant away from any other. The Raphael could translate into any Pax system—even Pacem’s—without the Hawking-drive wake warnings of the earlier, and current, Ouster spacecraft. The Raphael could ravage our Mercantilus transport lanes, attack undefended worlds and colonies, and generally wreak havoc before a Pax task force could respond.”

The Pope raised one finger. “Admiral Marusyn, are we to understand that this most prized of Gideon-drive technologies may fall into the hands of the Ousters… be duplicated… and thus power many of the Enemy’s ships?”

Marusyn’s already florid face and neck flushed more deeply. “Your Holiness… that is unlikely, Your Holiness… extremely unlikely. The steps of manufacture of a Gideon archangel are so complex, the cost so prohibitive, the secret elements so guarded…”

“But it is possible,” interrupted the Pope.

“Yes, Your Holiness.”

The Pope raised his hand like a blade cutting through the air. “We believe that we have heard all we need to hear from our friends in Pax Fleet. You are excused, Admiral Marusyn, Admiral Aldikacti, Admiral Wu.”

The three officers genuflected, bowed their heads, stood, and backed away from His Holiness. The door whispered shut behind them.

There were now ten dignitaries present, in addition to the silent papal aides and Councillor Albedo.

The Pope inclined his head toward Secretary of State Cardinal Lourdusamy. “Disposition, Simon Augustino?”

“Admiral Marusyn is to receive a letter of rebuke and will be transferred to general staff,” said Lourdusamy softly. “Admiral Wu will take his place as temporary Pax Fleet commander in chief until a suitable replacement is found. Admiral Aldikacti has been recommended for excommunication and execution by firing squad.”

The Pope nodded sadly. “We shall now hear from Cardinal Mustafa, Cardinal Du Noyer, CEO Isozaki, and Councillor Albedo before concluding this business.”

“… and thus ended the official inquiry by the Holy Office pertaining to the events on the Pax world of Mars,” concluded Cardinal Mustafa. He glanced at Cardinal Lourdusamy. “It was at this time that Captain Wolmak suggested that it was imperative that my entourage and I return to the archangel Jibril still in orbit around that planet.”

“Please continue, Excellency,” murmured Cardinal Lourdusamy. “Can you tell us the nature of the emergency which Captain Wolmak felt required your imperative return?”

“Yes,” said Mustafa, rubbing his lower lip. “Captain Wolmak had found the interstellar freighter that had uploaded cargo from the unlisted base near the Martian city of Arafat-kaffiyeh. The ship had been discovered floating powerless in Old Earth System’s asteroid belt.”

“Can you tell us the name of that ship, Excellency?” prompted Lourdusamy.

“The H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru.”

CEO Kenzo Isozaki’s lips twitched despite his iron control. He remembered the ship. His oldest son had crewed on it during the early years of the boy’s apprenticeship. The Saigon Maru had been an ancient ore and bulk freighter… about a three-million-ton ion sledge carrier, as he recalled.

“CEO Isozaki?” snapped Lourdusamy.

“Yes, Your Excellency?” Isozaki’s voice was smooth and emotionless.

“The ship’s designation suggests that it is of Mercantilus registry. Is this correct, M. Isozaki?”

“Yes, Your Excellency,” said the CEO. “But it is my recollection that the H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru was sold for scrap along with sixty-some other obsolete freighters about… eight standard years ago, if memory serves.”

“Your Excellencies?” said Anna Pelli Cognani. “Your Holiness? If I might?” The other CEO had whispered to her wafer-thin comlog and now touched her hearring.

“CEO Pelli Cognani,” said Cardinal Lourdusamy.

“Our records show that the Saigon Maru was indeed sold to independent scrap contractors some eight years, three months, and two days ago, standard. Later transmissions confirmed that the ships had been scrapped and recycled at the Armaghast orbital automated foundries.”

“Thank you, CEO Pelli Cognani,” said Lourdusamy. “Cardinal Mustafa, you may continue.”

The Grand Inquisitor nodded and continued his briefing, covering only the most necessary details.

And while he spoke he thought of the images he was not describing in detail: The Jibril and its accompanying torchships slowing to silent, synchronized tumbling, matching velocities with the dark freighter. Cardinal Mustafa had always imagined asteroid belts as tightly packed clusters of moonlets, but despite the multiple images on the tactical plot, there were no rocks in sight: just the matte-black freighter, as ugly and functional as a rusted mass of pipes and cylinders, half a klick long. Matched as they were in velocity and trajectory, hanging only three klicks away with the yellow sun of humankind’s birth burning beyond their sterns, Jibril and the Saigon Maru appeared motionless with only the stars wheeling slowly around them.

Mustafa remembered—and regretted—his decision to inspect the ship with the troopers who were going aboard. The indignities of suiting up in Swiss Guard combat armor: a monomol skinsuit layer, followed by an AI neural mesh, then the spacesuit itself—bulkier than civilian skinsuits with its polymered sheath of impact armor—and finally the web belts of gear and the morphable reaction pak. The Jibril had deep-radared the hulk a dozen times and was certain that nothing moved or breathed on board, but the archangel still backed off to thirty klicks’ attack distance as soon as the Grand Inquisitor, Security Commander Browning, Marine Sergeant Nell Kasner, former groundforce commander Major Piet, and ten Swiss Guard/marine commandos had jumped from the sally port.

Mustafa remembered his pounding pulse as they jetted closer to the dead freighter, two commandos ferrying him across the abyss as if he were another parcel to carry. He remembered the sunlight glinting off gold blast visors as the troopers communicated with tightbeam squirts and hand signals, taking up positions on either side of the open air lock. Two troopers went in first, their reaction paks throbbing silently, assault weapons raised. Then Commander Browning and Sergeant Kasner went in fast behind them. A minute later there was a coded squirt on the tactical channel and Mustafa’s handlers guided him into the waiting black hole of the air lock. Corpses floating in the beams of flashlight lasers. Meat-locker images.

Frozen carcasses, red-striped ribs, gutted abdominal cavities. Jaws locked open in eternally silent screams. Frozen streamers of blood from the gaping jaws and hemorrhaged, protruding eyes. Viscera drifting in tumbling trajectories amid the stabbing beams of light.

“Crew,” tightbeamed Commander Browning.

“Shrike?” queried Cardinal Mustafa. He was mentally saying the rosary in rapid monotone, not for spiritual reassurance but to keep his mind away from the images floating in hellish light before him. He had been warned not to vomit in his helmet.

Filters and scrubbers would clean the mess before he strangled on it, but they were not foolproof.

“Probably the Shrike,” answered Major Piet, extending his gauntlet into the shattered chest cavity of one of the drifting corpses.

“See how the cruciform has been ripped out. Just as in Arafat-kaffiyeh.”

“Commander!” came a tightbeamed voice of one of the troopers who had moved aft from the air lock.