"Captain Oversteegen is here, Admiral Draskovic."

The dark-haired, dark-eyed woman in the uniform of an admiral of the red looked up from the paperwork on her terminal at the yeoman's announcement.

"Thank you, Chief," she said, with perhaps just a trace more enthusiasm than the Fifth Space Lord of the Royal Manticoran Navy might normally be expected to show over the arrival of a mere captain. "Please show him in," she added.

"Yes, Ma'am."

The yeoman withdrew, and the admiral quickly saved the document she'd been perusing. Then she stood and walked around her desk to the conversational nook arranged around the expensive coffee table. The door to her office opened once more, and the yeoman ushered in a man in the black-and-gold of an RMN senior-grade captain.

"Captain Oversteegen, Ma'am," he murmured.

"Thank you, Chief." The admiral held out a hand and smiled at her visitor in welcome. "That will be all," she added, never looking away from the newcomer.

Her yeoman withdrew once more, and she gripped the captain's hand firmly.

"Good to see you, Captain," she said warmly, and waved at one of the waiting chairs with her free hand. "Please, have a seat."

"Thank you, Ma'am," Oversteegen said, and if it occurred to him that a full admiral of the red did not normally greet the commander of a mere heavy cruiser quite so enthusiastically, no sign of it showed in his expression or manner as he availed himself of the offer. He settled into the indicated chair, crossed his legs, and regarded his superior with polite attentiveness.

"I don't believe that I've had the opportunity yet to congratulate you, Captain," the admiral said as she sat in another chair, facing him across the coffee table. "That was quite a show you put on in Tiberian."

"I had a bit more luck than a man should get into the habit of expectin'," he replied in calm, even tones. "And, even more importantly, the best crew and officers it's ever been my good fortune t' serve with."

For just a moment, Draskovic seemed a bit taken aback. Then she smiled.

"I'm quite certain that you did. On the other hand, even with good luck and an excellent crew, it took a captain a cut or two above the average to polish off four Solarian heavy cruisers. Even," she added, raising a hand to stop him as he began to open his mouth, "when the cruisers in question had Silesian crews. You did us proud, Captain. You and your people."

"Thank you, Ma'am," he said again. There was, after all, very little else he could have said under the circumstances.

"You're very welcome," she told him. "After all, God knows the Navy needs all the good press it can get these days!" She shook her head. "It never ceases to amaze me how quickly everyone seems to forget everything else we've accomplished. I suppose it's one more example of 'Yes, but what have you done for us recently ?' "

"It's always that way, isn't it, Ma'am?" Oversteegen replied, and smiled ever so slightly. "I suppose it's not unreasonable for the man in the street t' be just a tad confused over exactly what the Navy's doin' for him these days." One of Draskovic's eyebrows arched, and he smiled again, more broadly. "I mean," he explained, "in light of the current debate between the Government and the Opposition over what the Navy ought t' be doin'."

"I see your point," Admiral Draskovic said, and sat back in her chair to regard him with carefully disguised thoughtfulness. There was something about him that baffled her. No, not baffled—confused, perhaps. He said all the right things, yet she had a sense that he didn't mean exactly what she thought he did. A part of her almost suspected that he was laughing at her from behind his respectful expression and aristocratic accent, but that was ridiculous, and she knew it.

If the captain felt the least discomfort under her regard, he disguised it admirably. No doubt he'd had plenty of practice at that. Unlike Draskovic, he not only came from a traditional naval family, but boasted connections to the most rarefied heights of the Manticoran nobility. He'd probably attended more formal dinners and met more senior officers and peers of the realm than Draskovic ever had, despite the half-T-century difference in their ages. Or the gulf between their ranks.

For just a moment, Josette Draskovic felt a stab of sheer, unadulterated resentment as she took in his superbly tailored, not-quite-regulation uniform and complete self-assurance. She'd worked hard all of her life to attain her present rank and authority; he'd been born into an elite world of privilege and advantage that had raised him to his current position with the inevitability of gravity.

She started to speak again, then stopped and gave herself a stern mental shake. How he'd gotten to where he was was really beside the point, wasn't it? He'd certainly demonstrated his fitness to command a Queen's ship at Tiberian last year, after all. And whatever some might have suspected about the connection between his birth and his career prior to Tiberian, the Navy had universally approved the promotion to captain senior-grade—and the Manticoran Cross—which that battle had earned him.

"The... 'debate' between the Government and the Opposition is probably enough to confuse anyone," she acknowledged. "Especially when we're having to make so many hard decisions about the Navy budget. That's one reason why what you accomplished out there has such implications for our domestic public opinion. It was so black-and-white, an example of the suppression of piracy and murder which has always been the Navy's primary peacetime job."

"As you say, Ma'am," he agreed. "At the same time, however, I think it's fair t' point out that the pirates and murderers in question had managed t' get their hands on modern Solarian warships. It seems t' me that the question of just how they managed t' pull that off deserves some careful consideration."

"Oh, I certainly agree with you there, Captain. Admiral Jurgensen has ONI working on that very question, I assure you."

"May I ask if they've come up with any theories, Ma'am?"

"Several," she said wryly. "Most of them mutually contradictory, of course."

"Of course," he agreed with another small smile.

"Obviously, the Sollies didn't just 'lose' four modern cruisers, whatever their government's official 'we don't have any idea what happened' position may be," Draskovic continued. "On the other hand, the Solarian League is huge, and we all know how little genuine control over its internal bureaucracies—including its military bureaucracies—its government really has. One theory is that some Frontier Fleet admiral decided to provide for her retirement by putting some of her ships up for sale rather than mothballing them. Which would be a neat trick, if she could do it. Personally, I don't see it. In the first place, those ships were too modern for anyone to be disposing of them on any pretext, including mothballing, I can think of. And even if they hadn't been, I can't quite convince myself that even the Sollies' logistics people wouldn't notice the complete disappearance of a million and a half tons worth of warships sooner or later!"

"Unless it was someone a lot more senior than any Frontier Fleet commander," Oversteegen said thoughtfully. "Someone with the reach and authority t' make embarrassin' paperwork vanish at its destination, instead of its origin point."

"That's more or less the thought that had occurred to me. I've spent enough time wrestling with our own paperwork to realize how much easier it would be for some bureaucratic chip-pusher at the top to arrange for their disappearance. Especially someplace like the League." She shrugged. "My personal theory is that somebody very senior in their equivalent of BuShips probably has a bank account somewhere with a very high credit balance."

"I'd be inclined t' agree with you, Ma'am," Oversteegen said. "But I still have t' wonder how someone like that made connections with a batch of Silesian pirates in the first place."

"I doubt that she ever did—directly, at least," Draskovic replied with another shrug. "God only knows how many middlemen may have been involved in the deal! Whoever first took them off the books probably disposed of them to a fence somewhere, who finally brokered the deal at third or fourth hand to the scum you and your people took out."

"You're probably correct," Oversteegen said after a moment, although his tone suggested that he wasn't totally convinced that she was. "But however they got their hands on them, they were operatin' an awful long way from Silesia at Tiberian. And that's not exactly an area noted for rich pickin's for pirates, either."

"No, Captain, it isn't," she acknowledged, allowing just a trace of coolness to color her own tone. "Those same thoughts have occurred to Admiral Jurgensen and his analysts, I assure you. As has the point that they deliberately chose to engage you. That's not typical pirate behavior, even at four-to-one odds."

"As you say, Ma'am." Oversteegen shifted ever so slightly in his chair. "I hope I don't appear t' be belaborin' the obvious, Admiral. It's just that no one seems t' have come up with answers t' the questions which bother me most. Or, at least, no one's mentioned any of those answers t' me if they have come up with them." He shrugged. "Given the casualties my people took, I'm afraid I have more than a passin' interest in them."

"I can certainly understand that," Draskovic assured him more sympathetically. "Unfortunately, until and unless ONI can get its hands on some solid leads, I don't think anyone is going to be able to provide those answers."

Oversteegen nodded, and a brief silence descended upon the office. Draskovic allowed it to hover for a moment, then drew a sharp breath and straightened in her own chair.

"Obviously, Captain Oversteegen, what happened in Tiberian is one of the reasons we're redeploying Gauntlet to Erewhon now that she's completed her repairs."

Oversteegen regarded her with polite attentiveness, and she shrugged.

"You've demonstrated that you have a good general awareness of the situation in the Erewhon area. That's a major plus. And the fact that you found and took out the pirates who'd ambushed one of Erewhon's own destroyers and killed its entire crew is another one, especially in light of the current... strain in our treaty relationship with Erewhon." And , she did not add, so is the fact that your mother is the Prime Minister's second cousin .