"Negative," Sandler interrupted. "All you're pulling up right now is a blanket. Neck-level ought to do it."

"I'm all right," Pampas assured her. "I want to get going on this."

"You can get going after you've slept a few hours," Sandler said, her tone making it clear it was an order. "Go on, get out of here."

"Yes, Ma'am." Wearily, but clearly trying not to show it, Pampas got up from the table and trudged from the room.

"Best news we've had in months," Hauptman commented.

"Definitely," Damana agreed. "So what's our next move, Skipper? Back to Manticore to report?"

"Not quite yet," Sandler said slowly, fingering the data chips Pampas had left behind. "After all, right now all we've got is a theory as to what's happening. And a possible theory of how to counter it."

She lifted an eyebrow. "Wouldn't it be nice to be able to drop a complete package on Admiral Hemphill's desk instead?"

"Okay," Damana said cautiously. "So how do we go about doing that?"

Sandler was gazing thoughtfully out into space. "We start by setting course for Quarre."

"Quarre?" Damana asked, looking surprised.

"Yes," Sandler said, her eyes coming back to focus. "We're going to commandeer one of the Manticoran freighters waiting there for the next convoy and let Georgio play with circuit breakers on the way to Walther. If I'm right—if the Jansci is their next target—we may get a chance to see if we've really found the answer."

Damana glanced pointedly at Cardones, as if to remind his captain that the Jansci and her high-tech cargo were classified information from mere regular Navy types. "Except that they've never hit a whole convoy before," he pointed out. "Individual ships only. Certainly never one with a military escort."

"And now we know why," Sandler agreed. "But remember that they've been building this whole thing up for several months. They'll know we've been watching for a pattern; if the Jansci is their main target, they'll make sure that's the attack where they break that pattern. It's a perfect way to throw us off-balance."

"I don't know, Skipper," Hauptman said doubtfully. "Sounds too complicated for a Peep operation."

"I agree," Sandler said. "But I don't think the Peeps are working on their own on this one. I think they've linked up with someone else who's plotted out the actual strategy."

"Who?" Cardones asked.

Sandler shrugged. "Sollies would be my first guess. Or maybe the Andies. Someone who has the technical expertise to come up with this gravitic heterodyne in the first place."

"And then foist it off on the Peeps?" Hauptman asked doubtfully. "Knowing full well it's only a matter of time before we figure out how to stop it?"

"Maybe they figure it's a chance to stock up on Manticoran merchandise until that happens," Sandler said. "Or maybe whoever owns the hardware is running a con game of his own on the Peeps."

"That's a kick of an idea," Damana said. "They'd sure be ripe for it, too, especially after Basilisk."

"Just be thankful he didn't dangle it in front of us," Hauptman said dryly. "I bet BuWeaps would be just as interested in this thing as the Peeps are."

"Don't laugh," Sandler warned. "The way these top-secret operations get compartmentalized, someone in Hemphill's office could very well have the sales brochure sitting on his desk right now."

An image flashed through Cardones's mind: Captain Harrington's expression as she was told she and Fearless would be given yet another new weapon to test out. The mental picture was accompanied by an equally brief surge of pity for whoever wound up delivering that message to her.

"Regardless, the sooner we nail this one shut, the better," Sandler went on. "Jack, get us on our way to Quarre. Jessica, pull up the stats on the Dorado and Nightingale and their crews. As soon as any of the techs wakes up, you'll put your heads together and figure out which one would be better for this test."

She looked at Cardones as she gathered up the data chips Pampas had left behind. "And while you do that, Rafe and I are going to go over this analysis with a fine-edge beam splitter. If there's anything Georgio's missed, I want to find it."

"Fearless to all convoy ships," Honor called over the ship-to-ship. "We're ready to leave orbit. Bring your wedges up and move into your positions."

She motioned to Metzinger, and the com officer closed the circuit. "How are they doing, Andy?" she asked.

"Looks good," Venizelos said, peering at his displays. "Dorado in particular seems really eager to take point."

"McLeod's ex-Navy," Honor told him, picking out the big merchantman on her own displays. "Warn him not to get too far ahead of the pack."

"Right," Venizelos said with a grin. Ex-Navy types, they both knew, sometimes forgot that the ship they were now commanding had about as much fighting power as a new-born treekitten. "You heard the Skipper, Joyce. Put a leash on him."

"Dorado acknowledging," Captain McLeod growled, cutting off the com with the heel of his hand. "You heard the Fearless, Lieutenant. Pull us back a few gees."

Hauptman, at the helm, glanced around at Sandler. "Go ahead," the real master of the Dorado confirmed for her, and it seemed to Cardones that McLeod's thin, dyspeptic face went a little thinner. It was bad enough, he reflected, to have had your ship commandeered by a bunch of hotshot ONI types barely twelve hours before departure.

But to have it commandeered by lunatics who had calmly announced their intention of ripping up and rearranging its guts in flight was even worse. The average merchie captain would probably have gone into hysterics at the very thought, or else fled to his cabin and the nearest available bottle. McLeod, former first officer of one of Her Majesty's destroyers, was made of tougher stuff.

Maybe he'd go find that bottle when he learned exactly what it was they were planning to rip up.

Sandler waited until the convoy was in hyper-space before turning Pampas, Swofford, and Jackson loose on the nodes. McLeod, to Cardones's mild surprise and quiet admiration, not only didn't come unglued, but even insisted on squeezing his way into the impeller room, dangerous high voltages and all, to watch them work.

Working on a ship's impeller nodes in flight was roughly equivalent to rebuilding a ground car engine while running a steeplechase. Sandler readily admitted she couldn't remember another case of anyone doing such a thing, but also pointed out that that alone didn't mean anything. Besides, as she reminded Captain McLeod roughly twice a day, surgeons routinely worked on living, pumping hearts without any trouble.

On the other hand, none of their techs were exactly open-torso surgeons. Still, as the days progressed and the new circuit breakers gradually began to appear at the critical junction points, McLeod's permanent expression of impending doom started to ease a little. He began to let the techs work without hovering over their shoulders, spending more time in the wardroom with his crew and any of the ONI team who happened to be off duty, sometimes regaling them with stories of his days in the Navy.

And since Cardones had little to do with either the refit or the day-to-day operation of the ship, he tended to be one of the more regular participants at McLeod's oral history lessons. It was all highly entertaining, and he suspected that at least some of it was actually true.

But mostly, he thought about the Fearless.

Sandler hadn't told him that his own ship would be running escort for their convoy. Maybe she hadn't known it herself. But it added just one more layer of frustration and dread to the voyage. Frustration, because so many of Cardones's friends were within easy com range and yet he couldn't even tell them he was here. He was on a secret mission, and Sandler had forbidden any contact, and that was that.