Black Prince's Fighter Direction Centre was usually busy, even when there was nothing much going on. There were always situations to be monitored, exercises to be run, ground services to be coordinated. Initially a cavernous, empty space, it had long since been modified - a web of internal bracing, then deck plates laid over them, converting the open pit and tiers of wall galleries into three separate decks.

The main tactical tank was still in place on the original lower deck, with the controllers' subchambers for the four squadrons of the fighter wing around it, but the next deck up was operational planning, surface action support, and the control pens for the bomb wing, and the top deck maintenance and status, and control for the transports and multirole wing.

In the operational planning bay, Air Commodore Olleyri and his control team were doing their own post-exercise analysis.

'Countermoves. What do you do about an enemy fighter force that's turtled in a planet of your own system? How do you deal with the sort of threat we presented there? Ideas?' Olleyri asked; most of the senior controllers and the squadron and wing leaders were gathered with him around the central display table.

'Ignore it,' Beta One said. 'As such. They stay in there and they're neutralised. They come out to fight, we pursue and intercept as normal. How close were you,' he asked Iota One, 'to running out of air?'

'It's not the air that's the problem. It's the fuel and ordnance. To get any real advantage from that situation, we have to move fast, which is the main reason the TIE lifesystem is crap,' Iota One said.

'The fuel is the limiting factor, the life system was designed down to that. Upgrading is trivial, but to get any really greater combat endurance, we need more fuel, which is vicious circle time again. Hit and run especially.'

'You're just jealous because you haven't got a hyperdrive,' Beta One said.

'It is more fuel efficient for those Alliance clunkers to short-jump than thrust a lot of the time - which means high relative velocity when we overrun them and strafe them to bits. Swings and roundabouts.'

'Waiting out TIEs might work, but think operational. We often won't have the luxury of time, due to political pressure. Rahandravell?' The boss turned to the newest, and temporary, addition to his team of controllers.

Franjia's hoverchair was bobbing up and down beside the main display table; she was out of her hospital bed, but they wouldn't let her get back into the cockpit yet. Worse, instead of letting her join and lead Epsilon in the battle, from a sim tank, Olleyri had ordered her to join him in the direction centre. He had made a joke of it, mocking her sim habit, but it was also an order.

'The hidden lair is less important than hidden eyes. Its recon assets the hidden force needs more than anything else, so whoever has jamming ascendancy has the edge. The attacking force can't time their lunges, can't reliably find weak points to strike,' she said.

'Blanket barrage jamming, in a friendly system, has several disadvantages. Traffic control, for one, and if civilian freighters are wandering around blind, deaf and dumb, that makes them easy targets,' Olleyri countered.

'So you- ahh. That ought to work. Spysats and probe droids around the planet, create a line of control, oh.'

'Turns into a meeting engagement on the fringes of the atmosphere, advantage defender. So you do it as a two-parter, fast flyby shootings by one team, take out the eyes, when the opposition move out to defend them the second team in closer orbit ambushes them - with luck piecemeal, if not?' He let her come up with the next piece of the puzzle.

'Fly an evasive holding action and take what you can while the second formation rejoins the fight. We-'

There was a buzz from the com terminal. Olleyri turned to it. 'CAG. What's the situation, bridge?'

'Incoming transport dangerously overdue.' It was Brenn, playing the part of the Captain's shadow as ever. 'We were supposed to rendezvous with a Modular Cruiser which was tasked to take the rebel prisoners off our hands before they could do anything, for instance attempt to escape.'

'Now it's passed from late to missing presumed lost, and you want us to sweep for it. Why would the rebs hit a prisoner transport on the way to the pickup, not the way back?' Olleyri wondered.

'No good reason, so it's almost certainly a bad one,' Brenn said, meaning that at best something improbable had happened, at worst something political. Olleyri nodded slightly to show he understood; Brenn continued

'Long range scan has nothing, don't even start looking at less than seventy-five light years out. You'll have backup so load for anti-fighter, we'll have course menus ready to download in twenty minutes.'

'Sir, can I-' Franjia began.

'No,' Olleyri said. 'They say another four days before you're fit. Assuming they're being overcautious as usual, count on another two days before I let you try to get killed again.'

'Aye, aye, Sir,' she said, disappointed, although it wasn't that unreasonable. 'This is going to be a squadron operation?'

'No, we'll be deploying every hyperdrive capable fighter we can muster, backed up by the corvettes. Pass the alert then fifteen minute break, everyone, get calories and stim up, this is going to be a long search or a short encounter battle.'

Lennart had taken his chief engineer's advice. The reports would take a little time to write up anyway; he could afford a hundred minutes for fencing practise, and if the command team were going to have to take an increasing share of running the ship, they may as well start now. Brenn had been left in charge of organising the recon sweep for the missing modular cruiser, for a start.

Once - back when he was a junior officer - he had carried a datapad with him everywhere, constantly scribbling down notes, trivia, facts and events, trying to get his head around what was happening. Now, although he did his best to hoover up any information that crossed his path, he tried to keep it all in his head. Partly to keep his brain fit, partly so that he could be busy while managing to look cool, calm and collected.

He supposed that the Force had been helping him with that too, and cursed it for it - then realised what he was doing. That was one of their recruitment techniques, wasn't it? The Force flows through all things, influences and affects everything you do. You aren't the person you thought you were anyway - so give in and become one with the Force.

Balls to that, Lennart thought. The main question is, to what extent were the Jedi honest practitioners, and to what extent a self- erpetuating cult? To what extent was it necessary to follow their code to safely and effectively wield the Force, and to what extent was it a matter of what amounted to brainwashing?

This turbolift needs more 'turbo', he thought, grumpily. They give far too much time to think. He wondered how many defaulters, hauled into the Captain's presence for transgressions too severe for a divisional officer to deal with, had been saved by a lift by the time it gave them to come up with some explanation or answer?

Or how many had been condemned by being given too much time, enough to overdo it and trip up on their own lies.

Which does connect right back to the question. Their relationship to the Force had been a kind of institutionalised schizophrenia, as he saw it; on one hand so terrified of falling to the dark side that they ruled much of what the Force was capable of to be off limits, on the other hand virtually abolishing their own personalities to enslave themselves to it.

Or fear, he realised. If Gethrim was right, and looking at the short list he had put together he seemed to be, the Force was a thing of feelings and emotions, needs and drives above all else; exactly what the Jedi forbade themselves. So the traditional way was out - even before taking Order 66 into account.

Or possibly sublimated their feelings by only allowing themselves to experience them through the Force. If the modern - well, immediate prewar - Jedi Order was a decayed remnant of its former self, corrupted into near uselessness by a small green fool who couldn't distinguish the means from the end, then what had it originally been? Had it always been without a mandate to help people? For some professions - the strongest example he could think of was from the medical side - simply doing their jobs well would ensure that good things happened to people, and any emotional involvement would represent a loss of ability to do the job. So relentless perfectionism was the only permissible, and in the last analysis only necessary, form of compassion.

How could you have the Force, be literally one in a trillion at the most generous estimate, and not try to be either a hero or a villain? There must have been a mandate. Couldn't not have been.

So the 'no attachments' rule made a kind of sense after all, except that somehow the original purpose had got lost along the way, the rule itself had become the objective. The Jedi order had reduced itself to accepting only the young and the impressionable, and dedicated itself to the waste and disuse of its power.

What were the traditional branches of the order - consular, guardian, sentinel? If there ever had been such a thing as a Jedi Knight-Errant, they were more than a thousand years extinct.

The lift doors hissed open on the office bay of Main Machinery-2. As per standing orders, no-one who was actually busy bothered to stand up and salute. They acknowledged him, of course, but not the full leap to feet, click heels and dislocate elbow ritual.

For a moment, he started to reach for his sabre. How dare they? How did these insignificant worms, these nobodies who only breathed by his will, fail to grovel in his presence? He should- He should smack himself upside the head, before he lost the plot entirely. He just stood there, reeling slightly from the bolt-from-the-blue flash of anger that had nearly possessed him.

'Skipper, you OK?' the watch officer asked.

'No, no, I don't think I am,' he said, dragging himself back to some kind of normality. He took a deep breath and started again.

'There are some strange things happening in my head, and I also have a rather urgent need to practise hitting people. Given both those facts, do you have such a thing as a sparring droid, expendable or at least rebuildable?'

Never mind the grapevine, he thought, I've just dropped a bloody melon. That'll get around fast.

'Not in one piece, I don't think, Sir. Ten minutes?'

Ah, Lennart thought. The dark side has enough brains to find a natural point of weakness. On some near surface, automatic-formal level, I do expect to be honoured and obeyed.

'If you could find a live opponent, someone good enough that I'm unlikely to be able to hurt him even if I do lose the plot?' he asked.

'Sir.' The watch officer contained his surprise fairly well, sent one of the leading spacemen off to look.

As the captain of an Imperator-class destroyer, I must rank high on any scale of authoritarianism, he thought. And yet I've used the contradictions in the regulations - which are not nearly as large or as many as I usually make them out to be - to throw half of them away and rewrite the other half to suit.

My ship looks like a wreck, my crew are half crazy already; and somehow they still jump when I tell them to. So, this illusion of freedom thing, who's fooling who? Between training, background, being on the receiving end of propaganda, they know how ruthless the Empire can be, probably better than I do. So what makes more sense - that I have managed to create some kind of microcosm, or that a man from a planet notorious for spawning chancers, rulebreakers, oddballs and maniacs is kidding himself?

Are their collective forty-six thousand minds more intelligent than my one? For some things, maybe. For speedy and decisive action in a crisis, no, which is why a ship has to have a captain and he has to be an autocrat. For social judgement, yes, many vague takes may be better than one sharp. Even disregarding the natural effect of perspective, as between giver and receiver of orders and punishment, obviously I am more of a bastard than I like to admit.

So treat this as a problem. What are the potential outcomes, and what are the tools to hand? Is unstinting self-knowledge the key? Kriff, I hope not, considering I've just put off getting a midichlorian count for twenty years.

Self-deception might be more to the point, considering how much of the Force seemed to be based on it. No, he decided. I am going to treat this as if it was a behaviour-altering disease, move slowly, think very carefully, examine every action to see whether it is a product of the affliction. Which is actually the strongest argument anyone's come up with for embracing the Force yet- the time involved in fighting it.

'Sir? This way,' the watch officer said. Lennart followed him.

As Captain, the only part of the ship off limits to him was the imperial suite. Everywhere else he could go as he pleased; having to be invited to join the wardroom was convention and tradition, not law.

That didn't mean he had. Main Machinery-1 he was reasonably familiar with, but that was the clean bright and shiny end: central control complexes, offices, planning and refresher training. Main Machinery-2 was a warren of workshops and laboratories and storerooms, folded away like the intestines of the ship. Lennart suspected they moved the bulkheads around from time to time anyway, just to stay in practise.

The training hall was almost empty; between routine maintenance, the axial defence turrets, and the major repair job in progress on the Comarre Meridian, most of Black Prince's engineers had no time and energy spare to keep up their practise. Disused machine tools and pieces of tools along one long bulkhead, including the casing of a second-hand molecular furnace that Mirannon swore was no longer radioactive, storage bins along the other.

There were four men there, obviously waiting for him; two leading hands, a petty officer and a reactor charge chief, Vilberksohn.

'Morning, Charge chief,' Lennart said, addressing the senior rank as per protocol.

'Morning, Captain,' Vilberksohn said, trying not to sound bleary. 'You have a sudden need to hit people, Sir?' At five in the kriffing AM, he didn't quite say.

'That too, Charge chief.' He brought out the lightsabre, thought about it. Shoved it back in his pocket. 'The closest you have would probably be a welding torch. I want to try that.'

Five torches were retrieved from one of the storage bins, Lennart was handed one of them. 'Ever used one of these before, Sir?'

'No, not in anger anyway.'

They looked at each other, thinking "it's true; the old man's finally flipped." Lennart caught them doing it; they snapped back to eyes-front. He couldn't really blame them.

'Shall we start with the basics?' the Charge Chief said, not quite entirely concealing his scepticism.

'May as well, but the accelerated version, you hear? We have just under ten days, now, before this might matter.'

They thought about that and leaped to a correct conclusion. 'Then, Sir, the only move you really need to know is how to trap his blade, and then shoot him with the blaster you should have in your other hand,' Vilberksohn said.

'That might be just a little too basic,' Lennart said. Never mind the fact that he might be expecting it.

'Don't get me wrong, Captain, the biomechanics of this are fascinating, and there's more than a human lifespan's worth of information on sword and pseudo-sword fighting. It's a great hobby, but there are easier ways of killing somebody.'

'I know you're trying to help, Vilberksohn, but the politics of the situation mean this is the way it has to be. No shortcuts.'

'Aye, aye, Sir,' Vilberksohn said, words correct, tone deeply sceptical. He activated the blades, said, 'Exercise setting.'

'These are non-standard, then?' Lennart asked.

'Sir, as a tool, you're looking for precise control response, focused on the task, not time critical; for a weapon you're looking at a totally different set of requirements. You cannot afford to need to control the thing precisely in a fight. The blob at the back, flip it open.'

The 'blob' was a round, oversized pommel; Lennart unfolded it, found a keypad, two thumb sticks, four sliders, two discs.

'Now seal it up again, Sir, because you don't need to worry about any of that. As a weapon, we add biometrics and presets so you can reliably voice control the thing.'

On exercise, the blades looked smaller and brighter than they had at first; Lennart waved his through the air to get the feel of it.

'Sir, exactly how much of this have you done?'

'Five or six training sessions with Commander Mirannon, I have a hazy, drunken memory of a dawn duel with a minor offshoot of the House of Tagge, and a boarding action during Second Coruscant. Most of that is a blur, too. I seem to remember jumping on a Destroyer Droid's back and smashing its head in with a vibro-axe…the after action report said it happened, so it must be true.'

There were other reasons why Lennart's memories of that day were fuzzy, but they were none of his business.

'So you have spilt oil in anger, then,' The Charge chief said.

'DC-15Se in the other hand, too, at least to begin with. You were saying about the basics?'

The charge chief went through the standard cuts, first set direct strikes at the centre of mass, then sweeping cuts, then thrusts, blade simply a continuous arc, a blur.

'I was being sarcastic, Sir,' he said, not bothering to stop. 'Like a true lightsabre, the blade is effectively weightless; all the mass is in the hilt. No momentum, it moves as fast as the hand and eye behind it can move. The reason the lightsabre is- was- the signature Jedi weapon is that, in anyone else's hands, the fight's over in half a second. They're all offence.
'When they meet, it's down to the strength of the wielder- but you need strength to parry, not to attack. If you can get your opponent to make a major movement in response to a small movement, over-react and leave himself open, you can gut him with a twitch of the wrist. Sweeping parries and the like are big, wide, slower movements - attack is faster. The only real defence is to get them before they get you.'

Lenart moved his welding torch through the standard moves, getting a few of them wrong, sloppy, working up to speed. He concentrated on exactly how it felt, trying to feel if the Force was at all involved.

'Lightly, Sir, lightly, the blade does all the work, keep it fluid. Feel up to trying a little free fight?'

'Depends on how likely I am to be able to walk away from it,' Lennart said, looking at the blade. 'Tell me more about this exercise setting.'

'Basically, Sir, there's barely enough plasma to pressurise the containment field, and that's set for fuzzy edge. It'll scorch, sting and deliver momentum, but it won't cut and cauterise.'

'So, rather like being beaten with a red-hot blunt stick,' Lennart said.

'Unscientifically put but essentially true, Sir. We find that people take learning more seriously when there's something at stake,' the charge chief said, quoting his captain.

'I am thinking of finally having the ship repainted,' Lennart said, apparently off hand.

'Sir,' Vilberksohn said, formally, snapping his cutting torch to the guard position.

They began; at first circling warily, Lennart trying to keep his blade between his body and the charge chief's, thinking defensively in as far as he had any time to think at all. Pure stimulus and reflex; at most snatched tenths of seconds to form words, to consciously observe - first touch was a blade dropping on to his shoulder, he smashed it aside and thought kriff, wrong, as it flickered back, tipped up and dropped again as he was wildly out of position - Lennart crouched back, out of most of it, but it stung.

He shook his head as if to clear it, said, 'I see what you mean, Charge Chief. How much are you holding back?'

'Sir, if I just went straight for you, I'd win maybe ninety percent of the time - that's an estimate. You wouldn't learn anything. Try again.'

Lennart did; striking for the tip of the charge chief's blade, it dipped out of the way, so Lennart jerked back out of the way of the return stroke that somehow hovered in front of his eyes, looped around twisting out of the way of a hasty counterstroke, touched him under the lowest left rib. Lennart reeled back, almost taking his own nose off with the torch, but it wasn't all impact; most of it was sudden reaction.

He stepped back and brought the blade up to guard position then lashed out in a rolling disarm. Vilberksohn managed to avoid losing his blade, continued the twist to bring it back to guard. Lennart smashed it the other way, got inside and was about to crash the edge of his blade against the Charge Chief's throat when he realised what he was doing.

So that was how it's supposed to work, he thought briefly, before Vilberksohn, acting on pure reflex, brought his blade in and up and hit Captain Lennart across the spine. He crumpled, ended up crouching on the ground supporting himself with one arm.

'Ahhh. I am clearly not looking hard enough at you people; if you can manage to pound each other like this and still turn up fit for duty next day, you obviously don't have enough to do,' he said, refusing to be angry. That flash of speed, where he had seemed to be looking out from slightly behind his own eyeballs, as if he had been plucked out of the universe and put down at a slightly skewed angle - the Force. The dark side, to be more specific. It would have done real damage if he hadn't pulled it short just in time.

'Sir, if it isn't bleeding out and hasn't fallen off, it doesn't count. Ready?'

No, would be the honest answer. He wanted to go and sit and think about what that felt like, and what it meant. The Force didn't have a mind of its own, wasn't really the product of mind, just of life - but it could exploit his. It would hit him at what he thought were his own weak points, and it was thirty years too late to start trying to trick it.

Time to see if he could hold it back.

'Yes.' Lennart pulled himself back to his feet, raised the cutting torch to try again. This time, another drop on to the shoulder, at first he tried to sweep it aside, then thought that if he pushed the charge chief's blade away he would simply duck round and in. He stepped back and tried to push the chief's blade up in the air with an extended down-and-up sweeping parry. It worked solely because Vilberksohn couldn't understand what he was trying to do and pulled back.

Lennart tried the same move himself to see how the charge chief handled it; the countermove was sidestep and riposte, twisting in and catching his captain's left arm.

'This is getting monotonous,' Lennart said, shaking himself out and getting ready to try again.

'Captain, you're trying too hard. Maybe you're just not yet ready for a live target.'

'So convince me,' Lennart said, returning to guard position, and deliberately trying to reach out for the passive, herbivore side of the Force, to form that quasi-religious connection to all things the stories spoke of. To his considerable surprise, it worked; to his very great relief, it was a genuinely unfamiliar sensation, somewhere between lucid dreaming and fever-induced out of body detachment. He was still marvelling at it when the charge chief's blade hit him in the gut.

'Never try that. Never try to wait your opponent into doing something stupid, Sir,' Vilberksohn said, as Lennart pulled himself together.

'It's been a long time since I've lost, really lost, at anything. I suppose it's probably good for my spiritual growth or something, but I could live without it. Let's try that again.'

'Captain, Sir, under certain circumstances I think most Imperial spacemen would relish the chance to beat the shit out of their commanding officer, but…maybe you should go back to basics and start with some simple exercises.'

'How long have you been doing this?' Lennart asked him.

'Ten years, Sir. Since before we were famous.'

'I have ten days before this is going to matter. It's the deep end or nothing. Let's-'

'Captain?' it was the duty watch officer, at the entrance to the hall. 'Urgent from the bridge. They think they've found her but the circumstances don't make sense. They want your presence.'

'Saved,' Lennart admitted, clicking off the blade.

In the lift on the way back up to the bridge he asked himself, so what have I learned?

Apart from that getting hit is bad. That whatever natural talent with a lightsabre I have it is going to take a lot of effort, and probably pain, to bring out. That some of my engineers do not have nearly enough to do to keep them out of trouble.

No point punishing him. It was mostly my fault, anyway.

Mainly that if feelings are anything to go by, and in this they are, then he had not been making much use of the Force to date. That surge of disembodied hyperclarity, that was new. Genuinely unfamiliar apart from the odd student recreational drug experience, which he had never been much for anyway.

And that makes me much happier to realise that my record is basically clean, that I have got this far without needing to call on the Force in any but the most preconscious, inexplicit way, than it does to know that I can when I need to, he thought.

The lift doors opened, he walked - limping slightly - through the entry chamber and on to the bridge.

'Good morning, Captain. You'd think that with thirty-seven thousand people, we'd be able to work shifts,' Brenn said, yawning slightly. 'Elements of Gamma and Epsilon are in contact; target's apparently dropped out of hyperspace to recompute a course, coasting under hotel load.'

'Everyone else has the privileges of working shifts; department heads are permanently on call. What made you decide that she's a target rather than a contact?'

'Positioning,' Brenn said, called up the sector map. 'From there, to here, via way-over-yonder? No mechanical malfunction that would leave them in as good a shape as the fighters are reporting could cause that. A navigational screwup should leave them falling over themselves to call for help or at least make excuses rather than going 'umm, who me?' It's possible that the captain is either an idiot or a lunatic, but - no, I don't like it.'

'Com/scan, patch me in. Aerospace group, multirole wing, Gamma One.' The link beeped when it was established, then 'Jandras? Black Prince Actual. Have you made any attempt to contact the modular cruiser?'

Aron, riding his still unfamiliar Hunter, was a light second away on the cruiser's port beam, beyond accurate gun but well within sensor range, lead flight with him, the three of Epsilon lead less Franjia ten thousand kilometres astern and to port.

'IFF squirt, Captain. Verifies as Imperial at low confidence. No voice or data, either way.'

'How does it smell to you?' Lennart asked.

'Sour, Captain. Do you want us to go in for a close inspection?' Aron asked. According to the Hunter's files, modular cruisers carried a solidly anti-ship armament, bizarrely ineffectual point defence but a decent spread of medium turbolasers, intended to keep off the likes of heavy corvettes and light frigates. Relatively easy for a fighter to approach.

'Negative, Gamma One, what I may need you for is wild weasel. Plan to make attack runs on her guns and EW emitters. Com,' he said to his com/scan team, who cut Aron out of the part he didn't need to know, 'get me the customs corvettes.'

'Aye, Sir - wait one, connecting now.'

A holoimage appeared on the main terminal; head and shoulders of a woman in severe-cut customs service uniform. 'SFA(I) Rontaine, Captain. What is it you need from us?' Dark, very close-cropped hair, sharp-nosed, hard face - relatively young, but dressed and acted older, Lennart thought. Probably a nightmare to work for.

'Senior Field Agent (Interdiction)? Which of your clutch of corvettes has the best inspection sensor fit?' Lennart asked her.

'All six have the same sensor suite, all of them regularly achieve 'excellent' or better efficiency ratings,' she said, aggressive-defensive. Surprisingly so; how dare you criticise, was the subtext.

'And all of them could be taken over and run by Starfleet crews, if you keep trying to mess me about. Whatever grudge you have, live with it. Answer the question,' Lennart said, sharply.

'There's no need to be like that,' Rontaine said, surprised.

'Really? If I give you a task, are you going to do it, or am I going to have to micromanage you every step of the way?'

There was a long pause. 'Captain, we seem to have got off to a bad start. What is the mission?'

'Essentially a customs job. Our stray modular cruiser has finally arrived - sufficiently late to make me suspicious. It's carrying an interrogation module, with standard prison security shields and baffles. I want to see what's inside them.'

It was interesting, watching Rontaine's face change: from a poor imitation of proper subordination, to shock, to determination not to be found wanting - over a thick bottom layer of 'oh kriff' - to thinking about the mission in hand.

'Acknowledged,' she said, not wanting to provoke further a superior who had already taken one bite out of her hide. 'Proceeding to contact, CN27AJ-'

'Do you really think that's all there is to it?' Lennart interrupted her. 'I threw you a trick question and you fumbled it. The ship you want to send on this job is the one with the best track record of not being shot. Instead, you let some old grudge or snit dominate your thinking to the point where you are now about to rush off to go rancor baiting without proper coordination or preparation. Talk me through how you're going to do this.'

'Sir, I reacted poorly, and now I want to make up for that by going and getting the job done.' From his expression she realised she wasn't getting off the hook. 'Approach from 50deg off the bow on a crossing course close to, match velocities for inspection.'

'With?' Lennart added.

'Shields up, weapons manned and jammers on standby. All of this is standard procedure in the customs service as much as it is in the navy,' she said. 'Approaching a suspicious contact.' She was trying not to sound more than mildly irritated.

'There are fighter elements ready to cover you. The rest of the search units will be converging on the contact to form a cordon. Report your findings as you make them. Navigation downloading now, Black Prince Actual out.'

He dropped the link, turned to his bridge crew, found com/scan had already located and displayed Rontaine's personnel file. He started reading through it; the single most important fact leapt out at him. Eris Rontaine was a graduate of the sector's naval academy - eighty-fifth in a class of twenty-five hundred. On graduation, she had not taken - no, he noticed, not been offered a commission in the Starfleet. For someone that high up the class rankings, to be given nothing - without even accumulated demerits as an excuse - was almost unheard of. Possibly it was no more than misogyny, possibly a personal grudge, either way it would have been an embittering experience.

Denied that, she had found another path, and hacked her way up the ladder, on proficiency and professionalism; her six ship division had an outstanding record - for this sector, anyway - but if she enjoyed her job, she hid it well.

She would have looked up her commanding officer, and found from the less heavily classified portions of his own service record that he had been an instructor for four years himself. That would bias her against him to begin with, as part of the system that had drawn her in, led her on and spat her out unwanted.

Everything looks so neat when it's just metal and energy and mathematics, Lennart thought. Maybe that's part of why the Confederation were able to keep fighting so long - mechanical crews cutting down on the problems of command, no egos to soothe, no personal crises to draw down efficiency. Huge numbers of armed droids helped as well, of course. And especially at this precise point, by far the largest of those problems is my own, so I'm in no position to get bitchy, he added to himself.

The customs corvettes were attached to the sweeper line, their high thrust and heavy antifighter weaponry should prove useful to cover and support long-range TIE patrols, but they were very lightly built for confronting warships. They had power and load capacity to spare, but it was unlikely there would be time and personnel available to make any meaningful refit.

He would have to see what could be done for, or if necessary to, Rontaine. She would be difficult to work with, especially for an ex-free trader and freewheeler like Konstantin Vehrec. Probably wasn't her own best friend in that regard.

Still, she almost certainly knew things that could be useful for him to find out. Later, assuming she survived.

'Alert Tarazed Meridian, she's first stage intervention along with the rest of recon line B if this goes badly wrong,' Lennart ordered.

There was a beep from his terminal. Private message; Aleph-3. He decided to deal with it now. 'Your timing's abysmal, we have a situation here. What is it?'

'I have just found out that you have been experimenting at fencing practise - and more besides, if the account I got was accurate.' She sounded annoyed with him.

'Yes, I was. I'm glad you weren't there; it was rather embarrassing. I found out, if that's the term, that actual ability is the coefficient of natural talent and effort invested.'

'Which is why you need an expert there to guide you and push you on,' she said.

'I had one; that was the problem,' Lennart said, not entirely joking.

'And the Force? You called upon it, reached out for it, didn't you?' she said, failing to hide her eagerness.

'Yes, both sides. I called on the ends of the spectrum, reached out to touch them and feel them, heft them and see how they sat in my head, and I don't quite see what all the fuss is about. Under the influence of the light side I found it difficult to distinguish reality from illusion; the dark side simply made it difficult to distinguish friend from foe.'

'Thus clearly proving the superiority of the Dark Side, especially when dealing with politicians,' Aleph-3 bounced back at him.

'The last thing you want, at this precise point, is for me to become power-crazed and attempt to assert my alpha-male personal superiority over my friends, allies and colleagues,' Lennart said, rubbing the bruise on his shoulder.

It was fascinating, to listen to the slightly panicked silence on the com as she tried to think of what she could get away with saying. She should be experiencing some cognitive dissonance about now, he thought. A dozen possibilities danced through her head, ranging from 'Remember I'm first in line when you're stocking your harem' to the copout 'if that be the will of the Force'. She resorted to 'So who else do you think can fill the role? Do you want to be a beta? You have to use the gift you've been given.'

'My gift for finding trouble, or letting trouble find me, has got nothing to do with the Force, and if you'll excuse me,' Lennart said, 'I can hear it calling my name.'

Obdurate's captain's day cabin was a lot smaller than that of a fleet destroyer; it really was a cubbyhole, sandwiched between the base mounts for the ship's sensor domes just aft of the main bridge. It contained a bed, a fresher, and a video wall, and at the moment it contained Karl-Anton Raesene and the pair of ISB agents who had been making his life miserable for the last week.

'I don't understand why you're being so difficult about this,' the senior man said to him. 'You know what we need from you.'

'It was an exercise,' Raesene said, with the sinking feeling that he was speaking an entirely different language whose words were coincidentally the same.

'A drill. It is still duty, is it not? It is still worthy of security oversight, isn't it?' the younger agent said. He had been laying on the menace fairly thickly, fingering the butt of his gun and glaring at people wherever he went.

The crew are afraid of him, Raesene thought. Afraid of the system that he represents, afraid of what he can arrange to have done to them. So afraid that some of them would actively help him do it. They won't stand up to them; I'm on my own.
Lennart's crew would cheerfully help him murder them, in a similar situation; but who, on board, could I count on to help me do that?

'Is it not, Lieutenant-Commander Raesene?' the senior agent asked.

'It is a special case that doesn't fully apply,' Raesene said, hoping that at some point they would actually start listening.

'How can that be? A violation of doctrine can be nothing other than a violation of doctrine.'

'The navy allows things to happen on exercise which are written up and learned from, but it's not like it is in the ISB or the Army,' Raesene tried to explain.

'I don't understand,' the senior agent said. 'What do you mean?' The junior agent started to say something, the senior agent shushed him. 'Explain, in your own time.'

With the uneasy sense that he was signing his own death warrant, Raesene tried. 'The Starfleet's always had more processing power available to it than the army or the security services. So have Intelligence. That makes it-' he didn't want to risk saying "us"- 'relatively tolerant of change and experiment.'

'How does that translate to being allowed to misbehave on manoeuvres?' the senior agent asked.

'We weren't on manoeuvres; we were in simulation. Half the point of exercises like that is to push the limits of doctrine - all right, underscore why it's usually a better idea.'

'Computer space isn't real? Good luck selling that one to a court,' the junior agent snorted.

'The Starfleet allows simulation exercises to be used as a forum for making mistakes. It's easier and cheaper to get wild ideas out of the system by letting them burn themselves out in virtual space than to risk billion-ton, trillion-credit ships on exercise, or stars forbid actual combat,' Raesene said. It was an exaggeration, but not by much. With twenty-five thousand years of space combat experience to draw on, it was impossible to remember everything, and equally difficult to teach. A lot of advanced tactical training consisted of throwing the candidates into a sim tank and seeing what happened.

'So violations of doctrine on exercise just…don't count?' the younger agent said, baffled. 'That's contrary to Correct Thought.'

'Not according to the Starfleet, it isn't, and that comes from a far higher level than you or me,' Raesene said. 'Captain Lennart could do everything but take a hard copy of the Fleet Instructions, tear it up and set fire to the pieces then piss on the ash, and get away with it - on simulation.'

'Then how do we go about providing him with a copy and a full bladder? I find it difficult to believe that nothing he does can be used against him,' the senior agent said.

'Hold on a moment, here,' Raesene objected. 'I agreed to help you uncover evidence against a renegade; manufacturing it was not in the game plan.'

The senior agent glared at the junior agent, who opened his mouth and shut it again; it didn't matter. What had nearly been said still hung like poison gas in the air.

'Are you beginning to doubt your mission? You've heard the man; you know what manner of maniac you're dealing with. He is unstable, he is unreliable, and regardless of whatever his real achievements are there is no guarantee we will not find him ranged against us tomorrow,' the senior agent said, trying to be charming.

Interesting line in pronouns you have there, Raesene thought. It wasn't about truth any more, or even about flagrant bad examples being set by senior officers who ought to know better; it was about finding some reason, any sufficient excuse, to bring him down.

'I realise that,' Raesene said, knowing he was making a lousy job of acting it. It had been a straightforward choice between moving onward and upward and going nowhere. He had been bribed, plain and simple. Why did they have to complicate it with ideology, simple corruption wasn't enough for them? If it had been a case of "you or me", he would have dropped a senior officer in it in a heartbeat; that was as much navy life as the uniforms and the food. The rebels were the opposition, and your own colleagues were the enemy. That much was business as usual, part of the job. The best clawed their way to the top, and while the connection between political in-fighting and naval war-fighting was weak, it was there; the determined and the devious succeeded in either case.

'The Starfleet, even the sector fleet, would never stand for the security services prosecuting one of their own on a breach of tactical doctrine. Even if it was a legitimate charge, you couldn't bring it without making him so many friends, or at least allies of convenience, in the process that you wouldn't have a hope of making it stick.' And it would also ruin whoever they tried to use as a lever in the process, something of more than a little concern to him.

'Shame,' the senior agent said, almost wistfully. 'I would have liked to meet him, and break him, on his own home ground. If that is not possible then we need another line of attack. Are disciplinary problems too internal to the Starfleet also, or would they provide a useful avenue of approach?'

'I have been hearing squadron scuttlebutt, about things on board that ship. Black Prince's domestic economy is…very strange,' Raesene understated. Most crews that leniently treated would have reacted to it as the softening of control that makes revolution possible and be in a state of anarchy if not mutiny within the month.

'Perhaps someone among his own officers would be prepared to give us what we need?' the junior agent said to the senior.

'Oh, I don't think that would be necessary, would it?' the senior agent said to Raesene. The message was simple; deliver.

'With his reputation, if he was an easy target someone would have indicted him already. The best kind of real evidence I'm in a position to get for you,' Raesene stressed, 'is how he exercises his command - whether he encourages disrespect of the Empire, or other un-Imperial behaviour. The fallout from this exercise should help, and I have a report to write up as part of that.'

'So how did it go?' Mirannon asked.

'I gave the skipper the bloody nose that you wanted me to, boss,' Vilberksohn shook his head. 'He does have real potential, and he could get to be very proficient at this, with practise.'

'Which he doesn't have. I've known him for, what, fifteen years now, ever since we were both on the staff of Tingel Approaches Command. If I didn't give a damn about him, I'd let him go and get killed.'

'So what we're doing is trying to convince him that he doesn't have a kitten's chance in a reactor core following the script, he can't afford to do this the way our VIP expects, and he needs to think of another solution?' Vilberksohn asked.

'Pretty much. Steer him in that direction, get him to realise that he can't do this all on his own,' Mirannon said.

'It just doesn't feel right, boss. I mean, yes, we're trying to do a good thing for him in the long run, but you're just not supposed to pound the snot out of command level officers. On any other ship I would have been crucified for that.'

'On Black Prince, being good at something, even something you're not supposed to, isn't a death sentence. Remember the graffiti outbreak?' Mirannon said, with an evil grin.

'How could I forget, Sir? Lieutenant Ranner's heart attack isn't the sort of thing that passes easily out of mind.'

The Graffiti War of '29 had been a bout of harmless fun, for the most part; it had begun as simple misbehaviour, but Lennart had decided to play with the situation. Some of them, he had decided, had artistic merit. Following a dead regulation grandfathered in from the Republic Starfleet about raising the cultural level of the crew - which he suspected had been copy-and-pasted from the penal code of the time anyway - he had decided to have a selection of pieces framed. In practise, this meant removing the surface that had been painted on and carting it off to the 'gallery' improvised out of the storage bays up in the bow, then replacing the surface.

It took about five seconds for the various branches of the crew to realise that there was no point fouling their own nest, that if you happened to, for instance, daub your symbolic-abstract masterwork over someone else's barrack room hatch and bulkhead, they had all the fun of cutting it loose and replacing it. So sneakiness became the order of the day; midnight painting raids, mysterious malfunctions to the ship's lighting system, spurious alerts, stealth artistry - and all the fun of carving pieces out of walls to cart them off in the morning. Not easy when it happened to be the skin of a pressure vessel, or a major armoured bulkhead.

It was a lot longer before they realised that it was, to all intents and purposes, a team and morale building exercise combined with practical training in damage control.

The only people who were safe were the legion; after one of their AT-ATs got painted dayglo pink with scarlet go faster stripes, they identified the perpetrators and exacted revenge.

A fifty-strong crew room, an entire maintenance section, found their barracks had been redecorated as a rainforest. Everything had been painted, dyed, coated, or inked multiple shades of green - including all fifty of the occupants. While they slept, no warning, no-one noticed.

It had finally come to an end when someone, chief suspect being Mirannon himself, had taken an airbrush to the containment vessel of the main reactor. Whoever it was had painted a fairly good impression of the first nanosecond of a catastrophic breach; the watch officer, Lieutenant Ranner, had taken one look at it and keeled over.

Not because of any special realism, but mainly because of the potential difficulties of dismounting and framing a slice out of the reactor containment shell.

The medics had got to him in time, but that had been the end of it. Most of the pieces of the gallery had been holo'd and the bits recycled, and the graffiti war had been declared over.

'Well, there were no permanent casualties,' Mirannon said. 'The skipper turned a nasty disciplinary incident into a bit of fun and a learning experience; not many others would. Suppose he gets killed as a result of this; that would leave us with Mirhak-Ghulej in charge, officially, wouldn't it?'

'Oh kriff. Sir.'

'Traditionally it's not supposed to be engineering's job to care about what happens topside, but screw that. If we have to protect him from himself, that's the job at hand. If he's appointed you fencing instructor, then you're a part of that.'

'Thank you, Sir. I think.'

The customs corvette emerged from hyperspace a hundred thousand kilometres off the position of the modular cruiser; the rest of Gamma and Epsilon emerged and formated on their leaders, far astern.

'Gamma, Epsilon, with me; follow that corvette.' Aron ordered, urgently. They accelerated after the customs ship, conforming on him; Aron pushed the throttle to its limit, then relaxed it slightly. How would that look, two squadrons of fast fighter-bombers sharking in from a position the cruiser's guns didn't cover, behind an antifighter escort?

It would look like a direct attack...which might not be so bad a thing to fake. Might flush them out.

'CN27AJ19 "The Silent Bugler", this is 721-Ep, Gamma One,' Aron nearly forgot which squadron he belonged to, 'decelerate and await escort.'

He was probably senior to whoever was in charge over there; a light corvette, that was at best a senior lieutenant's command, more likely a lieutenant's. Equivalent, of course.

'Gamma One, you are out of position. Accelerate to join us,' a snappish woman's voice answered him.

'Bugler,' Aron snarled, 'this is a Starfighter Corps squadron leader telling you to kriffing well conform.' Damned customs.

'Gamma One, this is Flight Control.' Franjia's voice. The standard theory was that the voxsystems made everyone sound alike in order to reinforce the group, interchangeable ethic; Black Prince's director crews regarded that as a factor that potentially compromised security, and preferred to use identifiable, verifiable voices, that an expert system could recognise even if the pilot's ears couldn't.
'Be advised,' she continued, sounding slightly smug, 'that "The Silent Bugler" is the flotilla leader, under the command of a Senior Field Agent whose rank equivalent is O-4, and who has seniority.'

That's all I need, Aron thought.

'Gamma One, take up station on our bow, snap it up,' Rontaine said, calculating time and distance in her head - aiming for a k-k approach, thousand kilometres per second relative velocity at a thousand kilometres cpa.

'CN27AJ19,' Franjia instructed her, 'you are out of position, decelerate and await escort.'

'Thank you, Control,' Aron said. 'Query; are we trying to make this look like a strike? An antifighter light escort to clear away the defending fighters for a bomber approach run?'

'Negative, Gamma One, assume escort stations around "The Silent Bugler."'

Lennart looked at the map display again. 'Working hypotheses? One of three things, I think.'

'The captain of the modular cruiser's a fool, they blundered into the rebels on the way here and they went for it, or?' Brenn asked.

'Think what lunatics we would look if we assumed that ship was in rebel hands, boarded and captured her, and it turned out she was simply being late and stupid all along,' Lennart said. 'Reinforce sector group's case against us pretty effectively, wouldn't it?'

'How do you propose to find out which is which, Sir? Boarding would do it, but-'

'Ideally, either without fuss, or tailored to make them look like the incompetents of the piece. Bearing that in mind, our probe now should have an interesting effect, provided Rontaine understands her footwork well enough to dodge when they do start shooting. Perhaps we should have a heavier unit standing by to, hm, render assistance.'

'Obdurate?' Brenn suggested.

'And what are you going to say, when the court of inquiry asks you why that ship?' Lennart asked him, skipping straight over the intervening step - that Brenn had obviously picked up on his Captain's doubts about her.

'Good record, should be able to cope with a changing situation, large enough and enough engine and tractor power to render assistance,' Brenn said, after a moment's thought.

Lennart nodded. 'Dispatch her, give her a vector consistent drop point at one light second, and alert Tarazed Meridian and Recon line B as first response if it does drop in the pot. There's no indication of a heavy covering party so they should be sufficient, by the time any larger threat manifests we could be there ourselves.'

'Aye, aye, Sir.'

The TaggeCo Modular Cruiser class didn't really have a proper Imperial designation; 'Dromedaries', they were frequently referred to as, for their load carrying capability and their general orneriness. Most of that was a situational problem; as a powerful family with an independent resource base, even the Imperial state couldn't afford to be overly cavalier with them, and they rode that for all it was worth.

Most of the technology on board was copyrighted to the House of Tagge, requiring proprietary tools and licensed technicians to work with. Usually the only different thing about it was that it had been designed to only work properly with proprietary tools and licensed technicians. Most of the changes were awkward ranging to trivial; septagonal nuts and bolts, non-standard pipe diameters, five pronged plugs, female-to-female connectors with interface boards, nonsense like that - but it was easier to temporarily retrain than completely refit. For the system, not the spacers concerned.

They also had no proper names, being part of the logistics train of the sector they usually got alphanumeric designators and nicknames at best. QDX312F9 "Free Gravity For All" had bigger problems than grumbling techs and half a name. Two regiments of Rebel infantry onboard, for a start.

They were not particularly happy either. The operation had already gone spectacularly wrong; their going ahead with what remained of the plan was a stroke of extreme audacity, or idiocy, depending. The troop commander and the first lieutenant of the light carrier that had captured her were watching the Imperial approach develop.

'Well?' the rebel Colonel, a short, wide man with long dark hair and long frizzy beard, asked, 'Are they a threat?'

'Recon fighters. They themselves can do nothing to a ship this size; it's their friends we need to worry about. Looks like we need to start lying earlier than expected.'

'Damn that mercenary nerf-herder, anyway. I knew we should never have trusted him - hero or not, he isn't even a full signed and sworn member of the Alliance; he probably did a pirate's job of recon,' the colonel said.

'I don't think Solo's to blame. From her records, this ship's course track looks as if someone played nullball with the sector map; she blundered through where our information said she was going to pass on the way back.'

The colonel's spine went cold. 'What information?'

'We were acting on a tip-off from our agents within Sector group. Didn't you know?'

'Acting on information received, that led us into this clusterkriff- that doesn't disturb you?' the colonel said.

'If we can bluff our way past them, the mission goes on. No worse than it was going to be anyway.' He nodded to the comtech - using a 'borrowed' Imperial uniform for verisimilitude - to start the plan.

'Customs Craft, this is Dromedary QDX 312F9, you are on a collision course. What is your intention?'

'Dromedary,' Rontaine said, watching it's gun turrets on the image, 'you are well off course. Is your ship fully functional? We will pass close aboard and inspect you for damage sustained.'

No response; on board Free Gravity For All, an ISB officer was being hustled on to the bridge.

'There's a customs cutter out there. Convince them that everything is fine,' the colonel said bluntly.

'What, help you against the Empire? Betray them to the Alliance? Never.' The ISB officer blustered, but his skin was very pale.

'There are a lot of things you'll never do again, after we feed you slowly into one of your own disintegration booths. Cooperate and we release you and your survivors on a backwater outworld, decide not to and we take you and them apart, a molecule at a time. Simple choice.'

'Kriffing rebel scum. How do we - how can I trust you?'

'Because we are Rebel scum, not Imperial scum. If I was still Imperial I'd make all the false promises in the world then fry you up anyway,' the colonel told him. 'You're wasting time. Two seconds. Choose.'

No answer. 'Take him away. Power setting 3, slow broil, for ten minutes-'

'No! No, wait, I'll do it. Just promise it's an outworld with a breathable atmosphere?' the ISB man said.

'Connect him up. To the com circuit, not the kriffing disintegrator,' the colonel shouted at the guards who had misinterpreted and were about to drag their prisoner away.

'Corvette, this is Space Major Overgaard, acting commander.'

'Good name for a Space Major,' Aron said, irrelevantly. 'What does that translate to, anyway?'

'The Starfleet refusing to allow them to use the same rank table, I think,' Franjia told him. 'O-4. Unlikely but not unfeasible for a large auxiliary.' Not the listed commander, either.

'What, another one?' Himself, Rontaine and now this man. 'Why does it have to be based on integers anyway? It'd make more sense to use fractions. Why couldn't I be an O-4.268, for instance?'

'If you don't shut up and keep proper com discipline, I kriffing well will decimalise you, you mathematical illiterate,' Olleyri interrupted.

'Yes, Sir. Sorry Sir.'

'We suffered an, ah, technical malfunction. Power coupling ruptured, fragments of the casing - it was being inspected at the time. Astro-Warden Fertun was among the injured,' Overgaard lied. He didn't have to act too much about that part; the rebels had run Fertun through a drumhead court-martial and thrown him into one of the disintegration booths. He was awaiting execution now. It had not been a hollow threat, and Overgaard did not have to simulate sounding shocked and horrified.

Obdurate materialised out of hyperspace, square on the starboard beam of the Free Gravity For All; Raesene queried the situation, received a copy of the conversation so far. Both the agents were on the bridge as he replayed it; smiled when Aron's part came round, and noted his number.

'Do you know Fertun?' Raesene asked them.

'I had the privilege of vetting him once - we uncovered and defeated a Rebel attempt to compromise him. A very zealous officer.' Which was security service speak for a hanging judge.

'Can we take that ship, or at least withstand her?' the rebel colonel whispered to the first lieutenant, meaning Obdurate.

'Unlikely; she's two sizes larger than a dromedary's guns are designed to keep off. Bluff is still our best weapon.'

'Acknowledged, Dromedary. Do you have a position fix?' Rontaine asked.

'Yes, we had an, uhm, minor nav computer malfunction.' Long pause. 'A glitch in the self-mapping software, apparently the module turned out to be the wrong shape or some such explanation. It's all perfectly in order, we have it recalibrated, we're fine now.'

'Wait one, Dromedary, external inspection under way now,' Rontaine announced; Gamma and Epsilon had finally caught up and reached escort positions, flanks above and below the customs corvette. They were all looking closely at the target - Aron mainly at the gun mounts.

'Gamma One to Epsilon Squadron; do you-' he began, and then realised it was a leading question; he changed it to 'report on the precise thermal status of the Free Gravity For All's weapon systems.'

'Gamma One,' Yatrock - now Epsilon's senior flight leader - reported, 'I have residual heat in the after MTLs. They have definitely been charged recently, high confidence two have been fired.'

'Dromedary,' Rontaine challenged, 'do you-'

'Wait, Customs,' Raesene had a message tightbeamed to the corvette. 'Don't make it a challenge. Let them talk themselves into more trouble,' he said, trying not to think too hard about his own unwelcome guests.

'Free Gravity For All, we have signs of recent weapon activity. Are your systems fully safed?' Rontaine asked, not acknowledging yet another supercilious Starfleet officer.

'The power coupling that blew,' Overgaard replied, 'it was, ah, part of the bridge/computing mesh, it, ah, may have been the source of the surge that caused our malfunction. We found ourselves in an unfamiliar location, after an internal explosion - the after defence section went on alert, thought we were being ambushed. Even fired a couple of shots.'

'Was the responsible officer commended for his promptness?' Rontaine asked.

'Um…' Overgaard stalled. 'Ah, yes, Force Security Special Agent Colomban was noted for his quick thinking, but he also was given the bill for the fuel he burnt off with meaningless fire. He, ah, declared himself bankrupt and committed suicide with a fuel cell over the 1MC. We're all still a little traumatised by it,' Overgaard invented.

'Presumably Third Technician Lister is busy trying to bypass the navicomp now?' Raesene asked.

'What the kriff is that, some sort of recognition code?' the rebel colonel asked Overgaard, who shrugged. 'No change,' the colonel reminded him. 'You're still lying for your life.'

'Of course he is. What, you think the Imperial Security Bureau has no respect for the classics?' Overgaard replied over the com. Which, of course, it usually didn't.

'This is getting less probable by the moment,' Raesene said. 'Are they trying to aim for "so crazy it could only be true?"'

'Who would this 'they' be?' the senior agent asked.

'You really want an explanation? Let's see what security implication you can make out of this; Lennart suspects that ship is in Rebel hands, but has no proof. It may be simple, or at this stage extraordinary, stupidity, it may be some kind of loyalty test on the part of the sector group - or the security services.' And he may suspect that, too, Raesene realised.

'If that is what he suspects, then he should move in on them at once. Better to inconvenience an ally than let an enemy go for want of sufficient thoroughness.' The younger of the two ISB agents said.

'That would involve destroying the ship's engines and weapons - specifically, the fighters hit the MTL turrets and we pound the engine block to prevent their escape. Hundreds of millions of credits' damage at least, and many questions asked if it isn't a rebel trick. If it was an official security service request, we could do it now - provided you're prepared to sign off on it.' Raesene said.

'Just when I think that you are incapable of rendering us any useful assistance, you come up with something sufficiently sneaky to make me think there is perhaps hope for you after all,' the senior agent said.

'In my estimation the ship is in rebel hands, and at least one of her crew is sufficiently alive for the rebels to use him as a mouthpiece. The utterly unbelievable story he is telling may be deliberately intended to raise our suspicions.'

'But you don't want to advise Captain Lennart of that,' Raesene guessed, accurately.

'We allow this situation to play itself out as though we were not here, of course. We will...observe.'

Very cold-blooded, Raesene thought, but had the sense not to say. He had already pushed it far enough.

Customs ships' penetrating scanners were defeatable by special shielding, but that certainly did not invalidate them. What they achieved was mainly to make complicated and expensive measures like smuggling compartments necessary, if the criminal wanted to last long enough at it to make a decent living.

It was estimated that upwards of ten million would-be smugglers a year were indirectly killed by the grey economy because their ships had been incompetently maintained - they had special adaptations that would have cost them their freedom if they had gone to a reputable yard. Probably as many again were directly killed, for reasons of going too far into debt trying to afford the modifications.

Chances were, "The Silent Bugler"'s sensor system had eliminated more lawbreakers than her gun fit. A young and spottily trained bunch, the rebel prize crew had few if any members who really understood how the scanners worked and how to stop them - or why they needed to.

'Command, this is Rontaine - no visible damage, no major ionisation scarring. Hotel load, Life Form Indicator interprets as…her engine and bow sections are undermanned. Skeleton crews. Module section is overmanned - forty-four hundred lifeforms - and indications of recent onboard weapons fire and disintegrator activity.'

Thank you very kriffing much, Aron thought. There was at least a shred of a reason why Rontaine hadn't been offered a Starfleet commission; a tendency to work to the mission regardless of what it cost her crew or her colleagues. That thing's engines had better be on top line, because we are going to have to run for it. Now.

There was a brief crackle of com carrier wave, then nothing.

On the bridge, Overgaard twisted out of the rebel soldiers' grasp and lunged for the microphone. 'Rebels on board, it's a trap, we were ambushed-' he shouted into it.

No effect. The rebel comtech had been a holovid producer before going to the wrong side of the law, and knew all about things like one second delay loops on supposedly live broadcast. He cut Overgaard off, and the two rebel troopers escorting him laid into him with their rifle butts.

'Take him away,' the colonel ordered. 'And, speaking of away, I don't think they bought a word of that. Let's get out of here.'

'Get moving, we'll cover you,' Aron com'd to Rontaine, who felt perfectly comfortable now with putting the corvette into a diving corkscrew away from the belly of the modular cruiser.

The fighters swept up behind it, starbursting out of the way of the ion plume as the ship started to run up to hyperspace initiation. They fish-hook turned behind it to pursue - the inquisition module was one of the heaviest and most power-hungry and slowed the modular cruiser down the most; with it she only pulled about eighteen hundred 'g', slow for a warship. Aron's fighters had a big speed advantage they could use to manoeuvre round it; first thing they did, he detached Gamma C flight to escort the corvette, and ordered the rest out to optimum firing range.

Nineteen fighters, five targets - the single mount MTL's that covered the modular cruiser's stern. They were already spitting fire in the direction of the Obdurate; no real worry there, without spectacular stupidity on his part - leaving the bow bay doors open and shields down would do it - a Demolisher-class frigate was more than capable of soaking up sporadic MTL fire.

She had incriminated herself handily with that, though. Open season.

"The Silent Bugler" 's guns were long-barrel ultralight turbolasers; quick tracking, fast firing, but their weight of shot was calculated for fighters and freighters, not armoured warships or fleet-auxilliary imitations thereof. Rontaine had done her part, didn't need to but decided to fly a slightly curving course away, to give the after pair of turrets a chance to open up on the dromedary, in the process scaring the crap out of Aron.

He was already planning approaches that avoided crossing Obdurate's line of fire; she carried the equivalent of half of one of Black Prince's turrets - the bolt would barely notice him if he got in the way of one of those shot. Raesene was holding fire with the LTL, though, recognising that the only thing they were likely to achieve were friendly casualties.

Rontaine's hail of fire tracked on to the target, standard antifighter procedure, and Aron's fighters scattered.
'Kriffing customs. Which side are they on? Let's see how they like it,' Gamma-Six, Aron thought.

'If you're still alive to complain, it wasn't that bad. Anybody hit?'

Epsilon Ten had taken a hit, just shielding. Nothing serious. 'Right, designating now; even numbered Gammas,' he laid the pointer on one turret and relayed it to the rest, 'Epsilon A,' point on, repeat for each subformation, 'B, C flights, and odd Gammas with me.'

Six or eight missiles homing on each turret, then. Not killing firepower, but enough to damage and disorient, maybe dismount the tube or destroy the local fire control systems. Epsilon dog-legged their missiles in, steering them to avoid the limited PD; only Aron and his senior flight commander did from Gamma. Nineteen of thirty hit.

Only one of the target turrets actually blew; but it did so in a spectacular flare of rupturing energy bank that kicked the Dromedary down and sideways.

'Kriff, that threw our navigation out. Take five minutes to recalibrate.' The naval lieutenant said, trying to remain calm.

'Which we don't have, with that frigate pounding us,' the colonel roared at him.

'We'd be hopelessly lost-'

'Lost where-are-we is better than lost dead. Do it.'

'She's jumping. Running up to hyperspace entry,' Aron announced.

'Active pinging, give me flood,' Raesene ordered; Obdurate - and the fighters - began to hammer Free Gravity For All with active sensor pulses, aiming to image her exactly enough to get a course prediction worth giving chase on. She flared, almost blindingly bright in the target scopes, and for a moment Aron thought they had hit the reactor, but it was just scan. Then she stretched out and leapt across the light barrier.

'Com, signal Falldess and recon-B to pursue, and get me Doctor Nygma,' Lennart ordered.

The image was different this time; it was an idyllic pastoral landscape. Lennart suspected that in time, the dark clouds would close over it, the storm and the thunder would cause the buildings and the hills to melt and splinter, and it would end in earthquake, volcano and space demons dancing in the fire-blackened streets.

'Ah, the voice of the lord of darkness squonks again. Good afternoon, Captain.'

'I think you know what this is going to be about, Doctor.'

'A notion made a motion, in the direction of my feet; but it had a change of heart, made for a different part, and ended in my head, instead.'

'Have you been administered therapy for your wordplay addiction?' Lennart asked, not seriously.

'What sort of therapy would you consider appropriate?' Nygma asked, and on his image the clouds were now raining acid.

'Being locked in a library with every 'teach yourself' language book ever coded, and not let out until you could pun in every language known to lifekind,' Lennart suggested.

'Ah, aversion treatment. Diversion and reversion treatment as well, depending on whether we have unnatural light. They tried that, plied that, and refried that. I can hoot in Hutt and woot in Wook, drabble in Dug and construe in Cerean, inculpate in Ithorian, an inherently improbable idiom-'

'And babble in Basic, and commit sadistic yet scintillating sabotage on the syntax of Standard. We know,' Lennart said. 'There was actually a reason for contacting you.'

'How depressingly mundane. You don't think you're going to get away that easily, do you?' Nygma cackled slightly.

'No,' Lennart admitted, 'and there are some terrifying simplicities I may need your help to mock, later, but that's a hurdle I'll undermine when I come to it. I want to talk to you about the dromedary "Free Gravity For All." '

'Ah, now there is a name to shovel confusion with,' Nygma said. 'Shall I make wild, random guesses as to what caught your ear?'

'I probably should give you information,' Lennart said.

'Aww. That takes all the fun out of figuring out what's going on,' Nygma said.

'It's already happened. How and why are the interesting questions now.'

'Let me interpret…"oh my grud, it's full of Rebels"- does that sum up the situation?'

'That's more than just Finagle's law, isn't it?' Lennart stated. 'You expected some such-more than that; you knew to expect it. Why?'

'We had to clear the dromedary's path. Like sweeping out the cracks in crazy paving. Which is a very pointless thing; I mean if you waste all the goodness on paving, what are you going to do to lubricate the rest of your life?'

'She was sent on a wild goose chase?' Lennart asked.

'So your plan is to bring down rogue waterfowl by throwing pre-fragmented shrapnel pavements at them? Intriguing but undependable. Which is what you want if you happen to be a goose,' Nygma said.

'I may attempt it in another incarnation. In the mean time, demetaphorise.'

'If time is being that mean to you, you may wish to consider-' Nygma noticed Lennart containing an outburst of temper. 'Yes, "Free Gravity For All" was sent on a long, complicated, roundabout route. She was supposed to arrive late and from an unexpected direction, with older IFF codes. If they wanted to simulate confusion they really should have asked an expert.'

'Wouldn't a real expert in confusion be so confused, no-one would ever realise they were an expert?' Lennart searched for a stab of wit, and found it. It was harder; he was annoyed not as much with Nygma, but with himself. He could feel the Force crowding into his head, getting in the way of clear thought.

'What's code, except simulating confusion? What's language, except piling confusion on confusion until they cancel out and let us grasp the universe?' Nygma declaimed.

'Look, Doctor Nygma, as much as I might want to take the time, we have a running operation. Could you translate to Ordinaryese?'

'Why didn't you say that earlier? The auxilliary's initial orders were for a straight pickup. They were altered by someone, let's call them Alice, who arranged an approach that would give you every reason to be suspicious of them and hopefully overreact. Someone else - are you following this?'

'Someone whom you are going to call Bob meddled next?' Lennart asked.

'Yes, you remember that, then? A second major change ordered the auxiliary to pass by a specific point on the way back to the nearest prison planet, Suorand V; I thought, maybe the starfield is unusually pretty or something, but I checked and it wasn't.
'So someone lowly placed in Escort Command, person C - Carol - altered the orders again. The point was very specific - only this time "Free Gravity For All", wonderfully tautologous don't you think and yet subtly ironic, passed through there on the way to the rendezvous.'

'Which RV turned out to be with a rebel strike force. So let me get this straight - we have elements within Sector group offering us maximum possible opportunity to make fools if not criminals of ourselves by over-reacting and slagging a friendly unit; a second group, of Rebel spies within Sector, who altered that to arrange for the recapture of their people; and a third group - or individual - who played with both their heads. Carol,' Lennart said, meaning Nygma.

'The beauty of it all is, in the chaos of order, counter-order and disorder, it's going to be impossible for anyone not an expert in confusion to work out exactly who did what when, to whom and why, never mind wherefore, whither and whatnot.'

'The rebels boarded her and captured her, and were in the middle of sanitising her. Still hiding the traces of the operation when squadron elements went after her and found them infrared-handed. Only one problem,' Lennart said.

'This feeds back into that time thing, doesn't it? No wonder you object if your reference frame only lets you manage one problem at once. What would that be?' Nygma asked.

'Once we do catch her, we're going to need another transport to hold all the existing prisoners and the crew of the dromedary. In fact, I think we're going to need two, just in case one gets lost.'