Warriors For The Working Day

Chapter Eight
By
(UCSBdad)

Disclaimer: Stolen about equally from the Henson Co., David Drake and a bit from George MacDonald Fraser. Shakespeare is in the public domain, I hope. In any case, no money changes hands here. Rating: T due to language. Time: Some twenty-five plus years after Peacekeeper Wars.

I know her." I said sharply. "She ran a shadow depository that John and I raided many cycles ago. Apparently she tried to double cross Scorpius and our raid exposed her. She tortured John and wanted to scoop out his eyes. The last I saw of her, she was running from Scorpius. I'm surprised she's still alive. Very few cross Scorpius and survive."

Aida, Kathleen and Rudy exchanged another of those frelling looks. Was this what it was like for people that said that John and I communicated without talking?

Aida gave me a smile. "No problem that she knows you. We can send a team down to Droon to pick up the intel. This Natira will never even know you're within a hundred light years of her."

"No! Absolutely not! She couldn't have gotten a good look at me. Besides, this is my husband we're talking about. Suppose something goes wrong and we can only get to a part of the intelligence Natira is keeping? I can tell what relates to John at a glance. What if we…"

"What if you get killed and I have to explain it to John." Aida shot back. "Even if this Natira didn't get a good look at you then, you can bet she knows what you look like now."

I shook my head vigorously. "If either of us, or our husbands, were the types that played it safe all of the time, we'd probably have been killed off cycles ago by someone willing to take a risk. John and I have been risking our lives for each other since we first met. I will not change now."

Aida glared at me. "By the Goddess, but you are the most stubborn woman in the frelling universes! Why can't you just once."

"She can't, Mother, and you know it." Kathleen interrupted. "I suggest we move on to planning our scam with this shadow depository."

Aida glared at all and sundry. But when she spoke, her voice was calm. "Kathleen. You are in charge of planning this. Use whatever you need to make this work. I want a full briefing on this as soon as possible."

With that, our dinner party broke up.

I spent the next three days briefing Kathleen and her officers on everything about Natira, and about shadow depositories, that I could remember. I went over our assault on Natira's depository again and again. Strangely, it made me feel closer to John.

After three solar days, we were halfway to Droon. That's when all Hezmana broke loose.

I was sound asleep in my tiny stateroom when the alarm went off. Over the sound of the alarm I heard someone yelling, "General Quarters! All hands to General Quarters!"

I leaped out of bed, pulled on a dark blue coverall and shoved my feet into a pair of boots. I was out the door before I realized that I had no frelling idea what General Quarters meant.

Luckily, Kathleen came running past me and I followed her to the ship's Combat Information Center. I grabbed a chair in the back and tried to figure out what the frell was going on.

At that point, Aida strode in, looking like she was ready to review a full dress parade.

"Status?" She asked quietly as she sat in her command chair.

The Agincourt had left the task force, and its commander, Admiral Nagumo, behind when we headed for Droon. I tried to remember the name of the Agincourt's captain who turned to face Aida.

"We're just entering the Yabeena system, ma'am. It's supposed to be a fairly quiet system, which is why we set the rendezvous with Scipio Africanus for here. However, there's all kinds of ship traffic in the inner solar system around their commerce planet."

Aida looked at the holo displays. "We seem to be a little far out from the commerce planet to see much."
The officer nodded. "We sent a recon drone ahead of us, ma'am. The raw feed shows a lot…"

"Weapons fire." Another officer at a computer station broke in. "Some kind of heavy plasma weapon, ma'am. Just a couple of shots, but no sign they hit anything."

"Warning shots?" Someone muttered.

"How long before we can get a good picture of what's happening?" Aida asked.

There was some brief muttering among several of the officers.

"Two to three minutes, ma'am." The captain finally said.

"We're picking up comm chatter!" another officer broke in.

"Put it on." Aida snapped.

The brief, static filled communications we'd picked up spoke of a disaster of some sort.

"…hull breach in two places and atmosphere is failing…" Cried a Delvian voice.

"For the love of the Goddess, help us. We…." That transmission was cut off.

"Boarders are right outside the comm station. They are firing. I repeat…" That was terminated by the sound of pulse weapons fire.

"God's blood!" Aida snarled. "A raider!"

Aida stopped and looked around, obviously formulating a plan.

"Ma'am, you have to see this. It's feed from the recon drone."

Aida turned to the holo in front of her. What it showed was blurry and filled with static. But what it showed was also crystal clear.

"They're tossing the crews out their airlocks." Said a shocked voice.

"Are we in weapons range?" Aida barked.

"No, ma'am. Optimal range will be in.."

"I don't want optimal, Captain Dahlgren." Aida shot back. "I want to take a shot at that bastard to let him know a warship is on his ass and means business."

"We can launch from tubes one through eleven and get a shot right down his throat." Someone said. "Missiles are green as are defenses."

"Fire." Aida said quietly. "And hope the bastard comes after us."

I felt a succession of jolts, one after the other, as the missiles left the Agincourt. At first, the missiles streaked towards the raider like avenging angels, but the range was too great. Those that weren't destroyed by the raider's defenses ran out of fuel and self -destructed.

As nuclear fires blossomed around the raider, one of the officers spoke to Aida.

"We've got a visual on the raider from the drone, ma'am."

The holo by Aida's command chair showed a familiar black, bulky shape bisected by a circular deck.

"Damn!" Aida cursed and was silent for a microt. "Well, I always said I thought we could take a command carrier with Agincourt. Now we get to try." She smiled at her staff. "Okay, people. We've trained for this and we know how we want to do this. A course of 125 by 80 should take us directly away from that bastard."

There was a flurry of orders from the staff to various parts of the ship, and despite the grav compensators, I felt the ship turn away from the commerce planet. I watched the image of the command carrier. After longer than any captain I had served under would have allowed, the command carrier turned and lumbered after us.

Kathleen detached herself from a computer station and came over to sit by me.

"We've run simulations on how to take on most of the ships we might run into over here. Now we'll see how good our simulations are. First, we're going to try outrunning the command carrier. Our tactics depend, in part, on being faster than the carrier. That way we can hit and run, and with any luck he won't be able to hit or run."

I nodded and sat back to watch and wait. It wasn't long before something happened.

"Ma'am! We're being hailed by the command carrier."

Aida smiled. "Well, let's hear what our raider has to say then."

The face that appeared in the holo viewer was blurry, but the voice was clear.

"Unidentified warship. This is Grand Admiral Lutjens, Leader of the Refounded Peacekeepers. I demand that you surrender. Stop your engines at once."

We did nothing of the sort, and for a few microns, I got a better look at the Admiral's face. She was stocky with quivering double chins pushed up by her high collar. Strands of dirty blonde and grey hair hung around her round face.

"I demand that you surrender at once! Do you hear me! Do not defy me!" Her voice was rising to a shriek. "I demand, do you hear me, I demand…"

Someone cut the holo off.

"She has a high opinion of herself." Aida said with a smile. "Has anyone heard of her? For that matter has anyone ever heard of a Peacekeeper rank of Grand Admiral?"

Aida was looking straight at me. I shook my head.

Kathleen leaned over a computer station and brought up some data. She shook her head. "No Grand Admiral's of any sort and the only Lutjens in the intel database is a commando officer running operations on some god forsaken desert world called Li Min Tah." She glanced up at Aida. "Our data is by no means complete."

Aida laughed, a short sharp laugh. "By no means indeed."

"The command carrier is starting to close, ma'am." Someone said.

"What's our power output?" Aida asked.

"Sixty-two percent of full military power, ma'am."

"Raise it to sixty-four and see how they do."

And so it went for the next arn or so. The command carrier would start to close on Agincourt and Aida would increase our power and the carrier would start sliding astern of us again. Then the carrier would start to gain on us. With the help of a calculator I'd been given, I managed to translate hech numbers to human multiples of light speed. As far as I could tell, the command carrier had reached about eighty-seven percent of her maximum speed while the humans were at about seventy-five percent of their maximum speed.

"Ma'am?" Called one of the officers. "Look at this."

A holo of the command carrier appeared. Something appeared to be streaming from the hammon side, but I couldn't tell what.

"Waste heat being expelled. By the Prophet, look at the heat signature of her engines. She's damn near ready to explode."

Aida shook her head. "Safety protocols will shut the engines down before that happens. But let's run our power up one percent more."

The command carrier seemed to visibly struggle to catch up with us, and then slowed down to less than half her former speed.

Aida smiled. It was the sort of smile I'd seen before on ship's captains.

"All right then. Let's go pay the bastards a visit." She turned to me. "Aeryn, max range for frag cannons is still forty thousand metras?"

I nodded. "The fact that they couldn't reach maximum speed may indicate their weapons systems are also degraded." I added.

Aida nodded. "We'll take no chances. Set a course straight at the target so that all missile tubes bear. Load a stonk and we'll fire at one hundred and twenty thousand kilometers. As soon as we fire, break to port."

"Aye aye, ma'am." Captain Dahlgren replied. "A stonk with all tubes bearing at one two zero thousand kilometers followed by a break to port."

I caught Kathleen's eye. "Stonk?" I mouthed. I knew I had a puzzled look on my face. It seemed to go with trying to communicate with humans.

She smiled and walked over to me. "Standard concentration, Aeryn. We have forty-four missile tubes. We'll fire eight penetration aids. Missiles designed to interfere with the defensive fire control of an enemy ship so the rest of the missiles have an easier time hitting her. The other thirty-six tubes will fire standard anti-ship missiles. Detonation lasers."

Again, I could feel the ship turning, this time towards the command carrier. The carrier had slowed down even more and was turning back towards the commerce planet it had been raiding.

"Should we ask for a surrender?" Captain Dahlgren asked.

Aida shrugged. "We should. But I hope that the Grand Admiral fights."

Someone reopened the comm channel that the so-called Grand Admiral had used to contact us. She was still trying to contact us, but in her frustration she'd been reduced to screaming obscenities at us. Aida briefly demanded her surrender. Lutjens didn't appear to notice, but continued shrieking at us.

"Cut the comms." Aida said with a wolfish smile. "Now she can learn what it's like to be defenseless."

"Ships launching from target, ma'am."

My eyes shot back to the holo of the command carrier. No doubt about it, a half squadron or so of Prowlers shot out of the command carrier's hangars.

"What the frell are they doing?" I asked under my breath.

"What indeed?" Aida added.

Instead of immediately assuming an attack formation and heading for us, the Prowler squadron was milling around trying to get organized.

"Christ. Two of them collided." Someone muttered.

"Keep an eye on them. Let us know if they manage to get organized." Aida said. "How long until we fire?"

"Two minutes and eight seconds, ma'am."

A human style clock face appeared on the holo. I watched as the hands slowly ticked off the time remaining.
I felt a series of heavy thumps as the missiles fired and sped towards the raider. At forty thousand metras, the carrier started firing all of its weapons. Almost two dozen missiles were destroyed. That left four penetration aids missiles and fifteen ship killers left. Almost simultaneously the missiles exploded, pumping giga-joules of nuclear energy into laser energy. The lasers cut through the carrier's armor and deep into its interior. Bulkheads ruptured, opening the ship to space. Men, women and children died from vacuum exposure, shrapnel and the lasers.

"Can we get a feed from the recon drone?" Dahlgren asked.

A close up of the command carrier appeared in the holo screen. It appeared to be dead in space. I did see some escape pods shoot out from the ship. They were destroyed by frag cannon fire.

"Jesus!" Someone whispered.

"Captain. That looney admiral is still broadcasting. You should hear this shit."

The holo changed to show Grand Admiral Lutjens. She was sitting quietly at her command station. A headless corpse floated in zero gravity behind her.

She spoke very quietly. "I am surrounded by traitors, by people who simply are too small minded to understand my sacred mission. The Peacekeepers have become weak and corrupt. I must reform them and return them to the golden age that our leaders have allowed to slip away." She suddenly looked at a monitor just within our view. "More traitors are trying to desert. Lieutenant Bowans, destroy them. Destroy them all."

Lieutenant Bowans, whoever he or she was, made no response.

"Even Bowans is a traitor." She snarled, reaching over to punch a button. I could see the holo shake and heard the explosion. Lutjens stared out of the holo with a serene smile on her face.

"There was an internal explosion on the target." Someone announced.

"Let's get this over with." Aida said tiredly. "We'll launch ten ship killers from sixty thousand kilometers. That should do it."

It did. There was no defensive fire and at least one of the command carrier's fusion bottles breached. The ship was destroyed.

"Ma'am? We're getting a message from the Prowlers that launched earlier."

"Put it on." Aida replied. "I hope this one is saner than the last one."

"No visual on this transmission, ma'am." Dahlgren said.

"Attention unidentified warship. This is Lieutenant Redd. I wish to surrender my command. I take full responsibility for our actions. I beg you not to punish my command for my crimes."

"What the hell is she talking about?" Aida asked. No one had a reply.

"This is Vice-Marshall Aida O'Donnell. I will accept your surrender under the Laws of War. You will be treated as prisoners of war, you have my word on that. However, if you, or any of your subordinates, are guilty of crimes, I will be compelled to try you."

There was a brief pause. Then Lieutenant Redd spoke. "I have no choice. We will surrender."

Aida and her officers decided to take no chances. Redd was told to assemble her command ten thousand kilometers away from Agincourt. From there, ship's boats would take off the pilots. That way no one would try to crash into the Agincourt or blow up their engines inside the hangar. Once they'd been checked for booby traps, the Prowlers would be brought aboard.

Kathleen and I headed for the boat deck to meet the incoming prisoners. As soon as they started leaving the ship's boats, the reason for their poor performance was clear.

"They're children." Kathleen gasped.

She was right. Not one of them could have been over fourteen cycles old and most were younger. They were trying to act brave, but they all looked like they were about to burst into tears.

The last Peacekeeper off was obviously Lieutenant Redd. The thought crossed my mind that I had heard that name before, but I couldn't remember where.

Redd herself was tall, slender and quite old for her rank. Her deeply tanned face was unlined, but her hair was white. She was escorted to us by a human soldier. I noticed that she limped.

"This is the enemy commander, ma'am." The soldier announced.

Kathleen nodded. "You are responsible for leading these children into combat?" She asked coldly.

Redd nodded. "I take full responsibility for everything. Any punishment is mine alone. The cadets are not in any way responsible for what has happened. I alone should be punished. I take full responsibility for…."

Kathleen waved her into silence. "You and they are now prisoners of war and are protected by the Laws of War. We shall have to see if anyone is guilty of anything."

Lieutenant Redd nodded. "Are you the commander of this ship, ma'am?"

Kathleen shook her head. "Chief intelligence officer. If you will accompany us, Lieutenant Redd?"

Redd fell in between the two of us and we headed for Kathleen's office.

"You're not Peacekeepers." Redd said. "And not Sebaceans."

Kathleen nodded. "We're humans." That was not exactly a lie based on what we knew of Sebacean history.

Redd looked at us like we were mad. "Humans don't have this kind of military technology."

Kathleen gave Redd a brief rundown on human history as it had occurred in her universe. She was careful not to imply that her captors were a relatively small group of refugees. I suppose it was better if Redd thought of humans as an irresistible and unified power.

When we reached Kathleen's office, a half a dozen or so of her people were there first. Rudy was sitting quietly in a corner.

Kathleen sat down behind her desk and I took a seat beside her.

"Please sit, Lieutenant." Kathleen said, gesturing to a chair in front of the desk.

Redd looked positively amazed at the treatment, but sat. One of the soldiers put a tray of food on the front of the desk with a large container of fruit juice.

"Please feel free to have something to eat and drink." Kathleen said with a smile.

Redd stared at us for a microt or two. "You're not going to use an aurora chair?" She asked suspiciously.

Kathleen shook her head. "We have other means of gathering intelligence. In your case, you appear to want to cooperate with us. That's good. A willing intelligence source is the best kind. I will warn you that we do have other sources of intelligence, so if you lie to us, we'll eventually catch you. Then we'll use other means to interrogate you."

Redd nodded. "That's reasonable. What do you want to know?"

"Everything." Kathleen replied. "Start at the beginning and go from there."

Redd looked at the container of fruit juice. She shrugged, took a drink and began to talk.

Redd's story was all too common among Peacekeepers in the last twenty cycles or so.

Her ship, the Agricola, had been based in the Hynerian Empire. They had been there for dozens of cycles, using Hynerian Navy resources to maintain their command carrier. When Rygel returned to the Empire at Bishan's invitation, things had started to change, although very slowly at first.

The Agricola no longer had the highest priority for repairs at the Hynerian Navy's orbital shipyard. They had to wait for Hynerian ships to be repaired. Hynerian factories suddenly had other priorities when the ship needed spare parts. Local farmers who had grown Sebacean food switched to Hynerian foods, forcing the Agricola to import expensive food from a distant Sebacean agricultural colony.

The longer this went on, the worse things got. Finally Captain Lutjens had demanded to meet with the Hynerian planetary governor to demand that the Hynerians provide her ship with what it needed. To her surprise, the Hynerian governor had been joined by a Luxan admiral who had apparently taken service under Rygel.

Lutjens made her demands, but the Hynerian just stared at her with a smirk on his face.

"Perhaps you should see this, Captain Lutjens." He said, pointing to a comm screen. In the screen's display, Lutjens could see three battle cruisers swinging out from behind the local moon.

The governor's smile widened. "Admiral Ga R'ith has joined us with three battle cruisers and a full complement of support vessels."

Lutjens could see the display showing one heavy monitor, a scout cruiser and numerous assault piercers following the battle cruisers.

"I think the time for you to make demands is past, Captain Lutjens." The governor said, gloating. "The Hynerian Empire has enough firepower here to destroy your command carrier with very little chance of any serious damage to ourselves. That being the case, I will now make a demand of you. A non-negotiable demand, Captain. You will leave Hynerian space and never return. If you do return, you will be treated as a pirate and destroyed.'

Lutjens had been speechless with rage. She was even more outraged when she found that her commando escort had been disarmed by the Luxan admiral's troops. Lutjens had no choice but to return to her ship and leave Hynerian space.

Lutjens headed for the nearest Peacekeeper base, optimistic that there she would find help in putting those Hynerians firmly in their place. Alas, she found no such thing. With the end of the threat from the Scarren Empire, much had changed for the Peacekeepers. And much of this had escaped Captain Lutjens' notice.

The Luxans found no reason to continue to support the Peacekeepers militarily and in many instances, as Lutjens had seen, Luxans were offering their services to enemies of the Peacekeepers. On Hyneria, Rygel had built up his navy and had made alliances wherever he could. This was helped by a low level, but clever, propaganda campaign stating that Dominar Rygel had been responsible for the creation of the wormhole weapon and the subsequent peace between the Scarrens and Peacekeepers. Bishan was inexorably loosing power and soon, just disappeared.

Peacekeeper Command had bluntly informed Lutjens that the Hynerian Empire was far too powerful to attack. In addition, without the resources of the Hynerians to draw upon, the Peacekeepers were hard pressed to keep their fleet at full war footing.

Lutjens was advised that her command carrier, being elderly and in need of serious maintenance, would be decommissioned. Lutjens and most of her crew were to be resettled on Sebacean agricultural colonies to hold themselves in readiness should the Peacekeepers need them again. Lutjens knew that would probably never happen.

Faced with spending the remainder of her life on some backwards planet, lording it over a handful of impoverished peasants, Lutjens chose to go renegade. Her crew, for the most part willingly, went with her, seeing no other choice.

Lutjens began raiding the fringes of the Hynerian Empire. This brought the attentions of the Imperial Hynerian Navy as well as that of the Peacekeepers. If the Peacekeepers only went through the motions of hunting the renegade, the Hynerians made every effort to destroy Agricola. In addition, the tramp freighters and agricultural planets that were Agricola's usual targets had little in the way of the high tech supplies needed to keep a command carrier in operation. Worse, there was a small but steady drain of desertions whenever any crew were landed on a planet. Many Peacekeepers found life as a renegade not to their liking.

Lutjens decided that her only recourse was to raid a Peacekeeper supply depot. She had found that, due to the general rundown of Peacekeeper forces, there were some that were not nearly as well guarded as they should have been.

The raid was both a total success and a disaster. The supply depot had been even less well guarded than Lutjens had thought, and had even more supplies than had been expected. Lutjens got away with her ship's holds crammed with needed supplies and took a merchant ship as a prize to carry additional supplies away.

However, a good fraction of her crew was appalled that they were now fighting other Peacekeepers. Sullen talk soon became the order of the day in some sections of the Agricola, and talk quickly turned to plotting a mutiny. The plotters were incautious and one of Captain Lutjens' spies soon discovered the plot. The plotters and many who simply couldn't prove their abject loyalty to Lutjens were subjected to the living death.

Captain Lutjens assembled the surviving crew and addressed them. She told them that the Peacekeepers they had previously served had become corrupt and incompetent. She unilaterally promoted herself to the rank of Grand Admiral, a rank previously unknown to the Peacekeepers and, for good measure, proclaimed herself the leader of the Refounded Peacekeepers, whose mission was to return the Peacekeepers to their long lost glory.

Lutjens still had problems, though. Through desertion or mutiny, she had lost a good quarter of her officers and almost as many crewmembers. Agricola was desperately short handed for a warship that was, in effect, at war with everyone.

"That's where I came in." Redd said around a mouthful of food. "Due to wounds and age, I had been retired to an agricultural commune on a planet called Xian. I was just starting to get used to being dirt-bound when Lutjens showed up."

"Lutjens conscripted everyone on the planet that she thought could serve her ship. A few tried to refuse. They, and their families, were executed."

"I had led a Prowler division on the old Serapis and found myself leading one again. " Redd shook her head and smiled sadly. "By Cholak, what a cluster frell Agricola's Strike Group was. Commander Bernal had been promoted from Junior Lieutenant based solely on his loyalty to Lutjens. As a pilot he was adequate and as a commander, he was useless. Senior Officer Ffulke led the Marauders and was competent enough. At least he would have been if he hadn't been so terrified of Lutjens that he wouldn't do anything for fear of antagonizing her. It did him no good. She executed him anyway. The Prowlers were led by Lieutenant Org. He kissed Lutjens fat eema like mad until the day he successfully deserted. That put me in charge of the Prowlers."

Redd stopped and stared at the ceiling. I could see tears welling in her eyes. "You've seen my pilots. Children, who shouldn't have been allowed to sit in a Prowler's cockpit."

"And there, lording it over everyone, was so-called Grand Admiral Lutjens, mad as a demented drannit and becoming more insane every day. She saw plots everywhere. She trusted no one, not even her bloody enforcer, Lieutenant Bowans. Bowans! I hope Cholak eats that bitch slowly."

Redd blinked back her tears and continued. "Of course, nothing went wrong because my pilots had virtually no training, or because we were short of skilled techs to keep our Prowlers flying. All that bitch Lutjens saw was treason and plots against her. She had two of my pilots executed because they crashed their Prowlers on landing. Proof of treason, she said. They were children! Frelling children."

"We were lucky in one thing. Somehow that madwoman realized that if she executed everyone that frelled up, her whole frelling crew would be dead in a monen. Soon plotting mutiny and treason was only punishable by a few arns in an aurora chair."

Rudy broke in. "I presume you were punished?"

Redd nodded. "I took the blame for whatever went wrong. I could handle the aurora chair and Lutjens' torturers better than my poor pilots could."

"You were tortured by this Lieutenant Bowans?" Rudy asked.

"No. The aurora chair was for minor infractions. Being tortured by Bowans personally meant a death sentence. She was too sadistic to stop once she got started. I was tortured by Bowans' assistants."

Rudy nodded. "I assume that explains your limp and the fact that you're bleeding on Kathleen's carpet."

Kathleen shot to her feet. "Dammit, Rudy. What the frell did you mean by sitting there letting her bleed?"

Rudy smiled and waved his hands in a dismissive gesture. "The good doctor M'Boya will be along presently. I sent a text message to him when I noticed the bleeding. However, I did want to establish Lieutenant Redd's version of events before the doctor examined her."

Kathleen was about to respond, but M'Boya pushed the door open and promptly let everyone know who was now in charge.

"Everyone but Kathleen and Aeryn, out now!" He rumbled.

Rudy smiled ingratiatingly at the doctor. "I'm afraid that I insist that I stay. In my official capacity, of course."

M'Boya glared at him.

"My dear doctor," Rudy continued, "You could throw me out of here easily, but how much time would that take?"

M'Boya muttered something under his breath and turned to examine Redd. After questioning her about her injuries, M'Boya told her to strip.

"Why did you send the others out of the room?" Redd asked.

"What does that have to do with anything?" M'Boya growled back.

Rudy laughed. "We weren't sending any inconvenient witnesses out of the room, Lieutenant. Humans, unlike Peacekeepers, are not born on spaceships and live their entire lives on them. Humans have a bit more of a need for privacy in their more intimate acts, such as being given a medical examination. Dr. M'Boya merely extended that courtesy to you."

"And humans wouldn't send witnesses out of the room if they planned on executing you. Humans believe in the positive encouragement that a good public execution provides." Rudy stopped for a microt. "Come to think of it, my own people do love a good beheading."

Redd stripped her flight suit off. She had indeed been tortured. She had bruises all over her body. Some were an old and faded to a purplish brown and some were so new they were still swollen. Dr. M'Boya examined her and was becoming visibly angry as he did so.

"This woman has been tortured." M'Boya said, glaring at all of us. "There is damage to nearly all of her joints, as if they've been intentionally hyper-extended. She has several fractured ribs. She has suffered soft tissue trauma and I'm seeing the residuals of a concussion. The only reason she isn't flat on her face is that she's on some sort of painkiller plus something like adrenaline. She's going to sick bay right now."

M'Boya grabbed a comm from Kathleen's desk and began ordering a couple of nurses and a gurney.

Redd gave us an odd look. "You let medical techs tell you what to do?"

Kathleen shook her head. "Surgeon-Major M'Boya is a commissioned officer. And I agree with him. Please remember what I told you about the value of willing intelligence sources."

"And remember that we have other sources and other options." Rudy finished.

Several nurses and a gurney arrived and Dr. M'Boya fussed over getting Redd onto the gurney and starting some medication.

While this was going on, Rudy had a discussion with a couple of Kathleen's intelligence officers. When M'Boya left with his patient, Rudy came over to us.

"I think Lieutenant Redd has some definite possibilities, Kathleen."

Kathleen raised an eyebrow. "I hope you're not thinking of using her as an agent. She's gone through a hell of a lot. I think she needs a long rest."

Rudy shook his head. "An agent? Oh, never. She doesn't have the personality for it for one. Entirely too open to begin with. But she could be useful in dealing with disaffected Peacekeepers."

"Aha!" Kathleen replied. "And what have you been doing, using my people?"

"I've had them de-briefing her pilots."

Kathleen shook her head. "Rudy, dammit, they're only children and they've been through a hell of a lot as well."

"The best time to interrogate them, of course." Rudy shot back. "Do you know that her second in command, Cadet Pilot Morr, insists that he's really in command and that Lieutenant Redd is just a figure head? He insists that he's responsible for the acts of the Prowler unit. We didn't leave them alone so they could cook up a story between them, but the rest of her pilots are doing their best to protect her. Quite honorable, if pointless."

"Rudy, do you really have to do this?"

Rudy nodded. "I'm afraid so. It appears that even by the rather lax standards of 31st century humanity, Lieutenant Redd may have committed war crimes."

Kathleen nodded and took a quick look around the room. "Let's keep this under wraps, people. We'll have to live here for the rest of our lives, so let's not go accusing anyone of anything until we have all the facts. And I do not want to hear any rumors about Lieutenant Redd either."

Kathleen was answered by a chorus of "Yes ma'ams".

I had been discharged from the sick bay and had been given quarters with Aida's staff officers. Kathleen and I walked back through the crowded, narrow passageways of the Agincourt to our quarters.

"You've said several times that you have sources of intelligence in the Uncharted Territories." I began. "Have you really been here long enough to set up an intelligence network?"

"Nothing like we used to have, Aeryn. But we've done all right."

I gave her a stare.

Kathleen laughed. "Okay, but this goes no further."

I shook my head. "I share everything with my husband."

Kathleen didn't say anything for several microts. Finally she spoke.

"I can live with that. You only need the abridged version, anyway."

"When we first got here, all of our information about this universe was twenty plus years out of date. You know what a hell of a lot has happened in that time. Our first actions were routine. We sent out frigates and had them track merchant ships to commerce planets. Once we found the commerce planets, we had the frigates set up at the edge of the solar system, actually out in the Oort clouds, where no one would look for a strange warship. All they needed to do was sit there with their comm channels open and pick up whatever comm traffic was being broadcast."

"You'd hardly get anything but routine news." I broke in.

"We didn't even have that much when we got here. Later, when our industrial base at Arsenal was up and running, we put drones out in the Oort clouds to do the same kind of eavesdropping. In time, we had broken a few low level merchant's codes and whatnot. Once every few months, we'd send a warship in to download all the traffic and get it analyzed. We've picked up a lot of good information."

"Not that good." I retorted.

"Very good, Aeryn. Very good. We needed something better than that. So we used Scipio Africanus."

"Who is?" I asked sharply. What was it with human speech?

"Not who, what." Kathleen replied. "Scipio Africanus is a 56 tube armored cruiser, and the ship we're rendezvousing with to go to the shadow depository. Screaming Skippy, as she's known, was built for commerce raiding. Big enough to kill anything smaller than a battleship and fast enough to run away from anything she can't fight. Given all the raiders operating in space these days, we decided to use Scipio as a blockade runner. Anyone who wanted a nice safe trip from one planet to the next, or wanted to send low volume, high value goods safely, learned that Scipio was their best bet. And our wealthy clients were more than happy to give us all the intel they had on the political and military situation in their area. After all, it was their goods and sometimes their lives on the line."

"We crewed Scipio Africanus with a mix of humans and some K'hiffs. We told everyone we were from a long lost Sebacean colony and having lost a civil war, had been traveling for fifty cycles since being exiled from our home."

"Lately we've added something new. We've landed a few "Sebacean" merchants on friendly commerce planets. They have lots of money and deal in expensive luxuries, such as liquors, spices, art work, anti-senescence drugs, and jewelry. Naturally, they have an interest in the wealthy and powerful on the planets they settle on since those are their clients, hopefully."

"Oh," Kathleen said with a smile as we reached my quarters, "we've told all of our people to be on the lookout for a human named John Crichton."

I felt better for a microt until I walked into my tiny metal cabin and saw the bed I would sleep in alone tonight. Frell! I hated sleeping alone.

The interrogation of Lieutenant Redd continued the next evening in the sick bay under the supervision of, and over the protests of, Dr. M'Boya. Off of the high doses of Peacekeeper medication that had kept her going, Redd looked much worse.

It turned out that Rudy had been right. Lutjens had operated on the principle that dead beings tell no tales and had a policy of killing the crews of ships she raided. Once, Redd told us, they had chased a large merchantman only to find out it was full of HaKazz pilgrims. Lutjens needed food, but HaKazz food was incompatible with the Sebacean digestive tract. In a rage, Lutjens had ordered Redd to use the ship as target practice for her Prowlers. Over twelve thousand peaceful pilgrims had died. That had hardly been the only massacre that Redd and her pilots had been involved in.

However, the interviews with the other prisoners established that Redd had repeatedly tried to prevent such crimes and had been repeatedly tortured by Lutjens for her efforts.

As Cadet Pilot Morr put it in one of his interviews, "Lutjens was insane, but not so insane that she didn't realize that if she executed everyone for their "crimes", she'd be all alone on the frelling ship. But everyone frelling well knew she'd torture anyone who stood up to her, and that she would execute some if they pushed too hard. And no one really knew if she wasn't so insane that she would eventually kill us all. And so she kept us in control."

The Prowler pilots also told us that Redd was being tortured when we came upon Agricola. When the chase started, Redd had somehow convinced her torturers that a ship that could easily outrun a command carrier might be such a danger to their ship that every experienced officer would be needed. The torturers were almost more afraid of Lutjens than the strange warship, but they had finally agreed that Redd would "escape" from custody, command her Prowlers and then return for additional punishment for escaping.

Finally, Redd was brought before Aida. In addition to her, Kathleen, Rudy, M'Boya, myself, and a young looking Guards officer acting as recorder met in Aida's office. We sat behind a long desk with the insignia of Human Forces Command and a mass of unit flags behind us. Redd was standing in front of us the Alert Position. She wore a simple orange coverall marked with the human letter "P" for prisoner. Two armed soldiers stood behind her.

Aida began. "Lieutenant Redd, formerly of the Peacekeeper command Carrier Agricola, although I am not required to so advise you, the panel considering your actions finds that your subordinates are guilty of no wrongdoing under the Laws of War and will remain as prisoners of war with no further action to be taken against them."

Redd nodded and smiled. "Thank you. I assure you that my pilots were not in any way responsible for any of the actions my unit took. The responsibility is mine alone and I am prepared to face my punishment."

Aida nodded. "The records presented to me indicate that you have committed heinous acts against your fellow beings. Acts that clearly contravene the Laws of War and require, let me repeat require, capital punishment."