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"May I ask another question, Ma'am?" Ragnhild said after a moment, and Abigail's chuckle dispelled some of her eyes' lingering chill.
"Ragnhild, you're on your middy cruise. You're expected to ask questions."
"Well, in that case, Ma'am, do you think Bogey Three got off a signal to Bogey One?"
"I don't know," Abigail admitted, "but the only reason I can think of for their not getting one off would be that we did enough collateral damage to take out their main communications array. That's distinctly possible, of course. Merchies don't have the communications redundancy of a warship, and all their command and control systems, including communications, are bunched a lot more tightly. I don't think we should go around counting on Divine Providence to have arranged that for us, though. The Tester probably wouldn't like it."
This time, her smile was actually a grin, although neither of them really found the probability that the freighter had sent a warning to her armed consorts especially amusing.
"No, Ma'am, I imagine not," Ragnhild replied, after a moment, with a smile of her own. She'd been a bit surprised, initially, by the fact that Lieutenant Hearns showed absolutely no inclination to proselytize for the Church of Humanity Unchained. But if the Lieutenant made no attempt to recruit active converts, she also made no effort to disguise her own religious beliefs-which appeared, truth to tell, to be far less rigid than Ragnhild had always assumed most Graysons' convictions must be-even surrounded by a secular lot of Manticorans.
"In any case," Abigail said, indicating the time display which showed just over sixteen minutes had passed since they began their deceleration, "we should be finding out just who these people really are for ourselves in another hundred and four minutes or so."