The Shadow of Saganami

The answer was waiting when they finally got to the ship's engineering spaces.

"Hold it up, Sir," Coporal McCollom said. "Alverson's outside the power room, and he says the hatch is locked. From the inside, it looks like, but he hasn't tried to force it yet."

"Everybody, hold where you are," Ma

"Well," Abigail said, her thoughts racing ahead of the words, "if whoever is inside was inclined to suicide, she's already had plenty of time to blow herself up. Unless, of course," she smiled without humor, "whoever it is is deliberately waiting until she's positive at least some of our people are on board."

"Sounds unlikely," Ma

"'Less stable.'" Abigail surprised herself with a harsh chuckle. "Lieutenant, anybody that far gone is so far around the bend she can't even see it in her rear view mirror!"

"We Marines are just naturally gifted with a talent for concise summations," Ma

Abigail nodded and glanced at the two midshipmen standing beside her and trying to look as if they weren't eavesdropping. Not that there was any reason they shouldn't be. They were both doing their best to look calm, and they were doing a pretty fair job, actually. Aside from a certain tightness in Ragnhild's shoulders and the fact that the fingers of Aikawa's right hand were drumming lightly on his holstered pulser, there was very little to give away their tension. She supposed she could have left both of them aboard the pi

"Recommendations, Ms. Pavletic? Mr. Kagiyama?" Both middies twitched as if she'd poked them, then they looked once-quickly-at each other before they turned to face her.

"I think Lieutenant Ma

"I agree, Ma'am," Aikawa said. "And if that's the case, whoever's in there's probably nervous as a 'cat with a hexapuma at the base of his tree. I'd recommend approaching him a little carefully."

"That seems like sound advice," Abigail said gravely, watching Mateo's face as he towered over the midshipmen from behind and tried not to smile. No doubt, she thought, he was remembering someone else's snotty cruise.

She gazed back at him for a second, then squared her shoulders, walked briskly across to the bulkhead -communications panel just beside the fusion room hatch, and pressed the call key.

Nothing happened for several seconds, and she pressed again. Two or three more seconds oozed past. Then-

"What?"

The single word was harsh, hard-edged and grating with hostility and yet washed out with exhaustion.

"I am Lieutenant Abigail Hearns, of Her Majesty's Starship Hexapuma ." This wasn't the moment to complicate things by trying to explain what a Grayson was doing so far from home. "We've taken possession of the ship. I think it's probably time you came out of there."

The intercom was totally silent for perhaps three heartbeats. Then it rattled back to life.

" What did you say? Who did you say you were?!"

"Lieutenant Hearns, of the Hexapuma ," she repeated. "Our ship's captured the heavy cruiser-the Anhur , I believe-and destroyed the destroyer, and so far, my boarding party hasn't found anyone alive out here. I think it's time you came out," she said again, firmly.

"Wait."

The voice was still harsh, but there was life in it now, incredulity and a desperate need to hope confronted by the fear of yet another trap. Abigail tried-and failed-to imagine what that voice's owner must have been through, and her failure gave her patience.

"Activate your visual pickup," the voice said after a moment.

The bulkhead com was a simple, bare-bones unit. It could be set for voice-only or for voice with two-way visual, but not for visual only one way. Apparently the delay had been to give the man inside the fusion room time to cover his pickup, because Abigail's end showed only a featureless blur. She stood calmly, facing her own pickup, then stepped back far enough to be sure that it could see her Navy skinsuit.

"Take off your helmet, please," the voice said, and she complied. There was silence, and then the voice said, "We're coming out."

Ma

A dark— haired man, perhaps a hundred and eighty centimeters tall, stood in the opening. His eyes widened, and his empty hands moved farther away from his sides, as he saw the three Marines behind the pulse rifles trained upon him.

"Lieutenant Josh Baranyai," he said quickly. "Third officer of the Emerald Dawn ."

"Lieutenant Hearns," Abigail said, and he turned his eyes away from the pulse rifles almost convulsively. She smiled as reassuringly as she could. "Are you alone, Lieutenant Baranyai?"

"No." He paused and cleared his throat. "No, Lieutenant. There are eleven of us."

"Can you tell us what happened out here?" she asked, waving one hand to indicate the rest of the corpse-littered vessel.

"Not for certain." Baranyai looked back at the Marines, then at Abigail again.

"Step forward out of the hatch, please," Abigail said. "I don't wish to appear discourteous, but until we know exactly what happened and sort out exactly who's who, we're going to have to proceed cautiously. Which, I'm afraid, means all of you will have to be searched for weapons. I hope you'll forgive any necessary discourtesy."

Baranyai laughed. The sound was just a little on the hysterical side, but it carried a surprising amount of genuine amusement, as well.

"Lieutenant Hearns, after the last couple of months, I can't think of anything we wouldn't be prepared to forgive if we get out of this alive!"

He stepped fully out into the passageway, still holding his arms well out to either side, and stood patiently as one of McCollum's skinsuited Marines quickly searched him.

"Clear, Ma'am," she said to Abigail when she was finished, and Abigail beckoned for Baranyai to join her (and the silently hovering Gutierrez) as the next person-this one female-emerged hesitantly from the fusion room.

"Now, Lieutenant Baranyai. What can you tell me?"

"They took us about two, two and a half months back," he said, scrubbing his mouth with the back of his hand and blinking rapidly. Then he shook himself and drew a deep breath.

"They took us two and a half months back," he repeated more calmly. "Jumped us just short of the hyper limit leaving New -Tuscany. We were a half-hour shy of translation when they matched vectors with us. Came out of nowhere, as far as we could tell." He shrugged. "I figure they probably came in under stealth, but the Company never has spent a credit more on sensors than it had to. They could have come thundering up firing flares, and we wouldn't've seen them!

"The first thing Captain Bacon knew, they were right there, and they told him that if he tried to use the com, they'd blow us out of space." Baranyai shrugged again. "With a heavy cruiser's broadside aimed right at him, he didn't have much choice. So they came aboard."

The Solarian merchant officer crossed his arms in front of him, rubbing his palms up and down his forearms as if he were cold.

"They were lunatics," he said flatly. "Most of them, we found out later, were 'security troops' for the previous regime out in the People's Republic of Haven. Apparently they actually crewed entire starships with 'security' perso

He looked at Abigail as if, even now, he found that difficult to believe, and she nodded.

"Yes, they did. We've had... quite a bit of experience with them ourselves. The previous Havenite regime wasn't noted for moderation."

"I'll take your word for it," Baranyai said. "I might not have, once, but I will now, for damned sure. Somehow the 'faxes don't seem to've reported the full story on the People's Republic. Nothing I ever saw said anything about homicidal maniacs being put in charge of the asylum!"

"Not all Havenites are maniacs. We aren't too fond of them, of course, but honesty compels me to admit that the present regime genuinely seems to have done everything it can to expose and eradicate the excesses of its predecessors." It came out sounding more stilted than Abigail had intended, but it was nothing less than the truth.

"I can believe that, too, from the way these people carried on," Baranyai said. "Their commander-'Citizen Commodore Clignet,' he called himself-could rant and rave for a half-hour at a time, and at the drop of the hat, about the 'recidivists' and 'class traitors' and 'enemies of the Revolution' and 'betrayers of the People' who'd conspired to overthrow the legitimate government of the People's Republic and murder somebody called Saint-Just."

Abigail nodded again, and Baranyai looked at her helplessly.

"I thought the Havenite head of state was named Pierre," he protested.

"He was. Saint-Just replaced him after he died in a coup attempt."

"If you say so."

Baranyai shook his head, and Abigail found herself smothering a smile at the way the Solly's confusion put the all-consuming importance of the war against Haven and the reasons for it into brutal perspective from a Solarian viewpoint.

"Anyway," the merchant spacer continued, "Clignet apparently sees himself as point man for the counterattack to 'save the Revolution.' He isn't just a common, garden variety, scum of the universe pirate, in his own eyes, at least. And he's real big on maintaining 'revolutionary discipline.'" Baranyai shivered again. "As nearly as I can tell, that's just an excuse to indulge in torture. Anybody-and I mean anybody— who steps out of line, discharges his duties inadequately, or just pisses Clignet and his toadies off is lucky if he gets off alive. Most of them're lucky if they manage to kill themselves before Clignet's enforcers get their hands on them. And our people caught it just as badly as his did. Apparently, the way he sees it, you're either entirely on his side or entirely on the other side, in which case you deserve anything he can think up to do to you.