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He appreciated Admiral Khumalo's official approval of his actions here in Pequod, but he hadn't needed the dispatches from the admiral and Captain Shoupe to warn him to watch his back. In fact, there were more dispatches from him already en route to Spindle, with the details of fresh confrontations with New Tuscan skippers. Now the New Tuscan trade attaché was getting into the mix, as well, registering "formal protests" over the "increasing high-handedness" of HMS Reprise and her perso
His people were trying hard to avoid pumping any hydrogen into the fire . . . for all the good it seemed to be doing. The entire ship's company knew about the stream of complaints and protests by now, but they still had their duties to discharge. And, like their captain, they'd come to the conclusion that all of this had to be orchestrated by some central authority and that it had to be headed towards some specific climax. And, once again like their captain, every damned one of them wished he or she had some clue—any clue—what that climax might be . . . and how it might be avoided.
Unfortunately, no one had been able to come up with that clue.
Oh, how I wish the Admiral would hurry up and get someone senior out here, Denton thought fervently. I don't care if it would be an escalation. I'm delighted that everyone is so damned pleased with how well I've done so far, but I'm getting awful tired of waiting for that other shoe. And I'm damned certain that whenever it finally comes down, I'm go
He knew why his nerves were even tighter than they had been, and his eyes slid across the tactical display to the data code of NTNSCamille. The New Tuscan light cruiser was about thirty percent larger thanReprise, and the NTN had a decent tech level for a Verge star system. It wasn't as good as the Rembrandt Navy, or the San Miguel Navy, perhaps, but it was two or three cuts above the average hardscrabble, hand-to-mouth, third- or fourth-tier "navies" one normally saw out in this neck of the woods.
Despite that, and despite the fact thatReprise was no spring treekitten, Denton wasn't at all intimidated by the larger ship's firepower. The truth, as he felt quite confidentCamille's captain realized as well as he did, was that the cruiser wouldn't stand a chance against the smaller Manticoran destroyer.
Unfortunately, it's not as simple as deciding who can blow who out of space, he reflected grimly.
Camille had arrived in Pequod almost five local days ago, and Captain Séguin had immediately informed the Pequod system authorities that New Tuscany had decided it would be both useful and advisable to permanently station one of its warships in Pequod as a formal observer. It was not, she had hastened to assure everyone in sight, viewed or intended by New Tuscany as a hostile act or as an affront to Pequod's sovereignty. Indeed, it was New Tuscany's hope, as the formal notes she'd delivered on behalf of Foreign Minister Cardot and Prime Minister Vézien made clear, that having an official New Tuscan presence in the system would help to cool things down, rather than heat them up.
Sure it was. Denton shook his head. If he hadn't been convinced all of the "incidents" New Tuscan merchant skippers were complaining about had been deliberately concocted on orders from their home government, he might have been willing to at least entertain the possibility that Séguin was telling the truth. Unhappily, he was convinced that if the New Tuscan government had been serious about bringing an end to the tension, all it really had to do was tell its captains to stop doing what it had them doing. Which meant Camille was obviously here for something else, and that "something else" wasn't going to turn out to be something Denton wanted to know anything about. That much, at least, he was sure he could count on.
His mouth twitched in a humorless smile as he watched Ensign Monahan's pi
Not another of those damned New Tuscan freighters! he thought.Dammit, they must be cycling their entire frigging merchant marinethrough Pequod! Don't they have a single ship still in—
His thoughts broke off as theHélène Blondeau's icon was abruptly replaced with the flashing crimson symbol that indicated a spreading sphere of wreckage, flying outward from the point in space at which a ship had just blown up.
"—so after completing my debrief of Ensign Monahan and each member of her crew separately, it is my conclusion that their reports—singly and as a group—are an accurate account of what actually happened during their approach toHélène Blondeau," Lewis Denton told his terminal's recording pickup fourteen hours later.
His voice was more than a little hoarse, exhaustion-roughened around the edges, and he knew it, just as he knew the report he was recording would show his weary eyes and the dark, bruised-looking bags which had formed below them. There wasn't much he could do about that, though. He had to get this report off, and the sooner the better. It was the better part of seventeen days from Pequod to Spindle by dispatch boat, but it was less than six days from Pequod to New Tuscany. He didn't really think anyone in New Tuscany would be insane enough to launch some sort of punitive expedition againstReprise or Pequod, but he was nowhere near as confident of that as he would have liked to be. Not after the most recent episode.
"Despite Captain Séguin's assertions to the contrary, there is absolutely no evidence that Ensign Monahan or her pi
"Indeed, I must reiterate that I have been able to find no evidence anywhere in any of our records or sensor data that indicates any external cause forHélène Blondeau's destruction. There is no indication of missile fire, energy fire, or collision. The only tentative conclusion I have been able to arrive at is that the ship and—apparently—her entire company were lost to an internal explosion. Neither I nor any of my officers, specifically including my engineering and tactical officers, have been able to suggest any normally occurring cause for such an explosion. The vessel was so completely destroyed that little short of a catastrophic and completely unanticipated failure of her fusion bottle would appear to be a remotely reasonable explanation. I find that explanation completely implausible, however, given the observed nature of the explosion. In fact, from the admittedly partial sensor data we have of the vessel's destruction and our analysis of the wreckage's scatter patterns, it appears to me and to my tactical officer that she was destroyed not by a single explosion, nor even by a single primary explosion and a series of secondary explosions, but rather as the result of a virtually simultaneous chain of at least seven distinct explosions."