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Brad flushed, furious. “This is some sort of fucking joke!” He waved off the authentication code and punched in the waypoint series for Moscow. “When I find the asshole—”
“Brad. Come here.” He looked round sharply. Mary was leaning over the repeater from Wang’s crow’s nest downstairs. She looked sick.
“What is it?”
“Here.” She pointed to a plot that had just shown up. Taxis Pride was a fleet auxiliary, liable for mobilization in event of war: it carried near-military-grade passive sensors. “Gamma plot, classic proton-antiproton curve, about two AUs out. It’s redshifting on us. I got a fix on that relay service buoy, Brad: it’s at the origin point for that … burn.”
“Shit!” The screen swam in front of Brad’s eyes. All of a sudden he remembered what it was like when he was nine, when his father told him his dog had died. “Shit!” Positronium was an unstable intermediate created during some matter-antimatter reactions. Redshifted, it was moving away from the reference frame of the observer at some fraction of the speed of light. Out from the star, it could mean only one thing — slower-than-light antimatter rockets, relativistic retaliation bombers cranking up for a kamikaze run on someone’s home world. “They’ve launched. They’ve fucking launched the deterrent fleet!”
They were a long-practiced team: he didn’t have to tell Mary what to do. She was already bringing back up the gravitational potential maps he’d need for the jump. Brad canceled his half-pla
Brad stared at the comm status display without seeing it. Then he mashed his palm down on the general cha
IMPACT: T plus 1392 days, 18 hours, 11 minutes
“What’s your finding?” demanded the Captain.
The three dogs gri
“Why did she get in there in the first place?” Ma
“In my judgment her actions are compatible with typical human adolescent dysfunctional behavior. This search-and-rescue security unit is not authorized to use lethal force to protect bonded cargo, Captain. A secondary consideration was that her absence had been noticed by familial parties and formally reported after she was officially transferred aboard the evacuation ferry. Remanding the delinquent into the care of her parents, with subsequent monitoring and supervision for the duration of the voyage, will prevent repetition and will not invite further attention.”
The dog that had been talking jerked its head pompously. One of its fellows padded over and sniffed at its left ear. Ma
Number one dog looked at him. “What are you talking about?”
“Eh?” Ma
The dogs stood up simultaneously, and he realized they had him surrounded. Gun-muzzle faces pointed at him, a thousand-yard stare repeated three times over. The FO dog spoke up: the others seemed to be under its control in some way. “We could tell you, Captain, but then we would have to silence you. Speculation on this matter by parties not authorized by the Ministry of War is deemed to be a hostile act, within the meaning of section two, paragraph four-three-one of the Defense of the Realm Act. Please confirm your understanding of this declaration.”
“I—” Ma