David Weber - Path of the Fury

"My engineer's quarters," she said, and he nodded and went to work … totally oblivious to the fact that he had just searched exactly the same room.

Alicia hardly believed what she was seeing. She'd counted on it, but actually seeing it was eerie and unreal, and she felt Megarea's matching reaction. Tisiphone, on the other hand, took it completely for granted, though she was obviously bending all her will upon the lieutenant to bring it off.

Giolitti completed his second examination and turned to her.

"Who's next?" he asked cheerfully. "My astrogator," Alicia said, and led him back out into the passage.

Giolitti made the last entry and wished all his inspections could go this smoothly. Captain Mainwaring ran a taut ship. Even her cargo hold was spotless, and Star Runner was one of the very few free traders whose crew hadn't left something illegal-or at least closely regulated- lying around where he could find it. Which made them improbably law-abiding or fiendishly clever at hiding their personal stashes. "Given his impression of Mainwaring's people, Giolitti suspected the latter, and more power to them.

It was funny, though. He'd been impressed by their competence, but they hadn't really registered the way people usually did. Probably because he'd been concentrating so hard on their captain, he thought a bit guiltily, and glanced at her from the corner of his eye as she escorted him back to the personnel lock. It was unusual for a captain to spend his or her precious time escorting a customs man about in person. Even the best of them seemed to regard inspectors as one step lower than a Rish, an intruder-and, still worse, an official intruder- in their domains. Giolitti didn't really blame them, but it was a tremendous relief when he met one of the rare good ones.

And, come to think of it, it wasn't really all that strange that the rest of her crew seemed somehow faded beside her. He'd never met anyone with quite the personal magnetism Theodosia Mainwaring radiated. She was a striking woman, friendly and completely at her ease, yet he had the strangest impression she could be a very dangerous person if she chose. Of course, no shrinking violet would be skippering a free trader at such a relatively young age, but it went deeper than that. He remembered the grizzled petty officer who'd overseen the hand-to-hand training of the "young gentlemen" at OCS. He'd moved the way Mainwaring did, and he'd been sudden death on two feet.

The lieutenant shook the thought aside and ejected the clearance chip from his notepad. He held it out to the captain, then extended his hand.

"It's been a pleasure, Captain Mainwaring. I wish every ship I inspected were as shipshape as yours. I hope you do well in our area."

"Thank you, Lieutenant." Mainwaring clasped his hand firmly, and for just an instant, he seemed to feel an odd, hard angularity in her palm, but the sensation vanished. A moment later, he didn't even remember having felt it. "I hope we run into one another again," the captain continued.

"Maybe we will." Giolitti released her hand and stood back, then raised an admonishing finger. "Remember, any of your people who come dirtside will be subject to individual med-scans to confirm their certification."

"Don't worry, Lieutenant." Mainwaring's rather amused smile made him feel even younger. "I don't expect we'll be here long enough for liberty-in fact, most of my people are going to be busy running maintenance checks on the Fasset drive before we pull out-but we'll check in with the medics if we are."

"Thank you, Captain," Giolitti gave her a crisp salute. "In that case, allow me to extend an official welcome to MaGuire and bid you good bye."

Mainwaring returned his salute, and the lieutenant headed back for his shuttle. He had two more inspections to make by shift end, and he wished, more wistfully than hopefully, that they might go as smoothly.

Alicia let herself sag against the bulkhead and sucked in a deep, lung-stretching breath. Dear God, she'd known Tisiphone was good, but the Fury's performance had surpassed her most extravagant hopes. She doubted they were likely to meet a brighter, more conscientious customs inspector than young Lieutenant Giolitti, and she no longer doubted their ability to razzle-dazzle him if they did. It had been unnerving enough to watch him "search" her quarters five separate times, but that had been nothing compared to watching him walk right past the feed tubes from the main missile magazine without even batting an eye. He'd had to climb a ladder to cross one of them, yet it simply hadn't been there for him, and neither had the energy batteries or the armory. He'd seemed perfectly content with his "inspection" of the control room, as well, though only an idiot-or someone under Tisiphone's spell-could have looked at those blank gray walls and the alpha link headset without realizing what he was seeing.

"Of course he did not," Tisiphone observed. "You are correct about his intelligence-a very bright young man, indeed-yet it is far simpler to suggest things to intelligent people, for they have the wit to add the details with little prompting. And," she added graciously, "you and Megarea were wise to suggest that we create your "crew's" personalities in such detail. It allowed me to project personalities with much greater depth."

"Yeah." Alicia drew another breath and straightened. "Still, you seemed to be concentrating pretty hard. Could you have handled more people?"

"I believe so, yes. Numbers of minds are not the difficulty, Little One, but rather the detail of the illusion I provide them with. Of course, it would be wise, in the event that we must deal with several people at once, to include a disinclination to discuss their inspection at a later date lest they discover too great a degree of similarity among their recollections."

"You're probably right," Megarea put in, "but unless there's a glitch in the documentation, one-man teams are the rule out here."

"I know." Alicia stepped back into the lift and punched for the flight deck. "Are we clear on our docking and service fees, Megarea?"

"Sure. Tis cooked the books just fine when she dropped our flight log on them, and Ms. Tanner took care of the bookkeeping while Captain Mainwaring was showing Lieutenant Giolitti around. We've covered all our fees out of her bogus credit transfer with a balance of eighty thousand credits left."

"What about service personnel?"

"No sweat. Lieutenant Chisholm dealt with them, and they'll be waiting for our shuttle to pick up the consumables. We're gonna have to dump most of them in deep space, since I had to order enough for a crew of five to make it look right, but our Melville download shows a complete overhaul six months ago, so I didn't have to fudge any servicing requirements."

"You're a sweetheart," Alicia said fervently. She'd been astounded by the verisimilitude of the computer images and voices Megarea could produce. It was a good thing the AI could, too, since they had to convince anyone who got curious- No, scratch that. They had to keep anyone from getting curious, which meant they had to provide crewmen other than Captain Mainwaring in one form or another. Megarea's ability to carry on com conversations, or even several of them at once, would be invaluable in that regard.

"Thanks. You and Tis did pretty good, too."

"Yet could we have accomplished but little without you, Megarea. It is the combination of all our skills which makes us formidable."

"You got that right, Lady," Alicia agreed. "But I take it no one raised an eyebrow over your faces?"

"Nary a twitch. Wanna see my latest efforts? I finally got that lisp down pat on "Lieutenant Chisholm," you know."

"Sure." The lift slid to a halt and Alicia stepped out onto the flight deck. "Let her roll."