David Weber - On Basilisk Station

"Good. I'd like to add his findings, good or bad, to my dispatch to Admiral Webster. And I'll feel a lot more comfortable personally once we have some sort of accurate idea of just how bad the situation ground-side really is."

"So will I." Dame Estelle shook herself. "All right, Honor. Thanks. I'll get on my end of things. Keep me posted if anything breaks up there."

"I will, Ma'am."

Honor killed the com link and crossed her legs. She steepled her fingers under her jaw in her favorite thinking posture, and the occasional soft murmur of command and response flowed over her as her bridge crew went about its duties. She never knew exactly how long she sat there, but finally she snorted softly and lowered her hands.

"Mr. McKeon."

"Yes, Ma'am?" The exec looked up. She beckoned to him, and he crossed to her chair as she stood.

"I think we're moving into the end-game phase," she said quietly, pitching her voice for his ears alone. "I'm trying to keep an open mind about that, but too many things seem to be coming together here." She paused, and McKeon nodded in agreement.

"I've been over Papadapolous's deployment plan, and it looks good," she went on, "but I want two changes made in it."

"Yes, Ma'am?"

"First, I want the Marines moved aboard the pinnaces now. There's room for them to bunk aboard—they'll have to hot-bunk, but they can squeeze in—and I want them ready to drop on zero notice. They can armor up on the way down or even after they hit dirt."

"Yes, Ma'am." McKeon pulled out his memo pad and keyed notes into it. "And the second change?"

"I want Lieutenant Montoya and our other medical people back up here. Get them aboard by mid-watch, if you can."

"Excuse me, Ma'am?" McKeon blinked, and Honor hid a sour smile.

"Officially, I've decided that it would be unfair to ask Dame Estelle and the NPA to make do with the services of our junior physician in the event of an incident on Medusa. In light of Commander Suchon's many more years of service, I feel it would be much more reasonable for us to put her experience to good use down there."

"I see, Ma'am." There was a faint gleam in McKeon's eyes. "And the, um, un official reason?"

"Unofficially, Mr. McKeon," Honor's voice was much grimmer, "Dame Estelle and Barney Isvarian have quite good medical staffs of their own, and there are a good many other civilian doctors in the enclaves down there. Between them, they should be able to carry Suchon's dead weight." McKeon winced at the acid bite in his captain's voice, but he nodded.

"Besides," Honor went on after a moment, "Lieutenant Montoya may be ten years younger than Suchon, but he's a better physician than she'll ever be. If we need a doctor up here, we're going to need him in a hurry, and I want the best one I can get."

"Do you really think we're going to need one?" McKeon couldn't quite hide his surprise, and Honor shrugged uncomfortably.

"I don't know. Call it a feeling. Or maybe it's just nerves. But I'll feel much more comfortable with Suchon dirt-side and Montoya in Fearless ."

"Understood, Skipper." McKeon put away his memo pad and nodded. "I'll take care of it."

"Good. In the meantime, I'll be in my quarters. I've got a dispatch to write." She produced a smile—a strange smile, compounded of fatigue, worry, awareness of her own ignorance, and an odd undercurrent that might almost be excitement—and McKeon felt a tingle sweep over him as he saw it.

"Who knows?" she finished softly, still with that same, strange smile. "I may even have something interesting to put in it in a few more hours."

She walked into the lift with her treecat, and McKeon stood for several seconds, looking at the door which had closed behind her and wondering why her smile had frightened him so.

Lieutenant Frances Malcolm, Medusan Native Protection Agency, stretched and yawned in her bucket seat. The skimmer swept onward above the rugged foothills, humming across the endless kilometers of moss on the quiet whisper of its turbines, and something thumped behind her. She turned in her chair and looked back just as Corporal Truman, the skimmer's gunner, dropped down out of his dorsal turret.

"Sorry, Franny." Malcolm hid a reflexive wince. Like Barney Isvarian, she was an ex-Marine, but the NPA wasn't real big on punctilious formality, and Truman was a career cop who'd transferred in from the San Giorgio City Police on Manticore. She'd given up on trying to turn him into anything resembling a soldier. There was no point in it. For that matter, she told herself firmly, there was probably no reason. The NPA wasn't the Corps, but while its members might seem casual to an outsider, they kept their heads when someone dropped them in the pot.

"I forgot my thermos," Truman went on. He scooped up the insulated container and hopped back up onto the raised firing step. Malcolm heard the thermos open and the gurgle as he poured coffee at his station and shook her head with a slight grin. No, this definitely wasn't the Corps.

"Coming up on the three hundred-klick mark, Franny," her pilot murmured, and Malcolm nodded. They'd flown a standard sweep pattern since leaving the Delta, and that had slowed their rate of advance to little more than seventy-five kilometers per hour. It made her feel as if they were barely poking along, especially in light of the urgency Isvarian had stressed in his briefing, but at least they were nearing the limit of their best estimate of how far the dead nomad could have come. And, she thought, she could say with certainty that there hadn't been any large numbers of rifle-armed Medusans in the area they'd swept. No one could hide that many iron rifle barrels or warm bodies from her sensors, and—

"What's that?" Sergeant Hayabashi's voice broke into her thoughts, and Malcolm raised her head. The sergeant was frowning down at his own instrumentation, and Malcolm felt her lips purse as she saw the bright blip shining from Hayabashi's screen.

"It's a power source," she said unnecessarily. "Could be an aircar's electrical system, or it might be a small generator."

"Well whichever it is, it shouldn't be here, should it?" Hayabashi asked, and Malcolm shook her head.

"Nope. But let's not jump to any conclusions, Sergeant," she said in her most judicious voice. "We're supposed to be looking for hopped-up natives. This could be someone grounded with a mechanical failure."

"Yeah, and I could be my own maiden aunt, Ma'am," Hayabashi replied, and Malcolm grinned at the sergeant's sour tone. "Anyway, it—"

The sergeant broke off as the blip vanished. He tapped keys, then frowned at the lieutenant. "Something cut off the scan, Ma'am," he reported.

"I saw." Malcolm adjusted her own systems. "We've lost the LOS. Maybe a ridge line cut it off—or it could be hidden behind something and we just happened to get a peek."

"Hidden?" Hayabashi gave her a sharp glance, and she shrugged.

"I didn't say I thought it was innocent, Sergeant. I only said it could be." Malcolm turned to her pilot. "Bring us back in a circle, Jeff. And drop us to a hundred meters or so. I want a visual on this thing if we can spot it."

"Coming back around now," the pilot replied. The skimmer swept around in a sharp turn, and Hayabashi grunted as he switched to visual.

"Well, shit," he muttered a moment later, then grimaced. "Sorry, Ma'am, but you were right. See there?"

The sergeant's finger tapped his display, and Malcolm craned her neck to look. Her eyes narrowed as she saw the camouflage-netted aircar nose parked just inside what looked like a natural cave opening. She shook her head, and glanced at her thermal and magnetic sensors. There was nothing on them, and she looked up at the pilot.