Intrepid

While Captain Drago handled his ship, Kris eyed the other. On-screen, it looked like a medium-size merchant. A bit big for a tramp freighter, doing catch-as-catch-can business between the small ports on the Rim and beyond. Still, its long, central spine was loaded with containers. Forward, it broadened into a bridge and housing arrangement for the crew. Amidships was a disk containing whatever cargo didn't do well in vacuum, and possibly some passengers. That was where the Wasp had its twenty-four-inch pulse lasers. Aft were the engineering spaces, a rectangle for the fusion reactor, plumbing for the magnetohydrodynamics generators, and huge bell-shaped plasma engines.

''Sensors, is that a single reactor?'' Kris asked Chief Beni, her own man, who was running that station just now.

''Looks that way, ma'am,'' he muttered, then did something to his board. ''But I'm still looking.''

Kris slaved her board to his. Beni might be leadership challenged on liberty, but with anything electronic he was a wizard. Just now, he used only passives, listening but making no noise that would tip a pirate's hand that the Wasp was anything but a soft, defenseless carrier of wood and drawer of water.

Then again, a pirate would be doing its own best to look as innocent as a lamb … and hide the wolf within. At the moment, they were even in the lamb department. Or one might actually be what it claimed.

''Hmm, ain't she a mite bit underpowered with a single Westinghouse 1500 series reactor?'' Chief Beni mused to himself, and jacked up the gain on a couple of his short-range sensors. ''Seems like there's a whole lot more neutrinos coming out of that single reactor … and they're spread out over a whole lot more space. Those engineering spaces looked a bit luxurious for just one teapot. Skipper, I make two Westinghouse reactors. And expect they're 2200 series at that. You got a wolf trying to fake it in woolies.''

''Damn,'' Captain Drago said.

''Straight,'' Kris added.

''Your orders, Your Highness.''

So King Ray didn't know these people nearly as well as Kris did. And this bunch had no problem following this Longknife into the mouth of hell. In a fast countdown to a fight, Drago wasn't looking to Abby, he was asking Kris.

She swallowed the first thing that came to mind… Let's kick some pirate butt. Instead, Kris muttered a much more sedate, ''Let's make sure someone like Helvetia isn't also trolling for pirates. Wouldn't want Grampa Ray faced with a media blitz ‘cause two good guys shot each other up.''

Someone on the bridge snickered at Kris's familiarity with a man everyone else knew as King Raymond of the United Sentients.

And somewhere on net came a ''Damn, one of those Longknifes can grow up.'' It sounded familiar.

''That you, Jack?'' Kris asked Captain Jack Montoya of the Royal United Sentient Marine Corps, who now commanded the rump company aboard.

''Not me, ma'am, not a chance. Though I do admit sympathy for the conclusion.''

Further discussion was suspended as the ship looming over them opened communication channels. ''Hello, stranger, this is Compton Maru out of Orama. What ship are you and where you from? Where you bound?''

Captain Drago took the commlink. ''This is the Lucky Seven Horse out of Hampton, and I'll tell you where I'm bound when you tell me where you been.''

That elicited a laugh, much as Kris expected. Profits were razor thin out here and a good way to go broke was to follow in the wake of another ship, trying to sell your cargo in an already satisfied market or buy up cargo that had already been shipped.

Kris might be Navy and Drago … whatever he was … but they'd spent enough time in bars among merchant captains to learn that much of the trade.

The laughing voice became serious. ''You tell me something interesting, then I'll tell you something more interesting.''

''Sounds fair,'' Drago said. ''Our last stop was Magda's Hideaway.'' It really had been. ''They took all our agricultural implements and were still hungry. They didn't touch our heavy machinery. Somebody got there first.''

''That little burg ain't growing anywhere near as fast as its founding fathers thought it would. If they ain't careful, they're going to get overextended on their loans,'' the voice from the larger freighter observed.

Kris let them ramble, and took the ship above her apart layer by layer—as much as passive sensors allowed. If the ship had lasers, no capacitors were charged. Dead in space, the ship was no longer running plasma through its engines. Its only power source was a trickle off the racetrack of hot plasma. That kept the ship's main battery charged.

''Could you power a laser directly from the main storage battery?'' Kris asked the chief.