“At least that’s how they’ll write it up for their reports,” Lev Carson observed dryly from McKeon’s com. The XO was once again in AuxCon with the backup bridge group. “Given the new management’s ‘collective responsibility’ crap, I’d make damned sure I covered my ass against any hint of cowardice or ‘defeatism.’”

  “So would I,” McKeon acknowledged. “But the truth is, it’s the best thing they could do, anyway. And—”

  “Excuse me, Skipper,” Lieutenant McCloskey said.

  “Yes?” McKeon looked at him.

  “Admiral Steigert’s on the com for you, Sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  McKeon touched the acceptance key and Rear Admiral Jožefa Steigert replaced Commander Carson on his display.

  “Ma’am,” he said.

  “They’ve surrendered.” Steigert snorted. “Surprise, surprise!”

  “Actually, I am a little surprised they didn’t blow the tank farm first, Ma’am.”

  “So am I,” Steigert acknowledged. “Especially given how fond of shooting people the ‘Committee of Public Safety’ seems to be. Of course, that could cut both ways. If you don’t blow the tanks to keep them from falling into the hands of those nasty Manties, you’re likely to get hammered—or shot—for lack of revolutionary zeal. But if you blow them in time to prevent that, you’re probably just as likely to get hammered—or shot—for defeatism.”

  “I can see that, Ma’am. But if it was me, I’d have pushed the button.”

  “Well, Citizen Captain Rummo apparently doesn’t see it that way.”

  “Citizen Captain?” McKeon repeated. “Not ‘People’s Commissioner’?”

  “Regular Navy officer.” Steigert shrugged. “Maybe they just hadn’t gotten around to assigning a ‘commissioner’ way out here yet.”

  “Maybe.” McKeon nodded, but he also frowned. Admittedly, the Slocum System was scarcely a critically important installation, but the Committee of Public Safety had made a point of assigning their ‘people’s commissioners’ to every single hyper-capable unit of the People’s Navy. And there’d been commissioners in every other system Sixth Fleet had hit after the formal declaration.

  “It seems odd to me, too,” Steigert said. “And just between you and me, Alister, I’m not a big fan of ‘odd.’ Tell your people to watch their asses when they go aboard the main platform.”

  “Oh, I will, Ma’am. I will.”

  * * *

  “Marine One is docking now, Ma’am. We’re number two, behind Major Hendren.”

  “Thank you, Scotty,” Brandy said. Lieutenant Tremaine was technically too senior for a mere shuttle pilot, but she hadn’t been surprised to find him when she boarded the shuttle. After all, as Prince Adrian’s flight operations officer, he got to make the cockpit assignments.

  That no doubt also explained why SCPO Harkness was Shuttle One’s current flight engineer, as well.

  She smiled at the thought and leaned forward in her seat, craning her neck to watch Marine One settle into the docking buffers in the orbital platform’s Boat Bay One.

  Like most industrial platforms, Sigismund Alpha’s design was bare-bones, practical, and as devoid of aesthetic value as it was possible to be. The main platform was an untidy aggregation of habitat modules, hydroponics sections, and cargo platforms, gleaming in the reflected light of Sigismund, otherwise known as Slocum III.

  Slocum was unusual for an F8 star in its possession of three exceptionally massive gas giants. Sigismund, the largest of the trio (and the only one which had actually been named), was about ten times as massive as the Sol System’s Jupiter, just short of “brown dwarf” territory. It wasn’t significantly larger than Jupiter, only denser and more massive, but it supported two separate refinery platforms—Sigismund Beta and Gamma—and a bountiful flotilla of atmospheric mining ships.

  The refineries and storage tanks were well separated from Sigismund Alpha, probably as a safety precaution in case of industrial accidents. They were actually a bit larger than Brandy had anticipated, too. It looked like at least two or three times the storage capacity she’d expected. If those tanks were full, TG 16.3 should have brought more tankers.

  Her lips twitched at the thought as she watched the boarding tube run out to Marine One and pictured Hendren and his Marines swinging through it to the Sigismund Alpha boat bay gallery. Over the last few months, she and Hendren had even gotten as far as using one another’s first names, occasionally. She suspected he still cherished a few reservations about Harkness, but given Harkness’ record, she couldn’t fault that. If she’d been a Marine, she would have had reservations about him! And whatever the Marine’s other faults might be, at least he had a lively sense of humor. Brandy could forgive a lot in someone who knew how to laugh at himself.

  His obvious competence was another mark in his favor. In Brandy’s experience, Marines in general had something of a fetish about training, but Clint Hendren took it to an even higher level than most. His people spent a lot of time in small craft and EVA exercises. And in fully geared-up shipboard exercises, tasked both to defend and to seize the ship. In fact, the time they spent practicing boarding and SAR exercises put enough wear on “his” pinnaces to eat up a disproportionate amount of Brandy’s severely overtaxed service and maintenance time. On the other hand, once he’d become aware—one might have said painfully aware, given their initial contact—of how overworked her people were, he’d assigned six of his Marines to help with the load. It wasn’t the same as having additional trained Navy ratings, but all six of them had extensive experience with Engineering as damage control team leaders, and they’d proven extremely useful.

  She wasn’t about to let him completely off the hook for the way he’d put his foot into his mouth that first time. Or, at least, she wasn’t about to admit it to him, anyway. But he’d made some long strides toward rehabilitating himself in her eyes. And he—and the rest of his Marines, of course—were a very reassuring presence when she found herself going aboard a platform inhabited by the next best thing to two thousand Peeps.

  “Bay secure, Ma’am,” Tremaine announced, and the shuttle quivered as its thrusters engaged. “Initiating docking sequence now.”

  * * *

  Brandy followed Major Hendren down the final passage to Sigismund Alpha’s command deck. As the senior officer present, she was technically in command, and where engineering issues and her party of ratings were concerned, she was just fine with that. But she didn’t know a damned thing about boarding a hostile orbital platform, and she was delighted to leave the details of securing that platform up to the Marine.

  Like the rest of her Navy personnel, she wore a standard-issue skinsuit, but Hendren’s Marines—aside from his single platoon in battle armor—wore Marine-issue armored skinnies. At the moment, the major was watching the system schematic displayed on his helmet’s HUD as he and Brandy moved at the center of a five-Marine diamond formation, and all of the Marines in question carried un-slung M32 pulse rifles. At least no one in her immediate vicinity had unlimbered a tribarrel or a plasma rifle, she thought dryly.

  Oh, stop that! she told herself. They’re doing their jobs, and they’re doing them damned well, and you know it.

  She did. In fact, what she felt most at the moment was impressed . . . and reassured. She was an engineer, not a tac officer, and sure as hell not a Marine! She carried the mandatory sidearm, and she’d qualified with it, as required. She was fairly certain she could at least not shoot her own foot off. Anything more was . . . problematical. So it was a good thing people who understood such things were along to keep her out of trouble.

  And the fact that this is so far outside your comfort zone is one reason you’re feeling nervous enough to make snitty remarks, if only to yourself, she thought. And I hadn’t realized how damned big this place was, either!

  In fact, compared to something like Hephaestus or Vulcan back home, Sigismund Alpha was tiny. Compared to Prince Adrian, it was huge, as was probably only to be expected of an orbital platform which housed a workforce closing in on three thousand. In addition to the environmental sections, there were engineering and maintenance spaces, docking racks for workboats and remote repair and maintenance drones, and God only knew what else, all located with the sprawling contempt for concentration microgravity made possible.

  In addition to the boat bay, designed to allow the transfer of personnel in a shirtsleeve environment, which was located in its own module and covered now by one squad of Lieutenant Dimitrieas’ First Platoon, there were five docking platforms arranged to service Sigismund Alpha’s extensive cargo modules.

  First was the only battle-armored platoon of the short company of Prince Adrian’s Marine detachment, and its second squad was distributed covering those cargo docks. The modules they served were much larger than Brandy had anticipated, but their size had made sense when she discovered that all of the system’s spare parts and support equipment were warehoused aboard Sigismund Alpha, rather than distributed to the refineries and tank farm. In addition, the Peeps had been building a second refinery—and additional tank farms—in orbit around Slocum IV. Most of the materials support for that was passing through Sigismund Alpha, as well, and its cargo space had been expanded accordingly. All of those docking platforms had to be covered, though, which had sucked away more of Hendren’s battle armor than Brandy might have preferred. On the other hand, battle armor was bulky, and most of Sigismund Alpha’s internal passages were too narrow for it to pass through readily.

  Dimitrieas’ third and final squad had been broken up into four two-person fire teams, rather than the standard three-person sections, and detailed to cover the platform’s central lift shafts. The shaft access compartments were much wider than the connecting passages, which made them a more comfortable fit for battle-armored Marines. And a Marine in battle armor was a very untempting target if anyone felt fractious. If Hendren had to hang somebody out on his or her own—and he did, given the number of points that had to be covered—it made sense to use his best-protected, best-armed personnel.

  Lieutenant Gillespie’s Second Platoon had been tasked for internal security. He and his first squad had headed for Power One, located in Sigismund Alpha’s central engineering section, along with Oliver O’Brien and Felicia O’Toole, to secure the platform’s reactors. His second squad had already accompanied Scotty Tremaine and Horace Harkness to secure Life Support Central, and third squad was on its way to the command deck along with Hendren, Anderson McCloskey, and, of course, Brandy herself.

  Bethany Clark and Third Platoon were still aboard Prince Adrian, skinsuited and ready to go in the second pinnace in case they were needed.

  “Marine One, Marine Two-One,” Gillespie’s voice came over Brandy’s earbug.

  “One,” Hendren acknowledged. “Go, Two.”

  “We’re in Power Central, Sir,” Gillespie reported. “The Peep power crew chief is walking Lieutenant O’Brien through the control panels now. From the Lieutenant’s expression, I think he’s getting the straight skinny.”

  “Copy your arrival,” Hendren said. “Any sign of security types?”

  “No, Sir.” Gillespie didn’t sound entirely happy about that, Brandy noticed. “Haven’t seen hide nor hair of them.”

  “Understood. Stay on your toes, Isaiah.”

  “Wilco that, Sir! Two-One, clear.”

  Brandy couldn’t see the captain’s expression, but from the set of his shoulders, she was willing to bet he was frowning. She picked up her own pace until she was walking beside him, and he glanced down at her.

  He was frowning, she saw. It wasn’t all that much of a frown, but still . . .

  “Yes?” he cocked his helmeted head.

  “I hadn’t really thought about the fact that we haven’t seen any of their security personnel,” she said quietly. “That seems . . . a little strange to me.”

  “Only a little?” Hendren snorted. “Everything we’ve seen about the Peeps since the Harris assassination says they’ve been beefing up their security forces, not just aboard warships but for every other imaginable base and outpost. Given this place’s size, they ought to have at least a couple of platoons of StateSec goons to ride herd on everybody’s political reliability.”

  “Apparently, Rummo doesn’t have one,” Brandy said.

  “He doesn’t?” the Marine sounded surprised.

  “Nope. Surprised me, too, Clint. I would have expected their ‘commissioner’ to be hovering in the background when Citizen Captain Rummo surrendered, but there was no sign of one.”

  “There wasn’t?” Hendren frowned. “I didn’t see any of the com traffic,” he added. “I should have figured something was odd when Captain McKeon told me Rummo would be the one surrendering the platform to us.” His frown deepened.

  “Do you think they’re planning something?” Brandy was pleased her voice sounded so level, but she felt her eyes flit around the passage, and their escort no longer seemed quite so ostentatious.

  “I think they’d be incredibly stupid if they were,” Hendren replied grimly. “Unfortunately, nobody issues any guarantees that the people on the other side won’t be incredibly stupid. So far the platform maps they’ve provided seem to be a hundred percent accurate, and Rummo’s boat bay people and now Engineering seem to be cooperating exactly the way he promised they would. So he sure looks like someone who’s minding his manners, but I don’t know . . .” He shook his head. “It’s just like I’ve got this itch I can’t scratch.”

  “Lieutenant Bolgeo?” another voice said in her earbug, and she raised one hand at Hendren, index finger extended in a “hold that thought” gesture.

  “Yes, Scotty?”

  “The Senior Chief and I are in Life Support Central, Ma’am.”

  “Any problems?”

  “No, Ma’am, but it’s a little weird. Life Support was unmanned when we got here. Not a soul in sight.”

  “Really?” She glanced back up at Hendren. “Scotty says Life Support was unmanned when he got there.”

  The Marine nodded.

  “We’re a little concerned over the fact that we haven’t seen any of the base’s security personnel yet,” she told Tremaine. “May be nothing, but keep your eyes open.”

  “Gunny Babcock’s already watching our backs, Ma’am. But we’ll keep our own eyes on things, too.”

  “Good. Back to you later.”

  “How unusual would it be for that station to be unmanned?” Hendren asked after a brief, thoughtful pause.

  “That’s hard to say. It would depend on a lot of factors, including how sophisticated the control links from Command Central are and how short on personnel they are.” Brandy shrugged. “On a Manticoran platform this size, everything—Power, Environmental, all of it—would be controlled from the command deck, so there wouldn’t have to be any operators physically on station. Not for routine ops, at least. But we’d have at least someone physically monitoring on-site, just in case. Even today, the human eye and brain are still about the best safety and servicing system around. And the Peeps tend to be more manpower intensive than we are, because their system reliability’s lower.”

  “So there ought to have been someone on Life Support?”

  “I’d say yes. Probably.” She grimaced. “I have no idea how their purges have affected personnel here in Slocum, though. A lot of their people in Mathias weren’t what anyone might have called the sharpest styluses in the box, and Slocum’s a much lower priority system than Mathias was. And given how much poorer than ours their serviceability is, I’d expect an experienced command crew to have duty watches on all the critical stations, if only for redundancy.”

  “An experienced command crew,” Hendren repeated.

  “Yes. But whatever they’ve done to their officer corps, they have hung onto the bulk of their long-term noncommissioned,” she said. “As I understand it, their career noncoms have always been the real backbone of their maintenance and operational personnel. So I’m pretty sure if it was left up to them, they’d have had a Life Support duty watch up and running. If they don’t, then presumably it’s because their officers told them not to.”

  “Which indicates either sloppiness . . . or maybe that that itch of mine has a certain justification.”

  “I’d prefer sloppiness,” Brandy said.

  “So would I, Brandy.”

  They turned the final corner and found themselves outside the open hatch of Command Central. The first Peep Marine they’d seen stood outside the hatch. His sleeve bore the chevrons of a sergeant, and the pistol holster at his hip was conspicuously empty.

  He came to attention as they saw him, although he didn’t salute.

  “Sergeant—I mean, Citizen Sergeant Lloyd Bigby,” he said.

  Hendren looked him over.

  “First one of those uniforms I’ve seen since we came aboard, Citizen Sergeant,” he said, after a moment.

  “Aren’t many of them around, Major. I’ve only got twenty-seven people, all told.” Bigby shook his head. “We’re basically just traffic cops.”

  “And there’s none of those—what? State Security types—around?”

  “You see any?” Bigby shook his head again.

  Hendren frowned, but then he shrugged and stepped past the citizen sergeant major onto the spacious command deck.

  A tall, brown haired officer in PRN uniform awaited them.

  “Citizen Captain Rummo?”

  “I am.”

  “Major Clint Hendren, Royal Marines. And this”—he indicated Brandy—“is Lieutenant Bolgeo. She’s now in command of Sigismund Able.”

  “I understand.” Rummo gestured around the command deck. Only a third or so of its stations were manned by the obviously skeleton bridge watch. “My people will show your people anything you need them to, Lieutenant.”

  “I appreciate that, Citizen Captain,” Brandy replied.

  “Before you do that, Citizen Captain,” Hendren said, “I’m a little puzzled. You seem pretty lightly staffed, and we’re getting similar reports from Life Support and Fusion One.”