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They nodded.

“You should have left your own comms behind.”

This time van Heel was the only one who nodded.

Should she make them wipe their comms? She could, because they’d compromised the job by bringing them. If Redmond got hold of either comms, they would know who they had. But then, they hadn’t known any better.

She coded a security override into her own comms. “Give me your personal comms.”

Chaudry handed his over first. She pushed the override through and handed it back. “Iris and fingerprint recognition.” Radko waited until Chaudry had held the comms up to his eyes, then pressed his thumb on the screen. “You, and only you, can use it. If anyone else tries, the whole thing will be wiped clean.”

Han handed his over but didn’t let go of it. “Mine’s already set for that.” She could see it was true. “My family is paranoid about security.”

Radko remembered Renaud Han as an easygoing man. Still, it had been years. Maybe he’d changed.

“Give me permission to check the settings.”

He did. It was way more secure than she’d made Chaudry’s.

“Right. Don’t use your personal comms for anything. Turn it off and pack it away in your bag. Use the issued comms from now on.”

Han scowled down at his hands.

“Han?” If he refused to do this, she was going to take his comms away. Or maybe try to use it so that it wiped itself.

“Understood.” Han depressed the back panel to turn his comms fully off. He looked at it, then held it out to her.

She almost took it, shook her head at the last moment. “You’re responsible for your own shit, Han. Look after it.”

He slipped it into his pocket.

“Same for you, Chaudry. Don’t use your personal comms for anything.”

Preliminaries over, it was time to get back to the job in hand. “We’re going to Redmond, where Tiana Chen—that’s me—will attempt to buy a stolen report. You are my bodyguards.”

Han stretched himself out in one of the seats, arms crossed behind his head. “Tiana Chen. You don’t mean that loathsome woman who hangs around court and blackmails everyone?”

“I do.”

Chaudry cleared his throat. “Redmond is enemy territory.”

“Of course it is,” van Heel said. “Covert ops. Remember. You do them in enemy territory.”

You didn’t always, but Radko didn’t correct her.

Chaudry pulled at the knuckles on his right hand. “I don’t speak Redmond; I work in Stores.” He didn’t state his question aloud, but Radko understood, anyway.

“They haven’t made a mistake. You were specifically chosen. All of you were.”

“Why?” van Heel asked. “So when we do get this report they can catalog them properly in Stores?”

“That’s better than the other option,” Han said. “That we’re disposable.”

“No one is disposable,” Radko said. “I intend to bring us all back.” Herself included. “We do this carefully, and we do it safely. I’ll take Chaudry and Han with me. Van Heel, I want you on surveillance, and as a backup if anything goes wrong.”

Van Heel nodded.

“As for not understanding the native Redmond language, Chaudry, you don’t have to. The person we are meeting knows where we are from. She’ll expect us to speak Standard.”

CHAPTER SEVEN: EAN LAMBERT

Kari wang was in the middle of a ship check when Ean arrived with Bhaksir and Hana. Even so, she took time out to meet them at the shuttle bay.

“Touch my ship without my agreeing to what you are doing—without my knowing what you plan—and I will personally boot you off the ship.”

“Understood,” Ean said because there was nothing else she wanted to hear.

“Good.” Kari Wang turned to Bhaksir. “Keep him out of my way until I need him.”

Bhaksir looked dubiously at Ean. “Isn’t he supposed to work with you? I mean—”

She should have done what Radko would have done, which was say, “Yes, Captain,” then let Ean work anyway.

“I’ve an undercrewed ship; no one is battle trained. I don’t have the foggiest how many weapons I’ve got or how to use them. I don’t need Lambert in my way. I’ll call you when I’m ready.”

Kari Wang headed back to the bridge, opening her comms as she went. “Mael, is level three secured?”

“All good,” Mael said.

Ean started after the captain.

Bhaksir hesitated. “Shouldn’t we wait till she calls us?”

“No.” Because no matter what she said, Kari Wang would expect them on the bridge soon. “Listen to the lines,” Ean said. Ship lines were a song of anticipation and calculation. “She says she’s worried.” Worry seemed to come with captaincy. “But she’s looking forward to it.”

The human lines were mostly calm—some nervous. Kari Wang had done a lot of training with these people in a very short time.

Ean sang softly to the lines as he followed the captain through the ship.

“Ready to fight,” the lines sang back, and Ean could taste the anticipation.

The alien ships were all warships. They would be used to fighting. Had that eagerness come from their prior crew or their current captain?

They reached the bridge. Kari Wang continued her checklist. She was nearly at the end, for Ean could hear the nerves and excitement.

Finally, “Dubicki?”

“Line eight is good.”

“Abascal?”

“Line seven is ready.”

“Lambert?”

“Here,” Ean said.

“Good.” She opened the comms—to Abram and to the other Eleven fleet ships. “This is the Eleven. Preparing to jump. Lambert.”

Ean started singing direct to the sevens, linking all the line sevens in the fleet, so that when they jumped through the void, they wouldn’t lose contact.

“Lambert. You have the coordinates.”

Yes, but how did he translate them to something the lines could understand? The captain usually keyed the coordinates on human machines. They didn’t have any way to set the jump on the Eleven.

He stopped singing. “We have a problem.”

The alien ships didn’t understand human references. In their practice runs, one of the human ships had always set the jump. He would have to bring one of the other fleet ships with them to set the coordinates.

He sang the comms open to the Wendell’s bridge. “Captain Wendell. I need you to come with us. I need you to set the jump.”

Captain Wendell never slept. Well, he must, but Ean seldom saw him away from his bridge. He was on the bridge now. Ean wondered if he used the lines to tell him when things were happening.

“Unarmed, into enemy territory.”

He shouldn’t have known where they were going.

“You’re not unarmed. You’ve six bombs. And we won’t be there long.”

“If we do this, I want a full complement of weapons on this ship afterward.”

It didn’t have the snap of the quick decisions Abram and Helmo made. Then, Wendell must have been planning how to get his weapons back. No doubt he’d worked out long ago all the possible ways he could do it, and this was one of them.

“I can’t promise that,” Ean said.

Kari Wang’s impatience was a wave battering at him. The Eleven joined in the chorus. “Battle.”

“Of course you can,” Wendell said. “You’re a level-twelve linesman.”

“We’ll lose our jump window soon,” Kari Wang said.