Harcourt turned to Ramona. “Did you know there had been a ship assigned to this mission before us?”
Ramona stared, frozen. Then she gave a quick, jerky nod. “Yes, Captain. They didn’t tell you, huh?”
“Not a word.” Harcourt’s lips thinned. He had a nasty, sneaking suspicion that Ramona had known the information had not been included in his briefing—but maybe he was being paranoid. After all, it had sounded like a good deal, at the time…
As long as they weren’t told the whole truth.
“Captain,” Billy called.
“What is it?” Harcourt knew that tone in Billy’s voice. His tension increased.
Billy was pointing out the vision port. “Silhouette. Just coming out from behind that big rock.”
Harcourt stared. Then he said, “Can you get that on your screen?”
“Electron telescope.” Billy jabbed at his panel a few times, and another screen lit. “There it is, Captain. Full magnification?”
Harcourt nodded.
Billy twisted something, the image expanded…
Into the silhouette of a Venture-class corvette. Badly damaged, missing a lot of pieces, but a Confederation corvette nonetheless.
“So,” Harcourt breathed, “we’re Number Three.” He turned to Ramona. “Or is it Number Four? Or Five? Or Six?”
She shook her head, ghostly pale. “They didn’t tell you this, Captain? They really didn’t tell you any of it?”
Harcourt forced his voice to be gentle. “No, Commander. None.”
“We’re Number Three,” she said, “and the Admiralty’s really upset that the first two missions disappeared.”
“I’ll just bet they are!”
Ramona shrugged helplessly. “They’re afraid all this spying will attract the Kilrathi’s attention.”
Harcourt just stared at her.
Then he said, in a very soft voice, “Oh, are they really, now?”
He turned back to look at the hulk on the screen. “I’d say they attracted attention, Commander. Yes, I think you could say that.”
Ramona was silent.
After a minute, Harcourt turned back to her. Her eyes had hardened, but they were still fixed on the wrecked silhouette on the screen. “You know,” she said, “if you didn’t captain a corvette yourself, you might never recognize that shape, it’s been chewed up so badly.”
“Yes, you might not.” Harcourt felt as though a gust of cold air had blown through him. What was she thinking?
He found out soon enough.
“We need to talk in private, Captain.”
He looked in her eyes and said, “Yes. Of course. The wardroom.” He turned to the staring eyes all about them. “No one interrupt.” Then he rose and went out the door.
Ramona followed.
In the wardroom, Ramona toggled off the intercom and locked it. Then she told him what she had in mind.
“No! It’s sure suicide! I won’t hear of it!”
“It’s the only way.” Ramona paced the wardroom. “We need a ruse, right? Well, this is it—better than going in disguised as an asteroid, even. A dead hulk, no emissions of any kind, so badly shot up that its silhouette isn’t even recognizable any more! I get aboard that wreck, you tow me up to cruising velocity, then disengage and let me go. Vukar Tag grabs me into orbit, but I’m going so fast that the planet can’t hold me. I swing around it once, get my pictures, shoot off toward the asteroid belt again—and voila! Mission accomplished!”
“Impossible!” Harcourt snapped. “If we’re off by one degree on the calculations, you’ll get sucked into Vukar Tag’s gravity well and crash!”
Ramona shrugged. “That’s the chance I take, that everyone in the Fleet takes whenever they go into battle. What’s the matter? Don’t trust your own computer? Or Ensign Barnes?”
“Barney is a damn fine astrogator!” Harcourt barked.
“Yes, I know—so crashing is the least of my worries.” She came back, leaned over him. “Look, I volunteered for an extremely dangerous mission. I knew I might not come back alive.”
“Yeah, but at least you could accomplish something by your death! This way, you might still get shot down before you get close enough for a single frame! When the Kilrathi see a bogey coming in to Vukar Tag, they’re apt to hit it with everything they’ve got, just to be on the safe side!”
“No, they won’t,” Ramona said, “because they’ll be too busy chasing after you.”
Harcourt didn’t move, but he went rigid. “Oh, will they?”
“Sure. A diversion, distraction, just as you were talking about with your crew during the brainstorm session.”
Harcourt leaned back, eyeing her very warily. “Just what kind of distraction did you have in mind?”
“Act like a Viking,” she said. “Private enterprise. A privateer, Free Trader—call it what you want. You attack one of their supply ships.”
Harcourt just stared at her in disbelief.
Then the idea sank in, and he went loose. “Yes. That would distract their attention, wouldn’t it?”
“You bet it would! They’ll come swarming up to stop you! As soon as you see they’re on their way, you take off and head for the jump point.”
“And leave you behind? Not a chance!”
“Simmer down, Captain—I’m not talking about suicide.” Ramona held up a hand. “Remember how we talked about using the planet as a slingshot, tractoring a chunk of atmosphere, ending up with us heading right toward the jump point? Well, instead, you have me come out heading toward the asteroid belt. Then you loop around, attack one of their fighters, exchange a few shots, then cut off all exterior emissions. They’ll think you’re dead, and won’t worry too much when you ‘crash’ into the asteroid belt and don’t come back out. Once you’re in there, you can maneuver on thrusters and pick me up.”
Harcourt sat glowering at her, trying to find a flaw in the plan.
He found it.
“Fine,” he said, “but how do we get home?”
“You won’t really be damaged, won’t be losing air the way the John Bunyan was.” Ramona knew she was talking more from hope than from logic. “But you’ll pretend to be, so they’ll think you are—and they’ll wait a few days, maybe a week, then go away. But your life-support systems will be intact, and you have rations enough for a couple of months. So when they decide you’re dead, and go away back to their bases…”
“If they decide we’re dead and go away.”
Ramona shrugged. “They did with the John Bunyan. Why shouldn’t they do it with you?”
Harcourt glared at her, trying to think of an answer again—but this time, he couldn’t. It was a lousy plan, one that was almost guaranteed to get her killed, without the information she’d come to get… “What if you are shot down in the middle of it? And the chances are very good that you will be. The pictures don’t get back to us, the mission fails, you’re dead—for nothing!”
“Of course I get the pictures back to you,” she said scornfully. “I’ll beam them by microwave. There will be plenty of time, before you turn to fake that attack on the fighter. Even if I do crash or get shot down, you’ll have all the pictures I shot up until then.”
A chill enveloped Harcourt’s back.
She saw it in his eyes and nodded. “Yes, Captain. Once you have that information, you have to forget about me, if that’s the only way to escape and get the data back to the Admiralty.”
“No,” Harcourt whispered. “I won’t abandon one of my crew.”