"You wanted me, sir?"
"Yes," she said calmly. She tapped the memo pad. "I'll want you to drop this off with Irene. It may be useful."
Tomanaga studied her covertly. Her face was as calm as ever, yet she radiated murderous fury. Only belatedly did he realize what it was. Her dark eyes, usually so tranquil, were deadly.
"Yes, sir," he said quietly.
"In the meantime," Han went on carefully. "I'd like to tell you what it is. This, Commander, is a record of what that young woman endured."
"Is there any ID on the attackers, sir?"
"There is," she said coldly. "Allow me to summarize. Her name was Ursula Hauser, and she was a second-year student at New Athens-a philosophy major." Despite her hard-held control, Han's mouth twisted before she could smooth it. "A philosophy major," she repeated softly. "According to her notes, her cabin lost integrity almost immediately, but Ms. Hauser was a quick thinker, and she managed to patch the holes.
"Then, over the intercom, she heard the boarders killing the passengers, Commander Tomanaga." She looked up, her black eyes pits of flame. "They lined them up, sorted out the ones they wanted to keep-the young, pretty women-and slaughtered the rest in number three hold.
"But Ms. Hauser was determined they wouldn't get all the passengers. She knew a little about small craft, so she decided to try to steal a cutter and escape. She was on her way to the boatbay when she came across five terrified children from third class, running for their lives from one of the raiders. She stabbed him to death . . . with a carving knife from the first class galley." She paused, and Tomanaga felt his pulse in his temples. "She took his weapon, but she knew now that they were between her and the boatbay, and while they might let her live, they would certainly kill the children. So she did the only thing she could and looked for a hiding place.
"She was certain they knew their primaries had depressurized her whole cabin block, so she took the children back to her cabin, hoping they would be overlooked and she could get them to the boatbay after the raiders left. But then they dumped the air, and there she was: locked into her cabin with five children, no power, no vac suits, no airlock, and no way out."
Han's voice trailed off and she looked away from Tomanaga's pale face, speaking so softly he could barely hear her.
"So she did what she had to do, Commander. She fed each of those children a lethal overdose of barbiturates from her cabin medical stores. And when she was quite certain they were all dead, she sat down at the desk, recorded all of their names, finished her memo . . . and shot herself." Han stroked the pad. "She was nineteen, Bob."
A long silence fell. Robert Tomanaga had never personally hated any enemy in all his years of service, but at that moment he knew exactly what hate was, and he understood the old, hackneyed cliches about "killing rages."
"But, sir," he sought a professional topic, something to push the sick hatred away, "how did they catch the ship? Argosy Polaris was fast-nothing but a fighter could have overhauled her if she'd had any sort of start. Surely her master didn't allow an unidentified ship into weapons range in the middle of a civil war!"
"No," Han said coldly. "He allowed a Republican cruiser patrol to close with him."
"Oh my God. No. . . ." Tomanaga whispered.
"Precisely. Obviously somewhat modified; they've replaced at least some of the hetlasers with primaries. But that was how he identified them to his passengers when he hove to. I doubt he ever learned his mistake."
"Sir, what-?"
"What are we going to do, Commander?" Han laid the pad aside almost reverently, and when she looked up, her eyes were carved from the obsidian heart of hell. "We're going to find them, Commander Tomanaga. We're going to find the vermin who did this, the vermin who used the honor of the Fleet to cover themselves. And when we do, Commander, I only hope they live long enough to know who's killing them!"
"Admiral! We're picking up something on the emergency distress channel!"
Han straightened in her command chair. Two weeks had passed with no sign of the pirates, but the possible hiding places had been narrowed methodically. Now there were only a handful of systems it could be, and Siegfried, on the far side of the next warp point, was one of them.
"Get a bearing, David," she said with the special serenity her staff had learned to expect in moments of stress. "Bob, send the group to quarters."
"Aye, aye, sir!" Tomanaga snapped, and the high-pitched shrilling of the alert wailed through the massive ship. Han hardly heard it.
"Got it, sir! Oh-one-niner level, two-eight-eight vertical. Looks like a standard shuttle transmission."
"Thank you. Bob, raise Captain Onsbruck. I want one fighter squadron to take a close look; hold the other two back for cover. This could be legitimate or a trap, so tell the pilots to take no chances."
"Aye, aye, sir."
"Thank you." She punched buttons, and Schwerin's face appeared on her com screen. "Captain, until I know exactly what we've got, you will halt the flagship and the battlegroup ten light-seconds short of the signal source."
"Aye, aye, sir."
"Thank you." She cut the connection and turned back to Tomanaga, and the lean chief of staff shivered at the hunger in her normally tranquil eyes.
"And now, Commander," she said softly, "we wait."
". . . know how important it is," Surgeon Commander Lacey told his admiral firmly, "but these are very sick people, sir! Another two days-" He shrugged. "You'll just have to use the statements they've already made."
"Very well. Thank you, Doctor."
Han switched off the intercom and looked around the briefing room at the taut, angry faces. The battlegroup's COs attended via com links to their command decks and looked, if possible, even grimmer than her staff.
"Lieutenant Jorgensen," she said, "you've been correlating the survivors' statements. What conclusions have you been able to reach?"
"Everything they've said is consistent, Admiral," Irene Jorgensen twisted a lock of hair around an index finger, "and according to them, the pirate commander is an Arthur Ruyard. Our prewar data base lists him as CO of the Kearsarge, a Frontier Fleet cruiser. Apparently he seized Siegfried by declaring support for the rebellion; once he controlled communications he dropped that pretense, and he's been raiding commerce-ours, the Rim's, even the Orions'-ever since."
"Oh my God!" Captain Janet MacInnes of the Eisenhower groaned. "Not the bloody Tabbies, too!"
"I'm afraid so, Captain," Jorgensen said, "but they've said nothing about it. I suspect they've chosen to take their losses and deal with the raiders on their own rather than provoking a possible incident because of the Khan's desire for neutrality."
"All right," Han brought the discussion quietly back to immediate problems. "What's your best force estimate, Lieutenant?"
"Sir, they appear to have the heavy cruisers Kearsarge and Thunderer and the light cruisers Leipzig, Agano, and Phaeton. There are also five or six destroyers and a prewar squadron of system defense fighters operating from Siegfried III."
"But Leipzig and Agano were destroyed in action against a Rim destroyer flotilla!" Alfred Onsbruck objected. "I saw copies of the Omega drones."
"I don't doubt it," Captain Schwerin said. "Lieutenant-" he turned to the intelligence officer "-I'll bet none of his ships are listed as current members of the Republican Navy, are they?"
"They aren't, sir. Leipzig and Agano at one time were Republican units; none of the others were ever listed as having come over."
"There you are," Stravos Kollentai said crisply. "Ruyard started with only his ship, then picked off the others from either the Rim or us-probably pretending to belong to the same side until he got close enough to spring the trap." He paused and rubbed his nose. "What bothers me is his crews. I hate to think he found that many potential pirates in uniform!"