"Nine minutes," said Sirkin.
If he knew, if he guessed, that the ship he chased was Sweet Delight, he'd know she had more acceleration in reserve. He'd account for that. But if he thought he was overhauling a ship already at full power, he might not expect that last burst; she might be able to get into FTL before he got her. Heris weighed possibilities. His aggressive pursuit suggested he knew; his use of their faked identity suggested he didn't . . .
"His communications to the Station should be blurring out," Oblo said. "Screens are up, half-power, and his own turbulence is in the way."
"He got something," Heris said. "Something he didn't like."
"Yes, but they're not shooting at us." The unspoken yet rang in her ears.
"There might be another reason for that," Heris said, putting her worst fears out for them all. "If they've missed the prince, onstation . . . and if they told Livadhi . . . he won't blow us away, but he'll be on our track forever."
"So the good news would be a shot across the bows?" asked Ginese. Sirkin gave a sudden twitch, as if she'd only now realized what was going on.
"In a way. Thing is, if he knows who I am, then he knows how I would've reacted—"
"Would have?"
"I've changed," Heris said. "So have we all." The veterans settled; without a word spoken, she knew she had reassured them about something no one could articulate. Sirkin glanced at the display.
"Eight minutes, thirty seconds."
Another request for voice communications, as if he had not received the first; he might not have, if his shields distorted the angled beam. Heris checked. If she had the standard civilian-quality scans, would she have had time to notice the new position? Yes. She sent the same packaged burst. It didn't sound much like her, she thought, though a comparison to her own voiceprint would show that it was. At the least, the accent suggested someone with years of spacer experience, commercial or military. Heris wondered how long it would take him to react to this. Several seconds to arrive, several seconds to decompress and play—she had made the message longer than strictly necessary. A few seconds for the return . . . any additional time off the clock was his reaction time.
"His optical weapons are just within range," Ginese reported. "They still have active scans on us, and theirs are hot, but I'm not detecting the targeting bursts I'd expect."
Would he wait until he could deliver more firepower, or would he act now? It was harder to deliver a warning shot from behind but easier to blow someone away . . . was he wondering which to do? He would need to be much closer to deliver a warning in front of them; he had to be sure it went off far enough in front. The seconds ran on.
"Eight minutes," said Sirkin.
This time it was a voiceburst hail; Oblo had it running almost as Heris saw the communications board flicker.
"F.R.C.S. Better Luck," came the voice. "This is the Familias Regular Space Service frigate Skyfarer. You are suspected of carrying contraband. Heave to for inspection." An old term, and not what they would do if they were going to comply . . . and . . . frigate? Named the Skyfarer? Heris stared across the bridge at Oblo, who shook his head.
"No, sir—ma'am—that's no frigate. But look at the old scan."
On the original scan board, which they'd left in because it was the standard required, the R.S.S. ship's profile did indeed resemble a frigate—half the mass of a cruiser. That made no sense. Why would a captain misrepresent his ship that way? Did he expect her to willingly engage a frigate? Surely in attempting to stop a civilian vessel, it was better to claim all the ship size you had . . . she'd always done so.
"Our weapons profile should look to him about even, if he were a frigate," Ginese pointed out. "If we engaged, then he'd be legally in his rights—"
"To blow us away," Heris said. "I do remember that much. But if that's his game, he can't know the prince is aboard." Or can he? she wondered. If the king—or anyone else—wanted to get rid of the inconveniently stupid prince, this would be a way . . . a tragedy of course, but one to be blamed on the unstable Captain Serrano. And perhaps on her employer or the employer's family.
"You're going to tell him?" Petris's eyebrows rose.
"Of course not. We're not supposed to have tight beam capability; it would be telling him and everyone else in this system."
On the tight beam, Livadhi's familiar face had an earnest expression that sat oddly with the rumpled red curls she remembered. Behind his head was the curved wall of the communications booth, which meant he hoped his crew wasn't spiking into this conversation.
"Captain Serrano, it is imperative that we keep this as short as possible." His stubby hands raked his hair again, so that one lock stuck straight up. "You have . . . er . . . the wrong person aboard your ship."
"Four minutes," Sirkin said.
"I know you can make jump inside the usual radius; you did it before. But don't do it now. Please."
Fleet captains rarely said "please" to civilian captains they had already ordered to heave to.
"I don't want to have to fire on you," Livadhi said. "But under the circumstances, it would be necessary. I say again, you have the wrong person aboard. You must not complete your mission."
Great. He knew about the mission and the prince, which meant he'd been sent here to intercept her. So much for the honor of kings, Heris thought, and wondered if he knew the actual radius at which she would risk jump. They had the data from her earlier jump, but . . . would that give them the same figures Sirkin was using?
And she had no tight beam for response. Anything she sent would be available to other listeners in time.
Carefully, weighing each word, she composed her response. "All persons aboard this ship have His Majesty's permission to be here."
"Captain Serrano—Heris—you know me!" Livadhi was sweating. And since he could be a coldhearted bastard when he wanted to—he had not been sweating when they'd stood before old Admiral Connaught to answer his questions about the alleged massacre of civilians on Chisholm Station—something about this bothered him. "You have the wrong . . . er . . . individual; it's not Mr. Smith, but a . . . er . . ."
"I have two individuals," Heris said. "Both carry legal identification which matches their descriptions; neither is a fugitive." Captive, yes, but not fugitives. And of course they both fit the description of the same person, but that was another problem, not his. Would he realize from what she said that she meant the prince and his double?
"You have two clones," Livadhi said. "I have the real prince, and we need to get him aboard your ship. Without anyone noticing, although the way you've been behaving, anyone would . . ."
"Captain Livadhi—" Had she ever called him Arash? Had she ever really run her fingers through those rumpled red curls, and felt a thrill? If so, it was the thrill of being noticed by someone slightly senior, the thrill of ambition realized, not the thrill of passion. She could remember that bit well enough. "We received departure clearance from Naverrn Station; our course since then has been in accordance with the filed plan. We took on only a single bin of cargo, the Outworld Parcel shipment, for which we hold a legitimate subcontract. All personnel aboard have been identified by legal methods and none is a fugitive from justice." More than that she could not say. Would not say.
"Three minutes," said Sirkin.
"We cannot let you continue with clones in place of the prince," Livadhi said. "It would embarrass the Crown—"
It would more than embarrass the Crown; the illegality of using unmarked clones as royal doubles would throw a political bombshell. Heris could not begin to imagine what would be destroyed.
"They're in easy range now," Ginese put in. "Not just the OR weaponry, but the overboosted missiles, too. Either boost us out of here, or we're dinner on the table."
"Heris, you have to trust me," Livadhi said. "I know it's hard; I know about the . . . er . . . problem you had, but you have to ignore that. You know I wasn't part of that." But did she? Ambitious, hard-driving: how could she know that Liv
adhi hadn't been part of Lepescu's clique?
"We have to talk," Livadhi said. "Face-to-face—or I'm sorry, but—"
"Meet you at the Tank," Heris said. Would he remember, and understand, that reference? It was worth a try. To her relief, his face relaxed.
"Deep or shallow?" he asked.
"The orange bucket," she said, hoping for the best.
"Two minutes, thirty seconds," Sirkin said.
Livadhi's face constricted in a mass of wrinkles, as he seemed to pry the memory out of some corner of his brain. Then he grinned. "Your honor, Heris?"
"Absolutely." With the word, she called in the last acceleration in reserve, and the Better Luck aka Sweet Delight skipped forward, momentarily outranging the cruiser. Livadhi's tight beam lost its lock, and before he could reestablish contact, they had reached the jump threshold. Heris held her hand up, waiting precious seconds, until the beam found them, only then chopping a signal to Sirkin. The ship flipped into FTL space.
Petris let out a whoosh of breath. "You cut that fine," he said.
"Should I give them more accurate data?" Heris asked, with relief now that it was over. "He'll assume I jumped as soon as I could—why else accelerate like that? And that's our safe margin now—what I just made for us."
"But how'd you know he'd try to talk again and not shoot?" asked Sirkin.
Heris shrugged. "It was worth a try. Either we have the prince, or just clones, as he said. If we have the prince, I doubt he'd fire on us without fire from us. That would create a lot of records to be faked. If we don't—if the prince is somewhere else—that's another set of problems. Suppose Livadhi has the prince aboard . . . he must look out for his welfare . . . he will not invite attack. He was in our range by the time we broke the link. If he doesn't have the prince, there's still the clones . . . I would imagine he'd like to bring them back where they came from."
"What's that business about meeting at a tank?" asked Petris.
"Well . . ." Heris rubbed her nose absently. "It's true, in a way. I did promise to meet him, and I do feel bound by that promise, but it should work out all right."
"Care to explain?"
"Don't look down your nose at me. You know perfectly well it's officers' slang; you're about to find out what it means." She put the Reference Quads up on the secondary screen. "In every sector, there's a mapped set of coordinates called the Tank. If one wants to meet somewhere discreet, for any reason, that's where one goes . . ."
"And every Fleet officer knows it, so it's about as secret as how many royals it takes to screw in a lightbulb?"
"Not quite that bad. Not just one set of coordinates, actually, but one for each combination of officers. It starts in training; each class has its own definition. Then once you're out in the Fleet, it's a matter of relationships. If you become friends with someone, you may choose to share your definition of Tank. For one sector, or several, or all. In fact, it's always shifting, because we use it even within a single ship, or on a Station. Lazy people might give the same set to everyone, but neither Livadhi nor I were lazy—not that way. Orange bucket, to him, means a particular set of coordinates—" She highlighted them. "In this sector, and not a difficult jump away. Nor out of the way to where we want to go."
"Weapons?" asked Ginese.
"Oh, live of course. Just in case he's got someone with him, or we hit bad luck again. Sirkin—what's our onboard time going to look like to reach those coordinates?"
"Thirty hours, give or take—what insert velocity?"
"I'd like to come in slow, minimal turbulence. We'll be on a similar vector, unless he double-jumps, which will give us even more time. Work out the details." She pushed herself to her feet. "And now, if you'll join me, Petris, we'll have a word with our passengers."
The first passenger had improved the shining hours since they left Naverrn by going to sleep. He snored, curled on his side in the sleepsack. Heris listened awhile, and decided the snore was genuine, not faked. No one could create all those little gurgles for punctuation on purpose, not without giggling.
"Let him complete his slumbers," she said. "We'll have a word with the other one."
The other one glowered at them from the sleepsack he had folded into a seating pad. "This is unconscionable. Not even a bed."
"I know," Heris said. "It's so sad that both of you must suffer. But your father expects you will understand."
"My father!" That with a snarl. "Easy enough for him to send me off without even my servants."
"If either you or your . . . double . . . had been cooperative, we might have been able to improve matters," Heris pointed out. "Now that we're under way, suppose you tell us which you are."
"Which?"
Heris wished she dared smack him. "Whether you are the prince, or he's the fellow down the corridor," she said.
"Oh." He appeared to ponder that much longer than necessary. "I . . . don't think either of us is the prince," he said.
"You don't think," Heris said. Was he trying to be cute, or could he possibly not know?
"No . . . I'm not entirely sure. I mean, I know I'm not the prince. But we switch around so much, you know, that I rather lose track."
"All clones?" Heris asked. "All his clones?"
"I suppose so," the young man said. "I never really thought."
"And do you have a name? When you aren't using the prince's, I mean?"
"Mr. Smith," he said, with a grin. "Gerald Smith. It's all I've ever been called. We all use it—his name is Gerel, so ours had to be close enough that his would be familiar, and yet not the same. My middle initial's B, and I'm the second one."
Heris wanted to ask him if they were all as stupid as the prince himself, but thought better of it. More important at the moment was the size of her problem. "How many of you clones are there?"
"Three, at least," he said promptly. "I went through the first stages of training with two others; our fourth had a metabolic problem and died early. But we might not have been the only cluster. On the other hand, we're almost never all together, so if one of us died in the line of duty, the others wouldn't know."
If there were three clones—or more—then the putative prince Livadhi had might not be the prince at all. "Why so many? I thought clones were expensive, and the confusion must have been difficult—"
He shrugged. "We're also prone to losses in the early embryonic stages, just as nonclones are. Given the expense, they don't take chances; they bring a cluster along together. If it's absolutely necessary to have a clone in place—as it is here—it's much safer to have a spare or two."
"Or three," Heris said. Where was the prince himself? With Livadhi? Somewhere else? "By any chance, was another clone on Naverrn? Or the prince himself?"
"No—I was primary, this trip, and Gerald C. was secondary. At least, I think that's Gerald C. you've got in the other room. I don't know where Gerald A. or Gerel Prime is."
"Gerel Prime being your code name for the prince?" The clone nodded. Heris could not see any difference between him and the prince she had transported from Sirialis. If that had been the prince—she had a sudden chilling suspicion that maybe her passenger had been one of the other clones, and the prince himself not involved in any of that mess. Yet the king clearly thought that had been the real one.
"How are you briefed about the prince's activities?" Heris asked. A minor matter now, but it might provide useful information. "Surely all of you must be kept up-to-date on his recent actions—and he on yours. Who monitors your . . . ah . . . personal interactions, and your personality profile?"
"We all carry implanted recorders," the clone said. She had trouble thinking of him as Gerald B., but she made herself repeat it silently. This was Gerald B., an individual, though genetically identical . . . "They're harvested regularly, by a Crown-certified technician, and we're retaped with the others at the same time. Usually takes a couple of hours. I've been told the prince is also equipped for retaping."
"Like training tapes?" Heris asked.
/> The clone—Gerald B., she reminded herself again—frowned. "I've been told it's like the military training tapes, the ones used before simulator training."
"Ah." With the right drug induction, those were powerful—one could almost believe one had already been through the simulators.