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switch ’er on and see if anything blows?”
    Reilly responded sternly, “Nothing blows on my ship, Duv. Jam it out.”
    “Roger that.” He launched the solution via their cybertronic network and waited. A green light came up on his status board. “Okay, it’s in place and blocking about eighty-seven percent of the signal. Anybody trying to track it now would have to be up our ass or pretty damn close to it. Do you want a system workup of initial specs, now it’s contained?”
    “Yeah, see what you can get off of it. Set the containment to detect any triggers before we sweep-scan it. I don’t want any more surprises today.”
    “Heard that alright.” Duv brought up the virtual view of the cyberdefense suite and set the containment field to flag any triggers or back doors prior to the sweep reaching those points. Then he turned his attention to finalizing their course plot. He brought up the route on his holo-display for final check to make sure all of his calculations back to Arias were valid and not going to drop them into controlled space, unfriendly patrolled areas, a star, or a black hole. He confirmed the coordinates and launched the flight pattern, turning control over to the ship’s computer to get them back to Arias by the next day. He got up to come look over Reilly’s shoulder, cup of coffee in hand. She had returned to the Welch records and was looking through everything HAILE had pulled up.
    “Seth did really well with this program modification. It’s pulling up everything, even classified records. And he’s sure it’s untraceable?”
    “He says it is. Even got us access to the ISUs’ main frame, for those special times when you need the very best!” Duv laughed, then sobered. “Must have got it from his mom—she was always the smart one, teaching him on this stuff from when he could barely walk. Good thing, too. That kid deserves better than being just another dumb stick jockey who can’t even see what’s right in front of him.”
    Reilly looked up. “You gotta stop blaming yourself. There were no indications, nothing until it was already over. If you had been there, you’d be dead like the rest of them.”
    “I still feel like if I had been there I could’ve made a difference, maybe saved her and my other boy. At least we got Skeeter out…thanks to you. You saved his life.” Duv gave an ironic laugh and shook his head. “You’ve saved all our lives at one time or other.”
    “Don’t go getting sentimental on me now, Jackson. You know I hate that shit and I’m already in a hell of a mood after all our fun today!” Reilly growled. “In fact, my day would end a lot better if I could finish it out by kicking your sorry ass!”
    “Well, you are right, his ass is sorry, but you’ll have to wait to kick it. Ty asked me to come get you. He has something to show you in the hold.” Chang was quiet as a ninja when he wanted to be.
    “Something wrong with the ship’s comms mic?”
    “The link is still out between the bay and the forward compartments. Something about a metallic bastard shooting lasers at you when you were boarding?”
    “Right. Okay. I’ll head that way. Thanks, Gunny.” Reilly ducked out of the compartment, but as she went, she was sure to give Duv’s shoulder a quick squeeze.
    Duv looked over at Chang. “That’s one tough lady. I’m glad she’s with us.”
    Chang glanced back at the door. “An army of a thousand is easy to find, but very difficult to find a general. You hungry or what?” He revealed a bowl of brown-looking glop with pieces of potato in it.
    “It smells like dirty socks!” Duv made a face.
    Chang looked insulted. “It’s dinner. Special potato stew with protein sauce.”
    “Special? I don’t like special cooking, I like good cooking.”
    “It has ingredients to help banish bad luck. You eat it and the bad luck goes away. This is from a very famous recipe passed down to my family over hundreds of years. One of my great, great, great