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standing in a doorway on the righthand side of the corridor, about fifteen feet ahead of us. The woman was looking considerably upset, and Dameron didn’t hesitate. he headed for her immediately at a trot, with me right behind him.
    “I’m assuming that that was a shout of joy, Gemiral,” he said as he reached the woman. “I left orders that there were to be no problems today.”
    “If this weren’t so serious, I’d laugh myself silly over that,” the woman snorted. “You’d better come in here and hear the latest.”
    Dameron frowned, but followed the woman back through the doorway she’d come out of. Being shy never pays, so I tagged along after them into what looked like a communications center. There were three men and two women seated at consoles, whisper mikes and ear discs in place, and one unoccupied console had a man standing next to it, a web-thin headset in his hand. he was big and dark-haired, wearing a uniform of a blue only slightly lighter than Dameron’s, and he gave me a curious stare before turning his attention to the Commander.
    “Is Leandor’s team in trouble?” Cameron asked hina, frowning.
    “Nothing that simple,” the big man answered, tossing the headset gently onto the console he stood near. “Post five just called to warn us that Clero’s up to something that will affect Bellna when she leaves for the capital to marry Prince Remo. They’ll call back when they have all the details.”
    “I knew Clero would try something!” Dameron growled, smacking his open palm with a wide fist. “Just our luck that it took this long to find out what. We’d better have enough time to set up a counter-plan, or everything we’ve worked for will go right down the tubes.”
    “It’ll be worse than that,” the big man said, shaking his head. “We won’t simply be back to square one, we’ll be off the board entirely.
    If we lose Bellna, we have no one to replace her with.”
    “I know, I know,” Dameron grumbled, gesturing a dismissal at the other man as he turned away from him. “It’s Bellna or nothing, and Clero’s trying to make it nothing. A lot he has to worry about, with five daughters to throw in the pot. If he loses one or two, he still has the others. Well, I’m not prepared to lose Bellna, and I wont lose her as long as I have enough information to plan with. Where the hell is post 5?”
    He turned to stare at the silent console, his impatience willing it to come alive and tell him what he wanted to know, but it didn’t respond. The men and women at the other consoles paid only partial attention to the displays in front of them, most of their concern directed toward the same spot Dameron stared at. The woman Gemiral had reclaimed her seat and headphones, but her presence wasn’t doing any more than Dameron’s stare. The only one who looked at all distracted was the large, dark-haired man, who leaned against Gemiral’s console with folded arms, his eyes resting on me. I leaned back against the wall near the door and folded my own arms, absorbing the casual stare without acknowledging it. I didn’t want anyone demanding to know what I was doing there at least until I found out what the flap was all about, which meant that near invisibility was called for. I looked at nothing in particular and didn’t make a sound, and happily there were no demands coming my way.
    My time sense isn’t too inaccurate, but a wait like that is hard to judge. Subjectively it felt like hours were passing, but objectively it couldn’t have been more than fifteen or twenty minutes before the console began blinking a demanding orange. The woman Gemiral began removing her headset, but Dameron gestured impatiently and stepped forward to flip a switch.
    “I’m right here, Eavamon,” he said to the now steady orange light.
    “What have you got?”
    “Not nearly enough,” a thin voice answered, sounding impossibly distant. “We’ve discovered there’s going to be an attempt and we know