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seize the throne in his absence. For such a risk, the reward must be very great indeed.”
    “Could be Mercia,” Tolvern said. “The planet is not firmly in either camp yet. A show of force would compel allegiance to the crown.”
    “I don’t think so,” Drake said, in response to Tolvern. “Malthorne has offered Mercia a carrot—trade concessions, new estates on Hroom worlds for Mercian nobility. All if she remains neutral. Bash Saxony with a big enough stick, and Mercia might decide that carrot looks pretty sweet.”
    “Quite right,” Rutherford said. “One swift blow against the only world we control, and we are finished.”
    “Then we return to Saxony, sir?” Caites asked. The question wasn’t directed to Drake, but to Rutherford.
    “What choice do we have?” Rutherford said. “If we lose Saxony, we are reduced to a fleet without port or resources. May as well turn to piracy—we’ll be finished as opposition to the lord admiral.”
    “We can reach Saxony with plenty of time to set up our defenses,” Caites said, “but we’ll be forced to leave Philistine and Melbourne on San Pablo.”
    “Aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves?” Tolvern asked. “Captain Drake hasn’t ordered any such movement.”
    “We have to defend Saxony,” the other woman said. “Unless you’d see us reduced to piracy.”
    Capp leaned back in her chair and rubbed at the lion tattoos on her forearm. “And what’s wrong with a bit of piracy? Cut off that bastard’s sugar, take his coin—we’ll hire all the mercenaries we need out here.”
    “That is absolute rubbish,” Rutherford said.
    Capp shrugged and leaned back farther. Any more, and she’d dump her backside on the floor. “Saxony is a bit of rock. What do we care for it?”
    “That bit of rock has fifty million of our people on it,” Caites said.
    Drake wanted to let them talk it out, interested in opinions and options, but it seemed that the room was dividing into two camps, and he needed to cut that off before it led to a split.
    “Enough arguing about Saxony,” he said. “And Ensign, you will kindly sit up. This isn’t the mess hall.”
    Capp did so at once.
    Nyb Pim cleared his throat with a sort of humming. “May I ask about Hot Barsa? Are you intending now to abandon it?”
    “We’ve still got two hundred thousand doses of antidote,” Brockett said. “We could make another go of it.”
    Needless to say, both the former sugar addict and the scientist who’d been working to duplicate the sugar antidote had been all in favor of moving directly against Malthorne’s holdings on Hot Barsa. Turning over the antidote to the free Hroom on the surface could swiftly weaken the admiral’s hold on the world.
    “We made an attempt,” Rutherford said. “It failed. It is time to turn to other options.”
    “It shouldn’t have failed,” Tolvern said. “It was well conceived. I never counted on those torpedo boats. Caught me off guard, damn it. I should have wondered. Those forts were too bloody passive. Too smug. It was obvious they were going to spring a trap.”
    “Any one of us would have made the same assumptions,” Rutherford said. “You deserve no blame. You were a single destroyer, and you fought well.”
    Tolvern seemed to appreciate this nod to her abilities. Some of the tension dissolved from her features. “Still. We were close, we nearly launched the pod. Now, the team is dead, and we are several light years away.”
    Brockett leaned over and spoke in a low voice for Nyb Pim’s benefit. The alien nodded solemnly. Meanwhile, Caites brought up something on a hand computer, which she showed to Rutherford. Tolvern repeated her self-criticism. Capp brushed it aside. There was some discussion of what, if anything, might have been done to get past those forts.
    While these side conversations continued, Drake raised a screen on the table. He brought up a map of the sector, with the human systems stretching along the left side in green,