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Bloodwing?
    Unnoticed by its owner, the fist clenched.

Chapter Three
    “Khre’Riov?”
    Ael stretched in her center-chair in the bridge, and turned her head just enough to show she was paying attention to Centurion t’Liun, without actually having to look at her. “Ie?”
    “Nniehv idh ra iy’tassiudh nnearh.”
    What you mean, of course, is that my gig is allowed to be “ready” because your security people have checked it and failed to find anything that would confirm your suspicions of me. Fool! Do you think you’re dealing with someone who works on your level? Aloud, all Ael said was “Khnai’ra rhissiuy, Enarrain”; and if the thanks was rather warmly phrased, so much the better. It would confuse t’Liun into a standstill.
    Ael got up from her hard seat and headed for the lift, and sure enough, t’Liun was standing there at her post when she could have been sitting, and gazing at Ael with what t’Liun doubtless thought was perfectly faked respect. How I detest you! Ael thought as she went past the narrow, dark, cold-faced little woman. You would sell your sisters’-sons and -daughters to Orion slavers for a quarter-chain of cash if the deed would buy you power. No matter, though; you and yours will be rid of me soon enough. Ael stepped into the lift. “Ri’laefv’htaiell, Enarrain,” she said, and waved the lift doors shut.
    T’Liun headed down toward the center seat as ordered, but rather hurriedly. That was the last thing Ael saw as the doors closed on her; and it made her laugh. How she wishes I would leave her that seat forever! And she laughed softly about it all the way down to engineering, where her gig was kept.
    It was a pretty little ship—a one-man scout, actually, very sleek and lean, with a high-absorption black coating and warpdrive capacity. It was many years newer than Cuirass or any of her sorry equipment; and this was because it was Ael’s own, brought with her from Bloodwing —the one thing she had insisted on taking. Privately she called it Hsaaja, after the first fvai she had demanded to ride as a child—a cranky, delicate, annoyed and annoying beast that was eternally hungry. This Hsaaja, like the first, was a glutton where fuel consumption was involved. But also like the first, nothing of his size could match him for speed…and neither could some larger craft: Cuirass, for example. Hsaaja ’s presence made t’Liun acutely nervous. That suited Ael very well.
    The ship stood with his forward cockpit open. She went up the ladder, settled and sealed herself in, then called the upper engineering deck and told tr’Akeidhad to go ahead and exhaust the smaller, lower deck where Hsaaja stood. His instrumentation came on and the power came up at the sound of her voice; air hissed out of the deck, the sound of the pumps becoming inaudible. The doors rolled away, and the lights went down, leaving Ael in starlight and the flashes of the landing beacons set in the floor. She took Hsaaja out on chemical jets, and once well clear of the ship, cut in the ion-drivers and headed for her fleet.
    They were all at the prescribed distance for fleet maneuvers, about a hundredth of a light-second from each other and from Cuirass —well out of visual range. Ael considered kicking in just a touch of warpdrive, then decided against it. Not from any concern about panicking t’Liun, who was certainly monitoring her course—that would in fact have been a minor pleasure. But she saw too little of realspace these days; and the otherspace in which ships moved while in warp was a wavering, uneasy vista, not pleasant to look at at all. She sat back, handling the controls at her leisure, and took her own good time.
    Hsaaja ’s computer already was displaying the three new ships’ ID signals—strings of numbers and the code for their class type. Klingon ships, all right. I do wish Command would stop buying those flying middens, Ael thought. But then Command couldn’t, as Ael well knew. The Rihannsu