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image of Johannes Hashoone, his great-grandfather. Eighty-five years earlier, Johannes had been the ringleader of a crew of pirates who had stolen a fortune from the mail boat Iris —a fortune that had been lost until Tycho figured out that Johannes had hidden it from his fellow Jupiter pirates beneath the Hashoones’ own homestead, in the lightless ocean beneath Callisto’s crust. In solving that mystery, Tycho had also discovered that Johannes had ambushed and killed his friend Josef Unger, leaving his ship broken on the surface of a comet.
    â€œYeh don’t think kindly ’bout ol’ Johannes, do yeh, lad?” Huff asked.
    Tycho hesitated, but then his ancestor’s cocky grin made him angry.
    â€œNo. He was a cheat and murderer.”
    Huff stared silently up at the image of his father. Tycho realized he was almost eye to eye with his grandfather. When had that happened?
    â€œI’m sorry to say it, Grandfather, but it’s true,” he said more quietly.
    â€œHe was both those things, ’tis true. I tried to convince meself yeh was wrong about what yeh found. But yeh weren’t, lad.”
    Suddenly Tycho felt ashamed. Huff had been amidshipman on Johannes’s quarterdeck. He’d learned the pirate’s trade from him, and spoke of his father with barely concealed awe. Now Tycho had ruined the memories Huff held dear.
    â€œI suppose it was a different time . . . ,” Tycho mumbled.
    â€œNo it weren’t. I don’t know why Father did what he did, and there ain’t no way to ask. All I can think is he must ’ave had his reasons.”
    Tycho turned to look at his grandfather and found Huff still staring up out of the shadows at the bright image of his father.
    â€œI ain’t sayin’ they was good reasons—but killin’ just for the pleasure of it? Arrrr, that weren’t like Father. Somethin’ made him do a thing he didn’t want to. Been in that situation meself.”
    Tycho paused. He imagined himself calmly asking his grandfather about the Battle of 624 Hektor. Had he and Thoadbone Mox really been the ones who distributed software to the other Jupiter pirates—software that had hidden a jamming program that left the Jovian craft helpless when Earth’s warships attacked? If so, had Huff known what the program concealed? Did he really think Oshima Yakata was a traitor because her ship hadn’t been affected? And if not, why had he spent more than a decade telling people that she was?
    But Tycho knew he wouldn’t ask any of those questions. That he couldn’t.
    After all, Tycho had secrets of his own now. Like the fact that he’d conspired with a Securitat agent namedDeWise, who’d met him on Ceres and all but handed him the bulk freighter Portia as a prize. Or that Tycho had pocketed the data disk he’d discovered in the Iris cache and given it to DeWise in return for a clear title to the Hydra— an agreement the Securitat agent had broken.
    Tycho hadn’t spoken with DeWise since then, and had sworn he’d never cheat again in pursuing the captain’s chair, no matter how the Securitat or anyone else tried to entice him. But he still worried that his family would discover what he’d done. If that happened, he knew, his pursuit of the captaincy would be over—you didn’t lie to your crewmates or steal from them, because no starship could operate effectively if her crewers didn’t trust each other.
    And if those crewmates were also your family?
    The family is the captain, and the captain is the ship, and the ship is the family.
    He and Yana had first heard that in the cradle. The Hashoone retainers who’d taught him the spacer’s trade belowdecks had recited it regularly. And his mother had quoted it whenever his disagreements with Carlo or Yana had become a problem on the quarterdeck. And yet he’d ignored it when it really mattered.
    But then Tycho shook his