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“Give the word.”
    Sokolov nodded. “What are our specifications, Mister?”
    Javier decided to play along. The Captain was making a show for the rest of the bridge crew, people who were strangers to Javier for the most part, unprepared for a sudden eruption of caustic sarcasm in their midst. “Well, sir,” he replied. “How well does Storm Gauntlet compare to the old Bannockburn ?”
    Javier watched a small grin cross the Captain’s mouth for a second. Only two Academy grads could have that conversation. It set a good tone, considering the rest were likely outcasts and dregs of various navies, put to shore by drink, temperament, or budget cuts. “Without a dedicated Science Officer,” the captain announced, “she’s probably comparable to the Academy Training Corvette. Perhaps five to ten percent better at shorter ranges. Less so at distance.”
    So, about what Javier expected for a boat like this. The sensor pods were cheap and durable, and probably older than about half the crew. “In that case, Captain, I would expect to improve on that by a factor of four or five after initial calibration, and six afterwards. If I had access to the kind of tuned automation that had been written for my old probe–cutter, as much as ten.”
    Javier could hear the gasps and snorts around them, depending on whether or not people believed him or thought he was boasting. He gave the whole bridge crew a carnivorous smile, lingering for a special moment on Sykora. She could have been carved from white marble.
    He turned to the Navigator, a big Dutchman who seemed to know what he was about. “If you’d like to watch, we could bring up screen fourteen on the main display.” The man nodded at him. “Fifty percent transparency, please. Thirty percent overlay.”
    The big screen in front of the captain split into two images, almost identical, with the old pod readings on the left and the pod from Mielikki , brought up to Storm Gauntlet’s calibration, on the right.
    Javier approved. The man was decisive and professional. Sokolov seemed able to surround himself with good people. Getting them all hung from the highest yardarm would probably make him feel bad. Afterwards. For a little while.
    “Captain,” he followed up, “permission to hard ping the system to baseline my systems?”
    Sokolov played along nicely. “Approved.”
    Javier unlocked a control on his touch screen with a password, and pressed the revealed button. Like every other default sensor control system in space, it emitted a sound like an old wet–navy sonar system pinging. He smiled. Some engineer, centuries ago, had achieved a personal form of immortality.
    He paused and watched his local screen, overlain with a mask as he supervised Yu’s training. There shouldn’t be anything hard enough to generate a return wave for several light minutes in any direction. This was the boring part he always left for Suvi.
    After several minutes, he opened up the configuration console and began tinkering. The system had about eleven hours of passive data to work with. He started adjusting things to the sorts of baseline values he already knew from years with this hardware, as if everything was new. No point in letting them know what he could really do.
    A little red diamond appeared on his screen as the computer started washing noise out of the signal. Sokolov was apparently paying closer attention that he let on. He leaned forward. “Mr. Aritza?” was all he said.
    Javier was already dialing the signal in and decoding the information. “Stand by,” he said.
    That can’t be right.
    Can it?
    Huh.
    “Captain,” Javier said into the pregnant silence. “that appears to be a very old emergency beacon on the fourth planet, which appears to be habitable.” Leave it at that. He really needed more information to draw better conclusions. Better to be kind of ignorant at this point and show off later.
    Sokolov tore his eyes from the screen to look over. “How old,