"Just one question then, sir," Ian asked.

"Sure, what is it?"

"How the hell did we get this equipment? It must be worth hundreds of millions."

"Just roughly over eighty billion and some odd change." Richards replied. "What's inside those boxes piling up on the flight deck cost more than the entire Concordia."

"So how then?"

"Don't ever ask," Tolwyn replied quietly. "People have died for knowing a hell of a lot less and I suspect there's more than one person who'd be glad to kill all of us if they knew what we were up to."

"And my ship?" Paladin asked.

"Once we off load the equipment to Tarawa, we'll leave the Hell Hole and head off to a quiet corner a couple of jump points up, and then off-load your new toy."

"Off-load what?" Doomsday asked, unable to hide behind his usual mask of disinterest and depression.

"A light smuggler craft with Stealth technology," Paladin said with a grin.

"How the hell did we get that?" Kevin asked excitedly.

"Oh, let's just say a Kilrathi Stealth fighter they thought was killed somehow wound up in our hands," Richards replied. We've yet to really figure out how it works, but we did manage to take it apart and install it in one of our ships and the damn thing actually works!"

"Paladin's going in as our point man on this operation, so we thought we'd give him a little something extra this time around," Tolwyn interjected.

"And its about time, considering what you folks pay me, Paladin replied with a grin.

"Enter."

Bowing low, Vak, baron of the hrai of the Ragitagha slipped into the darkened room, went down on both knees, head bowed to the floor and waited.

"You may arise, the voice whispered hoarsely and Vak came to his feet.

The bent figure motioned for him to approach and sit by his side, an act of great honor, and Vak moved quickly to obey.

"You at least I still know are loyal."

"As always, my Emperor," Vak said softly, not daring to raise his voice much above a whisper. Though the room was supposedly secured and swept, and the walls were mounted with vibration dampeners, it was still possible that something might have been overlooked.

The Emperor touched a control panel by his side and Vak felt the electrostatic tingle of a force field clicking in. Nothing now could hear them, unless a bug had been planted in the very chair in which the Emperor sat.

"We can talk freely now," the Emperor said.

Vak tried to relax.

"I have read the report you sent to me regarding this meeting. They are fools if they continue to follow Jukaga."

Vak nodded.

"I think you should know that you are not the only one to report to me thus."

Vak felt a cold uneasiness. Was this a lie or not? If not, then it meant that at least one other of the eight families had had second thoughts about Jukaga. Could it be that all the others might very well be playing both sides in this? Or was the Emperor truly alone and simply making him nervous, to insure that he told the truth? He tried to analyze this bit of information. He had no love for the Emperor, and that he had led them to the brink of disaster was obvious. But he feared civil war as well, knowing that if it came it would be his worlds that might very well be swallowed up if the humans should attack in the wake of the chaos.

We need the Emperor to hold us together, yet in the needing of him we are destroying ourselves as well, that is the paradox of it all, as Jukaga would say.

"You're wondering who?" the Emperor said with a cold laugh.

"Of course I would wonder such a thing."

"And of course I will not tell you. In fact, you've already thought I might be lying; I'll leave that for you to meditate on."

"Don't you trust me?" Vak asked, his voice and demeanor showing a genuine concern.

"Don't be a fool, of course I don't trust you. Remember that, Vak, anyone who wears the Imperial crown must learn that lesson first. I did not trust even my own son and in the end I ordered his death. There are times I am not even sure of my grandson, the heir."

He paused for a moment as if the memory did in fact still pain him in spite of his apparent lack of remorse in the years since the execution.

He lowered his head again, growling softly.

"You know that when I go," the Emperor finally said, "if my grandson is not supported, civil war will be the result. My hrai has ruled the Empire for centuries, that must continue, for no family will support the rise of another to rule over them."

Vak said nothing.

"But tell me," the Emperor chuckled, "why have you betrayed Jukaga's intentions to me?"

"Because I am loyal sire."

The Emperor leaned back and barked out a laugh.

"Do not play the fool, the real reason. I know you hate my grandson and me, blaming us for the death of your first born."

Vak was taken aback. His first answer had actually been the truth. If loyalty to a sworn oath was viewed as nothing more than a political toy, to be abandoned without thought, then they were indeed truly lost.

The Emperor looked at him closely and finally nodded.

"I believe you actually are loyal."

Vak, feeling insulted that such an issue had even been questioned, remained silent.

The Emperor looked away from Vak. Jukaga, as head of intelligence, had placed his spies not only beyond the borders but within even the palace itself. There was nothing he did not know. Poisoning him would be the easiest answer, but that might very well make the loyalty of Vak and the other family heads waver. The tacit agreement between hrai leaders and Emperors had stood for generations: both sides will support the other, neither will attempt to kill the other.

He thought of Thrakhath. He was tempted to recall him from his assignment with the new fleet but then thought better of it. The new fleet was not only the tool for the final offensive against the Confederation, but also a replacement for the home fleet lost in the last two years of campaigns. Three carriers were ready, at the very least six more had to be completed if the next campaign was to be a guaranteed success. He could not afford one more lost opportunity, for it would shake whatever power they had left to the very core and perhaps trigger open rebellion. Yet if they waited, Jukaga in his slyness might very well gain even more power.

It was an amusing question to ponder and he knew if he pondered long enough he would find the answer.

"You know just how munificent my reward might be if you provide me with information valuable enough, including perhaps even the marriage to one of my great nieces. It could very well mean that your family might even thus be in line for the Imperial succession," the Emperor said softly. And Vak smiled.

"Jump transition on automatic sequencing and counting at ten, nine, eight . . ."

Jason settled back into his chair and waited. A cold rush of excitement tingled down his spine. No matter how many times he had jumped he always felt the same, especially when going into hostile space. One of the key tactical points with jumping was the simple fact that you never knew what was on the other side. Inside secured shipping lanes behind the lines there were beacons placed at both points, monitoring traffic, sent up to avoid the possibility of a ship materializing in the same point of space occupied by someone else, an event that always had spectacular results. But beyond that was the question of just who was waiting. Paladin, piloting his new ship which he had named Bannockburn, with Ian aboard as his co-pilot, had already gone ahead to scout. The fifteen minutes' wait had passed and now it was time to follow through and the potential for an unpleasant surprise was always there.

He felt Tarawa drop away, and there was a momentary queasiness then the flash of rematerialization. He looked over at his navigation officer who was peering intently at her holo display.

"Correct jump alignment confirmed," she announced. "Bannockburn reporting in on laser lock."

Paladin's image appeared on the screen.

"This Stealth works like a charm. We found a remote sensor and took it out, it never even put out a signal. Optical scan shows the entire system's clear right up to the next jump point."

Jason looked over at Tolwyn and grinned.

"It looks like we got through. We've crossed from the frontier into the heart of the Empire."

He looked up at his aft visual and less than a minute later his escort CVE-6 Normandy came through.

"All ships through," communications announced, "all systems running nominal, Bannockburn reports successful take-out of remote drone without detect signal being activated."

Geoff Tolwyn, standing behind Jason, nodded, letting out an audible sigh of relief. Jason found that alone to be surprising; he was used to his old chief being absolutely unflappable.

They were now four jumps into the Kilrathi Empire, tracking down one of the hundreds of transition points leading from neutral territory into the Empire in the one direction and Confederation space on the other. Surveillance drones of course monitored these points, but "accidents" like the one Paladin had just arranged for the drone covering this jump point were easy enough to set up. It could be days or even weeks before a picket ship came out to replace the drone with a new one.

"Let's hit the flight deck and see what Richards is up to," Tolwyn said, motioning for Jason to follow.

Excited, Jason came out of his seat. He had been waiting for days to get a look at what Richards was doing.

Leaving the bridge they went down the main corridor to the forward part of the ship. At the airlock door two guards came to attention at Tolwyn's approach but did not step aside.

Internal ship security was nothing new to Jason but this was different. The two men were not dressed in the usual Marine class B uniform, for after all this was not a Confederation ship any longer. There was something disquieting about the black khaki uniform the two guards were wearing without a single insignia or marking on them. The easy way they held their laser rifles told him that these two were highly trained professionals.

Only seven members of the Tarawa's operating crew were allowed on to the hangar deck, Tolwyn and himself, along with Kevin, Doomsday and two Landreich pilots cleared to fly one of the four craft still left in the very forward part of the hangar, and finally Sparks as the one overworked maintenance officer permitted to work on the fighters. Everyone else aboard ship had already been told that the guards had standing orders to shoot first and then ask questions. Jason could tell this was simply not rhetoric, these two would do it without batting an eye.

Clearing the doorway, they stepped out into the hangar deck. Equipment was spread out across almost all the floor space which once was occupied by forty-four fighters. He realized that he was, in fact, looking at perhaps the single largest concentration of computing power anywhere in the Confederation except, perhaps, for the administrative centers of Earth and the moon, and even then he wondered. Banks of storage systems were arrayed along one wall, dozens of holo display fields were already up and running, and he approached one of them, a field nearly half a dozen meters cubed. A technician was standing inside the display field, which showed a three dimensional model of what he recognized as the near space environment around Kilrah. Bright hovering points of light represented the stars, their planets, and transition jump points, with blocks of data appearing above them, the information readable from any angle one looked at it. The technician standing inside the holo display looked almost godlike as she walked about inside it. He was totally mystified by what she was doing as she pulled out what looked like a laser pointer, aimed it at the orange size planet floating in the middle of the field and squeezed.

Another holo field popped into action next to the first, this one a close up of the planet the first technician had pointed at. The entire field was occupied by what looked like a solid ball, its continents covered with hundreds of flashing lights

"That's Kilrah," Jason whispered.

"Using this, they can lock in on any one of millions of sources even while continuing to scan all other traffic and look for new sources at the same time," Tolwyn replied softly,

Several white overall clad techs gathered around the globe, pointing, talking softly, arguing, and then aiming pointers at particular flashing lights. Behind them, two dimensional flat screens flared into light, streams of data flashing across some, others showing pictures, one of which caught Jason's eye, of Kilrathi wearing heavy leather armor slashing at each other with swords.

Vance came up to the two and nodded a greeting.

"Say, what the hell is that on the monitor?" Jason asked, pointing to the screen.

"A Kilrathi drama from the Gakarg Period."

"What?"

"Their ancient history. They love holos about the ancient wars when the various clans were feuding with each other before the unification. We monitor every such station from Kilrah, their media links are translight signalled throughout the Empire. It cost them a bundle but it helps keep them unified. Watching their stations might give us clues as to internal politics. We have a lot of software tied up with analysis of their popular shows, since there might be some subtle clues as to what's going on based upon the type of entertainment the government is broadcasting. In the last three days we've noticed an increase of Gakarg Period dramas dealing with Emperor Y'taa'gu.

"Who?"

Vance chuckled.

"I never heard of him either. Seems to be an evil emperor who was insane and finally killed by a virtuous warrior in order to save his people. It's worth watching. It's interesting that since the armistice we never see a single drama about the war with us, or any of their previous ones, only ancient history. Their news programs are the same, really tight on war news and only one brief announcement of the armistice and then nothing. These furballs are mighty security conscious on such things, but we still gleam occasional facts; that's why it's worth monitoring."

Lance led them around the holo display of Kilrah raised a pointer and aimed it at a flashing blue light

"Blue means commercial communication line," and he nodded back to a screen which was filled with what looked like shipping orders, instantly translated into standard English.

"This D-5 is monitoring everything that's reaching the antenna arrays mounted outside this ship. If it's non-coded it immediately translates it. We have the computers programmed to look for certain things on the commercial channels. For instance, a shipping order for IFF missiles gets tagged into a higher priority slot. We can even look for orders related to just one component of an IFF missile. If certain patterns of shipping develop or if something outside of the ordinary happens, the computer will alert a human operator who then analyzes it and decides if there's something important enough that it has to be kicked upstairs. That's the key job, looking for the little nugget of gold inside the tons of gravel and mud.

"One of the first things that started to tip us off to the fact that the Kilrathi might be building something was that certain commercial links for the ordering of military parts suddenly went into a new code system, which was changed every eight days. Significant orders for supplies, parts, and shipping became highly classified.

"That started some real questions being asked. The problem was that they shifted this classified work to the part of the Empire out beyond Kilrah, as far from our listening posts as possible The question of why really put the pressure on us to get this D-5 on line and also caused the loss of a lot of good intel people behind the lines. The jump we just completed is the deepest in we've ever been able to take equipment like this. You can see already the streams of data pouring in.

Richards led them over to his command booth and offered a couple of cups of coffee to his guests. Jason noticed that these people seemed to live on caffeine, and a fair number of them were addicted to Ian's habit of tobacco, a practice he found totally mystifying and somewhat disgusting.

"The D-5 can monitor any signal within its six hundred light year range and pinpoint its origin. The hard part is programming it to figure out what is worth looking at out of the billions of messages it picks up every day and then passing it to a human analyst for evaluation.

"The analyst's job is the toughest. It takes someone with a sixth sense to decipher what appear to be unrelated facts but actually are part of a pattern.

"We do the same thing for the media channels, the public communication lines, and of course the military and government lines," and he pointed to the flashing red and yellow lights back on the holo display of Kilrah.

"Those are the tough buggers, a lot of it is burst signalled and highly encoded."

"Damn, there's hundreds of them," Jason said. "Something must be up."

Vance laughed softly.

"Over ninety percent are dummy channels, broadcasting complete gibberish, total nonsense words that actually tie up most of our decoding equipment since we're not sure if its garbage or the real thing. Sometimes you might have a burst signal with a million words in it, all encoded, and the real message is twenty words in the middle, each word separated from the next by say six thousand four hundred words.

"Why that number?"

"Remember they have eight fingers and we have ten, so their numerical system is base eight. We tend to look a bit more intensely at base eight numerical lines as a result. What gets frustrating is that they are using at least a dozen different codes at any given time, with the highest level material going on what we call Fleet Code A, which tends to change every twenty-four to forty days. The real messages are hidden in a lot of garbage and we have to wade through each message and might spend weeks tracking down promising stuff only to discover its a decoy."

"Some of their people even have a sense of humor about it. One message, when finally translated, was a simple 'Hey, stupid, we fooled you,' and another was a long excerpt from what I guess was a Kilrathi dirty book. Decoding and translating each of those things took up time and equipment. We can't ignore a single message because we never know if we might hit paydirt or not. So we wade through all of this, figure out the real signals from the fake, then spend a hell of a lot of time cracking the code, and just when we think we've got it, they go and change the code and we're back to square one. Then to top it off they might have a station that's quiet for weeks or months, and it pops off a lone burst signal then shuts down. Trying to even figure out where it came from out of a billion cubic light years of space was nuts until the D4 model, which could do a Doppler analysis and at least do a probable trace."

"I'd go mad," Tolwyn said.

"Some of us do," Vance replied. "It takes a special kind of person to do this. You fighter jockeys, your battle is one of skill and wits, but it gets played out in seconds. Some of our battles last years.

Vance smiled.

"I've been in this game for twenty-nine years. I've dreamed all those years of having something like this D-5. With the new antenna array we can pick up bursts from up to six hundred light years out; only a couple of generations back in the system we were lucky to get consistent reads from ten light years away. We used to spend billions on recon drones which would go in, store up data for a week, then send out a burst signal. Once it signalled the Kilrathi would be onto it and take it out. Now this one system can cover an area that would have required thousands of drones.

"The big problem now is that counter intel believes they knew of the D-4 and maybe suspected our D-5. We've noticed a decrease in signal traffic and suspect they're shifting more to courier. So far we've yet to figure out how to read a dispatch pouch six hundred light years behind the lines."

As they continued to talk, Vance led them around the flight deck. Small cubicles had been set up in the center of the room, and hunched over in each was an operator, going through data that the computer felt was of sufficient importance to bring to the attention of a human operator.

"I've got a hundred and three analysts with me on this mission, each of them a specialist and the best in his field with eight or more years of training behind him. There are another forty programmers who feed in the requests and another twenty just to troubleshoot any glitches in the machine."

Jason looked around the room, wondering just who indeed was paying for all of this. He had his suspicions but knew it was best not to ask. What was equally troubling was the matter-antimatter mine that was almost casually brought aboard with the rest of the equipment. It was placed in the center of the room and would be activated if it appeared as if Tarawa might be captured. In this case there was definitely no surrender although, technically, they were not even at war.

A technician came up to Vance's side, looked over at Jason and Tolwyn and said nothing. Vance smiled and nodded.

"I think Jenkins here has something to tell me that he'd rather not say in front of the two of you," Vance said quietly.

Tolwyn, smiling, nodded and turned and walked away.

"Hey, we're on the same team," Jason finally said as they went back down the corridor to the bridge.

"Just remember, Jason, if there's no need to really know, then you definitely better not know. Believe me, son, there's a hell of a lot I wish I didn't know at this moment."

Tolwyn looked over at him and smiled.

"Come on, I think it's safe for us to have a short drink, help us unwind. It's going to be a boring float out here until something comes up."

Jason was awakened by a gentle, but insistent shaking.

Damn, what was it now, and then he was instantly awake. The room was dark, there was no klaxon, no attack. He suffered a moment of disorientation, the old dream had come back, the explosions silently bursting across the surface of the moon orbiting Kilrah. Svetlana . . .

"Jason, it's Tolwyn, something's up."

He stood up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and snapped on the light.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, but I want you in on this."

Jason reached into his closet, pulled on a fresh jumpsuit, slipped into a pair of shoes and followed Tolwyn out the door.

It was the midnight to four watch, one officer and four enlisted personnel manning the controls. Actually, the time was an artificial creation, complete to the dimming of all lights aboard ship except in work areas. He looked over at the chronometer, 0308 Confederation standard time and it certainly felt like it. He realized it had to be important if Tolwyn was pulling him out of the sack now. Well, at least it was some excitement for a change. They'd been on station eight jump points inside the Empire for twenty days, the three ships of their fleet rigged down for complete silent running, tucked into an asteroid field in a small system that didn't even rate a name on the charts, only a numbered designation.

Jason followed Tolwyn on to the flight deck and saw a small crowd gathered around a monitor. They quietly approached. Vance looked up and nodded a greeting.

"We've just had a break on cracking their latest A code and we've caught a burst signal from Kilrah but again it was garbled, emanating from the far side of the planet aimed towards Hari. They're only sending this particular burst when this one station is facing towards the Hari system and thus turned directly away from us. We get bounce reflections off of their moon, but the signal is degraded to near gibberish as a result. It's a pattern which seems to be adding up to something. We've also had a couple of partial locks on a burst coming out of the Hari system but it's still beyond our range to get a clear read and fix on it."

"So?" Jason asked, wondering why he had been pulled out of bed to hear what was not any of his business to know anyhow.

"I want to take us closer in," Vance replied casually, as if asking to do a little jaunt from Earth to the moon and back as a Sunday afternoon pleasure ride.

Vance motioned for the two to go into an empty cubicle. He punched up a holo display and then a two dimensional screen on one wall.

"This is why I wanted to get in closer," Vance said quietly, pointing at the holo map which floated in the corner of the cubicle and then to the flat screen where a long string of what appeared to be gibberish, marked by occasional intelligible words scrolled by.

"It's definitely fleet code, their highest grade. We had a twenty-three percent decipher on the last one, then this new code came on line but is being used only by this one station aimed at Hari. It has all the markings of a highest priority fleet code. We got really lucky when one of my people saw a similarity to a code they used nearly eight years ago and pulled it for comparison. We immediately broke a string of words and can do a six percent translation and it's less than twelve hours old. In five or six days I can bring that up to thirty percent and from there comparisons of word groupings, even knowing the writing styles of certain operators and officials, can help us break the rest.

"So why go deeper in now?"

"Because in five or six days I might have enough of the code broken so that we can get some hard core information. When we do, I want to be in position to scoop those signals from Hari and also the signals going out from Kilrah."

"That means getting some place between Kilrah and Hari," Jason said quietly.

Vance smiled again and nodded

"Do you know what you're asking? Only one ship's ever gone to Kilrah and back and that's this baby. I don't know how many Confed spy or recon ships have gotten into the area and back, but I bet it's precious few."

"Enough to prove it's possible," Tolwyn interjected. "But you are not going in to Kilrah, you're going to circle the edge of the Empire out to the far side and head into Hari territory."

"You didn't say we, you said you," Jason replied, looking over at Tolwyn.

"I'm taking the jump-capable Sabre on this ship back to Landreich in an hour," Tolwyn said

"Hell, that's at least a seven day run, it'll be a nightmare in a ship that small. It doesn't even have ahead on board."

"Well, if you don't mind, I'm taking Kevin along to keep me company. It'll be a chance for us to catch up on family matters. We'll just have to make do and rough it a bit. One of us can sleep in the tail gunner's slot while the other flies."

Jason smiled, glad at least for once that Tolwyn was dropping the stiff upper lip routine and allowing himself to show some open attachment to his nephew.

"I'm putting you in command of this fleet Paladin is being sent out in Bannockburn within the hour, doing forward recon and moving ahead of you. His orders are to go straight into Hari territory, to track down their burst signal, monitor it, and if possible close in for a visual check on its location.

"I'm ordering you to go cautiously, feel your way out around the edge of the Empire but don't go beyond extreme burst signal range to a relay drone that I'll make sure is deployed here," and he pointed to a map, which he quickly pulled up on a screen, showing a position four jump points inside of the Empire. "If something should come up, either with you or back home, we don't want you out of touch. I need to go back, some things have come up I've got to attend to and Vance has a little assignment for me."

Vance nodded and pointed back to the screen.

"There's several standard code words imbedded in these signals that we've seen before. They're just like Kilrathi general fleet communications during the war, daily updates on the various fronts that fleet commanders had to be made aware of. I suspect this word 'Nak'tara' that keeps coming up refers to a possible target of interest to those furballs. We're going to try an old trick to see if we can smoke them out. Geoff here has to take the message back personally. It's something I would never trust to a burst signal because it could tip off this whole operation. I don't even want it in writing. It goes out in his head, and he can see to it along with his other business."

Jason looked over at the screen. This system was literally receiving and analyzing hundreds of millions of words, millions of conversations in Kilrathi, all its various dialects, and coded talk, hundreds of hours of video, and thousands of holo images every day. It was analyzing it, and boiling it down for info, and now because of a six percent translation of a half heard signal, he was being asked to jump Tarawa to the far side of the Empire. He had wandered into a shadow world of a quasi war which was beyond his ability to really understand. Either they were on to something, or they were all definitely nuts and he tended to think it was the latter.

Baron Jukaga smiled as he read the report. It seemed that both the Emperor and his son were to take the Imperial cruiser out to Largkza, the second moon of Kilrah to attend the yearly ritual of Pukcal, the day of atonement at the famed temple to Sivar located on that planet.