exasperation, Kaplin flipped back ash-brown hair. 'You're crazy. You'll get us all court-martialed.'

    'Or decorated,' Harris interjected. 'That's what happened last time.'

    That moment Jensen noticed the gaudy, nonregulation nail lacquer. 'Ensign Kaplin,' he rapped out. 'One more breach of protocol on this bridge, and I'll have you confined to quarters.' His voice did not change inflection as he resumed with orders for his pilot. 'Harris, charge the coils and prepare for FTL. I want our dispatches delivered as if they were hot, and Sail on flight course for Chalice.'

In fact the logistics took days to work out. On fire with impatience lest they miss their timing at Chalice, Jensen paced through $ail's tiny corridors. He ran through his plan to trap Marity over and over again. Since the scoutship's living quarters consisted of two bunkrooms, a galley cubby, and the bridge, his crewmates grew sick of hearing it. Harris escaped by closeting himself in astrogation to watch his library of porn tapes. Kaplin got bugged enough to argue.

    Her fingers tapped the mess counter as she voiced her list of objections. 'First, you took a helluva risk assuming those recon boys you brown-nosed could wrangle us an assignment.'

    'Irrelevant point,' Jensen snapped. 'We've got our papers and the assignment, both on target.'

    Kaplin shot a glance at the soup he would not eat because of nerves, and her next nail snicked against the counter. 'Second, the explosive you had that dock worker rig in case your plans went awry could misfire.'

    Jensen gestured his exasperation. 'Not if you know, as the rest of Chalice personnel does, that the box with the self-destruct is a dummy. The crystals inside are fakes, a decoy for MacKenzie James.'

    'Oh ?' Kaplin's eyebrows arched. 'You told everybody about your plot? Even the janitors? Hell, man, if you left things that wide~open, your skip-runner's deaf not to know it. His intelligence network's better than Fleet's, if he's got connections with the Syndicate. So who's fooling who on this mission?'

    'Mac's best style is recklessness,' Jensen countered. 'And he wants those interface crystals very badly.'

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