d.a.m.n him.

"So," she said, "you"re even taking the Millennium away from me."

"Roz, you"re the one who proved that full-sized vessels can"t survive intact in the Cactus Corridor. That nebula would be dangerous without the Ba-am-as and their mines. But the fact that the Ba-am-as claim itand defend it, and the Corridor is filled with more debris than the average nebula, make it the most treacherous area of s.p.a.ce out here."

"I"ve flown it," Roz said.

"And lost a ship doing so."

"If regulations hadn"t insisted on one: successful completion of a mission and two: crew"s lives above all else, I"d"ve gotten the d.a.m.n ship out." She took a deep breath. "I want the Millennium on this mission."

"No."

"And since this mission"s off the books, I"m not following regulations."

"Roz-"

"What are you going to do, Allen?" she said, being as disrespectful to him as he was to her. "Throw the book at me? You can do that already. If you want me to go, and it"s clear you do, you do it my way."

"See the prototype first," he said.

"Has the prototype flown any farther than this base?"

"No."

"Have its weapon systems been tested in real battles, not simulations?"

"No."

"Has it ever flown in anything other than optimum conditions?"

"No."

"Then you give me the Millennium, or you find someone else to take this little joy ride of yours."

"I"ll have your a.s.s, Roz."

She smiled at him. "It seems that you already do, Allen. There"s not a lot more that you can threaten me with. You do it my way, or it"s not going to get done. Or did some other captain wrap a noose around her neck like I did?"

He stared at her for a long time. Then he sighed. "All right," he said. "You have the Millennium."

"Somehow," she said, "I"m not overjoyed."

Roz was even less overjoyed when the Millennium hit the Cactus Corridor. The Corridor was the name the Patrol had given one of the larger nebulas in this part of the galaxy and it was, as Galland had said, dangerous even without the mines placed in it by the Ba-am-as.

The Ba-am-as were a possessive race who claimed not only the s.p.a.ce around their planet, but the s.p.a.ce around their solar system as their territory. That they shared that s.p.a.ce with at least seventy-five other sentient species didn"t seem to bother them at all; that among the seventy-five were four-teen that were s.p.a.ce-faring only bothered the Ba-am-a"s in that they had to defend themselves.

And they did, against everyone.To make matters worse, the Ba-am-as were more technologically advanced than the Patrol. It meant that any s.p.a.ce-faring ships that went into self-proclaimed Ba-am-as territory had to be warships, and had to have a lot of maneuverability.

The Millennium had both, and normally, Roz would have felt all right going into Ba-am-as turf with her ship, but things weren"t normal, The Millennium was designed to run with a crew composite of three hundred. It could run well with anything down to two hundred and, theoretically, could function with a skeleton crew of one hundred.

Galland had allowed her the fifty crew members of her choice, promising to rea.s.sign all the others and rebuild their careers. She was happy for them-but the problem that she had was that to run the Millennium with half her minimal crew composite required her to use her best people-and those were the people she most wanted out of Galland"s clutches.

Her only other choice was to take the prototype which she trusted as much as she trusted Galland. Better to run the Corridor with a tired overworked talented crew in the best ship in the fleet than run it with a new ship and an unfamiliar crew.

Or so she told herself.

If there had been a way to avoid the Corridor, she would have done it. But there wasn"t, at least, not a quick way, according to the maps she had gotten from Galland. She would have interviewed his alien informants herself, but they had conveniently left the base just before she arrived.

She did watch the vids of the interviews and noted that all the pertinent information hadn"t been filmed at all. Some-one had shut off the vids at all the appropriate moments. That meant she couldn"t even reconstruct the blacked-out vids. All she had was Galland"s word, the crazy map, and supposition.

The interviews told her less than Galland had.

The fifth day into the nebula, the computer reported the first minefield.

The Ba-am-as were clever. The mines were impossible to detect, at least with Patrol technology, but the Ba-am-as always issued warnings in the parameter around the field. The warnings always ended with some Ba-am-adian dignitary expressing its wish that no race get hurt in Ba-am-adian territory.

So considerate.

Roz had the computer do a sweep anyway. She had learned, the last time she went through this nebula, that the Ba-am-adian mines appeared on scans as bits of rock. Her plan was to avoid all rock as she went through.

If the Bd-am-as had changed the configuration of the mines, however, the Millennium would get through the nebula by luck alone.

As soon as the announcement came through, Roz went to the bridge. She wasn"t the best pilot on board, not anymore, but she was the most canny. She took the copilot"s chair and served as backup as the ship crawled its way through the minefield.

Fifteen agonizing hours pa.s.sed. Roz suspected they were nearly out of the field when the first Ba-am-as ship appeared.

Ba-am-as ships were slender and white, looking so light that they seemed to float in s.p.a.ce. The Ba-am-as never revealed themselves. Even their announcements came through as audio only, and allattempts to look at their planet were blocked.

Roz always imagined that they looked like their ships, white featherlike creatures without any substance to them at all.

"Message," said Ethan, her first on this mission.

"What language we got?"

"Bad English," said Ethan.

It annoyed her that the Ba-am-as had learned the language of the Galactic Alliance, but the Alliance had never even heard the Ba-am-adian language.

Maybe language was just annoying her all around these days.

"All right," she said. "Tell them to go ahead."

Although she could probably recite the announcement chapter and verse already. She still heard it in her dreams.

"Galactic Patrol Vessel," said the flat androgynous voice that was so obviously computer generated.

"You are in Ba-am-adian s.p.a.ce. We request that you leave it immediately."

She had two ways of responding. She had tried the first the last time she had gone through and that had gone very badly. The Ba-am-a"s seemed to have no patience with people who claimed that this part of s.p.a.ce could not be owned.

She operated the communications array herself. "Ba-am-adian vessel," she said. "We had no idea we were in your s.p.a.ce. We"ve been called to an outpost on the other side of the nebula. We request safe pa.s.sage to tend to our people."

There was a long silence before she got the response, "There are no Patrol outposts on the other side of the nebula."

"There is one," she said. She wondered how far she would have to take this bluff. "I can give you the coordinates if you like."

She hoped that the Ba-am-as could not read her star charts. If she had to send the information, she"d use the least informative way possible.

"You are already halfway through the nebula," the Ba-am-as said. "You have guarantee of safe pa.s.sage to the other side. But you must agree not to return through our s.p.a.ce."

Great. All she was doing was putting off the inevitable. "That would require us to go several light-years out of our way."

"It is a small requirement to save your lives," said the metallic Ba-am-adian voice.

Actually that was true. And it put a germ of an idea in her head, an idea she did not have to examine until she got back from Galland"s mystery planet.

"We agree," she said.

Ethan swore behind her, and she waved him silent. The rest of the bridge crew was staring at her as if shehad grown three heads.

"We accept your safe pa.s.sage through the nebula and for it, we agree not to return this way."

There was a long silence on the other end. Then the computerized voice said, "We shall hold you and your people to this agreement. Now, follow us and we shall lead you out of the nebula.""

"Thank you," Roz said and ended the communication.

Her bridge crew was still staring at her.

"That Ba-am-as said "your" people," Ethan said. "You don"t have the right to negotiate something this big for the Alliance."

"I know," she said.

"Don"t you know what kind of problems this will create?" Ivy, her pilot, asked.

"I know," Roz said.

"And you did it anyway?" Ivy asked. "Don"t you know what"s going to happen to you?"

"Nothing that hasn"t happened already," Roz said. "I need a quick meeting of the senior staff. It"s time you all know what"s going on."

They frowned and returned to their posts.

She sat back and let Ivy do the hard piloting. But Roz made sure the computer was charting their course, and taking readings of the rocks and debris near the strange twists and turns. Maybe, just maybe, she"d be lucky enough to find a common material in all of that junk.

Maybe she"d discover how to locate a Ba-am-adian mine.

"He"s been tampering with all of our records?" Ethan asked, pacing around the conference desk.

The conference room in the Millennium was probably the prettiest room on the ship. On one wall, it had floor-to-ceiling windows open to s.p.a.ce, on the others it had hand-painted maps of the known universe-maps which could be covered by screens if someone needed to make a large presentation.

Ethan was a burly man who"d made his way through the ranks on sheer brute force. It had taken her-and her crew- to show him that he had the intelligence to match that strength.

Now, however, she wished he was small and puny. He was using that strength to knock empty chairs and eventually, he"d knock them clear of their anchors in the floor.

Ivy was huddled beside Roz, looking as if she didn"t want to be there. Three other staff members, pet.i.te Gina Fishel who headed security, no-nonsense Belle Curry who ran the medical team, and st.u.r.dy Tom O"Neal who led the engineering team, watched Ethan warily. He was expressing the anger all of them felt-Roz was smart enough to know that-but they still weren"t comfortable with the edge of violence that was in all of his movements.

She was. She remembered having the same feeling in Galland"s office.

"Yes," Roz said patiently. "He tampered with everything.""And you trusted him?"

"He was my superior officer," she said. "We were following regulations."

Ethan growled and smacked another empty chair. "You should have double-checked on him."

"Why didn"t you?" she asked, unable to control the impulse.

"Because that was your job."

"So, under your logic, you should have made sure that I did it properly." She folded her hands. "We"d all been on base since the loss of the St. Petersburg. We all had the opportunity to make sure that Galland was telling us the truth. We all chose to believe the system was working."

Ethan whirled, slapping his large hands on the table. "You can"t blame this on us."

"I"m not," Roz said. "But I am pointing out that the mistake I made was somewhat logical. I"ve had a week to think about this. I screwed up, yes, and I allowed my desire to maintain a ship and a command compromise all of us. But we"re here now-"

"We wouldn"t be here if you"d told us that on base," Gina said softly.

Roz nodded. "I know that."

Gina"s narrow face flushed. "You got us here under false pretenses."

"I need you to run this ship," Roz said.

"We could strike." That came from Belle. She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back in her chair.

Roz looked at her with surprise. Belle, who had served on more ships than the rest of them combined, never acted in an insubordinate manner. She accepted her work as easily as she accepted her silver hair and advancing years.

"You could," Roz said. "Then we drift. I can"t run this ship alone."

"So your plan is to be Galland"s lackey?" Tom asked.

Roz shrugged. "I figure we"ll investigate this."

"Why?" Belle said. "You know it"s not possible."

"I have a hunch Galland has sent us there for another reason," Roz said.

"And then how do you expect to get home?" Ivy asked, her voice soft. "You told the Ba-am-as that we won"t go through the Corridor. If we don"t, we"ll go so far out of our way that it"ll take us two years to get back."