Gorzynski made a sound in the back of her throat. "I don't understand," she said. "Why are they doing that?"

"I don't know," Keller told her grimly. "But we're going to pay them back with interest. Bet on it."

The board pinged: the static bomb was ready. Keller touched the primer and the release key, and there was a slight lurch as the bulky cylinder dropped free of the watchship. "Beddini? Static bomb away. Ninety seconds to detonation."

"Acknowledged," Beddini said. "We're out of here. Good luck."

"You, too," Keller said, and keyed off the comm laser.. "Let's go, Gorzynski."

They had swung the watchship around and were pulling for deep space when the static bomb blew up behind them, sending out a wide-spectrum saturation burst of tachyons that would blind whatever wake-trail detectors the enemy out there had. Or so went the theory. If it didn't work, the Peacekeeper garrisons on Dorcas and Kalevala had better hope they were ready for company. "Here we go," she told Gorzynski, and pressed the keys.

The sky shimmered, the stars spinning briefly into an illusion of a tunnel as the space around them twisted. And then the twist became a sphere, the stars winked out, and they were on their way.

Keller looked over at Gorzynski. The kid still looked sick, but there was something else there, too. The kind of quiet, dark determination that Keller had seen so often in hardened combat veterans.

She shook her head. What a way for the kid to have to grow up.

The door slid open, and Lieutenant Colonel Castor Holloway stepped into the Dorcas colony's Peacekeeper garrison sensor center. Major Fujita Takara was waiting just inside the door, his face looking somber in the dim red light. "What've we got, Fuji?" Holloway asked.

"Trouble, looks like," Takara told him. "Crane just picked up the leading edge of a static-bomb discharge."