Fisers. The Federal Intelligence Services. They'd likely dumped a load of listeners on the Belithain. Maybe even vid recorders.

  Which was absurd.

  Envoys are sacrosanct. You can kill them if you want to start a war, but you don't interfere with their mission. And you certainly don't bug an envoy.

  A real envoy would have objected, most strenuously. If I'd been a real Santa Kylie envoy, I would have. At least if we'd been in Santa Kylie orbit. Out here, orbiting a war-torn planet, raising a voice against a Free Fleet? Maybe. Probably. Likely.

  What would a real envoy do? Wait. Talk.

  I couldn't, though. Not with my borrowed, possibly out-of-date codes.

  Arguing would bring too many problems, take too much time. The silent planet didn't bode well. I needed to get down there, find the Knife's kid and move out.

  Maybe that was what the Feds were counting on, that the war would end, or escalate enough to let them use their bombard to end it. Voidmunching politics. It made me want to spit bitter acid.

  Or maybe I was wrong. Maybe there weren't any bugs on the Bucket. Only one way to find out.

  I made a motion for Hao to keep talking. She gave me a raised eyebrow but complied, chatting about the marines and the Navy engineering routines.

  Tapping my com readout for show, searching through the Bucket's various remote menu options, initializing scans almost at random, I focused inwardly. Drew a slow breath. Let it out and conjured a thread of cold force from the void, tapping it against the various wards on the Bucket.

  Armor. Sensor net. Locker. Mess. Engines.

  There's a feeling you get, when you're familiar with a space. You know when something's changed, without being able to say what. The Bucket's feeling had changed, a sharp, tingly overtone to my searching force thread. Anywhere else, even the Belithain, I wouldn't have noticed it. But the Bucket had been home for so long, that I'd grown to know it on an instinctive level, and that instinct told me something was wrong. The Feds had definitely left an active com behind.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  It took us two hours to find the bugs, going over the Bucket with magic and scanners, communicating with hand gestures, trying to stay silent. Seven pick-ups and a transmission module hidden right in the airlock. Small, no lenses, sound only. They didn't quite cover the entire ship, unless they had a way of filtering out speech by listening to the Bucket's structural beams. I hoped not.

  Or let them try. Crudmunging fisers. I hadn't done anything wrong, at least not yet, and they'd bugged me anyhow. I sucked on my lip, salty sweat filling my mouth. The bucket still smelled faintly of gun oil from the Marines. Or maybe that was my imagination. To the void with the fisers.

  I set up three different music streams, and activated an auto-sander in the engineering bay, feeding it a sizable chunk of aluminum with the orders to polish it down to a nub.

  For a moment, I was tempted to deactivate the bugs with a hammer. But that would tell the Feds that we'd found them, and the fact that I didn't protest would raise all manner of red flags. Better to play stupid.

  "You think that was all?" Hao said, once I got her into the cargo bay and indicated that it was safe to talk. The bay was cavernous, a space some thirty meters across. The black-and-warning-sign-yellow envoy's drop pod was our only cargo, leaving plenty of room to spare. I could have set up obstacles and held handgun trials, if I'd been stupid enough to shoot inside a thin-walled can in outer space.

  "I hope so," I said. "Unless you have a better method of finding bugs."

  Hao tapped her hand com, the readout shining orange for a moment. She shook her head.

  "None I haven't tried," she said. "I can't detect any outbound transmissions either."

  Which was strange. Why bug a ship if you weren't going to listen in?

  "Meaning?" I said.

  "That their crudmucking transmitter is a lot more powerful than normal," Hao said. "It's collecting the speech, coding it, and storing for burst transmission later. Or maybe a physical pickup."

  She sounded impressed. Then again, I could have fit the transmitter in the palm of my hand, and it wasn't much thicker than a finger. Impressive amount of computing power for such a small package. Well, that was Hao's problem.

  "You'll need to figure out how to fake its report by the time we get the Knife's kid up here," I said. "Can't let them know that two people emerge from the drop pod."

  "I'll try," Hao said.

  "Don't try," I told her. "Do. And don't transmit anything unless you have to. The fiser code breakers are good."

  That got me both a raised eyebrow and a smile.

  "Yes, sir," she said, crisply, giving me a salute the lieutenant would have been proud of. "Those who can, do. Those who can't, command."

  I laughed. That was more like it.

  "You'll manage," I said, heading for the gun locker. "Time to gear up and go down. Keep the Bucket safe and bore the Feds with how normal you are."

  Hao hesitated. Then she grinned back.

  "I will," she said. "And good luck."

  I gave her a nod, maybe curter than she deserved. But all these irregularities were giving me shivers. Silent war. Empty planet. Fisers. Helpful Feds. And I was getting sick of people wishing me luck.

  How bad could it be?