"He's gone where?" Lieutenant Armstrong's disbelief was written plainly on his face. He'd just poured his first cup of coffee, so his normal stiff bearing hadn't quite had time to set in.

            "Here's the note he left with Mother," said Lieutenant Rembrandt, shoving a piece of paper at her fellow officer. "At least he left a note-I'd have liked it a lot more if he'd told us in person, though."

            "We'd have tried to talk him out of it, which is why he didn't ask us," said Armstrong, glancing up from the note. "He has Beeker and Rev along, I see. Do we have any idea where specifically they've gone?"

            "The rebel headquarters is somewhere on the mainland," said Rembrandt. She waved a hand vaguely. "We don't know exactly where. Mother couldn't find any intelligence reports on it. The captain had already asked her. I was glad to hear that-at least he didn't set out completely blind. But the rebels haven't been enough trouble to justify close surveillance, up until now."

            Armstrong frowned. "No satellite intelligence?"

            "The satellite network here is pretty rudimentary," said Rembrandt, wearily. "The captain learned that when he was looking for that secret government project. There are a couple of old weather sats, dating back to the mining days, with add-ons for GPS and communications. But nothing military."

            "Nothing? Didn't these people just have a war?"

            "Sure," said Rembrandt. She walked over to the coffee urn and topped up her cup. "But remember, with only one nation on this world, they didn't have an enemy to keep tabs on. When that civil war broke out, their economy had collapsed, and neither side had off-world allies. It was a low-tech war all around-no armor, no air force, no long-range missiles. And no intelligence sats. Even after the war, the Army peacekeeping team never took the rebels seriously enough to spend the money on sats."

            "Well, I guess we should be thankful for small favors," said Armstrong. "At least nobody's got enough firepower to overwhelm a single Legion company if they decide to start shooting. I guess that's an acceptable trade-off for the extra set of eyes."

            "I agree," said Rembrandt, adding a dash of cream to her coffee. "Except we still need to figure out where the captain's gone. If an emergency comes up, I want to talk to him before I do anything drastic."

            Armstrong looked up from his coffee cup. "I don't see how that's a problem," he said. "We can zero in on their wrist communicators, right? Or is there something else you haven't told me?"

            "You got it. Everybody except the captain left their communicators behind," said Rembrandt. "And he's turned his off. I think he didn't want the rebels to get their hands on advanced tech if they decided to take him prisoner. One communicator won't do them much good; they need two or more to get any advantage from them."

            "Rats," said Armstrong. "So we can't get in touch with the captain unless he initiates the contact."

            "That's the story," said Rembrandt. "We better hope that nothing happens until he decides to come back."

            "We better hope the rebels don't decide they've got a useful hostage on their hands," said Armstrong.

            "Yeah, I thought about that, too," said Rembrandt. She drained her coffee and set down the cup. "Maybe you better get over to the comm center and see if you and Mother can figure out some alternate way to track down the captain."

            Armstrong picked up his coffee cup and rose from his chair. "I'll get right on it," he said. "Let you know if I hear from him."

            "Right," said Rembrandt. She watched Armstrong leave, then turned to the day's schedule. She'd be running the company in the captain's absence-this time without even Beeker's help. There had better not be any emergencies while she was in charge. She expected to have her hands full finding the captain.