This short story appeared in the anthology The Service of the sword in 2003 It was Silesian space. It was escort duty for convoys of Her Majesty's merchant marine. It was going to be boring as hell. Lieutenant (Senior Grade) Rafael Cardones stifled a sigh as the Star Knight-class heavy cruiser HMS Fearless slid smoothly into its slot in Sphinx orbit. It wasn't fair, and everyone aboard knew it. After all they'd gone through at Basilisk Station a few months back, and especially now with a shiny, brand-new-out-of-the-box warship wrapped around them, surely the Admiralty could have given them something more challenging than to run endlessly back and forth between Basilisk and the roiling cesspool of political chaos laughingly called the Silesian Confederacy.