by David Weber
"They certainly seemed so," Honor said. "Besides which, I can't think of a good reason why they would lie to me that way."
"Unless this raider is in fact an official probe by the Emperor," Wallace said sourly. "In that case, having their denial on record would help if they had to pull the plug on the whole thing at some point."
"Except that I doubt a simple battlecruiser captain is high enough in the chain of command to be privy to any such high-level intrigues," Honor pointed out.
"But if he's simply been fed the official story—" Wallace broke off, nodding. "Oh. Right. If all he has is the official story, there's no reason for him to be setting up fall-back excuses."
"And certainly not with some Manticoran commander he happens to run across," Honor said. "Which brings me back to my opinion that we can trust him to do what he's promised."
"At least as long as it looks like sticking with us will gain him something," Venizelos said.
"Which gives us that much more incentive to smoke this raider out as quickly as possible," Honor said. "Which means finding the right kind of bait."
She turned to Wallace. "Over to you, Commander."
Wallace seemed taken aback. "Over to me how?" he asked cautiously. "Are you saying you want me to find this bait?"
"You're the ONI man on the scene," Venizelos reminded him. "What do fake Andy ships eat for lunch?"
"I have no idea," Wallace said. "We only have two sightings, after all."
"Both of them alongside wrecked merchies," Honor reminded him. "Why don't we start with what the merchies were carrying."
Wallace's lips compressed briefly. "I don't know."
Honor and Venizelos exchanged glances. "I thought you were part of the team," Venizelos said.
"I was part of the team analyzing the attacker's ID and emission spectrum," Wallace said. "A different team was assigned to look over the merchantmen themselves."
"And, what, you don't talk to each other?"
Wallace's lip twitched. "Our report was instantly classified," he said. "That means no one below a field officer sees it without that field officer's authorization. If their report was classified too . . ." He shrugged. "At any rate, I haven't heard anything from that end of the investigation."
"That's just great," Venizelos muttered, shaking his head in disgust.
"That's SOP," Honor reminded him, sitting firmly on her own annoyance. "The system's there for a reason, so let's figure out how to work with it. Where's the nearest field office, Mr. Wallace? Posnan?"
"No, that one's been closed down," Wallace said. "The nearest actual station's now at Silesia."
Honor looked at Venizelos. "Any chance we can sneak over there while we're at Tyler's Star?"
Venizelos shook his head. "Not and stay with our schedule," he said. "Our next convoy should already be assembling when we get there with this one. We'll only have a couple of days; and after that we're off to Walther and Telmach, with no way to get back to Silesia."
Honor nodded; she'd pretty much come to the same conclusion. "Where's the closest base after Telmach?" she asked Wallace.
"Actually . . ." Wallace hesitated. "At the moment, Telmach should do just fine."
"I didn't know we had a base there," Venizelos said, frowning.
"We don't," Wallace said. "What we do have is the Provisioner about to set up shop."
Honor exchanged lifted eyebrows with Venizelos. The Provisioner was a depot ship, a sort of floating goody basket for Royal Navy ships working a long way from home. "I thought Provisioner was at the Gregor Terminus."
"It was," Wallace said. "She's being brought to Silesia as a sort of experiment. The hope is that if our escort ships can stay in the Confederacy longer without having to return to Manticore for supplies and replacement parts, we can guard our convoys more efficiently."
"Sounds reasonable," Venizelos said. "And you're saying there's an ONI field office aboard?"
"Not an office per se," Wallace said, "but there's an officer of command rank who should be receiving these reports on a timely basis."
" 'Should' being the operative word?"
"He will be receiving the reports," Wallace corrected himself tartly. "If you can wait until we reach there, we can hopefully get the merchantman data and start figuring out what sort of ship our raider likes to go after."
"Good enough," Honor said, keying for the bridge.
DuMorne's face appeared on her com screen. "Yes, Ma'am?"
"Is the Neue Bayern still within tight-beam transmission?"
DuMorne peered at something off-camera. "Yes, Ma'am, just barely."
"Good," Honor said. "Have Joyce get a lock while I record a message. And pull up our flight schedule for attachment."
"Yes, Ma'am."
Honor cut the circuit. "And after I do that," she told Venizelos and Wallace, "you two can bring me up to speed on the progress of our little impromptu cargo inspection."
"We're in position, Commodore," the Vanguard's helmsman reported. "Holding orbit true."
"Reduce impellers to standby," Dominick ordered. "Rig for full stealth."
"Yes, Sir."
The bridge crew started down the by-now familiar checklist; and from his unobtrusive seat beside the tac officer's station, Charles permitted himself a small smile.
It was a self-satisfied smile, though he was careful not to let any of that part show through. Dominick was hooked, all right; hooked like a prize bassine on a strand of thousand-kilo test line. And if the commodore was hooked, the People's Republic was hooked, too.
All he had to do now was reel them in. Reel them in, and hope that Dominick didn't accidentally bite on the bone before the deal was done.
The smile faded. No, Dominick wouldn't bite. Dominick was completely under his control, dazzled by his successes and by the booty pouring in from the Manticoran merchantmen he and his new toy had crushed beneath their heel. Dominick would follow Charles straight into hell if Charles wanted him to. Even better, he would charge in fully convinced that the course setting had been his own idea.
Not that Charles had any intention of dragging him or the Vanguard anywhere near that sort of fire, of course. On the contrary, he had every intention of keeping this ship as safe as possible. And not only because his own precious skin was aboard. If they tumbled to the hook too quickly, that skin wouldn't be worth very much.
And therein lay the rub. Because if Commodore Dominick was safely under control, Captain Vaccares was another matter entirely. He was primed for that trip to the edge of hell, eager to give the Crippler the kind of baptism of fire that Charles couldn't afford for it to have.
Something would have to be done about that. Something that wouldn't rock the boat Charles had so carefully maneuvered along this potentially treacherous channel for the past few months.
"Charles?"
Charles turned his attention and his smile to Dominick. "Yes, Commodore?"
"If they're on schedule, we'll have another four days before the Harlequin arrives," Dominick said. "While we're waiting, I want to put the crew through some extra simulations."
"Excellent idea," Charles agreed. "How can I help?"
"I want you to supervise the Crippler crew," the commodore said. "We're going to practice going up against a Manty warship, and you're the only one who can tell us if the simulation is accurate enough."
"I'll do what I can," Charles promised smoothly, even as he felt his stomach muscles bunching up. So Dominick was smelling blood in the water now, too. Damn that Vaccares, anyway.
Still, it could be worse. If the attack on the Harlequin fell out as planned, this particular Manty escort should be too far away to be a problem. And if for some reason it was closer or faster than anticipated, he should still be able to get the Vanguard out before the Manty could move in on them.
And supervising the Crippler drills would be a perfect opportunity to lay the necessary groundwork for that kind of strategic withdrawal. "When do we begin?" he asked.
"Immediately," Dominick sa
id, smiling wolfishly. "If you'll head down to the Crippler ops station, I'll sound battle stations."
"Certainly," Charles said, getting to his feet. Besides, he'd known going in that there was a fair chance this house of cards would eventually come tumbling down. That was why his own private yacht was snugged away in Vanguard's Number Four boat bay, and why he'd introduced that little bug into the battlecruiser's transponder and sensor systems so that the yacht wouldn't even be noticed if and when he had to leave.
And it was also why he'd made sure the up-front half of the price he'd negotiated with Hereditary President Harris for the Crippler would be enough to make him a respectable profit. If he never saw the half-on-approval money, he would survive.
He just hoped that if and when he had to vanish the Vanguard would be in a system where he had some contacts. His little sublight runabout wasn't going to take him anywhere else, and he would hate to still be stuck in some Silesian backwater trying to get home when the Havenites came looking for him.
He glanced at the main viewing screen as he crossed the bridge, noting the delicate sweep of a distant comet's tail slashing across the starscape behind it. Back on Old Earth, he knew, comets had been considered bad omens.
Groundless superstition, of course. He hoped.
Directly ahead, visible in all its glory on the cabin viewscreen, the delicate sweep of Baltron-January 2479's tail arched its way across the starscape. Comets, Cardones remembered, had once been considered bad omens.
Groundless superstition, of course. He hoped.
"Your attention, please," the pilot's voice came over the lounge speakers, and the two dozen well-dressed passengers scattered around paused in their drinking or conversation to listen. "I'll put it on the main display in a minute, but if you want to look out the right side of the cabin at the comet's head, you should be able to see the main building of the Sun Skater Resort."
There was no mad rush for the viewports; people with the kind of money these folks had, Cardones reflected, made a point of not looking hurried. Instead, they made a sort of concerted but leisurely drift toward the starboard side, those with glasses still sipping from them, most pretending it was no big deal even as they jockeyed genteelly for the best viewing positions.
Cardones glanced to his left, wondering if Captain Sandler was as amused by it as he was. But if she was, it didn't show in the bland, self-indulgent, wealthy-beyond-all-belief expression she was wearing. It was an expression designed to match those of the rest of the passengers, just as the rest of her posture and behavior let her mix seamlessly with them.
And, not surprisingly, she was doing it far better than Cardones was. He looked back at the crowd by the viewports and wished for the umpteenth time that he'd been able to talk Sandler into picking one of the others for this role instead of him.
But she'd had all the logic on her side, not to mention the command authority to back it up. Even he had had to admit that the probability of the raider attacking the Harlequin within sight of anyone, even the dilettantes lounging around the Sun Skater, was really quite low. The Shadow was silently covering the more likely attack area, and Sandler had insisted the ship be fully crewed with pilot, copilot, and all three techs. Cardones and Sandler had thus been the only two people the spy ship could spare; and so it was Cardones and Sandler who were going to spend a couple of nights in Tyler's Star's premier resort.
In one of the four honeymoon cabins.
Cardones squirmed in his seat. Sandler had made it quietly clear that none of the standard honeymoon activities would be taking place between them, and that she'd booked the cabin solely for its distance and therefore privacy from the main resort complex. But that hadn't stopped Cardones from feeling excessively uncomfortable with the whole arrangement. Nor had it stopped the others, most notably Damana and Pampas, from ribbing him about it.
But all that was forgotten as the camera zoomed in on the resort and he got his first real look at the place.
Sun Skater had been the brainchild of some Solly developer who had noticed Baltron-January 2479 drifting in toward Tyler's Star and seen possibilities no one else had. The entire complex had been thrown up in a matter of months, built onto—and partially sunk into—the comet's five-kilometer-diameter head.
It must have seemed like a fool's fever dream back when the comet was nothing but a huge lump of ice and rock floating out beyond Hadrian's orbit. But now, with the comet in close enough for the solar wind to work its magic, the investment had paid off handsomely. Carefully positioned just past the comet head's midpoint, the resort was squarely in the flow of the ethereal tail being gently boiled off the ice.
It was a vantage point virtually no one in the galaxy had ever had before, and that alone would have guaranteed it at least a trickle of the rich and jaded. Adding in the highly ephemeral nature of the place—for the resort would most likely be abandoned once the comet had circled the sun and its magnificent tail faded away—and that trickle had become a steady stream.
"There's our place," Sandler murmured from his side, pointing to the left of the main building complex. "That little red-topped building off to the left. See it?"
Cardones patted her hand in what he hoped was a husbandly sort of way. "Yes, dear," he said.
Still, he had to admit that there was a certain kick in being able to call an attractive female superior officer dear. Especially when he'd actually been ordered to do so.
Honeymoon Suite Three was located a hundred meters from the main resort complex, accessible through a half-underground tunnel. Like the tunnel, the suite had been partially sunk into the rocky ice of the comet for stability; and like the rest of the complex, it had the comet's tail sweeping over it, drifting past its windows. It was a strange and curiously magnetic sight, Cardones decided as he stopped their luggage cart just inside the main pressure door and peered out the kitchenette window. Rather like a horizontal snowfall, but without the howling windstorm that would be needed to create such a phenomenon on any normal planet. Here, instead, all was silence and calm.
He walked past the kitchenette and the bedroom door and stepped into the living room. There he paused again, his attention caught by the view out the back windows. Beyond the "rear" of the complex, the drifting ice crystals flowed together behind the comet head, coalescing into a tail that stretched out for millions of kilometers toward the brilliant starscape beyond.
"Nice view," Sandler commented.
Cardones jumped; he hadn't heard her come up beside him. "Sure is," he agreed, an odd lump in his throat. "I can see why people are paying these rates to come out here."
"Yes," Sandler said. "But Her Majesty isn't paying for us to gawk at the scenery. Let's get to work."
The spell vanished. "Right," Cardones said, turning away from the view and heading back to the luggage cart. "I just hope they were able to sneak in the sensor pod while we were catching the shuttle from Hadrian."
"We'll know as soon as we try firing up the remotes," Sandler said. "I think we'll set up here by the window. Get the receiver and display panel and bring them in."
Cardones picked up two of the suitcases and returned to the living room. She was in the process of rearranging the furniture, pulling the coffee table and a pair of end tables together in front of the couch that faced out toward the drifting tail. Opening one of his suitcases, Cardones pulled out a multi-channel short-range receiver array and carried it to the coffee table, trailing wires behind him.
It took them nearly two hours to set everything up, connect all the wires properly, and run the various self-checks. But after that, it took only a few minutes to confirm that the Shadow had indeed managed to place the sensor pod nearby.
"I'm surprised the tail isn't interfering with the readings," Cardones commented, peering at the displays.
"Actually, there really isn't all that much substance to it," Sandler reminded him as she made a small adjustment to one of the settings. "It's only thin gas and ice crystals blown off by light pressure and s
olar wind. Mostly all it does is provide a little visual camouflage for the pod, which is what we wanted."
"Still, some of those crystals are ionized, and a lot of the rest are scattering photons and electrons all over the place," Cardones pointed out. "I'd have thought that would at least skew some of the more sensitive detectors."
Sandler shrugged. "They're very good instruments."
"Nothing but the best for ONI?"
"Something like that." Sandler stretched her arms back over her shoulders. "If the Harlequin's on schedule, she should be hitting the edge of our sensor range anywhere from six hours to two days from now. Let's order some dinner from the kitchenette and then both grab a few hours' sleep."
They had their dinner and five hours of sleep, with Cardones on the large and comfortable bed while Sandler took the far less comfortable couch. Cardones had felt more than a little guilty about that, but Sandler had insisted. He had countered by insisting—with all due respect to a superior officer, of course—that he take the first watch after that.
He was two hours into that watch when the sensor pod made its first contact.
It was definitely a merchantman, looking alone and vulnerable as she lumbered along, and Cardones keyed a query pulse from the sensor pod to check the ID transponder. It was the Harlequin, all right, dead on the timetable Sandler had given him. For a civilian ship to hold so tightly to schedule was almost unheard of. Either Sandler was an incredibly lucky guesser, or else the Harlequin's skipper was the most anal retentive in the merchant fleet. With a mental shake of his head, he began a systematic quartering of the sky for other impeller signatures. There shouldn't be any, he knew: the rest of the convoy would be well out of his detection range by now, and Shadow was supposed to be skulking along invisibly on full stealth well behind Harlequin's current position, her own impellers shut down to standby.
And then, almost before he'd begun his search, another signature blazed into existence. A powerful signature, too strong to be that of a merchie or system patrol craft. Almost certainly a warship.
And it was burning along at four hundred gravities on an intercept course with the Harlequin.
