The Service of the Sword

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.

'Nodes to standby,' the ship's commander ordered in that smooth soprano of hers, and Cardones threw a surreptitious look at her. If Captain Honor Harrington was dismayed by the thought of escort duty, it certainly didn't show in her face. Her expression was almost serene, in fact, as if she didn't have a care in the world.

Of course, Cardones recalled, her expression had been nearly that serene as she ordered their former ship, the late lamented light cruiser Fearless, to charge off across the Basilisk system in pursuit of an eight-million-ton Q-ship owned and operated by the People's Republic of Haven. A Q-ship, moreover, that might as well have been a full-fledged battlecruiser for the weight of armament it carried.

While their light cruiser might as well have been a glorified LAC after all the gutting Admiral Sonja Hemphill had done to it in order to make room for her precious experimental grav lance. The fact that Captain Harrington had managed to keep the Fearless together long enough to find a way to use that self-same grav lance against the Peep Q-ship was irrelevant, as far as Cardones was concerned. To him, it had been borderline criminal stupidity on Hemphill's part, and the rumor mill had it that Captain Harrington had said so directly to her face at the Weapons Development Board hearing afterward. Not in so many words, of course.

He took another look at the captain's face. On second thought, he decided, that expression wasn't serene at all. Captain Harrington was looking forward to the chance to hunt down some pirates and kick their collective butt.

Maybe this tour wasn't going to be quite as boring as he'd first thought.

Across the bridge, Lieutenant Joyce Metzinger straightened suddenly in her chair. 'Captain, I'm getting a signal from HMS Basilisk,' she announced.

Cardones glanced back at the captain, saw a slight frown of surprise. She'd done a stint aboard Basilisk, he knew, before being given her first hyper-capable command. Tac officer, if he remembered correctly, the same post he himself currently held aboard Fearless. Was Admiral Trent simply calling to say hello?

He was half right. 'Admiral Trent sends his greetings,' Metzinger continued. 'He also requests your presence aboard at your earliest convenience.'

The com officer glanced at Cardones. 'He also requests that you bring Lieutenant Cardones with you.'

Cardones blinked. And he had never served aboard Basilisk. What in the world . . . ?

'Acknowledge the admiral's message, Joyce,' Captain Harrington told Metzinger. She stood and half turned, holding out her arms to the treecat wrapped lazily across the back of her command chair. He leaped gracefully into her arms, then scampered up into his usual traveling position along her shoulders. 'And have my pinnace prepared. Rafe?'

'Right away, Ma'am,' Cardones said, already on his feet. An admiral's earliest convenience was any regular mortal's five minutes ago, and it would not do to keep Trent waiting.

The Basilisk was a superdreadnought, three and a half kilometers long and eight and a quarter million tons of fighting fury. Cardones eyed it as their pinnace approached, his thoughts balanced midway between future anticipation and future regret. To serve aboard a prestigious ship of the wall had been his dream ever since he'd put on the uniform of the Royal Manticoran Navy. But on the other hand, with a ship that size the sheer number of people aboard tended to make even senior officers mere cogs in a machine far larger than they were. Even if he someday made it aboard such a ship, he suspected he would look wistfully back at his days aboard smaller ships like the Fearless, where each person made more of a difference.

Especially since even cruisers could sometimes make their presence felt on the galactic stage if they were in the right place at the right time, as Captain Harrington had proved at Basilisk Station. All in all, it might not be such a bad thing to serve a while aboard the RMN's smaller ships.

The Basilisk's boat bay was the usual scene of controlled chaos as Cardones followed Captain Harrington through the boarding tube to the sound of the side party's bosun's pipes. The boat bay officer of the deck and quartermaster were off to one side, conferring over a memo pad, while at the other side a work party was tearing into one of the fueling stations. He glanced once in that direction as he landed on the deck behind his captain, hoping they'd remembered to seal off the hydrogen tanks and clear the hoses before they fired up their cutting torches. He'd heard once of a party that had forgotten, and it hadn't been pretty.

Given the unusualness of Trent's invitation, Cardones would have expected the admiral to add to the novelty by coming himself to greet his visitors. But except for the side party there were only two people waiting for them: a tall man wearing the four gold sleeve rings and collar planets of a captain of the list, and an almost equally tall woman with the same four sleeve rings but the collar pips of a captain junior grade.

'Captain Harrington,' the man said, stepping forward to meet them. 'I'm Captain Olbrecht, Admiral Trent's chief of staff. Welcome aboard the Basilisk.'

He smiled as he stretched out his hand. 'Or rather,' he added, 'welcome back aboard.'

'Thank you, Captain,' Captain Harrington said, taking the proffered hand and shaking it. 'This is Lieutenant Rafael Cardones, my tac officer.'

'Yes,' Olbrecht said, nodding as he extended his hand to Cardones. His eyes flicked across his face and down his torso with the sort of evaluating glance senior officers always seemed to give their juniors. 'Welcome aboard, Lieutenant.'

'Thank you, Sir,' Cardones said. Olbrecht's grip was firm and precise, exactly the sort of handshake senior officers always seemed to offer their juniors.

'This is Captain Elayne Sandler,' Olbrecht went on, releasing Cardones's hand and gesturing to the woman still standing a respectful pace behind him. 'You'll be going with her, Lieutenant.'

Cardones felt his spine stiffen slightly. On the trip over he'd come to the conclusion that there was fresh data on the Silesian situation that Trent wanted to discuss with the Fearless's skipper and tac officer. But if he was now going to be split off from her . . .

'Yes, Sir,' he managed, turning his head to nod to the woman.

She nodded back, her cool eyes giving him the same once-over Olbrecht had just performed. Apparently it was a technique senior officers were issued with their collar insignia. 'This way, Lieutenant,' she said, turning and heading off toward one of the lifts.

'Yes, Ma'am,' Cardones murmured, looking at Captain Harrington. 'Ma'am?'

'Go ahead, Rafe,' she said, her voice calm and completely unconcerned. 'I'll see you later.'

'Yes, Ma'am,' he said. Her voice might have been calm, but Cardones had caught the puzzlement briefly creasing her forehead. So this wasn't something she'd been expecting, either. He headed off after Captain Sandler, trying to decide whether that was a good sign or a bad one.

He caught up with Sandler at the lift. 'Sorry to make such a cloak and dagger out of this,' Sandler commented as she palmed the call button. 'But you'll understand in a minute.'

'Yes, Ma'am,' Cardones said, settling for a neutral response as he watched Olbrecht and Captain Harrington disappear into one of the other lifts. Heading somewhere entirely different, apparently, than he and Sandler were bound.

The lift doors in front of them slid open, and they stepped inside. A minute later the car deposited them outside one of the Basilisk's ready rooms. Sandler touched the release and stepped inside; forcing the tension out of his shoulders, Cardones followed.

There were six people seated around the long briefing table, all of them looking back at the newcomers. Cardones glanced down the double row, automatically taking in faces and rank insignia.

His eyes reached the woman at the head of the table. An admiral, he noted with mild surprise. He lifted his eyes from her collar to her face—

And with a surge of rushing blood in his ears the tension came roaring back like a hyper-space grav wave slapping him in the face.

It wasn't just an admiral. It was Admiral Sonja Hemphill.