The Service of the Sword

He smiled suddenly. 'And, of course, I would like to show you proper Andermani hospitality, as well. Shall we say dinner this evening? Or whatever the next meal is your ship's clock is set for, of course.'

Honor blinked, the sudden change in Grubner's attitude throwing her off-balance like a well-executed aikido move. 'I'm very grateful for your offer, Captain,' she managed. 'But I don't wish to draw you off your schedule any longer than necessary.'

He waved a hand negligently. 'My schedule is not that rigid, Captain. And Imperial Naval orders always allow for unexpected events and opportunities.'

Opportunities . . . 'In that case, Captain, I would be honored to accept your invitation.' Honor glanced at the ship's clock. 'And dinner would be fine.'

'Excellent, Captain,' Grubner said. As near as Honor could tell, he sounded genuinely pleased. 'Shall I send a pinnace for you, or would you prefer to bring your own? Mine is most likely faster,' he added with a clear touch of pride, 'and almost certainly more comfortable.'

'Thank you, Captain,' Honor said. 'I appreciate the offer, but I'll come in my own. That way you'll be able to get under way again as soon as our meeting is finished.'

'As you wish, Captain,' Grubner said. 'I will expect to see you at your convenience. Neue Bayern out.'

The display blanked. Honor took a careful breath; and only as she glanced around did she notice that every eye on the bridge was pointed at her.

'What?' she asked, trying to sound casual. 'Haven't you ever seen someone invited to dinner before?'

Venizelos found his voice first. 'It must have been the German accent,' he said, his voice studiously bland. 'Though I've got to say, Skipper, that inviting you aboard wasn't what I expected him to do . . . until he caught your name.'

'You seem to have picked up a new fan, all right, Ma'am,' Metzinger agreed. 'How many million does that make now?'

Honor shook her head. 'I swear, when this is all over I'm going to change my name to Smith,' she threatened. 'I should have done it months ago.'

'Oh, I don't know, Skipper,' DuMorne offered. 'Andermani food's really pretty good, they say. And some of their wines are excellent.'

'I'll keep that in mind,' Honor said dryly. 'Joyce, call the boat bay and have my pinnace readied.'

'Yes, Ma'am.'

'You're not going alone, are you, Ma'am?' Wallace asked.

There was something in his tone that tickled the hairs unpleasantly on the back of Honor's neck. For the briefest second she wondered if he knew something about the Andermani she didn't. Something, perhaps, about hidden treachery beneath the surface courtesy?

But following a split second behind the reflexive xenophobic paranoia came the truth. It wasn't that Wallace knew something she didn't. It was that there were things he wanted to know.

She swiveled her chair to look at him, and there was no mistaking the eagerness in his eyes. A Naval Intelligence officer, poised to get a first-hand look at an Andermani warship. A simple cajoling of his captain, he was probably thinking, and he would be on his way to an intelligence coup that might put his career on the express track.

And in fact, she could very probably accommodate him if she chose. Captain Grubner hadn't placed any stipulations on his invitation; if she showed up with a whole entourage tagging behind her, she doubted he would refuse them entry to his ship.

But at the same time, she knew that doing so would be a betrayal of his trust and the unspoken yet clear intent of his offer. Especially if that entourage included an ONI officer.

And given the steadily worsening situation with Haven, it didn't seem like a good idea for a Queen's officer to go out of her way to annoy an Andermani captain. Especially one who had already taken the initiative in extending his hospitality.

'I don't think I'll be in any danger over there,' she told Wallace, deliberately misreading the true intent of his question. 'Besides, all of you will be busy right here.'

Wallace frowned. 'Doing what, Ma'am?'

'Checking out our convoy,' Honor told him. 'I want you and Commander Venizelos to assemble some inspection teams to go across to each of the ships. Get Scotty Tremaine and Horace Harkness to help, Andy—they'll know the right people to pick for the teams.'

'What kind of inspection?' Venizelos asked. 'What are we looking for, Skipper?'

'Shredder darts, of course,' Honor said grimly. 'I gave Iliescu my word that we weren't carrying them. Before we hit orbit, I want to know if I lied to him.'

The Shadow had reached the hyper limit at the edge of the Tyler's Star system and had started its long trip inward by the time the three techs finally finished their analysis.

'Boiled down to the basics, what seems to have happened is that all the nodes went into simultaneous overload,' Pampas said, gesturing to the exploded-view holo hovering over the wardroom table. 'There were a whole series of blown junction points in each one, tracking right along the control lines.'

'But the lines themselves weren't simply fried?' Sandler asked.

'No,' Pampas said. 'As I said, it looks more like an overload at these critical points.'

'But an overload from where?' Damana asked. 'There shouldn't be any way to get that much voltage in there. At least, not from the inside.'

'Actually, we have come up with a couple of ideas,' Pampas said. 'They're both pretty shaky, but so far they're all we've got.' He gestured across the table to Swofford. 'Nathan?'

'The possible culprit is here,' Swofford said, manipulating the controls. The exploded view vanished, replaced by a larger-scale technical schematic of a merchantman's power and control system. Another touch, and a pair of lines were highlighted at a point where they briefly paralleled each other. 'We've got a control line running right up against one of the main power lines for about ten centimeters. If we somehow got a bleed-through of enough current, it could conceivably pop the junction points we found.'

'Without burning the insulation?' Hauptman asked. 'Or was it burned?'

'There weren't any scorch marks that we could find,' Swofford admitted. 'That's what makes it shaky. The other possibility is even shakier: something called Jonquil tunneling, where RF electric fields twist in such a way that you get quantum tunneling of electrons between the power and control lines.'

'That would eliminate the intact-insulation problem,' Pampas added. 'Problem is, we can't come up with any way for the fields to twist that way without it showing up elsewhere in the power system.'

'What about Rafe's scenario?' Damana asked. 'The saboteur-in-our-midst thing?'

'Possible,' Pampas said. 'But even trickier to pull off than we first thought. In order to take down all the forward nodes simultaneously, our saboteur would have had to open up the system somewhere downstream of the control box but upstream of where the control lines branch off to the different nodes. There aren't a lot of places you can do that, and all of them are either in sight of the command crew or out in the open where anyone might happen by. That means he'd have to either distract an entire watch crew or else come up with a logical reason to be poking around access panels.'

'And he'd have to do it for both the fore and aft nodes,' Jackson put in. 'The lines go off in different directions.'

'Right,' Pampas said. 'Once into the wiring, he'd have to splice in a power boost with just enough juice to kill the junction points but not enough to affect anything else.'

'And, of course, he would have had to sync both boosts to get the fore and aft nodes to go down together?' Sandler suggested.

'Right,' Pampas said. 'Then, after the boosters had done their job, he'd have to go in and take them out again.'

'Though he would have had other cleanup to do at that point, anyway,' Hauptman reminded them. 'Erasing his presence from the logs, for starters.'

'And of course, the rest of the crew would probably have been dead by then,' Damana said.