The Service of the Sword

'You said these were our choices if it was done from the inside,' Sandler said. 'What about from the outside?'

Pampas shrugged uncomfortably. 'Then we're talking Admiral Hemphill's magic grav lance,' he said. 'Presumably if you boost a lance's power high enough, you could overload the impeller wedge in such a way that it would back-feed and blow out the junction points. But to pack that kind of power into a ship is beyond any theory I've ever heard of.'

'Especially when you're going to do it from a million klicks out,' Swofford added.

'Right,' Pampas agreed. 'Either of those two pieces represents an enormous technological leap. Put them together . . .' He shook his head.

For a moment there was silence.

'All right,' Sandler said at last. 'What I'm hearing is that our options run from the ridiculously unlikely to the completely impossible, and that we're at a stalemate until and unless we can see this thing work for ourselves. That about sum it up?'

'I'd say so, yes, Ma'am,' Pampas said.

'So let's make that happen.' Sandler touched her board, and the wiring diagram floating over the table was replaced by a schematic of the Tyler's Star system. 'The problem with catching raiders in the act is that they've always got so much space to work with,' she said. 'Usually, of course, they like to sit right at the hyper limit and catch their prey as they leave hyper-space; but our raider seems to prefer attacking them somewhere in mid- system.'

'Which he'd never get away with anywhere except Silesia,' Jackson muttered.

'No argument,' Sandler agreed. 'Everywhere else the in-system sensor nets would be right on top of him if he tried this too close to inhabited areas. So let's see if we can use that confidence against him.'

A slightly curved green line appeared, coming in from the hyper limit and running inward to end at Hadrian, the fourth planet out from the sun. 'Here's the vector our bait will most likely be coming in from,' she said. 'You can see by the configuration of the planets that unless our raider is waiting right at the hyper limit, he won't have any decent chance to attack before they're in range of either in-system forces or someone's sensor cluster.'

'What's that blue marker?' Cardones asked, pointing at a flashing light by one of the outer planets.

'An experimental ring-mining scheme,' Sandler said. 'A joint Silesian/Andermani venture, and as such under the protection of the IAN. The Andies usually don't have more than a destroyer and a few LACs on station at any given time, but that's enough to keep most raiders clear of the outer system.'

'Including our boy?' Hauptman asked.

'We hope so,' Sandler said. 'Because we certainly can't cover the inner and outer systems at the same time.'

'Even the inner system's a lot of territory for one ship,' Cardones pointed out. 'Or are we expecting help?'

'No, we're on our own,' Sandler said. 'But it's not quite as bad as it looks.'

She touched keys, and the schematic shifted to a close-up view of the inner system. 'Here's the incoming vector again,' she said. 'And here's the outgoing.'

Another green line appeared, running off at about a hundred forty degrees from the first. But instead of moving cleanly out toward the hyper limit, it split into three different paths a short distance out from the planet itself. 'As you see, at this point our convoy suddenly loses its coherency,' Sandler continued. 'One of the merchantmen is slated to swing inward to a solar research station, two more are to head outward to a rendezvous with the fifth planet, Quarre, with the other four heading outsystem toward their next scheduled stop at Brinkman.'

'I thought the whole purpose of a convoy was for the ships to stick together,' Cardones said. 'What are they splitting apart that way for?'

'Mainly because they haven't got much choice,' Sandler said. 'Three of the four ships in the latter group are carrying perishables, and they can't afford the extra time to divert either to the solar station or Quarre.'

'So which group does the escort stay with?' Damana asked.

'Assuming there is an escort,' Hauptman added.

'There is,' Sandler assured her. 'The heavy cruiser HMS Iberiana. The assumption is that no one's going to be interested in supplies being brought to a research station, so the plan is for the Iberiana to split the difference with the others. She'll run a course midway between them until the twosome reach Quarre orbit, then shift over, catch up with the main convoy, and take them out of the system.'

'Pretty well coordinated plan,' Cardones commented, frowning to himself. In point of fact, it was an amazingly well coordinated plan. Most convoys he'd ever known had been of the catch-as-catch-can variety, with merchies dribbling haphazardly into a system and the Navy then throwing them whatever escort they could scare up.

'Sometimes it works,' Sandler said with a shrug. 'Only when the merchantmen can stick with a real schedule, of course.'

'So that's the two departing ships,' Pampas said. 'What happens with the others?'

'The two Quarre-bound ships—Dorado and Nightingale —will stay there for a few days, picking up cargo from the various asteroid mining operations and doing some maintenance,' Sandler said. 'At that point another convoy is scheduled to come through bound for Walther, and they'll link up with it. The Harlequin —that's the ship headed to the research station—will meanwhile join with a Silesian convoy going directly to Telmach.'

'You seem to know a lot about their schedule,' Cardones said.

Sandler smiled slightly. 'Of course,' she said. 'We are ONI, you know.'

'I meant all these specifics about the presumed attack,' Cardones amplified. 'From the way you were talking before, it sounded like all we knew was that there was a reasonable chance the raider would show up here looking for something to hit.'

Damana shifted slightly in his seat, but Sandler's expression didn't even twitch. 'That's all the predictor program did tell us,' she agreed. 'Only after we knew that could we pull up the shipping schedule and decide that this particular convoy was the likely target.'

'Ah,' Cardones said. He was still young, he knew, and still unsophisticated in the ways of the universe.

But he wasn't so young that he didn't know a flat-out lie when he heard it.

'At any rate, the point here is that the Harlequin is going to be the one off all alone,' Sandler continued. 'So that's the one I'm betting on.'

'I presume we're not going to just follow it?' Swofford asked. 'That would be just a bit obvious.'

'Yes, it would,' Sandler agreed. 'And no, we're not.'

The schematic shifted again, this time showing the merchantman's entire course from the convoy split to the research station tucked into its close solar orbit. 'There's really only one stretch—granted, a big stretch—where the Harlequin will be out of sensor range of both the station and the Iberiana. We can cover about half the gap by putting the Shadow here.'

A green blip appeared about three-quarters of the way from the split to the station 'She'll be under full stealth, of course,' she went on. 'We'll then plug the rest of the gap right here.'

Cardones frowned at the holo. There was something else already there, something that indicated a solid body and not a ship or base or anything else manmade. And the slender line marking its orbit . . . 'What's that thing running the tight parabolic?' he asked.

'That, Lieutenant Cardones,' Sandler said, a note of satisfaction in her voice, 'is the comet officially designated Baltron-January 2479. Less officially, it's the Sun Skater Holiday Resort.'

Cardones lifted his eyebrows. 'It's the what?'

'You heard right,' she assured him. 'While the rest of the team takes the Shadow and goes into deep stealth—' she gave him a tight smile '—you and I are going to pay a visit to one of the most unusual resorts in the known galaxy.'