The Service of the Sword

'Productive,' Honor said. 'Let's go to my quarters. We need to talk.'

No one spoke again until they were in her cabin and seated around her desk. 'All right,' she said, reaching to her lap to stroke Nimitz. 'First of all, we need to make some introductions here. Some complete introductions.'

'Captain,' Wallace warned, his tone reminding her that Admiral Trent had made it abundantly clear that his identity was to be kept a vacuum-black secret from everyone else in her crew, including Venizelos.

It wasn't something Honor needed reminding of. Unfortunately, given the current situation—

'Are you referring to Commander Wallace's affiliation with Naval Intelligence?' Venizelos asked calmly. 'And no, she didn't tell me,' he added as Wallace's eyes flashed. 'She didn't need to.'

'Terrific,' Wallace growled. 'How many of you know?'

Venizelos shrugged. 'I haven't discussed it with anyone else, but probably only myself and maybe one or two others. Naturally, it won't go any further.'

'Naturally,' Wallace echoed ironically, in the tone of a man reluctantly accepting the inevitable. 'If the introductions are now complete enough, Captain . . . ?'

Honor described her conversation with Grubner and Trondheim. 'Interesting,' Venizelos commented when she had finished. 'You think they're serious?'

'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