The Service of the Sword

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 solar 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.

'Captain?' he called toward the bedroom where Sandler had relocated when he began his watch. He keyed the computer for analysis, belatedly realizing he should have done that before waking her up. If this was nothing but an extra Manticoran escort laid on at the last minute, he was going to look pretty silly.

Too late. 'What have we got?' Sandler said, fastening her tunic as she stepped into the living room.

'The Harlequin and a bogey,' Cardones reported. 'It's running a Silesian ID —'

He broke off as the analyzer beeped its results. 'But the emission spectrum makes it a Peep warship,' he finished. 'From the impeller strength, probably a battlecruiser.'

'Got to be our raider,' Sandler said grimly, dropping onto the couch beside him and snagging one of the keyboards. 'And a Peep, yet. Imagine my surprise.'

'Look's like Harlequin's come to the same conclusion,' Cardones agreed as the merchie's vector and emission numbers suddenly changed. 'She's making a run for it.'

'Watch carefully, Rafe,' Sandler said quietly. 'Come on, Peep. Do your stuff . . .'

Abruptly, the bogey's impeller emissions began to fluctuate, bouncing wildly up and down and up again. Cardones opened his mouth to say something—

And without any other warning, the Harlequin's impellers suddenly died.

Cardones exhaled his intended warning in a huff of stunned air instead. 'They did it,' he murmured. 'They really did it.'

'They sure did,' Sandler agreed, her voice somewhere midway between awed and horrified. 'Damn and a half. They actually knocked out her wedge.'

With an effort, Cardones shifted his eyes to one of the other displays. 'And from nearly a million kilometers away.'

Sandler muttered something under her breath. 'I've been hoping we were wrong, Rafe,' she said quietly. 'Hoping we were misinterpreting the data, or that this was some elaborate disinformation scheme. But this—' She shook her head.

'Unless there's a saboteur aboard,' Cardones suggested hesitantly. They still had that single thread to grasp at.

But Sandler shook her head. 'No,' she said firmly. 'Not on that ship.'

Cardones frowned sideways at her. There'd been something in her tone . . .

'Is there something else I should know about this?' he asked carefully.

Sandler's lips compressed into a tight line. 'That's not just a regular merchantman out there, Rafe. She's a Royal Navy supply ship.'

'Ah,' Cardones said as the whole thing suddenly came together. No wonder Sandler had known where to wait for the Harlequin, and when to start watching for her. Regular merchantmen might not be able to hold to a schedule worth treecat-chewed celery, but RMN ships most certainly could. 'Who are they supplying?'

'The research station, for one.' She smiled tightly at his expression. 'Oh, yes, it is a research station, and it is doing some studies of Tyler's Star. But we also have a presence aboard for some . . . other work.'

The smile vanished. 'But mostly, they were on their way to Telmach to resupply the Provisioner.'

Cardones blinked. Provisioner was a depot ship, designed to be home away from home for far-flung RMN forces. What was she doing in Silesia?

And then the full import of it hit him. 'They've got high-tech military equipment aboard,' he breathed. 'Sensor modules, ECM—even missiles?'

'No, no missiles,' Sandler said. 'And she shouldn't have much in the way of ECM, either. This one's mostly carrying non-classified stuff.'