The Service of the Sword

''This one'?'

'There's another ship on its way,' Sandler said, the words coming out with the reluctance of pulled teeth. 'The Jansci. She's due here in four days to join the Dorado and Nightingale at Quarre. They'll meet a new escort there and head to Telmach by way of Walther.' Her lips compressed again. 'That's the ship loaded with sensitive equipment.'

Cardones gazed at the displays. No wonder she'd been so reluctant to talk about this back aboard the Shadow. 'And yet they knew right where to hit it,' he said. 'And they knew which ship of the convoy they wanted.'

'Not necessarily,' Sandler said. But the words were automatic, without any weight of conviction behind them. 'It could have just been the luck of the draw.'

The Peep warship had hit the midpoint of its vector and was starting its deceleration toward a zero-zero rendezvous with its helpless prey.

'Not a chance,' Cardones declared. 'They're getting information. They know exactly what they're doing.'

He looked sharply at her as the last piece suddenly fell into place. 'Just the way you do. This little hunch didn't fall out of some computer prediction program, did it? They knew what the Harlequin was carrying; and you knew that they knew it.'

'Rafe—'

'There's a spy in the works somewhere,' he cut her off. 'ONI is feeding him all this information, letting him give it to the Peeps, all so we could get here ahead of time and be waiting for him.'

'Get off the subject, Lieutenant,' Sandler said, her voice soft but with a layer of warning laminated to it. 'This is classified way over your head.'

Cardones bit down hard against the retort trying to get out. 'What about Harlequin's crew?' he asked instead. 'Or are they part of the bait, too?'

'They're already out,' Sandler assured him. 'They would have had a pinnace waiting, just in case.'

She lifted her eyebrows. 'But even if they hadn't, we would have done it this way,' she added coldly. 'The only thing that matters is getting a handle on this weapon of theirs and figuring out how to counter it. To do that we need to see it work; and to do that we had no choice but to let them go into harm's way.'

The corner of her lip twitched. 'And really, is that so different from what you do in the regular Navy? You go into battle fully prepared to sacrifice some of your own. Certainly you know that a number of your screening destroyers and cruisers will die in order to take some of the heat off your ships of the wall.'

Cardones looked away from her, wanting to argue the point but no longer certain he could. They did go into battle knowing some were going to die, after all. Was that really any different from what Sandler and ONI were doing here? He looked back at the displays, searching the universe for answers.

There weren't any. But because he happened to be looking at the displays, he saw something neither he nor Sandler had yet noticed.

The raider had spouted a dozen assault boats, as both of them had known it would. But only eight of the boats were converging on the Harlequin's paralyzed hulk.

The other four were headed straight toward the Sun Skater Resort.

'You had better be right about this, Captain,' Dominick warned the image on his com screen. 'We know Harlequin got a distress signal off, and we have a very limited number of minutes before the system forces respond.'

'I am,' Vaccares said confidently. As if, Dominick thought sourly, the thought of a third fewer boats available to collect Harlequin's booty didn't even bother him. 'It was definitely a transponder query pulse; and it definitely came from the direction of that comet.'

Dominick grimaced. But if Vaccares was right, there was indeed no choice. One of the mission's standing orders was that no one was to get a good look at the Crippler in action—or, at least, not to get that look and survive to tell the story—until Charles decided they were ready to take on all comers, Manty warships included.

And speaking of the devil– 'I agree with Captain Vaccares,' Charles spoke up. 'A hidden query pulse may be accompanied by an equally hidden sensor array. If it is, you need to get rid of it before it can transfer data to anyone.'

Dominick felt his lip twist. Personally, he didn't give a rat's backside anymore whether or not the Manties got to see their new toy in action. A healthy dose of panic would be good for the overconfident little royalists, in fact. All he could see was the four fewer boats' worth of top-grade Manty technology going into Vanguard's holds.

But the standing orders didn't care. 'Fine,' he growled. 'Have them take a look. You sure you don't want to go along to supervise personally?'

'No, thank you, Commodore,' Vaccares said, his voice grim. 'If there's a Manty skulking by that comet, I want to be right here when he shows himself.'

'No doubt about it,' Sandler said tightly. 'They're on their way. Must have spotted the pod.'

'What do we do?' Cardones demanded, peering over the top of the displays at the window. Suddenly their spacious luxury suite was feeling downright claustrophobic.

As was the resort; and, for that matter, the whole damn comet. There were precious few places here to hide, and nowhere at all to run.

'First job is to get rid of the pod,' Sandler said, crossing the room to an attache case she'd earlier set unopened along the wall. 'Maybe we can convince them that's all there is.'

'Somehow, I doubt they'll be that gullible,' Cardones said, watching in fascination as she settled the case on her lap and flipped it open. Inside was what looked like a miniature helm control board, complete with an attitude control stick and a set of compact display screens set into the lid.

'We'll see.' Sandler flipped a pair of switches and the control board came to life, status lights starting to change from red to amber to green as the device ran its self-check. 'Ever seen one of these before?'

'No,' Cardones said. 'I gather it's a remote control?'

'Best on the market,' Sandler confirmed, settling her right hand into a grip on the stick and watching the last set of status lights with a patience Cardones could only envy. 'Not that it's actually on the market, of course.'

'Of course,' Cardones said. 'An ONI special, I presume?'

Sandler nodded. 'We keep a couple aboard Shadow at all times,' she said. 'They're especially handy in that there's no hard-wiring needed. All you have to do is wrap the receiver pack around the control cables running between a ship's helm and auxiliary control and you're set.'

'Really,' Cardones said, looking at the case with new respect. 'Even if someone else is trying to fly the ship at the time?'

'They're not quite that handy,' Sandler said. 'The induction signal's not nearly strong enough to override an actual control signal. At least,' she added thoughtfully, 'not yet. Maybe if you boosted the power enough you could even do that.'

'All you'd have to do then would be find a way to smuggle a receiver pack and a spy aboard a Peep ship of the wall,' Cardones said, trying to get into the spirit of the thing.

'You come up with the gadget and the technique and you'll retire rich,' Sandler agreed. 'Okay, here we go,' she added as the last light turned green. 'Cross your fingers.'

She keyed the thrusters, and the relative-V numbers began to rise. Cardones shifted his gaze to the window, straining for a glimpse of the pod. It should be visible, he knew; the tail material wasn't all that dense.

There it was: a dark bubble in the tail, falling rapidly away from them. Sandler leaned the stick sideways, and the bubble moved left toward the edge of the tail—