The Service of the Sword

Hemphill's office could very well have the sales brochure sitting on his desk right now.'

An image flashed through Cardones's mind: Captain Harrington's expression as she was told she and Fearless would be given yet another new weapon to test out. The mental picture was accompanied by an equally brief surge of pity for whoever wound up delivering that message to her.

'Regardless, the sooner we nail this one shut, the better,' Sandler went on. 'Jack, get us on our way to Quarre. Jessica, pull up the stats on the Dorado and Nightingale and their crews. As soon as any of the techs wakes up, you'll put your heads together and figure out which one would be better for this test.'

She looked at Cardones as she gathered up the data chips Pampas had left behind. 'And while you do that, Rafe and I are going to go over this analysis with a fine-edge beam splitter. If there's anything Georgio's missed, I want to find it.'

'Fearless to all convoy ships,' Honor called over the ship-to-ship. 'We're ready to leave orbit. Bring your wedges up and move into your positions.'

She motioned to Metzinger, and the com officer closed the circuit. 'How are they doing, Andy?' she asked.

'Looks good,' Venizelos said, peering at his displays. 'Dorado in particular seems really eager to take point.'

'McLeod's ex-Navy,' Honor told him, picking out the big merchantman on her own displays. 'Warn him not to get too far ahead of the pack.'

'Right,' Venizelos said with a grin. Ex-Navy types, they both knew, sometimes forgot that the ship they were now commanding had about as much fighting power as a new-born treekitten. 'You heard the Skipper, Joyce. Put a leash on him.'

'Dorado acknowledging,' Captain McLeod growled, cutting off the com with the heel of his hand. 'You heard the Fearless, Lieutenant. Pull us back a few gees.'

Hauptman, at the helm, glanced around at Sandler. 'Go ahead,' the real master of the Dorado confirmed for her, and it seemed to Cardones that McLeod's thin, dyspeptic face went a little thinner. It was bad enough, he reflected, to have had your ship commandeered by a bunch of hotshot ONI types barely twelve hours before departure.

But to have it commandeered by lunatics who had calmly announced their intention of ripping up and rearranging its guts in flight was even worse. The average merchie captain would probably have gone into hysterics at the very thought, or else fled to his cabin and the nearest available bottle. McLeod, former first officer of one of Her Majesty's destroyers, was made of tougher stuff.

Maybe he'd go find that bottle when he learned exactly what it was they were planning to rip up.

Sandler waited until the convoy was in hyper-space before turning Pampas, Swofford, and Jackson loose on the nodes. McLeod, to Cardones's mild surprise and quiet admiration, not only didn't come unglued, but even insisted on squeezing his way into the impeller room, dangerous high voltages and all, to watch them work.

Working on a ship's impeller nodes in flight was roughly equivalent to rebuilding a ground car engine while running a steeplechase. Sandler readily admitted she couldn't remember another case of anyone doing such a thing, but also pointed out that that alone didn't mean anything. Besides, as she reminded Captain McLeod roughly twice a day, surgeons routinely worked on living, pumping hearts without any trouble.

On the other hand, none of their techs were exactly open-torso surgeons. Still, as the days progressed and the new circuit breakers gradually began to appear at the critical junction points, McLeod's permanent expression of impending doom started to ease a little. He began to let the techs work without hovering over their shoulders, spending more time in the wardroom with his crew and any of the ONI team who happened to be off duty, sometimes regaling them with stories of his days in the Navy.

And since Cardones had little to do with either the refit or the day-to-day operation of the ship, he tended to be one of the more regular participants at McLeod's oral history lessons. It was all highly entertaining, and he suspected that at least some of it was actually true.

But mostly, he thought about the Fearless.

Sandler hadn't told him that his own ship would be running escort for their convoy. Maybe she hadn't known it herself. But it added just one more layer of frustration and dread to the voyage. Frustration, because so many of Cardones's friends were within easy com range and yet he couldn't even tell them he was here. He was on a secret mission, and Sandler had forbidden any contact, and that was that.

And dread, because if Sandler's analysis was right, the convoy was soon going to come under attack. Cardones was Fearless's tac officer, and her bridge was where he was supposed to be during combat. Certainly not here aboard a merchantman, being about as useless as it was possible for a Queen's officer to be.

And he was useless. In the quiet dark of the night, that was what rankled the most. The rationale for bringing him into this in the first place had been Hemphill's assumption that this mysterious weapon was a variant of her beloved grav lance. Now that they knew it wasn't, there was no reason at all for him to be here. Sandler ought to call it quits, swear him to secrecy, and just send him across to the Fearless.

But that was out of the question. Sandler had her orders, and like Captain Harrington, she knew how to follow them. Cardones would stay put until they were all told otherwise.

The refit itself seemed to drag on at the pace of a lethargic banana slug, but Cardones recognized that as the skewed perspective of someone who wasn't actually doing any of the work. They were, in fact, still twelve hours out from the hyper limit when Pampas pronounced the job complete.

And at that point, there wasn't anything for any of them to do except wait.

'Nightingale's out, Skipper,' Venizelos announced, peering at his displays. 'Reconfiguring her sails . . . looks clean.'

Honor nodded, her own attention on her long-range sensor displays. As always, right at the hyper limit was the most likely place for a pirate to be lurking.

But there were no impeller signatures showing nearby. 'Full active sensors,' she ordered.

'Already running,' Wallace said. 'Nothing showing.'

'Very good,' Honor said. 'Stephen, compute us a course for Walther Prime, and let's get moving.'

'Commodore?' Lieutenant Koln, Vanguard's tac officer, called from across the bridge. 'They're here, Sir.'

'Where?' Dominick demanded, swiveling toward his own tac displays.

'One-three-eight by four-two-three,' Koln said. 'About three light-minutes away.'

Dominick had the images now. 'Course?'

'Straight in, Sir,' Koln said with a note of satisfaction. 'Looks like the escort is riding the convoy's port flank.'

'Good.' Dominick looked at Charles. 'Any last-minute suggestions you'd care to make?'

'None,' Charles said. 'They're playing exactly as you anticipated.'

Dominick felt his chest swell with professional pride. Yes; as he had anticipated. This was his plan, and his alone, and he was looking forward to showing Charles a thing or two about Republican military tactics. 'Yes, indeed,' he said. 'Mr. Koln, alert Captain Vaccares. Activate Plan Alpha.'

'Captain, we've got a disturbance,' Wallace said suddenly, leaning over his displays. 'Off to port, about three and a half million klicks. Looks like—'

He broke off. 'Looks like someone's getting hit,' Venizelos put in. 'Silesian merchantman Cornucopia, by the transponder.'

Honor swiveled toward her tac displays. From the target's impeller strength and acceleration, CIC was