The Service of the Sword

limit.'

The images on the displays canted around as the Forerunner swung a hundred eighty degrees over. Vaccares double-checked the numbers and nodded to himself. The hyper limit was only about an hour away, he was still outside Fearless's missile envelope, and he was faster than she was.

They were going to make it home. Not covered with glory, as Commodore Dominick had planned, or loaded with treasure and the key to Manticore's conquest, as Charles had promised. No, they would be returning to Haven like a dog with its tail between its legs. But at least they would be returning.

And then, even as he came to that conclusion, the forward display flashed a sudden warning. 'Hyper footprint!' the tac officer called. 'Directly ahead of us.'

'Identify,' Vaccares ordered. Another Manty? Had the convoy had a second escort lurking out at the edge of the system?

But it wasn't a Manty.

It was far worse.

'Unidentified raider, this is His Imperial Majesty's battlecruiser Neue Bayern,' a harsh, German-accented voice announced coldly. 'You have no means of escape. Surrender, or be destroyed.'

Frantically, Vaccares looked at the tac display. But Neue Bayern was right. Between the battlecruiser in front of him and the Fearless behind him, there was no vector he could take that wouldn't force him into engagement with one or both of the larger ships for at least ten minutes.

He could fight, of course. He and his crew could die for the glory of Haven, or at least to save it from the consequences of getting caught with a seized Andermani ship.

But too many people had already died in this fiasco. Most of them were Manties, but they were dead just the same.

He could see no reason to voluntarily add to their number.

'Strike the wedge,' he ordered the helmsman quietly. 'And then signal the Neue Bayern and Fearless.

'Tell them we surrender.'

Admiral of the Red Sonja Hemphill looked up from the report and steadied her gaze onto the face of the young man standing stiffly at parade rest in front of her desk. 'And what, Lieutenant,' she said frostily, 'am I supposed to do with you?'

Lieutenant Cardones's cheek might have twitched, but there was no other reaction Hemphill could see. 'Ma'am?' he asked evenly.

'You disobeyed a direct order from a superior,' Hemphill said, tapping a fingertip on the memo pad in front of her. 'Captain Sandler's report makes it clear she told you not to raise the Dorado's wedge. Yet you did so anyway. Are you aware that that's a court-martial offense?'

'Yes, Ma'am,' Cardones said. 'And I make no excuse.'

Hemphill felt her face settle into a familiar set of lines. 'Aside from the fact that it saved every man and woman aboard the Fearless?' she suggested.

This time there was definitely a twitch. 'Yes, Ma'am,' Cardones said. 'And the crews of the merchantmen, too.'

'And do you intend to make a habit of placing individual lives over the value of official Naval or governmental policy?' Hemphill continued. 'More to the point for a line officer, do you intend to place the value of these lives over the lawful execution of your orders?'

The young man's face had settled into lines of its own. 'No, Ma'am,' he said.

'That's good, Lieutenant,' Hemphill said, letting her voice chill a few degrees. 'Because if you were—if I even thought you were—you would be out of the service so fast it would take you three weeks just to catch up with your butt. Do I make myself clear?'

'Yes, Ma'am.'

'Good,' Hemphill said softly. 'Then allow me make myself even clearer. You acted out of loyalty to Captain Harrington and the Fearless. I appreciate that. But loyalty must always be balanced with the larger perspective. Here we had a chance—a small one, admittedly, but still a chance—to feed Haven a line of disinformation that could have tied up its time and resources for years to come.'

She lifted her chin. 'And no matter what you, Captain Harrington, or anyone else aboard Fearless ever do with your careers, you will never accomplish anything that could possibly pay that kind of dividend for the Star Kingdom. Understood?'

'Yes, Ma'am,' Cardones said.

'Good.' Hemphill nodded toward the door. 'You're hereby detached from your temporary ONI duty. You will return to duty aboard Fearless when she returns to Manticore in approximately one month; until then, you're on R and R leave. The yeoman will give you a copy of your orders.'

'Thank you, Ma'am,' Cardones said.

'And remember that everything you heard, saw, or did while with Tech Team Four is classified,' Hemphill added. 'Dismissed.'

Cardones saluted, and with a crisp about-face he strode from the office.

With a grimace, Hemphill lowered her eyes to the report again. Yes, the kid had disobeyed orders, and she had needed to come down hard on him to make sure he didn't get casual about such things.

But in all honesty, it was hard to fault him for his actions. Even Sandler's own report had conceded it would have taken a miracle for Manticore to have kept up the deception long enough for Haven to commit any serious resources to the Crippler project. Balanced against that was the fact that the team had solved the problem, ended that particular threat to Manticoran shipping, and given the Peeps a sore nose along with it.

And even in the grand scheme of things, saving Her Majesty's Navy a heavy cruiser and its crew was nothing to be sneered at.

Especially when that ship had been instrumental in delivering a captured Andermani light cruiser back to its rightful owners, eliminating a potential source of tension before it really got started.

The Andies placated, and the Peeps humiliated. Two birds taken out with a single stone; and Hemphill was certainly realistic enough to appreciate the economy of such things.

And maybe there was a third bird waiting to be winged by this particular stone. That trick Harrington had used, flickering her impellers to signal the Neue Bayern lurking out beyond the hyper limit, had some definite possibilities. Not as a standard interception tactic per se; the Andies had had to do some very precise maneuvering in order to circle through hyper-space and plant themselves squarely in the escaping raider's path that way. Most Manticoran astrogators weren't competent enough to pull off a trick like that, at least not on a regular basis.

But the maneuver itself was almost beside the point. The point was that Harrington had found a way to use gravitational waves to send a signal to the Andies.

And since gravity pulses effectively moved faster than light and were detectable from much farther away . . . 

Especially if they could combine this idea with the new high-yield fusion bottles and superconductors being designed for the next-generation electronic warfare drones, and maybe throw in something from the compact LAC beta nodes already undergoing testing over at BuWeaps . . . 

A third bird, indeed. Maybe.

Pulling Sandler's report from her memo pad, she slipped in Harrington's and began to carefully reread it.

Bracing himself, feeling a little like the new kid in school, Cardones stepped onto Fearless's bridge.

It looked just the same as when he'd left. Looked, felt, and smelled; and for a moment he just stood inside the hatch, taking it all in. It seemed like forever since he'd left this place. Since he'd left these people.

'There you are,' a familiar voice said. 'Welcome back, Rafe.'