by David Weber
“Eyes on the prize, Long,” Kountouriote said tersely. “Here we go. Watch what happens when the Warshawski sails reconfigure as the wedge.”
Across the compartment at Travis’s right the door slid open. Reflexively, he tensed as he shot a look sideways. Captain Eigen had dropped into CIC once while Travis was watching over Kountouriote’s shoulder, and despite the fact that Guardian’s commander had given Travis permission to observe during non-action periods he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was someplace where he wasn’t supposed to be. Someday, Eigen was bound to realize that, too.
But it wasn’t the Captain. It was, instead, Commander Metzger.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Metzger greeted the group as she floated in and headed toward her station. Like Travis, she’d been promoted when she came aboard Guardian, from lieutenant commander to full commander, and from Tactical Officer to Executive Officer.
And as the rest of the officers and ratings in the compartment murmured their return greetings, Metzger’s eyes locked onto Travis’s. “Long,” she added.
“Ma’am,” Travis said, turning quickly back to the board as his heartbeat picked up again.
Because somewhere along the line, the newly-minted XO seemed to have taken an unusual interest in the newly-minted Gravitics Technician Third Class Travis Long.
Travis had certainly not expected any such attention when he discovered they’d both been transferred to Guardian. But in retrospect, he realized that it was almost inevitable. Outside of Vanguard’s bridge crew, he was the only one who knew that the missile delivery plan during the Phobos crisis had been his idea, not Metzger’s. It only made sense for her to keep an eye on him to make sure that secret didn’t spread elsewhere and possibly embarrass the people involved.
It sounded paranoid, he knew, and probably was. But there was no getting around the fact that the only other non-bridge person besides Travis who knew about the lie was Lieutenant Donnelly…who was also now aboard Guardian. Throw in Colonel Massingill, the Casey-Rosewood commander who’d had him on the carpet over Chomps’s stolen cookies, and it was starting to look like everyone he’d ever had a major run-in with had been put aboard this one particular ship. Maybe even with the goal of keeping an eye on him?
He rolled his eyes, feeling a surge of disgust. Ridiculous. No, this was just the normal shake-up that periodically took place in every ship’s company, probably with the added push of officers cashing in favors to get to fly a real honest-to-Pete interstellar trip. The fact that Metzger, Donnelly, and Massingill were all here was surely pure coincidence.
Still, when Travis was a child his uncle had warned him never to trust in coincidence. It had seemed like good advice then, and it was probably good advice now.
Something on the display caught his eye, eleven or twelve light-seconds inward from them. “Is that another wedge, Ma’am?” he asked, pointing to it as he forced his mind away from shadowy conspiracy theories and back to the task at hand.
“Sure is,” Kountouriote said, tapping the intercom key. “Bridge; CIC. New contact bearing zero one seven by zero one three; distance one-point-seven million klicks. Passing to plot now. From the wedge strength, looks like a merchant.” She clicked off her mike. “Probably Solarian design,” she added to Travis. “At a guess, Llama II class.”
“Acknowledged,” Captain Eigen’s calm voice came from the CIC speaker. Another one, Travis suspected, who either didn’t feel translation sickness or hid it well. “Patty, get a com laser on them. Find out if they’re buying or selling. Then—” His voice cut off as he closed his mike.
“Buying or selling?” Travis murmured.
“Here for the ship sale, or just a random merchant,” Kountouriote murmured back. “Though given it’s Secour, the odds of the latter are probably pretty slim.”
“Oh,” Travis said, frowning at the display. He’d barely been able to tell that it was an impeller wedge, let alone the design, origin, and class of the ship riding between the stress bands. “You really got all that just from her wedge, Ma’am?”
“It’s an art and a science,” Kountouriote said in a lofty voice. “It comes from experience.”
“Or it comes from learning how to snow the new kids on the street,” Metzger put in dryly. “Her vector suggests she’s in from Casca or Zuckerman, which means either the Solarian or the Havenite merchant circuit, and both of those use Dromedaries.”
“Oh,” Travis said, his face warming.
“Like the Lieutenant said, there’s an art to filling in the gaps,” the lidar operator spoke up. “But if you don’t fill them in right, the snow blows back in your own face.” He tapped his display for emphasis. “Y’see, that’s not a Llama. It’s a Packrat III.”
“A Packrat?” Kountouriote echoed, leaning closer to her displays. “What the hell’s a Packrat doing out—?”
“Greetings, Guardian,” a cheerful voice boomed from the CIC speaker. Another difference between Vanguard and Guardian, Travis noted approvingly: unlike Captain Davison’s more traditional approach to bridge/CIC communication protocols, Captain Eigen’s SOP was to automatically pipe all outside signals straight to the Tactical crew.
Which really only made sense. The men and women in CIC would be the first to analyze and interpret any situation that arose, and the Captain wanted them in the loop right from the start. “This is the merchantman Wanderer, Captain Oberon Jalla at your service. Am I reading this ID right? You’re Manticoran?”
“Yes, we are,” the Captain’s reply came over the speakers. “Are you here for the Havenite sale?”
The conversation flagged as the question started its twelve-second round trip. “What’s the problem with a Packrat freighter, Ma’am?” Travis asked quietly.
“They’re just not very common out here, that’s all,” Kountouriote said. “They mostly do the outer Solarian League routes.”
“Could be someone’s trying to expand their business into this region,” Metzger suggested.
“Countess Acton won’t be happy with that news,” someone else said.
“The countess has been talking for years about building more freighters to add to the one she’s already got,” Kountouriote explained to Travis. “More League competition is likely to put those plans on the back shelf.”
Travis nodded. Acton and Samuel Tilliotson were the rival owners of Manticore’s two single-ship freight companies, both of them running short-haul routes with the Star Kingdom’s neighbors. His mother had looked into investing in one of the firms when Travis was a teenager, but had decided that with Havenite and Solarian freighters handling the bulk of the traffic in the area it was unlikely a local group could get enough foothold to turn a serious profit.
“Good lord, no,” Jalla’s answer came. “The Concordia Shipping Company of Third Brunswick is hardly in the market for new ships, especially warships without a scrap of real shipping space. But we do have some passengers aboard from Ueshiba who may be looking to buy.”
“Really,” Eigen said. “Official government passengers?”
Travis frowned as the time-delay once again temporarily interrupted the conversation. Odd—Ueshiba was several degrees off the vector Kountouriote had marked as Wanderer’s entry angle. Had they taken a detour? He looked over at the plot, trying to gauge vectors and angles…
“Waste of time,” Kountouriote murmured.
“Excuse me, Ma’am?” Travis asked, frowning.
“I can see those wheels turning in there,” Kountouriote said, pointing a finger at his head and turning it around. “You’re trying to figure out whether or not they really did come from Ueshiba. Like I said, waste of time. For starters, the grav waves out here aren’t nearly as well mapped out as we’d like, and if their captain managed to catch one he could have gone way off direct vector. He also might have stopped off somewhere after Ueshiba. Zuckerman, Casca, maybe even Ramon.” She winced. “Though there’s not much at Ramon to draw outworld visitors.”
A shiver ran up Travis’s back.
A hundred years ago, Ramon had been systematically ravaged and looted by the Free Brotherhood, who had spent several years sucking the planet dry before moving on to Zuckerman and fresh victims. The Ramonian economy still hadn’t completely recovered from that devastation.
The politicians in Parliament who were so eager to dismantle the Navy might have forgotten about Ramon and the threat of groups like the Brotherhood. It was for damn sure the Ramonians never would.
“They’re working to get their society and infrastructure back together,” Metzger said. “But you’re right—there’s not much trade to be had there. Still, it was more or less on Wanderer’s route. Maybe they decided to swing by and take a look. Ham, pull me up the specs on Packrats.”
“Far as I know, they’re as official as you can get,” Jalla’s voice came over the speaker. This communications time-delay stuff, Travis decided, was a pain in the butt even when you were used to it. “Why do you ask?”
“Because Manticore sent a courier a few months ago to pick up the official Ueshiba delegates,” Eigen said. “Did they not arrive?”
“Here’s what we’ve got on the Packrat, Ma’am,” the rating at Tracking One murmured, his words accompanied by a set of simultaneous flickers as he sent the schematic to all the other stations. “Six hundred fifty meters long, about a million tons, one-gee toroidal spin section, six transfer shuttles. A little on the small side, but otherwise pretty straightforward freighter design.”
“Crew size?”
“Twenty to twenty-five, Ma’am,” the rating said. “There’s also room for probably fifty or sixty passengers.”
“I don’t know anything about any courier ship,” Jalla came back. “Hang on—let me patch you into the head of the delegation.”
There was a short pause. “I thought Diactoros had an escort,” Travis said.
“They did,” Kountouriote said. “HMS Perseus. It would take something pretty nasty to take her out.”
“Impossible,” Tracking said sourly. “According to Parliament, there’s nothing out here but rainbows and fluffy bunnies.”
“Captain Eigen, this is Moss Guzarwan, plenipotentiary and chief delegate of the Ueshiban Government,” an authoritative voice came over the speaker. “How may I help you?”
“I was inquiring as to why you’re aboard a freighter instead of the Manticoran fast-courier ship Diactoros,” Eigen said. “She was sent to bring you here, along with representatives from some of our other neighbors.”
Another time-delay silence descended on the compartment. Apparently, everyone in CIC had run out of other things to talk about.
“I know nothing about any courier,” Guzarwan said. “Wait a moment. You said a fast-courier? Well, of course. This is a Packrat merchantman, Captain. Obviously, I and my party left Ueshiba long before your courier arrived.”
“Why didn’t you wait for it?” Eigen said. “No offense to Captain Jalla, but I’m sure Diactoros’s accommodations are more comfortable than his.”
“That’s for sure,” the Tracking One rating put in. “Packrats are about as bare-bones as you can get.”
“To be perfectly blunt, Captain, some members of our government weren’t convinced you would actually send the courier as you’d promised. Though I wasn’t one of them, I assure you. Since we didn’t want to miss the meeting, when we learned Captain Jalla was bringing Wanderer to Secour anyway, we decided to add a second string to our bow by sending a back-up delegation. As, I assume from your presence, Manticore itself did?”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” Eigen said. “I hope Captain Jalla finds enough business here to justify a voyage of this length.”
“Oh, we’re paying him well for his services,” Guzarwan said dryly after the usual pause. “On top of that, he’s hoping he can buy a pair of P-409-R processing cores for his impeller ring without having to go all the way to Haven or else paying the ridiculous mark-up that the local merchants charge.”
“P-409s are an expensive item,” Eigen commented. “What kind of problem are you having?”
“Long, you know anything about P-409-Rs?” Metzger asked into the silence. “I understand you’ve had some training in impeller tech.”
“I’m not sure we actually use the 9-Rs, Ma’am” Travis said, trying to remember those early classes at Casey-Rosewood. Impeller nodes were insanely complicated things, but like everything else in the universe they were built from a limited list of components. P-409s were an important part of that list: processing cores that could be linked together to create the massive computer power necessary for managing plasma on an atom-to-atom basis in the impeller nodes. Processing cores were fast, densely-packed, incredibly powerful, and—as Eigen had already mentioned—incredibly not cheap. “Casey may use them, but I think the 9-B is the most modern type we have onboard.”
“Havenite ships must use them,” Kountouriote pointed out. “Or maybe they’ve got their own knock-off version. Not much point otherwise for Jalla to think he can score some here.”
“We’re having Klarian instability problems with two of our nodes,” Jalla’s voice came back on. “Nothing serious yet, but my engineer says it could get that way if we don’t replace the cores. I figured the Havenites would have brought a modern warship or two to ride herd on the sale, and was hoping they’d have enough spares that they could afford to sell one or two of them. I don’t suppose you have any you’d be willing to part with?”
“Sorry,” Eigen said. “I’ve checked with Logistics, and we don’t have any of that particular type aboard. Would a P-409-B work for you?”
“That’s a point,” Metzger commented. “About the warships, I mean. I doubt the ships the Havenites are selling are modern enough to need top-of-the-line components. Though I suppose they may have undergone upgrades at some point.”
“Makes me wonder how Jalla came to need something that advanced,” Kountouriote added. “Wanderer doesn’t read out as anything nearly that new.”
“There’s that,” Metzger agreed. “Maybe we’ll get a chance to ask him.”
“I don’t think so, but thanks for the offer,” Jalla said. “I have to go now—captainy stuff to do, you know. Safe flight to you.”
“And to you,” Eigen said. “We’ll see you in orbit.”
There was a brief tone, the signal that Guardian’s transmission had ceased. “And that’s that,” Metzger commented. “Interesting that Ueshiba was anxious enough that they sent two separate delegations. I wouldn’t have bet they had enough spare cash for any kind of serious system defense.”
“It’s about time they had something,” Kountouriote said. “They’ll be sitting ducks out there if anything like the Brotherhood ever comes around.”
“So will everyone else,” Metzger said. “Including possibly us. Long, is there a problem?”
Travis twitched. “Excuse me, Ma’am?”
“You’re frowning at that plot like there’s something wrong with it,” Metzger said. “Is there?”
Travis hesitated. There was indeed something that felt wrong about this whole thing. Wrong, or at least not quite right.
But he had nothing solid, or even anything nebulous that he could point at. And until he did…
“No, Ma’am.” Travis stole a sideways look at her, to find her watching him closely. “Nothing.”
“I see,” Metzger said, in a tone that said she didn’t quite believe him. “If that changes, be sure to let me know.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Travis murmured. “I will.”
* * *
With a muttered curse, Jalla keyed off the com. “Well, damn it all,” he said, turning to face Guzarwan. “That’s a hell of a development. What now?”
Guzarwan shrugged, trying to look casual about it, though he was anything but. Damn the Manticorans, anyway. He’d heard reports that they were sending a courier around to their neighbors, Ueshiba included. But all his calculations had indicated that they still had four to eight more days before the real Ueshiba delegation showed u
p and popped his balloon. Four days would have been all the time he needed to grab the Havenite ships and get out.
Only now Manticore had thrown a wrench in the works by sending a second ship ahead of its own delegation. And not only another ship, but a damn destroyer.
Did they know something they shouldn’t? No—that was impossible.
So why the hell were they here?
“Chief?” Jalla prompted. “What now?”
“We stay with the plan,” Guzarwan growled. “Or would you rather give up and go home?”
“No, but—” Jalla waved in Guardian’s general direction.
“So we weren’t expecting to have another armed ship here,” Guzarwan said. “So we’ll just have to be a little more on top of our game, that’s all.”
“You mean more improvisation?” Jalla asked pointedly. “What the hell’s a Klarian instability, anyway?”
“Nothing you have to worry about,” Guzarwan said. “It’s a minor little glitch that almost no one’s ever seen, and wouldn’t care about if they did. And I know how to fake one—all it takes is a little twitch every once in awhile. I needed a reason—besides us—for you to have brought Wanderer to Secour.”
“You’d already given a reason,” Jalla countered. “You told them you’d paid us, remember?”
“There are other freighters doing the local circuit,” Guzarwan reminded him. “Probably two or three of them during the time we supposedly hired you. One of those would have been a more plausible ship to hitch a ride on, especially since they were already heading this way and you presumably weren’t. The more reasons you can give someone, the more likely they’ll find one they can hang their hat on.”
“I don’t like it,” Jalla declared, shaking his head. “And you should never have mentioned a specific part. Especially something as advanced as a 9-R. Hell, our impellers use 8-Ds, not even the same class. Eigen’s bound to wonder why we want something like that.”
“Fine—let him wonder,” Guzarwan said with a shrug. “Wondering’s good for the soul.”
“Not if he wonders in the wrong direction,” Jalla warned. “Where did you even hear about—? Oh, no. You didn’t.”