The Service of the Sword woh-4

by David Weber

  "Like someone hunting pirates?" Venizelos suggested.

  Or perhaps something a little more personal? Honor caught Wallace's eye as he glanced up and lifted her eyebrows in silent question. He cocked an eyebrow of his own and gave a small shrug.

  So at least they were agreed about their basic uncertainty. The Neue Bayern might well be out hunting a rogue Andy raider. On the other hand, she might be here to give that same raider tactical or logistical support.

  "I hope she wasn't trying to sneak up on Iliescu's roadblock," Venizelos mused. "We pretty well ruined that one if she was."

  "She'll get over it," Honor said, coming to a decision. Whatever this particular Andy was doing out here, she probably knew about the raider. Given that, it wouldn't hurt to let her know the Royal Navy was also in on the game. "Joyce, open a channel," she instructed. "Put it up when you get it."

  "Yes, Ma'am." Metzinger keyed her board, and Honor silently began counting out the seconds. At the Neue Bayern's distance there was a twenty-second delay just for the signal's round trip, plus whatever time her captain took to decide whether or not he felt like talking to any Manticorans today.

  The count was up to ninety-four seconds when the com screen came up, revealing a heavy-jowled man with close-cropped hair and full lips that seemed to be settled in a perpetual frown. "This is Captain Lanfeng Grubner of the IANS Neue Bayern," he said, his voice gruff and sounding like he wasn't at all happy about being disturbed. But maybe that was just his heavy German accent. "What do you want, Fearless?"

  "This is Captain Harrington of the Fearless," Honor said, determined not to be intimidated by either Grubner's attitude or the fact that his ship outmassed and outgunned hers by a factor of three. "I wonder if I might impose on you for a brief conversation on a topic of mutual interest."

  She waited as the twenty seconds ticked past. "And what topic might that be?" Grubner asked.

  "I'd rather not discuss it on an open signal," Honor said. "If you could back off on some of your acceleration, I could bring a pinnace to within whisker laser range."

  "Impossible," Grubner said flatly. "I'm on an important assignment for my Emperor. I have no time to exchange pleasantries with foreign naval officers."

  "Not even if the conversation was related to your assignment?" Honor suggested.

  Grubner smiled thinly, a neat trick with lips as thick as his were. "But we shall never know whether it was or not, shall we? Good day to you, Captain—"

  Abruptly he broke off, his eyebrows drawing suddenly together. "Harrington," he said, his voice suddenly thoughtful. "Captain Honor Harrington?"

  "Yes, Sir," Honor said.

  The twenty-second delay seemed a lot longer this time. "Well, well," Grubner said. "So you are the heroine of Basilisk Station."

  "I wouldn't put it quite that way, Sir," Honor said, feeling her cheeks warming. She'd more or less resigned herself to the borderline awe she still got occasionally from her own people. But the same thing coming from a foreigner was a new and freshly embarrassing situation. "But yes, it was my ship and my people who pulled that off."

  "Indeed," Grubner said, nodding slowly. "Well. This puts a different light on things. I would be pleased if you would join me aboard the Neue Bayern for the conversation you requested."

  He smiled suddenly. "And, of course, I would like to show you proper Andermani hospitality, as well. Shall we say dinner this evening? Or whatever the next meal is your ship's clock is set for, of course."

  Honor blinked, the sudden change in Grubner's attitude throwing her off-balance like a well-executed aikido move. "I'm very grateful for your offer, Captain," she managed. "But I don't wish to draw you off your schedule any longer than necessary."

  He waved a hand negligently. "My schedule is not that rigid, Captain. And Imperial Naval orders always allow for unexpected events and opportunities."

  Opportunities . . . "In that case, Captain, I would be honored to accept your invitation." Honor glanced at the ship's clock. "And dinner would be fine."

  "Excellent, Captain," Grubner said. As near as Honor could tell, he sounded genuinely pleased. "Shall I send a pinnace for you, or would you prefer to bring your own? Mine is most likely faster," he added with a clear touch of pride, "and almost certainly more comfortable."

  "Thank you, Captain," Honor said. "I appreciate the offer, but I'll come in my own. That way you'll be able to get under way again as soon as our meeting is finished."

  "As you wish, Captain," Grubner said. "I will expect to see you at your convenience. Neue Bayern out."

  The display blanked. Honor took a careful breath; and only as she glanced around did she notice that every eye on the bridge was pointed at her.

  "What?" she asked, trying to sound casual. "Haven't you ever seen someone invited to dinner before?"

  Venizelos found his voice first. "It must have been the German accent," he said, his voice studiously bland. "Though I've got to say, Skipper, that inviting you aboard wasn't what I expected him to do . . . until he caught your name."

  "You seem to have picked up a new fan, all right, Ma'am," Metzinger agreed. "How many million does that make now?"

  Honor shook her head. "I swear, when this is all over I'm going to change my name to Smith," she threatened. "I should have done it months ago."

  "Oh, I don't know, Skipper," DuMorne offered. "Andermani food's really pretty good, they say. And some of their wines are excellent."

  "I'll keep that in mind," Honor said dryly. "Joyce, call the boat bay and have my pinnace readied."

  "Yes, Ma'am."

  "You're not going alone, are you, Ma'am?" Wallace asked.

  There was something in his tone that tickled the hairs unpleasantly on the back of Honor's neck. For the briefest second she wondered if he knew something about the Andermani she didn't. Something, perhaps, about hidden treachery beneath the surface courtesy?

  But following a split second behind the reflexive xenophobic paranoia came the truth. It wasn't that Wallace knew something she didn't. It was that there were things he wanted to know.

  She swiveled her chair to look at him, and there was no mistaking the eagerness in his eyes. A Naval Intelligence officer, poised to get a first-hand look at an Andermani warship. A simple cajoling of his captain, he was probably thinking, and he would be on his way to an intelligence coup that might put his career on the express track.

  And in fact, she could very probably accommodate him if she chose. Captain Grubner hadn't placed any stipulations on his invitation; if she showed up with a whole entourage tagging behind her, she doubted he would refuse them entry to his ship.

  But at the same time, she knew that doing so would be a betrayal of his trust and the unspoken yet clear intent of his offer. Especially if that entourage included an ONI officer.

  And given the steadily worsening situation with Haven, it didn't seem like a good idea for a Queen's officer to go out of her way to annoy an Andermani captain. Especially one who had already taken the initiative in extending his hospitality.

  "I don't think I'll be in any danger over there," she told Wallace, deliberately misreading the true intent of his question. "Besides, all of you will be busy right here."

  Wallace frowned. "Doing what, Ma'am?"

  "Checking out our convoy," Honor told him. "I want you and Commander Venizelos to assemble some inspection teams to go across to each of the ships. Get Scotty Tremaine and Horace Harkness to help, Andy—they'll know the right people to pick for the teams."

  "What kind of inspection?" Venizelos asked. "What are we looking for, Skipper?"

  "Shredder darts, of course," Honor said grimly. "I gave Iliescu my word that we weren't carrying them. Before we hit orbit, I want to know if I lied to him."

  The Shadow had reached the hyper limit at the edge of the Tyler's Star system and had started its long trip inward by the time the three techs finally finished their analysis.

  "Boiled down to the basics, what seems to have happened is that all the no
des went into simultaneous overload," Pampas said, gesturing to the exploded-view holo hovering over the wardroom table. "There were a whole series of blown junction points in each one, tracking right along the control lines."

  "But the lines themselves weren't simply fried?" Sandler asked.

  "No," Pampas said. "As I said, it looks more like an overload at these critical points."

  "But an overload from where?" Damana asked. "There shouldn't be any way to get that much voltage in there. At least, not from the inside."

  "Actually, we have come up with a couple of ideas," Pampas said. "They're both pretty shaky, but so far they're all we've got." He gestured across the table to Swofford. "Nathan?"

  "The possible culprit is here," Swofford said, manipulating the controls. The exploded view vanished, replaced by a larger-scale technical schematic of a merchantman's power and control system. Another touch, and a pair of lines were highlighted at a point where they briefly paralleled each other. "We've got a control line running right up against one of the main power lines for about ten centimeters. If we somehow got a bleed-through of enough current, it could conceivably pop the junction points we found."

  "Without burning the insulation?" Hauptman asked. "Or was it burned?"

  "There weren't any scorch marks that we could find," Swofford admitted. "That's what makes it shaky. The other possibility is even shakier: something called Jonquil tunneling, where RF electric fields twist in such a way that you get quantum tunneling of electrons between the power and control lines."

  "That would eliminate the intact-insulation problem," Pampas added. "Problem is, we can't come up with any way for the fields to twist that way without it showing up elsewhere in the power system."

  "What about Rafe's scenario?" Damana asked. "The saboteur-in-our-midst thing?"

  "Possible," Pampas said. "But even trickier to pull off than we first thought. In order to take down all the forward nodes simultaneously, our saboteur would have had to open up the system somewhere downstream of the control box but upstream of where the control lines branch off to the different nodes. There aren't a lot of places you can do that, and all of them are either in sight of the command crew or out in the open where anyone might happen by. That means he'd have to either distract an entire watch crew or else come up with a logical reason to be poking around access panels."

  "And he'd have to do it for both the fore and aft nodes," Jackson put in. "The lines go off in different directions."

  "Right," Pampas said. "Once into the wiring, he'd have to splice in a power boost with just enough juice to kill the junction points but not enough to affect anything else."

  "And, of course, he would have had to sync both boosts to get the fore and aft nodes to go down together?" Sandler suggested.

  "Right," Pampas said. "Then, after the boosters had done their job, he'd have to go in and take them out again."

  "Though he would have had other cleanup to do at that point, anyway," Hauptman reminded them. "Erasing his presence from the logs, for starters."

  "And of course, the rest of the crew would probably have been dead by then," Damana said.

  "You said these were our choices if it was done from the inside," Sandler said. "What about from the outside?"

  Pampas shrugged uncomfortably. "Then we're talking Admiral Hemphill's magic grav lance," he said. "Presumably if you boost a lance's power high enough, you could overload the impeller wedge in such a way that it would back-feed and blow out the junction points. But to pack that kind of power into a ship is beyond any theory I've ever heard of."

  "Especially when you're going to do it from a million klicks out," Swofford added.

  "Right," Pampas agreed. "Either of those two pieces represents an enormous technological leap. Put them together . . ." He shook his head.

  For a moment there was silence.

  "All right," Sandler said at last. "What I'm hearing is that our options run from the ridiculously unlikely to the completely impossible, and that we're at a stalemate until and unless we can see this thing work for ourselves. That about sum it up?"

  "I'd say so, yes, Ma'am," Pampas said.

  "So let's make that happen." Sandler touched her board, and the wiring diagram floating over the table was replaced by a schematic of the Tyler's Star system. "The problem with catching raiders in the act is that they've always got so much space to work with," she said. "Usually, of course, they like to sit right at the hyper limit and catch their prey as they leave hyper-space; but our raider seems to prefer attacking them somewhere in mid-system."

  "Which he'd never get away with anywhere except Silesia," Jackson muttered.

  "No argument," Sandler agreed. "Everywhere else the in-system sensor nets would be right on top of him if he tried this too close to inhabited areas. So let's see if we can use that confidence against him."

  A slightly curved green line appeared, coming in from the hyper limit and running inward to end at Hadrian, the fourth planet out from the sun. "Here's the vector our bait will most likely be coming in from," she said. "You can see by the configuration of the planets that unless our raider is waiting right at the hyper limit, he won't have any decent chance to attack before they're in range of either in-system forces or someone's sensor cluster."

  "What's that blue marker?" Cardones asked, pointing at a flashing light by one of the outer planets.

  "An experimental ring-mining scheme," Sandler said. "A joint Silesian/Andermani venture, and as such under the protection of the IAN. The Andies usually don't have more than a destroyer and a few LACs on station at any given time, but that's enough to keep most raiders clear of the outer system."

  "Including our boy?" Hauptman asked.

  "We hope so," Sandler said. "Because we certainly can't cover the inner and outer systems at the same time."

  "Even the inner system's a lot of territory for one ship," Cardones pointed out. "Or are we expecting help?"

  "No, we're on our own," Sandler said. "But it's not quite as bad as it looks."

  She touched keys, and the schematic shifted to a close-up view of the inner system. "Here's the incoming vector again," she said. "And here's the outgoing."

  Another green line appeared, running off at about a hundred forty degrees from the first. But instead of moving cleanly out toward the hyper limit, it split into three different paths a short distance out from the planet itself. "As you see, at this point our convoy suddenly loses its coherency," Sandler continued. "One of the merchantmen is slated to swing inward to a solar research station, two more are to head outward to a rendezvous with the fifth planet, Quarre, with the other four heading outsystem toward their next scheduled stop at Brinkman."

  "I thought the whole purpose of a convoy was for the ships to stick together," Cardones said. "What are they splitting apart that way for?"

  "Mainly because they haven't got much choice," Sandler said. "Three of the four ships in the latter group are carrying perishables, and they can't afford the extra time to divert either to the solar station or Quarre."

  "So which group does the escort stay with?" Damana asked.

  "Assuming there is an escort," Hauptman added.

  "There is," Sandler assured her. "The heavy cruiser HMS Iberiana. The assumption is that no one's going to be interested in supplies being brought to a research station, so the plan is for the Iberiana to split the difference with the others. She'll run a course midway between them until the twosome reach Quarre orbit, then shift over, catch up with the main convoy, and take them out of the system."

  "Pretty well coordinated plan," Cardones commented, frowning to himself. In point of fact, it was an amazingly well coordinated plan. Most convoys he'd ever known had been of the catch-as-catch-can variety, with merchies dribbling haphazardly into a system and the Navy then throwing them whatever escort they could scare up.

  "Sometimes it works," Sandler said with a shrug. "Only when the merchantmen can stick with a real schedule, of course."

  "So that's the
two departing ships," Pampas said. "What happens with the others?"

  "The two Quarre-bound ships—Dorado and Nightingale —will stay there for a few days, picking up cargo from the various asteroid mining operations and doing some maintenance," Sandler said. "At that point another convoy is scheduled to come through bound for Walther, and they'll link up with it. The Harlequin —that's the ship headed to the research station—will meanwhile join with a Silesian convoy going directly to Telmach."

  "You seem to know a lot about their schedule," Cardones said.

  Sandler smiled slightly. "Of course," she said. "We are ONI, you know."

  "I meant all these specifics about the presumed attack," Cardones amplified. "From the way you were talking before, it sounded like all we knew was that there was a reasonable chance the raider would show up here looking for something to hit."

  Damana shifted slightly in his seat, but Sandler's expression didn't even twitch. "That's all the predictor program did tell us," she agreed. "Only after we knew that could we pull up the shipping schedule and decide that this particular convoy was the likely target."

  "Ah," Cardones said. He was still young, he knew, and still unsophisticated in the ways of the universe.

  But he wasn't so young that he didn't know a flat-out lie when he heard it.

  "At any rate, the point here is that the Harlequin is going to be the one off all alone," Sandler continued. "So that's the one I'm betting on."

  "I presume we're not going to just follow it?" Swofford asked. "That would be just a bit obvious."

  "Yes, it would," Sandler agreed. "And no, we're not."

  The schematic shifted again, this time showing the merchantman's entire course from the convoy split to the research station tucked into its close solar orbit. "There's really only one stretch—granted, a big stretch—where the Harlequin will be out of sensor range of both the station and the Iberiana. We can cover about half the gap by putting the Shadow here."