David Weber - The Service of the Sword

And, not surprisingly, she was doing it far better than Cardones was. He looked back at the crowd by the viewports and wished for the umpteenth time that he'd been able to talk Sandler into picking one of the others for this role instead of him.

But she'd had all the logic on her side, not to mention the command authority to back it up. Even he had had to admit that the probability of the raider attacking the Harlequin within sight of anyone, even the dilettantes lounging around the Sun Skater, was really quite low. The Shadow was silently covering the more likely attack area, and Sandler had insisted the ship be fully crewed with pilot, copilot, and all three techs. Cardones and Sandler had thus been the only two people the spy ship could spare; and so it was Cardones and Sandler who were going to spend a couple of nights in Tyler's Star's premier resort.

In one of the four honeymoon cabins.

Cardones squirmed in his seat. Sandler had made it quietly clear that none of the standard honeymoon activities would be taking place between them, and that she'd booked the cabin solely for its distance and therefore privacy from the main resort complex. But that hadn't stopped Cardones from feeling excessively uncomfortable with the whole arrangement. Nor had it stopped the others, most notably Damana and Pampas, from ribbing him about it.

But all that was forgotten as the camera zoomed in on the resort and he got his first real look at the place.

Sun Skater had been the brainchild of some Solly developer who had noticed Baltron-January 2479 drifting in toward Tyler's Star and seen possibilities no one else had. The entire complex had been thrown up in a matter of months, built onto—and partially sunk into—the comet's five-kilometer-diameter head.

It must have seemed like a fool's fever dream back when the comet was nothing but a huge lump of ice and rock floating out beyond Hadrian's orbit. But now, with the comet in close enough for the solar wind to work its magic, the investment had paid off handsomely. Carefully positioned just past the comet head's midpoint, the resort was squarely in the flow of the ethereal tail being gently boiled off the ice.

It was a vantage point virtually no one in the galaxy had ever had before, and that alone would have guaranteed it at least a trickle of the rich and jaded. Adding in the highly ephemeral nature of the place—for the resort would most likely be abandoned once the comet had circled the sun and its magnificent tail faded away—and that trickle had become a steady stream.

"There's our place," Sandler murmured from his side, pointing to the left of the main building complex. "That little red-topped building off to the left. See it?"

Cardones patted her hand in what he hoped was a husbandly sort of way. "Yes, dear," he said.

Still, he had to admit that there was a certain kick in being able to call an attractive female superior officer dear . Especially when he'd actually been ordered to do so.

Honeymoon Suite Three was located a hundred meters from the main resort complex, accessible through a half-underground tunnel. Like the tunnel, the suite had been partially sunk into the rocky ice of the comet for stability; and like the rest of the complex, it had the comet's tail sweeping over it, drifting past its windows. It was a strange and curiously magnetic sight, Cardones decided as he stopped their luggage cart just inside the main pressure door and peered out the kitchenette window. Rather like a horizontal snowfall, but without the howling windstorm that would be needed to create such a phenomenon on any normal planet. Here, instead, all was silence and calm.

He walked past the kitchenette and the bedroom door and stepped into the living room. There he paused again, his attention caught by the view out the back windows. Beyond the "rear" of the complex, the drifting ice crystals flowed together behind the comet head, coalescing into a tail that stretched out for millions of kilometers toward the brilliant starscape beyond.

"Nice view," Sandler commented.

Cardones jumped; he hadn't heard her come up beside him. "Sure is," he agreed, an odd lump in his throat. "I can see why people are paying these rates to come out here."

"Yes," Sandler said. "But Her Majesty isn't paying for us to gawk at the scenery. Let's get to work."

The spell vanished. "Right," Cardones said, turning away from the view and heading back to the luggage cart. "I just hope they were able to sneak in the sensor pod while we were catching the shuttle from Hadrian."

"We'll know as soon as we try firing up the remotes," Sandler said. "I think we'll set up here by the window. Get the receiver and display panel and bring them in."

Cardones picked up two of the suitcases and returned to the living room. She was in the process of rearranging the furniture, pulling the coffee table and a pair of end tables together in front of the couch that faced out toward the drifting tail. Opening one of his suitcases, Cardones pulled out a multi-channel short-range receiver array and carried it to the coffee table, trailing wires behind him.

It took them nearly two hours to set everything up, connect all the wires properly, and run the various self-checks. But after that, it took only a few minutes to confirm that the Shadow had indeed managed to place the sensor pod nearby.

"I'm surprised the tail isn't interfering with the readings," Cardones commented, peering at the displays.

"Actually, there really isn't all that much substance to it," Sandler reminded him as she made a small adjustment to one of the settings. "It's only thin gas and ice crystals blown off by light pressure and solar wind. Mostly all it does is provide a little visual camouflage for the pod, which is what we wanted."

"Still, some of those crystals are ionized, and a lot of the rest are scattering photons and electrons all over the place," Cardones pointed out. "I'd have thought that would at least skew some of the more sensitive detectors."

Sandler shrugged. "They're very good instruments."

"Nothing but the best for ONI?"

"Something like that." Sandler stretched her arms back over her shoulders. "If the Harlequin 's on schedule, she should be hitting the edge of our sensor range anywhere from six hours to two days from now. Let's order some dinner from the kitchenette and then both grab a few hours' sleep."

They had their dinner and five hours of sleep, with Cardones on the large and comfortable bed while Sandler took the far less comfortable couch. Cardones had felt more than a little guilty about that, but Sandler had insisted. He had countered by insisting—with all due respect to a superior officer, of course—that he take the first watch after that.

He was two hours into that watch when the sensor pod made its first contact.

It was definitely a merchantman, looking alone and vulnerable as she lumbered along, and Cardones keyed a query pulse from the sensor pod to check the ID transponder. It was the Harlequin , all right, dead on the timetable Sandler had given him. For a civilian ship to hold so tightly to schedule was almost unheard of. Either Sandler was an incredibly lucky guesser, or else the Harlequin 's skipper was the most anal retentive in the merchant fleet. With a mental shake of his head, he began a systematic quartering of the sky for other impeller signatures. There shouldn't be any, he knew: the rest of the convoy would be well out of his detection range by now, and Shadow was supposed to be skulking along invisibly on full stealth well behind Harlequin 's current position, her own impellers shut down to standby.

And then, almost before he'd begun his search, another signature blazed into existence. A powerful signature, too strong to be that of a merchie or system patrol craft. Almost certainly a warship.