David Weber - The Service of the Sword

Dominick felt his lip twist. Personally, he didn't give a rat's backside anymore whether or not the Manties got to see their new toy in action. A healthy dose of panic would be good for the overconfident little royalists, in fact. All he could see was the four fewer boats' worth of top-grade Manty technology going into Vanguard 's holds.

But the standing orders didn't care. "Fine," he growled. "Have them take a look. You sure you don't want to go along to supervise personally?"

"No, thank you, Commodore," Vaccares said, his voice grim. "If there's a Manty skulking by that comet, I want to be right here when he shows himself."

"No doubt about it," Sandler said tightly. "They're on their way. Must have spotted the pod."

"What do we do?" Cardones demanded, peering over the top of the displays at the window. Suddenly their spacious luxury suite was feeling downright claustrophobic.

As was the resort; and, for that matter, the whole damn comet. There were precious few places here to hide, and nowhere at all to run.

"First job is to get rid of the pod," Sandler said, crossing the room to an attaché case she'd earlier set unopened along the wall. "Maybe we can convince them that's all there is."

"Somehow, I doubt they'll be that gullible," Cardones said, watching in fascination as she settled the case on her lap and flipped it open. Inside was what looked like a miniature helm control board, complete with an attitude control stick and a set of compact display screens set into the lid.

"We'll see." Sandler flipped a pair of switches and the control board came to life, status lights starting to change from red to amber to green as the device ran its self-check. "Ever seen one of these before?"

"No," Cardones said. "I gather it's a remote control?"

"Best on the market," Sandler confirmed, settling her right hand into a grip on the stick and watching the last set of status lights with a patience Cardones could only envy. "Not that it's actually on the market, of course."

"Of course," Cardones said. "An ONI special, I presume?"

Sandler nodded. "We keep a couple aboard Shadow at all times," she said. "They're especially handy in that there's no hard-wiring needed. All you have to do is wrap the receiver pack around the control cables running between a ship's helm and auxiliary control and you're set."

"Really," Cardones said, looking at the case with new respect. "Even if someone else is trying to fly the ship at the time?"

"They're not quite that handy," Sandler said. "The induction signal's not nearly strong enough to override an actual control signal. At least," she added thoughtfully, "not yet. Maybe if you boosted the power enough you could even do that."

"All you'd have to do then would be find a way to smuggle a receiver pack and a spy aboard a Peep ship of the wall," Cardones said, trying to get into the spirit of the thing.

"You come up with the gadget and the technique and you'll retire rich," Sandler agreed. "Okay, here we go," she added as the last light turned green. "Cross your fingers."

She keyed the thrusters, and the relative-V numbers began to rise. Cardones shifted his gaze to the window, straining for a glimpse of the pod. It should be visible, he knew; the tail material wasn't all that dense.

There it was: a dark bubble in the tail, falling rapidly away from them. Sandler leaned the stick sideways, and the bubble moved left toward the edge of the tail—

And then, suddenly, the smooth stream of glowing gas was ripped apart as she kicked in the impellers. The pod darted away like a bat out of hell, turning straight into the sun and clawing for distance.

Two of the approaching boats responded immediately, breaking away from the others and charging off to the chase. "What are you going to do if they get close enough to grab it?" Cardones asked.

"They won't," Sandler said, concentrating on her controls. "I'll make sure to destroy it first."

"Okay," Cardones said slowly. "But won't that kind of ruin the illusion that there's a crew aboard?"

"They're not going to get hold of the pod intact," Sandler said tartly. "Other than that, I'm open to alternative suggestions. Here, make yourself useful."

She let go of the drive control long enough to dig a forceblade from her pocket and drop it into his lap. "Pull all the data chips from the recorders and put them in with the collection by the player over there."

"Right," Cardones said, standing up and slipping the forceblade into his own pocket.

"And then," Sandler added, "start cutting everything up."

Cardones froze in midstep. "You mean the recorders?"

"I mean everything." She glanced a thin smile up at him. "Yes, I know. Millions of dollars worth of equipment down the tubes." She nodded at the displays. "But two of those boats are still on the way, and I'm not expecting them to be satisfied with just looking in the windows. We're going to have company soon; and we'd better not have anything here the average honeymooning couple doesn't."

"Yes, Ma'am," Cardones said, looking around the room. "Only, once we've shredded it all, how do we get rid of the pieces?"

"You'll see," Sandler said, her attention back on her controls again. "Get to work."

Manticoran law required a forceblade to emit a horrible, tooth-twisting whine whenever its invisible blade was activated. Sandler's version, ONI issue no doubt, gave out only a soft buzz instead. Cardones had retrieved all the data chips and hidden them as instructed—they had come prelabeled, he noted, with music and vid titles—and he was in the process of slicing up the receiver when Sandler abruptly straightened. "Well, that's it," she announced grimly. "The pod is officially history. How's it coming?"

"Not very quickly," he admitted, glancing back toward the windows. The approaching assault boats were still too distant to be seen, of course, but even that illusory safety wouldn't last much longer. "I hope you're not planning to dump everything into the disposal."

"That's the first place a suspicious mind would think to look," Sandler said, crossing to the orange-rimmed emergency suit locker door and pulling it open. "Here."

Cardones looked up in time to catch the vac suit she'd tossed to him. "Throwing it all outside isn't going to be much better," he warned as he closed down the forceblade and started climbing into the suit. "Besides, won't we set off decompression alarms if we start cutting open windows?"

"Not if we're careful," Sandler said, already halfway into her own suit. "Suit up, and I'll show you a trick."

The vac suit was designed to accommodate a wide range of body sizes and types, and was therefore bulkier and looser than the skinsuits Cardones was used to. Still, emergency equipment was fairly standardized, and he had it on and sealed in ninety seconds flat. "Ready," he called as the status bar went to green.

"Right," Sandler said, her voice coming over his helmet speaker from her own helmet. She had pried the cover off the air-pressure sensor on the wall and was fiddling at it with a screwdriver. "Come over here."

Cardones stepped to her side. "See this little lever?" she asked, pointing with the screwdriver. "Hold it down. And don't let it up."

"Right." Gingerly, Cardones took the screwdriver and wedged the blade against the lever. "What does it do?"

"It tells the sensor that we're all breathing just fine in here," she said, stepping to the couch and retrieving the forceblade from where Cardones had left it. "It also keeps the ventilator system shut down, which means it won't try to add more air once we evacuate the suite."

"Handy lever," Cardones commented. "How come you know about these things? I thought you were a command officer, not a tech."