Эрик Флинт - The Service of the Sword

"Good enough," Honor said, keying for the bridge.

DuMorne's face appeared on her com screen. "Yes, Ma'am?"

"Is the Neue Bayern still within tight-beam transmission?"

DuMorne peered at something off-camera. "Yes, Ma'am, just barely."

"Good," Honor said. "Have Joyce get a lock while I record a message. And pull up our flight schedule for attachment."

"Yes, Ma'am."

Honor cut the circuit. "And after I do that," she told Venizelos and Wallace, "you two can bring me up to speed on the progress of our little impromptu cargo inspection."

"We're in position, Commodore," the Vanguard 's helmsman reported. "Holding orbit true."

"Reduce impellers to standby," Dominick ordered. "Rig for full stealth."

"Yes, Sir."

The bridge crew started down the by-now familiar checklist; and from his unobtrusive seat beside the tac officer's station, Charles permitted himself a small smile.

It was a self-satisfied smile, though he was careful not to let any of that part show through. Dominick was hooked, all right; hooked like a prize bassine on a strand of thousand-kilo test line. And if the commodore was hooked, the People's Republic was hooked, too.

All he had to do now was reel them in. Reel them in, and hope that Dominick didn't accidentally bite on the bone before the deal was done.

The smile faded. No, Dominick wouldn't bite. Dominick was completely under his control, dazzled by his successes and by the booty pouring in from the Manticoran merchantmen he and his new toy had crushed beneath their heel. Dominick would follow Charles straight into hell if Charles wanted him to. Even better, he would charge in fully convinced that the course setting had been his own idea.

Not that Charles had any intention of dragging him or the Vanguard anywhere near that sort of fire, of course. On the contrary, he had every intention of keeping this ship as safe as possible. And not only because his own precious skin was aboard. If they tumbled to the hook too quickly, that skin wouldn't be worth very much.

And therein lay the rub. Because if Commodore Dominick was safely under control, Captain Vaccares was another matter entirely. He was primed for that trip to the edge of hell, eager to give the Crippler the kind of baptism of fire that Charles couldn't afford for it to have.

Something would have to be done about that. Something that wouldn't rock the boat Charles had so carefully maneuvered along this potentially treacherous channel for the past few months.

"Charles?"

Charles turned his attention and his smile to Dominick. "Yes, Commodore?"

"If they're on schedule, we'll have another four days before the Harlequin arrives," Dominick said. "While we're waiting, I want to put the crew through some extra simulations."

"Excellent idea," Charles agreed. "How can I help?"

"I want you to supervise the Crippler crew," the commodore said. "We're going to practice going up against a Manty warship, and you're the only one who can tell us if the simulation is accurate enough."

"I'll do what I can," Charles promised smoothly, even as he felt his stomach muscles bunching up. So Dominick was smelling blood in the water now, too. Damn that Vaccares, anyway.

Still, it could be worse. If the attack on the Harlequin fell out as planned, this particular Manty escort should be too far away to be a problem. And if for some reason it was closer or faster than anticipated, he should still be able to get the Vanguard out before the Manty could move in on them.

And supervising the Crippler drills would be a perfect opportunity to lay the necessary groundwork for that kind of strategic withdrawal. "When do we begin?" he asked.

"Immediately," Dominick said, smiling wolfishly. "If you'll head down to the Crippler ops station, I'll sound battle stations."

"Certainly," Charles said, getting to his feet. Besides, he'd known going in that there was a fair chance this house of cards would eventually come tumbling down. That was why his own private yacht was snugged away in Vanguard 's Number Four boat bay, and why he'd introduced that little bug into the battlecruiser's transponder and sensor systems so that the yacht wouldn't even be noticed if and when he had to leave.

And it was also why he'd made sure the up-front half of the price he'd negotiated with Hereditary President Harris for the Crippler would be enough to make him a respectable profit. If he never saw the half-on-approval money, he would survive.

He just hoped that if and when he had to vanish the Vanguard would be in a system where he had some contacts. His little sublight runabout wasn't going to take him anywhere else, and he would hate to still be stuck in some Silesian backwater trying to get home when the Havenites came looking for him.

He glanced at the main viewing screen as he crossed the bridge, noting the delicate sweep of a distant comet's tail slashing across the starscape behind it. Back on Old Earth, he knew, comets had been considered bad omens.

Groundless superstition, of course. He hoped.

Directly ahead, visible in all its glory on the cabin viewscreen, the delicate sweep of Baltron-January 2479's tail arched its way across the starscape. Comets, Cardones remembered, had once been considered bad omens.

Groundless superstition, of course. He hoped.

"Your attention, please," the pilot's voice came over the lounge speakers, and the two dozen well-dressed passengers scattered around paused in their drinking or conversation to listen. "I'll put it on the main display in a minute, but if you want to look out the right side of the cabin at the comet's head, you should be able to see the main building of the Sun Skater Resort."

There was no mad rush for the viewports; people with the kind of money these folks had, Cardones reflected, made a point of not looking hurried. Instead, they made a sort of concerted but leisurely drift toward the starboard side, those with glasses still sipping from them, most pretending it was no big deal even as they jockeyed genteelly for the best viewing positions.

Cardones glanced to his left, wondering if Captain Sandler was as amused by it as he was. But if she was, it didn't show in the bland, self-indulgent, wealthy-beyond-all-belief expression she was wearing. It was an expression designed to match those of the rest of the passengers, just as the rest of her posture and behavior let her mix seamlessly with them.

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.