"I must return to my ship!" Judith protested.
"If you'll permit, Captain, we'll send over a relief crew," Carlie said. "I have one standing by, all women, under Commander Umeko Palmer, our own XO."
Judith smiled.
"Thank you for your consideration. I will accept your relief crew, but it does not need to be all women. The Sisterhood does not mind men—not if they are Manticorans."
With One Stone
by Timothy Zahn
It was Silesian space.
It was escort duty for convoys of Her Majesty's merchant marine.
It was going to be boring as hell.
Lieutenant (Senior Grade) Rafael Cardones stifled a sigh as the Star Knight-class heavy cruiser HMS Fearless slid smoothly into its slot in Sphinx orbit. It wasn't fair, and everyone aboard knew it. After all they'd gone through at Basilisk Station a few months back, and especially now with a shiny, brand-new-out-of-the-box warship wrapped around them, surely the Admiralty could have given them something more challenging than to run endlessly back and forth between Basilisk and the roiling cesspool of political chaos laughingly called the Silesian Confederacy.
"Nodes to standby," the ship's commander ordered in that smooth soprano of hers, and Cardones threw a surreptitious look at her. If Captain Honor Harrington was dismayed by the thought of escort duty, it certainly didn't show in her face. Her expression was almost serene, in fact, as if she didn't have a care in the world.
Of course, Cardones recalled, her expression had been nearly that serene as she ordered their former ship, the late lamented light cruiser Fearless, to charge off across the Basilisk system in pursuit of an eight-million-ton Q-ship owned and operated by the People's Republic of Haven. A Q-ship, moreover, that might as well have been a full-fledged battlecruiser for the weight of armament it carried.
While their light cruiser might as well have been a glorified LAC after all the gutting Admiral Sonja Hemphill had done to it in order to make room for her precious experimental grav lance. The fact that Captain Harrington had managed to keep the Fearless together long enough to find a way to use that self-same grav lance against the Peep Q-ship was irrelevant, as far as Cardones was concerned. To him, it had been borderline criminal stupidity on Hemphill's part, and the rumor mill had it that Captain Harrington had said so directly to her face at the Weapons Development Board hearing afterward. Not in so many words, of course.
He took another look at the captain's face. On second thought, he decided, that expression wasn't serene at all. Captain Harrington was looking forward to the chance to hunt down some pirates and kick their collective butt.
Maybe this tour wasn't going to be quite as boring as he'd first thought.
Across the bridge, Lieutenant Joyce Metzinger straightened suddenly in her chair. "Captain, I'm getting a signal from HMS Basilisk," she announced.
Cardones glanced back at the captain, saw a slight frown of surprise. She'd done a stint aboard Basilisk, he knew, before being given her first hyper-capable command. Tac officer, if he remembered correctly, the same post he himself currently held aboard Fearless. Was Admiral Trent simply calling to say hello?
He was half right. "Admiral Trent sends his greetings," Metzinger continued. "He also requests your presence aboard at your earliest convenience."
The com officer glanced at Cardones. "He also requests that you bring Lieutenant Cardones with you."
Cardones blinked. And he had never served aboard Basilisk. What in the world . . . ?
"Acknowledge the admiral's message, Joyce," Captain Harrington told Metzinger. She stood and half turned, holding out her arms to the treecat wrapped lazily across the back of her command chair. He leaped gracefully into her arms, then scampered up into his usual traveling position along her shoulders. "And have my pinnace prepared. Rafe?"
"Right away, Ma'am," Cardones said, already on his feet. An admiral's earliest convenience was any regular mortal's five minutes ago, and it would not do to keep Trent waiting.
The Basilisk was a superdreadnought, three and a half kilometers long and eight and a quarter million tons of fighting fury. Cardones eyed it as their pinnace approached, his thoughts balanced midway between future anticipation and future regret. To serve aboard a prestigious ship of the wall had been his dream ever since he'd put on the uniform of the Royal Manticoran Navy. But on the other hand, with a ship that size the sheer number of people aboard tended to make even senior officers mere cogs in a machine far larger than they were. Even if he someday made it aboard such a ship, he suspected he would look wistfully back at his days aboard smaller ships like the Fearless, where each person made more of a difference.
Especially since even cruisers could sometimes make their presence felt on the galactic stage if they were in the right place at the right time, as Captain Harrington had proved at Basilisk Station. All in all, it might not be such a bad thing to serve a while aboard the RMN's smaller ships.
The Basilisk's boat bay was the usual scene of controlled chaos as Cardones followed Captain Harrington through the boarding tube to the sound of the side party's bosun's pipes. The boat bay officer of the deck and quartermaster were off to one side, conferring over a memo pad, while at the other side a work party was tearing into one of the fueling stations. He glanced once in that direction as he landed on the deck behind his captain, hoping they'd remembered to seal off the hydrogen tanks and clear the hoses before they fired up their cutting torches. He'd heard once of a party that had forgotten, and it hadn't been pretty.
Given the unusualness of Trent's invitation, Cardones would have expected the admiral to add to the novelty by coming himself to greet his visitors. But except for the side party there were only two people waiting for them: a tall man wearing the four gold sleeve rings and collar planets of a captain of the list, and an almost equally tall woman with the same four sleeve rings but the collar pips of a captain junior grade.
"Captain Harrington," the man said, stepping forward to meet them. "I'm Captain Olbrecht, Admiral Trent's chief of staff. Welcome aboard the Basilisk."
He smiled as he stretched out his hand. "Or rather," he added, "welcome back aboard."
"Thank you, Captain," Captain Harrington said, taking the proffered hand and shaking it. "This is Lieutenant Rafael Cardones, my tac officer."
"Yes," Olbrecht said, nodding as he extended his hand to Cardones. His eyes flicked across his face and down his torso with the sort of evaluating glance senior officers always seemed to give their juniors. "Welcome aboard, Lieutenant."
"Thank you, Sir," Cardones said. Olbrecht's grip was firm and precise, exactly the sort of handshake senior officers always seemed to offer their juniors.
"This is Captain Elayne Sandler," Olbrecht went on, releasing Cardones's hand and gesturing to the woman still standing a respectful pace behind him. "You'll be going with her, Lieutenant."
Cardones felt his spine stiffen slightly. On the trip over he'd come to the conclusion that there was fresh data on the Silesian situation that Trent wanted to discuss with the Fearless's skipper and tac officer. But if he was now going to be split off from her . . .
"Yes, Sir," he managed, turning his head to nod to the woman.
She nodded back, her cool eyes giving him the same once-over Olbrecht had just performed. Apparently it was a technique senior officers were issued with their collar insignia. "This way, Lieutenant," she said, turning and heading off toward one of the lifts.
"Yes, Ma'am," Cardones murmured, looking at Captain Harrington. "Ma'am?"
"Go ahead, Rafe," she said, her voice calm and completely unconcerned. "I'll see you later."
"Yes, Ma'am," he said. Her voice might have been calm, but Cardones had caught the puzzlement briefly creasing her forehead. So this wasn't something she'd been expecting, either. He headed off after Captain Sandler, trying to decide whether that was a good sign or a bad one.
He caught up with Sandler at the lift. "Sorry to make such a cloak and dagger out of this," Sandler c
ommented as she palmed the call button. "But you'll understand in a minute."
"Yes, Ma'am," Cardones said, settling for a neutral response as he watched Olbrecht and Captain Harrington disappear into one of the other lifts. Heading somewhere entirely different, apparently, than he and Sandler were bound.
The lift doors in front of them slid open, and they stepped inside. A minute later the car deposited them outside one of the Basilisk's ready rooms. Sandler touched the release and stepped inside; forcing the tension out of his shoulders, Cardones followed.
There were six people seated around the long briefing table, all of them looking back at the newcomers. Cardones glanced down the double row, automatically taking in faces and rank insignia.
His eyes reached the woman at the head of the table. An admiral, he noted with mild surprise. He lifted his eyes from her collar to her face—
And with a surge of rushing blood in his ears the tension came roaring back like a hyper-space grav wave slapping him in the face.
It wasn't just an admiral. It was Admiral Sonja Hemphill.
"Lieutenant Cardones," she said, gesturing a slender hand toward the empty chair two places down from her left, between a pair of men wearing lieutenant commander's and ensign's insignia, respectively. "Please; sit down."
Her voice was even, almost calm. But Cardones wasn't fooled for a minute. This was the woman whose "innovations" had nearly gotten him and the entire crew of the Fearless killed, and the woman who Captain Harrington had humiliated in front of her peers over it.
And now here she was, inviting that same Captain Harrington's tac officer to a private and apparently secret meeting.
This was definitely Not Good.
But an admiral was still an admiral. "Yes, Ma'am," he said, circling the foot of the table and heading for the indicated chair. Captain Sandler, he noted, was heading for the likewise empty seat at Hemphill's right.
Hemphill waited until they were both seated. "My name is Admiral Sonja Hemphill, Lieutenant," Hemphill introduced herself. The corner of her mouth might have twitched. "I believe you've heard of me."
"Yes, Ma'am," Cardones confirmed, his parade-ground neutral expression firmly in place.
"You've already met Captain Sandler," Hemphill went on, gesturing to the man to Cardones's right. "This is Lieutenant Commander Jack Damana; on your left is Ensign Georgio Pampas."
Cardones exchanged silent nods with them. Damana was short and freckled, with brown eyes and the shade of carrot-colored hair that Cardones usually associated with cheerful, casual types. But if either of those characteristics was included in Damana's personality, he was hiding it well. Pampas seemed to have been extruded from much the same mold, except that he sported the olive skin and dark hair of a heritage stretching back to Old Earth Mediterranean stock.
"Across from you is Lieutenant Jessica Hauptman," Hemphill continued.
Cardones went through the nodding routine again. Hauptman was medium height and running a little to the plump side, with brown hair and eyes and a name that rang a bell as unpleasantly out of tune as Hemphill's. It hadn't been all that long ago that Klaus Hauptman, head of the huge Hauptman Cartel, had come charging personally out to Basilisk system for a raging confrontation with the then Commander Harrington over her war against smugglers operating out of the Basilisk Terminus. The details of that confrontation were still shrouded in secrecy, but normally reliable sources had it that Hauptman had had his head handed to him.
Still, there was no animosity in Hauptman's face that he could see. No real resemblance to Klaus, either, for that matter. If she was in fact related to him, it had to be something pretty distant.
"To her right," Hemphill concluded, "are Senior Chief Petty Officer Nathan Swofford and Petty Officer First Colleen Jackson."
Cardones wrenched his mind away from Hauptman's face and name and nodded to the others. Swofford had a heavyweight wrestler's build, with blond hair and a half smile that somehow never quite touched his gray eyes, while Jackson seemed to be entirely constructed of varying shades of black.
"Together," Hemphill said, settling back in her chair, "they constitute ONI Tech Team Four."
Cardones felt himself straighten up, his carefully constructed house of paranoia collapsing into embarrassed rubble. Whatever grudges or even vendettas Hemphill might carry against Captain Harrington, she was still an Admiral of the Red; and Admirals of the Red did not casually divert Naval Intelligence task groups for their own private purposes.
"I see," he said, the words sounding incredibly lame. "How can I be of assistance, Ma'am?"
Hemphill gestured to Sandler. "Over the past few months we've been hearing rumors of something new going on in Silesia," Sandler said, tapping the table's keypad. A hologram of the Silesian Confederacy appeared over the table, with the major systems marked. "Specifically, rumors that someone out there is using a new weapon or technique for taking down merchant ships. Up until a month ago the only hard data we had was the locations of the attacks."
Six flashing red dots appeared in the hologram, the intensity range indicating oldest to most recent. Offhand, Cardones couldn't see anything significant in the pattern.
"It was only with this one—" a seventh dot appeared, brighter than the rest "—that we finally got something solid: another merchie in the system managed to get some sensor readings. They were too far away for anything really conclusive, but what they were able to get was highly suggestive."
"Of what?" Cardones asked.
Sandler pursed her lips. "We think someone out there's gotten hold of an advanced form of the grav lance."
"How advanced?" Cardones asked.
"Very," Sandler said bluntly. "Point one: it was able to take down the merchie's wedge."
Cardones felt himself sitting up a little straighter. The grav lance he and Fearless had been saddled with had been capable only of destroying an enemy's sidewalls, not the impeller wedge itself. Even granted that merchie impellers were weaker than those of a warship—
"And point two," Sandler added softly, "it took the wedge down from a million kilometers away."
Something with enough cold fingers for a dozen treecats began playing an arpeggio along Cardones's spine. The best grav lance the RMN possessed could hit an enemy from barely a tenth of that range, which was what made it such an unhelpful weapon in the first place. If this version was really able to take down impellers and could do it without needing to get into point-blank range first . . .
"I don't think you need the implications spelled out for you," Sandler went on. "We're still not entirely convinced that's what's going on out there; but if it is, we need to find out. And fast."
"Absolutely," Cardones agreed. "How can I help?"
"You're the only RMN tac officer who's ever used a grav lance in combat," Sandler said. "As such, Admiral Hemphill suggested you might be able to offer some useful insights as we go take a look at the most recent victim."
"Or what we suspect is the most recent victim," Hemphill added. "The Lorelei, seven and a half million tons, out of Gryphon."
"Yes, Ma'am," Cardones said, looking at Hemphill with an almost unwilling stirring of new respect. It must have taken a whole soup dish's worth of swallowed pride for her to have brought one of Captain Harrington's officers in on this. "I have to warn you, though, that I'm not very well versed in the grav lance's technical aspects," he cautioned.
"That part's already covered," Sandler said, gesturing to the end of the table. "Ensign Pampas, Chief Swofford, and PO First Jackson should have all the tech expertise we need. What we're looking for from you is the eye of experience."
"Yes, Ma'am," Cardones said, trying to suppress his quiet misgivings. Yes, he'd fired the grav lance in combat; but that hardly made him an expert on the damn thing. He just hoped Hemphill wasn't expecting more from him than he could deliver. "When will the orders be cut?"
"Already done," Hemphill said. "Captain Sandler has your copy; Captain Harrington's will be given to her after her
conference with Admiral Trent. Your replacement will be ready to join Fearless at that same time."
Cardones felt his stomach tighten. "Replacement?"
"A temporary replacement only," Sandler assured him. "You're still officially assigned to Fearless."
"On the other hand, who knows?" Hemphill said. "If you do well on this mission, ONI could decide they'd like you on staff full-time."
"I see," Cardones said. She meant it as a compliment, of course. Offhand, though, he could think of nothing he would like less than to be sitting in an Intelligence office somewhere trying to sift gold nuggets out of the effluvia of Peep propaganda 'faxes.
"Jack will fly you back to Fearless to pick up your kit," Sandler said. "We'll leave as soon as you get back. You can chew over the latest data and information once we're underway."
There must have been something in his face, because she smiled faintly. "No, we aren't taking Basilisk with us. We have our own ship, the Shadow. I think you'll like her."
"Captain Sandler will answer any other questions," Hemphill said, getting to her feet. "Needless to say, everything you've heard and seen here comes under the Official Secrets Act."
Her eyes locked like a pair of grasers on Cardones's face. "We're counting on you, Lieutenant," she said quietly. "Don't let us down."
Honor ran through to the end of the report and looked up at Admiral Trent, seated at the head of the bridge briefing room table. "I hope, Sir," she said carefully, "that this is some kind of serious misreading of either the data or the situation."
"So do I, Honor," Trent agreed heavily. "But even granting the extreme range the readings were taken at, and the low quality of the merchie sensors that took them, I don't see where there's much margin for error."
"And frankly, Captain, I don't see where there's any margin," the man seated across the table from Honor said, his voice a bit testy. "I know we all tend to think of the People's Republic as the only threat out there. But they're not, and it's high time we started remembering to look in other directions."