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  “It can do all that so quickly?” Tyler asked, looking down at the bag on the deck with a hint of respect.

  “It can,” Charles assured him. “It’s not as perfect as using a sensor-absorbing hull coating, of course. But this is simpler and much easier to retrofit a ship with. And under normal conditions it will render you adequately invisible to most active sensors.”

  “Provided our wedge is down, I presume,” Mercier said. He was eyeing the bag, too, a thoughtful gleam in his eye.

  “Of course,” Charles agreed. “There’s no way for any add-on like this to conceal the level of gravitic energy that a warship’s wedge normally puts out. But as long as you keep the wedge at minimal power while we’re moving across the Karavani system, your conventional stealth systems should be good enough to keep that from being any sort of problem. The transfer station’s sensors certainly won’t be good enough to pick us up at that distance, and we should be in place well before our Andermani friends arrive.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, and by the way, the Echo equipment itself is completely shielded and fail-safed. If anyone aboard should let his curiosity get the better of him and try to see what’s inside, it’ll instantly slag itself into an inert lump of silicon and metal.”

  Tyler smiled thinly. “I’m sure there are ways around that,” he said. “But for now, I have my orders.”

  “Assuming the Echo works as well as you claim, will it be for sale after this is over?” Mercier asked.

  “Perhaps,” Charles said cautiously. If the League ever caught him peddling this kind of stealth technology outside Solly territory… “But let’s deal with one thing at a time, shall we?”

  “As you wish,” Tyler said. “You said you were also tying in the communications system?”

  Charles nodded, impressed in spite of himself. He hadn’t expected either man to notice that off-handed comment as it went by. “Obviously, an add-on like this has its limitations, and it can be overwhelmed if enough ships are firing their active sensors at you at the same time. I’m not expecting that to happen on this particular mission, but adding the com system and its transmitters into the mix gives us more to work with, and therefore a higher margin of error. There’s no point in taking any chances we don’t have to.”

  “Reasonable enough,” Tyler said, a bit doubtfully. “And you have twenty-seven more of these things to install?”

  “Correct,” Charles said. “And since it will take progressively more time to attach each one and calibrate it to the others already in place, I’d appreciate it if I could get back to work.”

  “Of course,” Tyler said. “You’re certain there’s nothing my techs can do to assist you?”

  And perhaps happen to accidentally glance over his shoulder as he keyed in the activation codes for the black boxes’ self-destruct mechanisms? “I’m afraid not,” Charles said. “It would take more time to teach your techs how to do it than it would take me to do it myself.”

  “Ah,” Tyler said, smiling thinly. He didn’t buy Charles’s excuse for a minute, of course. Not that Charles had expected him to. “In that case, I’d best let you get back to work. We’re only four days out from Karavani, after all.”

  “On the vector I gave you?” Charles asked.

  Tyler’s eyes flashed. He might not mind an occasional lie, at least not when he knew he was being lied to. But having his professionalism questioned was another matter entirely. “Of course,” he said. “You just get your magic stealthing in place, and let me handle the People’s ship.”

  Charles thought about apologizing, decided he was tired of massaging Peep egos, and just nodded. Tyler eyed him for another moment, then turned and stalked away.

  “You’re sure you’re going to be ready in time?” Mercier asked.

  “If I can avoid long, repetitive conversations, yes,” Charles said. “Anyway, the stealthing doesn’t have to be totally on-line until the Andermani arrive.”

  “Yes,” Mercier said. “I trust you’ve remembered that, poor sensors or not, the mining station will spot our hyper footprint.”

  “And will be perfectly happy to log our mining ship transponder,” Charles said. “Once we’ve established who we are, we’ll load that particular transponder aboard a pinnace, and float it into that collection of floating rock near where we’ll be arriving. As long as we keep our wedge at low-power after that, the station won’t even notice us while we head for our jump-off point. And probably wouldn’t care even if they did.”

  Mercier scowled. “Sloppy,” he said, making the word a curse.

  Charles shrugged. In actual fact, he doubted the station’s casual attitude toward visitors was accidental. This wasn’t the first time the Peeps had brought their illicit Solly shipments through Karavani, and Saint-Just and his friends would hardly want stalwart and conscientious officers like Colonel Mercier manning the local sensors. “In this case, sloppy is good,” he said. “It’ll make our job that much easier.”

  “I suppose.” Mercier gestured to Charles’s bag of goodies. “Where do we go next?”

  Charles consulted his list. “Eight-C.”

  Mercier nodded. “Fine. The lift is back this way.”

  * * *

  “The extractor is the trickiest piece of equipment in the operation,” Chief Engineer Fisher said as he led Weiss though the slightly grimy corridors of the Smith-Nobuko Mining Center orbiting Karavani 5. “It breaks down on a regular basis, and it’s practically impossible to find new parts for. If the Clauswitz Conglomerate decides they’re interested in partnering with us, renovating or replacing it would be the best thing they could bring to the table.”

  “Understood,” Weiss said, feeling his patience straining dangerously close to the breaking point. The three weeks Charles had specified in his note were over, Weiss had been treading water here for over a week, and Chief Engineer Fisher was about to drive him out of his mind.

  It was a decent enough cover story, he supposed, especially given that Ambassador Rubell had had to come up with it essentially on the fly. Weiss was supposedly doing a favor to an Andermani space mining firm that was looking to expand its interests into the People’s Republic. Clauswitz had settled on Smith-Nobuko, the ambassador had told the Citizen Commerce Secretary, and had deftly maneuvered the other into suggesting Karavani as a place for Weiss to begin his unofficial enquiries.

  State Security would undoubtedly have had a fit about letting an Andermani diplomat wander the People’s territory untethered this way, especially out to a suspect system like Karavani. But the whole thing had happened so quickly that StateSec had apparently been left out of the loop.

  Which wasn’t to say Ambassador Rubell wouldn’t be delivered a strong protest, and Weiss subsequently delivered an equally strong official reprimand once he returned to Haven. Still, a rap on the knuckles would be worth it if Charles’s tip paid off.

  Only so far, it hadn’t.

  Weiss continued down the corridor, listening to Fisher’s running commentary with half an ear as he tried to decide what to do. In the nine days he and the diplomatic courier boat Hase had been here not a single additional ship had come calling. The only other vessel in the system, in fact, aside from the station’s own small collection of pinnaces and carriers, was a mining ship surveying a collection of floating rocks a quarter of the way across the system.

  Meanwhile, Fisher and his people were wining and dining Weiss with the surface heartiness and hidden tension of people who desperately need an influx of capital if their business is going to survive.

  Everyone knew the price war demanded from the militaries of the nations involved. Fewer people truly appreciated how deeply the devastation extended to every other level of society.

  Weiss could almost wish he really was scouting for Clauswitz, that he could give these men and women some hope. But he wasn’t; and even if he had been, he knew he couldn’t in good conscience help the miners out of their economic pit. Anything that helped one segment of Peep society ultimatel
y helped Pierre and Saint-Just, as well. Both officially, and on a personal level, that was something Weiss couldn’t do.

  So he would eat their food, and smile at their jokes, and make vague statements that sounded hopeful but really weren’t.

  And unless something interesting happened, in two more days he and his ship would be out of here.

  They had passed the extractor, and Weiss had graciously turned down the offer to get close up and personal with the balky machinery, when his com signaled. “Excuse me,” he said, and keyed it on. “Weiss.”

  “Sir, this is Captain Forman,” the Hase’s commander said. “My apologies, sir, but I was checking over the ship’s logs, and I noticed you haven’t made an entry in two days. May I remind you that regulations state you’re to log every day’s activities in a timely fashion?”

  Weiss felt his heartbeat pick up. That was the code signal he’d set up with Forman. Something was finally happening. “You’re right, of course,” he said. “I’ll come back and fix it as soon as Citizen Fisher and I have finished our current inspection.”

  He signed off. “Is there trouble?” Fisher asked anxiously.

  “Just some paperwork I’ve been neglecting,” Weiss assured him. “I’m afraid my ambassador is something of a stickler for such things.”

  “In that case, you’d best get to it at once,” Fisher said. “We can inspect the cryonic facility later.”

  “If you’re sure it’s all right,” Weiss said.

  “Absolutely,” Fisher said, pathetically eager as always to accommodate his guest. “We can pick this up again when you’re free.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Weiss was back aboard the Hase. “What do we have?” he asked Forman as he strode onto the bridge.

  “About six hours ago a ship came out of hyper,” the captain said, pointing to a spot on the system chart. “Its transponder identified it as the freighter Figaro, out of Haven. It signaled to the station that it was here to pick up an ore shipment.”

  Weiss eyed the position and vector numbers floating beside the freighter’s image on the display. “Interesting that he came out way over there instead of closer to the facility,” he commented. “Not pulling a lot of gees, either, is he?”

  “No, he isn’t,” Forman agreed. “The captain did say he’s having some trouble with his compensators, which could be why he’s accelerating so slowly. That wouldn’t explain his entry point, though.”

  “No,” Weiss said. “Still, nothing that can’t be explained by sloppiness or stupidity.”

  “Yes, sir.” Forman touched another spot on the display. “But then, an hour ago, this ship came out of hyper: Solly transponder—the Winter Vixen—heading for Haven with humanitarian supplies. The captain signaled that he’s having trouble with his nodes—nothing serious, but he preferred to be in an inhabited system while his crew worked on them.”

  “Again, not unreasonable,” Weiss said.

  “Not by itself, no.” Forman smiled tightly and gestured to the navigator. “But being the suspicious type, I had Ibo run a few numbers.” A fresh set of heading and acceleration figures appeared, this group beside the Solly’s position. “And then, just out of curiosity, I had him do a position/time comparison.” He gestured again, and a pair of intersecting lines appeared across the display.

  Weiss stiffened. Five and a half hours from now, the two ships that had casually entered the system from different directions, and ostensibly on different errands, were going to come within a few thousand kilometers of each other.

  And if both held their current accelerations, not only would they meet but they would meet at virtually identical velocities. “A nice, private little rendezvous,” Weiss murmured.

  “And taking place far enough from the station that no one here is likely to even notice if any cargo changes hands,” Forman said. “Certainly not if they do it properly.” He raised his eyebrows. “The question is, should we see if we can get a better view?”

  Weiss chewed his lip. The fact that the Winter Vixen was a Solly ship strongly implied that any transshipments would indeed be of interdicted Solly tech. If he could catch them in the act, the Emperor could either expose the trafficking and stop it, or else keep it secret and use the knowledge as a lever against Haven at some future date.

  But while an Andermani diplomatic courier boat might officially enjoy diplomatic immunity, such immunity wouldn’t hold up very well against laser-head missiles, should either side of the transaction decide they didn’t want to leave witnesses behind. “Do we have anything aboard we could send out in that direction?” he asked Forman. “Maybe strap a sensor buoy to a remote or load it aboard a cutter and see how close we could get it before the rendezvous?”

  “We might,” Forman said doubtfully. “Not much difference between sending a remote and going out ourselves, though. They’d know where it came from, and if they didn’t want witnesses they could still come here and make sure we didn’t live long enough to tell anyone.”

  Weiss looked over at the nav display. “What if we sent out a sensor and headed immediately for the hyper limit? Could we get out before they could reach us?”

  “Certainly,” Forman said. “The problem is that by the time the probe reached them we’d be so far away that it would be trivial for them to block any signal the probe tried to send to us.”

  Which would make the whole exercise pretty futile. “What if we wait until we get some data and then head out?”

  Forman shook his head. “By then the Solly, at least, would probably have enough velocity advantage to catch us. Greg?”

  “It would definitely be a long shot on their part,” Ibo said, his hands skating over the nav board like a skilled surgeon. “Depending on exactly where we aimed we might make it to the hyper limit before they overtook us.” He pointed to one of his displays. “But he’d be within missile range for the last twelve and a half minutes before we could get out. The Peep might be, too, assuming he’s faking his low acceleration.”

  “A simple ‘no’ would have sufficed,” Weiss said, scowling at the two incoming ships. So that was that. He and the entire Andermani Empire could suspect all they wanted, but it looked like that was all they were going to get this time around. “Fine,” he said, turning away. If Charles thought he was going to get paid for this one, he was out of his mind.

  “Wedge!” Ibo snapped.

  Weiss spun back around. “Where?”

  “There,” Forman said, pointing at a spot off to the side of the two incoming freighters. “About three light-minutes from the incoming Solly; eleven and a half from us. Just outside the hyper limit.”

  Weiss felt his forehead crease as he eyed the new marker, then looked over at the sensor display. “That doesn’t look like a normal alpha transition,” he said.

  “No, it doesn’t,” Ibo agreed sounding as puzzled as Weiss felt. “Definitely a spike of gravitic energy, though. Maybe he’s having some trouble with his nodes.” He bent over his instruments. “Let me see what I can coax out of the readings.”

  “Got a reaction,” Forman said tightly. “The Winter Vixen’s…looks like he’s veering off.”

  Weiss chewed at his lip. The gravitic energy from the newcomer’s wedge traveled instantaneously, but the radio signal from its beacon awasn’t nearly so quick. Even if the Hase sent out an inquiry right now, it would be nearly half an hour before the newcomer’s transponder gave them an ID on him. “Can we tell from the wedge what kind of ship it is?” he asked.

  “It’s definitely a warship,” Forman said grimly. “The wedge strength alone shows that. A heavy cruiser, I’d say, or possibly a battlecruiser.”

  “But no way to know whose?”

  “Not at this distance and with a courier boat’s sensors,” Forman said. “But from the Solly’s response, I’m guessing it’s not a Peep.”

  “Speaking of Peeps, there goes the freighter,” Ibo said, pointing. “Veering off. And in roughly the same direction as the Solly, interestingly.”

  �
��Trying to rearrange their rendezvous before the bogie can reach them?” Weiss hazarded.

  “If they are, it’s a fool’s hope,” Forman said. “They’d both have to redo their entire acceleration profiles, which isn’t exactly practical with a warship bearing down on you.”

  “And of course there’s nowhere for them to go with the warship between them and the hyper limit,” Weiss murmured.

  The words were barely out of his mouth when the numbers floating beside the Solly’s position abruptly changed as he angled even farther away from the warship and doubled his acceleration. “Uh-oh,” Forman said grimly. “Looks like the Solly’s gotten a positive ID. And he does not like it.”

  “Like that’s going to help him any,” Ibo muttered. “He’s already inside the bogie’s missile range.”

  “Unless the bogie’s plan is to run him down and get whatever he’s carrying for himself,” Weiss said. “Or is that even possible at this point?”

  “The bogie can certainly catch him,” Forman said doubtfully. “Whether he can disable him without destroying the cargo is a different question.”

  “He’s not even going to try,” Ibo said, his voice grim as he hunched over his displays. “More wedges—fast ones. The bogie’s launched a full missile salvo.” He looked up at Weiss. “He’s targeting the Solly, sir.”

  Weiss curled his hands into helpless fists. The League was officially neutral in this war, which among other things meant that its ships were to be left strictly alone. As a representative of another neutral power, it was Weiss’s duty to do whatever he could to make sure that neutrality was respected.

  But if the Winter Vixen was carrying interdicted cargo, it couldn’t hide behind either Solly neutrality or Solly protection. Regardless, with the Hase sitting here at the station with cold nodes, there was nothing Weiss could do even if he wanted to. Even a challenge and warning-off would take over eleven minutes to get to the combatants.