Cardones gave up. "I was just wondering if it was possible for the nodes to have been blown from the inside," he said hesitantly. "I mean, as... sabotage."
He had expected snorts of derision or at the very least a matching set of skyward-rolled eyeballs. But to his surprise—and relief—neither happened. "Interesting," Damana commented. "Seems to me there's one tiny problem with it, though."
"It would be tricky to pull off—" Cardones admitted.
"I wasn't referring to the technical difficulties," Damana cut him off gently. "I was thinking more about the fact that all the members of the crew have been accounted for out there."
Cardones grimaced. He'd felt vaguely like a fool even before bringing it up. Now, at least, he knew the specific parameters of that feeling. "Oh. Right."
"It was a good idea, though," Damana said encouragingly.
"And not one I'm ready to toss out with the bath water quite yet, actually," Sandler said, sounding thoughtful. "True, the number and gender of bodies match up with the official ship's manifest; but who's to say they didn't take on a passenger or extra hand somewhere along the way?"
"Wouldn't they have logged it if they had?" Jackson asked.
"They're supposed to," Hauptman said. "But if someone knew his way around a computer well enough to bring down the impeller, he'd certainly know how to edit a few log entries. My problem is why anyone would bother doing such a thing in the first place."
"Well, there's the cargo, for starters," Jackson said dryly. "Worth—what did we decide? Somewhere in the neighborhood of forty-three million?"
"Sure, but why cripple the ship?" Hauptman said. "If you're going to shut down the impeller, why not do it in such a way that you can bring it up again afterward? That way you can have the cargo and the ship."
"Unless it's a gigantic disinformation scheme," Sandler said. "We've already speculated that someone might have staged these attacks for the purpose of getting their hands on an ONI task ship."
"Which didn't happen," Damana pointed out.
"Yet," Pampas reminded him.
"If they haven't hit us by now, they're not coming," Damana insisted. "But if you're suggesting this is a variation of that scenario, Skipper, I can't see the point. What would they hope to gain?"
"Actually, the Captain may be on to something," Swofford said, rubbing meditatively at his lower lip. "Suppose we brought back a report saying that someone was able to do thus-and-so to a ship's impellers from a million klicks away. What do you suppose BuWeaps' response would be?"
"Ask for a bigger budget," Pampas murmured.
A slightly strained chuckle ran around the table. BuWeaps' appetite for money was legendary. "Right," Swofford said. "I meant after that."
"Well, obviously, they'd start a crash research project," Jackson said. "They'd first try to figure out what this theoretical weapon had done, then how to reproduce the effect, then how to devise a counter against it, and then how to build one for ourselves."
"All the while draining money and manpower from every other project in the pipeline," Damana said, nodding slowly. "It does make a certain amount of lopsided sense, doesn't it?"
"Especially when the whole thing drags on without anyone able to even figure out how the thing works," Sandler said. "A nice piece of distraction, especially with us in the process of gearing up for a war with the Peeps."
"I don't know," Pampas said, gazing down at the table. "Sounds too complicated for a Peep operation, and I can't see who else would bother. I'm still not convinced there really isn't something new out there."
"Neither am I," Sandler assured him. "But at this point it's worth brainstorming all possibilities."
"Well, in that case, you might as well throw this one into the hopper, too," Hauptman said. "It occurs to me that, along with creating a distraction for BuWeaps, this could also push the government into leaning even harder on the Sollies."
"Wait a minute," Jackson frowned. "Where'd the Sollies come into this?"
"No, she's right," Damana agreed. "I mean, where else could this superweapon have come from?"
"And pushing the Sollies any harder than we already have over the leaks in their embargo might goad them into getting their backs up," Hauptman said. "Maybe to the point of scrapping it altogether."
"Boy, there's a thought," Pampas muttered. "A Peep navy armed with Solly weapons."
"All the more reason to get this nailed down as quickly as possible," Sandler said. "Jack, did Arendscheldt Station send you a package while we were out?"
"Yes, Ma'am," Damana said. "I looked it over, and it looks like our next port of call will be Tyler's Star."
"Timing?"
"Seventeen days," Damana said. "A little tight, but we should be able to get there in time for the necessary preparations."
"Excuse me?" Cardones spoke up. "Is there something here I'm missing?"
"Sorry," Sandler apologized. "I forget sometimes that we've got uninitiated company aboard. We've now learned all we can—or at least we will have learned all we can once we get a full system map drawn up—from looking at the aftermath of an attack. What we'd really like next would be to actually witness the weapon in action so that we can get some real-time data on it."
"That would definitely be nice," Cardones agreed. "Are you telling me we have the raider's timetable?"
"In a sense, yes," Sandler said. "People tend to do things in patterns, though they're sometimes not even aware of it. It turns out that the ONI unit in our Arendscheldt consulate has a little computer program that tracks patterns like this."
"With only seven data points?" Cardones asked, blinking with surprise. "That's one amazing program."
"We like it," Sandler said dryly. "At any rate, it says the best guess for the next target is Tyler's Star in seventeen days. So that's where we go."
"Mm," Cardones said, turning to Damana. This still sounded wrong, somehow, but he was hardly in a position to argue the point. "And the preparations you mentioned?"
Damana smiled. "You'll see," he said. "And as a tactical man, I think you're going to like it."
"The last merchie just came out of hyper-space," Lieutenant Joyce Metzinger reported from Fearless's com station. "Reconfiguring her wedge now."
"Group's forming up nicely," Lieutenant Commander Andreas Venizelos added, peering at his monitors. "Looks like we've got a clear run straight in to Zoraster."
"Good," Honor said, looking over the bank of monitors deployed around her command chair. The six ships were indeed shambling into their positions in the designated formation: five merchantmen, plus the heavy cruiser HMS Fearless.
Which was currently pretending very hard to be a sixth merchantman. Honor had ordered their impeller wedge set to low power, imitating that of a civilian ship, and they were running with the ID transponder of a Manticoran merchantman. To anyone out there with prying eyes, they should look like just another small herd of nervous sheep huddling together for mutual protection against the wolves prowling the starways.
The question now was whether or not there were any prying eyes out there. "Commander Wallace?" she called, swiveling toward the tac station.
"Nothing, Ma'am," Wallace reported, an edge of frustration lurking under the even tones of his voice. This was the third stop the convoy had made, and they had yet to see even an ordinary pirate, let alone their alleged Andermani raider.
Honor could understood Wallace's frustration, and could even sympathize with it. But if the fish weren't biting, the fish weren't biting, and there wasn't anything she could do about it. She swiveled back toward the helm display—
"We've got a wedge!" Wallace snapped suddenly. "Coming up from standby; bearing one-one-eight by oh-one-five."