"I have no idea," Wallace said. "We only have two sightings, after all."
"Both of them alongside wrecked merchies," Honor reminded him. "Why don't we start with what the merchies were carrying."
Wallace's lips compressed briefly. "I don't know."
Honor and Venizelos exchanged glances. "I thought you were part of the team," Venizelos said.
"I was part of the team analyzing the attacker's ID and emission spectrum," Wallace said. "A different team was assigned to look over the merchantmen themselves."
"And, what, you don't talk to each other?"
Wallace's lip twitched. "Our report was instantly classified," he said. "That means no one below a field officer sees it without that field officer's authorization. If their report was classified too..." He shrugged. "At any rate, I haven't heard anything from that end of the investigation."
"That's just great," Venizelos muttered, shaking his head in disgust.
"That's SOP," Honor reminded him, sitting firmly on her own annoyance. "The system's there for a reason, so let's figure out how to work with it. Where's the nearest field office, Mr. Wallace? Posnan?"
"No, that one's been closed down," Wallace said. "The nearest actual station's now at Silesia."
Honor looked at Venizelos. "Any chance we can sneak over there while we're at Tyler's Star?"
Venizelos shook his head. "Not and stay with our schedule," he said. "Our next convoy should already be assembling when we get there with this one. We'll only have a couple of days; and after that we're off to Walther and Telmach, with no way to get back to Silesia."
Honor nodded; she'd pretty much come to the same conclusion. "Where's the closest base after Telmach?" she asked Wallace.
"Actually..." Wallace hesitated. "At the moment, Telmach should do just fine."
"I didn't know we had a base there," Venizelos said, frowning.
"We don't," Wallace said. "What we do have is the Provisioner about to set up shop."
Honor exchanged lifted eyebrows with Venizelos. The Provisioner was a depot ship, a sort of floating goody basket for Royal Navy ships working a long way from home. "I thought Provisioner was at the Gregor Terminus."
"It was," Wallace said. "She's being brought to Silesia as a sort of experiment. The hope is that if our escort ships can stay in the Confederacy longer without having to return to Manticore for supplies and replacement parts, we can guard our convoys more efficiently."
"Sounds reasonable," Venizelos said. "And you're saying there's an ONI field office aboard?"
"Not an office per se," Wallace said, "but there's an officer of command rank who should be receiving these reports on a timely basis."
" 'Should' being the operative word?"
"He will be receiving the reports," Wallace corrected himself tartly. "If you can wait until we reach there, we can hopefully get the merchantman data and start figuring out what sort of ship our raider likes to go after."
"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.