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He caught up with Sandler at the lift. "Sorry to make such a cloak and dagger out of this," Sandler commented 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 "i
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 ru
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."