A Call to Duty by David Weber & Timothy Zahn

Author:David Weber & Timothy Zahn [Weber, David & Zahn, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781476736846
Amazon: 1476736847
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2014-10-07T04:00:00+00:00

Captain Wolfe Guzarwan was halfway through his thick, spice-rubbed steak when a small plastic rectangle came sailing through the open door of Fenris’s wardroom and landed neatly between his plate and his pitcher of margaritas. “What’s this?” he asked, peering down at it.

“Your invite to the ship sale,” Dhotrumi said, a satisfied grin plastered across his face as he stepped into the wardroom. “A genuine Ueshiba governmental ID card, with all the trimmings.”

“Genuine, huh?” Guzarwan said. Wiping his fingers on his napkin, he picked up the card and looked more closely. Sandwiched between thin sheets of translucent plastic was a neat array of embedded chips and circuitry. “I thought you said the IDs from that merchantman were too damaged to get anything from.”

“Vachali said they were too damaged,” Dhotrumi corrected snidely. “But Vachali doesn’t know squat about things that don’t go boom or bang.”

“I wouldn’t make fun of the colonel’s limited range of expertise if I were you,” Guzarwan warned. “So this will pass as real?”

“It’ll get you in at the front of the line,” Dhotrumi assured him. If the implied threat of Vachali’s inflated self-importance was worrying him, he was keeping it a dark secret. “’Course, I don’t know if anyone on Secour’s ever even—”

“Anyone on Marienbad,” Guzarwan corrected. “Secour is the system, Marienbad is the planet.”

“Yeah, thanks, Professor,” Dhotrumi said with an air of strained patience. “Let’s try it again. I don’t know if anyone anywhere in Secour has ever met someone from Ueshiba, let alone scanned one of their IDs. That includes Marienbad, random asteroids, comets, and meteors, and possibly hypothetical space monkeys living on any or all of the system’s three suns. That better?”

“Wonderfully better,” Guzarwan assured him, mentally shaking his head. One of these days Dhotrumi was going to go smart-ass on the wrong person, and end up picking his teeth out of the nearest bulkhead. “I’m more worried about the Havenites calling scam than the Secourians,” Guzarwan said.

“Doesn’t matter who looks at it,” Dhotrumi insisted. “It’ll get you in just fine. Anyway, now that I’ve got the coding I can make more. How many do you want?”

Guzarwan wiggled the ID slowly between his fingers. “I think this will do.”

Dhotrumi’s eyes narrowed. “One ID? I thought we were going after the cruiser and the battlecruiser.”

“We are,” Guzarwan said. “Well, maybe one more. Yes, make it one more ID. Then you can concentrate on working up a few uniforms.”

“Uniforms,” Dhotrumi said, his voice gone flat. “Let me guess. You’ve changed the plan again.”

“Our part, yes,” Guzarwan said. “Your part, no. As long as you can crack the Havenite Navy’s start-up procedures, you’re fine. You’ll just follow Vachali and do what he tells you.”

“I can hardly wait,” Dhotrumi said sourly. “How many uniforms do you want?”

“Let’s say twenty Republic of Haven Navy and twenty Cascan Defense Force,” Guzarwan said. “Make it a mix of ranks.”

Dhotrumi blinked. “Twenty Cascan uniforms?”

“Twenty Cascan uniforms,” Guzarwan confirmed. “You’ve got the specs our clients sent us, right?”

“Right,” Dhotrumi said uncertainly. “It’s just .

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