Hunt the Heavens: Book Two of the Shadow Warrior Trilogy Read Online Free PDF

ship
Lollypop
to go through her paces?”
    He handed a transponder to Joshua.
    “Do you hear me?” Joshua asked the ship.
    “I hear you,”
came through the small speaker.
“I recognize your voice. Do you have a command for me?”
    Joshua turned to Cormac. “So what do I ask for?”
    “How about ‘gimme the external dimensions of a
Hatteras-type
92 yacht?’ In case you forget your
Jane’s
, that’s about twenty feet longer than the
Grayle
and a whole lot humpier.”
    Joshua spoke into the transponder.
    “Understood,”
his ship said.
    He heard the hiss of hydraulics, and the
Grayle
grew imperceptibly. As she did, a long oval atop her hull lifted, and a portholed bridge appeared.
    “That’s all false front, of course,” Cormac said. “It extends back over the drive tubes, so you don’t really pick up twenty feet, and the bridge is a dummy, too. I couldn’t figure any way to mickey up hull blisters, either, that wouldn’t conflict with your retractable ones, so I left that alone.
    “The
Grayle
can physically mimic about twenty other ships more or less of her class, from a Foss-class tug, to any number of in-system workships, to one of the new Federation
Sorge
-type spyships. That might be an interesting switch if things get sticky with our friend Cisco.
    “But that’s the frosting on the iceberg, when somebody gets too close. The real changes are in the various signatures, infrared, radar, and so forth. Onscreen, your little putt-putt can look like almost anything from a medium cruiser down to a miner’s asteroid puddle jumper. That’s the real prize. I decided that everybody wants to go small when they’re phonying up what their ship looks like, so I’d go mostly the other way around.
    “Plus your rig’s pretty clean anyway, so I wouldn’t be able to get much tinier an echo.
    “You lost two storerooms and one of your spare staterooms for all the e-junk I loaded in, and you don’t even want to think about drive economy, especially if you’re using any of the drive-signature spoofers.
    “Your performance envelope is still the same, unless you’re using any of the physical phonies in-atmosphere. I went for things that had lots of little bitty stickouts, so there’s a lot more drag. Be a little cautious about going full tilt when you’re surrounded by air if you’ve got any of that crap extruded. I don’t guarantee my welds that far.”
    “You through?”
    “I think so.”
    “Pretty good spiel,” Wolfe said.
    “Pretty good
work
,” Cormac replied. “Now you owe me.”
    “I do that.”
    Cormac turned serious. “And that’s a favor I’m going to call in.”
    • • •
    Wolfe was almost asleep, nodding over a last Armagnac and
Murder in the Cathedral
when the buzzing grew in his ears. He came fully awake, but the sound didn’t stop; it grew still louder.
    He felt menace, danger, and in spite of himself looked around the familiar bridge.
    Pain seared his arm, and he pulled his sleeve back and saw the red welts emerge.
    Then the buzzing was gone, and there was utter silence.
    After a time, the welts subsided.
    Wolfe got up, made strong coffee.
    • • •
    “De Montel?” Wolfe whistled. “This is a
serious
favor.”
    Cormac ran a thumbnail through the foil and pulled the cork. “Now that’s what a proper bottle-opening ought to sound like,” he said. “Never could get used to that crack when the pressure seal breaks.”
    There were two snifters on his desk. He poured one about half full, about an inch into the other.
    “Thought you didn’t touch hard stuff,” Wolfe said.
    “I’m trying to be sociable.”
    Wolfe sniffed, tasted, nodded. He eased himself down into the armchair in front of the desk. “Okay. What’ve you got?”
    Cormac reached into his desk drawer, took out a holo, passed it to Joshua. “Remember her?”
    The woman in the holo had dark, curly hair that frothed down about the shoulders of the sea-green gown she wore. She was on a promenade deck of a ship,