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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

_"Good afternoon, mistress," said the man behind Adele in the
buffet line. "Or `officer,' I suppose I should say. You're one of young Leary's crew, I take it?"

"He's named Cherry," said Tovera, speaking through the bead placed deep in Adele's right ear canal. It dulled her normal hearing on that side of her head, but it was the only alternative to a surgical implant in her mastoid bone if she wanted commentary from her servant. "He was at the gathering for Captain Leary yesterday."

"I'm Signals Officer Mundy of the Princess Cecile, yes," Adele said. She smiled, though she'd learned that didn't help put others at their ease with her. Some called her smile wintry, while others were less charitable. "And you're a Sexburgan, sir?"

"Ardis Cherry," the fellow said with a deprecating laugh. "And not a Sexburgan, no, just an expatriate like yourself. My business is here on Sexburga, but I'm a citizen of Strymon. Quite a little party here, wouldn't you say?"

Adele reached the head of the table. She took a plate and began plumping food onto it. Although normally abstemious, she'd been extremely poor for fifteen years. The habit of eating everything she could get at formal gatherings of this sort, common in Academe, was so deeply ingrained in her that it could be described as a conditioned response.

"I'm certainly impressed," Adele said truthfully. The next dish looked like candied beetles. She took one; poverty was even better than travel for making one open to new experiences. "There must be three hundred people here." According to Tovera, there were three hundred and forty-seven guests in addition to fifty-odd staff members and the guests' two hundred servants. "Most of Sexburgan society, I would guess."

"Sexburgan and expatriate," Cherry agreed. He seemed somewhat surprised at the food piling up on Adele's plate, then looked quickly away to avoid commenting on it. "Our two communities don't interact a great deal, except for Residency functions like this. We expats have no share in the local government, but our off-planet connections are frequently advantageous in matters of business and the attendant profit. There's rivalry but not hostility, thanks to the Resident Commissioners."

The Residency and its several outbuildings stood on the cliff south of Flood Harbor. If you looked past the buffet tables through the fourth-floor windows—small with thick glazing against the frequent winter storms—you could watch the ocean tossing sullenly all the way to the horizon. The complex was much older than Sexburga's agreement to become an Ally and Protectorate of the Republic early in the past century.

The stack on Adele's plate had risen beyond the practical possibility of adding to it. With a longing glance at a tray of unfamiliar sliced meats, she stepped back—then paused to snatch a roll.

Tovera was outside in the van which had brought Adele to the party, watching a bank of images transmitted by tiny cameras secreted in every room of the Residence. Their fish-eye lenses distorted the views to the point Adele would have found them useless, but Tovera seemed to have no difficulty.

Adele didn't see any reason for such paranoia; but then, she wouldn't have suggested her servant bring a submachine gun to Delos Vaughn's party on Cinnabar. She could certainly appreciate Tovera's fastidious attention to the details of her profession.

Large though the Residency was, the present number of guests comfortably filled it. Most were well-fed and all but the Cinnabar nationals from the RCN and the Commissioner's staff wore bright costumes, though they differed widely in style. Perhaps half the number were Sexburgans; the others came from at least a dozen other worlds within the Republic's sphere of influence.

Lt. Mon got up with three locals who'd been crushed against him at a tiny table, apparently a father, mother, and their strikingly attractive daughter. Mon tossed off another tumbler of tawny liquor. He looked stunned by the attention. Adele was virtually certain that he'd never imagined he'd ever be part of a gathering like this. The daughter took his arm as the parents beamed.

Cherry and Adele moved to the just-vacated table as Mon and his new friends walked toward the stairs to the roof garden. "How often does the Resident have parties of this sort?" Adele asked as they waited for a servant to clear the table of litter.

"Admiral Torgis gave a similar do on Republic Day both years that he's been here as Resident," Cherry said, settling down opposite her. He was in his forties and well-fed, if not exactly fat. "This is obviously because of Mr. Leary's presence."

"Because of Kostroma, you mean?" Adele said. She started with the candied bug since it seemed to watch her sadly from its perch at the edge of her dish. "Because surely a great deal of RCN traffic passes through Sexburga in the course of a year? Vessels more prepossessing than a corvette, that is."

Cherry tapped the side of his nose. "Oh, the admiral's given out that it's because of the business on Kostroma," he said, "and I suppose most of the guests believe that. But some of us know the real reason Speaker Leary's son has been sent on this mission. I understand you're an intimate of Mr. Leary yourself?"

Adele swallowed, hoping that her shocked expression would be put down to the mouthful she'd just consumed. The bug had been pickled before being coated with honey; the combination of flavors would take a great deal of getting used to.

"In a manner of speaking," she said. "We're on duty for the full period of the cruise, of course."

Adele had bitten back a retort along the lines of, "And what do you mean by `intimate,' sir?" when she recalled that she had duties to Mistress Sand. If this fat civilian was ready to blurt secrets to Mr. Leary's light-o'-love, then it wasn't the business of Mistress Sand's agent to disabuse him.

"Yes, yes, of course," Cherry agreed through a nibble of bread. "The deception has worked excellently, you'll be pleased to know. Why, the common folk here are falling over all of you on the say-so of Admiral Torgis. And you'll notice that the admiral pretends he doesn't even know that the President-to-be has arrived on Sexburga."

"Delos Vaughn isn't here," Tovera agreed. "Nor is Mistress Zane. All the other persons who met Captain Leary at the Captal da Lund's dwelling are here."

"Yes," Adele said mildly as she speared a sausage from her plate. Another result of her earlier privations was that she tended to the foods of the highest calory and protein content; starches and greens were relatively cheap. "Quite a clever ploy for a man who appears to be a bluff old spacer, isn't it?"

"Between us . . ." Cherry said. Surely no one could be so great a fool as to believe that anything shared among conspirators as amateurish as Cherry and his friends wouldn't also be common knowledge with anyone else who cared? "I think the idea came from young Gerson. He's the one who's been appointed as our liaison with the Republic."

"I see," said Adele. "I'd noticed that Mr. Gerson spends rather more money than his position on the admiral's staff would run to. That explains it."

Which it did. Adele had examined Admiral Torgis's record, both the public version and the one Mistress Sand had provided. The admiral was exactly what he seemed, a well-born, reasonably competent RCN officer who'd been put in place on Sexburga because of its value as a fleet base if trouble broke out again in the Sack.

Giving a gala reception for a naval hero was perfectly in character for him. Involvement in subtle diplomatic and intelligence activity was as unlikely as Torgis defecting to the Alliance.

And to corrupt a man like Gerson, who borrowed large sums of money and spent it in the form of cash, would be no more difficult than persuading a bitch in heat to couple. Adele didn't know what Gerson's unpleasant vice was, but it was obvious that he had one.

On the third floor guests danced to the accompaniment of a percussion band which played castanets, tambourines, and a glockenspiel. The effect was melodious and, though penetrating, didn't overwhelm speech even on the outskirts of the dancers. When the stairwell door opened, however, chiming music poured out over the refreshment room. It drew the attention of all the diners.

Admiral Torgis, imposing in Dress Whites instead of civilian attire, strode out of the stairwell looking even more red-faced than he had when Adele met him in the reception line. Behind him, his right hand gripping her left and pulling her along, was a woman who could pass for his twin sister but was in fact his wife. Lady Torgis wore a white dress with gold braid in the form of panels and hussar knots: not a uniform, but close enough to one to make her Tweedledee to the admiral's Tweedledum.

"Damned elevators in this place take forever!" Torgis boomed. "Who needs them, eh, Lieutenant? A companionway was always good enough for me during forty years of service!"

Daniel Leary emerged from the stairwell at a polite distance behind Lady Torgis. Instead of dragging his companion, a striking redheaded woman, the way Torgis did his wife, Daniel supported her in the crook of his right arm. Adele would've said that the redhead looked healthy enough to climb stairs by herself, but no doubt Daniel knew his business. Climbing stairs probably wasn't the—person's—preferred form of exercise.

Daniel caught Adele's eye and waved his free hand to her. She smiled back, causing Cherry's face to brighten with speculation, then go studiously blank.

Behind Daniel and his tramp came a stream of other guests, panting and distressed. The line was long enough to keep the door to the third floor open; thus the dance music flooding out to announce Admiral Torgis's arrival.

"Holodi of Zampt and her husband, they're factors for Zampt and the Learoyd Cluster," Tovera said as the first couple came into view. Her running commentary continued, identifying those following Torgis as among the leading residents of Sexburga.

They were divided equally between natives and expatriates, just as Cherry had suggested. When the Resident Commissioner had decided not to wait for the elevator, all his chief guests had to follow suit.

Adele felt a faint smile play at the corners of her mouth. There were extensive floral arrangements on the buffet tables. If Admiral Torgis picked an iris and began chewing on its stem, his guests would strip the displays of iris . . . though Adele believed they were poisonous. She withstood the urge to pull out her personal data unit and get a certain answer to the question.

"Let's get some more tables here for me and the lieutenant!" Admiral Torgis said. Harassed servants held a quick conclave, then shunted food from one of the serving tables to the others and brought the emptied one out to join the smaller eating tables.

"Adele," Daniel said, stepping over to her while the admiral's orders were being obeyed, "allow me to present Mistress Kira . . ."

He looked suddenly stricken.

"Lully," Tovera said in Adele's ear as the two of them rose.

"I believe you're Mistress Lully," Adele repeated in straight-faced amusement, touching fingertips with the redhead. She'd already noticed that women didn't clasp one another on Sexburga—any more than they did on the Alliance worlds. "Very glad to meet you. I'm Signals Officer Mundy of the Princess Cecile."

"Leary, bring your Mundy over to join us," Torgis boomed. "Who's that, Cherry? You come over here too, Cherry, if you like. Anyone good enough for the company of an RCN officer is good enough to eat with me!"

Servants were rustling chairs from around the room. One of them had started to snatch Adele's when she stood up, then froze in horror as he realized the junior officer had become one of the admiral's pets. Working for a master whose whims were as strong and (from a diplomatic perspective) unconventional as those of Admiral Torgis must be a nervous business at best.

"You had luck, Leary," the admiral said in a voice that could probably be heard on the floor below over the orchestra. "You know it and I know it. But all the luck in the world wouldn't have saved Kostroma if you hadn't been a man and a damned fine officer. By God, I'm glad the RCN still makes men the way she did when I was a cadet!"

"Hear, hear!" cried the members of his entourage, locals and expatriates evidently trying to outclap one another. They'd have been cheering just as loudly if the Resident Commissioner had called for infanticide and immediate submission to the Alliance of Free Stars. In Sexburga's social hierarchy, the Cinnabar representative was the sun and everyone else seemed desperate to become the planet in the nearest orbit.

Daniel leaned close to Adele's ear and whispered, "I know, it's all nonsense . . . but I'd be a liar if I didn't admit it feels good."

Adele patted him lightly below his gold-encrusted right epaulette. That raised eyebrows from not only Cherry but Mistress Lully as well.

"Quite all right, my dear," Adele said to the local woman in an accent redolent of the highest strata of Xenos society . . . to which she had, after all, belonged. "Our association is purely professional."

Good God, I am jealous! Adele realized in shock. Not of Daniel's body, of course; but the outrage on this red-haired trollop's face at a hint of intimacy between her and Daniel had lit an unexpected fuse in Adele's mind as well.

"Actually, Daniel," Adele said, uncertain whether or not he could hear over the bustle, "it's not nonsense. The admiral is quite correct about what happened on Kostroma."

The buffet was for ordinary guests; Admiral Torgis and those about him would have a sit-down dinner. The servants were now handing the expanded entourage into chairs, trying to judge status and fearful of their master's anger if they mistook his preferences.

Daniel went into the chair at Lady Torgis's right hand. After a moment's hesitation, the stick-thin, gray-haired female majordomo put Adele herself on the admiral's right and Mr. Cherry, of course, beside her. The Strymonian businessman looked as amazed as Mon had at the preference.

There were service stairs or at least a dumbwaiter, because three servants hustled in through the side door bearing place settings. The china was blue-and-gold with the RCN insignia, but instead of metal the flatware was made of plastic or—

"Scaleware from the Cassiterides, Admiral?" Daniel said in unfeigned enthusiasm. "I don't believe I've ever seen a set so fine."

Adele had her personal data unit half out of its pocket before she caught herself. Cosmographical directory, initial sort CASSITERIDES, sub-sort SCALEWARE . . .

Not her job, not necessary, and very much not the right time to call attention to herself. Daniel was bonding with the former admiral. In a thoroughly innocent fashion, of course; simply by being his own engaging self.

"You're not likely to see a better set ever, Leary," the admiral said. "I haven't and I've got a few years on you. A few decades, by God! But I wasn't more than your age when a grateful prince from Cassis gave them to me for saving his son and heir from the Alliance privateer who'd captured his ship. In the knickers of time, if you catch my drift. The privateersman was as queer as old Jaunty Teillor who commanded the Home Squadron when I was a boy."

Torgis, his wife, and Daniel all bellowed with laughter. Mistress Lully looked puzzled, and the member of the admiral's staff hovering in the background winced with psychic pain.

A servant set Adele's place; she picked up the outermost spoon and examined it more closely. The material weighed amazingly little. She'd thought the color was gray, but in fact there was a lambent fire—gold to green to a black that was total absence of hue—at the core of the piece. It was so clear that she could read the whorls of her finger pads through it.

"Cassis III is a sea world, Adele," Daniel said, leaning toward her over the table as the fingers of his right hand caressed Ms. Lully's bare shoulders. "The top of the food chain is the saberfish that grows to forty feet long. During the Hiatus only princely houses were permitted to have flatware made from saberfish scales, and even now very few sets of the real thing ever leave the planet."

"Right, right," Torgis said, bobbing his head with the animation of a man who believes he's met his soul mate. "They fob off muck made from the gill-rakers of filter-feeding worms on foreigners! This is the real thing. You can tell by the axial pinctatus, see?"

He held a fork up to the light, apparently trying to display the internal color that Adele had already noticed. Other guests peered at their host's waving utensil instead of looking at their own.

The expressions of Daniel and Admiral Torgis suddenly shifted. The humor was gone, replaced by an eager intentness. Around them the party continued to swirl.

Daniel's hand lay on Ms. Lully's back, but he had become still. A servant offered Torgis an urn of consomme she'd plucked from the serving table; another servant held the ladle ready to fill his bowl. The admiral ignored them.

Adele felt the rumble, though she wouldn't have noticed it for another minute or more had not the spacers' attitude shown her there was something to notice. Almost simultaneously the voice of Woetjans, the duty officer tonight, said through a roar of static in Adele's ear, "Bridge to Signals. The Winckelmann's on her way down with two destroyers waiting in orbit to follow. Warn the captain that Pettin's arrived, mistress. Bridge out."

"The thrusters are set to pulse in triple sequence," Admiral Torgis said, "and they're just as far out of phase as they always were on the Maspero when I was her third lieutenant. That was the sort of idea that only a naval constructor who'd never tuned a thruster himself would've come up with."

"She's Archaeologist class, all right," said Daniel, rising to his feet. The poor servant barely avoided sloshing herself with an urn of soup. "That means Commodore Pettin's here in the Winckelmann, and that means, Admiral, that my officers and I need to return to the Princess Cecile at once."

"Of course you do, Lieutenant," Admiral Torgis said, also rising. "The service of the Republic is a hard life, I'll tell the world—but by God, I wish I had a real command myself instead of being a damned chair-bound politician like they've made me!"

"But Danny . . . ?" Ms. Lully said with a stricken pout. "You were going to come out in the desert with me tonight to watch the moons rise."

Daniel bent down and kissed her forehead, right at the part from which the red hair flared to either side like a boat's bow wave. "Sorry, child, and you can't imagine how sorry I am, but I need to get back to my ship ASAP or sooner yet."

"We can get there fastest if I fly you," the woman said. "Remember, I have my aircar here."

Just possibly she wasn't the bubble-brain Adele had assumed. At any rate, Lully had grasped the salient point of the situation and responded to it with impeccable logic.

"Yes!" Daniel said. "How many seats does it have, dear one?"

"Well, four," Lully said through a recurrence of the pout. "But I thought you and I could—"

"Right!" said Daniel. "Lieutenant Mon! Front and center! We've got to be aboard the Princess Cecile before the commodore opens his ports."

Mon had already pushed in through the double doors from the balcony. He walked with the studied earnestness of a man who was sure that his head would fall off if he didn't keep it centered squarely over his spine.

Daniel grimaced and turned to Adele. "And you as well, Officer Mundy," he said. "If we get back in time, you'll take over as duty officer from Woetjans. I'm certain that the commodore will expect the duty officer to be sober, and I'm equally certain that Woetjans is even less likely to meet that standard that I am myself."

Lifting Ms. Kira Lully, now chauffeur, in much the same fashion that he'd carried her up the stairs earlier, Daniel said to the room, "Good citizens, duty calls! May my every landing find people half so generous as you!"

He strode to the stairwell, the redhead clutched against him like pirate's booty. Though unburdened, Adele struggled to catch up. Even so Lt. Mon was treading on her heels as she reached the door. Real spacers were amazingly surefooted when moving through clutter.

"By God, we'll all go greet the squadron!" Admiral Torgis cried behind them. "Gerson, get my car ready!"

Kira Lully held her trim red-and-gold aircar in ground effect just above the pavement until a roar of steam drowned the snarl of the Winckelmann's plasma thrusters. Only then did she drop the vehicle's nose over the cliff edge and plunge toward the Princess Cecile in spirals so tight that centrifugal force pressed the occupants outward.

Daniel had thought of suggesting he take the controls himself, but he'd kept his mouth shut for fear that the redhead would order them all out of the vehicle in a fit of pique. As it turned out, Kira was a much better driver than he was.

Also his fear that she'd blind herself by looking into the heavy cruiser's exhaust was remarkably silly when he used his head—which wasn't the part of Daniel Oliver Leary most often to the fore when he was dealing with pretty girls. Obviously, nobody living adjacent to Flood Harbor could be ignorant of the dangers of starships landing and lifting off.

"She's been running on eighty percent of her masts, and four of her thrusters are out of service too," Lt. Mon remarked from the rear seat beside Adele. "Christ, I'd forgotten what a bucket the Winckelmann was."

"How do you tell?" Adele asked over the echoes still hammering around the cliffs. "About the masts, I mean, since they're all withdrawn for landing."

Mon liked and respected Adele, but he had an abrasive manner at the best of times . . . which didn't include times he was as drunk as he was tonight. Before he could snap, "Use your bloody eyes, woman!" or the like, Daniel said, "Antennas five, six, ten, and twelve in each row haven't been unbound at least since the Winckelmann lifted off from Cinnabar, Adele. You can see the pitting from micrometeorites is uniform over the hinges and locking pins."

Kira dived into the warm salty fog which the Winckelmann's thrusters lifted from the harbor. The big cruiser was indeed a sad sight to anyone who knew ships: a clumsy design, now overage and poorly maintained in the long interval of peace. Commodore Pettin could see that as well as any other officer of his seniority, and it would gall him like a boil on the butt.

"I'm going to miss you tonight, Danny," Kira said plaintively as she fluffed them to a featherlight landing on the dock where the Princess Cecile's gangplank terminated. The harbor's surface was twitching from the nearby arrival of 13,000 tons of heavy cruiser, but the concrete slips kept other vessels from bouncing around unduly.

Adjacent to the corvette was the depot ship Admiral Torgis had moved there this morning. It was a freighter, now nameless save for its pennant number: SDN 3391. All but four antennas had been removed, and its High Drive had probably been cannibalized in the distant past to equip some warship that had limped down to Flood Harbor.

Under normal circumstances the depot ship provided stores, power for vessels whose fusion bottles were deadlined, and a repair shop. Tonight her cavernous bays were decked out with bunting, food, and liquor for the Princess Cecile's crew.

"Not half so much as I'll miss you, sweet thing," Daniel said, knowing as he framed the words that the truth was a little more complex. True, he'd been looking forward to the night and morning—and who wouldn't, after the run the Princess Cecile had just made? But it was even more true that Daniel would willingly forego the redhead's charms if there was just some way he could avoid the interview with Commodore Pettin he knew was coming. Why in the name of all that's holy did the pulpit-pounding commodore have to land in the middle of the Resident Commissioner's party for the crew?

Daniel hopped over the side of the aircar without bothering to open the door. "Mon," he said, "roust the crew as best you can—they'll understand it's an emergency. Adele, get onto the bridge soonest and take over. With luck we'll have the anchor watch sorted before—"

"Christ on a crutch!" Mon snarled. "The sanctimonious old bastard's making a hot exit!"

The Winckelmann was opening up in the usual fashion of airing ship on arrival. Hatches were lifting, the turrets for the secondary battery of plasma weapons were being cranked out to provide more room within the hull, and crewmen double-timed onto the outriggers to unlock access plates that couldn't easily be reached from inside.

Normally no one would disembark until the process was complete. This time, as soon as the hatches serving the water-level stern hold had clamshelled wide enough open, the twelve-place aircar assigned to heavy cruisers as a utility vehicle—the Princess Cecile had a jeep that could carry four if they were good friends—roared out.

Mon, not sober but used to functioning with a heavy load aboard, swung his legs over the side of Lully's car and ran for the depot ship with a rolling gait. The Winckelmann's arrival had called a good half the crew out already. Those who were vaguely sober were mustering less-steady comrades and helping them to the quay.

Adele tried to jump out of the aircar. She tripped, which was so likely a result that Daniel had already turned to grab her when he realized what she intended. He swung her to her feet, then tucked her into the crook of his arm and trotted for the corvette. It was much the way he'd carried the redhead, Kira, in what now seemed the dim past.

"But Danny . . ." the girl called. He heard the words and instantly discarded them as being of no importance under the present circumstances.

Daniel's reason for carrying his signals officer was quite simple. Adele had to be on the bridge when Commodore Pettin came aboard. Woetjans wasn't going to pass Pettin's standards of Ready for Duty, though the bosun would have the liquor bottles hidden and other evidence of good-fellowship out of the way.

Woetjans's taste ran to men who could make her look frail, though like most spacers she'd make do with what was available after a voyage like the past one. Daniel fleetingly wondered how lucky she'd been here on Sexburga.

Though, by the living God! absolutely nothing harmful to the good order of the RCN was going on here. The problem was that Commodore Pettin wouldn't see it that way; and thank God—thank Admiral Anston—for an experienced crew which could react to changed circumstances without the captain's orders.

Barnes and Inescu were on guard at the main hatchway. They'd managed to get to their feet and lift the stocked impellers they'd been issued for the duty. "Here comes the captain!" Inescu called cheerfully as Daniel pounded over the narrow gangplank with Adele in his arms.

It was a tossup in Daniel's mind whether Pettin would be more infuriated by a drunken officer of the watch or by one who was soaking wet from falling into the harbor in her haste to board. Adele was a solid weight, tall and not as slender as she looked from a distance. She didn't speak and held herself as stiff as a balance pole. Daniel suspected she didn't understand what was going on, but early in her contact with the RCN she'd learned how to keep from getting in the way in a crisis.

Daniel saw three earthenware jugs floating between the corvette's hull and the starboard outrigger. Barnes also noticed them and leaned over the hatchway, pointing his impeller.

"No!" Daniel shouted over the howl of the Winckelmann's car landing on the quay beside the redhead's. Barnes was too drunkenly focused to hear anything. He squeezed the trigger—

WhackWHOCK 

—and the weapon spat a fifty-grain pellet of osmium into the water at five times the speed of sound.

Daniel half-turned, trying to shield Adele, but the waterspout was thirty feet high and drenched both of them. There were bits of shattered pottery in with the froth and flotsam. Daniel couldn't say much for Barnes's judgment, but he shot straight despite being pie-eyed drunk.

Daniel set Adele onto the Princess Cecile's entryway. Barnes blinked in horror at what he'd done. "Sorry, sir," he mumbled. He lowered the impeller's muzzle so that it pointed at Daniel's feet instead of in line with his belt buckle.

Adele headed for the bridge without further direction. The soles of all RCN footgear, even the shiny half-boots Daniel wore with his whites, were of high-hysteresis rubber that gripped wet or dry. Adele squelched with each step, but she didn't fall down.

Daniel took the impeller from Barnes, switched the power off so that the coils couldn't accelerate another slug—into the harbor, into Daniel himself, or into God knew where—and returned it to the spacer. He could hear shouts echoing through the corvette as crewmen faced the sudden emergency.

"Steady on, Barnes," Daniel said quietly. "Try not to shoot the commodore."

Though that possibility had a degree of attraction just at this moment.

Daniel turned and braced himself to attention, facing the three RCN officers and the sergeant of marines tramping down the gangplank. Captain, acting Commodore, Josip Pettin was in the lead. He was a lean, white-haired man, fifty but looking older. Normally his face would merely have been pale, but at this moment Pettin was so angry that his expression could have been carved from sun-dried bone.

Daniel saluted. He'd never managed anything so crisp during his years at the Academy. He might as well have mooned the commodore for all the good it seemed to do.

"Sir!" Daniel said. "Welcome aboard RCS Princess Cecile! I'm Lieutenant Leary, reporting to you in accordance with my orders."

"Leary . . ." Commodore Pettin said, his nostrils flaring as though he detected a horrible stench. Maybe he did: even Daniel noticed Barnes's breath, and it wasn't that there was no alcohol on his own. "I queried Condor Control from orbit when I saw a corvette in the harbor. The controller told how it came there. Furthermore, they very kindly added that your splendidly handled ship left Cinnabar ten days behind my squadron and still arrived on Sexburga well ahead of me!"

Oh, God, that had torn it. No wonder Pettin looked mad enough to gnaw a junior lieutenant down to his boots.

The officers with Pettin were a plump, worried-looking commander—probably the Winckelmann's executive officer—and a lugubrious young woman with the single collar flash of a midshipman detailed as an aide with the rank of acting lieutenant. The sergeant of marines was just that—and it was instructive that Pettin hadn't brought a marine officer instead. This was a burly fellow whose nightstick had gotten real use in the past.

"Sir, the Navy Office directed me to spare no effort to join the squadron at Sexburga despite our late start," Daniel said, his eyes unblinkingly focused on the center of the hatch instead of meeting the commodore's glaring fury. It wasn't much of a lie, and it seemed for a moment that it might just calm Pettin's anger. Then—

Oh God. Kira whatever-her-name-is was trotting primly down the gangplank. The skintight skirt didn't hobble her in the least.

"Danny, sweetheart?" she called in a voice so clear that nobody within fifty feet could mistake the words. "You didn't kiss me good-bye, darling."

The quartet from the Winckelmann turned. The marine's face showed momentary appreciation, then went professionally blank. Commodore Pettin looked at Daniel again.

"Lieutenant Leary," he said. "I was concerned when I detected signs of obvious inebriation in the tones of the duty officer when I queried your vessel from orbit."

His voice started gently enough but it quickly rose to be heard over the howl of another aircar landing. The vehicle was ornate, with enamel escutcheons on the doors and a fringed canopy.

"But I never, never in my worst nightmares, could have imagined the sort of debauchery that I saw taking place as we landed! I will not ask for your explanation, because there cannot possibly be an explanation!"

"Danny . . . ?" Kira peeped. Even she seemed to have come to the realization that something was wrong.

The Princess Cecile's crew—the bulk of the spacers who hadn't had time to scramble aboard before the commodore's aircar arrived—had formed in ranks on the quay as though for an inspection. Through them, moving with the stumping precision of a man who'd spent his time in a starship's rigging, came Admiral Torgis with civilian aides in his train.

"Do you have anything to say before I remove you from command and order your confinement for court-martial?" the commodore shouted.

"Sir!" said Daniel. It was reflex, drilled into him at the Academy and absolutely the only thing to say under these circumstances. "No excuse, sir."

"Who's that?" boomed Admiral Torgis. "Pettin, isn't it? I'm glad you finally got here, Captain. You can have a drink with me in honor of Lieutenant Leary, who's been posted to your command."

"Admiral?" Commodore Pettin said, half turning and forcing his face in the direction of a smile; not very far in that direction. "The condition of the crew . . . Have you noticed . . . ?"

He gestured toward the depot ship, a little flick of his hand as though trying to brush away a fly. His subordinates had stepped aside and stood at parade rest, studiously not looking at either the commodore or the admiral.

Kira vacillated on the gangplank. Torgis took the girl by the waist in both hands and swung her behind him, showing skill and balance that a rigger could appreciate.

"Quite a little party, isn't it?" he said with a chuckle. Daniel noted a hard glint in the admiral's eyes, though: he knew exactly what had been going on when he arrived here and what would have happened if he'd been a few minutes later. "Thought it was the least I could do. Paid for it myself, that is. Though I think I could've justified Commission funds for the crew that saved Kostroma from the Alliance."

"But Admiral," Pettin said, swaying slightly with the tension he held himself under. "The condition of the officers as well as the crew—"

"Well, for God's sake, Pettin," Torgis said. He stepped into the Princess Cecile's entryway, pressing the Winckelmann's personnel back by sheer force of personality. "What do you expect their condition to be after a run like they made? Seventeen days from Cinnabar to here. I never knew of a crew who pushed so hard. They'll be fit to fight as soon as yours are, though, I warrant."

A second ship was descending; one of the squadron's destroyers, Daniel assumed, though he couldn't see from where he stood within the corvette. The thruster pulses were audible, though it would be some minutes before the sound smothered normal conversation.

Though "normal conversation" didn't describe what was going on here.

"Sir, the duty officer was obviously drunk!" Pettin said.

"With respect, sir!" said Adele Mundy in a hard voice without a hint of respect in it. "I believe I was eating dinner at the time the Winckelmann announced its arrival, but I most certainly am not drunk."

Daniel blinked in surprise, then choked back a laugh when he realized that Adele's statement was literally true. She stood ramrod straight on the companionway from C Level. She'd changed into her utility uniform, and he knew without question that the ship's log now would indicate she'd been on duty all night.

Pettin looked as though he'd been sandbagged. Admiral Torgis proved he understood as well as Woetjans did that the first rule of brawling is that you always kick your opponent when he's down.

"And if she isn't, that's a violation of my instructions to Lieutenant Leary, Captain," the admiral said. "I made it as clear as I knew how that every member of his crew should have a good time at my expense tonight. I may be retired, but there's still people in the Navy Office who'd listen if I told them the RCN doesn't need Goody Two-shoes for commanding officers. There'll be no Alliance attack here with the satellite defenses in place."

"Thank you, Admiral," Adele said in ringingly aristocratic tones, "but my sobriety is entirely a personal choice. I would be unsuitable as a commanding officer for other reasons as well."

"I see," said Commodore Pettin. He shuddered like a man lifted from freezing water. His tongue touched his lips. "Lieutenant Leary, report to me at ten hundred hours tomorrow."

He looked at Torgis and added in a voice that would have been venomous if it had more life, "If that meets with your approval, Admiral?"

The destroyer was within three thousand feet, slowing to a near hover as the captain steadied her for landing. Admiral Torgis, raising his voice to be heard over the throb of plasma, said, "I'm retired, remember, Captain. In any case, I wouldn't interfere with another officer giving proper commands to his subordinates."

Daniel had been standing at attention from the moment of the commodore's arrival. "Sir!" he said, throwing another salute. It wasn't nearly as crisp as the first; maybe despair was what he needed to perform drill and ceremony properly. "Ten hundred hours tomorrow, sir!"

Commodore Pettin turned and stalked off across the gangplank without returning the salute or further acknowledging the Resident Commissioner. His subordinates followed, each with a surreptitious salute to the former admiral.

The Princess Cecile's crew must have heard the entire exchange; now they began to cheer. They were so loud that Daniel could hear them until the destroyer licked the harbor into a roar of steam.

The cheering wasn't going to help matters tomorrow morning; but even before there hadn't been much doubt about how Daniel's formal interview would go.

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Contents
Framed

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Contents

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

_"Good afternoon, mistress," said the man behind Adele in the
buffet line. "Or `officer,' I suppose I should say. You're one of young Leary's crew, I take it?"

"He's named Cherry," said Tovera, speaking through the bead placed deep in Adele's right ear canal. It dulled her normal hearing on that side of her head, but it was the only alternative to a surgical implant in her mastoid bone if she wanted commentary from her servant. "He was at the gathering for Captain Leary yesterday."

"I'm Signals Officer Mundy of the Princess Cecile, yes," Adele said. She smiled, though she'd learned that didn't help put others at their ease with her. Some called her smile wintry, while others were less charitable. "And you're a Sexburgan, sir?"

"Ardis Cherry," the fellow said with a deprecating laugh. "And not a Sexburgan, no, just an expatriate like yourself. My business is here on Sexburga, but I'm a citizen of Strymon. Quite a little party here, wouldn't you say?"

Adele reached the head of the table. She took a plate and began plumping food onto it. Although normally abstemious, she'd been extremely poor for fifteen years. The habit of eating everything she could get at formal gatherings of this sort, common in Academe, was so deeply ingrained in her that it could be described as a conditioned response.

"I'm certainly impressed," Adele said truthfully. The next dish looked like candied beetles. She took one; poverty was even better than travel for making one open to new experiences. "There must be three hundred people here." According to Tovera, there were three hundred and forty-seven guests in addition to fifty-odd staff members and the guests' two hundred servants. "Most of Sexburgan society, I would guess."

"Sexburgan and expatriate," Cherry agreed. He seemed somewhat surprised at the food piling up on Adele's plate, then looked quickly away to avoid commenting on it. "Our two communities don't interact a great deal, except for Residency functions like this. We expats have no share in the local government, but our off-planet connections are frequently advantageous in matters of business and the attendant profit. There's rivalry but not hostility, thanks to the Resident Commissioners."

The Residency and its several outbuildings stood on the cliff south of Flood Harbor. If you looked past the buffet tables through the fourth-floor windows—small with thick glazing against the frequent winter storms—you could watch the ocean tossing sullenly all the way to the horizon. The complex was much older than Sexburga's agreement to become an Ally and Protectorate of the Republic early in the past century.

The stack on Adele's plate had risen beyond the practical possibility of adding to it. With a longing glance at a tray of unfamiliar sliced meats, she stepped back—then paused to snatch a roll.

Tovera was outside in the van which had brought Adele to the party, watching a bank of images transmitted by tiny cameras secreted in every room of the Residence. Their fish-eye lenses distorted the views to the point Adele would have found them useless, but Tovera seemed to have no difficulty.

Adele didn't see any reason for such paranoia; but then, she wouldn't have suggested her servant bring a submachine gun to Delos Vaughn's party on Cinnabar. She could certainly appreciate Tovera's fastidious attention to the details of her profession.

Large though the Residency was, the present number of guests comfortably filled it. Most were well-fed and all but the Cinnabar nationals from the RCN and the Commissioner's staff wore bright costumes, though they differed widely in style. Perhaps half the number were Sexburgans; the others came from at least a dozen other worlds within the Republic's sphere of influence.

Lt. Mon got up with three locals who'd been crushed against him at a tiny table, apparently a father, mother, and their strikingly attractive daughter. Mon tossed off another tumbler of tawny liquor. He looked stunned by the attention. Adele was virtually certain that he'd never imagined he'd ever be part of a gathering like this. The daughter took his arm as the parents beamed.

Cherry and Adele moved to the just-vacated table as Mon and his new friends walked toward the stairs to the roof garden. "How often does the Resident have parties of this sort?" Adele asked as they waited for a servant to clear the table of litter.

"Admiral Torgis gave a similar do on Republic Day both years that he's been here as Resident," Cherry said, settling down opposite her. He was in his forties and well-fed, if not exactly fat. "This is obviously because of Mr. Leary's presence."

"Because of Kostroma, you mean?" Adele said. She started with the candied bug since it seemed to watch her sadly from its perch at the edge of her dish. "Because surely a great deal of RCN traffic passes through Sexburga in the course of a year? Vessels more prepossessing than a corvette, that is."

Cherry tapped the side of his nose. "Oh, the admiral's given out that it's because of the business on Kostroma," he said, "and I suppose most of the guests believe that. But some of us know the real reason Speaker Leary's son has been sent on this mission. I understand you're an intimate of Mr. Leary yourself?"

Adele swallowed, hoping that her shocked expression would be put down to the mouthful she'd just consumed. The bug had been pickled before being coated with honey; the combination of flavors would take a great deal of getting used to.

"In a manner of speaking," she said. "We're on duty for the full period of the cruise, of course."

Adele had bitten back a retort along the lines of, "And what do you mean by `intimate,' sir?" when she recalled that she had duties to Mistress Sand. If this fat civilian was ready to blurt secrets to Mr. Leary's light-o'-love, then it wasn't the business of Mistress Sand's agent to disabuse him.

"Yes, yes, of course," Cherry agreed through a nibble of bread. "The deception has worked excellently, you'll be pleased to know. Why, the common folk here are falling over all of you on the say-so of Admiral Torgis. And you'll notice that the admiral pretends he doesn't even know that the President-to-be has arrived on Sexburga."

"Delos Vaughn isn't here," Tovera agreed. "Nor is Mistress Zane. All the other persons who met Captain Leary at the Captal da Lund's dwelling are here."

"Yes," Adele said mildly as she speared a sausage from her plate. Another result of her earlier privations was that she tended to the foods of the highest calory and protein content; starches and greens were relatively cheap. "Quite a clever ploy for a man who appears to be a bluff old spacer, isn't it?"

"Between us . . ." Cherry said. Surely no one could be so great a fool as to believe that anything shared among conspirators as amateurish as Cherry and his friends wouldn't also be common knowledge with anyone else who cared? "I think the idea came from young Gerson. He's the one who's been appointed as our liaison with the Republic."

"I see," said Adele. "I'd noticed that Mr. Gerson spends rather more money than his position on the admiral's staff would run to. That explains it."

Which it did. Adele had examined Admiral Torgis's record, both the public version and the one Mistress Sand had provided. The admiral was exactly what he seemed, a well-born, reasonably competent RCN officer who'd been put in place on Sexburga because of its value as a fleet base if trouble broke out again in the Sack.

Giving a gala reception for a naval hero was perfectly in character for him. Involvement in subtle diplomatic and intelligence activity was as unlikely as Torgis defecting to the Alliance.

And to corrupt a man like Gerson, who borrowed large sums of money and spent it in the form of cash, would be no more difficult than persuading a bitch in heat to couple. Adele didn't know what Gerson's unpleasant vice was, but it was obvious that he had one.

On the third floor guests danced to the accompaniment of a percussion band which played castanets, tambourines, and a glockenspiel. The effect was melodious and, though penetrating, didn't overwhelm speech even on the outskirts of the dancers. When the stairwell door opened, however, chiming music poured out over the refreshment room. It drew the attention of all the diners.

Admiral Torgis, imposing in Dress Whites instead of civilian attire, strode out of the stairwell looking even more red-faced than he had when Adele met him in the reception line. Behind him, his right hand gripping her left and pulling her along, was a woman who could pass for his twin sister but was in fact his wife. Lady Torgis wore a white dress with gold braid in the form of panels and hussar knots: not a uniform, but close enough to one to make her Tweedledee to the admiral's Tweedledum.

"Damned elevators in this place take forever!" Torgis boomed. "Who needs them, eh, Lieutenant? A companionway was always good enough for me during forty years of service!"

Daniel Leary emerged from the stairwell at a polite distance behind Lady Torgis. Instead of dragging his companion, a striking redheaded woman, the way Torgis did his wife, Daniel supported her in the crook of his right arm. Adele would've said that the redhead looked healthy enough to climb stairs by herself, but no doubt Daniel knew his business. Climbing stairs probably wasn't the—person's—preferred form of exercise.

Daniel caught Adele's eye and waved his free hand to her. She smiled back, causing Cherry's face to brighten with speculation, then go studiously blank.

Behind Daniel and his tramp came a stream of other guests, panting and distressed. The line was long enough to keep the door to the third floor open; thus the dance music flooding out to announce Admiral Torgis's arrival.

"Holodi of Zampt and her husband, they're factors for Zampt and the Learoyd Cluster," Tovera said as the first couple came into view. Her running commentary continued, identifying those following Torgis as among the leading residents of Sexburga.

They were divided equally between natives and expatriates, just as Cherry had suggested. When the Resident Commissioner had decided not to wait for the elevator, all his chief guests had to follow suit.

Adele felt a faint smile play at the corners of her mouth. There were extensive floral arrangements on the buffet tables. If Admiral Torgis picked an iris and began chewing on its stem, his guests would strip the displays of iris . . . though Adele believed they were poisonous. She withstood the urge to pull out her personal data unit and get a certain answer to the question.

"Let's get some more tables here for me and the lieutenant!" Admiral Torgis said. Harassed servants held a quick conclave, then shunted food from one of the serving tables to the others and brought the emptied one out to join the smaller eating tables.

"Adele," Daniel said, stepping over to her while the admiral's orders were being obeyed, "allow me to present Mistress Kira . . ."

He looked suddenly stricken.

"Lully," Tovera said in Adele's ear as the two of them rose.

"I believe you're Mistress Lully," Adele repeated in straight-faced amusement, touching fingertips with the redhead. She'd already noticed that women didn't clasp one another on Sexburga—any more than they did on the Alliance worlds. "Very glad to meet you. I'm Signals Officer Mundy of the Princess Cecile."

"Leary, bring your Mundy over to join us," Torgis boomed. "Who's that, Cherry? You come over here too, Cherry, if you like. Anyone good enough for the company of an RCN officer is good enough to eat with me!"

Servants were rustling chairs from around the room. One of them had started to snatch Adele's when she stood up, then froze in horror as he realized the junior officer had become one of the admiral's pets. Working for a master whose whims were as strong and (from a diplomatic perspective) unconventional as those of Admiral Torgis must be a nervous business at best.

"You had luck, Leary," the admiral said in a voice that could probably be heard on the floor below over the orchestra. "You know it and I know it. But all the luck in the world wouldn't have saved Kostroma if you hadn't been a man and a damned fine officer. By God, I'm glad the RCN still makes men the way she did when I was a cadet!"

"Hear, hear!" cried the members of his entourage, locals and expatriates evidently trying to outclap one another. They'd have been cheering just as loudly if the Resident Commissioner had called for infanticide and immediate submission to the Alliance of Free Stars. In Sexburga's social hierarchy, the Cinnabar representative was the sun and everyone else seemed desperate to become the planet in the nearest orbit.

Daniel leaned close to Adele's ear and whispered, "I know, it's all nonsense . . . but I'd be a liar if I didn't admit it feels good."

Adele patted him lightly below his gold-encrusted right epaulette. That raised eyebrows from not only Cherry but Mistress Lully as well.

"Quite all right, my dear," Adele said to the local woman in an accent redolent of the highest strata of Xenos society . . . to which she had, after all, belonged. "Our association is purely professional."

Good God, I am jealous! Adele realized in shock. Not of Daniel's body, of course; but the outrage on this red-haired trollop's face at a hint of intimacy between her and Daniel had lit an unexpected fuse in Adele's mind as well.

"Actually, Daniel," Adele said, uncertain whether or not he could hear over the bustle, "it's not nonsense. The admiral is quite correct about what happened on Kostroma."

The buffet was for ordinary guests; Admiral Torgis and those about him would have a sit-down dinner. The servants were now handing the expanded entourage into chairs, trying to judge status and fearful of their master's anger if they mistook his preferences.

Daniel went into the chair at Lady Torgis's right hand. After a moment's hesitation, the stick-thin, gray-haired female majordomo put Adele herself on the admiral's right and Mr. Cherry, of course, beside her. The Strymonian businessman looked as amazed as Mon had at the preference.

There were service stairs or at least a dumbwaiter, because three servants hustled in through the side door bearing place settings. The china was blue-and-gold with the RCN insignia, but instead of metal the flatware was made of plastic or—

"Scaleware from the Cassiterides, Admiral?" Daniel said in unfeigned enthusiasm. "I don't believe I've ever seen a set so fine."

Adele had her personal data unit half out of its pocket before she caught herself. Cosmographical directory, initial sort CASSITERIDES, sub-sort SCALEWARE . . .

Not her job, not necessary, and very much not the right time to call attention to herself. Daniel was bonding with the former admiral. In a thoroughly innocent fashion, of course; simply by being his own engaging self.

"You're not likely to see a better set ever, Leary," the admiral said. "I haven't and I've got a few years on you. A few decades, by God! But I wasn't more than your age when a grateful prince from Cassis gave them to me for saving his son and heir from the Alliance privateer who'd captured his ship. In the knickers of time, if you catch my drift. The privateersman was as queer as old Jaunty Teillor who commanded the Home Squadron when I was a boy."

Torgis, his wife, and Daniel all bellowed with laughter. Mistress Lully looked puzzled, and the member of the admiral's staff hovering in the background winced with psychic pain.

A servant set Adele's place; she picked up the outermost spoon and examined it more closely. The material weighed amazingly little. She'd thought the color was gray, but in fact there was a lambent fire—gold to green to a black that was total absence of hue—at the core of the piece. It was so clear that she could read the whorls of her finger pads through it.

"Cassis III is a sea world, Adele," Daniel said, leaning toward her over the table as the fingers of his right hand caressed Ms. Lully's bare shoulders. "The top of the food chain is the saberfish that grows to forty feet long. During the Hiatus only princely houses were permitted to have flatware made from saberfish scales, and even now very few sets of the real thing ever leave the planet."

"Right, right," Torgis said, bobbing his head with the animation of a man who believes he's met his soul mate. "They fob off muck made from the gill-rakers of filter-feeding worms on foreigners! This is the real thing. You can tell by the axial pinctatus, see?"

He held a fork up to the light, apparently trying to display the internal color that Adele had already noticed. Other guests peered at their host's waving utensil instead of looking at their own.

The expressions of Daniel and Admiral Torgis suddenly shifted. The humor was gone, replaced by an eager intentness. Around them the party continued to swirl.

Daniel's hand lay on Ms. Lully's back, but he had become still. A servant offered Torgis an urn of consomme she'd plucked from the serving table; another servant held the ladle ready to fill his bowl. The admiral ignored them.

Adele felt the rumble, though she wouldn't have noticed it for another minute or more had not the spacers' attitude shown her there was something to notice. Almost simultaneously the voice of Woetjans, the duty officer tonight, said through a roar of static in Adele's ear, "Bridge to Signals. The Winckelmann's on her way down with two destroyers waiting in orbit to follow. Warn the captain that Pettin's arrived, mistress. Bridge out."

"The thrusters are set to pulse in triple sequence," Admiral Torgis said, "and they're just as far out of phase as they always were on the Maspero when I was her third lieutenant. That was the sort of idea that only a naval constructor who'd never tuned a thruster himself would've come up with."

"She's Archaeologist class, all right," said Daniel, rising to his feet. The poor servant barely avoided sloshing herself with an urn of soup. "That means Commodore Pettin's here in the Winckelmann, and that means, Admiral, that my officers and I need to return to the Princess Cecile at once."

"Of course you do, Lieutenant," Admiral Torgis said, also rising. "The service of the Republic is a hard life, I'll tell the world—but by God, I wish I had a real command myself instead of being a damned chair-bound politician like they've made me!"

"But Danny . . . ?" Ms. Lully said with a stricken pout. "You were going to come out in the desert with me tonight to watch the moons rise."

Daniel bent down and kissed her forehead, right at the part from which the red hair flared to either side like a boat's bow wave. "Sorry, child, and you can't imagine how sorry I am, but I need to get back to my ship ASAP or sooner yet."

"We can get there fastest if I fly you," the woman said. "Remember, I have my aircar here."

Just possibly she wasn't the bubble-brain Adele had assumed. At any rate, Lully had grasped the salient point of the situation and responded to it with impeccable logic.

"Yes!" Daniel said. "How many seats does it have, dear one?"

"Well, four," Lully said through a recurrence of the pout. "But I thought you and I could—"

"Right!" said Daniel. "Lieutenant Mon! Front and center! We've got to be aboard the Princess Cecile before the commodore opens his ports."

Mon had already pushed in through the double doors from the balcony. He walked with the studied earnestness of a man who was sure that his head would fall off if he didn't keep it centered squarely over his spine.

Daniel grimaced and turned to Adele. "And you as well, Officer Mundy," he said. "If we get back in time, you'll take over as duty officer from Woetjans. I'm certain that the commodore will expect the duty officer to be sober, and I'm equally certain that Woetjans is even less likely to meet that standard that I am myself."

Lifting Ms. Kira Lully, now chauffeur, in much the same fashion that he'd carried her up the stairs earlier, Daniel said to the room, "Good citizens, duty calls! May my every landing find people half so generous as you!"

He strode to the stairwell, the redhead clutched against him like pirate's booty. Though unburdened, Adele struggled to catch up. Even so Lt. Mon was treading on her heels as she reached the door. Real spacers were amazingly surefooted when moving through clutter.

"By God, we'll all go greet the squadron!" Admiral Torgis cried behind them. "Gerson, get my car ready!"

Kira Lully held her trim red-and-gold aircar in ground effect just above the pavement until a roar of steam drowned the snarl of the Winckelmann's plasma thrusters. Only then did she drop the vehicle's nose over the cliff edge and plunge toward the Princess Cecile in spirals so tight that centrifugal force pressed the occupants outward.

Daniel had thought of suggesting he take the controls himself, but he'd kept his mouth shut for fear that the redhead would order them all out of the vehicle in a fit of pique. As it turned out, Kira was a much better driver than he was.

Also his fear that she'd blind herself by looking into the heavy cruiser's exhaust was remarkably silly when he used his head—which wasn't the part of Daniel Oliver Leary most often to the fore when he was dealing with pretty girls. Obviously, nobody living adjacent to Flood Harbor could be ignorant of the dangers of starships landing and lifting off.

"She's been running on eighty percent of her masts, and four of her thrusters are out of service too," Lt. Mon remarked from the rear seat beside Adele. "Christ, I'd forgotten what a bucket the Winckelmann was."

"How do you tell?" Adele asked over the echoes still hammering around the cliffs. "About the masts, I mean, since they're all withdrawn for landing."

Mon liked and respected Adele, but he had an abrasive manner at the best of times . . . which didn't include times he was as drunk as he was tonight. Before he could snap, "Use your bloody eyes, woman!" or the like, Daniel said, "Antennas five, six, ten, and twelve in each row haven't been unbound at least since the Winckelmann lifted off from Cinnabar, Adele. You can see the pitting from micrometeorites is uniform over the hinges and locking pins."

Kira dived into the warm salty fog which the Winckelmann's thrusters lifted from the harbor. The big cruiser was indeed a sad sight to anyone who knew ships: a clumsy design, now overage and poorly maintained in the long interval of peace. Commodore Pettin could see that as well as any other officer of his seniority, and it would gall him like a boil on the butt.

"I'm going to miss you tonight, Danny," Kira said plaintively as she fluffed them to a featherlight landing on the dock where the Princess Cecile's gangplank terminated. The harbor's surface was twitching from the nearby arrival of 13,000 tons of heavy cruiser, but the concrete slips kept other vessels from bouncing around unduly.

Adjacent to the corvette was the depot ship Admiral Torgis had moved there this morning. It was a freighter, now nameless save for its pennant number: SDN 3391. All but four antennas had been removed, and its High Drive had probably been cannibalized in the distant past to equip some warship that had limped down to Flood Harbor.

Under normal circumstances the depot ship provided stores, power for vessels whose fusion bottles were deadlined, and a repair shop. Tonight her cavernous bays were decked out with bunting, food, and liquor for the Princess Cecile's crew.

"Not half so much as I'll miss you, sweet thing," Daniel said, knowing as he framed the words that the truth was a little more complex. True, he'd been looking forward to the night and morning—and who wouldn't, after the run the Princess Cecile had just made? But it was even more true that Daniel would willingly forego the redhead's charms if there was just some way he could avoid the interview with Commodore Pettin he knew was coming. Why in the name of all that's holy did the pulpit-pounding commodore have to land in the middle of the Resident Commissioner's party for the crew?

Daniel hopped over the side of the aircar without bothering to open the door. "Mon," he said, "roust the crew as best you can—they'll understand it's an emergency. Adele, get onto the bridge soonest and take over. With luck we'll have the anchor watch sorted before—"

"Christ on a crutch!" Mon snarled. "The sanctimonious old bastard's making a hot exit!"

The Winckelmann was opening up in the usual fashion of airing ship on arrival. Hatches were lifting, the turrets for the secondary battery of plasma weapons were being cranked out to provide more room within the hull, and crewmen double-timed onto the outriggers to unlock access plates that couldn't easily be reached from inside.

Normally no one would disembark until the process was complete. This time, as soon as the hatches serving the water-level stern hold had clamshelled wide enough open, the twelve-place aircar assigned to heavy cruisers as a utility vehicle—the Princess Cecile had a jeep that could carry four if they were good friends—roared out.

Mon, not sober but used to functioning with a heavy load aboard, swung his legs over the side of Lully's car and ran for the depot ship with a rolling gait. The Winckelmann's arrival had called a good half the crew out already. Those who were vaguely sober were mustering less-steady comrades and helping them to the quay.

Adele tried to jump out of the aircar. She tripped, which was so likely a result that Daniel had already turned to grab her when he realized what she intended. He swung her to her feet, then tucked her into the crook of his arm and trotted for the corvette. It was much the way he'd carried the redhead, Kira, in what now seemed the dim past.

"But Danny . . ." the girl called. He heard the words and instantly discarded them as being of no importance under the present circumstances.

Daniel's reason for carrying his signals officer was quite simple. Adele had to be on the bridge when Commodore Pettin came aboard. Woetjans wasn't going to pass Pettin's standards of Ready for Duty, though the bosun would have the liquor bottles hidden and other evidence of good-fellowship out of the way.

Woetjans's taste ran to men who could make her look frail, though like most spacers she'd make do with what was available after a voyage like the past one. Daniel fleetingly wondered how lucky she'd been here on Sexburga.

Though, by the living God! absolutely nothing harmful to the good order of the RCN was going on here. The problem was that Commodore Pettin wouldn't see it that way; and thank God—thank Admiral Anston—for an experienced crew which could react to changed circumstances without the captain's orders.

Barnes and Inescu were on guard at the main hatchway. They'd managed to get to their feet and lift the stocked impellers they'd been issued for the duty. "Here comes the captain!" Inescu called cheerfully as Daniel pounded over the narrow gangplank with Adele in his arms.

It was a tossup in Daniel's mind whether Pettin would be more infuriated by a drunken officer of the watch or by one who was soaking wet from falling into the harbor in her haste to board. Adele was a solid weight, tall and not as slender as she looked from a distance. She didn't speak and held herself as stiff as a balance pole. Daniel suspected she didn't understand what was going on, but early in her contact with the RCN she'd learned how to keep from getting in the way in a crisis.

Daniel saw three earthenware jugs floating between the corvette's hull and the starboard outrigger. Barnes also noticed them and leaned over the hatchway, pointing his impeller.

"No!" Daniel shouted over the howl of the Winckelmann's car landing on the quay beside the redhead's. Barnes was too drunkenly focused to hear anything. He squeezed the trigger—

WhackWHOCK 

—and the weapon spat a fifty-grain pellet of osmium into the water at five times the speed of sound.

Daniel half-turned, trying to shield Adele, but the waterspout was thirty feet high and drenched both of them. There were bits of shattered pottery in with the froth and flotsam. Daniel couldn't say much for Barnes's judgment, but he shot straight despite being pie-eyed drunk.

Daniel set Adele onto the Princess Cecile's entryway. Barnes blinked in horror at what he'd done. "Sorry, sir," he mumbled. He lowered the impeller's muzzle so that it pointed at Daniel's feet instead of in line with his belt buckle.

Adele headed for the bridge without further direction. The soles of all RCN footgear, even the shiny half-boots Daniel wore with his whites, were of high-hysteresis rubber that gripped wet or dry. Adele squelched with each step, but she didn't fall down.

Daniel took the impeller from Barnes, switched the power off so that the coils couldn't accelerate another slug—into the harbor, into Daniel himself, or into God knew where—and returned it to the spacer. He could hear shouts echoing through the corvette as crewmen faced the sudden emergency.

"Steady on, Barnes," Daniel said quietly. "Try not to shoot the commodore."

Though that possibility had a degree of attraction just at this moment.

Daniel turned and braced himself to attention, facing the three RCN officers and the sergeant of marines tramping down the gangplank. Captain, acting Commodore, Josip Pettin was in the lead. He was a lean, white-haired man, fifty but looking older. Normally his face would merely have been pale, but at this moment Pettin was so angry that his expression could have been carved from sun-dried bone.

Daniel saluted. He'd never managed anything so crisp during his years at the Academy. He might as well have mooned the commodore for all the good it seemed to do.

"Sir!" Daniel said. "Welcome aboard RCS Princess Cecile! I'm Lieutenant Leary, reporting to you in accordance with my orders."

"Leary . . ." Commodore Pettin said, his nostrils flaring as though he detected a horrible stench. Maybe he did: even Daniel noticed Barnes's breath, and it wasn't that there was no alcohol on his own. "I queried Condor Control from orbit when I saw a corvette in the harbor. The controller told how it came there. Furthermore, they very kindly added that your splendidly handled ship left Cinnabar ten days behind my squadron and still arrived on Sexburga well ahead of me!"

Oh, God, that had torn it. No wonder Pettin looked mad enough to gnaw a junior lieutenant down to his boots.

The officers with Pettin were a plump, worried-looking commander—probably the Winckelmann's executive officer—and a lugubrious young woman with the single collar flash of a midshipman detailed as an aide with the rank of acting lieutenant. The sergeant of marines was just that—and it was instructive that Pettin hadn't brought a marine officer instead. This was a burly fellow whose nightstick had gotten real use in the past.

"Sir, the Navy Office directed me to spare no effort to join the squadron at Sexburga despite our late start," Daniel said, his eyes unblinkingly focused on the center of the hatch instead of meeting the commodore's glaring fury. It wasn't much of a lie, and it seemed for a moment that it might just calm Pettin's anger. Then—

Oh God. Kira whatever-her-name-is was trotting primly down the gangplank. The skintight skirt didn't hobble her in the least.

"Danny, sweetheart?" she called in a voice so clear that nobody within fifty feet could mistake the words. "You didn't kiss me good-bye, darling."

The quartet from the Winckelmann turned. The marine's face showed momentary appreciation, then went professionally blank. Commodore Pettin looked at Daniel again.

"Lieutenant Leary," he said. "I was concerned when I detected signs of obvious inebriation in the tones of the duty officer when I queried your vessel from orbit."

His voice started gently enough but it quickly rose to be heard over the howl of another aircar landing. The vehicle was ornate, with enamel escutcheons on the doors and a fringed canopy.

"But I never, never in my worst nightmares, could have imagined the sort of debauchery that I saw taking place as we landed! I will not ask for your explanation, because there cannot possibly be an explanation!"

"Danny . . . ?" Kira peeped. Even she seemed to have come to the realization that something was wrong.

The Princess Cecile's crew—the bulk of the spacers who hadn't had time to scramble aboard before the commodore's aircar arrived—had formed in ranks on the quay as though for an inspection. Through them, moving with the stumping precision of a man who'd spent his time in a starship's rigging, came Admiral Torgis with civilian aides in his train.

"Do you have anything to say before I remove you from command and order your confinement for court-martial?" the commodore shouted.

"Sir!" said Daniel. It was reflex, drilled into him at the Academy and absolutely the only thing to say under these circumstances. "No excuse, sir."

"Who's that?" boomed Admiral Torgis. "Pettin, isn't it? I'm glad you finally got here, Captain. You can have a drink with me in honor of Lieutenant Leary, who's been posted to your command."

"Admiral?" Commodore Pettin said, half turning and forcing his face in the direction of a smile; not very far in that direction. "The condition of the crew . . . Have you noticed . . . ?"

He gestured toward the depot ship, a little flick of his hand as though trying to brush away a fly. His subordinates had stepped aside and stood at parade rest, studiously not looking at either the commodore or the admiral.

Kira vacillated on the gangplank. Torgis took the girl by the waist in both hands and swung her behind him, showing skill and balance that a rigger could appreciate.

"Quite a little party, isn't it?" he said with a chuckle. Daniel noted a hard glint in the admiral's eyes, though: he knew exactly what had been going on when he arrived here and what would have happened if he'd been a few minutes later. "Thought it was the least I could do. Paid for it myself, that is. Though I think I could've justified Commission funds for the crew that saved Kostroma from the Alliance."

"But Admiral," Pettin said, swaying slightly with the tension he held himself under. "The condition of the officers as well as the crew—"

"Well, for God's sake, Pettin," Torgis said. He stepped into the Princess Cecile's entryway, pressing the Winckelmann's personnel back by sheer force of personality. "What do you expect their condition to be after a run like they made? Seventeen days from Cinnabar to here. I never knew of a crew who pushed so hard. They'll be fit to fight as soon as yours are, though, I warrant."

A second ship was descending; one of the squadron's destroyers, Daniel assumed, though he couldn't see from where he stood within the corvette. The thruster pulses were audible, though it would be some minutes before the sound smothered normal conversation.

Though "normal conversation" didn't describe what was going on here.

"Sir, the duty officer was obviously drunk!" Pettin said.

"With respect, sir!" said Adele Mundy in a hard voice without a hint of respect in it. "I believe I was eating dinner at the time the Winckelmann announced its arrival, but I most certainly am not drunk."

Daniel blinked in surprise, then choked back a laugh when he realized that Adele's statement was literally true. She stood ramrod straight on the companionway from C Level. She'd changed into her utility uniform, and he knew without question that the ship's log now would indicate she'd been on duty all night.

Pettin looked as though he'd been sandbagged. Admiral Torgis proved he understood as well as Woetjans did that the first rule of brawling is that you always kick your opponent when he's down.

"And if she isn't, that's a violation of my instructions to Lieutenant Leary, Captain," the admiral said. "I made it as clear as I knew how that every member of his crew should have a good time at my expense tonight. I may be retired, but there's still people in the Navy Office who'd listen if I told them the RCN doesn't need Goody Two-shoes for commanding officers. There'll be no Alliance attack here with the satellite defenses in place."

"Thank you, Admiral," Adele said in ringingly aristocratic tones, "but my sobriety is entirely a personal choice. I would be unsuitable as a commanding officer for other reasons as well."

"I see," said Commodore Pettin. He shuddered like a man lifted from freezing water. His tongue touched his lips. "Lieutenant Leary, report to me at ten hundred hours tomorrow."

He looked at Torgis and added in a voice that would have been venomous if it had more life, "If that meets with your approval, Admiral?"

The destroyer was within three thousand feet, slowing to a near hover as the captain steadied her for landing. Admiral Torgis, raising his voice to be heard over the throb of plasma, said, "I'm retired, remember, Captain. In any case, I wouldn't interfere with another officer giving proper commands to his subordinates."

Daniel had been standing at attention from the moment of the commodore's arrival. "Sir!" he said, throwing another salute. It wasn't nearly as crisp as the first; maybe despair was what he needed to perform drill and ceremony properly. "Ten hundred hours tomorrow, sir!"

Commodore Pettin turned and stalked off across the gangplank without returning the salute or further acknowledging the Resident Commissioner. His subordinates followed, each with a surreptitious salute to the former admiral.

The Princess Cecile's crew must have heard the entire exchange; now they began to cheer. They were so loud that Daniel could hear them until the destroyer licked the harbor into a roar of steam.

The cheering wasn't going to help matters tomorrow morning; but even before there hadn't been much doubt about how Daniel's formal interview would go.

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