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CHAPTER TWENTY

_It was crowded with four on the cab's bench seat, but Woetjans
had insisted in riding up front with Adele, Daniel and Liebig. The central driver's station was the problem: Adele was squeezed between Daniel and the right doorpanel, while Woetjans had the relative luxury of all the space to Liebig's left.

Woetjans didn't do things without a reason. Adele wouldn't have requested the bosun's presence, but her strength and experience had been a welcome addition when Mon ordered that she accompany Adele's party.

"Adele?" Daniel said. "Can you connect me with Spires? The squadron's scheduled liftoff is in ten minutes, so it's time for me to take my medicine from Commodore Pettin. The news will make his day, I'm sure."

"We told Captain Mon that you and the crew were fine, sir," Woetjans said. Adele felt her lips tighten at the bosun intercepting a request meant for her. "We called in as soon as we landed."

"Yes, I'm sure you did, Woetjans," Daniel said. There was a touch of reserve in his tone, an echo of what Adele herself was feeling. "But I need to report to the commodore directly and tell him that it'll be at least four hours before I reach the harbor. Adele, can you . . . ?"

"Of course," Adele said. She'd already wiggled out her personal data unit and brought it live. "Do you want the cruiser's communications center or a direct patch to Mr. Pettin?"

Adele had linked the aircar's satellite radio to her RCN helmet, but she couldn't claim to be any more comfortable with the helmet than she was with the radio's own peculiar voice controller. She'd learned on the flight out from Spires that the aircar was as smooth as a library table, so she'd reprogrammed the unit in order to run it with her wands through the data unit.

She hadn't expected to be quite as cramped as she was at the moment, but the task was easy enough. She switched on the radio and brought up the RCN menu as she spoke.

"He'll send me a rocket whichever choice I make," Daniel said reflectively. He didn't sound depressed, but his voice wasn't as boyishly ebullient as usual. "I think the direct line, though."

He grinned. "I'd rather be accused of arrogantly calling my superior direct," he said, "than of being a coward and hoping that I could avoid his notice by dealing with his staff."

"Ma'am?" Woetjans said. "Officer Mundy? Don't make the call. Don't make any more calls out till we're back with the Sissie, all right?"

Daniel leaned forward to look at the bosun past Liebig. Obviously the driver had been warned to expect what was happening now, because he had a false smile and his eyes fixed front.

"Woetjans?" Daniel prompted gently. Adele froze her display and watched the tableau from her corner.

"I'm sorry, sir," Woetjans said. She did sound sorry. Though she faced Daniel, her eyes were focused a thousand miles away. "The captain's given me orders that you aren't to call anybody till you resume command of the Princess Cecile; Acting Captain Mon has, I mean."

Adele couldn't see Daniel's face from where she sat, but his silence itself was telling. Woetjans took a deep breath and continued in an anguished voice, "Sir, Mr. Mon gave me the job instead of, instead of somebody else—"

Adele dipped her chin in a nod of understanding.

"—because he knew I'd follow naval discipline. That I'd put this pipe through the radio—"

Woetjans tapped her length of tubing with a little finger. She'd brought it to encourage the Captal if that proved necessary. It wasn't. The prisoners hadn't even complained aloud at being marooned with the remnants of food Daniel's unit had brought to South Land.

"—if that was the only way to keep you from getting a signal out. Sir."

"I see," said Daniel. He leaned back in his seat and grinned. "Adele?" he added. "What would you have done if Captain Mon had given you the orders that he gave Woetjans?"

It was an honest question, so Adele paused a moment to form a complete and honest answer. "I like Mon well enough," she said. "It's clear that he has what he considers to be your best interests at heart. But I wouldn't thank anyone who tried to control me for my own good, and I wouldn't be a party to a plot to do that to you."

She grinned just enough to lift one corner of the knife blade line of her lips. "Of course," she went on, "I bow to force majeure in the form of Woetjans's bludgeon."

Daniel laughed merrily. "Well, Woetjans," he said, "I hope I understand naval discipline as clearly as you do. Captain Mon has given you a lawful order which I'll watch you obey, little though I care to do so."

He twisted to look through the window into the passenger compartment. Woetjans had brought a cask of Sexburgan beer for the rescued unit, saying that it wouldn't affect their ability to function when they reached the corvette. Adele wondered how Tovera was getting along with the festive spacers.

Daniel turned back with a satisfied expression. "I trust I'm allowed to listen to traffic between the squadron and the Princess Cecile, however?" he said. "Ah, assuming that's possible, Adele?"

"Of course it's possible," she said, frowning. Daniel didn't mean to be insulting, but how would he react if she said, "And can you walk through that open door, Daniel?"

"Yeah, sure," Woetjans said. "Sir, you know I didn't want to . . ."

"Part of being in the RCN is learning to carry out unpleasant orders, Woetjans," Daniel said without expression. He tried to smile but gave it up as a bad job after a moment.

Adele checked the machine-made transcripts of the past four and a half hours of commo traffic between squadron command and the Princess Cecile; for her, written text provided a quicker way to assess material than sound bites were. Each message in turn proved low-level and routine: duty rosters, liberty records, the current supply manifest, and similar matters.

While she was scrolling through the data, the display threw up a red sidebar: the Princess Cecile was receiving a communication for the captain and slugged Squadron Six—Commodore Pettin himself. Betts, the duty officer, had just passed the call on as directed.

Adele paused only a moment, then routed the message live through the speakers in both cab and passenger compartment.

"Sir!" Mon's voice said. "Acting Captain Mon here, over."

"Mon, if you're in charge, then Lieutenant Leary is still absent from duty," Commodore Pettin replied. Adele wasn't good at identifying voices, but no one else in the squadron would have shown such disregard for naval propriety. "That's true, isn't it?"

"Sir," Mon said, "I've failed to recall Captain Leary from the expedition on which you ordered him. I'll keep trying, and I'm confident that he'll have returned well before the liftoff time you originally set. Over."

Daniel's left hand clenched, released, and then clenched again. His expression remained calmly attentive, his head cocked slightly to the side.

"Well, he won't find a ship to report to if he does," the commodore said, his tone suddenly cheerful. "Lieutenant Mon, I'm making your appointment to command of the Princess Cecile permanent in the absence of Leary. A captain who can't keep in touch with his ship has no business in the RCN. Your command will lift in six minutes, according to the schedule of operations. Hold in orbit for the remainder of the squadron to join you. Squadron Six out."

"Sir!" said Lt. Mon. "I'm very sorry, but the Princess Cecile is not ready to lift. While under my temporary command, the cooling system for her Tokamak went out of order. I haven't been able to repair the problem yet. Over."

"By God, Mon," Pettin said. He didn't sound angry, just amazed. "By God. I suggest you get your little problem solved in the next five minutes. Because if your foreign-built so-called corvette doesn't lift with the squadron, you will have no career at all. None!"

The transmission ended in the hiss of an open line; Adele broke the contact. No one in the cab spoke for a moment.

Adele looked out the side window. The aircar was over land again; North Land, she supposed, but geography didn't greatly interest her. Most of the continent was as barren as its wholly uninhabited sister.

"I very much regret Lieutenant Mon's decision," Daniel said quietly. "But I'm not one to second-guess the man on the ground."

He gave first Woetjans, then Adele a smile with something of steel in it. "And a great deal can happen before Commodore Pettin returns to Cinnabar and files his report with the Navy Office. We'll see what we can do in the interim to change his mind."

As the aircar dropped in tight spirals into the harbor, Daniel noted that the Princess Cecile was ready to lift off as soon as the gangplank came in. The turret would have to be lowered and two hatches were for the moment being used as gunports, but in an emergency all that could be taken care of while the corvette was bound for orbit.

Daniel nodded in approval. That was what he'd expected, of course, from Mon or any competent RCN officer, but it was still a pleasure and relief to see that his confidence had been justified.

They landed just short of the gangplank. A curtain of spray flashed up from the quay: wheeled traffic had worn the stone enough that it filled when vessels maneuvering in nearby slips sloshed the harbor's surface. Liebig cursed because he hadn't noticed the puddle in the twilight, but Daniel wouldn't have cared if he'd been standing in the middle of the splash. He couldn't be much more bedraggled than the past few days marching in the desert had left him.

"Move it, move it!" Woetjans bellowed. The passenger compartment had double doors to ease the passage of the wealthy and corpulent. The spacers were neither, but they disembarked as hastily as they ran to action stations; the wide openings eased the process.

Woetjans was out before the car was fully at rest. Liebig followed an instant later after he'd shut off the power. Adele, on the other hand, was looking puzzled about what she should do next.

Rather than wait for her to open the door beside her, Daniel slid out past the steering yoke. "Woetjans, two men to help the signals officer!" he called as he trotted to the gangplank past the crewmen waiting tautly for their captain to lead them aboard.

Daniel felt thoroughly alive. The Princess Cecile had missed the squadron's liftoff, a difficult situation but not necessarily a career-ending one. He'd have to play his hand as well as ever an officer did to save himself, however.

"Captain, I'm in the Battle Direction Center," said Mon's voice on the helmet earphones. "I have a course to Strymon loaded, based on Commander Bergen's logs. I know you'll be able to refine it, but I thought we could get under weigh now and save a couple hours computation time over a cold start. Mon over."

Daniel went through the corvette's entryway at a brisk walk instead of the dead run that instinct urged him to. He didn't want to waste time, but in fact a few minutes here or there wouldn't make any difference. A hasty error would mean disaster—and if he spooked his crew into such an error, it could be just as bad as his own blunder.

"Thank you, Mon," Daniel said as he banged up the righthand—upward—companionway, taking the steps two at a time. That was normal practice, and a rigger's reflex kept his left hand gliding over the railing the whole time to catch him if he slipped. "Watch-standing officers report to the bridge and I'll brief you on our course. Out."

The ship's machinery was live, a symphony of whirrs, whines, and the occasional flurry of clanking like a drum riff. Spacers waited at their action stations. The bow dorsal section of riggers, both watches, stood suited in the corridor. They flattened themselves against either bulkhead as Daniel passed, nodding with a stern smile.

He threw himself into his seat and rotated the command console to face his officers. A year ago Daniel would've radioed his plans ahead to the Princess Cecile, trusting RCN encryption to limit his message to its intended hearers if he even bothered to think about security. A few months of contact with Adele Mundy had showed him that an information specialist with a powerful computer at her command could read anything she got in electronic form.

There might be eavesdropping devices on the Princess Cecile's bridge—and unlikely though that was, it was greater than the chance of there being another specialist of Adele's skill on Sexburga. Even so, Daniel had ceased to say anything over the air that he didn't want others to hear.

Mon and Pasternak—with a long cut on his forearm, covered with a sprayed binder/antiseptic; the Chief Engineer didn't limit his duties to giving orders—came down the corridor behind Daniel. The other warrant officers (including Taley, who wasn't a watchstander but was understandably curious about what was going on) were already on the bridge.

Daniel beamed. He had a great crew, a crew that other captains would give an arm for, and they'd every one of them volunteered to serve with Lt. Daniel Leary. By God! they had.

"As everybody in this compartment knows," Daniel said, starting without preamble because he'd sound weak if he tried to articulate what he felt about the spacers he commanded, "we could better Commodore Pettin's time to Strymon with the crew on half watches and me sleeping for the whole run."

There was a general chorus of nods and murmurs. Woetjans slapped the bulkhead with her right hand and said, "Damned straight we will! They could sail the Winckelmann's masts out and we'd still be waiting for 'em laughing when they finally staggered in."

Adele alone sat with the neutral expression Daniel knew by now was what her face wore when she was trying not to sneer. He was quite sure that Adele would make her opinion known if Daniel said he intended to humiliate his commanding officer in the most public fashion possible; but she wouldn't go out of her way to insult fellow officers simply because their understanding differed from that of noblemen like herself and Daniel—and senior officers like Commodore Pettin.

"We're going to do something much harder instead," Daniel said. "I'm counting on your skill and professionalism and that of the spacers under you to make it possible."

Faces grew shuttered; curious and, if not exactly concerned, then . . . Well, the crew of the Princess Cecile knew by now that if their captain said something would be difficult, they'd be sweating like pigs before they were through it.

"We're going to rendezvous with the squadron en route instead of meeting it at its destination," Daniel said. He thought about the ways his plan could go wrong and smiled. He'd worn a similar expression the day he made an offer to three women; and they whispered together, giggled, and all three followed him down the corridor.

It could go wrong, but it wouldn't. Not with this crew to back him and recover from any miscalculations he made.

Several of the warrant officers looked blank; Mon scowled, his mouth working as though he were trying to swallow something ghastly, while Woetjans merely scratched herself and grinned. "That'll teach him who's a spacer, won't it, sir?"

"But Captain . . . ?" said Pasternak. "The commodore didn't transmit his solutions to the Sissie when we said we weren't ready to lift. We don't know where the squadron'll be, except Strymon where they'll end up."

Pasternak was by the nature of his duties a highly educated man, though Daniel suspected that—besides Adele, of course—in raw intelligence the bosun may have been the smartest of the warrant officers. Working with a fusion bottle required a great deal of rote learning, but independent thought was a quick route to disaster. Pasternak could be depended on to know the accepted response to most standard shipboard problems, and to deny that any other response was possible.

"That may prove correct, Mr. Pasternak," Daniel said, "but I hope that by modeling solutions on our astrogation computer, we can determine which one the commodore will have chosen and then rendezvous with him. The computers are identical, after all, so the only question is which chain of intermediate exits from the Matrix Commodore Pettin chooses."

"He'll push," said Mon. "He'll want to prove he can make as fast a run as ever a junior lieutenant did."

"He'll want to push," Woetjans said, "but he'll know the Winckelmann's ready to pull her sticks out if he don't treat her tender. And if he don't know that, his bosun'll tell him."

Daniel said, "Commodore Pettin is an able officer and a careful—"

He'd swallowed the word "cautious" before it reached his tongue. Daniel had no desire to insult Pettin, and to this group of officers and the RCN more generally, "cautious" was indeed a word of insult.

"—one. I expect him to get the best out of his equipment, but he'll also know that his equipment is old and ill-maintained. I'll proceed according to those assumptions, with Mr. Mon's help and the help of my chiefs of rig and ship."

There were general nods and grins. Daniel's officers assumed that because he said the task was possible, then they'd accomplish it under him. Which, after all, was the assumption their captain made as well.

"We're going to need a great deal of luck," Daniel said, "and we'll be working through the whole run to tolerances as close as those of a battle which would be over quickly. It's going to be a strain on everybody, perhaps equal to the seventeen days that brought us here from Cinnabar."

Betts put his hands behind his neck and leaned back at his console. "I signed on with you, Captain," the missileer said, "because I thought that was the best road there was to getting a name for myself and enough prize money to buy a rose nursery whenever I chose to retire. I guess the same's true of every soul aboard the Sissie today, except maybe for the roses. You give us our orders. You don't have to worry about us carrying them out, whatever they are."

In the middle of the general approving chorus, Woetjans slammed her hand against the bulkhead again and bellowed, "Damned straight!"

That too was pretty much how Daniel felt.

Adele sat cross-legged in a cabinful of opened luggage while the Princess Cecile bustled about her. Liftoff wouldn't be for hours, or so she'd surmised when she left Vesey to handle routine traffic at the signals console while she spent her own time more productively.

The door—the hatch—opened abruptly. Adele's head came around quickly and her left hand spilled chips on the deck beside her as it dipped toward her pocket.

Lt. Mon stepped through and paused, looking as surprised to find someone else in the room as Adele had been an instant earlier.

"Sorry, mistress," he said. He looked taut but not particularly alert. "I forgot this was your cabin."

"Mine?" Adele said in surprise. The first lieutenant's uniform looked as though he'd slept in it; in truth, he probably hadn't slept at all.

"Yes, ma'am," Mon said, more patient now in his exhaustion than she'd seen him at times he was in better shape. "Yours and the Medic, now that our passenger's cut and run."

He gestured toward the ship's medical computer, a full-body case which could diagnose and treat anybody who fit within its adaptive interior. "I came in to get my system flushed and another dose of Wideawake. But if you're unpacking . . ."

"For God's sake, use the, the—device," Adele snapped, angry with herself. Yes, of course this was the room originally assigned her, which she'd completely forgotten; and of course the medical computer would be in regular use throughout the voyage. Why in heaven had she decided to review Vaughn's documents here rather than in her half of the captain's suite?

Looking thankful, Mon stripped off the jacket he'd already unsealed in the corridor. "I'm just about gone," he said with a gray smile, gripping the pair of handholds and lifting himself feet-first into the cylinder with a grace that a professional acrobat might have envied. "Say, would you like somebody to help you with your gear?"

"This isn't my gear," Adele said. "Delos Vaughn abandoned his luggage when he left the ship. Presumably he felt that if he tried to retrieve it, even in Daniel's absence, someone would've taken alarm. I've had it moved to this room from the places where it was stowed during the voyage. I'm examining it for items of information."

On general principles she didn't care to go on with her business while Mon was in the room with her—not that she'd turned up anything he shouldn't know. Besides, a break to chat with another human being was probably a good idea.

The mesh and microtubing of the Medic's interior settled over Mon's body like fluid moving along a pipette; he gave a great sigh as the equipment began to sample his body chemistry through his bare skin. He hadn't sunk his head in the tube, so he was able to watch and talk to Adele.

"Is Captain Leary going to be in trouble for letting Vaughn escape?" Mon asked. Bitterly he added, "For me letting the bastard escape, I mean."

"No, I don't think so," Adele said. "Vaughn was using the Princess Cecile—and Daniel himself—to convince others that he had the support of Cinnabar for taking control of his home planet. That claim of support was probably false."

She'd already read far enough in Vaughn's secret correspondence to be sure that the Navy Office had no record of him boarding the Princess Cecile. Vaughn's organization had bribed the real courier with enough money to make even a Mundy blink. You could rent a senator for a year for far less.

Lt. Mon gasped as though he'd been dropped into cold water. The Medic was cleansing his system of fatigue poisons and the breakdown products of the drugs he'd taken to stay alert over the past several days.

Mon's face relaxed the way a wax mask would on low heat. Color—a healthier color than the previous sallow surface underlain by a metallic gray substrate—returned to his cheeks.

"Say, that's good to hear," he murmured, closing his eyes as his muscles luxuriated in chemical-induced relaxation. "What did you do with the bastard anyhow, the Captal I mean? I suppose you had him picked up so he doesn't just wander South Land for the rest of his life."

"As soon as the Princess Cecile lifts," Adele said, "a message will go to Admiral Torgis informing him where the Captal is and also providing information about the admiral's aide, Mr. Gerson. I expect the admiral will take care of both matters discreetly, for the sake of Cinnabar and more specifically the RCN. If it became public, it wouldn't be hard to make our rescue operation look like an act of piracy, after all."

Mon snorted. "It'd be damned hard to make it look any other way!" he said. "I sure wish I'd been along when you cleaned house on those bastards."

"Ah, Mr. Mon . . ." Adele said. It might not be her place to say it, but it was as much her place—because she was Daniel's personal friend—as it was anybody's, and she was quite sure that it ought to be said. "I'd like to thank you for your support when I used illegal methods to free Daniel."

She'd started to call them "improper methods," but nothing would have been improper to achieve that end. There were things that would have turned Adele's stomach even to consider, but Daniel Leary would have returned to the Princess Cecile, no matter what the result cost his friends.

"I'm well aware that in addition to the risk you ran in supporting us," she continued as Mon writhed in the ecstasy of not being in pain, "that there would have been personal advantages to you in obeying Commodore Pettin's orders."

Mon started to laugh. For a moment Adele thought the Medic was tickling him; then she realized that the lining had withdrawn against the body of the cylinder, freeing the patient from its ministrations.

Mon crawled out of the Medic, his bare chest ruddy as if from a vigorous toweling. He started to speak but broke into chuckling for a further moment while he donned his utility jacket.

"I guess you mean that I'd have a command of my own," he said at last. With a bitterness at shocking variance with his amusement of moments before, Mon added, "Quite a stroke of luck for a lieutenant who's learned to be thankful for bad luck because it was the only luck he was going to get, right?"

Adele said nothing. She looked up at Mon; her face calm, her gaze steady.

Mon patted the Medic's hood. "There's nothing like one of these for making you feel good," he said affectionately. "I tell you, if women were half so good, I wouldn't mind how much time I spend on the ground without a ship."

His face changed, though hardened wasn't quite the word to describe his new expression. He squatted so that he faced Adele with his eyes on the same level as hers. His elbows rested on his knees.

"Mistress Mundy," Mon said, "any religion I had to start out with, I lost before I was fifteen. I don't believe in any kind of afterlife and I sure don't believe in heaven. But Hell, that I believe in; only it doesn't happen after you're dead."

Mon straightened with a grin and stepped to the door. "I'm not going to put myself in Hell for the whole rest of my life," he added over his shoulder, "from remembering the way I sold out Lieutenant Leary after he gave me a break."

Adele watched the door close behind the lieutenant. It struck her that she'd just, for the first time, heard a religious philosophy with which she could agree.

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Framed

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CHAPTER TWENTY

_It was crowded with four on the cab's bench seat, but Woetjans
had insisted in riding up front with Adele, Daniel and Liebig. The central driver's station was the problem: Adele was squeezed between Daniel and the right doorpanel, while Woetjans had the relative luxury of all the space to Liebig's left.

Woetjans didn't do things without a reason. Adele wouldn't have requested the bosun's presence, but her strength and experience had been a welcome addition when Mon ordered that she accompany Adele's party.

"Adele?" Daniel said. "Can you connect me with Spires? The squadron's scheduled liftoff is in ten minutes, so it's time for me to take my medicine from Commodore Pettin. The news will make his day, I'm sure."

"We told Captain Mon that you and the crew were fine, sir," Woetjans said. Adele felt her lips tighten at the bosun intercepting a request meant for her. "We called in as soon as we landed."

"Yes, I'm sure you did, Woetjans," Daniel said. There was a touch of reserve in his tone, an echo of what Adele herself was feeling. "But I need to report to the commodore directly and tell him that it'll be at least four hours before I reach the harbor. Adele, can you . . . ?"

"Of course," Adele said. She'd already wiggled out her personal data unit and brought it live. "Do you want the cruiser's communications center or a direct patch to Mr. Pettin?"

Adele had linked the aircar's satellite radio to her RCN helmet, but she couldn't claim to be any more comfortable with the helmet than she was with the radio's own peculiar voice controller. She'd learned on the flight out from Spires that the aircar was as smooth as a library table, so she'd reprogrammed the unit in order to run it with her wands through the data unit.

She hadn't expected to be quite as cramped as she was at the moment, but the task was easy enough. She switched on the radio and brought up the RCN menu as she spoke.

"He'll send me a rocket whichever choice I make," Daniel said reflectively. He didn't sound depressed, but his voice wasn't as boyishly ebullient as usual. "I think the direct line, though."

He grinned. "I'd rather be accused of arrogantly calling my superior direct," he said, "than of being a coward and hoping that I could avoid his notice by dealing with his staff."

"Ma'am?" Woetjans said. "Officer Mundy? Don't make the call. Don't make any more calls out till we're back with the Sissie, all right?"

Daniel leaned forward to look at the bosun past Liebig. Obviously the driver had been warned to expect what was happening now, because he had a false smile and his eyes fixed front.

"Woetjans?" Daniel prompted gently. Adele froze her display and watched the tableau from her corner.

"I'm sorry, sir," Woetjans said. She did sound sorry. Though she faced Daniel, her eyes were focused a thousand miles away. "The captain's given me orders that you aren't to call anybody till you resume command of the Princess Cecile; Acting Captain Mon has, I mean."

Adele couldn't see Daniel's face from where she sat, but his silence itself was telling. Woetjans took a deep breath and continued in an anguished voice, "Sir, Mr. Mon gave me the job instead of, instead of somebody else—"

Adele dipped her chin in a nod of understanding.

"—because he knew I'd follow naval discipline. That I'd put this pipe through the radio—"

Woetjans tapped her length of tubing with a little finger. She'd brought it to encourage the Captal if that proved necessary. It wasn't. The prisoners hadn't even complained aloud at being marooned with the remnants of food Daniel's unit had brought to South Land.

"—if that was the only way to keep you from getting a signal out. Sir."

"I see," said Daniel. He leaned back in his seat and grinned. "Adele?" he added. "What would you have done if Captain Mon had given you the orders that he gave Woetjans?"

It was an honest question, so Adele paused a moment to form a complete and honest answer. "I like Mon well enough," she said. "It's clear that he has what he considers to be your best interests at heart. But I wouldn't thank anyone who tried to control me for my own good, and I wouldn't be a party to a plot to do that to you."

She grinned just enough to lift one corner of the knife blade line of her lips. "Of course," she went on, "I bow to force majeure in the form of Woetjans's bludgeon."

Daniel laughed merrily. "Well, Woetjans," he said, "I hope I understand naval discipline as clearly as you do. Captain Mon has given you a lawful order which I'll watch you obey, little though I care to do so."

He twisted to look through the window into the passenger compartment. Woetjans had brought a cask of Sexburgan beer for the rescued unit, saying that it wouldn't affect their ability to function when they reached the corvette. Adele wondered how Tovera was getting along with the festive spacers.

Daniel turned back with a satisfied expression. "I trust I'm allowed to listen to traffic between the squadron and the Princess Cecile, however?" he said. "Ah, assuming that's possible, Adele?"

"Of course it's possible," she said, frowning. Daniel didn't mean to be insulting, but how would he react if she said, "And can you walk through that open door, Daniel?"

"Yeah, sure," Woetjans said. "Sir, you know I didn't want to . . ."

"Part of being in the RCN is learning to carry out unpleasant orders, Woetjans," Daniel said without expression. He tried to smile but gave it up as a bad job after a moment.

Adele checked the machine-made transcripts of the past four and a half hours of commo traffic between squadron command and the Princess Cecile; for her, written text provided a quicker way to assess material than sound bites were. Each message in turn proved low-level and routine: duty rosters, liberty records, the current supply manifest, and similar matters.

While she was scrolling through the data, the display threw up a red sidebar: the Princess Cecile was receiving a communication for the captain and slugged Squadron Six—Commodore Pettin himself. Betts, the duty officer, had just passed the call on as directed.

Adele paused only a moment, then routed the message live through the speakers in both cab and passenger compartment.

"Sir!" Mon's voice said. "Acting Captain Mon here, over."

"Mon, if you're in charge, then Lieutenant Leary is still absent from duty," Commodore Pettin replied. Adele wasn't good at identifying voices, but no one else in the squadron would have shown such disregard for naval propriety. "That's true, isn't it?"

"Sir," Mon said, "I've failed to recall Captain Leary from the expedition on which you ordered him. I'll keep trying, and I'm confident that he'll have returned well before the liftoff time you originally set. Over."

Daniel's left hand clenched, released, and then clenched again. His expression remained calmly attentive, his head cocked slightly to the side.

"Well, he won't find a ship to report to if he does," the commodore said, his tone suddenly cheerful. "Lieutenant Mon, I'm making your appointment to command of the Princess Cecile permanent in the absence of Leary. A captain who can't keep in touch with his ship has no business in the RCN. Your command will lift in six minutes, according to the schedule of operations. Hold in orbit for the remainder of the squadron to join you. Squadron Six out."

"Sir!" said Lt. Mon. "I'm very sorry, but the Princess Cecile is not ready to lift. While under my temporary command, the cooling system for her Tokamak went out of order. I haven't been able to repair the problem yet. Over."

"By God, Mon," Pettin said. He didn't sound angry, just amazed. "By God. I suggest you get your little problem solved in the next five minutes. Because if your foreign-built so-called corvette doesn't lift with the squadron, you will have no career at all. None!"

The transmission ended in the hiss of an open line; Adele broke the contact. No one in the cab spoke for a moment.

Adele looked out the side window. The aircar was over land again; North Land, she supposed, but geography didn't greatly interest her. Most of the continent was as barren as its wholly uninhabited sister.

"I very much regret Lieutenant Mon's decision," Daniel said quietly. "But I'm not one to second-guess the man on the ground."

He gave first Woetjans, then Adele a smile with something of steel in it. "And a great deal can happen before Commodore Pettin returns to Cinnabar and files his report with the Navy Office. We'll see what we can do in the interim to change his mind."

As the aircar dropped in tight spirals into the harbor, Daniel noted that the Princess Cecile was ready to lift off as soon as the gangplank came in. The turret would have to be lowered and two hatches were for the moment being used as gunports, but in an emergency all that could be taken care of while the corvette was bound for orbit.

Daniel nodded in approval. That was what he'd expected, of course, from Mon or any competent RCN officer, but it was still a pleasure and relief to see that his confidence had been justified.

They landed just short of the gangplank. A curtain of spray flashed up from the quay: wheeled traffic had worn the stone enough that it filled when vessels maneuvering in nearby slips sloshed the harbor's surface. Liebig cursed because he hadn't noticed the puddle in the twilight, but Daniel wouldn't have cared if he'd been standing in the middle of the splash. He couldn't be much more bedraggled than the past few days marching in the desert had left him.

"Move it, move it!" Woetjans bellowed. The passenger compartment had double doors to ease the passage of the wealthy and corpulent. The spacers were neither, but they disembarked as hastily as they ran to action stations; the wide openings eased the process.

Woetjans was out before the car was fully at rest. Liebig followed an instant later after he'd shut off the power. Adele, on the other hand, was looking puzzled about what she should do next.

Rather than wait for her to open the door beside her, Daniel slid out past the steering yoke. "Woetjans, two men to help the signals officer!" he called as he trotted to the gangplank past the crewmen waiting tautly for their captain to lead them aboard.

Daniel felt thoroughly alive. The Princess Cecile had missed the squadron's liftoff, a difficult situation but not necessarily a career-ending one. He'd have to play his hand as well as ever an officer did to save himself, however.

"Captain, I'm in the Battle Direction Center," said Mon's voice on the helmet earphones. "I have a course to Strymon loaded, based on Commander Bergen's logs. I know you'll be able to refine it, but I thought we could get under weigh now and save a couple hours computation time over a cold start. Mon over."

Daniel went through the corvette's entryway at a brisk walk instead of the dead run that instinct urged him to. He didn't want to waste time, but in fact a few minutes here or there wouldn't make any difference. A hasty error would mean disaster—and if he spooked his crew into such an error, it could be just as bad as his own blunder.

"Thank you, Mon," Daniel said as he banged up the righthand—upward—companionway, taking the steps two at a time. That was normal practice, and a rigger's reflex kept his left hand gliding over the railing the whole time to catch him if he slipped. "Watch-standing officers report to the bridge and I'll brief you on our course. Out."

The ship's machinery was live, a symphony of whirrs, whines, and the occasional flurry of clanking like a drum riff. Spacers waited at their action stations. The bow dorsal section of riggers, both watches, stood suited in the corridor. They flattened themselves against either bulkhead as Daniel passed, nodding with a stern smile.

He threw himself into his seat and rotated the command console to face his officers. A year ago Daniel would've radioed his plans ahead to the Princess Cecile, trusting RCN encryption to limit his message to its intended hearers if he even bothered to think about security. A few months of contact with Adele Mundy had showed him that an information specialist with a powerful computer at her command could read anything she got in electronic form.

There might be eavesdropping devices on the Princess Cecile's bridge—and unlikely though that was, it was greater than the chance of there being another specialist of Adele's skill on Sexburga. Even so, Daniel had ceased to say anything over the air that he didn't want others to hear.

Mon and Pasternak—with a long cut on his forearm, covered with a sprayed binder/antiseptic; the Chief Engineer didn't limit his duties to giving orders—came down the corridor behind Daniel. The other warrant officers (including Taley, who wasn't a watchstander but was understandably curious about what was going on) were already on the bridge.

Daniel beamed. He had a great crew, a crew that other captains would give an arm for, and they'd every one of them volunteered to serve with Lt. Daniel Leary. By God! they had.

"As everybody in this compartment knows," Daniel said, starting without preamble because he'd sound weak if he tried to articulate what he felt about the spacers he commanded, "we could better Commodore Pettin's time to Strymon with the crew on half watches and me sleeping for the whole run."

There was a general chorus of nods and murmurs. Woetjans slapped the bulkhead with her right hand and said, "Damned straight we will! They could sail the Winckelmann's masts out and we'd still be waiting for 'em laughing when they finally staggered in."

Adele alone sat with the neutral expression Daniel knew by now was what her face wore when she was trying not to sneer. He was quite sure that Adele would make her opinion known if Daniel said he intended to humiliate his commanding officer in the most public fashion possible; but she wouldn't go out of her way to insult fellow officers simply because their understanding differed from that of noblemen like herself and Daniel—and senior officers like Commodore Pettin.

"We're going to do something much harder instead," Daniel said. "I'm counting on your skill and professionalism and that of the spacers under you to make it possible."

Faces grew shuttered; curious and, if not exactly concerned, then . . . Well, the crew of the Princess Cecile knew by now that if their captain said something would be difficult, they'd be sweating like pigs before they were through it.

"We're going to rendezvous with the squadron en route instead of meeting it at its destination," Daniel said. He thought about the ways his plan could go wrong and smiled. He'd worn a similar expression the day he made an offer to three women; and they whispered together, giggled, and all three followed him down the corridor.

It could go wrong, but it wouldn't. Not with this crew to back him and recover from any miscalculations he made.

Several of the warrant officers looked blank; Mon scowled, his mouth working as though he were trying to swallow something ghastly, while Woetjans merely scratched herself and grinned. "That'll teach him who's a spacer, won't it, sir?"

"But Captain . . . ?" said Pasternak. "The commodore didn't transmit his solutions to the Sissie when we said we weren't ready to lift. We don't know where the squadron'll be, except Strymon where they'll end up."

Pasternak was by the nature of his duties a highly educated man, though Daniel suspected that—besides Adele, of course—in raw intelligence the bosun may have been the smartest of the warrant officers. Working with a fusion bottle required a great deal of rote learning, but independent thought was a quick route to disaster. Pasternak could be depended on to know the accepted response to most standard shipboard problems, and to deny that any other response was possible.

"That may prove correct, Mr. Pasternak," Daniel said, "but I hope that by modeling solutions on our astrogation computer, we can determine which one the commodore will have chosen and then rendezvous with him. The computers are identical, after all, so the only question is which chain of intermediate exits from the Matrix Commodore Pettin chooses."

"He'll push," said Mon. "He'll want to prove he can make as fast a run as ever a junior lieutenant did."

"He'll want to push," Woetjans said, "but he'll know the Winckelmann's ready to pull her sticks out if he don't treat her tender. And if he don't know that, his bosun'll tell him."

Daniel said, "Commodore Pettin is an able officer and a careful—"

He'd swallowed the word "cautious" before it reached his tongue. Daniel had no desire to insult Pettin, and to this group of officers and the RCN more generally, "cautious" was indeed a word of insult.

"—one. I expect him to get the best out of his equipment, but he'll also know that his equipment is old and ill-maintained. I'll proceed according to those assumptions, with Mr. Mon's help and the help of my chiefs of rig and ship."

There were general nods and grins. Daniel's officers assumed that because he said the task was possible, then they'd accomplish it under him. Which, after all, was the assumption their captain made as well.

"We're going to need a great deal of luck," Daniel said, "and we'll be working through the whole run to tolerances as close as those of a battle which would be over quickly. It's going to be a strain on everybody, perhaps equal to the seventeen days that brought us here from Cinnabar."

Betts put his hands behind his neck and leaned back at his console. "I signed on with you, Captain," the missileer said, "because I thought that was the best road there was to getting a name for myself and enough prize money to buy a rose nursery whenever I chose to retire. I guess the same's true of every soul aboard the Sissie today, except maybe for the roses. You give us our orders. You don't have to worry about us carrying them out, whatever they are."

In the middle of the general approving chorus, Woetjans slammed her hand against the bulkhead again and bellowed, "Damned straight!"

That too was pretty much how Daniel felt.

Adele sat cross-legged in a cabinful of opened luggage while the Princess Cecile bustled about her. Liftoff wouldn't be for hours, or so she'd surmised when she left Vesey to handle routine traffic at the signals console while she spent her own time more productively.

The door—the hatch—opened abruptly. Adele's head came around quickly and her left hand spilled chips on the deck beside her as it dipped toward her pocket.

Lt. Mon stepped through and paused, looking as surprised to find someone else in the room as Adele had been an instant earlier.

"Sorry, mistress," he said. He looked taut but not particularly alert. "I forgot this was your cabin."

"Mine?" Adele said in surprise. The first lieutenant's uniform looked as though he'd slept in it; in truth, he probably hadn't slept at all.

"Yes, ma'am," Mon said, more patient now in his exhaustion than she'd seen him at times he was in better shape. "Yours and the Medic, now that our passenger's cut and run."

He gestured toward the ship's medical computer, a full-body case which could diagnose and treat anybody who fit within its adaptive interior. "I came in to get my system flushed and another dose of Wideawake. But if you're unpacking . . ."

"For God's sake, use the, the—device," Adele snapped, angry with herself. Yes, of course this was the room originally assigned her, which she'd completely forgotten; and of course the medical computer would be in regular use throughout the voyage. Why in heaven had she decided to review Vaughn's documents here rather than in her half of the captain's suite?

Looking thankful, Mon stripped off the jacket he'd already unsealed in the corridor. "I'm just about gone," he said with a gray smile, gripping the pair of handholds and lifting himself feet-first into the cylinder with a grace that a professional acrobat might have envied. "Say, would you like somebody to help you with your gear?"

"This isn't my gear," Adele said. "Delos Vaughn abandoned his luggage when he left the ship. Presumably he felt that if he tried to retrieve it, even in Daniel's absence, someone would've taken alarm. I've had it moved to this room from the places where it was stowed during the voyage. I'm examining it for items of information."

On general principles she didn't care to go on with her business while Mon was in the room with her—not that she'd turned up anything he shouldn't know. Besides, a break to chat with another human being was probably a good idea.

The mesh and microtubing of the Medic's interior settled over Mon's body like fluid moving along a pipette; he gave a great sigh as the equipment began to sample his body chemistry through his bare skin. He hadn't sunk his head in the tube, so he was able to watch and talk to Adele.

"Is Captain Leary going to be in trouble for letting Vaughn escape?" Mon asked. Bitterly he added, "For me letting the bastard escape, I mean."

"No, I don't think so," Adele said. "Vaughn was using the Princess Cecile—and Daniel himself—to convince others that he had the support of Cinnabar for taking control of his home planet. That claim of support was probably false."

She'd already read far enough in Vaughn's secret correspondence to be sure that the Navy Office had no record of him boarding the Princess Cecile. Vaughn's organization had bribed the real courier with enough money to make even a Mundy blink. You could rent a senator for a year for far less.

Lt. Mon gasped as though he'd been dropped into cold water. The Medic was cleansing his system of fatigue poisons and the breakdown products of the drugs he'd taken to stay alert over the past several days.

Mon's face relaxed the way a wax mask would on low heat. Color—a healthier color than the previous sallow surface underlain by a metallic gray substrate—returned to his cheeks.

"Say, that's good to hear," he murmured, closing his eyes as his muscles luxuriated in chemical-induced relaxation. "What did you do with the bastard anyhow, the Captal I mean? I suppose you had him picked up so he doesn't just wander South Land for the rest of his life."

"As soon as the Princess Cecile lifts," Adele said, "a message will go to Admiral Torgis informing him where the Captal is and also providing information about the admiral's aide, Mr. Gerson. I expect the admiral will take care of both matters discreetly, for the sake of Cinnabar and more specifically the RCN. If it became public, it wouldn't be hard to make our rescue operation look like an act of piracy, after all."

Mon snorted. "It'd be damned hard to make it look any other way!" he said. "I sure wish I'd been along when you cleaned house on those bastards."

"Ah, Mr. Mon . . ." Adele said. It might not be her place to say it, but it was as much her place—because she was Daniel's personal friend—as it was anybody's, and she was quite sure that it ought to be said. "I'd like to thank you for your support when I used illegal methods to free Daniel."

She'd started to call them "improper methods," but nothing would have been improper to achieve that end. There were things that would have turned Adele's stomach even to consider, but Daniel Leary would have returned to the Princess Cecile, no matter what the result cost his friends.

"I'm well aware that in addition to the risk you ran in supporting us," she continued as Mon writhed in the ecstasy of not being in pain, "that there would have been personal advantages to you in obeying Commodore Pettin's orders."

Mon started to laugh. For a moment Adele thought the Medic was tickling him; then she realized that the lining had withdrawn against the body of the cylinder, freeing the patient from its ministrations.

Mon crawled out of the Medic, his bare chest ruddy as if from a vigorous toweling. He started to speak but broke into chuckling for a further moment while he donned his utility jacket.

"I guess you mean that I'd have a command of my own," he said at last. With a bitterness at shocking variance with his amusement of moments before, Mon added, "Quite a stroke of luck for a lieutenant who's learned to be thankful for bad luck because it was the only luck he was going to get, right?"

Adele said nothing. She looked up at Mon; her face calm, her gaze steady.

Mon patted the Medic's hood. "There's nothing like one of these for making you feel good," he said affectionately. "I tell you, if women were half so good, I wouldn't mind how much time I spend on the ground without a ship."

His face changed, though hardened wasn't quite the word to describe his new expression. He squatted so that he faced Adele with his eyes on the same level as hers. His elbows rested on his knees.

"Mistress Mundy," Mon said, "any religion I had to start out with, I lost before I was fifteen. I don't believe in any kind of afterlife and I sure don't believe in heaven. But Hell, that I believe in; only it doesn't happen after you're dead."

Mon straightened with a grin and stepped to the door. "I'm not going to put myself in Hell for the whole rest of my life," he added over his shoulder, "from remembering the way I sold out Lieutenant Leary after he gave me a break."

Adele watched the door close behind the lieutenant. It struck her that she'd just, for the first time, heard a religious philosophy with which she could agree.

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