Lt. Leary, Commanding

by David Drake

  Mon was Daniel’s senior on the lieutenant’s list by eight years, but Adele hadn’t seen any sign of resentment toward his youthful commanding officer. She wondered if Mon was smart enough to believe his best route to promotion was to serve under a flashy, fortunate officer like Daniel Leary, or if it was something more basic: loyalty to a man who had treated him well.

  “The pirates of the Selma Cluster are supposedly pacified,” Daniel said. “And the Alliance has no bases in the Sack, so our chances of meeting a raider are limited.”

  He pursed his lips, then grinned engagingly. “On the other hand, I wouldn’t trust a pirate’s word that he’d reformed, and besides, they’re always having a coup or a revolution on one planet or another there. The losers aren’t going to be bound by treaties, so there’s the chance we’ll get in some hunting.”

  He frowned. “Depending on Commodore Pettin’s notions of how the Princess Cecile would be best utilized, of course.”

  “Captain?” Woetjans said. Of the officers excepting Adele, the bosun had the most experience of Daniel and the least hesitation of asking a straight question. “Can you tell us why we’ve been sent to Pettin anyhow? You know and I know that a clean ship like the Sissie’s got no business farting around in the Sack when there’s a war on.”

  “She’s foreign built,” said Pasternak. He spread his hands to fend off reaction to what sounded like an insult when it came out of his mouth. “I’ve never served aboard a tighter hull than this one, I don’t mean that. But what I know and what some bean counter in the Navy Office knows, that’s not the same thing.”

  “That don’t explain the crew, Red,” Woetjans said, rasping over the voices of three other officers who were probably about to make the same point. “A first-rate crew for the Aglaia, sure, she was a dispatch vessel and likely to be carrying anybody from admirals to a planetary observer. But we’ve got the pick of the Aggie’s crew aboard, and I don’t think that’s because some clerk fucked up.”

  “Is it Vaughn?” Betts asked. He sounded vaguely tense, as was to be expected from an ordinary space officer who fears he might be involved in high politics. “Vaughn carries himself like he’s somebody, that’s for sure!”

  Everyone stared at Daniel. He nodded twice, his mechanism for getting time to organize his thoughts. He looked around the table, deliberately not letting his eyes fall on Adele.

  “The appearance of Mr. Vaughn was a surprise to me,” Daniel said, “and to all the other officers of the Princess Cecile. There may be wheels moving within wheels, but I don’t have the impression that Admiral Anston decided we needed a crack crew to take some foreigner home.”

  Adele knew that Daniel had distanced the RCN from the passenger in order to keep the crew’s morale up; it was a wonder he hadn’t said “wog” instead of “foreigner.” Even so it set her teeth on edge. It was a betrayal of her cherished belief that humans should be citizens of the universe rather than chauvinists for their particular planet or organization.

  She grinned. Of course she was now an officer of the RCN, an organization that stood head and shoulders above every other group in the universe.

  “As for why we’ve been sent to the Sack, Woetjans …” Daniel said, smiling at the bosun. “I don’t know and I won’t speculate.”

  Woetjans and Pasternak both glanced at Adele, drawing the gaze of the other officers. She said nothing, and Daniel kept his own gaze blandly off her. Woetjans lowered her eyes in embarrassment and muttered, “Well, it’ll be all right.”

  Daniel’s expression hardened slightly. “I will say,” he said, “that if the Republic had a difficult task that was within the capacity of a corvette, there couldn’t have been a better choice than the Princess Cecile and her present crew.”

  Lt. Mon rose to his feet. His glass was full because Hogg had just been by with the fourth carafe.

  “To the Princess Cecile and her captain,” Mon said. He didn’t slur his words, but his voice boomed louder in the small cabin than it might have done a few bottles before. “Because they’ll get us out of any Goddamned hole the politicians manage to stick us in!”

  It was silly. It was the kind of emotional gesture that offended Adele’s belief that the intellect should dominate in all human endeavors.

  But she downed her sherry in a single gulp and cheered with the others.

  *

  “Ready to enter normal space,” called Lt. Mon over the intercom from the Battle Direction Center. Daniel’s display already echoed the BDC data, which was identical to that of the main computer. The chance of the systems being out of synch was vanishingly small, and even in that event the smaller BDC computer was more likely to be in error; but spacers lived to retirement age by making every calculation redundant.

  “Ready to record data,” Adele said, frowning slightly at her console. She accepted that standard operating procedure required her to verbalize each step of the process, however obvious it might seem to her—however obvious it was, given that Daniel was echoing her display also. She did it, but she was unlikely to ever come to like the process.

  “Ready to return to normal space,” Daniel said. He touched the alarm, sending whistle calls and green light across the Princess Cecile’s corridors and compartments. On the hull, the semaphore posts—four each at bow and stern, offset from the lines of antennas—flipped their arms out at 90 degrees and 270 degrees to warn the riggers still topside. Normally, but not now, they were already in the air locks.

  Daniel pulled the astrogation module’s main switch, cutting off the trickle of power that charged the sails. The corvette staggered. When the charge dropped, the bubble universe which the Princess Cecile was crossing squeezed the vessel out as incompatible with its natural order. The potential dropped at various points of the hull and rig at minutely different times. The discontinuity was noticeable, the way a sleeper can be aware of lightning.

  Delos Vaughn watched intently from the corridor just outside the bridge. When Daniel called general quarters for a position check, Vaughn had as usual been playing cards in the wardroom with the off-duty officers. He lost money consistently, though never in large amounts.

  A suspicious man might suspect that a fellow who was as knowledgeable about poker as Vaughn showed himself to be should at least break even. Daniel didn’t like to be suspicious. Still, he’d spent his youth among the influences of his father’s political maneuvering and the natural world he observed under Hogg’s tutelage. In both environments only the strongest could survive without using deception.

  “Ready to enter the Matrix!” Mon’s voice reported, a half-tone higher than it had been a moment before. Vaughn’s face looked like a skull, and even the RCN officers on the bridge were suddenly taut.

  Humans adapted to the Matrix. They could live and work outside the sidereal universe for days at a time and not be fully conscious of the strain—until it stopped. It was wrenching to experience the relief of returning to sidereal space, only to bounce back in seconds to a bubble universe in which what humans thought of as the natural order was an intrusion.

  Wrenching for the captain as well, but Daniel was determined to harden his crew and himself to the process. “Entering the Matrix!” he said. He hit the five-second warning. Then, as the whistle called and red light surged and subsided, he slid the navigation module live again.

  Bony fingers clutched his heart; somewhere a man screamed in abject horror. The Princess Cecile rippled into another universe in a wave of golden light.

  Nobody spoke for a while, though Daniel could hear heavy breathing over the whirr of electronics and groans as the hull worked. He got his own pulse under control. Impressions flickered in his brain like afterimages of something glimpsed in bright light. He didn’t know what they were, but his subconscious insisted they were important.

  “Daniel?” Adele said in a small voice. She swallowed as if she were trying to keep breakfast down. “Will I get used to this after a time?”

  “If you do, mistress,” Betts mumbled
through fists clenched against his mouth, “you’re the first one who ever did!”

  He turned his gray face to Daniel and added, “These touch-and-goes, they tear a ship up and they do the same to the crew. It’s not RCN practice!”

  Daniel’s face hardened, and a fresh jolt of adrenaline quelled the twitchiness of his stomach. The missileer’s words were a challenge to his authority.

  “It’s the practice of the RCS Princess Cecile, Mr. Betts,” Daniel said. “We’re going to a region frequented by pirates. If we’re to be effective against them, we must have the same skills as the pirates do. Since they hide in and strike from the Matrix by quick entries and exits, we will do the same.”

  Betts drew himself up into a proper military posture at his console. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “I come from big ships, you know that. If this is the way we’ll get a bite at a pirate or two, then by God I’m up for it.”

  “Of course you are, Betts,” Daniel said warmly. “As for myself, I’d rather face a dressing-down by an admiral, but we’re still going to practice quick insertions all the way to Sexburga, I’m afraid.”

  Adele was doing something involved at her console; Daniel wondered what. She didn’t analyze the star sightings, though they were collected and processed by equipment in the signals officer’s charge.

  He had a thought and switched on the PA system. “Captain to ship,” Daniel said. As he listened to the electronic echo of his voice, he thought he saw figures with too many legs walk across the corridor and through the wardroom bulkhead. “Fellow spacers, I’m proud to be part of a crew who can do its duty even while our guts are being turned inside out. We won’t ever learn to like the experience, but any pirates we meet are going to like what they get from us even less! Captain out.”

  Airlocks cycled. Woetjans had put both watches on the hull in case of trouble during this first touch-and-go; riggers were as likely as anybody else to find the experience disorienting. Now the extra crewmen were reentering the hull, moving with unfamiliar clumsiness.

  “The data regarding the effect insertions have on service life …” Adele said, speaking loudly enough to be heard clearly despite continuing to face her holographic display. “Indicate that there’s no difference between entries and exits from the Matrix taking place in a short duration and those which are spaced out over a longer period of time. The absolute number of insertions is all that matters, not the rate of occurrence.”

  “There’s records on this?” Sun said in amazement. The gunner’s mate had recovered quicker than anyone else on the bridge, but there was a hint of tension in his cheek and jaw muscles too. “I’ve heard of ships doing it, but not often enough you could put it in a book.”

  Adele turned to face the others in the compartment; the display framed her face as though with a multicolored aura. “The data comes almost entirely from exploration vessels,” she said with a dry smile that only those who knew her well would recognize. “As a matter of fact, the bulk of the data comes from vessels commanded by Stacey Bergen. The analysis indicates it should be valid for ships of all varieties, however.”

  “Uncle Stacey says you lose the flow of the Matrix if you stay in normal space for six, eight hours the way most captains do,” Daniel said in a combination of pride and embarrassment. He didn’t want it to sound as though he thought he was the equal of his uncle as an astrogator. “His crews were all volunteers, of course. But he never had better personnel than the Princess Cecile does today.”

  Daniel stood and forced himself to stretch; at the moment his body wanted to curl into a ball and hug itself. “Right now I’m going to compare his notes with the patterns I see.”

  He keyed the BDC channel and said, “Lieutenant Mon, please take the conn while I go onto the hull for an hour or so. There’s no need to come forward unless you prefer to.”

  “I’ll come along, if I may,” Adele said, rising to her feet. She seemed to be fully herself: cool and detached, with her normal pale complexion in place of the green undertone of a few minutes before. Apparently searching out data had been as bracing for her as a month in the country.

  “A pleasure to have you,” Daniel said truthfully, though he was a little surprised.

  Of course Adele had a way of surprising him. He hadn’t known about the life-cycle analyses of Stacey’s ships, and if asked he would’ve agreed with Betts that quick in-and-outs would wear a hull at a higher rate than the normal practice.

  What he did know—and what Adele probably knew also, though he was glad she hadn’t broadcast the information to the crew—was that despite his picked crews, Uncle Stacey’s commands had abnormally high rates of psychological casualties. Much as Daniel regretted the fact that he was going to lose spacers in the performance of their duty, the Princess Cecile was a warship and they—like him—were members of the RCN.

  Daniel offered Adele his arm and walked to the suit closet just off the bridge. The riggers of the port watch had stripped and were going below to their bunks. From the look of their faces, few would be able to sleep. The starboard watch, still on the hull with Woetjans, might well be the lucky ones. As Daniel had noted in Adele and himself, falling into one’s duties seemed to lessen the effect of rapid transitions into and out of the Matrix.

  Delos Vaughn lay half-conscious on the floor of the wardroom across from the suit locker. Daniel paused; he hadn’t wanted to take Vaughn aboard, but nonetheless the fellow was his responsibility. Timmins, the power room crewman Vaughn had hired to look after him aboard, lifted the passenger’s shoulders with one arm and brought a tumbler of clear fluid to his lips with the other.

  “Mr. Vaughn, are you—” Daniel began.

  Vaughn drank reflexively. His eyes flashed open and he spewed the rest of the glassful across the room. Apparently Timmins’ idea of a restorative was neat alcohol from the power room hydraulics.

  “Good God, Lieutenant Leary,” Vaughn said. He didn’t sound angry, merely amazed. “Is that sensation normal?”

  “I’m afraid it’s going to be normal for this cruise, sir,” Daniel said. He crossed his hands behind his back, a way to keep from fidgeting while he waited for something distasteful.

  Instead of the expected shouts and threats—vain, of course, but unpleasant regardless—Vaughn managed a weak smile. “I see how the Cinnabar navy wins its battles, Lieutenant,” he said. “Well, I asked to travel with you.”

  Using Timmins as a brace, Vaughn got to his feet. “And Lieutenant?” he said. “I win my battles too.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Adele sat primly in her place, taking her cue from Ellie Woetjans who presided at the head of the table. The senior warrant officers had invited Lt. Leary, Mr. Vaughn, and the two midshipmen to dinner. Adele was tense because she wasn’t good at rituals, and this one was both new to her and important. A gaffe here—and formal dinners were always minefields—risked hurting the feelings of her family by adoption.

  Balsley, classed as a Mechanic II but in practice the wardroom servant, stood at the hatchway. In a loud voice that made his brushy little mustache wobble he announced, “The guests have arrived.”

  “Rise for the captain and our honored guests!” the bosun said, suiting her action to her words.

  Adele scrambled to her feet. She was so careful not to overset the chair behind her that she bumped the table with her thighs. As the table was bolted to the deck neither it nor the place settings were affected an iota, but Adele knew she’d have bruises in the morning.

  And not for the first time. She was perfectly comfortable in tight spaces. What she didn’t like—and couldn’t seem to learn—was moving in tight spaces.

  Daniel appeared at the door, wearing his dress grays just as his hosts were. “Please be seated, sir,” Woetjans said. When she spoke formally, her words came out as though so many cuts of a buzz saw.

  “My fellow officers, thank you for your hospitality,” Daniel said as he entered. He took the seat to Woetjans’ right. He winked at Adele beside him.

&nb
sp; Vaughn was behind him, wearing a suit of vivid chartreuse and carrying a bottle. “Mistress President,” he said, offering the bottle to Woetjans. “I thank you as well. I hope you’ll accept this small addition to the festivities.”

  It was brandy, a distillation from Pleasaunce and expensive even within the Alliance. Betts, peering past Adele’s shoulder, said, “God damn! The Marat’s wardroom got a case of that stuff at a souk on Rigoun. A shot of that’ll put lead in your pencil, let me tell you!”

  Adele saw Daniel frown slightly. “Then it’ll make an excellent stirrup cup when we go on leave on Sexburga,” he said. “In ten days, I expect, at the rate we’ve been shaping.”

  Woetjans nodded and handed the bottle to Hogg, who’d been drafted for the night along with Tovera and Timmins. She looked a trifle wistful, but she wasn’t the person to question her captain’s orders even when they were delicately phrased.

  Adele knew perfectly well that alcohol impeded the physiology of mating, though no doubt a lot of the process was in the mind. It wasn’t an area in which she could claim expertise, of course.

  The midshipmen entered last, carefully groomed and as stiff as if they expected to be shot. They were both eighteen, just out of the Academy and on their first operational deployment. In a large vessel they would have had as many as a score of other midshipmen to provide fellowship and a degree of concealment. Instead they’d been placed in a small ship with a picked crew and a captain little more than their own age and already famous. Of course they were nervous!

  Adele thought of her own entry into the Blythe Academy. Her smile was grim.

  She’d been an outsider—of course; she’d been an outsider all her life and perfectly happy about it. Her skills even at age sixteen were beyond those not only of her fellow students but of her instructors and most of the staff of the Academic Collections. She couldn’t imagine wanting to fit in with people whom she considered only a short intellectual step above lapdogs.

  Dorst and Vesey couldn’t tell themselves that. Besides, from what Adele had seen, they were far too nice to consider doing so. For that matter, if Adele had been trained by instructors as able as the Sissies were at their different jobs, she wouldn’t have been so sure of her superiority.