Lt. Leary, Commanding (20 page)

Daniel glanced at Adele. "Mundy, do you have information on the complements of Commodore Pettin's ships?" he said.

Adele hadn't been expecting the question, but she'd absently brought up data on the three vessels as Daniel spoke their names. She increased the display's saturation for easier reading, then said, "The destroyers are crewed at seventy percent of their organizational standard. The cruiser is at sixty-five percent."

There were seventeen messages from Captain Pettin—Commodore when the squadron lifted off, under his command as senior captain in lieu of an admiral—demanding that the Bureau of Personnel provide him with more spacers. The only response he'd gotten was the MESSAGE RECEIVED notation that the bureau's computer created without the intervention even of a junior clerk.

"Hide our complement records, Ms. Mundy," Woetjans said, looking across the table at Adele. "Pettin'll take forty of our people if he learns we're fully staffed,
and
with real spacers instead of the landsmen he'll have in half his berths."

"She can't," Mon said sadly. "The pay record can't be changed till we reach home port again and link to Navy Office database. When our system handshakes with the
Winckelmann
, it'll all be there for Pettin to see."

"Of course I can change it," Adele said. "Should I, or was that a joke, Woetjans?"

"Actually, that would be rather helpful," Daniel said, pursing his lips in careful consideration. "That is, if it can be done without risking the pay or widow's pension of any of the personnel, that is?"

"Of course," Adele repeated. She didn't see why the officers thought it was that complicated a procedure. Any navigational computer had sufficient power to defeat a payroll encryption, and the
Princess Cecile
—because of Adele's secret assignment—had specialized software besides.

Daniel smiled like the sun rising. "Woetjans and Pasternak, after the meeting please give Officer Mundy a list of the personnel you'd like formally off the record."

He put his left hand on Adele's right and added, "I have a warrant from the Navy Office authorizing me to accept volunteers from RCN vessels. That might very well cover the situation, but it isn't an argument a junior lieutenant cares to make to a senior captain."

"Captain?" Lt. Mon said. "You'll have us at weapons training throughout the cruise, we all know that who came from Kostroma with you. But is there a chance, do you think, of real action?"

There were murmurs of agreement around the table, and possibly an increased sharpness in Tovera's expression also as she decanted more sherry. She felt Adele's eyes and shrugged in embarrassment at showing interest.

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 was 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."