Lt. Leary, Commanding (49 page)

Oh.

"Daniel!" Adele called to the slight opening which remained—a warship's battle doors open and close with enthusiasm. "I'm sorry, I—"

She got up, bumped the edge of the console, and promptly fell on her face because both her legs were numb. She'd sat too long without moving. Dorst and Vesey were helping her to her feet when Daniel stuck his head into the compartment again.

"Adele?" he said. "I didn't mean to disturb you, but . . ."

"Yes, I asked for your input," Adele said, "and then snapped at you when you came to the door. I suppose I thought you'd reply through the display. Well, I
didn't
think. I'm obviously not thinking clearly at all. I apologize."

Her throat hadn't been so dry since she'd fought her way out of an Alliance prison, breathing dust and air burned to ozone by electromotive weapons. She sounded terrible and probably looked worse. Dorst handed her a drinking bulb. She sucked deeply on it.

Not until the third swallow did she identify the contents as milk—the perfect choice once she thought about it. As Dorst had obviously already done.

"I'm very sorry," Adele said, irritated by the concern in the eyes of her three companions, and even more irritated because she couldn't deny she gave them reason for it. "Daniel, we, ah, have provided some alternative courses for the guardship and . . ."

Her knees were wobbling now. Great heavens, what was wrong with her?

"Mistress," said Vesey, "you haven't had a thing to eat or drink in eighteen hours. Please won't you sit and let us bring you some food?"

Dorst guided Adele back into the seat where she'd been working. She was accessing the ship's computer through the familiar pathway of her personal data unit. The battle computer's great holographic display showed what looked like a twisted circle of ribbon: the track of the guardship
Hammer
as it orbited Falassa. Date variations were color coded from violet to the deep red of the most recent.

Dorst put another bulb of milk in Adele's hand. Vesey said earnestly, "Sir, she's done it all herself. The only help we've given is to calculate the orbits from the data she's found in the logs."

Daniel nodded. "You asked me to look over your plots, Adele," he said. "I did, and I found them quite satisfactory. I'm amazed that the orbit's been so consistent over a ten-year period."

He gestured; obediently Adele drank more of the milk. For a moment her stomach threatened to rebel; then the combination of texture and food value went to work and she began to feel better.

She managed a smile. Of course she still had quite a lot better to feel.

"I thought it was rather like a moon," Adele said. "The orbit stays the same, that is. Doesn't it?"

"It's a low orbit, mistress," Dorst said. "They have to burn the High Drive every few days to keep atmospheric friction from dragging them back to the surface. But they want to overfly Homeland every orbit, so they porpoise up and down without any lateral motion to speak of."

"Yes," said Daniel, "and very useful that is to us, I must say. I'll have the course plotted to three decimal places, though we'll have to exit, say, five light-seconds out for the final refinements. I just wanted to know if you felt that additional computation might lead to significant changes?"

"What?" said Adele. "No, no. We had a perfectly adequate data sample. And anyway, there
isn't
any more data. Not that I've been able to find here on, on wherever this place is. Dalbriggan."

She scowled to hear her own words. Her mind wasn't working any better than her body seemed to be. She'd been lost within the problem, and now that it was solved—her task was complete, at any rate—she couldn't get back to normal.

Adele giggled. "Mistress?" Vesey said.

"I thought, `normal,' " Adele explained. "But of course I meant `what passes for normal with me.' "

The midshipmen looked aghast, but Daniel grinned at her. "Very good," he said. "I'll have Lieutenant Mon draft a movement order for the fleet while I develop the actual attack. Ah, will you have further need of the Direction Center?"

"Oh, heavens no," Adele said. She heaved herself to her feet again and managed to keep upright this time. "I had to have Vesey and Dorst with me—somebody who understood navigation, at any rate—so I couldn't block off the people around me as I usually would. But I did need privacy."

Daniel offered Adele his arm. "I was about to get something to eat in the galley," he said, probably a lie. "Will you join me, then?"

"Yes, I'd better, I suppose," Adele said. The milk had awakened a raging hunger that she'd suppressed while she copied and collated data.

The pirate cutters operated on unique internal clocks, determined either by the whim of the captain or as an accident because the astrogation computer had been shut down and reset to zero following repairs. Though Adele didn't suppose that had added much to the complexity of the operation. Even if they'd all been RCN warships, she would've felt constrained to check each time slug against reported star positions. There was no such thing as acceptable error in
her
universe.

The galley was on B Level opposite the entryway. Between mealtimes when the
Princess Cecile
was under weigh it served as a lounge, but usually when the corvette was on the ground the personnel spent their free time in facilities ashore.

Not here on Dalbriggan. When Daniel entered with Adele—the two midshipmen trailed behind like nervous pets—thirty-odd spacers rose to their feet in greeting. Most of them were armed: many with weapons from the arms locker and bandoliers of ammunition, but the others displayed less formal clubs, knives, and in one case a wire garotte.

"Sir, can you tell us what they're planning to do?" asked Liebig with a nod of greeting to Adele as well. "These bloody pirates, I mean. Are we going to attack?"

"A Number Four breakfast for Officer Mundy, if you please, Wharnock!" Daniel called to the spacer who was getting a mug of hot cacao from the mess dispenser. He settled Adele into a table vacated for them and said, "The free citizens of Dalbriggan are our friends and allies, Liebig. They're going to help us find necessary supplies to repair the
Sissie
. And just incidentally we'll clean out a nest of
real
pirates at the same time."

Wharnock brought over the meal packet. He stripped the top off with a gush of steam as he set it on the table before Adele. She stared in sudden horror at the bacon, eggs, and grits—and as suddenly felt another rush of hunger. She picked up the spoon attached to the container and began eating.

"Sir, d'ye trust these bastards?" a spacer asked. Adele didn't notice who spoke; she was balancing the spoonful of egg at the edge of her lips, blowing softly to cool the contents.

"Trust 'em to cut our throats if we turn our backs," another said. "They say they only go after Alliance shipping now, but you
know
they don't want us nosing around to see what loot they really got hidden away here."

Through the chorus of "Yeah," and "That's God's truth," Daniel—who wasn't eating, as Adele had suspected—said, "As a matter of fact, I do trust the Dalbriggans to help us, Swade. The leaders, that's most of the captains, not just Kelburney, don't want to be ruled from Falassa, but they know that's what's going to happen unless they do something fast. Our coming here gives them a chance to strike before so much support drains away to the Falassans that one of Kelburney's friends will have to shoot him."

Adele started on the grits; to the best of her knowledge she'd never eaten bacon, so she was leaving that for last, if at all.

Daniel's outline of politics in the Selma Cluster mirrored Adele's reading of the cluster's history. She smiled wryly. There was a great deal of similarity between Selma and Cinnabar, if it came to that. Her parents would certainly have agreed with that at the end.

"Officer Mundy?" Daniel asked. "How do you assess the situation from your specialist viewpoint?"

Daniel wasn't asking for a real analysis. At another time, in private, he'd certainly be interested in what Adele in all her different guises thought, but what the two of them were doing now was an exercise in theater to keep the crew's morale high. Though—Adele's private opinion would be precisely the same as the one she offered now.

"Speaking as a scholar who's studied politics and the history of the Selma Cluster," she said, "I agree with your outline. And speaking as a Mundy of Chatsworth—"

She tried to scoop up a strip of bacon but decided it must be finger food instead.

"—I must say that I'm pleased to have Speaker Leary's son on
my
side this time."

There was general laughter, some of it amazed. Every member of the crew knew who Daniel's father was, and by now rumor at least must have identified Adele with the leaders of the Three Circles Conspiracy. In this case by rare exception, rumor was perfectly correct.

Vesey put a steaming mug of cacao beside Adele's meal packet. Adele sipped. She'd have preferred water, but this bitter, stimulant-rich drink was the RCN's on-duty staple; she supposed she'd have to get used to it.

"I've kept you aboard the
Sissie
to avoid accidental problems," Daniel said, glancing around the room. "Astrogator Kelburney's giving a party to keep his crews occupied while we—"

He nodded.

"While Officer Mundy and the midshipmen assisting her, that is, provided me with the information I needed to plan the operation. You all know the trouble drunken spacers can get into."

He grinned broadly. The crewmen broke into appreciative hoots and laughter. More spacers were entering the galley, summoned by word—and how delivered?—that the captain was holding an informal ship's meeting and giving everyone the scoop.

"On the other hand, I thought it would be good to make sure nothing untoward was going on," Daniel continued, "so I sent Hogg to make purchases for my private stores. He'll report back with anything he finds interesting. And I believe Officer Mundy's servant went out also. With my blessing."

"With or without," a spacer muttered. He was far enough back in the room that Adele couldn't have seen him if she'd tried. "
That
one'd squirm through a cable port like a snake."

"Yeah," said Liebig, who'd watched Tovera in action at the Captal da Lund's fortress. "But she's
our
snake, Smokey."

Adele munched the last of her bacon. Tovera would be amused.

"All right, sir," said Matahurd. "We'll follow you anywhere, you know that. But what
is
it we're going to be doing?"

The cacao had cooled enough for Adele to finish the mug, though she didn't know that doing so was any better an idea than the bacon appeared to have been. It was staying down for now, but the long-term prognosis was no more than even. She stood, needing to stretch her legs.

"Falassa depends on a dismasted heavy cruiser for its defense," Daniel said, rising beside her. "It mounts sixteen four-inch plasma cannon in quadruple turrets and carries a quantity both of missiles and of multilaunch rockets for use against pirate cutters. We'll eliminate her to permit the Dalbriggan forces to assault the planet proper. I'm going out in a minute to inform Astrogator Kelburney that we're ready to lift at his convenience."

There was silence in the galley. Sun, standing near the doorway where he'd just entered with Woetjans, said, "Yeah, all right, we can do that. But when're we going to pay back them bastards back on Strymon, sir?"

"That'll be our next concern, Sun," Daniel said cheerfully. "
After
we've shown these pirates that going into battle at the side of the RCN is the shortest route to loot and victory!"

He gestured Adele to the doorway with a lift of his eyebrows. They exited together, followed by the cheers of the assembled crew.

_A
dele clumped down the companionway between two spacers
of the escort who'd been equipping from the arms locker. They looked wary, but Daniel was pleased to see that Adele was getting the hang of walking on the boot-polished steel surfaces of a warship's interior.

He was also glad to see Lott and Tavastierna were looking after her.

"Ah, if you'd rather get some sleep, Officer Mundy," he said, "that's quite all right. I thought it best to see the Astrogator in person, but the meeting shouldn't require your special expertise. Any of them."

Adele gave him a smile that could have passed for a nervous tic. "I find it hard to predict the future," she said. "Accurately, at any rate. I just went back to my room to dress for the occasion."

She patted the butt of the service pistol belted over her utility uniform in an open-topped holster. Adele wore the weapon in the middle of her abdomen instead of hanging by her hip. There the holster, canted for right-hand draw, would have interfered with her personal data unit in its pocket.

"Hogg found me the holster and belt," Adele added. "Ah, do you think it's appropriate?"

"Indeed I do," said Daniel. "I'm sure Kelburney will appreciate the gesture. Shall we go, then?"

Kelburney, having seen Adele shoot, would also appreciate that the pistol was more than a gesture when she carried it. Daniel had said that there shouldn't be any difficulty, and there shouldn't; but he agreed with Adele about the difficulties of predicting the future. He nodded to Woetjans.

"Listen up!" the bosun said, sweeping her fierce glare over the ten spacers of the escort detail. "We're here for show, period. Keep your guns switched off till you're told, and remember—nobody shoots till Officer Mundy shoots! Do you all hear?"

"And what's going to be left to shoot at when she's done?" Bemish said to general laughter.

Daniel grinned also, but he saw that Adele's expression had tightened. The change was minuscule, something that only a friend would have noticed.

"Let's go!" he said, louder than he'd intended. The main hatch cycled open.

Hogg got up from where he'd been waiting beside the berm. He was wearing a broadly conical straw hat, obviously local though not a garment Daniel had noticed the day before.