Shadow of Victory - eARC (51 page)

June 1922 Post Diaspora

“Damn. Wish he’d been smarter.”

—Master Sergeant Alexandra Mikhailov

Solarian League Marines (retired)

Chapter Forty-Five

“Clearance readiness from Junction Central, Ma’am,” Lieutenant Sughavanam announced. “We’re number ten for transit.”

“Thank you, Traxton,” Ginger Lewis responded as the scarlet “10” appeared beside Charles Ward’s icon in her maneuvering display. Technically, the next few minutes were Dimitri Nakhimov’s responsibility, but no captain ever let someone else make her first wormhole transit. So instead of Nakhimov, she raised her eyes from the display to look at Angelina Dreyfus.

“Put us in the outbound lane, Chief.”

“Aye, aye, Ma’am,” Dreyfus replied. Skilled fingers played the control buttons set into her joystick with a maestro’s skill, and the three million-ton starship responded with thistledown-grace. Ginger watched the icon on the maneuvering display settle exactly into its proper position, and then Dreyfus looked up from her own display.

“In the lane, Ma’am.”

“Nicely done,” Ginger acknowledged and switched her attention to the visual display.

There was a strangeness to the traffic through the Manticoran Wormhole Junction’s termini. She was far from surprised to see it, but the strangeness still seemed profoundly…unnatural.

It wasn’t so much that there was less traffic—although there was less of it—than that the inbound lanes were so sparsely populated, without the conveyor belt-like progression of incoming freighters, passenger liners, dispatch boats, and couriers. That was Operation Lacoön, she thought. Manticore’s far-flung merchant fleet had returned home, the traffic serving the Solarian League had ceased entirely, and while the traffic to non-Solarian destinations was actually picking up, there was still far less of it. According to her intelligence briefings, that non-Solarian traffic would be increasing, possibly dramatically, in the very near future, though. The abrupt cessation of the decades of cold and hot war with the Republic of Haven was in the process of opening enormous new economic possibilities for both nations, and a lot of the idled carrying trade was already picking up charters to Havenite destinations. Perhaps as much to the point, there were a lot of independent and nominally independent star systems in the Verge, and many of them would be delighted to trade with Manticore rather than the Solarian League…assuming the Star Empire was still around to be traded with.

That was a qualifier she didn’t much like, and she told herself once again that she and her crew weren’t deserting their posts. It wasn’t like the CW—at least the crew had settled on that much, she thought, lips twitching in an almost-smile—could have contributed much to the system’s defense when the Solarian battle fleet everyone knew was en route actually arrived. Nor would the sizable detachment of cruisers and destroyers accompanying the CW to the Talbott Quadrant have made much difference to such a clash of titans. Somehow she doubted that made any of them any happier to be leaving at this particular moment than her own people were.

Besides, she told herself, it’s not like Home Fleet hasn’t found a perfectly suitable replacement for our own mighty armament.

She snorted mentally at that, her eyes on the endless chain of ships headed out of the Manticore Binary System. Most were freighters and transports headed for Talbott, or for the repair yards at Trevor’s Star which were being upgraded as rapidly as possible to provide some fragment of the fleet support which had been lost in the home system. Others, however, were headed for the Beowulf Terminus, although there were fewer “freighters” in that transit queue than the casual observer might suspect. Or she hoped to hell any “casual observers” did suspect, anyway.

Charles Ward moved steadily forward with the other Talbott-bound vessels. The far smaller—and more lethal—cruisers and destroyers ahead and astern of her were minnows beside her bulk, although she was dwarfed by the even larger vessels headed for Beowulf.

CPO Dreyfus held their place in the outbound queue without further orders, and Ginger punched up Engineering as they neared the departure beacon. Kumanosuke Lawson’s face appeared on the small display by her right knee.

“Engineering,” he acknowledged.

“Commander,” she said, rather more formally than she might have spoken to another of her officers. “Stand by to reconfigure to Warshawski sail.”

“Aye, Captain,” he said. “Standing by to reconfigure.”

Ginger nodded and watched the cruiser ahead of the CW drift farther forward. The other ship hesitated for just an instant, and then blinked out of existence, and the number on Ginger’s maneuvering display changed to “1.”

“Cleared to transit, Ma’am,” Sughavanam said.

“Good. Tell Junction Central thanks,” she replied, and looked back at Dreyfus. “Take us in, Chief.”

“Aye, aye, Ma’am.”

Charles Ward drifted ahead at only twenty gravities, aligning herself perfectly on the invisible rails of the Junction, and Ginger watched her display intently. It was a good thing the RMN believed all its engineering officers should be bridge-certified “just in case.” There’d been plenty of times when she’d seriously resented the requirement that an engineer spend time in maneuvering simulators and on actual starships’ bridges. Then again, she’d never expected to find herself commanding a starship, either. Or, at least, not without a stint as a major hyper-capable ship’s XO first!

Of course, I did have that time as the Kitty’s acting XO in Monica until Ansten got back on his feet, didn’t I? she thought around a familiar flicker of pain for Hexapuma and all the friends who’d died with her. That has to count for something.

No doubt it did, but she cherished no illusions about her ability to emulate a ship handler like Aivars Terekhov or Duchess Harrington. Which made it no less important to demonstrate—to herself, as well as her ship’s company—that she was at least competent in that respect.

Charles Ward’s light code flashed bright green as the big support ship settled into exact position, and Ginger looked back at her com display.

“Rig foresail for transit.”

“Aye, aye, Ma’am,” Lawson replied. “Rigging foresail…now.”

The CW’s impeller wedge dropped abruptly to half strength as her forward nodes reconfigured to produce a circular disk of focused gravitation over three hundred kilometers in diameter.

“Stand by to rig aftersail on my mark,” Ginger murmured as Charles Ward continued to creep forward under the power of her after impellers.

A new readout appeared as that steady motion slid the rigged Warshawski sail steadily deeper into the focused funnel of hyper-space that was the gateway to Talbott. The readout danced rapidly higher as the sail began drawing power from the tortured gravity waves twisting eternally through the Junction, and Ginger watched them carefully. She knew she had a window of almost thirty seconds, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be sloppy, or—

The dancing numbers crossed the threshold. The foresail was now drawing sufficient power to provide movement, and she nodded sharply at Lawson.

“Rig aftersail now!”

“Rigging aftersail, aye, Captain.”

Whatever demons might be following Kumanosuke Lawson around, he ran his department like a precision chronometer, and Charles Ward twitched ever so slightly as her impeller wedge disappeared entirely and a second Warshawski sail spring to life at the far end of her hull.

The transition from impeller to sail was one of the trickier maneuvers with which a helmswoman had to deal, but Angelina Dreyfus’ skilled hands gentled the big support ship through the conversion with barely a quiver. She held the ship rock-steady, and Ginger’s fingers tightened on her chair arm as a familiar queasiness assailed her. Few people ever really adjusted to the sensation of crossing the wall between n-space and hyperspace, and her stomach seemed to have more trouble with it than most. The fact that the gradient was so much steeper in a junction transit only made that worse, but at least it would be over soon, she reminded herself as she concentrated on maintaining her serene expression.

The maneuvering display blinked, and for an instant no human sense or chronometer had ever been able to measure, HMS Charles Ward ceased to exist. In theory, it wasn’t truly instantaneous, although no one had ever been able to confirm that theory experimentally. Ginger wasn’t hugely interested in “theory,” however, and she concentrated on controlling her nausea as her ship snapped—whether “instantaneously” or not—across better than six light-centuries in that fragment of time no one could measure.

That nausea spiked abruptly, but then it eased once more, vanishing with the transit energy radiating from Charles Ward’s sails, almost as quickly, and she sighed in relief.

“Transit complete,” Chief Dreyfus reported.

“Thank you. That was well executed,” Ginger replied, watching the numbers spiraled downward once more. “Engineering, reconfigure to impeller.”

“Aye, aye, Captain. Reconfiguring to impeller now.”

Charles Ward folded her wings back into her impeller wedge and moved forward more rapidly, accelerating steadily away from the terminus in the wake of the cruiser which had preceded her.

* * *

“Can I get you anything else, Ma’am?” Jared Pallavicini inquired. “More coffee?”

“No, Jared, I think we’re fine,” Ginger replied. “Just leave us the Glenlivet and the glasses, and we’ll take it from there.” She smiled. “I promise I’ll buzz you if something else occurs to me.”

“Of course, Ma’am.” Pallavicini produced the required glasses, gave each a ceremonial swipe with a spotless napkin, and placed them precisely on the table, flanking the whiskey bottle. Then he withdrew, closing the pantry door behind him, and Ginger heard a chuckle from the far side of the table.

“What?” she asked, looking at her guest.

“You’re making progress with him,” Sinead Terekhov replied. “I don’t think he offered you more Alfredo sauce more than twice!”

“Don’t you go picking on Jared,” Ginger told her with a twinkle. “And for God’s sake don’t say anything about more food where he might hear you! Sying-ni’s done wonders with him, and I don’t want you undoing her good work!”

“Not for anything in the world,” Sinead reassured her, and they smiled at each other as Ginger uncapped the bottle and poured. Then they sat back, glasses in hand, at the table in the dining cabin which seemed much larger with only the two of them.

“That’s good,” Sinead said, sipping from her glass.

“I can’t really claim a very discerning palate where whiskey and wines are concerned,” Ginger admitted. “I know I really liked Glenlivet when Captain Terekhov introduced me to it, though.” She shook her head with a bittersweet smile of memory. “I wasn’t the only one in the Kitty’s wardroom who decided to stock up when I got the chance. Didn’t realize how much it cost, though!”

“I wouldn’t necessarily call Aivars’ palate ‘discerning,’” Sinead said, after a moment. “But he does have good instincts—in most things, not just wines or liqueurs. And when he makes up his mind about something—or someone—he doesn’t look back or second-guess himself.”

“I know what you mean. The Captain—well, Commodore, I suppose—isn’t exactly what anyone might call wishy-washy.” Ginger smiled, but the smile faded and her gaze turned a little troubled.

“What?” Sinead asked as the brief silence drew out, and Ginger shook herself.

“Oh, I’m just wondering—maybe worrying a little—over how he’s going to react to the entire notion of our being allied to Haven.” She looked her guest in the eye. “He never actually talked about it, Sinead, but I looked up the official record on Hyacinth. I know what happened to so many of his people, and how badly he was hurt himself. And he tried to hide it in Nuncio, but I knew…When he found out the ‘pirates’ were renegade StateSec ships, I knew how it hit him. I don’t know if he ever realized I did, but Ansten FitzGerald and I both knew.”

“I’m not surprised,” Sinead said quietly. “And I wish I could tell you how he’s likely to react. Oh, I know how he’ll react intellectually! He’s a very smart man, my husband, and only an idiot would think this was anything other than the best news we’ve had since the Battle of Spindle. But emotionally…that’s likely to be harder. And it may be even harder when he finds out how many of our friends—not just all the people on Hexapuma, but people like Peter Patterson and his wife—we’ve lost.” She inhaled deeply and shook her head. “I think he’d actually laid the ghosts of Hyacinth after Monica, but now…”

“Well, if anything’s likely to help him deal with all that, it would probably be seeing you.” Ginger smiled again, more broadly. “That portrait he keeps in his cabin is nice, but I suspect it’s not quite as nice as having the original in hugging range.”

“Oh, not simply hugging range, dear girl!” Sinead said with a wicked chuckle, and Ginger laughed.

“The truth is,” she said after a moment, “that I’m really pleased to have you aboard, and I’m looking forward to the Commodore’s reaction when you just turn up. He needs something to shake up his routine, you know. But I can’t help thinking you’d have been more comfortable on one of the personnel transports.”

“Nonsense!” Sinead sipped more whiskey. “They pack you into one of those things like canned peas! And that’s especially true now. If I was aboard one of those transports, I’d probably be sharing a single state room with at least one other anxious wife.” She shuddered delicately. “No, thank you! I’ve done that in the past. Besides, you and your officers are far better company than I’d find over there. I especially like Doctor Massarelli, and young Paula is a sweetheart!”

“Well, I wish you’d at least let me move you into better quarters,” Ginger protested. “We’ve got more space aboard the CW than any other ship I’ve ever served in, Sinead! For that matter, I have an entire additional sleeping cabin right here. It’s got to be more comfortable than the bunks down there in Snotty Row!”

“I am not yet feeble,” Sinead replied with a grin, “and I’m not going to bounce you—or one of your other officers—out of your quarters. It was kind enough of you to offer me a lift in the first place. Besides,” her grin faded, “Paula needs the company.”

And that, Ginger reflected, was entirely true.

She’d never imagined, when Sinead Terekhov told her she’d been granted priority for naval transport and that she’d like to accompany Charles Ward to Talbott, that she’d choose to make the voyage in the quarters normally assigned to the ship’s midshipmen. For that matter, she was reasonably certain Sinead hadn’t considered that possibility…until she arrived onboard and discovered that Paula Rafferty was all alone down there.