Lt. Leary, Commanding (18 page)

A smile touched the corners of her lips.
If the ship blows up here, who will Mistress Sand get to replace me?
Not that the answer was of any real consequence to Adele. She just liked information.

Daniel spoke tersely, authoritatively. The console's dynamic suppressor cancelled the sound of the words even a few inches away. Adele could have listened to the conversation on a dedicated line to the power room, but there was no need to. Lt. Leary was receiving oral confirmation from Chief Pasternak of what the instruments showed: the
Princess Cecile
was ready to lift.

Daniel grinned through his holographic display which was only a haze of light except to the eyes of the person seated at the console. His hand touched a switch and an electronic alarm whistled three times on a rising note. Signal lights pulsed red to orange, warning the crew during times that sound wouldn't carry because the ship was depressurized.

Daniel brought the throttles forward in a smooth motion. The linkage was physical rather than virtual so that the captain had feedback through his own flesh instead of just a gauge to watch.

Adele flexed her fingers, imagining the control wands between them. The trained human body is capable of wonderful subtlety. Unexpected, unwanted, she remembered a boy's face bulging as the bullet from her pistol punched through the bridge of his nose. That had required only a few ounces' pressure, expertly applied by a trigger finger trained in the gallery in the basement of Chatsworth Minor.

The thrusters roared to full power, squeezing Adele down in her seat. It was a gentle pressure; even with the antennas folded at minimum length along the hull and the sails furled tightly to them, a starship wasn't stressed for high accelerations.

Ships covered interstellar distances by entering bubble universes where physical constants differed from those of the sidereal universe, but velocity was conserved during the passage. There was no need of high accelerations when you could leave the universe for one in which distances were logarithmically shorter and the pressure of Casimir radiation drove vessels across light-years in a matter of hours. The High Drive, though very efficient, was needed only for maneuvering over distances too short for the captain to trust her astrogation.

The
Princess Cecile
bucked and started to yaw. Daniel's hands danced on the throttles. Adele snapped her eyes to her own display. The indicator for the third thruster in the upper bank—starboard—was quivering. It dropped to a hollow gray circle at the same time as the indicator kitty-corner—Port Two—became a white standby circle.

The
Princess Cecile
steadied. Adele thought she felt a minuscule vibration that hadn't been present before, but she might be imagining a change because her mind knew
something
had happened.

Her fingers touched a key with the same precision as Daniel had shown in juggling the throttles. Through her helmet Chief Pasternak was shouting, "
—ing bloody bracket gave and the feed line started thrashing like half an earthworm! Henning's got a loop of cargo tape on the whore, and we'll have her welded in numbers three minutes. Over!
"

"
Carry on, chief
," Daniel said calmly. She glanced at him again. His face wore an absent-minded smile as he tweaked a throttle—no longer linked to the other seven—and the vibration smoothed to glassy perfection. "
After all, this is a shakedown cruise. Needs must we can reach altitude on four thrusters.
Bridge out.
"

"
Engineering out.
"

Instead of concentrating on his display as Adele expected, Daniel stabbed the public address switch as forcefully as if he were trying to dent the plate beneath his virtual keyboard. Adele smiled: a control was never in doubt when Daniel activated it. He left delicacy for others.

"
Captain to ship,
" speakers said, the words echoing themselves from the ceiling of every compartment. "
The waterline feeding Starboard Three came adrift. Engineering has it jury-rigged, and it'll be at a hundred percent in a few minutes. Bridge out.
"

As Daniel switched off, he saw Adele watching him from the other side of his display. He grinned and made an O from his right thumb and index finger, then went back to his controls.

Adele did the same. Of
course
Daniel wouldn't forget that the crew would worry—or at least wonder—because the
Princess Cecile
's thrust had gone ragged. His duty was even more to the personnel than it was to the vessel's hardware.

Spacers shouted to one another. Under normal circumstances only the officers had communications helmets. When ordinary crewmen spoke to one another, they had to make themselves heard over the thrusters. The pulsing thunder muted as the corvette rose through ever-thinner layers of atmosphere, but even in hard vacuum the fabric of the ship shivered in a kind of low moan.

Two crewmen ran along the corridor carrying a rope-handled footlocker between them. They disappeared down the companionway, undeterred by the weight and awkwardness of their burden. Adele hadn't any idea what they were doing, whether it was a problem or simply personal belongings that somebody had forgotten to stow before liftoff.

The whistle called a two-note signal; the emergency lights glowed blue for a moment. Adele remembered the call from when the
Princess Cecile
left Kostroma: atmospheric density had fallen to the point that the captain could switch power to the High Drive at will.

Daniel engaged the PA system again. "
Engaging the High Drive
," he announced in a tone so emotionless as to sound bored. He waited still-faced for five beats of the second hand, backed the throttles to quarter power, and with his right hand threw the toggle that shut off fuel to the plasma thrusters at the same time as it engaged the matter-antimatter power plant.

The
Princess Cecile
shuddered. A high-pitched keen replaced the tremble of the plasma motors. Any change in acceleration was too subtle for Adele to sense, but she did feel a slight queasiness, familiar from her previous experience.

The High Drive delivered its thrust from a multithroated central port rather than eight—six during most of this liftoff—widely separated plasma nozzles. It was as though the
Princess Cecile
were balancing her thirteen hundred tons on the point of a needle. The controls kept the corvette aligned by minute changes in the thrust vector. The direction of "down" changed many times a second.

Adele smiled wryly. In this case, the delicate measuring ability of her inner ear was a detriment to her well-being.

On a sudden whim, she filled her display with a holographic image of the planet beneath. The first time she'd left Cinnabar, she'd sat in the passenger lounge and watched her world shrink on the display. She hadn't found it particularly interesting. Being who she was, she'd watched a perfect simulation of the process as soon as she decided to continue her schooling on Blythe.

Fifteen years ago, Adele had expected to return home. More accurately, it had never crossed her mind that she wouldn't return home, much less that her home would cease to exist. Now . . .

Adele turned from the image of a planet, the lines of its continents softened by the blue haze of atmosphere, and looked at the spacers around her. They were intent, ready for an emergency but cheerful nonetheless. Betts and Sun slapped hands in acknowledgment of a successful liftoff, and the riggers joked in the corridor.

Adele laughed aloud. She didn't worry about coming home again this time either.

Because this time she was taking her home with her.

Daniel rose from his console and stretched, a full-bodied exercise that ended with him leaning backward and bracing his hands on the seatback with a deck sandal locked around the chairpost. Liftoffs—and landings, even more so—were so all-involving that tension drew his muscles up like drying rawhide until the job was complete.

Delos Vaughn walked onto the bridge, smiling pleasantly. He wore a set of fawn coveralls which were utilitarian in cut, though grease stains would show as they didn't against the gray-on-gray mottling of RCN utilities. Over his left breast pocket was a tape with his name in glowing gold letters.

"Allow me to be the first to congratulate you, Lieutenant," Vaughn said. "Your recovery was so quick that I scarcely noticed the systems failure."

You have no business on my bridge!
Daniel thought.
A bracket snapping on liftoff is no more a systems failure than you're an RCN officer!
 

"Thank you, Mr. Vaughn," Daniel said aloud, "but I'd appreciate it if you'd consider the bridge off-limits unless I inform you otherwise. This is a warship on active service."

Turning his attention immediately to his console so that the comment would appear trivial rather than an angry dressing-down, Daniel keyed the Battle Direction Center channel. "Mr. Mon?" he said. "Come to the bridge please and take the conn. I'm going topside."

"
On the way, Mr. Leary
," Mon replied immediately. There was no need to go through full communications protocol on a dedicated line, any more than there was when dealing with one's fellows face-to-face.

Daniel straightened and again glanced around him. Vaughn had retreated into the corridor. He was watching with the bright interest of a bird but was careful not to interfere with the team of riggers preparing to go onto the hull. He must have felt Daniel's glance, for he waved an index finger in friendly greeting.

"Officer Mundy," Daniel said in a carrying voice, "we're preparing our initial entry into the Matrix. I'd appreciate it if you'd join me on the hull."

As he spoke, Daniel felt a flash of resentment, an uncommon emotion for him. Having a passenger like Vaughn was almost as bad as—indeed, perhaps worse than—carrying a senior officer. He couldn't feel that the
Princess Cecile
was really his, the way the officer commanding should be able to do. Although now that Daniel analyzed his feelings, he couldn't see why he
should
react that way to a foreign civilian.

"Why yes, thank you, Daniel," Adele said in pleasant, cultured impropriety. She rose from her console. "I suppose I should have that experience. Now that I'm an RCN officer, that is."

A valued member of the RCN,
Daniel thought, letting the grin reach his lips.
RCN officer in the sense that instructors at the Academy would understand it, though . . . that would be going a little far.
 

Woetjans gave Daniel a thumbs-up. He nodded. The bosun tongued a control in her helmet and the cheery, four-note Riggers Aloft call rang from the PA system as the signal lights pulsed yellow.

Lt. Mon—dark, wiry and professional—was striding down the corridor, dodging obstacles both human and inanimate, mostly equipment stored there for lack of a better place. Daniel nodded to him at the hatchway, said, "You have the conn," and slipped past with the ease of long practice.

Adele shifted left when she should have gone right and bounced off Mon's arm, then bumped Daniel from behind. It was amazing that a person with the physical dexterity Adele showed at a console—or with a pistol—could so consistently move in the wrong direction when she had to get from one point in a starship to another.

And of course when she was
on
a starship it was worse. Daniel reminded himself to attach her safety line personally.

The Bow Dorsal airlock was cycling, sending Woetjans and five riggers onto the hull. Six more crewmen waited to follow the first watch: the initial deployment of antennas and sails employed all the riggers rather than merely the port or starboard watch.

Burridge, one of the waiting riggers, tossed Daniel a suit from the open locker. He slid into it like a body stocking, then glanced at Adele to help her if she was having difficulty.

She wasn't: Dasi and Jonas held Adele by the arms while Burridge pulled the suit over her limbs and torso with as little ceremony or trouble as a cook has stuffing a sausage. From Adele's expression of mild disinterest, the process wasn't one that disturbed her. Vaughn, squeezed against the opposite bulkhead to keep out of the way, watched with a frown.

The light over the airlock glowed green, indicating the outer door was sealed. Dasi, the team's senior man, slammed the crash bar with a gloved hand and led his riggers into the lock. Daniel latched Adele's faceshield, drew her with him into the lock—it would hold a dozen in a pinch, times when speed was more important than comfort—and locked his own shield closed.

The world was silence except for Daniel's own breathing, heavy and echoing until he caught himself and consciously slowed it. He met Adele's eyes through the faceplates of optical-grade moissanite and grinned. She wouldn't be able to see his lips, but the muscles around her eyes crinkled in an answering grin.

The outer lock opened. The first result of air venting into space was that the light went flat: there was no longer a diffracting atmosphere to soften and spread the illumination.

The riggers surged out of the lock, each one going to a predetermined post. Daniel followed, shuffling forward so that one electromagnetic boot was always flat against the steel hull. He kept his right hand on Adele's equipment belt.

The
Princess Cecile
was spreading her antennas as quickly as the riggers could unlock them from their cradles along the hull. Hydraulic pressure extended and telescoped the masts and yards. Daniel noticed a dozen places where starlight blurred into iridescent fog. Some leakage was inevitable where new gaskets hadn't worked in or old gaskets had worn, and the vacuum of space emphasized the flaws. A trained eye—and Daniel's was—could tell the difference between a trivial seepage and a potential problem.

He leaned to touch his helmet to Adele's. "Look at Port Two," he said, pointing forward toward the second mast on the corvette's port side. "If that leak doesn't slow by tomorrow, we'll have to do something about it. The main joint is new, and the seal may have been pinched when it was being replaced."

Adele turned to follow the line of Daniel's fingers, taking her helmet out of contact with his. Riggers' suits weren't normally fitted with radios. An accidental transmission in the Matrix could have incalculable—literally—effects on a ship's velocity and location in regard to the sidereal universe.