by David Drake
"Oh, Commander," Madam Dorst said. "Oh, Timothy would be so—"
She put her hands to her face and turned away, sniffling uncontrollably toward the mirror across the entrance hall. She fumbled for a handkerchief in her sleeve.
"Please come into the sitting room, Commander," Miranda said, taking Daniel's right hand in her left and guiding him away while the older woman settled herself. "We have tea waiting."
Softly she added, "Timothy idolized you, you know. That's the only word for it. He hoped. . . he hoped that someday he. . . ."
"Midshipman Dorst had my full confidence," Daniel said forcefully, hoping to forestall tears. "Passed Lieutenant Dorst, I should say. I was very lucky to've had his support during several commands."
Daniel had a great deal of experience with women starting to weep. The only thing he knew to do about it was to put his arms around them and hold them, feeling uncomfortable. That wasn't appropriate here, and besides there were two women.
The room beyond was dim. Curtains draped the windows on the side wall, and there was more furniture of plush and dark wood than that was really comfortable in the available space. Lace doilies protected the backs and arms of the chairs. The sixth floor apartment held the remnants of a much larger establishment, and while this building was respectable, it was hanging onto that status by its fingernails.
In the center of the room was a low oval table with a top of richly figured wood. A tea service waited there on a matching porcelain tray; a knitted cozy with a design of fish covered the pot of hot water.
"What an attractive cozy!" Daniel said with false enthusiasm. He bent closer to the service, largely as an excuse to look away from Miranda. "I grew up in Bantry on the west coast. The pattern here takes me back to my childhood."
"Please do sit, Commander," said Madam Dorst from the doorway, apparently recovered. "Take the maroon chair, please; that's the one Timothy used when he was home. And my dear husband before him."
Daniel seated himself with care; his Whites were closely tailored. He'd been taken aback by the degree of grief the two women were displaying. Unless something had gone badly wrong at Navy Office, they'd have been informed of Dorst's death at least three months before, and it'd been a quick, clean end. The cutter Dorst commanded had been hit squarely by a pair of 20-cm plasma bolts fired at close range. He and his crew had vaporized before they knew they were in danger.
Mind, you always said something of the sort to the families. It did no good to tell civilians that their beloved offspring had died coughing his lungs out or had drifted away from the vessel into a bubble universe in which she'd be the only thing human until she screamed herself to death. But in this case, it'd really been true.
The women sat in the brown chairs to either side of Daniel. As Madam Dorst filled the pot with hot water, she said, "What ship have they given you now, Commander? Surely it'll be an important one after you've accomplished so much with your little corvette as a lieutenant."
"Now, mother," Miranda said, lifting a plate of little cakes. "Don't embarrass our guest. He may be off on a secret mission that he can't talk about. Commander Leary, will you have a macaroon?"
"Thank you, mistress," Daniel said, pinching one of the squishy little cakes between thumb and forefinger. "There's nothing mysterious about my present assignment, and in fact I don't have a ship to command. I'm off to Ganpat's Reach as an adviser. A Cinnabar ally's gotten into difficulties and the Navy Office found it easier to spare a very junior commander than a cruiser squadron."
It was obvious that Dorst'd been talking about him. Very likely the boy had also talked about Adele and the work she did for her civilian mistress. That was unfortunate, but it was bound to happen with a small, tightly knit company like the crew serving with Daniel.
"See, mother?" Miranda said with a pretty smile. "We mustn't ask him about that or he'll be required to lie. Commander, what will you have in your tea? Mother, it should be ready to pour."
"A little milk," said Daniel, feeling extremely awkward. "Just a little milk, please."
He wasn't beyond letting a pretty girl make him out to be a dashing hero; indeed, if she were pretty enough, he wasn't beyond encouraging her. Daniel Leary was 24 years old, and no one who'd known him any length of time doubted that young women were matters of great delight and concern to him. Here though, he was paying his respects to the family of a slain shipmate. It didn't seem right to trade on the situation.
"In all truth, Mistress Dorst," Daniel said, providing more detail than he normally would've done with civilians, "I don't have many friends in the Navy Office at present. This business arose just in time to get me out of the way, to Admiral Vocaine's benefit and mine as well. I was worried that I'd be assigned to command a guard ship or a logistics base in a quiet sector."
"Oh, that can't be, Commander!" Madam Dorst said, glancing in horrified amazement from the cup she was turning right side up on its saucer. "Why, Timothy told us that everybody at the highest levels of the RCN was full of your praises. The very highest levels!"
"I'm sure Timothy believed that, Madame," Daniel said, taking a tiny sip of the tea to wet his lips. "But you'll appreciate that his knowledge of the inner workings of the Navy Office was. . . ."
He shrugged and gave Madam Dorst a lopsided smile.
"Not extensive," he concluded.
"Please call me Miranda, Commander Leary," the younger woman said with a soft smile. "I won't presume to call you Daniel—which Timothy never did. But—"
"Daniel, of course," Daniel said. "Ah, Miranda. I'm not your superior officer."
When looking in her direction as he spoke, he noticed a data console sitting between flower vases on the table across from the doorway. It was a tiny folding unit, quite new. The rack of chips beside it included several whose coded striping was familiar to him even from six feet away: Foote's History of the Republic of Cinnabar Navy; The Navy List in its most recent update; and General Regulations and Ordinances Governing the RCN, also updated.
"My goodness!" Daniel said. "Are those Dorst's?" He cleared his throat in embarrassment. "Timothy's, that is. I hadn't taken him for so studious a—"
He broke off as the obvious answer struck him. "Ah," he said. "Perhaps to Midshipman Vesey left these books while she was on deployment?"
"The books are mine, Daniel," Miranda said, her voice calm but her back suddenly a little straighter in apparent reproach. "I felt I should become familiar with the RCN since Timothy had decided to make it his career."
"And as for Elspeth Vesey," Madam Dorst said with unexpected sharpness, "she hasn't so much as called on us since she's been in Xenos. I suppose she's just gone on with her life as though Timothy's death meant nothing to her."
"She always felt she was too good for Timothy, I think," Miranda said with equal venom. "Quite full of herself because she did so well in classes. Well, classwork isn't everything."
Daniel place his cup on the saucer he held on his right knee. "I really think you're mistaken about Midshipman Vesey," he said. He was trying to imagine the quiet, self-effacing Vesey as being full of herself; it was like trying to visualize Daniel Leary wearing priestly vestments. "She was completely devoted to, ah, Timothy. And him to her, if I'm any judge."
"They why," said Madam Dorst crisply, "has she not come to see us, Commander? Why?"
Daniel looked at the older woman, groping for the right words. He needed to explain what he felt was the truth, but he was squeamish about intruding into Vesey's privacy.
"Madame," he said at last, "I was afraid that the salvo which killed your Timothy had effectively destroyed Vesey as well. In a way, I think it did: she's just as efficient an officer as she was before—a very efficient officer, one whom I'm glad to have with me on the coming mission, just as I'd be glad to have Timothy if the fortunes of war had spared him."
The women watched him closely. Their expressions were politely reserved, but Daniel had the impression of a pair or cats eying a bird.
"She's efficient, as I say,
" he continued, "but she's no longer really alive. For the time being—and I hope that it's only for the time being—she's stepped away from everything except her duties. From what you say, that includes people whom I'm sure she loves and respects a great deal."
"Well," said Madam Dorst with her lips pursed. "I'll certainly consider your opinion, Commander."
"I'm shocked that they haven't found you a command, Daniel," said Miranda, thankfully changing the subject. . . albeit back to another awkward one. "The Alliance outnumbers us badly, and while I know that one of our spacers is worth two of Guarantor Porra's brutes—"
Daniel sipped. He'd be the last to object to pride in Cinnabar and the RCN, but spacers were spacers and he'd met Alliance officers who were every bit as skilled as anybody who came out of the RCN Academy.
"—it's still unthinkable that the RCN would waste its finest officer!"
"Miranda, thank you," Daniel said, lowering his cup to his knee again, "but the RCN has many fine officers, thank the Gods. And I'm not being wasted, I'm being sent to help an ally. It's a very responsible position and one that may be of more importance to the Republic than anything I could do if in command of a destroyer."
Or even in command of the cruiser Milton, as the captured Scheer had been renamed in RCN service. Ordinarily a heavy cruiser would be commanded by a captain, not a mere commander, but Daniel'd had his hopes. Not only was the Milton foreign built, she was of an oddball design intended for convoy escort and commerce raiding. A commander with the support of Admiral Anston, the Chief of the Navy Board, might very possibly hope to command the Milton when she came out of the shipyard where she was being repaired.
Miranda'd said she was shocked that Daniel wasn't offered a ship when he brought the damaged Milton back for repair. That was nothing to how Daniel himself had felt when he learned in Cinnabar orbit that his prize crew—spacers who'd been with him in some cases from before he had a ship of his own—were being transferred straight to a receiving ship instead of being paid off to enjoy a well-earned leave in Xenos.
The response to Daniel's protest had brought him a worse shock: Admiral Anston had retired after a heart attack. His replacement as Chief of the Navy Board was Admiral Vocaine, and one of the latter's first decisions had been to stop all leave. Spacers were kept under guard until they were transferred to an outbound ship.
It seemed to Daniel that treating people like so many pieces of hardware was unlikely to bring out the best of them in service, but the new Chief wasn't interested in Daniel's opinion. His petition had been heard—and ignored—by a junior clerk in the personnel division.
Daniel'd initially been so angry about what was happening to his crew—and many thousands of other spacers, of course, but his crew was his responsibility—that he hadn't thought of what the change in the Navy Office meant for him personally. When his sputtering fury had turned to resignation, he'd realized that he was going to pay heavily for having had—or being thought to have—Anston for a supporter.
"Well, I still think it's a pity," said Miranda. "Another macaroon, Daniel?"
"Oh, no thank you," Daniel said, smiling. He patted his cummerbund. "We were undercrewed on the voyage back to Cinnabar so everybody with rigging experience, myself included, got plenty of exercise. I lost three pounds, and I intend to keep it off."
He could've said more, but bragging about his astrogation would've been just as out of place here as hitting on the bereaved. He'd had a crew of seventy-five to manage a cruiser with a normal complement of four hundred. That would've been bad enough, but battle had scoured the masts and yards from the Milton's stern portion besides.
Despite the short crew and the jury rig, the Milton had made the run from Nikitin to Cinnabar in seventeen days, a week sooner than a vessel in normal commercial service. It wasn't a record run on paper, but it was as nice a piece of sailing as Daniel'd ever managed.
"How will you get to Ganpat's Reach, Commander?" said Madam Dorst over the rim of her teacup. The porcelain was so thin that her tea with lemon was an amber shadow through the wall of the cup. Like the room's furniture, the service must date back to a more prosperous period in the family's fortunes.
"Yes, that's a three-week voyage, isn't it?" said Miranda. She'd obviously been studying the Sailing Directions to have been able to pull that—accurate—datum up from memory. "And there's no direct trade, or almost none."
"I've been studying the route," Daniel said. "The Navy Office is chartering a vessel for the mission, a former corvette now in private hands. We have the full support of Senator Manco, of course."
What the mission really had was Adele Mundy, whose skill with information resources went beyond even the high standard to be expected of a librarian. The RCN was indeed chartering the Princess Cecile from its owner, Bergen and Associates. . . Daniel's own company, left him by his uncle, with Speaker Leary as a silent partner. The contract and funding request were on record as having been approved by every necessary office in Navy House and the Exchequer.
If some months down the road the officials concerned didn't recall granting those approvals, they were still unlikely to call attention to the business. The very best they could expect was questions about the oversight of their department.
And it wasn't really corruption: the charter was on fair terms and the only practical way Daniel could see to accomplish the task he'd been set. It would've taken months to go through normal approval channels, however, the request probably wouldn't have gone through. As Daniel'd told the women, Admiral Anston's fair-haired boy didn't have any friends in Navy House now.
He finished his tea, smiled, and added, "I believe it should be possible to shave a little time off the usual voyage with a tight ship and a good crew. I'm actually hoping to make the run in fifteen days. Unless we get to Bennaria quickly, we might as well stay in Xenos."
"Can you find a good crew in these days, Daniel?" said Miranda with a frown. "Can you find any kind of crew, in fact? I know the situation wasn't as serious when you and Timothy lifted four months ago, but now the RCN is having to strip merchant ships to minimum crews. Even so we're short of spacers."
She was a very handsome girl, more so than Daniel'd thought at first glance, and she understood the situation better than he'd have expected her brother to. Dorst was a fine officer, a splendid officer, but no one would've called him quick on the uptake.
"As a matter of fact, my, ah, staff is working on that problem," Daniel said. "I hope to have a solution by mid-morning tomorrow."
"My staff" again meant Adele using her ability to enter databases and modify the information in them. Her other employer had outfitted her with the very finest tools for the purpose, and she saw nothing wrong with using them in aid of the present mission. It was, after all, a task which the Senate had ordered the RCN to carry out and whose execution the Navy Office in turn had assigned to Commander Daniel Leary.
Daniel smiled at a thought: Admiral Vocaine would be angry if—and probably when—he learned what'd happened. But he wouldn't complain either.
The older woman directed the teapot toward Daniel's empty cup. He quickly set his hand over it.
"No, no—no more tea for me, please, Madame," he said. "I really have to be getting on."
He set the cup back on the tray carefully and rose. "Ah?" he added. "If I might ask a personal question?"
"Of course, Daniel," Miranda said. She flushed, and it struck him that she might've misunderstood his purpose. "Of course you may."
"Your, ah, Timothy was owed a considerable sum in prize money from the Alliance convoy we captured in the Bromley System," he said. "And the escort as well, a heavy cruiser that was bought into service. Has this money been paid you yet?"
"To tell the truth, Commander," Madam Dorst said, "no one will even tell us if there is money owed. Clerks keep sending us to different offices."
"We've been approached by some, well, brokers I suppose you'd call them," Miranda said, standing and lacing her fingers together. "They off
er to buy our rights and pay us immediately, but it seems to me that they'd be taking an awfully high percentage of the claim for themselves."
"I probably wouldn't call them brokers, Miranda," Daniel said, feeling the muscles of his jaw clench. "But I won't use that sort of language in front of decent ladies like yourselves."
He brought out the card he'd slipped into his cummerbund in expectation of the answer. Whites deliberately made no provision for carrying objects, but Daniel hadn't wanted to call on the Dorsts in company of a servant when he knew they couldn't themselves afford one.
"Go to this bank, the Merchants' and Shippers' Treasury, and ask for the manager, if you will," he went on as Miranda read the card with her mother at her elbow. "She's expert in this sort of matter, and I think you'll find the bank's rates are very moderate."
"Deirdre Leary," Madam Dorst said. She looked up. "Is she a relation, Commander?"
"As a matter of fact, she's my sister," Daniel said. "But I assure you, Deirdre would make sure that any member of the RCN got a fair shake."