Lt. Leary, Commanding

by David Drake

  ” … as much of a pleasure as the circumstances allowed. And I of course would be pleased to serve aboard the Princess Cecile.”

  Sand nodded. “I try to make the lives of agents doing difficult jobs as comfortable as possible,” she said. “I want to know whether or not the government of Strymon is intriguing with the Alliance. It’s possible that you’ll be able to determine this without ever leaving your vessel. On the other hand …”

  She turned her left hand palm down. The ring on her middle finger was set with a blue-and-white sphinx cameo which looked extremely old.

  ” … the Republic requires an accurate assessment of the situation, regardless of the risk to those gathering the information.”

  Adele ran through a mental checklist of what would be required to carry out the assignment. The corvette had a full RCN communications suite which, coupled to Adele’s own equipment, would see to the hardware needs. Much of the remaining background Adele could gather herself more easily than by having Sand retail it. One aspect, though—

  “Will the arrival of an RCN squadron alert the plotters?” she asked. “Perhaps even precipitate events? If there is a plot, of course.”

  “It shouldn’t,” Sand said. “Strymon is a loyal Cinnabar ally—so long as it’s watched. A naval visit every six months or so is normal. The present one is actually a little overdue because of the rush to refit the fighting squadrons.”

  Sand’s left arm rested on the pad of the information console. When the machine was switched on it would become a virtual keyboard; the alternative control wands waited in a slot at the edge of the pad. It was an old system, though considerably updated since Adele’s youthful visits to the Celsus.

  “They’ll expect Commodore Pettin’s squadron,” Sand continued. “They will not, I think, expect an information specialist of your abilities to accompany the ordinary naval personnel.”

  That raised another question. The RCN had its own channels and hierarchies; neither Adele nor Mistress Sand herself could give Daniel an order that he would obey. “I, ah, assume Lieutenant Leary will receive his assignment in the normal course of business?” she said.

  Sand laughed, rising to her feet with the help of her hand against the desktop. “I’m afraid I rather anticipated your acceptance,” she said to Adele. “I believe Lieutenant Leary is getting his orders even as we speak. Though I don’t know about—”

  She grinned, the satisfied expression of a person who does good work and knows it.

  “—‘the normal course of business.’ Still, the orders will be coming from an acknowledged superior.”

  Still smiling, she waved Adele to the door ahead of her.

  Chapter Three

  Daniel Leary sat in the General Waiting Room of the Navy Office, eyeing the ceiling thirty feet above him. The afternoon sun slanted through the skylights. It caught the whorls of webbing which clung to the corners of the coffers and turned them into so many jeweled accents.

  There were three hundred officers in the waiting room at the moment, most of them senior to Daniel. Some talked quietly; some read or pretended to read professional works or the Gazette; most sat with their eyes forward and the grim expression of people who expect to hear the worst and are determined to take it like officers of the RCN.

  Daniel was reasonably certain that he was the only person present who realized the webs hadn’t been woven by a native Cinnabar species—nor Terran spiders, for that matter—but rather by the winged snails of Florissant. The flicker of movement in the shadows beneath the opposite row of benches was a Quatie Hopper, thumb-sized and warm-blooded, patrolling for dropped crumbs on the tiles with fans of hair-fine filaments sprouting from its forelegs. The faint but rhythmic thumm, barely audible over the susurrus of shoes and voices, was an amphibian common to all three of the Halapa Stars … and the Navy Office.

  Over the centuries the RCN had touched most human-inhabited worlds; the natives of those worlds in many cases had touched the RCN as well. Daniel smiled: You could write a history of Cinnabar expansion based on the natural history of the Navy Office.

  A wooden railing, darkened by age and polished by the thighs of centuries of petitioners, separated the waiting area from the administrative section of seven civilians. A junior lieutenant who must be nearly forty spoke urgently to the receiving clerk; the latter continued to type on her keyboard. If she heard the lieutenant’s pleas, she gave no sign of it.

  The chief clerk, wearing a dull green coat and an expression of cold superiority, oversaw proceedings from a desk at the back of the section with his fingers tented before him. His desktop was a sheet of black opal with neither paper nor a data console to mar its polished perfection. A small printer perched on the outer edge, as if contemplating suicide in remorse at intruding on so august a personage.

  The staff was civilian to underscore the fact it was outside the authority of even the highest-ranking RCN officer. Several of those waiting for appointments were full captains; occasionally there might even be an admiral in the hall. The decisions about who passed and when they passed the bar to the offices within would be made without regard for how those waiting felt about it.

  A printer hummed on a desk; the clerk there rose and handed the slip of hard copy to the annunciator at the podium.

  “Number seventy-three!” the annunciator bawled.

  Daniel’s ivroid chit bore number 219. There wasn’t any precedence, of course. It was just a matter of when the underclerk responsible for temporary staffing would come to Daniel’s request: sixty additional personnel for twelve hours, so that he could lift the Princess Cecile and wring her out before turning her over to the Director of Forces as ready for assignment.

  The overaged lieutenant arguing with—arguing at—the receiving clerk glanced down at his chit in delighted surmise. He started forward, then paused. Another lieutenant, a trim female in a uniform as crisp as that on a tailor’s dummy, was already striding through the gate after handing her chit to the usher.

  The older man looked again at his own bit of ivroid, then hurled it to clack on the floor. Others in the waiting room ostentatiously looked toward the walls, toward the ceiling. Daniel watched a pair of snails swathe a beetle in a shimmering arabesque of death. He alone looking at something rather than away from an embarrassment.

  The officers gathered here weren’t afraid of what they would be told. They were afraid that they wouldn’t be told anything, that they would sit on these hard benches today and tomorrow and for all the future till they finally surrendered to despair, and that the RCN would never call them.

  “Number fourteen!” called the annunciator. “Number one-hundred-and-fifty-five!”

  Daniel wouldn’t be ignored, not this time, though he might spend the rest of today and longer cooling his heels. Spacers were in short supply: there simply weren’t enough trained personnel to serve both the merchant fleet and the RCN on a war footing. A temporary draft could be borrowed from the ships in port, however, to test a badly needed corvette.

  When he’d handed over the Princess Cecile, Daniel would return to this waiting room to request his own assignment. That might mean a very long wait indeed. Enlisted personnel were hard to find, but there were more qualified officers than there were slots for them even in the expanded fleet.

  Places went to people with interest: the support of a senior officer either because of personal contact or the recommendation of a civilian whose wealth or political influence might be of use to that senior officer. Daniel had neither of those things. He’d distinguished himself when he fell into command on Kostroma, but the swashbuckling manner of his success might itself give pause to an officer considering “young Leary” for an appointment.

  The printer’s hum was too faint for those beyond the bar to notice, but all six of the junior officials turned slowly and stared at their chief like rabbits facing a snake. Their motion drew the eyes of the waiting officers, Daniel’s among them.

  The chief clerk’s printer had extruded a sl
ip of hard copy. It was a moment before the fact registered on the man. He had to stand to lean over the broad, bare expanse and pluck the document from the output slot. He read it with disbelief, then walked to the annunciator as all eyes in the huge hall followed him.

  The annunciator filled his lungs, aware that he had the greatest audience of his career. “Number two-hundred-and-nineteen!” he called.

  Good God!

  Daniel stood, knowing that his 2nd Class uniform had suffered in guiding and supporting his uncle during the tour of the Princess Cecile. The trousers had rucked up slightly and were sticking to the backs of his thighs; normally he’d have tugged them down unobtrusively as he walked, but now!

  He strode forward, his face composed. Corder Leary’s son knew what it was to be on display, certainly. Particularly when Daniel smiled, which was more of the time than not, he looked even younger than his twenty-two years. That didn’t normally disturb him—indeed, a number of women seemed to find it intriguing. Right at the moment, however, he wished he could manage the gravity of a judge.

  And he also wished he’d managed to lose the fifteen pounds he’d sworn he was going to scrub off this long time past!

  The annunciator took chit 219 and dropped it into a drum on the receiving clerk’s desk. He gave Daniel the slip of hard copy as the usher raised the gate to pass him through the bar.

  Daniel stepped through immediately, just in case the usher changed his mind, then paused to read the slip. It was headed with his rank, serial number, and request as offered to the receiving clerk. In the destination block below was the legend:

  Ground floor, Room 14

  Daniel walked across the administrative section, past the desk of the chief clerk—still standing, watching Daniel with the expression of a man who’s stumbled over a disemboweled corpse—and through the door of polished hardwood at the back. Only when he’d closed that door behind him did he let himself relax with a sigh of relief.

  He tugged his pants legs straight. The female usher stationed in the long hallway watched him with cool interest.

  “Room Fourteen,” Daniel said, gesturing with the slip of hard copy.

  “That’s the Chief’s office,” the usher said imperturbably. “All the way down, right to the end.” She nodded.

  Daniel acknowledged the information with a nod of his own and strode down the hallway. There were six doors to his right, all unmarked and closed; the seventh had Director of Personnel stencilled on the frosted glass and was open. Daniel paused, about to step into the small reception room where an assistant communications officer glanced up from behind his desk—

  But this door wasn’t all the way down the hall; and the numeral above the stencilled words was 10.

  Daniel gave the clerk a smile of apology and continued on. Behind him a group of officers entered from the reception hall and turned in the opposite direction, headed for the stairs to the upper floors.

  The usher had said “the Chief’s office.” Daniel had assumed “Chief of Personnel.” He straightened his back and strode onward, completely puzzled and more than a little apprehensive. Well, the RCN expected her officers to handle whatever events they encountered in the course of their duties.

  The remaining doors to the right were marked Purchasing I, Purchasing II, and Purchasing III. A pair of civilians came out of the middle door as Daniel passed, calling cheerful farewells to someone inside. Daniel paused, but the taller one bumped him anyway—and bounced back.

  “Oh, sorry, Lieutenant, very sorry!” the fellow said, patting Daniel’s shoulder with a calloused hand. “If you’re down at the Harborside Tavern this evening, come on over and have a drink on me!”

  Daniel grinned and walked on. Apparently somebody’s business with the Navy Office had gone to his liking.

  Room 14 faced the end of the hallway. The door—closed—read Chief of the Navy Board.

  Daniel could hear voices through the glass. He paused again, completely at a loss, and then tapped on the door.

  “Enter,” someone called. Daniel turned the knob and stepped into another waiting room, though this one was paneled in lustrous black hardwood. There were three cushioned chairs for visitors and, behind a desk that matched the paneling, a wholly colorless middle-aged man.

  “Admiral Anston brought the ensemble back after his capture of High Meyne,” the man said. “The decor of the governor’s private office there took his fancy.”

  “Ah,” said Daniel, nodding to show that he’d heard what the clerk said. He offered the slip in his hand. “I’m afraid there’s been a mistake. Can you direct me to the correct office, sir?”

  The clerk glanced at Daniel’s routing slip. “There’s no mistake, Lieutenant Leary,” he said. “But if you’ll have a seat, please? The admiral is still engaged.”

  The door to the inner office was open. A captain wearing a 1st Class uniform sat on the visitor’s side of the desk, leaning forward intently. From where Daniel seated himself, very carefully not staring into the office, Admiral Anston on the other side of the desk was merely two neat hands holding a sheaf of documents.

  “All right, Palovec, so much for the extrusions,” the admiral said. It was his voice Daniel had heard through the outer door. “Now, tell me why you’re recommending thruster nozzles from Kodiak Forges? Why is Kodiak even being permitted to tender?”

  The hands slapped the papers down on the desktop of petrified wood. Another trophy of the admiral’s active service?

  “I believe they’ve sorted out their quality control problems, Admiral,” the captain said with a bubbling good humor that didn’t ring true in Daniel’s ears. “I’ve made a personal inspection of their plant, you know. And the quote was very attractive, as you see.”

  The outer door opened without the formality of a knock. Daniel turned. A servant closed the door behind himself. He was far too senior to wear livery, but at his throat was a cravat in Anston’s black-and-maroon colors.

  “I’m here to collect the admiral, Klemsch,” the servant said. His eyes flicked over Daniel the way light glances from a mud puddle. “Will you inform him, or shall I?”

  Daniel’s smile froze. He could take orders without hesitation or complaint; the RCN was no place for anyone who had a problem with hierarchies. But Daniel didn’t expect ever to meet the house servant he considered his superior in any pecking order.

  “Hold them for now, Palovec,” the admiral said, shoving the papers across the figured stone surface. “I’ll get back to you tomorrow.”

  “I’ll inform the admiral that you’re here, Whately,” the clerk said. “This is the Navy Office, you’ll recall, not Stamhead Square.”

  Captain Palovec rose and straightened his documents with a pensive expression. “I’ll do what I can to convince them to hold the price, Admiral … ” he said.

  There might have been more to follow, but Admiral Anston stood and, with a hand on his elbow, ushered Palovec to the door. Anston was a short man with trim features even now, but either he’d gained twenty pounds since the last picture Daniel had seen of him or he wore a corset during formal appearances.

  Daniel jumped to his feet, barely restraining himself from saluting. By tradition born of necessity, no salutes were offered within the Navy Office; otherwise nobody’d be able to walk down the hallway without stopping in the middle of each stride to exchange salutes.

  And as heaven and his Academy tutors knew, saluting wasn’t a skill Daniel could ever claim to have mastered.

  “Come along, Admiral,” Whately said as soon as Anston appeared. “Your wife sent me to fetch you. You’re an hour late as it is.”

  Anston looked at Daniel, then to Klemsch with a raised eyebrow. Captain Palovec opened his mouth to speak, then changed his mind and strode out of the office, clicking the outer door behind him.

  “This is Lieutenant Leary, Admiral,” Klemsch said.

  “Admiral, your wife has been waiting at the gallery,” the servant said sharply.

  “Then she’ll damne
d well have to wait longer, won’t she?” the admiral boomed. “Come on in here, lad. I can spare you a minute without all the statues melting off their stands!”

  With the exception of the splendid desk, Anston’s inner office was relentlessly utilitarian. The walls were off-white with no pictures or other decoration, and the furniture was as spartan as that of junior officers’ quarters on a warship. Daniel sat because Anston directed him to a chair, but he perched on the edge of the cushion.

  “Are you married, Leary?” the admiral asked.

  “No sir!” Daniel said. Had there been a complaint about—

  “Didn’t think so!” Anston said, sitting in the similar chair across the deck. “But rumor has it you’ve met your share of women. Is that true?”

  A number of possible answers to the question raced through Daniel’s head. There had been complaints. Coming home as the Hero of Kostroma and with money in his pocket—well, Daniel had always been able to meet women looking for a good time, and with his present advantages it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

  “Yes, sir, that’s true,” Daniel said. He’d never been any good at lying, and he wasn’t going to start now with the Chief of the Navy Board.

  Anston nodded again. “That’s a good thing in a young man,” he said in an approving tone. “That way you won’t have to make a fool of yourself when you get to be my age. Now—what do you think about Kodiak thruster nozzles?”

  Daniel felt as though he was being slapped on the back of the head with feather pillows. Every time he turned, whap! and another one hit him from behind.

  “Sir, I don’t have personal experience with Kodiak’s products,” he said, “but my uncle, that’s Commander Bergen, has stopped using them in his shipyard. He says the internal polish is fine, but you have to magnaflux each one for weak spots or you can expect to have plasma leaking sideways before you’ve got ten hours of service. He says he rejected the whole shipment he received last quarter.”

  Anston banged his fist down. “Just what I told Palovec when I took them off the tender list last year!” he said. “I don’t mind a purchasing officer making his five percent on a contract, but I will not have a man who lines his pockets by providing my people with shoddy goods! Klemsch, take a note of that.”