Lt. Leary, Commanding

by David Drake

  He strode to the stairwell, the redhead clutched against him like pirate’s booty. Though unburdened, Adele struggled to catch up. Even so Lt. Mon was treading on her heels as she reached the door. Real spacers were amazingly surefooted when moving through clutter.

  “By God, we’ll all go greet the squadron!” Admiral Torgis cried behind them. “Gerson, get my car ready!”

  *

  Kira Lully held her trim red-and-gold aircar in ground effect just above the pavement until a roar of steam drowned the snarl of the Winckelmann’s plasma thrusters. Only then did she drop the vehicle’s nose over the cliff edge and plunge toward the Princess Cecile in spirals so tight that centrifugal force pressed the occupants outward.

  Daniel had thought of suggesting he take the controls himself, but he’d kept his mouth shut for fear that the redhead would order them all out of the vehicle in a fit of pique. As it turned out, Kira was a much better driver than he was.

  Also his fear that she’d blind herself by looking into the heavy cruiser’s exhaust was remarkably silly when he used his head—which wasn’t the part of Daniel Oliver Leary most often to the fore when he was dealing with pretty girls. Obviously, nobody living adjacent to Flood Harbor could be ignorant of the dangers of starships landing and lifting off.

  “She’s been running on eighty percent of her masts, and four of her thrusters are out of service too,” Lt. Mon remarked from the rear seat beside Adele. “Christ, I’d forgotten what a bucket the Winckelmann was.”

  “How do you tell?” Adele asked over the echoes still hammering around the cliffs. “About the masts, I mean, since they’re all withdrawn for landing.”

  Mon liked and respected Adele, but he had an abrasive manner at the best of times … which didn’t include times he was as drunk as he was tonight. Before he could snap, “Use your bloody eyes, woman!” or the like, Daniel said, “Antennas five, six, ten, and twelve in each row haven’t been unbound at least since the Winckelmann lifted off from Cinnabar, Adele. You can see the pitting from micrometeorites is uniform over the hinges and locking pins.”

  Kira dived into the warm salty fog which the Winckelmann’s thrusters lifted from the harbor. The big cruiser was indeed a sad sight to anyone who knew ships: a clumsy design, now overage and poorly maintained in the long interval of peace. Commodore Pettin could see that as well as any other officer of his seniority, and it would gall him like a boil on the butt.

  “I’m going to miss you tonight, Danny,” Kira said plaintively as she fluffed them to a featherlight landing on the dock where the Princess Cecile’s gangplank terminated. The harbor’s surface was twitching from the nearby arrival of 13,000 tons of heavy cruiser, but the concrete slips kept other vessels from bouncing around unduly.

  Adjacent to the corvette was the depot ship Admiral Torgis had moved there this morning. It was a freighter, now nameless save for its pennant number: SDN 3391. All but four antennas had been removed, and its High Drive had probably been cannibalized in the distant past to equip some warship that had limped down to Flood Harbor.

  Under normal circumstances the depot ship provided stores, power for vessels whose fusion bottles were deadlined, and a repair shop. Tonight her cavernous bays were decked out with bunting, food, and liquor for the Princess Cecile’s crew.

  “Not half so much as I’ll miss you, sweet thing,” Daniel said, knowing as he framed the words that the truth was a little more complex. True, he’d been looking forward to the night and morning—and who wouldn’t, after the run the Princess Cecile had just made? But it was even more true that Daniel would willingly forego the redhead’s charms if there was just some way he could avoid the interview with Commodore Pettin he knew was coming. Why in the name of all that’s holy did the pulpit-pounding commodore have to land in the middle of the Resident Commissioner’s party for the crew?

  Daniel hopped over the side of the aircar without bothering to open the door. “Mon,” he said, “roust the crew as best you can—they’ll understand it’s an emergency. Adele, get onto the bridge soonest and take over. With luck we’ll have the anchor watch sorted before—”

  “Christ on a crutch!” Mon snarled. “The sanctimonious old bastard’s making a hot exit!”

  The Winckelmann was opening up in the usual fashion of airing ship on arrival. Hatches were lifting, the turrets for the secondary battery of plasma weapons were being cranked out to provide more room within the hull, and crewmen double-timed onto the outriggers to unlock access plates that couldn’t easily be reached from inside.

  Normally no one would disembark until the process was complete. This time, as soon as the hatches serving the water-level stern hold had clamshelled wide enough open, the twelve-place aircar assigned to heavy cruisers as a utility vehicle—the Princess Cecile had a jeep that could carry four if they were good friends—roared out.

  Mon, not sober but used to functioning with a heavy load aboard, swung his legs over the side of Lully’s car and ran for the depot ship with a rolling gait. The Winckelmann’s arrival had called a good half the crew out already. Those who were vaguely sober were mustering less-steady comrades and helping them to the quay.

  Adele tried to jump out of the aircar. She tripped, which was so likely a result that Daniel had already turned to grab her when he realized what she intended. He swung her to her feet, then tucked her into the crook of his arm and trotted for the corvette. It was much the way he’d carried the redhead, Kira, in what now seemed the dim past.

  “But Danny …” the girl called. He heard the words and instantly discarded them as being of no importance under the present circumstances.

  Daniel’s reason for carrying his signals officer was quite simple. Adele had to be on the bridge when Commodore Pettin came aboard. Woetjans wasn’t going to pass Pettin’s standards of Ready for Duty, though the bosun would have the liquor bottles hidden and other evidence of good-fellowship out of the way.

  Woetjans’s taste ran to men who could make her look frail, though like most spacers she’d make do with what was available after a voyage like the past one. Daniel fleetingly wondered how lucky she’d been here on Sexburga.

  Though, by the living God! absolutely nothing harmful to the good order of the RCN was going on here. The problem was that Commodore Pettin wouldn’t see it that way; and thank God—thank Admiral Anston—for an experienced crew which could react to changed circumstances without the captain’s orders.

  Barnes and Inescu were on guard at the main hatchway. They’d managed to get to their feet and lift the stocked impellers they’d been issued for the duty. “Here comes the captain!” Inescu called cheerfully as Daniel pounded over the narrow gangplank with Adele in his arms.

  It was a tossup in Daniel’s mind whether Pettin would be more infuriated by a drunken officer of the watch or by one who was soaking wet from falling into the harbor in her haste to board. Adele was a solid weight, tall and not as slender as she looked from a distance. She didn’t speak and held herself as stiff as a balance pole. Daniel suspected she didn’t understand what was going on, but early in her contact with the RCN she’d learned how to keep from getting in the way in a crisis.

  Daniel saw three earthenware jugs floating between the corvette’s hull and the starboard outrigger. Barnes also noticed them and leaned over the hatchway, pointing his impeller.

  “No!” Daniel shouted over the howl of the Winckelmann’s car landing on the quay beside the redhead’s. Barnes was too drunkenly focused to hear anything. He squeezed the trigger—

  WhackWHOCK

  —and the weapon spat a fifty-grain pellet of osmium into the water at five times the speed of sound.

  Daniel half-turned, trying to shield Adele, but the waterspout was thirty feet high and drenched both of them. There were bits of shattered pottery in with the froth and flotsam. Daniel couldn’t say much for Barnes’s judgment, but he shot straight despite being pie-eyed drunk.

  Daniel set Adele onto the Princess Cecile’s entryway. Barnes bli
nked in horror at what he’d done. “Sorry, sir,” he mumbled. He lowered the impeller’s muzzle so that it pointed at Daniel’s feet instead of in line with his belt buckle.

  Adele headed for the bridge without further direction. The soles of all RCN footgear, even the shiny half-boots Daniel wore with his whites, were of high-hysteresis rubber that gripped wet or dry. Adele squelched with each step, but she didn’t fall down.

  Daniel took the impeller from Barnes, switched the power off so that the coils couldn’t accelerate another slug—into the harbor, into Daniel himself, or into God knew where—and returned it to the spacer. He could hear shouts echoing through the corvette as crewmen faced the sudden emergency.

  “Steady on, Barnes,” Daniel said quietly. “Try not to shoot the commodore.”

  Though that possibility had a degree of attraction just at this moment.

  Daniel turned and braced himself to attention, facing the three RCN officers and the sergeant of marines tramping down the gangplank. Captain, acting Commodore, Josip Pettin was in the lead. He was a lean, white-haired man, fifty but looking older. Normally his face would merely have been pale, but at this moment Pettin was so angry that his expression could have been carved from sun-dried bone.

  Daniel saluted. He’d never managed anything so crisp during his years at the Academy. He might as well have mooned the commodore for all the good it seemed to do.

  “Sir!” Daniel said. “Welcome aboard RCS Princess Cecile! I’m Lieutenant Leary, reporting to you in accordance with my orders.”

  “Leary …” Commodore Pettin said, his nostrils flaring as though he detected a horrible stench. Maybe he did: even Daniel noticed Barnes’s breath, and it wasn’t that there was no alcohol on his own. “I queried Condor Control from orbit when I saw a corvette in the harbor. The controller told how it came there. Furthermore, they very kindly added that your splendidly handled ship left Cinnabar ten days behind my squadron and still arrived on Sexburga well ahead of me!”

  Oh, God, that had torn it. No wonder Pettin looked mad enough to gnaw a junior lieutenant down to his boots.

  The officers with Pettin were a plump, worried-looking commander—probably the Winckelmann’s executive officer—and a lugubrious young woman with the single collar flash of a midshipman detailed as an aide with the rank of acting lieutenant. The sergeant of marines was just that—and it was instructive that Pettin hadn’t brought a marine officer instead. This was a burly fellow whose nightstick had gotten real use in the past.

  “Sir, the Navy Office directed me to spare no effort to join the squadron at Sexburga despite our late start,” Daniel said, his eyes unblinkingly focused on the center of the hatch instead of meeting the commodore’s glaring fury. It wasn’t much of a lie, and it seemed for a moment that it might just calm Pettin’s anger. Then—

  Oh God. Kira whatever-her-name-is was trotting primly down the gangplank. The skintight skirt didn’t hobble her in the least.

  “Danny, sweetheart?” she called in a voice so clear that nobody within fifty feet could mistake the words. “You didn’t kiss me good-bye, darling.”

  The quartet from the Winckelmann turned. The marine’s face showed momentary appreciation, then went professionally blank. Commodore Pettin looked at Daniel again.

  “Lieutenant Leary,” he said. “I was concerned when I detected signs of obvious inebriation in the tones of the duty officer when I queried your vessel from orbit.”

  His voice started gently enough but it quickly rose to be heard over the howl of another aircar landing. The vehicle was ornate, with enamel escutcheons on the doors and a fringed canopy.

  “But I never, never in my worst nightmares, could have imagined the sort of debauchery that I saw taking place as we landed! I will not ask for your explanation, because there cannot possibly be an explanation!”

  “Danny … ?” Kira peeped. Even she seemed to have come to the realization that something was wrong.

  The Princess Cecile’s crew—the bulk of the spacers who hadn’t had time to scramble aboard before the commodore’s aircar arrived—had formed in ranks on the quay as though for an inspection. Through them, moving with the stumping precision of a man who’d spent his time in a starship’s rigging, came Admiral Torgis with civilian aides in his train.

  “Do you have anything to say before I remove you from command and order your confinement for court-martial?” the commodore shouted.

  “Sir!” said Daniel. It was reflex, drilled into him at the Academy and absolutely the only thing to say under these circumstances. “No excuse, sir.”

  “Who’s that?” boomed Admiral Torgis. “Pettin, isn’t it? I’m glad you finally got here, Captain. You can have a drink with me in honor of Lieutenant Leary, who’s been posted to your command.”

  “Admiral?” Commodore Pettin said, half turning and forcing his face in the direction of a smile; not very far in that direction. “The condition of the crew … Have you noticed … ?”

  He gestured toward the depot ship, a little flick of his hand as though trying to brush away a fly. His subordinates had stepped aside and stood at parade rest, studiously not looking at either the commodore or the admiral.

  Kira vacillated on the gangplank. Torgis took the girl by the waist in both hands and swung her behind him, showing skill and balance that a rigger could appreciate.

  “Quite a little party, isn’t it?” he said with a chuckle. Daniel noted a hard glint in the admiral’s eyes, though: he knew exactly what had been going on when he arrived here and what would have happened if he’d been a few minutes later. “Thought it was the least I could do. Paid for it myself, that is. Though I think I could’ve justified Commission funds for the crew that saved Kostroma from the Alliance.”

  “But Admiral,” Pettin said, swaying slightly with the tension he held himself under. “The condition of the officers as well as the crew—”

  “Well, for God’s sake, Pettin,” Torgis said. He stepped into the Princess Cecile’s entryway, pressing the Winckelmann’s personnel back by sheer force of personality. “What do you expect their condition to be after a run like they made? Seventeen days from Cinnabar to here. I never knew of a crew who pushed so hard. They’ll be fit to fight as soon as yours are, though, I warrant.”

  A second ship was descending; one of the squadron’s destroyers, Daniel assumed, though he couldn’t see from where he stood within the corvette. The thruster pulses were audible, though it would be some minutes before the sound smothered normal conversation.

  Though “normal conversation” didn’t describe what was going on here.

  “Sir, the duty officer was obviously drunk!” Pettin said.

  “With respect, sir!” said Adele Mundy in a hard voice without a hint of respect in it. “I believe I was eating dinner at the time the Winckelmann announced its arrival, but I most certainly am not drunk.”

  Daniel blinked in surprise, then choked back a laugh when he realized that Adele’s statement was literally true. She stood ramrod straight on the companionway from C Level. She’d changed into her utility uniform, and he knew without question that the ship’s log now would indicate she’d been on duty all night.

  Pettin looked as though he’d been sandbagged. Admiral Torgis proved he understood as well as Woetjans did that the first rule of brawling is that you always kick your opponent when he’s down.

  “And if she isn’t, that’s a violation of my instructions to Lieutenant Leary, Captain,” the admiral said. “I made it as clear as I knew how that every member of his crew should have a good time at my expense tonight. I may be retired, but there’s still people in the Navy Office who’d listen if I told them the RCN doesn’t need Goody Two-shoes for commanding officers. There’ll be no Alliance attack here with the satellite defenses in place.”

  “Thank you, Admiral,” Adele said in ringingly aristocratic tones, “but my sobriety is entirely a personal choice. I would be unsuitable as a commanding officer for other reasons as well.”

&nb
sp; “I see,” said Commodore Pettin. He shuddered like a man lifted from freezing water. His tongue touched his lips. “Lieutenant Leary, report to me at ten hundred hours tomorrow.”

  He looked at Torgis and added in a voice that would have been venomous if it had more life, “If that meets with your approval, Admiral?”

  The destroyer was within three thousand feet, slowing to a near hover as the captain steadied her for landing. Admiral Torgis, raising his voice to be heard over the throb of plasma, said, “I’m retired, remember, Captain. In any case, I wouldn’t interfere with another officer giving proper commands to his subordinates.”

  Daniel had been standing at attention from the moment of the commodore’s arrival. “Sir!” he said, throwing another salute. It wasn’t nearly as crisp as the first; maybe despair was what he needed to perform drill and ceremony properly. “Ten hundred hours tomorrow, sir!”

  Commodore Pettin turned and stalked off across the gangplank without returning the salute or further acknowledging the Resident Commissioner. His subordinates followed, each with a surreptitious salute to the former admiral.

  The Princess Cecile’s crew must have heard the entire exchange; now they began to cheer. They were so loud that Daniel could hear them until the destroyer licked the harbor into a roar of steam.

  The cheering wasn’t going to help matters tomorrow morning; but even before there hadn’t been much doubt about how Daniel’s formal interview would go.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Enter!” Commodore Pettin called through the open hatchway to his office.

  Daniel took two strides and halted before Pettin’s desk. He was well aware of the three clerks in the outer office, staring at his back, but Pettin continued working at the holographic display between him and the lieutenant he’d summoned.

  Daniel took an Academy brace and saluted. “Lieutenant Leary, reporting as ordered, sir!” he said.