Hunting Party

by Elizabeth Moon

  “No—not at all.” The voice carried no conviction, though. “Nothing to do with that—this—at all.” Serrano managed a forced smile. “Never mind—my retirement plans are far away, and we have a present problem: how to get you to your hunt on time. I’ll check with Sirkin, and see if we can’t cut some corners.”

  “With your concern for my safety?” That was meant as a joke, but came out sharper than she had intended.

  “Yes—with due concern for your safety.” Serrano was serious again. “There’s another matter, milady. It’s about your crew.”

  “What—do you think they’re all smugglers?” Again, a lightness she couldn’t sustain. Cecelia shook her head. “I’m sorry: I am trying to be funny and it’s not working.”

  “No wonder,” Serrano said. “You have had your schedule disrupted; you have lost a crewman through a dangerous accident; you have nearly been accused of smuggling; and you had to spend several days of uncomfortable travel under emergency restrictions. Frankly, I think you’re holding up surprisingly well.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. Nonetheless, I must bother you about the crew.” Serrano paused to sip from her cup and take a bite of pastry. Cecelia noticed again the dark smudges under her eyes—had she slept enough? Or was it worry? She picked up a pastry herself, and tried it. Leathery, compared to those her own cook turned out. “You hired your crew from one employment agency,” Serrano said. “Who recommended that agency to you?”

  “I hired you from the same agency,” Cecelia said. “What difference does that make?”

  “It’s a bit of embarrassment, but . . . they don’t send you their best. They admitted that to me, when I asked them to forward some information on the crew.”

  “But—but I’m a Bellinveau!” Cecelia’s voice rose. “Surely they wouldn’t—”

  “What they said,” Serrano broke in, “was that you did not need the level of expertise that a large ship did. Their top people go to big shipping and passenger lines, where they have a chance to move up—”

  “I pay very high salaries,” Cecelia said. “That ought to mean something, if my name doesn’t.” She didn’t like being interrupted, and she didn’t like the implication that her ship was unimportant compared to a commercial liner.

  “It means you get greedy incompetents.” Serrano stared her down; Cecelia felt again the power of that dark gaze. Then her face relaxed and she grinned. “Except me, of course. I wasn’t so much greedy as desperate to get a civilian job. But they did not recommend me for a commercial ship because of my background—the big corporations like to train their own people their own way, and find a military background a hindrance. You’ve got a very good navigator in Sirkin—she topped her exams, and I’m very satisfied with her work.” Cecelia had the feeling that “very satisfied” from Captain Serrano would have been a dozen flowery adjectives from someone else. “But the others, milady, looked on your yacht as a cushy berth where they would be well paid for doing little, and your previous captains seem to have concurred.”

  “But everything seemed to run smoothly,” Cecelia said, trying to remember if she’d ever noticed anything. Not really. As long as she arrived where she wanted to, when she wanted to, she had assumed the ship was fine. It certainly cost enough. “And I had the regular maintenance and inspections—I don’t know what more I could have done.” Even as she said it, she realized how she’d feel if someone said that about a stable in which they boarded their horses. She had had contempt for owners who didn’t know, who didn’t seem to care, about the details of stable management. Apparently she had made the same error with her own ship.

  Serrano did not seem surprised, but didn’t dwell on the point. “You paid for them, you mean. You had to trust your crew, because you didn’t know yourself what to look for. And I think that for some years you had honest, if less than superb, crew members who did their duties fairly well. A good captain would have been enough, to provide the initiative and discipline for crew who were competent but uninspired. But in Massimir Olin, you did not have a good captain. I don’t know with any certainty, but I suspect that he was looking for exactly such a ship, a small but fast vessel belonging to someone with no knowledge of ships or space, a vessel whose owner might be expected to visit places closed to commercial trade. You let him choose replacement crew, of course, and when old Titinka had that heart attack, he hired Iklind—from the same agency as the rest.”

  “But it’s quite reputable,” Cecelia said. Her mind whirled. She had never thought of herself—independent to the point of eccentricity and with no romantic susceptibilities—as anyone’s natural prey. The image of herself as a fat sheep which a wolf might stalk seemed both ridiculous and disgusting. “It’s the top agency in its field.” Implicit in that was the assumption that no Bellinveau would use less.

  “It is reputable,” said Serrano. “But no agency is immune from penetration. Where there is blood, the blood-suckers gather: where there is wealth . . .”

  “I know the saying,” Cecelia said. “But I never expected it to apply to me—I’m old, unattached and intend to remain that way, my money will revert to the family when I die—”

  “You are free transportation for your crew,” Serrano said. “You pay well enough that they know you must have more—you have everything done by top firms. But I think for Olin it was the places you could go without comment—the places he wanted to go, which you could take him to.”

  Cecelia thought about that, and set it aside. What Olin’s motives had been did not concern her now. “You had a point to make about the crew?” she asked. Serrano’s twinkle rewarded her for coming back to that point.

  “Yes, I did. I had intended to suggest some replacements of the least effective after your season of hunting; considering what’s happened, I think you have both cause and justification for making some changes now. Assuming you don’t want to start with me.”

  “Don’t be silly!” Cecelia said. “I don’t blame you for any of this.”

  Serrano shrugged. “You might well have. Good captains don’t let such accidents happen. Anyway, you need a replacement for Iklind. I’m seriously concerned about the entire environmental department, and would suggest you also drop the new juniors, retaining only the survivor of the accident. Mr. Gavin I believe to be honest, though totally devoid of initiative, and I think he can be salvaged by some good training. Your pilot . . . actually, besides his manner, I have no complaint of his performance. But he strongly defended Olin’s choice of course, in the face of a possible course that would have had you on your schedule. I suspect his complicity. We could do without a pilot, I am licensed for that duty, a separate qualification, and the expense of this refitting would explain your dropping him entirely.”

  “But can we find good crew out here?” Cecelia asked.

  “Yes—in fact I’ve asked Mr. Brynear about that already. As this is a major repair facility, there are always crews coming through. Someone is sick, and stays behind; someone is unhappy and jumps ship—not that we want that sort. Velarsin and Co., and other firms, hire these temporaries, and their work records here give us something to go on. Also there are people who start in refitting who want to work aboard a ship; if they’ve taken their exams, and we interview their supervisors, we can find some good ones. But it’s up to you, milady.”

  Exactly what she didn’t want, on her ship. She wanted it to function perfectly without her having to make any decisions at all. Just transportation . . . but of course, there were people who looked at horses as just transportation, and she knew what she thought of them. “I’ve always left it up to my captains,” Cecelia said slowly. “Are you asking me to interview with you, or—”

  “If you wish; it might be helpful to you to understand what I would look for in applicants. But what I meant is that I would not dismiss your employees without gross negligence on their part. You had some input, I assume, in the size of crew when you started out?”

  “Well . . . to be honest . . . I took
the advice of the employment agency even then. Told them what I had bought, and asked them to arrange a crew.” She could see by her captain’s expression that this was not the right thing to have done. She shook her head. “I was a fool, wasn’t I? Just like people I’ve known who’ve gone broke with racing stables. It just never occurred to me that the same things could happen here, in a simple little yacht.” Serrano’s expression did not change, but her eyes softened.

  “You had other things to think about, I’m sure. Why don’t you come along to some of the interviews, at least, and begin to pick up some of the terms? It will impress applicants, and it won’t bother me.”

  “Fine. I will.” She would learn every screw and bolt on her ship, the way she had once learned the anatomy of horses and every piece of leather and metal on her tack. How could she have left herself unguarded like this?

  “And don’t be hard on yourself,” Serrano said. Cecelia blinked. Was the woman a mind reader as well? “Remember, I still don’t know anything about horses.”

  * * *

  “Welcome aboard, milady,” Heris said. Eight hours late, they would be, undocking, but she felt happy anyway. Better a good job than a fast sloppy one. She had inspected the replacements with Mr. Brynear six hours before, and knew the new system was up to spec. Her new environmental team knew what they were doing, and Timmons was rapidly learning; he wanted to keep his job. The disgruntled pilot had complained bitterly about being dumped in the middle of nowhere; Lady Cecelia had finally paid his passage to one of the inner worlds of the system, even though her legal advisor said it wasn’t necessary. Lady Cecelia had told her gleefully about the stormy battle going on between Diklos & Sons, the insurance company, and her lawyers; she thought she would get her money back, at the least, and she had convinced the union that Iklind’s death was probably due to the bad work done by Diklos . . . so now Diklos had the union on their backs as well. Lady Cecelia’s staff had boarded an hour ago. Heris had given Bates the staff emergency directives, and he’d taken them without comment . . . They would soon begin emergency drills, proper drills, and this would be a proper ship.

  “Thank you, Captain Serrano.” Lady Cecelia and her maid came aboard serenely, as if nothing had happened; Heris saw her eyes flicker at the change in uniform. Heris had squeezed in a visit to a good tailor, and while it was still purple, it lacked the scarlet, teal, and cream trim and about half its gold braid. The docking access tube still had a thick carpet, but the walls were properly bare for inspection, conduits and tubing color-coded in accordance with Transportation Department directives.

  Behind Lady Cecelia, her nephew and his friends straggled in. Heris watched them with contempt behind her motionless features. Rich, spoiled brats, she thought. A waste of talent, if they have any; a waste of the genetic material and wealth it took to rear them this far. She gave a crisp “Welcome aboard,” and then walked past them out the tube to the dockside. Bates was waiting in the passage to see to anything more they needed. She would have avoided the greeting altogether except that she wanted to say a last few words to Brynear.

  “I hear you had a wager with your owner,” he said, grinning at her. “She making you pay up?”

  “She’d have let me off, considering the circumstances,” Heris said, grinning back. She liked his sort of toughness, his competence. He reminded her of the best she’d known, a memory she didn’t want right now. She pushed it out of her mind. “But the forfeit’s to learn more about what fascinates her—horses, of all things!—and if I’m to be a good captain for her, I need to understand her.”

  “If it weren’t rude and nosy, I’d ask you a question,” Brynear said.

  “It is, and I won’t answer it,” Heris said, with an edge. Then she softened. “I know what you’d ask, and I’m not ready to talk about it. Just wanted to thank you for a good job done well in a hurry. I’m glad we were able to argue our way past your schedule—and sorry to disrupt it.”

  “You can disrupt my schedule anytime,” Brynear said. “As I would have made clear, if you weren’t leaving so soon.”

  “You can repair my ship anytime,” Heris said, smiling. He was attractive, but not that attractive. Yet. The other memories were still too clear. “As I did make clear—but I wish we didn’t have to leave now. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome, Captain.” He threw her a civilian’s version of a salute and turned away. Heris went back to the ship and thoroughly enjoyed showing her crew that she was as good as the former pilot at undock and tug maneuvers.

  * * *

  “You shouldn’t have insulted the captain to her face,” Raffa said severely. They were two days out of refitting, two days of cool courtesy between Cecelia and the young people. Ronnie pouted, but she did not relent. “Don’t put out your lip at me,” she said. “It was wrong, and you know it.”

  “I didn’t know she was there. I didn’t know Aunt Cecelia had approved it. It’s too bad, really. I never asked to come along on this ridiculous cruise; it was all my mother’s idea.”

  “You’d rather be supervising a loading team at Scavell or Xingsan?” asked Buttons. “Come on, now, Ronnie . . . this isn’t bad. I admit, I wasn’t planning to be home for the season this year—no more than Bubbles—but it’s not as if visiting my father were a hardship.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Ronnie said. He looked around for sympathy, and found expressions that told him he was boring, and boring was one thing they would not accept.

  “Why don’t we swim?” asked Bubbles. “Now that we can use the pool again, a nice swim would be fun.” She stretched her long, elegant arms, and wriggled in a way that suggested something other than swimming.

  The others agreed; Ronnie knew he should swallow his sulks and go with them, but the sulks were too embedded. “Go ahead,” he said, when they turned to look back at him. “I’m going to try Beggarman one more time.” That was the computer game they’d been playing until it palled . . . and Ronnie never had gotten above the eighth level.

  He had no real intention of playing Beggarman. . . . He wanted to regain the ground he felt he’d lost with the captain. A private apology should do it; he had charmed his way past fiercer dragons than this. No woman of her age could be immune to boyish charm. He showered, put on a fresh jumpsuit, and looked at himself in the mirror. He slicked his hair: innocence? No. It looked as if he were trying for innocence. He tousled it: mischievous waif? Yes. That should do it. He waited until the others had logged into the pool enclosure. Then he strolled down the curving passage, slipped through the hatch between crew and staff areas, and found his way to the bridge. It wasn’t that hard; he had memorized the ship plan on his deskcomp.

  The bridge did not meet his expectations. He had envisioned something like the bridge of the training cruiser. . . . Aside from that, and the small craft he’d piloted, he’d never been aboard a ship. He stared at the small room crowded with screens and control boards, the watch seats crammed in side by side, the command bench hardly an arm’s length from any of them. Something was going on. . . . He sensed the tension, heard it in the low voices that reported values he did not understand. He had expected to find silence, even boredom; he had expected to be a welcome break in a monotonous shift. But no one seemed to notice him. Captain Serrano uttered a series of numbers as if they were important. . . . But how could they be, out here in the middle of nowhere? It must be one of her stupid drills or something.

  With all the confidence of youth and privilege, Ronnie strolled into the crowded space.

  “Excuse me, but when you’ve got a moment, Captain, I’d like to speak to you.” He spoke with the forthright but courteous tone of someone with a perfect right to be where he was, doing what he was. He expected a prompt response.

  He did not expect the smart crack of an open hand across his face; it sent him reeling into the back of someone’s chair. He grabbed for a support, and found a handy rail along the bulkhead. His cheek hurt; his mouth burned. Anger raged along his bones, but he was s
till too shocked to move. Serrano’s voice continued, low and even, with one number after another. Someone repeated them, and he saw hands flicker across control boards. Just as he got his breath back, he felt the gut-deep wrench he knew from his one training voyage: the yacht was flicking in and out of a series of jump points.

  Anger drained away; fear flooded him now. Jump transitions . . . they’d been near jump transitions, and if he’d interfered they might all have been killed. The quick remorse he was never too proud to feel swept over him. He gulped back the apology he wanted to make—he should wait, he should be sure it was safe.

  Then Captain Serrano turned to him, anger on her dark face. “Don’t you ever come on my bridge again, mister,” she said. Ronnie’s eyes slid around the room; no one looked at him. “Go on—get out.”

  “But I—I came to say something.”

  “I don’t want to hear it. Get off the bridge.”

  “But I want to apologize—”

  She took a step toward him and he realized that he was afraid of her—afraid of a woman a head shorter—in a way he had not feared anyone since childhood. She took another step, and his hand fell away from the rail; he backed up. “You can apologize to my crew for nearly getting us all killed,” she said. “And then you can go away and not come back.”

  “I’m—I’m sorry,” said Ronnie, with a gulp. It was not working the way he’d planned. “I—I really am.” She came yet another step closer, and he backed up; she reached out and he flinched . . . but she touched a button on the bulkhead, and a hatch slid closed four inches from his nose. BRIDGE ACCESS: PRESS FOR PERMISSION appeared on a lightboard above it. Ronnie stood there long enough to realize that his cheek still hurt, and she wasn’t going to let him back in. Then he got really angry.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” he told George later. No one else had seemed to notice, but George had asked about the mark on his face. “I mean, it was, in a way, but I didn’t mean to interrupt during a jump transition. She didn’t have to take it that way. Damned military arrogance. She hit me—the owner’s family—all she had to do was explain. Just you wait—I’ll get even with her.”