Lt. Leary, Commanding by David Drake

“Woetjans?” Daniel prompted gently. Adele froze her display and watched the tableau from her corner.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Woetjans said. She did sound sorry. Though she faced Daniel, her eyes were focused a thousand miles away. “The captain’s given me orders that you aren’t to call anybody till you resume command of the Princess Cecile; Acting Captain Mon has, I mean.”

Adele couldn’t see Daniel’s face from where she sat, but his silence itself was telling. Woetjans took a deep breath and continued in an anguished voice, “Sir, Mr. Mon gave me the job instead of, instead of somebody else—”

Adele dipped her chin in a nod of understanding.

“—because he knew I’d follow naval discipline. That I’d put this pipe through the radio—”

Woetjans tapped her length of tubing with a little finger. She’d brought it to encourage the Captal if that proved necessary. It wasn’t. The prisoners hadn’t even complained aloud at being marooned with the remnants of food Daniel’s unit had brought to South Land.

“—if that was the only way to keep you from getting a signal out. Sir.”

“I see,” said Daniel. He leaned back in his seat and grinned. “Adele?” he added. “What would you have done if Captain Mon had given you the orders that he gave Woetjans?”

It was an honest question, so Adele paused a moment to form a complete and honest answer. “I like Mon well enough,” she said. “It’s clear that he has what he considers to be your best interests at heart. But I wouldn’t thank anyone who tried to control me for my own good, and I wouldn’t be a party to a plot to do that to you.”

She grinned just enough to lift one corner of the knife blade line of her lips. “Of course,” she went on, “I bow to force majeure in the form of Woetjans’s bludgeon.”

Daniel laughed merrily. “Well, Woetjans,” he said, “I hope I understand naval discipline as clearly as you do. Captain Mon has given you a lawful order which I’ll watch you obey, little though I care to do so.”

He twisted to look through the window into the passenger compartment. Woetjans had brought a cask of Sexburgan beer for the rescued unit, saying that it wouldn’t affect their ability to function when they reached the corvette. Adele wondered how Tovera was getting along with the festive spacers.

Daniel turned back with a satisfied expression. “I trust I’m allowed to listen to traffic between the squadron and the Princess Cecile, however?” he said. “Ah, assuming that’s possible, Adele?”

“Of course it’s possible,” she said, frowning. Daniel didn’t mean to be insulting, but how would he react if she said, “And can you walk through that open door, Daniel?”

“Yeah, sure,” Woetjans said. “Sir, you know I didn’t want to . . .”

“Part of being in the RCN is learning to carry out unpleasant orders, Woetjans,” Daniel said without expression. He tried to smile but gave it up as a bad job after a moment.

Adele checked the machine-made transcripts of the past four and a half hours of commo traffic between squadron command and the Princess Cecile; for her, written text provided a quicker way to assess material than sound bites were. Each message in turn proved low-level and routine: duty rosters, liberty records, the current supply manifest, and similar matters.

While she was scrolling through the data, the display threw up a red sidebar: the Princess Cecile was receiving a communication for the captain and slugged Squadron Six—Commodore Pettin himself. Betts, the duty officer, had just passed the call on as directed.

Adele paused only a moment, then routed the message live through the speakers in both cab and passenger compartment.

“Sir!” Mon’s voice said. “Acting Captain Mon here, over.”

“Mon, if you’re in charge, then Lieutenant Leary is still absent from duty,” Commodore Pettin replied. Adele wasn’t good at identifying voices, but no one else in the squadron would have shown such disregard for naval propriety. “That’s true, isn’t it?”

“Sir,” Mon said, “I’ve failed to recall Captain Leary from the expedition on which you ordered him. I’ll keep trying, and I’m confident that he’ll have returned well before the liftoff time you originally set. Over.”

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