Several of the warrant officers looked blank; Mon scowled, his mouth working as though he were trying to swallow something ghastly, while Woetjans merely scratched herself and grinned. “That’ll teach him who’s a spacer, won’t it, sir?”
“But Captain . . . ?” said Pasternak. “The commodore didn’t transmit his solutions to the Sissie when we said we weren’t ready to lift. We don’t know where the squadron’ll be, except Strymon where they’ll end up.”
Pasternak was by the nature of his duties a highly educated man, though Daniel suspected that—besides Adele, of course—in raw intelligence the bosun may have been the smartest of the warrant officers. Working with a fusion bottle required a great deal of rote learning, but independent thought was a quick route to disaster. Pasternak could be depended on to know the accepted response to most standard shipboard problems, and to deny that any other response was possible.
“That may prove correct, Mr. Pasternak,” Daniel said, “but I hope that by modeling solutions on our astrogation computer, we can determine which one the commodore will have chosen and then rendezvous with him. The computers are identical, after all, so the only question is which chain of intermediate exits from the Matrix Commodore Pettin chooses.”
“He’ll push,” said Mon. “He’ll want to prove he can make as fast a run as ever a junior lieutenant did.”
“He’ll want to push,” Woetjans said, “but he’ll know the Winckelmann’s ready to pull her sticks out if he don’t treat her tender. And if he don’t know that, his bosun’ll tell him.”
Daniel said, “Commodore Pettin is an able officer and a careful—”
He’d swallowed the word “cautious” before it reached his tongue. Daniel had no desire to insult Pettin, and to this group of officers and the RCN more generally, “cautious” was indeed a word of insult.
“—one. I expect him to get the best out of his equipment, but he’ll also know that his equipment is old and ill-maintained. I’ll proceed according to those assumptions, with Mr. Mon’s help and the help of my chiefs of rig and ship.”
There were general nods and grins. Daniel’s officers assumed that because he said the task was possible, then they’d accomplish it under him. Which, after all, was the assumption their captain made as well.
“We’re going to need a great deal of luck,” Daniel said, “and we’ll be working through the whole run to tolerances as close as those of a battle which would be over quickly. It’s going to be a strain on everybody, perhaps equal to the seventeen days that brought us here from Cinnabar.”
Betts put his hands behind his neck and leaned back at his console. “I signed on with you, Captain,” the missileer said, “because I thought that was the best road there was to getting a name for myself and enough prize money to buy a rose nursery whenever I chose to retire. I guess the same’s true of every soul aboard the Sissie today, except maybe for the roses. You give us our orders. You don’t have to worry about us carrying them out, whatever they are.”
In the middle of the general approving chorus, Woetjans slammed her hand against the bulkhead again and bellowed, “Damned straight!”
That too was pretty much how Daniel felt.
* * *
Adele sat cross-legged in a cabinful of opened luggage while the Princess Cecile bustled about her. Liftoff wouldn’t be for hours, or so she’d surmised when she left Vesey to handle routine traffic at the signals console while she spent her own time more productively.
The door—the hatch—opened abruptly. Adele’s head came around quickly and her left hand spilled chips on the deck beside her as it dipped toward her pocket.
Lt. Mon stepped through and paused, looking as surprised to find someone else in the room as Adele had been an instant earlier.
“Sorry, mistress,” he said. He looked taut but not particularly alert. “I forgot this was your cabin.”
“Mine?” Adele said in surprise. The first lieutenant’s uniform looked as though he’d slept in it; in truth, he probably hadn’t slept at all.
“Yes, ma’am,” Mon said, more patient now in his exhaustion than she’d seen him at times he was in better shape. “Yours and the Medic, now that our passenger’s cut and run.”