Lt. Leary, Commanding by David Drake

She’d started to call them “improper methods,” but nothing would have been improper to achieve that end. There were things that would have turned Adele’s stomach even to consider, but Daniel Leary would have returned to the Princess Cecile, no matter what the result cost his friends.

“I’m well aware that in addition to the risk you ran in supporting us,” she continued as Mon writhed in the ecstasy of not being in pain, “that there would have been personal advantages to you in obeying Commodore Pettin’s orders.”

Mon started to laugh. For a moment Adele thought the Medic was tickling him; then she realized that the lining had withdrawn against the body of the cylinder, freeing the patient from its ministrations.

Mon crawled out of the Medic, his bare chest ruddy as if from a vigorous toweling. He started to speak but broke into chuckling for a further moment while he donned his utility jacket.

“I guess you mean that I’d have a command of my own,” he said at last. With a bitterness at shocking variance with his amusement of moments before, Mon added, “Quite a stroke of luck for a lieutenant who’s learned to be thankful for bad luck because it was the only luck he was going to get, right?”

Adele said nothing. She looked up at Mon; her face calm, her gaze steady.

Mon patted the Medic’s hood. “There’s nothing like one of these for making you feel good,” he said affectionately. “I tell you, if women were half so good, I wouldn’t mind how much time I spend on the ground without a ship.”

His face changed, though hardened wasn’t quite the word to describe his new expression. He squatted so that he faced Adele with his eyes on the same level as hers. His elbows rested on his knees.

“Mistress Mundy,” Mon said, “any religion I had to start out with, I lost before I was fifteen. I don’t believe in any kind of afterlife and I sure don’t believe in heaven. But Hell, that I believe in; only it doesn’t happen after you’re dead.”

Mon straightened with a grin and stepped to the door. “I’m not going to put myself in Hell for the whole rest of my life,” he added over his shoulder, “from remembering the way I sold out Lieutenant Leary after he gave me a break.”

Adele watched the door close behind the lieutenant. It struck her that she’d just, for the first time, heard a religious philosophy with which she could agree.

Chapter Twenty-one

As the Matrix rippled and pulsed beyond the tips of the Princess Cecile’s antennas, it struck Daniel that Adele’s saving grace wasn’t her immense competence at the things she did well. No, she survived because she didn’t claim competence where she had none.

And as the good Lord knew, Adele was even clumsier outside a ship than she was within the hull.

Daniel touched helmets with her. “Look up along the tips of the forward dorsal masts,” he said. “You see the ripples ahead of one, and between one and two; the patterns are the same.”

“I’m looking,” Adele said; obviously a placeholder to indicate she’d heard him rather than a claim of comprehension. She seemed to be looking in the right direction, at any rate. He’d learned by now not to take that for granted.

They stood at the first joint of Dorsal 4, a position Daniel had chosen because D4’s top and mid sails were furled on the present heading. If he were alone he’d be conning the Princess Cecile from an upper yard or even the mast truck, but with Adele . . . well, Daniel didn’t know of any case where a safety line had parted except when a whole antenna was breaking up; but riggers generally didn’t use safety lines, and those who did weren’t regularly snubbed up by theirs as they went drifting off toward some distant universe.

“Now look between two and three,” Daniel said. He didn’t point. All the crewmen in sight were watching him, and those on the peripheries were ready to relay his directions to their fellows stationed around the curve of the hull. “There’s a feathering of the light, do you see? A herringbone. If you look very carefully, it’s three separate patterns.”