He grinned, seeing a faint reflection of himself in the faceplate of his rigging suit. Of course if it did turn out to be a pair of pirates homing in on an argosy, that would be all right as well. Much as Daniel wanted to join Commodore Pettin and mend fences on his own behalf and that of Lt. Mon, a chance to see off a pair of pirates on the way would be more than welcome.
Daniel finished his series of commands; the sails of Port and Starboard Two already beginning to ripple. Whistling a tune he’d learned as “Pity the Poor Poacher”—in the RCN it was sung as “Pity the Poor Rigger”—he returned to the mast with his arms crossed before his chest.
Adele stood like an awkward piece of equipment clamped to the mast, watching Daniel with a stony face. She’d obviously felt insulted by the degree of his concern that she’d do something fatally foolish.
Touching helmets with her, Daniel said, “I appreciate your going along with my whim, Adele. There’s a risk to walking out along the yard—”
There was a risk the reprocessing latrine would explode when he used it too, but in neither case was it one that he’d bother to mention except as a way of soothing a friend’s ruffled feathers.
“—and having any other concern on my mind, however unlikely, would have added to my danger.”
Adele deliberately took one hand away from the mast and said, “Yes, it looked very dangerous to me. What were you doing?”
Daniel could feel the corvette start to rotate beneath him. The change was minute, a degree or two. The light of the cosmos flared in great banners from the Princess Cecile’s mast trucks, highlighting the maneuver for those to whom the motion of the vessel was too subtle a cue.
“On our calculated heading, we would have returned to the sidereal universe within optical range of the squadron,” Daniel explained, “but too far out for communication since they won’t be expecting our arrival. I’ve made some small refinements so that when we drop from the Matrix three hours from now, we’ll be within hailing range of the Winckelmann.”
He grinned more broadly than he might have done if there’d been anybody to see his face. Since he was leaned sideways into contact with Adele’s helmet, not even she could tell his expression. “In fact,” he added, “I believe that we’ll be within the regulation twenty thousand miles, which is considerably closer than either of the destroyers is going to manage on their present headings.”
“And you can see all that from streaks in the sky,” Adele said. He could visualize her wry smile. “Well, every profession has its unique language.”
Daniel cleared his throat. “I can’t identify individual ships from their wakes,” he said. “That’s an assumption based on probabilities, so in case I’m wrong the Princess Cecile will exit with the crew at action stations. Pirates have the same problem, of course: they risk dropping into sidereal space with a warship instead of the freighter they thought they were tracking. Rather than fight a battle, they’re always prepared to slip at once back into the Matrix and hope their opponent can’t follow them there.”
“Ah,” said Adele. Daniel waited for her to decide how to raise the topic that had brought her onto the hull with him in the first place. “Daniel, I’ve been reading Delos Vaughn’s files, as you know. One thing that appears from them is that his niece Pleyna—or at any rate the regent, Friderik Nunes—really is intriguing with the Alliance. That wasn’t simply a story to gain Cinnabar support for Vaughn’s return.”
“I see,” Daniel said. It struck him that his words were a perfect echo of Adele’s when he was trying to point out wakes in the Matrix to her. He’d heard what Adele said, but as for understanding what she meant, she could’ve been trying to communicate by eyeblinks. “Ah, do you mean that the Princess Cecile has a political mission, Adele? That is . . . ?”
He simply didn’t know how to go on. Did she expect him to aid Delos Vaughn openly? And if Daniel did, how in heaven’s name was he going to explain his actions to Commodore Pettin, let alone the board of the court-martial which would surely be convoked on his return to Cinnabar?