“Here you go, sir,” said the signalman, stepping aside so that Daniel could enter the H Level rotunda serving the squadron commander. The armored hatch was locked open and showed rust on the hinges. Daniel didn’t need a micrometer to tell that the jamb was warped beyond any possibility of sealing the hatch in event of disaster.
Four offices opened off the rotunda; the hatches of three were closed. A senior lieutenant in his late thirties sat at the central console, looking at Daniel with no expression whatever. He spoke into the intercom, his words smothered by the console’s active muting feature.
Daniel struck a brace before the console. “Sir!” he said. “Lieutenant Leary reporting to the commodore!”
“Cabin One, Leary,” the lieutenant said. He nodded minutely in the direction of the open office. “The commodore requests you to close the hatch behind you.”
Daniel stepped into the anteroom of the squadron commander’s office, closing the hatch as he’d been directed. Commodore Pettin watched him silently from across the console in the inner office beyond.
Pettin was wearing Dress Whites, just as Daniel was. Daniel didn’t know precisely how to take that, but he supposed he’d call it a good sign. Optimism didn’t cost anything, after all.
Daniel strode through and stopped two paces from Pettin’s console. The room was as bare as a cell. He drew a deep breath and was a heartbeat short of announcing himself.
“Sit down, Leary,” the commodore said. He didn’t sound in the least friendly, but neither was he snarling. “I’m going to proceed informally.”
Daniel hesitated. There were two chairs on his side of the console, to his right and left, and he didn’t know which would be the better choice. The less bad choice. Besides, the paranoid part of his mind was in control at the moment, and it had no difficulty in imagining Pettin having him court-martialled for sitting down before saluting and announcing himself.
“Sit down, dammit!” the commodore said. “Don’t you understand Universal?”
Daniel plopped into the chair to his right. His 1st Class trousers didn’t strain the way they usually did; marching across South Land on cold rations had been good for his waistline.
There was a moment’s silence. Knowing the risk he was taking, Daniel said, “Sir, I regret I didn’t inform you before I gave Lieutenant Mon orders to dismantle our fusion bottle for servicing while I was absent. The Princess Cecile’s inability to lift with the rest of the squadron was my own sole responsibility.”
“Bullshit, Lieutenant,” Pettin said, not unpleasantly. “But that’s not what I’ve summoned you here to discuss.”
Daniel folded his hands over the saucer hat in his lap. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“I suppose I’ve got to decide you’re either the finest astrogator alive,” Pettin said, “or the luckiest son of a bitch ever born. Or both, of course. Do you have anything to say on the subject, Lieutenant?”
Daniel’s mind mulled the response, “No, sir,” but he didn’t let the words reach his tongue. This wasn’t the time to play safe by keeping a low profile; if there was ever such a time.
“Sir,” Daniel said, “my uncle Stacey is the finest astrogator alive. I don’t know of anyone who can match his abilities.”
The commodore laughed: briefly, high-pitched, and as bitter as wormwood. “Commander Bergen, yes,” he said. “I think of his career often when I’m contemplating my own. Whatever you got from your uncle, Leary, you didn’t get his luck—because he never had any.”
Pettin formed his right hand into a fist but he didn’t slam it against the top of his silent console as Daniel thought he might. He looked old and very weary.
“You were lucky, damned lucky, to join the squadron on our first exit from the Matrix,” Pettin said. He relaxed his fist. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” Daniel said. “The variables fortunately cancelled one another out. We were very lucky.”
Pettin nodded. “But you were going to join before we reached Strymon,” he said. “That wouldn’t have been luck. We have six intermediate exits, and you were going to keep refining your data at each one until you were in communication range of the Winckelmann, weren’t you?”