Daniel scratched the hair over his left temple where the rim of his cap rode when he was wearing one. For no obvious reason, he tended to itch there when he was in the Matrix.
“The satellites are on a schedule,” Daniel said, “and the Selmans are excellent astrogators. Woetjans believes they’re capable of the necessary precision, at any rate.”
“Screw that!” Mon said. “I believe they can do it too; but I’ll be a damned sight happier when I can say they did do it.”
“Yes, I wouldn’t look forward to facing an Alliance battleship either,” Daniel said. “Still, even if a warning makes it through we can hope an RCN squadron can get under weigh faster than anything wearing Alliance colors. Commodore Pettin and I may not be soulmates, but my experience of him bears out his reputation as an able man.”
“Five minutes to exit from the Matrix!” Dorst’s voice noted. The midshipman was speaking louder than necessary, a sign of his tension.
“Mon out, sir,” Mon said, returning to his immediate duties.
Daniel wasn’t a dreamer, not really, but he had his reveries. For a moment he let his mind wander to the inevitable RCN punitive expedition that would retake Strymon and put paid to the Alliance interlopers. Would the Princess Cecile be a part of it? And would, for that matter, Lt. Daniel Leary still be in command of the Princess Cecile?
Daniel chuckled, calling up the sail plan, power output, consumption, and all the scores of other displays that were the same as they’d been before he and Mon discussed the attack. With near certainty they’d remain the same until the Princess Cecile returned to sidereal space. Daniel was still better off looking them over once more than he’d be building castles in the fairyland of the future.
Adele had rotated her seat away from the opalescence of her empty screen and was looking across the bridge. She nodded minusculy when Daniel caught her eye; but she hadn’t been, he realized, looking at him or at anything else within the starship’s limited confines.
Adele was uncomfortable in the Matrix. From the little she’d said, she disliked transitions even more than most of the humans who had to undergo them. She didn’t have work to occupy her so she was sending her mind into another place entirely.
Daniel stood and walked over to his friend. He didn’t have any duties for the moment either, so using his time to raise the morale of a valuable member of his crew was clearly called for.
“I hope Commodore Pettin can get his whole squadron into orbit within an hour of our warning,” Daniel said conversationally. “I’d expect him to lift the Winckelmann immediately on her anchor watch and ferry the remainder of the crew up aboard the destroyers, but it’s possible that he’ll do it the other way around. In any case, we shouldn’t be alone above Strymon for very long.”
“Two minutes to exit from the Matrix,” the PA system announced, this time in Mon’s voice. The atmosphere of the ship didn’t change, but someone on B Level began singing, ” ‘I walk in the garden alone . . .’ ” in a wheezy bass.
Adele focused on Daniel. Her face would never look soft, but some of the edge of tension over her cheekbones eased. “Will we be fighting other ships?” she asked; a polite question rather than a matter of personal concern.
“The guardships ought to run instead of fight,” Daniel said. “If they do fight, Kelburney’s fleet will sweep them away without needing our help. There’s no guarantees, of course, but I don’t anticipate that sort of trouble.”
He grinned. “Which is not to say that Betts and I haven’t prepared firing solutions for up to twelve targets, just in case Pleyna Vaughn increased the number of picket vessels. We don’t know what’s been happening on Strymon.”
Adele smiled the way a cat does before biting. “I hope that we will know after we’ve been in orbit for a few minutes,” she said. “I’ll be—we’ll be, that is—entering the databases of the Ministry of the Navy and the Presidential Palace both. I’ve programmed the computer to sort for recent information bearing on the Princess Cecile in particular and the RCN more generally. I’ll be reviewing the data as it comes in. That should give us an idea of the government’s intentions very quickly.”