“But Daniel,” Adele said, struggling to understand a situation devoid of logic. “Their ships are bigger and newer and there’s more of them. Surely Admiral Chastelaine knows that?”
“Yes, Adele,” Daniel said. “But he also knows that we’re the RCN. No Alliance commander ever forgets that.”
“Ah,” Adele said. “Yes, I understand.”
“Sir, there’s a ship rising from the surface,” Lt. Mon said. “It’s a private yacht, the Achilles, and President Delos Vaughn’s aboard. He says he’s coming up to meet with you. Over.”
He’d broken in on a dedicated link from the Battle Direction Center to Daniel’s command console. It didn’t pass through the signals console, but Adele had set the system to echo everything to her unit regardless of provenance. There was no information that she might not need, some time, some where.
“Does it indeed, Mon?” Daniel said. “I can’t imagine what Master Vaughn wants of me, but I certainly have some matters I’d like to raise with him. I suppose we’d better bring him aboard. Make the necessary arrangements. Captain out.”
Adele had called up the message and was running the speech attributed to Vaughn through voice recognition software when Daniel said, “What do you think about this development, Adele?”
“I don’t have the faintest notion,” she said. “Except that it really is Vaughn; and the heads of Friderik Nunes and Pleyna Vaughn have been stuck on poles in front of Delos’s headquarters in the suburbs of Palia, so I suppose he’s President of Strymon as well.”
Chapter Thirty-one
The Achilles looked to be a dumpy little vessel at present because her rig was stowed. Even when fully telescoped, the masts of the first and last of her four rings stuck out beyond the yacht’s short hull. Extended and wearing a full suit of sails, those masts would give her an area-to-mass ratio equalled by few if any other ships of Daniel’s acquaintance. To him, that was a mark of great beauty.
The scale of the image was too small to show the boarding line connecting the yacht to the Princess Cecile, though Daniel could have directed the console to emphasize it if he’d had any reason to. Vaughn had asked to board via a tube and to bring several of his aides with him. Daniel had granted neither request.
The outer airlock dogged home; a moment later the inner valve opened. Woetjans, her faceshield flung open, half dragged, half guided, Delos Vaughn into Corridor C. Vaughn’s expression through the synthetic sapphire of his visor was both irritated and frightened.
Daniel glanced again at the image of the Achilles. To Adele across the bridge he said, “That yacht’s far too fine a vessel to be used for an orbital ferryboat the way our guest just did. They could’ve found a cargo lighter easily enough.”
Adele shrugged. “You can’t hold a landsman to a spacer’s standards, Daniel,” she said. With the bosun’s help, Vaughn was struggling out of a rigging suit meant for someone a size larger, shooting frustrated looks toward her and Daniel but for the moment unable to join them. There was too much ambient noise for him to overhear. “I doubt whether he could, let alone does, understand that he’s done anything questionable.”
“Yes,” said Daniel, “but that’s rather a picture of his life, don’t you think? The ability to do whatever’s expedient without knowing or caring about anyone else’s viewpoint?”
Vaughn kicked out of the suit’s right leg and stepped to the hatchway. “Permission to enter the bridge, Captain Leary?” he said in a clear voice.
“You may enter the bridge, Mr. Vaughn,” Daniel said. Then, because he didn’t want to seem petty, he corrected himself: “President Vaughn, that is.”
” ‘Mister’ is quite sufficient between old shipmates,” Vaughn said with his familiar engaging smile as he strode forward. “And present allies, I’m pleased to say.”
Sun looked over his shoulder, then went back to his display; Betts never paused in obsessively computing missile courses. Adele continued to listen to the snips of intership and surface communications which her software culled out for her, but her eyes and her primary attention were on Delos Vaughn.
“I didn’t expect to see you again, sir,” Daniel said. “Not after the way you left us on Sexburga.”