Lt. Leary, Commanding by David Drake

“One minute to entering the Matrix,” Midshipman Vesey’s voice warned over the PA system. The signal lights pulsed.

“Princess Cecile to squadron,” Daniel said. His fingers and eyes continued to move as though controlled by an entity outside the person who responded to Commodore Pettin. “Sir, your transmission is breaking up. I’m therefore maneuvering as previously described. Princess Cecile out.”

He broke the connection. The eyes of his image met Adele’s.

“Daniel?” she said. “I’ve downloaded a report on the Strymon system into both our message cells. If you set them for Sexburga, there’s a sixty percent chance one will arrive. The authorities there can send a courier vessel to Cinnabar.”

“Thank you, Adele,” Daniel said, calling across the noisy bridge so that the other officers could hear as well. “But that’d mean shifting the ready-use missiles out of their tubes. I believe we’re going to have more use for them than Cinnabar has for a message.”

“Entering the—” Vesey said, and Adele’s world everted itself in what was becoming a familiar fashion.

“Lieutenant Mon,” Daniel said, “I’m going topside. Please take the conn. Out.”

He stood, feeling the Princess Cecile heel through the soles of his feet. The ship was a living apex of the infinite directions and forces of the Matrix. Adele turned from her console and said in a tone of inward-directed anger, “There’s nothing to add to the bare message! If Captain Strete had any imagery of the Alliance fleet, he didn’t transmit it to the Astrogator; and now he’s gone.”

“Come up on deck with me if you would, Adele,” Daniel said. “We have twenty minutes before the next exit, and the Sissie’s wearing almost her full suit of sails. It’s not something you’ll often have a chance to see.”

“For a variety of reasons, perhaps,” he added. He tried to sound solemn, but he didn’t manage very well. “Regardless, it’s a lovely sight.”

“Captain?” Betts said, looking over his shoulder as Daniel followed Adele toward the suit locker. “You’ll be taking down Four Dorsal and Four Ventral to clear the tubes, right?”

“I won’t know till we have a plot of the enemy formation, Betts,” Daniel said. Tovera and Hogg were in the corridor, readying Adele’s rigging suit. Hogg’s face was a thundercloud; Tovera seemed, as usual, mildly amused. “I will say that I’ll launch through a sail if necessary, though. Make your solutions regardless of the rig.”

“You’ve got no business going out right now!” Hogg snarled to Daniel, his face turned aside as he lifted Adele without ceremony for Tovera to pull on the legs of the suit. “That’s Woetjans’s job. You’re just full of yourself ’cause you spit in Pettin’s face, you know. You’re going to take a chance too many one of these days, young master!”

“I’m checking the rig, Hogg,” Daniel said quietly as he donned his suit in a practiced reflex: legs, arms, and then close the plastron; three simple movements that he could do in the dark or so hungover that he could scarcely stand. “Which is my business.”

He cleared his throat and added, “You’ll recall that I stopped telling you where we should place our snares before I turned six.”

“You didn’t stop being a smart aleck then, though,” Hogg said. He squeezed the rigid shoulder of Daniel’s suit before turning away again. He muttered, “Wish there was some fucking thing I could do.”

“You’ve already done it, Hogg,” Daniel said. “You raised me to be a man.”

He gestured Adele into the airlock, then stepped through and dogged the hatch.

Daniel started to clamp Adele’s helmet for her. She raised her hand. “Daniel?” she said. “Why aren’t you plotting missile courses now? And don’t tell me because that’s Betts’s job, competent though I’m sure he is.”

Daniel shrugged and pursed his lips. There was no reason she shouldn’t know, after all.

“We’re going to be too close for the missiles to course-correct after they’re launched,” he said. “The ship’s vector and attitude are going to determine whether the rounds hit or miss, not whatever we program into the attack console. But Betts is very good at his job, and he’ll be more comfortable if he’s able to focus on it.”

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