He nodded to Adele. “Since Officer Mundy,” he said, “has moved into the captain’s lounge—”
One of the two small cabins of Daniel’s suite off the bridge, intended for entertaining non-RCN guests where they wouldn’t have access to a console tied into the corvette’s data bank.
“—then we can put the passenger in that cabin.” He smiled at Vaughn. “Which you will be sharing, sir, with the infirmary and Medic; if you’re determined to take passage with us.”
“You know I don’t care where I sleep, Daniel,” Adele said with a moue of irritation.
“Nor do I, Lieutenant Leary,” Vaughn said, grinning—to Daniel’s surprise—in satisfaction. “But if it hasn’t become a point of honor with you, I have two small cases waiting in the car that brought me. In total they amount to the one and a half cubic feet permitted a midshipman under naval regulations. And I’ll hire a spacer to do for me on board, as I believe is customary?”
Aren’t you a clever devil? Daniel thought. Trying me on to see if I’d let you have whatever you wanted. A Leary of Bantry kowtowing to a foreigner!
“Yes,” Daniel said aloud. “That should be workable.”
He checked the time on the flat multifunction card he wore on a wrist clip while in utilities, then looked up again. “You have five minutes to get your two cases aboard, Mr. Vaughn.”
He smiled and felt the thrill of the words as he added, “We’re to lift ship as soon as we’re ready, you see. And the Princess Cecile is ready for her first operational cruise now!”
* * *
As the Princess Cecile trembled, white rings became blue solids on the sidebar to Adele’s communications display. One at a time, eight of them: the plasma thrusters switching from standby to live, expelling minute streams of white-hot ions into the pool. Very shortly Daniel would slide his linked throttles forward and the thrusters would lift the corvette to transatmospheric orbit.
Adele was detached, unaffected by the tense bustle of the bridge around her. She had duties at this moment, though they were of the negative variety: to block all incoming messages unless they directly concerned the vessel’s liftoff. The operation was complex and potentially dangerous if botched, though there was more risk of the sun going dark in the next minutes. Between the time the liftoff sequence began until the Princess Cecile reached orbit, even Admiral Anston could wait.
Betts, the Chief Missileer, and Sun, the gunner’s mate—a corvette was too small to rate a master gunner—were taut at their consoles to the left of Adele’s, though neither of them had as much to do with the process of liftoff as the Signals Officer did. Woetjans and a team of riggers waited in the corridor. They would climb onto the hull after the Princess Cecile reached an altitude at which the antennas could be deployed. That would be at least ten minutes and might be thirty, but the riggers already wore their suits with the faceplates hinged open.
They were all spacers, feeling a responsibility to the ship and its performance. To Adele, the Princess Cecile was the metal box in which she happened to ride at the moment. She would do her job and whatever else Daniel or another asked of her, but she couldn’t even pretend to care whether the ship rose to orbit—as it would, as surely as the sun would rise—or instead exploded here in Harbor Three.
The hatches were closed, the thrusters lighted; the fusion bottle that provided both plasma and auxiliary power was a green sphere in Adele’s holographic display, and the High Drive a hollow green-edged bar indicating that the antimatter converter was on standby but fully functional. Adele didn’t need to echo the ship’s indicators on her screen; she did so merely from a desire to show solidarity with the rest of the crew to whom they were important.
A smile touched the corners of her lips. If the ship blows up here, who will Mistress Sand get to replace me? Not that the answer was of any real consequence to Adele. She just liked information.
Daniel spoke tersely, authoritatively. The console’s dynamic suppressor cancelled the sound of the words even a few inches away. Adele could have listened to the conversation on a dedicated line to the power room, but there was no need to. Lt. Leary was receiving oral confirmation from Chief Pasternak of what the instruments showed: the Princess Cecile was ready to lift.