Lt. Leary, Commanding by David Drake

Daniel grinned through his holographic display which was only a haze of light except to the eyes of the person seated at the console. His hand touched a switch and an electronic alarm whistled three times on a rising note. Signal lights pulsed red to orange, warning the crew during times that sound wouldn’t carry because the ship was depressurized.

Daniel brought the throttles forward in a smooth motion. The linkage was physical rather than virtual so that the captain had feedback through his own flesh instead of just a gauge to watch.

Adele flexed her fingers, imagining the control wands between them. The trained human body is capable of wonderful subtlety. Unexpected, unwanted, she remembered a boy’s face bulging as the bullet from her pistol punched through the bridge of his nose. That had required only a few ounces’ pressure, expertly applied by a trigger finger trained in the gallery in the basement of Chatsworth Minor.

The thrusters roared to full power, squeezing Adele down in her seat. It was a gentle pressure; even with the antennas folded at minimum length along the hull and the sails furled tightly to them, a starship wasn’t stressed for high accelerations.

Ships covered interstellar distances by entering bubble universes where physical constants differed from those of the sidereal universe, but velocity was conserved during the passage. There was no need of high accelerations when you could leave the universe for one in which distances were logarithmically shorter and the pressure of Casimir radiation drove vessels across light-years in a matter of hours. The High Drive, though very efficient, was needed only for maneuvering over distances too short for the captain to trust her astrogation.

The Princess Cecile bucked and started to yaw. Daniel’s hands danced on the throttles. Adele snapped her eyes to her own display. The indicator for the third thruster in the upper bank—starboard—was quivering. It dropped to a hollow gray circle at the same time as the indicator kitty-corner—Port Two—became a white standby circle.

The Princess Cecile steadied. Adele thought she felt a minuscule vibration that hadn’t been present before, but she might be imagining a change because her mind knew something had happened.

Her fingers touched a key with the same precision as Daniel had shown in juggling the throttles. Through her helmet Chief Pasternak was shouting, “—ing bloody bracket gave and the feed line started thrashing like half an earthworm! Henning’s got a loop of cargo tape on the whore, and we’ll have her welded in numbers three minutes. Over!”

“Carry on, chief,” Daniel said calmly. She glanced at him again. His face wore an absent-minded smile as he tweaked a throttle—no longer linked to the other seven—and the vibration smoothed to glassy perfection. “After all, this is a shakedown cruise. Needs must we can reach altitude on four thrusters. Bridge out.”

“Engineering out.”

Instead of concentrating on his display as Adele expected, Daniel stabbed the public address switch as forcefully as if he were trying to dent the plate beneath his virtual keyboard. Adele smiled: a control was never in doubt when Daniel activated it. He left delicacy for others.

“Captain to ship,” speakers said, the words echoing themselves from the ceiling of every compartment. “The waterline feeding Starboard Three came adrift. Engineering has it jury-rigged, and it’ll be at a hundred percent in a few minutes. Bridge out.”

As Daniel switched off, he saw Adele watching him from the other side of his display. He grinned and made an O from his right thumb and index finger, then went back to his controls.

Adele did the same. Of course Daniel wouldn’t forget that the crew would worry—or at least wonder—because the Princess Cecile’s thrust had gone ragged. His duty was even more to the personnel than it was to the vessel’s hardware.

Spacers shouted to one another. Under normal circumstances only the officers had communications helmets. When ordinary crewmen spoke to one another, they had to make themselves heard over the thrusters. The pulsing thunder muted as the corvette rose through ever-thinner layers of atmosphere, but even in hard vacuum the fabric of the ship shivered in a kind of low moan.

Two crewmen ran along the corridor carrying a rope-handled footlocker between them. They disappeared down the companionway, undeterred by the weight and awkwardness of their burden. Adele hadn’t any idea what they were doing, whether it was a problem or simply personal belongings that somebody had forgotten to stow before liftoff.