Daniel beamed at his guests from behind the data console, now reversed at the head of the table. Adele knew that this was the first operational command group meeting Daniel had called as captain, and he was correspondingly proud. Not that Daniel ever did anything with less than enthusiasm.
There was no formal seating order, but Mon sat at the captain’s right and the others had by silent consensus granted Adele the seat at Daniel’s left. In the middle places were the other watch-standing officers: Pasternak, Woetjans, Betts and the ship’s machinist, Taley.
The two midshipmen, Dorst and Vesey, sat in the end seats with big eyes and their lips clamped nervously shut. They were present to educate them, not by right, since they ranked only as petty officers. They’d reported aboard a few hours before the Princess Cecile lifted off: the grandson of an old shipmate of Stacey Bergen, and an intense young woman who’d brought Daniel a curtly phrased introduction from Klemsch, the Secretary to the Navy Board.
Adele had checked their backgrounds, of course. Chances were Vesey was the bastard of Senator Dryer; her record at the Academy was far superior to that of Dorst in any case.
Tovera had put glasses at the places, and Hogg held a tray with a carafe of a respectable Cinnabar sherry. The wine was too fruity for Adele’s taste, but she wouldn’t have to drink much of it. Open bottles didn’t last long, not in a company of naval officers.
“Pass the wine, Hogg,” Daniel said. “Fellow officers, you know our orders are to join the squadron under Commodore Pettin en route to Strymon. As Pettin lifted from Cinnabar ten days ahead of us, that means we’ll have to crack on a bit.”
“Too true,” said Taley, nodding solemnly—an expression that came naturally to her as she looked as cadaverous as a corpse buried three weeks. “And right after a refit, too. I’ll be busy in the repair shop, I can see that now.”
“I dare say we’ll all be busy, Taley,” Daniel said with a grin. “Because I propose to reach Sexburga with no intermediate planetfall. We’ll only make dips back into sidereal space to take star sights.”
“Holy Father of Grace!” Betts said. The missileer tossed off his sherry and would have retrieved the carafe if Hogg hadn’t interposed his hip so that little Vesey could serve herself. “That’s three weeks, Captain. They say that the devil himself walks the corridors if you’re that long in the Matrix.”
“If he does,” said Pasternak tartly, “then we’ve the first proof of religion that I’ve ever heard. We’ll be famous for bringing the comfort of faith to benighted skeptics of the sort I’ve been all these years.”
Adele’s eyes narrowed slightly. Both officers had gained their experience aboard large vessels operating as part of a fleet.
“The Aggie was under for twelve days, bringing the news of the Wroxter Fight back to Cinnabar,” Woetjans said, knuckling her scarred jaw. “I saw my mother on the bridge, all tarted up like she was when we buried her.”
“I think we can manage the leg in seventeen days, Betts,” Daniel said. “I’m using Commander Bergen’s logs, and I like the way the Matrix has been shaping thus far.”
He smiled, then shrugged. “And Pasternak? I’ve never experienced Immersion Phantoms myself—”
He nodded to the bosun.
“—as Woetjans has, but I’ve heard my uncle and his fellows talk about them often enough. They’re quite real and we’ll have to bear with them, I’m afraid. On the credit side, I’ve never heard that phantoms do any sort of harm.”
“There’s been ships that didn’t come back from the Matrix, though,” Betts said, his eyes following the carafe.
“So there have,” Daniel said with a sharpness that turned agreement into something just short of a rebuke. “But the Princess Cecile is going to reenter the sidereal universe, so that needn’t concern us here.”
Adele took her wine, and Hogg emptied the rest into Daniel’s glass. Tovera was filling another carafe; the label was identical, but the fluid within had a mauve undertone that the first bottle hadn’t. Daniel wouldn’t think of cutting the quality of what his guests drank after they’d had a first glassful to numb their taste, but Hogg wasn’t one to pour his master’s money down a rathole if he saw other options.