Lt. Leary, Commanding by David Drake

“But Danny . . .” the girl called. He heard the words and instantly discarded them as being of no importance under the present circumstances.

Daniel’s reason for carrying his signals officer was quite simple. Adele had to be on the bridge when Commodore Pettin came aboard. Woetjans wasn’t going to pass Pettin’s standards of Ready for Duty, though the bosun would have the liquor bottles hidden and other evidence of good-fellowship out of the way.

Woetjans’s taste ran to men who could make her look frail, though like most spacers she’d make do with what was available after a voyage like the past one. Daniel fleetingly wondered how lucky she’d been here on Sexburga.

Though, by the living God! absolutely nothing harmful to the good order of the RCN was going on here. The problem was that Commodore Pettin wouldn’t see it that way; and thank God—thank Admiral Anston—for an experienced crew which could react to changed circumstances without the captain’s orders.

Barnes and Inescu were on guard at the main hatchway. They’d managed to get to their feet and lift the stocked impellers they’d been issued for the duty. “Here comes the captain!” Inescu called cheerfully as Daniel pounded over the narrow gangplank with Adele in his arms.

It was a tossup in Daniel’s mind whether Pettin would be more infuriated by a drunken officer of the watch or by one who was soaking wet from falling into the harbor in her haste to board. Adele was a solid weight, tall and not as slender as she looked from a distance. She didn’t speak and held herself as stiff as a balance pole. Daniel suspected she didn’t understand what was going on, but early in her contact with the RCN she’d learned how to keep from getting in the way in a crisis.

Daniel saw three earthenware jugs floating between the corvette’s hull and the starboard outrigger. Barnes also noticed them and leaned over the hatchway, pointing his impeller.

“No!” Daniel shouted over the howl of the Winckelmann’s car landing on the quay beside the redhead’s. Barnes was too drunkenly focused to hear anything. He squeezed the trigger—

WhackWHOCK

—and the weapon spat a fifty-grain pellet of osmium into the water at five times the speed of sound.

Daniel half-turned, trying to shield Adele, but the waterspout was thirty feet high and drenched both of them. There were bits of shattered pottery in with the froth and flotsam. Daniel couldn’t say much for Barnes’s judgment, but he shot straight despite being pie-eyed drunk.

Daniel set Adele onto the Princess Cecile’s entryway. Barnes blinked in horror at what he’d done. “Sorry, sir,” he mumbled. He lowered the impeller’s muzzle so that it pointed at Daniel’s feet instead of in line with his belt buckle.

Adele headed for the bridge without further direction. The soles of all RCN footgear, even the shiny half-boots Daniel wore with his whites, were of high-hysteresis rubber that gripped wet or dry. Adele squelched with each step, but she didn’t fall down.

Daniel took the impeller from Barnes, switched the power off so that the coils couldn’t accelerate another slug—into the harbor, into Daniel himself, or into God knew where—and returned it to the spacer. He could hear shouts echoing through the corvette as crewmen faced the sudden emergency.

“Steady on, Barnes,” Daniel said quietly. “Try not to shoot the commodore.”

Though that possibility had a degree of attraction just at this moment.

Daniel turned and braced himself to attention, facing the three RCN officers and the sergeant of marines tramping down the gangplank. Captain, acting Commodore, Josip Pettin was in the lead. He was a lean, white-haired man, fifty but looking older. Normally his face would merely have been pale, but at this moment Pettin was so angry that his expression could have been carved from sun-dried bone.

Daniel saluted. He’d never managed anything so crisp during his years at the Academy. He might as well have mooned the commodore for all the good it seemed to do.

“Sir!” Daniel said. “Welcome aboard RCS Princess Cecile! I’m Lieutenant Leary, reporting to you in accordance with my orders.”

“Leary . . .” Commodore Pettin said, his nostrils flaring as though he detected a horrible stench. Maybe he did: even Daniel noticed Barnes’s breath, and it wasn’t that there was no alcohol on his own. “I queried Condor Control from orbit when I saw a corvette in the harbor. The controller told how it came there. Furthermore, they very kindly added that your splendidly handled ship left Cinnabar ten days behind my squadron and still arrived on Sexburga well ahead of me!”

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *