In general terms he was glad to see Mon, who’d been as satisfactory a first lieutenant as Daniel could imagine serving under him: competent, careful, and brave—though that went almost without saying in an RCN officer. No few of those who wore the uniform were pig stupid, but cowards were as rare as saints. Besides those professional virtues, Mon was loyal to Daniel beyond what could be expected of a human being.
On the other hand, if Mon was coming to moan about having to feed his large family on half-pay when the Sissie went out of commission, well—Daniel would sympathize, but at another time. For now his grief was for the corvette herself.
“Sir!” Mon said, clasping Daniel’s hand. “Thank God you’re on Cinnabar. I had nightmares of you being off on an embassy to Kostroma or the Devil only knew where!”
Mon’s dress uniform fit poorly—he’d lost weight since he last wore it, which might have been five or more years in the past—and he hadn’t taken time to update his medal ribbons. Daniel let a smile of satisfaction touch his lips: the citations Mon had won in the brief time he’d served under Lieutenant Leary would have made the cabbage patch on his tunic much more impressive.
Quite apart from the fit of his uniform, Mon looked dreadful. At the end of the brutal run to Sexburga, seventeen days in the Matrix without a break, everybody aboard the Princess Cecile looked like they’d been dragged through a drainpipe . . . and even then, Mon had been in better shape than Daniel saw him now.
“I’m here, right enough,” Daniel said with a note of deliberate caution, “but as you can imagine, Mon, I have a good deal on my plate right at the moment. Perhaps later . . . ?”
“Sir,” Mon said. His face screwed up in despair and frustration. “Daniel, for God’s sake. I need help and I don’t know where else to turn!”
“Ah,” said Daniel, nodding in understanding. “Well, I hope I always have a few florins for an old shipmate.”
He reached for the wallet that’d be attached to the equipment belt of the 2nd Class uniform he usually wore on the ground. His Whites used a cummerbund rather than a belt and had no provision for carrying money or anything else of practical value.
“Hogg?” he said, trying to hide his irritation in forgetting the situation. “Do you have ten—that is, twenty florins you can let me have until I’m back in my rooms?”
“Sir, it’s not money . . . ,” Mon said. He straightened and looked around, suddenly a man again and an RCN officer. “Look, can we go somewhere and talk? This is . . .”
He shrugged; Daniel nodded agreement. Standing in the open among attendants sweeping up the debris of a funeral simply wasn’t the way to discuss anything except the weather.
“Right,” Daniel said. “The last time I looked there were bars just down the street. We’ll find a booth and see how I can help you.”
He gave Mon his arm and they started up the avenue, by now almost empty of mourners. Though there was no lack of bars this close to Harbor Three, they weren’t the sort of places that an officer usually entered wearing his dress uniform.
Still, if Daniel kept his intake to only a few drinks—or anyway, a moderate amount—then he shouldn’t have to replace his Whites because they were dirty; or they were bloody; or they’d been torn completely off his back in a brawl that’d started the Lord knew how. And if he did have to replace his uniform, well, an officer of the RCN was always ready to make sacrifices for his fellows.
CHAPTER 3
Buelow’s, only three doors down from the Stanislas Chapel, catered to warrant officers looking for a place to have a drink rather than common spacers intending to get falling-down drunk as quickly and cheaply as possible. Daniel eased himself into a booth, realizing as he did so that it was the first time since dawn that he’d taken the weight off his feet.
The three-dimensional photographs on the walls were of landscapes rather than sexual acrobatics. Daniel couldn’t identify any of the scenes, but the three-legged creature clinging to the face of a basalt cliff certainly wasn’t native to Cinnabar. The dark, pitted wood of the bar came from off-planet also; Daniel noted with interest that its vascular tissue seemed to curl in helixes around the bole, rising and sinking through the slab’s planed surface like sections of a dolphin’s track.