Daniel laughed and linked arms with her. “Let’s go back to the Sissie,” he said. “I want to review the operation again with Mr. Chewning, and I’d like you to be there for the code briefing.”
He began to whistle a snatch of “The Streets of Balshazzar,” “When I was a young man. . . .”
But after all, while there’s life there’s hope.
* * *
“It’s first-rate equipment,” Daniel said through his two-way link with Adele. “No question about that—and Fleet Standard, too, not commercial crap. Well, not that Alliance commercial equipment is all bad. The trouble is that it’s not what I’m familiar with. Do you find that also, Adele?”
Adele pursed her lips, wondering how to respond. With the truth, she supposed; it was the choice she invariably made, and when speaking to Daniel there wouldn’t be negative repercussions. Still, she could shade her answer. . . .
“Well, this is a new system to me, of course,” she said, “but I’ve configured it to emulate my handheld. There was plenty of time for that. And, ah, thank you again for allowing me to use a station here on the bridge. I suppose it was for security that the, the Alliance kept the signals room separate, but I wouldn’t be comfortable like that.”
When Adele was working she was oblivious of everything going on around her—including, as she’d proved in the past, combat damage that made the Princess Cecile whip like a gavotting dancer. Nonetheless she preferred to be here on the open bridge instead of off in the signals compartment, even though most of her education and working hours had been in rooms and carrels where she was utterly alone.
She had a family, now, her fellow RCN spacers. She liked being with them, particularly when she was likely to die at any moment.
The Goldenfels’ bridge was much larger than that of the Princess Cecile. A subordinate console was attached back-to-back with each primary position so that a junior specialist could echo the actions of the officer at each station. The exception was the command console, standing in solitary state in the center of the compartment.
There were bridge stations for a Navigator, a Third Lieutenant, and a commissioned Engineering Officer. None of those personnel existed in the Princess Cecile’s crew, let alone the rump which Daniel had transferred with him to the Goldenfels. Adele was at the Navigator’s console. She’d had no difficulty in patching the full capacity of the vessel’s signals suite to it.
“Six, this is Six-One,” said Midshipman Vesey from the Battle Direction Center. She was using the command channel instead of a two-way pair, though that wouldn’t have mattered to Adele, who routinely accessed all commo on the Princess Cecile and now on the Goldenfels as well. “All personnel are present or accounted for. Over.”
Under the circumstances that meant “present” since none of the personnel assigned to the Goldenfels were on leave, sick, or on detached duty. Vesey was following the form. That was proper at any time and inevitable now that the midshipman had become executive officer of a ship far larger than the corvette to which she’d signed on.
The Goldenfels’ present crew was eighty-six personnel, which included seventeen formerly-Alliance riggers who’d asked to be taken on. Some had been captured when the Princess Cecile arrived, but ten had come out of the bush when they realized the situation. Spacers were by definition a transient lot. Even naval vessels ordinarily were crewed by people from a dozen independent planets, and the populations of some of the Alliance’s client states were anything but pleased to serve Guarantor Porra.
Even so the freighter was undercrewed, but Daniel said the situation was satisfactory. It wouldn’t be a long voyage, after all.
“Thank you, Mistress Vesey,” Daniel said. “Break. Power room, report.”
“Power Room reporting all green,” Pasternak replied. “Anyway, there’s nothing more I can do to turn this crippled pig into a starship. Four out.”
“Roger, Mr. Pasternak,” Daniel said. From where Adele sat she could see Daniel’s fingers moving on his keyboard, shifting one display into the next. His face looked as calm as the statue of a saint. “Break. Princess Cecile, this is Goldenfels Six. What is your condition, over?”