Vesey had showed herself an able astrogator, not just by computation but with at least a touch of the feel for the Matrix that had made Stacey Bergen and to a considerable degree his nephew Daniel legends in the RCN. Dorst wasn’t either as smart or as clever as Vesey, but he was as solid as bedrock; that too was a virtue the RCN prized in her officers.
“So, Woetjans . . . ,” Daniel said, trying not to be completely obvious. “Lieutenant Mon said you had your share of trouble on the voyage back from Strymon?”
The bosun made a sour face. “I’ve had worse, I guess, sir,” she muttered, refusing to meet Daniel’s eyes.
“Well, if you have,” said Sun forcefully, “then you’ve been harder places than I have, thank the Almighty.” He turned to Daniel and went on, “Sir, you wrung the Hell out of us when you ran us to Sexburga in seventeen days straight in the Matrix, I swear you did, and we had less trouble with the ship than I’d expect in dockyard. Mon brought us back and, well, I’m bloody glad to have solid ground under my feet. Bloody glad.”
“Amen to that,” muttered Chief Engineer Pasternak, who’d just come up from the Power Room. A third of the Sissie’s crew must be aboard her tonight, a remarkable percentage for a ship returned to her home port for the first time after a long cruise. The entrance hold was becoming crowded, but there was no larger compartment aboard the corvette until the stores were off-loaded.
“Tush!” said Daniel. “I don’t regret pushing her the way I did, but you all know as well as I do that half the trouble you had on the return voyage was because of the strain I laid on her outbound.”
The machinist who’d just emptied the brandy bottle snorted. Perhaps the liquor had gotten up his nose.
“Mon said you had passengers, too,” Daniel went on. “What were they like?”
The spacers looked at one another. After a moment Vesey said, “Well, the Klimovs aren’t bad, sir. For foreigners, you know. Quite open-handed folk, the both of them.”
“Sober, they’re all right,” said Woetjans, her eyes on Daniel. “When the Count’s got a drop or two in him, which is most times, he’s apt to forget he’s not back on Novy Sverdlovsk with his house slaves. He threw a bottle at the spacer doing for him—and got decked for it.”
“That was me, sir,” said Timmons, a short, good-humored technician whom Daniel had never known to show any more temperament than the paint on the bulkhead did. He looked at his feet in embarrassment. “Sorry, sir.”
“Sorry for bloody what?” demanded Woetjans. “The day some wog gets away with hitting a Cinnabar spacer is the day I defect to the Alliance. But—”
Her eyes hardened on Daniel again.
“—if Klimov had been captain instead of a passenger, then hitting him would’ve been mutiny and an open hatch for the fellow who did it. That’s so, isn’t it, sir?”
“I’ve known RCN officers who did as much, Woetjans!” Daniel said sharply. “So have you, I dare say.”
“Aye, and worse,” Sun said with a chuckle. “Cap’n Reecee fired a shot at the sailing master when we came out of the Matrix four light-days from where her reckoning had put us. He wasn’t any better a shot than she was an astrogator, mind.”
“Reecee was an RCN officer, Sun,” Woetjans said. “Not a wog!”
“Amen to that,” Pasternak said, offering around a retort of clear fluid; industrial alcohol from the hydraulic system, very likely. That was the standard Power Room drink.
“I haven’t met Klimov . . . ,” Daniel said. Vesey drank and handed the retort to him. “If he likes the Sissie well enough to buy her, as Mon says he does, then he and I share one taste, at least.”
He drank, a careful sip followed by a deeper draft when he was sure the fluid had been cut with water. Drunk straight, industrial alcohol dried the mouth and throat as badly as swallowing live coals, but the mechanics and engineers didn’t always bother to dilute it.