“Ah, but you’re buying only the ship,” Daniel explained. “You need a crew as well—and I’ll tell you frankly, without a crew as good as this one the voyage you contemplate will at best be very unpleasant.”
“So hire this crew,” said Klimovna, shrugging expressively. “Where is the problem? Hire whoever you want—you are the captain.”
“The only way I believe I can hire these spacers or others of their experience,” Daniel said, “is if they come as my retainers. That is, you and the Count contract with me for the Sissie’s full wage bill, and I undertake to pay the crew out of that amount. A director of the Merchants and Shippers bank—”
He’d almost said “Deirdre.” It wouldn’t have been a disaster, but formality was still the better policy here.
“—is working up a detailed contract now; I don’t have the precise figures.”
Count Klimov guffawed with delight. He turned to his wife and said, “You see what the sly dog is doing? We pay him, and he pays the serfs—what he pleases!”
“You have the principle correct,” Daniel said through a fixed smile. “Though Cinnabar spacers are not serfs.”
Still smiling but enunciating with care he continued, “I asked you if you were satisfied during your voyage from the Strymon system. This new endeavor will be on the same terms. That is, the control and discipline of the crew will be entirely in the hands of me as captain. You will give me orders, and I will command the ship.”
“What difference does it make?” said the Count.
His wife looked at Daniel with unexpected shrewdness. “Your lords of the navy make you captain on those terms,” she said. “You’ve served them well, it seems. Georgi and I will trust you as far as they, I think.”
Daniel nodded politely. “Then there’s only one matter left to clear up before I accept your offer,” he said. “I’ll ask my colleague Lieutenant Mon to relinquish his prior right to the position. I believe he’ll be willing to do so.”
He set his hand on the hatch’s bar handle.
“There is no need!” said Klimov. “Nothing was signed, nothing at all!”
“Perhaps not,” said Daniel, his tone courteous to a fault. “But RCN officers are punctilious about their honor . . . and so are the Learys of Bantry. I hope you’ll keep that in mind, because I’m looking forward to congenial relations with you during our voyage.”
He cleared his throat and smiled broadly. “I believe we’re ready for you to conduct your business with the Navy Office. While you’re doing that, I’ll address what I hope will be our crew,” he said. “Yes?”
“Yes, yes of course,” said the Count with a dismissive gesture.
“Yes,” said Klimovna. “Very congenial.”
* * *
Adele sat on a forty-gallon drum on the quay beside the Princess Cecile. The container was still part full from the way it sloshed when she shifted her weight, but she had no idea with what. Her data unit was on the similar drum in front of her, so she’d adjusted it to project its holographic display higher than she’d normally have done. Nothing that she needed to attend was happening on the dock, so she’d resumed winnowing data regarding Radiance and the Commonwealth of God more generally.
Calling the Commonwealth a government was stretching the point. The Chief Elder was the titular head of a polity of over a hundred stars, but he answered to a Council of Seventy—and the fleets, numbering anything from three to a dozen depending on politics, were semi-autonomous and elected their own admirals.
“Mistress,” Woetjans said. Adele heard the bosun speak and filed the fact to be dealt with as soon as she’d shut down the volume of the Shipping Instructions she was reviewing.
Factions within the Commonwealth elite were at daggers-drawn—literally, often enough. If the Alliance navy was willing to expend its resources at such a distance from its nearest existing bases, it could easily find powerful backers on Radiance.
A group claiming that human beings could breathe water could find backers on Radiance; all it would take was spreading a little money around. The Commonwealth was a bizarre assemblage that seemed to cling together only because its parts couldn’t even agree to separate.