“Mistress?” Woetjans repeated. The bosun touched Adele’s shoulder. Adele’s left hand dropped into her tunic pocket. Her eyes were blank and her mind was awash with blazing terror, the hormonal rush that short-circuited thought by screaming “Run or kill!” to the lizard brain.
“The captain’s about to speak, mistress,” Woetjans whispered. If she’d noticed Adele’s hand starting to come out of her pocket holding the little pistol, she was too polite to mention it.
“Thank you, Woetjans,” Adele said, her voice trembling. She got off the drum to pick up the wand she’d dropped. With it again in her hand, she shut down the data unit as Daniel faced the crew in the light of the sun edging over the corvette behind him.
“Well, shipmates, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you all together,” he said, his cheerful voice booming. “In a moment Lieutenant Mon will give you your discharges, but he’s allowed me to say a few words to you first.”
Daniel stretched his left arm back, pointing toward the Princess Cecile without taking his eyes off the ranks of spacers. The midshipmen and warrant officers, all but Adele herself and Woetjans—who’d apparently appointed herself to look after the signals officer—stood at the left end of the common crewmen.
“You all know the Sissie’s being sold out of service,” he said. “What you haven’t known till now is that I’m leaving the RCN to become her captain. The Klimovs, the passengers who came from Strymon with you, have hired me to take them to the Galactic North aboard what was the finest corvette in the RCN!”
“Holy God and Her Saints!” Woetjans bellowed. The whole crew was either chattering or standing open-mouthed, a matter of how different temperaments reacted to amazement.
Dorst and Vesey were embracing. They couldn’t afford 1st Class uniforms—neither had family money—but their Grays sported more medal ribbons than most officers several ranks their senior could claim.
“What about Lieutenant Mon?” Sun called, his voice echoing from the corvette’s flank with a metallic harshness that was probably unmeant. “We heard he was going to be captain!”
“Mr. Mon has agreed to manage my late Uncle Stacey’s shipyard,” Daniel said, adjusting his volume as the crew fell silent as he resumed speaking. “He’ll be hiring in the near future, I shouldn’t wonder, and any of you who fancy staying on solid ground for a time might look him up. But for the rest of you . . .”
Adele smiled. She could’ve broadcast the speech through the Sissie’s public address system, but Daniel obviously hadn’t felt he needed mechanical support; and he’d been right, as he generally was with anything to do with ships or spacers.
He put his hands on his hips and leaned his torso back slightly, giving the assembled spacers a huge grin. “You’d have to be crazy to come with me!” he said. “You may think some foreign civilian would let you slack off, but think again! The Sissie’s crew won’t be working for Count Klimov, they’ll be signing on with me personally, Daniel Leary. They’ll be under RCN discipline same as if the Sissie were in commission.”
The murmuring of the listening spacers built again like sudden surf.
“We’ll be lifting with a full crew,” Daniel resumed after a pause to let the more clever spacers explain what he’d just said to their denser fellows. “We’ll be carrying missiles, though not a full magazine, and we’ll have expended some of them before we come back or I badly misjudge the North.”
Adele realized suddenly that her friend was addressing not only the Cinnabar citizens in front of him but also the Klimovs watching from the bridge hatch above. He was being carefully circumspect in the words he used—
Which didn’t prevent Koechler from shouting to his fellow riggers Barnes and Dasi, “No, you ninnies, we won’t be working for wogs, we’ll be working for Mr. Leary!” in a voice loud enough to be heard on the street outside the compound.
“We won’t be at war,” Daniel went on, “but going among those cut-throats and pirates in the North will be as dangerous as war. Maybe worse!”
“We’ve seen pirates, sir!” Sun cried. “Seen ’em and seen ’em off, haven’t we, spacers!”