Klimov lowered his impeller; waste heat from the projectiles it’d accelerated made the barrel glow dull red. He looked at Daniel. “I decided I didn’t need that trophy, Captain,” he said.
Daniel tried to get to his feet. He used his gun as a pole, but it folded under the stress. The dragon’s beak had sheared halfway through the aluminum receiver.
“Very good shooting, sir,” Daniel said. He braced himself on one knee, then lurched fully upright. Klimovna leaned on one elbow, so at least she hadn’t been killed.
“Somebody want to get this fucking car off me?” Hogg demanded.
Daniel walked to the vehicle, bent, and switched off the power; the fan slowed with a peevish moan. “I’m very sorry, Hogg,” he said. “I’m afraid lifting the car will have to wait for the crew I see coming toward us from the Princess Cecile.”
He waved to indicate matters had settled down. Raising his arm sent a line of jagged pain all the way to the toes of his left foot.
Had the knife Hogg threw survived the Count’s shot? Pray God it had, because you could never tell when you’ll need something like that again.
“Captain Leary?” the Count said. “What is the next port on our itinerary?”
“Todos Santos, the capital of the Ten Star Cluster, sir,” Daniel said. “How long would you like to remain here before we lift ship?”
“I don’t want to remain here even as long as it will take me to walk back to the Princess Cecile,” the Count said, giving Daniel a wintry smile. “That long I must wait, I know. But not much longer, all right?”
“Aye aye, sir,” Daniel said. “I know exactly how you feel.”
CHAPTER 10
Hanging in orbit, cooling their heels outside Todos Santos’ defensive minefield, may have made everybody else aboard the Princess Cecile jittery and snappish, but Adele found it the ideal place to gather information—which was her job, after all. When my job isn’t shooting people, she added mentally; and because she was in a good mood, that whimsy made her tight smile broaden by a hair’s-breadth.
If she’d known how to whistle, she’d have whistled as Daniel did in similar circumstances. It probably wasn’t worth the effort to learn the art now; though perhaps. . . .
She caught movement from the corner of her eye and glanced to the side. Daniel glided over to her console, his face unwontedly grim. The Princess Cecile had gravity or its equivalent only on a planet or under power. Todos Santos Control had assigned them an orbit which they could leave only at the risk of being treated as hostile by the planetary defenses, so they couldn’t have stooged about under 1 g acceleration even if the corvette had unlimited water remaining in its storage tanks to be converted into fuel for the High Drive.
“Can you get a notion of how long we’ll wait for landing approval, Mundy?” Daniel asked, as usual professionally formal in public settings. The fact he’d come over to talk without going through the commo system showed how much inaction frustrated him, though.
She’d forwarded to Daniel’s console the layout of the harbor at San Juan, the planetary and effectively national capital; technically the Ten Star Cluster was part of the Commonwealth and tributary to Radiance. The ship’s ordinary sensors would’ve provided images showing the size and number of ships in the great harbor, but Adele’s—the additional software and equipment from Mistress Sand—added the vessels’ names, their arrival and planned departure dates, and all the other information in the files of Planetary Control.
In a few minutes, she’d have completed gathering all the data in the vessels’ computers. Oh, yes, this was a fine environment for a skilled information specialist.
“There seem to be only two picket boats,” Adele explained. She shrank the communications data she’d been working with to a sidebar so that she could project a spatial display for Daniel. Instead of echoing the image to his helmet visor, her first thought, she switched her console to project an omnidirectional view. She frowned. “According to Control Authority records there are five, but I can’t find any physical sign of the others.”