Adele sniffed. “I was thinking about it,” she said. She appeared to be observing the ships in the Floating Harbor on her display.
Daniel cleared his throat. “Cinnabar and Kostroma are very different,” he said, because he was afraid he had to say something.
“Yes,” said Adele. “And Corder Leary isn’t a complete fool like Walter III.”
She shook her head and continued, “My parents were very passionate people. I’m sure passion is a useful characteristic or it wouldn’t be so general in the human population, but I’ve always thought it must get in the way of accurate assessments.”
She met Daniel’s eyes and offered her pale excuse for a smile. “Of course, my parents had friends,” she said. “As I do not.”
Daniel tapped her shoulder with his clenched fist. “You’ve got friends,” he said.
And Daniel Leary had one friend more than he’d had when he arrived on Kostroma.
The APC’s landing skids grated minusculely as it settled to the Aglaia’s concrete dock. Adele, wearing the commando lieutenant’s uniform, reached for the hatch mechanism.
Behind her Daniel called into the closed-up troop compartment, “Remember, nobody says a word except Ms. Mundy. Not if there’s a gun in your face!”
Adele opened the narrow hatch beside the cupola and stepped out, remembering the Alliance officer doing the same thing the day before. She wondered if she ought to display hectoring anger as the commando had done.
Adele smiled slightly. So long as the guards on the Aglaia’s landing stage didn’t make the correspondence perfect by throwing a grenade through the hatch.
The ports and panels that had been open when the Aglaia was in Cinnabar hands were now clamped shut, except for the main hatch where six soldiers armed with stocked impellers waited. The guards wore tan, not camouflaged, uniforms, so they were sailors rather than soldiers, Adele supposed.
The guards watched with interest just short of concern as Adele and the commando-uniformed Cinnabars exited one by one. Dropping the sides of the troop compartment might have looked provocative, and there was just a chance that a guard would notice that the five Cinnabars still aboard wore Kostroman naval garments.
Adele strode across the unrailed catwalk to the landing stage. Waves lifted the ship and the pontoon in differing rhythms; when the sailors tramped onto the light-metal ramp behind her Adele’s balance problem got even worse.
Adele kept her eyes focused on the face of the bearded petty officer commanding the guards. Her own visage was grim, perhaps a more suitable expression than she’d have been able to arrange had she not been afraid of falling into the damned ocean.
“We’re the relief for Lieutenant Wozzeck’s platoon,” Adele said coldly as she reached the landing stage. It too rose and fell, but without the twisting vibration. Did dignitaries never fall in the water?
“Wozzeck?” the Alliance sailor said. He’d been born on rural Leon from his dialect; Adele’s statement puzzled him, but not her Bryce accent. “Sir, the navy took over here ten hours ago. This is the prize ship Aglaia.”
“Of course it’s the Aglaia,” Adele snapped. “Vishnu and his Avatars! Where’s Lieutenant Wozzeck?”
The guards looked at one another in worried puzzlement. One of them—speaking toward her petty officer, not Adele—said, “Wozzeck was watch commander on the duty sheet before Glanz took over, but that was last watch.”
“All right, where’s your damned command post?” Adele said with an angry grimace. She slapped her left thigh to add to the effect. “I’ll try to raise somebody who can tell me what’s going on.”
She looked over her shoulder. Daniel had reached the landing stage. The rest of the Cinnabar sailors were strung out along the walkway or still on the pontoon because Adele hadn’t left them room to go farther. They were nonchalant; probably more nonchalant than real soldiers would have been.
“Leary,” Adele said, “you come with me. The rest of you stand easy until I get back with some information. And keep your mouths shut! This is supposed to be a nondisclosure mission.”
“Nondisclosure mission” didn’t mean anything that Adele knew of, but she’d been in and around bureaucracies most of her life. Nobody in a large organization knew everything that was going on, and this hint of mystery gave the sailors an excuse not to betray themselves by their accents.