“Damn right,” said Hogg, moving into the pickup’s field for the first time. “And if you’re smart, you’ll sign up with Mr. Leary. You’ll like serving under a real officer for a change.”
Adele stood in the hatchway of the APC, waiting for Daniel to take his restraining hand off the coaming. She was so irritated that she’d have driven away while he was still talking, but Barnes was more respectful of his lieutenant.
The Alliance aircar approached the tender in a trough of spray, returning from the Aglaia with another load of sailors. Gambier was driving, but a Kostroman—Warrant Officer Gershon, the man who’d closed down the power room during the assault—sat beside him to provide an authentically non-Cinnabar voice for Tarnhelm Control.
“Look, Adele,” Daniel said, raising his voice to be heard over the car’s fans. “I think I’d better come along after all. It isn’t proper for a civilian to be in charge of this. Freeing RCN officers is RCN business, and—”
“Mr. Leary,” Adele said in a tone of very genuine cold anger, “in your company I have taken part in looting naval warehouses and in capturing not one but two naval vessels. There is no one in our mutual enterprise who knows the Elector’s Palace as well as I do, nor whose accent can pass for that of an Alliance citizen. Your presence is necessary to ready the Princess Cecile for our escape. The twelve of us—”
She nodded toward Hogg and the ten sailors under Woetjans already within the vehicle. They and Adele wore commando uniforms.
“—can deal with the matter of the Aglaia’s officers just as readily as we could if your presence made our number thirteen.”
She wrinkled her nose dismissively. “I don’t object to you coming on grounds of superstition,” she said, “merely because it would be stupid.”
The aircar landed, rocking the tender despite the APC’s centered mass. Gambier idled the fans and the noise level dropped.
“Sir?” said Hogg. “Have this bitch of a wog ship ready to lift when we get back, all right? Because sure as shit, we’re going to be ready.”
“Too fucking true,” agreed Woetjans.
“Yes,” said Daniel. “All right.”
The car was disgorging its load of sailors. “Hold for me, Gambier,” Daniel called. “I need to prepare the Aglaia for when we lift.”
He looked at Adele and smiled wistfully. “Odd that it’s so much easier to do something dangerous than to ask friends to do so, isn’t it? Good luck. And Hogg?”
“Yessir?” the servant called. Adele had already started to pull the hatch to.
“Ms. Mundy has all the skills desirable in an affair of this nature,” Daniel said. “She does not have experience, however. Don’t let anything happen to her.”
“On my honor, sir!” Hogg shouted as Adele angrily clanged the hatch closed.
Barnes skidded the armored personnel carrier away from the tender. Adele’s stomach churned as they dropped to the water, then rose.
She wondered how many officers really thought it was easier to take risks than to order others to do so. If Daniel was an example, perhaps all the good ones did.
The Aglaia’s tactical operations center was an armored citadel at the opposite end of Deck E from the bridge. All the sensor inputs were routed here as well as to the bridge, through separate trunks.
Normally during battle the first lieutenant would be in charge of the TOC, while the captain commanded from the bridge and the Chief Missileer, a warrant officer, oversaw the missile launchers themselves. The weapons stations were entirely automated, but things go wrong with machinery even when nobody’s shooting at you.
Daniel, in the TOC with the missileer, said, “To create a diversion when we lift to orbit, Chief Baylor, we’re going to launch the Aglaia’s missiles on radio command while she’s here in harbor. I’ll deal with the software prohibitions, but I want you and your crew to remove the mechanical interlocks. There can’t be any slip-ups.”
“Bloody hell!” said Chief Baylor. His small, foxy face tightened with wrinkles. “Launch in an atmosphere? It’ll . . .”
Daniel hadn’t had much to do with the missileer on the Aglaia’s voyage out; Baylor kept to himself and his weapons, polishing the missiles’ hulls and performing daily diagnostics on the launch and in-flight control systems. The other officers thought Baylor was strange, but he didn’t cause trouble and he pulled his nonspecialist duties like anchor watch commander without objection.