"She's got friends. Hard worker, shows initiative, always willing to help out."
"A milk biscuit." That with contempt.
"Oh yes, all the way through."
"I wish we didn't have any of that sort aboard," Chief Burdine said. "They could have a happy life milking cows somewhere; what'd they have to join Fleet for?"
"For our sport," Sergeant Prinkin said.
"That's true." Burdine grinned at him. "Though it's little sport someone like her will give us."
Running up to Admin from the repair bay meant running up a lot of ladders, which other people seemed busy running down. Again and again Anseli had to stand aside while one or more officers or squads of NEMs clattered down. She wasn't really in a hurry, because the longer she was away from Sergeant Prinkin the better, but standing at the foot of ladders wasn't her idea of fun. Her mind wandered to the LACs and the bioscan. If LACs could drop and pick up troops . . . or drop troops off . . . why couldn't they pick troops up? Go down empty, come back full? And if you didn't bioscan the LACs, how could you tell?
"Stand clear!"
She flattened herself to the bulkhead yet again, not really seeing the uniforms flashing past her. What if there were people on the ship who weren't crew? People from down on the planet?
Of course, everyone on this planet was Fleet, so it didn't matter. Did it?
Anseli knew that pivots weren't supposed to think—well, not beyond memorizing instruction sets in manuals. But she'd always had a sort of itchy feeling in her head if she didn't get things straight. Machines either worked or they didn't, in her very clear interior universe. A bioscan which reported on real, verifiable human-sized beings behind one wall didn't turn liar and report that there were people where there weren't any. That very same bioscan unit had reported nothing in the LAC holds when the LAC left . . . when it was known to be empty. So
how
did the sergeant know the LAC was empty when the bioscan said it was loaded with troops? Sergeants knew everything, but . . . her mind itched.
A non-itchy part of her mind began its own commentary on the crew members who kept coming down the ladders. There had been no general alarm, so why were the ship's security details on their way to the LAC bays?
By the time she reached Admin, her mind was worse than a case of hives, and the only way she knew to scratch it was ask questions. The chief in Admin growled and handed her another job to do. How was she supposed to learn if no one answered her questions?
Bonar Tighe
reported its LACs recovered, and requested and received permission to dock at the orbital station. This, like the request to practice LAC drops, was standard procedure, and the Traffic Control gave
Bonar Tighe
a docking priority assignment based on her ETA. The stationmaster approved station liberty at the captain's discretion, and forwarded the station newsletter. Ships of
Bonar Tighe
's mass could not microjump so close to a planet, so the cruiser had to crawl patiently in a spiral to catch up with the station, a process which took several hours.
Margiu Pardalt boarded the odd-looking aircraft before dawn. If not for the briefings, she'd have had no idea that such craft existed. On Xavier, she had seen only surface-to-station shuttles and low-flying aircars or flitters. Her years at the Academy had introduced her to high-altitude passenger aircraft like the one she'd been in from Drylands to the coast. But this uneasy compromise between aircraft and boat looked like something a mad scientist would come up with: four fat engines on the high-set wings, with whirligig propellers set into adjustable ducts; a peculiar blob hanging from the end of each wing, suspended on a thin pole. The bottom of the fuselage had the conchoidal shape, scooped and ridged, that she associated with shattered glass. She found it hard to believe it would actually fly.
This time the craft carried only three passengers besides its crew. One was a gray-haired major, with a pinched mouth and a narrow line of decorations which she recognized as efficiency awards. Admin, most likely. He went to the head of the little line waiting on the dock as by rights, boarded first, and installed himself in a seat midway down the port side, where he immediately flicked on his seat lamp and opened a handcomp.
The other passenger had waved Margiu ahead, with a flamboyant gesture that matched his flamboyant appearance. In the harsh lights of the harborage, his leather jacket blazed a garish yellow, and the metallic decorations glittered. Margiu climbed over the entrance coaming, and followed the major, almost stumbling once when the gentle motion of the seaplane on the water surprised her.
She picked out a window seat, on the starboard side. As she buckled in, she looked up to see the third passenger watching. One of those? He had pulled off his cap, revealing fine gray hair fluffed around a bald pate, and in this light she could see that his yellow jacket might be some theatrical troupe's idea of a uniform. Its shoulders were decorated with loops of green braid, and a line of stars on the upstanding collar, now open to reveal a green shirt; his dark pants were actually green.
"May I?" the man said, in a surprisingly sweet voice. "I'm really quite harmless."
She had hoped for a quiet ride, perhaps even a nap. But courtesy demanded that she say yes, so she nodded.
A crew chief checked to be sure they were all wearing the PPU, and a life vest, and that all the survival gear aboard was actually in place. Predictably, the man in yellow wasn't wearing his PPU. Unpredictably, he was quite cheerful about having to change, and quicker than she would have expected. Margiu had flown between the stars, but never over large bodies of water; she began to realize that this was serious.
Then the pilot swung the stumpy plane around, revved the engines, and Margiu felt acceleration shoving her back. The plane slammed its way across the low ripples of the harbor, spray blurring the lights outside. A few moments later they were airborne.
The headlands of Dark Harbor, edged with lights, fell away behind and below them, and then it was nothing but darkness below. Down there somewhere was water, invisible to the eye but cold and wet. Margiu shivered. To her relief, her seat companion turned a little away and started snoring almost immediately. By dawn, they were flying under high clouds, and the water below looked like a vast sheet of wrinkled silk patched with shades of blue and green and silver that she could not identify.
The man beside her woke up, and gave her a sweet smile. "I hope my snoring didn't keep you awake," he said.
"No, sir."
"I'm no sir, milady. I'm Professor Gustaf Aidersson, if you want my dull, boring, everyday name, which goes with my dull, boring, everyday profession, about which I cannot talk, or we will both be in serious trouble. Or you could call me Don Alfonso Dundee, most noble knight of the Order of Old Terra, and we could have a pleasant conversation about anything you wish."
"I'm sorry?" She had no idea what he was talking about.
"No, I'm sorry." He hit himself dramatically on the forehead. "Never accost young ladies before breakfast with strange tales out of distant mythology. You've heard of SPAL?"
"No, sir."
"Ah. Well, it's the biggest collection of galoots and misfits in the universe, and the letters stand for the Society for the Preservation of Antique Lore. Antique lunacy is more like it—I have no faith whatever in the actuality of our tomfoolery, but it is fun. We got the idea back when the rich folks in the Families first took up antique studies and arts—long before your time, milady—and we put our own interpretation on it. Let them flit about with fencing masters from the Company of Sabers, create titles for themselves, and imagine that they're re-creating scenes from Old Earth history. They're so serious about it, it takes all the fun out."
Margiu listened to the rolling flow of words and wondered if the man were entirely sane. His bright sidelong look seemed to catch her thought in midair, as if it were a ball being tossed.
"You wonder if I'm crazy. Of course you do. I'm not sure myself, and my wife tells me regularly that my pot is a little cracked. But the fact of the matter is, craziness is not necessarily a bar to genius, and my kind of craziness consists only in boring total strangers to distraction in airplanes. Or spacecraft. Or anywhere else I can trap them." He grinned at her with such obvious good humor that Margiu felt herelf relaxing.
"What is that yellow jacket?" she found herself asking.
"Good question," he said promptly, in a tone that she could well believe went with a professor of something. "There was a colony world—second-order colony out of Old Earth by way of Congreve—which had successive waves of settlers. They didn't get along, so of course they started fighting. Back then fabricators were pretty basic machines—couldn't turn out any useful sort of protective garments. So the colonists started using leather from their herds of cattle. The color told what side they were on. Mine is a semiaccurate reproduction of a Missen-Asaya officer's uniform of the Third Missen-Asaya/Tangrat War. Except the insignia. I should have a little wooden bird, but I couldn't find it before I left. My wife swears I must have left it at the last awards banquet . . . so I just took the stars off a model spaceship. Not a very good model, either; Rose-class ships never had double batteries of beam weapons. I told Zachery that when he showed me the model, but he got huffy about it and threw it in the corner, the one where Kata drops her dirty boots. That's why I knew where to find stars when I wanted them. And I thought stars might be more impressive when I had to travel with Fleet officers, but of course they see that yellow canary-jacket and try not to laugh."
It was like drowning in treacle.
"But I'm talking too much about myself. Just whap me on the head when I do that; that's what my wife does. Or ignore me and look out the window if you want. I can see you're an ensign, with red hair exactly the color of my niece's, but—who are you?"
"Margiu Pardalt," Margiu said. "From Xavier."
"Xavier!" His face lit up, and her heart sank. "You know, the tactical analysis of the most recent engagement is fascinating. I was most impressed with the fire control of the Benignity ships—"
"The Benignity ships—" She couldn't help that, or the tone it popped out in.
"Yes. No disrespect to Commander . . . er . . . whoever it was—"
"Serrano," murmured Margiu.
"But the Benignity performance was markedly better than expected. And there's new data—from this very facility—well, not where we're going but where I assume you've been, the Copper Mountain base—to indicate that they upgraded one of our ships they captured. For instance, the time to recharge—no. I mustn't get onto this." Margiu could see the effort it cost him to rein that enthusiasm back. "Tell you what, let's talk about wet navies. Here we are, flying over a superb large ocean, and I'll bet you've never studied wet-navy history, have you?"
"Only a little," Margiu said. Her mind scrabbled frantically in search of some crumb of data to prove that she had studied it at all, but only the word
Trafalgar
rose up. She couldn't remember if it had been an admiral, a ship, or a battle. "Trafalgar," she said.
"Of course!" He beamed at her. "A mighty battle indeed, that was, but perhaps a little remote for our purposes. Are you familiar with the application of Nelson's sail tactics to colonial naval battles?"
"Uh . . . no, sir."
"Consider, if you will, the archipelagos of Skinner III." He spread his hands, as if touching a particular geographic area, and Margiu wondered if she ought to admit she didn't know what an archipelago was. She didn't have time. "Forty thousand islands, at least. Colonized with intent to exploit its obvious advantages for aquaculture, but, as always, underfunded and subject to piracy. Abundant timber, so—"
Margiu's com beeped; she pressed the button. Her companion watched, bright-eyed. The pilot spoke: "Ensign, Major—" She glanced back and saw the other officer sit up; he met her eyes across the plane. "There's some kind of trouble at Stack Islands. Apparently personnel are missing, believed lost at sea—"
"What personnel?" the major asked.
"Base Three commander and a guard corporal. There's also a life raft missing from the Three Base aircar hangar, and evidence of a struggle . . . they're saying the corporal may have gone crazy and kidnapped the commander. But anyway—we're to join the search; they don't have any long-range craft, and they suspect the life raft was blown west by the storm into the North Current."
Margiu started to say that her orders were to get those directives to the base commanders without delay, but decided not to. The pilot knew she was a courier, and if someone were down there in a raft, surely that had to come first. She hoped.
They were still at least an hour east of the Stacks, but Margiu could not help scanning below for the life raft. She had no idea how big it would look from whatever altitude they were flying.
Dark dots appeared on the sea. "Those are the Stacks," the pilot said. Margiu stared at them . . . a scatter of tall black rocks, whose height above the water was hard to judge in this flat light. The plane lost altitude again in a sudden lurch. "We'll be over Stack Island Three in an hour."