With the Lightnings (6 page)

"Maybe we could lock down the blast door in the corridor to the passenger suites?" said Midshipman Cassanos, a fresh-faced youth of eighteen on his first commission.

Midshipman Whelkine was female, a year older, and had never given Daniel a real smile in the three weeks he'd known her on shipboard. Her hands clenched on her glass when Cassanos spoke, but that wasn't necessarily a response to the words. Whelkine's skills were well above the norm for officers at her level of experience, but Daniel had never before met anyone as fearful of putting a foot wrong.

"Midshipmen with interest," Mon said, fixing Cassanos with eyes like two obsidian knives, "should have sense enough not to insult admirals who can spike any chance of command assignment for those midshipmen in future years. Do you understand me, Cassanos?"

Cassanos stiffened in his seat, flushing with embarrassment. "Sir," he said. "I spoke out of turn. I humbly ask the pardon of our host and the assembly."

"Did you say something, Cassanos?" Daniel said as he sat down carefully. "Nobody here heard you, I'm sure."

Mon's reaction was kindness, not hypocrisy. He was the second lieutenant of RCS
Aglaia
, a communications vessel with a light cruiser's hull and masts but the armament of only a corvette. Space normally given over to weapons and magazines provided passenger suites comparable to an admiral's accommodation on a First-Class battleship. The delegates to Kostroma travelled swiftly and in the luxury befitting their rank, but without tying up an important naval asset and putting the nose of Elector Walter III out of joint.

Mon's skills as an officer were respected or he wouldn't have a berth on a showpiece like the
Aglaia
; but he
didn't
have interest, and he hadn't had either the flair or the good fortune to get a command slot in other ways. Mon would be promoted, slowly but steadily, through a series of staff and ground positions till he retired . . . unless drink and bitterness led him to say something that the RCN couldn't overlook.

Cassanos had a chance. Mon didn't want the boy to lose it through the misfortune of aping a loser like himself.

A steward filled Daniel's glass. The servants were from the
Aglaia
's staff, attending this dinner through some arrangement Hogg had made with the purser. Hogg had provided the wine also. As usual he hadn't volunteered information about his source of supply and Daniel had determinedly refused to ask. Daniel was scrupulous about the provenance of his normal fare, but this dinner was a matter of honor. If he
knew
that Hogg had raided Admiral Lasowski's private stock, he'd have to do something about it.

"I served under Lasowski when she was captain of the
Thunderer
," Lt. Weisshampl said. The wine in her refilled glass was the rusty color of a dried cherry; she stared with solemn intensity at the highlights on its surface. "A cautious officer. Not a person to trust a subordinate to do her job—but fair, wouldn't invent a problem if there wasn't one. Just cautious."

Technically the
Aglaia
's crew weren't subordinate to Admiral Lasowski in the chain of command. The admiral and her staff were passengers on the RCS
Aglaia
, a vessel under the command of Captain Le Golif. Nobody who'd ever met an admiral believed that would be the reality, but Daniel knew the
Aglaia
's situation was worse than most.

As Weisshampl said, Admiral Lasowski was a cautious officer—but she was also a person who used minutiae to settle her mind from the pressures of her real duties. Lasowski had the responsibility of satisfying Walter III with arrangements on which her honor would ride, but she knew also that the Cinnabar Senate would repudiate those arrangements if a majority of its members believed that was best for the Republic.

The Elector of Kostroma, an autocrat (albeit one who faced recall at gunpoint at any moment), would know only that Martina Lasowski had made untrue statements to him. Officers of the RCN, also an autocracy, were likely in their heart of hearts to view matters much the same way. Admiral Lasowski would have to resign, disgraced at the climax of a previously successful—if cautious—career.

"Being between the Senate and a dictator who needs money," Daniel said aloud, "would make anybody pace the decks. They just don't happen to be her decks, is all."

The admiral was no particular friend of his. She'd made it clear that Lt. Leary had replaced her godson in the delegation by the decision of persons with whom she disagreed. For all that, she'd ignored Daniel rather than working at making his life hell. Daniel liked most people, and Lasowski hadn't given him reason to add her to the short list of those he didn't.

"The way to make that tinpot Kostroman see reason," Lt. Mon said, "is to park a battleship in orbit over the palace until he decides there's nothing he'd rather do than kiss our bum. God and all His saints! How long does Walter think there'd be a Kostroman merchant fleet if we declared him an enemy?"

"Now
that
," Cassanos said, coming to life again, "would mean serious prize money!"

Daniel felt his eyes glaze with the thought of the sudden wealth that could accrue to even a junior lieutenant if hundreds of rich transports became fair targets before they could reach neutral ports. That was dream wealth, though; there'd never been any doubt that the Reciprocity Agreement would be renewed. Even if it weren't, Kostroma wouldn't become a hostile power.

"I was posted from the
Hemphill
to the inspections department at Harbor Three," Mon recalled with morose savagery. "I hadn't been off the books three days when the
Hemphill
took a transport trying to run four thousand tons of fullerenes into Pleasaunce. And then, instead of a combat tour I'm sent to squire around Admiral Pain-In-the-Ass Lasowski!"

"I understood you to be discussing your hemorrhoids, Mon," Weisshampl said to her junior. "If that isn't what you said, you might want to think about sleeping off the cargo you've taken on board tonight."

"I'm all right," Mon muttered to his glass. "I'll watch my tongue."

The
Aglaia
had an unusual number of officers for a complement of 180 ratings. A corvette of that crew would be under the command of a lieutenant who might be the only commissioned officer aboard. On some small vessels the missileer stood watches, even though that warrant officer wasn't a spacer like the Chief of Ship and Chief of Rig.

Even so, meddling by an admiral passenger, which might be bearable on a battleship with a crew of a thousand, would stretch a saint's patience on the
Aglaia
. Lasowski had inspected the ratings' quarters not once but twice on the voyage out. The only way to escape her was to climb one of the masts which drove the vessel through sponge space. Daniel had frequently done just that, but the option wasn't open to the officers standing watch.

A ship preparing to enter sponge space with its masts extended in all directions looked like a sea urchin. The mast tips formed the points determining the size and shape of the field against which Cassini energy pressed. The plasma motors were shut down as soon as the ship left the atmosphere; the High Drive was at low output to provide maneuvering way. The masts weren't stressed for anything approaching 1-gee acceleration when spread.

When the charge and alignment of the masts was correct, the vessel slipped into the fourth-dimensional Matrix in which the cells of sponge space coexisted. Rather than enter another universe, the ship itself became a separate universe. Its progress in respect to the sidereal universe was again a matter of the masts' alignment and charge.

Navigational tables provided a starship's commander with basic instructions, but the Matrix through which she guided her bubble universe could not be directly sensed. An astrogator used the minute rise and fall in mast charges to plot variations in the Matrix and the corresponding change in the ship's relation to the sidereal universe.

A really successful astrogator had a sense that, like perfect pitch, went beyond skill and training. That astrogator's mind saw into the matrix. His runs were faster, his planetfalls more precise, and when he voyaged beyond the existing charts he brought his ship back.

Commander Stacey Bergen was an astrogator whose reputation inspired deserved awe in others, his nephew included. But with a quiet and never-spoken assurance very different from the pride that also was a part of his character, Daniel Leary felt he was as able an astrogator as anyone he'd ever met
except
his Uncle Stacey.

Lt. Weisshampl got to her feet with a slow grace that belied the amount she'd had to drink. She was a tall woman with the features of someone more petite. Her parents had some status but no money; an aunt, however, had married wealth and provided Weisshampl with the support an officer needed beyond RCN pay.

She raised her glass. "Fellow officers," she said, "I give you Command. May she come to all of us, and may we prove worthy of her!"

"By God, yes!" Cassanos said and gulped his wine. Daniel blinked, for the midshipman's words were those he'd caught before they reached his own lips.

Lt. Mon drank with a face like a raincloud. He lowered his empty glass and gripped it in both hands as if to strangle it and himself as well.

"Would the master like me to bring in the brandy?" Hogg murmured in Daniel's ear.

"Brandy?" Daniel repeated. The unexpected word dragged him from a fantasy in which Admiral Daniel Leary stood on the steps of the Senate House to receive the acclaim of an adoring nation.

"I thought it'd go well now, sir," Hogg said with a satisfied grin. He wore clean clothes, a loose green shirt over blue trousers with a red cummerbund to tie the ensemble together. Shaving had been neglected in his care to prepare the dinner. Hogg looked like a cheerful pirate at the moment, which was pretty much the reality as well.

"It'll go very well indeed, Hogg," Daniel said. "Bring on the brandy!"

He leaned back in his chair, a heavy thing of plush and dark wood borrowed from the landlord. He was at peace with the world.

Some time in the distant past a librarian having a bad day had said something that Daniel must have misinterpreted. Who could be angry about such things when life was a wonderful thing, shadowed only by the absence of command?

Command would come, as surely as good fellowship and good wine and the stars themselves had come to Daniel Leary!

The Grand Salon where the Elector held formal dinners rose the full height of the palace's second and third stories, with a rebated clerestory above that. The ceiling was a single enormous fresco, but the light wasn't good enough for Adele Mundy to see more than a hint of bare limbs and flowing drapery.

She'd have liked a better view, but since she hadn't bothered to visit the salon in daylight she didn't suppose that her interest could be as great as all that. Primarily she was feeling the utter boredom of the gathering.

"Now . . ." said the man to her left, a provisions merchant from Kostroma City and the only person seated below Adele at the fourth and lowest table of the dinner. "This is egg salad, of course—"

He wiggled a dab of vaguely peach-colored matter on his fork; Adele wasn't sure that "of course" would have been a phrase she used in the identification.

"—but what
kind
of egg, I ask you? Not hen as you might think, but domesticated Kostroman Diamondtail!"

"Pardon me, mistress," said the member of the Alliance delegation on Adele's right. He was a husky, dark-haired fellow in his forties who'd said his name was Markos. He spoke Academy-grade Universal with a rasping undertone of the Pleasaunce slums. "I believe I've been seated higher than my proper precedence should have allowed. Please accept my apology and change places with me."

"I'm sure—" Adele began, then caught herself. "Ah."

Even if Markos were a junior clerk as he'd claimed, he should have been higher as a simple matter of diplomatic checkers. At the head table Admiral Lasowski sat to the Elector's right while the Alliance chief of mission was on the left of Walter's mistress, looking sour. Not only had the Cinnabar envoy been given precedence, an admiral's dress uniform with six full rows of medals and a gorget of honor at the throat completely upstaged the robes of the Alliance civilian.

The order at the two middle tables was reversed. A grandnephew of Guarantor Porra, a peacock in full plumage, sat at the top while the Cinnabar civil head was two places below him; likewise the two naval captains at table three, an Alliance delegate sitting above Le Golif of the
Aglaia
—not properly a member of the Cinnabar mission, but present in Lt. Leary's place.

It was proper that at table four the mid-ranking functionary from the Cinnabar Navy Office restore balance by being seated higher than Markos; but no member of the delegations for whom the banquet was arranged should have been
so
low. The notion that Markos should really have been below the Electoral Librarian was ludicrous, a piece of gallantry which Adele knew her looks didn't justify and nothing else
could
justify.

"Yes, thank you for your courtesy, sir," she said as she rose with Markos to trade places. She could deal with whatever lay beneath the surface of the fellow's offer when it appeared. For now, the important thing was that Adele no longer sat next to the merchant, whose invitation had evidently been bartered for the food. Adele had begun to doubt that even a free meal would be worth another five minutes of the Kostroman's rambling boredom.

Adele sat down. Servants were already removing the settings for this course, so there was no need for her and Markos even to trade flatware.

She heard her former neighbor address a question in his inevitable nasal whine. "I'm sorry, sir," Markos said in a loud voice. "I'm deaf in my left ear and I can't hear a word you say."

When Adele had gotten the new data console running three days before, she'd tested its connection to the palace net by accessing the guest list for the banquet to which she'd just received an invitation. The information was protected, but what passed for protection on Kostroma was child's play for Adele with an extremely powerful processor at her service. She had a talent for information retrieval and had trained at the most advanced center for the purpose in the human universe.