Against the Odds

Chapter Thirteen

Despite Heris’s sense of urgency, she took her flotilla through the intermediate jump points with all due caution, checking ansible activity along the way. Nothing more from the ansible at CX-42-h and the only word from HQ was “Proceed with caution.” Heris would like to have arrived at CX-42-h in an off-axis insertion, but the erratic planetoid made that too risky. So she ordered a textbook insertion and hoped the mutineers—if they were there—hadn’t had time to mine the entrance.

She missed Koutsoudas most at times like these, when insertion blur robbed her of eyes at the moment they were most vulnerable. But the scan finally cleared—it had been only a couple of minutes after all—and the navigation board came up with a perfect match for the chart, except that the erratic planetoid was a degree off from where it should have been.

“Ship?” she asked.

“One . . . masses a cruiser . . . no ID yet.”

“Mutineers could have disabled the ID.” No Fleet cruiser should be here; the last ansible download had given her all cruiser locations in this sector, and this wasn’t one of them. “What’s its course?”

“It’s . . . zero acceleration relative to system, Captain.” A worried note in that voice. “Drives appear to be shut down. They may be trying to lie doggo.”

Thank the gods for small mercies. “Weapons?”

“Nothing lit, Captain.”

“Is that the only vessel insystem?”

“The only thing that size—the search program’s on . . .”

Indefatigable continued its own deceleration, in company with its companions.

“Captain, I have a tentative ID—”

“Go ahead.”

“It’s based on just the mass data—”

“Go ahead!”

“Well . . . it’s the same class as the Bonar Tighe. We have to get a lot closer before I can be sure.”

“Our beacon’s transmitting, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So unless they’re all dead over there, they know we’re here, and who we are.”

“If their scan’s working . . .”

“Why wouldn’t it be? You want to bet our lives on the notion that they have even their passive scan shut down for some reason? I don’t. When will we be in tightbeam distance, Chief?”

“Forty minutes, Captain. There’ll still be lightlag, of course.”

“That’s all right.” Heris considered. If she blew them away without hailing them—which she was inclined to do—she would have to pick up debris proving they were a mutineer ship, or she’d be in worse trouble. Officially at least; being caught by surprise would be the worst. If she hailed them by tightbeam . . .

“Captain! Ansible flash!”

Here? Now what had happened at HQ?

“What is it?”

“Local origin—this ansible—and it’s . . . omigod!”

“The message, please.”

“Sorry—yes, Captain. It’s to be transmitted to any Fleet unit querying any ansible . . . it’s on a two-hour repeat. Danger Blue, Danger Blue, Danger Blue, mutineer fleet this location on 23/4—that’s today, Captain—ship names include Bonar Tighe, Wingate, Metai, Saracen, Endeavor . . . attempting to disable mutineer flagship, execute code zero, repeat execute code zero.”

Heris let herself breathe again. Someone on that ship—several someones, it would have to be—had just committed suicide, but their deaths would save many. “Weapons,” she said. “Lock on to that ship—give me a solution.”

“We’re still too far out,” the weapons officer said.

“I know. But there’s some urgency. We’re going to microjump closer. Any other ships in the system yet?”

“There might be—nothing as big as the other named ships—”

“They’ve left,” Heris said. “But the loyalists don’t have that information—”

“There’s this little something—yes—it’s really little, about the size of a troop shuttle.”

Mutineers escaping a disabled cruiser, or loyalists who had managed to escape the mutineers? Either way, she’d prefer not to destroy it.

“Weapons, we want to take out the cruiser and not the troop carrier. Where’s the best location? Nav, heads up on this, and prepare to microjump.”

While they calculated, Heris tightbeamed her captains on the other ships and sent them out on search.

“Here, Captain,” the Weapons officer and Navigations officer presented their plot.

“Do it,” Heris said. “And I want a firing solution the instant we come out, and then immediate fire.”

A split-second later, the screens blurred and cleared again as they microjumped. There was the blunt ovoid of the cruiser, showing no activity in drives or weapons or active scan. From this distance, they could get a positive ID: it was the Bonar Tighe, last reported on Copper Mountain.

The combat troop shuttle was larger than the shuttle she’d taken up from the surface of Xavier that time, but the cockpit, when she reached it, looked much the same. The sergeant had chosen the right-hand seat. He gave her an anxious look as she edged past a console covered with knobs she didn’t recognize and took the pilot’s seat.

“You can fly this, right, sera?”

“We don’t know yet. I certainly never trained in it, or anything nearly as big.” At first glance the screens, buttons, dials, and controls were a confusing blur; she forced herself to look at them one by one. She recognized the rate-of-climb indicator, and then the roll—and-bank next to it, where it should be. “We’re under power?”

“Yes, sera, just five percent. I didn’t dare go faster . . .”

Percent power, percent fuel remaining, flying time at this fuel usage . . . all in the right relation, which meant that here—yes—would be the onboard power supply, and there would be the artificial gravity indicators and controls. Something in the right place looked like a scan screen, but it was dark. “Did you try scan?”

“No, sera—I don’t know anything about scan.”

So they were under power flying blind . . . “You have scan experts,” she said to Chief Jones. “Get someone up here to handle scan, while I figure out the rest of this.” She ignored the scan screens, found the attitude controls, and then the primary navigation system. It was off; she flicked it on, and a screen came on, showing much the same display she’d seen from her own ship . . . from a different angle, but she recognized it. There was the mass of the system’s star . . . a label popped up giving its ID number in the catalog. Then another mass, then another, appeared, each with a descriptor.

Dusty Dirac spoke up from behind her. “Hey—need some help with scan?”

“We need to know who else, if anyone, is in the system,” Cecelia said. “And I’ve got enough to do learning the rest of these controls.”

“Gotcha. Do you need Pete right now, or can I switch places with him?”

Cecelia glanced over at her copilot. “Do you mind?”

“Not me. I’m way over my depth.” He struggled out of his seat.

“See if you can find a manual while you’re up,” Cecelia said. Heris had finally convinced her of the utility of hardcopy manuals, and she hoped the rest of the military had Heris’s habit of stashing useful manuals near the places they might be needed.

Dusty slid into the copilot’s seat and started tabbing systems on. Cecelia ignored the results for the moment; she had to decide if she could really get this craft to go where she wanted it to.

“Uh-oh,” Dusty said.

“What?” Chief Jones leaned into the cockpit.

“Something big just jumped into the system.”

“Whose side, I wonder?”

“Theirs, most likely. We only just got our message out. This is probably one of their people coming to rendezvous.”

Cecelia shut her ears to this distraction and located all the controls she was used to from her own runabout. Unfortunately, this craft was missing some she expected—it had no FTL drive, for instance—and had some she’d never seen before. Intended as it was for near-space work, mostly shuttling from orbit to surface and back, its fuel load was far less than she could have hoped. They certainly weren’t going to leave the system in it.

“How far are we from the ship we left?” she asked.

“Oh . . . about ten kilometers. Why?”

“How far away should we be for safety if that ship blows up?”

“Blows up . . . why would it blow up?”

“Because if that’s one of their allies coming in, and they can’t answer—and they can’t, because we destroyed their ability—it’ll probably shoot them preemptively, won’t it?”

Jones looked at her and shook her head. “Cecelia, you continue to amaze me. Let’s see—a cruiser under fire, not returning fire, shields down . . . the fireball will be . . . we need to be a lot farther away.”

“Their scans will still be foxed by downjump turbulence,” Dusty said. “We can move now and they may not notice us . . .”

“Tell everybody to hang on,” Cecelia said. “In case the artificial gravity does something I don’t know how to fix. I’m going to go insystem . . .” She changed the ship’s attitude, then advanced what she hoped was the throttle. The delta vee changed abruptly, and then increased.

“We’re going somewhere fast,” Dusty said. “Or faster, I should say.”

“It’s the Indefatigable,” Dusty said suddenly.

“Can you tell if they’re loyalists or mutineers?”

“They just blew up Bonar Tighe. I’d say that makes them loyalists.”

“That could be a mistake,” Jones said. “Or they may think like you, Cecelia.”

“Whoever it is, they’ll have scan that can pick us up, right?”

“Well . . . maybe. There’s a lot of noise from the ship blowing up. If we hailed them—”

“And if they’re the wrong ship, then we’re in worse trouble.”

“We can at least be listening,” Cecelia said. Dusty turned on the receivers and the automatic tuners.

“—Shuttlecraft, identify yourself or we will fire upon you.”

“Don’t fire!” Dusty said quickly. “Who are you?”

“R.S.S. Indefatigable, Serrano commanding. Stand down your weapons.”

“Weapons . . . what weapons?” Cecelia asked. “Do we have weapons?”

“Combat shuttles do, but I don’t know anything about them. Maybe it’s these switches—”

“Don’t touch that!” Chief Jones said. “Tell them our problem.”

“We don’t have a real pilot aboard,” Dusty said. “We don’t know which switches are which.”

“What do you have?”

“Well . . . a civilian who holds a surface-to-orbit license for a small civilian craft—we used the automatic launch to get out with.”

“Just stay where you are—don’t touch anything. We’ll match course.”

Cecelia sat back and took a deep breath. Against all odds, they’d escaped the mutineers, escaped the destruction of the ship they’d been on for . . . however many days . . . and she was still alive. Miranda . . . she did not want to let the others know how merciful Miranda’s death had been.

It took hours for the Indefatigable to match courses and for one of the shuttle pilots aboard it to make an EVA trip across to take over and maneuver the shuttle into the other cruiser’s bay. Then at last they could debark and work their way, one at a time, through the airlocks into the ship proper.

Cecelia, rumpled and dirty, saw across the compartment the compact dark woman she knew better than perhaps any other . . . Heris Serrano.

“I might have known,” Heris said. The corner of her mouth twitched.

“What?”

“You . . . of course . . .”

Chief Jones looked from one to the other, alert and almost suspicious. Heris transferred her gaze to the Chief. “Chief Jones? I’m Commander Serrano . . . welcome aboard. I understand you’re the ranking NCO?”

“Ranking survivor, yes, sir. Master Chief Bigalow was senior to me, but he was killed during the escape.”

“Let’s get your wounded to sickbay and get you all something to eat, then we’ll need to hear the whole story.

The captain’s office into which Heris ushered Cecelia looked nothing like she’d imagined. Blonde, fake wood, soft-focus pictures of desert scenery in peaches and tans . . .

“It’s not my ship, really—I inherited it during the mutiny. This is what her former captain wanted.”

“So who has your ship?” Cecelia asked.

“I don’t know. Haven’t had time to find out. There is a war on, you know.”

“I know,” Cecelia said, rubbing her bruised shoulder. “I was in it.”

“Just what were you doing on a mutineers’ ship, and how did you get from there to a combat shuttle? The last I heard, you were clear across Familias Space, having just won that horse trials thing.”

“It’s a long story.” Cecelia sank into the soft cushions with a sigh. “It started with finding a home for Brun’s children—”

“The family’s not keeping them?”

“No. I took them away because Miranda and Brun were immobilized after Bunny’s death—they couldn’t think. They hadn’t even named the boys. Anyway, I took them off to Ronnie and Raffa, who were out on this colony—” She launched into the whole story, and Heris listened without interruption, until Cecelia came to that last bit of the voyage. “So I tried to signal the ansible, but they got to me before there was time to get confirmation that it had accepted my signal . . .”

Heris nodded. “It did accept your signal—and Fleet’s been watching out for ansible activity not associated with normal message traffic.”

“Took you long enough,” Cecelia said, not quite grumbling. Heris shrugged.

“So—then they captured you. Then what?”

Cecelia would have preferred not to give the details of everything that had happened—it wasn’t so much humiliating as simply unpleasant—but Heris insisted on extracting every bit of information.

“I don’t see why you need all this from me,” Cecelia said at last. “You’ve got the others—”

“Yes, and I’ll talk to them,” Heris said. “But your viewpoint is unique. You were in at the beginning, with the Lepescu mess; you were involved with the crown prince and the clones; you were at Xavier. And you saw it from a civilian viewpoint—from an old civilian’s viewpoint.”

“Well, this old civilian is hungry and thirsty and tired and could really use a shower.”

“I know. I’m sorry. It was imperative that I hear your story first, before talking to the others. Remember at Xavier that you had that lieutenant—what was his name?—convinced that you were some sort of covert ops person?”

“Well, you’d put me in an odd position—”

“Don’t blame me—you were the one who insisted on coming up to the Station. But my point—I’d like you to do that again. I’m burdened by an Executive Officer of surpassing pedantry—no combat experience at all, very little ship experience, a born paper-pusher. But senior to everyone else, and he’s driving me insane. If you could keep him busy—”

“Why not let Petris take care of him?” Cecelia asked. “He’s an officer now, right?”

Heris grimaced. “Petris isn’t here. This isn’t my ship—I mean, not the ship I’d been on, with my crew. In the turmoil right after the mutiny, they were assigning officers to command the nearest ships, and this one was just finishing a refit. The crew is a mixed bag from a dozen other ships and the sweepings of regional headquarters. That’s where I got Seabolt.”

“But I’m not covert ops,” Cecelia said. “I’m not military at all.”

“So you say . . .” Heris said, grinning. “I’m willing to bet that even the women in that cell with you will accept the story that your life as a self-indulgent rich horsewoman is just cover. Everyone knows, you see, that self-indulgent rich women are all fools. What did they think of Miranda’s trick with the mop?”

“They were impressed,” Cecelia said. “But it was only fencing—”

“It was lethal,” Heris said. “We stuffed-shirt military types recognize lethality as proof of competence. I will bet you that during their own debriefing, at least two of them ask if Miranda wasn’t undercover military at some time in her life.”

“So . . . what would I have to do?”

“Just be yourself, but drop some hints, and come confer with me from time to time.”

“They’ll catch me out—there’s a lot I don’t know . . .”

“Of course—you’ve been undercover. And you do know my Aunt Vida, and many useful facts about the square of the hypotenuse—”

“What?”

“Old verse, I don’t know how old. It’s a spoof on the education of a complete military officer. Play it by ear, Cecelia. You did before, and I’m sure you can now.”

“It sounds crazy—”

“Please. If it will loosen Seabolt’s tenacious grip on regulations even a little, it’ll be a help.”

“All right. I’ll try. Anything for a shower and a meal and a long, peaceful sleep.”

“Right away,” Heris said.

Cecelia’s first sight of Seabolt came at once; he was waiting outside the captain’s office. As soon as the door opened, he gave her a cursory look and spoke to Heris. “Captain, I simply must insist that you file a Signal 42 at once.”

“Commander Seabolt,” Heris said, “you must meet Admiral de Marktos. She goes by the name of Lady Cecelia de Marktos usually.”

Seabolt blinked. “Admiral? I don’t remember that name on the admiral’s list.”

Cecelia drew herself up and gave him the look she would have given an impertinent groom. “Naturally not, Commander. It would not do for my name to appear on any list you would have access to.”

Seabolt spluttered an instant, then paled. “Admiral—excuse me, sir, I didn’t think—”

“Obviously.” Cecelia turned to Heris. “Captain, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get cleaned up—”

“Of course, sir.” Heris touched a button on her desk, and one of the marines stationed outside her door saluted. “Take this officer to her quarters, and be sure someone has arranged clean uniforms.”

“Yes, sir. What insignia, sir?”

Heris tilted her head at Cecelia, who considered quickly the pros and cons of demanding insignia to fit her newly acquired rank. “For the time being,” she said, “let’s leave off all rank insignia. There are advantages . . .”

Seabolt’s face was a study; Cecelia repressed a giggle at the combination of indignation and avid curiosity.

“Yes, sir,” the guard said.

Chief Jones, in a crisp clean uniform, looked entirely recovered from what must have been a considerable ordeal. She came to attention in front of Heris’s desk; Heris waved her to a seat. “Chief, I’m amazed that you managed to hold together an effective group and get out of that brig. I’m recommending you for a commendation.”

“Thank you, sir. But they’re all good people, including the ones who didn’t make it off. We weren’t going to let a lot of mutineers get us down.”

“Were all of you from the same ship, or did they combine loyalists from several ships?”

“From Saracen and Endeavor that were docked at Copper Mountain’s orbital station at the same time. And two personnel were from the Station itself, but they didn’t make it out.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t just kill you,” Heris said.

“So was I. Cecelia said they were probably saving us for prey—for a hunt like that Admiral Lepescu had.” Her brow wrinkled slightly. “She did say to call her Cecelia—but I suppose now I should call her Lady Cecelia?”

“It might be better,” Heris said. “You may hear other things about her, Chief; she and I have been involved in a few bits of excitement before.”

“Yes, sir. She said you shot Lepescu—”

“Yes. But she got one of his lieutenants on that trip.”

The chief’s expression was knowing. “She’s not just a rich-bitch playgirl, is she, Captain?”

“Explain,” Heris said.

“Well . . . she and Miranda, who was supposed to be Lord Thornbuckle’s widow . . . they both looked like rich aristocrats. The clothes they were wearing when they were brought in must’ve cost a year’s pay. And the way they talked, that accent. But there was something—I caught on to it that first day, and then later, when they’d come back from cleaning latrines and pass on things they’d seen . . . that’s not what ordinary society ladies are like, as far as I know.”

“They’re not exactly ordinary,” Heris said. “Go on, Chief.”

“Well, the way they got us out—I already told it on tape, but I don’t think I can make it as clear as I see it. You know, most of us, back when we first join, it’s hard to get most of us to actually hurt someone, let alone land a killing blow. An’ I didn’t really expect they could do it, just hoped . . . and then both of ’em did it, no problems. We couldn’t really see, from the cell, anything but Miranda with the end of the mop, but she lunged. I guess she was a fencer . . .”

“Yes. She’d won competitions as a young woman.”

“She must have kept in practice. I didn’t see the blow hit, but I could hear it. One of the men saw it, said it was as neat a strike as he’d ever seen. And the guards were dead, just like that, and Cecelia—Lady Cecelia, I mean—came dragging one of ’em, so we could use his finger in the cell door ID slot. No fuss, no tears . . . and Miranda, too, and besides, she had that command presence.”

“Chief, you have to realize that this is not something I can talk about. You may think what you think, but you’re not going to know the whole story. Just know that you’ve made a very good friend, someone who doesn’t forget her friends.”

Jones’ face relaxed. “That’s all right, Captain. She did more for us than we did for her, and I’m glad to be part of whatever it is, so long as it’s for the service.”

“It is.” Heris paused for any more questions, but Jones said nothing, just sat there looking alert and professional as she was. “Now,” Heris said, “we need to get all you people back to duty. This ship’s got a scratch crew, some of whom have little or no shipboard experience, let alone cruiser experience, and combat. Most of the petty officers were yanked out of regional headquarters. I’d like your assessment of which of your people would be best where. If you could get that to me by this afternoon—”

“Yes, Captain. I’ll get right on it.”

“We have particular need of expertise in drives; I’m not satisfied with the tuning of the FTL drive, but our FTL tech is just out of school.”

“Petty Major Forrester and Petty Light Kouras, Captain—both have FTL drives certification. And there’s a sergeant—Forrester would know.”

“That’s a relief. Look, write this up—I need something in the record ASAP.”

Cecelia scrubbed until even her fastidious nose couldn’t detect the faintest trace of the slop bucket contents, then opened the shower door to find a complete uniform hanging in the dressing cubicle. The automatic underwear dispenser saved her from having to wear someone else’s used garments, and the uniform fit well enough. She glanced at herself in the mirror, where the midnight blue made her face paler and her hair flame out against it. She looked—striking, was perhaps the best word for it.

An escort was waiting for her when she came out into the corridor.

“And you are?” she asked, unwilling to admit she didn’t have a clue which of the various bits of braid and metal meant which.

“Corporal Baluchi, sir.” The young woman saluted smartly. “I’m to be your escort for now.”

“They have explained that we don’t talk about my . . . exact position?”

“Oh, yes, sir.” Baluchi’s eyes sparkled. “We’re not to say a word, or repeat anything you say to anyone.”

“Very good,” Cecelia said, and tried to remember if she was supposed to say anything else.

“If the . . .” there was a pause, as Baluchi tried to think of a way to address a person whose rank must not be mentioned. Cecelia came to her aid.

“For the time being,” she said, “you may address me as if I were a civilian, Lady Cecelia de Marktos. That, and the fact that I’m wearing a uniform without insignia, should prevent many problems.”

“Yes, sir!” Baluchi almost quivered with enthusiasm at being on the inside. “If the lady would care for a meal first—or rest?”

“Food,” Cecelia said. “And I hope the others have already eaten,” she added, remembering a commander’s responsibility for the troops.

“Yes, sir, they have. I’m to take the . . . the lady to the junior officers’ wardroom, because the senior officers’ wardroom is occupied right now, though if—”

“That’s fine, Corporal,” Cecelia said. She felt as if she were stepping blindfolded over a pattern of trip wires.

“The junior officers’ midday mess starts at 1100 hours, and it’s only 1000, so you won’t have any interruptions—but I’m sure they’ll wait until you’re through.”

“Corporal, if I eat for more than an hour, I’ll explode.” Even as she said it, Cecelia remembered the long, leisurely, gourmet dinners of her past, including that one with Heris, early in their acquaintance. She gulped down the food put in front of her and was more than ready for the promised rest.

“Down here, sir.” The corporal led her to a row of compartment doors. “Right now, we’re moving things around, but you’ll have this to yourself for the first twenty-four hours anyway, and one of us will be outside the door if you need anything. Right across here is the head; the showers are two down.”

“Thank you, Corporal Baluchi.”

Inside was a double-bunked compartment with clothes lockers. One of the bunks had a set of pajamas in her size laid out on it. Cecelia pulled off the uniform, put on the pajamas, and then realized that she’d better act the part and hang the uniform up. She found little labels pasted in the locker, making it clear which part went where.

The bed was narrower than she liked, but after the cell she found it easy to sleep . . . and when she woke she knew she’d slept too long—she felt logy and uncomfortable.

And she had no idea if military personnel ran across the hall to the head—at least she knew what that meant now—in their pajamas or dressed first. She had to have help. Heris was far too busy to tutor her, but she knew where to go.

Chief Jones gave her a careful smile. “Lady Cecelia—”

Cecelia sighed. “I suppose now we’re not in jail we have to be formal? And here I was hoping you’d finally gift me with your full name.”

“Gwenllian Gwalch-aeaf Jones—my parents had a passion for genealogy and kept telling me to remember my Welsh heritage—which I don’t, because I don’t even know what planet they were talking about. They died when I was eight.”

“There was a Wales on Old Earth,” Cecelia said. “It’s in some of the books I’ve read. Then there’s New Wales on Caratea. I don’t know anything about it, though, except a lot of the names have double d and double l.”

“Hills and castles is all I remember, and something about music. Anyway, I changed my name legally when I entered Fleet, because the recruiter had such a time with my original names, just as all my teachers and the orphanage staff had done. Parents should think of things like that when they name children. I picked my new name out of a book I’d read, with a girl hero who wasn’t always fainting or cooking things for the others. Katrina; they called her Kat.”

“Ah. And my parents gifted me with not only Cecelia but a string of other fancy names—I think you’re right, parents should pick something nice and boring and ordinary.”

“Anyway, the captain said it’d be better to call you Lady Cecelia, not just Cecelia, so—”

“That would be fine,” Cecelia said, “except for one little complication.”

“And what’s that?”

“Heris Serrano and I have known each other for years; we’ve been through some difficult times.” This was harder than she’d thought it would be. “At times, it’s been handy to pretend that I was actually in the military.” Jones just looked at her. Cecelia went on. “In covert ops, you see.”

“And you’re not?”

“It’s . . . hard to explain.”

“You don’t have to explain; the captain gave me a hint.”

“I need to explain this much. Heris is having a little problem with someone and needs me to be an admiral.”

Jones’ mouth twitched. “Naturally . . .”

“It wasn’t my idea,” Cecelia said. “The thing is, I don’t know how to be an admiral. I mean, I know Vida—Admiral Serrano—”

“You’re on first-name terms with an admiral, but you’re not an admiral and you don’t know how to pretend to be one?” There was a definite twinkle in Kat Jones’ eyes.

“Yes. Exactly. I need a coach. For the . . . er . . . shipboard sorts of things. That I would have learned if—”

“If you hadn’t been busy doing other things. Of course, sir, I’ll be glad to help.”

Cecelia caught Seabolt just outside Heris’s office. Did he live there? No matter . . . “Ah, Commander Seabolt. Just the officer I wanted to see—”

“Sir!” Seabolt came to attention. “Admiral . . . er . . . de Marktos, I was wondering—”

“Commander, please. I’d like to see your JS-135s.”

“The . . . er . . . JS-135s? For the whole ship?” His voice almost squeaked.

Cecelia gave him her best admiral look. Chief Jones had explained that the JS-135 was the history of each item assigned a ship: its date of service, its maintenance record, and so on. A cruiser had tens of thousands of JS-135s in the computer file, and invariably some of them were not complete.

“You are the executive officer of this vessel, are you not?”

“Yes, Admiral, of course, but—”

“Then I want to see the JS-135s. It should not have escaped you that this would be an ideal time for pilferage and misappropriation of materiel.”

“Er . . . of course, Admiral. Er . . . now?”

“Commander, did someone put a sedative in your cereal? Of course, now.”

Cecelia’s approach to checking JS-135s was to drag Seabolt from one end of the ship to the other, pointing out items and demanding to see the file on each one. He made a couple of abortive attempts to escape her clutches, but Cecelia imagined the cruiser as a badly run training stable, and was having fun finding the mice in the feed room—or the Fleet equivalent. Thanks to Chief Jones, she had enough of the administrative vocabulary down to convince Seabolt that she was, after all, a real admiral, though a capricious and difficult one.

When she felt hungry again, she insisted that he eat with her. “I can see,” she said, “that I have a lot of work to do here, Commander, and I will require your personal assistance.”

“But, Admiral, I have other—”

“I’m sure Commodore Serrano can cope without you for a while,” Cecelia said, invoking an admiral’s right to interrupt. “And you are, as you know, responsible for the disposition of all furnishings and munitions . . .”

“Yes, Admiral.” Seabolt looked harried, as well he might, but still knife-creased. Cecelia eyed him as she ate, and wondered if she could make him crawl through some grimy tunnel—if she could find anything grimy on Heris’s ship. She had not missed the glances some of the crew sent their way, wicked delight in seeing Seabolt being harrassed by someone else.

After the meal, she kept him busy again—he was, despite his trim appearance, not as fit as she, and he was puffing long before she felt tired. She paused, between decks, and gave him a minatory look. “Commander, it’s important for officers to maintain physical fitness. You shouldn’t be out of breath just from running up a few ladders—”

“Sorry, sir—”

“I’ll try to moderate my pace—” Cecelia set off sedately, scolding herself inwardly for taking such delight in making him miserable. Was she as bad as the mutineer guards? She hoped not. In the spirit of reform, she inquired seriously into his diet and most recent health checkups. “I’m sure it’s hard,” she said, “with all the work you do, but you won’t be much use in combat if you’re sick or unfit. You must learn to take care of yourself.”

“It’s my bad ankle, sir,” Seabolt said. “I broke it a few years ago—”

“Oh, ankles,” said Cecelia, who had broken both at one time or another. “The best thing’s exercise, and lots of it.” She explained, at length, everything her physical therapists had told her. “Now if you ever blow a shoulder—”

Seabolt looked green; she took pity on him.

“Never mind; you can worry about that if it happens. Now tomorrow, we’ll finish up the JS-135s and make a start on correlating those to the ship’s table of organization—”

“Yes, Admiral. What time?”

“I should be ready to start by 0700,” Cecelia said. “We have a lot of work to do.”

She slept well that night, and woke full of more ideas for things Seabolt could do for her.

Heris had plenty to do without worrying about Seabolt, and noticed his absence only occasionally, with mild relief. She had actually been able to organize a search for useful debris from the Bonar Tighe without his interference. She had prepared a packet for the ansible, and had the patrol craft out mining the jump point; the next mutineers to pop in had a nasty surprise coming. Major O’Connor, the third officer, had taken over the executive officer’s functions so seamlessly that Heris didn’t notice.

Ten days later, Seabolt was in her office again. Heris noticed that he looked pale and uncomfortable.

“What is it, Commander?” she asked.

“I’d like to request a transfer, sir.”

“A transfer? In the middle of a war?”

“I know, sir—it’s most inappropriate, but—I think I’m losing my mind.”

“Seabolt, if this is some kind of joke—”

“No, sir; I swear it’s not. It’s—I just can’t keep up—she always has something else, every second—”

A glimmer crossed Heris’s mind. “She?”

“The admiral—Admiral de Marktos.”

“She’s bothering you?”

“Not bothering—not exactly. But she’s on me every second, question after question, and you know, Captain, when we got this ship we didn’t have time to check it out completely. My stomach’s burning, my eyes—”

“Go down to sickbay and get some antacid, Commander. You have your stresses in this war and I have mine.”

“But sir—”

“Tell you what, Commander; if you want off the ship at the next station, I’ll find a way to reassign you. But all I can do now is ask the admiral to let up on you a little. And if I do that, she’ll be down on me. I have a flotilla to command and mutineers to find. I’m afraid you’ll just have to stick it out.”

“Yes, sir.” Seabolt, Heris noticed, wasn’t nearly as knife-edged as he had been.

“You might ask the admiral if she has time to see me,” Heris added as he went out the door.

“You are a wicked woman,” Heris said to Cecelia, handing her a cup of tea.

“Yes,” Cecelia said. “I believe I am. But it’s keeping him out of your hair, isn’t it?”

“Just don’t drive him into a heart attack,” Heris said. “That would be another set of forms to fill out.”

“I’ll give him time to work out in the gym,” Cecelia said. “But I’ll want real stars at the end of this.”

“If we all survive, I’ll come to your promotion party,” Heris said.