Daniel'd donned his 1st Class uniform before boarding the tender, but he didn't need Hogg's clucks and grimace to tell him that what'd he'd put the garment through on Yang hadn't been to the white fabric's benefit. There was also the problem that the cutter didn't have bathing facilities, and Yang certainly wasn't a place to shower.
He'd thought of cleaning up aboard the Hermes before seeing Captain Slidell, but they really needed all the time they could get—and probably then some. Maybe Slidell'd make allowances for the fact that Daniel'd made himself as presentable as he could by wearing his Dress Whites.
He grinned despite his determination to maintain a serious mien. Probably not, but maybe.
"Welcome back, sir!" a Power Room technician said cheerfully as they passed in opposite directions along the A Deck corridor. The fellow's name was Melies; he was a former Sissie.
Spacers from the Bainbridge whom Daniel'd seen since his return were quiet and even worried looking. They dropped their eyes to avoid meeting Daniel's.
The one blessing in all this was that four cutters hung in their davits before 614 docked; 612 was the only one missing. The number of available cutters wouldn't matter if Slidell accepted Daniel's plan, or at any rate wouldn't matter to Daniel; but they provided more choices, even if none of those choices was a particularly good one.
The Captain's office on the Hermes was a two-cabin suite on A Deck, adjoining the bridge. There was a screened latrine in an inside corner and the desk folded down into a bunk so the suite could be used as a watch cabin when the captain expected trouble and didn't want to be too far from the bridge.
"One moment, Lieutenant," said Orly, seated at the desk in the outer office. "The Captain asked me to announce you. He's with Lieutenant Ganse."
He touched the commo switched and murmured something concealed by the cancellation field. Orly wore a vaguely hopeful expression rather than the nervous twitch he'd demonstrated when Daniel first met him in Harbor Three. Daniel wondered if he'd been talking to Sissies; that seemed more likely than that Slidell himself had begun speaking more positively about his XO to his secretary in the days since he'd sent Daniel off to Yang.
"Go on in, sir," Orly said after a moment, then flashed a sheepish smile.
Daniel was ready to accept anything he could as a good omen. He squared his shoulders and entered, pulling the hatch to behind him.
"Sir!" he said, with what might've been his best salute in the past year. "Lieutenant Leary reporting!"
"Then report, Leary," Slidell said in a grim voice. "Did you carry out your mission?"
Ganse pursed his lips and looked from Daniel to the Captain. He and Slidell were seated at the desk. There were two more chairs in the office, but Slidell hadn't told Daniel to take one.
"Yes sir, we did," Daniel said, shifting his right foot the regulation half pace to the side. He hadn't even been told to stand easy, but he decided that to hold the First Lieutenant at attention while the Second Lieutenant sat would be excessively insulting, even for Slidell. "The Cinnabar citizens are on their way here in a chartered transport. The particulars are in my formal report and can wait, but I'd like to tell you critical information that Signals Officer Mundy obtained in the course of gaining the prisoners' release."
"You did it?" Lieutenant Ganse blurted in amazement. "By God, Leary, that's good work!"
"You hired a transport?" Slidell said almost simultaneously. "How in blazes did you do that, Leary? If you've been exceeding your authority—"
"Not at all, sir," Daniel said, ignoring Ganse and deliberately misinterpreting the Captain's question. "A firm of Cinnabar factors on Yang was very helpful in effecting the release of their fellow citizens. But in the course of carrying out Admiral Milne's orders, we learned through captured communications that the insurgents on Yang are in league with the Alliance. They've a base under construction on Big Florida Island and—"
"How did you capture Alliance communications?" Slidell said. He'd spread his hands with his arms forward on the desk like a cat tensing to pounce. "Good God, Leary, if this is some kind of jape I'll send you back to Xenos in irons!"
"Sir, there's a twelve-ship Alliance convoy heading for the base being constructed on Yang," Daniel said, keeping his voice calm. Any superior officer would've had difficulty assimilating this information. Slidell's active hostility was regrettable, but it changed only the tone of the briefing. "The logbook of the courier vessel we damaged there didn't have a manifest of their cargoes, but common sense suggests a shipment of that size includes a planetary defense array as well as a considerable garrison. The escort is the heavy cruiser Scheer with the destroyers Z17 and Z21."
"Logbooks are in code, aren't they, Leary?" Ganse asked. He obviously couldn't understand how what Daniel was saying could be true, though he was trying to. "I didn't think they could be read until the boffins back in Xenos had been over them."
He frowned. "Or maybe Sinmary Port, I grant," he added.
"Captain," said Daniel, calmly but earnestly, "my Signals Officer has some experience with this sort of thing, as I believe you know. She was able to decode the material, though I should note that she didn't understand the significance since she doesn't have astrogation training. The courier left the convoy fifteen days ago, at an uninhabited system listed as CZ 486455 in RCN charts. If they—"
"Wait!" Slidell said, not raising his voice excessively but certainly making clear who was in charge. "You say your friend Mundy did this all by herself? Then it hasn't been checked. How do we know she's right? Or even that she hasn't made the whole thing up!"
Ganse drew in his breath. Daniel closed his eyes for a moment. He had to find the correct words or there'd be a bad result—for Cinnabar, for Adele, and particularly for Captain Slidell.
"Sir," Daniel said. Slidell looked slightly abashed, as though he hadn't known what he was going to say till the words rang in his own ears. "I'm an RCN officer first and foremost; the needs of the service are my main concern, as I know they are yours. But Officer Mundy . . ."
His tongue touched his lips. He was afraid the Captain might try to interrupt, but that didn't happen.
"She's a great asset to the RCN and the Republic, of course," Daniel continued, "but at core she's still Mundy of Chatsworth. She wouldn't hesitate a heartbeat to resign her warrant in order to pursue a matter touching the honor of her House."
Daniel hoped Slidell understood what he was saying. He hoped further that the Captain had heard enough about Adele's marksmanship to understand what a duel with her would mean.
Both those things were probably true, but from Slidell's sudden grimace Daniel suspected that it was the man's innate courtesy which caused him to say, "I misspoke, Leary. But the most scrupulously honest person may make a mistake."
"I agree, sir," Daniel said, taking a deep breath now that his chest muscles had relaxed enough to permit it. "Though as a personal observation I'd note that Officer Mundy makes fewer mistakes than most people. Be that as it may, the data themselves are too complex to be coincidental, and Officer Mundy doesn't have enough knowledge of astrogation to have unconsciously biased those data in the process of decoding."
Slidell clenched his right hand into a fist. "Yes, I see that," he said, glaring at his own knuckles. He raised his eyes to meet Daniel's. "You understand my disinclination to go haring off back to Sinmary Port crying 'Wolf!' and having the whole business turn out to have been a mistake, I'm sure?"
"The Scheer . . ." Ganse said in a tone of grim musing. "I wonder how quickly the Cornelwood'll be able to lift? Not quickly enough, I'd judge. Even if the Scheer wasn't thirty years newer. Of course we're RCN."
"Sir?" Daniel said. "I believe there's an alternative to summoning the squadron from Nikitin. Well, an addition to that—obviously we need to inform Admiral Milne as well. I had an additional several days to consider the matter on the voyage from Yang, you see. Might I use your display, sir?"
Slidell glowered in a return to angry suspicion, then shook himself and said, "Yes, all right, use it, but don't be too long about the business."
He brought his display to life, a pearly shimmer above the desk, then tapped in the command which projected a virtual keyboard on Daniel's side. Though he didn't say, "Sit down," Daniel took the offer as implied and lowered himself into a chair to begin work.
"One of the Alliance transports, the House of Zerbe, is having trouble with her main computer," Daniel explained as he brought up data. "Because the Greif was the handiest vessel in the convoy, she was twice sent back to complete the Zerbe's calculations so that the whole force could move on. The Zerbe's problems delayed the convoy's progress at least ten days since it lifted from Pleasaunce."
The omnidirectional display now showed the convoy's course from the Alliance capital in red, followed by an extension in bright orange along the route the courier vessel had taken to alert Yang that they were coming. Daniel added a yellow underscore to the portion that the convoy had probably traversed after the Greif separated from it.
"Now, while we don't know that the main body is going to take the same course as the courier did," Daniel continued, "it's at least probable that it will. The gradients are lower along that route than for the two alternatives I plotted on the way from Yang—"
He could explain his reasoning, but he hoped Slidell wouldn't ask. He knew the convoy's commodore would follow the same route as the courier vessel, but that certainty was based on Daniel's reading of the fellow's choices during the earlier portion of the voyage from Pleasaunce.
Though Slidell was a skilled astrogator, his plots were too calculated for him to be able to get into the mind of an astrogator who was a hair quirkier. If he didn't believe Daniel without evidence, the evidence Daniel had available wouldn't convince him.
"All right," said Slidell with a wave of his hand. "Go on, then."
"The Greif's third waypoint before arriving on Yang was the Vela Maun system," Daniel said, highlighting a section of the route and then switching to a plot of the system itself. "They're using the gas giant Marduk as their rendezvous, not Vela Maun itself. If they follow their practice during the voyage thus far, they'll make short hops as necessary to form within a hundred thousand kilometers of one another before proceeding."
Lieutenant Ganse had taken out a small astrogation computer and was plotting something on his own, though with frequent references to Daniel's display. Daniel rather liked Ganse—he was a keen officer and technically proficient, though he needed to fight the strain of indecision to which he seemed prone.
"Now, Marduk has a dozen real satellites," Daniel continued, "but there's also a certain amount of metallic debris captured from the asteroid belt. The quantity and location of those bits is constantly changing. My thought is . . ."
He swallowed and raised his eyes to Slidell's before going on, "The convoy won't be expecting attack. I believe a single cutter might escape detection among the debris. More than one ship would certainly arouse suspicion, but with all emitters shut down there's a chance for one."
"What good would a cutter do against a heavy cruiser, Leary?" Lieutenant Ganse asked with a puzzled frown. "Why, we don't even carry missiles."
"We wouldn't target the heavy cruiser, Ganse," Daniel said, nodding. "The transports will have their antennas extended and sails spread when they arrive. They'll make perfect targets for a cutter's rockets. With luck we'll be able to cripple half the convoy, perhaps more, before the escort can react."
What he meant was, "Before the escort blows us to glowing vapor," but RCN service had risks. Spacers wearing the uniform found companions in every port, looking for a hero to couple with. Those who served with Daniel Leary and survived had earned that adulation. . . .
"They'll be weeks putting the damage to rights unless they're willing to leave the cripples behind," he added. "And that'd mean splitting the escort, which would be even better for us when Admiral Milne arrives with the squadron."
Daniel lowered his eyes. "I'd of course command the cutter," he said quietly. "Since it's my plan. And call for volunteers, because obviously there's, ah, a great deal of risk involved."
Slidell's face hardened, not all at once but in a series of tiny increments. It was like watching a time-lapse image of a pond freezing in winter. What in bloody hell did I say to make him angry?
"So of course you'll command the cutter, will you, Leary?" Slidell said. He rose from behind the desk slowly, in barely controlled anger. "Are you captain of the Hermes, then, to decide what flotilla assignments are to be?"
"No sir," said Daniel quietly. He wanted to stand, but he was afraid that'd look challenging; to Slidell in his present mood, at any rate. "It was my plan, and—"
"And I'm still your captain, Leary!" the Captain said. "You're a clever devil, I'll give you that. But you're not clever enough to make me the goat while you play the hero again. Yes, it's a good plan. I'll see you get credit, because I'm an honorable man. But I'll be the one to execute it!"
"But sir . . ." Daniel said. That was his tongue moving before his mind caught up with it. He started to say a number of things, all of them wrong, and managed not to let them pass his lips:
"It's dangerous." Which would be answered by, "Are you calling me a coward, Leary?"
Slidell certainly wasn't a coward, but Daniel wasn't sure he appreciated just how dangerous the proposed operation was. Slidell hadn't been in that sort of situation before, while Daniel—and the spacers he'd take for his crew, because they'd all volunteer—had.
"The cutter will have to look like a rock." To which Slidell would reply, "Are you saying I don't know how to handle a ship? I was commanding cutters before you were born, you puppy!"
And indeed, Slidell's ship-handling was of the highest quality. The difficulty was that this wasn't a matter of greasing a ship into a dock or making a rendezvous with another vessel in orbit. The cutter had to look like a chunk of nickel-iron which'd been twisted from the core of a planet when it'd disintegrated, then was caught by the gravity field of the gas giant that would some years or decades in the future suck it to flaming immolation. Unless the cutter's motion was eccentric in several axes, a casual glance at the Scheer's PPI would disquiet the watch officer even if he or she didn't immediately understand what was wrong.
Nothing Daniel had seen of the Captain convinced him that Slidell could counterfeit random action. That'd be like hoping Daniel Leary would learn to salute as perfectly as an Academy Honor Graduate—which Slidell had been in his day.
And of course the final not-quite-spoken objection: "Without Officer Mundy's ability to tap Alliance communications, you don't have a prayer of succeeding."
That was as certain as Daniel's hope of becoming admiral; but Slidell wouldn't believe it, nor would his paranoia accept Adele's presence on an operation which the slightest misstep would turn into a failure.
Anyway, Daniel would die before he willingly sent Adele off on a mission like this under anybody but himself. She was too good a friend to throw into a certain disaster.
"Sir," Daniel said at last. "I would much rather you allowed me to take out the cutter. Your duty is to the Hermes herself."
"You will not tell me my duty, Mister Leary!" Slidell said. "Your duty is to obey my orders. If you're not capable of doing that, I'll remove you from your post and you can spend the rest of the voyage as a passenger under Lieutenant Ganse's command until I return!"
"Sir, I'll do my duty as you order," Daniel said. "As I've done throughout the voyage."
"If I may say, Captain?" Lieutenant Ganse said, wearing a worried frown as he combed his red hair with his fingers. "I don't believe either of you should be trying this. Leary, I know your reputation—"
He nodded to Daniel with an apologetic lift of his hand.
"—but this is completely mad! It's suicide, man, not a military operation. Surely you see that?"
"I believe the operation has a chance of doing serious damage to the Alliance convoy, Ganse," Daniel said. "If they're allowed to proceed at their present rate of progress, they'll have a planetary defense array in place around Yang before Admiral Milne can possibly arrive from Nikitin. Even without further reinforcement from Pleasaunce, it'll take a major task force to dig them out. And if Yang becomes a base for Alliance privateers, Cinnabar trade with the Gold Dust Cluster will drop to nothing. Piracy is enough of a problem."
He carefully didn't respond to Ganse's actual question. He did indeed think it was suicide—but it had to be done nonetheless, or the cost to the Republic would be crippling.
Daniel wasn't aware that he was grinning until Slidell snapped in genuine amazement, "Good God, Leary! What is there to laugh about in this situation?"
Daniel hadn't had much luck calculating his statements to the Captain. With that in mind and simply because it was his normal behavior, he said honestly, "Well, sir, I was thinking that my father has heavy investments in Gold Dust anti-aging drugs. I think if asked, he'd say they've given him more benefit than I ever did."
Slidell's face went white, then flushed. He didn't move for a good fifteen seconds. At last he said in a rasping whisper, "I think you must be mad to mention the man who murdered my brother, Lieutenant. Quite mad."
He shook himself, then continued, "Lieutenant Leary, you will go to the Battle Direction Center and wait there until I've left the Hermes. Then you may take temporary command, as is the due of your position. Though it's not, in my opinion, an office of which you're worthy."
Slidell took a deep, shuddering breath. "Did you hear me, man!" he shouted. "Get out of my sight!"
Daniel turned and strode from the cabin without saluting. That appeared to have been the only good decision he'd made today in his relations with Captain Slidell.
Adele worked quietly, pulling together information on all the solar systems listed as waypoints in the Greif's log. Nobody'd asked her to do that, nor could she imagine what use it'd be to anyone.
It was information with bearing—however tangential—on the present operation; therefore she gathered it. The communications traffic over Lantos didn't require much attention, and Adele had nothing more pressing. After all, she hadn't imagined that the courier vessel's logbook would be of any use either.
Daniel was at the console to her left, working on course projections and crew lists for cutters 610, 613, and 615. Cutter 612 under Midshipman Dorst had lifted to patrol the adjacent Housmann system some ten hours before she and Daniel returned to the Hermes in 614.
611 was the cutter Captain Slidell had chosen for the attack in the Vela Maun System. Adele was following the progress of boarding through the cutter's commo system; it appeared to her that Slidell would separate in a matter of minutes, though she hadn't asked Daniel for an expert opinion when she forwarded the feed to his console. He obviously had enough on his mind already.
"Wonder why he's taking the people he is?" Midshipman Cory said. "This is going to be a, well, a tough one, isn't it? Anton I swear doesn't know his right hand from his left, and a couple of the others on 611 aren't a lot better."
The four midshipmen still aboard the tender filled the remaining consoles of the Battle Direction Center; the warrant officers who'd normally be on duty here were on the bridge or in the two operational cutters. Hogg and Tovera sat on the jumpseats against the bulkhead, looking—falsely—relaxed.
Adele couldn't see Cory—on the console opposite her own—but the midshipman's face frowned from the top of her display. Pitching her voice to be heard by everyone in the BDC without using intercom—just in case—Adele said, "It's a matter of loyalty, I believe. I've checked 611's crew list against the record of testimony at Captain Slidell's court-martial on the mutiny. All of those he's chosen to accompany him supported him unequivocally."
Bragg sat immediately to Adele's right. "I supported him," he said, his expression stricken and his voice trembling in horror. "He had to execute them! Why doesn't he trust me?"
Adele looked at him. "I believe Mister Slidell may have believed all the midshipmen on the Bainbridge were tainted by the presence of Oller Kearnes," she said. "It probably has nothing to do with you personally, Bragg."
It was also possible that Slidell thought Bragg was as thick as a battleship's hull. Certainly Adele herself thought that. But given that Slidell had taken his clerk, Orly—the only member of the cutter's crew whom she knew well enough to judge—the first explanation might well be the correct one. Orly was able enough at his job, but he had no business on the present mission.
A hatch sealed, sending a ringing shock through the tender. "That was Captain Slidell closing up Cutter 611, Lieutenant," Adele said formally, this time using an intercom link within the BDC only.
At almost the same time, Lieutenant Ganse reported from the bridge on the command channel, "Mister Leary, this is Ganse. Captain Slidell has left the Hermes. Would you care to come forward and replace me on the bridge? Over."
"Negative, Mister Ganse," Daniel said. "Stay where you are and continue in command until Captain Slidell has gotten safely away. Leary out."
Adele followed Daniel in bringing up a real-time image of 611. The cutter rocked gently as the davits extended from the tender's side. The mechanical catches flashed open, ringing through the hull as every metal-to-metal contact did; then tuned electromagnets in the davits and the cutter's shackles pulsed, repelling one another and kicking the lighter vessel away from the tender's hull.
The cutter wobbled slightly as it drifted outward. Three brilliant white points stabbed from its underside, the High Drive motors switching on; because the tender was orbiting above the atmosphere of Lantos, there was no need for plasma thrusters. Cutter 611 drew away at an accelerating rate, building the initial velocity before it began to navigate through bubble universes which would effectively multiply that velocity against the constants of the sidereal universe.
The cutter's hull had vanished; the light of matter and anti-matter annihilating one another in the High Drive remained, but distance had merged the three exhausts into a single glare; then it vanished abruptly. Slidell had shut down his drive and was easing his command into the Matrix.
Adele felt the tension go out of her abdomen; she smiled faintly. She wasn't afraid of Captain Slidell, but she must've been subconsciously concerned that he wasn't going to leave after all. That same below-surface portion of her mind was sure that unless Daniel Leary had free rein, the Alliance operation was going to succeed to the great detriment of Cinnabar.
Adele grinned. Consciously she thought much the same thing.
"Lieutenant Ganse, this is Leary," Daniel announced over the command channel. "I'm taking command of the vessel. Break. Ship, this is Six. We have a lot to do, fellow spacers, and we don't have much time to do it. I'm expecting everybody to carry out their duties, correctly but above all promptly. Listen and check your helmet displays to see where you're assigned, then report to your stations ASAP. Break."
Daniel stabbed his right index finger onto the Enter key of his virtual display, sending all personnel the crew lists for Cutters 615 and 613. He looked over at Adele and winked, giving the spacers time to assimilate the information. She blinked in surprise, then understood and forced a grin in reply—but Daniel had already gone back to his task.
"Lieutenant Ganse," he resumed, "take command of Cutter 615 and proceed in the most expeditious way possible to Nikitin, where you'll inform Admiral Milne of the situation. I've prepared a report and enclosed the supporting documentation we've gathered, but I'm sure the Admiral will want you to supplement that with your own personal observations. I trust you'll be able to do so. Do you understand? Over."
"Aye aye, sir," Ganse replied. He sounded a little shaken, and the real-time image Adele was watching was wide-eyed.
"I'm glad to hear that, Mister Ganse," Daniel went on. "I've downloaded a course to Nikitin into 615. I don't require that you follow it, but it should give you something to work from if you haven't plotted something yourself. I've assigned a familiar crew for you. They should be boarding now, and I trust you'll follow with all responsible haste. Over."
"Familiar crew" meant "personnel from the Bainbridge." Or better, "personnel not from the Sissie."
"Roger, Captain," Ganse said. "I'm on my way as soon as I stop by my cabin to pick up my barracks bag. And sir? I have prepared a course to Nikitin, though of course I'll compare it with yours. Ganse out."
Daniel laughed. Without keying the electronics he said, "Ganse's a good man. I should've known he'd be running course projections without being told. Of course maybe Mister Slidell gave him the orders; I may not be giving the Captain enough credit."
"He did not," Adele said austerely. She'd recorded every word that passed between the two officers since Slidell ordered Daniel to the BDC. Even when the men were talking face to face, the communications equipment in whichever cabin picked up their every word.
She didn't say that in the midshipmen's presence, though they were probably aware of her capabilities. Given the way Bragg's eyes widened, he might think Adele was a witch rather than an information specialist.
Daniel gave her an affectionate smile, then sobered and said, "You know, it could be that Ganse acted like a rabbit because Captain Slidell wanted him to be a rabbit. He came back at me a moment ago."
Adele smiled. Indeed, Lieutenant Ganse had retorted sharply—though she suspected you needed to be either an RCN officer or a Cinnabar aristocrat to read that into the exchange.
Still smiling, Daniel rose from his console and looked past Blantyre to Midshipman Vesey. "So, Vesey . . ." he said. "Do you have a course plotted to the Housmann System already?"
"Yes sir," Vesey said primly. "I have three. Would you like me to use the minimum time course? That's without a midpoint star sighting and involves higher gradients, though nothing that should strain a cutter."
"What's your calculated time, then?" Daniel said. His tone was light, but his eyes had narrowed minutely.
"Seven hours ten minutes, sir," she said. "Less if I judge the sky perfectly, but not much less."
"No, I shouldn't think it could be much less than that," Daniel said quietly. Adele heard surprise and considerable respect underlying the words. He would've expected Vesey to be ready to fetch her lover back, so seven hours must be very fast time. "Your crew's waiting for you in 613, Vesey. Bring 612 back within seventy-two standard hours; I'm going to need both of you."
Vesey swung to her feet and started for the hatch. She was smiling brightly, probably from both the praise and the chance to see Dorst again.
"And Vesey?" Daniel said.
She whirled, her hand on the latchplate. "Sir?"
"Midshipman Dorst is a good officer and a good man," Daniel said. "But don't let him try to navigate to Cancellaria without a midpoint course correction, all right?"
"Yes sir," Vesey said. "I plan to reach Housmann soon enough that we won't have to hurry on the remaining leg."
Her expression became momentarily girlish. "Though I'm sure Timothy would do fine without a star sight."
She rushed out of the compartment, closing the hatch behind her. Daniel grinned. "I'm not sure of anything of the sort," he said, "but I know Vesey'll get him back in time if she has to tow him. Which she won't—Dorst isn't fast, but he isn't sloppy either."
"Sir?" said Midshipman Blantyre. "What are the rest of us going to do?"
"For the time being, take your positions on the bridge," Daniel said. "I'll continue to command from here in the BDC—I'm used to it, you see."
Adele kept her face still. She couldn't move to the bridge because of her special hardware, and there might be a time Daniel needed to be able to speak to her without electronics.
"Blantyre," he continued, "I'm giving you the command console. You'll take command if something happens to me. Cory, you're astrogation. Lay a course for the Ruby in the Cancellaria System, that's the convoy's waypoint following Vela Maun. When you're done, send it to me to check."
Daniel turned to the remaining midshipman with a smile of quiet satisfaction. "Bragg," he said, "I want you to act as assistant engineer. Take the third bridge console and keep an eye on the Power Room boards. Now, hop to it, all of you!"
The midshipmen vanished into the corridor, headed for the bridge. Bragg, the last out, didn't close the hatch behind him. Hogg got up from his seat and walked over to it. As he swung it shut, he muttered, "If there's a way to detonate the fusion bottle, that'un 'll find it, you know."
"I think he'll be fine, Hogg," Daniel said mildly, sitting at his console again and bringing up status displays on the cutters readying for separation.
"I bloody well don't," Hogg said, settling onto one of the now-vacant consoles. "But you've always been a lucky bugger, master, so maybe we'll get away with it again."
"Daniel?" Adele said, looking at her display instead of turning to the friend beside her. "Why are we going to Cancellaria instead of keeping station here?"
"I need to see what shape the Alliance convoy's in before I can plan the next step," he said cheerfully. "I thought of scouting in a cutter, but that'd just delay things. I don't believe time will be a serious factor, but I don't want to take chances."
"But Captain Slidell will be returning here to Lantos, won't he?" Adele said. She kept the frown off her face, but she knew some of it was seeping into her voice. "What will he do if you're not here?"
Daniel cleared his throat. "Well . . ." he said.
Before he could continue, Lieutenant Ganse's voice on the command channel announced, "615 to Hermes. Hermes, we're ready to launch. Over."
"615, I'm extending the davits," Daniel replied as his fingers moved. "Prepare to extend, over."
Hydraulic motors hummed within the tender. Daniel looked toward Adele; this time she met his gaze. "You see, the thing is, Adele . . . Captain Slidell would certainly remove me from my office; and a court-martial would find he was right to, no question about that. I'm certainly willing to take my punishment if it comes to that. But—"
"Hermes, this is 615," Ganse said. "We are ready to launch. Over."
"615," Daniel replied as he keyed commands. "I'm starting the sequence. You will launch in fifteen seconds from the time hack."
His index finger hammered the keyboard.
"Time!"
He turned to Adele again. "The thing is," he said very quietly, "Captain Slidell isn't coming back. There's no chance at all he'll survive this mission."
Electromagnets kicked Cutter 615 away with a ringing jolt, adding the final emphasis to Daniel's bleak statement.