HMSS Hephaestus
Manticore Planetary Orbit
Manticore Binary System
June 14, 1906 PD
“so, how’s your new boss?” Tim Bolgeo asked across the table.
“Commander Yaytsev’s gonna be tough, but he’s fair, Dad,” Brandy replied. “He reminds me a lot of Commander McBain, really. Different sense of humor, though. His is . . . dry. Really dry, actually.” She snorted. “If I were a snotty aboard his ship, he’d send me looking for the particle flux monitoring system with a totally straight face!”
“Did your training officer do that aboard Montego?” her father asked with a chuckle.
“Not Lieutenant Stuyvesant,” Brandy said with an answering grin. “Senior Chief Tyler sure did, though!”
Her father’s chuckle turned into a rolling laugh, and her mother shook her head at both of them.
“Could you at least hold it down to a dull roar, Timmy?” she asked tartly, although her own lips twitched as she did. “Remember we’re in a public place!”
“I’m pretty sure they’ve heard people laugh in Dempsey’s before. Assuming they could hear me anyway, over the background noise,” Bolgeo told her with an unrepentant chuckle, and waved a hand at the well-populated tables around them.
He had a point, Brandy reflected. Like Hephaestus itself, Dempsey’s operated around the clock, but most of the station’s “day” population synced its schedule to that of the City of Landing, so it was fortunate she’d reserved their table well in advance. It was approaching the peak of the dinner hour, the wait time for a table was creeping upward, and the restaurant area was crowded enough the seated diners’ buzz of conversation actually made it difficult to hear the piped-in music.
“Oh, trust me,” Linda Bolgeo said even more tartly. “People can hear the ‘Bolgeo Bray’ in the middle of a Gryphon thunderstorm!”
Her undutiful husband laughed again, harder than before, and Brandy shook her own head.
“Forget it, Mom. We’re not changing him at this late date.”
“Doesn’t mean I have to give up the good fight,” Linda replied.
“Oh, stop blackening my character!” Bolgeo said. “We’re supposed to be celebrating Brandy’s new ship, not picking on minor flaws in my otherwise impeccable social graces.”
“I don’t think ‘impeccable’ means exactly what you seem to think it means, Dad. But you’re right. It is a celebration, so Mom and I will womanfully refrain from pointing out the many major flaws in your social graces and return to the topic at hand.”
“Oh, thank you!” Bolgeo said soulfully. “And, on that topic, how’s the rest of your department?”
“Pretty solid,” Brandy said more seriously. “I don’t know them as well as I knew my people aboard Cassie, of course. Not yet.”
“You’ll get over that pretty quick,” her father told her, and his voice was more serious than it had been, as well. “Especially once they cut you loose from Home Fleet and Prince Adrian starts doing the kinds of things she should have been doing for the last six or seven T-months.”
Brandy nodded and carefully didn’t notice the shadow that flitted through her mother’s eyes. It was official. Sixth Fleet, which included HMS Prince Adrian, would—finally—deploy forward the next day. No one knew—or not “officially,” at least—exactly where they’d be deploying to. Scuttlebutt said they’d probably be basing out of Grendelsbane, or possibly the Madras System, but nobody had confirmed that for the ship’s company yet. Brandy inclined toward the Madras destination, given that the Royal Navy’s most pressing strategic objective at the moment had to be the Trevor’s Star terminus of the Manticoran wormhole junction, but no one was interested in dropping casual information where Peep spies might hear about it. On the other hand, the fact that Sixth Fleet was Admiral White Haven’s command pretty much guaranteed it would be committed to full-fledged offensive operations somewhere ASAP.
That was more than enough to explain the shadow in Linda Bolgeo’s eyes.
“It’s not going to be a picnic, Brandy,” her father said very soberly. He gave his wife an apologetic glance and reached across the table to take her hand, but his eyes went back to his daughter’s face. “I know that, after Hancock, you understand that if anybody does, baby girl, but that’s one reason I am so pissed with the Opposition. We should have been hitting the Peeps months ago, before this damned Committee of Public Safety got itself organized and their navy started getting its feet under it again.”
“I know, Dad.”
“I know you do, and if I were a more self-disciplined fellow, I’d keep my mouth shut instead of worrying you—and your mom—by talking about it. But I’m not, and I am pissed, and I know your mom is already worried about it. Because after Hancock, we understand what the costs can be, too. But it’s also because everything I’ve ever heard about McKeon says he’s one hell of a skipper. He’s no slouch in a fight—he sure as hell proved that in Yeltsin!—and from everything I hear, he runs a taut ship, the kind that knows what it’s doing when the shit hits the fan. The kind”—his eyes moved back to his wife’s face and he squeezed her hand—“where people do their jobs and come home again even if the shit does hit the fan.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure you’re right about that, Dad. I can’t say I’ve gotten to know him at this point—I’ve only been aboard a week! But that tracks with everything I’ve seen so far. And, like I say, the people in my shop seem really, really solid. If it falls in the crapper, we’ll have good people to dig us back out of it again.”
“Good!” Her father nodded vigorously, then released her mother’s hand and patted it before he picked up his water glass again. “So I can take it you’re happy with the new slot?”
“Mostly.” Brandy frowned slightly and picked up her fork to play with. “I’m completely satisfied, I think, Dad, but ‘happy’ might be a bit too strong.”
“Oh?” Bolgeo’s frown was considerably deeper than hers had been. “Why?”
“It’s just—” Brandy turned the fork in her hands, looking for the right words. “It’s just that the ship isn’t really happy right now.”
“How surprising is that if everybody aboard knows you’re headed for the front?” Linda Bolgeo’s voice was ever so slightly edged with the anger—or the anxiety, at least—of a mother whose child was headed for the front right along with her ship.
“It’s not that, Mom.” Brandy gave a quick headshake. “Frankly, it’s got more to do with politics than it does with fighting the war. And not just how darned long it took to get the declaration voted out!”
“Harrington, you mean,” her father said, and she nodded.
“I don’t mean one bit of disrespect for Captain McKeon, Dad, but that’s a man who’s really angry and really hurting right now. He works hard to keep it from showing, but I saw some of it the first day I went aboard, and I’ve seen more of it since. I don’t think he even knows how to let something like that affect the way he does his duty, you understand. It’s certainly not going to keep him from doing one bit less than the best job he absolutely can! Like I say, I’ve only been aboard about six days, and I’ve already seen more of him than I saw of Captain Quinlan in the first six months aboard the Cassie. I know Prince Adrian’s a lot smaller ship, but the real reason is that Captain McKeon makes a point of dining with his officers on a regular basis.
“The thing is, though, that everybody aboard knows how much he’s hurting over this whole mess, and they care about him, Dad.” She met her father’s eyes. “So no matter how hard he tries to keep it from splashing on them or the fact that it’s not affecting the way he does his job, I think it is affecting the way they do theirs. And it’s even worse for some than it is for others. I was surprised to find out how many of Prince Adrian’s people have served under Countess Harrington. We’ve got at least six of them in Engineering alone! And all of them take this mess personally.”
“Most of the Navy—the competent part of it, I mean—takes it ‘personally,’” Bolgeo growled.
“I know, but it’s worse for some than for others. Especially people like Lieutenant Tremaine, our boat bay officer. He was with Lady Harrington in Basilisk as a baby ensign—boat bay officer on the old Fearless, in fact—and he’s taking it really hard. And Senior Chief Harkness—!”
She rolled her eyes, and her dad grunted.
“That’d be Horace Harkness?” he asked, and Brandy nodded. She didn’t look at all surprised that her father had recognized the name, and he snorted when he saw her expression. “Yes, I used to get into trouble with him. ’Course, he got into plenty of trouble all on his own hook! Especially where Marines were involved.”
“That certainly sounds like ‘my’ senior chief,” Brandy acknowledged dryly. “Although, as far as I can tell so far, he hasn’t had any fights with any of Prince Adrian’s Marines.”
“He wouldn’t have.” Bolgeo shook his head. “He never did fight with any of ‘his’ Marines. Unless they had the bad taste to step up beside some other Marine in a bar somewhere. He’d make an exception in that case.”
“Pining for the days of your misspent youth, are you, Timmy?” Linda asked sweetly. “I seem to remember at least once you caught a little brig time because you stepped up beside a petty officer named Harkness ‘in a bar somewhere’ and the two of you caused—refresh my memory, dear? Thirteen hundred dollars of damage, was it?”
“It was fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of damage,” her husband corrected, “and we didn’t do the damage, the stupid Marines did the damage when Horace and I threw them—I mean, when they fell through the bar’s front window.”
“Oh my God,” Brandy said. “I just hope he doesn’t figure out I’m your daughter!”
“Horace?” Bolgeo laughed. “Trust me, baby girl, he already knows. He knows everything about his officers. But I promise he won’t hold your DNA against you. And he’s not the kind to brownnose or take advantage of an old friendship, either.”
“Well, that’s reassuring.”
“Should be,” her father said more seriously, “because he’s one of the good ones. He’ll look after you. You’ll have to keep an eye on him where Marines are concerned if he gets shore leave—probably won’t be that big a problem aboard Prince Adrian, especially with Iris Babcock as their gunny—but there’s not a better missile tech or systems specialist in the entire Navy. And what he can do with cyber systems—!” He shook his head. “I’ll guarantee you the only reason you’ve got him aboard a heavy cruiser is because of his discipline record. If he hadn’t gotten himself busted as often as he did, he’d be at least a chief warrant aboard a battlecruiser somewhere by now. So take advantage of the fact that you’ve got him.”
Brandy nodded. It was unusual for her father to give someone that strong an endorsement, and when he did, it was worth listening to.
She started to say something else, then paused as the server arrived with their orders. The large serving bowl of spaghetti alla puttanesca went onto the table, and their heads bent as her father murmured a quick blessing. Then her mother started serving their plates and they were too busy giving their food the focused attention Dempsey’s kitchens deserved to worry any more about Horace Harkness.
* * *
That was good, Brandy thought as she watched through the boarding tube’s transparent wall while her parents made their way to the short-haul ferry back to Gryphon. I wish Mom hadn’t had to make the trip all the way to Hephaestus for just one meal, but she’d have killed me if I hadn’t had dinner with both of them before I shipped out!
She chuckled at the thought, but the chuckle faded a bit as she reflected on how long it might be before she had the chance to share a meal with her parents again. Or if she ever would, for that matter. Was this the last time she’d ever see them?
Oh, stop that! she scolded herself. Dad would kick your butt if he knew you were thinking maudlin crap like that! Of course you’ll see them again. And Mom will hop right back on the puddle jumper for Dempsey’s the moment you dock at Hephaestus again! It’s not that long a trip, after all.
The Manticore Binary System was one of the vanishingly few star systems in which habitable worlds orbited multiple stellar components, and Brandy’s homeworld was eleven light-hours from Hephaestus. That was why, despite the fact that everyone called them “puddle jumpers,” the ferries that plied back and forth between Gryphon and Manticore or Sphinx were hyper-capable. While it would take the puddle jumper just under three hours to cover the roughly fifteen light-minutes from Manticore planetary orbit to the Manticore-A hyper limit, the hyper voyage to Manticore-B’s hyper limit would take only half an hour. Of course, then they’d have to cover the distance from the Manticore-B limit to Gryphon at sublight speeds, which would add another three and a half hours. Although Gryphon was actually closer to Manticore-B’s hyper limit than Manticore was to Manticore-A, the puddle jumper would arrive at the limit with a normal-space velocity of just about zero. It would have to accelerate for over an hour and a half, then decelerate just as long. Still, they’d be home in little more than seven hours, as opposed to the twenty-seven hours a normal-space trip would take.
Because the puddle-jumpers carried so much civilian traffic, their boarding tubes incorporated grav plates, which meant Tim and Linda were able to walk down the tube side-by-side. They held hands as they went, and Brandy’s eyes softened as her mother leaned toward her father, resting her head against his shoulder. He released her hand, put his arm around her, and pressed a kiss to her hair as they moved out of Brandy’s line of sight.
She stood a moment longer, looking after them with misty eyes, then inhaled deeply and headed away from the civilian docking facility toward the nearest Navy boat bay from which she could catch a shuttle to Prince Adrian’s parking orbit. A station as huge as Hephaestus had a lot more than one boat bay, for obvious reasons, and they were distributed around the platform to place them as conveniently as possible. “Conveniently as possible” wasn’t remotely the same as “really, really conveniently,” of course, she reminded herself.
Despite the hour, there was a lot of traffic along her route. There always was, she thought as she made her way down the passage, but at least it flowed fairly steadily. It shouldn’t take long to reach the bay.
She reached a cross corridor, turned to her right, and both eyebrows rose as that steady flow halted abruptly. What in the—?
Her raised eyebrows lowered and her eyes widened as he realized why the men and women in front of her had stopped. For some of them, it was only because the people in front of them had, and those people looked as surprised—and confused—as Brandy had been. But most of the traffic hadn’t simply stopped. No, most of those people had stopped, then stepped back with their shoulders to the bulkheads . . . and snapped to attention.
Outdoors, military courtesy required officers and enlisted to salute approaching superior officers. Indoors—or aboard ship or aboard a space station like Hephaestus—that was relaxed and only a courteous nod was required, since saluting indoors was proscribed. Even outdoors, however, the salute was a walking salute, because the Navy had better things for its personnel to do than stop dead every time they met a superior. And while Navy personnel were expected to make a hole for superiors in tight quarters, there was certainly no regulation which required shipboard personnel to completely clear a passage as broad as the ones in Hephaestus!
But the men and women in front of Brandy Bolgeo didn’t seem to care about that, just at the moment, and she felt herself pop to attention, as well, as a tall woman walked down that magically cleared passageway toward her.
She wore a captain’s uniform and carried her left arm in a sling. She was flanked by two green-uniformed armsmen, and a cream-and-gray treecat rode the shoulder of the master chief steward walking to her left. Pain and loss had left their marks in her expression, and the beret on her head was black, not the white beret of a starship’s commander which had been taken from her. But she walked steadily, her head high and her shoulders back, and there was no surrender in those brown, almond eyes.
She seemed unaware of the way in which the path before her had been cleared, of the silent men and women who wore the Star Kingdom’s uniform and who’d stopped, come to attention, to let her pass. But her treecat’s head was raised, his ears pricked. His body language radiated his own awareness, his satisfaction, and her own eyes were suspiciously bright.
She was headed, Brandy realized, not toward a Navy boat bay, but toward the civilian bay her own parents had just left. Even that had been taken from her, Brandy realized. She was on half-pay, denied a command, told she was unnecessary—unwanted—at the very moment the Navy in which she had served for her entire adult life faced its sternest test.
And that Navy hadn’t even provided her transport back to Grayson on one of the warships headed there.
Brandy stood at attention as Countess Harrington passed her, and the treecat turned his head, looked directly at her, as if he could read her thoughts, her awareness of how badly his person had been treated. She watched them go, walking into exile, and the bitter unfairness of it all suffused her. It was so wrong, after everything Lady Harrington had given, all the sacrifices she’d made—after so much had already been taken from her.
But there was no defeat in those shoulders, and as Lady Harrington disappeared from sight, Brandy Bolgeo realized there never would be. Not in those shoulders.
The universe can kill her, if it tries hard enough, she thought. But beat her? Never!
She stood for a moment, gazing down the passageway, then drew a deep breath, shook herself, and headed back toward the boat bay and the shuttle waiting to carry her to her own duty.