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Chapter Nineteen
Abigail Hearns sat in the copilot's seat on the flight deck of the pi
And , Abigail thought, remembering a night sky speckled with the brief, dying stars of deep-space nuclear explosions , she's not that much smaller than the LACs we had when Lady Harrington took out Thunder of God. There's a certain symmetry there, I suppose... if this works out .
Wolverine sat motionless in space relative to Nuncio-B, holding her position while Pontifex-and HMS Hexapuma -moved steadily away from her at an orbital velocity of just over thirty-two kilometers per second. Five other LACs sat with her, all that could reach her present position before she'd stopped in space, holding position on minimal power, and let her homeworld move away from her. They were packed to the limits of their life-support capacity with two companies of Nuncio Army troops who, Commodore Karlberg had assured Captain Terekhov, were fully qualified for boarding actions and vacuum work. She hoped Karlberg was right, although if everything went well, it probably wouldn't matter one way or the other.
The real teeth of the boarding force lay in the platoon of Captain Kaczmarczyk's Marines distributed-along with Abigail Hearns, Mateo Gutierrez, Midshipman Aikawa Kagiyama, and Midshipwoman Ragnhild Pavletic-between the two pi
Probably because she's never seen anything that antique outside of a historical holo drama, Abigail thought wryly.
She gri
There's no way they'll let me keep them, whatever happens. But it was a nice gesture on the Skipper's part. And practical, too, I suppose.
Terekhov had surprised her with the appointment to the acting rank just before she left the Hexapuma . In theory, he had the authority to make the promotion permanent, but only pending a BuPers review. And given that Abigail had held her current rank for less than eight months before reporting aboard Hexapuma , she rather doubted BuPers would feel inclined to confirm it. In fact, her peculiar status as a Grayson currently in Manticoran service-and the only steadholder's daughter serving in either of her two navies-would probably make the Promotion Board even stickier than usual. But at least it made her technically superior to Ma
Captain Magnus Einarsson was obviously one of the Nuncians who had trouble remembering that prolong meant the Manticorans with whom he was interacting were uniformly older than they appeared to Nuncian eyes. When he looked at Abigail, he saw a teenager, probably somewhere on the lower side of sixteen, and not a young woman almost ten T-years older than that. Worse, Nuncio was an uncompromisingly patriarchal culture. The bitter centuries of bare subsistence and miserable medical care had created a society which was forced to stoically endure a horrendous child mortality rate. For most of their planetary history, Nuncian women had been too busy bearing children-and dying of childbirth fever, as often as not, until the local medical establishment finally rediscovered the germ theory of disease-to do much of anything else. Only in the last two or three generations had the system's slowly climbing technology level made it possible to change that. And, human societies being human societies, cultural changes of that magnitude didn't happen overnight.
Yet another parallel with home, the Grayson lieutenant thought sardonically. Although at least this atheistic bunch doesn't try to justify it on the basis of God's will! But without Lady Harrington, the Protector, and Reverend Hanks to kick them in the butt, they're going to be slower-and even more mulish-about accepting the change, anyway.
Einarsson, at any rate, clearly had serious reservations (which he no doubt thought he'd concealed admirably) about accepting "recommendations" from even a senior-grade lieutenant who happened to be female. How he would have reacted if she'd turned up with her permanent rank was more than she cared to contemplate.
She looked down at the chrono once more and nodded as it came up on the five-hour mark since her remote arrays had detected the intruders. Five hours in which Pontifex had moved over half a million kilometers, taking Hexapuma with it. If the bogeys had managed to put one over on Hexapuma and get a recon drone into space headed to intercept the planet at the time they themselves would approach the hyper limit, its course would take it far enough from Wolverine' s present position to make anything as weak as a LAC's impeller signature invisible to them. And since Bogey One and Two themselves were still far beyond shipboard detection range of the planet-
"Stand by for acceleration in three minutes," Captain Einarsson's voice said in her earbug.
The three minutes ticked past into eternity, and then the six LACs and their pi
Well, we'll find out whether or not the Skipper is a tactical genius in about ten and a half hours, Abigail thought.
Naomi Kaplan settled herself at Tactical, racked her helmet on the side of her bridge chair, and gave her console exactly the same quick but thorough examination she always did. It took several seconds, but then she made a small sound of approval and sat back, satisfied.
"I have the board," she said to the midshipwoman sitting beside her, where she'd minded the store while Kaplan caught a belated breakfast. The ship was at Condition Bravo-not yet at General Quarters, but with her crew already skinsuited-and it was the RMN tradition to see that its people were well fed before battle. Kaplan had already seen all of her people fed... and been informed rather pointedly by Ansten FitzGerald that he wanted her fed, as well.
"You have the board, aye, Ma'am," Helen Zilwicki said, and Kaplan looked at her.
"Nervous?" she asked in a voice too low for anyone else on the bridge to overhear.
"Not really, Ma'am," Helen replied. Then paused. "Well, not if you mean scared ," she said in a painstakingly honest voice. "I guess I probably am worried. About screwing up, more than anything else."
"That's as it should be," Kaplan told her. "Although you might want to reflect on the fact that just because we think we're bigger and nastier than they are, we're not necessarily right. And even if we are, we're still not invulnerable. Somebody can kill you just as dead by hitting you in the head with a rock as with a tribarrel, if she gets close enough and she's lucky."
"Yes, Ma'am," Helen said, remembering the breaking-stick feel of human necks in the shadows of Old Chicago's ancient sewers.
"But you're right to concentrate on the job," Kaplan continued, unaware of her middy's memories. "That's your responsibility right now, and responsibility is the best antidote to more mundane fears, like being blown into tiny pieces, that I can think of." She smiled at Helen's involuntary snort of amusement. "And, of course, if you should happen to screw something up, I assure you that you'll wish you had been blown into tiny pieces by the time I'm done with you."
She frowned ferociously, brows lowered, and Helen nodded.
"Yes, Ma'am. I'll remember," she promised.
"Good," Kaplan said, and turned back to her own plot.
Zilwicki was a good kid, she thought, although she'd had some reservations, given the midshipwoman's co
Still, Kaplan had wondered if someone from such a politicized background would be able to put it aside, especially now that Zilwicki's kid sister had become a crowned head of state! But if there'd ever been a single instance of Zilwicki's political beliefs intruding into the performance of her duties, Kaplan hadn't seen it. And the girl was a fiendishly good tactician. Not as good as Abigail, but she had the touch. So if someone had to sub for Abigail, Zilwicki was an excellent choice.
But I don't want anyone subbing for Abigail , Kaplan thought, and felt a flicker of surprise at her own attitude. The youthful Grayson had a knack for inspiring trust, on a personal as well as a professional level, without ever crossing the line to excessive familiarity with superiors or subordinates. That was rare, and Kaplan finally admitted to herself that she was worried. That she disliked letting Abigail out of her sight, especially out amongst those primitive, sexist Nuncians.