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"You think they were hiding something, Sir?" Blumenthal asked, frowning. He toyed with his dessert fork for a moment. "I suppose that if the pirates did contact them and offer to ransom the transport's passengers, one of the conditions might be that the Refugians keep their mouths shut about it afterwards."
"That's one possibility," Oversteegen acknowledged. "However, I wasn't thinkin' about anythin' quite that Byzantine, Guns."
"Then why would they hesitate to cooperate in anything that might catch the people responsible for the disappearance and probable murder of their colonists, Sir?" Atkins asked.
"This is a small, isolated, intensely cla
Once again, his eyes seemed to flick ever so briefly in Abigail's direction. This time, though, she couldn't be certain it wasn't her own imagination. Not that she was much inclined to bend over backward giving him the benefit of the doubt, because it was obvious to her what was going on behind his relaxed expression.
He might as well have me wearing a holo sign that says "Descendent of Religious Lunatics!" she thought resentfully.
"My point," he went on, apparently blissfully unaware of—or, at least, completely unconcerned by—his midshipwoman's blistering resentment, "is that the Refugians don't like outsiders. And that outsiders, like the Erewhonese, may not make sufficient allowance for that when they try t' talk to them. It certainly appears to me that the Erewhonese who interviewed the planetary authorities after Star Warrior's disappearance didn't, at any rate. It's obvious the locals got their backs up. It may even have started when Star Warrior dropped in on them in the first place.
"But if Star Warrior disappeared because she discovered somethin' that led her t' the pirates and the pirates destroyed her, then Tiberian is the only place she could have done it. The system was her first port of call, and so far as we can determine, she never made it t' her second port of call at all. So if there is an actual chain of events, not just some fluke coincidence, between Star Warrior's investigation and her disappearance, Tiberian is the only place we can hope t' find out whatever she did.
"If I'm right, and the Fellowship of the Elect just didn't want t' talk t' a secular bunch of outsiders who failed t' show proper respect for their own religious beliefs, then clearly the thing t' do is t' go try talkin' t' them again. It's entirely possible that no one on the planet realizes the significance of some apparently minor piece of information they gave Star Warrior which might have led her t' the pirates. If there was somethin' like that, then clearly, we have t' find out what it was. And the only way t' do that is t' get them t' open up t' us. And for that—" he turned his head, and this time there was no question at all who he was looking at, Abigail thought "—we need someone who speaks their language."
"Hard skew port! Come t' one-two-zero by zero-one-five and increase t' five-two-zero gravities! Tactical, deploy a Lima-Foxtrot decoy on our previous headin'!"
The thing Abigail hated most about Captain Michael Oversteegen, she decided as she ma
Her life would have been so much simpler if she'd been able to just write him off as one more under-brained, over-bred, aristocratic jackass who'd gotten his present command through the pure abuse of nepotism. It would have made his infuriating accent, his too-perfect uniforms, his maddening ma
Unfortunately, she'd been forced to concede that although it was obvious that nepotism did explain how a captain as junior as he was had snagged a plum command like Gauntlet in this era of reducing ship strengths, he was not incompetent. That had become painfully evident as he put his ship through a series of intensive drills in every conceivable evolution during the voyage to Tiberian. And given that Tiberian lay just over three hundred light-years from Manticore, with a transit time of almost forty-seven T-days, he'd had a lot of time for drills.
She was being foolish, she told herself sternly, her eyes obediently upon the tactical repeater plot while the current exercise unfolded, but she knew she would have felt a certain spiteful satisfaction if she could have assigned him to what Lady Harrington called the "Manticoran Invincibility School." But unlike those complacent idiots, Oversteegen obviously held to the older Manticoran tradition that no crew could possibly be too highly trained, whether in peacetime or time of war.
The fact that he had an obvious talent for cu
There was an undeniable trace of stiffness and formality in his relationship with the captain, but that was true for quite a few members of Gauntlet's ship's company. After the first week or so, no one aboard was prepared to question Captain Oversteegen's competence or ability, but that didn't mean his crew was prepared to clasp him warmly to its collective heart. The fact was that whatever other talents he might possess, he did not and probably never would have the sort of charisma someone like Lady Harrington seemed to radiate so effortlessly.
Probably, Abigail had concluded, that was at least partly because he had no particular interest in acquiring that sort of charisma. After all, the natural order of the universe had inevitably raised him to his present station. His undoubted competence was simply proof that the universe had been wise to do so. And since it was both natural and inevitable that he command, then it was equally natural and inevitable that others obey. Which meant there was no particular point in enticing them into doing what was their natural duty in the first place.
In short, Michael Oversteegen's personality was not one which naturally attracted the devotion of those under his command. Competence they would grant him, and obedience they would yield. But not devotion.
Arpad Grigovakis, on the other hand, seemed prepared to worship the deck he walked on. Abigail couldn't be positive why that was, but she had her suspicions. Grigovakis, after all, would never be described as a sweetheart of a guy himself. Although he was nowhere near so wellborn as the captain, he definitely belonged to the upper strata of Manticoran society, and he not so secretly aspired to precisely the same image of aristocratic power and privilege. In fact, Abigail thought, Grigovakis probably found Oversteegen a much more comfortable role model than someone like Lady Harrington, no matter how much he might recognize and respect the Steadholder's tactical brilliance.