“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.”