A mess mate brought a new thermos of coffee. The Lieutenant sampled it. Not bad. Not good, but at least not bad. ''Tell the chief of the Admiral's mess that he better have a very good cup of coffee waiting in forty-five minutes when I wake the Admiral.''
''He'll want something good to go with that,'' a tech said.
''Drug inspectors. We'll show them some drugs to inspect,'' said another. There were rumors about how the Peterwalds made their money. Rumors spread by the Longknifes, no doubt.
''Mind your boards. Let me know the second anything changes,'' the Lieutenant warned. A woman, speaking for Wardhaven, throwing defiances like a kitten surrounded by hungry dogs. Maybe they would be taking a surrender from her before noon today. But deep in the pit of the Lieutenant's gut, there was a suspicion, a suspicion supported by nothing on the boards, that there was more behind those words.
''Mind your boards,'' he repeated.
Contact: -8 hours 30 minutes
Kris ducked into her stateroom for a second to change into a shipsuit. Whites might look good for a talk with the troops, but she didn't need the Order of the Wounded Lion's crest gouging her at three g's. At three g's lots of things went from a nuisance to a major problem.
Kris glanced in the mirror one last time. That was still her. The fancy uniform was gone, she wore just what she needed for the job she'd do today. Just her, her crews and boats, and some mighty nasty battlewagons that figured they had everything the way they wanted it. ''Well, we got some free women, free men, willing to put it on the line to tell you no,'' she told herself. ''Let's go keep Wardhaven the way we want it.''
The Halsey was busy, crew going about the business of getting under way. Sandy was still in CIC as Kris passed.
''Anything new and surprising?'' Kris asked.
''Nope. The station's sensor array is back online, but the intel feed is the same, just to three more decimal places.''
''Take care, Santiago. This time we'll make sure the history books get it right.''
''Take care yourself, Longknife, and the history books are written by historians. They'll never get it right until they stick their noses outside their safe libraries and come out here where it's really happening.''
''Must be a historian somewhere in the mix. We've got everything from pirates to kids.''
''Excuse me,'' a gentle voice said. ''Am I missing something?''
''Kris, may I introduce my pet newsie. Winston Spencer, this is Princess Kristine. She commands today.''
''Your Highness.'' He bowed from the neck. ''Lieutenant,'' he frowned, then glanced at Sandy. ''Commander? And isn't the captain of the Naval Base taking out some armed container ships? Yet you say Princess Kristine commands. Is there a story here?''
''Live through today''—Sandy smiled enigmatically—''and you may have your story. If you have the smarts to figure it out.''
''Hmm,'' he said, as Kris left Sandy and her Boswell.
Kris found Tom with his legs sticking out from under one of the 109's bridge consoles, Fintch under it with him.
Penny muttered, ''No. Still no. Yes! No. No. No. Got it! Hold it there!'' Kris said not a word while Tom and Fintch finished what they were doing to something.
Tom rolled out from under the console, spotted Kris, and grinned. ''Something didn't stay fixed from yesterday's work with Beni, or while fixing what he fixed, he elbowed something.''
''Or someone elbowed something,'' Penny added.
''Anyway, it's fixed, and we're good to go,'' Fintch said, grinning, then frowned and looked around. ''Should one of us call attention on deck or something?''
''I think we better belay all that until after we've got a couple of battleship hides to nail on the O club wall down on Wardhaven,'' Kris said.
''Yeah. If the gal is using Navy words like belay''—Tom grinned—''she's got enough salt in her veins without us doing all that time-wasting attention stuff. We've either learned all our lessons by now, or it's too late.''
''Is the old boat ready?''
''As ready as she'll ever be.'' Tom saluted.
''Or will be as soon as you find a place for me,'' a new voice said. Kris turned to face a short, middle-aged man holding a large portable computer. Behind him, three yard workers lugged, in order, a high-g station, a workstation, and a toolbox.
The man held out a hand. ''I'm Moose. I'm your raven.''
''Raven? Moose? Mine?'' Tom said.
''Yeah,'' the fellow said, stepping aside. ''Set me up next to that intel station. That ought to work best. Yeah, you got all those yachts faking it as PFs, but it might help a bit if you occasionally faked it as a yacht. You know, made some of the noises that the civilian boats make but the Navy paid lots of bucks to quiet you guys out of.''
''You're here to make noise!'' Tom said.
''Yeah. You mind? I'm a last-minute addition. We ravens decided to put one of us on each of your boats.''
''I heard about this. It's your call, Tom,'' Kris said.
A yard worker was already on his knees, drill at the ready, but only at the ready. He looked up, eyeing Kris, Tom, Penny. ''Look, I don't know which one of you dudes is the boss here. Do we start drilling or not?''
''Can you drill in Uni-plex?'' Kris asked. Unlike smart metal, the semi-smart metal used in the PFs could be reorganized twice. The third time you tried to change it, it fell apart. Navy policy was to change the cheaper Uni-plex only once.
''Sure, ma'am, we drill it all the time,'' the worker said.
''You're going to make noises,'' Tom said to the stranger.
Moose's lips got thin in exasperation. ''Look, folks. You got a nice ANG-47SW station here. Bet you got it dialed in sweet. It's gonna let you know all kinds of things about what you're facing. Right?''
Penny nodded.
''So, what you gonna do with what you find? Hope you got a canned program to work on it. Hope you can compute a modification for it real fast.''
''I should hope so,'' said Nelly from around Kris's neck.
''Yeah, right, they warned me about that thing. Listen, you can count on what you got, or you can count on me. I got my own bag of tricks. Some are standard. Some are the kind of stuff that old ravens like me and mine spent our lives dreaming about, dreaming up. It's been a long peace. This looks like the only war in town. You gonna give me a shot at it?''
Kris looked at Tom. ''It's your ship, Tom.'' She paused for a moment. ''I know it's rough having someone walk on your bridge at the last second and say, ‘I might just win the war for you,' but, well, I just did something like that to some tugboat skippers. Told them they needed to step up their game and maybe help me win this thing. I don't know.'' Kris shrugged. ''Your call.''
''Me pass up a pretty black box?'' Tom grinned. ''Drill, man.''
''I'll need to hitch into this intel station. I can probably do all my intake and output from it. No other hookups.''
''Good, ‘cause if you wanted to crawl under my navigation console, I'd space you.''
''Kind of touchy there, huh?''
''Tom, how's the rest of the boat?'' Kris asked.
''Time for a final walk-through. You want to come with me?''
''I'd be honored to do that, Skipper.''
''Just don't touch anything.'' He laughed. ''Can't have these staff officers getting their hands on things.''
''Only to run my white gloves over surfaces to check for dust,'' Kris assured him.
Penny took her station, did a check. ''Kris, you heard about the ultimatum?''
''No!'' So Penny ran it for them.
''You recognize the spokeswoman?'' Penny asked.
''I think that's Pandori's daughter.''
''Think they'll identify themselves?'' Tom asked.
Kris shook her head.
''Who's gonna do the drug inspection?'' the raven asked.
''Us. With pulse lasers,'' Kris answered.