She tapped her own memo board with a stylus, and a lift bank flashed amber on both boards simultaneously.
"Make sure your com link doesn't get compromised, and stop at this lift bank," she continued, indicating the flashing section of the schematic. "Meantime, I'll head aft to Lift Nineteen. Whether there's power to the lifts or not, we can use the shafts to move inboard."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am," Corbett acknowledged. "Bosun?"
"I'm on it, Sir," Musgrave said with just a hint of reassuring gruffness, nodded to Abigail, and started down the passage in the indicated direction with his extraordinarily youthful superior officer in tow.
Abigail watched half of the boarding party moving off with them, then turned to grin at Gutierrez.
"Let's go, Matteo."
* * *
Major Markiewicz followed Captain Ingebrigtsen and Master Sergeant Palmarocchi out of the lift doors at the 00 Deck level. According to the schematic in his battle armor's memory, he was approximately sixty meters aft of Leeuwenhoek 's command deck, and one hundred meters forward of her flag bridge. The 00 Deck corresponded to the Royal Manticoran Navy's Axial-One, the central—and best protected—deck of a warship's core hull, and Leeuwenhoek 's was both broader and higher than the other decks stacked above and below it. The passage before Markiewicz was well lit, yet he felt uneasily aware of its vastness, as if he couldn't quite make out details.
Don't be stupid, Evgeny. You can see just fine. It's just that you shouldn't be seeing this much empty space aboard any warship .
He snorted mentally, then turned to the dark-haired SLN lieutenant who'd been waiting at the lift doors. Allowing for prolong, she was probably somewhere in her thirties, he estimated—old for her rank in the RMN. Then again, the Sollies hadn't had as many vacancies created for promotion over the last couple of decades as Manticore had.
The name "PABST, V." was stenciled on the breast of her skinsuit, and she wore no helmet. She was of slightly above average height, although she looked like a stripling standing in front of his looming battle armor.
"Major Markiewicz, Royal Manticoran Marines," he said crisply over his armor's external speakers.
"Lieutenant Pabst—Valencia Pabst," she responded. "I'm Admiral O'Cleary's flag lieutenant."
"Excuse me, Lieutenant," Ingebrigtsen put in a bit sharply, "but don't Solarian officers salute superior officers?"
Pabst looked at her for a moment, as if Ingebrigtsen had spoken in some foreign tongue. Then she shook herself visibly, flushed, came to a reasonably correct position of attention, and saluted Markiewicz.
"I beg your pardon, Major."
There was more than a little anger in her voice, but Markiewicz figured she was entitled to that.
"I realize this has all come as something of a shock, Lieutenant Pabst," he replied, charitably ascribing her lapse in military courtesy to the aforesaid shock as he returned her belated salute.
"Yes, Sir. It has," she agreed, still with that core of cold anger and resentment. "If you'll follow me, please?"
"Lead on, Lieutenant," Markiewicz replied.
"Top?" Ingebrigtsen said quietly to Palmarocchi.
"On it, Ma'am," the master sergeant replied, and dropped back beside Lieutenant Lindsay.
He spoke very quietly to the young man for a moment, and then Lindsay and his platoon's first squad arranged themselves unobtrusively at Ingebrigtsen and Markiewicz's heels. The second and third squads stayed put, keeping an eye on the lift banks while Master Sergeant Palmarocchi and Platoon Sergeant Wilkie kept an eye on them. Markiewicz really wished Palmarocchi was along to watch his back, but he supposed that between them a grass-green lieutenant, an experienced captain, and a weary old major who'd once upon a time been a battalion sergeant major ought to be able to manage a single squad of Marines.
* * *
The hike from the lift to Leeuwenhoek 's flag bridge seemed to take far longer than it ought to, and Markiewicz suspected he wasn't the only person who found the silent emptiness of the deck eerie. Pabst obviously didn't feel much like making small talk, for which he scarcely blamed her, but no one had much to say over the Marines' com net, either.
Good communications discipline , the major thought wryly. Maybe we should try boarding surrendered Solly superdreadnoughts more often as a training technique .
Lengthy as the walk seemed while they were making it, it ended abruptly at an open pressure door. Pabst glanced at Markiewicz, then stepped through the door.
He followed her, and found himself on the SD's flag deck.
Like the passageway outside it, Leeuwenhoek 's flag deck was considerably more spacious than a Manticoran flag deck would have been. That was interesting, Markiewicz thought, given the far larger number of people crammed aboard the Solarian ship. A Manticoran designer, with considerably more volume to play with, would have fitted the command stations into no more than two thirds of the volume Leeuwenhoek 's architect had assigned to them.
The various displays and consoles had a sleek, aesthetically pleasant grace to them. Their shapes and spacing seemed to flow into one another, almost as if they'd been designed to do just that, although, he thought as he glanced over them, they didn't seem to be arranged quite as well from the viewpoint of information flow. The ops officer on a Manticoran admiral's staff, for example, was placed so that he could see the astrogator's display by looking in one direction and the master tactical plot by looking in the other, all without moving out of his bridge chair. The way Leeuwenhoek 's command stations were arranged, however, the ops officer would have to stand up, take at least two steps, and crane his neck awkwardly to see the astro display. And one of the reasons he'd have to was that he had at least twice as many assistants as a Manticoran ops officer would have required, and he would have had to walk around one of them to see it.
Obviously, they figure the guy who does the shooting doesn't have to see where the guy who's steering is headed , he thought dryly. Not to mention the minor fact that they're way over-manned .
He noted those details out of the corner of one eye. Most of his attention was focused on identifying Admiral Keeley O'Cleary. In one way, it wasn't very difficult, since his armor's memory had been loaded with her picture. But what he hadn't counted on was the sheer number of stars stenciled on various people's skinsuits.
He was still registering the fact that the compartment seemed to be filled with an extraordinary number of flag officers when O'Cleary stepped forward. She looked at him, dark-eyes stony, and he saluted.
"Major Evgeny Markiewicz, Royal Manticoran Marines, Ma'am," he said.
"Admiral O'Cleary," she replied, acknowledging his salute with frigid correctness. "I trust you'll forgive me if I don't add 'Welcome aboard,' Major?"
Silence, Markiewicz decided, was golden, and he contented himself with a courteous little half-nod from behind his armor's visor.
"Vice Admiral Hansen Chamberlain, my chief of staff," O'Cleary continued, indicating a short, squared-off officer to her right. "My operations officer, Rear Admiral Tang Dzung-ming. My staff intelligence officer, Rear Admiral Lavinia Fairfax. And my staff communications officer, Captain Kalidasa Omprakash."
At last, someone who isn't an admiral! Markiewicz thought as he acknowledged each introduction in turn. Then he indicated his own officers.
"Captain Ingebrigtsen," he said, "Lieutenant Fariсas, Rear Admiral Oversteegen's flag lieutenant, and Lieutenant Lindsay."