But Steele's nose for news hadn't deserted him. Everybody in Task Force 71 seemed to think Raymond Prescott could walk on water, but Steele hadn't forgotten the way the Bugs had made a fool out of him at his famous "April Fool" battle. The reporter hadn't been able to make up his mind whether Prescott really was the loose warhead that people like Bettina Wister thought he was, or if he was just an unreasonably lucky screwup. The Orions certainly thought highly of him . . . which, given their history and lunatic warrior-cult "honor code," was probably a bad sign.
Up to this point, however, and almost despite himself, Steele had been leaning towards the theory that Prescott might actually be as good-in a purely and narrowly military sense, of course-as his vociferous supporters insisted. He'd done a thorough job of destroying Home Hive One, at any rate. Although, Steele reminded himself, all anyone really had to prove that he had were the reports and imagery the Navy itself had handed out.
But now . . .
Steele tucked himself into a smaller space, squeezing further back into the alcove in the launch bay bulkhead. Even Delmore had gotten more and more tight-faced as the two of them listened to the occasional situation reports Captain Morris had put out over the general com system for the benefit of his crew. The official press pool had been pretty much closed down for the duration of the battle-officially to keep the reporters out of harm's way, although it also just happened to mean no media watchdogs would be in position to report any screwups which might occur along the way. But even the reports Morris was willing to share had indicated that things were getting pretty tight.
Other people had been less reticent, though . . . and less inclined to play jolly cheerleader than the captain. Steele had spent weeks-months-working on contacts of his own aboard Angela Martens. Delmore might have her stooges among the officers, but Steele knew where to go if you wanted the real dirt. The officer corps always closed ranks to protect the Navy's "good name"-and their own, of course, although that was never mentioned. So if you wanted to get at the things the Navy didn't want you to know (which, by definition, were the ones it was most important to bring to the public's attention), you had to do an end run around the official information channels. If you looked long enough, you could always find someone who was dissatisfied enough-often over the most trivial things, but a man had to work with what he could find-to tell you anything you wanted to know.
Sometimes that someone was a disgruntled officer, sometimes it was an enlisted person or a nomcom. Aboard Angela Martens, it was Petty Officer Third Class Cassius Bradford, a much put upon individual, who, in his own unbiased opinion, should have been at least a chief petty officer by now. The fact that he wasn't had proved a fertile source of information when Steele suggested that perhaps the support of a friendly news report or two might provide PO 3/c Bradford's career with the upward impetus it deserved. Which was how Steele had happened to learn that Admiral Hot Shot Prescott had screwed the pooch.
Again.
For the first time since his assignment to Seventh Fleet, Vincent Steele had truly come face-to-face with his own mortality, and it was Prescott's fault. Angela Martens was a carrier, not a battle-line unit. Even Steele knew carriers weren't supposed to get into missile range of enemy starships-that was why he'd specifically requested a carrier assignment. Oh, intellectually he'd realized that even carriers could be destroyed, but any half-competent admiral would do his best to keep the carriers out of the main fray, if only to preserve the bases from which his own fighters operated.
But that asshole Prescott had managed to get himself caught with his fighters out of position and armed with the wrong external ordnance loads while every damned Bug gunboat in the universe came charging down on TF 71! And, of course, a carrier built on a monitor hull was far too slow and clumsy to dodge kamikazes. Which meant that Angela Martens, as a direct consequence of Prescott's latest screwup, was about to be attacked by waves of antimatter-loaded gunboats whose sole purpose in life was to destroy her and everyone on board her . . . including one Vincent Steele.
Bradford had all but pissed himself when Steele buttonholed him and the petty officer babbled out the latest news-news, which, Steele had noted, Captain Morris hadn't seen fit to put out over the net just yet. Prescott had managed to get all of them into a situation from which they could be rescued only by a miracle. The only way they could possibly beat off the waves of gunboats streaking towards them was to somehow recover their own fighters and manage to get them rearmed and relaunched before the Bugs arrived.
Which, Bradford had assured him, was effectively impossible.
Raw terror threatened to overwhelm Steele, but he'd shoved it aside. There was nothing he could do about what was about to happen, but assuming he himself survived-and despite all Bradford had said, he resolutely refused to consider the possibility that he might not-he could at least ensure that there was proof of the degree to which Prescott had screwed up this time.
He hadn't even considered enlisting Delmore's aid. If she'd known what he was really up to, she might well have turned him in to Captain Morris herself, given the extent to which she'd allowed herself to be co-opted by the Navy. Besides, she was a stickler for obeying every petty military instruction she received. The fact that it was at least as much her job to find out the things the Navy didn't want her to know as to faithfully parrot the things the Navy did want her to know never even seemed to occur to her. She-and the rest of the press pool-had been told the hanger bays were off limits during flight operations, and there was no way she would have accompanied Steele down here. Which was a pity. She might be a brown-nosing bitch, but she did know her way around the guts of these stupid ships a lot better than he did. He could probably have gotten here in half the time if he'd been able to count on her to help. Not to mention the fact that he would have been able to understand a lot more of what was going on with her to interpret.
But she wasn't here, so he'd just have to do the best he could without her.
He edged cautiously closer to the mouth of the alcove in which he'd hidden himself and manipulated the camera control to pan it back and forth across the scene outside it.
Despite his own sophistication (and fear), he had to admit that it was incredibly exciting to watch. He vaguely remembered the briefer who'd escorted his own small clutch of reporters around the hanger decks when they first came aboard. The young woman had seemed far too youthful for her rank as a full lieutenant-more like a teenager in uniform than a real officer. But someone had told him later that she was a Fringer, from one of the out worlds where the antigerone treatments were universally available, so she'd probably been quite a few years older than he'd thought at the time.
But what stuck in his mind now was the way she'd told them that a carrier's hanger deck was the most dangerous assignment in the entire Navy. He'd put it down as hyperbole intended to impress the ignorant rubes of the press, but now he wasn't so sure.
He was glad he was wearing the standard Navy-issue vacsuit he'd been issued from ship's stores. Everyone else was wearing one, too, of course-vacsuits were the Navy's standard battledress, which was probably one of the more reasonable policies it had ever decreed. Although Steele's suit bore the word "PRESS" across the front of the helmet and the shoulder blades, the label was less evident than one might have expected, especially if the person looking at it had something else on his mind. Aside from the press identification, however, Steele's vacsuit looked remarkably like that of an Engineering officer. That was because he was assigned to a life pod attached to Communications, which, in turn, was assigned to the Engineering techs assigned to Com maintenance.