"I can't believe he'd really be crazy enough to pull something like that, Ma'am," Gaunt said, shaking his head. "He must know we're coming-the glory hound didn't leave us any choice about that! Surely he's not so far gone he won't wait one more week if it means the difference between going in unsupported and arriving with backup."
Saunders regarded her XO with a slight, rare frown. Gaunt was an efficient executive officer, the sort who always got the details right and developed an almost uncanny ability to anticipate his CO's desires. But he was also a stickler for sometimes petty details, and he had a powerful attachment to doing things by The Book. A certain… narrowness, coupled with an aversion to risk taking. He disliked the "glory hounds," a term he used a bit too easily for her taste, and Victoria Saunders had come to question whether or not he had the combination of flexibility and moral courage to wear the white beret of a starship commander. Especially in a war like the present one.
His last comment had just settled the question, and she was guiltily aware that an executive officer was what he would remain. That was what happened when a CO endorsed an officer's evaluation with the fatal words "Not recommended for independent command."
"Perhaps you're right," she said, looking at the man whose career she'd just decided to kill.
He wasn't, of course. But there was no point trying to explain that to someone of his seniority who didn't already understand.
"It's Copenhagen , all right, Sir," Naomi Kaplan announced.
"Thank you, Guns," Terekhov said calmly, and Helen glanced sideways at Paulo. The two midshipmen stood beside Lieutenant Commander Wright, where he'd been running through the results of their latest astrogation quiz on one of his secondary plots. Now Paulo met her gaze with no more than the micrometric elevation of one sculpted eyebrow.
It was the tiniest expression shift imaginable, but to Helen, it might as well have been a shout. She'd come more or less to grips with her emotions where he was concerned, although she wasn't positive he'd done the same for her. It didn't really matter. One thing the Neue-Stil Handgemenge taught was patience, and she was willing to wait.
She'd get him in the end. Even if she had to use some of that same Neue-Stil to beat him into submission.
She pushed that thought aside-or, rather, into a convenient pigeonhole for later consideration-and returned his lifted eyebrow with an abbreviated nod of her own. They were in agreement. The Captain couldn't possibly be as calm as he sounded.
The Squadron (everyone was calling it that now… except the Captain) floated in the absolute darkness of interstellar space, over six light-years from the nearest star. Starships seldom visited that abyss of emptiness, for there was nothing there to attract them. But it made a convenient rendezvous, so isolated and lost in the enormity of the universe that even God would have been hard-pressed to find them.
Many of Hexapuma's people had found the visual displays… disturbing over the last week or so. The emptiness here was so perfect, the darkness so Stygian, that it could get to even the most hardened spacer. Commander Lewis, for example, made a point of avoiding any of the displays, and Helen had noticed Senior Chief Wanderman watching her every once in a while. There was something going on there, she thought. Something more than the uneasiness some of the ship's company seemed to feel. Whatever it was, Lewis wasn't letting it affect her performance of her duty, but Helen had the peculiar impression that Hexapuma's Engineer would welcome even the prospect of taking on an entire system navy if it only got her away from this lonely spot which the rest of existence had forgotten.
Personally, Helen wasn't bothered a bit. In fact, she rather enjoyed her visits to the observation dome to watch the other ships of the squadron with their lights drifting against the soul-drinking dark like friendly, nearby constellations.
"Lieutenant McGraw."
Terekhov's voice pulled her back out of her reverie.
"Yes, Sir?"
"Please challenge Copenhagen ."
"Aye, aye, Sir," the com officer of the watch replied, and Terekhov nodded and settled back in his command chair to wait.
Helen was confident Kaplan had identified the incoming ship correctly. And she felt equally certain Commander FitzGerald was still in command of her. But it was typical of the Captain to make absolutely certain. It was interesting. He took infinite pains, taking nothing for granted, and if she'd seen only that side of him, she'd have written him down as a slave to The Book. One of those fussy martinets who never stuck their necks out, never took a chance.
But that wasn't how the Captain's mind worked. He took such care over the details, whenever he could, because he knew he couldn't always do that. So that when the time came for the risks which must be run, he could be confident of his ship's readiness… and his own. Know he'd done everything he possibly could to disaster-proof his position by perfecting his weapon before the screaming chaos of battle struck.
It was a lesson worth taking to heart, she thought, trying to focus her mind on Wright's voice as the Astrogator resumed his analysis of her latest navigational effort.
"Captain on deck!"
Ginger Lewis, still officially Terekhov's acting executive officer, barked the traditional announcement as he and Ansten FitzGerald stepped through the briefing room hatch. It was a tradition Terekhov had dispensed with shortly after taking command of Hexapuma , but he wasn't surprised by Ginger's reversion to it. She had an excellent grasp of group dynamics, and she was providing him with every psychological edge she could.
Eleven men and women in that compartment, including himself, wore the white berets of starship commanders, and he saw uncertainty, concern-even fear-on some of those faces. He wondered what they saw when they looked at him?
He walked to the head of the table, FitzGerald at his shoulder, and seated himself as the XO moved behind his own chair.
"Be seated, Ladies and Gentlemen," he said.
They sat back down, and he let his eyes sweep silently around the table, looking at each of them in turn.
Anders of the Warlock , and his executive officer, George Hibachi. Both of them returned Terekhov's regard steadily. Not without concern, but without flinching. That was important. After -Terekhov himself, Ito Anders was the senior officer of the "squadron" he'd assembled.
Eleanor Hope of the Vigilant , and her XO, Lieutenant Commander Osborne Diamond. Hope looked acutely unhappy, and her eyes avoided his. Diamond was a cipher, sitting at his captain's left elbow with no more expression than the bulkhead behind him.
Commander Josepha Hewlett and Lieutenant Commander Stephen McDermott of the Gallant . Both of them looked uncomfortable; neither looked as unhappy as Hope.
Lieutenant Commander Benjamin Mavundia, Audacious ' CO, and his exec, Lieutenant Commander Annemarie Atkinson. They were an unlikely looking pair. Mavundia couldn't stand a millimeter over a hundred and fifty-eight centimeters, with dark skin and a shaved head; Atkinson was almost as tall as Terekhov himself, and fair-haired and ivory-complexioned. Yet Mavundia's expression was the closest to eager of anyone's in the compartment, and Atkinson's eyes mirrored his own determination.