“It’s a minesweeper,” she heard. “Odd beast, isn’t it? Nothing else could go in after you.”
Then they guided her to the airlock, and on into the ship, where she had a chance to change into a gray Fleet shipsuit before her shuttle flight left for the Harrier.
“Some party,” the admiral said, without preamble, when Brun had arrived in her office.
“I—don’t remember most of it,” Brun said. The admiral looked familiar, though she didn’t think she’d met admirals before. Not this one, anyway.
“My niece tells me you once wanted to run away and join the service,” the admiral said. Niece. Aunt. Brun looked at the admiral again. Graying hair, but the same evenly chiseled dark features, the same compact body, the same confidence.
“You’re Heris’s aunt,” she blurted.
“Yes. And you’re Lord Thornbuckle’s daughter. Tell me—are you cured of your desire for adventure?”
Brun thought a moment, even though she didn’t need to think. “Not really,” she said. “I mean, I’m still alive.”
The admiral nodded, as if she’d expected that answer. “Do you now understand why my niece and her crew insisted that you learn all those boring bits you complained about?”
Brun laughed, which startled the admiral, then she smiled too. “I always understood,” Brun said. “I didn’t realize the complaining bothered them. Doesn’t everyone gripe?”
Admiral Serrano—she supposed they had the same surname as well as the same genes—tipped her head as if to inspect Brun more closely. “You are a remarkable young woman,” she said. “My niece thought so, and you just proved it again. Will you eat with me?”
Brun had no idea what meal might show up, but her stomach was ready for any of them. Any two or three of them. “Thank you,” she said, hoping that the admiral would ignore the far less mannerly answer her stomach gave at the thought of food. “I’d be honored.”
“She’s safe aboard the Harrier,” Koutsoudas said. “If that’s safe . . . they won’t let me talk to her.”
“I don’t think my aunt eats girls for breakfast,” Heris said. “Not even that one. Who, I’m sure, is cheerful and bright-eyed and ready to tell an admiral everything she thinks she knows about everything she’s heard.”
Heris put in a call to Sweet Delight, to reassure Cecelia that Brun had survived. Cecelia, relieved of that anxiety, had a long string of other topics to discuss. Heris really didn’t care, at that moment, about the fate of the breeding farms she’d visited, the status of the financial ansible, or what might happen to the miners who had thrown the party. She would have been far more annoyed with Cecelia, if the conversation had not included an inquiry about each of the former Sweet Delight crew. Cecelia might have her batty side, but she did care about people. She even cared about the present crew, especially Jig Faroe, whom she praised until Heris finally cut her off. She could almost feel his embarrassment through the intervening thousands of kilometers of vacuum.
“You know,” Ginese said, without looking around, “it’s going to be very interesting when your aunt and Lady Cecelia get together.”
Heris had not thought of that. “Oh . . . my,” she said. Those of the bridge crew who had been on Sweet Delight had the same expression she felt on her own face.
Chapter Nineteen
“Patchcock? What are they doing on Patchcock?” Kevil Mahoney dropped the faceted paperweight and stared at Lord Thornbuckle.
“I haven’t the faintest idea.” Bunny stared out the window at a day that suddenly seemed less sunny. “It probably has something to do with the technical data on the rejuvenation drugs that they sent us . . . but it’ll take me hours to wade through that. And in the meantime—Patchcock! Of all places in the universe.”
“It’s not a good sign,” Kevil said. “Things have gone wrong with this from the beginning. D’you suppose Kemtre had this sort of feeling—that everything was suddenly coated with grease and slipping away in all directions?”
“I don’t know, but I do. First the financial ansibles in the distant sectors go offline for a few days, and then some crazy admiral demands authorization to take a whole wave on a live-fire maneuver out to the frontier, ‘just in case there’s trouble. . . .’ ”
“And you gave it,” Kevil reminded him.
“Well . . . they were already gone by the time it actually crossed my desk. And they claimed it involved Heris Serrano, that she was in some kind of trouble—”
“It’s probably George’s fault,” Kevil said. When Bunny looked confused, he said, “Not that, the Patchcock thing. Whatever you don’t want George to see, he sees. Whatever you hope he doesn’t know, he knows. Some evil instinct told him that there was one place we didn’t want our children to go, and he headed for it like a bee to its hive.”
“From the Guerni Republic?”
“I know, it’s unlikely. But so is George. I wish he’d realize what his talents are, and use them profitably. He—” Kevil broke off as Bunny’s desk chimed at them.
“Yes?” Bunny glared at the desk; he’d told Poisson that he didn’t want to be interrupted.
“A Marta Katerina Saenz, milord. Says she’s going to talk to you.”
“I’m—” But the door was opening already.
Raffa’s Aunt Marta had the dark, leathery face of someone who spent most of her days outside. On her, the coloring and features that made Raffa look like a Gypsy princess had matured into those of a wisewoman. She wore clothes that layered improbable color combinations to give an overall effect of archaic flamboyance. Bunny had never met her before, since she preferred to live in the mountains of her own planet, but he had no doubt who she was.
“Where is my niece?” she asked.
“You are naturally concerned,” Kevil began.
She gave him a look that stopped the words in his mouth. Bunny felt his own mouth going dry. “Don’t try your honey tongue on me, Kevil Mahoney,” she said. “You’ve the charm of a horse dealer, but I’m not buying. You sent Raffaele off somewhere, and now you’ve lost her. Isn’t that so?”
“She’s not exactly lost,” Bunny said, wondering why his collar suddenly felt so tight. He had aunts of his own, formidable aunts, whom he had learned to work with or around, as needs must. But this—“They’re on Patchcock,” he blurted, surprising himself. He had not meant to tell her.
“They . . .” she said, meditatively. “I presume Ronald Carruthers is one of ‘them.’ ”
“And my son George is the other. She should be safe enough—”
Her dark eyebrows rose alarmingly to the iron-gray hair above. “Did you not hear me before? Your son George, indeed. I’ve heard about your George.” Then, before Kevil could answer, she waved a hand. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. Your son’s not a bad young man, and what I heard is years old by now. Just that he had a clever tongue in his head, inherited no doubt from you.”
“Quite,” Kevil said. Bunny glanced at him, glad to see the flush receding from his neck. Kevil’s profession required him to keep his temper, but no man was at his calmest with his son under fire.
“So—you sent Raffaele somewhere with Ronald and George—”
“Not precisely,” Bunny said. When cornered by an aunt of this caliber, the best plan was complete disclosure. “We sent Ronnie and George to—on a—to do something for us. And they didn’t report in—”
“I’m not surprised,” she said, this time with no softening. “And you sent Raffaele to rescue them? I suppose it made sense from your viewpoint.”
“Not exactly rescue. We wouldn’t—I mean, we assumed they’d just gotten . . . er . . . sidetracked, as it were.”