David Drake - When the Tide Rises

A starship's rigging was set and lowered by hydraulic rather than electrical motors. Riggers communicated by hand signals and took orders from the bridge through hydromechanical semaphores; a radio signal, even from a half-watt intercom, might send a ship into uncharted nothingness forever.

The only reason to avoid radios in sidereal space was that you might then use one by accident in the Matrix. That was reason enough: spacers faced enough risks without adding an avoidable one. RCN suits were only fitted with radios by the agreement of both the captain and the signal officer.

An unintended good result of this was that conversations on the hull required direct contact between the helmets of the two people speaking. They couldn't possibly be overheard.

Cory bent to touch her again. "How did you learn that?" he said. Even vibrating through his helmet and hers, she could hear the fear and anger.

The answer was that Adele had examined the bank records of everyone connected with the production until she found sums of money-about thirty-seven thousand florins; she had no idea how the figure'd been arrived at-being transferred to a familiar name. Cory wasn't who she'd expected to find, but she'd never been a person to let preconceptions overrule facts.

"Answer the question, Midshipman!" she said harshly.

The software that permitted Adele to enter bank records-and to transfer money, if she'd chosen to do so; which of course she did not-was part of the package with which Mistress Sand had equipped her. She didn't care whether an observer would agree that she was using the tools properly: she was Mundy of Chatsworth, and if others' perceptions conflicted with her own sense of right, so much the worse for the others.

"Yes, mistress," whispered Cory. Adele had to know what the words must be to recognize them. "Mistress, I thought you and Captain Leary should get credit for what you did. I knew that with the new Chief of the Navy Board, well, nothing good would come from that direction. So I found a producer who made that sort of documentary and then I went into the logs."

His helmet shifted away from hers, then clicked back. Adele smiled faintly; Cory must've turned to face her, forgetting that they could either see one another or speak-unless they wanted to be nose to nose. She certainly didn't want that.

"It wasn't hard, really," he said. "They wanted to bring something out right away while the story was still hot in the news, and this let them show the real thing. Well, it could've done. It did, sort of."

That's one way to describe the "documentary,"Adele thought, but she supposed that judging by the standards of the entertainment industry, it was unusually accurate.

Which led to the next question. "So, you gave Stanlas the material free to help me and Captain Leary?" she said mildly.

"Oh, goodness, mistress, no!" Cory said unexpectedly. "They paid for it and paid well-I charged them ten florins a minute for what I transferred!"

Adele heard a rasp as the boy cleared his throat. "Look, mistress, I know you think… well, people think and maybe they're right, that I'm not very sharp. But my father's the biggest paving contractor on Florentine and I know how to negotiate a contract."

Before Adele could follow up on that, Cory went on, "Hoskins and Bladel were killed on Mandelfarne Island, you remember? And Dorsey lost a foot and can't walk any more. They gave her a mechanical one but it doesn't work. So I split the money between Dorsey and the two families. That seemed right."

Yes, it certainly does, Adele thought. Aloud she said, "There were others injured in the attack. I believe you were yourself, Cory?"

"Well, sort of but that doesn't matter," he said earnestly. "I mean, mistress, that's just the job, isn't it? We're RCN, nobody minds about a few scrapes. But dead-and that happens too, sure, but since I had the money. And Dorsey was different, she's on crutches now, I guess till she dies. It wouldn't help having a wheelchair and her living up on the fourth floor where it's cheap."

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Cory cleared his throat again and said, "Ah, mistress? I didn't ask Six because, you know, he might not agree. Or you, because, well, I was afraid to. I never thought you'd learn, mistress. I should've asked."

But you didn't, because I'm Mistress Mundy, who's killed more people than you can count, Adele thought. And you weren't sure how angry I might get if you told me what you planned.

"All right, Cory," she said. "I don't suppose there's any reason for Captain Leary to learn what happened. But you must never do that again, do you understand?"

"Yes, mistress!" Cory said in relief. "Mistress, I swear I won't!"

The dorsal semaphore had six arms. They all suddenly stuck out from the post at equal intervals. Cory gasped and pointed, then touched helmets again.

"Mistress!" he said. "That's an emergency recall. What do you think Six wants us for?"

"I think we'll go in and learn," said Adele. She shuffled toward the airlock, but Cory held her by the shoulder for a moment to unclip her safety line from the antenna.

Like a baby, she thought. But that's all right. I have a family to take care of me.

"Help me out of this thing!" Adele said even before the inner hatch was fully open. She didn't mind wearing the airsuit at her console-it'd be uncomfortable, but personal comfort had never concerned her. That the suit kept her from getting at her data unit-andwhy hadn't she left it behind when she went onto the hull?-was another matter.

She needn't have spoken: Tovera, Cazelet, and Cory-who'd stripped off his gauntlets in the airlock-were already at work on her catches.

"Mistress, I'm going to lift you," Cory said-and did so, tilting her back as though she were sitting at her console. When Adele's feet came off the floor, Tovera tugged down the lower half of the suit; Cory shifted and Rene pulled the remainder from her torso.

They worked well as a team. The midshipman was well experienced with suits and Tovera could be expected to accomplish any physical task efficiently, but Adele had just learned something important about Cazelet.

She smiled as she settled onto her console. How nice that what she'd learned was positive. It wasn't always that way.

Daniel was absorbed in computations, and Sun in the console adjacent to hers was rotating the turrets to make sure the guns were ready. Rather than ask either of them what was going on, Adele echoed the command display onto her own. In truth, even when the person talking to her was a friend whom she trusted implicitly, she felt more comfortable with electronic data than she did spoken words.

The astrogation display was gibberish, but Daniel had inset the Plot-Position Indicator; that showed illuminated beads maneuvering at the edge of the minefield protecting Diamondia. The three red beads were careted with the names of RCN vessels, theAldgate, Ludgate, andMoorgate. The names meant nothing to Adele and there wasn't time just now to call up full particulars.

The four blue pips weren't careted, which meant they'd turned off their IFF. Adele sniffed as her wands moved. As usual she'd slaved her console to her personal data unit, but that was just for comfort: she was adequately quick with any input device. A dumb machine might not be able to identify an uncooperative target at a light-hour's distance, but she was Adele Mundy.

If the ships had been closer, she'd have pinged the message drones that all but the very smallest vessels carried. A careful officer could disable that automatic facility, but with the exception of Adele herself she'd never seen anyone bother. Most captains didn't seem to know it existed.

That wasn't an answer for the present, since the signal and reply would take two hours. She'd make do with passive intelligence, the electronic signatures of the vessels themselves.