The Way To Glory by David Drake

Author:David Drake [Drake, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-11-28T04:06:21+00:00

* * *

Adele watched as Sun, lying on his back, spliced her specialized equipment into Cutter 614's command console. The commo suite was quite sophisticated—virtually identical to that of the Hermes herself though without the redundancy—but there wasn't provision for anybody but the captain to use it: cutters didn't ordinarily carry their own signals officer.

Daniel, obviously thinking the same thing, said, "We'll weld you a jumpseat on the back of the console, Mundy."

He cleared his throat and added, "I regret this situation. That I involved you in it, particularly."

"There you go, mistress!" Sun said, starting to inch his way out of the very close quarters he'd been working in. No starship could be described as roomy, but cutters were tight even by the standards of a corvette like the Princess Cecile. "Want to test it now?"

"In a few minutes, Sun," Adele said. "Thank you for your help. I don't have the expertise with tools to have done that myself."

"My pleasure," Sun said cheerfully. He got his head clear, glanced to either side, and then sat up carefully in the space between the console and the gunnery board. "I'll bring my duffel in, then. Captain, it'll be a pleasure to sail with you again."

"Are you assigned to 614, Sun?" Daniel said in surprise. "I'd have thought..."

Sun grinned. "Every place in the cutter's crew went to a senior Sissie, sir," he said. "And it's not volunteers, though I guess we all would. Captain Slidell assigned us, just like that."

"Let's go out on the hull, Lieutenant," Adele said, closing down her personal data unit. She smiled. "I believe it's too early to watch the sunset, but I'm sure we'll find something."

"Eh?" said Daniel. His puzzlement warmed into a great, beaming smile. "Yes indeed, I'm sure we will. If I'm stationed on Nikitin for any length of time, I'd like to make a study of the seabirds. Do you know, I've already seen three off-planet species? I wonder if they're accidental or deliberate introductions?"

The cutter's single hatch for the present connected it to the tender. Going onto the hull required entering the Hermes' central passage, then exiting through one of the tender's hatches. With Daniel in the lead, they went out the same way they'd done a few days before.

Adele didn't have magnetic boots this time, but Daniel snapped a short safety line to her belt and attached the other end to his own harness. The worst her clumsiness was going to do was leave her hanging at the end of a six foot line. Unless Daniel's injuries—

"Daniel, are you physically fit?" she said sharply as she followed him up the ladder to the mast platform. "Perhaps we shouldn't—"

"Oh, heavens yes!" Daniel said, turning at the top and offering Adele his hand. "You mean from the squid? Yes, I need to use my legs or they're apt to swell and stiffen, but there's no better exercise than running up and down the antennas the way the crew has to do on a cutter."

He held up his left hand.

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