She knew some people wondered what she could possibly see in the brutish-looking Lethridge, but that was because they'd never bothered to look past the face at the man. Metcalf had, and
"Oh, shit!" The soft expletive was almost a prayer, and she turned quickly as she heard it. Lethridge sat back in his chair, looking down at the lines of text glowing on his display, and she walked quickly towards him.
"What is it?"
"We've got a 'response required' message," he replied.
"What about?" she asked.
"They've missed Proxmire's courier boat," he said grimly, and she felt her face lose all expression.
"And?" Her voice was flat, impersonal, and Lethridge looked up at her quickly. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, discarding whatever he'd been about to say as he recognized the grimness in her dark eyes.
"And it's just about what the Admiral figured it would be," he said after a moment instead. "His next duty station's sent a routine missing ship inquiry up the line."
"Is this one his replacement?" Metcalf asked. It was unlikely, of course. If the new boat was carrying a shipping inquiry, then obviously someone expected it to report back instead of settling into orbit here.
"No." Lethridge shook his head. "There's an attachment to the inquiry, thoughsomething about another message that explains why Proxmire's replacement has been delayed. It's listed as... Alpha-Seven-Seven-Ten." He looked at the petty officer who shared his com watch with him. "Anything on that one, Alwyn?"
"Sorry, Sir. I'm still working through the queue directory. There's an awful lot of routine stuff in hererequests for reports, new regulations, all kinds of crap. Just looking at all of it is going to take a couple of hours, I'd guess, and I haven't started any actual decoding of the lower priority messages yet."
"Find it now," Metcalf directed, much more curtly than she'd intended to, and resumed her pacing as PO Alwyn called up message A-7710 and he and Lethridge dove into the task of decoding it.
She hadn't thought about Proxmire and his crew in months now. Part of her had felt almost guilty about that, but the rest of her had recognized it as a healthy sign that she'd finally accepted that she'd truly had no choice but to kill him and that it was time to put it behind her. But they never had located anyone on Hell who'd known exactly how long he was supposed to have the Cerberus courier duty, and Citizen Brigadier Tresca's sloppy com staff had never bothered to enter that information into their computers.
Once Harkness and his team had broken into the secured data they'd at least been able to check the records for how long courier boats were normally assigned to Camp Charon, but the information hadn't helped much. The duration of courier assignments tended to be erraticin some cases, the records suggested, because assignment here was considered punishment duty, which meant that how long a crew had it depended on how seriously they'd pissed off their superiors. The shortest duration they'd found had been five T-months, and the longest had been just over a T-year and a half. They'd also been able to establish that Proxmire had been here for only three months, and they'd hoped that meant he'd had enough time left on his assignment for them to do what they had to do before someone came looking for him.
Only they'd been wrong.
"Got it!" Lethridge announced suddenly, and Metcalf found herself back beside his chair. "It says here" the Erewhonese officer began, then paused in surprise as he looked up and discovered that Metcalf had somehow teleported herself across to him without making a sound. He blinked, then shook himself.
"It says here," he resumed with a slightly lower volume, "that Proxmire failed to check in with Shilo Sector SS for his next assignment. They sound concerned, but not terribly so; this is just a request that Camp Charon confirm that he hypered out on time. But it also says his replacement won't be here for another two T-monthswhich means he'll be almost four months late by the time he actually gets here." The Erewhonese officer smiled wryly. "Whoever drafted this message seems to've figured Tresca would be bouncing off the walls by now over the delay. He went to some lengths to explain the courier net's been all screwed up lately. Apparently StateSec doesn't have as many boats of its own as we'd thought. They seem to rely on Navy couriers a lot, but the Navy's been whipping their own boats all over the PRH to coordinate all the ship movements Citizen Secretary McQueen's been ordering."
"Well thank God for small favors," Metcalf muttered.
"Agreed. But that leaves the problem of what I tell this courier," Lethridge pointed out. "Should I go with the canned response?"
"Um." Metcalf frowned again, hands still clasped behind her, and bounced slowly up and down on the balls of her feet while she thought. It would have been so much nicer to be able to ask Admiral Harrington about it, but that was impossible for the same reason she couldn't ask Commodore Ramirez or Captain Benson: none of them were on Hell at the moment.
Ramirez and Benson were off reacquiring their command skills aboard Krashnark in company with the ex-StateSec light cruiser Bacchante, and Admiral Harrington had gone along to observe and possibly throw a few unplanned tactical problems at them. That was one reason Metcalf had designed the courier boat's inbound routing so carefullyto keep her well clear of the exercise areaand she hoped the CIC crews she and Senior Chief Ascher had been training aboard Krashnark had made use of the opportunity to run a passive plot on a live target. And that they weren't embarrassing their teachers.
Her mouth moved again, this time in a grimace. They were making enormous progress, but aside from about four thousand Manticoran and Grayson POWs, none of whom had been dirtside on Hell for more than five T-years, the best of their personnel were at least a decade out of date. Some of them, like Benson, were more like half a century out of date, and blowing that kind of rust off their skills required something on the order of an old-fashioned nuke. Of course, Benson was a special case, Metcalf admitted. The captain had a genuine giftshe might even be as good in the captain's chair as Admiral Harrington was reputed to have beenand her skills were coming back with astonishing speed. But a lot of the others were still pretty pathetic by RMN standards.
Which was the reason Metcalf prayed they wouldn't have to deal with any regular navy crews that approached the quality of, say, Lester Tourville's people. It would not be a pleasant afternoon in space if they did.
Now stop that, she told herself with absent severity. So far, things have gone better on the retraining front than you could ever have expected, now haven't they?
And so they had. Bacchante had come swanning along as innocently and unsuspectingly as Krashnark, and Warner Caslet had talked her skipper through the minefields and energy platforms just as smoothly as he'd talked Citizen Captain Pangborn through them. The actual capture of the ship had been a little trickier, since Bacchante had just stopped in for a little R&R and a broader selection of fresh vegetables. Since she hadn't been delivering any prisoners, finding a justification for sending multiple shuttles full of boarders up to meet her had been much harder. In fact, it had been impossible... but it hadn't been necessary, either. Citizen Commander Vestichov hadn't been able to surrender fast enough when the targeting systems of a dozen graser platforms locked his ship up at a range of less than twelve thousand kilometers.