“I may assume,” he said, “that my elevation to the rank of Vice-Admiral will come at some convenient time during the next year?”
“We had thought,” the Minister for the Fleet said, “to implement it as of this date.”
“I would respectfully suggest that it be withheld until I have furnished a convenient pretext in the form of significant battle action,” Henlo replied.
The Minister for Preparedness nodded slowly. “An excellent suggestion.” He looked at Henlo shrewdly. “May I say, Captain Henlo, that you are an even more remarkable man than your record would indicate.”
Henlo accepted the compliment gracefully. He hated equivocal situations. Now he could be sure that he would also have to guard against the Ministry’s attempts to assassinate him.
All in all, it had been a nerve-wracking but remarkable and satisfying session.
III
Henlo returned to Torener with his nerves in the fine, whetted condition which had always produced his best thinking. He called in his Executive Officer immediately, and issued orders for the provision of admiral’s facilities aboard ship.
“Are we going to carry Rahoul’s flag, sir?” the exec asked.
“That’s right,” Henlo said, and grinned nastily at his subordinate’s disconcerted expression. He had fully expected the story of Miranid’s promotion to become current almost immediately. It only remained for him to discover just what, in the exec’s estimation, constituted subtle probing.
“Ah—I meant Admiral Miranid, of course, rather than the late Commander,” the man said hastily. “A mistake of the tongue.”
“Undoubtedly. A bit character revealing, wouldn’t you say?”
The exec departed in hasty confusion. Nevertheless, Henlo reflected, he would have used exactly the same approach himself, three years earlier. In about six years, that officer might require judicious attention.
Every carefully analyzed little fragment of psychological data helped keep a man’s fur on.
But all this was merely automatic routine. What mattered now was Miranid. What manner of man was he? Henlo had no intention of following his carefully implied orders until he’d had a chance to suck the ephemeral admiral dry of any useful political techniques he might have developed.
And, for that matter, precisely why did Miranid have to be removed?
Miranid did not arrive before Torener was completely fitted-out and ready to take her place with the fleet. In that interval, Henlo managed to keep his own tensions from showing, and was also able to get a fair idea of the reactions his subordinate officers would manifest.
Heaven only knew what the regular officers in the remainder of the fleet were thinking. Aboard Torener, Henlo awaited his arrival with a mixture of curiosity and amusement. The admiral would find it rough going.
Miranid arrived at night. A thin, close-packed man with thick but dull fur, he marched up the lowered ship’s ramp with a lithe grace and quickness to his movements that reminded Henlo of something wild.
The formalities were short, as usual, since the admiral was presumed competent until proved otherwise. As a matter of fact, Henlo had arranged it nicely, with the ship’s officers lined up in order of rank and with himself at their head, of course. The required minimal exchange of salutes finished the entire ceremony in a quarter of an hour.
Rahoul, who had set something of a standard for incapability, had been welcomed to the Ministerial Office Building with three full hours of music, saluting, and drill, during the progress of which he had grown increasingly restive. At the conclusion, he had taken the un-subtle hint, and not even presented himself at the Ministry before going home and suiciding.
“My compliments on your evident good health,” Miranid said, in the usual formula.
“And mine on yours,” Henlo replied neutrally enough.
They exchanged no further amenities. Miranid assumed command immediately, and, with a startling familiarity for the more esoteric flight characteristics of the City Class, had Torener blasted up to spearhead the formation in which the remainder of the fleet lay.
Henlo wondered, briefly, whether he was going to make his command address to the fleet immediately, or wait until all ships had acknowledged Torener’s arrival. Apparently, some of them were being deliberately laggard in so doing.
Miranid threw a quick glance at the Admiral’s Plot board which had been installed in one of the control room bulkheads. The white lights marking the positions of friendly ships were only sparsely modified to pink by the brilliant red “Your Position Determined and Acknowledged” lights.
He grunted, and for a moment Henlo thought he was going to turn the ship back to Captain’s command and make the bold stroke of beginning the customary address immediately, regardless of whether those ships pretended not to know of his presence.
Miranid was across the compartment in three strides, and in the Master Navigator’s chair. “Grab holds,” he lashed out, and Henlo got a palm around a stanchion just as Torener spurted ahead.
The Plot board went crazy. His head spinning, his free arm busy fending off loose equipment that came flying at him, Henlo realized dimly, and with horror, that Miranid had interlocked all of the fleet’s navigators with his own controls.
It was over in a third of an hour. Unspeaking, his hands flashing over the navigation board, and with the same highly unexpected familiarity with the capacities of even the most inconsequential Fleet vessels, the new admiral had the entire armada whipped into a compact group along unfamiliar but, to Henlo, brilliant organizational lines. And the entire Grand Farlan Starfleet was leaving the home system rapidly behind, pursuing a course which Henlo recognized as being the most deceptive possible while still permitting rapid diversion toward the very part of the Vilkai territories which Henlo had long decided was ripest for attack.
So much for Miranid’s first move. When he flicked the switch that unlocked the other ships’ navigating computers, the second began almost instantly.
The admiral threw a look over his shoulder at the Plot chart. In the same motion, he scooped up an Intervoice microphone.
“Gunnery.”
“Gunnery here.”
“Coordinates as indicated—” He punched out a position for the gun computers. “Fire!”
And Regra, an off-screen destroyer that had instantly attempted to go into turnover and return to the home system, burst apart.
Then, at last, Miranid switched over to General Comm and made his command address to the fleet. It was this:
“Have I made myself clear?”
He switched off, got out of the chair, and stalked by Henlo.
“Your ship, Captain,” he said.
“Thank you, sir,” Henlo said unsteadily, and Miranid clanged the airtight hatch behind him as he strode away toward his cabin. In the control compartment, officers and men with anomalous expressions began picking up the loose gear they had assumed it was safe to unlatch once Torener had rendezvoused with the fleet.
IV
Once again, Henlo sat in his cabin, trying to sleep. And again, it was not the innumerable creakings and drummings of a ship running under constant acceleration that kept him from succeeding. His thoughts were in a hopeless muddle.