“I see you don’t know the situation,” she said without even a hint of anger. That seemed to make Gavin even more nervous.
“I don’t—It doesn’t matter,” he said, almost stammering. “It doesn’t matter what happened—what you say; we’re not coming back as long as you’re the captain.”
“I see,” Heris said. “Perhaps I’d better let you speak to Lady Cecelia.” She waved her employer over, and stepped away from the comunit, out of its pickup range, for a moment. In brief phrases, she explained Gavin’s message, and watched almost amused as Lady Cecelia went white with fury and then red.
“Damn them!”
“No . . . think a moment. They’re incompetent, lazy, and we wanted to get rid of them anyway. Now they’re also in legal jeopardy—and you have the reins. They don’t know what’s happened over here—none of it. They don’t know you have a crew already. Have fun, milady!” Heris grinned, and after a last glower, Lady Cecelia grinned, too. She beckoned Heris to join her at the comunit niche.
Gavin’s self-pitying whine had scarcely begun when Lady Cecelia cut him off with a terse and almost certainly inaccurate description of his ancestry, his progeny, his intellect, and his probable destination. Heris decided that foxhunting offered unique opportunities for invective, and found her own anger draining away as Cecelia continued her tirade.
“And I shall certainly file suits for breach of contract,” she wound down, “and I daresay Lord Thornbuckle will be investigating you to see if you’re involved in this other affair.”
“But Lady Cecelia,” whined Gavin. “What other affair? And why—I mean, we’ve served you—” She cut him off, and turned to face Heris, breathing heavily.
“How was that?”
“Fine. And since we know you had one smuggler in the group, I would carry through on that threat to have them investigated.”
“I certainly will,” Cecelia said. She stalked off, her tall angularity expressing indignation with every twitch of her formal skirt. Heris excused herself early and went upstairs to contact Petris again.
“So we’re going out short-crewed,” Heris said. She was not unhappy about it. “By civilian standards, that is. And over-crewed on the house-staff side, considering Lady Cecelia’s guests this round.” The prince had his own set of servants, and Cecelia insisted on adding another cook.
“Looks adequate to me, Captain,” Petris said. He had worked up a crew rotation. “We could use two or three more, but—”
“But you’re right, this is adequate. If we don’t run into trouble, and if everyone works at Fleet efficiency. Which I expect you will. Something to consider is that we can hire replacements to fill out the list at Rockhouse Major. And we might think of hiring ex-Fleet personnel, while we’re about it.”
“Are you looking for trouble, Captain?” Petris’s dark eyes twinkled.
“No. But I expect it anyway.” A tap at her door interrupted. “Oh—that’ll be Bunny’s daughter Bubbles, I expect.” She had forgotten, thanks to Gavin, that she’d agreed to talk to Bubbles after she went up to her room. “She’s insisted on talking to me.” Petris grinned at her expression.
“What—do you think she wants to come along?”
“Yes, and I can’t let her. And I don’t like the role she’s casting me in.”
“You’ll do her no harm,” Petris said.
“That’s what her father told me,” Heris said, shaking her head. “I’ll get back to you shortly.” She closed the uplink, and turned to the door of her suite. The blonde girl she’d first seen passed out drunk on a couch in the yacht had changed beyond recognition, and although being in mortal danger changed most people, this was exceptional.
“Captain Serrano,” the young woman said. She stood stiffly, as if in a parody of military formality.
“Yes—do come in. We had a small crisis aboard, and I was just dealing with it.”
“I—if this is a bad time—” She had flushed, which made her look younger.
“Not at all. Between crises is an excellent time.” Heris led the way to a pair of overstuffed chairs beneath the long windows, and gestured as she sat in one of them. “Have a seat.”
The girl sat bolt upright, not her usual posture, and looked like a young officer at a first formal dinner. Heris wondered again what this was about. Her father had refused to give any hints; Heris’s own experience was that when young people preferred to talk to a relative stranger, the topic was usually embarrassing—at least for the youngster. But she didn’t know what, in the current state of the aristocracy, would be likely to provoke embarrassment. What “rules” could such a girl have broken—or be planning to break—when most of society’s rules didn’t affect her at all?
“I want to change my name,” the girl said, all in a rush, as if it were a great confession. Heris blinked. She would never have allowed herself to be called Bubbles in the first place, and she could understand why the girl would want to change . . . but not why anyone would object. Was this the big problem? Surely there was more.
“Bubbles doesn’t really fit you,” she said cautiously.
“No, not now.” The girl waved that off as if it were trivial—which is what Heris thought it. “My full name’s Brunnhilde Charlotte, and Raffa and I thought Brun would be a good version. But that’s not the whole problem.”
“Oh?”
“No—my parents are willing to give up Bubbles, though Mother would prefer some other variation, but it’s the other part . . .”
The other part meaning what, Heris wondered. She sat and waited; youngsters usually told you more if you did.
“It’s . . . the family name.” Aha. That would cause a row, she could see. “I haven’t told them yet, but I know they won’t like it.” They would more than “not like it” if she wanted to give up her family name; they would, Heris suspected, be furious and hurt. The girl—Brun, she tried to think of her now—went on. “It’s just that I’ve always been Bubbles, Bunny’s daughter—Lord Thornbuckle’s daughter—and not myself. I feel—different now. When we were in the cave—” Ah, thought Heris. The rapid personal maturation by danger has left behind the social immaturity. “—I realized I didn’t feel like who I was. I mean, I felt different, and it didn’t match.” She took a deep breath and rushed through the rest. “I want to change my name and go into the Regular Space Service and learn how to really do things and find out who I am.”
Heris blinked again, remembering her own impulse (quickly squashed) to change her name and apply to the Academy not as a Serrano but purely on her own merits. She had even made up a name and practiced the signature. The silly romanticism of youth—or, if you looked at it another way, the integrity and courage.
“And you thought I could help you?” she said, keeping her reactions to herself.
“Yes. You know how things work—and you could take me to someplace I could enlist.”
Now the problem was how to say no without shutting the girl off completely.
“How old are you?” Heris asked. “And what kind of background would you offer the Fleet?” She already suspected the answers. Brun was too old to enlist with the skills she could reasonably claim—having been taught marksmanship by your father didn’t count, even if he was a renowned hunter—and lacking any education the Fleet would recognize. At least, under an assumed name. “Which will get you in trouble anyway,” Heris explained. “After all, plenty of people the Fleet doesn’t want would like to get in. Falsifying one’s identity is fairly common—and nearly always detected, and when detected is always justification for rejection.”