She felt a small trickle of satisfaction as she realized the same thing would have happened here, if she'd simply asked the computers to plot a course along the most powerful gravity waves, because one strong section of them never rose above the Gamma bands, which would have required at least three downward translations. That would not only have cost them over sixty percent of their base velocity at each downward translation, but Hexapuma's maximum apparent velocity would have been far lower in the lower bands, as well.
She punched in waypoints along the blinking green line of her rough course as the computer refined the best options for gravity waves and the necessary impeller drive transitions between them. The blinking line stopped blinking, burning a steady green, as the waypoints marched along it. Helen knew it was taking her longer than it would have taken Lieutenant Commander Wright. Still, she decided, she didn't have much to feel embarrassed about when the numbers finally came together.
"I have the course, Captain," she announced, looking up from her console at last.
"Very good, Ms. Zilwicki." Terekhov smiled slightly, and waved one hand in Senior Master Chief Clary's direction.
"Helm," Helen said, "come to one-one-niner by zero-four-six at five hundred and eighty gravities, translation gradient of eight-point-six-two to h-band Zeta-one-seven. I'm uploading the waypoints now."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am," Clary replied. "Coming to one-one-niner by zero-four-six, acceleration five-eight-zero gravities, translation gradient eight-point-six-two, leveling at Zeta-one-seven."
Helen listened carefully as the senior master chief repeated her instructions. Under any conceivable normal circumstances, there was no way a petty officer of Clary's seniority was going to get them wrong. Even if she did, she almost certainly would have caught any error when she checked her actual helm settings against the course data Helen had loaded to her computers. But even improbable accidents happened, which was why the Navy insisted orders be repeated back verbally. And just as it was Clary's duty to repeat her orders, it was Helen's duty to be certain they'd been repeated correctly.
Hexapuma turned to starboard, climbing relative to the plane of the ecliptic of the local star, and moved ahead with ever gathering velocity as she accelerated at her maximum normal power settings.
"Thank you, Ms. Zilwicki," Terekhov said gravely, then he looked at Commander FitzGerald. "I believe we can secure from transit stations, XO. Set the normal watch schedule, if you please."
"Aye, aye, Sir." The executive officer turned to Lieutenant Commander Wright. "Commander Wright, you have the watch."
"Aye, aye, Sir. I have the watch," Wright agreed. "Third Watch personnel, man your stations," he continued. "All other watches, dismiss."
There was an orderly stir as the other three watches' bridge crew, including Helen and Ragnhild, but not Aikawa, turned their stations over to the Third Watch. As they did, Wright seated himself in the command chair at the center of the bridge which Captain Terekhov had just surrendered to him. He pressed the stud on the arm rest which activated the ship-wide intercom.
"Now hear this," he said. "This is the Officer of the Watch. Third Watch personnel, man your stations; all other watches, dismiss."
He settled himself more comfortably in the chair and leaned back as HMS Hexapuma bored steadily onward into the Talbott Cluster.
Chapter Nine
Abigail Hearns watched Chief Steward Joanna Agnelli remove the dinner plates. The meal had been first rate, and so was the wine, although if the Captain had chosen it himself, his palate didn't quite match that of Captain Oversteegen or Lady Harrington. But whatever his qualifications as a wine expert, he-or someone-had certainly shown excellent taste when it came to furnishing his quarters.
The decksole was covered with gorgeous, handwoven mats of velvety-soft, superbly dyed silk-sisal from her own home world-probably from Esterhaus Steading, judging by their stylized lizard-hawk motif. She doubted anyone else in Hexapuma's company had the knowledge to realize just how rare and expensive those mats were. Abigail did, because her nursery back home had been floored in them when she'd been a child, and just looking at their rich-toned patterns made her want to kick off her boots and run barefoot across them.
The bulkheads bore a few paintings. All of them, from what she could see, were excellent. Most were holo-portraits, although there was one breathtaking original neo-oil of a red-haired woman with laughing green eyes. In some ways, she reminded Abigail of Commander Lewis, although this woman was probably older (always difficult to be certain in a prolong society), with a rounder face. It was an extraordinarily attractive face, too. Not beautiful, but brimming with life and character... and wisdom. Abigail thought she would have liked her.
The rest of the day cabin carried that same combination of taste, quality, and comfort-from the crystal decanters on the sideboard to the hand-rubbed polish of the ferran wood table and chairs. But despite its air of welcoming graciousness, there was also an edge of rawness. Newness. None of the furnishings had been with the Captain long enough to slot comfortably into the spaces of his life, she thought.
Probably because everything he'd surrounded himself with before had been destroyed with HMS Defiant at the Battle of Hyacinth. She wondered how that must feel, when he looked at the new paintings, the new furniture.
Abigail wasn't certain what to make of the dinner itself, either. Terekhov wasn't one of the RMN officers who followed the tradition of dining regularly with his officers. In Abigail's native Grayson Space Navy, every captain was expected to follow that practice, a legacy of Lady Harrington's indelible imprint upon their service, and Abigail had to admit it was the tradition she preferred. But Hexapuma's Junction transit lay over two T-weeks behind them, and this was the first time Captain Terekhov had invited anyone-aside from Commander FitzGerald and Commander Lewis-to dine with him.
When she'd learned of the dinner, and that she was on the guest list, Abigail had more than half-dreaded a boring evening, an ordeal to be suffered through while a captain who disliked parties pretended he didn't. But Terekhov had fooled her. It might be true he didn't care for parties, and he might not have been entirely comfortable at this one. But if that were the case, no one could have guessed it from watching him or listening to him. He'd remained the cool, slightly distant man he'd been from the beginning, yet he'd managed somehow to make every guest feel individually welcome. He'd been just as pleasant to Midshipman Kagiyama and Midshipwoman Pavletic as to Commander FitzGerald or Surgeon Commander Orban, even as he had maintained precisely the right distance from each of his juniors. In many respects, it had been a genuine tour de force , and yet that inner barrier, that sense of being one step removed from everyone about him, remained.
Abigail couldn't help wondering what hid behind that barrier. Strength, or weakness? Part of her was tempted to assume the former, yet she remembered only too well how drastically she had misjudged her own first captain. And so she remained undecided, feeling as if there were a shoe poised to drop somewhere just out of sight.
All of the toasts had been drunk. Aikawa, as the junior officer present, had gotten through the loyalty toast to the Queen with admirable composure, and the Captain himself had called for the Protector's Toast from Abigail. She'd appreciated that, just as she'd appreciated and admired the fashion in which he'd discharged all of his host's responsibilities, and now she watched him lean towards Lieutenant Commander Kaplan at his left elbow. Abigail couldn't hear what they were saying from her own place at almost exactly the other end of the table, but Kaplan grinned suddenly, then actually laughed out loud. Terekhov straightened back up with a small smile of his own, but then his expression sobered, and he picked up his knife and rapped gently on the side of his wineglass with the back of the blade.
The musical chime cut through the buzz of low-voiced after-dinner conversation, and all eyes turned towards him.
"First, Ladies and Gentlemen," he said, "allow me to thank you all for joining me tonight. It's been an even more pleasant evening than I'd anticipated."
A low, inarticulate murmur answered him, and he smiled, ever so slightly. No doubt he was thinking exactly what Abigail was-that only a complete lunatic would even contemplate trying to turn down a dinner invitation from her commanding officer.
"And secondly," Terekhov continued, "I must confess I had at least a minor ulterior motive in inviting you. Commander FitzGerald and I have discussed our orders at some length, and I have no doubt the ship's grapevine has been buzzing with more or less garbled versions of those orders for weeks now. Since we'll be arriving in the Spindle System in less than three T-days, I thought it would be as well to take this opportunity to give all of you the official version of our mission."