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  "Shelly," corrected Mike, fingering the bracelet of black intelli-plastic. "Michelle died on Diess."

  "Sorry," said General Horner, ignoring the inquiring glance from General Taylor, "Shelly. Can you work out the details with just that?"

  "I could do it without the staff, if everything is in the network."

  "It is," said Horner.

  "Then no problem."

  "Initial deployments and SOP battle plans for three regiments in wildly varying terrain?" asked General Taylor. "No problem?"

  "Yes, sir," said O'Neal with a tired smile. He thought it would be a nightmare, but doable. "After activating a company of multigenerational soldiers being introduced to science fiction technology for the first time, in an encampment that has daily riots, this will be a piece of cake."

  "Okay," chuckled General Horner, tossing back the last of his vodka. "You have three weeks. Your company will be on leave by then and you're going on leave as well. Colonel Hanson asked me to make that an order, by the way."

  "Yes, sir. I could do with a little time off."

  "I agree," said Taylor. "And so did Lieutenant General Left."

  Mike looked suspiciously from general to general. "How did the Fleet Strike Commander, who I trust is still safely ensconced on Titan, become involved?"

  "Well, Bob seemed like the best point of contact to make with Fleet," said Horner with a frown.

  Mike flicked an ash off his cigar and frowned warily. "And why did Fleet get involved?"

  "Well, we had to get permission from Vice Admiral Bledspeth," explained Taylor.

  "Yes, sir," said Mike, his suspicions fully aroused. "I suppose you did. For what is the question?"

  "Well, to get them to kick Sharon loose," said Horner.

  "And shuttle her down for a break of her own," pointed out Taylor. "That was almost harder."

  Mike's jaw dropped. "Sharon's taking leave?" he asked incredulously. "Since when?"

  "What time is it?" asked Taylor, ostentatiously looking at his watch.

  Horner gave one of his rare true smiles. "Close your mouth, Mike, flies will take advantage. Think of it as having friends in high places. Or, if you prefer, think of it as a reward for maxing your FSTEP."

  "Sir," the captain spluttered. "This is not funny. It is completely unfair to everyone else in the world who has a spouse on detached duty! It is the worst case of personal privilege I can imagine!"

  "Yes, it is," said Taylor, seriously. "But most of those soldiers have not made the contributions you have. Most of those soldiers are not going to be asked to shoulder the burdens you, and Sharon, will be asked to shoulder. And most of those families, despite the occasional tear-jerker news report, don't have both parents in harm's way."

  "Mike," said Horner, seriously also. "It's a done deal. I knew you would react this way which is why I didn't even ask you about it. Take it as a gift from a friend or an order from a general. I don't care which. But Sharon will be on leave a week before you get kicked loose. Then you'll have a week together. After that you'll have a week by yourself. And that will probably be the last break you have for years."

  "Yes, sir," said O'Neal, finally getting over the shock. Looked at a different way it was a hell of a compliment. The only part that bothered him was the personal privilege. He finally decided that this was one gift horse where he wasn't gonna look at the teeth.

  "Take off, Mighty Mite. It's good to have you around."

  " 'Night, sir," said Mike. He paused at the door in thought. "And thanks," he said.

  CHAPTER 14

  Lagrange Point Four, Sol III

  0510 EDT September 10th, 2004 ad

  I wanna pony. Her young face was scrunched in an unhappy frown, her arms crossed over her chest and tears threatening in her eyes. The light wind of the summer afternoon had faded and the trees in the background were dropping their leaves like rain.

  I'm sorry, sugar, you can't have a pony. None of us can have ponies.

  Why not?

  There's no air for them to breathe. As she said it Sharon realized that there really wasn't any air. She began to pant but she couldn't fill her lungs.

  Mommy? said the little girl, receding into the blackness. She had fallen out of the air lock and was drifting off into the depths of space, the diamond-hard stars wheeling around her as she fell and fell. Mommy? Mum? Comman'er O'Neal? Commander? Mum? COMMANDER!

  Sharon started up in the bunk and banged her head into the bunk above hers. For a moment stars wheeled around her and she nearly screamed at not waking from the nightmare. Instead she took a deep breath and quietly let slip her husband's favorite swearword.

  "Are you quite all right, mum?" asked Boatswain Michaels. He squatted by the side of the bunk with a cup of steaming tea in his hand. His thick Midlands accent was, as always, nearly incomprehensible.

  "I'll be fine as soon as I figure out how to kill Lieutenant Crowley so I can have his bunk removed," she joked, swinging her legs over the side of the bunk. It was necessary to hunch forward to avoid banging her head again. The ceilings of the converted Indowy fast courier were barely six feet tall. Cramming two bunks in vertically had been challenging.

  Everything had been challenging since she'd been assigned to the position of executive officer on the Agincourt five months before. During her tenure she had suffered through three different captains as Fleet High Command cycled officers through the few available warships. The first one was fine, a former submariner who had taught her many of the tricks that stood her in good stead since. The other two had been losses, micromanaging assholes who were lost commanding the ship. The last one had been a philanderer to boot, a Russian bigot with wandering hands.

  She had firmly quashed a mutiny by the ship's crew that would have led inevitably to a fatal "accident" for the officer. The crew treated her more like an older sister than their XO, and had fiercely defended her. By the time the captain left he had discovered the many pleasures of a badly tuned ship, such as varying air pressure in his cabin, reversing toilets, lighting that remained at constant intensity but slid through the spectrum in varying increments, now red, now purple, now, apparently, out, but really broadcasting in high ultraviolet. The sunburn from the last had actually overwhelmed his antiradiation nannites.

  Since he had completely bypassed his executive officer, placed in the position because of her background in astronautic engineering, the systems failures were entirely his fault. He, of course, did not see it that way, blaming everything on Sharon. She, in turn, kept full records of all meetings or even casual encounters.

  The past two weeks of inquiries had been . . . interesting. It was not an experience she cared to repeat. However, a new commander was on the way and the Russian was headed back to the land of borscht.

  "Ach, you don' wann' remove Lieutenant Crowley now, mum," the boatwsain disagreed. "Thin you'd have'ta con this bitch on your own everytime."

  She accepted the cup of tea, then rubbed her forehead before taking a sip. She'd have a knot there. The request for foam rubber had been on the books for nearly four months. Time to send another HEAT round. And then there was the shortage of filters, which was why the ship smelled like a goat-locker. And the forward force screen was acting up. And the number three impeller. And about half the environmental fans, thus the hint of ozone in the goat-locker. And the heat exchangers. And with the main water recovery unit down, the cup of tea she was ingesting was a third of her potable water ration for the day. But with the Russian gone at least they might get some of it fixed. If they could squeeze the parts out of Titan Base.

  "Anything I need to know right away?" she asked and reached across the narrow compartment for a bottle of Tylenol. The living compartments were designed for four-feet-tall Indowy. At five feet eleven she fitted in them poorly.

  "Aye, mum," said the boatswain soberly. "Wiv finely lost the forward force screen."

  "Damn," she muttered, swallowed a handful of the acetaminophen and chased it with a swig of the bitter tea. The "
chai" as the NCO insisted on calling it was a thick, nearly black concoction preferred in the British Navy. Sharon had talked the crew out of many things, feeding her pickled herring for breakfast as an example, but she had been unable to adjust the tea. Whatever. It woke you up.

  She pulled off her T-shirt and pulled out one that was marginally fresher. Michaels was queer as a three-dollar bill, so it wasn't going to inflame him.

  They'd had a couple of problems with sexual harassment and one attempted rape in the first few weeks she was onboard. Not all the countries that had contributed sailors to the Fleet had a tradition of females serving on ships. She had stamped on it hard. Maybe too hard. She sometimes wondered if being left on the ship was punishment for suspending the attempted rapist in microgravity, vacuum and darkness for fourteen hours. With his radio pulled. The sailor had had to be transferred to Ground Forces.

  She pulled on a stained coverall and stamped her feet into a pair of shipboots. The emergency belt pack was the last piece of necessary equipment to go on and she was ready to face her day. She was already hot as hell. The backup heat converter must be out again.

  "You should at least have a bite," said Michaels reproachfully. He held out a platter with toast on it.

  She tilted her head to the side, a habit she had picked up from her husband, and smiled. "You're the bosun, not a steward."

  Michaels shrugged. "Cooky's pretty damn busy, mum. I knew you'd not eat if I di'nt insist."

  Sharon picked up one of the pieces of toast and took a nibble. It was dry and quite awful. There was no decent bread flour in the ship and the last fresh food they had received had come in nearly a month before.

  The ship was on a seemingly endless patrol of near-Earth space. Parts and food, such as reached them, were shipped in by light freighters and transferred by hand from ship to ship. The crew struggled endlessly against the conflicting demands of failing systems and the boring patrols.

  Sharon knew they were no better or worse off than the other frigates. The converted fast couriers were the front line of the Federation's defense against the Posleen, but they were frighteningly inadequate from the human's point of view. The ships were ancient, literally centuries old, and lacked every item that humans had come to expect in a warship. There were no redundant systems, no easily switched out spares, not much in the way of defense, and the weapons were nearly useless.

  What made matters worse was their customization. Each ship was hand built over nearly a half century by one of a few Indowy families. Since each ship was custom fabricated there were no interchangeable spare parts. For that matter, since the ships were designed to last for a few centuries of blemishless activity, then be taken out of service, there were no parts whatsoever. Every part was solid-state; there was no reason that they would not last a pair of centuries. And the Indowy guaranteed it.

  Unfortunately, most of the ships, like their own Agincourt, had been in service since the beginning of the war. The losses from the war were straining the production capacity of the Federation beyond the maximum and the shortage of shipping was the most obvious aspect. These ships, which should have been taken out of service a century earlier, were still being used on the front line. And the Indowy technicians attached to the Fleet were learning a new term from the humans: jury-rigging.

  She nibbled at her dry toast and had another sip of the bitter tea. Then she tapped the artificial intelligence device on her wrist. "What's the news?" she asked.

  "There are twenty-seven messages in your e-mail queue," the AID answered in a melifluous baritone.

  "How many of those are the maintenance people on Titan whining about our parts requests?"

  "Fourteen."

  "Delete."

  "Okay. Then there are five denying requests from various crewmembers for a transfer off ship. One of those is a rather snotty question about the leadership of the frigate."

  "Send 'em a copy of the transcript from the inquiries and tell them to kiss my ass. Diplomatically. And resubmit the requests. God knows somebody should be able to get off this tub."

  "Done. There are six answers to your requests for better food, all of which boil down to quit whining."

  "Okay. Send the requests back but increase the requested amount every time until you get to our maximum stores level. Do that once per day or once per denial if they respond within the day. Carbon-copy all requests to Fleet HQ."

  "Okay. Most of the rest of it is junk. But there is a message from Titan Base stating that the new CO has been assigned and will be arriving this afternoon."

  "Joy," said Michaels. "Bloody joy and happiness. Another one." Part of the problem was that the COs for the frigates were captains. The post would have been one for a lieutenant commander or even a lieutenant in a regular navy but the frigates were the only place for "wet navy" sailors to learn the ins and outs of space command. Because the posting was relatively "simple," the senior officers assigned generally started off assuming that they knew twice as much as the officers and crew in place. Many of them had learned what it was like to breathe vacuum.

  Sharon shook her head. "Hey, maybe this one will be different. Who is it?" she asked the AID.

  "Captain April Weston," said the AID.

  At the name, Michaels sucked in his breath. "Bloody hell."

  "You know her?" asked Sharon.

  "I've never met her," said Michaels. "But everybody in His Majesty's bloody Fleet knows about her."

  Sharon made a come-on gesture, indicating a request for enlightenment.

  Michaels shook his head. "Well, she's just about the only woman who has ever stood for admiral in the fleet who came out of surface warfare. She's a bloody legend among the swifties. On her mother's side she's related to a dead chappie named Mountbatten." He paused trying to figure out how to explain that to an American.

  "I've heard of him," Sharon said dryly. The late Earl Mountbatten had been the last of a breed. Closely related to the Royal Family he had been an officer in the Navy during World War II. After distinguishing himself as commander of a destroyer squadron and having repeated ships shot out from under him he had formed the first combined special operations groups in history. After the war he had been made Earl of Burma and expertly ushered that country into independence. He was a national hero and a treasure whose life was finally snuffed out by the bomb of an Irish terrorist. "So she's related to the Royal Family?"

  "Distantly," said Michaels with a shrug. "Us Brits have still got a thing about, well, 'blood.' You know?"

  "Lineage," said Sharon.

  "Bloody right. Well, this Weston is the sort of person who . . . sort of reinforces that. If there was ever a case of the acorn not falling far from the bloody oak."

  Sharon nodded. "So this is good?" she asked cautiously.

  "Oh, yeah," said Michaels. "Of course, Mountbatten survived four ships. And most of his chappies never made it back. There was some as would jump ship rather than sail with him."

  Sharon snorted and thought about the departed Russian. "I'll take my chances."

  * * *

  The air lock hissed and Captain Weston stepped forward, still fumbling at the catches of her pressure helmet. It annoyed her to demonstrate incompetence in her first moments on the ship, but the only previous time she had worn a battle suit was during the four-hour familiarization class at Titan Base.

  One of the petty officers standing at attention stepped forward and unhooked the last recalcitrant fitting and her ears were blasted by the shrill of a recorded boatswain's pipe.

  She stepped forward and returned the salute of a good-looking brunette in a slightly soiled coverall. "Captain April Weston," she said and removed a folded piece of paper from a sealed belt-pouch. That maneuver she had managed to practice on the shuttle over and it went off flawlessly.

  " 'You are hereby ordered to proceed forthwith to the Fleet Frigate Agincourt for purposes of assuming command,' " she quoted. "Signed Hareki Arigara Vice Admiral, Director, Fleet Personnel Department." Weston lowere
d the paper and nodded at the presumptive executive officer. "I take command, ma'am."

  "I stand relieved, ma'am," said the brunette. "Sharon O'Neal, Lieutenant Commander. I'm your XO."

  Captain Weston nodded and looked around at the assembled crew. It was a fairly small party. "I am about to betray my ignorance," she admitted. "Is this most of the crew?" she continued, slightly aghast. Normally most of the off-duty crew members would be present for the greeting party. There was more than enough room in the pressure hold for more people, so the group of twenty or so might be it. That would place the upper end of the crew at thirty or so. The crew of a "wet" frigate would number over a hundred. Her previous cruiser command had numbered over a thousand.

  "Ma'am, there are four on duty in the tac center," the XO answered, "three in engineering and four more at various other points. There are also six Indowy crewmembers." She hesitated. "They . . . don't usually associate with large groups of humans."

  Weston nodded her head. That was one briefing she had gotten. "Understood." She looked around and raised her voice slightly. "I'm sure we'll all get to know each other well over the next few months." The tone was a command voice. It implied that what the speaker said would occur, whatever the universe might throw at the speaker. Compared to the whiny and blustering Russian she replaced it was immensely heartening to the crewmembers. Which was what she had intended.

  She looked around at the damaged and dingy interior of the ship. The lighting was purplish and unpleasant and the cargo hold was covered in scuffs and dents. For all that there was little real dirt. The ship was obviously well cared for. But the age and poor condition were clear nonetheless. She smiled and chuckled. "I'm sure we're going to get real friendly."

  There was an uneasy chuckle in response from the group and she turned to the XO. "Mrs. O'Neal, why don't you show me to my dayroom and we'll get down to business."

  "Yes, ma'am," said Sharon. The new commander had obviously gotten a realistic first impression and the response was better than she had hoped. "If you'll follow me?"