He laughed. "That's the funniest thing you've said in a long time. Well, all right men, pack your things and get down to the docks. We'll be sailing tonight."
"Under cover of darkness?" She smiled. "You do some of your best work then, you know."
Fanning just sighed and shook his head.
Venera returned to the hallway, and taking Hay den's arm, drew him away from the office and toward the stairs. He let her do it. "I'm going to send a man around to your flat," she said to Hayden. "Tell him what to collect for you. You're not to leave the house today; wait for me by the main doors at six o'clock tonight, or your contract is terminated. Is that understood?"
"But what's"
She waved a hand imperiously, indicating that he should retreat down the stairs.
She stood between him and the man he'd come to murder.
"Well?" she said. Venera seemed to see him for the first time; a muscle in her jaw flexed, causing the star-shaped scar there to squirm. "What are you waiting for?"
Hayden took a step down. He'd been planning this moment for years. In his mind it had always been clear: the traitor revealing his cowardice at the end, Hayden making some pronouncementdifferent every timeof just vengeance for his people's loss. An execution, clean and final.
But in order to get at the admiral now, he would have to leave Venera Fanning bleeding out her own life in the hallway.
He took another step down.
Something came over Venera's face. Softness? Some subtle giving-in to an interpretation of his actions that he didn't understand? "It will all be made clear tonight," she said in as soothing a tone as she was likely capable of.
He could have retreated around a corner, waited for her to leave. He might have staked out Farming's office for the rest of the night. Instead he found his feet take another step and another, and then he was turning and clattering down the steps as though he actually had some other place to go. Somehow he ended up passing the photograph of Fanning posing with a graduating class. He stopped and stared at the date written on it until a hand descended on his shoulder and someone spoke his name.
He pushed past the other manservant as the world spun around himand when he came to himself again he was kneeling in one of the servant's washrooms
vomiting wretchedly into the privy.
CHAPTER FIVE
There was a particular style to be cultivated when you were leaving port; he needed to project confidence and purpose to the airmen so that they didn't look back and obeyed his orders without question.
Rook was not the flagship of the fleet. A midsized cruiser, she was beginning to show her age, and several years ago had been refitted to buttress Slipstream's dwindling winter fleet. Still, she was a good ship: a hundred feet long, thirty in diameter, basically cylindrical but with curving ends that terminated in vicious spiked rams. Her duck wooden hull was festooned with hatches and ports through which could be thrust rifles, rocket racks, jet engines, braking sails, or mutineers as the situation warranted. Many of the hatches were open as she hung in the air next to the docking scaffolds, a mile from the Admiralty. The sun was glowering from behind the docks, whose caged catwalks cast long curving shadows across the amber hull of the ship, while tongues of light had found and lit random intricacies of its interior. Inside, the ship was a series of interlocking cells, most of them made of wooden lattices through which you could see men working or the tanned sides of tarpaulined and lashed crates. Some of the cells were big blocks of metal, such as the armory and the rocket magazine. And to the fore of the ship, just behind the bridge, an exercise centrifuge spun lazily. Its side walls made a turning mandala of Admiralty notices, wooden walls, and plumbing. The men were required to spend a few hours a day in the centrifuge, and he would too; nobody was going to lose their fighting trim on this voyage.
Captain John Sembry saluted the admiral. His staff were lined up in midair behind him, their toes pointed precisely in the same direction. "The ship is ready, sir," announced Sembry.
A quick glance told Chaison that everything was where it should be, and the men were all working hardor at least giving the impression of working hard. That was all that mattered, if things were truly ready. "Very good. Captain. I'll be on the bridge. Carry on." He turned and did a hand-over-hand walk through a narrow passage under the centrifuge, heading for the prow.
On the way to the bridge he checked his cabin. Venera was not there. Neither was her luggage. Fuming, he continued on up to the cylindrical chamber just behind the fore rocket battery. The navigator and helm were waiting, looking expectant. They hadn't yet received their orders and were expecting to be told to set a course for Mavery. He was going to surprise them.
But not, apparently, yet. "Where is she?" he demanded of a petty officer. The man snapped to attention, slowly drifting upward and away from his post.