What Distant Deeps by David Drake Page B

said Daniel. “Though with the Peace of Rheims in effect, we can’t hope to find a war zone.”
     

CHAPTER 3
    Xenos on Cinnabar
    Daniel, holding the ivroid chit inset with 444 in black which he’d just gotten from the receiving clerk, turned and looked for an empty place on the benches. The General Waiting Room was as full as he’d ever seen it.
    Navy House had grown into a complex of buildings as the Republic of Cinnabar Navy expanded into the sword of an empire. What people ordinarily meant by Navy House was the Navy Office, built around the hall in which RCN officers waited to be summoned for new assignments.
    Generally they waited in vain. They would return tomorrow and following tomorrows until they either lost hope or received an assignment. A third of the RCN’s ships had already been paid off in response to the Treaty of Rheims, and perhaps as many more would follow over the next few months. Today’s crush of unemployed officers could only get worse.
    Daniel wondered if officials in the Procurement Bureau had ordered additional ivroid chits. The highest number he recalled having seen was in the seven hundreds. He smiled faintly: the apparatus of the waiting room might have to expand because of the demands of peace, just as Navy House itself had grown due to the needs of war.
    Someone ten benches back waved in the air, then pointed to Daniel. His grin spread as he recognized Pennyroyal, a friend—or at least friendly acquaintance—from his Academy days; he strode down the aisle toward her.
    He wouldn’t have said there was a real space beside Pennyroyal, but she was widening what there was with animated whispers to the officers in both directions as she mimed shoving them aside. The result was still tight, but that was in part a result of Captain Daniel Leary having put on a few pounds. A few more pounds, unfortunately. He sat with a grin of apologetic embarrassment to the older lieutenant to his left.
    “I’m surprised to see you slumming with us poor sad jetsam, Leary,” Pennyroyal whispered. From another’s mouth that could have been a bitter gibe; from hers, it was ruefully appreciative. “I heard you got a Cinnabar Star for that business off Cacique, didn’t you?”
    “Ah, yes,” Daniel said. He was wearing his best set of Grays. Medal ribbons were proper but were not required with Grays, the second-class uniform; Daniel had chosen not to wear his.
    In fact he’d gotten a Wreath for the Cinnabar Star which he’d been awarded after the Battle of Strymon while he was still a lieutenant. “We had a great deal of luck there, I must say.”
    The Annunciator stood with the receiving clerk, beside the gate in the bar separating the assignment clerks from the ranks of benches. The printer beside him whirred out a length of flimsy. He pulled it off, glared at it, and said, “Number One-Seven-Two, come forward!”  
    A thin, almost cadaverous lieutenant scraped up from one of the back benches and strode toward the front. She was trying to look nonchalant, but she stepped a little too quickly. She was wearing her Whites; when she passed, Daniel saw that fabric of the elbows and trouser seat had been polished by long use.
    Daniel felt uncomfortable discussing his career with former classmates. He had been lucky, very lucky; and particularly, he’d been lucky in gaining Adele’s friendship and support, which were matters he couldn’t discuss. Indeed, Adele’s intelligence duties—her spying—made Daniel even more uncomfortable than discussing his victories did.
    “Well, I’m hoping for some luck myself,” Pennyroyal said. “Vondrian—you remember Vondrian, don’t you?”
    “Of course,” Daniel said truthfully. Vondrian, who’d been a class ahead of him at the Academy, had private money. Instead of lording it over his less fortunate fellows, he’d been liked and respected by all who knew him. “He has a ship of his own, I understood?”
    “That’s right, the Montrose in the Tattersall