Nimisha's Ship (6 page)

Somewhat startled by her knowledge of the lieutenant’s record, he covered his surprise with a sly smile. “I’d’ve lost my bet then,” he said.

“Oh?” Nimisha raised both eyebrows in amusement, encouraging an explanation by curving her mouth in a delicate one-sided smile that fascinated the admiral. He was by no means immune to the charismatic charm of the young woman with such speaking gentian-blue eyes.

“Yes,” Gollanch said, steepling his fingers and rhythmically bouncing his fingertips together, a reflective habit of his.

“Let me guess,” Nimisha said, leaning forward and grinning as shrewdly as he had. “That Marcusi captain.”

“How did you arrive at that conclusion?” Gollanch did not yet care to admit how accurate her assessment was.

She leaned back. “He was doing his best—adroitly,” she said, raising her hand not to denigrate the captain’s performance. “He also seemed exceedingly well informed about my, ah, present design plans.”

“Hmmm . . .” Gollanch made a mental note to find out how the captain had been able to access that information. Not even the Fleet had the right to invade a Family’s private enterprise without due invitation. “I shall check into that.”

“Don’t bother. There’s nothing I do not intend to share with the Fleet when I have perfected what will improve your ships.” She dismissed that problem with a flick of her hand. It was an unusually callused hand for a Family scion, with a wide strong palm, deft fingers, and trimmed nails, unlike the usual elegantly tapered fingers with artificial extensions almost as long again as the finger—a fad that impeded any use of humankind’s greatest advantage over most animals. “How can you fault Captain Marcusi for wanting to succeed? He’s really very good at it.”

“In that case . . .” Gollanch ended the subject with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Good, especially as I made my own”—her delightful grin enlivened fine features that tended, in repose, to be sober, if not aloof—“discreet inquiries, since it was obvious my operation is of interest to the Fleet. So it is very good of you, really, to be so . . . so . . .”

“Accommodating?” Gollanch suggested. On consideration, Rustin was a very good choice, a better match for this woman than Captain Marcusi, who had great ambitions for himself—in which he would probably succeed, bar a bad command decision. Rustin was far more interested in achieving the best results from a project than in making certain everyone knew he had had a hand in it. The lad had good ideas and, as the Lady Nimisha had noted, excellent engineering credentials. Then, without trying to appear rushed, though the admiral had a full day’s appointments—a few of them not as pleasant as this one—he smiled at her. “How soon can I send Lieutenant Commander Rustin to Rondymense Ship Yard?”

Nimisha rose. “He’s waiting at my skimmer. I promised him a tour of the Yard at dinner the other night. As soon as I could arrange it.” She reached her hand across the table and Gollanch shook it with both of his, noticing the workmanlike strength of her grasp. Again that almost gamine grin and the twinkle of her gentian-blue eyes. “He was the only one who didn’t hint. He also was the first to ask me to dance and converse on suitable subjects.”

“Ah! I will recommend such tactics should similar strategy be needed.”

“You are a dear, Admiral,” she said, releasing her hand and making her way to the door. There she stopped, considered momentarily, and then gracefully looked back over her shoulder at him. “Lieutenant Commander Rustin may never know
all
I have in mind as design features, but he will be privy to what would improve the performance of the Vegan Fleet vessels.”

At such an outrageous remark, Gollanch let out a roar of laughter that brought the officer at the worktop in the anteroom to his feet in surprise. “Such condescension is more than we hoped for, Lady Nimisha Boynton-Rondymense.”

“Certainly it’s more than you deserve,” was her parting shot.

It took Lady Nimisha some twenty minutes to reach her skimmer, where Caleb Rustin was standing, looking bewildered. The long planes of his face were slightly Oriental, often giving him a vexingly unreadable expression. He was regarding his wrist com as if it had extruded fangs and bitten him. When he heard her steps—she was wearing her usual work apparel, including calf-high boots with reinforced toes and soles—he smiled a little hesitantly. His bemusement was still apparent in his light gray eyes, a contrast to the sallow skin and thick black hair. He swallowed.

“Admiral Gollanch’s office has just contacted me, Lady Nimisha,” he said. And blinked. “I’ve received a promotion, and I’m not due one yet.”

“An, but you certainly couldn’t be the naval attaché at Rondymense Ship Yard as a mere senior lieutenant,” she replied.

“I’m the naval attaché?” There was little inscrutability left in the genuine delight and amazement of his expression.

“Yes, you’ll suit me ever so much better than that pushy Captain Marcusi.”

“Mar—” Caleb tilted his head and let out a roar similar to the admiral’s, though she did not mention the similarity. She noticed the discreet design of his body-heir tattoo, not common in the Navy; she supposed his family had been awarded prize money, possibly in the last pirate attacks. First Families had started the convention of tattooing several hundred years before to prevent the kidnapping of heirs.

“What occasions such mirth?” she asked.

“Because Marcusi fancies himself as adroit, devious, and charismatic.”

“He is. Those tactics are useful for a line officer on the fast track to command, but they don’t work quite so well on Family.”

“May we speak candidly, Lady?” he asked, his expression serious. When she nodded, he went on. “Why me? There were many candidates for you to choose from, some who’ve had commands and more experience.”

“You . . .” she said, pointing her finger at him, “asked me to dance.”

Caleb let a small smile pull at his lips while his eyes met hers with equal candor. “That was only because I didn’t know what else to do to get you away from the others.”

“Ah, but you conversed with me, too.”

“What else does one do when one dances?” He seemed surprised.

She chuckled. The ingenuous reply did him no harm at all. A man who had the right priorities, training, and certainly some breeding, though his tattoo was neither complex nor colorful. She gestured toward her skimmer, indicating they could now leave.

“How does a body-heir become a Fleet officer?” she asked.

“When that body-heir’s sire is also a Fleet officer,” he replied.

As they rounded the little spacecraft, the guard came to immediate attention. He wore the gray and silver of Nimisha’s Yard livery. Now he gave a smart salute to the freshly promoted lieutenant commander, as if he somehow knew Rustin was no longer a mere lieutenant.

“Worrick, this is Lieutenant Commander Caleb Rustin, who has recently been appointed naval attaché to our Yard. He is to be treated with all due courtesies, naval and yard. Secure the hatch for takeoff. We’ll just go forward and inform Control of our imminent departure. Thank you.”

As she gave the new attaché the promised guided tour of the Rondymense facility, she also put him through some general paces, including a short EVA. There did happen to be a suit that could have been measured for him, since the EVA ready room was equipped with quite a range of sizes in space-worthy gear.

“Put your name on that one when we come back in,” she said when they had returned from the inspection of the Fiver. At the moment the ship was a skeleton of petralloy rings, tapering to the bow and blunt at the stern: her latest attempt to design
the
perfect long-distance spacecraft. He seemed totally at ease, automatically clipping on to safety rings with his suit harness and unclipping as they pushed about the skeleton.

His chuckle came over the helmet com. “This fits me better than my Navy issue ever did.”

“You should investigate the other perquisites that come with an attaché’s position while you’re at it.”

“Ah, now I wouldn’t have thought of that.”

“Speak sharply to Admin,” she said. “You’ll require specialty pay and an extra uniform allowance.”

“Should I ask how you know what perks are available to an attaché?”

“I looked them up.” She hadn’t anticipated a sly sense of humor from him, but it did him no harm. “But you have to sign the authorization.”

“True.”

She activated the airlock controls, and as the lock rolled back, they reentered the Yard proper. That was the beginning of their stimulating and inclusive association.

Caleb lent his knowledge and naval expertise to Nimisha’s often intuitive ideas. He came to appreciate Jeska’s precision and practicality. Indeed, he encouraged them to include some of the more radical changes, reveling in their grasp of efficient spaceship design. It was a change for him to work with minds that were not hedged in by bureaucratic shibboleths and antiquated thinking, not to mention Fleet budgetary restrictions. Nimisha had the resources to build a squadron of her versatile long-distance yachts if it so pleased her, and Jeska kept her to what was possible, effortlessly taking over most of the less spectacular management duties.

It was inevitable that Nimisha and Caleb enjoyed some intimacies, the result of long hours of intense, cerebral work that had ended in rather special, to him, interludes. He knew she hadn’t taken these incidents seriously: No doubt she dismissed them as the needs of the moment, enjoyed them for that moment, and then forgot them in the face of more pressing concerns as she returned to her overriding desire to perfect an intergalactic spaceship. He had schooled himself to do so as well, fascinated more by her personality and her dedication to design improvement than by her beauty—not that he ever became accustomed to having such a beauty as a companion. With selective breeding and gene control now four centuries in use, no one in her stratum of society could ever be considered ugly; some were simply more beautiful than others. Indeed, beauty was hardly limited to her class, since antenatal gene repair and intelligent nutrition produced handsome folk in every walk of life. Lately, elements of bizarre styles of “beauty” had been introduced, not in the major Families, of course, who were more conservative, but in those lesser Families who delighted to shock. Some of the variants had been spectacular—but artificial in ways that did not quite come off as something the owner would be likely to bequeath to his or her successor.

Lady Rezalla actually approved of Lt. Commander Rustin, despite his rather modest body-heir tattoo, especially after she discovered from Admiral Gollanch that he was due for further promotions in his position as attaché. She could consider a possible admiral appropriate for any long-term association her daughter might make. When not even a “friendly contract” ensued after several weeklong absences with Rustin, Rezalla was almost disappointed. Nimisha did, indeed, know what was due her Family. And to her daughter.

Obviously, Nimisha’s passion for naval design far outweighed the need for any legal companionship. The best of all possible worlds, Lady Rezalla thought, for she had long practiced the art of “to have and have not” as far as males were concerned. At least, if Nimisha insisted on such an unusual career, she had chosen one of the most prestigious.

And Lt. Commander Rustin was an acceptable escort, so Lady Rezalla included him on her special guest list, an honor on which he never presumed.

The Mark 3 was built, tested, and put into production over the next three years but, after many severe tests, the perfection Nimisha wanted of it had still not been attained. Candidly Caleb Rustin agreed with her. Jeska, who spent more and more of her time in her managerial capacity, still attended their Design Room sessions and felt that the Mark 3, sleek and compact, could become claustrophobic for the light-year distances it was intended to traverse.

“Why not go back to the ellipsoid shape and keep it pure in that shape?” she suggested. “There’s really no need, especially if you plan to have this surface lander, to have all the bulges and bumps to contain the necessary storage spaces. We’ve gone a little too far in the opposite direction. Simplicity, especially with the femtosecond AI’s now available, might be the way to go.” And so Nimisha called up the shape, dragging in the basic units from other successful designs.

Caleb added a new water-purification system that the Fleet had been perfecting, as well as a top-quality catering system, designed to convert pure protein and complex carbohydrate substances into food that not only tasted exactly as the diner wished but provided the necessary nutrients for the maximum efficiency of the human body. Repair units had to operate autonomously should the ship be damaged in any one of the hundreds of scenarios that had to be programmed into the memory banks from those the Fleet generously opened for the project.

Civilians—like Lord Rhidian, who bought the test Mark 3 from her and effusively praised it—found it more than comfortable and certainly fast enough to meet their requirements. The Rondymense Yard expanded and Jeska became executive director, freeing Nimisha to pursue the elusive ideal with Caleb. The Fleet was attempting to come up with a more economical version, which she and Caleb privately referred to as the Faulty Four, while she refined the satisfactory units of the Mark 3 and started from the beginning to conceive further innovations that would make the Mark 5 nearer to her ideal. She and Caleb spent hours in the Design Room, dragging and drawing, redesigning, reorganizing components, until the day they asked the all-important questions: Would the performance of this design equal Nimisha’s optimum? How much would it cost to build? And how long would it take to complete?

“A projection of its performance capability is twelve percent higher than the Mark Four,” the Designer replied. “It would take no longer to build than the Four, since much of the same basic design has been refined and can now be utilized. Based on current prices for top-grade materials . . .”

“Have I ever economized on them yet, Designer?”

“. . . the cost would take precisely sixty-two percent of the credit currently on deposit.”