Ballistic (The Palladium Wars), стр. 80
“Where are the girls, anyway? Isn’t it nine o’clock in the morning down there?” Dunstan asked.
“Kendra is at socaball practice. Amelia is still in bed. I’m being merciful because tomorrow isn’t a school day, and because she volunteered to help me this afternoon with the food for the spouse association meeting.”
“That’s still a thing?”
“It’s never not a thing,” Mairi said. “I must have baked a thousand cakes and hand pies for the association over the years.”
After the last six months, the screen in front of Dunstan was like a window into another world, a normal one where people didn’t have to wear vacsuits, didn’t have to memorize the exact location of the nearest escape pod hatch. He was disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to see his daughter’s faces, but he was glad they were busy with a regular life, unaware of the new hazards that had appeared out here between the planets.
“Two weeks’ leave, and then three months of shore duty,” he said. “And I have no idea what I’m getting after that. All I know is that it won’t be this old girl. She’ll be in the breakdown yard by then.”
“It would be nice if they doubled up on your shore duty time after socking you with a surprise double deployment,” his wife said. She was cutting up strawberries while she talked on the vidcom, her hands trimming the little green leaves and stems with a paring knife seemingly on autopilot.
“It would be nice. But you know it won’t happen in this lifetime.”
“I know. Because the navy treats its people almost as well as it does its ships.” Mairi flicked another strawberry stem into the garbage without having to aim.
“Only because they can sell the ships for scrap when they’re done with them,” Dunstan said with a smile.
He checked the time on the bulkhead display in his cabin. The countdown to docking was close to the point where he needed to be present in the AIC again.
“I have to go and make sure we dock without putting any more dents into the hull,” he said. “Not that it matters much at this point. I’ll let you know what’s going on once we’re on Rhodia One and get our orders for surface transport.”
“Okay. I’m glad that you’re at least overhead already. And not that I’m happy your ship got damaged. But it’s good to know they won’t be able to refuel it and send you right back out like they did last time. Love you.”
“Love you, too. See you very soon.” He blew a kiss at the screen and swiped his hand to make the projection disappear.
Dunstan got up from the edge of his bunk and straightened out his uniform overalls. His shipboard bag was strapped down on top of the mattress, packed and ready to go. Once they docked, he’d retrieve his bag and leave through the main collar, and then he’d never see these bulkheads again. He’d served on many ships, but this goodbye felt more poignant somehow. Minotaur had carried all of them into battle and back home faithfully despite her age and the neglect the fleet had shown her, and now the navy would reward her by having her torn apart with plasma cutters.
He opened the door of his cabin and stepped out into the passageway, then took a left turn to walk to the AIC. On the way, crew members made way as he passed through, and he spread around a few words of upbeat encouragement. They’d been in a genuine battle now, not just a brief trading of shots with a pirate corvette. They had fought a far more powerful warship and gotten in a blow or two without taking casualties. Even if the Gretian cruiser had a green crew and no missiles in her magazines, it was a statistically unlikely outcome. It made everyone on his crew stand a bit taller.
The AIC staff looked as busy and alert as ever, but Dunstan knew that this was the part of a cruise when errors were most likely to creep in. With their home planet spread out underneath and the space station just in front, everyone was halfway home in their heads already. He sat down on his command couch and observed the choreography of the procedures ballet for a little while, all the parts of the command machine working together to get the ship to her docking ring as precisely and safely as possible. Rhodia One was as busy as ever, but Dunstan saw mostly merchant traffic, and precious few warships. The navy had started the war with two hundred ships and ended it with 1,300. Now they were back down to two hundred, and almost half of that number were not ready for deployment for various reasons. The rest had to carry the workload of patrolling all Rhodian space and safeguarding the transit lanes as they moved through the navy’s sphere of control. It had been enough until recently, when the pirates had started to become more numerous and far more violent seemingly overnight. Now the fleet was stretched to the breaking point and maybe already beyond. The Gretian cruiser was still out there, and its simple presence in Rhodian space had already cost the fleet a destroyed cruiser and a damaged frigate that was beyond repair. And now Home Fleet was short four more ships, tied up on a