Jack of Harts 2.5: Wolfenheim Rising by Medron Pryde Read Free Book Online

guardroom.  The two guards on duty examined him first, before turning eyes to Dawn, probably scanning to make certain they weren’t mad assassins coming to wipe out Normandy’s command staff.  The guards nodded after a moment, presumably deciding they were safe, and opened the hatch leading to the bridge.
    He stepped through to see nearly a dozen men and women hard at work.  Cybers in grey and blue coveralls worked on opened panels, their legs sticking out from under numerous stations.  The grey-garbed Peloran yard dogs still worked hard to complete the final refits Normandy needed so badly.  They weren’t actual dogs of course.  Dogs rarely chose engineering as a career.
    Normandy’s blue uniform coveralls and the bridge crew’s pre-War style of white service uniforms came from American navy surplus stores, and the uniforms had proven as rugged and dependable as promised.  Thanks to his long shopping trips, he knew every surplus storeowner within twenty lightyears of New Earth on a first-name basis, and most within fifty lightyears at least recognized him when he walked in the door.  Excluding those on Earth, of course.  He had no fundamental problem with using Charles’ family to acquire the colony equipment without them knowing about their contribution.  But flaunting it by buying stuff in their backyards was a bit too flagrant an abuse for his tender peace of mind.  And one Malcolm McDonnell needed far too much beauty sleep to be keeping himself awake at night with worries of Hurst-family assassins dancing through his halls.
    Malcolm turned his mind away from that unappealing nightmare and nodded at each crewmember as they acknowledged his presence in their domain with a smile, a shrug, or a few less flattering gestures.  “Watch it,” he whispered through the side of his mouth at Walter Thompson.  “You might get stuck like that.”
    The tactical officer snorted under his breath, but returned to work the moment Captain Wyatt cleared her throat.
    Peloran ships boasted very small crews, leaving the operations of their warships to the cybernetic brain.  The ship’s captain gave orders and the ship executed them.  It was a surprisingly simple command chain, and Malcolm had been sorely tempted to follow that example.  But he’d never served in the military, and Dawn was an administrative cyber without a single warship cyber within several generations of her family line.  He trusted her to run the ship, but even she admitted that she didn’t have the family experience to fight her like a real warship cyber could.
      So even with the Peloran upgrades that would have made it possible for him to take direct command of Normandy , he’d elected to maintain something closer to standard American crew policies.  On the one hand, by recruiting experienced naval personnel he also recruited their experience and knowledge.  And on the other hand, most of the ten thousand colonists asleep inside Wolfenheim truly were civilians, with very little if any military experience.  Recruiting the better part of two thousand retired naval and marine personnel to crew the warships would almost certainly prove invaluable in the very likely event that things got exciting once they reached the other side of The Gateway.
    Malcolm studied the naval veteran he’d trusted with command of Normandy .  The brunette was far older and more experienced than her twenty-something looks suggested, of course.  Her naval dossier held a long series of “performs above and beyond the call of duty” characterizations from her commanders.  That they ended with “showed profound misjudgment of the tactical situation” meant very little to him.  Charles vouched for her, and the reports Malcolm wasn’t supposed to see showed him a classic example of shooting the messenger.  The woman who had extricated her ship from the Battle of Epsilon Reticuli, mostly alive and against formidable odds, turned away from the recalcitrant tactical