"Sir," Sabatine said with a perfunctory salute. Such honors weren't typically given on ship during active service it seemed to ease the tension. Over the last several days they had seen each other sporadically in the course of their duties. She found it was easier to think of him as an RCN officer if she immersed herself in her work, which as it happened, was her natural inclination. While they were in transit Sabatine spent one watch on the hull with the riggers, trying to improve her modest astrogation skills, and the second watch with the ship-side techs. In the second category she was probably more skilled than anyone other than Chief Savachev and she worked with the midshipmen to improve their technical abilities. There was no fixed curriculum for a midshipman but Sabatine intended that by the end of the cruise all of the Vickie's middies would have a basic understanding of the machines that kept them alive in the hostile void of space, even if she was afraid that Otis might take his hand off with a power saw if she took her eyes off him for more than a few seconds. Captain Micha gave some instruction on command and, when he had time, astrogation so she tried to fill the remaining gaps. More than once she had seen Savachev hide a groan when she had set the middies to a task though, certain that her techs would have to repeat it once 'the young gentlemen' were done buggering around.

"Sir I wonder if you might give the order for the port and starboard watch to take liberty. Normally the captain would do it but he is caught up talking with Chief Higgs," she told him. Micha had been speaking to Higgs when she left the bridge, mostly asking questions about Kaiden for some reason, though it really wasn't any of her business. The bosun no doubt wanted to get to liberty himself but you didn't let your CO know that, even if it should be blatantly blood obvious. There was a babble of voices from the companionways behind them as the spacers, dressed in their liberty suits, RCN utilities whose seams had been embroiled with ribbons denoting all the ports the spacers had called upon, anxiously awaited to be unleashed. It was bad form for Micha to keep them waiting, but it was just possible this was a test of his new XO.

Beyond the boarding hold riggers were extending a ponton bridge to one of the quays to which the Vickie had moored. Errhai was a backwater world, hell everything in the Rayleigh Stars was a backwater, but it was more developed than many of its neighbours. There was a fair amount of export trade, mostly sugar that was processed from cane grown on inland plantations. A network of diesel powered railways brought the stalks of cane into Port Benjamin, as the city fancied itself, where it was processed in factories into an export grade foodstuff. The process involved a great deal of steam and gave the place a faint stink of molasses and old socks. There was a fair amount of rum produced here as well, and it was the staple liquor on the several dozen major worlds of the Raleigh Cluster, at least among the better classes on those worlds. Tilda sneezed violently as unquenched ions from the slip tickled her nose, both Kaiden and Sabatine were familiar enough with water landings to ignore the sensation. Sabatine affected not to notice, as a general she found she was happiest when she pretended Tilda didn't exist.

"Who are those people?" Tilda asked, pointing at a group of expensively dressed men and women at the end of the pier. The riggers were yelling at them to get back away from the quay so they could tie up the pontoon bridge. Klave was gesticulating with a length of pipe, making it clear that well dressed or not, if they didn't clear out of his way he was perfectly willing to clear them out. The question was directed at Sabatine so there was no way to ignore it without being rude.

"Captain Micha transmitted our crew list from orbit so we could debark without screwing around with local customs," she replied in a neutrally professional tone. Such things were a curtesy only. The 'Friendship of the Republic' was a thin veil that was easier for the locals to accept than 'possession of the Cinnabar Empire' would have been. The Republic, unlike the Alliance of Free Stars, usually preferred to work through local elites if it could, but if they got uppity the RCN would be happy to set them straight. 

"I suspect they noticed our eminent executive officer on our manifest, and have come to invite him to a hundred dinner parties so they can boast to their friends of having met a genuine Cinnabar Noble," she explained.