The Road of Danger-ARC

by David Drake

  He cleared his throat and added, “We’d have gone bust seven years ago if Bernhard hadn’t raised our capitalization. I’d cheat my mother before I’d cheat him.”

  “Thank you, Master Bremington,” Daniel said with a half-bow. With a deeper bow to the woman, he added, “And thank you, mistress.”

  “I’ll just wander around, if that’s all right with you, sir,” said Hogg. The words were more respectful than the tone in which he spoke them.

  Daniel followed Bremington down a short hallway. Before the door behind him closed, he heard Hogg said, “I wonder, mistress, if there’s a place nearby that a poor man might find a drink and a game of poker?”

  ***

  The pale russet robe Adele wore in her guise as Principal Hrynko felt unfamiliar but not uncomfortable. She wore khaki utilities beneath it, and the rigger who had run it up for her had placed long vertical slits along the sides as directed. Through them she could reach her pistol or her data unit as easily as she could have normally.

  “Hallelujah, I’m a bum!” her escort chorused. She wasn’t sure how the Alliance staff would to react to the details of her escort, but she suspected no one on Madison except her had more than a passing acquaintance with Kostroman nobility. “Hallelujah, bum again!”

  Techs had built Adele’s litter from high pressure tubing and bats of insulation. Covered with ribbons and bunting from the ship’s stores, it was flashy enough to appeal to any real Kostroman. Spacers felt that the more decoration, the better; a taste shared by most cultures once you got past the sophisticates of Xenos and Pleasaunce City.

  Adele’s data unit was already operating in passive mode, gathering inputs according to the instructions Adele had programmed before she left the ship. She didn’t suppose she’d need the pistol at Forty Stars Sector Headquarters, but there had been unpleasant surprises in the past. They had been less unpleasant because she had been able to shoot her way out of trouble.

  They’d reached the plaza in front of the Alliance Building. Adele said, “Set me down here.”

  Tovera was ahead of the litter, walking with Woetjans at the side of the ragged column. She took the command through her earbud and spoke crisply though inaudibly to the bosun.

  “Hallelujah, give us a handout—”

  “Halt!” Woetjans shouted. Some of the locals—loungers in the portico as well as those entering or leaving the entrance on business—leaped to the side in surprise; spacers laughed at them.

  Three of the four riggers carrying the litter started to put it down. The last was a moment behind the others, with the result that Adele would have pitched out onto the flagstones if she hadn’t grabbed the stringers with both hands.

  Riding with Hogg has sharpened my instincts, she thought. Perhaps if I live another fifty years, I’ll rise to the level of Landsman in the opinion of my shipmates.

  Woetjans had suggested that riggers carry the litter because their job required them to be agile. They weren’t used to working as this sort of team, however, and marching in step wasn’t part of any spacer’s training. The twenty Sissies accompanying Adele each wore a russet sash over the right shoulder to indicate that they were Hrynko retainers, but beyond that they were as disparate a group as you could find.

  They didn’t carry real weapons, but they had clubs of various sorts. That was normal practice on Kostroma, and it wouldn’t have raised eyebrows for a member of the nobility in Xenos. Nobody expected a Senator’s daughter to be jostled in the street by laborers. The Alliance authorities here might object, but they wouldn’t be surprised to see it.

  Adele stepped out of the litter, feeling thankful. She had—reasonably—felt on the verge of disaster all during the procession from the Harborfront. It might very well have been that a member of the escort would have caught her if the litter-bearers had flung her out, since they’d learned to be alert on the Princess Cecile lest Mistress Mundy fall or drift into serious trouble. Nonetheless, it had been an uncomfortable sensation.

  The whole escort moved toward the double doors of the entrance, several of them sliding pipes or batons from under their belts. A pair of slender, forties-ish women in blue uniforms were leaving the building. They saw the oncoming gang and turned back inside with startled chirps.

  Adele opened her mouth to object, but Woetjans was already bellowing, “Dasi, Barnes, and Creighton only, you wankers, just like I said! Any of you who can’t obey orders can spend their liberty polishing thruster nozzles! Yes, I mean you, Hatchett.”

  Adele stared coldly at the confusion, her natural expression under the circumstances. Spacers slunk away from the door and gathered around the litter, tucking away cudgels or in the case of one technician, a knife that he shouldn’t have been carrying.

  Tovera nodded. The spacers pushed open the doors and marched into the atrium. Adele followed them, and Tovera brought up the rear with her attaché case held waist high in her left hand. Though the building didn’t have a military detachment, the pair of security guards inside were fingering their shock rods as they scowled at Woetjans and her spacers.

  Adele felt the humor of the situation, though she didn’t let it reach her lips. With Tovera in the room, nobody else could be considered really dangerous. The mental smile hardened: except perhaps for Tovera’s mistress.

  The double-height atrium was semicircular, with doors opening off the curve. There were dozen people watching Adele’s arrival at ground level, and a similar number peered down over the mezzanine rail.

  “I am the Principal Hrynko!” Adele said, her words filling the big room. She had grown up in a family of politicians; even her little sister Agatha had known how to project her voice. “I am here to meet your Admiral Jeletsky, as one leader to another!”

  The male receptionist at the central island was in urgent communication with someone over the intercom, but he kept his eyes on Adele and her entourage. Nobody actually responded to Adele.

  She pointed to a man in lace-trimmed trousers and jacket who stood at the open door to his office. The style had been briefly popular on Pleasance about five years earlier, marking the fellow as a local who was trying to pass as a citizen of an Alliance core world. He was probably a mid-level functionary and therefore as frightened of overstepping his authority as he was of doing the wrong thing.

  “You!” Adele said, pointing with her right arm. “Take me to the Squadron Commander!”

  “Mistress?” said the receptionist in a desperate voice. “Your Ladyship? Please, someone is coming. He’ll be here very shortly, so if you—there he is! Deputy Quinley, the, ah, Principal Hrynko is here to see you.”

  Quinley was short, tubby, and at the moment red-faced. Over an ordinary business suit with puffed sleeves he wore a blue sash; the pretty blond aide trotting with him through an interior doorway was trying to tug wrinkles out of its glossy fabric.

  He stopped and straightened when he saw Adele. Bowing, he said with unexpected dignity, “Your Ladyship, I am Deputy Controller Quinley. How may the Alliance serve you here on Madison?”

  “I am here to see Admiral Jeletsky,” Adele said. “I am a leader, and I will meet with your leader.”

  What Adele was really here to do was to cause a stir that would cause all departments in the building to check on what was happening—and by so doing, to open their systems to her personal data unit. She wasn’t looking for information at the moment; that would require her input, choosing the pathways and circumventing security. All she expected to get from this were the internal addresses.

  “Your Ladyship,” Quinley said quietly but firmly, “Admiral Jeletsky is a Fleet official. Unless you’re here to declare war, your business is with the Sector’s civil government. I am the highest Alliance representative available. If you’ll come back to my office, we will deal with your concerns as expeditiously as possible.”

  He looked at Woetjans and added, “My office isn’t overly large, Your Ladyship. It would be better if you left your companions here to amuse themselves. And better still if
they were to wait outside.”

  Adele looked stern in a calculated fashion for a moment. Then she said, “My secretary will accompany me.”

  To the bosun she added, “Woetjans, you may wait at the litter while I deal with this bureaucrat.”

  If Quinley was offended by the description, he avoided letting the fact show. “Follow me, please,” he said and walked back the way he had come. Adele, Tovera, and finally the aide followed.

  A security guard opened the door into a hallway. He and Quinley exchanged glances; then the guard faced front and stood with no more expression than the wall behind him while “the Kostromans” passed.

  Quinley’s office was on the ground floor, but the back wall was glass with a door into the small garden beyond. The deputy controller touched a belt fob as he entered, and the sidewalls became a creamy blank. Everything in the office was virtual except for the chairs and desk of a synthetic with the sheen of black onyx.

  “If you’ll give me a moment, please,” Quinley said, sliding behind the desk and bringing up a display on which he concentrated.

  Adele had to restrain her reflex to take out her data unit. As a loud semi-barbarian, she was a harmless joke. If she showed herself to be technologically capable, she would become more interesting—especially since Quinley was showing himself to be a good deal more than a pompous nonentity also.

  The aide smiled brightly and said, “Won’t you be seated, Your Ladyship, mistress? And can I have some refreshment brought to you?”

  Adele sat down. Though the chair looked like stone, it deformed firmly but comfortably to her weight. She said, “No, I have my own food aboard the yacht.”

  Tovera stood against the wall, on the hinge side of the door panel. If it opened, she and her attaché case would be concealed from the person entering. Neither Quinley nor the aide paid her any attention: Tovera was as colorless as the walls.

  “I see,” Quinley said in a neutral voice. He shrank his holographic display—it had been merely a haze of light to any eyes but his—and looked at Adele. He said, “I’ve reviewed the records, Lady Hrynko. So far as I can see, there’s no reason you couldn’t have let the port authorities handle the clearance in the normal course of business. That might take a day or two, but since you’re the owner but not the listed captain, your employees could have made the declarations without troubling you.”

  Adele raised her head slightly so that she was speaking down her nose at the deputy controller. It was acting, of course, but her mother had been a very good role model for this sort of thing.

  “I should let flunkies come aboard my yacht?” she said. “Even if I am on emeritus status, I am owed the honors of a Principal of Kostroma!”

  “As you wish, Your Ladyship,” Quinley said equably. He brought up his display again, then narrowed it to a single column so that he could meet Adele’s eyes.

  “Since I’m acting as clearance officer, Your Ladyship,” he said, “I’m curious about the size of your crew. One hundred and fifteen effectives would be heavy even for a warship the size of your yacht. Why is that, please?”

  When Adele didn’t respond instantly, Quinley added, “I’m officially curious, that is. An answer is a requirement of your presence on Madison.”

  Not at all a pompous nonentity, Adele thought, pleased at the realization. She liked to meet competent people, even in cases where her job would have been simpler if they were like the dullards who vastly outnumbered them.

  Aloud she said toward the corner of the ceiling, “Should the Principal Hrynko allow a booby from Vitebsk—”

  She had recognized the deputy controller’s accent.

  “—to question her motives? But no matter.”

  Adele met Quinley’s eyes again; he had flushed at the reference to his origins. “I explained,” she continued, “that I was Emeritus; that is, that my stepson guides Hrynko in my place. I considered becoming Elector of Kostroma but decided that the position was unworthy of me in the final analysis. Elector Cargill, who took the position when I renounced it, arranged a pension for me sufficient to support my love of travel.”

  Anyone with a feeling for politics would hear Adele’s statement as an admission that Principal Hrynko had lost the struggle to rule her planet but that she retained enough power that the victor had preferred to buy her off instead of carrying the fight to the end. From the way Quinley relaxed, he certainly heard it that way.

  Adele turned her hands palms-up. “I have chosen to invest part of my pension in safeguarding my person,” she said. “Instead of spending larger sums to ransom myself from the pirates who infest many of the regions in which I may travel. Should anyone question my judgment?”

  Quinley smiled, then touched a keyboard control. “I certainly don’t question it, Your Ladyship,” he said. “I’ve cleared your yacht. Enjoy your stay on Madison.”

  The aide had been standing across the doorway from Tovera. “Wycherson,” he said. “Please show her Ladyship out.”

  Adele followed the aide down the corridor at a stately pace. There was nothing more to do here, but rushing off to check what her data unit had gathered would threaten the pose of aristocratic foolishness which she had taken pains to cultivate. Patience was always a virtue, and here it was a necessary one.

  “Feel free to call on us, Your Ladyship,” the aide called as she held the entrance door open for “the Kostromans.” Adele swept past without deigning to look at her.

  Woetjans shouted an order, but the Sissies were already sorting themselves out. There were different spacers on the litter poles; this time they were techs from the ship side rather than riggers. It appeared that even the bosun had decided that the riggers’ individual initiative wasn’t the best choice for teamwork on the ground after all.

  Adele waited until they had lifted the litter before she took out her data unit; through sheer effort of will she waited till they had paced a block back in the direction of the yacht before she switched on the display. Tovera walked alongside instead of being ahead with Woetjans.

  Adele looked at her servant. She would have spoken, but a ship lifted from the roadstead just then. Though the vessel was small and a mile offshore, its three plasma thrusters hammering at full output were loud enough that she would have had either to shout or to speak through the earbud, in which case Tovera could not have responded.

  When the sound had died away, Tovera looked up and said, “Mistress?”

  “Most of the departments might as well be without any security at all,” Adele said. “Which I suspect means that there will be nothing to help us in their files.”

  Tovera shrugged. “The exercise was healthy, I suppose,” she said.

  The techs moved more smoothly by far than the riggers had; with a little practice they would probably become quite good at the business. Though if Adele never had to ride on a litter again, it would be too soon.

  Aloud Adele said, “I said ‘most of the departments,’ Tovera. The exception was Fleet Intelligence, which seems to be walled off securely.”

  Tovera frowned, a momentary parochial irritation overcoming her usual detachment. “The Fifth Bureau didn’t have a high opinion of Fleet Intelligence,” she said, making her opinion impersonal in form.

  “No,” said Adele, “nor do I—in general. Since the 40 Stars detachment is such an exception, I think I’d better learn more about the Commander Rudolph Doerries, who runs it.”

  ***

  Daniel got up from the console. He braced himself in the doorway of the office and pushed hard against both jambs. His muscles had stiffened while he went over the Calpurnius Trading files.

  It might have been useful to have Cazelet with him—or for that matter, to have Cazelet in his place—but Daniel was confident that he would have spotted a problem if there were one; at least he would have spotted the fact that there was a problem. His sister Deirdre handled the Leary family’s extensive investments, but Daniel himself wasn’t a babe in the woods when faced with a ledger.

  B
remington must have heard the movement, because he came out of the adjacent office where he’d been working since he unlocked all files on his personal console and left Daniel alone with it. Obviously he was making a point—but it was precisely the point an innocent man would want to emphasize.

  “Are you satisfied, Pensett?” he asked.

  “I am,” said Daniel, looking over his shoulder as he shifted and thrust against the doorway in the other direction. “Both with your good faith toward Master Sattler and with the good business judgment with which Calpurnius Trading is run.”

  Daniel had the impression that Bremington made sure that the shipping side went smoothly while Mistress Sysco ran the front office and was the partnership’s public face. He hadn’t seen Sysco since starting work on the files: an earnest looking young man was still at the reception desk which he had taken over when Sysco offered to show Hogg some nearby establishments where he could relax.

  Daniel grinned. How relaxing Hogg had found the afternoon was another matter—and none of the young master’s business.

  “Well, give my regards to Bernhard when you next see him,” Bremington said. “Is there anything more we can help you with?”

  Will you please get out of here and let me do my job! Daniel translated mentally. He smiled. Aloud he said, “There is, sir, but I hope it won’t be a burden. Master Sattler wants me to follow a shipment of his goods to Sunbright. I’m a spacer, of course, so I’m more than happy to work my passage.”

  “To Sunbright?” Bremington said with a rising inflection. “Why in the name of the infernal does he want to do that? Our sales are Free Alongside at Ashe Haven. If the buyers want to dump the goods into the sea after they pay for delivery, that’s no skin off our noses—us or Bernhard either one.”

  “I didn’t figure it was my business to ask,” Daniel said, shrugging and spreading his hands. “I’m being paid and paid pretty well. Besides which—”