The Road of Danger-ARC

by David Drake

  Daniel shrugged. “Hell if I know,” he said. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t know her well enough to care.”

  He paused and added, “She was bright, I give her that. But that’s all I’ll give her. She had trouble with her PT scores. I had the feeling that if she wasn’t so bloody bright, she’d have left at the end of the first year.”

  The figure across the desk shrank his display to look directly at Daniel. Until then it had been a rectangular sheen within the otherwise featureless blur of the distortion field.

  “Look,” Daniel said, letting his disquiet at the situation enter his voice; he hoped his tone would read as bored irritation. “Are you doing to get to the point? Because if you want to hear about my dear old schooldays, you can wait for my memoirs while I do something useful.”

  “I assure you that this is useful, Lieutenant,” the voice said. “I had to determine that you were not an imposter before I opened the matter to you.”

  The portentous tone struck Daniel as false, but it might well have been no more false than that of any other man pretending to himself that the fate of the nation was in his hands. There were no few of those, which Daniel had learned as a child in the house of Speaker Leary.

  Corder Leary himself spoke with the unemotional precision of an architect describing a housing block. Nothing in his voice ever suggested that there was more than casual importance to the order he was giving; though it might mean the immediate murder of some thousands of men and women; along with a number of children, inevitably gathered up in haste and error.

  “I need a messenger to carry dispatches to Sunbright,” the hidden man said. “They must be put into the hands of Freedom himself. There are any number of adventurers here on Madison, let alone Cremona, who would contract to carry them, but they would be venal or worse. You are an RCN officer, Lieutenant; you are therefore a man of honor and a patriot.”

  I wouldn’t say… Daniel thought. But considering the context and the RCN officers he had met—before as well as since he entered the Academy—the statement was a pretty fair approximation of the truth.

  Aloud he said, “I hope I am a man of honor, yes; and I’m certainly a patriot. I don’t see how my patriotism is involved with the problems of scruffy foreigners here at the back of beyond, however.”

  The Chief laughed. “That is a matter for higher ranks than yours, Lieutenant,” he said, “but I assure you that my statement is quite true. All you have to do is to carry out your duties with the skill and determination to be expected of an RCN officer. Are you willing to do that?”

  “I was planning to look for, well, a position, after I reached Sunbright,” Daniel said cautiously. “Is this business going to affect my chances of doing that?”

  “It will not,” the other man said. “But this duty is a paid position also. Here are—”

  He slid his right hand through the distortion screen. His fingers were short, pudgy, and well manicured. He lifted and withdrew them to display ten high-denomination coins.

  “—a thousand Cinnabar florins. The fee is yours upon your oath as an RCN officer that you will use your best efforts to deliver the dispatches—”

  His left hand appeared, pushing a chip case, then withdrew.

  “—into the hands of Freedom. I depend on your honor; but the Republic also depends on you.”

  “A thousand florins?” Daniel said in surprise. He leaned forward to view the case more closely, being careful not to touch it. It was a standard RCN model, which meant that unauthorized opening would destroy the contents and probably the hands of the thief.

  “It will be a difficult task…” the Chief said. He continued to sound like a recruiting spiel for an elite combat unit. “And an extremely dangerous one. You will earn your pay, Lieutenant.”

  Daniel chuckled. He dropped the coins into his breast pocket, then slid the chip case into the right cargo pocket of his utility trousers.

  “I was going to Sunbright anyway,” he said to the blurred figure. “For a thousand florins, I don’t mind looking up somebody on the ground there.”

  He took a step back and said in a challenging tone, “I don’t believe your story about this being my duty to the Republic. But that doesn’t matter one way or the other, since I’m on half-pay till notified. Are we done now?”

  “We are done, Lieutenant,” the Chief said. His voice had returned to the calm boredom with which he had begun the interview. “Watchly will take you and your man to the Savoy.”

  Daniel turned on his heel and walked out, trying to hide his delight. He didn’t trust anything the Chief had just told him—but it really didn’t matter.

  He couldn’t have given himself a better excuse to find Sunbright if he had planned the whole meeting.

  ***

  Tovera was wearing a loose gray sweater and darker gray slacks. The garments didn’t fit very well, but they probably hadn’t fitted the original owner either.

  Without glancing aside from her driving—Tovera was a very earnest driver—she said, “There’s another set in the back that will do for you. There’s plenty of time for you to get them on before we reach the warehouse.”

  Adele leaned into the back and found a sweater with broad horizontal stripes of blue and maroon—both colors originally dark but badly faded—and a pair of slacks indistinguishable from those Tovera was wearing. They were so loose that she pulled them on over the clothes she was wearing, then transferred her pistol to a trouser pocket.

  She didn’t ask about the boy; his condition wasn’t important at this moment. Tovera was one of the most consciously observant people Adele had ever met, however; she caught her mistress’ glance toward the rear of the van after she had finished dressing.

  “He’ll have a headache when he wakes up,” Tovera said. “And a hundred pesetas in his pocket. He’ll be fine so long as things go well. If they don’t—”

  She shrugged, smiling.

  “He takes his chances with the rest of us,” Adele said without concern. They hadn’t asked the boy’s opinion, because they didn’t care. They needed bait of a particular type, and the boy had been drawn from the bait bucket.

  Why would a Mundy of Chatsworth care what a feral youth thought about a necessary action? In the longer term it would benefit him and his fellows, but that had very little to do with Adele’s fierce determination either.

  I couldn’t save my sister Agatha.

  Adele reached for her data unit to check how far they were from their destination; the borrowed trousers covered the unit’s pocket. She pressed her lips tightly together, more in irritation at herself than because she couldn’t get the information.

  She had the information: when she looked out the window, she saw that they were turning north off the Harborfront and onto the street where the former warehouse was located. A repair garage on the corner was unmistakable: it had walls of pinkish-beige.

  I have to be willing to accept information directly though my eyes and ears. I’m nervous, and I’m letting reflex rather than intellect control my behavior.

  She looked at Tovera and said, “I’m not an animal! That is, I’m not only an animal.”

  Her servant raised an eyebrow but didn’t turn her head. “No, mistress,” she said.

  She was smiling. She was a sociopath without true emotions anyway.

  Tovera turned the car toward the gate in the brick facade and stopped in the street. The wall was a little lower than Adele had guessed from the imagery, closer to nine feet than ten; the guard tower projected another four feet above it. The guard had a window of armored glass. The three gunports below it were flared to provide full coverage of the street.

  Theoretical coverage, that is. Adele doubted that anybody could hit a target from the port while aiming through the glass panel. Certainly not with a carbine.

  After waiting a moment with no response, Tovera depressed the van’s attention signal, which turned out to be a high-pitched bell. No one appeared at the window; Tovera rang again.

 
Adele grimaced. The bell was unpleasant, and Adele of course could open the gate herself with a moment’s business with her personal data unit.

  She didn’t need to do that; she was just impatient. She should be thankful that the guards were somnolent.

  The gate slid sideways, jerking and squealing on its track. Tovera drove in, scraping the van’s left fender on the post because she was concentrating on the gate itself on the right side. There were enough dents and scratches in the vehicle’s finish that this wouldn’t arouse the guards’ suspicion.

  There were four surface cars in the courtyard; there had been only three nondescript sedans when Adele had last checked satellite imagery. The new vehicle was a small three-wheeler with flowers stencilled onto a bright yellow background.

  The gate banged shut and a heavy crossbar slid into place. Adele got out her door and walked to the back of the van where Tovera met her. Tovera wasn’t carrying her attaché case.

  The door in the back of the gate tower was open, as it had been on the imagery. The guard, a paunchy man, stepped onto the landing. He hadn’t bothered to bring his carbine.

  “We didn’t get a call about you this time?” he said. There was doubt in his voice.

  “Well, we’re here anyway,” Adele snapped without looking up at the fellow.

  Tovera opened the back of the van. Adele waited a moment for her to unhook the elastic cords holding the boy in place, then leaned in to help pull him out. He was as limp as a half-full bladder of water.

  “How come he’s not tied?” the guard said. “Say, did you drug him? Why’d you drug him?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Adele said. “He’ll scream just fine when the knife goes in. Now, tell them to open the bloody door so that we can get out of here, okay?”

  Her back was to the tower. She brought out her data unit under cover of her body. When she heard the door into the one-story building start to rise, she switched off the security cameras.

  Tovera held the boy up by the collar with her left hand. She had taken the sub-machine gun from her waistband where the sweater had concealed it. Two guards stood in the doorway; they didn’t step into the courtyard

  Leaving her data unit on the floor of the van, Adele turned to the tower. The guard had gone back inside. The staff knew what went on here. At least the man at the gate tonight was squeamish about it.

  “Hey, fatty!” Adele shouted. “Come give us a hand, lard-ass!”

  The guard stepped onto the landing again. He shouted, “Who the bloody hell do you—”

  Adele shot him twice in the throat. She didn’t aim at his head silhouetted against the evening sky for fear that her light pellets would hit the cranial vault instead of the eyesockets and perhaps not penetrate.

  The tower guard grabbed his throat with both hands, gagging in blood. His feet twisted under him so that he fell back on his side. His legs kicked for a time as his body ran down.

  Tovera’s weapon had snapped out two short bursts. When Adele turned, one of the two guards in the doorway was sprawled limply while the other one had stiffened like a mannequin. The sub-machine gun’s muzzle glowed red.

  Adele and Tovera stepped over the bodies; they didn’t need to discuss the plan.

  The drugged boy lay on the pavement at the back of the van. From any distance he would look identical to the three guards. The difference between life and death might be no more than a faint breath—or a few ounces’ pressure on a trigger.

  CHAPTER 13: Ashetown on Madison

  Adele held the pistol out at her side. Though she had only fired twice, the electromagnetic flux that propelled the pellets had heated the little weapon’s barrel shroud hot enough to blister her thigh through the cloth if she dropped it back into the trouser pocket.

  Besides, she was likely to use the pistol again very soon.

  Facing the outside door was the guardroom where the pair now sprawled in the doorway had waited until the van arrived. Adele hadn’t been able to view the interior of the building while she planned the operation, but the files of a Madison architect had provided as-built drawings of its original warehouse configuration.

  A corridor now ran across the front of the building. Tovera turned right, toward what had been the warehouse office and was probably now the administrative control room: the security cameras and intercoms were run from a console there.

  Adele went the other way.

  There was a steel door to the right at the end of the corridor. Over it was a security camera on a different circuit from the external system; it would have gone blank also when Adele ordered the control console to shut down for a system check. There was no keypad on this side of the door, and the intercom would be dead also.

  She rang the knuckles of her right hand on the center of the door panel. If she had had something hard she might have used that instead, but the sharp cling-cling-cling on the steel was adequate.

  She wouldn’t use her pistol as a mallet, of course. It was a specialized tool whose mechanisms were more delicate than many people seemed to realize.

  Someone shouted from the other side of the door. Adele smiled slightly and knocked again. She didn’t bother trying to make out the words.

  Bolts withdrew from wall sockets at both top and bottom of the door. It had been designed much like a spaceship’s hatch. The panel opened toward her, slowly because of its weight.

  “What happened to the camera and—” the guard inside began. There was no concern in his voice, merely the irritation of a dull man when his routine is interrupted.

  He didn’t notice Adele’s pistol before she shot him twice through the right eye. His body spasmed backward, kicking the doorpanel hard enough to open it wider. Because he was wearing soft-soled boots, the sound was only a muffled thump.

  The guard had been in an anteroom with a door on the other end as well. Its only furnishings were a low stool and a holograph projector loaded with—

  Adele touched the unit to check. She loved information, no matter how valueless, the way an alcoholic craves the bottle.

  —pornography involving women, more women, and animals. At least she assumed it was pornography. She had never pretended to understand the allure of sex, but it puzzled her than anyone could find these images titillating.

  She looked down at the dead man, wondering what had happened to the pair of soldiers who had killed her sister Agatha. No doubt they would have explained that they were just doing their jobs, but logic as well as Adele’s anger argued that men who cut off the head of a little girl were not likely to die in bed themselves.

  The inner door wasn’t locked. Adele pushed it open.

  The space beyond was a single room thirty feet deep and twenty wide. On the right-hand wall was an electronics suite that would have done credit to the bridge of a battleship.

  The floor to the left was a stainless steel tray with upturned edges. On it was a floodlit operating theatre. A child, probably an undernourished ten-year-old rather than someone younger and healthier, was strapped to the table.

  The man who had been bending over the child was in his sixties and fat, with lifeless hair. He was nude except for splotches and splatters of blood; he seemed to have dipped his thumbs in the blood to paint designs on his chest.

  He held a scalpel. It and his hand were dripping.

  Light reflecting from the door’s inner face must have drawn him from his leering concentration. He rose and stared at Adele in surprise and anger. “Who the hell are you?” he said. “Get out!”

  “Put down the knife,” Adele said. She kept her eyes on the fat man as she walked toward to three linked consoles against the wall.

  Her personal data unit was out in her right hand. It didn’t have to be in contact with a console, but it was probably safer sitting on one than it would be anywhere else in the room for the next short time.

  “I told you to get out, you stupid bitch!” the man said, raising the scalpel as he started around the table. There were drains in the floor.

&nb
sp; Adele shot him through the wrist. He didn’t drop the scalpel until three spaced rounds had puckered the skin, smashing the cartilage and delicate bones into grit and gelatine. She set the little data unit on the console’s fascia.

  “What did you do?” the man shouted in disbelief. “What did you do?”

  He lunged toward Adele. She shot him twice through the right knee, then twice more through the other. He finally twisted to the left and fell, still shouting.

  Sheer mechanical damage had brought him down; he didn’t seem affected by pain. Either he was heavily drugged, or the endorphins which his brain released from delight at torturing children protected him from what should have been agony.

  Adele walked to the boy, keeping the table between her and where the naked man had fallen. Blood had stopped leaking from the network of shallow cuts, but she touched the victim’s throat with the tips of her right index and middle fingers.

  There was no carotid pulse. She suppose that was just as well. As well as carving out the boy’s eyes, the man had cut his vocal cords.

  “Are you police?” the man said as Adele walked back around the table. “You’ve made a mistake, a terrible mistake! I’m Charlie Platt. Talk to your watch commander. You’re not supposed to be here!”

  He wheezed suddenly; perhaps the pain was getting through after all. “Oh, what have you done? You bitch, you stupid bitch!”

  “I’m not the police,” Adele said. She checked her little unit as it mined the consoles and transferred their data to her base system on the Princess Cecile. Though it purred along happily, it hadn’t completed its tasks yet. There must be an amazing amount of information in Platt’s system.

  The man on the floor had fallen half on, half off, the tray under the operating theater. He must have begun noticing discomfort from the raised steel gutter, because he tried to squirm off it. That flexed his right knee; he screamed and his whole body quivered.

  “I thought I might need access codes from you,” Adele said. “Apparently not, since my unit is mirroring yours without difficulty. Your external security was very good, though.”