The Road of Danger-ARC

by David Drake

  “I’ll pay you,” Platt said, breathing quickly. “I can pay any amount, any amount. I’m a very important man!”

  Platt had fouled himself when his leg bent. He was an aging fat man who wore only his own feces and a child’s blood, and he was bragging about his importance.

  “You must be very important,” Adele said in a calm, reasonable tone. “To be allowed to do this.”

  She gestured toward the operating table with her right hand.

  “Even on a frontier world like Madison, that’s amazing.”

  “I was the Chief of Systems at Fleet Prime on Pleasaunce!” Platt said. Adele wasn’t sure whether it was breathy enthusiasm or only pain which she heard in his voice. “I should have been promoted to Technical Director, but some officious fool started making trouble and I had to, well, I came here. I—”

  He paused and panted for a moment while he retrieved the thread of his argument. At last he said, “I know powerful people here. They’ll give you whatever you ask to free me. Anything! Just ask.”

  “Your protector is Commander Doerries of Fleet Intelligence here?” Adele said. She backed a few steps to glance sideways at her data unit without looking away from Platt.

  “That doesn’t matter!” Platt said. “I can get you more money than you dream, that’s what matters!”

  “No,” said Adele, “it isn’t. Even if I cared about money, it wouldn’t matter now.”

  She shot Platt through the eye; twice, as she had been trained to do. He spasmed and went flaccid.

  You don’t torture a cockroach.

  “Coming through!” Tovera said from the doorway. “Coming through!”

  Adele slid the data unit into its proper sheath beneath the borrowed trousers. She continued to hold the pistol out. It would have cooled sufficiently to pocket by the time she stepped into the open air again.

  “I’m almost done here,” she said, turning. “Bring a—ah. Yes, of course you would.”

  Tovera gave Adele a snake-like smile. She held two of the automatic carbines which dead guards had dropped.

  “Step clear, mistress,” she said, holding one of the carbines sideways at her waist. The other was slung over her shoulder.

  Adele obediently walked toward the door. When Tovera was satisfied that Adele was at a safe distance, she fired into the first console. Because the impellers were smoothbores, rifling didn’t twist the barrel to the side but the fully automatic burst did lift the muzzle slightly under recoil.

  The thirty osmium pellets spaced themselves across the body of the console and halfway into its nearest neighbor. Sparks, fragments, and the sizzle of short circuits followed the line of destruction.

  When the weapon was empty, Tovera tossed it into a corner—the muzzle glowed a yellow which shimmered toward the white—and unlimbered the other carbine. Her second long burst was in perfect alignment with that of the first.

  She dropped the carbine onto the steel floor; it sizzled and stank in blood. “I’ll lead,” she said, drawing her sub-machine gun as she stepped ahead of Adele at the door.

  “No problems?” Adele said.

  “The woman on the console tonight had her girlfriend in to improve the time,” Tovera said. “I expended six rounds instead of three, that’s all.”

  She held up a keychip in her left hand. “I thought we’d leave the van here and go out in the girlfriend’s car,” she said. “Nobody will connect that with this business if it gets noticed before we’re back aboard the Sissie.”

  “All right,” said Adele. It was very improbable that anyone would notice the slaughter for days if not weeks, given the care that Platt and Doerries had taken to keep the location secret.

  Adele didn’t care. She wasn’t sure she cared about anything at the moment.

  The three-wheeler’s back wouldn’t have held an adult, but they easily folded the drugged boy into it. Tovera got into the driver’s seat and switched the vehicle on. Adele took out her personal data unit by rote.

  “The boy back there?” Tovera said without looking at Adele.

  “He was dead,” Adele said. She opened the gate for Tovera to accelerate into the street, then started it closing again.

  Adele looked at her servant. “Tovera?” she said. “Does what happened to those children disturb you?”

  Tovera did not look away from the road. “It bothers me, mistress,” she said, “because it should bother me. It bothers you.”

  “Yes, it bothers me,” said Adele. She thought about Agatha. “It bothers me a great deal.”

  ***

  Daniel and Hogg got out from opposite sides when the aircar landed. Its fans blew grit across their ankles as it lifted and curved away from the quay where the Savoy was berthed. Watchly didn’t look back at them.

  “I chatted some with Martensen, the guard back to the farmhouse, you know?” Hogg said in a quiet voice, his hands in his pockets. He hadn’t spoken about the farm or the people there during the return journey.

  “Ah?” said Daniel. Kiki Lindstrom came to the Savoy’s entry hatch, probably summoned by the sound of the aircar. She didn’t call to them or start across the catwalk. Her face was impassive in the high light standards on the quay.

  “We didn’t talk about much,” Hogg said, still facing in the direction Watchly had driven off. “But his boots were Fleet issue. And the poncho he was wearing had G 37 stencilled on the back.”

  “Ah,” Daniel repeated in a brighter tone. “There’s a destroyer G 37 in Fleet service. Probably not first-line by now; the class was laid down about twenty years ago, which is a long time for a destroyer.”

  “Martensen isn’t a kid,” Hogg said reflectively. “He’s a husky fellow, though.”

  He shrugged. “Anyway,” he said, “I thought you might want to know.”

  “Yes,” said Daniel, “thank you. It confirms my suspicions.”

  He didn’t know what it meant. The fact that an Alliance officer was pretending to be a Cinnabar officer certainly meant something, but it might simply be that the Chief was a grafter who thought that patriotism would make former RCN Lieutenant Pensett more willing to lend himself to some black-market scheme.

  Daniel touched the RCN document case in his pocket. Adele would be able to open it safely, he was sure, but he didn’t want to take it straight back to the Princess Cecile. There was an obvious chance that Martensen or someone of his ilk was watching “Pensett’s” activities, or that Lindstrom herself would contact her backer if she decided Daniel’s behavior was suspicious.

  Daniel—or perhaps Hogg—would have a chance to deliver the package tomorrow, when he was sure that Adele had returned to the Sissie. He wasn’t going to risk this heaven-sent opportunity to meet Freedom without a better reason than he had thus far.

  “Let’s go aboard, Hogg,” Daniel said, “and choose our bunks.”

  There was an old girl who lived in Cairo Port… he whistled as he preceded Hogg across the catwalk. How I wish that she was dead!

  CHAPTER 14: Ashetown on Madison

  Adele entered the Battle Direction Center and sat at the empty console beside Cory’s. She had left the borrowed over-garments in the three-wheeler when she and Tovera abandoned it in an alley behind a row of brothels.

  Someone would probably steal the vehicle before morning, but that didn’t matter. There was no harm done if the car remained where it was for however many days it was before the authorities discovered the owner’s body was one of many at a massacre site.

  “Mistress!” Lieutenant Cory said. “I didn’t expect you back here. Ah—that is, I’m glad to see you. It feels, well, I’m used to being on the bridge, so this station isn’t… I mean, even though it’s a promotion to First Lieutenant.”

  Adele looked at him. The others present in the BDC were Fiducia, the missileer’s mate, and Knibbs, a technician whom Cory had been instructing in astrogation simply because he was willing to learn.

  And Tovera, of course. It was easy to overlook Tovera, while things were quiet.r />
  Captain Vesey, as she had become, was at the command console on the bridge. Although she would not have questioned anything Adele did, Adele would feel constrained in Vesey’s presence. Vesey felt that she ought to understand what Lady Mundy was doing.

  Cory didn’t feel anything of the sort. If Adele had begun tap dancing on the seat of her console, the most Cory might have done was ask if he could help. She’d chosen the BDC for no better reason than that.

  “I suppose it’s the opposite with me,” Adele said. “I thought this would be a more comfortable setting for a task I have to do. Though I hadn’t connected the cause and effect until you spoke, Cory.”

  In fact, she realized, she wasn’t making many connections at all since the shootings. She had subconsciously divorced herself from everything that was going on around her.

  She felt a touch of wry humor, though nobody looking at her face would have recognized it. The disconnected way she had felt since leaving Platt’s sanctum wasn’t very different from her normal state of existence.

  Cory’s enthusiasm cooled as Adele looked at him without emotion. “Ah…” he said. “I’m watch officer, but since it’s quiet I thought I’d go over procedures with Knibbs here. If you’d like us to leave…?”

  “Not at all, Cory,” Adele said as she synched her personal data unit with the console. She preferred to use her little unit as an interface. She found the wands with which she controlled it to be her fastest and most efficient input method. “Strictly speaking, this isn’t really RCN business.”

  “I better get back to the Power Room,” muttered Knibbs. He got up without looking at Cory or Adele. Fiducia had already slipped out of the BDC.

  I didn’t care, Adele thought wearily. But I couldn’t have cleared the compartment more quickly if I’d waved my pistol.

  “I could—” Cory said.

  “Sit down,” Adele said, much more sharply than she had intended. She grimaced. She was on edge, but that was no excuse for snarling at a—well, at a friend—who was simply trying to be polite in a confusing situation.

  She met Cory’s eyes and tried to smile. “I uncovered a sexual predator here in Ashetown,” she said. She was explaining as a more tangible form of apology to him. “I’m transmitting the information to the authorities. As I say, it isn’t strictly RCN business, though it seems to involve Fleet officials in some fashion or other.”

  “Sexual predator…” Cory repeated. Something had changed in his face, though Adele couldn’t have said exactly what the difference was. He cleared his throat and said, “Mistress, if you thought it might be better for a couple of us to talk to the fellow informally…?”

  And what is there in your background that causes you to react that way, Lieutenant? Adele thought; her face remained expressionless. Aloud she said, “Thank you, Master Cory, but I’m sure no further action will be necessary.”

  “Yes, mistress,” Cory said. He relaxed and his smile spread. Perhaps he understood more than had been in Adele’s words. He’d been in close contact with her for long enough to know what she was besides a scholar and a signals officer.

  She checked her display; the file transfer was complete. She hadn’t dumped the whole assemblage which she had netted from Platt’s consoles, just enough from a quick sort to give the proper authorities a handle on the rest.

  “Ah,” Cory said. “If Fleet officers are involved, could I help? Even if they weren’t, you know, it would be an honor to help. And Rene too, of course, though I think he’s in town now looking for clothes.”

  Cazelet looking for clothes? But of course: lingerie or the like for Elspeth Vesey; to be given her after she stepped down as captain of The House of Hrynko.

  Adele thought of the mass of data. Her two unofficial aides could be useful, during the initial sort and probably later on as well.

  “Yes,” she said, transferring a file to Cory’s console. “This man claimed to have been Chief of Systems at Fleet Prime and in line for the post of Technical Director. I don’t know what period this would have been going on, but today he appeared to be in his sixties.”

  “Yes, mistress,” Cory said; he was already at work. “Is there anything in particular I should be looking for?”

  Adele pursed her lips. “Platt implied he working for Commander Doerries, head of the Fleet Intelligence office for the Forty Stars Sector,” she said. “Platt’s skills were of a high enough order that his claims about his rank on Pleasaunce may well be true. If so, how did he come to be transferred to this backwater?”

  “Guarantor Porra,” Tovera said, “is something of a prude.”

  Adele didn’t twitch in surprise, but Cory did. It was as though one of the jump-seats folded against the bulkhead had joined the discussion.

  “Porra is?” Cory said in amazement. “Why, he’s…he’s done…”

  He let his voice trail off. Perhaps he was remembering that Tovera had been a member of the 5th Bureau, the intelligence agency which reported directly to the Guarantor—that is, Dictator—of the Alliance, and which was the tool he used for his most brutal acts of repression.

  “Guarantor Porra has done many reprehensible things,” Tovera agreed with a terrible smile, “but personally he is prudish. He might well order children to be tortured as a matter of policy, but it would disgust him to learn that one of his officials was torturing children for sexual gratification. I suspect you’ll find that Platt wasn’t transferred: he was running ahead of Fifth Bureau executioners.”

  She giggled. “He didn’t go far enough, as it turns out,” she said.

  If Platt was a fugitive, Adele thought, then whatever Commander Doerries is doing isn’t a sanctioned operation. With luck the data grab from Platt’s consoles would eventually give them full particulars on that operation, though it still might not have any bearing on RCN business or even on Mistress Sand’s broader objectives.

  Adele’s smile was barely a quiver at the corners of her lips. There was no useless information; there was only information for which she hadn’t yet found a use.

  “Master Cazelet?” Tovera said. She spoke loudly enough for Cazelet to hear as he entered the compartment, but the real purpose was probably to call Adele’s attention the new arrival.

  “I, ah…” Cazelet said. “The captain told me that you were, both of you were in the BDC. I thought I’d…well, I’d see if there was something I could do?”

  Adele smiled faintly. She shouldn’t be surprised to be surrounded by people who looked for work rather than for ways to avoid work. That was her own attitude, after all; and more important, that was Daniel’s attitude.

  “Find a console,” she said without looking over her shoulder toward Cazelet. “I’ll send tasks to you when that’s appropriate.”

  The console Adele was using threw a pulsing amber attention signal onto the upper right corner of its display. It took her a moment to cycle back to the present and determine which of her various automated operations had born fruit.

  She expanded the icon. As soon as Daniel informed her of his plans, Adele had cued her intercepts of Squadron internal message traffic to alert her if the word Savoy—among many others—appeared. It just had.

  She scanned it, then copied the link to Cory, Cazelet, and—after a heartbeat’s hesitation—to Vesey on the bridge. This might well become a task for the corvette Princess Cecile, not just a matter of intelligence gathering and dissemination.

  A man named Petrov—the name wasn’t familiar; she would track him down later—had reported to Squadron Headquarters that the yawl Savoy was carrying weapons stolen from Fleet stores and intended for the rebels on Sunbright. Though the Squadron was on four-hour alert, the Operations staff had authorized Captain von Trona of the cruiser Marie to sequester the yawl pending survey and possible condemnation of her cargo.

  The Marie carried a company of fifty-six Naval Infantry. They had no duties during lift-off preparations. There wouldn’t be a problem if they were absent and the Squadron received emergency orders to
lift for Sunbright—or for Tattersall, as the case might be. Von Trona had told the company commander, a Naval major, to take a platoon to the Savoy that night.

  “I thought the blockade runners bribed the Fleet authorities here to look the other way?” Cazelet said. “We know the authorities have been bribed, I’ve tabulated the payments over the past three and a half years. What caused the change?”

  Adele didn’t consider the question, because for the moment it wasn’t important. The only important task was to reach Daniel before the Alliance troops arrived. Since the Savoy was tied up at a quay, it was possible that the ship had landline communication through the Ashetown network.

  “It isn’t a change,” said Cory. “Lindstrom and her backers are bribing the Squadron Base establishment. This Petrov obviously knew that, so he sent his information to the Squadron itself. If the Fleet is anything like the RCN, the real spacers hate the base wankers worse than they do, well—”

  His small image on Adele’s display grinned.

  “—worse than they hate us. The RCN may kick their asses in battle, but we’re not going to rob them blind on the ground. I suspect somebody on Jeletsky’s staff—and von Trona for sure—is doing this to stick it in the base establishment’s eye.”

  The Savoy’s berth did have a landline connection. Adele called it while she prepared to send a microwave signal to the blockade runner also. The Sissie’s stern sending head had a direct line to the yawl, but success presupposed that the Savoy’s receiver was switched on.

  It would be bad if an RCN officer were arrested aboard a blockade runner carrying arms to the Sunbright rebels. If by some chance the RCN officer were identified as Captain Daniel Leary—that would be very bad indeed.

  Answer me, Daniel!

  ***

  “Mistress Lindstrom?” Daniel said, nodding to the ship-owner as she backed out of the hatchway to allow him and Hogg aboard. “I thought I’d familiarize myself with the electronics tonight. Tomorrow morning I’ll go over the rigging, but that’s a job for daylight, right?”

  “The rigging’s all right,” Lindstrom said. “It got us here, didn’t it? Why wouldn’t it get us back to Cremona?”