The Road of Danger-ARC

by David Drake

  “They didn’t come on the Princess Cecile, sir,” Daniel said. “I think they may be the foreign officials that Lady Mundy mentioned.”

  “I’m going to see what’s happening,” Cox said. He stepped off, ignoring the wet ground cover and the resuming drizzle.

  “Sir—” said Daniel; and paused, though no one outside his head would have realized it. He wasn’t sure how to continue.

  Adele had ordered him to accompany the admiral closely. She had not, however, told Daniel to prevent Admiral Cox from performing his duties—and the admiral’s expressed intention to sort out the trouble here in the parking lot was certainly part of the duty of the Admiral Commanding the Macotta Squadron.

  Daniel could provide information and perhaps a buffer, however. He caught up with Cox and said, “If you don’t mind, sir, I suggest your other aides remain under the marquee.”

  And out of the way. Nothing about Ruffin’s past behavior made Daniel want to trust her if things got rough, and Butler seemed even less of a man of action than the commander did.

  “Roger,” said Cox. He turned his head and snapped, “You two, stay on the porch!”

  I’m as glad not to be on the squadron staff, Daniel thought. On the other hand, it was scarcely unusual for a senior officer to behave like an arrogant bastard some of the time, and Cox was at least competent.

  Passengers were getting out of the back of the command car. There would be room for twelve soldiers in battledress if the extra communications and sensing electronics were stripped out; as they must have been in this case, since half a dozen had disembarked already and more were stepping onto the steep ramp.

  Fleet dress uniforms weren’t quite as bulky as the body armor, pack, and shoulder weapons that combat troops wore, but the difference was one of degree rather than kind. The garments were the same gray-green—Field Gray—color as Fleet utilities, but they were of glossy fabric—silk for those who could afford it—with peaked saucer hats, flaring shoulder boards, and the fittings in gold rather than silver or black.

  Adele in a dark business suit stood facing the vehicle’s rear hatch. Her hands were before her and empty, but crooked elbows put her hands near her tunic pockets.

  To Adele’s left was Tovera, as was to be expected. The man on Adele’s right was a stranger to Daniel. He was of moderate height and build. Like Adele he wore civilian clothing, and he looked almost as insignificant from a distance as she did.

  The officers who had gotten out of the command car intended to wait near the base of the ramp for Admiral Jeletsky. Instead, RCN Marines in 2nd Class uniforms were easing them back, as gently as possible but firmly nonetheless. The Marines were under the command of a lieutenant colonel who looked just as stern as Vondrian had at the drop-off point in front of the house.

  “That’s LaSalle from the Schelling,” Cox said. “I didn’t give him orders to do this.”

  I wouldn’t bet on that, Daniel thought. If orders were to be transmitted electronically, Adele generally preferred to do it herself under the proper codes and protocols rather than bother with the formality of requesting action by the person whose responsibility it was.

  Three men and a woman, all in nondescript clothing, waited at the sides of the ramp. The woman was watching the man beside Adele. He hooked his left index finger, a motion as slight as what was required to pull a trigger.

  The woman faced around and nodded. The next man out of the vehicle was a commander, well built and apparently fit. He had a pencil moustache and a small goatee. He gave the Marine officer a look of guarded concern.

  The woman at the base of the ramp touched his wrist said, “If you’ll come with me, please, Commander Doerries.”

  Doerries jerked away from her. While his attention was concentrated on the woman, a man in back of him took the wrist in his left hand and twisted it behind Doerries’ neck. Doerries tried to turn into the grip to loosen it, but a man on the other side had his free hand. He appeared to hold Doerries gently, but from the commander’s choked scream his thumb and fingers were on the verge of being dislocated.

  Stumbling, sobbing, Doerries allowed himself to be walked toward the Alliance assault boat which loomed over the vehicles at the rear of the parking area. The trail its floatation tires left in the soggy ground was clearly visible now that Daniel had walked near. Not only had the boat been in place before the conference attendees started to arrive, it had come straight in from the bay three miles north.

  Doerries’ arrest had startled the Alliance staff officers into gabbling like a rookery of large birds awakened in the night. Admiral Jeletsky, portly but solid looking, pushed aside the captain who had frozen in the command car’s hatch and stepped out.

  “Wait a bloody minute!” Jeletsky shouted. “You can’t arrest my officers! This is an act of war! Cox! Where are you, Cox?”

  He thinks Doerries has been arrested by Cinnabar personnel, Daniel realized.

  The man beside Adele tapped his finger again. Seeing what was about to happen—the scene clarified the way battle plans did, all the swirling possibilities suddenly freezing into one crystal certainty—Daniel started forward.

  “Stop right bloody now or—”

  “If you’ll come with me, please, Admiral Jeletsky,” the woman said. She took Jeletsky’s wrist.

  The admiral looked at her in sudden realization. He screamed like a nose-clamped hog about to be butchered and pulled himself away. The remaining man took Jeletsky’s left wrist and elbow and began to raise them.

  “Help me!” Jeletsky cried. “Help me!”

  A trim-looking Fleet lieutenant unsnapped her holster. The pistol was small, part of her uniform rather than a real weapon, but it would probably work. The gods knew that Adele’s pistol did, and it was smaller yet.

  Daniel took her hand in his. “Excuse me, Lieutenant,” he said, “but I’d rather that you not do that. This is my only set of Dress Whites, and I’d prefer not get them spattered with your blood.”

  The staff lieutenant looked around wild-eyed. Tovera and the hulking minder beside Adele’s companion had sub-machine guns pointed at her. She stopped pulling against Daniel’s grip and her knees began to shake.

  The 5th Bureau operatives walked Admiral Jeletsky into the assault boat. The people guarding that vehicle were either Fleet Marines in civilian clothes or the Bureau’s own muscle.

  Daniel returned to the side of Admiral Cox. “Sir,” he said. “I think you have brought the Tattersall operation to a satisfactory conclusion.”

  CHAPTER 29: Leelburg on Tattersall

  Adele let out a deep breath as the hatch of the assault boat closed behind Master Storn. Doerries and Jeletsky were already on board. She didn’t relax, but she noticed that she felt less tense.

  The closest Adele came to relaxation occurred when she was deep in research with all the resources she needed and nothing standing between her and the answer except the limits of her own abilities. Thus far, she had not reached any such limits.

  The boat—should she call it a truck or bus since it was on land now?—wallowed off in the direction of Flounder Harbor. It was quite possible that it would be driven straight into the hold of the Feursnot. If so, there was a good chance that Tattersall’s wet grayness had been the last open sky Doerries and Jeletsky would ever see.

  Daniel and Admiral Cox remained together, talking with animation. Cox turned toward the house, then turned back to look directly at Adele. She stood straight, her face set. I will listen to whatever the Admiral chooses to say; then I will decide whether I will respond or not respond.

  Cox bowed at the waist. It was what he would have done if, at a formal affair, Admiral Cox in uniform met Lady Mundy in civilian garb.

  Adele curtseyed. Her mother’s training brought the correct response out by reflex. She watched Daniel and Cox walk side by side toward the building’s entrance.

  I didn’t expect him to draw his pistol and try to shoot me, but I wouldn’t have been surprised. That surprised me.

>   Tovera coughed minusculely. Tovera never coughs.

  Adele kept her left hand out of her tunic pocket, but she turned very quickly. Mistress Sand stood at Tovera’s elbow. She shielded a snuffbox—a lovely thing, carved from burl—in her upturned palm, but she didn’t attempt to use it in the drizzle. Her tweed suit and circular hat of matching fabric were close-woven.

  Adele felt humor that didn’t reach her lips. These were exactly the conditions for which Sand’s outfit was intended. The older woman was in truth as well as appearance a squire from Cinnabar’s central uplands. She was considerably more than that also.

  And she was most unexpectedly here on Tattersall.

  “I wonder if I might have a word, Mundy?” Mistress Sand said. She phrased it as a question; Adele was one of the few people who might not accept a direct order from Mistress Sand.

  “Yes, of course,” Adele said. She gave the older woman her equivalent of a broad smile and added, “I’m glad to see you; but even if I weren’t, I would be glad to grant so courteous a request.”

  To a degree, Adele regretted choosing to to wave her independence in Mistress Sand’s face in that fashion. On the other hand, if Mistress Sand ever forgot that she was dealing with Mundy of Chatsworth, she might try to behave as a superior in fact rather than on an organizational chart. Adele’s reaction to that might go beyond what could be swept under the table in the future. Since Adele wanted to continue the relationship, it was better not to take the risk.

  Sand thrust her hands into her jacket pockets. She eyed the house into which the last of the conference attendees were filtering and said, “I doubt we’d find much privacy there, and I’d prefer to give that place a wide berth anyway. It looks like a carnival funhouse.”

  Glancing sidelong at Adele, she added, “Shall we go somewhere in my car?”

  An aircar waited at the edge of the parking lot. It was a comment on how focused Adele had been on the drama which the Alliance visitors had just acted that she hadn’t noticed the sound. No matter how well tuned an aircar’s fans were, the intake rush couldn’t be completely muffled.

  Adele looked beyond the car. “Let’s just walk on the other side of the road,” she said. “The ground there is firmer, I believe. I think it will be as private as anywhere on the planet.”

  After a moment’s thought, she added, “It’s possible that we’ll be overheard by some burrowing animal or the like, but I haven’t seen any myself.”

  I wonder if Daniel would know the answer to that?

  Sand looked startled, then laughed. “I forget you have a sense of humor, Mundy,” she said. In a wistful tone she said, “Sometimes I forget I do myself. Yes, let’s walk.”

  The Marines who had been directing traffic relaxed now that vehicles had stopped coming up the drive. There might be a few late-comers, but the senior officers were inside by now, which took the pressure off the junior personnel who remained.

  By becoming a Sissie, a member of the crew of the Princess Cecile, Adele had found herself forced to observe human behavior with her own eyes. She had become fairly skilled at the business, though she still would have preferred to gain her information through recordings and the reports of third parties.

  She wondered if she had ever seen, let alone entered, a carnival funhouse. It wasn’t the sort of thing which would have interested Senator Lucas Mundy’s bookish daughter. Immediately after the Proscriptions Adele could not afford anything non-essential; since then, Signals Officer Mundy had not had the time.

  Daniel might know about funhouses; Hogg certainly would. She would ask Hogg to arrange for her to see one at the next opportunity. It would be part of her education in her new role to see a funhouse—and to do so in her own person rather than through video imagery.

  “Did you perchance request that I come out here, Mundy?” Mistress Sand said. They had crossed the road and were continuing on toward the forest a mile or so away.

  Adele frowned. “Of course not,” she said. “I didn’t realize how serious the business was until the Princess Cecile reached Madison. Not till the end of our stay there, as a matter of fact. I didn’t have any way of sending a priority message to Xenos from an Alliance world, and even if I had, the round trip would be at least thirty days. By then the matter would have ended one way or another.”

  She shrugged. “I sent a report,” she said. “I would have built an altar and prayed to the Great Gods before I did anything as foolish as trying to summon you. I would have consulted you if you’d been present, but the Navy Board authorization you provided when we met on Cinnabar was all that I needed to deal with the matter. Matters.”

  The vegetation here was knee-high. Adele’s trouser legs were being soaked, but her RCN boots were waterproof. She’d walked in the rain before; and slept under culverts when it rained, come to that.

  “I began reviewing information on the Macotta Region after I sent you—” Sand said. She stopped when she saw Adele’s almost smile.

  “I misstated,” Sand said. “When I signed off on your plan to go to Kronstadt with a warning about the coming trouble on Tattersall. Which is my excuse for not having read into the region sooner and thus having missed the clues that something was badly amiss.”

  What Adele had thought were flowers among the plants were actually star-shaped patches of white on the dark green leaves. Though…the patches swelled from the leaf surfaces, and creatures no more than a tenth of an inch long crawled on and about them. Perhaps they were flowers, or anyway served the purposes of flowers.

  She looked up again. Mistress Sand was waiting patiently for her to choose her answer.

  “I had no idea of the ramifications either until we arrived in the region,” Adele said. “I don’t see why you fault yourself for not seeing them.”

  “Because it’s my job,” Sand said. “Not yours.”

  She looked at the sky and apparently decided that the mist had stopped falling. She spilled a quantity of snuff into the cup between her closed left thumb and the back of her hand. From the tickle in Adele’s nose, the tobacco was mixed with cinnamon.

  Sand knuckled her right nostril shut, snorted half the charge, then repeated the process through her right nostril. Facing away from Adele she sneezed loudly; sneezed again; and finally sneezed a third time with transporting violence.

  She wiped her lower face with a large handkerchief printed in the same pattern as her tweeds, then smiled at Adele. Her cheeks were flushed.

  “Filthy habit, I know,” Sand said. “Still, it settles me; and I’ve decided it’s a better choice than my flask—”

  She tapped her tweed jacket; the dull thump located the flat metal container.

  “—when I’m talking to you. I have enough trouble keeping up when I’m not buzzed.”

  Sand’s expression tightened. “I should have known,” she said, “because it’s my job to keep in touch with what’s going on in all regions. I have access to more data than you do. As soon as I looked at the Sunbright situation, I saw that elements in the Alliance itself were behind the rebellion, and that they were trying to blame it on us. On Cinnabar.”

  “Sunbright is an Alliance world,” Adele said. “There was no reason for you be concerned about what was going on there.”

  She smiled wryly. “For that matter,” she said, “though the Alliance authorities did have reason for concern, they didn’t get very far without our help.”

  “I had the advantage of knowing that Cinnabar wasn’t backing the revolt,” Sand said. “Even if the support was unofficial, weaponry at that level would have left traces moving through RCN accounts. No doubt the Fifth Bureau could have found it also, if they’d been looking in that direction.”

  The horizontal leaves of a plant a little taller than most of those around it dangled lines covered with what Adele thought were flowers. As her next step brought her closer, the “flowers” drifted away in discrete masses, leaving the tendrils white and bare.

  Plant and animal behavior can be interesting if I ima
gine that I’m viewing holographic images, Adele thought. Human behavior became interesting that way too.

  “Your advantage over the Fifth Bureau…” Sand said. “Because obviously you’d already learned the things I rushed from Xenos to tell you. Was that you’re a magician.”

  Adele sniffed. “Scarcely that,” she said. “I located the information specialist who was supplying Doerries with particulars on the blockade runners. The specialist’s database had a record of the whole operation. He was perforce inside Doerries’ firewall; and he gathered information as I do, not for any reason of Doerries. I think a clerk in Macotta Headquarters could have done what I did. Though the clerk would have taken longer to sift out the important elements.”

  Mistress Sand looked at her. Adele was suddenly afraid that the older woman was going to ask how she had gotten access to Platt’s databases. Adele wouldn’t lie; but neither, she decided, would she answer fully.

  Sand wouldn’t be happier to know the truth. Neither was Adele herself. Platt had been a loathsome beast whose death made the human universe marginally better…but despite that, Adele had dreamed of his moonlike face and his one accusing eye every night since she killed him.

  “I came to the region to bring you information, Mundy,” Mistress Sand said, changing the subject. “I would have left the execution in your hands, because I’ve never met anyone with better tactical appreciation of matters of this kind. I trust your judgment implicitly.”

  She didn’t change the subject after all. She heard about what happened on Madison and has drawn the correct conclusions about who was responsible.

  “I’ll credit myself with making sure that you left Cinnabar with plenipotentiary authority from Admiral Hartsfeld,” Sand said. Her smile grew. “On the other hand, I don’t think you would have found it difficult to create that authorization yourself. Would you have, Mundy?”