by David Drake
“You heard the master!” Hogg said. “Hop it, Bantries! You’re going to make us proud or you’ll rue the day you were born!”
The new draft clumped and clattered aboard the Sissie. Sun led and Hogg brought up the rear. They each carried a blanket roll; first order of business would be to get them proper footlockers. That’d mean Master Daniel—as opposed to Commander Leary—would need to advance modest amounts of money. . . .
“When will Lady Mundy be joining you, Daniel?” Miranda said. “Or is she already aboard?”
“Is she on board, Mon?” Daniel asked; Mon shook his head.
“To be honest,” Daniel said to Miranda, “I don’t know when she’ll arrive. She said she had some business to take care of.”
He pursed his lips. “And she said she’d be bringing an assistant, if I approved,” he added. “Which of course I did.”
“That’d be Tovera, you mean, sir?” Mon asked. He kept his tone very neutral, the way people did when they had to talk about Tovera.
“No, from the way she spoke, she’s talking about a real assistant,” Daniel said. “In addition to her servant Tovera. I, ah, I’m confident that Officer Mundy knows what she’s doing.”
Mon nodded. Pasternak, the Chief Engineer, leaned out of a stern hatch. “Mon!” he bellowed. “There’s a bloody valve frozen on the feed to Number Eight thruster!”
“There bloody well isn’t unless your own people have been monkeying with it!” Mon bellowed back. He glanced at Daniel. “With your leave?’
“Of course, Mon,” Daniel said, but his manager was already striding up the Sissie’s entrance ramp. His boots hammered the non-skid surface.
“Is the assistant someone that Lady Mundy’s other friends assigned to her, Daniel?” Miranda said in a very quiet voice.
“To be honest, my dear,” Daniel said, “I don’t know and I don’t want to know. I’m happiest—”
He smiled warmly at the girl beside him, taking some of the sting out of what was nonetheless a rebuke.
“—when I don’t know anything at all about Adele’s other friends!”
XENOS ON CINNABAR
The private car in which Adele shuttled along the tram lines of Xenos was marked with the crest of the Petrie family, three red mullets on a puce ground. It was common for wealthy families to keep personal cars at their townhouses; servants lifted them on and off the monorail as required.
Adele slipped her personal data unit back into its pocket so that she could grip a handhold as she faced the woman who’d summoned her into the vehicle. “Well,” said Mistress Sand. “What did you learn?”
Adele shrugged. “That the Petries are a west-coast family,” she said. “Though they appear to be wealthy enough, they’re not interested in the expense and ferment of Xenos. They don’t have a townhouse here.”
“I would have told you that,” said Bernis Sand. “I suppose you wouldn’t have trusted me, would you?”
“I ordinarily get information electronically,” Adele said calmly. “When the question occurred to me, I answered it in my normal fashion.”
She’d never seen the spymaster angry before. Sand’s voice remained calm, but her stubby fingers fidgeted with a carved ivory snuff box, slipping it into and out of her waistcoat repeatedly.
“We looked at the information on the chip you sent us,” Sand said, turning to face the opera window on the right side of the vehicle. The clear acrylic panel had been treated with a film that unrecognizably distorted objects seen through it. “To the extent we can cross-check, everything is confirmed.”
She met Adele’s eyes again and managed a slight smile. “It’s in very good order,” she added. “I was reminded of your own reports, Mundy.”
Adele smiled faintly. “Thank you,” she said. “Mistress Boileau trained me well.”
“Bartram Cazelet was executed in Wellbank Prison on Pleasaunce,” Sand continued. “It’s possible but unlikely that Glenda Boileau Cazelet is still alive. You know about the Guarantor’s prisons, so you realize that this possibility isn’t good news.”
Adele dipped her head in acknowledgment. “Yes, I realize that,” she said.
“What we don’t know, Mundy,” Sand said in a harsher tone, “is who informed on the elder Cazelets. At this point there’s a significant chance, a significant chance, that it was their own son. Your Rene Cazelet may well be not just an informer but an agent of the Fifth Bureau!”
A second tram with the Petrie crest, rather more battered than the first, followed theirs. That too was normal when members of the nobility wanted to retain their privacy but keep servants readily accessible. Today the second vehicle carried Tovera and Rene Cazelet, accompanied by four very solid men wearing Petrie livery.
“I don’t believe that’s the case, mistress,” Adele said. “You may think the Fifth Bureau could delude Mistress Boileau in that fashion, but I do not. Regardless, I have a personal—a family—obligation to young Cazelet. He came to me for shelter, as I went to his grandmother.”
“Mundy, you can’t take him off planet with you,” Sand said, “not given the nature of Commander Leary’s mission. The risk to the Republic is unacceptable, completely unacceptable.”
“I certainly can’t leave him alone on Xenos while I’m gone for an indefinite period,” Adele said quietly. “I’ll keep an eye on him, mistress; and Tovera will, if you don’t trust me. But he’s going along.”
“Are you saying that you won’t accompany Commander Leary if this Cazelet doesn’t go with you?” Sand said, raising her voice. She was a stocky woman given to tweed suits in earth tones. There was nothing distinctive about her appearance, but her personality dominated whatever room she was in.
Adele smiled faintly. Mistress Sand dominated the interior of this tramcar as surely as the sea covers a rock on the bottom; but in this case, as with the sea, the rock wasn’t changed by the circumstances.
“The question doesn’t arise, mistress,” Adele said. “I can take Cazelet with me.”
The emphasis was very mild, a barely noticeable stress on the syllable.
“Commander Leary would find room for him if the two of them had to share a bunk,” she continued. “And he’ll certainly find room for me, even if he had to smuggle me aboard in a section of spar.”
Adele felt mild distress at the fact of this interview; Mistress Sand should know her better by now. Though the circumstances were unusual, of course.
The tram jolted across a set of points, rocking both of them. Mistress Sand grabbed a railing, then barked a laugh. “What I find interesting in talking to you, Mundy,” she said, abruptly more relaxed, “is that you’re not afraid of me. Most people would be under these circumstances.”
Adele sniffed. “We’re professional colleagues,” she said. “We have a difference of opinion, but you’ve accepted my judgment in other difficult circumstances when I’m sure you had doubts. I’m quite sure that you don’t wish me to come to harm.”
Sand looked at her squarely. “No, I don’t want you to come to harm, Mundy,” she said softly. “I’d rather lose my right hand than lose you, for the Republic’s sake.”
With a flash of renewed anger she went on, “I read the after-action report on the assault on Mandelfarne Island. What in the name of the gods were you thinking? Do you know how important you are to Cinnabar?”
“I know I’m a Mundy of Chatsworth, mistress,” Adele said. She smiled; her lips felt as it they’d been carved from ice. “And I know that if I ever put personal safety ahead of my duty, it won’t be long before I lose the debate with the person in my head. The person who doesn’t think there’s any reason for my continued existence.”
Sand sighed and inserted a key card into the tram’s control panel. “It’ll take you to the Bergen yard,” she said. She hadn’t bothered to punch a new destination. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“That’s correct,” Adele said primly.
She hadn’t been wholly truthful in implying that she wasn’t a
fraid. There was a possibility that someone would decide to remove Rene Cazelet without—or even against—Sand’s orders. Tovera was the best assurance of Cazelet’s survival. The fact that Tovera herself wanted the boy dead wouldn’t prevent her from killing anyone who tried to accomplish that result.
Sand looked at her again and shook her head. “Mundy,” she said, “if you don’t start showing a little common sense, you’re going to be killed sooner rather than later. And I will regret that very much.”
I won’t regret it, Adele thought; but her lips merely gave a thin smile.
Chapter Four
BERGEN AND ASSOCIATES YARD, CINNABAR
“Fellow officers,” Adele said, awkwardly formal because of the awkward situation, “this is my assistant Master Cazelet. He’ll lodge in the midshipmen’s quarters.”
She’d called Vesey and the two midshipmen, Cory and Blantyre, to the Battle Direction Center in the corvette’s stern. The senior warrant officers—Pasternak and Woetjans, Chief of Ship and Chief of Rig respectively—wouldn’t have much direct contact with Cazelet, so she hadn’t summoned them.
The BDC wasn’t laid out for meetings: there was a star of three consoles in the center of the chamber which could control the Sissie if the bridge in the far bow were destroyed. The aisle between the consoles and the jumpseats against the bulkheads was narrow, but there was enough room for five people to meet face-to-face.
Also the BDC was out of the way of the jumble of testing and stowage before liftoff. Adele hadn’t locked the armored hatch, but Tovera stood in the corridor outside; they wouldn’t be disturbed.
The watch-standing officers eyed Cazelet. Vesey, a slim woman with plain features and mouse-brown hair, showed obvious distaste. Cory, a largish, soft-looking youth of modest intellect, appeared to be uninterested. Blantyre was a stocky, forceful girl; her guarded expression reminded Adele that Mistress Boileau’s grandson was rather a good-looking young man.
Cazelet for his part stood straight with his legs spread slightly and his hands clasped over his belt buckle. He looked from one officer to another, smiling with the mild hopefulness of a puppy.
Vesey looked from Cazelet to Adele. “Is he to take instruction with the midshipmen also, then, mistress?” she said harshly. Vesey had been a skilled officer, particularly in astrogation, but she’d lacked confidence. When her fiancé died in battle, Vesey’d lost all zest for life.
Adele smiled faintly. On the credit side, Vesey no longer dithered because she was second-guessing herself. She had instead a fatalistic willingness to accept whatever happened. Because she was so highly skilled, the results of her crisply executed plans were consistently good.
For Vesey’s sake, it was a pity that she wasn’t happier. Happiness wasn’t something that Adele herself had much experience of, however, and she certainly wasn’t going to counsel someone else about how to achieve it.
“That won’t be necessary—” Adele began.
“Instruction in astrogation, do you mean, Lieutenant?” Cazelet said unexpectedly.
Vesey’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Primarily astrogation, yes,” she said. “Shiphandling as well, but there’s not very much chance to practice that while we’re under way.”
“I have some training in astrogation,” Cazelet said. “And in shiphandling and Power Room operations; some, that is. I’d like to join Midshipmen Blantyre and Cory, if it’s agreeable to you.”
He looked at Adele. “And with you of course, mistress,” he added.
“How did you happen to study those things?” Vesey said with a chilly lack of inflection.
“My family is in the shipping business,” Cazelet said. “Was in business. My father wanted me to learn it from the ground up.”
He cleared his throat. “I don’t compare the smatterings I’ve picked up with your RCN training, of course,” he added.
Cory looked at Cazelet, then nodded to Adele. “Lady Mundy doesn’t have RCN training,” he said, in a tone of challenge that surprised Adele to hear from him. “There’s never been a signals officer like her before ever.”
“That’s what my grandmother says too, Cory,” Cazelet said. He offered a friendly smile.
“Master Cazelet’s grandmother trained me, you see, Cory,” Adele said. “I’d be pleased if the three of you would make him feel at home aboard the Sissie, as Mistress Boileau did for me in the Academic Collections.”
“She did?” Cory said in amazement. “Oh. Oh.”
“Fine, I’ll include him in the classes,” Vesey said; still emotionless, but perhaps a degree less hostile. “Mistress, if I may—I have duties which I’d like to attend to?”
“Yes, of course,” said Adele. “Thank you all for your time. I simply thought that since we’d be in close quarters for an indefinite period, it’d be best to have a formal introduction.”
“Come along, Cazelet,” Blantyre said brightly. “I’ll show you to our berth.”
Cazelet looked back at Adele; when she nodded, he followed Blantyre through the hatch that Vesey had just pushed open. Cory trailed out in the wake of the others.
That’d gone well enough, Adele thought. The boy should fit in.
* * *
Daniel luxuriated in the familiar contact between his back and the Sissie’s command console. He grinned: this was home. The corvette had been his first command, and he knew that she’d always be first in his heart.
Along the bulkhead to his right were Sun at the gunnery console and Adele on signals. In theory the captain could slave the functions of every other station to himself at the command console; in practice, nobody else could enter Signals while Adele was aboard the Princess Cecile. The chores could be handled from either the command console or the Battle Direction Center, but it was impossible to gain access to the files stored in Adele’s territory.
Cory sat at the navigator’s console to Daniel’s immediate left, though heaven help the Sissie if he had to pilot them home.
Daniel pursed his lips in disapproval of the thought. That wasn’t fair: under his tutelage and Vesey’s, Cory was becoming a decent astrogator. Oh, he didn’t have a flair for the task, but he’d pass his boards for promotion to Lieutenant when he had a chance to sit for them. And Cory did, of all things, have real skill at communications—though that was properly the duty of a junior warrant, not a commissioned officer.
The remaining bridge console was the Chief Missileer’s, filled at present by a former Pellegrinian named Borries. Daniel had run Borries through a lengthy series of tests and found him to be surprisingly good—better than most who came out of the RCN specialty school at Harbor Three near Xenos. Despite that, Daniel didn’t intend for the fellow to actually control the corvette’s primary armament in action.
Daniel had a touch which turned attacks into an art form—and besides, he liked launching missiles. Borries was on hand in case Daniel was incapacitated or too madly busy elsewhere to handle the task.
Vesey was in the BDC with Blantyre and three ratings, ready to take over if there was any reason that they should. Daniel rechecked the gauges on his holographic display. All hatches were sealed and the pumps were purring to circulate reaction mass. He hadn’t ordered Pasternak to light the plasma thrusters yet, however.
“Center,” Daniel said. His display immediately threw up the images of six personnel in the BDC. The last face puzzled him for an instant; then he realized it was Adele’s new assistant, using the display on his commo helmet because there wasn’t a console open for him. “Vesey, will you and your team be ready to take her up in five minutes, over?”
“Aye aye, sir,” Vesey said. Her voice was neutral, but a touch of pleasure lifted the corners of her mouth. That was as close to a smile as Daniel had seen her give since Miranda’s brother died.
“You have the conn, Vesey,” he said. “Out.”
Daniel paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts. How many times had he addressed his crew before liftoff? Many, certainly, but every time was different; like a battle
, like maneuvering closer to another woman. . . .
“Ship,” he said. When he switched the intercom to the general communications channel, a multi-pointed star pulsed in the upper right of the display. If he moved the cursor onto it with his virtual keyboard, the real-time images of everybody aboard the Sissie would flash into life just as those in the BDC had done a moment earlier. In so doing, they’d mask the entire display. Daniel preferred to have the Power Room readouts as background to his thoughts.
“We’re about to lift again, Sissies,” he said, smiling easily. The crew, all those who weren’t involved in the liftoff itself, were watching him even though he didn’t see them. “Again, I say, because most of you’ve been with me for years by now. Those of you who’re new to the Sissie—congratulations! You’ve signed aboard the finest ship in the RCN, which means the finest ship in the whole human universe.”
The corvette shuddered heavily; Vesey had directed Pasternak to light two of the eight thrusters. They were on minimum output for the moment, the petals of each nozzle flared wide. Steam from the pool bloomed around the hull, mixing with iridescent exhaust ions which hadn’t yet been damped by the atmosphere.
“I’ve been under orders not to tell you where we’re lifting for,” Daniel continued, “so I haven’t; but most of you’ve been around long enough to have learned what our lords and masters in Navy House have not: you can’t keep a secret in the RCN.”
He heard the laughter and mild cheers he’d been playing for. A speech to people you’re leading into battle is always a political speech, and nothing political is to be done without care. Corder Leary’s son knew that, and—though Daniel didn’t let the thought stiffen his face into a stern mask as it started to—the late Lucius Mundy’s daughter probably knew it even better.
“For the record now . . .” Daniel continued. A second pair of thrusters lighted. “We’re going to Pelosi in the Bagarian Cluster to help the rebels there organize against the Alliance.”