by David Drake
Vesey, Blantyre, and Cory rode the ninth float. Vesey seemed uncomfortable but the two midshipmen were in their element. Well-dressed youths were throwing flowers to Blantyre over the Bagarian soldiers lining the parade route, while not only women but some heavily made up men tried to get through to Cory.
“The traders, the country craft we found on Dodd’s Throne . . .” Adele said, scrolling through data. She’d started with the files of Fidelity Mercantile. She could’ve transferred from there to other databases, but Lampert’s information provided all she needed. “They arrived back on Pelosi several days before we did. They brought reports about what’d happened.”
“Of course!” Rene said. “We couldn’t travel any faster than the Babanguida, and she’d have been a bucket even with a proper crew. But—”
He looked at Adele with a frown.
“—surely they didn’t bring positive reports, did they? They were near as anything, well . . . Except for Commander Leary, they’d have been robbed of everything.”
“Lay-dee Lear-ee!” shrieked at least a dozen spectators. They were better organized than the Bagarian Navy—or for that matter than the clerks of Fidelity Mercantile. Lampert should hire a few of them, assuming they could read and write. “Lay-dee Lear-ee!”
Adele was smiling; good. That was the right attitude to take toward well-intentioned people who didn’t have the advantages of education and intelligence, but who nonetheless insisted on opening their mouths.
“It appears that they took being robbed as a given if they met Bagarian warships,” Adele explained as she reflexively tried to bring order to Lampert’s files. “Rather like crashing if your thrusters fail on landing. You hope they don’t fail, but if they do the crash is inevitable. When Daniel—”
A mistake. She didn’t underline it by trying to correct the personal reference.
“—stopped the business and saw to the return of whatever hadn’t been drunk, they were delighted. And of course the citizens here really wanted a—”
The word “citizens” made her look up from the data unit’s holographic display. Stretching across two building fronts above the cheering crowd was a painting on a tarpaulin large enough to cover half a dozen cargo pallets. A female figure—the prominent bust made that obvious—in a white uniform (with a scarlet cloak added, but that was a minor license for this artist) bestrode, literally, a starship. From the turrets drawn all over the vessel’s hull it was no ship ever built, but the legend GENERALISSIMA DEMARCE was painted prominently on the bow.
The figure had a pistol in one hand, a stocked impeller in the other, and with both was shooting at attackers who waved Alliance flags. Because they were more or less in scale with the ship, they barely came up to the ankles of the giantess.
“They wanted a victory,” she concluded, but her voice had dropped to a whisper. “By all the Gods.”
On the figure’s left, red letters with an arrow read CAPTAIN ADELE MUNDY. On the right, a similar legend and arrow—in violet—read GRAND ADMIRAL LEARY’S WIFE.
“I don’t remember having that much fun when we took over the DeMarce,” said Tovera. Her voice was chirpy, though she had to shout to be heard.
“There weren’t any Alliance personnel!” Rene said. “Why, this is infamous! And we didn’t shoot anyone. We scarcely had to threaten Captain Seward!”
“Right, no fun at all,” said Tovera. “Well, better luck next time, boy.”
She was baiting Rene, a positive sign. Tovera’s sense of humor, grim and deadpan though it was, was a human trait. Adele didn’t suppose her servant would ever develop a conscience, but this was a step in the right direction.
“I prefer to think of it as amusing, Rene,” Adele said as she sent a text message to the commo helmet Hogg wore; he’d pass it on. The information she’d gleaned from Lampert’s files wouldn’t surprise Daniel, but he might as well have the details before DeMarce and Lampert spoke to him in private.
Partly because of what she was thinking about the Bagarian government and partly because she found Tovera’s sense of humor infectious, Adele added, “I find my trigger finger gets quite enough exercise as it is without me needlessly adding to the list of people I intend to shoot.”
* * *
Before the door of the conference room in the north wing of the Hall of Assembly had finished closing, Jordan Wiens—the Minister of Trade—snarled, “What possessed you to rob our own merchants that way, Leary? Are you out of your mind?”
“You had no right to do that!” Minister Lampert said, his words stepping on his colleague’s. “You lied to us, admit it! You lied to us!”
There was a yelp in the anteroom and the door opened again behind Daniel. He didn’t bother looking over his shoulder to see that Hogg had followed him regardless of what the attendant outside thought about the matter. The servant’s presence wouldn’t be necessary, but it wasn’t a bad thing to have him around.
Daniel stepped chest to chest with Lampert and said in a ringing voice, “See here, my good man! I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head when you speak to a Leary!”
He wasn’t as near the edge of control as his tone implied, but neither was he merely pretending to be angry. This was a case, Speaker Leary’s son had decided, when it was politic to show one’s teeth.
Lampert stepped back in surprise; Wiens, his mouth open to resume, instead fell silent. No one spoke for a moment.
The Generalissima herself said plaintively, “This really has caused a difficult situation, Admiral. I know you couldn’t have foreseen the problems, but I do wish you’d explained ahead of time what you intended. I don’t know how long it’ll take us to put matters straight.”
Daniel thumped his left leg out to the side and crossed his hands behind his back. Only after he struck the pose did he realize he’d just come to Parade Rest. Well, it’d do. Quite obviously the members of the Bagarian government didn’t intend to sit.
The central table would seat a committee of twenty, and there were chairs around the walls for aides and functionaries. Over the long south wall was a railed balcony, though the doors onto it were closed and perhaps locked. The high windows in the other three sides were in alcoves with built-in seats. Bright-colored insectoids fluttered against the inside of the panes, though it was beyond Daniel’s ability to imagine why they’d entered if they were so determined on escaping again.
But then, he’d walked into this room also, hadn’t he? And he’d known full well what to expect.
“Generalissima, Ministers,” Daniel said. “I told you I was taking the squadron for a training cruise, and that’s all I did. That we stumbled onto a pair of Alliance prizes was a piece of great good luck but not a violation of orders either explicit or implied. I’m puzzled that you’re not as pleased about that as I am, though; and as pleased as the citizens outside clearly are.”
“You see, Leary,” said Alfred Decker, the Minister of Resources, “if you start seizing civilian property, the Alliance is going to do the same in retaliation. Many—most, in fact—of our substantial citizens have property and accounts receivable within the Alliance. On Pleasaunce even. What’s to stop the owners of the ships you’ve captured from recompensing themselves from our—that is, from the property of Bagarian citizens?”
“Absolutely nothing, I suppose, Minister,” Daniel said. He was beginning to find this amusing. He had the trump card and knew it: he didn’t mind a public scene over the issue, and the ministers couldn’t afford to let that happen. “But you’re at war, you’ll recall. Guarantor Porra could order such confiscations at any time.”
“But he won’t, Admiral,” DeMarce said. “Not unless he’s, well, provoked. Capturing civilian ships in the way you did on Dodd’s Throne is exactly the sort of provocation we want to avoid.”
“Why, Your Excellency, gentlemen . . .” Daniel said in a good counterfeit of puzzlement. “I don’t believe you’ve thought this through. You’ve been chosen—”
How had they been chosen? H
e’d understood that DeMarce was a military strongman, but close contact with the government left him with the suspicion she was the puppet of the wealthy merchants who’d become her ministers.
“—to lead the Bagarian peoples in their struggle for liberty. Surely you see that temporary personal loss is a small price to pay for that liberty. Why—”
He stepped toward the east windows, facing the square which the crowd filled. The cheers were sparser in the absence of anyone present to spark them, but they continued nonetheless.
“—you can hear the people’s enthusiasm even now. You see how our good fortune on Dodd’s Throne has raised patriotic fervor on your behalf. You wouldn’t think of dashing their joy, would you?”
“Bloody hell!” said Nick Bedi, a wizened stick of a man with the Cluster Affairs—that is, internal security—portfolio. “If you tell them that, they’ll hang us all! By all the gods, man! And chances are they won’t stop with us, either, so watch your tongue for your own sake!”
“With respect, Minister,” Daniel said, knowing that if Bedi wanted to find respect in his tone he’d have to listen very hard. “I’m an RCN officer, so of course concern for my personal safety comes a bad second to doing my duty.”
Daniel’s duty lay to Cinnabar, however, not to the Bagarian Cluster or even to its common people. Some of the ministers must suspect that by now, though at least DeMarce seemed to think the young Cinnabar advisor was just dangerously naive.
They all knew they had a tiger by the tail, though. Daniel could rouse the mob against them, and if they’d so much as glanced at his record they realized he’d be willing to do that or to do anything else his duty required.
The chances were that a lot of cluster citizens were going to die because the government had called on Cinnabar for help. Daniel deeply regretted that, but Admiral James was depending on him.
“Look, Leary, we’re all pleased about the prizes, of course,” Lampert lied with a straight face. “But what the Cluster needs now isn’t more commerce raiders, it’s Churchyard and Conyers. They’re daggers to our throat as long as the Alliance continues to hold them.”
“That’s right,” said Kevin Hewett, the Chancellor. “Alliance commerce can be taken care of by the privateers we’re commissioning. Our share will be very important to the budget for the coming year.”
“Yes, very important,” Lampert said. “While you’re supposed to be attacking Churchyard, Leary. Before the Alliance reinforces it, you see. Not swanning off to Dodd’s Throne, which isn’t a threat and couldn’t ever be a threat!”
If you’re worried about your own trade, Daniel thought, you’re out of your collective minds to commission privateers—for which read pirates, in result if not by intention.
These ministers were too desperately shortsighted to understand the dangers; Daniel thought it was that rather than ignorance of how lines blurred at the sharp end. Spacers with privateering commissions, few of them Bagarians and some no doubt from Alliance worlds, would be balancing money for themselves against the wishes of a government of strangers. Their own profit would win every time.
But that wasn’t the business of Cinnabar nor of Commander Daniel Leary, not right at the moment. Aloud he said, “I’m pleased to have the government’s support, sirs and madame. Your Excellency—”
He looked at DeMarce with a bland smile.
“—we discussed troops for the Churchyard expedition when we last spoke. Where are they billeted? And of course I’ll need transport and at least a month’s rations—”
“That won’t be possible, I’m afraid, Admiral,” said the plump, balding Terry Dean. He was Minister for the Army and wore a bright green military uniform with scarlet shoulder boards. “The demands on the Army of Freedom are such that we don’t have any troops to send off with you. But the oppressor’s forces have no bottle. You’ll see. When you start bombarding Churchyard, they’ll all surrender the way they did on Schumer’s World.”
That’s not the lesson I would’ve drawn from Schumer’s World, thought Daniel. There’d been only a battalion of Cluster Militia on the planet, and the Victoria Luise—now Ladouceur—had been captured while provisioning as the first act of the revolt. Churchyard, with a major naval base and no more colonists than it had immigrant workers from deeper into the Alliance, would be a very different matter.
“I must say that I regret to hear that there won’t be troops available,” he said aloud, keeping his tone neutral. “You mentioned bombardment, General Dean. Are the plasma missiles ready for the squadron to load, then?”
“They certainly are, Leary,” said Lampert, suddenly cheerful again. “My friend Power delivered the final tranche of the contract just this morning. Bloody fast work, I say.”
“Delivered and been paid for,” said Chancellor Hewett sourly. He was a tall man with soft features, a stoop, and the expression of a dying camel. “Which leaves bugger all in the treasury, I don’t mind telling you.”
“Well, of course he was paid!” Lampert snapped. “He did the work, didn’t he? I’m sure that when Admiral Leary here captures Churchyard, there’ll be plenty of loot to plump the treasury up. Isn’t that so, Leary?”
“One can certainly hope so,” said Daniel. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror between the windows. The varnished hardness of his smile disturbed him. But these folk weren’t his first responsibility. “At any rate, Minister, the Cluster’s share of the captured freighters and their cargoes may be of some help when they’re auctioned.”
“Just so, Leary, just so,” said Lampert. “Now, I’m sure you have a great deal to do before you leave to sweep the oppressors off Churchyard, and we do too. You understand?”
“Perfectly, Minister,” Daniel said, bowing. “Oh—and one further thing. I’ve raised spacer’s pay to the usual eighteen ostrads a month with senior ratings in proportion. I trust this meets with your approval, as it’s absolutely necessary to retain experienced personnel.”
“For heaven’s sake man, where do you expect me to find the money for that?” Hewett growled. “No, we don’t approve!”
“I believe I found the money on Dodd’s Throne, Chancellor,” Daniel said. “If you require me to, I’ll find more in the same place or similar ones; but I’d rather be concentrating on the problem of Churchyard.”
Ministers looked at once another. “All right, Admiral,” DeMarce said to break the silence. “We’ll find the money. You deal with Churchyard.”
Hewett grimaced. “All right, all right,” he muttered. “But it’s wasting money on trash, you know.”
“I know many people who feel that way about spacers, Chancellor,” Daniel said. He bowed again and backed out of the room respectfully. Hogg slipped out after his master and closed the door.
Daniel turned to put his back to the door. His lips were pursed as though he’d been sucking on a lemon.
* * *
As Adele settled onto a stone bench in the entry vestibule of the Hall of Assembly, the heavyset man who’d been leaning against a pillar on the other side straightened and walked toward her. “Excuse me, Lady Mundy,” he said. “I’d appreciate a moment—”
Tovera stepped in front of Adele with her hand in her attaché case. Adele knew from experience that the pale woman’s face would be blank, as far from threatening as could be imagined, but the man stopped dead. He didn’t raise his hands, but he held his arms out to the sides and spread his fingers. He wore a khaki military uniform whose only adornments were rainbow shoulder patches and a rainbow-dyed tuft pinned to the left side of his forage cap.
“Lady Mundy,” he said carefully, “my name’s Chatterjee. I’d like to speak with you for a moment regarding your, that is the RCN, mission to our cluster.”
He smiled. “Here in public is fine,” he said. “But I won’t raise my voice during some parts of the discussion.”
Adele eyed him without bothering to reach into her pocket. A line of soldiers was more or less good-naturedly keeping the celebration in the sq
uare from spilling into the Hall proper, but the noise of the crowd would adequately cover normal speech from anyone but an eavesdropper with a parabolic microphone. Because the engaged columns of the vestibule were so deep, that putative microphone would have to be directly across from the people speaking—a circumstance which Adele could deal with very quickly if Tovera didn’t do so first.
“All right, Colonel Chatterjee,” Adele said. The man’s uniform was unfamiliar, but the rank tabs—dragons displayed—were the ones which cluster forces had borrowed from Alliance practice. “I can give you a few minutes while I’m waiting for Admiral Leary to finish his meeting.”
Rene Cazelet had been chatting with Vesey near the entrance to the vestibule. His eyes had flicked to Adele when Chatterjee approached; now he stepped toward them, apparently without taking leave of Vesey. She watched him walk away with an expression Adele couldn’t describe.
Chatterjee seated himself to Adele’s right. He glanced over his shoulder at Rene and said, “It’s of course your business how widely you want this information disseminated, milady . . .”
“I appreciate your delicacy,” said Adele as she gestured Rene back. She wasn’t concerned at what the boy might hear; she’d found him as discreet as Tovera herself. Chatterjee was obviously concerned, though, and it was Adele’s duty to gather information.
That was her duty and her whole being.
“I’m the chief military aide to Governor Radetsky of Skye,” the colonel said, noticeably more relaxed. “And his friend of long standing, I’m pleased to say.”
“Go on,” Adele said. She’d taken her data unit out when she sat down. Her wands had been sorting for Chatterjee; now she added Radetsky and Skye as she listened.
“Five years ago Guarantor Porra settled military veterans on the South Continent of Skye,” Chatterjee said. Three young men glanced toward the pair as they walked past, but their eyes didn’t linger. They were probably clerks who’d decided that the celebrations permitted them to leave the office for the day. “The old settlers are enthusiastic for freedom, but not the new ones. There isn’t much fighting, but we independence supporters’ve raised a division of two thousand men in case South Continent tries to invade.”