by David Drake
Which would be good, because apart from turning pirate, Daniel didn’t have any ideas of his own.
* * *
“You see, Mistress Hu . . .” Adele said to the angry fat woman across the desk from her. “Admiral Leary needs a loan to meet the wage bills of the spacers in his squadron. I hope—”
“You can go away now,” Esther Hu said. She’d taken public control of Binturan Brothers Trading on the death of her husband, but according to the records he’d been only the public face of the business run before her by her father and uncle—Kostroman citizens. “I’ve paid my taxes to the government—and if you think you can pressure me, I’ve got the protection of Chancellor Hewett!”
“We know you’ve paid your taxes, Mistress Hu,” said Rene Cazelet. Like Adele, he had his personal data unit live on his lap. “And I assure you, Admiral Leary isn’t the sort of man who’d use your Kostroman citizenry to rouse the population against you if things begin to go badly on the naval front—as they certainly will if the crews aren’t paid.”
They were in a real working office at the back of one of Binturan Brothers’ three warehouses. In the vast room outside, fork lifts snorted as they shifted pallets and bales; diesel fumes drifted under the office door. There were two calendars on the wall to the right, a local one with religious art and another with images of Pleasaunce City and Alliance holidays marked.
“This is a real loan,” said Adele. It was useful to have Rene present to counterpoint the sales talk—or the extortion threats, if one preferred. Sometimes Tovera provided a useful foil, but she’d have been wrong for this negotiation. She stood now, watching sardonically with her back to a steel filing cabinet. “You’ll get the money back with interest as soon as the Admiral is in a position to redeem it.”
“I’m not interested in getting the money back!” Hu said. “I’m not giving you an ostrad! Are you deaf?”
“We’d considered asking you for three hundred and twelve thousand Alliance marks,” Adele said calmly, her eyes on Mistress Hu’s.
“I can’t—” Hu said in a changed tone. She flushed, then went white and slumped back in a swivel chair whose leather upholstery leaked stuffing.
“You sons of bitches,” she muttered. “This is a shakedown.” The amount Adele’d named was Binturan Brothers’ exact profit on thirty tonnes of wheat shipped from Islandia in the Bagarian Cluster to the Alliance Fleet on Formentera, as listed in the set of books which Hu kept personally. No one else—except Adele, as of the previous week—had access to the figure.
“No, mistress,” Adele said with a dry forcefulness. “It is not. It is a request that you go the extra mile in support of the naval forces of the state in which you are resident.”
“We realize that you have many expenses beyond those appearing on any single transaction,” said Rene with a sympathetic smile. “My family’s in the shipping business also—on Pleasaunce. In fact, last month we were involved in transshipping wheat from Formentera to Pleasaunce.”
“You’re from the Alliance?” said Hu, looking from Rene to Adele in blank surprise. “I thought—”
“Both my colleague and I are acting in behalf of the naval forces of the Bagarian Republic,” Adele said. “As I’m sure you would do in similar need. At you will do, I’m confident.”
“As I said, that full amount would be unreasonable,” Rene put in, jerking the shipper’s head back around. Adele had located the transaction when searching the files of Binturan Brothers, but only the connection with Phoenix Starfreight made it significant. “But a hundred thousand marks, paid over a period of four days beginning the day after tomorrow—that’s quite possible. And necessary.”
“As a loan,” Adele repeated. Hu wouldn’t believe her, but it was true: when the money became available to repay Binturan Brothers, Daniel would pay it over instantly. “Because you realize the importance of keeping the Cluster’s warships crewed and effective.”
Mind, Daniel wouldn’t have authorized even this approach. It did have the hallmarks of extortion rather than business—but the Mundy family had tended to lump business and extortion together as activities unbefitting to a noble house. Adele could console herself that her parents, at least, would be no more upset by the present negotiations than they would be—for example—at the fact their daughter was a warrant officer in the RCN.
“Look, you’ve got me over a barrel, I see that,” Mistress Hu said. She tried to glare, but anger quickly melted to miserable resignation. “But I can’t come up with that much, not half that much, after fitting out all six of my ships for the Skye expedition. Sure, I’ve got Chancellery pay warrants, but what’re they good for? And I don’t know when I’ll see my ships again. Can’t you understand that? When or if I’ll see them again.”
Adele’s face didn’t show anything, but she immediately changed the search she was performing as she sat in the dusty office. “Admiral Leary has no wish to cripple Binturan Brothers. He understood—”
This was a complete lie. Adele noted that it didn’t bother her to lie when it was necessary as part of her duties to Mistress Sand or to the RCN. Odd; she hadn’t been aware of her skill at deceit until her job changed a few years before in a burst of gunfire.
“—that the demands of the expedition were being spread more widely among the shipping companies in Morning City.”
“Did he?” Hu said bitterly. “Well, you can tell him that he’s not the only one who noticed that my family’s not from Pelosi and that I don’t have citizenship. It didn’t matter while the Alliance was in charge—oh, the governors were all crooks, but they robbed everybody! It’s our new Bagarian ministers, Hewett and Dean, who put it to me that the only way I could prove I was loyal was to offer my whole fleet!”
“I see,” said Adele calmly. She shut down her data unit; she’d gathered more information than she could process quickly, and this wasn’t the time to spend in processing anyway. Without quick action, there’d be no need for analysis.
She rose nodding to Hu. “Mistress,” she said, “I’ll inform the Admiral of the present situation. If he finds you’ve been telling the truth—”
“By the Gods, I wish it wasn’t the bloody truth!” the shipper snarled with the first animation she’d shown since Adele unmasked the fact of her transaction with the Fleet.
“If that’s the case,” Adele continued stolidly, “I’m confident he’ll direct us to find some other arrangement for protecting the independence of the cluster. Good day to you.”
She twitched her right index finger to the door. Tovera opened it, looked hard at Mistress Hu, and preceded Rene into the warehouse proper. Adele brought up the rear and closed the door behind them.
“Adele?” Rene said.
She nodded curtly and said, “Outside, if you will.”
Binturan Brothers wasn’t the sort of business which put eavesdropping apparatus in the light fixtures—indeed, the cavernous warehouse was noticeably short of light fixtures—but it might have been. Adele did things properly not so much for practical reasons but rather because she preferred to be proper. She felt more comfortable.
One of the three sliding doors in the front of the warehouse was open; a turbine was rocking slowly along an overhead trackway toward the ten-wheeled truck waiting to take it. Workers in dungarees made from coarse local fibers turned to watch Adele and her companions stride past and out the door.
Tovera rotated her head toward the workmen and outside, back and forth. Adele’s lips tightened momentarily, but there was nothing to say that’d change the situation. Expecting attack from every quarter wasn’t paranoia in Tovera; it was a part of life, like breathing.
And every once in a while, Tovera was right.
The warehouse faced Morning Harbor across the broad but unpaved seafront boulevard. Similar warehouses were scattered among spacers’ hotels, taverns, and shops specializing in cheap clothing. Motorized buses—three or more open cars pulled by a tractor with a diesel or electric motor—ran a schedule of sorts t
hroughout Morning City, but the four-wheeled taxi Adele had hired to bring them to Binturan Brothers was waiting down the street as directed.
The problem was that it couldn’t go in two opposite directions at once.
“Rene,” Adele said. She’d made the decision simply by laying out the choices in neat mental columns. There wasn’t a perfect solution; there wasn’t even a good solution. Therefore she picked the least bad option. “You’ll take the taxi—”
She nodded.
“—to the Ladouceur immediately and warn Admiral Leary that the ministry is about to move on Skye. This is too major a policy decision not to affect us, though at present I don’t know in what way.”
She’d been too busy with financial questions since their return from Conyers to keep abreast of the government’s activities. That was a mistake: during the time she and Daniel were off Pelosi, the government had turned on an internal rival with a speed and ruthlessness it was incapable of displaying toward the common enemy.
Adele had made a mistake; but it would’ve been a mistake to put off raising funds to pay the Ladouceur’s crew. Time would probably show that she’d failed to deal with other absolutely critical matters as well, every one of which had been necessary for the successful completion of the mission. They would fail because Adele Mundy hadn’t done her job adequately.
She’d go on, of course. She known from as far back as she could remember that she’d never be good enough to meet her own standards. But she’d go on.
“Tovera and I will find another taxi—”
“Mistress, that may be difficult around here,” Tovera protested.
“Then we’ll walk until we find one!” Adele said, letting her self-loathing flare out at her servant. “We’ll find one and take it to the Skye Benevolent Society offices.”
“Adele, we could call,” Rene said, hefting his personal data unit. “I’ve linked into several commercial repeater grids.”
“Do you trust the person who’ll take the call either on the Ladouceur or in the Skye offices not to be an agent of the ministers?” Adele sneered. “I don’t. And if you do, you’re a fool.”
“Mistress, sorry,” Rene muttered.
“But the boy could deal with the other business while we return to the ship,” Tovera said quietly.
“They wouldn’t believe him,” Adele said. “The permanent secretary knows me. He’ll get word to Radetsky, I think in time.”
She took a deep breath; her mouth worked, trying to squeeze out a sour taste. “We owe Radetsky something. We can’t save him—Dean and Hewett are in league with the Alliance forces on West Continent. Between them they’ll crush the present Skye government. But Radetsky can get himself and his family off-planet to Conyers. They’ll be safe there with Chatterjee.”
A red haze covered Adele’s eyes momentarily. It cleared; Rene was still looking at her with concern.
“Get on with it, boy!” she said. “How much time do you think there is?”
Rene nodded and got into the taxi. It pulled off almost immediately.
“Let’s go, Tovera,” Adele said. All the emotion was burned out of her. “The sooner we take care of this, the sooner we return to the ship ourselves.”
How much time is there? had been a good question. Probably not enough, the way things seemed to be going. She’d made mistakes. . . .
But she’d go on. Until she died.
Chapter Twenty
MORNING CITY ON PELOSI
The call plate beside Daniel’s bunk buzzed. He slapped it and said, “Six, go ahead, over.”
The room was dark. Daniel didn’t know where he was, and he wasn’t really awake: his conscious mind was watching from an indefinite distance as his body communicated by rote with whoever was on the other end of the circuit. He was already wearing utility trousers and an undershirt; he began pulling on his boots by reflex as he spoke.
“Sir, this is Liu on the bridge,” the plate said.
Lieutenant Liu is officer of the watch. I’m in my space cabin, dead tired and catching a few minutes’ sleep before Adele returns and the watch awakens me according to my instructions so that I can talk with her.
“Captain Hoppler’s here and he’s got orders from the Ministry, he says, over,” Liu said. He sounded concerned, probably afraid that he was mixed up in something too big for him. More likely it was a request that Admiral Leary turn in the ammunition expenditure forms that were by now so badly overdue . . . but it was just possible that Hoppler was bringing at least a portion of the crew’s back pay.
“Roger, Liu,” Daniel said. “I’m on my way.”
He’d gotten his boots on the correct feet; now he pulled a utility jacket over the undershirt and sealed its closure also. He hoped it was presentable, but he didn’t have time to check. It’d be good enough for Hoppler regardless, but if the Newbernian were coming with pay, Daniel would like to display a reasonable regard for the proprieties.
He grabbed his forage cap from the small desk and put it on; it still had his commander’s square on the peak rather than the four wreaths of a Bagarian admiral, but it’d do. An RCN commander ranked a wog admiral any day of the week . . . and he hoped he wasn’t so logy that he’d say that aloud.
Daniel opened the hatch and stepped into a corridor full of soldiers. A hundred or more armed spacers were milling about, fingering impellers and chemical rifles. Those near the hatch stared at him.
“Let me by, if you will,” Daniel said sharply. “I’m the captain, and I need to get to the bridge!”
He’d had a momentary urge to duck back into the space cabin, but he couldn’t do any good there and there was more than a little chance of precipitating something if he tried. Dogs instinctively chase when they see something running, and this lot were mangy curs or he much missed his bet. There were a lot of them, unfortunately.
The spacers made way at the tone of command. He recognized some as crewmen of the Independence and DeMarce. Though armed with projectile weapons, many were barefoot and those with rifles wore bandoliers with only a few extra rounds thrust through the cartridge loops. Daniel didn’t doubt they’d be able to control the Ladouceur, however. Clearly, that’s why they were here.
The bridge hatch was open. Daniel strode through and swept those present with his eyes. Liu was the only member of the cruiser’s crew, but half a dozen officers who’d been assigned to the DeMarce or the Independence had accompanied Hoppler and Seward.
“Welcome aboard, gentlemen,” Daniel said with a bent smile. “If you’d told me you were coming, I’d have been more ready to entertain you.”
Liu wasn’t stupid, but neither was he sufficiently imaginative when faced with the unexpected. If any of the former Sissies’d been on watch, they’d have closed the hatches and summoned Six when they saw a body of armed men approaching.
“That’s what we thought too, Leary,” said Hoppler with a toss of his chin; his goatee wobbled. “That’s why we didn’t warn you.”
He glanced at the girlishly slim Seward. “Give him the documents, Captain,” he said. “It’s only polite to let him read them.”
Daniel took the rolled sheaf of hardcopy from the smirking Seward and untied the tape holding it. The document on top was engraved with:
INDEPENDENT REPUBLIC OF BAGARIA
OFFICE OF THE GENERALISSIMA
The remainder of the text was offset printed and the registration was skewed:
By virtue of the powers vested in me as head of state, I hereby rescind all offices and appointments of the Independent Republic of Bagaria previously granted to Daniel Orville Leary, a Cinnabar citizen.
It was signed DeMarce, Generalissima, and countersigned Douglas Lampert, Minister of the Navy.
Daniel felt a smile twitch the corner of his mouth. I wonder if I can appeal the order on the grounds they got my middle name wrong? He didn’t let the thought reach his lips. That was probably a good thing, given the glares of frightened anger which even the tiny smile drew from the Bagarian captains
.
Correction: the captain and the admiral. The second document in the group appointed Andreas Hoppler as Admiral of the Navy of the Independent Republic of Bagaria, while the third—
Daniel shuffled the hardcopy, still smiling faintly
—transferred command of the cruiser Ladouceur to Captain Ronald Seward.
“Well, gentlemen,” Daniel said, returning the documents to Seward, “these appear to be in order. I’ll instruct my servant to collect my personal belongings and be off shortly.”
He nodded politely.
“Don’t play us for fools, Leary!” said Hoppler harshly. “You’ll stay right here—in your space cabin until everything’s settled. I don’t mind telling you that that may take a few months.”
“You’ve been subverting discipline in the squadron for too long for loyal officers to be safe if you were loose to pursue your schemes,” said Seward. His anger was probably a reaction to being frightened when Daniel smiled. “Planning a coup, I shouldn’t wonder! Well, Bagarians are going to run their own affairs now without foreign meddling.”
An odd thing to hear from a Kostroman citizen, Daniel thought; but that, like so many things, could pass for now. Aloud he said, “Gentlemen, I see that I won’t be able to convince you that I neither had nor have any designs on the government of the cluster. I hope, however, that you’ll accept my parole as an RCN officer on my oath that I will in no way harm or act against the interests of the Republic or her officials?”
He did hope that, but with rather less belief than he had for the salvation of his soul. A promise of honorable conduct only works with people who conduct themselves honorably.
“Dream on, Leary,” Seward sneered. “Just stay quiet until we’ve put paid to the rebels on Skye and you’ll be all right. And if you’re wondering, we’re replacing the Ladouceur’s crew with spacers we can trust from the Independence and the DeMarce.”
“And I’ll only warn you once,” said Hoppler. “If you continue to connive with traitors, you’ll regret it—briefly! Even Cinnabar citizens have accidents, you know.”