by David Drake
“Sit down, Leary,” he said. “I want to talk with you privately before I seal this.”
He tapped the pouch and continued, “And I mean private. There’s no rank in this room until I tell McDonough to open the door again.”
James sounded tired, but this time in a good way. The exhaustion he’d displayed when Daniel first met him on the terrace of the Residence had been as much depression as overwork.
Daniel settled onto the maroon leather in a gingerly fashion. He wasn’t going to argue with an admiral, but he knew how bloody dangerous these “all pals together” situations were for a junior party who was fool enough to take his senior at his word.
A mirror-backed wall sconce above the banquette lighted Daniel very well. James hadn’t seen him in full dress before. He guffawed and said, “Well, you’re a sight for sore eyes, aren’t you, Leary?”
“Sir, I feel like a clown,” Daniel said sincerely. “But you said ‘Cinnabar and foreign medals.’”
James chuckled. “So I did, and you’re certainly one up on Niven and his pretty boys in their frock coats,” he said.
In a slightly softer tone he added, “A bloody impressive clown, Leary. I’ve read your record. Fruit salad’s easier to come by than a record like yours.”
Daniel cleared his throat. “Ah, thank you, sir,” he muttered.
James tapped the courier pouch. Sealing it would arm a layer of thermite in the lining of the case. Opening the pouch by force would incinerate the contents, along with the person applying the force and probably the room in which it happened.
“I suppose you hope that my report recommends you for promotion because you tricked Guphill into sending away half his squadron,” James said bluntly. “Don’t you?”
“Sir, I’d never suggest what ought to go into my commanding officer’s after-action report,” Daniel said. “Never.”
“I didn’t ask what you’d suggest, Commander,” the admiral snapped. He’d been under strain for a very long time, and victory brought its own different stresses. “I said that’s what you hoped. Isn’t it?”
“No sir,” said Corder Leary’s son, not a politician but a man who knew politics from the inside out. “I very much hope you would not put that in your report to Navy House, because it involves matters beyond the remit of the Admiral Commanding the Diamondia Squadron. At the very best, the Navy Board would regard the recommendation as an impertinence and ignore it. More probably, particularly given my history with Admiral Vocaine, the Board would assume I’d somehow nobbled you—”
James snorted.
Daniel flashed him a hard smile. “Yessir,” he continued, “but they would. And they’d post me to the job of latrine inspection on West Bumfuck in response.”
James chuckled. The sound was rusty as though he hadn’t laughed in a while.
“I don’t know that it’d be anything quite so dire, Leary,” he said, “but it wouldn’t have a good result, no. So I haven’t done it. I do note that the intelligence of enemy movements which the Princess Cecile brought was of inestimable value, and that Captain Leary handled his corvette with the skill and courage to be expected of an RCN officer.”
“Thank you, sir,” Daniel said. He was just as sincere as he’d been when he said he looked like a clown.
“If you’d managed to get yourself killed the way Powell and Meltzer”—the captains of the Express and Escapade—“did,” James continued, “I’d put you in for a Cinnabar Star. In your case, a wreath to the Star. But you don’t get even that.”
“That’s all right, sir,” said Daniel, smiling. “Perhaps I’ll have better luck next time, eh?”
James laughed again. “Perhaps you will at that, Leary,” he said. “Well, it’s happened to plenty of others who swore the oath, hasn’t it?”
His right index finger ran along the seam of the courier pouch. “I dare say it’d have happened to most of us in the Diamondia Squadron if we’d had those two battle cruisers to deal with also,” he said.
Daniel didn’t speak. His eyes were on the painted screen on the wall behind the admiral. It showed a scene on the deserts of Ryndam, a voorloper stalking a casiline bird whose vestigial wings ended in defensive spikes. Did Governor Niven come from Ryndam, or had some interior decorator liked the contrast the screen made with the harbor outside?
An open plastic writing sheet lay on the small table at James’ end of the banquette. He picked it up, glanced at it again, and handed it to Daniel.
“I’m sending a personal note to my cousin in the pouch, Leary,” James said. “Go on, read it.”
Daniel took the document but didn’t let his eyes fall onto the writing yet. “Ah, your cousin, sir?” he said.
“What?” said James, a trifle sharply. “Yes, my cousin. You didn’t know that Eldridge Vocaine’s my wife’s aunt’s son?”
“Oh,” Daniel said. “I didn’t know that, sir.”
Pursing his lips, he looked down at the letter. The richly grained plastic had a high gloss; he found he had to adjust the angle slightly so that the admiral’s firm, black writing wasn’t lost in the reflection of the light sconce.
The Residence, Diamondia
7 Three 18
My dear Bucko—
I hope this finds you well. It leaves me a bloody sight better than I expected would be the case a week ago.
In my formal report, I recommend a number of my officers for awards and promotion. I’d appreciate it if you’d see all this business through what seems to an outsider like me to be an impenetrable bureaucracy. I’d regret being forced to make a public protest simply because some faceless, bone-idle twit in Navy House was sitting on his hands instead of processing my request.
There’s a matter which I’ve not put in my report because it’s not my place to do so. You succeeded beyond anyone’s dreams with your plan to destabilize the Bagarian Cluster so that the Alliance couldn’t reinforce the Jewel System. In fact, you managed to draw off half Admiral Guphill’s squadron, enabling me to deal with the remainder in a thorough fashion.
If (as I expect) I’m asked to address the Senate on my return to Xenos, rest assured that I will give full credit to you, coz, for your plan; and to your agent, Captain—as I expect his rank will be by then—Leary, who so brilliantly executed it.
Hug Maisie for me, and tell Aunt Madge that I’ll be bringing her a jar of Ceralian honey on my return.
Yours in haste—
Gams
Daniel handed back the thick sheet. “Thank you, sir,” he said very quietly.
James folded the four corners in, then folded both outer quarters of the new rectangle inward. He held his signet to the seam; after thirty seconds, the gold catalyzed the plastic with a hiss, sealing the letter around a stylized K.
The admiral flipped the letter over and on the face wrote Vocaine, Navy House/Eyes Only. That done, he added the letter to the pouch, which he sealed. Then he rose from the couch.
“I’ll have McDonough bring it to the Sissie in the morning, Leary,” James said. He walked to the console and began to put his tunic back on. “No sense you having to worry about it tonight. Now, go out and have some fun. You’ve earned it.”
“Thank you, sir!” Daniel said. “I—well, thank you, sir!”
Lieutenant McDonough opened the office door; there must’ve been a signal Daniel hadn’t seen. He floated by her.
I’ve got to find Adele, he thought.
As Daniel stepped out the door onto the terrace, a volley of fireworks burst over the harbor, red and gold and splendid.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Dan Breen continues as my first reader, catching instances where the subject and verb don’t agree, infelicities of phrasing, and not infrequently size issues. He’s enough bigger than me (and than most people) that he’ll do till a real giant comes around.
Dorothy Day and Karen Zimmerman archived my texts, a safety measure that takes a considerable weight off my mind. In fact, none of the computers I blew up this time were my primary
work computer . . . but they could’ve been. Unless simultaneous asteroids hit Seattle and Indianapolis, I’d still have been able to proceed without losing a beat. (I’m not daring anybody when I say that. Really, I’m not.)
Dorothy also provided continuity help on dates and character names. This is invaluable.
Whereas Evan Ladouceur handled naval continuity, which is also invaluable. I have a team of remarkable experts.
Which of course includes Karen, my webmaster and the person who researches things for me in an eyeblink. She was not the model for Adele Mundy, but she’s a real human example of how truly remarkable a trained research librarian is.
I mentioned blowing up computers, pretty much as usual. My son Jonathan twice rebuilt my desktop unit and kept me operational. I honestly don’t know what it is about me and computers; I’m really a very gentle person who wants only the best for his machines.
One oddity that occurred with this book is that I was asked to use the names of various people in the text. (The technical term is Tuckerizing, named for the fan and author Wilson Tucker who popularized the practice in the 1930s.) Having a long list of real names is handy for a writer, especially for a writer like me who likes to name characters rather than referring to them by epithets alone (the tall cop; the doctor; etc.).
I should emphasize that I used only the names, not the characters of the persons themselves. In many cases, that’s a Good Thing.
My wife Jo bore up nobly, fed me amazingly well, and tramped around warships, castles, tanks (quite a number of tanks), and various other places while I researched the novel.
I owe a great deal to all of the above people and to many more as well. There are times I find life pretty difficult. Without my network of friends and family, it’d be—for me—literally impossible. Thank you all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Drake was attending Duke University Law School when he was drafted. He served the next two years in the Army, spending 1970 as an enlisted interrogator with the 11th Armored Cavalry in Vietnam and Cambodia. Upon return he completed his law degree at Duke and was for eight years Assistant Town Attorney for Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He has been a full-time freelance writer since 1981. His books include the genre-defining and bestselling Hammer’s Slammers series, and the nationally bestselling RCN series including In the Stormy Red Sky, The Road of Danger, and The Sea without a Shore.