RCN 11: Death's Bright Day (eARC)

by David Drake

  “Daniel,” she said. Her head must be turned, though Daniel couldn’t see even the foot he was touching. “It’s going to get tight in a moment, but it’s just a short place. Will you be all right?”

  “Keep moving,” Daniel said. How in hell was he supposed to know if he’d be all right until he reached the pinch? He certainly wasn’t better for talking about it in a tunnel tighter than a grave!

  Miranda moved on. Daniel waited a moment, lying on his side and trying to control his breath. The air wasn’t bad, though it had an odd mustiness. There couldn’t be much circulation down here.

  “Daniel, I’m through,” Miranda called. “It opens up when you get through.”

  “I’m coming,” said Daniel. He was already sorry for feeling so angry a moment before. He hadn’t said the things he’d been thinking, but Miranda knew him well enough to have heard them in his tone.

  She knows me well enough that it won’t have surprised her either. Well, if she’d wanted a saint, she’d been looking in the wrong direction. He was still embarrassed.

  The triangular passage narrowed side to side, and the peak lowered also. Daniel thrust at the rock with his toes, squirming forward almost as though he were swimming.

  It was definitely getting tighter. He pulled his left arm back along his body and twisted slightly to make his body as slim as he could. He didn’t think about it, just kept thrusting ahead. There was a way out, maybe not for him, but he’d keep going forward until he got there or died. Going forward…

  Fingers touched his outstretched wrist. Daniel squirmed a little further and he could get his left arm free also. He opened his eyes—he didn’t remember closing them—and the lantern made the wide chamber a yellow ambiance. DaSaenz and Miranda were waiting, she with a concerned expression. With another wriggling push Daniel was out.

  He got to his feet. Miranda hugged him, probably from affection. It was a good thing regardless, because otherwise Daniel would have toppled backward.

  “I’m all right,” he wheezed, and in a moment he was.

  “How did you find this place, Master daSaenz?” Miranda said, holding Daniel firmly. The ceiling was flat and much lower than that of the conical antechamber, but the floor had at least three large lobes. Its total area was considerable.

  “I’ve been studying the caves all my life,” their guide said. “I’ve had robotic mappers for the past fifteen years. I’ve explored every passage I’ve found and mapped them to the end, then built up a three-dimensional image.”

  DaSaenz made a broad gesture. “There are forty caves opening off this chamber,” he said, “and I know them all. I’ve seen things that no one has seen for hundreds of years, and I know the caves as no one else ever has.”

  “That’s very impressive,” Daniel said. He was breathing normally again.

  “It’s my life!” said daSaenz. “These caves are the daSaenz heritage. No one but a daSaenz really has a right to be here! Ah, though you, you’re my mother’s guests. That’s why I’m about to show you the greatest wonder of all.”

  “What would that be, Master daSaenz?” Miranda asked quietly. Her fingers were massaging the point of Daniel’s right shoulder.

  “I found a room which is alive with glowworms,” daSaenz said. “When I was last there a year ago, more of the rock was covered by them than was clear. You noticed that the tunnel we came through to get here didn’t have any glowworms in it?”

  Miranda nodded; Daniel grunted. He probably wouldn’t have noticed anything even if he’d kept his eyes open. He hadn’t been panicked, but squeezing through the passage had been an extremely unpleasant experience.

  “Because that stratum had no pyrites in it,” daSaenz said, nodding enthusiastically. “And there are very few in the present chamber, see?”

  He turned off the lantern. Daniel felt Miranda’s body shift as she turned to scan the whole chamber. He saw a pink blur on the floor in the middle distance. There seemed to be prickles and sparkles of light all around them, though they were too faint for him to be sure that he wasn’t seeing ghost images within his retinas.

  “But if you have the courage to come with me,” daSaenz said, “I’ll show you a hollow which must have been a huge pyrites crystal before the glowworms began to devour it. Huge.”

  “We’ll follow,” Daniel said. “Go on, then.”

  Miranda squeezed his hand again and stepped slightly away. DaSaenz turned on the lantern and led the way into a left branching…though when they were well within it, Daniel saw that what he’d thought was a solid wall to the right seemed rather to be a massive pillar standing in a single large bay rather than a divider between two. He couldn’t be sure in the side-scatter from the lantern.

  Their guide led them into a series of passages, some wider than others, but none really narrow. The ceiling remained high enough to clear their heads, though from caution Daniel put his left hand on his forehead. A scraped knuckle could be ignored, but a whack on the scalp was apt to be bloody and distracting.

  There were multiple branchings, but daSaenz never hesitated. He really did know the caves.

  “We’re coming to the wonder,” daSaenz called back over his shoulder. He got down on all fours and led into a branching to the left which was only about three feet high. Miranda hesitated; Daniel sent her in ahead of him, but he followed on her heels.

  “Here,” said daSaenz. He stopped and shifted in the passage. It gleamed when brushed by lantern-light: the rock was metal plated.

  DaSaenz shifted again and slipped waist deep into the rock: there was a hole in the floor of the passage. The remainder of his body and finally his head disappeared also. The lantern from below lit not only the opening but also the rope ladder hanging down into it.

  “Come, if you will,” daSaenz called. “I’ll turn out the lantern when you’re here.”

  “Wait,” said Daniel. He turned onto his left side to edge by Miranda as she shrank herself against the opposite wall.

  The ladder hung from a wooden bar. Daniel felt the ends and found they were held securely by U-bolts hammered into the rock. The fasteners and the rock were both glass-smooth with iron deposited by the glowworms, but the bar hadn’t been touched: wood must contain some sulfur, though not enough to tempt the creatures when pyrites was available.

  There were glowworms—a violet one and a red one, both more vivid and filled with bright sparks than those Daniel had seen farther back in the caves. He ignored them as he tested with his bare hands both the bolts and their grip on the crossbar. He had to be sure that the structure was solid before he trusted Miranda’s life and his own to it.

  Daniel couldn’t feel the creatures, though the vivid glow beneath his thumbs proved he was touching them. He shifted his grip onto the bar and let himself down into the opening. He kicked his feet until one boot found a rung; he settled his weight onto it, then walked himself down the rest of the way on the ladder. The rungs were wooden battens; the rope stringers seemed to be woven from some slick synthetic fiber.

  DaSaenz kept the lantern aimed at Daniel’s shoulders on the way down. The floor of the lower chamber was about ten feet below that of the passage from which they had dropped.

  Daniel gripped the ladder to hold it steady. “I’m clear!” he called up to Miranda. she descended with the supple quickness he had noticed in all her movements.

  DaSaenz swept his light around the chamber. It was an irregular polygon almost thirty feet across at its widest point. There were patches of bare rock in the floor, but the walls had a metallic luster deeper than the shimmer of deposited iron nearer the anteroom of the cave.

  “I suggest you keep very quiet after I turn the light off,” daSaenz said. “I’m going to move against the wall behind me, but you’ll get the best view if you move to the other end of the chamber.”

  Daniel nodded and walked away from their guide. Miranda was half a step ahead of him.

  “Are you ready?” said daSaenz.

  “Yes/yes.” Daniel’s voice was cu
rt, Miranda’s musical.

  The lantern went off.

  The darkness was alive. The glowworms were not only brighter than those Daniel had seen before, they were larger—some of these were two hands across—and the concentration of bright points in the glow was greater. All the colors of the rainbow mingled, and the violet ones hinted that their light extended deeper into the spectrum than human eyes could follow.

  “Oh, Daniel,” Miranda said. “Oh, Daniel. Oh, this is so wonderful.”

  As daSaenz had said, glowworms covered more than half the surface of the chamber. They did not quite touch one another except in a humped mass along the edge near where Daniel and Miranda stood. There the glowworms had concentrated like an oil slick on the surface of a harbor.

  Daniel bent to the mass without speaking. He touched it, finding metal which was too thick to bend under the pressure of his hand.

  He felt lower to get to the edge from which he could lift a piece and feel the bottom. He expected to find bits of rock which had spalled off the wall when supporting pyrites had been eaten away.

  Daniel lifted a glove.

  He stood holding it. “DaSaenz, turn your light on!” he said. “I’ve found something!”

  DaSaenz didn’t reply. A moment later Daniel heard the click of battens knocking together. He ran back to where they had left their guide but as he feared, he was too late.

  “Daniel?” said Miranda.

  “The bastard’s pulled the ladder up behind him!” Daniel said.

  Cuvier Harbor, Jardin

  Adele was lost in her work, pretty much as always. Some of the material in the files which Major Grozhinski had provided duplicated or at least supplemented Mistress Sand’s files, but Cinnabar could only guess at what the 5th Bureau was doing in the Tarbell Stars—let alone what they intended.

  The plural in speaking of the 5th Bureau was necessary here. Storn had laid out in detail the cluster assets both of his diocese and that of his rival Krychek. Storn’s activities had been limited to observation and to increasing his ability to observe—particularly on the worlds overseen by Krychek’s diocese.

  The First Diocese had been encouraging separatist movements on the more important worlds of his sector. That hadn’t been quite as useful as Krychek might have hoped when rebellion against the Tarbell Government had broken out on Ithaca.

  There was a great deal of hostility to President for Life Menandros throughout the sector, but the planetary leaders didn’t care for one another much either. The rebels formed a Council of the Upholders of the Freedom of the Tarbell Stars, but it was a talking shop which spent its time in ill-natured squabbles. The Council could not have successfully maintained a rebellion even against a foolish coxcomb like Menandros if Krychek had not provided personnel for administrative positions among the Upholders.

  Does Krychek think they won’t be noticed if they’re not officially in command? Adele wondered. Another possibility was the one which concerned General Storn: that Krychek had Guarantor Porra’s support, so that he didn’t have to be concerned about Pleasaunce learning of his plot.

  Under other circumstances Adele would have been sharing her task with Cory and Cazelet, not so much to reduce her workload as to bring them up to speed about the situation. This was the first night of the landfall, however, and both her deputies—their position unofficial but beyond any question—were sampling the entertainments of Cuvier City.

  Both men would be working beside Adele if she had asked, and their companions, Hale and Vesey respectively, would have been uncomplaining if disappointed. They all felt they owed Adele more than she thought they did, and they trusted her judgment implicitly.

  Her lips quirked. Adele was demonstrating her good judgment by not calling them away from their fun. She didn’t believe she had ever been young in the sense that people seemed to mean it, but she had observed humanity closely enough that she understood the concept.

  The watch officer was Chief Engineer Pasternak. He was competent for any question involving the Power Room or the propulsion system. Astrogation was a closed book to him, and Adele would probably be as useful as Pasternak if the Princess Cecile had to leave the planet.

  There would be plenty of time for Cory and Cazelet to study the Tarbell Stars on the twenty-day voyage from Jardin. And if there wasn’t, then Adele herself would be enough as she had always been enough in the past.

  I have flaws. I don’t have the flaw of false modesty.

  She was looking at the military and particularly naval strength of the Upholders, since that was probably the most significant factor. It would certainly be the first concern of her colleagues.

  For the most part the Upholder fleet was the collection of scraps and antiques which Adele had learned to expect in hinterlands like the Tarbell Stars, but there were exceptions. The three destroyers were of recent Alliance construction, and the officers and crew of one of them were ex-Fleet. That didn’t prove Krychek’s connivance as there was a considerable number of Fleet and RCN spacers freed by the Treaty of Amiens. Some of them preferred naval duties to those of the merchant service.

  There was also a modern heavy cruiser. That—

  Adele’s holographic screen blurred. She came awake to her present surroundings, blinking in surprised anger. Tovera, standing beside the signals console, had just slid her hand through the display.

  “Yes?” Adele said. She was still angry at having been dragged out of her studies, but she knew Tovera wouldn’t have interrupted her without a good reason.

  “Hogg wants to talk to you,” Tovera said with her usual lack of expression. She stepped aside, though Hogg didn’t move closer.

  Is Hogg afraid of me? Adele thought. Or is he simply deferring to Tovera’s ownership interest?

  “Ma’am,” Hogg said. His arms were at his sides, and he was standing as straight as Adele had ever seen him. “The master’s not back and he hasn’t called in neither. I know, you’re not his mother and I don’t worry about him normal like, but I been talking in some of the bars.”

  “Go on,” Adele said. She had no idea of what time it was. She called up a real-time image on top of her screen and viewed Cuvier Harbor at dusk, much later than she had expected it to be.

  “You see the thing is, the cave wasn’t open to strangers till seven years back when the current lady took over when her husband died,” Hogg said. “It was daSaenz family and maybe friends after a big dinner or the like. Not something a junior officer from a supply ship gets invited to. Dorst was lying about being there, and that means I don’t know what’s going on. And the master’s not back.”

  Adele began searching. She used the control wands through her personal data unit to access her console and through that the thirty-odd databases in Cuvier City which she had coupled during the time the Princess Cecile had been here.

  Hogg said something. From the corner of Adele’s eye she saw Tovera move him back so that he wouldn’t again try to interrupt. When Adele was searching, she ignored the people around her. If they thought that she should give them a running account of the process, they were going to be disappointed.

  Adele grimaced. She wasn’t sure there was a definitive answer, but she had what was probably good enough for current requirements.

  “I can’t at present prove that the caves were not open to the public thirty years ago when Midshipman Dorst landed here in the Orangeleaf…” Adele said to Hogg and Tovera. Pasternak was in his office in the Power Room; only she and the servants were on the bridge. “But there are ample references to them being opened one day a week when Carlotta daSaenz became head of the family seven years ago. At her father’s death, by the way; her husband wasn’t a daSaenz, she was.”

  As she spoke, she shifted the material from Major Grozhinski into a separate cache, then threw the mechanical switch under her saddle to cut it off completely. It could not be accessed on line; even Adele herself would have to snap the switch before she could get to the data.

  “What’s that mean?”
Hogg said. He seemed bewildered as well as being angry.

  “It could be nothing,” Adele said, getting to her feet. She paused; she had been sitting in the same position for long enough that her circulation took a moment to respond to movement. “Dorst may have gotten a special dispensation, just as Daniel did. But we’ll visit the caves and ask. Hogg, can you line up transportation?”

  “I’ve got a truck up on the street,” he said. “Six wheels, a lot like we used for hauling at Bantry. Do you want something fancy?”

  “That will be fine,” Adele said. Hogg wasn’t a good driver, but a familiar vehicle was a safe enough choice under the circumstances. She strode off the bridge, heading for the Down companionway. “Oh, and Hogg? Bring a long gun. I’m not expecting trouble, but it’s as well to be prepared.”

  “There’s an impeller in the back already,” Hogg said. “And I’ve got a pistol.”

  Tovera laughed. The sound echoed in the armored companionway like the chittering of bats.

  “If it’s pistol range,” Tovera said, “leave it in your pocket. That’s for me and the mistress.”

  CHAPTER 8

  DaSaenz Estate, Jardin

  “There may be another way out,” said Miranda. Her voice was perfectly calm, but the fact that she’d spoken at all showed that she must think they were doomed.

  “Oh, I think we’re all right,” Daniel said. He walked back to her, keeping his voice low. “You can stand on my shoulders, can’t you? Though I think we should wait a few minutes in case he’s waiting at the top.”

  “Oh,” said Miranda. She hugged him fiercely. “I’m sorry I panicked. Yes, of course I can stand on your shoulders. Actually, with a boost I could probably jump through the opening; enough to get a hold, I mean.”

  “I’d rather you just climbed up on me,” Daniel said. “I’ll worry less.”

  It would be very easy for someone trying to jump through a hole in a stone ceiling to smash her elbow in this uncertain light. Several glowworms were on the rim of the opening, but even so it would be a tricky target.