RCN 11: Death's Bright Day (eARC)

by David Drake

  “Is it going to do this again?” Dreyer asked. Her voice had lost its previous hectoring edge.

  Adele looked at the captain for the first time since she had begun working at the console. Dreyer seemed to have softened. Very few female captains operated on the fringes. Even though the Flower of Cortona was registered in the Alliance, Dreyer’s personality must have been shaped by the hostile environment.

  “Not if you use basic care to keep all commo software in the designated sector,” Adele said. “This is no more difficult than drinking filtered water rather than straight reaction mass.”

  Adele got up. “I think it’s ready now,” she said.

  “Bethel, look,” Dreyer said, looking at the starboard bulkhead. “How would you like a second mate’s slot? The Flower isn’t a luxury yacht, but you’re better off than you will be with the Upholders. They’ve a bunch of wankers, let me tell you.”

  “Thank you,” Adele said, putting her personal data unit into its trouser pocket. Her slight kit was bundled with that of Tovera beside the hatch. “I prefer a structured environment to that of a tramp freighter.”

  “I can find a slot for your friend, too,” Dreyer called to their backs as they walked down the boarding ramp. Adele didn’t reply.

  When they reached the quay, Tovera chirruped a laugh. “I’m sure your duties on the Upholder will be very simple,” she said.

  Adele clicked her tongue. “I don’t want to learn astrogation,” she said.

  Though it couldn’t be very difficult to program an astrogation computer adequately, judging by the intelligence of many of the space captains she had met here on the fringes.

  “I probably wouldn’t have to kill anybody as mate on a freighter,” Adele said.

  The rest of the intake was involved in emptying the hold. Access plates on the spine had been laid aside so that the crane could hoist out missiles and transfer them to lowboys. Adele didn’t see any reason to volunteer her slight body to brute force labor which was already being handled with skill.

  “You don’t have to kill anybody now,” Tovera said. “Look at Cazelet.”

  Daniel rose into sight aboard a missile. He stepped onto the hull, then waved cheerfully when he saw Adele.

  “No, I suppose not,” Adele agreed. “And it wouldn’t bring back the ones I’ve already killed.” The hundreds, many hundreds, I’ve already killed. “Which is a good thing, in a few cases.”

  She didn’t often smile when she recalled the faces she had last glimpsed over her gunsights, but she smiled now. Platt the child-molester, writhing in his own blood and filth as he boasted of his importance.…“Yes, sometimes a good thing.”

  Tovera sat on a bollard. It had been kinked when it stopped something large from rolling off the quay. “I’ve always heard that you should stick to work that you’re good at,” she said. She grinned at Adele and added, “And you’re very good, mistress. Very good indeed.”

  * * *

  Daniel expected to be mustered aboard the Upholder by the First Officer—or even by a midshipman; twenty-two spacers weren’t a very important increment to a cruiser with a crew of five hundred. Nonetheless Captain Joycelyn himself was here in the riggers’ mess, though the enrollment would be conducted by the bosun, Wagstaff. A clerk sat at a lowered table beside them.

  “Spacers, I’m Captain Joycelyn of the Upholder, your commander,” said Joycelyn, a good-looking man with short blond hair. His Fleet 2nd Class uniform—field gray with dark piping—had Upholder red-and-blue shoulder flashes of an arm raising a torch. It was tight around the waist.

  But so is mine, Daniel thought ruefully.

  “I want to congratulate you for choosing the winning side in this affair,” Joycelyn said. “It isn’t really a civil war, it’s a real government appearing in the Tarbell Stars where there’s been nothing but a joke and a nest of bloodsuckers on Peltry for the past generation.”

  He gestured to the hologram over the serving line at the head of the room: the Upholder with all sails set, against the glowing background of the Matrix. It was an imposing piece of art, though the ship was too sharp and clean for reality and the colors of the Matrix were too saturated.

  “We have a navy,” Joycelyn said. “You’re part of it, a big part of it—a heavy cruiser with a crew of real veterans. The so-called Tarbells have only a few destroyers, and those are mostly too rusted to lift. Their crews are the sort of sweepings you’d expect on junkers, and they haven’t been paid for months. You’ve all gotten your signing bonus, and you’ll get your pay regular by the month, not just at the end of the voyage. Ask your shipmates!”

  Joycelyn looked around, but the Sissies didn’t react. Daniel wondered what real recruits would have done; perhaps he should have coached his people on how to react, but he didn’t know what to suggest.

  Maybe silence was the best choice after all. People who had come this far to sign on to a civil war were likely to have seen quite a lot of life.

  “Wagstaff will assign you to watches,” the captain said. “File up to the table and give your name so that the clerk can sign you in.”

  The front rank began to shuffle forward. Hale called, “Sir? I’m an Academy graduate, Garrett. I was told you’d have a lieutenancy for me?”

  “All right, Garrett,” Joycelyn said. “Wait here with me, and when your colleagues are done I’ll take you to the bridge and run you through your paces.”

  “How were the Upholders able to buy a heavy cruiser?” Daniel said quietly to Adele, standing beside him in the rear rank. “There’s obviously money behind them, but I don’t see the Fleet handing over a ship like this even though the Peace of Amiens has held now for a couple years.”

  “The Galissonniere was hit by a missile at Keeler’s Planet,” Adele said, her eyes on Captain Joycelyn. “She limped back to Pleasaunce, but she was scrapped as uneconomic to repair. The missile hit the starboard outrigger and splashed the hull as well.”

  Daniel frowned. Whipping from a missile strike, followed by being bathed with molten steel, certainly would make a ship unrepairable economically, but—

  “This ship can’t have been hit by a missile!” he said. He hadn’t seen any evidence of serious damage when they boarded the cruiser. A hit like that should have stretched or crumpled every bulkhead on the ship.

  “No, this is the Galossoniere’s sister ship, the Triomphante,” Adele said. “The Alliance bought them both from Karst. General Krychek got the papers switched. An audit of the ships in ordinary will indicate what happened—though possibly not how it was done even then. There won’t be an audit for a decade, judging from RCN practice. Unless war breaks out again.”

  “I wonder if overthrowing the Tarbell government is a violation of the Treaty of Amiens,” Daniel said. “It isn’t really the Alliance doing it, after all; just one official.”

  Adele shrugged. “It’s grounds for the resumption of war if the Republic wants it to be,” she said. “If it’s made public, of course, but I don’t see how the plan can keep from becoming public if it succeeds.”

  “Do you think we will respond?” Daniel said.

  Adele shrugged again. “By ‘we’ you mean the Republic, I suppose,” she said. “You know as well as I do that there isn’t a Republic, there are factions just as there are factions in the Alliance. Two of them are involved here, obviously, and I dare say Guarantor Porra would have an opinion of his own if he learned what his subordinates were doing. I don’t know what would happen. What will happen, I suppose.”

  “Well, not if we stop it,” Daniel said, relaxing slightly. “Which is why we’re here.”

  “I’ve been the bosun’s mate of a battleship!” Woetjans said from the front of the line, her voice rising with anger. “I’m not a bloody landsman!”

  “You’re a landsman on this ship!” Wagstaff shouted back. “Because I class you as a bloody landsman! Women can’t do a spacer’s job, and they bloody well can’t do a warrant officer’s job!”

  Daniel thought of inter
vening, but he probably couldn’t. He certainly couldn’t intervene effectively without destroying the mission that had brought them to Ithaca. If Woetjans kept her temper and remembered they were really here for—

  Woetjans bent enough to grab Wagstaff by both legs below the knees. Wagstaff shouted and punched down at the middle of her back.

  Daniel thought Woetjans was going to throw the Upholder’s bosun, but instead she pivoted him as though he were a bat she was striking the floor with. Wagstaff got his arms up to save his head.

  Woetjans kicked him in the face. Wagstaff moved his hands to block her. She drove his head down into the deck. The steel rang and Daniel was sure he heard bone crunch.

  Woetjans tossed Wagstaff toward the hatch, limp as a half-filled grain sack. She straightened to attention, facing the bulkhead in front of her, and said, “Sir!” as if reporting to a new commanding officer. Her face was red and she’d torn off the right sleeve of her tunic, but she was doing a good job of controlling her breathing.

  “What’s your name, spacer?” Joycelyn said, looking Woetjans up and down.

  When Woetjans didn’t answer—possibly because she didn’t remember her name for this mission—the clerk said, “She’s van Arp, sir.”

  “Well, van Arp,” the captain said. He was apparently taking her silence as a reaction to the fight; which indeed it might have been. “The Upholder has a vacancy at bosun. Do you think you’re capable of filling it?”

  “Sir!” said Woetjans. “Yes sir!”

  “Enroll van Arp as bosun, spacer,” Joycelyn said to the clerk. He looked at Woetjans again, then around the intake generally. He continued, “Wagstaff was from Karst, he came with the ship. I find Karst generally to be behind civilized norms. Wagstaff was an extreme example of that.”

  “I’ll have him landed on the dock, shall I, sir?” Woetjans said. She remained at attention.

  “Yes, bosun, I think that’s a good idea,” Joycelyn said. “Garrett, with me. The rest of you, carry on.”

  He and Hale walked out of the compartment, stepping carefully over Wagstaff’s out-flung arm.

  Daniel felt himself relax. “Just as well we didn’t rehearse this,” he muttered to Adele. “Because that certainly wouldn’t have been my plan.”

  * * *

  Adele had mistakenly expected the bridge of the Upholder to be very similar to that of the Milton, since they were both heavy cruiser hulls of similar vintage. Instead, the Upholder had two rows of consoles back to back down the center, with the striker’s station of each relegated to the bulkhead. There was a corridor between the primary and secondary stations on each side.

  “Sit at the communications console, Bethel,” Commander Braun directed. He lowered himself onto the seat across the aisle from her. “I’ll observe from the backup station.”

  The Upholder hadn’t been built for the Fleet. The Alliance had purchased the cruiser and its sister-ship from Karst at the height of hostilities, when young Headman Hieronymous had succeeded his grandfather. Hieronymous immediately broke the long relationship between Karst and the Republic of Cinnabar.

  His advisors were brothers who had returned from an exile in which they had become officers in the Fleet; they had brokered the sale. The two powerful cruisers were a useful addition to Fleet strength, and their sale had cemented the brothers’ relationship with the Alliance. They had shortly murdered Hieronymous and, with Alliance support, took over Karst. The Treaty of Amiens left Karst outside both superpower blocks, however.

  “I’ve read your file, Bethel,” Braun said as Adele settled herself and brought the console live. “It says that you don’t have any big-ship experience. Is that true?”

  Almost a dozen people were on bridge at present, though only a few of them seemed to be on duty; several were in civilian clothes. Adele wouldn’t be able to identify them until she had some time alone with the cruiser’s internal systems.

  “Yes, that’s true,” Adele said. She had proven herself able to lie when necessary, just as she was willing to kill when necessary. This wasn’t a lie, though: the file of Communicator 2 Bethel, which Adele herself had written, showed her Fleet service as being in ground facilities or on a destroyer.

  “Well, do the best you can with this test sequence,” Braun said. “I’d like to be able to leave most of the ordinary commo to you while I’m occupied with other duties.”

  Krychek had picked several key officers for the rebel military, but Braun was high up in the ranks of the First Diocese itself; he reported directly to Krychek. Braun was aboard the cruiser as the political officer under the guise of a communicator.

  In fact his background in communications wasn’t any better than that of a normal Fleet—or RCN—officer. Braun could handle Signals Officer duties on a cruiser well enough not to arouse suspicion in his fellows, but he was obviously very willing to pass those duties on.

  Adele’s smile was tiny and very cold. Braun was probably sent as a Signals Officer because his astrogation isn’t much better than my own.

  “Respond to these incoming signals as though you were the communications officer, Bethel,” Braun said, then turned to the flat-plate display at his own station and activated a program.

  Adele took out her personal data unit, which she had already linked to the Upholder’s system. The test signals started with normal incoming for a ship in harbor—notice of deliveries, status requests, personal messages for named individuals—then progressed to communications regarding lift-off and from the ground to the cruiser in orbit.

  Adele routed them without difficulty. The signals were always slugged properly, which made the job much easier than it would be in reality with an unfamiliar crew. Real incoming messages were likely to address “Daisy” or “Phil,” and were made unintelligible as well as unfamiliar by the speakers’ mushy accents.

  “Commander…?” Adele said, using a link to Braun’s station rather than turning and raising her voice. On the Princess Cecile she would have keyed the link verbally, but here she used manual controls until she had time to explore the system. “I’m dealing with real incoming messages as well as your test sequence. If you don’t want me to do that, please tell me now.”

  “What?” Braun said. He turned, raising his voice, but his station properly routed the words as a reply on the two-way link. “What real messages?”

  “Tomorrow’s training schedule from Central Personnel,” Adele said. “I sent that to the first officer. And a request for a fatigue party of twenty to aid with re-rigging the destroyer Truth, which I sent to the bosun. Sir.”

  “Ordinary messages are routed to the duty officer during this test,” Braun said, frowning.

  “You set it to do that…” Adele said, wondering if she should pretend more respect than she felt. “But then you shut down the console. When I brought the console back up, it reverted to default programming and sent incoming messages to the signals console.”

  There didn’t seem to be any reason to crawl to her new superior: Braun needed her even more than she had assumed from the beginning. Besides, I’m not very good at pretending respect.

  “I see,” said Braun. “To be honest, this model of console is unfamiliar to me. Well, that’s very good, Bethel. You can consider yourself acting signals officer of the Upholder, though that won’t be formal since you don’t have commissioned rank yet. You will have when you return to Fleet service, I promise you.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Adele said. “Selkirk—” Tovera for this mission “—was my regular clerk on the Z71, so we’re experienced in trading watches. You won’t have to worry about signals with the two of us in place.”

  “You had a clerk on the Z71?” Braun said, frowning again. “Is that SOP for destroyers?”

  “In most cases one of the technicians doubles as the signals officer’s striker,” Adele said, hoping that Fleet standard operating procedure was the same as the RCN’s. “Selkirk and I made the connection more regular, and it works well.”

  Tovera, seated
at the empty astrogation console beside signals, nodded demurely to Braun.

  Braun stood up; Adele turned to face him but stayed at the console. “All right,” he said. “That seems a good system for the Upholder as well. You may carry on until I get regular watches set up. Your real duties will begin in a week when we make our first shakedown cruise.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Adele said.

  Braun frowned again and added, “I warn you, this will be work for you; I won’t have leisure to give you much guidance. But in the end I think you’ll find yourself quite satisfied.”

  “I expect I will, sir,” Adele said. “And I’ve never minded hard work.”

  Braun nodded and walked off the bridge. Adele busied herself with learning the details of the system she now controlled.

  On a two-way link, Tovera said, “He certainly won’t be able to give you much guidance. Personally, I’m really looking forward to the payoff.”

  “Yes,” said Adele as she transferred her stored files from the Flower of Cortona to a walled-off portion of the signals console. “I think we all are.”

  Ten light minutes from Ithaca

  Daniel, perched on the second flange of the Starboard B antenna, reeved the final sheave of the new block. He extended the cable’s free end, working hand over hand; it was stiff enough to be treated as rod for short distances. Beauchamp, farther down the rigging, walked the end to Schatt and held it while his partner clamped a bight in the end.

  Daniel climbed down to the deck while the others coupled the fall to the motor. He joined them as Beauchamp arm-signaled to Longridge, the bosun’s mate waiting at the control point. Longridge obediently touched the power switch. Hydraulic motors hummed, tightening the fall along with three others. The topsail yard rose majestically into position.

  Beauchamp clapped Daniel on the shoulder and gave him a thumb’s-up. Schatt waved to Longridge, who responded with a dismissal signal; the three of them had worked well past the change of watch to finish changing out the block. Beauchamp was carrying the old block; it would have to be disassembled to determine where the damage was and whether it could be repaired.