The Way to Glory

by David Drake

  "Commander Slidell?" the man in Grays said cheerfully. "I'm Sloan Pontefract, Admiral Milne's Flag Lieutenant. The Admiral sent me to invite you to tea this afternoon, say seventeen hundred local. She served with your wife's father and brother, perhaps you know."

  Pontefract took in the spectacle of the Hermes' officers standing in line at Parade Rest. He halted at the head of the ramp and threw Slidell a salute which was razor sharp despite being clearly off-hand.

  "I'm sorry, sir," he said. "We don't stand on ceremony much here in the back of beyond. No offense intended, I assure you."

  Slidell returned the salute. "None taken, of course," he said grudgingly. He turned to Daniel and snapped, "All right, Leary. You and the midshipmen are dismissed."

  "Commander?" said the other lieutenant. "I'm Farschenning from the port office. I'm afraid the facilities here are rather stretched at the moment as we've had a bit of an emergency. If you need repairs, I'm afraid they'll have to wait—unless your own complement can carry them out, of course?"

  "We noticed the flagship's situation," Slidell said. "How in the name of heaven did something like that happen?"

  Farschenning and Pontefract exchanged glances. Farschenning pursed his lips and said, "Bit of a disputed question, Commander. Some think the thrusters were overstressed, while others believe that yard maintenance here at Sinmary Port may have been to blame. And of course some times you have bad luck. That's perhaps the most likely explanation, though of course there'll have to be a Navy Office inquiry to get to the bottom of the matter."

  Daniel kept a neutral expression as he considered Farschenning's careful statement. Squadron command and the base establishment—which reported to the Bureau of Material on Xenos, not to Admiral Milne—had started out by blaming one another for an event which'd been just short of disastrous. The likely result of such a public brawl would be half a dozen people forced into retirement for negligence or worse.

  Cooler heads seemed to have prevailed, though. The parties were uniting to claim an Act of God that'd save everybody's career.

  "The major problem now is to lift the Cornelwood so we can repair her," Farschenning continued. "The, ah, repercussions from the accident will be easier to deal with if the damage is repaired."

  Lieutenant Pontefract nodded grimly. "The Cornelwood's the only real combat unit in the squadron, you see," he said, admitting what Daniel had noticed when he first he looked at the ship-list for the Gold Dust Squadron. "Oh, I don't mean the others aren't warships, but they're a frigate and patrol cruisers configured for station-keeping and landing operations. Or your tender, Commander. All very well for chasing pirates or pulling civilians off Yang when they're having another of their bloody revolutions—"

  "Bloody is right," muttered Farschenning. "The poor devils in the Garnet got the job of dealing with the savages this time. I don't envy them."

  "—but not for slugging it out with other warships," Pontefract went on. He'd paused, nodding agreement while Farschenning spoke. "Of course that's not likely to happen since the Alliance doesn't have any bases within thirty days of here, but not having the capacity would . . ."

  He rolled his palms upward with an apologetic smile rather than put the rest of his thought into words. Daniel could finish the sentence easily: a squadron commander whose error degraded his force below the level required to face a putative enemy could expect to be recalled if not cashiered when Xenos heard about it.

  "Yes, a very difficult situation," Slidell said, pursing his lips and nodding. "We've got a variety of problems to deal with—the Hermes is directly out of the builders' hands, you see—but I understand your priorities."

  He gave the two station officers a wintry smile and went on with the closest thing to a joke that Daniel had heard from the Commander: "I even agree with them, though I doubt Admiral Milne was concerned about whether I did or not."

  "You'll have to lift the Cornelwood on the thrust of another ship attached by cables, won't you, sir?" Vesey said to Lieutenant Farschenning. "The only alternative's to drain the slip, and the mud bottom makes that problematic."

  Daniel looked at Vesey in surprise. The midshipmen had remained to listen to the station officers, standing with polite informality. That was perfectly proper—their primary duty was to learn the business of a commissioned officer before they themselves received commissions—but they weren't expected to take part in discussions unasked.

  "We'd come to that conclusion, yes," Farschenning said, his eyes slightly narrowed but his tone polite. Vesey's observation had been both insightful and accurate, after all. "You're welcome to observe—"

  He nodded to Slidell.

  "—if your commanding officer approves, of course."

  "You see, sir . . ." said Midshipman Dorst. He was a big, extremely fit young man. Vesey could spot him quite a few IQ points and still come out ahead, but Dorst never hesitated to put himself between others and trouble. The RCN needed officers like that as well as clever ones, and there were few better than Dorst. "Lieutenant Leary has personal experience with using one ship to lift another. He did it on Morzanga."

  The station officers stared at Daniel. Captain Slidell turned, his eyes flicking from Dorst to Daniel and his lips forming a tight line.

  "Good God!" Pontefract blurted. "You're that Leary? Leary of the Princess Cicily?"

  Daniel nodded curtly. "The Princess Cecile," he said, "but yes. I don't think the business on Morzanga makes me an expert, though. That was very much a matter of 'needs must when the devil drives,' I assure you."

  "Well, you're certainly the closest thing to an expert on Nikitin right now!" Lieutenant Farschenning said. "This is very good luck indeed. But what are you doing on . . ."

  He caught himself with a guilty look at Commander Slidell. The rest of his sentence was just as clear as Pontefract's unspoken discussion of how the Cornelwood was damaged: what's a dashing officer like you doing as First Lieutenant of a tub?

  "I can't speak for the Navy Office's reasons," Daniel said to cover the embarrassment. Can't speak in public, at any rate. "But my service has been primarily on a single vessel, and I'm learning a great deal on the Hermes. If I'm assigned to cutter operations—"

  He gave Slidell a deferential nod. The Captain preserved a stony silence.

  "—then I'll have a chance to hone my ship-handling skills in still another fashion."

  "Well, it's certainly good luck for the Gold Dust Squadron," Pontefract said. "Leary, I'm sure you'll be receiving orders assigning you to the project as soon as I get back to Squadron House."

  He glanced at Slidell and flashed a wry grin. "I'm sorry about snatching your First Lieutenant away when you've got refitting of your own to do, sir," he said, "but you understand the priorities."

  "Indeed I do, Lieutenant," Slidell said with heavy sarcasm. "I trust the Hermes will somehow manage without the remarkable Lieutenant Leary."

  The station lieutenants exchanged puzzled glances. Daniel kept his face expressionless. He was glad to see the midshipmen did also.

  "Well . . ." said Farschenning. "We'll take our leave, sir. Send in your supply requests and we'll fill them as quickly as we can."

  "And don't forget the Admiral's invitation, Commander," said Pontefract. "She's looking forward to seeing you again."

  He threw Slidell another sharp salute. It looked easy when he did it; Daniel always felt that he'd grown an extra elbow when he tried.

  "Indeed," said Captain Slidell as he returned the salute. "Perhaps the Admiral and I can discuss priorities."

  Daniel returned to Parade Rest, waiting for what Slidell would say when the station officers were out of earshot. In fact the Captain said nothing, only turned on his heel and stalked up the companionway toward the bridge on A Deck.

  Daniel looked at the midshipmen. Both Vesey and Dorst wore broad smiles. And after a moment, Daniel smiled back.

  CHAPTER 10

  Sinmary Port on Nikitin

  "Stop here, Hogg," Daniel said when he rea
lized that otherwise they'd drive straight through the swamp to the group overseeing salvage operations on the Cornelwood. The utility vehicle from the Hermes had six broad wheels. It'd likely get to the other side, but that'd mean chewing up the narrow pedestrian way and drenching the officers with muddy water.

  One of those present was Captain Molliman, the Port Commander. At the very best irritating him wouldn't speed the supply of food and spares to the Hermes . . . which in turn wouldn't improve Captain Slidell's opinion of his First Lieutenant.

  Hogg pulled around in a tight circle so that the vehicle's blunt cab faced the road back to the Hermes' slip. "All around the barn to get here, and we could see the sucker before we started," he grumbled to Daniel beside him. "Why'd they design the port like this?"

  "Well, they didn't, Hogg," Daniel said mildly. From the air all the islands dotting Nikitin's equatorial ocean—not just Sinmary—looked like games of dominoes. Straight lines branched at ninety degrees and sometimes formed tee intersections with one another, creating messy sprawls in the shallow seas. "This is how the algae grows, and the site planners simply used what they found."

  He glanced over the dozens of other vehicles already at the site. Most were cargo-carrying hovercraft, pulled up on the quays framing the slip, but there were a number of aircars also.

  A pair of barges were anchored beside the listing Cornelwood to receive heavy stores through its hatches. The cruiser's 13,000-ton bulk dwarfed the low-lying surface craft.

  "Besides, it looks as though the locals use water transport," Daniel added. "Be thankful the Hermes had a truck and we didn't have to walk."

  "Aye, the pig," Hogg agreed, if it was really agreement.

  Woetjans and the squad of riggers in the bed of the truck were out before Hogg had shut down the multi-fuel turbine. "Now keep civil, you lot," she thundered. "You're Mister Leary's Sissies and so the best in the RCN, but this is somebody else's turf. We're to help as we're asked to, not to take the job over ourself."

  Daniel sighed. The bosun had just given good advice to her crew, senior people who'd worked on Morzanga. It was a pity she'd bellowed it in a voice that everyone in the slip must've heard.

  "I'll lead, if you please, Woetjans," Daniel said, stepping to the truck's running board. He hesitated before dropping the remaining thirty inches to the ground.

  He could've jumped to the ground, of course, but from the look of the soil he'd probably have sunk in to his ankles. Chances were he'd get muddy enough in the course of things—quite a number of people were working in the water, and Daniel wasn't one to stay comfortable while his subordinates did dirty, dangerous jobs. Still, it was better to introduce yourself to senior officers in a clean uniform.

  Sinmary looked extremely flat from orbit . . . and so it was, no more than a twenty-foot drop from the spine of the jagged island to the shore of the almost-tideless sea. Because of the vegetation, though, sight distances were short except over water. The trees had trunks like inverted bells to catch rainwater, circled by diadems of foliage. They covered the equatorial islands. On Sinmary there'd been no effort to clear them except to build base facilities and the residences of the planters.

  According to the Sailing Directions, Nikitin did a considerable business in fresh fruits and vegetables grown for nearby stars which in turn produced anti-aging drugs. Hundreds of nearby islands were under cultivation, but most of the wealthy landlords had a colony on the North Coast of Sinmary and commuted by aircar instead of living in scattered isolation on their estates.

  The island-forming algae itself provided the ground cover. It trapped rain like the trees, in its case by creating rectangles whose edges threw up membranous sheets on calcite stiffeners. The organic portion decayed nightly to slush and was replaced the next morning. Where the island's surface wasn't tree roots or artificial, it was generally a bog.

  Daniel started toward the officers. Beryllium monocrystal woven into a coarse mesh formed a walkway with a natural non-skid surface. The same material was used for catwalks connecting starships to quays beyond reach of their boarding ramps, but here it was supported on pilings rather than pontoons. Though immensely strong, the yard-wide ribbon bobbed and swayed under Daniel's weight as if it'd been floating.

  Lieutenant Farschenning looked over his shoulder as Daniel approached. He called cheerfully, "Here's Leary now, Captain. And it looks like Slidell was able to spare some of his riggers after all."

  Daniel managed not to grin. He'd been on the bridge when the two messages came in, so he knew exactly what'd happened. When Slidell opened the message from the Port Commander's office, he'd snapped, "No, of course I can't spare riggers if I'm to make the Hermes ready without any help from the dockyard staff! And if Molliman thinks he can order me, I'll remind him that I'm not in his chain of command."

  The second message was from Admiral Milne. Slidell stared at it expressionlessly, then said, "Mister Leary, direct the bosun to pick a squad of riggers who were with her on Morzanga and accompany you to the salvage site. Dismissed!"

  The officers were standing on the concrete top of the quay. Through cracks in it rose ankle-high membranes of shimmering algae, some of them recently trampled down. Earth, compressed with a plasticizer, made a better surface for any purpose that didn't involve high heat because it was more resilient. The construction engineers hadn't used it on Nikitin because lime for concrete was readily available, while the closest thing to dirt was the gooey organic sludge from decayed algae.

  Daniel halted a pace from Captain Molliman and saluted, saying, "Sir! Lieutenant Leary and twelve riggers reporting as ordered."

  "Yes, yes, Leary, and we're glad to have you," said Molliman. He looked at the enlisted personnel, squinting to read the bosun's name tape. "Glad to have you too, Woetjans," he went on. "Report to Senior Chief Takami on Barge 73—if he isn't in the Corny, I mean. We're lightening ship at the moment, mostly lift and carry."

  "Aye aye, sir!" Woetjans said. "We'll take one of the little skimmers if we may?"

  "What?" said Molliman. He waved the Sissies toward the surface-effect vehicles pulled up at a slant nearby. "Oh, right, you're on foot."

  He returned his attention to Daniel. Molliman was an overweight man of fifty with a limp and a built-up sole on his right boot. He couldn't have gotten through the Academy with that physical impairment, so it must be a service-incurred disability—and the reason he was now in a desk job.

  "Be a good chap, Leary," he said. "Don't keep making people salute, eh? This isn't Xenos."

  Daniel flashed an apologetic smile in reply.

  "We're all glad to see you, Lieutenant," said a man in his early thirties, one of the two lieutenant commanders in the group. Nodding to the other LTC, a woman a few years older, he went on, "Tooney and I have been talking about how we'd manage the lift. She's got the Cutlass, I'm Peggs of the Chrysoberyl. And I'll tell you frankly, Leary, I'm glad you know how to do it. Because neither of us think it's possible."

  The challenge in Peggs' tone was mild and so far as Daniel was concerned perfectly justified. Nobody enjoys being told an outsider—and a junior besides—says he can do what you can't. Nonetheless, Peggs wasn't flatly hostile to the notion.

  "You're related to Commander Bergen, Leary?" Tooney asked.

  "My uncle, sir," Daniel said, nodding.

  Tooney shrugged to Peggs. "I served with the Commander," she said. "There's nothing God could do with a ship that he couldn't, in the Matrix or in a gravity well, either one."

  She fixed Daniel with her eyes again. Tooney's face was thin and ascetic; it reminded Daniel not a little of Adele Mundy. "I'm willing to learn anything you can teach me about the business, Leary," she said. "And if you want to take the controls yourself, I won't fight you for the honor."

  "With respect, Commander," Daniel said, "I don't believe it is possible to lift the Cornelwood that way. Certainly not with me at the controls of an unfamiliar ship. I pride myself on my ship-handling, to be sure—"

  He quirked a
grin at the local officers. He wasn't going to pretend false humility, because the truth would make his point much better.

  "—but I'd had years with the Sissie and knew her quirks. More important, though, the freighter I righted was on dry land and didn't weigh half what a heavy cruiser does, even if you manage to gut her down to the hull. I don't believe any practical net of cables can survive sufficient thrust to bring the sunken outrigger to the surface."

  The local officers looked at one another. Farschenning and the other two lieutenants kept blank faces, but the lieutenant commanders began to smile. Molliman wore a look of grim satisfaction.

  "Well, I shouldn't say it, Leary," Peggs said, obviously speaking for all of them, "because I'd like to see the Corny back in service ASAP . . . but I was a little concerned that somebody else thought he could succeed at what I expected t' be a disaster if I tried it."

  "Somebody who didn't talk through his hat, you understand," Tooney added. "We know the Gold Dust Cluster is out in the sticks, but even here we've heard about you, Leary."

  "That leaves us the problem of righting the cruiser, though," Captain Molliman said glumly. "And don't say build a coffer dam, drain the slip, and jack up the hull—because the bottom of the slip won't bear the weight. It's porous limestone and less than ten feet thick. And under that is three hundred feet of sea-water, which isn't much of a help."

  "A reputation's like a snowball, sir," Daniel said, nodding to Tooney. "It gets bigger the farther it gets from where it started. But Captain? I think there is a trick that might work."

  "Well, I'd like to hear it," Molliman said, his eyes narrowing. "And I hope it doesn't require sacrificing a black goat or something. Mind, I don't say I wouldn't do it."

  He flashed Daniel a wry smile. It struck Daniel that Molliman knew perfectly well that his career was seriously at risk, but he'd managed to remain professional when many officers would either be ranting or drinking themselves into oblivion.