by David Drake
Starboard Six in the stern was firing; Port Six was not. Daniel opened the starboard feed wide, acting with cold decision as his mind processed an unacceptable situation and provided a response that would've caused his immediate court-martial if he'd ever done it in front of a senior officer.
Reaction mass to the working stern thruster increased from the 20 percent idling flow to its maximum, some 79 percent. The pump was shot and the feed line was clogged, but it ought to be enough.
"Ship, hang on!"
A roaring plume lifted like a geyser about the Beacon's stern. The ship shook even though the nozzle was wide open. When the flow had stabilized, Daniel irised the nozzle aperture to the tightest setting, providing full thrust.
The stern rocked on asymmetric thrust that raised the tip of the starboard outrigger off the ground though it couldn't lift the whole vessel. Daniel flared the nozzle again. When the power dropped, so did the Beacon's stern—with a bone-jarring, mind-numbing crunch into the hard ground.
The shock bent the aft outrigger struts and strained every frame from the midpoint sternward. Daniel'd been waiting for it, but he bounced against his seat restraints. It threw everybody else aboard off their feet.
And it jarred loose whatever was blocking Port Six. The thruster lit and after a moment settled into the same rasping vibration as the other four working units.
The courier vessel's turrets had been withdrawn into the hull for landing. Now the upper one began to rise, controlled from the Battle Direction Center aft or perhaps at the turret as the Beacon's was. It mounted standard Alliance 10-cm weapons; they'd rip the converted freighter's thin plating like flames flashing through muslin.
The Beacon's turret was on the dorsal centerline, directly over the main A Deck corridor. The turret hatch was open and the short access ladder hung down. The twin plasma cannon were supposed to fire alternately at a combined rate of two hundred rounds per minute as long as the gunner kept his foot on the firing pedal.
Daniel heard Sun screaming curses within the turret; suddenly the gun fired twice. After the second round, something cracked and flooded the open turret hatch with the blue-white sparkle of a short circuit.
Sun dropped to the deck, still cursing and now trying to beat out the flames on his trousers. Miquelon kicked his feet out from under him and covered him with a quilt from the bedding that'd lain piled on the bridge. She had to fight to keep the panicked gunner from throwing her off before she'd smothered the flames.
The second pair of bolts hit the Greif's turret and the hull immediately below it. Deuterium pellets in the Alliance loading tubes, ready to be compressed by laser arrays, detonated instead at the touch of the Beacon's plasma. A scallop of hull around the turret vaporized.
Daniel raised his mass flow to 60 percent for the bow thrusters, 75 percent for the stern pair. He knew they wouldn't stand 75 percent long, but he had to break the grip of gravity. He shrank the nozzles. Rocks and gobbets of glass fused from sand splattered the underside of the hull moments before the ship started to rise.
But she did rise, only a few inches but that was enough. He angled his thrust minusculely and the Beacon of Yang slid forward. He didn't have to turn her because the imbalance forward made her drift starboard toward the single bow thruster. The stern dragged, adding the shriek of metal scraping rock to the snarl of the plasma jets.
That was all right. Even if they ripped the bottoms off both pontoons, they'd be able to skate over the strait on thrust alone.
A rattle of slugs pelted the Beacon's stern quarter and howled away in the night. An automatic impeller was shooting at them from the top of the Generalissimo's headquarters. On the video display the osmium projectiles scored the night in neon streaks as they ricocheted. The light quivered through the bridge hatch as well.
"Ship, this is Six," Daniel said, hearing his voice echo through the public address system. There were scores, maybe hundreds of rebels still aboard, but the Beacon of Yang was an RCN warship nonetheless. "We'll transfer immediately to Cutter 614, then lift for Heavenly Peace where we'll wrap up a few details. After that, fellow spacers, we head back to Nikitin by the quickest route your captain can plot. Six out!"
He heard the cheers, spreading faintly against the roar and shriek of the vessel's passage. They reached the strait, shrouding themselves in a blanket of steam and broiled sea life.
Snarling thunder astern twisted the hull, then subsided. Daniel balanced the controls with one hand while checking the emergency schematics with the other. Nothing had changed for the worse. If the rebels'd hit the Beacon with a heavy weapon, they'd failed to do serious damage.
On the external video a score of bright sparks snapped into the rebel headquarters. The building swelled outward in a red flash, then collapsed on itself.
"Six, this is Sun!" Daniel's commo helmet chirped. Adele must've passed the message after blocking all those before it. "The rockets work! The rockets work!"
A mushroom of dust rose from where the headquarters had been. It stood as a marker when the rest of Big Florida Island slipped below the horizon.
* * *
Adele could generally work through whatever was going on around her, and her helmet's noise cancellation system prevented the deafening racket of the Beacon of Yang's progress from being a problem. The vibration, though—the high frequency buzz of five unsynchronized plasma thrusters, punctuated randomly when one or both outriggers scraped the surface—was a different matter. That kept jouncing the data unit off her lap. Every time she had to grab it, she lost the display on which she'd been working.
The roar of the thrusters increased. Adele's body shifted sideways as the starship decelerated; steam curled through the open hatch. They were settling into the exhaust which they'd outrun while they were proceeding at a steady rate from Big Florida Island.
"Ship, this is Six!" Daniel's voice ordered. He was sitting at the command console, close enough to touch, but reflexively Adele glanced instead at the image she kept at the top of her screen. "Ferguson and Sun, get to the cutter and bring up your systems. Woetjans, make sure the corridors on every deck are open to the outside. Don't trust the powered system or the schematics, I want each one of those doors open if you have to blow it clear! Six out."
The Beacon quivered, then burped air loudly. The ship rocked deeper than a moment before, then shook with a sizzling crash.
"Bloody hell, the thrusters are starting to go under already!" Daniel said, this time speaking normally instead of using the intercom. "Bloody hell, but we can't leave the poor wogs to drown just because they're too bloody ignorant to get out before this sorry excuse for a ship sinks or turns turtle. Adele, can you make it to the cutter on your own?"
"What?" said Adele, lost for a moment. She'd heard her friend speaking, but she'd been too busy with the data she'd snatched from the Greif to process his words. "To the cutter? Yes, I suppose so—down to the entrance gallery and across the ramp, you mean? Or do I need to go—"
She nodded toward the hatch by which she'd entered the bridge. The line still dangled there, but she doubted she could pull herself onto the dorsal spine. Even if she did, she'd probably need as much help climbing down the outrigger strut as she had coming up.
"The ramp will be fine," Daniel said, a small smile quirking the corner of his mouth. He turned and started out of the bridge; Hogg waited in the corridor. "I'll check the corridors and join you in the cutter as soon as I can."
"Daniel?" Adele said, speaking loudly in her need to stop him before she could ask her question. "Do I have to leave immediately? I have some work."
Daniel's face went professionally blank. "You can take five minutes," he said. "No more, it's not safe. Tovera—"
Adele followed his shifting eyes. Tovera stood just behind the partial console. The three of them were alone on the bridge. The captured rebels were gone, though the corpse was still sprawled against the forward bulkhead. The prisoners had been trussed like poultry going to market, so somebody'd either cut t
hem loose or carried them away without Adele noticing.
"—make sure she leaves in five, all right? I don't want something to happen."
"I'd rather die," said Tovera; and smiled. Daniel grimaced at the joke—because to Tovera, it was a joke—and left the bridge. He was talking over the intercom.
Adele went back to her data. She'd gotten into the Greif's computer easily during the several minutes the Alliance courier vessel lay alongside the Beacon of Yang. Though the dispatches were in a separate electronic compartment from the ship's own working files, they were nonetheless housed in the main astrogation computer. Adele had penetrated that compartment—Alliance Fleet Command used twelve formats for the purpose; she had the keys to all of them on her data unit—and downloaded the files.
But that was as far as she'd gotten, because, she hadn't been able to break the encryption. The software and devices coupled to Adele's console on the Hermes would make short work of the problem, but the tender was weeks distant.
She was sure that she could obtain by finesse what she couldn't at this moment get through brute force, if she could only view the problem from just the right slant. If she concentrated, she could—
"Ma'am?" a voice said. Then, louder, "Mistress Mundy, please?"
Adele jerked her head around, the sequence of numbers in her mind raining down like glass from a shattered mirror. Dasi was peering at her with a worried expression. He held an impeller at the balance; it'd been fired recently because the barrel, a tube of synthetic diamond wrapped with coils of fine wire, was still hot enough to distort the air above it.
Dasi's big left hand held the wrist of Maria Mondindragiana. If Adele hadn't been seeing the woman only inches distant, she'd have thought there was something wrong with the image.
The rebels aboard the Beacon had been disheveled or worse—wakened from drunken sleep and then sent scattering by the fear of death. Mondindragiana by contrast wore a dress of natural fabric and a gleaming fur stole. Her jewelry was massive and brilliant, and she'd applied makeup with more taste than Adele would've given her credit for. She looked like a queen, not a refugee.
"Mister Leary said bring the whore to 'im," Dasi said, "but he's gone off, and—"
"I am not a whore, you Cinnabar nancy!" Mondindragiana shrieked.
Dasi's face flushed. His right arm went back, lifting the impeller and positioning the butt to smash the woman's face through the back of her skull. Dasi was a man by almost any standard you cared to apply, and perhaps for that very reason there were subjects on which he was sensitive.
"Dasi!" Adele shouted, jumping to her feet. Tovera had her sub-machine gun out, but that wouldn't necessarily keep the big rigger from acting. By putting herself between the gun and its target, Adele made Dasi jerk away.
Dasi's eyes cleared; he lowered the impeller and flung the woman's arm away from him. "Look," he said in a husky voice, "you take care of the bitch for Mister Leary, all right, ma'am?"
"Yes, all right," Adele said calmly. Dasi had already turned to stride from the bridge. He probably didn't hear.
Mondindragiana straightened her garments. "Men!" she muttered, then looked shrewdly at Adele. "So," she went on. "You are who? You are the wife of Captain Leary, is that so?"
"It is not," Adele said as she placed her data unit in its pocket and looked around the compartment to see if there was anything else she should be taking. There was obviously no point in continuing to struggle with the encryption. "I'm the signals officer of Cutter 614 which Captain Leary commands."
"Just so there's no confusion . . ." Tovera said. It was always a shock when Tovera spoke in company. "My mistress is also Mundy of Chatsworth. I'm the servant who kills people for her."
Tovera giggled as she replaced the sub-machine gun in its holster.
"When she doesn't want to bother killing them herself, that is," she added. "I wouldn't want you to be surprised at what happens to you if you decide a whore from Waystation can insult a Cinnabar noble."
Adele looked at her servant. How very odd: Tovera is reacting to the insult to Dasi in just the way another Sissie might do. Tovera's behaving like a member of the crew, of the family, of spacers serving under Captain Leary.
Tovera was a sociopath, of course, but an intelligent one. She adapted by mimicking the behavior of successful members of the society to which she'd associated herself. At the moment, she appeared to be mimicking Adele Mundy. Given their mutual proclivities, that wasn't a bad choice.
"Yes, that's substantially correct," said Adele, straightening to really observe Mondindragiana for the first time. "I hope you'll keep it in mind, because there's been quite enough killing today already."
She glanced at Tovera. The servant kept a straight face, but Adele gave her a tiny grin. "Enough for some of us, anyway," she added. "We'll return to Heavenly Peace and deliver you to President Shin. A cutter's crowded at the best of times, and I presume we'll skim the surface to avoid attack by the missiles on Big Florida Island; that'll mean a rough ride. Keep quiet and as much out of the way as possible, and you'll shortly be back where you belong."
"But I don't belong there," Mondindragiana said.
The Beacon of Yang gurgled loudly. The deck had been slanting slightly to starboard. That side lifted noticeably, then sloshed down to a slope of fifteen degrees as another compartment flooded. Tovera raised an eyebrow and glanced toward the corridor.
Adele grimaced. Why does everything become more complicated than it ought to be?
"Yes, well, I'm sure you can work that out with the President after he's released his Cinnabar prisoners," Adele said. "Tovera, if you'll lead the way, we'll get out of here more quickly than if I do."
She smiled wryly. "And since it seems that Daniel wasn't exaggerating the danger of sinking," she added, "that would be just as well."
"Signals Officer Mundy," Mondindragiana said in a calm, steely voice. She hadn't followed Tovera and Adele toward the hatchway. "I can't claim to have been born to one of the great families of the Republic, but Procurator Vorga granted my citizenship application twelve years ago for reasons that seemed good to him. If you like, you can shoot me for telling the truth, but I am a Cinnabar citizen."
Tovera turned and raised an eyebrow again. She touched her weapon.
The woman really does look like a queen, Adele thought. For all that she was born in a slum on a gutter planet and crawled up from there on her back.
Ignoring further rumbling from the bowels of the ship, Adele said, "Mistress, we believed that Generalissimo Ma was holding you against your will. If this isn't the case, you have my sincere apologies and I'm sure those of Captain Leary. We'll leave you—"
"Faugh, Ma is a pig," Mondindragiana said, flicking her beringed left hand to dismiss the thought. "He's a pig and he and his men live like pigs. He didn't care about me as a woman—what would that one do with a woman, eh? Just a trophy, a thing he'd taken from Shin."
"Well, then," Adele said, "we've freed you and—"
"I'm not free if you give me back to Shin," the woman said harshly. "Yes, I know, I came to him of my own choice, but he wouldn't let me leave. And he's worse than Ma. Shin can't use a woman in the normal ways either, so he does other things. Shall I show you the scars?"
She pinched a fold of her long skirt and began to draw it up.
"No!" said Adele, her nostrils flaring. In a more settled tone she went on, "No, that won't be necessary, mistress."
Two more thruster nozzles dipped into the cove, one and then the other. They shattered with piercing cracks. The Beacon of Yang lurched further to starboard.
"Mistress?" said Tovera. "It's your decision, of course, but . . . ?"
"Yes, of course," Adele said. "Come along, Mistress Mondindragiana, we'll discuss this on the way. You see the problem is—"
They followed Tovera into an armored stairwell, a companionway. None of the lights that should've illuminated it were working, but Woetjans' crew had locked open the doors onto every deck. The corridors beyo
nd were bright enough that Adele didn't even switch her visor to light enhancing mode.
"The problem is," she continued, raising her voice to be heard over their echoing steps, "that President Shin has demanded your return in exchange for his release of two hundred other Cinnabar citizens. I can't speak to your relative value to the Republic compared with that of the other citizens, but Captain Leary was sent to procure their release. I don't wish him to be put in a position of explaining his failure to an admiral who isn't best pleased with him already."
"Out this way, mistress," Tovera said, standing in a hatchway and looking down the corridor beyond. She held her sub-machine gun ready.
"I have seen this Daniel Leary," Mondindragiana said calmly. "He's a man, that one. He won't leave me to that impotent scum Shin after I explain."
You've certainly sized Daniel up accurately, Adele thought. Aloud she said, "Mistress, if you don't return to President Shin when we arrive in Heavenly Peace, it's very possible that he'll order an attack which will destroy our cutter."
"Captain Leary won't be afraid," Mondindragiana said stolidly.
Three Cinnabar spacers were in the corridor, chivvying rebels—former rebels?—toward the opening brilliant with floodlights from outside. The last man, Merlati, waved toward Adele and called, "Better move it, sir! She'll go over before long or I'm a priest!"
"I dare say the captain would do much as you suggest," Adele agreed, "but I'd like to spare him the risk. Mistress, if you will go back to the Shin with apparent willingness, I'll attempt to get you out again before Cutter 614 lifts from Yang. I don't know how yet; I'll need to discuss the business with others—"
Particularly with Hogg. Hogg by now would've learned the ways in and out of the Presidential Palace. Doubtless he had plans for turning the knowledge to a profit.
"—but I'll try. And I'll succeed or die trying."
They'd reached the entrance gallery. The cutter's lights were trained on the opening and ramp. They were so bright that Adele slitted her eyes and considered darkening her visor.