The Way to Glory

by David Drake

  "Why, good God, sir!" Daniel said, shocked into speaking more directly than he'd intended. "They don't have a dock on Briarwood that'll take a ship her size, and I don't think the facilities are a bit better on Gascoigne. Besides, the turret casting'd have to be shipped there since there's no foundries off Cinnabar that could handle the job."

  He paused to think, then continued, "Better to take her to Cinnabar, mount a pack of thrusters on her stern as a temporary fitment, and bring her down in a private yard to be re-rigged. That'll be complete by the time a new turret's ready, and she can be transferred to Harbor Three to place the turret in a week or less."

  He cleared his throat. "Ah," he said. "Of course that's just a personal opinion. I met Captain Hallas and the other members of your survey party when they came up in the first of the cutters ferrying us to the ground. I wouldn't presume to interfere in her duties."

  If Daniel had the slightest concern that the survey party wouldn't come to the same conclusions he had, he certainly would try to interfere; but he knew Hallas by reputation. There were RCN officers who looked down on engineering specialists like her, but Daniel knew better that.

  "I have full confidence in my survey party," Jeffords said, "but you've spent three weeks aboard the Scheer bringing her from Bromley. Her hull's all right then, you think? Ships colliding at those velocities don't usually leave much of either one."

  "The Hermes was a gas cloud by then, not a ship," Daniel said. His mouth worked for an instant on the sour thought: she'd been a good ship, well-found and as handy as a tender could be with her specialized design.

  "The only structural damage came when a plasma cannon exploded and blew the whole turret out," he continued. "We made do with an internal dam of sailcloth since the rig had higher priority. I'd want something a lot sturdier before I landed her, of course, but that can wait for Cinnabar orbit. The team attaching the thrusters can take care of the patch at the same time. Ah—if that's your decision."

  Jeffords flicked through several files in quick sequence. Daniel could see the display but without context the data meant nothing to him. Still scowling, Jeffords looked at him again and said, "You brought the Scheer from Bromley with a crew of seventy-five. Is that number sufficient to sail her to Cinnabar?"

  "Yes sir," Daniel said, "it is. Especially if they're the same seventy-five. The prize crew was mostly spacers who've been with me since, well; since my first cruise as a supernumerary on the Aglaia."

  He coughed to let his mind work. Daniel liked to deal with individual items in sequence, and several very different things were going on right now. One of them was the implication that he'd be taking the crippled Scheer back to Cinnabar, which meant he'd no longer report to Admiral Milne. Milne would be very happy if that occurred, but not nearly as happy as Daniel Leary.

  "Ah, sir?" Daniel went on. "I realize we made wretched time from Bromley, before we got the stern antennas rigged, but our rate over the final four days was very much better than the early portion. I'm not making excuses—our initial progress was abysmal and I was the one plotting the course—but I'd expect not more than seventeen or eighteen days to Cinnabar orbit."

  Jeffords frowned; then his expression became unreadable. He went to his console again, shifting from one astrogation chart to another. After staring at the last for a moment, he shrank the display and faced Daniel.

  "You're related to Commander Bergen, aren't you?" he said abruptly.

  "Yes sir," said Daniel. "Commander Bergen was my Uncle Stacey. He was the finest astrogator ever born."

  "I've heard that," Jeffords said. "And because I've heard that, I guess maybe there's a chance you can get that wreck to Cinnabar in eighteen days. Anyway, you're going to have the chance. I'll cut the orders as soon as I've got a formal report from Captain Hallas."

  He paused, drumming his fingers, then added, "And as soon as we've held the damned court-martial on the Hermes, that'll have to be taken care of. I'll tell Broderick to schedule it ASAP so that we can get on with fighting a war."

  Jeffords leaned back in his seat again and smiled. "Anston thinks a lot of you, Leary," he said. "You know that, don't you?"

  "I'm very glad to hear that, sir," Daniel said in a careful voice. There was something in the Admiral's tone besides bonhomie. Daniel figured he was better off keeping a neutral expression than he would be guessing wrong about what was going on.

  "Yes," Jeffords said. "He says you take orders. That isn't your reputation, I'm bound to say, but Anston's judgment is the main reason we're beating the Alliance all the way around the flagpole even though they've got twice our population."

  He opened a drawer in the console's return, then slammed it shut. "Right," he muttered, rising to his feet. "I told Broderick to keep it for me. Come on out, Leary. I'm having a little reception in the garden and you're invited."

  "Yes sir," said Daniel. He'd been saying that a lot. Well, he was speaking to an admiral, so it was what he should be saying. Anston said I take orders? he thought.

  He reached for the door but Lieutenant Broderick swung it open instead. Daniel stepped through and moved aside, letting Jeffords by. Hogg, grinning like he'd stolen somebody's liquor cabinet, was alone with the receptionist in the outer office; there was no sign of Adele and Tovera. They might've gone off with Wilsing, of course, discussing matters of common interest that weren't properly RCN business.

  "Everything's ready, Admiral," Broderick said. He walked briskly to the outer door and opened it.

  "Come along, Leary," Jeffords ordered, gesturing Daniel ahead of him. Daniel obeyed, blank-faced. Something was going on. . . .

  The garden was full of people, full; there were hundreds of them. Many were wearing Whites, but a good half the crowd was enlisted spacers in their liberty suits: utilities with ribbons dangling from the seams and a patch for every port of call. The former Sissies were there, and so were members of the Hermes' crew who'd originally been with the Bainbridge.

  Daniel stopped short. "Hurrah for Mister Leary!" Woetjans bellowed, and the whole crowd took up the cheer.

  Adele was in the front rank, standing between Woetjans and Tovera. Barnes and Dasi were behind her to make sure she wasn't jostled from the back; Daniel didn't know that he'd ever seen her look so happy. And Deirdre too! She stood in front of a weather-beaten statue with two of her own guards.

  "Go on, Leary, go on," Admiral Jeffords said, shouting to be heard. "Stand on the dais but leave room for me."

  Daniel walked out. He didn't see Admiral Milne in the crowd, but many of the other officers from the Squadron and Port establishments were present. Lieutenant Ganse was cheering and waving a spacer's neck scarf with RCS Hermes embroidered on it. Deirdre and her people were the only civilians, though.

  While Daniel'd been speaking with Admiral Jeffords, somebody had brought a low dais into the garden and covered it with a tarpaulin painted red. There was a serving table for later, set over the cold frames along the garden's east wall. It held liquor in bottles, carafes, and a tub—probably punch made with industrial alcohol for Power Room crewmen.

  A pair of base personnel with a stereoscopic recorder were perched on a limb of the walnut tree. Good God!

  Daniel stepped onto the dais, feeling wood creak beneath his boots. The Admiral got up beside him and took a scroll from his aide; a ribbon with a red wax seal tied it closed. Jeffords grinned at Daniel and broke the seal with his thumb.

  "Assembled spacers and citizens of Cinnabar!" he said. A concealed pickup sent his voice booming from speakers mounted under the eaves of Squadron House, but the amplification wasn't really needed. "It gives me great pleasure to read this communication from Admiral Anston, President of the Navy Board."

  "Yee-hah!" somebody shouted. Daniel winced, but people who'd faced what his Sissies had couldn't be expected to find an admiral as threatening as RCN regulations wanted him to be. There was just the one outburst, though, thanks be to God and the good sense of Woetjans, who spun and pointed her finger toward Tim
mons in silent threat.

  Jeffords held the document up, face toward the crowd so that everybody could see the calligraphy and the pair of additional seals in blue and again red. It struck Daniel that though Jeffords was a very important man, he'd probably never experienced this much raucous enthusiasm before during his professional duties. He was milking the scene for all it was worth.

  "It reads," the Admiral said, squinting at the document now, "'By the powers vested in me by the Senate, I hereby appoint Daniel Oliver Leary to the rank and authority of Commander in the Navy of the Republic of Cinnabar, his duties to commence upon the reading of this order.' Signed, Anston, President of the Navy Board, and counter-signed G. W. Tillotson, Admiral, Chief of the Bureau of Personnel."

  Jeffords turned and with a flourish held out the document. Daniel reached for it reflexively, but he almost forgot to close his fingers on the parchment.

  But that's a two-step promotion! he thought.

  From the way his Sissies were cheering, they hadn't overlooked that point either.

  CHAPTER 30

  Sinmary Port on Nikitin

  Adele heard the vehicle coming some ways before it pulled up in front of Cutter 614's boarding bridge. It was a tractor from the port's maintenance division, meant to drag trailers carrying heavy parts. At this hour of the night there was very little traffic, and the caterpillar treads rang on the beryllium-mesh road surface like a continuing alarm.

  Adele got up from the console and joined Tovera at the hatch. "Hogg's bringing Mister Leary back," Tovera said. "They're alone."

  She took her hand out of her attaché case. Adele knew that the precaution was as natural to Tovera as breathing, but apparently her servant was concerned that greeting the visitors at gunpoint might appear discourteous.

  Adele smiled slightly. Tovera probably didn't care what Daniel thought regarding the matter, but Hogg's opinion was something else again.

  "When I was out walking one morning for pleasure . . ." Daniel sang. Liquor had roughened his clear tenor voice, but he got down from the tractor without stumbling and walked straight as a plumb line along the boarding bridge.

  Hogg followed his master, obviously unconcerned. As these things went, Daniel was as sober as a . . . well, as sober as Adele herself.

  "I met a young spacer—" Daniel continued. He stopped dead and spread his arms wide. There was a bottle in his right hand.

  "Why, hello, Adele!" he cried. "What are you doing here?"

  "I told Timmons and Claud to go find a party," Adele said, "and that I'd be anchor watch in their place. I don't know that they'd have taken any other order from me, but they didn't argue that one. I wanted a full-sized computer and decided to use 614's instead of putting a cot in the Communications Room at Squadron House."

  She stepped back to let Daniel enter the cutter. She didn't add that while she knew she'd be welcome aboard the Tonnant, she wasn't willing to trust her data to Deirdre Leary. Adele was under no illusions about her ability to safeguard information that passed through the Tonnant's system.

  Daniel wore the pips of a full commander and two broad stripes on his cuffs, but the upper stripe on either sleeve was only pinned. He hadn't had his uniform off since his promotion, so there'd been no opportunity to sew on the stripes properly.

  He raised the bottle to his lips, then stared at it in surprise. It was of yellow glass and fluted; rather attractive, Adele thought.

  "It's empty," said Daniel. He set the bottle carefully on the arm of the command console. "I didn't know it was empty."

  The bottle slipped from the cylindrical cushion and shattered on the deck. Daniel didn't appear to notice it. "The Hermes is gone, the Sissie's gone too," he said. "I'm not going to sleep on shore, and I'm not going aboard the Tonnant either. Deirdre might want to talk about things I don't want to talk about."

  Daniel's face scrunched into a combination of fury and despair. "Adele?" he said. "My father's going to think I did what he asked. What am I going to tell him?"

  Adele slipped her personal data unit into its pocket. Daniel could have almost any woman on the planet tonight, but instead he wanted a ship he'd commanded to share his triumph with him. He displayed a touching innocence at some times.

  "Daniel?" she said. "Are you able to come up on the hull with me? I'd like to look at the stars."

  Daniel laughed. "Officer Mundy," he said with drunken solemnity. "I am a commissioned officer in the RCN. I can climb the ladder upside down, if you like. Indeed, I'll do that regardless just to prove I can!"

  "Please don't," Adele said. "I'll become dizzy and fall, leaving you with my death by drowning on your conscience."

  Laughing at the way she'd disarmed his deadpan bluster, Daniel reached out of the hatch with his left hand. He caught a rung of a hull ladder and swung himself outside, then climbed with as little hesitation as he'd shown walking aboard in the first place.

  Adele followed in a stolidly cautious fashion, moving one hand or foot at a time. She felt ridiculous in her concern, but she knew that she'd be even more ridiculous if she let herself fall.

  Hogg and Tovera watched Adele's progress from the hatch, speaking quietly to one another. The servants were on terms of mutual respect and even liking, if one could properly use that word to describe Tovera's mental processes. They stepped back into the belly of the ship when she'd reached the spine and Daniel offered her his arm.

  Adele knew that they could overhear her conversation with Daniel if they wished to; she was simply making the point that she wanted privacy, a wish that they could respect or not as they chose. She rather suspected they would, but she wasn't going to worry.

  Daniel sat cross-legged, leaving the dorsal foremast to support Adele's back. He pointed at what to her was a fluttering blur over the water of the slip.

  "That's a balloon bird from Golconda," he said. "They're amphibians, really. Here they only come out at night or on cloudy days, because direct sunlight would make the methane in their lift bladders swell enough to burst them."

  Adele wasn't interested in natural history generally or balloon birds in particular, but she dutifully pulled her goggles down over her eyes and followed the line of Daniel's arm. A flat creature hovered just above the slip. It had transparent pustules which she supposed were the lift bladders. The fringes of its body rippled against the faint breeze, permitting it to hold its position.

  "It dangles a lure into the water," Daniel explained. He wasn't using his goggles. "When a fish takes it, barbs open like the head of a harpoon and the bird jerks it into its belly. If it misjudges the size of the fish, it has to either disgorge or digest its meal floating on the water."

  He turned to Adele and grinned. "How do you suppose creatures from Golconda got here, Adele?" he said. "I could imagine a thousand paths, none of them likely. And maybe none of my guesses would be right."

  "I agree," Adele said. "And that has some bearing on what I want to tell you."

  Because Daniel had dropped the subject of his father, she thought of letting the matter be. Daniel wouldn't forget it even if he never mentioned it again, though. Better to have it out now.

  She took off her goggles and put them in her lap. She wanted to bring her data unit out simply as a mental crutch, but that would be weakness.

  "Daniel," she said, "I ran DNA analyses of you and Oller Kearnes through the Hermes' Medicomp. Both of you were in the RCN database, of course."

  "I hadn't thought of that," Daniel said. "Go on."

  "There was no statistical similarity," Adele said. "If Corder Leary is your father, he wasn't the father of Oller Kearnes."

  Daniel didn't speak for a moment. His moonlit face could've been carved from wax. Then he started to laugh.

  "Oh, Adele!" he said. "Well, there's no certainty in life, but based on what I know of my mother's personality, I'm pretty sure that I'm Speaker Leary's son."

  He leaned his head back and laughed again in relief and delight. The balloon bird skittered downwind and vanished into the
reeds poking up around the water's margin.

  "So it was really that easy?" Daniel said. "Anybody could have done it!"

  "Yes," said Adele, keeping the edge out of her voice by the greatest effort of will. "Anybody at all."

  Daniel stopped laughing abruptly. He turned to face Adele directly. "You know," he said conversationally, "I've been drinking quite a lot tonight, but I don't think that has much to do with it. I'm perfectly capable of saying stupid things when I'm stone sober. My pardon, Adele. I should have said, 'Any librarian would have asked the question, so it was fortunate that someone finally brought the problem to a librarian.'"

  He squeezed, then released her right hand. "Thank you, Adele," he said. "That will silence my father."

  "I'm not done yet," Adele said. "I did a general sort, since I had the parameters entered in the database already. I found one close match."

  She turned—turned her face toward the water but really turned it away from Daniel. A humped form edged from the reeds like foam moving against the breeze. She couldn't see the balloon bird clearly without putting her light-amplifying goggles back on; and anyway, she didn't care about the cursed bird!

  "Commander Slidell's elder brother was named Jan," Adele continued. "He was at one time your father's legislative aide."

  "That's correct," Daniel said. "Had I told you that?"

  "No," said Adele, "you hadn't. I looked it up—"

  In a political database that was one of the tools Mistress Sand had provided her.

  "—after I found a genetic match between Commander Slidell and the late Oller Kearnes. I should say 'the late Commander Slidell and the late Midshipman Kearnes,' I suppose. The similarity is consistent with Kearnes having been the son of Slidell's brother. Since they're all dead now, it may not matter."

  "On the contrary, Adele," Daniel said. "I think it matters a great deal."