The Far Side of The Stars

by David Drake

  The Far Side of the Stars

  David Drake

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2003 by David Drake

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 0-7434-7158-X

  Cover art by Stephen Hickman

  First printing, October 2003

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Drake, David.

  The far side of the stars / by David Drake

  p. cm.

  ISBN 9-7434-7158-X (hardcover)

  1. Space warfare—fiction. I. Title.

  PS3554.R196F37 2003

  813'.54—dc22 2003014259

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Typeset by Bell Road Press, Sherwood, OR

  Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

  Printed in the United States of America

  Baen Books by David Drake

  The RCN Series

  With the Lightnings

  Lt. Leary, Commanding

  The Far Side of the Stars

  The General Series

  Warlord with S.M. Stirling (omnibus)

  Conqueror with S.M.Stirling (omnibus)

  The Chosen with S.M. Stirling

  The Reformer with S.M. Stirling

  The Tyrant with Eric Flint

  Hammer's Slammers

  The Tank Lords

  Caught in the Crossfire

  The Butcher's Bill

  The Sharp End

  Paying the Piper

  The Belisarius Series

  with Eric Flint

  An Oblique Approach

  In the Heart of Darkness

  Destiny's Shield

  Fortune's Stroke

  The Tide of Victory

  Independent Novels and Collections

  Seas of Venus

  Foriegn Legions, edited by David Drake

  Ranks of Bronze

  Cross the Stars

  The Dragon Lord

  Birds of Prey

  Northworld Trilogy

  Redliners

  Starliner

  All the Way to the Gallows

  Grimmer Than Hell

  The Undesired Princess and The Enchanted Bunny

  (with L. Sprague de Camp)

  Lest Darkness Fall and To Bring the Light

  (with L. Sprague de Camp)

  Armageddon

  (edited with Billie Sue Mosiman)

  Killer

  (with Karl Edward Wagner)

  DEDICATION

  For Tristan David Drake

  The previous four generations of the family have

  read voraciously, so I hope he'll carry on the tradition.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Dan Breen continues as my first reader, making my prose better than it would be without him.

  Dorothy Day and Evan Ladouceur have been addressing specialized continuity problems in this one, and my webmaster Karen Zimmerman not only helpfully read my drafts but also archived them. (After you've killed as many computers in the middle of projects as I have, you learn not to take chances.)

  Speaking of which, my son Jonathan got me going again when I did kill a computer. I can't claim to have consciously raised my own techie, but it seems to work very well if you have the time. I'm reminded of the Neolithic hunters who set their axeheads in split living branches, so that when the wood regrew it gripped the stone perfectly.

  Clyde Howard helped research bits of information that I knew I had but couldn't put my finger on till he'd provided them.

  My friend Mark Van Name made an observation that allowed me to write this book (and I expect future books) in a greater state of contentment than ever before. I don't think it makes the prose better, but it's certainly an improvement for me.

  Writers aren't easy to live with, and I may be more difficult than most. My wife Jo manages, and she feeds me very well besides.

  My thanks to all of you.

  Dave Drake

  david-drake.com

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  One of the problems when you're writing of either the past or the future is "How much should I translate?" I don't mean simply language: there's a whole complex of things that people within any society take for granted but which vary between societies. (But language too: I had somebody complain that the Arthurian soldiers in The Dragon Lord talked like modern soldiers. My reaction to this was that I could write the soldiers' dialogue in Latin, but the complainant couldn't read it; and if I'm going to translate into English, why on Earth wouldn't I translate into the type of English the same sort of men speak today?)

  Weights and measures are a particular problem. I don't assume that the world of the far future will use the weights and measures of today, but I'm quite certain that my inventing new systems will do nothing desirable for my story. (There are people who're really happier for a glossary of made-up or foreign words. I'm not, though I'll admit I still occasionally murmur to myself, "Tarzan bundolo!")

  In the RCN series Cinnabar is on the English system and the Alliance uses Metric, simply to suggest the enormous complexity I expect will exist after Mankind spreads among the stars. (Well, I certainly hope we'll spread among the stars, but I won't pretend I'm sanguine about our chances at the moment.)

  Communications protocols are very roughly based on those of the 2nd Squadron, 11th ACR, during the period it was—I was—under the command of LTC Grayle Brookshier. There were a lot of stories about squadron and regimental commanding officers. The stories about Battle Six were all positive.

  I think I should comment on the background of this novel also. Today physical travel is easier than ever before, and television takes us literally anywhere. The world is generally accessible to most people, and as a result it's becoming homogenized. I don't insist that this is a bad thing, but it's a major change from the situation of a generation ago, let alone that of a hundred years in the past.

  In the late 19th century a party of Russian nobles bought a South Seas trading schooner from its owner/captain, hired as captain the former mate (a man named Robert Quinton), and for several years sailed the Pacific from Alaska to New Zealand, from Kamchatka to Diamond Head. They hunted, bought curios, visited ancient ruins, and viewed native rites in a score of localities.

  This sort of experience was available only first-hand and only to the exceptionally wealthy (or their associates like Quinton, who wrote a memoir of the voyage). Today anybody who watches PBS and the Discovery Channel can see everything those aristocrats saw, or at any rate as many of those things as survive.

  I've tried as one of the themes of The Far Side of the Stars to give the feel of that former time, when travel was a risky adventure possible only for the few. While I'm glad that many—myself included—can share the world's wonders today, I do regret the passing of the romance of former times and the fact that maps no longer have splotches marked Terra Incognita.

  Dave Drake

  david-drake.com

  CHAPTER 1

  Adele Mundy wore for the first time her white Republic of Cinnabar Navy dress uniform. The sleeves had the chevrons of a warrant officer, the lightning bolt of the Signals Branch, and a black ribbon of mourning. She paused to check herself in the mirror in the entryway of her townhouse.

  Three generations of Mundys had live
d in Chatsworth Minor, ever since the family became so politically prominent that Adele's grandfather replaced their previous townhouse in Xenos with these imposing four stories of brick, stone, and ornate carvings. Adele had grown up here, but she'd been off-planet continuing her education as an archivist the night sixteen years ago when the Three Circles Conspiracy unraveled and gangs arrived to carry off the remainder of her family for execution.

  She'd never expected to see Chatsworth Minor—or Cinnabar—again. When she learned that the heads of not only her parents but also her 10-year-old sister Agatha had been displayed on the Speaker's Rock, she hadn't wanted to see any relic of her previous life.

  She smiled faintly into the mirror. Times change, but people change as well. The stern-looking naval officer with splashes of medal ribbons on the bosom of her tunic wasn't the reserved girl who'd left Cinnabar for the Academic Collections on Bryce just in time to save her life. They shared facial features and a trim build, that was all.

  Or almost all; because both the officer and the girl lived with the bone-deep certainty that they were Mundys of Chatsworth. Adele's parents had been egalitarians and members of the People's Party, but there'd never been any doubt in their minds that the Mundys were first among equals . . . and no doubt in their daughter's mind that whether she was a scholar or a street-cleaner, she was a Mundy. There'd been times after her parents were killed and their property confiscated for treason that Adele believed a street-cleaner probably lived better; but that didn't change anything that really mattered.

  Adele's servant Tovera—if servant was the right word—glanced at her mistress briefly in the mirror; her eyes flicked on, never resting anywhere very long. If Adele was prim, then Tovera was so colorless that casual observers generally paid her less attention than they did the wallpaper. For the funeral she wore a gray dress suit of good quality, also with a mourning ribbon. Her only other ornamentation was a blue-and-silver collar flash that proclaimed her a retainer—the sole retainer at the present time—of the Mundys of Chatsworth.

  Tovera missed little but cared about even less; perhaps she cared about nothing except whatever task she'd been set or had set herself. Having Tovera around was much like carrying a pistol with a trigger as light as thistledown.

  The pistol in the sidepocket of Adele's tunic was so flat it didn't bulge even a dress uniform. Its trigger was indeed light.

  Smiling again Adele said, "I didn't have to check myself, did I, Tovera? You'd have told me if something was wrong."

  Tovera shrugged. "If you wanted me to, mistress," she said. "I don't imagine we'll attract much attention at this affair."

  Adele adjusted the set of her own black ribbon. "No," she said, "I don't suppose we will. But Daniel loved his Uncle Stacey, and I wouldn't care to fail Daniel."

  I'd rather die than fail Daniel . . . But she didn't say that aloud, and Tovera wouldn't have cared anyway.

  Adele glanced at the footmen, waiting patiently as she'd known they would be, and then to the doorman. The house servants wore Mundy livery, but unlike Tovera they were employed by the bank which on paper leased the townhouse. That was one of the perquisites which had fallen to Adele by virtue of her friendship with Lieutenant Daniel Leary, RCN; the son of Corder Leary, Speaker Leary to his associates even though he'd given up the speakership of the Assembly years before.

  "I believe we're ready, then," she said. The doorman bowed and swung open the front door of softly gleaming beewood cut on what had been the Mundy country estate of Chatsworth Major. With the four footmen ahead of her and Tovera trailing a polite pace behind, Adele stepped into the court.

  Times indeed change. Speaker Leary had been primarily responsible for crushing the Three Circles Conspiracy—and Adele's family—into a smear of blood . . . but it was his influence acting through the agency of Daniel's elder sister Deirdre which had returned the townhouse to Adele's ownership when she decided she wanted it after all. Ligier Rolfe, the distant cousin who'd taken possession of the truncated estate after the Proscriptions, probably didn't to this day know what had happened to end his ownership.

  The tram stop was at the mouth of the court, now quiet, which had acted as an assembly room when Lucius Mundy addressed his supporters from the fourth floor balcony of Chatsworth Minor. Political power had never meant anything to Adele; indeed, so long as she had enough to feed her and the freedom of a large archive in which to indulge her passion for knowledge in the abstract, she didn't care about money. Even so it pleased her to think of how furious her cousin's wife, Marina Casaubon Rolfe, must have been when she was evicted from a house to which the mere wealth of her merchant family would never have entitled her.

  Tovera must have noticed her expression. "Mistress?" she asked mildly.

  "Do you remember Mistress Rolfe?" Adele said.

  "Yes," Tovera said. "A fat worm."

  "I was recalling," Adele explained, "that she saw fit to insult a Mundy of Chatsworth."

  Tovera didn't comment. Perhaps she smiled.

  Servants lounging at the entrances of other houses fronting on the court rose and doffed their caps, standing with their heads bowed as Adele passed by. In Lucius Mundy's day, all these houses had been owned by supporters of the People's Party. They'd suffered accordingly, but those who bought the properties in the aftermath of the Proscriptions were generally social climbers like Marina Rolfe. To them Adele's return gave the neighborhood the cachet of a real aristocrat's presence; they'd made very sure that their servants were properly obsequious.

  Adele couldn't imagine what her neighbors made of the fact that Mundy of Chatsworth was a naval officer; and a warrant officer besides, a mere technician instead of a dashing commissioned officer like her tenant, Daniel Leary. Aristocrats were allowed to be eccentric, of course.

  "Mistress?" Tovera said again.

  "Am I eccentric, Tovera?" Adele asked, glancing over her shoulder.

  "I wouldn't know, mistress," Tovera said. "You'd have to ask someone who understands what 'normal' means."

  Adele grimaced. "I'm sorry, Tovera," she said. "It's not something I should joke about."

  As Adele and her entourage approached the stop, an east-bound tram pulled onto the siding. Another monorail car clattered past on the main line, heading west toward the great roundabout in the center of Xenos. By law only the Militia, the national police, could fly aircars within the municipal limits of the capital; the likelihood that a touchy rival aristocrat would shoot down a private aircar passing overhead made the law more effective than merely legal sanctions could have done.

  Many of the great houses had their own tramcars which teams of servants set on the rail when their master or mistress chose to go out. Adele had a respectable nest egg in the form of prize money gathered while under the command of Lieutenant Leary, but she couldn't have afforded such an establishment even if she'd seen any use for it.

  She'd gotten used to taking care of herself; she preferred it that way now. She had Tovera, of course, but it was easy to forget that Tovera was human.

  A footman ran ahead to engage the tram that'd just stopped, saving Adele the delay before another car arrived in answer to the call button in the kiosk. At this time of day that might be as much as half an hour. The funeral was being held at a chapel near Harbor Three, the great naval base on the northern outskirts of Xenos. Adele had allowed enough time—of course—but she preferred to be a trifle early than to miss the start of the rites because of a run of bad luck.

  Adele Mundy had seen a great deal of luck in her 32 years. Quite a lot of it had been bad.

  The man who got off the tram wore a hard-used, one might almost say ragged, RCN 2nd class uniform, gray with black piping. It was the minimum standard of dress required for off-duty officers in public, though given its condition—there were oil stains on the left cuff and a mended tear on the right pants leg—the powers that be in the Navy Office might have been better served had the fellow donned clean fatigues instead.

  The recent armistice betwe
en Cinnabar and the Alliance of Free Stars had led to the decommissioning of many ships and the consequent relegation of officers to half-pay status. For those who didn't have private means, half-pay was a sentence of destitution. This was obviously an unfortunate who couldn't afford to maintain his wardrobe—

  "That's Lieutenant Mon," Tovera murmured in her ear.

  "Good God, it is," Adele blurted under her breath. She'd unconsciously averted her eyes in embarrassment; poor herself for most of her adult life, she had no desire to wallow in the poverty of others.

  Such concerns didn't touch Tovera any more than love or hate did. The man coming toward them was a potential enemy—everyone was a potential enemy to Tovera—so she'd looked carefully and thus recognized Daniel's first lieutenant.

  "Good afternoon, Mon!" Adele called, stepping through the line of footmen who'd deliberately placed themselves between her and the disreputable-looking stranger. "What are you doing here? Have you completed the Princess Cecile's repairs already?"

  "Mundy?" said Lieutenant Mon. "Thank God I found you. Is Captain Leary here as well? I need to see him soonest. I must see him!"

  Mon was a dark, close-coupled, morose officer in his early thirties. His technical skills were above the high average of RCN officers, and his doggedness made up for his lack of brilliance. Mon had neither family wealth nor the interest of senior officers to aid him, so his advancement in the service had been embitteringly slow.

  Adele respected Mon but she didn't particularly like him. She doubted that many people regarded him as a friend.

  Mon's saving grace was the way he'd reacted when Daniel Leary gave him his first taste of honor and prize money. There were officers—many officers—who'd have been envious of the lucky younger superior who swept from success to success while they plodded in his wake. Mon by contrast had shown only gratitude and utter loyalty.