The Far Side of The Stars

by David Drake

  "Sober, they're all right," said Woetjans, her eyes on Daniel. "When the Count's got a drop or two in him, which is most times, he's apt to forget he's not back on Novy Sverdlovsk with his house slaves. He threw a bottle at the spacer doing for him—and got decked for it."

  "That was me, sir," said Timmons, a short, good-humored technician whom Daniel had never known to show any more temperament than the paint on the bulkhead did. He looked at his feet in embarrassment. "Sorry, sir."

  "Sorry for bloody what?" demanded Woetjans. "The day some wog gets away with hitting a Cinnabar spacer is the day I defect to the Alliance. But—"

  Her eyes hardened on Daniel again.

  "—if Klimov had been captain instead of a passenger, then hitting him would've been mutiny and an open hatch for the fellow who did it. That's so, isn't it, sir?"

  "I've known RCN officers who did as much, Woetjans!" Daniel said sharply. "So have you, I dare say."

  "Aye, and worse," Sun said with a chuckle. "Cap'n Reecee fired a shot at the sailing master when we came out of the Matrix four light-days from where her reckoning had put us. He wasn't any better a shot than she was an astrogator, mind."

  "Reecee was an RCN officer, Sun," Woetjans said. "Not a wog!"

  "Amen to that," Pasternak said, offering around a retort of clear fluid; industrial alcohol from the hydraulic system, very likely. That was the standard Power Room drink.

  "I haven't met Klimov . . . ," Daniel said. Vesey drank and handed the retort to him. "If he likes the Sissie well enough to buy her, as Mon says he does, then he and I share one taste, at least."

  He drank, a careful sip followed by a deeper draft when he was sure the fluid had been cut with water. Drunk straight, industrial alcohol dried the mouth and throat as badly as swallowing live coals, but the mechanics and engineers didn't always bother to dilute it.

  "And Mon says Klimov plans to pay top wages as well," Daniel said, keeping his eyes on Woetjans as he passed the retort to the machinist at his side. They all knew what he was talking about, that Mon was a shipmate and an officer he respected. . . .

  "Well, he won't be paying them to me," Sun said bluntly. "I've got a machinist's rating, besides which there's plenty merchant skippers sailing routes where they'd feel better to have Lieutenant Leary's gunner aboard."

  "Wages're fine, sir," Woetjans said, apologetic but clearly coming from the same place as Sun. "The thing is, though—"

  She gestured with her left hand.

  "—there's never been a spacer yet who lifted ship with anything still in her pocket. Some leave most of their pay with their families, sure—"

  Woetjans might mean the plural literally. It wasn't just a music-hall joke that spacers kept separate households at each planetfall of a regular route.

  "—and some of us spend it in bars; but we all spend it. Another florin a week doesn't mean very much, especially if we don't come back."

  Well, that was blunt enough; even without Pasternak repeating, "Amen to that!"

  "Sir?" said Dasi. He and his mate Barnes were big men and utterly dependable. They weren't the quickest minds in the RCN, but they were experienced enough that either would make a good bosun's mate the next time Daniel had an opening to fill.

  "Aye?" said Daniel. He'd heard the tram stop outside the gate. He didn't turn his head, but from the way Vesey brightened as she looked past him, the fellow trotting toward the Princess Cecile was Midshipman Dorst.

  "What should we do, sir?" Dasi said, his face screwed up with concern. Timmons offered him a bottle; he was too perturbed to notice it. "Should we sign on with this wog and Mr. Mon? Do you want us to?"

  Daniel sighed, waving away the return of Mr. Pasternak's retort. "Dasi," he said. He let his eyes trail across the faces crowding the entrance hold; all of them familiar, all of them troubled. "All of you. When we served together aboard the Princess Cecile, I never doubted that you'd obey whatever order I gave."

  He stiffened into a formal Parade Rest, the posture he'd have taken if he were addressing them from a reviewing stand. He continued, "I have neither the right nor the will to give you orders now. You and I both have decisions to make, but we make them as individuals because we're no longer captain and crew."

  "Too bad about Mon," said Woetjans, shaking her head in summation. "But I guess he'll find a berth somewhere."

  Daniel cleared his throat. "I'll be getting back to my quarters," he said. "I . . ."

  His throat clogged and his eyes began to sting. That damned hydraulic fluid!

  "I'll be at the paying off ceremony tomorrow," he said, forcing the words out in a rush. "Fellow spacers, there was never a ship luckier in her crew than the Princess Cecile!"

  Daniel turned and strode back toward the tram stop, almost colliding with Mr. Dorst whom his blurring vision missed. The cheers of the Sissie's crew followed him all the way to the gate.

  * * *

  Adele heard the front door close and the murmur of voices. She opened her study and stepped into the hallway just as Daniel started up the stairs.

  "Please join me, Daniel," she said; which was foolish since obviously he was coming to her quarters on the second floor already. She'd asked the doorman to send him up as soon as he arrived, no matter what time it was. "Some matters have arisen that I'd like your advice on."

  "You're all right, Adele?" Daniel said. He'd taken off his billed hat when he entered the house; his face, lighted from above the stairwell, had the hard, controlled expression that she'd seen on the bridge of the Princess Cecile in action but very rarely otherwise. "I'm sorry not to have been here when you, ah, returned."

  "Oh, there's nothing wrong," Adele said, frowning in puzzlement. "I just had some questions about my plans that I—oh. Oh, I see what you mean."

  She ushered him into her study, realizing as she did so that it was messy by ordinary standards. Books and paper were stacked on most of the flat surfaces; she was researching the Commonwealth of God, and some documents were available only as hardcopy. She'd cleared a second chair in expectation of Daniel's arrival, though.

  "The business when I came home?" she said. She shrugged. "The doorman'll be off work for several days, I believe. Apart from that, everything is, well, normal. I'd expected questioning by the authorities, but apparently it's all been swept under the rug."

  Adele had reloaded the pistol as soon as she got home. It was in her pocket now, not against real need but for the security its slight weight afforded her subconscious. The little weapon had become an addictive drug. It was the thing that best kept the nightmares at bay, though it was the cause of those leering nightmares as well.

  "Yes," said Daniel. "Hogg and I arrived during the clean-up. The people involved appeared to be able."

  Adele closed the door and motioned to the upholstered seat across the leather-topped desk from her own straight chair. A wine bottle and two glasses waited on the tray a servant had brought earlier in the evening.

  "Hogg isn't here, by the way," she said. "He left a message for Tovera, and they're still out."

  Daniel grimaced as he sat down; he looked suddenly tired. "Adele?" he said. He lifted his head and met her eyes with a determined expression. "I gave Hogg free rein on dealing with what happened here this afternoon. Whatever comes of it is on my head; I want you to be very clear on that."

  Adele smiled faintly. "Have some wine," she said, uncorking the bottle. "It's from what used to be Chatsworth Major. The new owners renamed the estate Skyland, but the grapes are the same."

  She poured, one glass and then the other. The wine was a dark honey color; not a famous vintage, but a comfortable one and a familiar taste that brought her childhood and its security a little closer.

  "As for anything that happens to the Rolfes, Daniel . . . ," she went on. "I'd say that's on the head of the person who sent thugs to knock our doorman around. But for what it's worth, I told Tovera not to kill anyone. She's quite trustworthy that way."

  She quirked a grin at Daniel as she handed him
his wine. "Emotion doesn't get in the way with her, you see," she said. "She doesn't lose control."

  Daniel drank and nodded approvingly before lowering the glass again. "You said you had questions?" he said, raising an eyebrow.

  "Mon will have told you that aristocrats from Novy Sverdlovsk are buying the Princess Cecile for a voyage to the Galactic North," Adele said, continuing to smile faintly. One of the few personality traits she and Daniel shared was a dislike for circumlocution. "An acquaintance, probably the person who had our court cleaned after the incident this afternoon, wants me to accompany them in order to get an impression of Alliance activity on Radiance and its satellite."

  She didn't go into detail or use Mistress Sand's name, knowing that the whole business would make Daniel uncomfortable. He was by no means a blunt, unsophisticated naval officer—he was Speaker Leary's son, for God's sake!—but in Daniel's ideal world actions would be open and transparent. He believed that if he did his own job openly and very well, he could leave other aspects to those who found them more congenial. Leave them to people like his friend Adele, it might be. . . .

  "I see," said Daniel. He seemed calm, but he tossed down the wine instead of remembering to sip it. She reached for the bottle, but he waved her away brusquely with his free hand as he frowned in concentration.

  He did see, of course. Adele had never met anyone who more quickly integrated disparate data than did her friend Daniel. It had gained him a deserved reputation as a combat commander, and probably equal envy from acquaintances marveling at Leary's success with women.

  "Lieutenant Mon's as good a technical officer as you'll find," Daniel said, his eyes on the corner of a bookshelf. It was vanishingly improbable that the works filed there—pre-Hiatus fiction, a collection which Adele had chosen to recreate though she didn't share her mother's taste—was of any interest to him. "Nothing else appearing, I'd wish you Godspeed."

  He looked up, his face again uncommonly hard. "However, the Sissie's crew have decided that he's an unlucky captain," Daniel continued. "They may well be right. Mon won't be able to hire a trustworthy crew, I'm afraid, and the risks on a voyage to Radiance will be very great. Unacceptably great, I would say, unless your need were also very great."

  He raised an eyebrow.

  Adele nodded, turning the stem of her wineglass between thumb and forefinger. "That's my judgment as well," she said dispassionately. "My acquaintance made clear her opinion that the matter is of weight comparable to the risk."

  "With all respect to your acquaintance," Daniel said, his voice very much that of his father's son, "I doubt she has a proper grasp of the danger involved under these precise circumstances. Uncle Stacey opened most of the present routes to Radiance. Lieutenant Mon for all his undoubted virtues is neither Stacey Bergen nor a man who's ever made the run to the North himself."

  Adele sipped her wine, letting the remembered flavors recall for her a simpler, sunnier childhood. "I'm inclined to agree with you, Daniel," she said, "but I'm sure beyond question that some colleague of mine will be aboard the Princess Cecile on this voyage. I have no idea who it would be, but I'm confident that there's no one more familiar with the Sissie and her capabilities than I am. And I'm afraid—"

  She smiled wryly across the table.

  "—that the Mundy family's involvement in the Three Circles Conspiracy leaves me under more of an obligation to the Republic than an ordinary citizen would be."

  Daniel rose to his feet. "I'll give the matter some thought," he said. He sounded suddenly nonchalant. "There may be a way out."

  He smiled broadly at her. "For now," he said, "I'm going to bed. I need to be at the mustering-out ceremony for the Sissie's crew in the morning. You'll be joining me, I hope?"

  "Yes, of course," Adele said as she stood to show him to the door. She, like Daniel himself, had been on half-pay since they'd returned to Cinnabar six weeks earlier; they had no official connection with the Princess Cecile. If he wanted her present, that was a good enough reason to be there, however.

  "Good," he said, skirting a stack of books on the floor. Each was marked with the name of the person who'd loaned it because Mundy of Chatsworth was collecting information on the Galactic North. Adele's family connections had become useful again.

  "There's usually an answer if folk of good will get together to find one," Daniel said, grinning as he stepped through the door she'd opened for him.

  Despite what Adele could only think of as the puerile silliness of the comment, she found herself grinning back. The Daniel Learys of this world somehow made childhood homilies not only seem true but, based on her own experience, come true.

  CHAPTER 6

  A dozen spacers from the Princess Cecile and the civilians of both sexes attached to them shared the tramcar with Adele and Daniel as it slowed to the siding at Harbor One. She frowned again at her civilian clothes and said in a quietly tart voice in Daniel's ear, "I really could have worn my dress uniform too, you know!"

  Daniel looked down at his own resplendent Whites. Instead of medal ribbons, he was wearing the awards themselves. That meant a startling amount of glitter—in particular the Order of Strymon in Diamonds, an aiguillette of gold and silver cords fastened at his breast and epaulette with clasps whose stones were the size of a child's teeth.

  "Oh, that's not called for," he said in a tone of mild satisfaction. "I'd never look like this at a real RCN affair, but to impress civilians—and civilians from Novy Sverdlovsk besides—I thought it was the thing."

  He met her eyes; his smile had just the least professional crispness. "That's my job," he added. "You'll want to stay inconspicuous, I believe."

  The tram rocked to a halt. Without thinking about it, Daniel stepped through the mass of spacers standing closer to the door; they were squeezing against the sides to let the officers by. Adele followed, realizing wryly that she was the only person on the car who didn't take it for granted that the captain and signals officer would get out first. Her parents would have understood perfectly—not that they'd ever have ridden in a public conveyance—but Adele herself had lived in poverty for long enough to have lost the instincts of privilege.

  Two more cars pulled up behind the one they'd ridden. Both were full of spacers and the same assortment of civilians as the ones who'd accompanied Daniel and Adele. The remainder of the Princess Cecile's crew already stood in four loose ranks on the quay in front of the corvette.

  An officer in grays was seated behind a portable table with an enlisted clerk, flanked by a pair of Shore Police with sub-machine guns. The pay chest, still locked, waited on the table.

  "Daniel, the civilians?" Adele whispered.

  "Some are wives," Daniel murmured in her ear. "Well, spouses. The others are crimps or their agents, making sure that their advances are covered before the rest of the pay is drunk up. If there's any remaining, of course."

  Lieutenant Mon, wearing his dress uniform like Daniel, stood at a little distance from both the paymaster and the crew. He brightened noticeably when he saw Daniel approaching, but he still looked haggard.

  "Mr. Mon, might I have a word with you please?" Daniel called. In an aside he added, "This concerns you in a way also, Adele, so I'd appreciate it if you joined us."

  Mon threw a glance over his shoulder, then came toward them at a quickstep; the newly-arrived spacers passed him in the opposite direction to fall in with their fellows.

  Adele judged Mon had been looking at the strangers who were watching from the open hatches of the Princess Cecile's bridge, forward on A Deck—the uppermost of the corvette's four levels. Several wore RCN uniforms, but two were civilians. The woman was dressed in a medley of garish colors; the man's black-and-white suit was cut to slant toward his left shoulder, making him look as though he were about to fall over.

  "The Klimovs are aboard with the dockyard representative and a survey party from the Navy Office," Mon muttered, making explicit what Adele had already assumed. He wrung Daniel's hand. "Sir, I . . . I'd be very gra
teful for anything you can bring yourself to say to the crew."

  "Before I address the crew, Mon . . . ," Daniel said. "I have a proposition for you."

  It seemed to Adele that he was being unusually formal with his old shipmate. Daniel hadn't been the sort of captain who maintained a psychic distance between himself and those whom he commanded.

  "Sir?" said Mon, straightening instinctively. His expression was too blank to be described as puzzled.

  "You may know that I've become heir to my uncle's controlling interest in Bergen and Associates," Daniel continued with the same smooth formality. "I'll need a yard manager, as I myself will be off-planet much of the time even if the present state of peace lasts. Which is unlikely unless the Almighty shows Guarantor Porra the path of righteousness before the RCN has to do it again."

  His smile was that of a senior taking a junior into his confidence to the extent of a mild joke. Adele marveled strait-faced to watch her friend become a kindlier version of his own father. At this moment the two lieutenants had ceased to be fellow officers: they were patron and client, and she saw exactly where the interview—it wasn't a discussion—was going.

  "I want you for my yard manager, Mon," Daniel said. "I can't tell you precisely what the conditions of employment will be—I made a brief call to my sister Deirdre this morning and she's working out the details—but there'll be profit participation. I told her to set the percentages so that the manager is initially paid at the level of a full commander. If the yard flourishes, so of course will the manager. Uncle Stacey wasn't healthy enough for the past several years to keep things going at their best."

  "Good God, captain," Mon said. "Good God!"

  "Will you accept, Mon?" Daniel said, raising his eyebrows. "I can't think of a man I'd rather have in the position."

  "Sir," Mon said. He stepped forward and wrung Daniel's hand hard. "Oh, bless you, sir, I. . . . You won't regret this, I swear!"

  He sobered and started to look over his shoulder, then caught himself. "Ah, what about the Klimovs, sir?" he said quietly. "I haven't signed the articles, I couldn't until the ship passed to their ownership, of course. But they're expecting me, you know, to . . ."