The Far Side of The Stars

by David Drake

  "The Chief says these two go to see Himself at once!" Sebastian said to another former Cinnabar spacer, this time a tired-looking woman with a chain of alternating hearts and RCN monograms tattooed around her throat.

  "Yeah, well, that's for me to say, ain't it?" the woman said. She touched the communicator clipped to her epaulette.

  Before she could speak into it, one of the sections of lattice pivoted up and a familiar face peered down. "Adele, is that you already?" called Adrian Purvis. "Come up, come up! We've been discussing the situation ever since you called."

  And lest Adele wonder who her cousin meant by "we," another section of lattice raised. She recognized that face also, from images she'd studied in preparation for the present mission. She hadn't met Admiral O'Quinn before in the flesh.

  * * *

  Daniel had released the starboard watch, the riggers from the port watch, and all the officers save himself, Pasternak, and Vesey. Woetjans and the regular crewmen were gone, cutting a swathe through the nearest bars and brothels, but the other officers save Adele—on business of her own, nothing Daniel needed or wanted to know about—and the Purser, Stobart, watched solemnly from the outriggers as Daniel and the Chief Engineer inspected the thrusters. Even Stobart was gone only because he had to arrange for stores to replace those used up on the voyage out from Cinnabar.

  Daniel sat in the inflatable raft which mechanics holding ropes on both outriggers steadied. Pasternak stood in front of Daniel with his head in a thruster nozzle.

  After a moment he lowered the laser micrometer and said, "Down three millimeters is all, and the throat's as smooth as a baby's butt. Sir, I could turn these into a quartermaster's store as unused if I waited for Monday morning and got a clerk with a hangover!"

  "By God, didn't I bloody tell you, Betts?" Sun said, clapping the Chief Missileer on the back. "There's no jinx with Mr. Leary in command. Why, when he was captain before, not even Mr. Mon could bugger our luck!"

  "Bridge watch to Six," Vesey called. "Sir, there's a crowd coming this way. Maybe it's a parade, but there's soldiers at the front and what looks like a little tank or something. Over."

  "Bridge, I'll meet them on the dock," Daniel said, frowning. "Killian, haul me over to your side; Pachey, loose your line. Lively now, we've got company coming!"

  Sun got a hard expression and climbed the outrigger's telescoping strut instead of bothering with the ladder to the main hatch. He'd been a motorman working on High Drives before his rating made him the Sissie's acting gunner. Betts was older, heavier and probably never as active, but he mounted the ladder with similar grim haste.

  "Don't do anything obvious with the weapons!" Daniel shouted as the two warrant officers disappeared into the hull. He jumped to the outrigger himself. Instead of boarding, he trotted to the cable which moored the corvette to the quay. Over his shoulder he added, "Mr. Pasternak, check the High Drive on your own, if you will!"

  Daniel hopped over the funnel-shaped rat-guard midway along the cable—they didn't stop rats either, that he'd seen—and stepped to the stone quay. He was wearing utilities—a clean pair since he wasn't going to be working on the drive units, just observing the inspection—and a billed cap. Apart from the single stars embroidered in black on his lapels, he could've passed for one of the common spacers. It wasn't the outfit in which to greet an official delegation, and that was definitely what was coming along the quay toward the Princess Cecile.

  There were soldiers, all right, but the six in the front rank were playing instruments of orange thermoplastic extruded into trumpet shapes. The amplified music was loud, stirring, and—except for crackles of static from one of the trumpetoids—perfectly in tune.

  The troops behind were armed to the teeth, generally with laser packs rather than electromagnetic impellers, but this clearly wasn't an attack. The vehicle—Vesey's "little tank or something"—was a utility tractor with steel sides welded onto the rear bin. An automatic impeller was mounted on a pintle there, but for this event the gun was aimed skyward. Patterned fabrics draped the sides.

  Maybe they're coming for the Count, Daniel thought. A Novy Sverdlovsk flag, red and white silk blazoned with a red eagle, hung from the tip of the mast which was extended over the quay, but the Klimovs had gone into San Juan as soon as the slip cooled down enough for Daniel to open the hatches.

  He'd sent ten crew under a petty officer as the Klimovs' escort. The assigned spacers escaped maintenance duties and might be able to relax some themselves, depending on circumstances.

  Lamsoe and Tulane were on guard at the main hatch as part of the anchor watch. They joined Daniel on the quay, holding their sub-machine guns so that they were ready but not threatening. They didn't look worried, but they obviously weren't happy with the situation. No spacer is happy with a surprise, even if it's a fresh meal twenty days out.

  The tractor stopped. The statuesque, gorgeously-dressed woman in the box glanced over the corvette and the three spacers on the quay. She settled her gaze on Daniel, and said, "Daniel Leary, son of Corder Leary, of Bantry? Governor Sakama Hideki sends his greetings and says he'll be pleased to accept your visit at once."

  Three servants who'd walked behind the vehicle set the boarding ladder they carried against the side of the box. "If you'll mount," said the woman, "we'll be off immediately."

  "Yes," said Daniel. There were quite a lot of things he could've said, all of which would've been a waste of time and breath. "Ship—" cueing his commo helmet "—this is Six. I'm calling on Governor Sakama. Mr. Chewning is in charge until I return. Six out."

  He looked at the two spacers, then pointed to the flag hanging limp from the mast eight feet overhead. "Lamsoe?" he said. "Can you and Tulane get me that flag now? Don't hurt it any more than you need to."

  "Roger," Lamsoe said, slinging his weapon over his neck. Tulane, a beefy man who'd won squadron trophies for all-in wrestling when he was younger, laced his fingers into a stirrup. Lamsoe settled his foot into it and said, "Go!" Tulane hurled his partner onto the mast.

  Lamsoe locked his legs around the tube and snicked out the blade of his multitool. The lanyard was of woven boron monocrystal, nothing an ordinary knife would cut. Two quick strokes left the grommets still reeved to the line and the corner-cropped flag fluttering down into Daniel's hands.

  Daniel tied the vivid silk as a sash around the waist of his mottled gray fatigues. The Governor probably meant to put him off-balance by not giving him time to dress for a formal reception. That was a clever move of its kind; as a tactician himself, Daniel could respect the subtlety of the mind which had devised it. But an RCN officer ought to be able to teach wogs a thing or two about field expedients!

  "I'm very glad for the chance to meet his excellency the Governor," Daniel said as he strode to the boarding ladder. He mounted, glancing over his shoulder at the Princess Cecile.

  Only someone very familiar with the corvette would have noticed the change from ten minutes earlier. The dorsal turret was still aligned with the ship's axis, but the twin plasma cannon were minusculely elevated from their locked position. In the best tradition of the RCN, Sun had his guns ready for whatever happened next.

  CHAPTER 12

  "Sit down, Mistress Mundy," said Admiral O'Quinn, gesturing Adele to a place that'd obviously been saved for her on a low circular bench draped with rugs. In the center was a small serving table holding glass carafes of wine and platters heaped with fruit, most of it unfamiliar. Two women and two men besides O'Quinn and Cousin Adrian were already seated. They wore RCN-style dress uniforms with the starburst of the Cluster replacing the winged sandal of Cinnabar; each had a chestful of garish, dangling, medals.

  Adele's eyes took a moment to adjust to the lattice-shaded loggia. She kept her face emotionless, but the appearance of the others, the senior officers of the Aristoxenos, shocked her. Certainly it'd been sixteen years—and she herself was no longer the girl who'd just arrived on Bryce to study in the Academic Collections—but the officers gathered here
looked not only older but unhealthy.

  When Adele last saw her cousin, he'd been a noted fencer; now he was distinctly pudgy and the collar of his formal tunic pinched deep into the fat of his neck. Broken veins spiderwebbed Admiral O'Quinn's nose; he was drinking wine from a twenty-ounce mug. The other four, the surviving members of the battleship's second through sixth lieutenants, were in comparable condition.

  Servants stood at both ends of the loggia with more bottles of wine and fruit platters. They wore splashy, well-used clothes, often ill-fitting; cast-offs from their superiors, Adele realized. Adrian glanced at them and said, "Go on, get out of here! We need to talk privately!"

  "But Lord Purvis?" said the servant with waxed mustachios who appeared to be the senior of those present. "If you need more—"

  "Go on, damn you, get out!" Adrian snarled petulantly. "Do you think I couldn't have you bastinadoed, Aurelio?"

  The servants crowded out the doors to the interior of the building, leaving them ajar. If Adrian really thought he was gaining privacy, he was a fool; but the chances were he was just salving his conscience by paying lip service to security concerns.

  "Sit down," O'Quinn urged again, "and have some of this wine, mistress. It's nothing like what we had at home, but I find it palatable."

  Adele stepped over the bench and seated herself carefully. The central table was low and three feet away, strictly for serving rather than dining. Two officers were eating what looked like miniature pomegranates; they spat the seeds onto the rugs layered over the floor.

  Face as stiff as cast iron, Adele took the offered glass. It was a brandy snifter, but O'Quinn had poured it full of the same vintage he was drinking. She sipped. The flavor was interesting, though there was an earthy hint that she suspected would be an unpleasant companion the morning after drinking a quantity of the wine.

  There was no likelihood of that, however, since either the vintage was fortified or the sugar-converting bacteria here on Todos Santos were remarkably resistant to poisoning by the ethanol waste product. She didn't think, "You could fuel an engine with this!" because she knew full well that you couldn't; but she also knew that a mug the size of Admiral O'Quinn's would have her comatose before she reached the bottom.

  "Tell us frankly, Mistress Mundy . . . ," said Bodo Williams, the Second Lieutenant. Her cheekbones stood out from tight-stretched skin. When her hands began to tremble she clasped them before her, but even that didn't completely control the shaking. "Tell us—did the Senate send you as their emissary to arrange the terms of our repatriation?"

  Adele blinked. Good God! But it was a serious question, as serious to them as it seemed absurd to her. The six former RCN officers stared at her with a mixture of hope and desperation.

  "Lieutenant Williams," Adele said carefully. "Admiral, all of you. . . ."

  She set her glass on the floor beside her and took out her data unit to occupy her hands. The rugs weren't a firm surface, but obviously nobody else cared if the glass spilled.

  "I'm not an envoy," Adele said bluntly, sweeping the fearful eyes with her own. She spoke with a hostile edge, an unintended but natural result of these people putting her in a ridiculous position. "Of the Senate, of anybody. I'm Adele Mundy, calling on my closest living relative—my mother's brother's son—when as a result of my private employment I found myself unexpectedly in the city where he lives."

  She glared at Commander Purvis. "And Adrian?" she continued, "I'll note that I didn't expect my desire to see a relative would involve me in a conspiracy which was a demonstrably bad idea sixteen years ago!"

  Adele hadn't known what she was going to say until the words came out of her mouth. She rose, sliding the data unit away. She'd taken it out to calm her as she gathered her thoughts, but now they blazed in a white fury that might require her to have her hands free. How dare these—

  "Adele, we're not conspirators!" Adrian said, stepping toward her with his arms out. Adele jerked backward and the bench caught her knees. She toppled but Adrian grabbed her by the shoulders and held her upright.

  "Adele, we're not conspirators," he repeated softly as he leaned away again, one hand still touching her arm. He was breathing hard. The others were on their feet also, all but Williams who'd fallen back to the bench and now braced herself on the serving table for another try. "We . . . when you came, we thought you might be coming for us. That's all."

  Adele took a deep breath, then stepped over the bench. "I'm not leaving," she said, noticing the sudden misery on the faces of the gathered officers. "I just needed to get on the other side of this damned barricade."

  She tapped the bench with her toe. She'd knocked over the wineglass, all right, and soaked the cuff of the one civilian suit she'd brought with her aboard the Princess Cecile. Not a matter of great moment, she supposed, but typical of other things.

  "Forgive me for my discourtesy," Adele continued. Her reaction could have been worse: she hadn't drawn her pistol. "I understand your concern, but to the best of my knowledge—"

  Which was very good knowledge indeed.

  "—neither the government of Cinnabar nor the RCN more specifically have any active concern with the Aristoxenos and her crew. That's far in the past. You can live your lives in as great an assurance of safety as—"

  She smiled with the bleak humor that seasoned the dark parts of her life. Not long ago those parts had been almost all of her life.

  "—any of us have in this existence."

  "We thought . . . ," said Admiral O'Quinn, holding his big mug in both hands and staring into its empty depths. "That since you were . . . ?"

  He looked up without finishing the sentence.

  "Yes," said Adele crisply. "But that was coincidence. My stopover is merely because Todos Santos is a nexus for routes into the North, which my foreign employers wish to explore."

  She smiled again with her usual quirky humor.

  "Much the same reasons that brought you here in times past, I suppose," she added.

  "But the captain of your ship is Speaker Leary's son!" said Estaing, who'd been—who probably still was—the battleship's Fourth Lieutenant. "If you're not the emissary, mistress, is he?"

  "Mr. Estaing . . . ," Adele said in a cold voice. Estaing was a tall man, rangy and handsome in file imagery. He hadn't run as far to fat as some of the others, but he had the eyes of a ferret and a facial twitch as regular as a metronome. "I said you're safe. No one is searching for you. Not me, not Captain Leary, and not even the three women to whom you apparently promised marriage in the days leading up to the discovery of the Three Circles Conspiracy!"

  That was probably more than a former RCN warrant officer, now on the beach, should have known about a man she'd never met. Still, she'd said it and had no real regrets. She'd read the files on the Aristoxenos' officers, not because she'd expected to meet them but because she was Adele Mundy and she liked to know things. Politics aside, Lieutenant Estaing was a pig.

  Nobody spoke for a moment; Estaing flushed and turned away.

  "Adele," said Adrian. "Please—I think you're misunderstanding. We aren't afraid of the Senate hunting us down. We thought, you see, just possibly . . . that Cinnabar was offering to let us return."

  Oh good God, Adele thought, not for the first time in this interview. She had to struggle to restrain a laugh, instinctive protection against the horror of the situation that she'd just uncovered.

  "Adrian," she said aloud, speaking as carefully as she'd have chosen her footing across a muddy field. "I can't speak to that, and I assure you Captain Leary has no knowledge of the subject either. He's estranged from his father, and he was never interested in politics anyway."

  "But they allowed you back?" Adrian said. "And we thought . . . ?"

  "The Edict of Reconciliation was issued over a decade ago," Adele said, speaking sharply so that her words wouldn't be mistaken for agreement. "I had occasion to read it carefully, as you might imagine. The Edict specifically excepts certain categories of people, in particular
mutinous members of the RCN and the Land Forces of the Republic who failed to accept the terms of the amnesty within six months of the offer."

  "I told you!" said Tetrey, the Sixth Lieutenant; a petite woman in old pictures, a mass of pasty flesh in present reality. "I told you there was no way they'd take us back, but you had to go ahead with this charade!"

  "Well, what was the choice, you stupid cow?" Estaing shouted. He raised his hand; Adele, blank-faced, reached into her pocket.

  "Mr. Estaing, sit down and be silent!" Adrian snapped. "Now, by God!"

  Estaing didn't sit, but he grimaced and drew back from Tetrey. A pig, Adele thought, drawing another deep breath as her hand came out of her pocket empty.

  "Sirs and ladies," she said, all eyes on her again. "I don't say that there's no chance of you returning to Cinnabar, just that the question has nothing to do with the arrival of the Princess Cecile on Todos Santos. I, ah, know some persons of influence in Xenos. When I'm next on Cinnabar, I'll make discreet inquiries if you'd like me to. But I can tell you nothing now beyond what you probably know already."

  She cleared her throat. "If you'd indulge my curiosity?" she went on. "I don't understand precisely why you'd want to return. Your present situation—"

  She let a sweep of her eyes take the place of a gesture.

  "—appears comfortable, and at best . . . well, I'm sure you know that your property in the Republic was confiscated. In honesty, I can't imagine much of it would ever be returned; and even if it were, I doubt it would allow you to live in palaces like this one."

  "Aye, Corder Leary doesn't have a palace like mine," Admiral O'Quinn said, seating himself heavily on the bench. He raised his mug reflexively, then remembered it was empty. He took the carafe by its handle, found it empty too, and glared. For a moment Adele thought the admiral was going to hurl one or the other across the room, but instead he relaxed and grinned at her sadly.

  "I don't need a palace," he said. "Not here in the Cluster, anyhow. I want to go home, Mistress Mundy . . . and it doesn't look like that's going to happen. Not unless I want my head to decorate the Speaker's Rock."