The Far Side of The Stars

by David Drake

  The trap door wasn't meant for anybody quite so bulky as Daniel Leary wearing his dress uniform under a cloak. He squirmed, angling his torso into the enclosed balcony. Light entered through lattices, softening everything into a world apart from the street outside. Perfume clung to the wood, and more giggles sounded from the dim interior of the house proper.

  Daniel and every other member of the Sissie's crew carried an emergency communicator while on liberty. The plate now buzzed. For a moment Daniel fought the urge to ignore it, but they'd only call him in a real emergency.

  "Are you coming, Mr. Officer?" breathed a voice from just out of sight inside the house.

  Daniel sighed and slid the flat communicator from his sash. "Six here," he said. "Go ahead."

  * * *

  Adele sat at her console, her data unit on her lap. Her wands twitched across information she'd collected through the Princess Cecile's antennas and had processed with a navigational computer which in minutes or less could calculate courses across the universes of the Matrix. She smiled as she worked, as happy as she was capable of being. Certainly she was content, which was all she'd ever asked from life.

  "General quarters!" ordered Woetjans, the watch officer. "There's an aircar approaching, a big one! Over!"

  Adele switched her display to an optical pickup on the corvette's hull. If she could just find the vehicle identification code, she could search for the owner through the mass of data she'd collected. . . .

  Crewmen ran down the corridors to their action stations. "Bessing!" somebody shouted on B Deck, his voice echoing up the companionway. "Get the arms locker open! Where's Bessing?"

  Bessing, a rigger who was striking for an armorer's rating under Sun—now on liberty—was already sprinting down the corridor to the locker adjacent to the Battle Center. The electronic key was in his hand.

  "Everybody return to duty!" Woetjans said. "It's the Countess and there's nobody with her. Bridge out."

  Adele didn't understand why the Klimovna was returning alone, but it was no cause for concern; least of all to Adele Mundy. She went back to her own affairs, downloading the files involving the Cluster Naval Self-Defense Force. Nobody'd asked her for the information, but at some future date Daniel or Mistress Sand—or someone at present unknown—might ask about the Cluster's navy. Because Adele was who she was, she gathered the information now.

  Also there was the matter of the Goldenfels. The Alliance freighter was sealed against Adele's devices, so she was methodically searching all the Cluster files involved with the vessel. The bureaucrats' records, official and otherwise, would provide a good start on the data she wanted.

  "Good afternoon, Countess," Tovera said in a loud voice.

  Adele jumped internally, suddenly aware that someone—that the Klimovna—stood beside the signals console. Adele compressed her display, though it was only a blur of light from any angle but that to her own eyes, and looked up.

  The Countess smiled down at her. "You appear to concentrate, Mistress Mundy," she said.

  "Yes," said Adele. "It's the only way I know to accomplish anything."

  The Countess sat sideways on the couch of the gunnery console, continuing to smile. Adele noticed that she hadn't responded to Tovera's greeting. Granted, Tovera had been warning Adele of the foreigner's presence, but she still deserved a response.

  "You work very hard," the Klimovna said, ignoring what Adele had meant for a blunt warning that she was busy. "You've only been off this tiny boat one time since we've landed, have you?"

  Adele's eyes narrowed. The short answer would've been, "Yes," though the fact hadn't occurred to Adele until the other woman mentioned it.

  Still, Adele's duties to Mistress Sand required at least the passive cooperation of the Princess Cecile's new owners. Aloud she said, "Countess, some of the most beautiful and historic buildings in the human universe are libraries, and I've been privileged to work in the best of them. While I'm working, though, I'm aware of nothing but data and the means by which I access it."

  She gestured, then continued, "My console provides me with that in a more readily accessible form than I could find anywhere else on this planet."

  Except just possibly at a similar installation on the Goldenfels.

  "Countess, you say countess!" the Klimovna said with a moue and a shake of her head. "Please, call me Valentina. I should like that we be friends."

  She paused, staring intently at Adele, then continued, "You are not the jealous sort, I think? Are you, Adele?"

  "What?" said Adele in puzzlement. Light dawned, bringing a broad—perhaps tactless—smile to her face. "Ah, I understand. Ah, Valentina, at the risk of mistaking where this conversation is headed, let me assure you that I have no physical relationship with Lieutenant Leary—with Daniel. I've never had such a relationship."

  "But . . . ?" said the Klimovna. "You seem . . . ?"

  "We're friends," said Adele. "Daniel happens to be a tenant of the house I own in Xenos. But to be more frank with you than our slight acquaintance warrants—"

  And to cut short a conversation that Adele found extremely distasteful.

  "—I've never been interested in a man—or woman—in that fashion. Whereas Daniel, so far as I've seen, has never been interested in a woman as old as I am. That's thirty-two standard years, Valentina."

  She paused, holding the other woman's eyes, then added, "I'm only seventeen years younger than you are."

  The Klimovna jerked back as though struck. In fact a slap probably wouldn't have shocked her as badly as that bit of precise knowledge did. Well, she'd forced Adele into an unpleasant conversation, so she could take the consequences of it.

  "Piffle!" the Klimovna said after a long moment, rubbing her hands hard on the thighs of her pants suit. "Men are fools, some of them. What can some young bubblehead offer them, compared to an experienced woman of the world, eh?"

  "I'm sure I don't know," Adele said dryly. Then, because it was an aspect of the matter that had irritated her too—though improperly—during her friendship with Daniel, she added, "Though it appears that the bubbleheadedness is at least part of the attraction. I won't even speculate why."

  "Piffle," the Klimovna repeated, staring at the outer bulkhead with a disgusted expression. She rose to her feet, her hands interlaced behind her back. She didn't leave, though, as Adele first thought—and hoped—but simply looked away.

  She turned back to Adele abruptly. "I suppose my husband's still out?" she said.

  "So far as I know," Adele agreed, "though you should check with the watch officer to be sure. I thought the two of you were together."

  "Faugh!" said the Klimovna. "Georgi likes to drink and gamble and who knows what? Why would I want to watch that? I bought an aircar to replace the other one."

  She waved her hand. To replace the one you crashed, Adele amended, but silently.

  "Daniel's man Hogg arranged it," the Klimovna continued. "A very clever fellow, Hogg. I wonder if he would care to serve me in place of his present master?"

  "I doubt it," said Adele dryly.

  "I don't think Hogg would cut your throat for asking," said Tovera unexpectedly. It was like having the chair itself speak. "But he might. Hogg's quite an interesting fellow—as servants go."

  "I take Tovera's point," Adele said, raising her voice to speak through any chance that the Klimovna was going to say the wrong thing. "It would be unwise to raise the question with Hogg. Old family loyalties, you know. I suppose you have the same thing on Novy Sverdlovsk?"

  The Klimovna sniffed. "At home, servants know their place," she said, but she wasn't looking at either Tovera or Adele when she said it. "Anyway, I bought this car from a store of unclaimed goods. Hogg introduced me to the warehouse manager."

  Did he indeed? Adele thought, struggling to keep a straight face. Well, it was no business of hers. Knowing Hogg, the Princess Cecile would have left Todos Santos long before any owner returned to claim his property.

  Because Adele had reduced h
er display, a small red asterisk appeared in the air over the data unit. She closed her lips over the polite fluff she'd been creating to offer Klimovna—small talk must be easier for other people—and brought the display up to full size.

  Oh. Oh! That must mean—

  "Ship, this is Loppy, I'm with the Count only he's upstairs," said a voice. "We got a situation here and we're going to need help bloody damned quick. Over."

  Because the call was on an emergency channel, it got a priority routing to the bridge and the Battle Center as well as to Adele's console. The call plates every spacer on liberty carried were meant for recall by the ship. The plates' outgoing transmissions generally carried only a half mile or so.

  Adele had directed the ship's technicians to adjust the plates' programming to use the relay system that carried messages for the Governor's Guard, giving them full two-way capability. For ordinary crewmen that didn't matter a great deal—the establishments serving their needs were generally well within a half mile of the harbor. The detachment escorting Count Klimov would've been out of touch without the modification, though, as would Captain Leary himself.

  "Loppy, this is Woetjans," said the bosun. As watch officer she was using the command console, but the couch was adjusted to Daniel's height. It made a clumsy match for Woetjans' raw-boned frame. "Go ahead."

  "Top, we're in a fancy club, dunno what the name of it is," Rigger Loppinger said. "It's not just a bar and a knock shop, the Count's upstairs in the card room playing with the captain of the Goldenfels. You remember—"

  "I remember," the bosun said grimly. "Spit it out, spacer!"

  Adele's wands flickered. She'd already queued a recall signal; now she called up the triangulated location of Loppy's call and superimposed it on files from San Juan's chief of police. The establishment was the Anyo Nuevo; and judging from the amount it paid in bribes each week, it was a very upscale place indeed.

  "Top, the Count's cleaning out the bastard from Pleasaunce," the rigger said. "He'll own his back teeth in a little bit. They wouldn't let us in the card room, but I could hear it through the doorway. Thing is, there's twenty spacers from the Goldenfels drinking down in the bar here, and I don't think their captain's going to let the Count go home with his money. Can you get us some help? Over."

  The Klimovna was speaking, had been speaking for some while. Adele was only vaguely aware of her, the way she heard the hum of the corvette's fusion bottle on D Deck. Tovera had backed the older woman away so that she wouldn't brush Adele with a sweep of her arms.

  Woetjans turned awkwardly on the couch. Her face was anguished. "Mistress?" she called across the bridge to Adele. In an emergency riggers like her didn't think about radio communication. "Can you raise the captain, because—"

  "Six here," Daniel said, answering the summons Adele had sent as soon as Loppinger mentioned the Goldenfels. "Go ahead."

  "Woetjans, I'll take this," Adele said, bringing a look of relief to the bosun's face. "Daniel, Count Klimov is playing cards with Captain Bertram of the Goldenfels in the Anyo Nuevo, whose coordinates I've downloaded to you. The game will shortly result in violence. Bertram has twenty spacers with him and his ship has a total crew of three hundred and fifty-six, according to the amount the port medical inspector just paid into his private account to clear the ship from quarantine. Ah, over."

  She was sure how many crew the Goldenfels carried because she'd compared the payment to that made for the hundred and twenty-seven passengers and crew aboard the Princess Cecile. Cheating a government was one thing. Cheating an official personally by shorting his bribe was something else, and much more dangerous.

  Daniel whistled, a sound which the recall plate only partially transmitted. "That's no freighter!" he said. "The Goldenfels must be an auxiliary cruiser."

  In a different tone but with almost the same breath he continued, "Very well, sound recall."

  Adele acted as she heard the words, nodding assent to the bosun.

  "Woetjans, how many men are aboard the Sissie now? Over."

  "Twenty-four either on watch," Woetjans said, "or back from liberty early. But those're in bad shape some of 'em, over."

  "Very good," said Daniel. "Can you lay on transport? Because if we have to run a mile and a half to this bar, we're none of us going to be in good shape. Over."

  "The aircar," said Adele.

  "Right, the lady's back with an aircar!" Woetjans said. "I shouldn't wonder we could fit twelve in her—she's a big sucker. Over."

  "Yes," said Daniel. "Woetjans, take nine and yourself. Stop to pick me up at—"

  "Daniel, I've downloaded the coordinates," Adele said hastily.

  "Roger, me and Hogg," Daniel resumed. "No guns. Adele, take charge until Mr. Chewning reports back. Six out."

  Woetjans was on her feet bellowing, gathering personnel both with her raw voice and over the ship's PA system. "Daniel!" said Adele before he broke the connection. "Do you want me and Tovera—or just Tovera?"

  "Good God no!" Daniel replied, his voice strained as if he were doing something physically demanding while still holding the call plate in one hand. "Adele, if there's shooting in this city, you can depend on it that the Governor's troops will execute everybody they catch. Just don't let anybody from the Goldenfels aboard the Sissie, and make damned sure the guns're manned. Over."

  "Over, Daniel," Adele said. "Out."

  She leaned back in her couch and closed her eyes, feeling suddenly empty. There was a good deal happening, but she herself had nothing to do except wait.

  The Klimovna's voice penetrated the mental barriers Adele had set up when she had no time to deal with trivia. Adele opened her eyes. "Madam," she said. "Your husband is in trouble over a card game. Captain Leary and some of the crew are on their way to extricate him. Ah, they'll be taking your aircar."

  Bessing was seated at the gunnery display. Nobody was at the command console or the missile board, but the three senior ratings in the Battle Direction Center could handle anything up through lifting ship, Adele supposed.

  "Georgi will play," the Klimovna said. She made a moue. "So clever, he thinks himself."

  She looked sharply at Adele. "He will be all right?" she said. "Tell me the truth."

  Adele met the older woman's eyes, her face expressionless. "Yes," she said at last. "I think the Count will be all right. Daniel—Captain Leary—will send him back in the aircar, I expect."

  But will Daniel be all right with hundreds of Alliance spacers baying for his blood? Adele thought.

  Oh. Yes, of course. There was an answer.

  Adele's wands flickered as she entered the maze of local communications systems. There were six simply for the San Juan district, two of them surprisingly sophisticated. There was no common system even for the military. The army, the navy, and the Governor's Guard were all separate.

  The Klimovna was speaking again somewhere close by in the background. Adele found the node she needed and entered it, bypassing the firewall. She took a deep breath and began to speak.

  * * *

  Barnes, swearing like the spacer he'd been for the past twenty years, deliberately slammed the aircar hard on the street. The overloaded vehicle bounced upward on a combination of momentum and air compressed by the fans in surface effect. The huge cloud of dust looked like a bomb blast, but they cleared the furniture van whose driver had kept right on coming out of the sidestreet when he saw the aircar hurtling down the boulevard a bare seven feet above the rutted surface.

  Daniel'd braced himself against the dashboard, but the weight of husky spacers behind him slammed him hard anyway. His ribs didn't crack, so it was cheap at the price.

  Barnes wasn't a good driver in the conventional sense, but his very ham-fistedness made him exactly what the present situation required. There was no way to do a neat job of flying a six-place aircar with fourteen spacers aboard. Unlike a better driver, Barnes wasn't disconcerted by the number of skidding collisions they'd had on the way to the Anyo Nuevo.

  Barn
es was a big man, handy with a club or his fists. That was good too, as was the fact Woetjans brought twelve in the car instead of ten like Daniel ordered. He hadn't put them out on the street when he and Hogg squeezed aboard, and now that they'd arrived at their destination he was glad for the bosun's better judgment.

  It'd been a near thing, though. Bloody near, he'd thought when he saw the van nosing straight across their path.

  "Turn right at the next intersection and stop!" Daniel said, his left hand on Barnes' shoulder to get his attention. He was watching the road through a street map projected as a thirty percent mask on his faceshield. A moving red bead indicated the aircar, a gold one their intended destination.

  Barnes tried to corner and tried to stop, each with partial success. The streets joined at more than a right angle, and they had the speed up to keep the overweight car from dropping like an anchor. At the last instant Barnes did the best thing possible, jerking the steering yoke hard right so that they were banked at 45 degrees when they slammed into the front of a food stall, then caromed off before bouncing to a halt.

  Locals who'd a moment ago been gaping at the vehicle coming toward them on screaming fans scattered like a covey of birds. Daniel was pretty sure the aircar hadn't hit anybody—all the people he could see were running and cursing at the top of their lungs—but the good Lord knew there'd be damage claims from at least the stall-holder whose soup tureens were sprayed across her back wall. That was a matter for later, and for Count Klimov—if they got him out alive.

  "This way!" Daniel shouted, forcing his way up against the weight of several spacers using his body to launch themselves out of the moaning vehicle. "And keep out of sight till I'm through the door!"

  Daniel handed Hogg the commo helmet Woetjans had brought for him, donned his gleaming white saucer cap—slightly squished in the controlled crash of their landing—and straightened his rows of medal ribbons. When Daniel was as presentable as possible under the circumstances, he strode into an alley whose sides he could've brushed with both elbows. Twenty feet down he knocked at the metal back door of the Anyo Nuevo.