The Far Side of The Stars

by David Drake

  The Aristoxenos had been lucky to arrive off Radiance as quickly as she did, and it'd take her longer to get home. The Princess Cecile would've added a minimum of nine days to her voyage if she'd returned to Todos Santos with the battleship.

  "We've taken enough chances this voyage, Sissies," Daniel said. "I don't want to put us through more."

  "Six, this is Five," Chewning announced in an apologetic voice from the Battle Direction Center. "We'll be reentering normal space in—one minute. Over."

  "Roger, Mr. Chewning," Daniel said. "Break. Ship, prepare to return to sidereal space—"

  He pressed the control.

  "—now!"

  The Princess Cecile shuddered into sidereal space like a fish swimming through transparent glycerine instead of water. Daniel wasn't really worried about what would happen over Todos Santos unless colossal bad luck brought them out of the Matrix within spitting distance of an Alliance warship.

  Nobody should be looking for them here. People would notice the corvette's arrival and some might have hostile intentions, but Daniel had full confidence in Adele's ability to identify a problem in time for the Sissie to escape. They'd refilled their tanks of reaction mass on an uninhabited world a day out from here. They could make it to Cinnabar on their present load if they had to, though it'd mean short rations by the time they arrived.

  Present reality returned with a crystalline suddenness that turned all the previous time in the Matrix into half-remembered nightmare. It wasn't really bad while you were in it, but when you came out you had a sticky itchiness on your soul like the way your skin felt after swimming in salt water.

  The Princess Cecile was 80,000 miles above Todos Santos. The PPI was full of ships. To Daniel's momentary horror, a voice over a laser communicator—which proved that the Sissie had not only been noticed but but that she'd been located with as much precision as fire control would require—said, "RCS Melampus to unidentified vessel. Identify yourself immediately, over."

  In the lower right-hand corner of Daniel's display appeared a box of text in red outline from Adele:

  Thirteen country craft

  RCS Melampus Diana Seahorse Clyde Kapila

  There were details of size, armament, and Table of Organization crew strength, but Daniel knew all that or knew it well enough for his purposes. The first four Cinnabar vessels were destroyers; the Kapila was a battleship which'd been in Harbor Three when the Princess Cecile lifted as the Klimovs' private yacht.

  "Melampus, this is starship Princess Cecile, out of Xenos with a former RCN crew aboard," Daniel said. He was careful not to claim to be a naval vessel, as he'd done without hesitation when signaling anybody else. "We arrived to take on supplies for the run home, but finding you here I'd like to report to somebody on your commander's staff if that's possible. Sissie over."

  There was a pause. Daniel turned to his gunner. Calling across the bridge because he didn't want to risk accidentally transmitting to ships whose missileers were ready to launch, Daniel said, "Sun, lock your guns now. We can't afford a mistake. These people might be sorry to have killed us when they figure things out, but they're not going to miss!"

  "Princess Cecile, is Lieutenant Leary your captain, over?" the destroyer said at last.

  Daniel heard the 4-inch turrets clack into the fore-and-aft position that kept them from shifting when the vessel was under power. He pursed his lips, then said, "Roger, Melampus, this is former Lieutenant Leary. Ah, Melampus? We're on a ballistic course, waiting for direction as to how we should proceed. Over."

  After a longer pause, a different voice—Adele's text crawl read from RCS Kapila—said, "Princess Cecile, this is Movement Control. You're to land in Berth A-12, San Juan Harbor, immediately. A vehicle will be waiting to transport Lieutenant Leary and Signals Officer Mundy to the RCN Ground Detachment Headquarters. Do you understand, over?"

  "Movement Control," Daniel said, frowning but trying hard to keep his voice neutral, "do we need clearance by the Cluster authorities also, over?"

  "Princess Cecile, there are no Cluster authorities any more as regards space travel," the voice from the Kapila said. "This is RCN territory, mister. Carry out your orders! Over."

  Daniel met Adele's eyes across the bridge. She was nodding and wore what was for her a broad grin.

  "Roger that, Movement Control," Daniel said. "Sissie out."

  He looked at his display. The Battle Direction Center—which probably meant Vesey, as Chewning simply wasn't quick enough to have done it—offered a landing solution that would bring them down at San Juan in an orbit and a half.

  Daniel grinned. "Mr. Chewning?" he said. "Do you feel comfortable about landing us this time, over?"

  "Yes sir," said Chewning. "I mean, it's pretty straight, isn't it, sir? I mean, it looks pretty straight to me. Over."

  "And to me as well, Chewning," Daniel said, releasing his shock harness. "You have the conn. Break. Officer Mundy, I know we ought to be strapped in for a landing, but you and I need to get into our Dress Whites soonest, and that means getting started now. Six out."

  * * *

  The main hatch lowered with a wheezy sigh, swirling in the air of the Todos Santos. Hot steam had boiled from harbor water mixed with garbage and lubricants, and it was shot through with ozone.

  Adele smiled. She'd come to associate that complex of odors with safe landings. Smelling it again gave her a feeling of nostalgic warmth.

  Riggers were mooring the Princess Cecile bow and stern. Here in the entry compartment, a team of ship-side spacers under a petty officer tilted the gangplank out by hand and let it clang to the quay instead of bothering with the hydraulic extender. Two of them ran across and tied the shore end off to bitts. The horizon rose and fell gently as the corvette rocked on waves she'd created when she landed.

  Through the dissipating steam Adele could see an all-terrain ground vehicle, a bug of a body supported on four huge knitted-wire wheels, waiting on the quay. The front bench was open except for a roll cage mounting an automatic impeller, but the back was enclosed; the fenders bore stenciled Cinnabar markings.

  "Ready, master?" said Hogg, resplendent in pantaloons, a ruffed shirt, and a broad silk sash, in contrasting colors. He didn't carry a weapon openly—they were going to meet Cinnabar officials, not the benighted locals, after all. Except Adele knew the term in Hogg's mind was closer to "fucking wogs."

  Tovera was in an off-white pants suit. It sounded conspicuous, but the creamy fabric didn't glow even in bright sunshine and in the shade looked like a splotched wall. She carried her attaché case for no better reason than Daniel checked the set of his saucer hat: it was what you did when you left the ship.

  "Yes, I think we are," Daniel said, grinning at Adele. Hogg swaggered down the gangplank in a mixture of pride and truculence.

  They'd done great things in the North, but that was in the past; now they must deal with the present. The ordinary machinery of the RCN was concerned with the way things were accomplished as well as what the things were. Hogg, for all his blustering countryman's appearance, had a sophisticated awareness of the distinction: he'd have been hanged long since if he hadn't.

  Daniel strode toward the quay ahead of Adele as befit his rank. Tovera was last of all, the secretary too commonplace to notice—especially with Hogg in front to draw attention. The two made a good team, as good as Daniel and Adele did in their different fashion.

  Tovera understood the risks of doing the right thing the wrong way as clearly as Adele did, but neither of them cared enough about their own lives for that to matter. Daniel, on the other hand, loved life and pleasure as much as any other soul aboard the Princess Cecile. If all went well he'd be relaxing tonight just as his spacers did, with enough liquor to float the corvette and one or more air-headed bimbos to share it with him.

  But if Daniel knew with absolute certainty that doing the right and necessary thing would cause him to be executed by his own government, he'd do what he thought was right and necessary. Hogg would
be beside him, muttering that the master was a damned fool, and all the Sissies would be following.

  The car's driver got out as soon as Adele and Daniel started across the gangplank. At their approach he opened the door to the rear compartment.

  Hogg turned and raised an eyebrow toward Daniel. The driver said, "Why don't you servants ride up front with me, eh?"

  "Why don't you button your lip till we hear what the master wants, eh, boy?" Hogg said. His tone was pleasant enough despite the words.

  Adele glanced into the back of the vehicle. Cushioned seats faced one another in pairs; Lieutenant Wilsing sat in the middle, bending forward to look at them.

  "Come on up front with me, Hogg," Tovera said in an unusually loud voice for her. "I've met the gentleman. Mistress Mundy can handle any trouble that he causes."

  Daniel nodded smilingly to Hogg, then handed Adele into the seat and went around to the other side himself. The car started off as soon as he closed the door behind him. The tires made a ringing hum on the pavement.

  "Captain," Adele said, "this is Lieutenant Wilsing. You may remember him from when the Princess Cecile was fitting out in Harbor One."

  Adele had sent a coded report to the Kapila when she found a receiver to handshake with hers. She hadn't been certain until then that Mistress Sand's organization was participating in this operation, but she wasn't at all surprised that it was. This was clearly more than an RCN initiative.

  "Yes, I do," Daniel said in a distant tone that showed he not only remembered, he understood. "Good morning, Wilsing."

  "I'm an aide to Captain Carnolets, who's head of the RCN Ground Detachment here," Wilsing explained. "We've only been here two days, so matters are still being sorted out. Count Klimov arrived in Xenos on a Cinnabar freighter from Todos Santos, telling of how you'd located an Alliance squadron on Radiance. The Count had recovered the Earth Diamond here in the North, which proved he couldn't be entirely a crackpot."

  Wilsing spread his hands with a supercilious smile. "Admiral Anston took the report seriously enough to scrape together a squadron to set up a base on Todos Santos," he said. "And a civilian advisor—"

  Mistress Sand, obviously.

  "—convinced some important Senators that there should be an advisory mission to help Governor Sakama through the present difficult situation. He retains control of the Ten Star Cluster, of course, but well, we couldn't have the Alliance setting up a base here as well as on Radiance, could we?"

  "The Alliance squadron's been pretty well scotched," Daniel said. He cleared his throat. "The base on Gehenna's still usable, though, most of it. It's something Admiral Keith will need to deal with. Ah, that is, I assume the Admiral will want to prevent the Alliance from reoccupying the base."

  "Scotched?" Wilsing repeated in a rising tone that filled Adele with a mixture of embarrassment and fury. "Well, my goodness. If that's true, it's very fortunate. There was a good deal of concern as to how the Kapila was going to perform against two modern Alliance battleships. She'd been relegated to guardship duties, you know."

  "The lieutenant's statement is quite true," Adele said. "As one would expect of anything said by a Leary of Bantry, of course."

  Wilsing's tongue touched the corner of his mouth. "Of course," he said. "I—"

  "And as for concern, Wilsing," Daniel said, smiling but with a muscle at the back of his jaw jumping, "I doubt it was shared by any real RCN officer. The day an RCN battleship can't see off a couple wogs, I'll join the priesthood. Eh, Mundy?"

  "You'd look remarkably silly in robes, Captain," Adele said with a hard smile for Wilsing's benefit. "But I doubt either of us will live to see that happen."

  The vehicle slowed to a halt, its tires singing on a descending note. A section of street was closed off with razor ribbon and concrete barriers, guarded at each end by an armored vehicle mounting a plasma cannon and a squad of the Land Forces of the Republic.

  Wilsing nodded with a fixed smile. "The Ground Detachment has been granted these buildings by Governor Sakama," he said. "We'll walk from here, if you don't mind."

  Daniel laughed and got out the door Hogg opened for him. "Well, Mundy," he said. "It looks better than some of the places we've been together, doesn't it?"

  Arm in arm, and with their servants, they followed the discomfited Lieutenant Wilsing through the narrow entrance to the headquarters of the new government of the Ten Star Cluster.

  CHAPTER 34

  Ground Detachment Headquarters was a palace like that of her cousin Adrian, and it certainly hadn't been abandoned before the Cinnabar squadron arrived a few days ago. Somebody'd been touching up the frescoes on the ceiling of the entrance hall. The scaffolding remained, but work had stopped.

  Adele wondered who the owners had been and what they'd done to lose their home abruptly. They'd very likely lost their heads as well, which made her think of the Three Circles Conspiracy.

  "Adele?" Daniel said. She came alert, feeling a hot itch shudder momentarily just under her skin. A clerk of some kind was waiting expectantly for Daniel to go off with him, but Daniel was watching her with concern. "I'm to meet with a board, they say."

  "Sorry," Adele said. The smile on her lips didn't belong to her; nothing belonged to her, she'd died half a lifetime ago when she heard of her family's massacre. "I was daydreaming."

  "If you'll come with me, mistress," Lieutenant Wilsing said, "Captain Carnolets is waiting."

  He sounded concerned but no longer slickly supercilious. Adele's smile became real. Wilsing had learned something during the ride here. And she wasn't dead. She belonged to the RCN and to the Princess Cecile; and she belonged to herself again, because she had the respect of men and women whom she herself respected.

  "Good luck with your board, Captain," she said, nodding to Daniel. She had no idea what he was getting into; she simply hadn't had time to search records here. "I can provide any documentation you need, of course."

  "Thank you, Mundy," Daniel said. "And the best of luck to you as well. RCN forever, eh?"

  The clerk led him and Hogg past the guard of a ground floor room. Wilsing, seeing that she was ready to follow him, took Adele in the other direction and up three flights of stairs. Tovera followed silently.

  Adele heard voices and the sound of office machines in the rooms they passed, but the suite at the top of a corner tower was silent. A male secretary met Adele at the door. He bowed her in and remained outside with Wilsing and Tovera as he closed the door.

  The room was covered in overlaid rugs, a meter wide and three meters long, which must have come with the palace. The desk was crackle-finished metal with a smooth enameled top—straight RCN issue. It was large, but only because three identical modules had been dovetailed together.

  The man behind the desk was typing into a keypad while watching a holographic display. Simultaneously he spoke into a pickup with active sound cancelling: Adele saw his lips move, but she couldn't hear anything but the hum of the display as she walked toward the desk. The man nodded her to a puffy cushioned chair, part of the original furnishings, while continuing to speak silently.

  Adele brought out her handheld and searched the map database to learn who'd owned the property before the RCN moved in. In part she was interested in the answer, not that it was likely to mean anything to her; but it was also true that she didn't care to twiddle her thumbs while somebody else carried on with his own business. Carnolets was the military governor here, that was obvious; but she was Mundy of Chatsworth.

  Captain Carnolets was a tall, broad-shouldered man who'd stayed in shape despite being in his late sixties or older. He wore a 1st Class dress uniform with a considerable number of medal ribbons on both breasts. Adele wasn't expert in such things, but the varying size of the ribbons suggested to her that many of them were from foreign governments rather than the Republic itself.

  This palace was still listed as the property of Duchess Ayesha Ramos, a member of the Governor's Inner Council. Presumably the Duchess had given the wrong
advice recently, or perhaps Governor Sakama had simply needed a scapegoat to take the blame for something when an RCN squadron arrived.

  Adele glanced hard-faced about the room, taking in the statues in alcoves and the geometrical parquet of the ceiling. While it lasted, life had been pleasant for Duchess Ramos. Lucius Mundy might well have said the same thing.

  "All right, Mundy," Carnolets said, switching off his display to look across the desk at her unveiled. His expression probably seemed intimidating to many of those he interviewed. "Your report made interesting reading."

  Adele shrugged. After you've faced 15-cm plasma cannon, a scowling human holds few terrors. "Gathering the information was interesting also," she said. "Now that I've had time to digest the experience, that is. While it was going on I didn't feel much of anything."

  Carnolets frowned, then broke into a smile and slapped the desk ringingly. "Bernis Sand said you don't look like much but not to be fooled," he said. "That's right, isn't it?"

  "I don't know Mistress Sand as well as you appear to, Captain," Adele said, "but I'd be willing to take her word on most things."

  Carnolets nodded. "Aye," he said, "and so would anybody who matters in the Senate. That's why the Republic's as healthy as it is, a lot of folks say. I say it."

  Adele nodded without speaking, waiting for the captain to come to the point. There was a point, she felt certain, or he wouldn't be representing Mistress Sand.

  Carnolets drummed on his desk with the index and middle fingers of his right hand. "All right, Mundy, I've got your report, but it's not the same as being there. Give me—give us—your assessment of the Alliance threat remaining on Gehenna. Nobody's looking to take your job if you're wrong."