The Road of Danger

by David Drake

  Adele sniffed. “My officers in that case, I believe, Lieutenant Pensett,” she said.

  She checked to be sure that her automated systems were harvesting communications: between Macotta HQ and the ships of the squadron, and among the ships themselves. The systems were, of course, and she wouldn’t lose anything by waiting to review the data until they were in the Matrix.

  She said, “All right, since we’re both superfluous to the vessel’s requirements at the moment, I propose to brief you on Sunbright.”

  “I’m in your hands, Lady Hrynko,” Daniel said, then chuckled. “During the voyage, I’ll read the files you’ve compiled, but I’d appreciate an oral précis.”

  This is my duty, Adele thought as she hesitated a moment to organize the data in her mind. Not to brief Daniel, but to entertain him when he’s feeling uncomfortable because he’s removed himself from his normal duties.

  Pasternak had completed his individual thruster checks. He and Vesey — Captain Vesey — were discussing Unit E with a minuteness that irritated Adele despite the mere shadow of attention she gave it.

  The ship’s officers were obviously just as uncomfortable performing in front of Daniel as he was in watching them do so. She hoped that Vesey and the others would shed that overcaution when they were on their own; even a signals officer/librarian could see that E’s three-percent-below-average output was insignificant in any real sense.

  “The administrative capital, Saal, is the part of Sunbright which is really under Alliance control,” Adele said as strands of data settled into place. “Saal includes the starport and the logistics base — ”

  “The base whose construction set off the rebellion?” Daniel said.

  “The causes of the revolt are more complex than that,” Adele said. “But the influx of construction workers and staff was certainly a factor.”

  She coughed and went on. “In any case, Saal is more extensive than even its population, some twenty percent of the planet’s total, implies. There’s a fence and bunker line, so though rebels certainly get in and out of the city, they’re unlikely to attempt a head-on attack.”

  She had almost said, “They wouldn’t attempt a head-on attack.” That was the sort of thing that people said when they didn’t think, since even a little reflection would remind them that people often did equally wild things — and that sometimes the attempts succeeded, because their enemy had been caught completely off guard.

  It irritated Adele to — almost — speak thoughtlessly. Irritation was almost the only constant in her life, however, so perhaps she should probably be thankful for the near blunder.

  With her lips forming the shadow of a smile, Adele continued. “There are Alliance administrators for all the communities, and often they actually live in these communities.”

  “Often they do?” Daniel said.

  “Yes, though of course some administrators prefer to remain in Saal and carry out their duties electronically,” she explained. “But ordinarily they won’t have any problems with the rebels if they keep out of the way during the hours of darkness and more generally avoid rocking the boat. So to speak.”

  Daniel’s image was frowning. “So basically,” he said, “the government, the administration imposed from Pleasaunce, controls the Fleet base. Which is really the only thing which is really important to the Alliance.”

  “Yes,” said Adele, pleased again by her friend’s quick understanding. “The Alliance problem is that the population outside Saal is large enough and — thanks to Freedom — hostile enough to require a very expensive garrison for that base.”

  Two thrusters, balanced bow and stern, lighted again. This was the start of liftoff procedure.

  Adele shrugged. “I suspect that Guarantor Porra and his advisors would willingly give up all revenue from Sunbright rice — pink rice, it’s known in the trade — if they could get rid of the rebellion. But at this point a significant element of the population would continue to attack Alliance facilities even if the government withdrew from everywhere but Saal itself. And anyway — ”

  Adele checked the list of Alliance officials on Sunbright to make sure of the name.

  “ — Governor Blaskett appears to be too hard-line to consider backing down. I would say that he has at least as much to do with the rebellion as Freedom does.”

  “Rice smuggling funds the rebels?” Daniel said.

  Adele wondered if he particularly wanted to learn that information or if he were simply “showing interest.” Probably the former, since the Princess Cecile was not proceeding directly to Sunbright as they had worked to convince everyone on Kronstadt that they were. Getting into the rebel structure through their suppliers would be a good method, if it were possible.

  All eight of thrusters were running now, but their nozzles were flared to waste their energy into the water of the harbor. The roar was nonetheless visceral, and enveloping steam shook the corvette.

  “I can’t find any other source of funds,” Adele said. Her tone was neutral, but the fact galled her. “Obviously the available records on smuggling are partial. Available to me, but I think to anyone; there’s no centralized control, and even when I get the Sunbright records — ”

  She had no doubt that she would have those records eventually.

  “ — they’ll only give a further portion of the whole.”

  She pressed her lips together sourly, then went on. “I think rice smuggling and raids on stockpiles on Sunbright itself probably equip the rebels’ current operations. They don’t explain the initial investment, the start-up funds, which must have been considerable. There were mobile anti-ship missiles around the export warehouse at Tidy when the first group of interloping traders landed to pick up the rice. A missile destroyed the gunboat Panther when it approached to capture the smugglers.”

  Daniel’s face went perfectly blank. “I see,” he said. “Yes, that does imply a considerable initial outlay.”

  Then he said, “Adele, is it possible that Cinnabar is behind this rebellion? Because to be perfectly honest, I don’t see anywhere that the funds could have come from without government involvement.”

  “Yes, that’s possible,” Adele said; bluntly honest, because she was bluntly honest. On a matter of such importance, there was no option anyway. “I find no evidence that rogue elements in the Macotta bureaucracy are involved, but I’ll continue to look.”

  “Yes,” said Daniel. “And if you find that is the case, we’ll deal with it ourselves. Since we won’t be able to trust the local authorities.”

  He laughed. “You know?” he added. “I’m rather glad that Admiral Cox handed us this mission. It sounds as though it may be more interesting than anything that our friends in the Macotta Squadron are going to find on Tattersall.”

  “Liftoff!” said Captain Vesey. The thruster petals closed; the Princess Cecile shuddered, starting to rise again to the stars.

  CHAPTER 6

  Point ME8*9JB

  Daniel stood with Cazelet on the topgallant crosstrees of the Ring D dorsal antenna, watching mixed teams of riggers and techs from the ship’s side shift the port and starboard Ring F antennas sternward by thirty inches. Woetjans was in charge of the operation, with Vesey on the ground taking direction and learning from the bosun’s years of experience.

  “Does staggering the F Ring really make the ship more maneuverable, sir?” Cazelet asked, his eyes on the scene below. He was up here because he had a view of the whole operation and could direct the teams if they needed it. Daniel liked the view from high up a mast, but he was here today because it put him with Cazelet in privacy.

  A diamond saw screamed, cutting the last bolt head off the Port F mast step. Six spacers, in rigging suits without helmets, held the cables which would support the heavy step when Woetjans herself broke the grip of the rust which would continue to hold it.

  “Well, I can’t say, Cazelet,” Daniel admitted. “I’ve never been aboard a ship with this rig, not till now. Nobody but some Kostromans use it,
and not many of them in this generation. But there’ve been some great Kostroman spacers.”

  Rigging suits — hard suits — were stiffened with fiber. The armor could turn strands of frayed cable which would tear an airsuit and the flesh beneath. Hard suits wouldn’t save a spacer who was under a falling spar, but wearing them was a reasonable safety precaution for the present sort of job.

  Daniel grinned. Woetjans — predictably — didn’t think hard suits were necessary; Vesey had overruled the bosun. That was good, because otherwise Six would have had to reappear aboard the Sissie for long enough to give the order himself. He wasn’t going to have his people crippled because Woetjans thought any concession to safety was a form of cowardice.

  Cazelet had been leaning over to look down. He straightened and bent backward, rubbing the small of his back with both hands.

  Daniel grinned. The midshipman was balancing on steel tubing almost a hundred feet above the curve of the hull, and the hull’s eighty feet more above the sheet of solid ice on which the Sissie stood.

  ME8*9JB was a charted location, not a name. The planet had a breathable atmosphere and vast quantities of water in the form of ice, but there was no other encouragement to colonization and no indigenous life. Ships stopped here often to replenish their reaction mass, and a number never rose again; half a dozen were visible from the crosstrees, metallic glints against the glacier. Using his visor’s magnification, Daniel saw that the hulks had been stripped. Some had even lost sections of hull plating, leaving the frames bare.

  “This is the sort of place you only land if you’re having trouble,” said Cazelet, surveying their surroundings. Basalt ridges thrust up a mile to east and west of the corvette, channeling the slow river of ice; snowfields stretched beyond, occasionally marked by another black peak. The sun was a tiny blue-white dot in the high sky. “Sometimes the problem won’t be soluble.”

  “But eventually,” Daniel said, “somebody else with a problem will land, and maybe you can make one ship out of the parts of two or three.”

  Cazelet’s comment had been intelligent and on point. He’d entered the RCN as a midshipman by Daniel’s dispensation. The boy hadn’t been trained in the Academy, but experience he’d gained while working up from the bottom in his family’s shipping firm, Phoenix Starfreight, made him the superior of ordinary midshipmen in many aspects. The main gap in Cazelet’s learning, missile tactics, was something that —

  Daniel grinned.

  — Captain Leary was as well-suited to teach as anyone in the Academy.

  “That’s a penterio,” Cazelet said, pointing his extended left arm toward the ship farthest to the south in the ice stream. “None of them have been built since Santander rebelled against the Alliance a hundred and more years ago.”

  Daniel raised his magnification. Penterios displaced about five hundred tonnes and carried cargo externally on a spiderweb of spars and cables. That netting spread the vessel’s weight and kept her from sinking out of sight in the decades or longer in which she must have rested on the ice.

  “I landed on Santander once,” Cazelet continued, “while I was purser on the Kelly Maid. It’s a thriving place now — in a small way, of course. It was re-colonized from Pleasaunce and Greenhome after the reorganization which followed the mutiny.”

  He turned toward Daniel; Daniel turned his head also, to meet the younger man’s eyes. Cazelet said, “The old culture was completely gone, of course. Not enough of the original population survived to maintain it.”

  “Yes,” said Daniel, looking down at the rerigging.

  He had learned when he was very young that it was a bad idea to discuss matters of academic interest to you with someone to whom they have great emotional weight. He was well aware of the brutality of the Alliance of Free Stars in dealing with what its leaders considered rebellion.

  Rene Cazelet, however, was an orphan because Guarantor Porra had decided his parents were a threat to the state. He had come to Adele as a suppliant, sent by his grandmother, to whom Adele owed a debt of gratitude; and Adele had asked her friend Captain Leary to find a place for the boy.

  Daniel grinned slightly. The RCN, and the Princess Cecile in particular, had gained a very useful officer through that turn of events.

  He wasn’t about to discuss brutal suppression of dissent with Cazelet, however. Corder Leary, Daniel’s father, had put down the Three Circles Conspiracy in a thoroughly savage manner, after all; as Adele, also an orphan, could testify.

  Woetjans was shouting triumphant directions to the crew on the cable. They shuffled sternward, bringing the step along with them. The bosun planned to set the base into its new position on the hull directly; the holes were already drilled, and a senior technician waited with a drift punch the length of her forearm to slide it the last quarter inch into place.

  Cazelet cleared his throat. Looking at the distant horizon rather than Daniel, he said, “Ah, sir?”

  Daniel turned toward him. “Yes, Cazelet?” he said gently.

  “Ah, you may know that Lieutenant Vesey and I have been seeing one another socially,” Cazelet said. The air was bitter, and gusts of wind sent snow dancing over the ice sheet, but sweat was beading his forehead and his cheeks were flushed. “When we’re on the ground and off duty, that is. We’ve tried to be discreet about it.”

  “Go on, Cazelet,” Daniel said. He thought, I’d be a bloody poor commanding officer if I didn’t know that, midshipman.

  “Well, I just wanted you to know that because Elspeth, that’s Lieutenant Vesey, is captain of the . . . the House of Hrynko now, we decided it wouldn’t be proper that we continue seeing one another,” Cazelet said. He glared at the horizon as though he wanted to eviscerate it with a grappling hook. “Even on the ground. Because the captain isn’t ever off duty, not really.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, Cazelet,” said Daniel, as mildly as he’d spoken before. “Because that means I don’t have to transfer you to becoming the officer in charge of sewage lagoons on, say, Aristogeiton’s World.”

  “Sir?” Cazelet said in surprise, his face jerking around to meet Daniel’s eyes.

  “I believed you both had good judgment,” Daniel said. Nobody watching them, even with magnification, would imagine they were discussing anything of more emotional significance than the Sissie’s sail plan. “But if I were wrong about one or both of you, well, I’d correct my mistake. A commanding officer cannot be sleeping with a subordinate on a ship as small as this one.”

  “No, sir,” Cazelet said. He swallowed. “Anyway, you weren’t wrong. I — thank you for letting us think it through ourselves, sir.”

  Daniel nodded mildly and returned his attention to the teams beneath. “Got it!” shouted a technician. One, then two, impact drivers began to burr home the bolts anchoring the repositioned mast step.

  Daniel wondered if Cazelet fully understood the risks he’d faced if he hadn’t made the correct decision. The boy was Lady Mundy’s protégé. If he had let his behavior risk the safety of Adele’s new family — the crew of the Princess Cecile — she might have treated the breach as a matter of honor.

  Rene Cazelet would not have survived that decision.

  * * * *

  “Ma’am?” said Cory, rotating his seat at the astrogation console to face Adele. “I’d like you to look at this.”

  He was facing her back, of course. She didn’t bother to turn, and Cory knew her too well to expect that she would. If he was more comfortable looking at her back than he would be speaking to her holographic face, that was his business.

  While Vesey and Cazelet — along with Daniel — were involved on the Sissie’s exterior with the rerigging, Cory was on watch on the bridge. Because he was a good officer — in part because Adele had trained him — he was using the time for work rather than games or pornography.

  “Yes,” she said aloud, adjusting her display to echo that of the astrogation console.

  Adele didn’t mind being called away from her analysis of rice p
roduction — according to official statistics — on Sunbright over the past ten years, broken down by district. All information was potentially valuable, as well as being worthy for its own sake, in Adele’s opinion. That said, the practical benefit of these data was yet to be proven.

  Cory had been looking at a pattern rendered in sepia monochrome. Lines ran roughly from top left to bottom right, crossing occasional beads of varied shape. It was unintelligible without context: Adele could imagine it being anything from a graph to a magnified view of the fabric of her trousers.

  She started to follow the current image back through its history to determine what it was. Before — momentarily before — she executed that plan, she caught herself and smiled wryly. She turned to face Cory, punishing herself for so determinedly shutting out the RCN family of which she was — by the gift of fate, because she didn’t believe in gods — a member.

  I don’t really believe in fate, either. Well, in luck, then. I certainly believe in luck.

  “Please tell me what we’re looking at, Cory,” she said.

  “Well, ma’am,” Cory said. He turned to his display and highlighted a faceted lump in the flow of lines. “If you’ll take a look here.”

  Adele thankfully returned to her display also. Signals officer was a junior warrant rank, equivalent to bosun’s mate and several steps below a commissioned lieutenant like Cory. Despite that, he and Cazelet treated Adele as though they were young boys and she was dowager matriarch of their family.

  The attitude of the enlisted personnel, including Woetjans and Pasternak, was simpler yet: they were peasants, and Lady Mundy was mistress of the estate. That bore no resemblance to proper RCN protocol, and it certainly wasn’t anything Adele encouraged.