The Road of Danger

by David Drake

  “And you got out of that fine,” Daniel said. “Let’s go over the console together. And I packed light, but not so light that I didn’t find room for a bottle.”

  He was feeling such relief that his knees trembled. What with one thing and another, he’d had a lot of women screaming abuse at him over the years. While he wouldn’t say that he’d come to long for a quiet life, he did increasingly appreciate Miranda Dorst’s calm intelligence.

  “I’ve got one open,” Lindstrom said, turning with him toward the crew capsule. “Maybe we’ll move on to yours later.”

  After a step she added, “And call me Kiki, will you?”

  The hatch was only wide enough for one at a time. “Ma’am?” said Hogg as the owner led the way through.

  Daniel backed out of the way; Lindstrom paused and turned her head. Without warmth she said, “Right?”

  “D’ye have any guns aboard?” Hogg said. “I mean, for using. I don’t care what’s in the cargo.”

  “There’s a pair of carbines in the locker here,” she said, tapping the vertical chest starboard of the hatchway. “For when we’re on the ground on Sunbright, just in case. But I’m the only one with the key.”

  “Well, ma’am,” Hogg said, his eyes turned toward the deck. He was so perfectly the bashful rustic that Daniel wanted to burst out laughing. “I don’t know squat about consoles and electronics, but guns is different. I figure I could sit out here in the hold and go over the carbines so that I’m sure they work if we need them. Though you could do worse for a club, I suppose.”

  Lindstrom was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Right,” and fished out a key fob attached by a length of monocrystal line to a loop on her equipment belt. She touched it to the lock plate, then stepped into the crew capsule. Daniel followed her.

  The owner’s bunk had a railing so that it could be curtained off from the remainder of the tiny cabin, but the curtain itself was missing. A stack of four more bunks folded against the opposite bulkhead, battered outward because of the hull’s curve. The vertical space between bunks would be tight, but no worse than would have been the case in the midshipmen’s berth of a battleship.

  With Hogg aboard, there couldn’t be assigned bunks. That didn’t matter. The large crews of warships always shared bunks, and that was normally the case on smaller merchant vessels as well.

  Lindstrom sat on the edge of her bunk and reached under it, coming out with a bottle. She looked at Daniel and patted the bedding beside her.

  With careful nonchalance, Daniel walked past her and sat at the console as though he hadn’t noticed the invitation. Only after he had touched a few keys to bring up the system diagnostics did he turn beaming and say, “Kiki, this is a first-class piece of hardware! It’s not new, but I trained on older systems at the Academy. This is much better than I expected!”

  Daniel’s enthusiasm — perhaps a little exaggerated for effect, but the astrogation computer really was a solid unit — smoothed Lindstrom’s brief scowl away. She unstoppered the bottle, took a slug of its faintly violet contents, and offered it to Daniel. Because the compartment was so small, he didn’t have to rise from the console to take it.

  “We gutted the Savoy and replaced all the controls,” Lindstrom said, warming. “The hull was fine and the rigging was too, except for the cordage — we replaced that. The only problem’s been the bloody fusion bottle.”

  Daniel sipped the liquor and sluiced it around the inside of his mouth to get the flavor. It was smooth, though from the tingle, he suspected that it was roughly the same proof as industrial alcohol from the Power Room. It had the floral taste which its color suggested.

  He swallowed. The aftertaste reminded him of a wreath left over from a funeral held some weeks past. He took two proper swallows and handed the bottle back.

  “I don’t think we’ll have serious problems,” Daniel said honestly. “Your spacers are experienced, and I’ll have a chance to get to know them on the leg to Cremona. Getting through the patrols above Sunbright will be a little trickier, sure, but I know how difficult it is to intercept a little yawl like this in anything but a dedicated pirate-cruiser with a crew which knows its business. I won’t promise, exactly, but, well — ”

  He grinned, but what he was about to say was the truth if ever he’d spoken it.

  “ — I’d be pretty disappointed if somebody trained on Novy Sverdlovsk could do a better job of ship handling than a Cinnabar Academy graduate.”

  An amber light pulsed from behind, flooding the compartment and startling Daniel. He jumped to his feet and turned; his left arm was out with the fingers spread, prepared to block whatever had started to happen.

  The console display had been pearly and neutral; now it sequenced from bright amber to black. Daniel lowered his arm sheepishly and said, “What is that, mistress?”

  “That’s an incoming call,” said Lindstrom, rising to her feet also. “But it’s the landline, so it must be a wrong number. I haven’t given the number to anybody; I just use it to call out.”

  There’s one person who could find an address that everybody else thinks is secret, Daniel thought. He sat at the console, his back to the owner, and brought up a menu.

  “What are you doing?” Lindstrom asked.

  The incoming call was an icon to the right. Daniel opened it. Without hesitation, Adele’s voice said, “I need to speak to Lieutenant Pensett immediately. This is Principal Hrynko, and I need him at once.”

  “Speaking, Lady Hrynko,” Daniel said, as smoothly as if they had rehearsed the routine. “Go ahead.”

  “On the basis of information given by a man named Petrov,” Adele said, “a platoon of marines is coming to search the Savoy and arrest you. If they find contraband, that is, and I gather that they will. They’re not treating this as an emergency, though, so you have at least an hour to return here. Ah, where you’ll be welcome, of course.”

  Daniel felt his lips purse as he considered. Changing from his initial wording — of course Adele was sure he would have at least an hour, because she wouldn’t have said so otherwise — he said, “Warn me if there’s a change in the troops’ schedule, if you please. I’ll be here, and I’ve — ”

  He brought the whole communication’s suite live.

  “ — switched on the microwave in case something happens to the landline. I believe we can lift off comfortably ahead of their arrival. S — ”

  He caught himself.

  “Pensett, that is, out.”

  “If you say so, Master Pensett,” Adele said. Her voice was as cold and dry as a desert night. She broke the connection.

  “What’s going on?” Lindstrom said. She had heard the whole conversation, but she obviously hadn’t been able to take it in. “They won’t arrest us. Do you know how much money I’ve put in the hands of the port commissioner?”

  “Hogg!” Daniel called, but his servant already stood in the interior hatchway. He held one carbine muzzle-upward by the grip like a large pistol, and the other by the fore-end, butt toward Daniel.

  “We won’t need those, Hogg,” Daniel said tartly. “I don’t propose that you and I fight the Fleet by ourselves. Or even one cruiser squadron.”

  He turned to the owner, who was now gaping at Hogg instead of at Hogg’s master. He said, “Kiki, do you know where your men will be now?”

  “Pretty much,” she said. “I’ve been doling out their pay from the last run at a bit each night so they don’t wind up broke or dead right away. There’s maybe a half-dozen bars along the water that they might be at, starting with El Greco’s.”

  “Find them,” Daniel said. “Get them aboard fast. Hogg, escort her in case somebody needs convincing or is just too drunk to walk.”

  “As the master says,” Hogg murmured. He disappeared into the entry hold. The arms locker banged closed a moment later.

  “What are you doing, Pensett?” Lindstrom said. “They can’t be coming to arrest us, I tell you!”

  If Adele says that’s what’s hap
pening, Daniel thought, it’s happening. I’d believe her over a choir of angels singing otherwise.

  Aloud he said, “I’ll be running through liftoff checks and making sure the tanks are topped off. Now, move it! You have forty-five minutes. I don’t care if the men come aboard drunk, but I’ll lift short-handed if I have to.”

  Lindstrom opened her mouth, perhaps to object that she owned the Savoy. She deflated and turned silently toward the hatch. Hogg said, “Shake a leg, sister! You heard the young master!” But the prodding was unnecessary.

  Daniel started the pumps that circulated reaction mass to the plasma thrusters and studied the flow. There was corrosion or a pinch in the line to the number one thruster, but it wasn’t serious enough to change his plans. He began to whistle.

  Father and I went down to camp, along with Captain Bony . . .

  He felt very much alive.

  CHAPTER 15

  Ashetown on Madison

  Adele, seated at the Battle Direction Center console she had appropriated, watched imagery of the Savoy lifting off. Exhaust curling upward from the plasma thrusters curtained the blockade runner, though the ship was generally visible as something between a shadow and a lumpy cylindrical shape. It was thirty-seven minutes after Principal Hrynko had warned Kirby Pensett that his ship might be seized.

  I wondered whether — I doubted whether — Daniel was correct in believing that he could get away in an hour. I’ll apologize when we’re next together.

  The BDC was an armored box of irregular shape, designed to protect the equipment and personnel within to the greatest degree possible. As with the Power Room, there were no piercings to weaken its structure save for the hatch onto the corridor.

  Cory and Cazelet had gone to the wardroom, just forward of the Battle Direction Center on the starboard side. That compartment had an external hatch from which the two officers were watching Daniel lift off. They wore RCN goggles whose lenses would filter the dangerous actinics and could magnify the image if they chose to.

  Adele considered the situation with part of her mind. Cory and Cazelet were spacers. They used holographic displays constantly and with great skill, but they were even more at home on the hull of a ship in the Matrix — directly viewing not just stars but the very cosmos in its majesty.

  Adele was a librarian. Given the option, she preferred to observe her surroundings through an electronic interface. The male officers were doing the same thing — their goggles were as surely electronic as the console at which Adele sat — but they were subconsciously counterfeiting direct observation.

  A smile almost reached her lips. Cory and Cazelet were her students, but she had not turned them into her clones. For that, the RCN — and their RCN careers — could be thankful.

  Nor was either of them a particularly good shot. They should be thankful for that.

  Another alert throbbed on her sidebar. She opened it as text, though she kept Daniel’s liftoff as background to the message.

  The signal was from Forty Stars HQ to the Estremadura in distant orbit, but it was routed through Platt’s station as a cut-out to protect the identity of the initial sender. Though Platt and Commander Doerries were careful about communications security, Adele had retrieved their internal codes as part of her haul from Platt’s sanctum. She now could read the contents instead of just knowing that there had been a message.

  Doerries — whom she had identified with certainty from reviewing Platt’s records — was ordering the Estremadura not to disturb the Savoy. Adele had not yet determined what game — or games — Doerries was playing with the blockade runners, but he apparently had his reasons for wanting the Savoy to get through.

  That was all very well, since Adele very much wished Daniel to have a safe trip also. Unfortunately, because Adele had destroyed the retransmission station and killed its operator, the message was not going to reach the Estremadura.

  Dropping the clutter of the Savoy’s liftoff from her display, Adele instructed one head of the Sissie’s stern microwave cluster to lock on to the lurking cruiser — and froze. Doerries had placed this message at his highest security level. Instead of sending it through the planetary satellite network, it had to go by direct microwave link. The handshake between the systems was achieved through a pair of randomizing chips which were identical at the molecular level.

  I can’t duplicate the signature. The necessary chip in Platt’s station was irretrievable, even if it hadn’t cracked from heat stress during the short circuits.

  She would punish herself at leisure for her mistake — for her choice; it hadn’t been a mistake, because she had made the correct judgment under the circumstances. If the choice cost Daniel his life, she would punish herself till she died, and that day couldn’t come soon enough. For now, though, she had to mitigate the damage.

  Adele switched to the laser transmitter. It wasn’t ideal — there wasn’t a good way to communicate with a ship lifting off — but it was more practical to punch coherent light through the optical haze of the exhaust than it was to drive microwaves through the RF hash caused by the volume of ions changing state.

  “Savoy, this is Hrynko,” Adele said, her voice as dry as salt fish. “Respond at once. I repeat, respond at once, over!”

  * * * *

  “ — at once, over!” Daniel’s commo helmet said in what he believed was Adele’s voice. The helmet eliminated static from the signal, but it could only fill in the holes with flat approximations of what the algorithm decided were the missing particles.

  “This is Savoy,” he said. The helmet wasn’t his personal unit from the Sissie — that had Six stencilled above the visor — but it was RCN standard. It wouldn’t strike anyone as unusual that a lieutenant dumped out on half pay would manage to liberate a commo helmet before he strode down the gangplank for the last time. “Go ahead, Hrynko, over.”

  Starships didn’t — couldn’t — accelerate very quickly. Not only were they underpowered for the purpose, accelerations more than three gees would torque the hull even of a warship and leave a trail of rigging in the wake as tubes sheared and clamps vibrated off.

  Civilian vessels were even less sprightly than warships. The Savoy was straining upward at less than two gees, as much as her three thrusters could manage. Daniel could have walked about the cabin if that were necessary; holding a normal conversation wasn’t a strain.

  “Savoy, the Estremadura was alerted twelve hours ago to make a particular effort to capture you,” Adele said, her voice sounding even more emotionless than usual. “The information provided to the Estremadura includes the four alternative course plans in your computer for the route from here to Cremona. The cruiser entered the Matrix as soon as imagery of your liftoff reached its location three light-seconds out. Ah, over.”

  “Roger, Hrynko,” Daniel said, smiling in fond amusement. “Thank you for the warning. I think we should be able to put matters right shortly. Savoy out.”

  He realized that though Adele might worry in part because the patrolling cruiser was targeting the Savoy, most of her concern was because she herself wasn’t aboard the blockade runner to work some sort of magic. Perhaps she would have come up with some amazing trick — she certainly had before — but Daniel didn’t imagine it would be necessary. A yawl commanded by Captain Daniel Leary, RCN, ought to be able to run circles around the yokels here in the Macotta Region.

  The Savoy’s only acceleration couch was his on the command console. The four crewmen — West and Hargate wore the ship’s two rigging suits — were seated on the folded-down bottom bunk, and Hogg was on Kiki’s couch with her. He sat at the foot and wasn’t being overcompanionable, but Daniel knew that his servant hadn’t asked her before he chose his location.

  He thought of warning the others, but the Savoy didn’t have a PA system. Nor was there room for the whole console to rotate as it was designed to do, and Daniel wasn’t willing to turn the seat alone at this juncture: he needed to keep his eyes on the display more than he needed to keep the
others abreast of what he was doing.

  The Savoy was thirty miles above Madison’s surface. If Daniel had been commanding an RCN ship, he would have switched to the High Drive by now to conserve reaction mass. On a commercial vessel there were other factors to consider. The throats of Savoy’s High Drive motors were already badly eroded. It made sense to minimize the further damage inevitable when antimatter atoms which hadn’t combined in the reaction chamber flared into an atmosphere.

  Daniel finally shut down the thrusters. Instead of switching directly to the High Drive, he adjusted controls to bring the electrical balance of the yawl’s surface as close to zero as possible.

  “Preparing to insert!” he shouted. He wasn’t sure if anybody but Hogg — who had covered his ears — could hear him. Though the ship was simply coasting on inertia, the thrusters’ roar had been numbing to unprotected hearing. Like most civilian spacers, the Savoy’s crew didn’t bother with pansy frills like sound-cancelling earphones or even earplugs.

  “Pensett, what are you doing?” demanded Lindstrom, who must have heard something after all.

  “Inserting!” Daniel said as he pressed the red Execute button. The console was so old that the keyboard was real instead of virtual, and the tactile thunk through his thumb was immensely satisfying.

  The yawl slipped from normal space into the Matrix. The physical sensations accompanying the change of state were entirely imaginary and in Daniel’s case had differed on each of the by-now thousands of times that they had occurred. This time he felt as though he had dropped fifty feet, been brought up short by a rope anchored in his solar plexus, and then dropped twice more in similar fashion.

  He leaned back on the acceleration couch, gasping and hoping that his insides would settle down before long. Knowing that the experience was purely psychological didn’t make it any less real — or exhausting.