The Road of Danger

by David Drake

  Freedom was so lost in his own problems that Daniel might not have gotten a reaction if he’d stuck his thumbs in his ears and waggled his fingers. “But it all went wrong,” the rebel said miserably. “We didn’t take Saal immediately as I’d hoped, but the rest went to plan. We took most of the planet like water soaking into a cloth. Blaskett couldn’t stop us, and Pleasaunce couldn’t send him more troops in the middle of a war with Cinnabar.”

  He raised his hands, apparently gesturing to an unseen audience. “I thought it was just a matter of time before the Alliance evacuated Saal and the people of Sunbright could work out their own destiny!”

  “Instead Saal held out,” Daniel said. That was a foregone conclusion when disorganized militia faced regular troops in prepared positions. The first rush might have succeeded, but when it didn’t, the chances of a rebel military victory evaporated. “And the armed bands that you’d created found that it was easier to take the rice themselves rather than to fight Alliance soldiers in pillboxes. Before long, most of your forces were mercenaries or opportunists, I suspect.”

  “It was worse than that,” Freedom said. He was a healthy, well-fed young man, but Daniel had seen prisoners in labor camps who looked less wretched. “And I didn’t set up all the bands, but I made them possible, yes. Don’t think I don’t know that.”

  He met Daniel’s eyes. He said, “Brutes have become warlords, and the farmers are slaves. I wanted to get rid of Blaskett, but I’ve created a hundred Blasketts, and each one is worse than the one before. And there’s nothing I can do!”

  Daniel considered the situation. Freedom’s political naivety startled him, though not in itself: he had learned about practical politics in his cradle as the son of Speaker Leary, but he understood that most people didn’t have such a background.

  The surprise was that this young innocent, Daniel would have said, had done such a brilliant job of setting off the rebellion. The fact that Freedom hadn’t understood what he was doing didn’t detract from the skill with which he had done it. And even now, without Freedom’s coordination, government forces should be able to recover Sunbright with the modest increase in forces which the Treaty of Amiens made possible.

  “Sir?” Daniel said. “You’re confirming what I was told aboard the blockade runner that brought me here. But I think Sunbright will settle down if you leave; and anyway, you won’t have to watch it get worse. It certainly will get worse, I’m afraid, if you continue to direct the rebellion. You’re really very good at it, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “I can’t leave,” Freedom said. He sounded as though he had just announced that his infant son was terminally ill. “Don’t think I wouldn’t have done that, but — ”

  He jerked his head backward without actually turning to face or point toward Captain Kidlinger.

  “ — I’m never alone when I’m around ships. Except in Saal, I mean. The blockade runners only land where they’ll be protected by the missile batteries, so the gangs are always around. Even if I could convince a ship captain to take me aboard, the gangs trading with them wouldn’t permit it. I’m pretty sure that they’d kill me and hide my body rather than let the government use me for propaganda against them.”

  He grimaced. “Kidlinger would kill me,” he said. “He’d like to kill me now, I think, but he still imagines that he can rule Sunbright some day.”

  Daniel smiled wryly. He had expected the rebel leader to produce some altruistic reason why he couldn’t abandon “his suffering people” here on Sunbright. Daniel wasn’t an expert on accents like Adele, but he’d give odds that Freedom’s voice still carried a hint of an upper-class Xenos drawl.

  Aloud he said, “You mentioned Saal, sir. Can you get into the city?”

  Freedom looked at him. He said, “Can you get me off planet, Lieutenant Pensett?”

  “If you can get into Saal, sir,” Daniel said, “I think I should be able to arrange something. I gather you can?”

  “Yes,” said Freedom. With sudden decision, he said, “Pensett, I’m going to tell you something that nobody else on this planet knows. My name is Tomas Grant, and I’m the field supervisor of the Saal Water Department.”

  A deputy department head would have access to the main governmental database . . . and if that deputy was a little more computer savvy than most of his municipal peers, it explained how the Sunbright rebels had gathered such extremely good intelligence from the start of the rebellion.

  Daniel smiled slowly. Freedom — Grant — looked as stiff as if he were tied to a post to wait for the firing party.

  “Fair is fair, Master Grant,” Daniel said. “My real name is Daniel Leary. I’m an RCN captain on active duty, and I’m here to get you safely off Sunbright. I have a reputation for carrying out my assignments.”

  That was a case of Daniel shading the truth. His orders said nothing about keeping Freedom safe. But he was Captain Daniel Leary, and by now his superiors should be expecting him to exceed his orders.

  CHAPTER 21

  Halta City on Cremona

  By the time the elevator thumped to rest on the ground floor of the warehouse, red strobes in the ceiling were pulsing while a musical but penetrating gong tolled. The light blurred through the dust of the building’s interior, turning the drab space into an angry dawn.

  Adele felt silly walking around with the pistol in her hand, so she returned it to her pocket. She knew from experience that she would be able to get it out quickly enough if the situation required her to do so.

  The workmen Adele passed as she followed Brock’s quick strides hadn’t paid any attention to the pistol, however, nor to the more obtrusive weapons which her companions carried. Equipment was shutting down in response to the alarm, so the building was somewhat quieter than it had been when she and Tovera entered.

  An amplified voice called, “All employees report to your section manager at once! Report to your section manager at once!”

  Adele thought it was Brock’s grandson speaking, but distortion from multiple speakers and the building’s bad acoustics kept her from being certain. The delay before the general announcement was enough to have allowed him to give instructions to the foremen before he sent the common laborers to them.

  Three trucks were backed into the loading dock: a flatbed which had arrived with a pair of sealed shipping cubes, a hopper truck into which pink rice was pouring from an overhead spout, and a three-axle vehicle with four-foot sides of corrugated steel around the bed. Brock went to the last.

  The truck driver stood on the dock, looking concerned as the cargo handler who’d been with him disappeared inside at the loudspeaker’s summons. A double pallet of eight-inch piping hung from an overhead track, ready to be swung onto the bed.

  “Tony, I’m going to borrow your truck,” Brock said to the driver. “I’ll square it with Norgay, or else Klaus will if I don’t get around to it. Okay?”

  “Okay, Brock,” the driver said; his eyes were on the big pistol whose grip protruded above the outfitter’s waistband. “Hey, is everything okay? What’s going on?”

  Brock stepped onto the truck bed, then gripped the side with both hands and swung over to stand on a back tire. He stepped from the tire to the running board and from there opened the driver’s side door.

  “We’ve got a bloody ratfuck for the moment, Tony,” he called to the driver, “but me and my friends here’re going to straighten Mangravite out. Then it’ll be fine.”

  “Whatever you say, Brock,” the driver said with nervous brightness. “Hey, I’m sure not going to bet against you!”

  Adele had detoured to the flight of steps at the other end of the high dock; her boot soles pattered on the concrete. Tovera remained on the platform, trying to watch in all directions. She held her submachine gun close to her chest, where its outline wouldn’t be immediately obvious.

  “Shake a leg, both of you!” Brock said. Adele opened the cab door and slid in. There was plenty of room for concealment under the dash if she curled he
r legs under her.

  Tovera stepped into the truck bed. She reached for the gate with her left hand.

  “Here, you can’t lift that alone,” the driver said, bending to help her. Before he touched it, Tovera straightened, pivoting the gate upward to clang shut; the catches snicked home.

  Brock chuckled. He twisted the handle of the hand brake, then let its tensioning spring pull it open.

  “Next stop, Halta Harbor,” he said as he lifted the transmission lock from its detent. His foot settled onto the throttle. Motors whined; the truck accelerated slowly but as smoothly as a falling rock.

  “I took this one because she’s got electric motors in each wheel hub,” Brock said, pitching his voice so that Adele could hear him over the chorus of whines. “Don’t get me wrong — I could handle any of them. I started out in this business driving a diesel with a crunch box. But I figured not having to worry about missing a shift right now was maybe a good thing.”

  Adele, under the dashboard, twisted so that she could look at Brock. She was pleased to see that he was watching the road and keeping his hands on the big, nearly horizontal wheel as he spoke.

  “I see,” she said. “You’re the expert, so of course I accept your decision.”

  She didn’t really see. Why would the outfitter, who was driving into a gunfight with apparent willingness, be concerned that a stranger thought him unmanly for choosing a vehicle with a transmission that was less difficult to manipulate than those of the other options?

  Adele would say that she didn’t understand men, which was true; but that might imply that she did understand women, which certainly was not true. She had often thought that humans were an interesting species, but that she wasn’t a member of it.

  Brock swore softly, switching the weight of his foot to the back of the single, center-pivoted control pedal. The whining changed note and grew louder; each separate motor was turning the truck’s inertia into electricity which it pumped back into the capacitors. Daniel had explained the system to her not long after they met, for no better reason than his enthusiasm for hardware, and she had remembered because her enthusiasm for information was just as great.

  “We’ve got cops ahead,” Brock warned. “Just keep your head down, and I think I can talk us through.”

  “All right,” said Adele. The data unit in her pocket relayed the conversation to Tovera’s earbud, but that was probably redundant. She had never known Tovera to shoot unless she thought it was necessary — or to refrain from shooting because someone else didn’t see that necessity.

  The truck slowed to a halt, but Brock didn’t lock the transmission. He stuck his head and burly shoulders out the side window and called, “Hey, buddy? Can you give me a break? I got something hot on back at the office — if I get there before her husband comes to pick her up.”

  “Sorry, we gotta search all vehicles,” said a muffled voice from outside. “I feel your pain, believe me, I do.”

  “Look, I just dropped off a load of pipe shipped from Norsk on the Asphodel,” Brock whined. He reached into his breast pocket. “There’s nothing to search, all right? And here’s ten thalers to see it my way. Hell, here’s ten for each of you. Believe me, she’s special.”

  “Well, I dunno. Jerry . . . ?” the outside voice said. There was no reply, but his partner must have shrugged. A hand reached up to take the Alliance coins which Brock offered.

  Brock’s foot shifted on the pedal. “Give’r my best,” the voice called, more faintly.

  “Stop where you are!” a new voice shouted — more distant but making up for that with volume.

  Brock came off the throttle, but he didn’t rock the pedal back to brake. A submachine gun ripped out a short burst. It must have been aimed in the air, because Adele didn’t hear the nasty spatter of pellets hitting something hard.

  “You bloody well stop or the next one’s through the windscreen!” the new voice shouted.

  “Hey!” said Brock, heeling the brake hard. Even so, the truck slowed gently. “These patrolmen have already searched me. And what’s the Navy doing stopping honest truckers anyway?”

  “They didn’t search you, you bought “em off, which you won’t do with us,” said the voice, now on the driver’s side of the cab. “And as for the Navy — ”

  The passenger door jerked open. The moon-faced man in blue utilities was holding his carbine upright by the balance in the hand not on the door handle. He didn’t have time to look surprised before Adele shot him through the right eye and, as his head jerked back, through the open mouth.

  “Drive!” she said, but the truck was already accelerating at its slow best. She straightened to look out. Forward motion hadn’t swung the door hard enough to latch, so she pulled it closed.

  Tovera’s submachine gun crackled a three-shot burst, then another, then a third. It sounded like water dripping into hot grease.

  Adele couldn’t see the first two targets from her angle, but Tovera’s third burst threw forward a man wearing nondescript trousers but a crossbelt over his dirty white tunic. He had been trying to duck behind the stone steps to the entryway of an office building. The back of his tunic speckled, and he sprawled across them instead. The pistol flew out of his hand.

  The policeman had probably been too frightened to shoot at the truck as it disappeared down the street, but Tovera wasn’t one to take chances. Neither was Adele, not in this unpredictable chaos.

  The police must have been on foot, but turned crossways to block the street ahead was a small blue van with a Navy of Cremona shield on the side in gold. The truck rolled into the van with a crunch and skidded it sideways. Brock continued to accelerate.

  A tire rubbed off the smaller vehicle; the wheel rim sparked across the cobblestones until it found purchase in a crack. The van flipped onto its side, then roof, and was pulled under the truck’s axles one by one, shedding parts with the scream of metal on metal.

  The truck continued on; the wreckage of the van didn’t catch fire. Brock seemed to be whistling between his teeth, but his mouth was set in a rictus.

  The street ahead kinked slightly to the right. Two blocks past the angle and coming toward them was a flatbed truck. People standing in the back looked forward over the cab. Adele thought, Are they —

  The windshield starred in three milky patches between her and the driver; the truck body rang like a quickly hit anvil as the slugs passed through. Brock hauled the wheel to the right, hand over hand. Their truck turned onto a cross street, lumbering over the curb. They scraped the corner of a tavern; glass and bricks shattered, spraying the sidewalk.

  The gunman in the flatbed hit the back with another round from his automatic carbine, but the rest of the burst flew wide. The range was too great for Tovera’s weapon to be lethal, but a light pellet in the face would throw off the aim of the most focused marksman.

  The bullet-pocked windshield was as hard to see through as a heavy fog. Adele pounded at it with her right hand, but she only succeeded in stretching the sticky middle sheet of the glass sandwich even nearer to opacity.

  Brock lifted his pistol and punched the barrel through the windshield in front of him. He swung his arm sideways, grinding the butt through the glass like a ship’s bow crushing pack ice.

  He drew back his arm, then repeated the stroke to clear the top of the windshield. When he dropped the pistol onto his lap, his wrists were bleeding. Hauling hard on the steering wheel, he turned the truck left onto a street parallel to the one on which they had left the warehouse.

  Two ground cars and a light truck were stopped in the street ahead. Men with pistols, clubs, and lengths of chain were climbing out of the vehicles, warned either by radio or the sound of shots coming toward them. They all wore scarves striped red/yellow/black.

  When I have a moment, I’ll learn which gang uses those colors.

  Adele leaned out the open side window, where she didn’t have to worry about jagged edges. Two shots spun the man on the right. His right arm stretched upward like t
hat of a hammer thrower, but his grip must have frozen on his spiked mace, because it didn’t come out of his hand.

  Two shots more, holding for the center of the chest because the jouncing truck didn’t allow for delicacy; the driver sprawled out of sight behind the hood of the car he had started to get out of. Two more and a gunman crumpled backward into the man behind him — who dropped next, coughing up bright pulmonary blood.

  Brock guided — aimed — the truck between the back fender of the car in the middle of the line and the hood of the truck behind it. There wasn’t room to clear either vehicle, but the big truck bounced them in opposite directions. If Brock had smashed into one straight on and ground it down, he would have chanced ripping out his truck’s wiring harness or a hydraulic line.

  There were bodies on the left side of the makeshift roadblock also. Like her mistress, Tovera had started at the edge and worked toward the center.

  The street ahead to the next bend was almost empty of people, though there might be some hiding on the floors of cars. Vehicles had been driven over the curb to either side and seemingly abandoned.

  The visible exception was a heavyset woman in a loose, floral-print dress. She must have just stepped out of a shop when the shooting started. She had dropped her string bag, spilling brightly colored fruit, but she seemed unable even to throw herself to the ground. She gaped red-faced as the truck rumbled past.

  Adele gave her only a glance. She wasn’t a threat.

  The shroud around the barrel of her pistol was glowing yellow because of waste heat from her shots. She had expended at least half her twenty-round magazine. She would replace it with a fresh magazine as soon as she could, but she had learned to wait until the weapon cooled. Without protective gloves, the hot barrel would raise blisters.

  If, as seemed likely, Adele emptied the pistol in the next few minutes, she would have blisters tomorrow morning — if she survived. She smiled wryly: that was a cheaper price than others were paying this afternoon.