by David Drake
Daniel rolled brandy around in his mouth to avoid having to speak; though another “umm” would probably have been sufficient. Kostroman merchant captains paid good wages—and paid them on time, as well. Naval ratings were rarely so fortunate.
“Say …” said Candace, his head swiveling. Daniel followed the Kostroman’s eyes to a blonde woman in a backless dress.
“Not a lot of front either,” Welcome noted approvingly. He snagged another cup of brandy from the buffet table. “To the dress, I mean.”
“She’s not for us, though,” Welcome added. “I saw her come in on the arm of Admiral Sanaus. Rank hath its privileges.”
“I didn’t think I’d better bring my friend tonight,” Candace said regretfully. “Her husband’s offplanet, but you know, still …”
“It’s important that your Admiral Lasowski knows how valuable we can be to your cause if Cinnabar just gives us the help we need,” said Parzifal, the most focused of the three lieutenants. “I don’t think those politicians in the palace really understand.”
“Not that Hajas isn’t a first-rate man and a real supporter of the navy,” Candace put in. “The advisors he’s got around him, though, I don’t think a one of them’s been aboard a warship.”
He sounded to Daniel as if he was giving an honest opinion, not suddenly concerned that somebody would take his friends’ opinions as treasonous. The Kostroman navy—like the RCN—was nonpolitical. On Cinnabar the power of the navy was greater than that of any faction that might want to use it; here on Kostroma it was more a matter of the navy being of so little importance that those looking for power didn’t bother with it.
“It’s a mistake to rely on orbital defenses,” Welcome said as he passed Daniel a fresh drink. “They can’t do a thing for our ships beyond Kostroma proper. Not even for the mining and manufacturing at Port Starway in the asteroid belt!”
Daniel opened his mouth to argue, then took a sip of his drink instead. The clear brandy was a taste he’d had to acquire since he arrived on Kostroma. Acquisition was complete by the end of his first night of partying with local officers.
Arguing with these men about Kostroman defense policy was as useless as trying to convince somebody that the world wasn’t really flat. They were going to believe what it suited their own needs to believe, and argument otherwise would only damage friendships.
In fact Kostroma’s defenses were lamentably poor, but building up the fleet to the relative strength it had two generations before wasn’t a practical alternative. Kostroma couldn’t crew both the warships and her trading vessels, and she couldn’t at this point take political control of independent worlds in place of her age-old practice of reciprocal trading links.
Both the Alliance and Cinnabar controlled multiworld empires which were by now held together by self-interest. The star systems of Cinnabar’s protectorate had no external political authority, but the local magnates could move to Cinnabar and gain a degree of influence over the affairs of the whole Republic. Protected worlds were in a position clearly inferior to that of Cinnabar itself, but with equal clarity they were better off than they would have been if fully independent.
The situation with the Alliance of Free Stars was even simpler: planets that revolted against the Guarantor’s authority were nuked to subsistence level or below. Chief Planetary Administrators were always foreigners, and no warship of any size had a crew with a majority of members from any single planet.
Neither Cinnabar nor the Alliance could be described as a universal democracy, but both systems worked to provide a manpower base sufficient to a large fleet. Kostroma had proceeded in a different fashion in the years immediately following the Hiatus, when those worlds with the ability to navigate the stars had enormous advantages over the neighboring systems they contacted. It was too late to change now.
“Now, we know you can’t talk about the negotiations,” Parzifal said, bending closer than Daniel liked. “Still, you’ll drop a word in your admiral’s ear, won’t you? Imagine a whole Kostroman squadron with you when you engage the Alliance fleet!”
“When I’m next alone with Admiral Lasowski …” Daniel said. That would be sometime in her next incarnation if Lasowski had anything to say about it. “I’ll see that the point is stressed.”
In fact, neither Walter III or any responsible Elector of Kostroma would accept a gift of warships which required the vessels to be used against the Alliance. That would be equivalent to dropping Kostroma and its trade into a meat grinder. Kostroma couldn’t be made strong enough to resist all-out Alliance attack, and taking sides in the conflict would guarantee such attack.
What Kostroma needed was exactly what Welcome had sneered at a moment before: a significant upgrade to its orbital defense system. If the Alliance captured Kostroma, most of its ships, even those off-planet, would come as well because the owners were in Alliance hands.
An orbital minefield prevented a quick capture, since a properly laid one took weeks or even months to reduce. No Alliance fleet could remain so long in a hostile system without a base, knowing that Cinnabar would respond with even greater force before the Alliance could capture the planet.
Well, Kostroma’s defenses weren’t ideal but they were probably good enough. And they weren’t the concern of Lt. Daniel Leary, either.
He finished his cup of punch and said, “I see what you mean,” as he prepared to cut himself clear of the trio.
“Say, Leary,” Candace said, putting an arm around Daniel’s shoulders to move him aside. Welcome and Parzifal turned their backs, obviously by prearrangement.
In a conspiratorial tone Candace went on, “Do you think you can get some time clear tomorrow?”
“Umm,” said Daniel. This didn’t sound like an offer to address a prayer breakfast, but he’d learned to be cautious about what he was agreeing to. “That might be possible, yes.”
“My family’s got a fishing lodge on a little island not too far from here,” the Kostroman lieutenant explained. “I was going to visit it tomorrow. The accommodations aren’t palatial, but there are compensations—privacy, for example. Now, it occurs to me that my Margrethe has a friend who might really like to meet a visiting naval officer. Interested?”
He knuckled Daniel’s ribs with the hand that wasn’t around his shoulders.
Daniel pursed his lips. He was able to make his own arrangements, but if circumstances wanted to drop opportunities in his lap—that was all right as well. He grinned. “I’d be delighted to see more of your interesting planet,” he said truthfully.
“I’ll bet you would!” Candace said, punching Daniel again. “At midday I’ll be at your lodgings in my aircar. And you’ll give good hard thought to building up the Kostroman Navy, right?”
“I sure will!” Daniel said brightly as he moved away.
It was hard to imagine anything at all good in the idea, but he didn’t need to say that. After all, Candace was a friend. And getting to be a very good friend, in his way.
* * *
The young officer who’d just danced a gavotte with Adele wore a costume including at least six major color elements, most of which clashed with those nearest them in the ensemble. Apparently Kostroma’s Homo militaris was even less restrained in his notions of attractive garb than was his civilian counterpart.
The Kostroman stepped back, made a full formal bow, and said, “You have given me a great honor, Ms. Mundy. You dance divinely.”
He was quite serious. The pack of his gaily dressed fellows poising to beg her company for the next dance proved that beyond even Adele’s doubt. She couldn’t have been more surprised if someone informed her she’d been chosen to replace Guarantor Porra.
“No more for a moment,” she called loudly to forestall the rush of insistent Kostromans. “I really need to stand for a moment and have something to drink.”
That was the wrong thing to have said: she hadn’t specified water and the herd of naval officers was already thundering toward the buffet. She’d have twen
ty-odd glasses of punch pressed on her in a moment. The sip she’d taken earlier convinced her that the fluid would make a satisfactory paint stripper but had no other proper human purpose.
“Your escort is a lucky man, Ms. Mundy,” said the boy who’d just danced with her. She wished she’d caught his name. He’d apparently decided that he didn’t have a chance at another dance so he might as well keep her company until the punch arrived. “Who is he, may I ask?”
“Lieutenant Leary of the Cinnabar Navy,” Adele said. Her eyes automatically searched for Daniel as she spoke his name, but the chance of finding someone dressed normally in this assemblage of peacocks was vanishingly slight.
Her own Bryce-style party costume was a beige bodystocking with ruffs at the neck, wrists and ankles. She’d thought it might be extreme for Kostroma. She couldn’t have been more wrong.
Of course, she’d also thought she’d be a wallflower here as she’d invariably been when she attended the frequent social functions at the Academy. Wrong again.
“Ah, of course,” said the young officer. His fellows were bearing down on him and Adele again, elbowing one another in universal determination to be the first to offer her liquor that she wouldn’t touch her lips to. “We provincials can’t compete with you sophisticates from the great empires, can we?”
The crowd of Kostroman officers arrived, pushing with increasing enthusiasm as each shouted his particular merits. It was as bad as the mob of water taxis that had greeted Adele when she stepped off the transport that brought her to Kostroma.
“Gentlemen!” she cried in a tone like that her mother used to correct sluggish servants; democracy wasn’t an ideal the Mundys pursued within their own home. “Step back, if you will!”
Several of them jostled her, pushed by others behind them, and Adele’s former dancing partner had a glass of punch emptied over his back. Still, she hadn’t been crushed against the wall behind her. That was the most likely result had she not started acting like a Mundy of Chatsworth.
“Please!” she continued in the same ringing voice. “I wish to continue my conversation with my friend here. Everyone who accepts the social conventions held on Cinnabar and Pleasaunce will permit us to do so.”
She was taking a cue from the youth’s comment about sophistication. It worked like a charm. The circle around them couldn’t have widened faster if she’d announced she had leprosy.
The reason that Adele had this unwonted and utterly unexpected popularity was the fact she came from Bryce, one of the core worlds of the Alliance, and she knew the dance steps current there. That made her very nearly unique in this gathering. Though one of the more prestigious Founder’s Day parties, the Admiral’s Ball didn’t attract recent visitors from “the greater empires” as her partner had put it.
A number of the officers’ consorts were attractive—and probably highly paid—imports from Cinnabar and the Alliance, but none of them had been on their home worlds as recently as Adele. They looked daggers at her as they memorized her movements.
Adele smiled coldly. While she’d learned the steps as a necessary part of her academic routine, she lacked the interest to have become skillful at them. In this assemblage she literally couldn’t put a foot wrong: her mistakes were assumed to be subtle variations. A dozen whores were already determinedly trying to copy her errors.
An overweight man beyond middle age stepped onto the dais with the help of an aide. His uniform was relatively simple; there seemed to be an inverse relationship between rank and the degree of florid dress.
Having said that, this fellow wore a gold sash as well as gold piping on his blue trousers and tailcoat. His chest was a clinking mass of medals.
“That’s Grand Admiral Sanaus,” Adele’s sole companion explained in a respectful whisper. “Chief of the navy.”
Sanaus spoke to the bandleader, then offered his hand to a doll-like blonde woman who clearly believed less was more when dressing to gain attention. Adele sniffed, but she had to admit the girl—she was no more than twenty-five standard years old—was impressive. Real muscles rippled beneath the smooth skin of her thighs and shoulders, too.
The band hit a low chord and sustained it while the assembly quieted. “My officers and honored guests!” Admiral Sanaus said in the relative silence. “It’s my pleasure to greet you in the name of the navy of the Commonwealth.”
Sanaus wheezed between words and the puffiness around his eyes was a sign of ill-health Adele wouldn’t have wanted to see on anyone she cared about. That was few enough people, of course.
“It’s my even greater pleasure to ask for a few words from the lovely lady who’s deigned to accompany me tonight,” the admiral continued.
He bowed to the blonde. The room broke into good-natured cheers. “Ms. Mirella Casque, the scion of Casque Trading and the representative of that famous house here on Kostroma!”
“He’s bragging,” Adele’s companion whispered. They were only twenty feet from the dais. “But he surely has reason to, doesn’t he?”
“He does if he survives the night,” Adele said.
“Even more if he doesn’t!” the Kostroman replied. He was too young to know how to fake gallantry.
Casque Trading was one of the oldest and largest firms of its sort in the Alliance. This girl seemed young to represent the Casques on so important a trading system as Kostroma, but her being a daughter of the house explained the choice.
The girl bowed, then smiled as she ran her blue eyes across the assemblage. Adele felt their touch. The intelligence within that pretty package was just as real—and as hard—as the thigh muscles.
“I want to thank you and to thank your entire planet for the kindness and hospitality you continue to show me,” she said. Her voice was clear and perfectly modulated; perhaps a trifle studied for the ingenue she looked like, but quite in keeping for the local head of an important trading company. “The settlement of Kostroma was a happy day for me and for Casque Trading, as well as for all you wonderful people.”
She gripped Grand Admiral Sanaus’s hand, bowed again—so deeply that Adele suspected the fabric of her top was glued—and hopped off the dais. She handed Admiral Sanaus down herself, ignoring the aide’s attempt to get involved.
“She’s really something, isn’t she?” Adele’s companion said. Conversation had picked up so he was able to speak in a normal voice without fearing the admiral would overhear. “And very wealthy, from what I hear.”
“The Casques are old money,” Adele said. Her words weren’t the agreement the boy probably thought they were. “The founder of the family was a member of the original colony on Pleasaunce, and because the Casques are close to government circles they’ve grown wealthier as the Alliance has expanded.”
“Remarkable,” the Kostroman said, watching the woman who called herself Mirella Casque walk away on the arm of his superior.
Remarkable indeed. The woman had a Bryce accent: she was no more a Casque than Adele herself was. The family was a useful cover to explain the amounts of money “Mirella” was almost certainly spending to cultivate the leaders of the Kostroman navy.
Adele didn’t know who the woman really was, but she had a good idea of who the woman worked for. Not the Fifth Bureau, though. More likely one of the aspects of Alliance military intelligence.
From what Adele had seen while she worked at the Academic Collections, spies of rival branches of the same nation didn’t get along any better than professors at the same university were likely to.
* * *
Candace drove the aircar well and fast. The women weren’t professionals; so long as the car was in Kostroma City they sat on the two seats in the vehicle’s closed back where they couldn’t be seen. Margrethe, Candace’s “special friend,” had a nipped-in waist between a remarkable bosom and lush hips; Bet, Daniel’s date for the afternoon and evening, wasn’t so much petite as egg-shaped. Her face, framed with lustrous black ringlets, was extraordinarily pretty.
“Benno”—Candace to
Daniel—“tells us Cinnabar has the greatest navy there ever was, Lieutenant Leary,” Margrethe said. She gave Daniel a smile that showed her dimples. “You certainly have lovely uniforms.”
Bet giggled behind her hand and whispered something in her friend’s ear. She winked at Daniel and giggled again.
Daniel was wearing his 2nd Class uniform as the best compromise between his needs and his means. Although Bet was already hooked, so to speak, Daniel was too good a craftsman to wear civilian clothes and miss the effect the uniform could have on the girl he was meeting. On the other hand, he wasn’t going to risk his full-dress Whites at a rundown fishing lodge.
“We’re fortunate to have allies like Kostroma,” Daniel said cheerfully. Candace didn’t look best pleased at the way both women were fawning over the exotic stranger. He’d been very well aware when Margrethe leaned forward to point out her parents’ townhouse to Daniel—and flopped a breast on his shoulder in the process.
The car was over open sea by now. The water was shallow. Knobs rose from the sea floor, their crests fringed with coral and sponges in colored bands varied by depth. Fish swam among the fixed life-forms. They were as brilliant as daubs of light flung from diffraction gratings.
Daniel looked over the side, wishing that he’d brought an identification chart. The Aglaia’s database wasn’t complete on Kostroman sea life, but he was sure that Adele could have downloaded something suitable if he’d thought to ask her.
“What do you think of Kostroman girls, Lieutenant Leary?” Margrethe asked. “I’m afraid we must seem very provincial to someone who’s travelled the way you have.”
“Madame Margrethe,” Daniel said; the girls resolutely refused either to call him “Daniel” or to give him their last names. It was a piece of coquetry that he didn’t understand, not a concern for their security. “I can honestly say that no female company has impressed me as favorably as that by which I now am honored.”
That wasn’t true, of course, but it wasn’t any greater a lie than failing to correct the impression that he was well-travelled. Besides, the girls were quite adequately pretty and Daniel shared with most men of his acquaintance the feeling that availability enhanced a woman’s attractiveness. He knew there were other philosophies on the question, but he didn’t hold them.