by David Drake
Her mild pleasure at not seeing Vanness was more than counterbalanced by finding Bracey and his two drinking companions in the library with a pair of women. They had bottles, but the men’s main present concern seemed to be to coax one of the women into sex with all three of them. She wasn’t quite drunk enough, and the other woman seemed to be more competition for the men than an alternative target.
All five displayed Zojira colors in some fashion or other. One of the men had a pistol thrust under his black and yellow sash. Bracey carried a slung submachine gun, but the ammo tube that should have been parallel to the barrel was missing.
Adele swept the group with expressionless eyes as she entered; no point in pretending they weren’t present. No point in speaking to the scum either. She found her personal data unit on the console where she’d left it. After sliding it into the pocket where she should have left it to begin with, she squatted to open the main console’s sideplate.
“Hey!” said Bracey in surprise. He got up from the stacked boxes on which he sat, tumbling the one on top onto the floor beside him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, bitch?”
People were dying tonight; Adele shouldn’t let herself worry about a carton of what seemed to be service manuals for machinery that had been rust for a hundred years. Even so …
She turned and looked at Bracey with the cold loathing of a human for a slug. “Because of the unsettled conditions at the moment, Bracey,” she said, “I’m not going to order you out of here. But neither will I have you interfering with the way I carry out my duties. Shut up and mind your own business.”
She turned back to the console’s internal architecture. When she’d emplaced the decryption module Markos gave her, she’d deliberately reversed its polarity as a minor act of rebellion. She was quite confident that neither Markos nor any Kostroman technician he brought to check the installation would figure out why it didn’t work.
In the event, Markos hadn’t asked for information from the Aglaia which would have told him twenty members of her crew were billeted in the palace. Now Adele wanted that decryption capacity herself: what would work on Cinnabar naval communications would work equally well on their Alliance equivalents.
“What do you mean, your duties?” Bracey said. He stepped toward Adele. His fellows looked puzzled; the drunken woman began to croon a lullaby. “I’m the Electoral Librarian, now. You’re nothing, bitch! You’re dirt!”
Adele seated herself at the console and used the wands to bring up the operating system. She needed to enable the module now that it was properly in place, and she also wanted to conceal its existence from anyone examining the software.
Movement in the doorway … Adele’s eyes flicked to the right. Markos’s aide had entered the library.
“Turn around or by God I’ll use this!” Bracey said. The aide raised an eyebrow in mild interrogation.
Adele looked over her shoulder. Bracey was pointing the submachine gun at her. She couldn’t tell whether he thought she was too stupid to know the gun was unloaded, or whether the fool didn’t know himself.
“Get him out of here or I’ll kill him,” Adele said quietly to the aide. She shifted both control wands into her right hand.
Bracey pulled the trigger, answering Adele’s unspoken question. When nothing happened, he gave a wordless scream and gripped the weapon by the barrel to use as a club.
Adele drew her pistol. Bracey stepped back; the two men with him ducked behind piles of boxes. The more sober woman was cradling her drunken companion’s head, smiling in satisfaction as she ignored whatever else might be going on in the room.
“You won’t use that!” Bracey said. Adele grinned faintly.
“I wonder how many men have had that for their last words,” said the aide, speaking for the first time. She crooked the index finger of her left hand toward Bracey. The submachine gun in her other hand shifted slightly.
“I’ll use this,” she added with her insectile smile. “Out of here now, all of you.”
One of the hiding men raised his head to survey the situation. He and his companion circled their way out of the library, giving both Adele and the aide as wide a berth as possible. Bracey saw them leaving. He started after them, stumbled on a fallen book, and hurled the useless submachine gun away as he scuttled through the doorway.
The women were leaving also, wrapped in their own world. Adele dropped the pistol into her pocket and resumed her task.
“Mr. Markos noticed you weren’t in the Grand Salon,” the aide said. “He wanted to be sure that you were all right.”
Adele continued working. “Please thank Mr. Markos for his concern,” she said, “but assure him that I’m quite capable of looking after myself.”
“I warned him that you were,” the aide said with catlike humor, “but he didn’t believe me.”
Adele finished the modification. Portions of the console’s software and memory could now be accessed only through her handheld unit. They no longer existed so far as an operator at the unit’s integral controls were concerned.
“Good night, mistress,” the aide said in her expressionless voice. “I’m sure we’ll have other dealings in time.”
She left the library. Her absence was like the coming of spring.
Adele got up from the console and checked to be sure her personal data unit was settled in its pocket. There was still winter in her heart.
* * *
Hogg returned from the truck’s cab. Something bulged when his loose jacket hung against his beltline the wrong way. Beside them a man was hammering on a jitney’s splashboard while screaming at the driver; she screamed back.
“I handed one through the panel into the back,” Hogg said. “I figured the guys there, they can’t see out and they’re going to feel like canned meat unless they’ve got, you know, a good luck charm. Do you want the other one, sir?”
“No,” said Daniel. He leaned against the back of the truck, trying to look as though he belonged here. His eyes scanned the broad, arched doorway into the palace. “A gun would look wrong without the proper belt and holster. You’re probably better with it anyway.”
Besides, he wasn’t sure he’d want the weapon. If he carried a pistol he’d be wondering whether or not to use it every time there was a crisis. Lt. Daniel Leary had to think as a commander, not a gunman, if his detachment was to survive.
Alliance troops had begun to sort out the traffic jam, starting at the street entrance. They weren’t trained for the job, but their brute force approach—a gun in the face and a curt order—was beginning to have an effect. Soon it might be possible to pull the van back onto the pavement and leave the gardens.
Adele had left them just under twenty-five minutes ago. Daniel didn’t need to check the time: his mental clock was accurate even now when he was waiting for something that was out of his control.
Adele would need a minimum of ten minutes to reach the third-floor library without the sort of haste that would arouse attention. Ten minutes more to return. Five minutes wasn’t much for whatever it was she needed to do when she got there, not really.
“Didn’t sound to me like any of the shooting came from up there,” Hogg said morosely, nodding his chin in the direction of the north wing of the palace. They couldn’t see the end windows that served the library because the van was parked so close to the main building. “Of course, with so much shit going on it’s hard to tell.”
Gunfire was omnipresent in Kostroma City tonight, like the cries of nightbirds at Bantry. The sharpness of light weapons didn’t travel very far, but neither was it possible even for a poacher like Hogg to be absolutely sure of the direction it came from.
“I’ve got everything,” Adele Mundy said from Daniel’s side. “We can leave now so far as I’m concerned.”
“Christ Jesus son of God our savior!” Hogg snarled. “Where did you come from, woman?”
“Adele, sit beside Hogg in the cab,” Daniel said. “He’ll be driving. I’ll hang on the runn
ing board so people see my uniform.”
“I’m a librarian,” Adele said to Hogg. She walked around the side of the truck toward the cab. “For an answer to that you’ll have to ask a priest or a philosopher.”
Daniel blinked when he realized she was joking. His eyes hadn’t picked up Adele’s drab brown clothing as she left the building and strode toward them at a measured pace. In this confusion of light and noise, she’d been merely part of the background.
As an afterthought Daniel slammed the concertina door shut. “Woetjans?” he murmured to the panel. “You can open it after we’re out on the street, but we can’t afford anybody glancing in while we’re stuck here in traffic.”
Hogg started the engine, an air-cooled diesel, as Daniel put his feet on the passenger-side running board and reached through the open window. The cab was a tight squeeze for two; the three of them couldn’t possibly sit inside.
Although the jam was beginning to clear, Daniel assumed they’d have to wait anything up to an hour before they got into traffic. Instead Hogg leaned out the window and waved frantically at a jitney. The driver, a man who’d have looked villainous even if he’d had both his ears, stopped dead and opened a gap.
The turbocharger howled as Hogg pulled back the throttle, sending the truck into the traffic stream without difficulty. “A guy I know,” Hogg murmured. “He must be laughing his head off to be working with the cops tonight.”
Hogg’s driving had generally been done on country tracks, but his rough and ready style didn’t seem out of place in the present circumstances; at least he was sober. Daniel hung on grimly as they bumped and squealed toward the exit one truck’s length at a time.
The commandoes let vehicles pass in opposite directions alternately at the bottlenecks. To avoid seeming furtive Daniel looked at each Alliance soldier that the truck came abreast, but the troops in battle dress weren’t interested in wog officers. They just wanted to get the mess cleared up so that they could return to the porch of the palace. Nobody wanted to tell his grandchildren that he’d been crippled by a wog jitney while pretending to be a traffic cop.
“You didn’t have any trouble inside?” Daniel asked, speaking with his lips close to Adele’s ear.
She turned to look at him. “No,” she said. “Nothing worth mention.”
The truck reached the exit. A jitney with three screaming women tied together in the back tried to pull through the opening ahead of them. The commando on gate duty fired his submachine gun into the jitney’s splashboard. Bits of plastic sprayed the driver and the buttocks of his companion, facing backward to keep an eye on the prisoners.
The passenger yelped and jumped out of the vehicle. The driver stalled his engine. Hogg gave the commando a friendly salute and drove through the gateway, slamming the jitney sideways with his fender as he did so.
They swayed into the street in a wracking turn. “Here we go, sir!” Hogg cried cheerfully. “We’re really moving now!”
“We’d be moving if we jumped off the palace roof,” Adele said calm-faced over the intake howl. “And the result might be very similar.”
Before tonight Daniel hadn’t considered the librarian to have a sense of humor. He’d been wrong, but on balance he thought he’d prefer that Adele keep her humor to herself for the time being….
* * *
The first time Adele Mundy had seen the entrance to the Naval Warehouse Compound, the gateposts were decked with bunting in honor of the Founder’s Day celebrations. Tonight a three-bar barrier was swung across the road and the squad of Kostroman sailors on guard aimed stocked impellers at the approaching truck.
Hogg rowed through the gearbox to slow the truck before he actually squeezed the brake lever. Either the brakes needed maintenance or most of his experience had been with vehicles with bad brakes. Riding with Hogg made Adele wonder if the fellow had any experience. He’d only grazed objects with the truck’s left side, though, so perhaps he was just being especially careful of his master hanging on to the passenger-side window.
The truck ground to a halt six feet from the barricade; the engine ran at a chattering idle. Three sailors were outside the gate. They moved to the sides, out of the fan of light from the headlamp mounted in the center of the truck’s hood. Only the first of the four light standards along the entranceway worked, and it was now behind the vehicle.
“I’ll take care of this,” Daniel muttered into the cab. He dropped from the running board and strode to the sailor who wore a holstered pistol instead of carrying a heavy impeller. “We’re here with a delivery for Grand Admiral Sanaus,” he said to the Kostroman. “Items for safekeeping during the present awkwardness. The password is Greatorix.”
“The password’s canceled,” the Kostroman said. “We’ve got orders not to let anybody in tonight. Go on back. Maybe in the morning things’ll be different.”
Hogg leaned out the window on his side so that he could hear better. Adele did the same. The sailors were nervous and looked frequently back the way the truck had come, toward the glow of fires over Kostroma City.
“Dammit, man!” Daniel snapped. “I’ve given you the password. This is Admiral Sanaus’s personal brandy stock. If anything happens to it you’ll have him on your necks, not some politician who’s here today and gone tomorrow!”
The pistol-armed Kostroman shook his head in a combination of concern and denial. “Look, I can’t open up. If you want to park here till morning—”
“If you can’t carry out the admiral’s orders,” Daniel said, “then get an officer out here who can. Your obstructionism means the ass of everybody in your chain of command, don’t you see?”
“Where do you suppose he comes from?” said a bearded sailor leaning against the gate from the inside. He was ostensibly talking to the petty officer in charge, but his loud voice was meant for everybody in the guard detachment. “He sounds funny to me.”
Hogg swore softly as he twitched away the wiping rag covering the bulky electromotive pistol in his lap. He leaned back in his seat and muttered, “Get ready for trouble!” to the small open panel between the driver’s compartment and the back of the van.
Daniel Leary took two strides to the gate and grabbed the sailor by the throat with his right hand. His fingers choked the man’s yelp before it reached his lips.
“Scum don’t normally criticize the accent of a gentleman of L’ven!” Daniel said. “Do you understand that, scum, or shall I use your mouth for a latrine?”
The Kostroman sailor held an impeller at the balance. Daniel shook him violently, banging the man’s chest against the barrier’s crossbars. The weapon rattled until the sailor dropped it.
None of the others interfered, though two half-raised their impellers without pointing the muzzles anywhere. Daniel looked around the detachment with fierce scorn, then hurled his victim back into the compound. The sailor’s face had started to turn blue.
Fixing his glare on the Kostroman petty officer, Daniel said, “Hogg, we’re going to drive through this gate if the scum don’t open it for us. And if they shoot, they’ll learn what Hell is like before they reach it!”
He strode back to the truck, scowling in utter fury. Adele didn’t remember ever having seen a better piece of acting, or a better place for it.
Her hands were on her lap. She relaxed them to her sides, putting her fingers a little farther from the opening to her left pocket.
The petty officer turned toward the compound, his expression troubled. Hogg revved the diesel into a ringing whine. His hand held the brake firmly.
“Open it!” the Kostroman shouted. “Let them in and to hell with them!”
A sailor drew out the thick pin locking one end of the barrier to the brick post. The whole detachment worked together to swing the gate into the compound. It was so heavy that they didn’t seem to notice they were also pushing the man whom Daniel had dropped within the gate’s arc in wheezing incapacity.
Daniel jumped onto the running board. His face was as distorted as
a bomb-burst. Hogg eased the truck forward, just enough to spur the sailors to a final effort.
“I can’t believe that scum!” Daniel said in a hoarse whisper. “What kind of navy is it when a rating thinks he can be discourteous to a superior officer?”
“But …” Adele said. She didn’t know how to continue. “You’re not a superior officer” was so obvious that she couldn’t very well say it.
The way was clear. Hogg drove into the compound, accelerating as hard as the tons of human cargo in the back of the truck permitted. Their headlight swept the buildings. The warehouse facades were decorated with brick pilasters and swags of cut stone despite their utilitarian function.
“We’re looking for Building Forty-four,” Adele said to Hogg. She set her personal data unit on her lap, although she’d memorized all the necessary information when she called it up the first time. “It’s in the third row, according to the plan.”
“What kind of navy?” Daniel repeated. Adele finally had to admit silently that the Cinnabar lieutenant hadn’t been acting after all.
Considering that his fury was directed at a gross lapse of professionalism, Adele found herself inclined to agree.
* * *
Daniel punched the last of eight digits into the keypad on the door of Warehouse 12 and stepped back. The lock clicked. Woetjans thrust a short prybar into the door seam instead of struggling with the recessed handle. She pulled and Dasi, the huskiest man in the detachment, shoved on the back of the bar.
The door jerked sideways as though blown along its track. Several ratings grabbed the edge while it still had rolling inertia and slammed it all the way to the stop.
Hogg had the truck angled so that the headlight shone into the warehouse. Miscellaneous junk was piled in the aisle at the front of the building just as it had been at Warehouse 44, but Bell hopped nimbly over the obstruction and cried, “Here’s the ration cartons!”