by David Drake
The interior of the building was a single large room with a seven-meter ceiling and walls covered with vast murals. There were hundreds of people present: guards, clerks, officials, and petitioners. Everyone but the guards in powered armor seemed to be talking simultaneously, creating bedlam.
The twelve floor-to-ceiling pillars weren’t structural—the coffered concrete vault was self-supporting. Rather, the columns were giant light fixtures, and their white radiance lifted Ned’s spirits the instant he entered the room.
The throne room, near enough. The burly man sitting on a dais opposite the door must be Lon Del Vore. He was framed by the double line of columns. Guards stood before the dais with the integral weapons in their forearms pointing outward.
The guards weren’t really protection. Every civilian present, including the visitors, wore a holstered pistol. A good gunman could draw and fire before the armored men could react. Ned knew that as a pistolero he was at the low end of the Swift’s complement, but he was confident he could assassinate the Treasurer if it came down to cases. Lon’s willingness to expose himself in this fashion was a comment on his physical courage.
Three men were on the dais with Lon, standing rather than seated. Two of them were old. They dressed in bunchy dark fabrics and used small electronic desks that looked like pedestals.
The third man was small, blond-haired, and about thirty standard years of age. By looking carefully Ned could see that the blond man, Lon, and Carron all had similar features, though their body types could not have been more varied. Ayven Del Vore, the Treasurer’s heir—and from the look of him, a very hard man despite his slight build.
Lon’s chair was ornate and decorated with hunting scenes in blue enamel, but there was a keypad built into one arm and a hologram projector in the other. As one of the older men spoke earnestly, the air in front of the Treasurer quivered with images which couldn’t be viewed from the rear of the coincidence pattern. The holograms distorted his face with shifting colored veils.
At Lon’s feet lay a carnivore of a type depicted frequently in the room’s murals. It was four-legged and rangy, so that it would weigh less than a man of similar torso length. The claws on the forepaws were fifty to eighty centimeters long. Too big to retract, the claws pivoted up so that they curved against the ankle joint with their needle points forward.
The beast had a hooked beak, though its body was covered with brown fur worn down to calloused skin over the joints. When Ned first noticed the creature, it was lying on its back to scratch itself under the chin with a dewclaw that could have disemboweled an ox. Though one of the guards stood with his laser focused on the beast at all times, the Treasurer’s choice of a pet also indicated his contempt for personal danger.
An usher whose blue robe fluoresced in vertical lines stepped close to Carron. They exchanged details in tones lost in the surrounding babble.
The official turned and strode down the aisle with his arms akimbo, shouting “Make way!” as he advanced. His chest and elbows thrust people aside to create a zone in which Carron with Lissea, then Ned and Tadziki behind them, could walk without themselves bulling through the crowd.
Ayven glanced at his brother without interest, but his eyes lingered on the Swift’s three personnel. Ayven wore a big-bore powergun in a shoulder holster. The rig was out of the way during normal activities but was almost as accessible as a hip carry should need arise.
Carron’s brother was the first Pancahtan Ned had seen who looked as though he might have earned a place on the Swift. From the way Ayven watched Ned and Tadziki, Ned suspected Ayven was making a similar assessment of the visitors.
“Prince Carron Del Vore and companions!” the usher bawled, his face centimeters short of the guards at the foot of the dais.
Lon shut off the holographic screen which had blurred his face till that moment. He was balding and heavier than he probably wished to be, but he remained a powerful man with features that could have been chipped from stone.
“You’re back soon, aren’t you?” he said. He spoke over the ambient noise without giving the impression he was shouting the way the usher had done. “Thought better of that nonsense, have you?”
“We landed on Buin, Father, because the auxiliary power unit was overheating,” Carron said. His voice sounded brittle in contrast to that of the Treasurer. “By great good fortune, Captain Doormann of Telaria and her vessel arrived on Buin at the same time. She and her crew were able to rescue me and the survivors of my yacht from the natives, who would otherwise have infallibly slain us all.”
“Lost the ship, did you, brother?” Ayven said. He didn’t sneer, exactly. Rather, he displayed the sort of amused contempt a man might for the mess a puppy had made in someone else’s house. “Well, I suppose you could have gotten into worse trouble if youbeen fooling around here. I’ve always been afraid you were going to manage to destroy the satellite ring with your nonsense.”
“Go on, boy, introduce your friends,” Lon said. “I’m going to be up half the night with this curst redevelopment scheme for the Foundation District as it is, so I don’t have a lot of time to waste.”
“Sir,” Carron said with spots of color on his cheekbones, “permit me to introduce Mistress Lissea Doormann, captain of the vessel Swift out of Telaria. These are two of her officers, Masters Tadziki and Slade.”
“Where’s Telaria?” Ayven asked sharply.
Lissea stepped forward. She didn’t shove Carron aside, but her hand on his shoulder urged him to leave her in charge. “Telaria is a world well outside the Pocket, sir,” she said.
“Impossible!” Lon said. “The Twin Worlders don’t let any ships through the Sole Solution. Unless—Telaria, you said?”
“The Twin Worlders don’t command the Sole Solution anymore, sir,” Lissea said. “But if you think you recognize the name, you probably do. Lendell Doormann was my great-granduncle, and it’s to retrieve the capsule that he stole from Telaria that I’ve come here.”
“You fought your way through the Sole Solution?” Ayven said in wonder.
Other conversations hushed throughout the hall, though the shuffle and rustling of bodies continued to create background noise like that of distant surf. The carnivore on the dais stared at Lissea. Its eyes had horizontally slitted pupils and golden irises.
“The Twin Worlds will not be interdicting the Sole Solution in the future,” Lissea said. “There was no fighting involved. We’ve come to Pancahte in peace, and with the intention of bringing your world and mine into closer relations.”
Ayven knelt beside the chair and used the keypad. A miniature image trembled before him, unreadable to the visitors.
“Don’t talk nonsense,” Lon said with a quick wave of his hand. “Telaria’s half a galaxy away. What I want to know is how you got past the Dreadnought.”
Telling him wouldn’t do Lissea’s cause any good. If the Treasurer learned the expedition had been willing to use biological warfare against whole planets, he was very likely to forestall a similar attack with a quick massacre.
“The Twin Worlds ended the blockade by their own decision,” Lissea lied. “The Dreadnought wasn’t on station when the Swift reached the Sole Solution.”
We wouldn’t land Nodals on a world as dark as Pancahte. They wouldn’t ripen here.
“So you’re diplomats, are you?” Ayven said as he stood again. The image he’d summoned from Pancahte’s data net sprang to large size and rotated toward the audience. It was a view, possibly real-time, of the Swift with members of her complement amusing themselves around her in the landing area:
Yazov threw gravel up in the air, several bits at a time. Josie Paetz blasted the pebbles with his pistols, trading weapons between his right and left hand after every shot like a juggler. Other men watched, cheered, and occasionally fired shoulder weapons.
The Warsons squatted in the shelter of the hull with a box between them for a table. They were playing cards and occasionally swigging directly from a carafe. The ship’s l
iquor supply was supposedly locked up in the absence of the captain and adjutant, but Ned had already seen what the brothers could do to electronic security.
Even so, it would have been a placid enough tableau, except that Deke and Toll between them carried enough hardware to arm a squad. Ned knew the Warsons well enough by now to read the seemingly aimless glances they gave their surroundings. They were hoping somebody would view their feigned nonchalance as an opportunity to attack.
Herne Lordling stepped to the middle of the hatchway. He yelled at the shooters. The projected display didn’t include an audio track. Josie fired one more round and turned insolently. The breeches of his pistols were locked back, empty. A gray mist of matrix residue streamed from them as air cooled the bores.
Herne turned toward the recording instrument and shouted again. He outstretched his left arm, pointing with the index and middle fingers together. His right hand hovered over the grip of his holstered pistol—
The image quickly jumped away, then ended.
“Diplomats?” Ayven repeated. He laughed.
Ned made a decision because he’d noticed that besides Lissea, there were only two women in the big room. He didn’t have time to discuss the matter with his captain.
“Sir, if we were only diplomats,” he said as he stepped forward, “we wouldn’t have survived to rescue your son.”
The analytical part of his mind noted approvingly that his voice rang across the hall like the note of a bar of good steel.
“I’m Slade, nephew of the Slade of Tethys.” The nouns wouldn’t mean anything here, but the statement’s form would. “The other members of Mistress Doormann’s company are of similar rank on their own worlds. We come to you in peace, aiding a worthy lady to redress the wrong done by a kinsman of hers.”
Ned was glad that he couldn’t see Lissea’s face as he spoke, but they both knew by now that the way forward needn’t be a pleasant one. Twenty gunmen couldn’t gain Lissea’s ends by main force, so they had to adapt themselves to circumstances.
Lon Del Vore straightened in his chair; Ayven’s stance became a challenge. For all that, the two men relaxed somewhat, because this was a situation they understood.
“I’d say that after seventy years,” Lon said, “that this capsule you claim is forfeit to the state of Pancahte for nonpayment of personal property taxes.”
His face broke into a smile like a landslip. “But if you choose to contest ownership, you can apply for appointment of three assessors under our laws. With right of appeal to the Treasurer.”
“We’re of course willing to pay for your help,” Tadziki offered quickly. “In currency, if you will, or in our labor. The matter is a moral obligation for our mistress, you see.”
Ned risked a glance back at Lissea. She stood with her lips composed, her hands folded demurely before her, and hellfire glaring from her dark eyes.
“There’s no more possibility of bank transfers between our planets than there is of trade,” Lon said irritably. “And as for labor—the men of Pancahte can arrange their own disputes without need of diplomats of your sort.”
“It’s moot anyway,” said Ayven. Behind the mocking smile, his mind had given the question serious consideration. “The capsule is on Hammerhead Lake. Nobody can get close to it without being fried.”
“Father!” Carron said. Ned started. He’d forgotten that Carron still stood just behind him. “Seventy years ago, a Doormann reached Hammerhead Lake despite the tanks. Perhaps now another member of the family can do the same and teach us how to do so. That would be of enormous value.”
“Value to boys who don’t have anything better to do than play with old junk, maybe,” Ayven snapped. “No value to Pancahte, that we should turn over property on the say-so of a woman who claims a relative of hers stole it.”
The carnivore became restive. It got to its feet, turned toward Lon, and made a mewling sound. Lon rubbed the beast’s throat with the toe of his boot, calming it again.
“You offer labor,” he said, speaking toward Tadziki. “Well and good. I’ll make you a proposition. The tanks—I suppose my son has told you about them?”
“Yes I have,” Carron said crisply.
“The tanks kill a certain amount of livestock and a few careless people every year,” Lon continued. “They’re an irritation. If you can destroy them, then I’ll let you have the capsule you claim.”
“Or you can leave Pancahte immediately,” Ayven said, “with as much help from me and the Treasurer’s Guard as it takes to shift you.”
“Yes, I accept,” Lissea said. “I’ll need a few days to prepare for the operation, however.”
“Three days, then,” Lon said. Ned stepped sideways to remove himself from the discussion. “But if you think you’re going to look the tanks over from close up—well, their weapons don’t leave enough to require burial, so it’s no concern of mine.”
“I’ll order supplies to be sent to the Swift to replenish her stores,” Carron said.
“Will you, brother?” said Ayven.
“They rescued me and my men at considerable personal risk,” Carron said with a cold power that his voice hadn’t held before in this audience hall. “They fed us during the journey. I don’t believe the state of Pancahte is so poor that we can’t show such persons hospitality.”
Lon grimaced. He pointed to one of the old men on the dais. “Make it so,” he said.
Returning his gaze to Lissea, he went on. “Three days. Or you leave Pancahte and return at your peril.”
Lissea nodded with cold contempt and turned on her heel.
Carron started to go out with her. “Not you, son,” Lon said. “You’ve trespassed long enough on our visitors’ hospitality. From now on you’ll leave them strictly alone.”
Carron blinked like a burglar caught in the act.
Tadziki tapped Ned’s wrist, then nodded toward the official on the dais. “I’ll stay back a time,” he whispered. “Take care of Lissea.”
Everyone in the room watched Ned trotting to catch Lissea before she left the room. He supposed it was his imagination that he could actually feel the carnivore’s eyes on him.
The view of the audience with Lon Del Vore and Ayven was an amalgam of the recordings Lissea’s helmet and Ned’s had made. As a result, the hologram played back by the Swift’s equipment differed subtly from Ned’s memory. That disturbed him, as did watching himself on a tightrope between the Pancahtans and Lissea—without the adrenaline rush that had carried him through the event itself.
“Those bastards,” Herne Lordling said, facing the projection from the bottom of the ramp. The Swift’s entire complement, save Tadziki—who was still in town—and the man on instrument watch, sat or squatted before the hatchway to watch.
The image of the door swelled on the display until the hologram dissolved. The crew had rigged translucent tarpaulins between the ship and the blast walls as protection against both the elements and Pancahtan eyes. The filmy sheets were sullen with the primary’s shadowless light.
“It’s their planet,” Lissea said. “They’ve agreed to let us proceed, which is as much as we could ask for.”
Her voice was emotionless. She was so angry that she’d shut down to keep from exploding, but Ned wasn’t sure Lordling realized that.
Herne stared at Lissea. “But their attitude, woman!” he said. “They’re sneering at us! These hicks are sneering at us.”
“I’m not unfamiliar with the experience of being patronized by my inferiors, Herne,” Lissea said coolly. “Let’s get on to the problem at hand.”
A ship lifted from across the circular port. There was a quick shock as the engines came up to full power, then a sustained roar which faded slowly as the vessel rose into the thinner layers of the atmosphere. The ship was a big freighter. Pancahte had an extensive trade network among the worlds of the Pocket.
“They don’t believe we can really evade—overcome, what ever—the tanks,” Ned said while the rumbling continued. “If we ac
complish that, we may still have difficulty getting the Treasurer to honor his agreement. He wasn’t just joking when he let us know that he personally is the highest law on the . . . the world.”
“What somebody ought to do is to give that Treasurer a third eye-socket,” Lordling said. “And that somebody just might be me.”
“And what would that gain us, Herne?” Lissea snapped.
“It’d gain us the bastard being dead!” Lordling said. “Look, Lissea, you can’t let pissants think they can push you around. It’s—well, you’ll have to take my word for it.”
“No, I won’t have to do that, Master Lordling,” Lissea said. “Because I’m in charge.” She pointed toward the hatchway. “Go relieve Harlow on the console. Now!”
Lordling looked amazed. He didn’t move. Ned leaned forward, his eyes on Lissea. He reached across her and put fingertips on Lordling’s knee.
She grimaced. “No, cancel that order,” she said. “But Herne, stop acting like an idiot.”
“The capsule’s not so big that we’ll have trouble handling it,” Toll Warson said. “I can borrow a van easy enough to hold it. What we ought to do is make a quick snatch and run before Del Vore has second thoughts.”
“Steal one of the trucks right out there?” Petit asked, nodding in the direction of the terminal parking area.
“No, no,” Toll said. “Via, off a street. We just went through the lot to check out door and power locks. It won’t be a problem.”
“What about the tanks?” Ned asked.
“Some people like to think tanks can stand up to anything an infantryman can dish out,” Deke Warson said, loud enough to focus attention on him. He was at the back of the audience, where Ned couldn’t have seen him without standing up. “The tanks I’ve run into, that’s not the way it is. I’m willing to bet these are no different.”
“Worst case,” Toll said, “we take out the running gear and then keep clear of the guns. Our Carron may be a very bright lad, but he’s sure no soldier.”
Toll met Ned’s eyes with a degree of amusement, though without malice. By this point he respected Ned, but he still felt there was a lot the boy had to learn.