What Distant Deeps

by David Drake

  Raphael Control broke the connection. Adele was already passing the information on to Daniel and Vesey in the BDC. So much for being polite to the Founder of Zenobia and his Alliance masters.

  Adele smiled grimly. She didn’t really disagree with the decision, after all. Her highly cultured mother would have been horrified to hear Adele shouting “Up Cinnabar!” after a bloody victory, but her mother hadn’t been RCN.

  Up Cinnabar! And up the RCN!

  Raphael Harbor on Stahl’s World

  Daniel didn’t ordinarily think about how the Princess Cecile looked to civilians, let alone civilian children. As he stood beside the Browns, however, watching the little girl—Hester?—cling to the Commissioner’s leg, he realized that there was very little to choose between the Sissie’s boarding hold and a detention cell.

  The steel surfaces were flecked with rust—landings were more often than not made in salt water—and streaked with hydraulic fluid: a working ship couldn’t be clean, not after the first liftoff and landing. Other than that, the compartment’s only features were the hatches which were steel like the bulkheads. They were dogged and sealed more securely than a bank vault, let alone a prison.

  The main present feature of the hold was noise: the sighs and wheezes and clanks of the ship’s internal workings, and the trip-hammer clangs of the hull and rig cooling, each part at a differing rate. Steam no longer roared—Pasternak had shut down the thrusters—but it continued to sizzle angrily as harbor water boiled from hot metal.

  “It’ll be over soon now, mistress,” Daniel said, bending toward the child with the care his closely tailored Whites demanded. Though they weren’t as tight as they might have been: in the Matrix, he ate less than he did in port, and he spent a good deal of time on the hull. Walking in a rigging suit was exercise, and climbing repeatedly to a masthead and back was that in spades.

  As Daniel spoke, the multiple bolts—the dogs—which locked the entry hatch into the hull withdrew deafeningly. To someone who’d been aboard while automatic impellers were raking the corvette, the clangor—even when expected—was similar enough to induce a start.

  To civilians like the Browns, it probably sounded like a load of anvils had been dropped on them. Clothilde screamed, her husband threw his arms around her, and the child began to bawl as though she’d accidentally smashed her pet hamster. She was trying to climb her father’s leg.

  Daniel put his hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Ah, mistress?” he said. “It’s all right, really it is. The noise will stop soon—”

  The hatch began to lower into a boarding ramp. Metal squealed against metal, and the pumps driving the hydraulic jacks had a vibration so high-pitched that one experienced it instead of hearing it. Stepping outside his experienced viewpoint, Daniel had to admit that it would have been pretty unpleasant even without the steam and biting plasma which curled in through the widening gap.

  The child didn’t stop crying, but she transferred her grip to Daniel. That allowed him to lift her and mutter into her ear, “There, there, dear. It’s all going to be all right.”

  He wasn’t good on names, particularly women’s names. He’d learned over the years that “dear” or “love” were safe, whereas a “Hester” which should have been “Heather” could lead to a very unpleasant discussion.

  Hogg hovered close at hand, wearing what for him were dress clothes. His cap, shirt, sash, trousers and shoes were brand new and bright orange. Unfortunately they were five separate shades of orange, and his socks were chartreuse. He looked like a clown, a countryman dressed in what he imagined was sophisticated finery.

  That was all true. Hogg was also an expert poacher and as ruthless as a countryman has to be. He would throttle a man with a length of monocrystal fishing line with as little hesitation as he would snap the neck of a snared rabbit. The pockets of his baggy clothing sagged with various weapons, and he was expert with them all.

  “She’s going to slobber on your Whites, young master,” Hogg grumbled. He half-extended his arms, but he wasn’t quite willing to take the girl away. Just as well, Daniel supposed. Hogg wasn’t really a bogeyman, but it wouldn’t be hard for a child to imagine otherwise.

  “And if she does, Hogg?” Daniel said. “You’ve sponged worse than drool off my uniforms, have you not?”

  “Aye, but not before you went to a reception with an admiral,” Hogg said. “Although not much of an admiral or they wouldn’t have stuck him in a bloody dump like this.”

  He patted the girl on the back and said, “Sure, go ahead and puke, sweetie. It don’t matter on this pisspot out in the sticks.”

  The end of the hatch banged against the corvette’s starboard outrigger, extended to provide stability as well as buoyancy. It floated twenty feet from the concrete quay, but members of the harbor’s permanent staff were already swinging an extension bridge to meet the ramp.

  “I’m not going to whoopsie!” the child said, turning her head toward Hogg with injured dignity. “You shouldn’t say that.”

  “No, dear, I’m sure you’re not,” Daniel said. “Now can I give you back to your—”

  He started to say “Mommy” but switched instead to “—Daddy?”

  He bent. The girl obediently got back onto her own feet, but she continued to hold Daniel’s right hand.

  An eight-place aircar with a closed cabin made a fishhook turn over the harbor and settled crosswise on the quay. “Is that the Governor’s car for us, Pavel?” Mistress Brown said. She started forward, tugging at her daughter’s free hand. “It must be, thank goodness. Come along, Hester.”

  Adele had been watching them, which Daniel found about as predictable as there being a sky overhead. The overhead speakers—so that the Browns would hear the information—announced, “Captain Leary, this is Signals. The Squadron Commander’s vehicle has arrived for you.”

  “Oh!” said Clothilde Brown, rocking back on her heels. Hester still gripped Daniel’s hand.

  “Roger, Signals,” Daniel said. “Break. Lieutenant Cory, what uniform are you wearing, over?”

  “Sir?” said Cory, using the earbud only. “Sir, I’m in my Grays, over.”

  The second-class uniform was proper public garb—an important consideration, because a regional RCN headquarters wasn’t a place to openly flout regulations. Daniel said, “Report immediately to the entry hold and escort the Commissioner and his family to the quay where the—”

  Daniel’s tongue fluttered an instant. The Governor himself would not be sending anybody to meet the Browns; he would almost certainly be attending the affair on the Palmyrene cruiser.

  “—Governor’s office will be having them picked up and escorted to Government House, over.”

  “Sir!” said Cory. “On the way, out.”

  Daniel smiled faintly, visualizing Cory banging down the companionway three steps at a time. The boy had always been willing, but it was a pleasant change that he’d become competent as well.

  “I have to go off now, Commissioner,” Daniel said, bowing slightly. He didn’t owe that to a civilian official below him in equivalent rank, but courtesy was cheap. Courtesy and kindness were cheap. Brown looked as though he had been staked over an anthill; the glare he was getting from his embarrassed wife explained why. “Lieutenant Cory will be down in a moment to take charge of you while I go play the—”

  He fingered the sash that marked him as a Knight of Novy Sverdlovsk. It was one of a number of foreign decorations whose empty magnificence impressed civilians who didn’t understand the significance of the Cinnabar Star with Wreath.

  “—dashing naval hero for people who don’t know any better.”

  He squeezed the child’s hand and firmly released it. “Hester,” he said. “Ask Lieutenant Cory to tell you how he helped me steal a destroyer on Bennaria when he was only a midshipman. Can you remember that?”

  The girl bobbed her head enthusiastically. Daniel turned and strode briskly down the ramp. He hadn’t really felt sorry for Commissioner Brown, wh
o was an accountant. Daniel couldn’t get inside the head of an accountant.

  But he had been a child; many would say that he still was. It seemed rather hard lines for Hester to be stuck out here in the back of beyond.

  CHAPTER 7

  Raphael Harbor on Stahl’s World

  Daniel lengthened his stride. A commander wearing Whites had gotten out of the aircar. Instead of waiting, he marched down the quay to the base of the cantilevered bridge which had been swung out to meet the Sissie’s boarding ramp. There he chatted with the riggers under Woetjans who were lashing the free end to bitts on the ramp.

  “Do you want an escort today, Six?” the bosun asked as Daniel approached.

  “In case I have to shoot my way out of the party, Woetjans?” he answered with a grin. “Thank you, but I hope that won’t be necessary.”

  “Aw, not that, Six,” Woetjans said. She obviously wasn’t sure whether Daniel really believed that was what she’d had in mind. “Just to show you’re important.”

  “Carry on, bosun,” Daniel said, hoping that Woetjans didn’t understand his smile. To base personnel, let alone civilians, twenty Sissies with their weapons of choice would be seen as ragged tramps—an embarrassment rather than an honor. Only people who had been in hard places themselves could understand what it meant to have a crew like that at your back.

  The commander started down the bridge. It was wide enough for even three to walk abreast, but his steps and Daniel’s made the tubular frame flex awkwardly.

  If I’d had my choice, I’d just as soon we’d met on the concrete, Daniel thought. But then, if he’d had his choice, he wouldn’t be rigged out like this to meet what passed for the Great and Good of the Qaboosh Region.

  He grinned. The son of a Cinnabar senator knew who counted in this universe. It wasn’t anybody he’d be meeting today.

  “Captain Leary?” the commander called. “I’m Milch, and I’m honored to meet you. Or—should I have saluted? Bloody hell, Leary, I apologize! We don’t stand much on ceremony out here, you know.”

  Milch was a little taller than Daniel and a little plumper, but he looked both alert and friendly. Sometimes the officers you found in posts like this were people who for one reason or another—booze was a frequent one—couldn’t be trusted anywhere they might actually have to do the job of an RCN officer.

  “I don’t stand much on ceremony either, Commander,” Daniel said, “because I’m so bloody poor at it. Even when I’m not wearing this clown suit—”

  He flicked the sash again with a grimace.

  “—for which I apologize, but I understood it was the admiral’s orders that I wear foreign decorations.”

  “Oh, don’t apologize, Leary,” said Milch as they walked back alongside one another toward the car. “You’re quite a coup for us. The Palmyrenes have been making all the running at this Assembly, but you’ve just given Admiral Mainwaring a way to top the Autocrator. The only thing better would be if you’d come in a bloody great battleship instead of a corvette.”

  “I think a battleship would rather defeat the intention of delivering the new Commissioner to Zenobia in a quiet and courteous fashion, Commander,” Daniel said dryly. “Though I’m surprised that Palmyra is, well, so important. I had the impression that it was merely a regional power, and the Qaboosh Region isn’t—you’ll forgive me?”

  Milch chuckled and said, “Isn’t worth mentioning in the same sentence as, oh—”

  He gestured to the aigrette on Daniel’s left shoulder, the Order of Strymon.

  “—Strymon, you mean? Or Kostroma? Well, you’d be right—but the people here, in the region, don’t know that. The Qaboosh is so far from Cinnabar—or Pleasaunce—that the Autocrator gets taken at her own valuation because nobody knows any better. Including her.”

  Daniel found the quay a subconscious relief because it didn’t spring up and down in response to the commander’s forceful strides. A starship under way vibrates on many simultaneous frequencies, but one whose hull actually bounces is in very serious trouble indeed.

  “But surely one heavy cruiser, even out here . . . ,” he said. “And a local crew, I assume?”

  Milch didn’t bridle, exactly, but there was a slight sharpness in his tone as he said, “Local crew except for specialists, yes, by and large. And you won’t find better spacers than the Palmyrenes, Captain. As for the Piri Reis, that’s the cruiser, she’s enough to handle everything else in the region, ours or the Alliance’s. But it’s the cutters that make Palmyra important. I’ll show you when we get aloft. Simmons?”

  “Sir?” replied the driver, opening the car’s middle door for the officers. Milch gestured Daniel to a front-facing seat of the middle pairs, then took the one opposite him as the driver got in.

  “Take us up to a hundred feet and circle the civil basin clockwise instead of going straight to the Palmyrene do,” Milch said. To Daniel he went on, “Palmyra was independent for five hundred years following the Hiatus, but Pleasaunce took over in the First Expansion and held the planet till the Consolidation Wars. It was their regional HQ.”

  The driver had left his fans idling at zero incidence while waiting instead of shutting down. That allowed him to lift off as soon as he got in, simply by running up the throttle with one hand and coarsening the blade pitch with the other. The lightly loaded car rose in a steep curve.

  “The Pleasaunce governor,” Milch said, “revolted and declared independence. The regional forces went along with him. By the time the Alliance of Free Stars had formed around Pleasaunce and Blythe thirty years later, it would have taken a major expedition to recover the place. Nothing in the Qaboosh Region was worth the effort.”

  Daniel grinned wryly. A certain amount of grit had blown over the tops of his ankle boots—the footgear of first-class uniforms was standard space boots in design, though they were glossy black instead of gray suede—but it wouldn’t have time to work down to where it would raise blisters. What was presumably good enough for the squadron commander was perforce good enough for the captain of a private yacht.

  “I’ll grant you the Autocrator has been putting on airs—Odin was bad enough, but to listen to his widow Irene, you’d think you were hearing the Speaker of the Senate,” Milch said. “But it’s a bloody good thing the Horde is out there or the region’d be overrun with pirates. There’s not much we could do with four patrol sloops—when none of them are in the yard—and an old gunboat. The Alliance has two modern destroyers on Zenobia, but besides that it’s a handful of gunboats scattered through the region.”

  “I noticed the Z 46,” Daniel said. The aircar’s wide circle had brought them around to the destroyer’s berth. “Frankly, I was a little surprised. The Peace of Rheims is fresh enough—”

  He meant “fragile enough.”

  “—that there aren’t likely to be courtesy calls to most squadron bases for a while yet.”

  “Oh, we’ve always been more relaxed here,” the commander said. “Neither side was strong enough to push matters, and until the past year Irene was busy with two of her husband’s sons by mistresses who had their own ideas about who should be the new Autocrator. But the reason the Z 46 is here is Hergo Belisande, the Founder of Zenobia. He’s a very small fish, as you might expect, but he’s as noisy as if he counted for something. He’s been raising holy hell at the Assembly, claiming that Palmyra plans to attack him and that he wouldn’t be safe travelling by anything but an Alliance warship.”

  Milch shrugged. “The Fleet commander on Zenobia, Lieutenant Commander von Gleuck, asked Admiral Mainwaring through a back channel if it would be all right—it’s not a decision for the Governor, you see. And we didn’t see any reason why not.”

  “Are those the Palmyrene cutters?” Daniel said suddenly as the car continued its circle. “There, the slip alongside the cruiser, the six of them?”

  “Ah, you noticed, did you?” Milch said in a pleased tone. “I wondered if you would. Yes, they are—and it’s just what it looks like. The
re’s a full set of hydraulic linkages for the sails and yards in the dorsal bow, not just a semaphore keypad. The ships can be conned from the hull while they’re in the Matrix.”

  “I’ll be buggered,” Daniel said. “I’ve never seen that, though my Uncle Stacey said that it could be done. Some of the little clusters he’d found had people who did it.”

  He looked from the cutters below to Milch. “Pirates,” he said. “It’s not good for much except piracy, is it?”

  “And anti-pirate operations,” Milch said, nodding. “Which is what the Palmyrenes do now. But that’s a reason we don’t get shirty about the unique glory of Cinnabar here in the Qaboosh Region. An RCN battlegroup could take care of the Piri Reis without blinking, but a couple hundred cutters like that—the Horde and private ventures—would pretty much shut down trade in the region for as long as they wanted to.”

  His face suddenly blank, Daniel glanced at the commander. He’d been mildly contemptuous of the Qaboosh Region and the Cinnabar officials here. Oh, it was natural enough—inevitable, he supposed, for an officer who’d been in the thick of things and had done very well for himself and for the Republic.

  But Commander Milch’s strategic appraisal was completely valid—and would have been beyond the imagination of most RCN officers whose service had been limited to big ships and important regions. And those Palmyrene cutters were remarkable by any standards, even Daniel’s own.

  They were small, displacing five hundred tons or even less. They were armed with clusters of unguided rockets whose only purpose was to damage the rigging of other ships in sidereal space. The more sophisticated rockets had proximity fuses, though pirates often made do with contact fuses and simply got close enough that one or more rockets hit the hull or rigging.

  When that happened, a 20-pound bursting charge blew a cloud of shrapnel in all directions, cutting cables and clawing sails to rags whether they were spread or furled against the yards. The hull—even of a lightly built merchantman—was unlikely to sustain any damage worse than scars and perhaps a sprung seam. Pirates didn’t want to damage cargos, and the ships might also be of value if only for spare parts.