What Distant Deeps

by David Drake

  “No,” said Daniel, “you couldn’t.”

  “Yeah, I figured,” Hogg mumbled, handing over a folding knife with a knuckle-duster grip and a spike on the butt. It should have been clumsy, but Daniel had seen Hogg throw it with perfect accuracy. “Bloody hand.”

  Daniel beamed at the women; they had been waiting patiently. Adele and Tovera were urbanites. They had no idea of what the hunters were discussing, but they knew to hold their tongues when they were ignorant.

  “Now,” said Daniel. “Adele, you’ll guide us from up here while Hogg and I go to fetch the case. And Hogg, little though you like it, you’ll have to wear my commo helmet so that you can listen to Adele’s instructions.”

  “Aww . . . ,” Hogg muttered. “Well, I guess it serves me right for getting hurt.”

  More brightly he added, “Let’s get the Sissie here. Because I’m really looking forward to interviewing an assistant commissioner about what happened to the car’s motors!”

  “The mistress says we’re getting off to the right,” Hogg grumbled. “What I say is that if I didn’t have this bloody pot on my head, I’d be able to find my bloody way around like I have since before I started walking.”

  The ground had seemed solid from the top of the tower, but there were mud-filled swales in which the two men squished knee-deep. So far as Daniel could tell, the vegetation was indistinguishable from that which grew on firmer soil, but the buglike parasites sucking juices from the stems here were bright orange instead of the yellow with brown speckles that he’d seen close around the tower.

  “I appreciate you wearing the helmet for me,” Daniel said, holding the flag up in his left hand.

  In truth, he and Hogg both knew that it was almost impossible to keep a straight line in a marsh like this, and an unfamiliar marsh besides. The tower was the only high fixed point. Without a second point for triangulation, you could wander miles off course.

  The commo helmet had a compass function, of course, but it wasn’t worth trying to teach Hogg how to use it. He’d always gotten along without equipment, and by this time of his life he wasn’t going to change easily.

  “She says go straight through these reeds,” Hogg said. His pistol was in his left hand. Because he was walking a pace back from Daniel, he kept the muzzle in the air. Unlike Adele, he didn’t shoot equally well with either hand. Until he spent some time connected to the Medicomp, the pistol was less useful than the knife would have been.

  It kept Hogg from feeling useless, though. Tovera would have made a better commo relay person, but for Daniel to have told Hogg to wait in the tower would have been a crushing insult.

  Daniel reached out with the pole to part the reeds; the knife was withdrawn in his right hand to disembowel anything that lunged at the flag. “Right you are, Hogg,” he said cheerfully. “And there’s the case.”

  They had reached the lagoon. The bank was undercut and eighteen inches high. The meandering body of water was forty feet across near where they stood. As best Daniel could tell without falling in, it was five or six feet deep. That range would be the difference between swimming and wading.

  A juvenile dragon curved close to the bank and darted out again. It didn’t come within a foot of the surface, so it would be a waste of time to shoot at it.

  “Little bastard,” Hogg said morosely. “We don’t want to eat your dinner. If you’d just leave us alone, you could grow up to be big and strong.”

  “I’m showing disrespect for it by moving into its territory,” Daniel said. He smiled, but his amusement was tempered by knowledge. “Which isn’t a great deal different from us and the Alliance, is it, after all?”

  “Well, we’ve taught the wogs to back off plenty of times,” growled Hogg. “I don’t mind teaching a lizard, though I still think it ought to be me doing it.”

  “Warn me if something comes up, Hogg,” Daniel said instead of bothering to respond directly. He sat on the bank, letting his feet hang in the water. He could swim with his clothing on if he had to—certainly he could swim the few yards necessary here—and the tough cloth of the garments would be some protection. He slid into the lagoon.

  The bottom wasn’t quite as deep as he’d feared, but his boots raised shovelfuls of silt to cloud the water. The attaché case rocked away, but not far.

  A juvenile seadragon banked sharply and arrowed toward the disturbance. It drove itself with its long, flattened tail, keeping its legs close to the body except when it thrust one or more of the paddle feet out as rudders.

  Daniel slapped the flag into the water to his left. The seadragon made a ninety-degree turn as smoothly as water running through a pipe elbow. It rotated onto its side as it struck, ripping the fabric; the teeth were blunt, but the creature’s powerful jaw muscles were intended to crush them through crab shells.

  Daniel flipped his arm sideways, trying to toss the dragon onto the bank. He got it half out of the water; then the pole broke. He ducked as the creature writhed through the air where his head had been an instant previously.

  It slapped the water, tangled and half-blinded by the flag wrapping its head but snapping furiously at whatever was close. Daniel stabbed the creature just in front of its external gills and twisted the knife.

  The seadragon continued to thrash, even after Daniel lifted its torso above the surface. Its jaws snapped three times very quickly; then the eye he could see glazed. The legs and tail were still moving, but they were uncoordinated.

  Using the knife as a gaff, Daniel hurled the creature farther into the lagoon. The motion took a great deal of effort; the short fight had wrung more out of him than he had expected. He waded deeper and caught the handle of the attaché case with the water barely touching his chin; then he slowly forced his way back to the bank and tossed the case onto land.

  “Here you go, young master,” Hogg said, grasping Daniel’s left hand with his own. Daniel braced his right boot as far up the back as he could reach; then, with Hogg as an anchor, he heaved himself up and stood.

  Daniel wiped the blade clean of mud and blood on his pants leg, then closed the knife. “Thank you, Hogg,” he said, offering the weapon in the palm of his hand.

  Hogg picked up the case instead. “You keep it till we’re back with the mistress,” he said. “I’m bunged up, and it seems like you know how to use it.”

  I had a good teacher, Daniel thought as he followed his servant back to the tower.

  At the end of the day, Hogg had been right: animals, including humans, did fight territorial battles. People like Hogg and Daniel Leary had thus far fought better than any of the rivals they had faced.

  Adele, seated on top of the tower, took the satellite communicator from the attaché case while Tovera watched with an unfamiliar tight expression. Adele realized that she had never seen the case fully open before. Tovera hadn’t exactly hidden the contents, but she was a private person who avoided displaying any aspect of her life.

  The pistol-sized sub-machine gun had pride of place in the center of the lower half of the case, but around it and in separate pockets in the lid were a variety of other miniaturized devices. Adele didn’t recognize all of them. The information specialist in her wanted to begin questioning Tovera, but that would be both a waste of time and an insult to her servant.

  The communicator was obvious, though this one was the smallest that Adele had seen. It was a blunt, flat-based cone the height of her index finger; there were three bumps just below the apex and a dimple above the base. She set it before her on the top of the tower.

  “The base will stick,” Tovera said, leaning slightly forward as though she were about to snatch the unit away from her mistress. “If you—”

  Adele touched the dimple, causing micropores in the cone’s base to exude a quick-setting adhesive. If it was the type she was familiar with, a sharp ninety-degree twist of the cone would break the seal and the adhesive would sublime, but that was a question for later.

  “Yes,” she said, touching the three bumps in
turn to release the antenna prongs. “Does the unit require an authorization code?”

  Tovera laughed harshly, a very different sound from her not-infrequent cruel giggle. She said, “No, mistress. It’s just a communicator. I didn’t see any reason to make it more difficult to use than it had to be.”

  She coughed. “And I apologize.”

  Adele paused and looked up at her servant. “I don’t care to have other people poking around in my files, Tovera,” she said. “If I were to break my wrists, I might have to; but I wouldn’t be happy about it.”

  She resumed the process of connecting her data unit with the satellite communicator. Zenobia’s network was rudimentary but sufficient to the planet’s traffic. Shortly after the Sissie landed, Adele had carved a dedicated circuit for RCN use out of the system—just in case. Unless the satellites were destroyed or someone equally capable undid her work, she had access to the entire planet so long as she could connect with the network to begin with.

  Tovera coughed diffidently. She said, “I don’t think my wrists are broken, mistress, but thank you. I’ll go sit with Hogg, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” Adele said without looking up again. Hogg had been wobbling when he stepped out onto the roof with the attaché case; Daniel had instantly ordered him back inside. It was a sign of how much pain Hogg had been in after the climb had raised his blood pressure that he had obeyed without argument.

  Adele got her connection. “Daniel, would you care to . . . ?” she said.

  He shook his head with a grin. “You’re the signals officer, Mundy,” he said.

  Nodding, she said, “Mundy to Princess Cecile. Please reply, Princess Cecile, over.”

  Daniel stood beside her, looking around with a pleasant smile. He appeared to be viewing the landscape in idle curiosity, but Adele noticed from the image on her display that he always watched her out of the corner of his eye.

  Does he think I’m going to fall off this roof? Adele thought in irritation.

  The hard line of her lips relaxed into her version of a smile. Well, yes, Daniel might very well be concerned that she would fall off the roof. The smooth surface, lack of railing, and the fact the top sloped down on all sides made it quite dangerous unless you were—as she had suggested—a bird.

  “Mistress, thank the gods!” said Cazelet’s rushing voice. “Break!”

  There was a pause, about long enough for the acting signals officer to pass the information on. Then Cazelet’s voice resumed, “Mistress, Elspeth—that is, Lieutenant Vesey—says we’re three minutes out. What is your situation, please, over?”

  Adele was using her data unit’s speakers, but Daniel would have been able to listen anyway through his commo helmet. He frowned with surprise at the news.

  “We have a couple minor injuries,” Adele said. Hogg and Tovera had reappeared in the roof opening, but they didn’t step out. Tovera was surreptitiously keeping an eye on Hogg to prevent him from overreaching himself. “Princess Cecile, how do you come to be approaching, over?”

  “Mundy, this is Three,” said Vesey, taking over from the midshipman. “When we lost contact with you, Lieutenant Cory brought up recently viewed sites.”

  They shouldn’t be able to recover my viewing history! Not even Cory and Cazelet should be able to break the encryption!

  “He informs me that your history was irrecoverable, but that Six had recently tried to view a site also. By using imagery from ships in Calvary Harbor, Cory was able to pinpoint Six’s coordinates as Diamond Cay in the Green Ocean, the direction in which your aircar was seen leaving this morning. I issued an alarm, and we were able to lift in seventeen minutes. Over.”

  Daniel caught Adele’s eye, then pointed to himself. Adele nodded and switched the control.

  “Lieutenant Vesey, this is Six,” said Daniel, using his commo link instead of speaking directly to the data unit. “We will await your arrival with great pleasure. Land at the base to the crystal structure, if you will; the walls will protect us from the exhaust.”

  He paused without signing off, then continued, “And Vesey? Will you please relay my appreciation to the officers and crew of the Sissie? This was work in the best tradition of the RCN. I have no higher praise to give, over.”

  “Roger, Six,” said Vesey. “Three out.”

  Adele started to pack her equipment, then decided to wait. It wouldn’t take long, and she preferred not to be out of communication just now. She could already hear the rumble of the corvette’s thrusters.

  “You’ve trained some good ones, Adele,” said Daniel, his hands in his tunic pockets as he looked eastward. “And so have I. I used to worry that Vesey was indecisive.”

  He chuckled. “Mind,” he added, “I suspect the ship’s undercrewed, though there’s likely forty drunks stretched out at their action stations.”

  The Princess Cecile was visible now, thundering along just high enough that the iridescent plume of her exhaust didn’t lick steam from the wave tops. The gun turrets were unlocked. The paired cannon were depressed slightly to fire at such ground targets as might present themselves.

  “They didn’t know what they might be getting into,” Adele said. In moments like these, she thought she knew what other people meant by love. “But they came anyway. Of course.”

  “Of course!” agreed Daniel in surprise.

  In the lagoon where Tovera’s case had floated, birds with sharp teeth and clawed forelegs ahead of their two wings were fighting over the corpse of the juvenile seadragon. The thunder of the Sissie’s plasma motors drowned their shrieks.

  Adele smiled faintly, wondering whether Zenobian scavengers found human carrion edible also. Assistant Commissioner Gibbs might give her an opportunity to answer that question.

  CHAPTER 15

  Calvary on Zenobia

  Hogg had procured the vehicle, so Daniel let him drive the squad of Sissies through the dark streets of the city. He wasn’t a very good driver, but none of them were; and it had been the right choice to make for other reasons. Hogg was whistling “Lilliburlero,” cheerful and completely himself for the first time since he’d injured his hand.

  “Hey, Hogg, what is this thing?” Barnes called from the back. “A hay cart?”

  The vehicle had an electric motor and balloon tires—of four different sizes, granted, but nonetheless reasonably quiet on the brick streets—so it was possible to talk inside without bellowing. Even the thrum of the drive belt, slanting from the cab down through the floor of the back—there was no partition—wouldn’t have been noticeable if its rumbling surface hadn’t been unshielded for most of its length. Spacers were used to things that could snap off a finger or a whole leg, but the experienced ones didn’t let themselves forget about such dangers.

  “The fellow has a general hauling business,” Hogg said. “I put him onto a good thing, and he’s letting us use the truck for as long as we need. Nice one, isn’t it?”

  Daniel’s helmet projected a route in front of the driver. As Hogg spoke, the hologram indicated a corner coming. He turned more quickly than the street did, but the curb on that side was low. Both the pole and the side of the vehicle had brushed things in the past.

  Woetjans muttered, “Bloody hell!” as she rocked in the back. That was mainly because she didn’t like surface transportation, however. Her hands were tight on opposite ends of her truncheon. Even she couldn’t make the high-pressure tubing bend, though.

  This was a good vehicle, though, especially for the purpose. The back had high sides; they’d rigged a tarp over the top so that people looking down from third-floor roofs couldn’t see what was going on, but even that wouldn’t have mattered.

  Daniel hadn’t asked—and wouldn’t ask—for details on the “good thing” Hogg had mentioned. It looked to him as though the new battery clamped beside the motor had been RCN issue, though he was pretty sure it hadn’t come from stores that Captain Daniel Leary had signed for. Even if the situation was what he suspected it was, the RCN w
as getting value from its supply budget.

  “Daniel,” said Adele through the commo helmet. “It’s going to take us—”

  “Us” meant Cory and Cazelet under her direction, he supposed. Daniel didn’t object to or even ask about the tasks Adele gave his officers. The business was a stark violation of RCN regs, but it worked extremely well.

  “—days or weeks even to get through the material on Gibbs’ personal database, but he seems to have preserved every contact he had with the plotters. He recorded all his conversations with his Palmyrene handler, both personal and by phone. I can’t imagine what he was thinking of!”

  She paused, then added, “Of course, the archivist in me is very pleased. We might not even need Gibbs in person.”

  “Oh, we need him,” Daniel said, feeling his smile harden. He wasn’t a cruel man; he wasn’t even hard, by the standards of people like Hogg and—there was no point in denying the bald truth—Adele. Nonetheless, he was a Leary and an officer of the RCN: those who attacked him and his would pay.

  He cleared his throat and said, “Adele, is the password ‘Shirley’ still correct, over?”

  “Yes,” said Adele. “It’s his mother’s name, according to his file in Navy House.” Without changing tone she added, “You’re approaching Gibbs’ residence. I’m shutting off his exterior surveillance system now. Actually, I’ve switched off the entire system. Ah, over.”

  Hogg switched off the power, turning the electric motor into a brake: the only brake the vehicle had so far as Daniel could see, except for the spade outside the cab on the driver’s side. That could be pivoted to dig into the street on either an up or down slope, though it seemed of limited utility on bricks unless the driver carefully wedged it into a crack.

  “We’re here, young master,” Hogg said. He started to get out. The street was so narrow that there was barely room to walk around the vehicle to either side. The narrow-fronted row houses were of two stories. They had stone foundation courses and were brick above that.