In the Stormy Red Sky-ARC

by David Drake

  "R16, this is suicide!" Daniel said. "You must shut—"

  The gush of steam from Berth 4 redoubled, concealing the mine tender for a moment. Then the hull with its minimum rig rose slowly from the cloud. They probably don't even have stores aboard for an interstellar voyage!

  "Six, I've got her, over!" Sun cried. He was hunched over his console, his right hand poised over the execute button.

  "Gunner, you may fire one round only," Daniel said, his face hard. Taking risks and ordering others to take risks were major parts of a naval officer's duties. This sort of pointless bravado disgusted him.

  WHANG!

  The shot came quicker than Daniel had expected. Because of the Milton's greater height, Sun had managed to get an angle while the tender was still largely within her slip. From the masthead sensors, Daniel saw a wedge of the top of the quay blaze white as the lower margin of the bolt touched it, reducing the concrete to quicklime and shattered gravel.

  Most of the plasma struck the R16, however, and ripped her in two. In a breathable atmosphere, steel heated to the temperature of a star became fuel. The central portion of the little vessel didn't just vaporize as it would have done in space, it burned.

  An iridescent fireball filled the slip, then paled as it lurched upward. When it burst high in the air, diamond-bright droplets rained down.

  R16's bow dived into the slip, driven by two working thrusters. A double blast followed when water bathed the hot Stellite nozzles. It would have been impressive if it hadn't been upstaged by the plasma bolt itself.

  The last ten feet of the tender's stern accelerated skyward in a steep curve while Daniel watched in amazement. The fragment hurtled several hundred feet up before the thruster driving it ran out of reaction mass. It spun, flinging out lesser debris which seemed to include a pair of human bodies, and plunged into a subdivision. There was no explosion, but more houses began to burn.

  "The bloody fool," Daniel said. That was as much of an epitaph as R16's commander would get or deserved.

  He took a deep breath, furious at the waste. "Ship, this is Six," he said. "All clear, all clear. And Gunner, that was a fine piece of work. Six out."

  Calm again, Daniel turned back to Senator Forbes. "Sun, that's our Gunner—"

  He gestured left-handed toward the gunnery console.

  "—caught the mine tender while it was still in its berth. If it had had time to get up to a thousand feet or so it would have been an easy target because of the reduced deflection, but the falling debris would've done all manner of damage. That was very good work."

  Daniel didn't know what if anything Forbes made of what he was saying, but the fact that Sun heard his captain praise him to the Senator was important. Sun had done a very good piece of work. Most of the lives he'd saved were those of local civilians, but there would've been losses among the Brotherhood infantry too.

  "Yes, I see," said Forbes in the tone of somebody who would have preferred not to have been interrupted. "When were you planning to meet the Alliance Commodore?"

  There was a dull bong and the cruiser rocked slightly. Forbes and her aides might not even have noticed it after the violence of the plasma cannon, but it announced to Daniel that the boarding ramp had lowered until it butted firmly. The naval berths in St James Harbor were as well appointed as those of Harbor Three on Cinnabar; instead of floating catwalks, metal extensions unfolded from the dock on cantilevered supports.

  "Yes," he said. "If you're ready, your Excellency, we'll be heading for the command bunker in about five minutes when the utility vehicles come up from the hold. I'd have used the aircars—"

  "Except that the turbulence which the ship creates makes them too dangerous a risk to my life?" the Senator said. Her tone was so dry that Daniel wasn't sure whether she was joking or still angry over his previous manipulation.

  "No, your Excellency," he said. Forbes had a right to be angry, and this would be as good a time—in the middle of a major victory—as he could imagine for her to let it out. "Because it's too dangerous to put anybody up in the air when hundreds of Alliance personnel are loose and haven't been disarmed. I'll take my chances—our chances, if I may say so—with the odd slug flying around, but it's easier than you might think to shoot an aircar right out of the sky. And it's very hard to dodge gravity if that happens."

  Forbes sniffed and looked down at the cream sleeve of her jacket. "I should have worn gray," she said, as much to herself as to anybody. "This will be all soot by the time we get to this bunker."

  "Well, think of it this way, Senator," said Hogg in a raspy voice. "So long as you haven't shat your trousers, you'll be better dressed than the local brass you'll be meeting."

  Forbes stared at him, then turned to Daniel. He let the smile ease from his lips and waited with a neutral expression.

  "Your man has a smart mouth, Leary," she said. "Does he know how to handle those guns he's carrying?"

  "Hogg is a very good shot, your Excellency," Daniel said.

  "I thought he might be," Forbes said. Her face crinkled into a slight smile. "And I dare say he's right about how our opposite numbers reacted to being on the other end of those bloody great cannon. Well, whenever you're ready. Do you have to change clothes?"

  Daniel glanced down at his utilities. "No, your Excellency," he said. He took the sub-machine gun which Hogg offered. "This is a useful reminder to Commodore Harmston that we're a fighting force."

  The first of the Hydriote transports was rumbling down from the stratosphere with a load of the Fonthill Militia. Blantyre was in charge of them. Before they'd even lifted from Fonthill, she'd used maps of St James City to set up patrol areas. Each unit would be commanded by a petty officer from the cruiser. There'd have to be adjustments—there would have been adjustments even if a tenth of the city hadn't been destroyed in the assault—but Blantyre would take care of the problems without bothering her captain about them.

  "As soon as we're sure the Alliance forces understand that they've surrendered," Daniel said, "I will change—at least into my Grays. The prisoners from Admiral Ozawa's squadron are in a quarry north of the city. Freeing them is my next priority, and they deserve the respect of a dress uniform."

  Forbes nodded crisply. "I'll join you," she said. There was no question at all in her done.

  "I hoped you would," Daniel said truthfully. "Now, let's deal with Harmston."

  He glanced back at the panorama as he started out of the compartment with Hogg, Major Mull, and Senator Forbes. Armed spacers were trotting down the Milton's boarding ramp. That would be the cadres for the Militia as well as the cruiser's own security party, as expected. But among them—

  Daniel looked at the signals console; it was empty, though Cory was doubtless handling communications from his station. He'd been right to think that the two slim figures leaving the ship were Adele and Tovera. They'd left the bridge while his attention was on Senator Forbes.

  What in heaven is Adele doing now?

  Though being Adele in the present chaos, the question might better be phrased, What in Hell?

  While Adele, Tovera, and Dasi clung to the pivot where a lowboy would normally be attached, Barnes drove the tractor along the esplanade toward Fleet Berth 74 where the Zieten was moored. There was plenty of room on the deck of the bright orange vehicle, but passenger amenities were conspicuous by their absence.

  Something fell on the back of Adele's neck. Rain? she thought, but when she patted it absently with her right hand the fingers came down black. It had been a blob of ash—oily ash.

  She grimaced and wiped her fingertips on the back of her trouser leg. Quite a lot of the things burning around St James Harbor this afternoon were human bodies. The smell was unmistakable if you'd been exposed to it before.

  The tractor jounced over a length of pipe—plastic and therefore not a mast section, but it didn't deform under the small, solid wheels. Dasi's left arm was around Adele's waist; she was as safe as she'd have been if she were attached to the pivot by
a safety line. That didn't make it a comfortable ride, though, even at a modest eight miles per hour which was as much as the low-geared electric motor could manage even without a loaded trailer.

  "We could've gotten something with springs," Dasi said glumly. His partner seemed to be having a good time at the control yoke, but Barnes also had the tractor's only seat. "There was a couple little trucks in the shed two berths over. All we'd have had to do was lift the roof off them and I'd bet we could've got one of them to run."

  Something exploded to the right. Adele jerked her head around, but she couldn't tell where the blast had come from; it might not even be within the military reservation. There'd been several random shots since she and her ad hoc escort set off from the Milton, but nothing that sounded like real fighting.

  "The Brotherhood of Amorgos has the reputation of shooting first and not bothering to ask questions at all," Tovera said with a touch of gentle mockery, about as close as she usually came to displaying humor. "Armed people driving toward them in a truck with Alliance markings are likely to be stopped by the quickest means available. In this case that would probably be an automatic impeller, though they could doubtless take care of us with personal weapons."

  "Lieutenant Alderman expects us," Adele said. "But I too thought that the tractor was the best means of transportation at present."

  Three transports had landed, all of them in the military reservation, and a fourth was now thundering down from the heavens. The former slaves had to be armed from the Alliance arsenal here—Daniel didn't have sufficient RCN weapons.

  "Ma'am?" Dasi said. "Is something wrong?"

  I must have smiled, Adele thought. At least I would have meant it for a smile.

  Aloud she said, "I wonder if we'll be equipping the new Militia with Cinnabar weapons? Admiral Petersen would have captured quite a quantity of small arms on New Harmony, and it's likely enough that they would have been shipped here to the main base in the cluster, just as the prisoners were."

  Dasi laughed gaily over the jingle of the wheels grinding debris into the concrete pavement. "Say, you're right, ma'am!" he said. "That'll teach 'em, won't it?"

  Adele didn't respond save for a another neutral smile. Dasi took the reversal as an Aunt Sallie, a toy which inevitably bobbed upright on its weighted base after it had been slapped down. Adele's own image was that of a wheel: the Alliance had rolled to the top at New Harmony, but the wheel had turned again here at Bolton. The wheel was still turning, and it would turn until the end of time.

  The tractor rolled and rattled into the warm cloud surrounding a recently landed freighter. Adele couldn't see farther than the control yoke. She expected Barnes to switch to infra-red viewing, then realized that he wasn't wearing a helmet or goggles that would allow him to.

  They trundled into the sunlight on the same line that they'd entered a hundred feet earlier. She supposed spacers got used to working in blurred light and darkness.

  Adele tapped her personal data unit, though she didn't take it out of its pocket on so jolting a ride. The gray haze was too much like the hours before dawn when faces returned to her in an almost-dream. She knew that was only a trick of her mind, for their features were clear. For the most part they'd only been pale blobs above her gunsights during the fractions of seconds she'd seen them in life.

  "They're waiting for us up there," said Barnes. His hand rose from the control yoke to point.

  Tovera reached around from behind him and pulled his arm down. She said, "Let's not do anything our friends in the infantry might misunderstand."

  Barnes grunted. "Got it," he said.

  "You should've let me drive," Dasi said peevishly to his partner. As best Adele could tell, Dasi didn't really mean he wouldn't have pointed while approaching keyed-up men with guns; he was simply seizing the opportunity to complain again about something that had rankled throughout the ride.

  A hundred yards ahead, sixty-odd spacers lay like rolls of carpeting on their backs along the edge of the esplanade. A dozen or so at the far end wore field-gray Fleet utilities.

  A Brotherhood APC was parked its own length from the prisoners with its nose toward them. That was too far for anybody to decide to be a hero by rushing the vehicle. The impeller in the cupola and the troopers' personal weapons were stained gray at the muzzle by vaporized aluminum from firing.

  Several Brotherhood soldiers crouched behind cover, following the tractor with their guns. Adele didn't know where the rest of the squad was—probably controlling the other approaches. It wouldn't be a good time to bring out her data unit and get a precise answer from satellite imagery.

  "Halt where you are!" boomed a loudspeaker on the APC. "No vehicles are allowed closer than you are right now!"

  Barnes obediently pushed the control yoke forward, bringing the tractor to a jingling halt. Adele hopped down, as glad as not to leave the hard orange deck.

  "I'm Officer Mundy!" she said, wondering if anybody in the vehicle could hear her. She walked forward, taking her usual quick, short steps. "I need to speak to Lieutenant Alderman!"

  "I'll talk to them, ma'am," Dasi said apologetically, striding in front of her.

  They'd reached the nearest Alliance prisoners; some twisted their heads to follow the newcomers with their eyes, but many remained as stiff as logs or as corpses. A Brotherhood soldier with a sub-machine gun knelt at the base of the gantry Adele had just passed, watching events silently.

  "Now look, you pongoes!" Dasi bawled. "We're from the Millie, so put them bloody guns up now or Cap'n Leary'll show you what real guns is!"

  Adele grinned despite herself. She'd expected Dasi to politely request to meet the Brotherhood lieutenant, albeit more loudly than a librarian's lungs were capable of. After the fact, the notion seemed absurd. She knew riggers, and in particular she knew Barnes and Dasi—which was much of the reason she'd asked them to escort her to the Zieten.

  That didn't mean it was the right way to approach the Brethren, who were reputed to have their own outlook on honor and propriety. Once you'd devoted your life to the State through its Gods, you were likely to disregard merely human regulations.

  Adele stepped forward, her hands raised at her sides. "Lieutenant Alderman, I'm Officer Mundy," she called. At least between them, she and Dasi had confused the troops enough to get within speaking distance. "I'm the one who requested your unit to take charge of the ship and its crew. I gather you've done so?"

  Two soldiers stepped out from between a pair of room-sized shipping containers. Both carried sub-machine guns, but the older man behind wore a commo pack which would boost the signals of the small helmet transceivers which all the infantry wore.

  "You're female!" said the younger man. Combat troops didn't wear insignia, but he was obviously Michael Alderman.

  "Yes," said Adele, lowering her hands. If you must state the pointlessly obvious. "I spoke with Colonel Stockheim, who gave you your orders. Have you carried them out?"

  "Mistress, please remain where you are!" Alderman said forcefully. He was either angry or nervous because he was faced with an unexpected situation. "I need to check with the Colonel."

  An older soldier rose from the APC's hatch. He said, "Sir, that's the RCN officer who got the astrogation gear working on Paton."

  Ignoring his noncom, Lieutenant Alderman began speaking into his helmet microphone. His sound cancellation field was up. You little puppy, Adele thought; but after her mental rebuke of the rigger, she didn't say that aloud.

  The noncom met Dasi's eyes and shook his head, one enlisted veteran to another. He didn't look at Adele, though.

  Alderman stiffened abruptly, his eyes focused straight ahead as they would if he were being dressed down face to face instead of just over the radio. Adele hadn't warmed to Colonel Stockheim, but he seemed to be better at ordering priorities than this junior lieutenant was.

  Swallowing, Alderman turned to face Adele squarely and saluted. "Your pardon, Officer Mundy," he said. "The crew of the ship Zieten is here as
you wished—

  He gestured with the muzzle of his sub-machine gun. He carried the weapon with the ease of long practice. However poor Alderman's judgment might be, Adele had the impression that he would give a good account of himself in a gunfight.

  "—but the ship is closed up. Ah—should we blow it open? The Colonel was clear that we were to extend you every facility."

  "I'll take it from here, Lieutenant," Adele said. She was furious, but the first order of business was to correct the problem.

  She turned to the Alliance officers, the prisoners wearing uniforms instead of ordinary spacers' slops. She said, "Corvette-Captain Friedman—"

  She had the Zieten's roster from her databanks.

  "—stand up if you please!"

  The pudgy man on the end lifted his head but didn't otherwise move. Goodness only knew what sort of threats the Brethren had offered anyone who didn't lie flat.

  "Now!" Adele said.

  The pudgy man rose to his elbows, watching Alderman, then carefully got to his feet. "I'm Peter Friedman," he said. "Look, we're prisoners of war. You can't just shoot us."

  He didn't sound very sure about that. Adele grimaced. "Of course not," she said. She nodded to the supine row. "Is your whole crew here?"

  "Mistress, we're a courier ship," Friedman said. Adele didn't bother to say that she knew that; he was nervous enough already. "All my crew is here, yes. We obeyed the, ah, Captain Leary's orders. It'd be crazy to think we could fight a heavy cruiser!"

  "That's very much what Captain Leary said after he destroyed the R16," Adele said, emphasizing the point which obviously the Alliance officer was already aware of. Tovera and Barnes moved up to join her and Dasi. "But why is the Zieten still sealed?"

  "Look, mistress, this isn't our doing, I don't want you to think that," said Friedman, speaking in a breathless monotone. His eyes kept dancing around as though everything they lit on seared them. "But like I say, we're a courier ship and there were a couple Messenger Service people aboard with the pouch."