Lt. Leary, Commanding

by David Drake

  He lifted the decanter and gestured toward Daniel; Daniel shook his head minutely in refusal. Vaughn poured for himself and continued, watching the sparkling liquid swirl into the glass, “Strymon does have frigates, though, very similar to your ship. I think with those frigates, properly commanded and supported as they should be by the government, we could sweep the Sack clear of pirates as we did under my father. Don’t you?”

  He met Daniel’s eyes. Daniel nodded and said, “Well, sir, if the opinion of a junior lieutenant is of any importance—yes, I think you’re right.”

  And I hope it happens soon, he thought; but while Daniel was no politician, he was too much his father’s son to blurt that while stone sober. Which he wouldn’t be much longer if he didn’t watch himself.

  “I think I’ve monopolized the company of my host for long enough, sir,” he said, offering Vaughn his hand. “Mistress Zane, a pleasure to meet you. I hope your stay on Cinnabar is profitable.”

  The Strymon aide slid the screen away as soon as Daniel’s hand touched it. He stepped out of the bower and saw Hogg waiting for him with a glass of something clear that wasn’t likely to be water. That looked even better than Shawna and Elinor, but by heaven they were waiting too!

  Whistling a tune he’d learned on Bantry as “The Farmer’s Daughter,” Daniel walked toward the trio. The rest of the afternoon was for pleasure, or he’d know the reason why.

  Chapter Seven

  The barge nosed back up on Rakoscy Islet with the last load of the guests who’d dispersed throughout the Gardens during the course of the party. The leaves on the shrubs and the islet’s ground cover were canted to catch the late afternoon sun, giving the shore a subtly different appearance from the one Daniel and his companions had left two hours before.

  Shawna and Elinor pressed close to Daniel from either side, cooing things that probably wouldn’t have made sense even if he’d bothered to listen to them. The young noble he’d cut out was sitting under a bower, drinking straight from a bottle and glaring at Daniel with undisguised hatred. His nervous-looking servant was close by; a balked noble was likely to be a dangerous master.

  You’re welcome to them now, buddy, Daniel thought. I haven’t been so tired out since I climbed Hessian Hill when I was six and then realized I had to get down again before nightfall. In a few days this afternoon would be one to remember fondly. At the moment, Daniel just wanted to be shut of the girls and to have a chance to sleep.

  Adele had been sitting primly alone in a bower with the personal data unit deployed on her lap. She didn’t look out of place; from her smile, she was having at least as good a time as anyone else at the party. When the barge tooted twice to announce its return, she’d shut down the data unit and walked toward the shore.

  Tovera wasn’t at first visible, but Daniel suddenly spotted her at the serving tables where she could see the interiors of the bowers. Hogg waited where the barge had grounded, standing stiffly with his hands crossed behind his back. He was probably very drunk. It was hard to imagine a circumstance in which Hogg, surrounded by free liquor, wouldn’t become very drunk.

  “Girls,” Daniel said, holding a hand of each girl and then joining them to one another as he stepped away, “I have to speak privately with my servant at once. I’ll never forget having met you!”

  “Oh, Danny!” they said in dismayed unison. They’d have clasped him again but he managed to make his escape.

  Adele reached where Hogg stood at the same time Daniel did. “Quick!” Daniel whispered. “Come up with a reason I can’t ride back with those girls.”

  “Lieutenant Leary,” Adele said without missing a beat, “I need your input immediately to make up the crew list.” She tapped the purse where she’d just placed her data unit.

  “Very good, Mundy,” Daniel said in a similarly carrying voice. “We’ll go over it on the way back.”

  “Looks to me like you had a pretty good time,” Hogg said, flicking a shower of dust from beneath Daniel’s collar. It glittered in the air, then vanished. When disturbed, the trees of Joart sprayed great silver fountains of pollen which sublimed in sunlight unless it touched receptive stamens within a few moments. Daniel’s collar had shielded a portion of the gouts loosed while the trio thrashed in a glade on Joart Islet.

  “Besides which,” Hogg added judiciously, “you’re missing both epaulettes.” He patted the denuded shoulders for emphasis.

  “Ah,” said Daniel. He’d almost forgotten that. “Ah, yes. Shawna wanted one to, ah, remember—”

  Though he’d have thought the memories would be clear enough without a trinket; heaven knew his own would be.

  “—and of course when she said that, Elinor too … It just seemed simpler. And I figured they could be replaced?”

  The last sentence, though phrased as a statement, was really a question and not much short of a prayer. Daniel knew what effort Hogg had gone to so that his master would have a 1st Class uniform, and now on first wearing Daniel had gone and damaged it.

  “And so they can,” said Hogg with the formality of a priest giving absolution. “I will waylay an admiral this very night and remove his epaulettes, young master.”

  “No, Hogg,” Daniel said firmly. “I personally will visit Sadlack and buy a pair of epaulettes. I regard the task as proper punishment for having mutilated my uniform in this fashion.”

  Which was true in a way, but it was also a lot easier than dealing with the consequences if Hogg hadn’t been joking. Hogg had a sense of humor: a bawdy, raucous one that had rubbed off on Daniel. On the other hand, there was almost nothing that Hogg might not do, especially if he was drunk. There were many things that Daniel wouldn’t do; though now that he thought about it, forcibly borrowing an admiral’s epaulettes probably wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility.

  “As you say, young master,” Hogg muttered. “A Hogg would never be able to live with himself if he disobeyed his master’s order.”

  “Daniel,” Adele said to break into Hogg’s maunderings—and whatever the truth of the threat to an admiral, the notion that Hogg would never disobey Daniel was not to be taken seriously, “Tovera placed an eavesdropping device at Vaughn’s table. I’ve heard the conversations.”

  She tapped the data unit in her purse. Daniel controlled his reflex to glance at Tovera. Adele continued, “During the afternoon Vaughn’s agreed with three people here to rent a new townhouse for the next year. That’s three separate townhouses, giving each owner the same story about wanting larger quarters. He must be lying to two of them, but I can’t imagine why he’d do that. He’s bound to be caught in a few weeks.”

  “Ah!” said Daniel, because Adele’s words gave him a vivid recollection of some of the things he’d recently been murmuring to Shawna and Elinor. “Only if he’s here, you see.”

  It wasn’t the same, well, quite the same, because Daniel had used words like, ” … for all the time I’m on Cinnabar… .” But he knew the girls thought the phrase meant, “for the future,” while Daniel knew he’d be off-planet in a week at the latest.

  “I think,” he amplified, “that Vaughn expects to leave Cinnabar very shortly. I don’t know of any reason he should expect that … but it seems he’s confident enough that he’s making sure as many movers and shakers as possible ‘know’ that he’s planning to stay.”

  Guests were moving toward the boats under the gentle urging of the aides from Strymon. Many were under the weather, and a few were being supported or even carried by servants: Vaughn’s hospitality had been lavish and of high alcoholic content.

  “Lieutenant Leary?” Vaughn called. He stood with Tredegar beside the four-seat craft which had led the flotilla to Rakoscy Islet. “I’d appreciate it if you and your guest would ride back with me. I’d like to hear from your own lips how you captured the Princess Cecile.”

  Daniel hid his frown, but he darted a quick glance at Adele. She smiled thinly—her back was to their host—and said in a soft voice, “Yes, of course he’s lying, but we
may as well go along with it.”

  “Delighted, sir,” Daniel said cheerfully as he strode over to the nobleman. “And I should say at the outset that Officer Mundy here had more to do with the success of the operation than any other person.”

  They got into the small vessel, Daniel and Adele sitting behind Vaughn and Tredegar respectively. Two well-dressed Cinnabar nobles and a woman whom Daniel recognized as a senator’s widow had been standing close by. They looked vaguely put out as they moved off in search of other seating for the trip back to the entrance.

  Mistress Zane had returned to the larger boat which she’d ridden on the way in. Unlike the trio, she seemed quite at ease to be separated from her host.

  “I really would be delighted to hear about your exploits, Lieutenant,” Vaughn said in an undertone. “And yours as well, Officer Mundy. But I have to admit to a small subterfuge—I’ve just short of promised three of your fellow guests that I’d rent a house from each of them, and in truth I don’t intend to go through with any of the deals. If I were alone with one of them I’d have to descend to flat lies, and if I rode in a larger craft with all three together, my entire imposture would be exposed.”

  Tredegar reached past the steering column to touch the joystick on the dashboard; the trolling motor whined and the boat started to back away from the shore. Vaughn put his hand over the aide’s and said, “Wait for the others to board, Cornelius. We’re not in a hurry, after all.”

  Tredegar turned to look at Vaughn. His expression was empty, his eyes glazed in a taut face. He didn’t seem to be taking in the words, but at last he glanced down at the control and lifted his hand away.

  “Are you all right, Tredegar?” Daniel said sharply. “You don’t look well, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  Or if you do. The aide looked as if he’d been poisoned; that, or he was utterly terrified.

  “Sun,” Tredegar said. “Just a touch of sun. I’m all right now.”

  The blood had indeed returned to his cheeks, but as he spoke he engaged the motor again as if he’d forgotten the exchange of a few seconds earlier. Vaughn looked puzzled, but the other vessels were loaded by now so there was no further reason to delay.

  The boat eased into the channel. Tredegar centered the joystick, then clicked it upward to send them toward the entrance. In the clear water beneath, fish like strands of gilded tinsel schooled in the waterweed. They reminded Daniel of lightning flashing among the clouds.

  “If you’ll permit a question, Mr. Vaughn,” Adele said coolly, “why did you suggest you were going to rent a house if you didn’t intend to do so?”

  “Am I simply a pathological liar, you mean, mistress?” Vaughn translated with a laugh. “No, or at any rate I don’t see it that way. But you see, if my enemies—Friderik Nunes and his friends from the Alliance of Free Stars—learn that the Republic is sending me home, they’ll try to eliminate me before I leave. I’m practicing a mild deception to encourage spies here on Cinnabar to believe that I expect to remain on your planet for the foreseeable future.”

  “It’s not safe for you to go back,” Tredegar said. He kept his face straight ahead so that he didn’t have to meet his superior’s eyes. “You trust Zane but she’ll be your death. Death, Delos!”

  “Cinnabar is a wonderful planet, Lieutenant,” Vaughn said, seeming to have ignored Tredegar’s words. “She isn’t my planet, however. I’m looking forward to returning to a home I haven’t seen in fifteen years.”

  To the left was an islet whose trees seemed swathed in cobwebs instead of having ordinary foliage. Daniel couldn’t place their origin and suddenly regretted not having made more of an exploration of the Gardens. Even though the habitats were selective and thus artificial, the vegetation and the few permitted animal species were real so far as they went.

  “Why are you telling Daniel and me the truth if you’re lying to others?” Adele said, pressing the point with a lack of tact that made Daniel smile. They were very different people, he and Adele, but they both had a capacity for directness that startled others. “Our social superiors, many would say.”

  Vaughn smiled at her. His expression was perfectly open and natural—and false. Daniel was convinced of that, though he had no more evidence to go on than he did about the state of the universe before time began.

  “Well, Officer Mundy,” he said. “I don’t believe you’re going to help my enemies, knowing that you would thereby help the Alliance. And if you’ll forgive a foreigner a bit of romance—I don’t care to lie to officers of the Cinnabar fleet. We on Strymon have had ample reason to respect you and the ships you crew.”

  You know Adele’s been listening to your conversations, Daniel realized. You’re telling us a story that fits what we already know, but that doesn’t make it true.

  “I see,” Adele said. “I wish your endeavors well, Mr. Vaughn.”

  Albirus Islet with its wall of amber trees was coming up on the left. Tredegar had gone rigid again, except that he kept sucking his lower lip in and out over his teeth. He kept pressing the joystick but the trolling motor’s throttle was already full-open.

  “Is Mistress Zane here to make arrangements for your return, then?” Adele asked. Daniel saw her fingers twitch and almost smiled: Adele desperately wanted to enter the data somewhere to make it real to her.

  “Well, Thea is a friend,” Vaughn said. “I don’t think I should—”

  There was a fresh hole in the sheets of hardened sap, a saucer-sized window from the interior of Albirus Islet that hadn’t been there when the party entered. It could’ve been casual vandalism, but that wasn’t the first explanation that went through Daniel’s mind.

  “Watch out!” Daniel said, pointing to the opening. The boat was coming parallel to it. “There’s a—”

  Only shadows showed through the amber curtain, but metal glinted on the other side of the hole. Vaughn was looking at Daniel in surprise; Adele groped in her left pocket for the pistol she’d been forced to leave behind. Tredegar, his face set and tears streaming down his cheeks, gripped the joystick as if it were his last hope of life.

  There was no time for thought, only instinct. Daniel seized the aide’s throat with both hands, lifted him bodily from the seat, and threw him into the crystal water.

  The boat pitched wildly, but craft in the Gardens were broad-beamed with the expectation that many passengers would be clumsy and no few of them drunk besides. Daniel stepped into the pilot’s seat, jerked the separate steering wheel to the left, and stamped on the foot throttle which controlled the main motor. The boat surged toward the islet, the bow lifting to a thirty-degree angle as the powerful waterjet torqued the vessel around its center of mass before accelerating it.

  “Are you—” Vaughn said, grabbing Daniel around the shoulders. Adele threw herself over the Strymonian’s face. She wasn’t strong enough to break the grip of a well-built man, but suddenly being blindfolded made Vaughn jerk away.

  The world exploded in heat and the flash of a sun going nova. What was left of the boat flew over on its back, flinging its three remaining passengers into the canal not far from Tredegar.

  *

  Air, fiercely hot and compressed by a thunderclap to the density of tons of sand, enveloped Adele. She thought she’d let go of Vaughn, but she couldn’t be sure. She felt nothing—not even the pull of gravity—until she slammed into the canal.

  She rose spluttering. The canal’s knee-high water was clean and sweet; it must be filtered with the same care that the proprietors showed with every other aspect of the Gardens. Except that occasionally they failed to prevent assassins from bringing heavy weapons into their emasculated precincts… .

  The weight of the motor held the boat’s stern down, so the remainder of the plastic hull stuck up in the air. The dashboard had survived but the lower portion of the bow had been converted into a stench of resin matrix. Only a few tatters of fiberglass reinforcement were still attached to the undamaged mid-hull.

  A gray fog hung above the
wreckage, and a few wisps of ionized air were dissipating like yesterday’s rainbow. A plasma bolt, then, from a weapon concealed behind the wall of amber sap. The light-speed particles liberated their energy on the first solid object they encountered. They’d destroyed the boat, but they hadn’t been able to penetrate even the thin hull when Daniel lifted it with the throttle.

  Daniel sloshed toward the islet, staying to the left of a direct line with the gunport. He should have looked silly, unarmed and dressed in a dripping uniform. Adele doubted that he looked silly to the gunmen, though. As the commendation for his activities on Kostroma had put it, “Faced with a superior enemy, Lt. Leary chose to attack in accordance with the finest traditions of the Republic of Cinnabar Navy.”

  Feeling extremely foolish, Adele also started toward the islet, keeping to the right of the opening. If she’d had her pistol she might have done some good. So far as she could tell, this was no better than suicide. Still, she was acting out of cold analysis, not passion: she knew she’d rather be killed than live to remember that she’d let her only real friend die alone.

  It occurred to Adele to wonder what had happened to her purse with the personal data unit, dropped when she tried to get Vaughn out of the way. She hadn’t the least notion of what Daniel was doing, but she knew him well enough to support him regardless.

  The boat’s hull had reflected some of the bolt’s energy back toward the weapon, eating away a fan of hardened sap and fracturing the smooth amber wall for ten feet in either direction. A man wearing a poncho of light-scattering cloth ran past the enlarged opening, holding a handgun. Why didn’t I insist on keeping my—

  A bow wave washed Adele to the side as the barge carrying the servants surged between her and Daniel. She had to splash forward clumsily to keep from being pushed onto her face.

  The craft had a small cockpit in the rear. The aide who’d been at the controls floundered in the water thirty feet back while Hogg drove the vessel at a slant toward the islet. Several of the servants had jumped overboard; all but one of the remainder had ducked behind the gunwales.