Lt. Leary, Commanding

by David Drake

  “Anyway …” Daniel continued, feeling his face warm as he looked at himself with the eyes of Midshipman Daniel Leary, age eighteen. “I don’t want you to keep them on leashes, Adele, but I’m afraid that if they go off with any of the other senior warrant officers, they’ll … well, the only question would be whether they spent their liberty in bars, brothels, or a gambling house.”

  A smile drove the self-conscious embarrassment from Daniel’s face. Voicing the thought he said, “Of course, Sexburga’s a major port. I’m sure there are a number of establishments providing all three entertainments under the same roof.”

  Sobering he went on, “And I don’t care if my midshipmen do spend their liberty in one. I don’t want to force them into that choice, though, as sending them off with Woetjans would guarantee. I can’t order you to do this—”

  Actually, he could: he was captain of the Princess Cecile, and if he ordered his crew to spend their whole liberty in church, regulations permitted him to do so. His chance of having anybody report aboard for the next leg of the cruise was a great deal more problematic, however.

  “—but it would be a favor to me and to the RCN.”

  Adele nodded. “All right,” she said. “I didn’t have anything more exciting planned than sightseeing in what seems from the description in the Sailing Directions to be quite an interesting city. If Dorst and Vesey would care to join me, I’d be pleased to have their company.”

  She looked down at her rumpled utilities. “I suppose I should change? I see the others are.”

  “Dress grays are traditional for officers on liberty,” Daniel said. “If you’d prefer civilian clothes, that’s perfectly acceptable also. That is, on my ship it is.”

  “I sincerely hope I’ll never travel on anybody else’s ship, Daniel,” Adele said with a faint smile. “Certainly not as a member of the RCN.”

  She stepped toward the suite she shared with him. “I’ll put on my uniform. It’s perfectly comfortable and I’m—”

  Adele paused, looking back over her shoulder. “Actually, I’m rather proud to wear the uniform. Although I’m still surprised to feel that way.”

  Grinning broadly, Daniel keyed first the attention signal and then the PA system. “Midshipmen to the bridge,” he ordered.

  Hogg stepped onto the bridge, wearing his version of liberty dress—high boots, red beret, orange pantaloons, and a canary yellow shirt with flaring sleeves. He’d been waiting politely in the passage for his master and Adele to finish their conversation. “If you won’t be requiring me, sir,” he said, “I thought I’d go ashore and pick up a few things we’ll need for the voyage.”

  “Certainly, Hogg,” Daniel said. “I only hope that you don’t pick up anything that you don’t mean to.”

  Hogg drew himself up, which still left him a hand’s breadth short of Daniel’s own modest height. “Loose women,” he said in a tone of injured innocence, “are not a problem of mine, young master.”

  He cleared his throat and added, “Though I’ll be fair and say that I never noticed you to have problems finding them neither. Quite the contrary.”

  “We’ll trust that they don’t have anything on Sexburga that the sick-bay computer can’t solve,” Daniel said. “But of course you’re free to go, Hogg. Have fun.”

  Daniel watched the vivid form of his servant disappear down the companionway. Hogg had grown grayer day by day during the long, brutal voyage. It wasn’t so much a physical change as a lowering of the intense spirit that usually animated his pudgy form. He’d never flinched, let alone complained, but Daniel wasn’t sure how much reserve there’d been remaining.

  Perhaps very little—but Hogg had always rebounded swiftly.

  Delos Vaughn came out of his berth, dressed in a flowing blend of blues and greens. His servant, Timmins, watched him head for the bridge. When he was sure of Vaughn’s intention, Timmins ducked down the companionway. He was still wearing fatigues, having waited to change into liberty dress until he’d attended to the passenger.

  Daniel’s eyes narrowed slightly. To get that sort of service from a spacer after a voyage like the one just ended, Vaughn must be paying quite well. Which shouldn’t have been a surprise, of course.

  Vaughn paused at the bridge hatchway. “Lieutenant Leary?” he asked. “May I speak with you?”

  “Yes, of course,” Daniel said. “Welcome to the bridge, Mr. Vaughn.”

  It didn’t bother Daniel, but he’d noticed that Vaughn always called him by his rank, lieutenant, rather than his position as captain of the Princess Cecile. If the choice was a political game, Daniel didn’t understand it. But perhaps Vaughn was just ignorant, the niceties of shipboard usage having passed him by.

  It didn’t exactly bother Daniel.

  “I have friends here on Sexburga, Lieutenant,” Vaughn said as he stepped over the hatch coaming a trifle shakily. He spoke normally, but his cheeks had sunk noticeably in the past seventeen days. “I believe they’re waiting for me on the dock now. I wonder if you might be able to join us for dinner tonight? I’d like to show my appreciation for the skill as well as the hospitality you demonstrated on this voyage.”

  Daniel reached over to Bett’s console—his own keyboard was out of reach from where he stood—and brought up the panoramic view with quick keystrokes. He hoped he wasn’t frowning at Vaughn, though he wouldn’t pretend that he really cared that much.

  “Your friends waiting for you, Mr. Vaughn?” he said, adjusting the display to expand the quay to which a team of riggers was extending the corvette’s gangplank.

  “Why yes, Lieutenant,” Vaughn said. “I believe you met Mistress Zane at my party? Though of course you might not remember her with all the excitement that day.”

  “I remember her,” Daniel said in a quiet voice. Indeed, that was Zane standing ramrod straight beside the open door of the ground car now waiting on the quay. Daniel had thought the vehicle was bringing harbor officials to handle the administrative details of the Princess Cecile’s stay on Sexburga. “She must have made good time to arrive before we did.”

  Vaughn shrugged. “There’s quite a lot going on, Lieutenant,” he said. “As no doubt you realize.”

  Adele had come out of her cabin; Tovera straightened an everted pleat of her mistress’s jacket with fingers as thin and white as if they were merely the bones. The midshipmen waited stiffly in the passage, their faces scrubbed and saucer hats in their hands. Vesey was squinching forward, apparently in an attempt to minimize the grease stain she’d somehow managed to get between her first and second jacket buttons.

  “I appreciate your invitation, Mr. Vaughn,” Daniel said, changing the subject back to one he felt comfortable with, “but I’m afraid tonight is impossible. I’ll remain aboard the Princess Cecile until the liberty parties return tomorrow and Mr. Pasternak takes charge.”

  “I see,” said Vaughn. A flash of anger suggested that at heart he didn’t see any reason ever that his will should be thwarted, but the emotion was gone as quickly as it appeared. “Well, can we say tomorrow, then? I really feel a duty as a citizen of Strymon to thank you before a gathering of my compatriots. Quite a number of the chief residents here are natives of Strymon, you realize.”

  What Daniel realized was that Vaughn was making the invitation a matter of planet-to-planet protocol. Why he’d want to do that was puzzling, though a simple desire to get his own way would be a believable explanation; but Vaughn certainly had the power to make trouble for Daniel on the grounds of a political snub if the invitation were refused.

  “I’d be pleased to attend you, yes, Mr. Vaughn,” Daniel said. “With the proviso that I’ll call on the Cinnabar Commissioner as soon as I go ashore; and whenever Commodore Pettin arrives, I’ll be entirely at his disposal.”

  Daniel wasn’t under any illusions about Vaughn’s instinct to dominate, but it wasn’t something that put the man outside the pale in the mind of an RCN officer. More important was the fact that the young nobleman controlled his impulses. What
ever Vaughn might have been at the core, his intellect made him a civilized man who operated within the norms he found around him; and it was intellect, after all, that divided men from beasts.

  “Let’s say tomorrow evening then, Lieutenant,” Vaughn said with a smile, bowing as crisply as a punch notching a ticket. “The twelfth hour, as they calculate things here on Sexburga; and at the Captal da Lund’s residence outside Spires. I will expect you.”

  He turned and strode to the companionway, nodding in friendly acknowledgment to the midshipmen. The interchange with Daniel had restored Vaughn’s poise: he walked with none of the stiffness and doubtful balance that had hampered him when he entered the bridge.

  Adele stepped to Daniel’s side. In a low voice she commented, “The hormones that emotions release do wonderful things for a person’s physical condition, don’t they? I wonder if I’ve been wrong all my life in thinking people would be better off without emotion?”

  Daniel looked at his friend sharply, not quite certain that she was joking. Deciding he didn’t want to ask a question that might have the wrong answer, he said, “Yes, it seemed to me as well that more was going on than a party invitation. But I wonder why?”

  He glanced sidelong at Adele and raised an eyebrow. She shrugged and said, “I truly don’t know, Daniel. It’s no affair connected with … me or mine, to the best of my knowledge.”

  In the glum pause that followed, Tovera turned her palm up. The slight movement called attention to her. Daniel started: it was like a magician’s illusion. Poof! and Adele’s servant stood where his mind hadn’t registered anything a moment before.

  “I wonder, mistress?” Tovera said. “Will I be going with you today?”

  In place of the coveralls she’d worn during the voyage, she’d donned baggy gray slacks and a beige shirt that would have hung to her knees if it hadn’t been belted at her waist. The loosely bloused fabric could conceal any number of weapons or other devices—and probably did.

  “I don’t believe I’ll need you, no,” Adele said, her words as careful as the taps of a gem-cutter. “You’re welcome to come, but if you’d rather be off on your own … ?”

  “Spires gets all sorts of people,” Tovera said. She smiled; the expression belonged on a bird of prey. “Some of them may enjoy the same things I do.”

  She took a ring of dark hematite with a simple gold inlay from a purse hidden under the drape of her blouse, then slid it on her left little finger. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then. At this hour?”

  “Yes, that will be fine,” Adele said. “If I need you sooner, I’ll …”

  She tapped the personal data unit that she used for communication. Tovera might have a mastoid implant for all Daniel knew, though a simple pager the size of a pea would be sufficient.

  “Thank you, mistress,” Tovera said as she walked away. Daniel shook his head in wonderment. It was like seeing the shadow of death thrown on the corridor bulkhead.

  “And before you ask,” Adele said in a bleak voice, “I don’t have the faintest notion of what she means.”

  Daniel hadn’t had the least intention of asking. He put his hand on Adele’s shoulder and squeezed it, reassuring both of them that their truths remained.

  Adele looked at the image Daniel had called up on the attack console. The gangplank was an internally braced structure that could unfold an entire twenty yards if necessary, though Daniel had brought the corvette much closer than that to the concrete slip. The Princess Cecile’s crew, bright and fluttering in their liberty dress, crossed in loose formation. The crew from the anchor watch who’d just extended the gangplank watched their singing, laughing, fellows without expression.

  Daniel sighed. Well, that was why he was aboard himself. A captain had to be willing to carry out unpleasant duties occasionally, if he expected his crew to obey when he ordered them to do things they’d rather not. Which, after all, covered most of the activities aboard a warship.

  “That’s Thea Zane, the woman who visited Vaughn on Cinnabar!” Adele said. She sat at the console, apparently oblivious of her surroundings, and began switching between screens without bothering to explain what she was doing. The view of the dock shrank to a corner of the display.

  “Yes it is,” Daniel said. Dorst and Vesey remained at the hatchway, teetering with nervous anticipation. He crooked his finger to bring them to him. “And I can’t imagine how she reached Sexburga ahead of us, even if she left immediately after Vaughn’s party.”

  “She came aboard the yacht Achilles,” Adele said with satisfaction, leaning her head aside. “Twenty-three days out of Cinnabar.”

  Daniel stooped to bring his head into position to read the personnel manifest the yacht had filed with the Harbormaster. Fifty-three crew—a large complement for a 300-ton vessel, but she was carrying the sails of a much larger hull—and one passenger: Mistress Thea Zane.

  “I see,” he said, straightening. His smile had a degree of calculation in it. “I suppose we should be glad that they didn’t have Uncle Stacey’s logs, or our run from Cinnabar might not have been a record after all.”

  He straightened and gestured to Adele. She switched the console back to a full-sized image of the dock and stood, nodding to the midshipmen to show that she was aware of them. On the display Vaughn gripped arms with Mistress Zane, then got into the closed car with her help. Obviously, he wasn’t fully recovered from the voyage.

  Well, neither was Daniel, though he was getting there. He forced his face into a serious expression and said, “Dorst, Vesey, I have a favor to ask of you. I realize you have plans for your liberty—”

  He was fairly confident that the midshipmen had no real plans, just concern sparked by the tall tales they were bound to have heard. They’d be afraid that they wouldn’t measure up to what was expected of an RCN officer.

  “—but I’m going to ask you to put them on hold for our first day here.” Daniel cleared his throat. “Normally I’d escort Officer Mundy myself, but I have anchor watch for the next twenty-four hours. I don’t want her to stumble around Spires alone, so I’d appreciate it if you’d accompany her. I won’t make this an order, but—”

  “Sir, we’d be happy—” Vesey said. Her tongue caught and she glanced at Dorst. “Ah, I’d be—”

  “We’d be honored to join Officer Mundy!” Dorst said with relieved enthusiasm. “We’ll keep her, ah …”

  He wanted to say “safe,” but he suddenly doubted that was the right word. Wisely, Daniel thought, he let his voice trail off.

  Adele seemed to be on the verge of open laughter; which, if not a first, certainly wasn’t something she had great experience with. Still working to keep his face straight, Daniel said, “This meets with your approval, Officer Mundy?”

  You had to know what you were looking for to see the flat bulge in the side pocket of Adele’s jacket. If the midshipmen had heard the stories about what Adele could and had done with her pistol, they probably classed them with the stories about the night Barnes serviced all thirty of the girls in a brothel on LaGrange, having reached the madam just as dawn broke.

  “Yes it does,” she said solemnly. “I’m afraid my taste in amusement is staid by any standards, but we can at least get the flavor of the city together. In future days you’ll be free to indulge yourself.”

  “Oh, that’ll be fine, ma’am,” Dorst assured her. “To tell the truth, I was sort of looking forward to … I’ve never been out of the Cinnabar system, you know, and I’d like really to see some things besides—”

  He broke off and pointedly didn’t look at Vesey.

  “We don’t have to leave the Sissie to get drunk,” Vesey said primly, her eyes fixed on the far bulkhead also. “Anyway, we’re glad to join you, mistress.”

  “Then you’d best learn to call me Mundy,” Adele said as she shepherded her charges toward the corridor. “I have the Sailing Directions—”

  She tapped the pocket with her data unit.

  “—and a map of Spires, so we should be all ri
ght if we stay together.”

  She nodded to Daniel as she followed the midshipmen down the companionway; a thin, stiff-looking woman in dress grays. He winked in reply. Yes, they’d be all right; no question about that.

  The people telling about Barnes’ exploit exaggerated: there’d only been fifteen women in the house, not thirty-one. And they exaggerated about Adele as well. She hadn’t really killed a hundred Alliance soldiers on Kostroma with single shots to the head, snapping the rounds off every time a target offered.

  But it probably wasn’t as much of an exaggeration as the story about Barnes.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Nine funicular railways climbed from Flood Harbor to the city of Spires on beyond the cliffs. Three were for personnel, leaving at fifteen-minute intervals according to the scarred metal plate in the shelter where Adele stood with the midshipmen. The others were much larger, with cogged rails to give positive traction to heavy loads. They hauled cargo to and from the freighters berthed in slips formed from golden limestone quarried from the cliffs themselves.

  “How does the harbor flood?” Dorst said, looking back at the rounded hulls of starships which showed over the slips like so many oxen in their stalls. “It looks to me that the locks keep the water level pretty constant whatever the tide’s doing.”

  “Captain Ludifica Flood refounded the colony from Earth after the Hiatus,” Adele said, restraining the urge to bring out her personal data unit and show the boy the reference. “The harbor’s named after her.”

  The funicular lines carried two cars in balance, going up and down simultaneously on a single set of tracks with a double-tracked shunt in the middle where they passed. The lower set of pulleys squealed loudly as the cars above reached midpoint.

  Adele eyed them without pleasure. The cables were no thicker than her thumb, which seemed modest when they had to support forty-odd passengers and the vehicle against a thousand-foot fall. Deliberately she said, “I wonder, Dorst; are these—”

  She gestured.

  “—going to be thick enough to hold us?”