by David Drake
Pettin thumbed the display to lower intensity and looked through it sourly. He touched his forehead in a perfunctory salute and said, “At ease, Leary. Pretending you were an honor graduate isn’t going to fool me. The only respect you’re owed is for your uniform, however much you may disgrace it.”
Daniel stepped sideways to parade rest, keeping his eye on the corner of the holoprint of a vaulted cloister behind the commodore. It was the only portion of the compartment’s furnishings that wasn’t RCN issue. Granting that Pettin wasn’t a wealthy man, this was still an unusual degree of asceticism in an officer of his seniority.
“I’ve met your sort before, Leary,” the commodore continued. “Well-born wastrels whose political connections put them on a fast track to honors despite their manifest incapacity for command. Professional officers soon learn to work around them.”
Pettin was wearing a utility uniform, technically acceptable since he was aboard a warship on active duty but a studied insult when welcoming the captain of a vessel recently posted to his command. Daniel had finally settled on his grays for the interview, knowing that whatever choice he made would be grounds to damn him—for a popinjay in a dress uniform or because his utilities lacked respect for his superior officer—if Pettin chose to take it that way.
As Pettin certainly was going to do.
“Any comment to make, Lieutenant?” Pettin asked, raising an eyebrow.
“No, sir,” Daniel said to the cloisters.
With the exception of astrogation—and there because of his skill in practice rather than on theory—Daniel’s Academy scores had been toward the lower limit of adequate. Even that degree of success probably owed less to Daniel’s efforts than to the fact that a naval career didn’t appeal to many grinding intellectuals. Still, there was more to being an RCN officer than your academic record.
But to protest to Pettin now? Daniel Leary had made a fool out of himself many times, and not always over a woman; but he’d never been so great a fool as that.
Pettin continued, looking vaguely displeased at Daniel’s lack of reaction, “The portion of the squadron that accompanied me from Cinnabar will require three days to refit. No doubt the Princess Cecile will be ready long before that since you’ll have taken advantage of your early arrival.”
Pettin raised his eyebrow again. It was hard to distinguish the expression from a scowl, but Daniel decided a response was the better choice. “Yes, sir,” he said.
He’d wrung the Princess Cecile out, no question about that, but she’d come through the test with flying colors. Parts of the rigging needed replacement, and one of the triply-redundant pumps feeding the antimatter converters had lost its impeller in spectacular fashion, but all this would be classed as normal wear and tear for a run of such length.
With the exception of a turnbuckle that wasn’t in store on Sexburga, the repairs were already complete. Tally and her assistant were machining that last part out of bar stock; they’d have it in place by mid-afternoon.
“Fine,” Pettin said with heavy irony. “Then that frees you to undertake a survey of ruins on the south continent here. I understand they’ve never been properly catalogued. A local resident, the Captal da Lund, has kindly offered the use of his aircar and a guide. They’ll be ready by ten hours thirty local time, and I expect you and your support personnel to be ready also.”
He paused with an expectant smirk.
“Yes, sir,” Daniel said. The aircar he’d seen in the Captal’s compound would hold twenty people, but there’d be gear to carry as well. He’d take ten crewmen plus Hogg—a worthy scion of generations of poachers and outdoorsmen—and Adele if she wanted to go.
Disappointed again, Pettin continued, “You’ll turn over command of the Princess Cecile to your first lieutenant and report back in seventy-two hours for liftoff with the rest of the squadron. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Daniel said. In the RCN, carrying out a superior’s order always took precedence to wondering why the sanctimonious jackass had chosen to give the order in the first place.
“Leary …” the commodore said, leaning back in his chair as his fingers writhed on the desk before him. “I don’t imagine that removing you from the high life of Spires is going to make an RCN officer of you—I doubt anything could do that—but it’s as much as I can do at present. Do you have any comment to make?”
“Yes sir,” Daniel said to the hologram. “Am I dismissed to prepare for the expedition, sir?”
“Dismissed!” Commodore Pettin said.
Daniel saluted, turned, and strode out of the office as smartly as he could manage. To his back Pettin shouted, “And I only wish I could dismiss you from the service as well!”
He could have saved his breath. Daniel hadn’t been in the least doubt about the commodore’s opinion.
*
The bustle around Adele on the Princess Cecile’s bridge hadn’t penetrated her concentration, but when Daniel appeared, still shouting orders back down the companionway, she looked up from her console. Daniel already had the jacket of his 2nd Class uniform off and was unsealing the fly of his trousers to drop them also.
“Adele!” he said. “Are you interested in seeing South Land? Frankly, I’d just as soon have you here to handle communications, but you’re welcome to come if you’d like. I’ve told Woetjans that I’ve got Hogg to shepherd me so she’s not going to tag along. Mon may need a bosun in the event the good commodore gets another harebrained idea.”
A sidebar showed that Lt. Mon was in the Battle Direction Center, alerting the crewmen who’d be accompanying Daniel to the middle of nowhere. A few of them might start out with a hangover, but they were all present and accounted for. Daniel hadn’t known what was going to happen when he formally reported to Commodore Pettin, but he’d made sure he and his whole complement would be prepared for it.
“I’d go if you wanted me,” Adele said. “I’ve slept many a night on a cot in the Academic Collections. A tent in a rocky desert isn’t going to be worse. But if you really want me here, there are ways I can be more useful.”
With Tovera’s help, Hogg had finished packing duffle bags for himself and Daniel. Unasked he traded Daniel a utility jacket for the grays. As he did so, the kneeling Tovera slid Daniel’s trousers down and tapped his ankle for him to raise his right foot. She gave Adele a sidelong smile.
“I’ll tell you one way right now,” Daniel said. “See if you can find out how Pettin decided to send me off to the South Land. I’m surprised he even knows about the ruins. He certainly doesn’t have the reputation of being an archaeologist!”
“I’ve already determined that, I believe,” Adele said, half smug and half peeved at being told to do something that had been obvious to her from the moment Daniel called in as he left the Winckelmann. “I don’t know if you have time … ?”
“Yes,” he said, now lifting his left foot as directed to step out of his trousers. “Everything’s obviously under control here. I’d like to know what’s going on before the arrival of the Captal’s guide—and spy, I presume.”
At the open arms locker down the corridor, Sun handed impellers or submachine guns to the spacers told off for the expedition. His assistant, Gansevoort, ran the recipients’ ID chips through a reader that paired them with the weapon serial numbers.
Adele’s wands refocused her holographic display so that Daniel could view it from where he stood. Tovera was pulling the leg of his utility trousers over his right boot.
“It’ll be quicker if you explain it, I believe,” Daniel said with an austerity that was not quite a rebuke. He switched legs while his hands did up the buttons—more rugged, weather resistant, and silent than any other closure system—of his jacket.
Adele considered what had just happened. Daniel thought her gesture was a way of saying, “You can’t match my skill even if I show you what you ought to be looking for.” He was quite possibly correct. Both he and the situation demanded better performance from her.
�
�Sorry,” Adele said, readjusting the display. “I checked Commodore Pettin’s message log.”
“His secure log?” Daniel asked with a frown of puzzlement. Tovera was buttoning his trousers.
“It’s not that secure,” Adele said. “If there’s anything else you’d like to know from the Winckelmann’s records, just ask me.”
Daniel grinned and shook his head. Hogg, who already wore a stocked impeller slung muzzle-down over his right shoulder, handed Daniel an equipment belt complete with a holstered pistol.
“Mr. Gerson from the Commission staff called for an appointment yesterday at twenty forty-seven hours Cinnabar time,” Adele resumed. The Sexburgan day, slightly longer than that of Cinnabar, was brought into alignment by adding an intercalary eighty-one minutes to the ship’s clock at midnight. “I think he was with Admiral Torgis when he—”
She wasn’t sure how to describe the admiral’s intervention, so she gave a shrug that didn’t affect the angle at which she held her wands.
“When he saved my ass,” Daniel said as he buckled the equipment belt around him. “Saved the Sissie’s collective ass, very possibly. And yes, Gerson did accompany the admiral.”
“The message said that—” Adele said. She paused, then instead of paraphrasing, quoted, “Gerson said, ‘I have information for your ears only, regarding the workings of the Commission and their bearing on your command. It is imperative that we speak before ten hundred hours tomorrow.’ Pettin called him. Gerson refused to say anything further even though the line was encrypted.”
She was quite certain that Gerson was simply being paranoid rather than that he really believed anyone could hear the message. This was a case where paranoia had paid off.
“They met three hours later—” Two hours and fifty-one minutes later, but Adele had learned overprecision tended to bother those she spoke to. “—according to Pettin’s appointment record. Gerson stayed forty-five—” forty-three “—minutes, during which time Commodore Pettin called up all the information about South Land in the Winckelmann’s data banks. That was limited to the Sailing Directions, of course. He then put through a call to the Captal da Lund, confirming that a car and guide would be here at ten-thirty hours local time today.”
“I see,” Daniel said quietly. Now dressed for action, he sat at his console and looked over the changes Lt. Mon had made in the watch roster to reflect the personnel going off to South Land for three days.
“All right, muster on the quay with your ground packs!” Sun said to the spacers he’d just armed. He’d be acting as Daniel’s second in command so he had every right to order them out, but Adele knew that the shout—which had startled her—was meant to alert Daniel to the detachment’s readiness.
The ten crewmen trotted toward the companionway, carrying in one hand the weapons they’d just been issued and the small pack holding toiletries and a change of clothes in the other. RCN crews were frequently used for detached security and fatigue duties on distant worlds where no other Cinnabar personnel were available, so there was a Standard Operating Procedure for it. Adele doubted whether “detached” often meant a dozen people being put in the middle of a desert over a thousand miles from their ship, though.
Daniel looked up to see Sun, the last in line, heading down toward the quay. Pasternak was coming up from the power room, using the other companionway. He looked worried, but Adele knew by now that was the engineer’s normal expression.
“We’ll be sleeping under tarps,” Daniel said to Adele and to Banks, waiting silently at the attack console although he was technically off duty at the moment. “That shouldn’t be too bad if rain’s as rare as the data say.”
“I’ve downloaded all the available information on Sexburga into your helmets,” Adele said. “They have plenty of storage capacity, and it’ll save time by you not having to go through the communications satellites to reach the ship’s data bank.”
“Ah,” Daniel said. “I appreciate that.”
His face twitched as if he were trying to suppress a smile. Then he said, “Adele, why do they want me to go to South Land? The Captal can’t really care about the ruins. He’d go himself if he did.”
Adele shrugged again. “There’s nothing available electronically that even suggests a reason,” she said. “There’s a physical archive in the basement of Council Building, that’s the local government. The midshipmen and I found it the other day. While you’re roughing it, I intend to search there to see what I can find.”
Pasternak entered the bridge; Lt. Mon was coming down the corridor from the Battle Direction Center. Betts got to his feet. Daniel rose from his console also, to take his leave of his officers before joining the detachment on the quay.
“There’s worse forms of busy work that a captain can find for a junior lieutenant,” he said, flashing Adele a boyish grin. “But I really wish I knew what Vaughn’s friends are playing at.”
“So do I,” Adele said aloud. Her mind added, And one way or another, I’m going to learn.
Chapter Sixteen
The aircar’s central compartment had luxury seating for eight. Sun, Vesey, and the eight ordinary crewmen found it uncomfortably roomy: spacers liked close quarters or they’d have found some other line of work. The rear compartment had jumpseats for servants as well as cargo tie-downs; the expedition’s food and luggage rode there now.
Daniel and Hogg were on either end of the bench seat in front, sandwiching their driver/guide Dorotige, the attendant Daniel had met guarding the Captal’s gate. Today he wore a gray jacket over loose khaki trousers instead of the clown suit he’d been in for the party.
“I wish to God that you’d packed those guns away in the back,” Dorotige said, shouting over the sound of wind and the fans’ vibration. The central compartment was slung in elastic to isolate the passengers from the noise of operation, but the driver had no such luxury. “Or left them back in Spires, better yet. There’s nothing bigger than your thumbnail on South Land.”
“You’ve been here before,” Daniel said, looking down at a plain broken by ravines where russet vegetation found enough moisture to grow. In the forward distance rose sandstone hills which the wind had weathered out of the surrounding clay. “My crewmen haven’t, and this isn’t the sort of business they’re trained for anyway. They’re more comfortable being armed.”
In truth, Daniel’s only real concern about the expedition was the same one the Captal’s man had voiced. The spacers weren’t for the most part any more familiar with hand weapons than they were with camping in the middle of a barren desert. Even though he’d ordered them to leave the guns’ power switches off, there was a real chance that somebody’d put a bullet through himself, a fellow, or the car’s drive fans.
“They’ll be all right, buddy,” Hogg said. “Most of this lot know which end the slug comes out of. And I told ‘em that if anybody looses off a round, it’d better kill me straight out, because I’m sure as shit going to cut his throat if it don’t.”
Hogg was quite capable of exaggeration. He was also capable of cutting somebody’s throat. Daniel hoped the comment was in the former category, but he even more hoped that he’d never have to learn.
An intercom connected the vehicle’s three compartments, but Sun used his helmet’s unit channel to ask, “Captain? What’s the ETA now? We ought to be getting close, right?”
“Hold one,” Daniel said, flipping down his visor and cueing the geographical overlay. It didn’t show what he expected it to. Frowning, he used the thumb dial under his left ear to increase the scale until the destination pip showed on the same screen as the point where the helmet’s inertial navigation system placed the aircar. They were to the north of the plotted ruins and well inland of them as well.
“Dorotige,” Daniel said without raising his voice more than the noise level required. Hogg must have heard something in the tone, because he reached into his pocket.
“Yeah?” Dorotige muttered.
There was a snick from Hogg’s sid
e of the compartment. “Look at the master when he’s talking to you, fishbait,” Hogg said. He didn’t speak loudly either, but with the point of a seven-inch knife blade resting against Dorotige’s throat, he didn’t have to.
“What the hell!” Dorotige screamed. The aircar lurched sideways. If Hogg hadn’t been very fast, the jolt would have done exactly what the driver was afraid of; but while you could fault Hogg’s judgment occasionally, Daniel was pretty sure his servant would never kill anybody that he didn’t mean to. He had the knife back and closed before Dorotige managed to spit himself on it.
Daniel steadied the control yoke with his left hand, bringing the car straight and level again. He said, “We aren’t heading for the ruins like we’re supposed to be, Dorotige. Why is that?”
“What do you mean not the ruins?” the driver shouted, angry and terrified at the same time. He pointed through the windscreen toward the ground five hundred feet below. “What the hell do you think that is down there? Look, right at the bottom of the hill, there! We’re here, you—”
The sound of Hogg’s knife reopening punctuated the driver’s bluster. He choked the next word off in his throat.
Daniel grimaced. He could see a pattern of lines in the stone, but until he dialed up the magnification on his visor they looked like mere weathering. That still might be what they were, but at 40x magnification and with the helmet’s optical stabilizer engaged, Daniel could tell they were straight or at least seemed straight.
“There’s two sites!” Dorotige said, now in a tone of injured innocence that Daniel had to admit his right to. “This is where the Captal told me bring you. The water you can get at the place down south has a lot of sulfur in it.”
“All right,” Daniel said. “Set us down, please.”
He glanced into the passenger compartment. The helmet communicator was still engaged so the crewmen had heard everything that was going on. Dasi had his impeller pointed at the back of the driver’s head. The heavy slug would punch through the clear plastic without difficulty, true enough, but it’d also send fragments of the panel across the compartment like a grenade blast.