Lt. Leary, Commanding

by David Drake

  Those closest could hear them, but this discussion wasn’t over the intercom. Woetjans wasn’t concerned about status. She simply wanted to be beside Daniel if trouble started.

  Halfway up the pillar which supported the roof at the open end was a platform holding a life-sized statue of the man at the top of the dais. It was of gold; not a significant cost increment to a spacefaring nation which could gather metals in any volume in asteroid belts, but nonetheless an untarnishable assertion. Its blue-glinting eyes were faceted sapphires.

  Daniel smiled. His father hadn’t gone to quite that length, but he would certainly have appreciated Astrogator Kelburney’s gesture.

  Hogg nudged Woetjans in the ribs. “Hey,” he said. “Stick by me, cutie, and I’ll let you hold one of my bombs.”

  The bosun looked down at him, then barked a laugh. “Right!” she said, smacking the tubing into her left palm with a sound like a whiplash. “Boarders with me. We’re going to get a good spot to see Cinnabar’s best make monkeys out of a bunch of wogs!”

  “Come on, Adele,” Daniel said. Loud enough to be sure that everyone in his party could hear, he added, “We’ll get a good view of the room from the top step, don’t you think?”

  *

  Most of the smells peculiar to this part of Dalbriggan were unfamiliar to Adele, but they were pleasant enough. She particularly liked the spicy sweetness that seemed to come from the wood of the Hall itself.

  The hog-scavenged dump was downwind, a considerable improvement on her apartment in Xenos where the street was cleaned primarily by the heavy spring rainfalls. It wasn’t a matter of great concern to Adele, but she noticed it as she noticed many things.

  She walked forward with Daniel. Their escort had stopped a pace back, but there was no longer a crush that Woetjans and her henchmen had to muscle through. The Dalbriggans had left room for the escort at the front of the gathering; the space was tight, but the Cinnabars were no worse crowded than the locals themselves.

  “As the local representatives of the Republic of Cinnabar,” Daniel declared at the foot of the dais, “my companion and I will take our places beside the Astrogator!”

  He’d started out speaking at maximum volume. A hidden directional microphone picked up his words and amplified them around the Hall without need for human effort. Daniel let his voice drop and found that the public address system compensated with no more than a stutter.

  He glanced at Adele and winked; she kept a straight face, concerned about what she was to do. This was worse than a formal dinner in the Princess Cecile’s wardroom. There at least it was unlikely that she could make a mistake which would lead to the massacre of all her companions.

  She smiled, a reflection of the amusement she knew Daniel would express if she’d been able to speak the last chain of thoughts aloud. That wasn’t practical, so she had to laugh on her friend’s behalf.

  “Captain Leary stands by me,” said the Astrogator. His voice had a resonance that could have filled the vast building unaided. “His officer stands on the bottom row where she belongs.”

  Daniel took the first step and the second at a measured pace, gesturing Adele along with a minuscule crook of his index finger. “When you come to Cinnabar,” he said ringingly, “you follow Cinnabar custom. When Cinnabar comes to you, Astrogator Kelburney, you still follow Cinnabar custom. We represent the Republic!”

  Daniel took the third step, then the fourth; none of the captains already on the dais moved to bar his way. Adele followed, watching her feet. The treads were deeper than she was used to, and it wouldn’t help the mission if she were to fall on her face.

  Kelburney laughed; it was impossible to tell how much of the humor was real. “Come up, then, Captain,” he said. “And bring your bitch as well if you’re so devoted to her.”

  They took their places on the top level, Daniel to the Astrogator’s right and Adele beside Daniel. She turned and looked back the way she’d come. The Hall had very nearly filled during the time it took the Cinnabar contingent to walk its length. There were several thousand people present, more than Adele would’ve imagined possible from the Hall’s forested environs.

  “Silence for the cup!” said the woman at the lectern. So many people in a single room couldn’t be really silent—their breathing alone was a deep susurrus like that of a sleeping dragon—but the voices stilled. A pair of servants came forward.

  They were old, and both were crippled: the man stomped along on one leg and a peg, while the blast that scarred the left side of the woman’s face had also burned off her arm. She carried a wineskin on a strap over her good shoulder. The man had a gold-mounted cup in his hands.

  Adele’s face hardened. The cup was made from the brainbox of a human skull. For a moment Adele had permitted herself to imagine that the able use of technology made Dalbriggan a sophisticated planet.

  The woman filled the cup, lifting the strap with her shoulder and squeezing the wineskin between her elbow and torso. The man handed the cup to the Dalbriggan on the end of the bottom row. He drank, an honest swallow, and passed the cup to the officer beside him. She drank as well and passed the cup in turn.

  Four more had drunk before the last handed the cup to the servants to be refilled. The ceremony continued.

  Adele didn’t let her mind wander; rather she slipped into a world where no one could touch her. It was a cold place and utterly colorless, but it was familiar to her. She’d spent a great deal of time in grayness since the day she learned that her family had been massacred, leaving Adele Mundy a destitute orphan.

  She could function in this place but she couldn’t feel a thing; which was generally for the best.

  There was a sound in front of Adele. Her eyes locked into focus with those of the cripple offering her the refilled cup. “No, thank you,” Adele said in a clear voice.

  Daniel reached past her and took the cup. The bone was old; yellow on the outside, dark as the wine itself on the inside from generations of use.

  “No!” said Kelburney. He stepped in front of Daniel on the broad tread and put his hand over the cup before Daniel could lift it. The Astrogator was taller than he’d seemed when the Cinnabars first entered the Hall, and his powerful wrists belied his slender appearance.

  Kelburney wore a cloth-of-gold tunic over pantaloons of the same material. His wide belt and crossed bandoliers were scaly leather, sagging with the weight of ammunition, knives, and pistols in open-topped holsters. The weapons showed signs of hard use.

  “She’ll drink from the cup, Captain Leary,” the Astrogator said, “or she leaves the Hall. That I swear, though a Cinnabar fleet orbits above us!”

  Adele stared calmly at the tall Dalbriggan; her mind analyzed the situation as coldly as it would if she were not directly involved. Kelburney’s boast that he’d defy a Cinnabar fleet was just that, a boast. The Princess Cecile was the only RCN vessel present, however—and it was quite clear from Kelburney’s expression that his anger and determination were real. Tendons stood out on his neck.

  Adele smiled. It appeared that the ceremony of the cup was a major aspect of Dalbriggan faith. Well, faith or not, it was equally important to Adele that she not sup with utensils made from human bodies.

  “You misunderstand me, sir,” she said. The hidden director controlling the parabolic microphone picked up her voice and amplified it so the whole room could hear. “My religion forbids me to drink—”

  As Adele spoke, her eyes holding the Astrogator’s, her left hand reached out and slid the pistol from the cross-draw holster at his left hip. She didn’t know the weapon, but the range was too great for the light projectiles of the pistol in her own pocket.

  “—and requires that if I do—”

  Kelburney felt the weight of the pistol withdrawing. He tried to grab Adele’s hand. Daniel caught his wrist. The two men remained locked together motionless. Kelburney’s expression changed to amazement; Daniel only appeared soft.

  “—I must kill the person who compelled me,” A
dele said.

  She turned side-on to the far end of the Hall, the pistol extended in line with her left arm. She’d been trained as a duelist, not a pistolero.

  The audience was shouting, but Adele doubted anyone was going to shoot at her so long as she was standing close to the Astrogator. The captains nearby on the dais were more of a threat, but they seemed willing to let matters take their course. Anyway, Adele couldn’t control what other people did.

  She could only control the pistol in her hand.

  The weapon was stone-axe simple, with only a post and ring for sighting. At this range, a little over a hundred yards, Adele wouldn’t have minded holographic magnification; but she’d make do.

  The power was already switched to the coils. Kelburney wasn’t the sort to let his last act in life be fumbling to take his pistol off safe.

  Adele squeezed the trigger as she exhaled, both eyes open. The sound of the room departed like water vanishing down a drain. The front post was sharply focused; her target was a blue glint in a gray-gold blur.

  WHACK!

  The snapping discharge through the impeller rings was a surprise as usual, accelerating the heavy slug to several times the speed of sound. The pistol recoiled in Adele’s hand, the muzzle lifting. It was well balanced, settling back on target as naturally as Adele’s own familiar weapon would have done.

  The head of Kelburney’s statue twisted awry. Whether she’d hit the right eye or not, she’d certainly torn the casting enough that the sapphire flew out of its socket.

  WHACK/WHANG!

  In her concentration Adele hadn’t heard the sound of the first slug’s hammerblow on the metal, but she did the second as gold ripped apart. Long splinters, reddish against the age-blackened surface wood, stood out from the post like a halo where the shots had penetrated after striking the metal.

  The top of the statue’s head tumbled ringingly to the floor. Dalbriggans in the back of the Hall scrambled to get out of the way.

  “I believe you have a second cup now, Astrogator Kelburney,” Daniel said, releasing the older man and stepping back. “If you’ll have somebody bring it up to us, perhaps you and I can use it to drink to a new understanding between your people and mine.”

  He smiled toward Adele. “At any rate,” he added, “I believe you understand Officer Mundy better now.”

  Adele took the pistol by the receiver with her right fingertips and offered the butt to Kelburney. The flux had heated the barrel to yellow heat in only two shots. It was a powerful weapon, meant to punch through body armor.

  “Thank you for the loan, sir,” Adele said.

  The only noise in the Hall was the continuing echo from the commotion moments before. The Dalbriggan officers on the dais drew back with sharp expressions, more tense than they’d been while Adele was aiming the weapon.

  Kelburney took the pistol expressionlessly. He looked at the truncated statue, obviously judging the likelihood that he could duplicate Adele’s feat—and correctly deciding that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell of it.

  “Here, woman,” he said, handing the pistol back to Adele. “Anybody who can shoot the way you can ought to have a gun of her own.”

  And what in heaven’s name am I supposed to do with a cannon like this? Adele thought; but she took the weapon with a tight smile. That was the politic thing to do, after all, and it was a very nice piece of workmanship.

  Kelburney turned to face the assembly and placed his hands on his hips. “Siblings of the stars!” he said. “Free citizens of Dalbriggan and the universe! Is it your will that I and your council examine these strangers and make policy based on what we learn?”

  The shout built from a dozen throats to a hundred; finally the whole assembly shook the walls with its bellowed response. At first there were a few cries of, “No!” among the general assent, but as the volume built so did the agreement.

  Kelburney raised his arms skyward. The shouting stopped, though the Hall still rumbled with shuffling feet and indrawn breaths.

  “Siblings!” Kelburney said. “Will you be bound by our decision?”

  This time there was no opposition. The assembly’s decision was implicit in its first response; and this would not, Adele suspected, be a good environment for people who recalcitrantly espoused a minority view.

  Kelburney gestured Adele and Daniel both close. He shouted into their ears, “The Council Chamber’s through the door behind us. I’m glad to learn the RCN has a proposition for me, because as it chances I have a proposition for the RCN.”

  He gestured them ahead. Others from the dais were already going into the room beyond, though the Hall proper still reverberated with the enthusiasm of the full assembly.

  I wonder, Adele thought, if I should ask for a holster and belt while I’m at it?

  Chapter Twenty-five

  The Sailing Directions said the Selma pirates took slaves along with their other loot, so Daniel was surprised to see that the only servants in the semicircular council chamber were a half-dozen adolescents and the two aged cripples who’d brought the cup around at the assembly. From the freedom with which they bantered with the officers, all were freeborn Dalbriggans.

  Adele walked beside him, holding the heavy service pistol as gingerly as a spinster with a baby. She could put it in a cargo pocket since the barrel had cooled by now, or she could lay it on the scarred table. Daniel didn’t say either of those things because Adele was as able to see the possibilities as he was; and as with the spinster, there was more than a little pride in her expression.

  She leaned close and said, “Interesting. They don’t allow slaves to be present during governmental deliberations. That shows better judgment than most slaveholders display.”

  The Astrogator pointed to a seat in the middle of the table and said, “I’d like you there, Leary, facing me. Unless you’re scared to have your back to the door?”

  Daniel chuckled. He gestured Adele to the chair beside the one indicated and said, “I doubt I have as many enemies on Dalbriggan as you do, Kelburney. Now that you’ve raised the question, though, I’ll try to control my fear that somebody’ll shoot through me to get you.”

  The Astrogator snorted. He lowered himself into the chair across from Daniel—handsawn wood of simple design like the others, but the only one in the room with arms—and said without preamble over the sound of the others scraping into their seats, “I saw your ship when you landed. Looks to me like you didn’t show the best judgment in who you mixed it with.”

  “The fight wasn’t our choice,” Daniel said calmly, “and it’s not over yet. On my honor! it’s not. But yes, the Sissie needs some work. My crew will handle the labor, but I’ll be purchasing supplies from your stores.”

  “We run to small craft here,” Kelburney said. “There’s no masts on Dalbriggan to fit a corvette like yours.”

  He turned his right palm out to forestall anything Daniel might try to interject. For the moment at least it appeared the form “I and your council” meant “I, the Astrogator.” The ships’ officers ranged up and down the long table watched carefully as they drank from the mugs servants were handing out, but they held their peace.

  “We can help you get what you need, though,” Kelburney said. He smiled like a hungry cat. “If you’ve got the balls.”

  Daniel spread his fingers on the tabletop as he considered the Astrogator. A boy put a goblet carved from rock crystal on the wood beside him; the mahogany-colored fluid foamed slightly.

  Taley and the Princess Cecile’s riggers could fish and weld spars meant for Dalbriggan cutters into a working set of masts for the corvette; everybody in the room—with the possible exception of Adele—knew that. Kelburney was offering a plausible excuse as a bargaining ploy.

  That was fine: Daniel was here to bargain. He smiled back and said, “I think you’ll find the RCN always has the courage to do its duty, Astrogator Kelburney; whatever the circumstances. Why don’t you describe your plan so that I can decide where my duty lies?”


  “Bring in the prisoners,” Kelburney called. A door hidden behind hangings at the side of the room opened. Six concerned-looking spacers entered behind the black-clad woman who’d presided at the lectern during the assembly.

  Daniel watched the newcomers with no expression. There were things he couldn’t permit. If this pirate chief so overstepped himself as to offer Cinnabar slaves in return for RCN help—

  “Not our prisoners, Captain,” Kelburney said. The wariness in his voice showed that he’d picked up on Daniel’s change of expression. “Distressed spacers, put off in a lifeboat in the Dalbriggan system by pirates from Falassa.”

  He gestured to the cripples filling mugs from a tapped keg on the serving table behind him. “Kephis, Bradley—give our guests some beer while they explain to Captain Leary how well we’ve cared for them after their misfortune.”

  The young servants offered the next batch of refilled tumblers to the newcomers. Daniel sipped from his own goblet. The beer was dark and more bitter than he was used to, but an RCN officer didn’t look alcoholic gift horses in the mouth.

  Falassa was the habitable planet of star S2. The Selma pirates had generally operated as a loose sodality which chose its leader in common, with the Council Hall here on Dalbriggan as the seat of government. As the Sailing Directions made clear, there was nothing new about a ship, a squadron, or one of the three planets going its own way for a time, however.

  Massacre rather than reconciliation was the preferred method of repairing divisions. Daniel smiled faintly. The Princess Cecile had other important business before it, but he’d hoped when he received his orders that his mission might involve fighting pirates. He could scarcely complain about having his wishes granted, could he?

  “My name’s Slayter,” said the balding forty-year-old leader of the spacers brought in for display. “I’m captain and owner of the Pretty Mary out of Rohaska.”

  Several of the Sissie’s crew had been born on Rohaska. It was a Cinnabar protectorate with a long spacefaring tradition.