Lt. Leary, Commanding

by David Drake

  “Entering normal—”

  Images flipped in Daniel’s mind. He saw himself from four angles; a trail of future selves stretched to infinity from each possible existence.

  “—space,” Mon closing in a gasp rather than the intended shout, as though he’d been punched in the stomach while the word was still in his throat.

  Strymon, a blue ball with more land than water, hung 13,000 miles below the Princess Cecile. Three frigates were in geosynchronous orbits at 24,000 miles; the calculated position of the fourth put it on the other side of the planet from the corvette.

  Daniel shrank the real-time view of Strymon to a sidebar and expanded the Plot Position Indicator from the right half to his whole display. He’d set the PPI’s field for 300,000 miles above the planetary center. That was an unusually large volume for the purpose, but it allowed him to view the pirate cutters as they entered sidereal space.

  “Strymonian vessels!” Daniel ordered, using modulated laser beams directed at the three visible ships. “Surrender at once to the forces of the Republic of Cinnabar. If you attempt resistance, the sixty-eight ships of my fleet will respond with overwhelming force!”

  The Princess Cecile had exited directly above the capital, Palia, and the harbor serving it. Lt. Mon had the job of contacting the ships of Commodore Pettin’s squadron on high-power microwave while Daniel warned off the guardships. Under the circumstances, Daniel didn’t think the commodore would object to being left to an underling, though you could never be sure.

  The PPI glowed, the pattern shifting like tinsel drifting in still air. Several, then a score, of the pirate cutters had vanished into the Matrix only moments from their first appearance in sidereal space. Now they reappeared, less than half their previous distance from Strymon.

  “Strymonian frigates!” Daniel said. The fourth vessel had edged up from the planet’s shadow; the Princess Cecile’s commo suite directed a laser emitter at the Strymonian without further input from Daniel or Adele. “We have no quarrel with the loyal citizens of Strymon, but the traitors who’ve intrigued with the so-called Alliance of the tyrant Porra will be rooted out and punished if they don’t give up immediately. Surrender to the Republic of Cinnabar to save your lives and your honor!!”

  Precisely how surrender was an honorable option for the picket vessels was a question beyond Daniel’s ability to answer, but it seemed a useful phrase to throw in at the moment. His father would’ve nodded with understanding.

  The High Drive whined at maximum output to hold the Princess Cecile in position above Palia. Because the corvette was well below geosynchrony, that meant braking against its initial orbital velocity. Pray heaven that Mon had a clear link to the squadron!

  Only a handful of the pirate cutters remained where they’d originally appeared, well out from Strymon. A gaggle of thirty trembled from the Matrix within 40,000 miles of the planet. Though there was nothing seemingly organized about the pirate formation, Daniel noted with delight and amazement that the ships were in precisely the same relative alignment as they had been before they entered the Matrix a few minutes before.

  Woetjans and both rigging watches were on the hull, despite the danger and the fact they had no job to do at the moment. Daniel wasn’t going to land so there was no need to take the antennas down, but he didn’t know—couldn’t know—what the corvette’s next course might be. The riggers waited in case an emergency required an immediate adjustment to the sails.

  Not, after all, an unlikely occurrence under the present circumstances.

  “Strymonian vessels!” Daniel repeated. “Surrender to the RCN or die!”

  He’d inset real-time imagery of the frigates across the bottom of his display. The Strymonians orbited with eight antennas partially extended, permitting them to shift into the Matrix on short notice but also able to maneuver in normal space. For the most part they expected to deal with smugglers or merchantmen lifting without paying their port duties, not actual warfare above their homeworld.

  Several Selma cutters came out of the Matrix within Strymon’s gravity well. None were particularly close to the guardships, though their varying altitudes and orbits meant that the parties could have volleyed rockets at one another if they’d chosen to do so.

  Another score of pirates appeared in near space. Daniel shrank the scale of his PPI to a normal hundred thousand miles; if he’d halved the radius again, he’d still contain the entire Selma fleet.

  Most of Kelburney’s captains could have exited within pistol range of the frigates if they’d chosen to do so. The Strymonians would have fired rockets out of reflex before there was time to parley; and then would have died in salvos from the remaining scores of pirate cutters.

  Few captains, no matter how brave, would throw their lives and ships away uselessly against overwhelming force—and those few would be restrained or shot by their own crews if they attempted such general suicide. By showing the Strymonians that resistance was pointless, Daniel was letting them save their lives.

  Kelburney had accepted the plan with laughing agreement. Daniel didn’t doubt that the pirates would slug it out at knife distance if forced to, but theirs was a business rather than a crusade. Death meant the end of the party and was therefore to be avoided.

  “RCN vessel, this is Frigate One-Two-Seven,” said a high-pitched female voice which came to Daniel on a direct link. “We have declared for President Delos Vaughn. Welcome, allies! I repeat, we are allies of the RCN in suppressing the tyranny of the pretender Pleyna Vaughn. What are your requests? One-Two-Seven over.”

  President Delos Vaughn? Good God, what had been happening on Strymon during the past few days?

  Two of the four frigates vanished, their icons from the PPI and the real-time images from the sidebar as well. They’d shaken out sails on their partial rigs and were escaping into the Matrix rather than trust the mercy of the swarming pirate fleet.

  Daniel had expected and intended all four of the pickets to flee during the opportunity he’d given them. 127’s—surrender? claim of alliance?—was a pleasant surprise, leaving only the fourth—

  “RCN vessel, this is Two-Oh-Four!” a male voice buzzed through a poorly modulated laser link. “Long live President Delos Vaughn! Long live the Cinnabar Navy!”

  Daniel cued his console to respond to both of the surrendering patrol vessels and also to the Astrogator’s flagship. The Princess Cecile wasn’t equipped to contact all sixty-seven ships of the pirate armada in a single transmission; he could only hope that Kelburney was.

  “Strymonian vessels One-Two-Seven and Two-Oh-Four,” Daniel said. “This is RCS Princess Cecile, Admiral Leary commanding. Make all your weapons safe, withdraw your gun turrets into your hulls, and hold your orbits. You will not be harmed if you obey these orders to the letter. RCN out.”

  There was always a risk that some pirate would settle an old grudge by rocketing sitting ducks like the Strymonian frigates, but that wasn’t Daniel’s major concern at the moment. What happened, happened.

  The PPI was alive with cutters circling Strymon, in as many orbits as there were ships. The patterns had the chaotic complexity of a kaleidoscope, seemingly random motion which was nonetheless as precise as a sword dance. Serving alongside the pirates provided memories any captain would cherish. And other memories as well, of course.

  Kelburney’s own vessel was in the same orbit as the Princess Cecile, braking hard to hold position ten miles astern. Like the rest of the Selma cutters, it stepped a full set of antennas despite the stresses of maneuvering in normal space. The pirates favored shorter, thicker masts than the starships of more traditional states; even so, the Astrogator must be risking his rig in his desire to be able to race off through the Matrix without delay.

  “Sir, Commodore Pettin requests to speak with you,” Lt. Mon said. “Do you wish me to take the conn? Mon over.”

  As the Princess Cecile struggled to hold position over Palia, it was dropping toward the surface of Strymon. Eventually Daniel was going to
have to gain altitude or enter the atmosphere—and he certainly wasn’t going to enter the atmosphere. Still, he didn’t have to make that decision quite yet.

  “Right, hold position as long as you can, Mon,” Daniel said. “And Mon? Warn me if our allies do something I need to know about, even if that means breaking in on the commodore. Out.”

  Adele’s body was rigid. Her hands danced like a pair of balletomimes, and her display was a mass of data. It meant no more to Daniel than his astrogation vectors would have meant to her, but so long as Adele was at the signals console he knew he’d have all the warning there could be from that source.

  He switched to the squadron command frequency that Mon had used to alert the ships on the ground. “Sir!” he said. “Lieutenant Leary reporting, over!”

  Pettin wouldn’t have heard Daniel claim to be an admiral to overawe the guardships. With luck—and a Signals Officer who was preternaturally adept at wiping records—he never would learn about that.

  “Leary, what the hell is going on, over?” Pettin said, his voice beginning to break up in the higher registers.

  “Sir, you’ve got to—” wrong word, junior lieutenants don’t tell commodores what they’ve got to do “—get your personnel aboard and lift ship soonest!” Daniel said. “I’ll explain as soon as—”

  The command link was dual frequency, with the emitting and receiving antennas at bow and stern respectively. The separation wasn’t enough on a vessel as small as a corvette to send and receive simultaneously through an atmosphere without interference, but it did allow Pettin to manifest his fury in a roar of static that silenced Daniel.

  “—the Winckelmann will be in orbit in ten minutes, Lieutenant,” the commodore was saying in the enforced silence. “I’m asking you now, what the hell is going on? Over!”

  Daniel let out his breath in a sigh of relief. Regardless of what happened to the career of Lt. Daniel Oliver Leary afterwards, the Winckelmann and her consorts would be safely out of the Strymon system within the hour. It might be months or even years before circumstances allowed the RCN to reenter the Sack with a force sufficient to deal with the powerful Alliance squadron now based on Tanais, but at least the Cinnabar ships and a thousand trained spacers had avoided massacre.

  “Sir,” he said, “we were attacked when we discovered an Alliance battleship, heavy cruiser, and four destroyers on Tanais. We repaired our battle damage on Dalbriggan and returned immediately to warn you of the danger. Ah, we’re accompanied by a squadron of allies from the Selma Cluster. Over.”

  “God help me,” Commodore Pettin said. The words sounded heartfelt. “Leary, we’ll discuss this at a time of greater leisure, and I don’t have to tell you what will happen to you if you’re lying. Right now I’ve got my hands full gathering up the seventy percent of my crews who’re on detached duty thanks to the rebellion you started. Squadron out!”

  “And if you want to know about that rebellion, Daniel,” said Adele over the intercom, “I have some information for you here.”

  *

  Strymon was a developed world with a highly organized information infrastructure. It occurred to Adele as she viewed clips of the chaos below that she could probably find similar records of the Proscriptions following the Three Circles Conspiracy.

  She’d heard her parents had been shot against the wall of the garden behind their townhouse. Adele hadn’t been an outdoors child, but her room was at the back of the house. She had familiar memories of ivy growing against the sun-bleached red bricks.

  “Ten days ago …” said Adele, using a two-party link to the command console. “Rumors were circulating that Cinnabar had decided to support Delos Vaughn. The secret police couldn’t determine precisely who was starting the rumors. Nunes, that’s the Guardian, Friderik Nunes, had his agents stir up a mob to attack the Cinnabar Observer’s residence. He thought Observer Mariette was behind the rumors and hoped the threat would make him stop.”

  Adele brought up imagery of citizens wearing bright Strymonian costumes marching up three avenues to the square on which the Cinnabar Residence stood, one of several ornate buildings behind walled forecourts. The pavement was plasticized clay, seamless and unable to provide missiles, but the leaders of the mob had thoughtfully provided themselves with sacks of fist-sized stones.

  “Why would they imagine Cinnabar was behind rumors like that?” Daniel wondered aloud. “That’s scarcely our style. Thinking we were about to send a plenipotentiary to order a change in the government, now, that might have happened.”

  Two uniformed police at the entrance ambled away as the mob approached. One of them even tipped his cap to a woman in the front rank.

  “The secret police provided the leaders and hired a number of additional thugs,” Adele said. “There was quite a lot of spontaneous response, though. A large element of the civilian population hates Cinnabar almost as much as they fear us.”

  “They’ll have reason to fear one day soon,” Daniel said quietly.

  Four chattering women came out a side door of the residence and started down the street. They were members of the housekeeping staff, Adele knew from the records of the incident. All were born on Strymon, though they came from country districts rather than Palia itself.

  They saw the oncoming mob, hesitated, and tried to get back through the door by which they’d left the building. It had locked behind them. The women started running in the opposite direction, only to meet another limb of the mob.

  Stones flew from both directions. The women hunched, trying to protect their heads with their arms. Members of the mob knocked them down with clubs, then finished the job with boots.

  “No Cinnabar citizens were injured,” Adele said without expression. “All the windows on the ground and second floors of the Residency were broken, but the leaders of the mob didn’t permit invasion of the grounds. It was meant as a warning.”

  Daniel sighed audibly. “It takes a particular sort of person to kick an old woman to death,” he said. “Well, politics is no proper business of an RCN officer.”

  “The next day,” Adele said, “Delos Vaughn appeared at one of his family’s estates three hundred miles south of Palia. With him was a force of eight hundred off-planet mercenaries, paid for by a consortium of shippers and landholders. You met many of the conspirators at the Captal da Lund’s dwelling on Sexburga.”

  She called up a montage of images, some from news media and others gathered from the conspirators’ own files. Though the mercenaries had been hired as individuals on a dozen different worlds, they were outfitted with battledress of a standard pattern bearing the badge and shoulder patches of the Land Forces of the Republic, Cinnabar’s army. They carried stocked impellers and submachine guns of Cinnabar manufacture, with a limited number of crew-served weapons.

  One of the images showed Delos Vaughn addressing a crowd of civilians. The sound bite attached to the clip rang, “My people, the Republic of Cinnabar has sent me to regain my rightful position as President of Strymon and to free you from the tyranny of Friderik Nunes and his puppets!”

  “The secret police believed the troops really were from Cinnabar,” Adele said. She shook her head in disgust and amazement. “They also believed there were six thousand of them.”

  The Princess Cecile was maneuvering constantly to optimize its position above Strymon. Neither the changing vectors nor the whine of the antimatter engines disturbed Adele now that she had real work to do.

  “What was the position of the army?” Daniel asked. “Or does Strymon even have an army, come to think?”

  “There’s a Presidential Police Reserve,” Adele said. She’d searched for army deployments, found none, and finally worked back from clips of the fighting to learn what the government troops were called so that she could determine their strength. “It’s about twenty thousand personnel at full strength, but there was quite a lot of desertion as soon as word got out that Delos Vaughn had returned with Cinnabar backing.”

  “I see why the commodor
e blames me for the trouble,” Daniel said. “And I greatly fear that he’s more right than not.”

  Adele selected an image: government troops with violet collar flashes arriving in twenty-place aircars on the outskirts of a village. They began to advance down the main street, still mounted on the vehicles which flew low, using ground effect for support.

  A podium with a dozen chairs, many of them knocked over when the speakers hastily fled, had been erected in the town square. As the lead vehicle approached, a man in the clock tower opened fire with an impeller. Slugs punched through the aircar’s aluminum body and sparkled off the cobblestone pavement.

  More guns fired from basement windows; the houses were frame with wooden shingles, but they had stone foundations. Troops on the vehicles returned fire wildly, occasionally dropping their fellows with ricochets. Civilians flung roof tiles to shatter on vehicles and the pavement.

  The aircars turned and raced back the way they’d come, still hugging the ground. One of the buildings was beginning to burn. A civilian’s body lay in the street, and half the troops in the back of the last vehicle out were sprawled or writhing in smears of blood.

  “There was a good deal of skirmishing like that,” Adele said. “Nunes was afraid to strike with his full strength because he couldn’t trust even the troops which hadn’t deserted. He called for assistance from the Alliance squadron that had just arrived at Tanais. Admiral Chastelaine, the Alliance commander, refused. He didn’t say why.”

  “His ships must have been without port facilities for at least thirty days, perhaps twice that,” Daniel said. “I don’t imagine many squadron commanders under those circumstances would delay their refit because some wog was worried about riots.”

  Adele’s lips tightened, but that was a precise description of Chastelaine’s probable attitude. That it was also very likely Daniel’s own attitude was inconsequential for the time being.

  “Our friend Delos was continuing to gather support on the basis of his Cinnabar backing,” she resumed, “so he didn’t have any reason to push for a quick conclusion. Then Commodore Pettin arrived.”