In the Stormy Red Sky

by David Drake

  The plots were so uniform that Daniel would've guessed that rereading a single novella could easily have taken the place of starting a new one. Electrons didn't take up much room, however, and the critical variations that Daniel saw in the Matrix were just a blur to untrained eyes.

  "Let's see what the problem is, then," he said briskly. "Colonel Stockheim, if you'll lead? And I suppose—yes, I see a ship's officer is waiting for us in the entryway."

  Stockheim made a crisp turn in place and set off down the floating bridge. Daniel fell into step with him as a matter of both courtesy and self-interest.

  The walkway was solid enough to support a utility vehicle, but the colonel's firm stride made it quiver. If Daniel syncopated Stockheim's steps, he would set up a rocking couple that would be uncomfortable for both of them. By good luck or intelligence, Cory too matched them step and step.

  The Brotherhood of Amorgos were warrior monks, raised from birth to fulfill the obligations of their homeworld, Thebes, to the Republic of Cinnabar. There was no more gender bias in ordinary Theban society than there was on most civilized worlds—on Cinnabar, say, or Pleasaunce—where the right woman was the equal of a man.

  Soldiers of the Brotherhood, however, lived apart from Theban society while they were being trained. They were then deployed off-world for their entire active careers. When they retired, they taught new recruits and lived in segregated enclaves.

  The Brotherhood paid the contribution Thebes owed to Cinnabar for the privilege of being a member of the Protectorate. The Republic gained ten or a dozen regiments, phratries, of troops as good as any in the human universe.

  And as for the Brothers themselves—they had a home and the respect of the only people whom they acknowledged as peers. Perhaps it was hard on them, perhaps their early training had warped them into something inhuman. But—

  Daniel smiled, with sadness but also pride.

  —spacers had a hard life too, and there wasn't a man or woman on the Milton who wasn't proud to be one of the best of the best. Most people, the huge majority of people, had never been members of an elite. They couldn't understand that those who paid the cost of becoming a Millie or a Brother of Amorgos didn't regret it; rather, they held everyone else in contempt.

  "Kelly, this is Captain Leary from the warship," Stockheim said curtly. "He's going to fix your computer."

  "There is nothing wrong with my computer," the Hydriote said in a cold, angry voice that implied they'd already had this discussion a number of times in the past. "The problem is the instruction chip that you provided, Colonel. You provided."

  He glared at Daniel. "Captain Leary, I am Captain Kelly," he said. "Come! You will see, and you will tell this landsman that the fault is his."

  Hydriotes tended to slick, tight garments in pastel colors instead of the drab shapelessness that most spacers wore while on duty. Instead of wearing short jackets and billed caps like most merchant captains, Hydriote officers displayed their rank with crimson sashes, often with a long knife stuck through the folds. They looked barbaric, and it hadn't been so very long ago that Hydra had been a center of piracy; but they were skilled spacers and famous well beyond their region for the honesty of their captains.

  Instead of taking them up a companionway to the spine, Kelly strode along a corridor toward the bow. To Daniel's surprise, the transport's bridge was here on the entrance level. He'd never been on a multi-decked starship before whose bridge wasn't on the highest level, the A Deck.

  "It is what we do on Hydra," Kelly said, apparently reading Daniel's expression correctly. He was probably used to the reaction. "We always build ships this way. It suits us well!"

  "I've heard only good about Hydra's ships and her shippers, Captain," Daniel said, which was more true than not. The Hydriotes were a clannish lot and, though famously trustworthy for their clients, had a much chancier reputation with those they sold goods to. Still, you could say that about any successful merchant.

  The bridge was roomy and well appointed for a merchant vessel, with two full-function consoles. A Hydriote without the sash of office sat at the one on the port side; he didn't get up when Kelly led in the visitors.

  "Get out of Captain Leary's way, Baskert," Kelly said, jerking a thumb toward the crewman. "Go on, Leary. The chip the colonel there gave me's already loaded in the system. Take a look at it and tell him!"

  The crewman got up without response; indeed, his face showed no expression. Daniel slid into the bucket seat and brought the console live. It was an Emerson 3, built on Cinnabar some sixty years ago; he found it quite familiar. The short-haul traders whose refits were the bread and butter of Bergen and Associates during peacetime used exactly this sort of unit.

  Daniel ejected the chip and looked it over before he accessed it. It appeared to be a standard route pack, ordinarily used by vessels with less capable computers. Preset routes between fixed points could save hours of computation time.

  Reinserting it, Daniel said, "Colonel Stockheim, you provided the chip, then?"

  "My orders are to hand in the old course chip to a trading house at each planetfall," the colonel said. "The factor there gives me the course for the next stage and I give it to the captain of the ship we transfer to. The phratry was carried on two vessels coming here to Paton, so I was given two chips on Raulston, the previous stage."

  He cleared his throat and added, "The factor on Brightsky told me that the chip was delivered to her months ago by the courier who brought the manifests from her central office. Amberly here said the same thing."

  The console purred. The data appeared to be loading normally. Without looking away from the holographic display—though for the moment that was still a pearly blur—Daniel said, "Were all the factors employed by Cone Transport, then?"

  "What?" said Stockheim. "Oh, I see what you mean. No, on Welwych it was Interstellar Master Traders. And Hartman and something on Brightsky, I think. I could check the unit diary to make sure, if you like?"

  "That won't be necessary, thank you," Daniel said. IMT as well as Hartman and James were owned by William Beckford, just as Cone was. There was nothing surprising about that—or even improper, really. A man as wealthy as Beckford used his influence to get contracts which made him even wealthier.

  The console indicated it was ready. Daniel slid the cursor over the run button and banged the virtual keyboard with his usual enthusiasm. Instead of the expected course projections, the screen dissolved into pastel snow.

  "You see?" crowed Captain Kelly. "It does the same thing for him! This is garbage, Colonel, garbage. You go back to your factor and tell him so."

  "Six?" said Cory, making it clear who he was speaking to while keeping the exchange informal. He'd seated himself at the other console. "Might I look at the course pack, please?"

  "You think we didn't try both consoles, boy?" Kelly said. His angry history with Stockheim heightened his tone. "It's the chip, I tell you!"

  "Yes sir," said Cory, calmly. "That's why I'd like to look at it."

  Daniel ejected the chip again and stood to hand it directly to Cory instead of passing it through Kelly. He felt more comfortable standing anyway, given the hostile atmosphere. No, Stockheim and Kelly weren't going to start swinging at one another, but their bristling body language spun Daniel's subconscious back into the many past fights he'd been involved with.

  Cory inserted the chip; he'd already warmed up the second console. Using a light pen, a much cruder version of the control wands Adele preferred, he began what Daniel thought must be a search of the chip at the physical level.

  Watching a computer run was if anything slightly less interesting than the more traditional watching paint dry. "Colonel, Captain?" Daniel said, as much as anything a way to prevent the two men from glaring at one another. "Were you given any explanation for these movement orders? That is, a preset route instead of a destination? A ship as capable as the Spezza—"

  He nodded to Kelly with a friendly smile.

  "—could certa
inly have computed her own course, and I'd expect that to be true of any vessel big enough to carry your regiment. Or even half of it."

  Stockheim shrugged. He seemed to appreciate the reduced emotional temperature. "We're soldiers," he said. "We're used to not being told very much. Usually I'd have heard something, though, but not on this mission."

  He offered Captain Kelly a half-smile. "Every ship's captain that carried us asked me the same thing," he said. "Kelly here did. I couldn't tell them anything. Not wouldn't, couldn't."

  "Think Amberly could tell us something if we asked in the right way?" said Kelly, quirking an eyebrow.

  "No," said Stockheim with a quick shake of his head. "The only solution he sees is to request further instructions from his home office in Xenos, and he's more afraid of doing that than he is of me. Unless you can fix this, Captain Leary—"

  A glance and nod.

  "—he is going to make that request. But that will take a month, I'm sure."

  Daniel nodded pleasantly. Interesting to see that Kelly's "the right way" didn't suggest bribery to Stockheim. On the other hand, Kelly might not have been thinking of bribery either; the dagger in his sash wasn't a gilded showpiece.

  "All right!" said Cory. He turned at the console, beaming. "Six—sirs, I mean. I found it. The chip's been encrypted, that's all."

  "Why in buggering hell is that?" said Kelly.

  "You can fix it, then, Midshipman?" said Stockheim simultaneously.

  "Six, may I . . . ?" Cory said.

  "Go ahead, Cory," Daniel said. The boy was bursting to explain, but he didn't want to put a foot wrong. "I'm well out of my depth."

  "Sirs, there are two folders on the chip," Cory said.

  "Two courses?" Kelly said. "Did they tell you that, Stockheim?"

  "Sir, I don't know if they're two courses," Cory said, determinedly getting the explanation in before his seniors went off on a pointless tangent. "I don't know whether either is really course data. And the why is that I think one of them was supposed to be encrypted—"

  He gestured toward the colonel.

  "—maybe for the factor on the other end who'd receive it. But whoever did it was sloppy, and part of the other folder's encrypted also. I can get some of the data out of it, but not the basic parameters. It wouldn't be garbage, but it wouldn't be useful anyway."

  "You can fix it, though?" repeated Stockheim. "Decrypt it?"

  "No sir," said Cory. He sounded triumphant, and he looked as happy as Daniel had ever seen him. "But Signals Officer Mundy can. She's on the Milton now."

  "Ah!" said Daniel brightly. Everyone on the bridge looked at him.

  Daniel was confident that Adele would need only the course pack, but there might be other useful information aboard the Spezza . . . and besides, it suited Captain Daniel Leary to give the Brotherhood of Amorgos a little lesson in civilized behavior.

  "Yes, I'm sure Officer Mundy will be able to solve this, gentlemen," Daniel said. "I'm afraid the solution comes at what you will consider a heavy price, Colonel, but sometimes that's the way. Military men like you and me are used to paying heavy prices, aren't we?"

  He gave Stockheim a hard smile. "I'll summon her immediately."

  The freighter's boarding ramp loomed before them as they splashed across the harbor. "Hang on tight!" called Dasi, the driver—the coxswain?—of the amphibious truck. Adele gripped her bench, but Barnes, seated inside her, reached around with both arms and clamped his hands on the sidewall.

  "Yee-hah!" the two riggers cried together. The front pair of the vehicle's six wheels jolted onto the ramp in a spray of water and unidentifiable flotsam. The tires gripped and the truck continued to crawl the rest of the way up. The water-jet in the stern whirred till the middle wheels were clear also.

  "That's far enough!" Daniel shouted from the entry hatch. He circled his index finger at Dasi before making a chopping gesture.

  Whether or not Dasi heard the words, he knew what his captain had in mind. He swung the truck broadside to the slope and brought it creaking to a halt. The fins of the idling diesel rang like an ill-tuned wind chime.

  "See, safe as houses, ma'am!" Barnes said, beaming as he stood and swung up the half-hatch behind them. "Here, let me get the steps."

  "I could probably get out without breaking my neck, Barnes," Adele said with a tinge of irritation, but that wasn't fair. Probably, yes, but by no means certainly. The crew knew that their captain demanded that Adele certainly not break her neck.

  Since Adele's earliest days with the RCN, Woetjans had made her safety the responsibility of Barnes and Dasi. There was no question that the common spacers respected Adele, but they also considered her—to quote Daniel, a countryman to the bone—as awkward as a hog on ice.

  She felt herself grin as she dismounted from the vehicle, holding her case of specialized equipment in her left hand. Daniel caught the expression and said, "Officer Mundy?"

  "I was wondering, Captain," Adele said, "whether I could find imagery of a hog on ice. I wasn't raised on a farm, you see."

  "Umm," said Daniel, deadpan. "I have a trained librarian on my staff, Mundy. I'll set her to the problem as soon as she's completed her current tasks. I'm glad to see you made it safely."

  "So am I," said Adele. "Though drowning is supposed to be a relatively painless way to die."

  Tovera got out on the other side. She swung down one-handed, holding her case—which on the outside was deceptively similar to Adele's—by the other. The vehicle stood high enough on its all-terrain tires. Adele had to admit that the Dasi's support really was helpful, since she didn't intend to let her code-breaking paraphernalia out of her hand.

  "I noticed that. May I ask, Dasi," said Daniel, his tone making it clear that he was asking and that he'd have an answer, too, "why the bloody hell you didn't bring Officer Mundy by the concrete esplanade?"

  "Chief Pasternak said there's two of these cars on a cruiser's complement," Dasi said, grinding his right boot toe onto the ramp. "But nobody's tried them out on water yet, so Barnes and me thought . . ."

  Both riggers looked off into the sky at angles.

  "Use better judgment in the future, spacers," Daniel said quietly. "I know you wouldn't survive the loss of Officer Mundy, so I won't offer any pointless threats. But use better judgment."

  "Sorry, Six," Dasi muttered to empty air. Barnes scowled and nodded, fiercely in both instances.

  "Come," said Adele, her tone sharpened by embarrassment. "Let's get to the matter at hand."

  With Daniel in the hatchway were Cory, a barbaric-looking spacer, and a very fit older man in battledress. The last wore a large pistol with a fold-down front grip in a belt holster; it was either fully automatic or it threw a much heavier slug than most handguns.

  Adele smiled faintly. If you put most rounds in your target's eye, you could generally make do with a pocket pistol.

  "My name's Kelly," said the spacer, "and the Spezza's mine—mine and my uncles'. If you can get us on our way, Mundy, there'll be a bottle of something choice for you."

  He turned and started across the entrance hold. "And you, Leary," he added over his shoulder.

  "Wait a minute," said Stockheim with growing anger. "Leary, what do you mean by this? Both of these persons are female!"

  Daniel and the Hydriote continued walking. Adele had no intention of responding—she was aboard ship by invitation of its captain and by Daniel's orders. But—

  "Technically you might be correct, Colonel Stockheim," Tovera said. "But please don't let your hormones lead you into unprofessional conduct."

  "What!" said Stockheim. The exclamation was no more a question than that of a man who's set his hand on a hot burner.

  "Tovera is my assistant, Colonel," Adele said, following the two captains onto the bridge. "I choose—" she wasn't going to lie for this purpose and claim Tovera's presence was necessary "—to have her with me."

  Stockheim crossed his hands behind his back. He stood as stiffly as if he were before a firi
ng squad, but he met Adele's eyes. "Captain Leary has already pointed out to me that beggars can't be choosers," he said. "And I mean no offense to you personally, Officer Mundy. It's just that we of the Brotherhood regard women as occasions of sin."

  Another spacer was seated at the right-hand console. He rose with an ill-natured grunt when Kelly jerked a thumb in his direction, and Adele sat down in his place.

  Adele took a chip from her case and inserted it into a slot beside the one holding the route pack. On her way to the transport she'd been discussing the problem with Cory over an intercom channel, using the Milton herself as a base unit. She had a pretty good idea which key would provide the solution; but if not, she had several hundred alternatives already prepared.