In the Stormy Red Sky

by David Drake

  "You needn't worry, Colonel," she said as the console worked. It was slower than a first-line RCN unit, but no computer which could handle astrogation could be called slow. "I assure you that I have no more inclination toward sin, as you put it, than this console does."

  She patted the fascia plate with her right hand.

  "So you may as well disregard my gender, just as I do."

  Having finished linking the console to her personal data unit, Adele leaned back and watched its display form. She preferred to use her wands for control; but more important in this instance, she could set the hologram so that it was focused only for her own eyes. She didn't want the others, particularly Stockheim, to know that she was sweeping up all the information in the Spezza's system, but neither did she want to seem obviously secretive.

  Stockheim snorted, but he didn't speak.

  "You travel with twenty-three women, Colonel," Tovera said. Her voice sounded like scales rustling on a slate floor. "They're in the warehouse with your troops right now. According to the manifest, you left a twenty-fourth woman behind on Brightsky when she broke her leg in a fall."

  "You hellspawn!" Stockheim said, and everything moved very quickly. Stockheim stepped forward, his right hand rising. He slammed chest-to-chest into Daniel, who hadn't been there a moment before, and bounced back.

  Cory grabbed Stockheim's right arm; Stockheim twitched like a dog shaking and flung the midshipman against a bulkhead. Kelly pricked the back of the colonel's neck with his dagger and shouted, "Enough! This is my bloody bridge! All of you, enough!"

  Stockheim turned without jerking his head away. The dagger point nicked his ruddy-brown skin before Kelly drew it back.

  "Your pardon, Captain," the soldier said in a rusty voice. "You are of course right; this is your bridge."

  "And the lady's right about the manifest," said Kelly, thrusting the dagger back into his sash with a quick enthusiasm that should've ripped the fabric if it didn't split the pelvis besides. "Which is no secret to anybody who wants to look it up at port control. So I don't see why you'd be flying hot anyhow, eh?"

  Adele slipped the pistol back into her pocket, then picked up the wand she'd dropped onto the floor. She returned to the encrypted data, breathing through her open mouth. With luck no one was paying attention to her.

  Well, no one who didn't know her already. She always forgot how quick Daniel was until she saw him move again in a crisis.

  Tovera provoked this because she was angry, Adele thought. But she shouldn't be able to feel anger any more than she could feel love. Could a sociopath really learn to be human?

  "The women, as you put it," said Stockheim, facing the empty corridor, "are a detachment of Intercessors. Their purpose, their vocation, is to bring the individual Brethren in touch with Godhead as required by our humanity."

  His eyes swept the others on the bridge; Adele was watching through a pickup in the other console so that she didn't appear to be involved in the discussion. Stockheim was both angry and defensive, but he'd brought his emotions back under tight rein.

  "The Brothers of Amorgos aren't saints," he said. "We're men as the Gods made all men: sinful. If you want to mock us for being as you are, do so. We'll continue to do our duty, regardless of laughter and insult."

  "No one's mocking, Colonel," Daniel said, rubbing his chest with the fingers of his left hand. The two men had collided like tree trunks in a windstorm . . . though it was the soldier who'd recoiled. "We're here to help you, after all."

  Adele removed her key and replaced it carefully in the attaché case. She rose from the console, aware that all present were looking at her.

  "I believe that will take care of the problem, Captain Kelly," she said, bowing slightly. "I've recopied the navigational instructions in clear onto the same chip. You'll be able to access them normally."

  "And the other folder that your Cory said was on the chip?" the Hydriote said. "What of that?"

  Adele shrugged. "It's still there," she said. "The material didn't appear to involve your vessel, so I left it as it was."

  "Then I think we've accomplished what we set out to do," Daniel said, giving everyone a broad smile. "Officer Mundy, your vehicle appears to have ample room for me and the midshipmen as well, so I think we'll all return to the Millie together."

  "If I may ask a favor, Captain?" Adele said. "There's a large public garden at the eastern jaw of this harbor; I'd very much like to see it this morning. If you have time, I'd appreciate it if you could give me some pointers from your background in natural history."

  "I'd be pleased to, Mundy," Daniel said. "We should have an interesting discussion."

  His expression hadn't changed in any identifiable fashion, but something about it now reminded Adele of the touch of her pistol's grip.

  CHAPTER 9

  Ravenny Gardens, Hereward on Paton

  The gateway with Ravenny Gardens worked into the top of the arch was made to look like wrought iron, but when Adele tapped it with her knuckles, she found that it was the extruded plastic she expected. A sign beside the entrance read: A gift from the Associated Garden Clubs of Paton, in honor of their late founder, Dolores Ravenny. This really was wood, and the paint had flaked badly.

  Barnes reversed the amphibious vehicle, then snorted back down the street toward the dock area with his partner and the two midshipmen. Daniel watched them go with his usual mild smile.

  "This is quite a pleasant neighborhood," he said. "Not at all the view that a spacer normally gets of a port city, I'm afraid."

  "Yes, I suppose it is," Adele said. She'd checked slant imagery of the district before she picked the gardens as the venue for her discussion, but all that had really impressed itself on her was the fact it was suitably private. Out of politeness, she looked around her now.

  The two- and three-story frame houses were spacious by the standards of Xenos, where land was at a premium. Each sat in its own lot, set off from its neighbors and the street by waist-high hedges or occasionally a fence of wooden pickets.

  Adele returned her attention to where it needed to be. "The east edge of the gardens overlooks the open sea," she said. She was uncomfortable with what she'd just learned in the Spezza. It wasn't unusually awful as such things went, but she didn't know what to do about it.

  The easy solution, of course, was to do nothing. That came naturally to Adele Mundy, who was more interested in knowledge than people. She wasn't sure it was the right answer here, however, so she was deferring the decision to Daniel.

  Besides, Adele found herself caring more about people than she had for the first fifteen years after the massacre of her family. Either she was allowing her emotions to resurface or—

  She smiled wryly.

  —like Tovera, she was training herself into a series of behavior patterns which others would read as emotions. Either way, it eased life within society.

  The gates were open, but a caretaker in a white—whitish—jacket got to his feet as Adele and Daniel entered. Tovera was a pace behind, moving her eyes more often than her head, but turning her head frequently as well.

  "Sir?" said the caretaker. "Sorry, we're closed except for the workmen. We'll open again for the Promenade at nine."

  Adele took out her data unit, casting around for a place to use it. There were benches along the path ten yards in, but if she wanted to sit without getting past the caretaker, the best alternative was moist ground covered with russet tendrils like fur. They would probably stain badly.

  A lace-winged insect landed on her wrist. She flicked it off.

  "Here you are, my good man," Daniel said cheerfully. He spun a florin toward the caretaker. Sunlight caught the coin at the top of its arc, flashing from the ruby hologram within the central crystal. "We won't get in the way of your people, I promise you. Setting up for the Promenade, you mean?"

  "Why, thank you, sir!" said the caretaker, turning the coin over in his fingers. Adele had noticed before that Cinnabar coinage—holograms within silvery r
ims—had a flashy presence beyond its actual value. At that, a florin was worth about half a day's wage in the scrip passing current on Paton. "Yes, the Promenade, every tennight. Ah, if you'll be careful, then, I guess it can't hurt anything."

  Smiling pleasantly, Daniel led them briskly past lest the fellow change his mind. Tried to change his mind, Adele suspected, but it was better to avoid a problem than to deal with one that'd arisen.

  Adele grimaced at her data unit. She couldn't use it unless they stopped, which would be a foolish thing to do for no more important reason than she had now.

  Daniel must have read her expression correctly—they did know one another well. He grinned and said, "The tennight Promenade is the major social event in Hereward. Everyone who's anyone dresses up and comes here to listen to the live band and look at one another. And nine is early evening here—Paton uses a ten-hour, daylight-to-dusk clock."

  The gardens were laid out on a tongue of land. It was only twenty yards across here at the entrance, but it spread to over a hundred near the tip. To the right was the harbor; to the left, the open sea whose water was equally opaque but a clearer gray.

  Circular planters, generally with a tree as the centerpiece, were spaced just inside the perimeter hedges; a graveled walk wound around them. At the end of the peninsula was a larger plaza, also graveled. Workmen were setting up a small bandstand and a dance floor, using boards from the dump truck parked on the walkway and the trailer behind it.

  Daniel's eyes narrowed; then he shrugged. "I suppose they used a dump truck because they had one," he said. "That's a good enough reason, after all."

  "Ah," said Adele, putting the data unit away. "Thank you."

  "It's not surprising that I'd be more aware of high society in Hereward, after all," Daniel said with a chuckle. "Mind you, if I let the locals learn that my signals officer is Lady Mundy, you'll get even more invitations than I do."

  Adele felt her lips squeeze into a sour bunch. "Thank you for not doing that," she said. She nodded toward a gap in the outer hedge, where a railing gave a view over the harbor. "I think we'll be adequately private here. I wasn't confident of that aboard the Milton, since the senator was aboard."

  If Forbes—if her staff—were skilled enough, they could have set timed recording devices virtually anywhere. If the devices were designed for recovery, not real-time broadcast, they would be completely undetectable.

  Though that wasn't the real reason for Adele's discomfort. She was tense and miserable because of Forbes's existence in the middle of her RCN family, not at anything Forbes was really going to do there. For all the cruiser's size, the Milton wasn't a safe haven for Adele so long as there was a senator aboard.

  "These gardens are full of exotic plants," said Daniel in a whimsical tone. "If you're from Paton. If you're moderately well-versed in horticulture—and I'm barely that myself—you recognize a good half of what you see as standard species which humans take everywhere they go. Many are from Earth originally—the roses, the pansies. . . . But the rest as well, the wagtails—"

  He pointed to the clump of plants with finger-thick stems from which petals like pastel flags waved in the sea breeze.

  "—are from Hinson's Rest, the bluebrights—"

  He pointed to the clumps whose spiky cyan foliage overwhelmed the white florets at the center of each.

  "—that they grow by the square mile on Melpomene for medicinal extracts, but you find them in gardens on just about every other inhabited world too."

  He swept his hands across an arc of the plantings. "Pretty much all of them, the ones I can identify by name but I'd guess all the rest, they're off-world species. Whereas what I'd like to see is a nice slice of Paton's own plants in their native habitat."

  Adele laughed, surprising even herself. She opened and closed her hands; she'd been gripping the railing so fiercely that they'd started to cramp.

  "I'm sorry, Daniel," she said. "I'm angrier than I'd realized at Forbes's presence. And what I learned in the Spezza's log . . . fed into it."

  She cleared her throat and continued, "The Brotherhood, this phratry of it, is being sent to put down a rebellion on an agricultural world named Fonthill."

  Daniel nodded. "All right," he said. "If you don't care what gets broken in the process, they're good troops for the purpose. Maybe the best."

  He frowned slightly and added, "I'm not familiar with Fonthill, though."

  "Fonthill," Adele said, brushing away several more of the lace-winged insects, "is owned by William Beckford. It isn't a listed world—anywhere."

  Daniel frowned. A dozen or more of the large flies were crawling on his sleeves. He pinched together the wings of one and lifted it to where he could see it more easily. The slender body arched and straightened, while the four little legs paddled in the air.

  "I presume there's something valuable on Fonthill," he said as he peered at the insectoid. "Minerals?"

  "Fonthill is the source of shinewood," Adele said, looking toward the empty horizon. "All direct contact is through Hydriote vessels, not those of Beckford's companies. The Spezza has made two voyages to Fonthill in the past five years; the route pack they received from Factor Amberly is for a third, though Captain Kelly may not realize that until he arrives. The Spezza hasn't gone from Paton to Fonthill in the past, and the chip provides a route rather than a destination."

  "That . . . ," said Daniel. He looked around them. "Here, let's walk to the harbor side, if you don't mind."

  He walked around a planter centered around a tree that looked like a forty-foot coat rack swathed in streamers of thin green fabric. Around its base were plants with blue tubes which grew out of leaves the color of sunburned skin.

  The foliage was covered with the winged insectoids. As Adele watched, a further cloud of them lifted over the perimeter hedge and settled to join earlier arrivals to the garden.

  "Daniel," she said, though she continued to walk with him. "There seem to be more of the insects in this direction. Insectoids."

  "Yes, I want to see if they're hatching from the harbor," Daniel said in an oddly lively voice. He continued, "No one's ever known the source of shinewood. I can see why Beckford would keep the location secret, since it's so valuable a product. Products, really, since there's at least a dozen identifiable species. They have nothing in common except their sheen under UV."

  "The other thing that all the types of shinewood have in common . . . ," said Adele. She brushed the railing of structural plastic clear of insectoids to that she could cross her hands on it before her. "Is that their sap is an ulcerating poison. Working with it—cutting the timber and milling it, since that's done on Beckford also—is debilitating and fatal within five years."

  She gave him a cold smile, ignoring the tiny feet causing tiny prickles as they crawled over her face. "That's an average based on the number of replacement workers which the Hydriotes bring in. They have lot numbers, which permits me to extrapolate to a rough total."

  "That implies very high wages," Daniel said. There was no more humor in his smile than there had been in hers. "Or that the workmen are slaves. Which would surprise me slightly, since Hydra became a signatory to the Blythe Convention over a century ago, barring its citizens from the slave trade."

  He raised an eyebrow.

  Adele nodded crisply. "I suspect it's a matter of definition," she said. "Beckford's companies buy labor contracts, particularly prison contracts. There are many worlds which aren't overly scrupulous about policing that sort of thing. That was the case in the Protectorate of the Veil until Governor Das was appointed, as a matter of fact. And it's still the case in the Hegemony. Headman Terl preferred to avoid public executions, but his security police were zealous in removing troublemakers."

  "I see," said Daniel. "And I can't say I like it very much. . . ."

  Daniel tossed the fly he'd been examining into the air and watched it vanish into the amazing swarms of its fellows. They were rising from surface of the harbor like spindrift, never more th
an thirty feet out from the shore as best he could judge. He thought of slipping his imaging goggles down over his eyes, but there was no call for that.

  "The labor purchases are made through a variety of intermediary companies," Adele said. "The only ones that can be directly linked with Beckford are completely aboveboard, as for the Cone plantations on Paton. Separate entities recruit labor from those plantations with promises of wages and better conditions, but Cone and similar traders will have properly signed documents when Protectorate inspectors come by."

  Daniel nodded, dislodging a platoon of the insectoids. They were fodderflies, native to Hartweg's World deep in the Montserrat Cluster. The harbor was boiling, not only with the flies but with the fish and birds which gorged on the hatching.