In the Stormy Red Sky

by David Drake

  "Spread out!" Woetjans rasped to her section. "Keep your eyes open but don't bloody start the trouble!"

  Then, presumably over her shoulder, "Six, we're outa the woods. Nobody's showing at the windows, but there's an enclosure and a couple guys without clothes looking out through the wire."

  "Those are prisoners, captured rebels," Adele said. She was using a commo helmet for the moment, but she would probably set it on the floor as soon as she'd found a place to settle and bring out her personal data unit. "The administrators call them ferals."

  She frowned and added, "Don't let the administrators kill them if you can help it. We'll need them."

  "Woetjans!" Daniel called. "Secure those prisoners! Do what you need to keep them safe!"

  He thought for a blink of time, then said, "Come on, Hogg! Dasi—"

  The bosun's mate commanding the rear guard.

  "—stay with the senator. I'm going forward!"

  They jogged past Forbes and her aides. She looked startled and concerned. It was hard to tell how much she'd understood of the shouted conversation with the advanced guard.

  It was uphill and spacers don't get a lot of practice running, but it wouldn't be far. Daniel burst out of the trees, allowing Hogg to get ahead as he couldn't on the narrow path. Unless he'd been willing to clout the young master out of the way, of course—a plan that he'd probably considered for the young master's own sake.

  The vegetation on the hundred feet remaining between the woodline and the nearest of the three buildings was blackened and dead, killed by herbicide rather than fire. Burning it off would've released a lethal cloud of the toxins that the staff was trying to keep away from their quarters.

  "Base Alpha, this is Captain Daniel Leary, RCN!" Daniel called as he trotted forward. "We are taking control of this facility in the name of the Republic and of Senator Beverly Forbes!"

  He was trying not to wheeze and also trying not to fall on his face. Quartz outcrops in the coarse laterite and the twisted remnants of vegetation made the footing treacherous, but he didn't dare take his eyes off the buildings he was running toward.

  He wore a pistol on his equipment belt, more as a badge of rank than a weapon; he wasn't a good pistol shot. The holster slapped his thigh as he ran.

  "If you resist," called the public address speakers under the eaves of both buildings, "you will infallibly hang as rebels against the Republic of Cinnabar! Depend on it!"

  It took Daniel a moment to realize that the threatening voice was Adele's. He should've expected that, he supposed; she'd said that she'd been listening in through their communications system. That meant, being Adele, that she could take control of it as she wished.

  "I surrender!" someone cried shrilly from inside the nearer building. "Don't shoot! I surrender!"

  The twenty-odd spacers of the advanced guard had spread around the buildings and were pointing their guns at whatever seemed most threatening to each individual. Nothing seemed very threatening to Daniel, but his spacers were determined not to miss a bet.

  Woetjans was poised to kick in the front door, which was dull red plastic and contrasted with the beige walls. Since it opened outward, she'd probably fail—and then somebody would shoot the latch off without bothering to see if it was locked in the first place.

  Daniel grimaced. This wasn't at all the placid stroll to the door and presentation of credentials that he'd hoped for before they'd landed, but there wasn't any help for it. He certainly wasn't going to come without an armed escort; and even if he had, the Milton's enormous bulk would probably have put the wind up the locals' tails.

  "Please, please, don't shoot!" the voice squealed. The door quivered as someone grabbed the handle from the other side.

  Woetjans tensed. Daniel tapped her on the shoulder and gestured her back forcibly.

  "Come out, then!" he said. "You won't be harmed so long as you turn over control of the facility promptly."

  The door opened. The man who came out was fat besides being tall. Though balding, his moustache flowed into the beard that covered his neck; the facial hair was intensely black. He wore a white shirt and a shoulder sash of red silk.

  "I'm the, ah . . . ," he said. His voice was higher pitched than his bulk suggested. "That is, my name's Disch. Please, we've put up all the guns and we only have them for the ferals anyway. We'll do anything you say!"

  Looking down he noticed his sash. He tugged violently without being able to tear the cloth, then lifted it over his head and threw it onto the ground.

  A barefoot woman wearing a brown shift stepped out of the door behind Disch. She held a frying pan before her.

  "Right," said Daniel. "Now, Master Disch, how many staff members do you have—"

  The woman brought the pan up and around in both hands, slamming the edge into the base of Disch's skull. The cast iron rang dully, but the sound of crunching bone was sickeningly audible as well.

  Blood splattered, a drop splashing Daniel's cheek. Disch's eyes rolled upward; he pitched forward on his face. Daniel stepped to the side to avoid the big man; he grabbed the woman by both wrists.

  "Let me—" she shouted; then her taut muscles relaxed. She let go of the frying pan. Meeting Daniel's eyes, she said, "There's five of us, and him."

  She kicked Disch's thigh with her heel. Though she was barefoot, her soles were callused like hooves; the stroke would have hurt if the fallen man had been conscious. He was breathing in great snorts.

  Adele stepped around her to get to the doorway. She was holding her data unit and the wands in her right hand; her left was in her tunic pocket. Her utility trousers were stained by the dead vegetation she'd been sitting on, though that wasn't obvious on the black-and-gray mottled fabric.

  "Mistress!" said Tovera.

  Woetjans gripped Adele's sleeve, pulling her back; Tovera entered the room with her sub-machine gun ready. Adele looked up with an expression as cold as the blade of a guillotine; the bosun released her.

  Adele smiled faintly. "Yes, I take your point, Woetjans," she said, taking her left hand out of her pocket. "But be careful, please. Sometimes I just react when I'm thinking of other things."

  Barnes and four other armed spacers entered the building; Adele followed them. Close up, Daniel could see that algae with a faintly orange cast was creeping over the structural plastic, softening its lines but probably making it dangerous to touch.

  "He's just a trustee," said the girl Daniel held. She prodded Disch with a toe—not a blow but a disparaging reference. "No different from the rest of us, but he thinks he's god because the off-planet staff lets him act like one. They won't stay here, so Disch does what he pleases."

  She half-smiled. "Did," she said.

  This would be a more unpleasant place to live than many of the apparently harsher worlds which Daniel had seen. You could move normally on the surface, unlike some iceworlds, but that surface would inevitably begin to devour you. The woman had a rash beneath her chin and on the inside of both arms, and a line of sores circled the neck of the sprawled Disch where his collar rubbed.

  Forbes and her aides stamped up from the woods. Dasi had kept his spacers from rushing forward when Woetjans charged the compound with the lead section; he deserved a pat on the back for that, which Daniel would see he got as soon as things quieted down. Not quite yet, though. . . .

  "In the name of the Senate and people of the Republic!" the senator said. "I declare the entire world of Fonthill under martial law. Cinnabar forever!"

  Spacers cheerfully shouted, "Cinnabar forever!" and, "Up Cinnabar!" Some of the most gleeful weren't, as Daniel knew from their enlistment records, even Cinnabar citizens.

  Daniel shot a sharp glance at the woman he was holding. She was much younger than he'd judged, no more than eighteen. Her arms and legs were badly bruised, and he suspected there were more bruises on the places that her loose shift covered.

  "Are you going to be all right if I let you go?" Daniel said. He could get one of the spacers to watch her or even
tie her up, but he didn't want to do that if he could avoid it.

  She laughed without humor. "I'm fine," she said. "If you mean, am I going to hit that bastard again—"

  She jabbed Disch with her foot.

  "—no, don't worry. Though I don't know why you bloody care. He's not worth anybody caring, believe me."

  Daniel did believe her, but he was a naval officer and the matter didn't fall within his remit. If Forbes wanted to set up kangaroo courts, he as the ranking RCN officer would provide the civil authorities with support as required. Until then, he'd maintain order among the local population so long as that was consistent with his naval duties.

  Forbes was trying to get into the headquarters building, which was part of Daniel's duties. The senator's two servants were about to try pushing through the spacers who clogged the doorway, and that wasn't going to end in a good way.

  "Poindexter!" Daniel said, stepping between Forbes and the spacers' backs. "Smolich! Get your asses out of Her Excellency's way. Woetjans, I want all personnel out of the control room now except you and two others. Put the compound in a posture of defense!"

  He paused while the room emptied. There'd been a dozen spacers inside, along with the Adele, Tovera, and the Fonthill officials—trustees, the woman had said, as though this were a prison. Which it obviously was, in the minds of everybody who was involved with it.

  Daniel and Hogg followed Forbes into the control room. The building didn't have climate control, and though the large openings under the roofpeaks provided ventilation, they did nothing for the mugginess.

  The officials were three men and an older, heavily tattooed, woman. The men stood with their backs to the wall while the woman leaned against it, supporting her weight with her arms. She glared over her shoulder at Tovera, but Tovera's smile was considerably more threatening.

  Adele was speaking into a modern communications console. She looked up when Daniel entered.

  "The rebels are dealing with interloping traders," she said. "Hydriotes, I'm sure, moonlighting between runs to Fonthill under contract to Beckford's companies. But that means they must monitor the shipping frequencies, so I've been calling the local rebel commander, Earl Wiley."

  "Carry on, Mundy," Daniel said. "Excellent!"

  He turned to the captured officials. The men appeared harmless, cowed and frightened. The tattooed woman—well, she was harmless with Tovera watching her over the muzzle of a sub-machine gun, but it might be as well to transfer her to the prisoner cage outside.

  "Right," Daniel said. "First, I'll want the location of all the labor camps here on Fonthill. Who'll find that for me, hey?"

  "I schedule the runs," the eldest of the three men said. His left arm was shrunken, though all the fingers moved; Daniel wondered whether it was a pre-existing injury or reaction to the endemic poisons of this hellworld. "I can show you on the other computer, the one in there."

  He nodded toward the room to the left. The doorway was arched and closed with a screen of glittering plastic ribbons.

  "But it won't be quite up to date on where they're cutting, because the satellite link's been out for the past week."

  Which explained why Adele couldn't access it from the Milton: bad maintenance instead of exceptional security. If all the personnel on Fonthill were slaves, the chances were that bad maintenance was the only maintenance there was.

  "We'll see if we can't get that working shortly," Daniel said, wishing that he'd brought Cory along. Well, they'd sort it in good time, he was sure. "For now, show me the unit. And what's your name, my good man?"

  "Daniel!" Adele said. "I have contact."

  That wasn't according to RCN protocol, but none of the spacers present looked startled. They didn't think of Adele as a signals officer, and however Lady Mundy spoke to Six was fine with them. Lieutenant Commander Robinson might've had conniptions, but he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut—and anyway, he and the Wartburg were still in orbit.

  "Who is this that calls to Comrade Wiley, over?" said the console's speakers; Adele must have cut them on when she got the signal.

  "I'll speak," said Forbes, stepping in front of Daniel in the assumption that he would give way. As he did, because this wasn't a tactical situation; but he felt his face harden slightly.

  "Go ahead, then," said Adele, looking up. Her face was blank, but again Daniel had the realization that the senator might want to be more careful about what she said and how she said it.

  "This is Lady Beverly Forbes," the senator said, striking a pose unconsciously. "Senator of the Republic and Ambassador Plenipotentiary to the Veil and neighboring worlds. I'm here to bring Fonthill under direct Cinnabar rule and to right any wrongs which may have been done here. I want you to come to Base Alpha immediately so that we can negotiate an arrangement which will greatly benefit you and your followers."

  She stopped. "Over," said Adele, more punctilious as intermediary than she ordinarily was with her own communications.

  "Are you mad, woman?" the console replied. The cackling laugh that followed suggested that the man on the other end of the conversation—Comrade Wiley himself—wasn't too tightly wrapped either. "Wiley does not come to Base Alpha or anywhere else. If you wish Wiley, you come to him! Over."

  The Fonthill authorities—if that wasn't too grand a description—must be completely lacking in military skills and equipment if the rebel chieftain was willing to communicate directly. Whether the sender was broadcasting or bouncing his signal through the satellite net, Adele certainly had a fix on the location. A missile or a company of Marines could be on top of it within an hour if that were the plan.

  Which it wasn't, of course.

  "Don't get above yourself, Wiley," Forbes said sharply. "Of course I'm not going off into a swamp to meet a run slave. You have my word that you and your followers will be safe when they come to Base Alpha."

  Instead of adding the closing protocol, Adele said calmly, "I didn't transmit that, Senator. I'll take it from here."

  "What?" said Forbes.

  "Quiet down the tattooed lady if she moves, Woetjans," Tovera said, shifting her stance. She'd hung the sub-machine gun under her right arm in a patrol sling; now the waist-high muzzle pointed at the senator's aides. The men with guns merely blinked, but Platt squealed and dropped the briefcase he'd been clutching to his chest on the hike from the Milton.

  Hogg chuckled. He'd slung the impeller and was holding a folding knife with a knuckleduster grip. It was made for close quarters like this, but Daniel had seen Hogg throw the weapon fifteen feet to put the point through the eye of a flying lizard and into the creature's brain.

  "She's too smart to do that," Hogg said. "Isn't that so, sweetie?"

  The woman snarled a curse, but she didn't try to straighten from her off-balance position.

  "Comrade Wiley . . . ," Adele said. She'd made her initial contact behind an active cancellation screen, but she left that down now so that everyone else in the room could hear her conversation. "This is Lady Adele Mundy, Senator Forbes's colleague. We've freed two of your fellows, Comrades Jarrod Selsmark and Fred Gibbs. I'm going to put them on in just a moment."

  As she spoke, Barnes and another rigger, Jimmi Laursen, chivied the two prisoners down the short hallway from the cage. They were stinking and emaciated, and despite their attempts at bravado they were obviously afraid of what was going to happen next.

  "I want you to set up a rendezvous with them," Adele continued. This hadn't been planned; but Adele had a quick mind and didn't bother discussing things she considered obvious. "I assume you have some kind of code. The Republic will provide your colleagues with whatever form of transportation they wish, and my secretary and I will accompany them to you. Then we can go over the Republic's offer in person. Over."

  She gestured the—former—prisoners toward her. Barnes prodded one at the base of the spine with the muzzle of his impeller; they both lurched forward.

  "This is not enough!" cried the console. "I am Wiley! I will meet w
ith the senator!"

  "You'll meet with Mundy of Chatsworth, Comrade Wiley," Adele said, "and if you know anything of Cinnabar history you'll feel honored. Now, I'm turning the console over to your colleagues. Comrade Selsmark—"

  She pointed at the nearer prisoner. He was tall and must once have been powerful. His red beard was in two braids, though they had frayed into a tangle.

  "—see if you can convince your leader that it's in his best interests to deal with me as a friend."

  "You're on," she said, chopping her index finger down.

  In a quiet aside to Daniel, Adele added, "Because he is going to be dealing with me."