In the Stormy Red Sky

by David Drake

  The boy blushed even darker. "No sir," he whispered toward the maps. "I didn't mean that at all, sir. Sir, I'm very sorry."

  "I checked your record after we met on Paton, Leary," the colonel said. His smile wasn't wide, but it seemed sincere. As with Adele, one got the impression that his face might crack if his lips spread too broadly. "I'm not in doubt about your manhood."

  He swallowed; his face wrinkled as though what had been in his mouth was sour. "While I realize that my business as a soldier is to take orders, not to question them, has any provision been made to protect the laborers after the regiment is withdrawn?"

  "The ferals are beasts," the older aide said. He didn't raise his voice, but harsh emotion trembled in his tone. "I know how Beckford has treated the laborers on Fonthill, but the fact remains that the ones who've run—the ones who survive in the wild—aren't human any more."

  "And you mustn't think that they'll spare the laborers who're still in the camps," said the younger man earnestly. "They hate the ones who haven't run even worse than they do the administrators, or they seem to. They eat laborers they capture, as if they were cattle!"

  "We'll be taking the laborers away with us," Daniel said. If Adele had been here, she would've commandeered one of the consoles to create a visual display; perhaps she'd have shown the Hydriote fleet which would be removing the former slaves. Still, his verbal description seemed to be holding the Brethren's attention. "And that includes your ferals, if my colleague Officer Mundy can convince them to go with us."

  "Are you joking, Leary?" Colonel Stockheim said, his voice getting colder and harsher with each syllable. "What could you possibly offer the ferals? They're not human any more, we've told you!"

  "I'm offering them a cash payment to be determined later, plus citizenship on Bolton," Daniel said. "Or rather, Officer Mundy is, in the name of Senator Forbes. The same offer that's being made to all the other laborers on Fonthill. They can stay here, of course, but I can't imagine why they would want to."

  "Bolton?" said the young aide, frowning as he tried to get a mental grip on the statement. "Sir, the only Bolton I know is an Alliance world in the Montserrat Stars."

  "Right," said Daniel, "at the moment. But they're about to become Friends of Cinnabar. That's why we need the labor force from here. The ordinary workers will patrol St. James Harbor, where about half the planet's population lives. That will be peacekeeping so long as there's enough of a garrison from the start to keep the lid on. Out in the countryside, though, where there isn't that kind of control—well, that's work for the ferals. They'll find the conditions better than they are in the jungle here, and from what you tell me—"

  He met the eyes of each of the Brethren in turn. Their faces were gray. Daniel was smiling, but someone who knew him would have noticed that his cheeks were set in hard lines.

  "—they'll find anti-partisan work more congenial than you or I would."

  Nobody spoke for a moment.

  "I told you I'd read your file, Leary," Stockheim said at last. His face and voice were without expression; his fingers riffled the maps again. "I'm just a soldier, but I've seen things; I can read between the lines of a report."

  "Yes sir?" said Daniel, meeting the eyes of the older man.

  "I read about what you'd done in the Bagarian Cluster," Stockheim said, "and I thought, 'He's as hard as his father, and his father was as hard as the Speaker's Rock.' "

  Daniel heard a whisper of sound, though it was so faint that the landsmen probably didn't notice it. A starship was tearing through the upper levels of the atmosphere, coming in for a landing.

  "Colonel," he said carefully, "we're at war. And we've both taken oaths to defend the Republic against her foreign enemies."

  "Yes," said the colonel. "But I'm glad my duties involve these."

  He patted the receiver of his sub-machine gun.

  "The work is cleaner, in my opinion."

  "The Republic is fortunate to have soldiers of your quality, sir," Daniel said. "And certainly I'm fortunate on this operation."

  "Captain?" said the young aide. "If I may ask—what do you foresee as the Brotherhood's role in your operation? You haven't said."

  "Ah!" said Daniel with a nod. His face shivered into his familiar grin, like ice breaking up in the rush of a spring freshet. "Yes, I mentioned that Bolton would shortly be joining the Friends of Cinnabar?"

  The Brethren nodded, their expressions all to a degree guarded.

  "Well, gentlemen," Daniel said. "Your regiment and my Milton are the instruments which are going to make that happen."

  Even if the soldiers had wanted to reply, the thunder of the Wartburg dropping down to land beyond the berm would have drowned them out.

  West of Base Alpha, Fonthill

  The innate goodness of the Lower Orders of Mankind was an article of faith with Adele's mother, Evadne Rolfe Mundy. Apparently the Lower Orders—Evadne capitalized the words—had a simple purity which brought them closer to Nature and therefore to The Good.

  After the Mundy estates were confiscated during the Proscriptions, Adele had spent many years as a member of those Lower Orders. She therefore viewed them without her mother's blinders of ignorance. Adele had no great affection for civilized Man, but Man in a state of nature stank.

  That was particularly true when—she gave Wiley a cold smile—one member of the Lower Orders had just disemboweled another member on the mud bank beside you. She said, "Senator Forbes has arrived at Base Alpha aboard the RCS Milton and begun to bring Fonthill under proper Cinnabar government. As part of that process—"

  Adele moved sideways to allow Tovera to get out of the barge without stepping in Selsmark's reeking entrails. The other freed captive, Gibbs, remained seated at the transom. He was still holding the control wheel, and his face was as stiff as if he'd died of strychnine poisoning.

  "—Senator Forbes has granted all current Fonthill residents an amnesty for crimes committed before her arrival."

  Tovera toed the corpse's thigh. Daniel had provided the freed ferals with trousers from the Milton's slop chest before they set off in the barge. The long knife had severed Selsmark's waist cord, so his pants had fallen to his knees before Dapp had flung the body down.

  "I'd say this was an internal organizational matter, not a crime Lady Mundy would have to report," she said. She held her attaché case slightly open in her left hand, but her right hung at her side. "Still, it might be a good idea not to repeat it, all right?"

  She smiled at Wiley.

  Wiley's other four supporters had retreated minusculely when Dapp executed the adjudged traitor. They backed farther now, glancing between Adele and Tovera in amazement.

  "Do you laugh at me, lady?" Wiley squealed. "I eat pretty ladies like you! Do you hear me? We going to deal, yes, but I make the deal! Your people pay plenty to get you back, pretty lady!"

  "Comrade Wiley," Adele said sharply. She reached into her tunic pocket. "This is an extremely good offer from your viewpoint. If you refuse it—"

  "Dapp!" said Wiley. "The little pale one has a smart tongue. You fix her like Selsmark. Then the pretty lady knows we mean business!"

  Dapp laughed, baring his filed teeth. He reached for Tovera's throat. Tovera didn't move, but Adele brought out her pistol.

  "Wah!" Dapp said. He jumped back.

  Adele shot him twice in the right eye. He was so close that a blob of clear jelly splashed her cheek. His left arm and leg flailed convulsively. Wiley tried to jump out of the way, but Dapp's fist clouted him on the cheek and knocked him down.

  Adele waggled the pistol out at her side to cool it; even two shots seriously heated the barrel. To drop the weapon back in her pocket immediately risked charring the lining and even giving herself a blister.

  A feral lifted his spear. "Put that down," Adele said.

  The feral threw it to the ground and vanished into the jungle behind him. His three fellows followed an instant later, one of them dropping his crossbow as he ran.

&n
bsp; Dapp fell onto his back. The knives on his bandoliers rattled as his body shuddered. His mouth and left eye were open, and pinkish brains oozed from the crater of the right one.

  Adele grimaced. Wiley rested on his elbows with a dazed expression.

  "Get up," she snapped. She put the pistol out of sight to encourage him; by now the coil-wrapped barrel was only vaguely warm.

  "What will you do to me?" said Wiley, rising with a careful expression. He was judging whether he'd be better to run or to jump the pair of small women, calling for his henchmen to return.

  Tovera took out her little sub-machine gun. "Stay and listen, little man," she said. "You'll like that better than the other ways this could go."

  "I'm going to make you a fair offer and return to Base Alpha, just as I've been saying," Adele said. She had a good deal of practice at restating the obvious, but she'd never come to like the experience; that was one of the reasons she found dealing with Daniel to be such a pleasure. "I have neither the desire nor the ability to force you to take it, but common sense should be enough."

  She was suddenly dizzy. The stench, she thought, blinking angrily, but it wasn't Dapp's voided bowels. It wasn't even reaction to the adrenaline that a few instants of violence hadn't burned out of her system. Some day one of them will kill me instead, and then the dreams will stop.

  Wiley rose, eyeing her warily. Did he notice that? But the feral probably hadn't seen anything wrong, and anyway it couldn't matter.

  "You're welcome to stay on Fonthill if you like," Adele said, drawing a handkerchief from her breast pocket and wiping her cheek. "We'll be taking all the laborers and staff off with us, though. Perhaps you can arrange for food with Hydriote traders, though for the immediate present their ships are going to be fully occupied in other matters. And nobody else has the coordinates of Fonthill, of course."

  Wiley straightened slightly. He didn't relax, but neither was he on the verge of suicidal action. "And if we go with you, we ferals?" he said.

  "There'll be fighting," Adele said. "Quite a lot of the civilians where we're going won't like the change of government we're imposing. You'll have modern small arms and the overall direction of the campaign will be by RCN officers."

  "The civilians will have guns?" Wiley said.

  Adele nodded. "Some of them certainly will," she said. "And many will be retired military personnel. They won't be organized, but individually they'll know what they're doing. Better than you and your personnel will, I dare say."

  Wiley sniffed. "Maybe in a battle they would," he said. "From what you tell me, this won't be a battle."

  The feral chieftain should have looked ridiculous standing against a wall of jungle in his mud-blotched suit. He didn't.

  "Yes," said Adele. "I take your point."

  She cleared her throat as a pause to collect herself. For a moment, her mind had been other places.

  "In return for your services to the Republic," she said, "you and your personnel will gain Friendly Citizenship. That is, citizenship on a world classed as a Friend of Cinnabar. You'll be able to vote in planetary elections but not—"

  Her smile was dry.

  "—for Senators of the Republic. Besides the cash stipend—whose amount has yet to be determined—I have no doubt that despite RCN oversight, your military activities will provide you with ample opportunities for pillage and rape."

  Wiley shrugged without speaking. His eyes didn't leave hers.

  "In case your comment about cannibalism was more than just boasting," Adele said, "I strongly recommend you drop the practice. Quite a lot that happens during a war will be ignored, but cannibalism will not."

  Wiley tugged his trousers around to glance at the seat, but he didn't try vainly to brush away the drying mud. "I can't be everywhere," he said.

  This time Adele shrugged. "I'm offering you choices, Comrade Wiley," she said. "What you do with the offers is your own business."

  "How much time do we have?" Wiley said. "I'm not saying I accept, but if I do?"

  "The last ships will be loading at Base Alpha in four days," Adele said. "After they're gone, the remaining residents will have Fonthill to themselves for months or perhaps years. I suspect that when the Republic returns, it will do so with proper military forces and sufficient ships to enforce its revenue regulations, but that's beyond both my knowledge and my interest."

  She looked down at Dapp and Selsmark. They were veiled in insects, and worms or perhaps root tendrils were squirming from the mud to nuzzle them.

  "We'll leave you now," she said. She stepped carefully into the skiff, trying not to make it wobble too badly as she worked her way back to Gibbs in the stern. Tovera waited on the mudbank until her mistress was seated on the thwart.

  When Adele looked again, Wiley had vanished. Something had raised its wedge-shaped head from the water and was tugging at a coil of Selsmark's intestine. Like the feral chieftain, the creature was small and rather pretty.

  From the length of its paired fangs, it was probably poisonous as well.

  CHAPTER 17

  One light-hour above Bolton

  The Milton was accelerating at 1 g to maintain the illusion of gravity, but Adele didn't care. She never noticed the discomfort of freefall when she had work to do. At present, she had a great deal of work.

  Bolton's planetary defense array was even older than the Merkur's log had led her to believe, a Type 30 instead of the expected Type 32. That made marginally easier the task of deriving its codes.

  The other thing that she'd expected—not counted on but expected, the way she expected to awaken in the bunk where she'd gone to sleep the night before—was that the array would be poorly maintained and that twenty or even thirty percent of the individual mines would be unserviceable for one reason or another. Instead, the serviceability rate was above 95 percent and perhaps as high as 97 percent.

  Adele smiled wryly. If the entire garrison of St. James Harbor was as good as the Defense Systems Officer, the Cinnabar forces were facing a very long day which might not have a happy ending. Recriminations would only matter to the survivors, however, and she had no intention of surviving a disaster.

  The mine tender R11 was exchanging signals with the Wartburg, which had extracted fifteen minutes previously. The transport was a comfortable distance from the PDA's coverage area, waiting for the tender to pass her through. Captain Robinson had the normal commercial codes, and the Wartburg was, after all, exactly what she claimed to be—save for her crew and cargo. There shouldn't be any problem with her clearance.

  The trick was getting the Milton through, and that was going to be quite a trick. That's why I'm paid the big ten florins a week, Adele thought with the same grim smile as before. Plus prize money, which for spacers under Captain Daniel Leary had in the past amounted to considerable amounts. The ones who survived, of course.

  A ship was already in the process of landing. It had arrived an hour ahead of the Wartburg. Adele frowned, wishing she'd been—distantly—present when it was signalling the tender, so that she could identify it.

  The ship began to drop out of orbit. As it did so, the sensor image twinkled as it spoke to the controller below with a modulated laser that wouldn't be smothered like the radio frequency band by the roaring plasma thrusters.

  There was good luck and bad luck; and unless you were prepared, all your luck was going to be bad. Adele was prepared. She ran the signals through a decryption program.

  The code was Alliance Fleet, not commercial, which in itself was important to know; but it was intended only for low security communications, shiphandling and docking instructions, so it wouldn't have taken long to defeat even if the particular code set hadn't been included in the updated package Mistress Sand had provided before the Milton lifted from Harbor Three.

  The aviso Zieten was acknowledging St. James Control's directions to land in Fleet Berth 14. That wasn't important in itself, but the fact it was a courier vessel rather than a heavier warship was critical to the success
of the operation. Adele transmitted the information as a text crawl at the bottom of Daniel's display.

  If by great ill fortune the Milton had arrived on Bolton just after an Alliance battleship landed, there would be virtually no chance of accomplishing the operation. Even a destroyer whose captain reacted instantly to the situation would have made success problematic.

  Adele didn't for a moment imagine that they would have aborted the mission, of course. "Virtually no chance" had in the past been chance enough, when Daniel was in command.

  The cruiser's 8-inch turrets began to rotate, setting up as many competing vibrations as a rainstorm lashing a pond. Adele scowled and lifted her feet from the deck plating. Her console's cushions couldn't smother the tremblers completely, but without competing inputs from the deck she could control her wands with adequate precision.