In the Stormy Red Sky

by David Drake

  The remainder of the thousands on the drill field came from the crews of Squadron Varnell. There weren't many fanatics who would be willing to sabotage a starship while they were aboard—but there were some. Thanks to Adele's ability to open the ships' files, probably faster than the Alliance clerks themselves could have done, that risk had been minimized. All Equals—the Alliance equivalent of adults with full Cinnabar citizenship—had been sent directly to the Travanda Quarry, as had personnel from any Alliance world who ranked above warrant officer's mate.

  What remained was the bulk of the common spacers. They wouldn't do alone—they wouldn't do well—as a warship's crew, but they were the perfect addition to the senior spacers and Cinnabar citizens who'd been sent here from New Harmony.

  "Now, I know that some of you served under Admiral Ozawa recently," Daniel said. "And here you are, having taken Guarantor Porra's pay. You're wondering if that's going to be a problem."

  He stared across the assembly with a stern expression. He already knew the names of spacers who'd switched sides on New Harmony. He could have separated them with an hour's time and a company of the Brotherhood to provide muscle. If the people below hadn't been worried before, they certainly were now.

  "No, of course not, fellow spacers!" Daniel said. "What choice did you have? I'd have done the same thing if I'd been in your place!"

  He wouldn't have, of course.

  "But I will give you a choice," he continued. "If you return to the RCN, I'll credit you with the wages you were owed at the time your ships were lost on New Harmony. I'm Captain Daniel Leary, and I swear it!"

  The first cheers were timid, but they built to real enthusiasm. Daniel waited for them to die back.

  "Now, I'm not threatening you," he said. "Nobody has to join the luckiest captain in the RCN and have a chance to get filthy rich. You can stay here on Bolton, eat as well as you will in space and just sit on your butts without a bit of work or danger either one!"

  He was warming to his subject. It wasn't hard to be enthusiastic, because he really was telling the truth. Sure, he was polishing it up till it was fit for an admiral's inspection, but it was the truth nonetheless.

  "But for those of you who really are spacers, the ones that a fighting captain wants serving with him . . . ," Daniel said. He'd been speaking loudly enough that there was distortion from the speakers at the distant rear of the field. He lowered his voice a trifle; the howl was disquieting at an animal level, and he wanted to build enthusiasm instead of subliminal fear. "Then look at the tables down in front of me."

  Midshipmen Else, Barrett, and Fink; Gunner Sun; and Dasi and Barnes, the bosun's mates, each stood by a folding table with a pile of florin coins, a personnel roster, and a technician holding a retinal scanner. Behind every enlistment table was another where a husky rigger guarded a demijohn of rum. A four-ounce stainless steel tumbler was chained to the handle of each liquor jar.

  "This is your chance, spacers," Daniel said. "Here's your opportunity to walk into a bar on your next liberty, richer than anybody else in it—but you not having to buy a drink yourself, because you sailed with Captain Leary and everybody wants to hear your stories. If you'd rather be a rich hero instead of a space bum waiting the war out in a quarry on bloody Bolton—take the Republic's florin and have a drink on me. Join the RCN!"

  Cheers followed. More important, spacers surged toward the tables to enlist. The folk who were willing to be in the front of the assembly were the ones who were least afraid of what was going to happen. Daniel had a row of Millies in liberty suits ready to calm congestion, but the crowd's self-selection left them with nothing to do.

  Besides, spacers were used to moving in tight places. A pileup in a hatch or an airlock during a crisis meant that people and maybe the ship would die.

  Colonel Stockheim had offered troops to keep order. Daniel was afraid that his response, though technically polite, had conveyed the disgust he felt at the notion of a captain who needed ground troops to control spacers.

  Major Mull and his Marines were drawn up in two ranks in front of the dais, wearing dress uniforms. They had a right to be present, but Daniel had made it clear that they were a guard of honor, no more.

  Behind the dais waited the cadre of the fourteen new vessels of the RCN, ready to gather in the recruits which would fill out the ships' companies. Daniel had parcelled out the former prisoners in the Travanda Quarry, keeping crewmen of the same vessels together where he could and putting them under familiar officers.

  Lieutenant Commander Robinson came up the steps at the back of the stand. Daniel smiled over his shoulder, but he continued to look out over the assembly.

  "A brilliant speech, sir," Robinson said. "I wouldn't be surprised if you got them all."

  "Thank goodness for Officer Mundy," Daniel said, nodding toward the crowd. It was moving now like a single entity, a vast amoeba. "She eliminated everybody who might have been a problem, so this is no different from a recruiting expedition back on Cinnabar. Records are wonderful things if you've got somebody who can access and interpret them."

  Robinson shook his head in smiling amazement. "We'll have the first RCN ships with full crews in my lifetime. Maybe in all time!"

  "Well, they were ready to join us," Daniel said. "What spacer wants to sit in a prison camp without anything to drink but water, hey?"

  "I wouldn't have known how to speak to them, not that way," the First Lieutenant said, shaking his head again. "I will now, though."

  He looked at Daniel and added, "We're not as well set for commanding officers, though, I'm afraid."

  Daniel laughed. "I wouldn't say that, Robinson. This is scarcely the first time in the history of the RCN that a ship's executive officer has succeeded to the command. Not infrequently the change of command has occurred during a battle, in fact."

  "Yes sir," said Robinson. "But I don't know that it's happened before that no captain in a squadron has ever commanded so large a ship before. Except for you, of course, since you're staying with the Milton instead of taking the battleship."

  There was a question on Robinson's face if not in his words or even tone. Daniel shrugged and said, "I've tried to keep ships' companies together, or in the case of the Friedrich I've seen to it that she's crewed by the combined crews of the Heidegger and Hobbes who're used to serving on a battleship. Which I'm not, unless you count the Swiftsure back in training."

  He looked at the Direktor Friedrich—it wasn't his place to rename his captures; that would be done by the proper committee on Cinnabar—then back to the Milton. "And besides," he said, "the Millie—and the Millies—and I have gotten to know each other since we lifted from Bergen and Associates. It's more efficient all round to keep our company together and put Commander Rebecca Pimental back aboard another battleship."

  "I've got more respect for what they do at Navy House since I spent yesterday and most of this morning roughing out the crew lists for you, sir," Robinson said. "Respect, but I assure you not liking. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. Well, like fourteen jigsaw puzzles, and the pieces all jumbled together."

  He cleared his throat. "Ah, Captain Leary?" he said, lowering his voice. "I, ah . . . I'm very pleased that you gave me command of the Insidioso. I, ah, I'm aware that there are officers senior to me who aren't in command slots."

  "If anybody asks, you can tell them that you were a midshipman on the Dardo, which was built on Pantellaria like the Insidioso," said Daniel. "But—"

  "Sir?" Robinson blurted. "You knew that?"

  Daniel grinned. "I told you that records are wonderful," he said. "At least for those of us who have Officer Mundy to go over them for us. But as I started to say, that's a polite lie anyway. The truth is, I thought you were the man for the job, so I put you in it. I didn't need to go over any records to decide that."

  Robinson's face was slender and aristocratic. He blushed, an event as out of place as Dress Whites on a pig.

  "Sir . . . ," he said. "Sir. I'll . . . thank you, sir."
/>   Daniel returned his attention to the thinning crowd. "We might get them all, just as you say," he said. "There's a point when deciding to hold out takes more courage than being the first to move. Thanks to Officer Mundy, there was nobody down there who'd try to convince the others that they shouldn't join the RCN."

  "Officer Mundy is indeed an asset, sir," Robinson said. "I'd heard stories, of course, but I didn't fully credit them until I had the privilege of serving with her."

  He looked around, frowned, and then said, "I suppose there's no reason she should be here for this. Just a waste of her time."

  Daniel smiled. "Well, perhaps," he said. "Officer Mundy says she doesn't need to be told when she does a good job—that it should be enough that she knows. I'd just as soon that she be present when something works out perfectly because of her actions."

  Especially something that doesn't involve sprawled corpses who she's shot, Daniel thought, suddenly saddened. He doubted that any of the crew, even Sissies who'd been with Adele throughout her service in the RCN, knew what it cost her to do the things she regularly did for the Republic and for her shipmates.

  Forcing the smile back, he said aloud, "In fact she told me she had business to discuss with Senator Forbes. And though you wouldn't think of asking, Robinson, I'll tell you flatly that I don't have any idea of what she was planning to discuss. The person who informed me was Lady Mundy, who isn't under my command."

  Robinson looked startled, then cautiously blank-faced. "I see, sir," he said.

  "I don't," said Daniel. "But as you noted, Adele is an asset. I'm sure we'll learn what she's doing when there's some reason for us to know."

  "Daniel swears by the view out here while the ship is in the Matrix," Adele said as Senator Forbes looked about them. She gestured upward. "Actually, he prefers the view from the top of a mast."

  "But you don't, Mundy?" said the senator. From here on the spine of the Milton they could look down on most things in the harbor and the city beyond, but the battleship half a mile away swelled like a steel cliff. Distance blurred the rust and scars on its hull, leaving jeweled shimmerings and soft shadows.

  "Daniel is religious," Adele said. "I'm not. And I find that I process information better at second hand than I do directly."

  Somewhere in the western distance was the drill field where Daniel was addressing the captured crews. It was probably out of sight beyond the Friedrich. Adele could tell for certain by viewing satellite imagery through her data unit, but—her right index and middle fingers caressed the thigh pocket—that would be inappropriate. Quite a lot of what she liked to do was inappropriate when she was being forced to interact with other human beings.

  "Religious?" said Forbes. She was wearing a dark blue suit. It seemed to be as comfortable as business dress ever was, but she was fiddling with the cuffs and the collar, obviously ill at ease.

  "Well, not formally, though he'll wear his Whites to the temple if he's on Cinnabar during a High Feast," Adele said. She didn't pay much attention to her own clothing; so long as it had pockets for her data unit and pistol, fit and color didn't matter to her. "But he believes in something greater than himself. He certainly wouldn't say that the Matrix is the face of God, but I think that somewhere in his heart he feels that it is."

  A haze still lay over portions of St. James City. There had been considerable looting by locals, who felt the arrival of Cinnabar forces gave them license to settle scores and improve their fortunes. Oftentimes fires had resulted. Things were quiet now, but it had been almost ten hours after the battle that the Fonthill Militia, armed from arsenals here on Bolton, fanned out across the city to keep order.

  "What do you believe in, Mundy?" Forbes said, facing her directly. The senator was even shorter than Adele herself, though her fiery energy gave her presence. "The Republic?"

  Adele sniffed. "The same way I believe in this ship," she said, tapping the hull with her toe. "It exists and the Republic exists, so of course I believe in them. If you mean in the sense of what do I have faith in—I believe that I'll die, mistress. And beyond that, I believe that the universe will end."

  Also I believe in a few human beings, she thought. One, at least. But that wasn't any of Forbes's business.

  Forbes looked away, then turned back to Adele. "You didn't ask me to join you here to discuss philosophy," she said. She arched an eyebrow and went on, "You know, when you asked me—summoned me, might be a better phrase—to join you on the hull, I wondered if I ought to bring my bodyguards."

  "Good heavens, woman!" Adele said. "I didn't bring you out here to kill you. I want to discuss politics. And anyway, what possible difference did you imagine that bodyguards would make?"

  The thought of the two hulking servants trying to prevent her from shooting their mistress was funny enough to bring a smile to Adele's lips. Forbes looked even more disconcerted, but the smile seemed to relax her somewhat.

  "Politics are a subject on which I have some expertise," the senator said. "Though after my debacle in the speakership election, you might wish to quarrel with that claim."

  Adele's smile widened slightly, though if anything it became colder as well. She said, "I think you have some ways to go before your political misjudgments reach the level that my father's did. But I had nothing as complex as the Cinnabar Senate in mind. Here in the Montserrat Stars, you're the representative of the Republic's government."

  Forbes pursed her lips, then said, "No one is likely to argue with the assertion," she said. "My appointment as plenipotentiary was to the Veil and Adjacent Regions . . . which this cluster can be claimed to be."

  Her smile was suddenly as hard as Adele's own. "The governor on Cacique is an Administrator Grade Three named Richard Flanagan," she said. "He wouldn't argue the point even if he were able to get a message out through the Alliance blockade. But why does that matter to you?"

  The Milton shuddered; a blanket of steam rose from around the stern. Forbes started for the forward airlock. Adele frowned and said, "That's all right, Senator. Chief Engineer Pasternak polished the throats of four stern thrusters. Apparently he's testing them now, but it won't be more than an irritation."

  "Just as you say," Forbes said doubtfully, but she came back to Adele as directed. She gave their immediate surroundings a sour look and added, "Though I still don't see why we're here in the first place."

  Adele looked around also. The antennas and yards were telescoped to minimum length, then folded tightly to the hull so that the cruiser could lift off on the shortest possible notice. The rig was therefore as neat as a starship could be, without the webbing of cables and sails shaken out in differing states and attitudes.

  It was far more orderly than a garden or a park, as a matter of fact; but orderliness wasn't to everyone's taste. Well, it wasn't Adele's present concern either.

  "We're here for privacy," she said crisply. "Daniel hasn't informed me of his plans, but I'm going to speculate on them and I don't want anyone else to overhear me."

  "I see," said Forbes in a guarded tone. "I'm surprised to hear that Leary hasn't confided in you, however, Lady Mundy. As you're obviously friends."

  "Yes," said Adele, "we are. But Daniel rarely consults anyone about military subjects. He'll ask me for information, and he may ask me for help in executing his plans. He probably will, in fact. But that hasn't happened as yet, and I'm therefore speculating."

  Forbes was actually frowning. "Would he tell you?" she asked.

  The steam from Pasternak's brief touch on the thrusters—touches, really, because he'd cycled through all four individually—had almost dissipated. Adele could still feel the tingle of an occasional ozone molecule at the back of her nose when she breathed, but that was as normal a part of shipboard life as the smell of lubricant.

  "Yes," Adele said, "he would. But because I haven't been told anything, I'm free to speak to you without violating a confidence."

  She coughed. "I want you, in the name of the Republic, to appoint Daniel—to appoint Captain
Leary—to the brevet, that is temporary, rank of Rear Admiral. The civil representative of the Republic has the authority to do that in an emergency. I've checked the regulations."

  Adele smiled wryly. "I'm not, thank my good fortune, a lawyer," she said. "But information is information, even when it's clothed in the most remarkably turgid and repetitive language."

  Forbes looked relieved, to Adele's great surprise. "I see," she said with a knowing smile. "You want to raise your friend's rate of pay for the time we're here in the Montserrat Stars. And perhaps you're hoping that Admiral Leary will see fit to pass some of the temporary largesse to a valued friend."

  Adele chuckled, though she was glad that she'd guessed where the senator would go with the information. Otherwise she was likely to have said things that the senator would find as difficult to overlook as Mundy of Chatsworth did an accusation of corruption at a piddling level.