What Distant Deeps-ARC

by David Drake

  Hogg and Woetjans had the boy from behind. The complaints of people they'd knocked down added to the general bedlam.

  "Think a swim'd sober him up, Six?" the bosun said, nodding toward the sea. She held Platt's right arm straight up and was stepping on his foot to anchor it.

  "Or there's the old cesspool from before we cut the sewer through from the third row houses," Hogg suggested in a gruffly hopeful voice.

  "Dear gods, Leary," Hofmann said. "Dear gods."

  Daniel had forgotten the fellow. He said, "You can—"

  Hofmann bowed to Adele. "Lady Mundy," he said, "I sincerely apologize for any offense my son may have given in his delirium. I was remiss, grossly remiss, in not keeping him at home when I knew how ill he was."

  Adele's face changed, though Daniel didn't know how he would have described the difference. Adele looked human again; he supposed that would do.

  "Yes," she said. "Home would be the best place for him. My colleagues—"

  Her eyes flicked toward Hogg and Woetjans.

  "—will help you put him in the car, if you don't mind."

  "Yes, of course!" Hofmann said. "And I will apologize personally to Mistress Maynor in the place and manner you wish, your Ladyship."

  "A moment if you please, Hofmann," Daniel said. Woetjans thumped to attention; even Hogg's expression showed that he understood that there weren't going to be any arguments now. "May I borrow these for a moment?"

  Without waiting for Hofmann's response—it was a blurted, "Yes, of course, anything!" when it came—Daniel lifted the pistol from the tray with his right hand and the one the servant had just finished reloading with his left. Holding each by the balance, butt forward, he turned toward Adele. She waited impassively.

  "Adele?" he said. "There are two Dravidian Maws above us, the large pink birds. They're an introduced species which I consider to be a nuisance. Would you please take care of it for me?"

  He held out a pistol. Adele glanced at the raucously circling birds. Smiling faintly, she took the weapon in her left hand.

  The Maws wobbled between a hundred and a hundred and fifty feet in the air, higher than most of the other birds. The bare skin of their wings was, as Daniel said, pinkish below, though the upper surface was opalescent and rather attractive in sunlight.

  That was the birds' only attractive aspect. Their heads were roughly the size of clenched fists and resembled beaked gargoyles, their call was as shrilly unpleasant of that of a tortured rabbit, and they spread their liquid green feces widely as they flew. One could scarcely ask for a better—

  Adele presented her pistol and fired as part of the same motion. Spectators jumped at the shot; a few reflexively clapped their hands over their ears.

  One of the birds had been over the sea. Its head vanished in a pink mist; the heavy body tumbled, motion making the wings flutter like unstayed sails. The bird splashed but did not immediately sink.

  Adele tipped the butt of her pistol up; Daniel took it in his free hand as he offered her the loaded weapon. She held that one for a moment, judging the balance. The pistols should have been identical, but Daniel wasn't going to try to tell his friend her business.

  Some of the birds had scattered at the previous shot, but the remaining Maw continued its circle. It shrieked as it sailed over the sea wall, apparently in general peevishness. Adele presented and fired, her motion more like someone netting butterflies than anything lethal.

  The bird's skull splashed, though this time the lower half of the beak remained attached to the neck by a strip of skin. The throat sack filled like a parachute, halting the Maw in mid flight.

  The bird dropped, spilling air and swelling again twice more before it hit the water; it floated within and arm's length of its mate. The new splash drew some of the fish which had begun to nibble the previous carcass.

  "Thank you, Adele," Daniel said as he took the emptied pistol. He beamed at Platt.

  The youth had stopped struggling. He stared at Adele, then turned gray and threw up. Hogg grinned to Woetjans. When they both let go, Platt toppled face-first into his own vomit.

  Hogg elbowed one of the liveried servants. "I guess you two can get him to the car, right?" he said. "Do it now."

  The servants took their master by the arms, but they fumbled badly. Platt dropped to the ground again before they got him to his feet. They finally stumbled off in the direction of the aircar.

  Daniel turned. He threw the pistol in his right hand as far into the sea as he could get it, then followed it with the other. He managed to get an additional three or four feet on the second throw. Fish, made hopeful by the Maw corpses, shivered toward the fresh disturbances.

  "Very sorry about dropping the guns, Hofmann," Daniel said. "I'll pay you for them, of course."

  Hofmann was helping his wife to her feet. He looked over his shoulder toward Daniel. "I wouldn't think of it, Leary," he said. "It's just another of the several favors you've done me this day."

  Then, to his wife, "Come along, Bertie. We have things to discuss when we get home."

  The landowners and Sand remained where they had been. Daniel gave them a quick, hard smile to show that all was well.

  Bantries sidled away from Daniel and Adele, whispering to one another with a variety of expressions. Cazelet had headed for the hall, his arm around Cory's shoulders.

  Hogg and Woetjans were moving back also. That surprised Daniel until he realized that the gallon liquor jug had somehow vanished from sight.

  They've earned a drink this day, he thought. He ostentatiously turned his back instead of peering more closely at his servant's baggy tunic.

  Adele was standing at his side. "I don't know about you, Daniel," she said quietly, "but I'm ready to leave Cinnabar for a place where the rules are simpler."

  "Yes," said Daniel. "Though with the Peace of Rheims in effect, we can't hope to find a war zone."

  CHAPTER 3: Xenos on Cinnabar

  Daniel, holding the ivroid chit inset with 444 in black which he'd just gotten from the receiving clerk, turned and looked for an empty place on the benches. The General Waiting Room was as full as he'd ever seen it.

  Navy House had grown into a complex of buildings as the Republic of Cinnabar Navy expanded into the sword of an empire. What people ordinarily meant by Navy House was the Navy Office, built around the hall in which RCN officers waited to be summoned for new assignments.

  Generally they waited in vain. They would return tomorrow and following tomorrows until they either lost hope or received an assignment. A third of the RCN's ships had already been paid off in response to the Treaty of Rheims, and perhaps as many more would follow over the next few months. Today's crush of unemployed officers could only get worse.

  Daniel wondered if officials in the Procurement Bureau had ordered additional ivroid chits. The highest number he recalled having seen was in the seven hundreds. He smiled faintly: the apparatus of the waiting room might have to expand because of the demands of peace, just as Navy House itself had grown due to the needs of war.

  Someone ten benches back waved in the air, then pointed to Daniel. His grin spread as he recognized Pennyroyal, a friend—or at least friendly acquaintance—from his Academy days; he strode down the aisle toward her.

  He wouldn't have said there was a real space beside Pennyroyal, but she was widening what there was with animated whispers to the officers in both directions as she mimed shoving them aside. The result was still tight, but that was in part a result of Captain Daniel Leary having put on a few pounds. A few more pounds, unfortunately. He sat with a grin of apologetic embarrassment to the older lieutenant to his left.

  "I'm surprised to see you slumming with us poor sad jetsam, Leary," Pennyroyal whispered. From another's mouth that could have been a bitter gibe; from hers, it was ruefully appreciative. "I heard you got a Cinnabar Star for that business off Cacique, didn't you?"

  "Ah, yes," Daniel said. He was wearing his best set of Grays. Medal ribbons were proper but were not requ
ired with Grays, the 2nd Class uniform; Daniel had chosen not to wear his.

  In fact he'd gotten a Wreath for the Cinnabar Star which he'd been awarded after the Battle of Strymon while he was still a lieutenant. "We had a great deal of luck there, I must say."

  The Annunciator stood with the receiving clerk, beside the gate in the bar separating the assignment clerks from the ranks of benches. The printer beside him whirred out a length of flimsy. He pulled it off, glared at it, and said, "Number One-Seven-Two, come forward!"

  A thin, almost cadaverous, lieutenant scraped up from one of the back benches and strode toward the front. She was trying to look nonchalant, but she stepped a little too quickly. She was wearing her Whites; when she passed, Daniel saw that fabric of the elbows and trouser seat had been polished by long use.

  Daniel felt uncomfortable discussing his career with former classmates. He had been lucky, very lucky; and particularly, he'd been lucky in gaining Adele's friendship and support, which were matters he couldn't discuss. Indeed, Adele's intelligence duties—her spying—made Daniel even more uncomfortable than discussing his victories did.

  "Well, I'm hoping for some luck myself," Pennyroyal said. "Vondrian—you remember Vondrian, don't you?"

  "Of course," Daniel said truthfully. Vondrian, who'd been a class ahead of him at the Academy, had private money. Instead of lording it over his less fortunate fellows, he'd been liked and respected by all who knew him. "He has a ship of his own, I understood?"

  "That's right, the Montrose in the Tattersall Flotilla—which Vondrian says is three destroyers n a good day but generally less," Pennyroyal said. "Tattersall is an Associated World of the Republic but not a Friend, you see. It gives the RCN an observation base in the Forty Stars where every other world worth mentioning is part of the Alliance."

  "I dare say Vondrian's breathing easier for the Peace of Rheims, " said Daniel, shaking his head. The trouble with a detached command like what Pennyroyal described was that if the enemy decided to get rid of you, you probably wouldn't have enough warning even to run away.

  "I wouldn't be surprised," said Pennyroyal. "And I hope to be able to ask him personally soon, because he swears he's requested me as his First Lieutenant. I don't mind telling you, Leary, it's going to be bloody short rations for me if I have to live on half pay for very long."

  "Vondrian's as straight as a die," Daniel said. It was the truth, but he added verve to the words to buck up Pennyroyal. "If he told you he was going to request you, you can take it to the bank that you'll have your berth shortly."

  That wasn't quite so true. Captains had a great deal of influence in the choice of officers serving under them, and Vondrian's wealth gave him more influence than most. At a time like this, however, when any posting was worth fighting for, there was always the risk that an admiral's nephew was going to be appointed into the place a lieutenant commander had requested for a friend.

  Partly because Daniel was afraid his smile would slip if he looked directly at Pennyroyal, he focused on the bench ahead of him. Faintly visible in the wood was a pentacle about three inches across from flat to the point opposite. The illumination from the skylights thirty feet above was so diffuse that he first noticed the texture rather than the slight difference in color.

  "Why, I'll be!" Daniel said. He was glad to change the subject, but his enthusiasm was real. "Here, Pennyroyal—do you see the fungus growing through the wood? The gray pentacle?"

  "I suppose I see the pentacle," Pennyroyal said—agreed would be too strong a word. "If you say it's a fungus, I'll believe you."

  "You remember that some of these benches were supposed to have been made of paneling from the Alliance flagship captured in the Battle of Cloudscape?" Daniel said. Burbled, he supposed—but he'd always found the wonder of the universe more interesting than tensile strength or power-to-weight calculations. "Well, that must not be just a legend. This is a Pleasaunce species!"

  He grinned in satisfaction at having dredged up another datum. "A male. They're bisexual, and the females grow in circular patterns."

  "That's your number, isn't it, Leary?" said Pennyroyal.

  For a moment Daniel tried to fit her words into a context of history or natural history, which between them were absorbing his attention. The bench in front of me is over three hundred years old!

  "Four-forty-four?" Pennyroyal said.

  Oh, dear gods!

  "Yes, and I thank you sincerely," Daniel said as he rose. The two officers between him and the aisle turned sideways to let him slip past. Their faces were stoical, but Daniel didn't think he was imagining a touch of envy on the face of the overweight commander.

  The receiving clerk looked up at Daniel. The sour disdain with which he greeted an expected new suppliant turned to fury when he saw the person approaching was an officer who'd been to see him only minutes before.

  "If you're looking for a luckier number, Captain—" the clerk sneered. When he realized that the chit Daniel was displaying face-out was the number that had been called a moment earlier, he swallowed the rest of whatever the comment would have been.

  "This one seemed lucky enough to me," Daniel said with a pleasant smile; he handed the chit to the Annunciator to drop back into the wire hopper. "Four-four-four, if you please."

  He was in too good a mood for a minor functionary to spoil it. Besides, he was pretty sure that just being cheerful would irritate the clerk as much as anything else he could do.

  The twelve or fifteen personnel at desks on the clerical side of the Waiting Room bar were civilians. The only RCN officer in their chain of command was the Chief of the Navy Board. No one else in uniform, not even a full admiral, could give a valid order to an assignment clerk. That was a necessary feature of a job which would often lead to outbursts of fury from frustrated officers.

  But facing anger and resentment day after day would have taken a toll on a saint, in the unlikely event that a saint applied for the job. The receiving clerk in particular had to be ruthless, but his duties had curdled necessity into cruelty.

  "Yes, of course, Captain," the clerk muttered. The Annunciator gave Daniel the flimsy printed with 444—Desk 7 and nodded to the usher, who lifted the gate.

  Desk 7 was in the further two row, identified by a rectangular sign on a short post; the letters were tarnished silver. The clerk was a woman in the process of passing middle age; her throat was wrinkled and her jowls were slipping, but her figure was still good.

  She beamed at Daniel, an expression he had never expected to see on the face of an assignment clerk. "Do be seated, Captain," she said, gesturing toward the straight chair across the desk from her. "May I say that I regard it an honor to meet you professionally?"

  "I . . . ," said Daniel. He didn't know where to go with his response. Here on this side of the bar, the noise of the hall was more noticeable than it had been among the hundreds of waiting officers whose whispers and shuffling were responsible for it. "I, ah, thank you."

  "There are a few formalities to take care of first," she said, sorting through a file of hardcopy. "As the final commander of RCS Milton, you're to initial this Finding of Loss and Disposal."

  Sliding a sheet of paper and a stylus across the desk, she added peevishly, "They haven't attached the court martial decision, though. There's normally a copy of the court record."

  She raised her eyes to Daniel's. "Not that that there was anything to be concerned about in your conduct, of course," she added hastily.

  The document was a form whose blanks had been filled in by someone with casually beautiful handwriting. Daniel began to initial each paragraph that had holograph additions. He said, "A court martial is required for any captain who loses his ship, mistress. We—because it wouldn't have been possible without an exceptional crew—were able to sail the Milton home. The surveyors declared her a constructive loss, but that was decided after I'd handed her over to the dockyard."

  Daniel returned the finding and stylus. Smiling to make a joke of what he was a
bout to say, he added, "There wasn't much doubt about their decision, I'm afraid; even without the end of hostilities, the Milton couldn't have been economically repaired . . . and there was a prejudice against her design, as well. But I, ah, regret her loss nonetheless."

  Sixty-three spacers had died when an Alliance missile vaporized the Milton's stern. Daniel felt for every one of them; but he felt for the cruiser herself as well. A theologian might claim that ships don't have souls, but Daniel was a spacer and knew things that no landsman would ever fathom.

  The clerk replaced the form in her file folder, then handed Daniel another document. "Here is your new assignment, Captain," she said. "Oh! I should have told you to keep the stylus, I'm afraid. You're to sign the upper copy."

  "Thank you," said Daniel dryly, retrieving the instrument which was only six inches from his hand. He scanned the document, smiling with satisfaction—and, truth to tell, with relief.

  The past generation had been one of constant war or looming war between Cinnabar and the Alliance. The Peace of Rheims appeared to be a different animal from the brief truces of the last twenty years, if only because both empires were on the verge of social and economic collapse.

  Peace had put the RCN in a state of flux like nothing before in Daniel's lifetime. It had been possible that someone very senior in the RCN or even the Senate was going to trump the cards that Captain Daniel Leary and his friends could play.

  "Captain," the clerk said earnestly, "I realize that being assigned to a chartered vessel may appear to be a slight after your command of a heavy cruiser. I assure you that it is not: the Cinnabar Commissioner died suddenly on Zenobia. It's necessary to rush a replacement there, but the world is in the Alliance sphere. We can't send a warship without giving offense, which might have the most serious implications for the recent treaty."

  "Mistress . . . ," Daniel said, looking up from his orders. He was faintly puzzled. "I understood that the needs of the service were paramount from the moment I enlisted. I've never objected to a lawful order."

  There had been times when Daniel Leary's superiors might have complained regarding the speed and manner in which he executed his orders—but he wasn't going to say that to a civilian.