by David Drake
The Alliance officer continued to smile as he backed to the companionway. Only when Posy was within the armored tube did he face around to follow her.
His interjection had broken the mood on the bridge. "Money will always find a way, Leary," said the Autocrator. She sounded distant rather than furious, though Adele didn't doubt the fury was still there. "Some men cannot be bought, perhaps; but a result can always be bought."
She strode to the companionway, surprising all her entourage except the guard who had brought up the rear before. He reached the hatch before his mistress and preceded her down the stairs.
"I think," said Daniel in the sudden quiet, "that we'll lift tonight."
"I'm calling Commissioner Brown now," said Adele as her wands moved. "He should be at the Governor's Residence, but he hasn't had time to transfer his luggage yet."
Woetjans came in from the hull and stopped in the bridge hatchway. "Cory's out looking over things while the wogs scoot down the stays," he said. "I'll go roust our people home. You keep Pasternak here to pick'em up as they come in, right? Because some'll be drunk enough to wander on off again."
"Roger, bosun," Daniel said. "My goodness, I hope I didn't harm relations in the region unduly by that."
"From the tone of the Autocrator's remarks," said Adele as she checked for Commissioner Brown's location through the Residence security cameras, "I don't imagine you can have done anything worse than advancing the arrival of trouble with Palmyra by a little. A very little."
* * *
There was a gust of wind; rain spattered down again. Daniel turned his head away, but he didn't duck into the guardhouse because he saw the lights of a ground car coming down the approach road to the Naval Basin.
"Six, the hire car with the Browns has entered the naval reservation," Cory reported, confirming Daniel's expectation. Presumably Adele had something more important on her plate and had delegated tracking the Commissioner to Cory. "Bridge out."
"Roger," said Daniel. He gave a big smile to the pair of guards—ratings from the base establishment—andn said, "These are the ones I've been waiting for. Thanks for your hospitality."
"Thank you, sir," said the senior man. "Not often we get to listen to somebody like you."
"You're welcome here any time you want to spend a chunk of your life getting rained on for no bloody reason," said his junior. "Say, sure you don't need a ventilation system tech on your corvette, sir?"
"I'm going to be in enough trouble with the regional command," said Daniel, truthfully without explaining why it was true, "without poaching their personnel. But I appreciate the thought."
The vehicle stopped. The four wheels had rubber tires, but the two on the front weren't the same width; the cabin in the back was built of wood and mounted on a chassis designed for something else. The driver, wearing a slicker, got out and started to open the passenger cabin.
"Carry them to Slip 4, my good man," Daniel said, striding over to him. "I'll ride along so it'll be all right."
"What's happening?" said Clothilde Brown. "Surely we don't have to get out here in the rain, Pavel!"
"I'm not supposed to enter the reservation . . . ," the driver said uncertainly.
"It'll be all right," Daniel said, slipping him a coin. "And I'll have one of my spacers ride back with you so that you won't have any trouble on the way back."
While the driver was surreptitiously checking the denomination of the coin—it was a full florin; more than a day's wage here on Stahl's World—Daniel got into the cabin beside the Commissioner. Bench seats front and back faced one another; there were two small suitcases on the central rack.
"We'll be driving up to the ship," he said to the Browns. "I'll get some of my people to carry your bags in, so you just run up the ramp and get out of the rain."
"Here, I'll ride along," said the younger gate guard unexpectedly, shielding his sub-machine gun under his field coat. "No sense one of your folks get drowned walking back when we've got to be out in it anyway."
The guard hopped in beside the driver; the car shuddered off. The cabin was completely separate from the cab, which with the rattling provided privacy for anything Daniel had to say.
"We were treated abominably!" said Clothilde. The little girl flounced up suddenly to a sitting posture; she had been lying half across her mother's lap. "There was nobody to receive us at the Residence! We would have been treated better if we were tradesmen!"
In a matter of speaking, Daniel had no duty to the Browns except to deliver them safely to Zenobia. Out of courtesy, and perhaps because he felt sorry for the poor Commissioner, he had chosen to make their lives a little easier by saving them the walk to the gate. Cory said they had walked out this afternoon when they realized they would have to depend on a hired car because the civil establishment wasn't going to send a vehicle.
"The regional assembly has disrupted everything here, I'm afraid," Daniel said. "Ah—I was wondering if you would mind if we were to lift for Zenobia immediately?"
"I want to go home!" the little girl said, but she said it in the tone of a child making a point of her displeasure, not one who thinks there's any chance that she'll get her way. "I don't know why we had to come here anyway!"
"I'm not accredited to Stahl's World," said the Commissioner quietly. "I had hoped that I might get a little local knowledge here before going on to my station, but that probably wouldn't be the case however long I remained here. I would just as soon go on."
"They were insulting," his wife said with venom. "They didn't care anything about us, anything. We could just as well have died in space so far as anyone at the Residence was concerned."
Daniel looked at her set, angry face in the lights of the slips as they passed. Brown would have been dealing with junior clerks or less; anyone of greater importance would have been involved with the regional assembly. Zenobia, as an Alliance possession, wasn't even part of the Regional chain of command.
Sure, it was a pity that the clerks hadn't been more welcoming to strangers who weren't properly part of their job, but most people found only themselves of importance. Clothilde Brown certainly fell into that category, but this time the locals had trumped her with their disinterest.
Daniel realized he was grinning. To take the sting out of his expression, he said, "We'll get you to Zenobia promptly, Mistress Brown. In three days, I judge. I know that life this far out from Cinnabar takes some getting used to, but once one learns the tricks it can become very pleasant."
The vehicle drew up alongside Slip 4. Even before Daniel could figure out how to open his door—the latch was a half-circle of wood which rotated into a cut in the jamb—four spacers double-timed down the Sissie's ramp holding a tarp overhead. A sheet of rain blew in from the side, but the idea of shelter appeared to raise Clothilde's morale.
More spacers appeared, grabbing the bags that Daniel handed out. Daniel sent them and the Browns up the ramp, then covered himself with the poncho Hogg had brought. He waved thanks to the gate guard as the car turned and headed back.
"You could've sent Cory," Hogg said as they reached the boarding hold. The Browns were headed toward the stern companionway; Hester's voice floated back querulously. "You could've sent an engine wiper. If you needed to send anybody."
A truck pulled up, loaded with spacers from the dives along the harbor front. Daniel dropped his visor a moment to check the running count projected on its upper right corner. Thirteen personnel hadn't reported, but only two weren't listed as accounted for. The Princess Cecile would be ready to lift inside an hour.
"It was less trouble all round if I met them at the gate," Daniel said, trotting up the companionway behind his servant. "I told the guards a few stories and they let me bend the rules a little. They wouldn't have done that for a wiper. Maybe a warrant officer, but the chiefs were better put to getting the ship to rights for a quick liftoff."
Adele looked up from her console as Daniel entered the bridge. "Captain," she said with polite neutrality.
Daniel smiled with genuine pleasure at seeing her. "Will we step on the toes of any other ships if we lift shortly, Signals?" he asked.
"No one else is scheduled to lift from either basin tonight," Adele said, switching to a two-way link as she checked her display. "Nor are any other vessels in condition to lift, as best I can tell. The freighter Costigan was testing thrusters earlier this afternoon, but the captain isn't aboard at present."
"Good," said Daniel as he settled onto the command console. "I'll get clearance from Raphael Control, but because we're on the civil registry now, we don't need naval authorization even though we're on the naval side of the harbor."
"Why don't you want to get naval clearance, Daniel?" Adele asked. "Is there some reason it wouldn't be granted?"
Daniel was checking the Power Room statistics. The converters and pumps were in the green, as they had been on landing only a few hours earlier. He would normally have taken aboard fresh fruits and vegetables, but the short run to Zenobia made that unnecessary. The additional cable was already aboard.
"I don't want to discuss the matter with Admiral Mainwaring," Daniel said. "I'm not under his command, but he would have questions . . . and I think it better not to have my opinion of Autocrator Irene on record in the regional HQ. Half the personnel are locals, and I would be amazed if half of them weren't reporting to Palmyra."
"Six, this is Three," Lieutenant Vesey reported on the command push. "All our personnel are aboard, though there are forty-odd who had best remain in their bunks unless there's an emergency, over."
"Roger, Three," said Daniel. "Prepare the ship for liftoff. Six out."
"The Autocrator is very clear about her place in the universe," said Adele with no more expression than usual. "It remains to be seen whether the universe shares her opinion."
Daniel was grinning as Vesey sent the attention signal through the PA system. With luck, they would have returned to Cinnabar before that question became important. But if not, well—civil registry or not, the Sissie was a fighting unit and had proved herself so many times in the past.
CHAPTER 10: Calvary Harbor on Zenobia
Adele was contentedly engaged with her duties as the Princess Cecile roared down toward the surface of Zenobia. Occasionally she wondered if her "contentment" was what other people referred to as happiness. There wasn't any way to test the hypothesis, however, so she generally ignored the question.
Landing a starship from orbit was a matter of lengthy, thunderous buffeting. Though the antennas had been retracted and clamped as firmly as possible to the hull, every section rattled at a different frequency. The atmosphere howled and whistled; the thrusters pulsed deafeningly as they ionized reaction mass, spewing the plasma out at high velocity to brake the corvette's approach.
Adele was more or less aware of what was going on around her, but she ignored it. The cacophony was familiar from long repetition; and besides, nothing that didn't physically interfere with her work was of great importance when she had something to do. She was quite good at finding things, but first landing on a new planet was always an embarrassment of riches.
She had set Cory at the astrogation console and Cazelet in the BDC to various tasks that she had broken out for them. The Sissie's internal operations would have astounded—appalled—any RCN officer who wasn't already familiar with them: during a landing, all officers should be at their posts, prepared to deal with crises—not harvesting electronic data under the direction of a junior warrant officer.
Daniel—who had the conn—or Vesey either one could have landed the Princess Cecile and dealt with anything untoward that happened. If both of them—if every watch-standing officer—aboard the corvette suddenly dropped dead, there were a dozen ratings who could have brought the ship in safely. And if Captain Daniel Leary chose to give his signals officer a free hand in directing the crew as she saw fit, then surely the results justified his decision.
Adele grinned slightly while she examined data from the Founder's Palace: regular officers would still be appalled. Which was in part why an irregular officer like Daniel had proved so successful.
The thruster output increased in a smooth curve rather than a series of jolts, showing that a human hand rather than a computerized landing program was in charge of the process. Even so the perceived increase in the weight of Adele's control wands made her pause until the ship sank finger's-breadth by finger's-breadth into the steam which her exhaust boiled from the harbor.
The Palace's electronic security was conspicuous by its absence: Adele had seen local shops which did a better job of safeguarding their data. Security was so bad, in fact, that her first thought was that the Founder's important files had been concealed so skillfully that she couldn't locate, let alone penetrate, them.
That was paranoia on her part. Founder Hergo had no important files. The lack of security was actually a reasonable allocation of resources, since the only risk was that someone would divert the monthly household expense allowance.
When on Zenobia—the Z 46 hadn't yet returned from the Qaboosh Assembly—Posy Belisande lived within the Palace, as indicated by those household expenses. She had no electronic files whatever. As Adele had expected, if she was to learn anything from Posy, it would have to be a result of personal contact.
She managed a wan smile. The risk of embarrassment shouldn't deter her. She could have spent her whole life without being more than vaguely aware of the Qaboosh and the residents thereof, so it could hardly matter to her if in future years somebody here felt that she had behaved in a self-important or otherwise foolish fashion.
Well, it wouldn't deter her. Nothing would. But she feared embarrassment as she had never feared death.
Daniel brought the Sissie in so gently that the first sign that they were down was the relative silence as the thrusters shut down rather than the outriggers splashing into the harbor. The ship gave a long drawn-out sigh; then hatches rang open all over the hull.
It would be some minutes before the entry ramp could be lowered, but the Sissie's veterans weren't concerned about a little steam or ozone from the exhaust. A pump began to chug, hauling harbor water through twin hoses to replace the reaction mass expended in landing.
Adele went back to work. Her first priority had been military installations, since she put her duty to the RCN—or at any rate, to her fellow Sissies—ahead of Mistress Sand in the present circumstances. Very likely she would say the same in any circumstances, but she tended to disregard questions in the abstract.
There were no warships in Calvary Harbor or elsewhere on Zenobia as far as she could tell. The Z 46 was either still on Stahl's World or more likely en route to Zenobia, and her sister ship—the other vessel in the Zenobia Detachment, the Z 42—was in powered orbit as it had been since von Gleuck lifted off. A Water Buffalo—basically a tanker with enough thrusters to reach orbit—had replenished the destroyer twice, according to her log.
Von Gleuck was clearly taking the Palmyrene threat seriously. Having met the Autocrator, Adele couldn't imagine the woman launching at attack without herself being present to watch, but von Gleuck had no intention of returning to Zenobia and finding that Irene had stolen a march on him and was in control.
There were no Alliance ground troops on Zenobia, and the security presence controlled by the Resident was only about 20 personnel, fewer than Adele had learned to expect. Apparently Zenobia's independence was less nominal than it had seemed from Xenos.
The Founder's Regiment had a present strength of 319 effectives, with an average of about ten percent over the past six months absent for illness or on leave. They were light infantry trained for urban combat—but they were trained: they weren't simply thugs and torturers like the troops of many fringe-world leaders.
The commander was Major Aubrey Flecker, a Norstrilian who had left the Grand Army of the Stars to avoid a prison sentence. Though the regiment's equipment was to Alliance standards, none of the personnel were from Pleasaunce or Blythe. Or from Cinnabar, of
course; but again, Adele got an impression of Zenobian independence.
A company of forty-four men was on duty at the Palace now. They appeared to be primarily a reaction force to deal with trouble of a serious nature anywhere on Zenobia, but they also guarded the building itself with a surprising amount of enthusiasm. Instead of fixed guard posts, several four-man teams patrolled at intervals set by a randomizing timer. After checking the surveillance imagery for several days running, Adele was impressed by the way the system appeared to keep the troops on edge.
There was also a battery of anti-starship missiles under under three soldiers and a lieutenant; the installation squatted in the middle of what had been a Palace courtyard. Adele's quick check of the records showed that the whole regiment had been cross-trained in missile control; personnel rotated through the installation on the regular duty rota. The battery had links variously across the planet, but the missile controls were only accessible from within the command post.
Adele recalled her discussion on Stahl's World about the problem of capturing Cavalry Harbor. She wouldn't be willing to bet against the troops on duty being alert enough to spike the first three enemy vessels attempting an assault landing
"Ma'am?" said Cory; not in any sense proper communications protocol—or RCN procedure more generally—but sufficient on a two-way link with Adele. "Would you like me to go down and help the Browns, like before?"
Adele awoke to her immediate surroundings. She brought up a panorama of the harbor, then shrank the imagery to the quay where the Sissie had landed. The large aircar waiting there was military in all respects but one: the identification numbers on the front had been painted over, and on the door the seal of the Representational Affairs section had been appliquéd over what was almost certainly the stencilled legend Land Forces of the Republic.
A tall, neatly dressed, man stood beside the vehicle. The caret Cory had thoughtfully added above him read Comm M Gibbs/Acting Commissioner.
"There's nobody from the Palace to meet them, I mean," Cory added, probably concerned that Adele hadn't responded immediately.