by Baen Books
by David Drake
Pennyroyal knew that Cadet Leary was supposed to have remained aboard the Swiftsure until 1700 hours with the rest of the Starboard Watch. That said, she'd gotten to know Daniel Leary pretty well during their three years at the Academy. When she couldn't locate him in their accommodation block or the cable tier where he was supposed to be on duty until 1630, she suspected that Leary had managed to slip ashore with the Port Watch.
It was more out of whim than from any real expectation of finding the other cadet that Pennyroyal went out on the hull through a forward airlock. The Dorsal A antenna was raised while the Swiftsure was docked in Broceliande Harbor. Daniel was sliding down a forestay, his rigging gauntlets sparking against the steel wire. A bosun's mate named Janofsky was following him down.
"You're supposed to be inspecting cable, Leary," Pennyroyal called, amazed and a little exasperated at what her friend got up to. "If an officer catches you fooling around in the sunshine, you'll lose your liberty. At least your liberty."
Daniel Leary wasn't any more interested in astrogation theory than Pennyroyal herself was, but he had an obvious gift for astrogation. He could be a valuable officer of the Republic of Cinnabar Navy—if he weren't booted out of the Academy before he graduated. Leary treated discipline the way he did religion: it was all very well for others, if they really wanted to go in for it.
"Pardon, ma'am, but that's just what we're doing," said Janofsky, touching his cap. "I directed Cadet Leary to inspect the standing rigging of Dorsal A under my supervision."
In theory the cadets were classed as landsmen: they were junior to able spacers, let alone to a warrant officer like Janofsky. In practice, outside of actual training many of the Swiftsure's cadre treated cadets like the officers they would become when they graduated.
Now with the Republic of Cinnabar and the Alliance of Free Stars in an all-out war, spacers were valuable commodities. It was necessary to provide cadets with practical experience before they were commissioned, but a training ship's complement tended to be made up of personnel who for one reason or another could be spared from front-line combat vessels.
Some of the Swiftsure's cadre had persistent coughs, stiff limbs, or were simply old: Janofsky probably wouldn't see seventy again. Others drank or drugged or were a little funny in the head.
But no few were ring-tailed bastards who were doubly hard on cadets. Cadets had the chance of bright futures, which none of those in a training ship's cadre could imagine would dawn for them.
"Ah," said Pennyroyal. She didn't believe the story, but it couldn't be disproved if Janofsky was willing to swear to it. Captain Landrieu herself couldn't punish Cadet Leary, and a veteran spacer like Janofsky knew that he was effectively beyond discipline. Old though he was, the bosun's mate carried out his duties—both working ship and training—with a skill that set him above most of the cadre.
"Come to that, Penny," Leary said, "you knocked off early yourself, not so?"
"I was on galley duty," Pennyroyal said. "With three quarters of the crew ashore, there was bugger all to do by mid shift. Cookie excused me and the other cadets. I wanted to find you."
Janofsky had gone below, leaving the two of them alone on the ship's spine. Though the Swiftsure was nearly sixty years old, she was still a battleship. She loomed over not only the rest of the harbor traffic but the buildings of Broceliande, none of which were over six stories high.
Foret was subject to the Cinnabar Empire—a Friend of Cinnabar if you wanted to be mealy-mouthed. It was a pleasant enough planet but of no real importance in galactic politics, making it a natural port call for an RCN training vessel. Part of what an RCN officer needed to know was how to behave on worlds which had their own cultures. Foret provided that, and the trouble you could get into on Broceliande stopped short of being eaten by the locals. There were ports where that wasn't true.
'I didn't mean to seem mysterious, Penny," Daniel said after glancing around. "Janofsky was doing a favor for me and I didn't want to embarrass him in front of a stranger. Which you pretty much are to him."
"And you're not?" said Pennyroyal. The sun, setting beyond the harbor mouth, stained pink the white-washed facades of buildings. The landscape beyond the city was heavily wooded. The ordinarily dark-green native foliage had a purplish cast in slanting light.
"I met Janofsky when I was six, in my Uncle Stacey's shipyard," Daniel said. "I didn't remember that—remember Janofsky, I mean. There must've been hundreds of spacers dropping by to give their regards to their old captain. Janofsky had been a young rigger on the Granite, the dedicated exploration vessel that Uncle Stacey made his Long Voyage in."
"When they discovered twenty-seven worlds that'd been lost to civilization for two thousand years?" Pennyroyal said. She had known that Daniel's "Uncle Stacey" had been in the RCN, but until now she hadn't connected the name with Commander Stacey Bergen, the most famous explorer in Cinnabar history. "No wonder you're such an astrogator!"
"I had a leg up," Daniel agreed with a slight smile. "Uncle Stacey never got rich, but the spacers who served under him say he was the greatest man who ever lived. The greatest captain, anyway. Janofsky asked about Uncle Stacey when I came aboard the Swiftsure, and I asked him to make some contacts for me in the shore establishment here when he went on liberty yesterday."
"Well, as a matter of fact," Pennyroyal said, "it was about liberty that I wanted to talk to you. You remember that story Vondrian and Ames told, about going on liberty on Broceliande with a ship's corporal?"
"Yes, I certainly do," Daniel said, his expression suddenly guarded. The corporals were the assistants to the Master at Arms, the ship's policemen. "They went to a gambling house that was raided by the police. One of the guards started shooting. If Vondrian hadn't been able to bribe the police to release him and the other cadets, they'd have been jailed for conspiracy to murder."
"Well, I always suspected that was a set-up," Pennyroyal said. "Today I heard that one of the ship's corporals, Platt, had offered to guide a group of cadets to a place at a distance from the harbor where the drinks were higher class. I remembered Vondrian's story and thought we ought to warn the others."
Pennyroyal could have done that herself, but she knew that if the story came from Leary it would be believed. If she told people what she'd heard during a night of drinking with two friends from an earlier class at the Academy, she'd be mocked as faint-hearted. An RCN officer with a reputation for cowardice wouldn't stay an RCN officer long.
There were plenty of people, instructors as well as cadets, who thought Daniel Leary was bumptious, a fool, and even certifiably mad. The rumor about him pleasuring the commandant's daughter in the Academy chapel justified any of those descriptions—and Pennyroyal, who had been on watch in the choir loft, knew the story was true.
Nobody thought Leary was a coward.
"Well, as it chances . . . ," Daniel said carefully. "I had heard about the expedition and thought I'd join it. I'm not fancy about what I drink, but Platt says the women are higher class too. They do interest me."
"Are you joking?" said Pennyroyal, but he clearly wasn't. There had to be something behind Leary's bland smile, though.
Another thought struck her. "Say!" she said. "Is your man Hogg going along? I don't doubt he's a real bruiser even if he does look like a hayseed with maybe two brain cells to rub together, but you can't muscle your way through a dozen cops!"
"Umm, Steward's Mate Hogg has business of his own to attend to tonight, he told me," Daniel said. "He's not really my man, you know. He insisted on following me from the Bantry estate when I broke with my father and entered the Academy, but I can't afford to keep him. He's living on his pay and whatever he might add to that by playing cards."
Hogg's winnings were greater than his RCN pay, from what Pennyroyal had seen in the galley; but however the former Leary tenant made his living, he continued to refer to Daniel as "the young master." Still, Hogg doubtless had a life beyond service to Cadet Leary.
Pennyroyal stared at her friend. "What are you planning, Leary?" she said. "You've got something on."
Daniel shrugged. "I plan to go to a high-class entertainment establishment . . . ," he said. "And have a good time. That's all."
"If you're going, then I'm going along," Pennyroyal said. "That's flat. Understood?"
This time Daniel grinned. "You know I'm always glad to have you beside me, Penny," he said. "But don't act surprised at anything you may hear, all right?"
"All right," said Pennyroyal, grinning back. ""It's about time we change to go on liberty, then."
She wasn't sure it would be a night she'd remember as "a good time," but she knew it would be interesting.
***
Pennyroyal and Leary had bunks near one another in the stern. The accommodations block already swarmed with cadets changing into the clothes they would wear on liberty. A few cadets had sprung for gray 2nd class dress uniforms. Though only commissioned or warrant officers had a right to wear Grays, senior cadets were customarily allowed the privilege.
That wasn't an issue with Pennyroyal: she couldn't afford to buy anything unnecessary until she graduated and was commissioned as a midshipman. Midshipman's pay wasn't much, but it was something.
"Leary, where did you get those!" Pennyroyal said as she finished pulling on the clean utilities she would be wearing and got a good look at her friend—wearing Grays.
"Umm, they're from a hock shop on the Strip," Daniel said, touching his left lapel with two fingers. There was barely visible fading where rank tabs had been removed. "A mate of Janofsky's tailored them for me. Some of these senior spacers do better work than you could get on the ground."
"Right, but you were broke!" Pennyroyal said. "Where did you find the money?"
"I was broke," Daniel said. "But I found the money. I'll explain it later, but for now I want to catch Platt before he leaves his cabin."
Pennyroyal fell in beside Leary, though he was walking toward the pair of aft companionways instead of the set amidships with the rest of the cadets. She said, "But we're supposed to gather in the main boarding hold at 1730. At least that's what I heard."
"I had a different idea," Daniel said. "Don't worry, we'll get there."
They skipped up the companionway in a shuffle of echoes. Even with only two of them in the steel tube, their boot soles on the nonskid treads were multiplied into a whispering chorus as overwhelming as surf in a storm.
Most warrant officers bunked in curtained cabins ahead of the racks of the common spacers. The master at arms and his—hers, on the Swiftsure—four corporals were a deck above for their own safety and comfort.
The ship's police were responsible for enforcing the ship's discipline. Even the best masters at arms were corrupt to a degree: there would be gambling during a long voyage despite regulations; limiting it to a few rings which paid for the privilege was better for discipline that a rigid ban.
The Swiftsure's police were at the far wrong end of the corruption scale, however. What Pennyroyal had seen since she and the rest of the cadets boarded made her even more sure that Vondrian, known to be wealthy, had been set up by the ship's corporals in collusion with locals.
She and Leary left the companionway and almost collided with a lieutenant whom Pennyroyal didn't know by name. She jumped to the side of the narrow corridor and snapped a rather better salute than Leary, ahead of her, managed.
"What in blazes are you two doing on this level?" the lieutenant demanded. His words weren't slurred, but the odor of gin enveloped them.
"Sir!" said Daniel, holding his salute. "Corporal Platt ordered us to attend him in his quarters, sir!"
"Platt?" the lieutenant said with a grimace. "Bloody hell."
He pushed past and into the companionway. He had not returned the salutes.
Leary apparently knew exactly where he was going. They were nearly at the sternward end of the corridor when he stopped at a door, not a curtain, and knocked on the panel.
"Cadets Leary and Pennyroyal reporting, Corporal," he called toward the ventilator.
For a moment there was no response; then Platt jerked the light steel panel open. He held a communicator attached by flex to the flat-plate display against the outer bulkhead. There was a scrambler box in the line.
Platt's scowl turned into a false smile. He took off his headphones and said, "I was on my way down in a few minutes, Leary. I just needed to take care of a few things for tonight."
"We came about tonight, Corporal," Daniel said. "Pennyroyal and I had the notion of just the two of us going with you. Instead of thirty or forty cadets chipping in for a cattle car or whatever you've got laid on, I thought I could spring for a taxi. All right?"
"Umm . . . ?" said Platt. He hung the handset and earphones back beneath the display. He was a middle-aged man, balding from the forehead; not fat but soft looking. "Well, if you're willing to pay . . ."
"I don't mind spending my father's money on giving myself a good time," Daniel said. "There was no bloody point in sucking up to the Speaker if I wasn't going to get something out of it."
Pennyroyal felt her face stiffen. In the past Leary had spoken of his politically powerful father only when he was drunk and someone asked him a direct question. His answers then had been uniformly curt and hostile; she would have said that Daniel was more likely to become a priest than ever to make up with his father.
As for money, Daniel had seemed interested in it only when he wanted to buy a round of drinks for the table but didn't have it to spend. The notion that Daniel Leary would patch up a bitter quarrel in order to afford taxi fare was ludicrous—except that was clearly what he had just implied.
"All right, Leary," Platt said. He stepped into the corridor and latched the door behind him. "I'd heard your Hogg saying something like that. Your Old Man's pretty well heeled, ain't he?"
"I'll say he's well heeled," Daniel muttered as Platt led them along the corridor toward the down companionway. "Anyway, it's just too much money to walk away from."
Platt glanced at the cadets; glanced at Leary, anyway. "I'll tell you what we'll do then," the corporal said. "We'll go out through the forward hatch. That's for officers' use, but I can square it. That way we won't run into the rest of your cadets in the main hold, and there's a better class of hire cars waiting."
"Sounds great!" said Daniel. He pulled a hundred-florin coin out of his belt purse. That was even more of a surprise to Pennyroyal than seeing her friend in Grays. "Say, are they all right with Cinnabar money at this club you're taking us to?"
"They're all right with any kind of money at the Café Claudel," said Platt. "And the more, the merrier."
From the purr in the corporal's voice, the same was true of him.
***
"What's the fare in Cinnabar florins, my good man?" Leary asked in an upper class drawl as they pulled up under the porte-cochere.
The hire car was a limousine with room for eight in the cabin, though there were signs of age and wear. The leather upholstery was cracked, much of the gilt was gone from the brightwork, and the soft interior lighting was further dimmed by burned-out glowstrips.
Even so, it was the most impressive private vehicle Pennyroyal had ever ridden in. She wasn't sure that she could have found its equal on her homeworld of Touraine. If she had, it still wouldn't have been carrying the orphan daughter of a parish priest.
"Thirty Cinnabar florins, master!" chirped the driver through the sliding window into the cab.
"Bloody hell, Leary!" Pennyroyal said. "Ten'd be high! It's not but three miles from the harborfront!"
A pair of husky servants in white tunics and gold braid opened the car's double doors. They weren't carrying weapons.
"Here you go," Daniel said, handing a fifty-florin coin through the window. "If you're still around when I'm ready to leave, there may be another one for you—but I'm on a twenty-four hour liberty and I don't expect to end it early."
Platt had gotten out of the vehicle a
nd was waiting beside the house attendants. Pennyroyal got out with Daniel following her. The driver called, "I'll be right here in the VIP lot, master. You can count on me!"
"I dare say we can, for that kind of money," Pennyroyal muttered.
"My father always said 'Spend money to make money,'" Daniel said cheerfully. "Well, that was one of the things he said. Regardless, Corder Leary certainly made money."
Café Claudel must have originally been a country house, though Pennyroyal had gotten only a glimpse of the building as the limousine approached by a curving drive. The gardens facing the house seemed overgrown, though the late evening light wasn't good enough for certainty.
Platt led the cadets up steps to the doorway where an attractive blond woman wearing a morning coat and striped trousers waited. "Say, Dolly?" Platt said as they approached. "These two are with me. See that they're treated right, okay?"
"The Claudel treats all of its guests properly, Master Platt," the woman said with a professional smile. She was older than Pennyroyal had thought from a distance.
"I need to talk to Kravitz," Platt said. "Is he—there he is."
He turned and said, "I need to chat with the manager, Leary. You two come in and have a good time, okay?"
A trim little man with a goatee had just entered the anteroom from the lobby. The corporal went off with him. The doorkeeper's eyes followed them, then returned to Pennyroyal and Leary.
"You'll find a bar to the left within," the blond said. "There's gaming off the lobby to the right. Upstairs, if you're interested in no limit games . . . ?"
She raised an eyebrow.
"No!" said Pennyroyal, more fiercely than she had intended.
"I might be later," Daniel said, "but just for now I'm hoping to find a drink."
"The Claudel's cellar is famous," the doorkeeper said, "and we have a wide range of off-planet spirits also. If your particular preference isn't available, our bartenders can suggest a near approximation, I'm sure."
Pennyroyal wondered what the staff would suggest if she asked for industrial ethanol, the working fluid used in the Power Room, cut with fruit juice. They could probably find a high-proof vodka with a similar kick—though at much higher price. But that was another matter . . .