by David Drake
“I’d probably have asked the fellow to apologize,” Tovera said through the bud in Adele’s left ear. “On his knees.”
She giggled. “Probably.”
Tovera was on the roof of the Assembly Hall, observing the gathering electronically. The ear bud let her guide Adele to Daniel expeditiously through the rout, but Adele couldn’t reply. Tovera had a parabolic microphone, however, which served much the same purpose as a two-way link.
Not even Tovera could really claim that Adele needed a bodyguard to walk into an upper-class party, but she was probably uncomfortable not to be within sub-machine gun range of any threat to her mistress. That was all right. Adele was often uncomfortable knowing that her servant might kill somebody beside her at any moment.
Tovera had her uses, though; and while she was in Adele’s charge, she was less likely to do something that civilized people would consider horrible. Perhaps that counterbalanced some of the things which Adele herself had done and which she considered horrible.
“I see him, mistress,” Tovera said. “He’s at the northeast corner of the refreshment tent, the one nearest you. Wait, he went back under it.”
“Yes, I see it,” Adele said, turning toward the marquee. A small orchestra on the bandstand played a galliard; well, played at a galliard. There was probably a dancing floor of boards at that end of the mall.
The gathering she’d attended the first night had been a ball at the Theatre Generale. The men had all wanted to dance with her, and the women had watched her with envious determination to learn the latest steps from Cinnabar.
Rene Cazelet had attended also. He could’ve had his choice of partners: for a dance, for the night, or for as long as he stayed on Pelosi. Although Adele didn’t have personal knowledge of, well, mating rituals, she’d observed them as she’d observed many other things.
Instead Rene’d spent most of the evening at their table, drinking sparkling water and watching Adele with almost the determination that Tovera showed. They both worry too much, Adele thought.
Rene’d danced twice with her, though. He didn’t wear riding boots like the men on Pelosi, and he didn’t plant his feet on top of her toes—also in contrast to the men on Pelosi.
Adele hadn’t permitted him to accompany her tonight. She could slip in and out while wearing her second-class uniform, but if Rene came he’d draw attention even if he dressed like a servant. She didn’t usually think in those terms, but he was obviously an attractive man.
“He’s coming out from under the marquee,” Tovera said. “He’s with a local man. I’ll have his name in a moment.”
“Why, Adele!” said Daniel, resplendent in his Whites with full medals. “I didn’t know you were coming tonight, and I’m delighted to see you. May I present Master David Power? He’s supplying us with munitions.”
Power was tall but even so heavy for his height. His tailcoat was either black or a dark red that turned black under the fairy lights; its hems and lapels were gold, and his trousers were gold as well. Like Daniel, he held a ten-ounce glass from which he’d drunk half the clear liquor.
Power looked at Adele, frowned, and said in a slurred voice, “Who’s this, then? She’s important?”
“She’s Lady Adele Mundy, my good man,” Daniel said mildly. “Mundy of Chatsworth, don’t you know? Well, I suppose we can’t expect Bagarians to be up on Cinnabar society, can we, Lady Mundy?”
He clapped the big man on the shoulder with apparent bonhomie. Daniel had certainly been drinking, but Adele could tell he was putting on the appearance of tipsiness to make forgivable what would otherwise have been a cutting insult.
The drink had really affected him, however. Daniel wouldn’t have let the implied slight to Adele cause him to retaliate that way against an ally if he’d been fully himself.
“I’m incognito, Master Power,” Adele said as brightly as she could manage. She wasn’t angry with the fellow, but she was tired and she needed to speak to Daniel alone. “Admiral Leary should be more discreet. I trust we can count on you?”
“What?” said the local man, swaying. He was trying to stare at Adele, but his eyes didn’t focus. “Count on me. Yes, count on me!”
“Might we get a drink, Admiral?” Adele said, gesturing with the fingers of her right hand. “Something’s come up at the ship.”
“Count on me!” Power said, wandering off. Instead of offending the fellow by ordering him away, Adele had said just enough to puzzle and bore him so that he left of his own accord. “Count!”
“He’s gotten the contract to build missiles with plasma thrusters instead of High Drives,” Daniel said, speaking in a low voice as they watched Power wobble into the crowd. “They’d be useless against warships, of course, but we can launch them from orbit into an atmosphere without antimatter destroying the nozzle in the first half mile. I think they’ll let us force the Alliance forces to come up and fight—or smash them on the ground if they won’t. Either way is fine.”
“This was your idea, Daniel?” Adele said.
“Not mine, no,” said Daniel with a satisfied smile. “But I brought the notion with me. Captain Burke used them on Grimmald and very kindly let me copy the plans before we lifted from Cinnabar. They’re really quite simple, steel pipes full of water with a pump, a plasma thruster, and a very basic guidance system. Well within the manufacturing capability of Pelosi—or for that matter, any planet that can build water heaters!”
He grinned a little broader. “Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration,” he said, “but they certainly can build them here on Pelosi.”
The orchestra had begun playing an estampe which Adele’d heard on Cinnabar—not during her most recent landfall but when she was in Xenos two years before; now they shifted awkwardly into a tarantella. Was it a deliberate medley or had the players gotten their music scrambled?
Adele reached for her data unit while the back of her mind plotted routes to the solution of the puzzle. She caught herself.
“I’m sorry,” she said, giving Daniel a smile that would’ve withered leaves. “I’m tired and I’m not concentrating well.”
He didn’t know what she was talking about. On the other hand, he did know her. He nodded in calm acceptance, waiting for her to get to the point.
“Yes,” Adele said, clearing her mind with the syllable. She resumed, “Rene and I have been going over the records of trading companies in Morning City. Coupled with information we brought from Diamondia, a pattern has become clear.”
“The locals are cooperating with you?” Daniel said. “If so, I need coaching, because I’m certainly not getting cooperation.”
“They’re not cooperating, no,” Adele said with another cold smile. “But their security isn’t very good. And—”
She felt her face muscles relax minutely.
“—Rene has provided context from his knowledge of Phoenix Starfreight. That’s proved very helpful.”
She cleared her throat and continued, “Although contact between the cluster and the Alliance has been embargoed on both sides, Bagarian ships meet Alliance vessels on Dodd’s Throne and trade normally. Generalissima DeMarce may not be involved, but all six of her ministers are.”
Adele looked around her. Pastel light on the bright clothing gave the crowd a sinister look, but that probably came out of her mind rather than reality. “I dare say two-thirds of the guests here at least are members of companies which are currently trading with the Alliance.”
“Dodd’s Throne . . .” Daniel repeated, his mind sorting files. Adele started to bring out her data unit, but for this sort of question Daniel’s way was faster. He would, of course, have committed to memory places that might be used as bases by either side. “Right, lies outside the cluster proper. Red sun, normal gravity, adequate atmosphere; no water to speak of, though. Some cobalt and nickel mining, but food has to be imported and it’s a miserable place.”
He smiled brightly. “Well, that’s very interesting,” he said. “How large-scale is it?”
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Adele felt herself frowning. “At present there’re eight ships here in Morning Harbor which arrived from Dodd’s Throne with Alliance cargoes,” she said. “That’s about average over the past three months. Where we can check the manifests, the cargoes arrived on ships of larger capacity; therefore presumably fewer of them.”
She cleared her throat, wondering if drink had fuddled Daniel more than it usually did. More than it ever had before . . . which would be a much worse problem than this business alone.
“Daniel, this means that the government we’re here to support doesn’t want to rock a profitable boat,” she said carefully. “They won’t support—whatever they may say— actions that would prevent the Alliance from reinforcing its fleet in the Jewel System.”
“Yes, I see that,” Daniel said, still smiling. He swirled the remaining liquor in his glass but didn’t taste it for the moment. “But I prefer to think of that as a problem for the past. Thanks to you and Master Cazelet—”
He dipped his head in a half-bow.
“—I can start working on a solution. And since that’s Minister Lampert there by the roast ox, I believe I’ll do that right now. Thank you, Adele!”
Daniel strode off toward the barbeque pits. He began whistling. As the first few notes drifted back to her, Adele recalled the song: “Roll me over, in the clover . . .”
MORNING HARBOR ON PELOSI
If Daniel had been able to stand outside himself, he’d be the first to say that the Ladouceur would be a joke in a squadron of modern warships. At 3,800 tons she was smaller than any light cruiser built for a generation and more; she had a mixed armament of two 6-inch guns in a dorsal turret amidships and four 4-inch guns in lateral turrets offset to bow and stern; and her antennas, instead of telescoping within themselves, folded parallel like the yards.
The arrangements of armament and rigging had proved unsatisfactory in service. Rather than rebuild the ships involved, the Financier class had been relegated to colonial service, showing the flag on planets where a kerosene lamp was high technology. At some point in its history the Ladouceur had passed into Alliance ownership; beyond a notation by a clerk in Navy House, the RCN wouldn’t have noticed her passing.
But the old cruiser was now Daniel’s flagship, and it was with pride that he gestured toward her with his left hand and said, “Generalissima and gentlemen, with the Ladouceur rerigged to my satisfaction and the crews of the whole squadron worked up properly, we’ll have a force to keep the Alliance well away from Bagaria. Guarantor Porra has enough problems that he won’t care to spend his resources in cracking as hard a nut as he’ll find us to be!”
Captain Seward of the Generalissima DeMarce snorted; Captain Hoppler, who’d brought the Independence down from orbit this morning, shot his right cuff and ostentatiously studied his shapely fingernails. DeMarce exchanged a grimace with Minister Lampert, though both smoothed their expressions back to neutrality when Daniel glanced over his shoulder at them.
Because of Adele’s warning, Daniel had couched his praise more defensively than his personal taste might’ve formed it in other circumstances. In truth, the chance of Bagaria mounting offensive operations with the means at hand would’ve been pretty slim, were it not for the equally low caliber of the opposing Cluster Command. And though the government might not want to disrupt trade, the undoubted greed of his present audience offered another means of manipulating them.
“And the amount of loot that’ll come to the Republic when we take Churchyard and then Conyers . . .” Daniel said with bland enthusiasm. “Why, even the poor of Morning City will be wearing crowns!”
My goodness but that was a lie! But it wouldn’t lie heavily on Daniel’s conscience. From the feral looks on the faces of his companions, they had no intention of letting the imaginary loot trickle that far down the social scale.
“That’s all very well to say, Admiral,” said Seward, a girlishly slight Kostroman whose mustache turned up in spikes at the end. “But the crews are a problem. We seem to recruit only the dregs, I’m afraid, and not many of them. True patriotism is absent from the lower orders.”
The Bagarian navy paid a common spacer eight ostrads per day; commercial vessels in the cluster paid eighteen. All the petty officers and most of the leading spacers were foreigners whom the new republic had recruited with promises of premium pay. Unfortunately that pay hadn’t materialized, so desertions among skilled spacers were even more frequent than by the Bagarian natives.
“Well, I hope that self-interest will supply the place of patriotism once we get matters in hand,” said Daniel in a tone of determined cheerfulness. “When they see the loot their fellows return with, I mean. But for now, we need to be sure that the major elements of our squadron can work together. That’s the Ladouceur and your ships, gentlemen—”
He bowed to Seward and Hoppler.
“—the DeMarce and Independence.”
“If by work together you mean maneuver in concert in the Matrix, we can’t,” said Seward in a tone of scorn. He’d expected to retain command of the light cruiser he’d brought back from Schumer’s World; his pique at the Cinnabar officer who’d been placed over him was understandable. “We’re practical captains, Leary. We’re not trained in this silly folderol that you Cinnabar gentlemen set such score by.”
Daniel nodded pleasantly. “I understand that coming from a merchant background you wouldn’t have experience in the concerted action that’s necessary for successful naval operations, Captain,” he said. “It’s certainly no reflection on your skills.”
That was no more than the truth; the only justification for taking it as an insult was that it replied to the Kostroman’s own hostility. Mind, Daniel did intend it as an insult. Even if failure could be justified, it was nothing to brag about.
“I’ve allowed for that problem,” Daniel went on smoothly while the reddening Seward spluttered toward finding words. “I’ll put officers I’ve brought with me aboard the Independence and DeMarce as astrogators. It’s not that they’re more skilled than you gentlemen, of course—”
He nodded again toward the two captains. Vesey certainly was a better astrogator than either of them, and Blantyre might well be. Of course that left Cory as First Lieutenant of the Ladouceur, but at worst the midshipman knew how to use the astrogation computer.
“—but they’ve worked with me, and my little foibles won’t throw them off. I propose to lift from Morning Harbor at 0600 tomorrow.”
He turned to Generalissima DeMarce. “Your Excellency?” he said. “I expect to be back in between three days and a week. Can you have a thousand soldiers ready then? Because as soon as I have the ships worked up, I propose to move against Churchyard and take care of the Cluster Command once and for all.”
The Generalissima flicked a hand to her head as though patting down an errant curl. “If you think that’s wise . . .” she said without meeting Daniel’s eyes. “Yes, all right, when you return.”
“We don’t have full crews!” Hoppler protested. “We don’t even have minimal crews. Leary, you’re a bold fellow I’m sure, but we can’t go off!”
“Captain Hoppler, I’ve looked at the crew lists,” Daniel said, letting the least touch of steel creep into his tone. “I’ll be leaving the Sissie in Morning Harbor and splitting her crew among the three vessels of my new command, so we won’t be short of skilled personnel. Some of the existing spacers may not be fully experienced yet, but that’s what training’s for. And as I told you, I believe that once we have a degree of success, the next stages will come easier.”
“We won’t have a success!” Seward said. “We’ll have a mare’s nest, that’s all!”
“Captain Seward,” Daniel said. “The government of Bagaria has seen fit to give me command of her naval forces.”
He nodded toward DeMarce and Lampert. They were watching the discussion carefully, but neither tried to intervene.
“The government may remove me at any time, of course,” Daniel went on, “but
until then I intend to command to the best of my ability. The major elements of the fleet will lift for orbit at 0600 tomorrow. I very much hope you both will continue in the Bagarian service, but if you choose to resign your commissions instead—so be it. Do you understand me?”
The men scowled, but neither spoke.
“Gentlemen,” Daniel said, “I must insist on a reply. Do you choose to continue in command of your present charges?”
“Yes,” said Hoppler. “Yes, fine, but you’ll see.”
Seward didn’t speak for a moment. Then he snarled, “You’re a cocky bastard, Leary! Yes, all right, I command the DeMarce. That’ll give me a good view of you falling on your high-and-mighty face.”
“We’re all agreed, then,” Daniel said cheerfully, sweeping his four companions with another sunny smile. This seemed to be his morning for telling whopping lies. “Then Your Excellency, gentlemen—I’ll be off. I have a great deal to do before liftoff tomorrow.”
The main thing he had to do was to take Vesey and Blantyre into his confidence. He wasn’t going to tell all the Sissies what was going to happen for fear one of them would blurt something to the locals on the way.
He wanted the Bagarian officers to be completely surprised when the squadron extracted from the Matrix above Dodd’s Throne.
Chapter Eleven
ABOVE DODD’S THRONE
The process of extraction, so unpleasant if Adele had time to think about it, passed her unaware or at least unconcerned when she was busy. The Ladouceur’s extraction above Dodd’s Throne made Adele very busy.
The planet, sunlit from the Sissie’s present position, was an unattractive yellow-orange lump. The Sacred Independence was already in normal space, 147,000 miles from the Princess Cecile and rather closer than that to the planet. Another ship hung in a free-fall orbit some 57,000 miles above the planetary surface. Ordinarily ships held 1 g to simulate gravity, but Rene’d warned Adele that Dodd’s Throne might be an exception because it wouldn’t be possible to replenish reaction mass upon landing.
