by David Drake
“Go on,” Adele repeated. Chatterjee was a Skye native, but in his youth—he was thirty-nine standard years old now—he’d been a lieutenant in the Alliance Army. Governor Radetsky was officially a general now, but unlike his aide he didn’t have previous military experience.
“The Governor offers you a battalion of two hundred and fifty men,” Chatterjee said. “They’d be under my command. We have transport as well, a former immigrant ship manned by spacers loyal to the governor. Just tell us when and where you’d like us to be.”
Adele’s wands stopped moving; she met Chatterjee’s eyes. “Why?” she said.
“Conyers and Churchyard aren’t a danger to Pelosi,” Chatterjee said. “Nor to most of the other worlds that’ve joined the rebellion. They’re a danger to us, though. With ships and troops from them, the colonists in the South can sweep over us. The Governor felt the quickest path to our own safety is to help you capture the Alliance bases before they organize to conquer us.”
“To help Admiral Leary, you mean,” Adele said, watching to see Chatterjee’s expression when he heard the words.
“I believe that when I talk to you, Lady Mundy,” he said calmly, “I’m talking to Admiral Leary.”
She shrugged. “Near enough, I suppose,” she said. “Why do you think we need troops from Skye? Since you’re so well informed, you certainly know that the Cluster government has promised us a much larger force already.”
Chatterjee laughed bitterly. “The government can promise you Pleasaunce and Blythe,” he said, “and you’d have the same chance of getting them. Terry Dean won’t let any real number of men out of his immediate control. They’re his power base, you see. And if he did, you wouldn’t be pleased with what you got. I’ve trained the battalion we’re offering Commander Leary, milady.”
“I see,” Adele said. The words weren’t simply a placeholder; she saw a great deal now. “If Admiral Leary should wish to get in touch with you at some later point, how would he go about it?”
“Send a message to this address,” Chatterjee said, offering Adele the printed card he’d been holding in his palm throughout the conversation. “Either I’ll be there or they’ll contact me.”
Tovera reached past with her left hand, flashed the card’s face to Adele who continued to hold her wands, and slipped it into the attaché case. It read
SKYE BENEVOLENT SOCIETY
55 Paterson Street East
Morning City
“A courier vessel will get from here to Skye in a day and a half,” Chatterjee said. “The men are ready to board. It’ll take the transport between four and five days to reach Conyers; perhaps a day longer to Churchyard.”
Adele’s fingers brought up a map display and highlighted the address. It was in the northern fringe of the city, not far from Morning Lake.
Chatterjee’s grin almost split his broad, flat face. “Those are the times they tell me,” he said. “I know nothing whatever about starships, Lady Mundy. But I do know troops, and mine are good ones.”
“Thank you, Colonel,” Adele said, nodding to Chatterjee in dismissal. “I’ll see to it that the information gets to the proper quarters.”
As Chatterjee rose, Adele allowed him a minuscule smile. “Colonel?” she said. “I shouldn’t wonder if you got a chance to prove what you say about your soldiers.”
Chapter Thirteen
EN ROUTE TO CHURCHYARD
Daniel rose from the Ladouceur’s command console. The course was set and the cruiser’s systems were operating within parameters. Within fairly reasonable parameters, in fact; the ship was in better condition than there’d been any reason to expect. The Financier Class’s design failings seemed to have been mitigated by very solid construction standards. The ships were a peacetime series, of course.
“Captain, this is Dart Six,” said Borries, the Chief Missileer. “I’m in Bay B as in boy. I think you better come look at this, over.”
“On the way, Dart Six,” said Daniel. “Break. Lieutenant Liu—”
The Ladouceur’s current XO, now on duty in the BDC. Wai Liu was a young man from the Cinnabar protectorate of Rochefort. He’d joined the Bagarian service before the Sissie’s arrival. His astrogation was a trifle better than Cory’s, but Daniel wouldn’t trust him in a fight till he’d seen a different side of the fellow than he had thus far.
“—I’m going down to the missile bays. You have the conn, but inform me if anything unusual happens. Six out.”
Liu’s “Roger, Six,” sounded bored. That was legitimate, though Daniel hoped he’d react quickly enough if anything did crop up.
He grinned. Adele didn’t bother to look up as Daniel trotted past the signals console, but an image of his face grinned from the top of her holographic display. Whether or not Liu kept him on top of events, Adele would.
Daniel turned into a Down companionway; the missile bays were on B and C Decks, while the Bridge was on G, the dorsal spine. Hogg was following him for no particular reason; their soft boots syncopated one another; like brushes on a drumhead, they drew whispers up and down the armored tube.
They didn’t meet anyone in the companionway; the Ladouceur was undercrewed. Daniel wouldn’t pretend to have full confidence in the three-quarters of the complement who hadn’t served with him before, but he was sure most of them would be all right once they’d had time to work up under an RCN captain and RCN petty officers. He could only hope he’d have that time for working up, but he kept reminding himself that the enemy personnel in this cluster were at any rate no better.
The Ladouceur’s squadron-mates consisted not only of the Independence and DeMarce, but also eleven light vessels of the Bagarian Navy. These last were tramps of the sort that handled intra-cluster trade in peacetime; the largest was 1,000 tons, and two barely displaced 300.
They weren’t even sparred heavily enough to serve as fast couriers, so under normal circumstances they had no real military purpose. Each could carry between three and six missiles, however, strapped to the outer hull. Working the sails would be even more difficult than usual, and the smaller vessels had been forced to lift with the missiles’ reaction mass tanks empty. They’d been filled in orbit by the Ladouceur, whose thrust to weight ratio allowed her to rise from a gravity well carrying much greater incremental mass.
The B Deck hatch was latched open; rust streaked the mating surfaces. Daniel frowned, wondering if Pasternak had found time to check the seal of the cruiser’s internal subdivisions. If the hull were damaged in action—hard maneuvering could open seams, let alone the risk from enemy missiles and ions—everybody aboard would have to shift into suits unless the damage could be isolated.
Daniel gave a wry smile. Well, in the event they might have to wear suits. Pasternak had enough on his plate in the Power Room. He couldn’t be faulted if he let his duties as Chief of Ship go by the boards for the time being.
B Deck was bulk storage, which included two of the cruiser’s four missile magazines. Crew members called to one another in a parallel corridor, their voices gibberish from echoes. The air on this level smelled of old food, old lubricant, and the faint bite of ozone.
Daniel’s makeshift missile boats didn’t have the targeting capacity or maneuverability to be useful in a ship-to-ship action, but they could dip into Churchyard’s atmosphere and launch plasma missiles at ships tied to the quays. The base certainly had anti-starship defenses, but only in limited quantity: missiles capable of ripping ships from orbit cost more than these ragged tramps did. The Alliance commander couldn’t safely expend them on light craft while three large warships waited just out of range.
The Bagarian squadron was to rendezvous off the unnamed seventh planet of the Churchyard system, a gas giant with no moons to confuse officers who weren’t used to trying to identify other ships in vacuum. Daniel would marshal his little flock there, then make the short intra-system hop to Churchyard. His missile craft would bombard the harbor until the Alliance commander either surrendered or sent his warships u
p to fight.
Daniel grinned. He didn’t expect the Alliance ships to fight. If they did, though, he couldn’t think of a better way to give his raw squadron a stunning victory that would boost its confidence.
The internal hatch to B Magazine had been slid partly open. It was long enough that thirty-foot missiles could be dollied out and rolled to the aft magazines in event the tubes fed by B Magazine were out of service. Daniel hoped he’d never have to do that, because even with a crack crew it was a recipe for death and injury every time the ship changed the amount or angle of thrust. He’d try if he had to, of course.
The light craft carried a total of forty-six plasma missiles. The squadron’s three heavy ships had only partial loads of High Drive missiles, so Daniel had split the remaining twenty-four bombardment weapons among them as reloads—half on the Ladouceur and six each on the converted freighters. It seemed to him that he had a good chance of destroying the Cluster Command’s remaining ships, and an even better chance of frightening Churchyard Base into surrender.
Except—
“Captain,” said Borries, standing in the hatchway and looking down the corridor, “we got a problem.”
The Pellegrinian had a long face. He’d look like he was in mourning on the happiest day of his life, but this wasn’t that day. “I been looking at these half-assed missiles we took aboard on Pelosi.”
“Right, Borries,” Daniel said, following as the missileer stepped into the magazine. A Bagarian spacer, originally from Mistral—Daniel couldn’t remember his name, Robert Canedo or Caneta he thought—was already inside. “The reloads for the bombardment fleet.”
The magazine was a wilderness of steel and hard lines. It’d originally been painted white, but generations of oil film and the friction of missiles, dollies, and spacers in hard suits had left it in layered gray shades picked out by patches of rust.
To its deck was welded a double rank of missile cradles, twelve and twelve, but only the forward set was filled. Borries had removed several plates from the round on the inboard end. Mechanics’ lights glared into the openings, and tools littered the deck.
“I didn’t realize these missiles had access ports,” Daniel said, surprised at this level of effort from David Power. Captain Burke’s plans didn’t include such refinements, and nothing Daniel had seen on Pelosi would’ve caused him to complicate a project he was giving to the locals.
“They do if you got a diamond saw,” said Borries grimly. “Now, don’t worry, Captain, I’ll weld it back neater’n it was. Which won’t be hard.”
He gestured to the spacer with him. “Go on, Canedo,” he said. “Tell the cap’n what you told me.”
“Well, it’s like this, sir,” the fellow said nervously. “Look, I don’t want you to think I’m not loyal to the Bagarian Republic, sir?”
Daniel frowned. He wouldn’t have spoken, but Canedo had stopped with a statement his tone turned into a question. He obviously wasn’t going to proceed without encouragement.
“I don’t expect loyalty to the Bagarian Republic, Canedo,” Daniel said. “I can assure you that the spacers I brought here in the Sissie aren’t loyal to the Bagarians.”
“Too right, sir,” said Borries with an enthusiastic nod.
And true of me as well, spacers, Daniel thought, but it wouldn’t do to say that. Aloud he continued, “I do expect you to do your job to my satisfaction and to the satisfaction of my officers. If you can manage that, then the Bagarian Republic is going to get a lot more than its money’s worth out of you. Now, tell me what you know.”
“Well, you see I’d been a gunner’s mate on the Vickie Lu when the wogs grabbed her on Schumer’s Pisspot,” Canedo said. “The wogs let common spacers enlist, but since I had a rating they kept me behind barb wire even though I wasn’t an Alliance citizen. After you lot arrived, though, Ship and Rig went through the camp and pulled out folks they figured were okay. And I am, sir, I swear it!”
“Go on,” Daniel said, smiling faintly. He’d made Woetjans and Pasternak responsible for crewing the heavy ships of the squadron. He had enough to do himself without worrying about the crew situation unless somebody brought it to him as a problem. His senior warrant officers were too competent and too proud to do that.
“Well, you see,” Canedo said, “what the wogs put us prisoners to doing was making these missiles—”
He rang his knuckles on the partially opened round beside him.
“—if you want to call ‘em that. And sir, there’s some of the crew from the Vickie Lu as think the sun rises outa Guarantor Porra’s butt every morning. I told Mister Borries that—”
“He’s got missile training, Cap’n,” Borries said eagerly. “I’d like to make him my striker, if you don’t mind.”
“Granted,” Daniel said. “Go on, Canedo.”
“Well, Mister Borries thought we oughta take a look for ourself. And we did.”
“Take a look here, Cap’n,” Borries said, leaning into the access port and pointing with his right index finger. Canedo reached in through the next opening to the left and lifted the trouble light so that it better illuminated the feed line to which the missileer was pointing. “Just look at this!”
The line was extruded from light metal; not as good as copper or the high-density polymer which RCN missiles would use, but adequate for the present purpose. The lines wouldn’t have time to fracture from vibration in the intended use.
Somebody’d crushed this one flat in the middle with a pair of heavy pliers. No water would flow through it to feed the thruster.
“I figure they’re all like this, sir,” Borries said. “This or something else as bad. Only I wanted to tell you before I started taking the rest of ‘em apart.”
“You did right, Borries,” Daniel said. “And you did very well, Canedo.”
After a momentary pause he said, “You can fix them? I’ll tell Pasternak to give you technicians if you like.”
“I guess Canedo and me can do it, Cap’n,” the missileer said. His expression didn’t look happy so much as it did anguished, but Daniel was willing to bet it was meant for a smile. “I’ll tell Ship if we need help, then.”
“Then I’ll get out of your way, Borries,” Daniel said, turning on his heel. As he started back toward the bridge, began whistling, When I was a young man, young man, young man . . .
He could either become furious at Master David Power, whose fiddle had saved him a few hundred florins in labor charges and bid fair to cost his nation a major victory; or he could smile cheerfully because his make-do crew was shaping up so nicely.
He was Daniel Leary: he smiled.
Then I met a young girl, young girl, young girl . . . he whistled.
ABOVE CHURCHYARD
Adele sat poised at her console. Because she used her own data unit as an interface, she wasn’t handicapped when she changed from the Sissie’s recently upgraded electronics to the cruiser’s much older systems.
Realistically, differences in displays, input devices, and operating systems never slowed her down when she was on the track of information; not to a degree that any onlooker would’ve noticed it. Still, she was a conservative person and would rather have things the same than not.
“Preparing to extract from the Matrix in thirty seconds,” Liu announced from the BDC.
Adele felt the quiver of charges building as the Ladouceur neared the end of its short hop from the outskirts of the Churchyard System. The Independence and DeMarce had reached the rendezvous without difficulty; that was almost a given with Vesey and Blantyre plotting the courses. Only seven of the eleven light craft had arrived, though Daniel seemed to think they’d be sufficient. She smiled: indeed, he’d said he’d be amazed to find as many as nine.
Adele smiled more broadly; almost as broadly as what an ordinary person would call a smile. One change that she didn’t in the least regret was being adopted into the RCN family. There were costs to the association, physical and mental ones both, but Daniel Leary and the RCN had sav
ed her life. More important, they’d given her a reason to live.
“Extracting-g-g . . .” moaned a voice dehumanized by the process of returning to the sidereal universe. The interior lights sharpened, the displays swelled to life now that the Ladouceur wasn’t in a bubble universe shut off from every other human artifact, and the five turrets squealed as Sun slewed them toward real targets.
Adele didn’t care what Sun did or Daniel did, and for that matter she didn’t care very much about whether a missile was about to blast the Ladouceur into dust and ions. Other people, friends and enemies alike, had duties for which they were responsible; that was fine. Adele Mundy would focus on her duty, which right now involved learning everything possible about Alliance ships on and about Churchyard.
The Ladouceur was 103,000 miles out from the planet and displaying very little proper motion to it. Daniel had placed them a little east to the perpendicular of Hafn Teobald, the Alliance naval base, so that Churchyard’s rotation would keep the target in view for the longest possible time even if the cruiser didn’t maneuver.
That was Daniel’s problem; Adele’s first act was to tap into the planetary network of weather satellites. That gave her day and night coverage of Churchyard’s surface at a level of detail that was more than adequate for the present purposes. The system could be shut down but probably wouldn’t be, at least not before she’d found another path to continuous surveillance.
With the future provided for, Adele surveyed the ships in harbor below. That hadn’t been her first priority because she knew it’d be Daniel’s. He was better at optical identification than she was anyway. In this case, the electronic signatures would only confirm what the captain’d already learned.
Three freighters, one of them gutted for use as a warehouse and accommodation ship, were anchored parallel to the harbor’s northern shore. In two of the six slips on the south side were a large modern destroyer, the Cesare Rossarol, and the missile boat S81.
