The Way to Glory

by David Drake

  "Yes, that's right," Adele said with a degree of reserve that almost certainly wasn't justified, given the lieutenant's friendly enthusiasm. She was a cautious, reserved person. She saw no point in trying to change the personality that was natural to her and which had kept her alive in circumstances which had been fatal to others.

  "Well by heaven!" the lieutenant said, reaching out to clasp Adele's hand in greeting. "I'm Paolo Zileri. Danny and I were great friends at the Academy. I've been looking forward to seeing him once I got this commo mess cleaned up. By heaven!"

  "If you're satisfied now, Lieutenant," said Commander Rittenhouse, "then I'll return to my duties."

  He disappeared into his office without waiting for an answer. The door closed and the dissonant music resumed.

  Zileri snorted. Adele merely let an almost-grin lift a corner of her mouth. If Rittenhouse hadn't spoken, nobody would've noticed he was leaving. . . .

  "Look, Mundy," Zileri said. "I know this is an imposition, but is there any chance you can fix this for us? It's not your duty, but it'll be me and Hernandez otherwise. Even with you telling us where the problem is, I'm not . . . well, I don't think Hernandez is up to the job and I know I'm not."

  Adele thought for a moment. She had nothing to do aboard the Hermes at the moment, and her duties to Mistress Sand weren't pressing in the sense that the delay of an hour would make a difference.

  "Yes, all right," she said. "We'll take care of that immediately."

  She started out of the Communications Center beside Zileri. "Mind," she added. "I'm not guaranteeing that I've diagnosed the real problem."

  "But knowing Mistress Mundy . . ." said Tovera unexpectedly from behind them. "I'm sure that she will have solved the problem before we leave. I'm as sure as I am of death."

  That was, Adele thought, another joke. In its way. In a way she shared with Tovera.

  CHAPTER 11

  Sinmary Port on Nikitin

  An enlisted spacer flew Lieutenant Zileri with Adele and Tovera back to the Garnet in the vessel's small aircar. The patrol cruiser was good-sized, nominally of three thousand tons displacement—the same as the Hermes, though arranged in a cigar shape rather than the tender's uncommon dumbbell. Even to eyes as inexpert as Adele's, the Garnet looked worn.

  The ship had eight rings of antennas. Each should've had four masts—dorsal and ventral, port and starboard. Starboard Three and Four were missing, and it seemed likely there were other gaps in the Port and Ventral rows which Adele couldn't see from her present angle.

  She thought it was an illusion that the cruiser was riding lower on the starboard side than on the port, but when the aircar settled to the quay she saw it was actually true. Spacers and others who wore the dull blue of ground staff—or at any rate, wore scraps of blue uniforms, mostly cut-off and grease-stained—were at work on the starboard outrigger. A large pump powered by its own fusion bottle waited alongside on a flatbed, though it hadn't been hooked up to the outrigger as yet.

  The aircar landed gently on the quay. Mud which ground vehicles had tracked onto the concrete had dried, so a doughnut of dust lifted from beneath the car and straggled away on the gentle breeze.

  One of the men on the outrigger waved to Zileri, then started toward them across one of several catwalks laid for the purpose. He wore a commo helmet and utilities with the sleeves buttoned short.

  "Say, Captain!" Zileri called over the descending whine as the fans slowed. "We're in luck. This is Signals Officer Mundy who's serving with my friend Danny Leary. She's going to fix the commo suite for us!"

  That's getting a little ahead of yourself, Adele thought. But it was certainly what she intended to do . . . and judging from past experience, she'd probably succeed.

  Adele found it difficult to be objective about herself, and her tendency not to trust the future was a learned reflex. You could arrive on Bryce, preparing to begin a lifetime of study, and learn in a few days that you were a penniless orphan. . . .

  "Mistress Mundy," Zileri said, turning to make introductions. "This is Captain Andy Toron, as good an officer as you could hope to serve under. Andy, this is the Sparks who figured out what Cluster HQ wouldn't have in another million years."

  "You're just trying to butter me up in hopes I'll leave you on the ground when we head back to Yang in a few days," Toron said. He was a short man—barely taller than Adele's five-feet five-inches—but in extremely good physical condition. It was obviously something he worked at. "No such luck."

  "Aw, don't even joke about that," Zileri said, walking with Adele and the Captain to the boarding ramp just down the quay. Tovera followed behind. "We ought to be able to go two, maybe three months before we're up for that duty again, right?"

  "I wish it was joke," Toron grumbled. "No, it's not. Kwo, the consular agent on Yang, sent a dispatch by freighter just after we left. Seems the government captured a couple hundred mercenaries from Burwood fighting with the rebels. They're Cinnabar citizens, so he wants a naval vessel to free and repatriate them. And you heard they managed to half-sink the Corny landing her?"

  "Yeah, how'd they do that?" Zileri said. They strode up the ramp, Adele between the two officers and Tovera a pace behind. The internal hatches were all open, so the entrance hold echoed with the sound of tools and the calls of those using them.

  "Hell if I know," Toron said. "What matters is that the crews of the Cutlass and Chrissie are fully committed to raising the Corny, so guess who that leaves to take care of the situation on Yang? Again!"

  They entered a companionway and started up. A rainbow-colored animal the length of Adele's hand swooped through the air past her. She started instinctively.

  "Aw, don't let the lizards bother you, mistress," Zileri said. "They keep the cockroaches down, as much as anything can anyhow."

  He muttered a curse and added, "I wish somebody'd downed that bastard Kwo on Yang before he sent that stupid report, though. Who the hell cares if a few wogs from Burwood get whacked on Yang? They took their chances, right?"

  "Look, if you wanted to make citizenship policy for the Republic, you shouldn't have joined the RCN," Toron said wearily. The two officers were letting off steam, not really arguing. "And don't blame Kwo. He did us a favor, tried to anyhow. He probably had that report before we lifted, but he held it a day figuring somebody else would get a turn in the barrel instead of keeping us on Yang."

  They came out on A Deck. The main corridor and the bridge just forward of the companionway were much better lighted than the companionways. For an instant, the bulkheads seemed to shiver; then Adele realized she was seeing a wave of large cockroaches scurrying away.

  Another lizard, this one bright yellow, ran a few steps along the bulkhead before launching itself on flaps of translucent membrane stretched by its three pairs of legs. It snapped up a roach on the fly and sailed back to perch on a ventilator grating. The roach's wing covers fluttered to the deck.

  "They make good pets," Zileri said, following Adele's eyes. "Once you get used to them, anyhow."

  "And there's nothing else for the roaches," Toron said. "Venting to vacuum doesn't kill the egg cases, and you can't use poisons when you've got to recycle your air for God knows how long."

  The entered the bridge. The bosun seated at the command console turned and said, "Sir?"

  "Stay where you are, Gorney," the Captain said. "I'm just bringing Sparks from the Hermes to take a look at our commo."

  The only other crew member was a young, intense-looking man with Signals Branch lightning bolts on his lapels. He had a wiring schematic on his display, but from his scowl it wasn't helping him a great deal. At Toron's words, he turned with a look of relief and said, "You think you can fix it? Because I been tearing my hair out since we got back from Jacobean way last year. I can't find a bloody thing wrong!"

  "I'll try," said Adele. "If I can—"

  She hadn't gotten the request out before the signaller, Hernandez she remembered—the name tape on his utilities was too faded to read
—jumped from his console. "Please!" he said. "Any bloody thing you want. You want me to dance on the maintop, I'll do it if that'll get the commo suite fixed."

  "I don't think it'll require that," Adele said with a faint smile as she seated herself at the console. She brought out her personal data unit. For most tasks she found it quicker to use the little unit with her wands as a controller coupled to the primary system, rather than to adjust herself to a console set up in an unfamiliar way.

  The display blurred; another yellow lizard—this one with a bright red tail—had sailed through the air-formed hologram, distorting it. Adele was by no means sure that she'd get used to the creatures, though it seemed that she might have to if the Hermes remained here on station for the year or more she expected.

  "Say, you heard we're going back to Yang, didn't you, Lieutenant?" the signaller said to Zileri as Adele completed linking her unit to the console. "D'ye suppose we'll have to fight this rebel cruiser?"

  "Any fighting we do's going to be trading shots on the ground, Hernandez," Captain Toron said. "And our problem's with President Shin's government, anyway. Not that there's much difference I can see."

  "This batch of rebels have an old Baltoon post ship, Mundy," Lieutenant Zileri explained as Adele cascaded the data across her holographic display. The trick was finding the correct directory since you couldn't trust the descriptions which other people had given the information. "They armed her and call her the Beacon of Yang, but long odds she couldn't lift into orbit. It's just bragging."

  "Everything on Yang's just bragging," Toron said in a resigned voice. "Bragging and dirt. Every kind of dirt there is."

  Adele had the navigation directory. The headers were alphanumerical, nonsense groupings so far as she was concerned, but by checking for times of entry she quickly set out the inputs occurring at just over six standard months and just over five. She opened the first.

  "We'd be saving ourselves time if we slagged this Beacon while it's on the ground," Zileri said with a touch of enthusiasm. "If we make a pass over the area, you know they'll shoot at us. Bloody hell, they shoot at refugee ships! We've got a right to shoot back, right?"

  "The trouble is, they've got anti-ship missiles in place around the Beacon," Toron said. "That was in Kwo's report, too. Mind, I wouldn't be surprised if he'd brokered the missiles to the rebels himself. The cruiser, so called, that's no threat to us, but a sheaf of hittiles through our Power Room and it's all over."

  The astrogational data in the file proper meant nothing to Adele, but the format sidebar was clear—and was clearly the problem. She made a series of quick changes then shifted to the next similar input.

  "Maybe we could come in at low level?" Zileri said, not so much hopefully as in the tone of a man toying with a puzzle. "Of course, if we've got to trick them into shooting at us, it doesn't help to take them by surprise so they can't."

  The navigational update five-plus months back appeared to be the only one that had changed defaults. Perhaps it'd been compiled at a different location? Though it might be as simple as someone going on vacation and his standard task being handled by a different person.

  "They're on Big Florida Island," Toron said. "We'll just route around them into and out of Heavenly Peace. If they ever do get the Beacon into space, she'll be easy enough to deal with then."

  "All right," said Adele, sliding her wands into their carrying case, then getting up from the console. "I've corrected the problem, I believe. Mister Hernandez, if you and Lieutenant Zileri will take a look at the file, I'll show you where to make the correction if the problem recurs after a later astrogational update."

  Hernandez slipped into the seat Adele had just vacated. "All right," he muttered. He highlighted the change in the file history without needing Adele to point it out. "All right, yes! Mundy, this is brilliant!"

  "You can test it by setting the computer to run an astrogational problem, anything at all so long as it's running," Adele said to the two commissioned officers. "And use your commo for normal traffic. But I don't think you'll have a problem."

  Captain Toron beamed. "Say, Mundy," he said. "You wouldn't like a transfer to the Garnet, would you? She doesn't look like much, but she's a regular little money-spinner for her crew. We took, retook from pirates I mean, a freighter a couple months ago with a million and a half florins of anti-aging drugs aboard."

  "Thank you," Adele said as she returned her data unit to its pocket. "But I think I'll stay with the Hermes."

  "Anything we can do for you another time, then, mistress," said Toron. "It's hard enough duty here in the Cluster even when we help each other, and you've sure helped us."

  "Yeah," Zileri said. "And I don't want to explain to Danny how we snatched away the magician he's got for a Sparks. Well, that Captain Slidell has, I guess."

  "You were right the first time," Tovera said in a dry voice as she followed Adele toward the companionways.

  A lizard with blue legs and a bright green body sprinted along the corridor ahead of them squeaking, then launched itself and curved through the hatch airborne. The squeaks echoed faintly after the creature itself had disappeared.

  Adele smiled faintly. Yes, Zileri had been right the first time.

  * * *

  The only thing the Raynham mother and daughter had agreed on was that the other wasn't going to sit beside Lieutenant Leary, so Daniel rode in the front of the aircar with Buscaigne. The sea breeze was fitful with occasional gusts over the steep edge of the island that made flying tricky, but Buscaigne set the vehicle down with an expert fluff of the fans.

  "Admiral Daudell built this parking area when he opened out the Grand Gallery," Celia said brightly. "It'd become quite overgrown, though, till dear Zita had it and the Gallery too cleaned up for the ball she gave last Republic Day. Zita really takes an interest in our little community, not like some earlier Admirals."

  Admiral Milne was personally wealthy from her eighth of all prizes taken by the Gold Dust Squadron, so she might very well have hired farm laborers or civilian personnel from the port when they were off duty to clean and renovate the gallery and its attendant facilities. If that's what she'd done, Daniel would cheerfully add his praise to Lady Raynham's.

  The chances were, though, that Milne had simply detailed spacers from the ships under her command to do the work. That was what admirals did, after all; and so did other powerful people, including politicians like Speaker Leary. It was the way of the world, and Daniel didn't lose sleep protesting it . . . but the fact that spacers were prettying up the landscape for a party instead of pulling maintenance on their vessels might have something to do with the failure that left the Cornelwood half-sunk in the harbor.

  Celia Raynham sat directly behind Daniel. Buscaigne hopped out of the car while the fans were still spinning and trotted around the front to get to her before Daniel could.

  "Allow me to hand you out, my dear!" he said firmly. Given that Daniel had no more desire to touch the lady than he wanted to be embraced by one of the giant amoebas from the harbor, he heartily approved of Buscaigne's procedure.

  "And will you be my gallant, Danny?" Ginny Raynham said, holding her arm out over the side of the aircar in invitation.

  "Yes," said her mother. "Dear Geneva really does need someone to take care of her. She has scarcely a bean of her own, poor thing, just the tiny trust fund Lord Raynham settled on her before he passed. All the rest came to me."

  Daniel set his arm for Ginny to take as she stepped lightly from the vehicle. He didn't imagine Celia thought money was of any real significance to him—certainly not in anything having to do with women. She was just making a point of being nasty, rather as Ginny did about Celia's age. Like mother, like daughter, he supposed; though probably Adele would say something harsher about humanity in general.

  He smiled. And that harsh judgment might be right; but that was Adele, not him. What he felt about the present situation was that Ginny Raynham was a very attractive girl who was determined to get to kno
w him better—for a time.

  Daniel looked about. The island's margin stood ten or twelve feet above the sea here; take two steps southward from the parking area and you'd drop straight into the water. The ground across a gully on the north side of the area sloped upward, though by no means steeply by the standards of most planets. Daniel saw the mouth of a cave not far up the hillside.

  The roof of the rambling Admiral's Mansion was in sight a quarter mile to the east, but the intervening terrain was native forest. A path led along the seafront from the port housing to the parking area. There was probably a spur up to the mansion, but Daniel hadn't noticed it as they flew here from the harbor.

  A metal footpath, this one a full five feet wide, dropped into the gully before rising into the woods. It'd been freshly repaired. Daniel started down it with Ginny clinging to his arm. Behind them he heard Buscaigne and Lady Raynham speaking in low voices; the words were unintelligible but both sounded peevish.

  To Daniel's surprise, the path kinked to the left instead of continuing toward the opening he'd spotted from the parking area. "Isn't it this way?" he said doubtfully, pointing into the woods with his free hand. From this angle he couldn't see the cave, but he thought he could find it easily enough.

  "No, no, follow the path, Leary," Buscaigne called in a tone barely within the bounds of politeness. The mesh flexed with his weight and that of Lady Raynham as they followed the younger couple. "Do you think we're such bumpkins here on Sinmary that we'd build a track off to nowhere?"

  Daniel grinned instead of bristling. The gibe had called to his mind the only circumstances in which he could visualize Buscaigne doing physical work: as part of a prison labor gang, preferably chained to other convicts.

  Ginny leaned her left breast against Daniel's arm as she pointed up the slope. "Those are the Wormholes up there, Danny," she said. "There's ever so many of them, but they don't really go anywhere. They're like a ball of knotted string."