by David Drake
Shin's female guards were pressing closer, forcing the spacers into a tight arc around Daniel and the edge of the dais. The women weren't hostile, at least overtly, but there were too many of them for the space and they wanted to hear what was going on.
They couldn't possibly hear over their own echoing shuffles, whispers and clinking equipment. The smell of the hall was overpowering.
"You came to save Cinnabar citizens, that's what you're telling me?" Shin said, spinning the chaplet on his joined index fingers. He didn't look angry any more. Daniel had a suspicion that the President for Life wasn't the stupid savage he'd assumed.
"That's correct, your excellency," Daniel said. He had to raise his voice to be heard, even as close as he stood, but he tried to pitch it so that the volume didn't make it threatening. "It's a principle of the greatest importance to my republic."
"If you want to save Cinnabar citizens," Shin said, "then you can save my great friend Maria Mondindragiana. The rebels captured her in her villa and took her to Big Florida Island. You bring back Maria and I'll give you my prisoners. There!"
Shin straightened, looking smug.
Daniel kept his face blank for a moment as he thought. "Your excellency," he said, "do you mean that Mistress Mondindragiana is a Cinnabar citizen?"
"Of course she is!" said the President. Daniel could barely hear him. "She comes from Waystation. That makes her a Cinnabar citizen."
It certainly does not, Daniel thought. Waystation was a Cinnabar protectorate, but only a quarter of the residents were actually citizens of the Republic. This wasn't the time to halt negotiations for a records search, however.
"We'll operate on the assumption that she's a citizen, then," Daniel said aloud. "What else can you tell me about how the lady's being held?"
"She's on Big Florida Island!" Shin said, petulant again. "What do I know about what goes on there? The rebels stole her and I want her back, that's all that matters. You bring her back, all right?"
He set the chaplet on his head. This time it remained balanced.
"And one more thing," the President said. "You bring her back before Liberation Day, you hear? That's a week. Because if you don't, I burn those dirt in the stadium to teach other dirt not to fight against me!"
Daniel saluted again. "Very well, your excellency," he said. "We'll proceed immediately with our preparations. Good morning to you!"
"Make way for the respectful envoy of Cinnabar, leaving to carry out the instructions of President for Life Shin!" the loudspeaker shouted. "All hail the friendship between the Democratic Republic of Yang and the Republic of Cinnabar!"
A surge trembled through the packed hall. The women gave way minusculely, enough for the spacers at the key of the arc to start advancing toward the door.
The motion reminded Daniel of the times he'd watched a startled snake regurgitate recent prey. This was better than some outcomes.
Though he had to admit that the thought of attacking the rebel stronghold with thirty-odd spacers and a cutter didn't seem a great deal better than being chewed to death by hundreds of crazy women.
CHAPTER 17
Heavenly Peace on Yang
Adele and her escort picked their way through the streets of Heavenly Peace. Daniel had offered as many armed spacers as she wanted, but that would be threatening in the wrong way. For Adele's purpose, the two servants were better.
Hogg led by three paces; Tovera trailed by the same distance. The premises of Acme Trading Company were within a few blocks of the palace—to the extent that "blocks" were a real concept in this twisting warren—but the state of the streets made the journey seem longer.
Filth wasn't the problem they'd expected: spring tides scoured the streets. The high water marks on the buildings were above what Adele could reach with her arm outstretched. There were more substantial barriers, though: burned-out vehicles, tree trunks swept in on the tides that took out the garbage, and the rubble of a collapsed building. That last had been blown up from the inside, and from the smell there were still human bodies buried in the ruin.
"There it is," Hogg said. "I've seen prisons I liked the look of more."
He carried a stocked impeller ready to use; Tovera held her sub-machine gun openly instead of concealing it within her attaché case. The problems of getting from Cutter 614 to here didn't include the local residents, all of whom had fled or at least hidden at the approach of murderous looking strangers.
Acme Trading Company was a fortress with a walled compound at the left side and to the rear of the main building. The cast-concrete walls hadn't been painted, but the yellow dust of the city'd weathered into their pores. There were no windows on the building's two lower stories; those on the topmost were small and covered with heavy grates.
"Maybe it's a prison for the people outside it," Tovera said. She made a sound like a small reptile laughing. "That would seem justified."
The compound backed onto one of the channels that meandered through the swamp to the harbor after. A barge was tied up there now, under the automatic impeller in the tower above the gate on the water side. A similar gun pointed at the trio from the top of the main building. They tramped on stolidly toward the street door, which put them too close for the gun to bear on them.
A pair of rats—huge things, dappled brown on fawn and weighing at least a pound and a half apiece—were bickering over a rib bone in the door alcove. It was too big for a human rib, Adele thought, though she didn't suppose that mattered.
The rats turned at the approach of Adele and her companions. Instead of fleeing, they hunched down and bared their long chisel teeth, clicking them together.
"Stand aside," Tovera warned quietly.
"Don't shoot!" Adele said over her shoulder. The crackle of the sub-machine gun could bring any kind of frightened response, including a grenade from the guards on the roof of the building.
Hogg had balanced his heavy gun in his left hand. His right made a sidewise motion, snapping out a four-ounce sinker on the end of monocrystal fishing line. He jerked it back as though it'd been a yo-yo. The line curled around the neck of one rat and decapitated it neatly. The blood-spouting corpse sprang in one direction while the living rat ran the other way.
"Well, I guess the bone's ours, Hogg," Tovera said.
"I'm a captain's servant now," Hogg said, dropping the weighted line back in a pocket, but he continued to wear the mesh glove that let him handle the monocrystal without cutting off his own fingers. "I eat better'n that."
Adele smiled faintly. "I wish I could say I always have," she said. "But there've been times I was very poor and very hungry."
And I may be both those things in the future, Adele thought, but I'll never again be without friends. Since now I know what it's like to have friends.
The door was metal and opened outward. The upper hinge sagged, so at some time in the past Acme had had to grind down the stone lintel and dig a trench in the street so that the door's lower edge cleared. There'd once been a peephole, but a thick plate had been welded over it; instead, a video camera was glued to the jamb and connected to the interior with a length of flex snaking up to the third-story window.
"I'm Mundy of Chatsworth," Adele said. She was wearing RCN utilities—she hadn't brought civilian clothes with her on the cutter—but her present business wasn't, strictly speaking, that of a signals officer. "You've been informed that I'm coming. Open your door."
Nothing happened for a moment. Hogg fingered a dimple in the face of the door that a bullet had made; the fragmented projectile had splashed a star around the impact. "What d'ye think, Tovera?" he said. "This must've been a pistol. Would one of these—"
He patted the butt of his impeller.
"—punch clear through, d'ye suppose?"
"I doubt it," Tovera said, giving him a thin-lipped smile. "But you could certainly shoot the hinges off."
They both laughed. What are the people inside thinking? Adele wondered, but that was merely an idle thought: she didn't car
e, not really, about the opinion of Masters Bonn and Herbrand, late of Xenos on Cinnabar but now doing business on Yang as Acme Trading Company.
The door creaked open. Behind the two beefy locals who were doing the considerable labor of pushing it stood a plump, frightened looking man whom Adele recognized as Tre Herbrand from the image in his citizenship file. He was a Lantos native but he'd been granted Cinnabar citizenship by the governor of his home district, the Queen's Globe.
"How are you doing that to our console?" Herbrand demanded. He had rounded features with eyes as close set as a pig's. Adele suspected it wouldn't make her happier to learn what personal services this man had provided the district governor to gain citizenship. "How are you making it play your message? It's shielded!"
"Not very well," Adele said coolly. "Take us into your office and I'll break the loop. It's served its purpose."
She gestured him back with the fingers of her right hand; not the hand resting near the pocket holding her pistol. That was merely habit. Herbrand was no threat and his two laborers were unarmed. A man with a sub-machine gun waited a little way down the hall, but that must be a normal precaution against rats that might come in when the door was open—four legged and two legged both.
"You can't order us to help you," Herbrand said, shuffling quickly down the passage ahead of them. The laborers were squealing the door closed again; the gunman stayed where he was but dipped his head in acknowledgement as they passed. "I wish Bonn was here. He has influence in Xenos, you know. Real influence!"
Boxes and bales were stacked ceiling high on both sides of the room. Along the back wall were a circular staircase, a freight elevator and—partitioned off from the remainder of the volume—an office from which Adele could hear her imagery blaring at high volume. She didn't see anyone else on this floor, but voices echoed down from the upper stories.
"He has no influence with my commanding officer, Speaker Leary's son," Adele said, walking in and seating herself at the merchant's console without asking permission. The machine was some twenty standard years old, obsolete by Xenos standards but quite adequate here. "And more to the point, Master Herbrand, he has no influence with me and it's me that you're going to have to satisfy."
She'd looped an image of President Shin directing Daniel to recover his mistress from the rebels, using video taken from Woetjans' helmet so that Daniel himself in uniform would be visible. At the end she'd cut in a clip of herself telling the proprietors of Acme Trading to expect her within the half hour. She'd entered the fortress through the microwave antenna on its roof. Her feed claimed to be from the Harbormaster's office with information on recent arrivals—information for which the company paid a regular bribe.
It was a neat job, but nothing Adele would get a swelled head over. A proper Alliance military target was better protected by an order of magnitude, and—
Adele allowed herself a satisfied smile as she typed in the code series that returned the console to its owner's control. She didn't even bother to couple her own data unit to do the job.
—she'd penetrated those targets too.
"Well, you still can't threaten us," Herbrand muttered in a despairing attempt at bluster. "Yang is an independent state. You have no authority here."
Hogg chuckled. He took his throwing line from his pocket and used the seat of an upholstered chair for a towel to wipe the monocrystal clean of rat blood. Bits of stuffing flew out and drifted around the room.
"Leaving that question for the moment," Adele said, turning to face the merchant, "I think you should be asking yourself how President for Life Shin will react to hearing that you refuse to help us carry out his request. Given that I'm offering you payment at the rate you'd expect from commercial captains, I'd be surprised at your refusal as well."
"Payment?" Herbrand said in amazement. He stood nervously in the middle of the office. Adele's companions lounged against the walls on either side of him, and Adele remained seated in sedate comfort at his console. "At commercial rates?"
"That's right," Adele agreed. "The transfer will be made from the Gold Dust Cluster secret account to whichever correspondent bank you use on Nikitin. This is public business, you see."
"Oh," said Herbrand. "Oh."
He sat on one of the chairs beside the console and said, "What is it precisely that you'd like from Acme Trading Company, Mistress Mundy? I assure you our rates are competitive with any you'll find on Yang."
"I assure you that's correct," Adele said with a faint smile. "Because I've checked your records for the past three years to determine what those rates are. I'm not here to haggle, sir. But you will be paid."
Herbrand nodded, making a steeple of his hands on his lap. "I'm very pleased to hear that," he said. "In the past, you see, the Admiral—who I know is the only person authorized to use the secret fund—hasn't taken such an interest in affairs on Yang."
"On my honor as a Mundy, the payment will be made," Adele said.
And so it would, though it'd come as rather a surprise to Admiral Milne when she learned that it had. This was an absolutely proper use of secret funds, precisely what the funds were meant for in fact. But had Adele—or worse, Lieutenant Leary—requested a line of credit from them for this mission, the Admiral would've refused angrily.
Adele wouldn't use her information skills to steal any more than she'd use her pistol to rob people in the street. Putting those skills to the purpose of causing others to act as they ought to, however—well, what could be more proper than that?
"As for what we need," Adele continued, "the immediate requirement is for an aircar."
"All right," said Herbrand, nodding and now rubbing his hands together. "Acme has three aircars, there's one that we can lease to you—with proper indemnification against loss, of course."
"You have one aircar that has a reasonable chance of making it to Big Florida Island and back," Tovera said. She giggled. "The twelve-place Metrolight. And I'll try not to lose it."
"Hey, how come you get to drive the aircar?" Hogg said. "I know how to drive one too. We'll roll dice for it."
"You don't know how," Tovera said, "but I learned on Todos Santos while you were partying after we got back from Radiance. And I'd rather bet on the sun rising in the west than against you rolling your own dice."
Herbrand pursed his lips. "Well," he said, "I'm sure we can accommodate you, though with not the Metrolight—not for a trip to Big Florida, especially. The—"
Hogg snicked his folding knife open and stepped closer to the merchant. "You wasn't listening," he said. "The mistress told you we wasn't here to haggle."
"Hogg is quite right, Mister Herbrand," Adele said coldly. "My expert—"
She'd had no idea that Tovera knew how to fly an aircar. She'd been expecting to use Barnes for a driver, hoping against hope that his skills would've improved since the most recent time she'd seen them demonstrated.
"—has chosen the Metrolight, so that's what we'll have."
She coughed slightly, then resumed, "You can think of this as an exercise in eminent domain, if you wish. It's immaterial to me whether you feel the taking is by the government whose citizen you are or that of Yang where you reside, but—"
Adele smiled, very slightly.
"—since we'll pay you and we intend to return the vehicle, I think the situation better fits an action by the Republic of Cinnabar."
"All right, all right," Herbrand said, seemingly more resigned than angry. Hogg closed his knife but didn't move away from the merchant for the moment. "You have no idea how hard it is to get a working aircar to Yang, but all right. Is there anything else you need?"
"Yes," said Adele. "The Republic will use you as our agent to arrange transport for some two hundred Cinnabar citizens back to one of the Burdock Stars. I'm not fussy about which planet they land on. I want them to arrive alive and in good health, but this isn't a luxury cruise. Anything suitable for cattle will be good enough for this purpose."
"Just as well you don't want luxur
y," Herbrand said, "since I'm a businessman, not a wizard. Does it have to be one hull?"
Adele thought. "Yes," she said, "though if there's a significant price difference we'll consider alternatives."
She wished Daniel's sister Deirdre were here, a banker and heir apparent to Corder Leary's business interests. Adele didn't know and didn't care about things like rates and discounts. She knew the words, though, and she knew to use them now because if she didn't Herbrand would sense weakness. Then, because he was . . . not a fool, not exactly, but because he was completely unfamiliar with who he was dealing with, he'd attempt to cheat her.
She was Mundy of Chatsworth. Disrespect for a Mundy would not go unpunished.
Adele rose. "Mister Herbrand?" she said. "A piece of advice for you. I've come to do business in a fashion that provides a fair profit for Acme Trading Company, including an indemnity for replacing your Metrolight if things develop badly. I do not wish to shoot you. But be very clear that I will shoot you if you insult my honor. Do you understand?"
"Don't dirty yourself, mistress," Hogg said, grinning. "Let me'n Tovera take out the trash. She likes it, and I don't mind."
Tovera's laugh didn't sound like it came from a mammal, let alone a human being.
"I hear you," Herbrand said. His voice was quiet and the way his eyes flicked from one servant to the other suggested that he meant what he said.
"We'll return to the cutter now," Adele said. "A party will pick up the aircar in an hour's time. I'll have sent you the necessary credit information by then."
She walked out of the office. This time Tovera was leading while Hogg brought up the rear.
"Mistress Mundy?" Herbrand called.
Adele looked over her shoulder. The merchant stood in the doorway. "Yes?" she said.
"You might be able to come back alive from talking to Generalissimo Ma on Big Florida," Herbrand said. "And I'm more than willing as a businessman, as well as a loyal Cinnabar citizen, to take the Admiral's money for chartering a ship to the Burdocks. But mistress, do you honestly believe you're going to get the President's fancy bit off the island and trade her for those Burdock mercenaries?"
