The Road of Danger

by David Drake

  The circular bench was cracked, seriously enough that Adele moved the width of her buttocks to the right. That in turn meant that the line from her to the cherub no longer extended through the building’s main door. The lack of symmetry made her momentarily furious.

  She smiled suddenly. Daniel said, “Adele?”

  “Admiral Cox made me angrier than I realized,” Adele said, looking at her friend. She felt the smile still quivering on her lips; it wasn’t a feeling she was familiar with. “I’m still angry, it appears. That’s reasonable, but planning to shoot the head off a statue because it’s in the wrong place — ”

  She indicated the cherub, deliberately using her left hand: her gun hand.

  “ — is as foolish as the admiral himself.”

  Daniel looked from Adele to the statue — it was dull gray metal, probably lead — and then back to the tunic pocket where Adele kept her pistol. “I suggest you use a heavier weapon,” he said. “Or I suppose we could move closer?”

  Adele kept silent for a moment. Then she said, her voice as dry as Daniel’s own, “Thank you. I’ll continue to review my options.”

  She cleared her throat and went on. “The Macotta Region remained quiet during most of the war. The regional squadrons are small compared to the volume for which they’re responsible, and both Cox and his opposite numbers are more concerned about being out of position if the enemy attacked than they were of attacking the enemy. But seven years ago, Captain Baines swept through the Funnel with a fast-cruiser squadron drawn from the Cinnabar Home Fleet.”

  “Right,” said Daniel. “A stunt, really. Baines did quite a lot of damage to shipping, but it wasn’t significant because nothing in the Funnel is significant. He stressed all his ships and lost the Grey in a landing accident because her thrusters had limed up.”

  He shrugged. “I gather it was good for morale, though,” he said. “On Cinnabar itself, that is. I don’t think there was a single regional commander who didn’t think he had a better use for a couple of Baines’ eight cruisers than to send them off to the back of beyond.”

  “Yes,” said Adele. “In any case, there’s a rumor that Freedom is an officer from Baines’ squadron, left behind either by accident or deliberately to rouse a rebellion. That is why the Alliance demanded that we repatriate our citizen and probably why Xenos tasked the RCN rather than the governor’s office.”

  She remembered Daniel’s raid on the Pleasaunce Home System in the ancient Ladouceur. Because of Adele’s training, she had initially believed in factors she could tabulate: tonnage, missiles, cannon, date of construction. Experience had taught her that personnel, not hardware, won battles.

  “I don’t recall Commander Ruffin mentioning that this rebel is an RCN officer,” Daniel said thoughtfully.

  “It’s possible that she considers the possibility as ridiculous as I do,” Adele said. She saw no need to keep the contempt out of her voice. Besides, she supposed she would have been just as tart if the commander were part of the discussion. “More likely, she’s as clueless as the people on Pleasaunce and Xenos who accepted the unfounded rumor to begin with. Other than the fact that Captain Baines passed within approximately thirty light-years of Sunbright some three years before the rebellion started, there’s no connection.”

  “Then there’s no way to track the fellow?” Daniel said. “I thought that if he really were one of Baines’ officers, you could . . . Well, I’ve seen what you can do with a database. And Sunbright’s population is probably under a million, isn’t it?”

  “Eight hundred and ninety-three thousand,” Adele replied absently — from memory; she didn’t have to break into the stream of data crossing her display. “Though I’d expect that figure to be low. Sunbright didn’t really have a central government until the Alliance imposed one while the base was under construction, and most of the existing population regards the new officials as an occupying force.”

  She looked up from her display and met Daniel’s eyes. She realized that she felt good. “Daniel,” she said, “I think this will really be a challenge. I’m rather excited about the prospect. Shall we get back to the Sissie? I’d like to talk this over with Cory and Cazelet. That is — if you don’t mind?”

  Strictly speaking, Adele had no authority over commissioned officers — Cory was a lieutenant — or even a midshipman like Cazelet. Both men had an instinct for information gathering, which on-the-job training with Adele had honed to a fine edge.

  As a practical matter, everyone aboard the Princess Cecile jumped when Adele forgot herself and said, “Jump!” She tried to hold to RCN proprieties, though — when that didn’t interfere with her accomplishing the task before her.

  “Yes, of course,” said Daniel, rising. While at rest he looked pudgy, but he didn’t need to use his arms to help lift himself from the uncomfortably deep bench. “Ah — I realize it isn’t properly our concern anymore, but do you think the local Naval Intelligence section will be able to handle the business on Tattersall?”

  “Yes, of course,” Adele said — more curtly than she intended. Her mind was on the next several stages in the process of locating Freedom and getting him off Sunbright. “When two RCN battleships appear over the planet, the plotters will fall all over themselves to inform on their friends before their friends inform on them. That’s what happened when the Three Circles Conspiracy unravelled, you’ll remember.”

  That’s what happened when your father unravelled the Three Circles Conspiracy, she thought. And in the process of doing so wiped out the Mundy family — with the exception of the elder daughter, Adele, who was studying off-planet.

  “I bow to your expertise,” Daniel said mildly.

  Adele felt her lips form a tight smile again. Hunting down Freedom was a proper task for a person of her skills, so she would do it. But she hadn’t forgotten Admiral Cox and his aide, either. They had behaved discourteously to fellow RCN officers.

  And one of those officers was Mundy of Chatsworth, who was no longer a helpless orphan.

  CHAPTER 3

  Holm on Kronstadt

  The vehicle Hogg had found for them was a surface car with friction drive — a roller on a single central strut — but an air-cushion suspension. Adele, in the backseat with Daniel, didn’t know what the advantage or claimed advantage was over vectored thrust like the armored personnel carriers which had become familiar to her, but no doubt there was one.

  “It rides very smoothly,” Daniel said approvingly but perhaps with a touch of wonder.

  Adele sniffed. Hogg had a remarkable facility for finding vehicles, but they never rode smoothly when he drove them. This car had the logo of the Macotta Regional Authority on its front doors. She doubted that Hogg had simply stolen it, but anything was possible with that old poacher.

  “And just in case you was wondering how this happened to show up,” Hogg said, patting the fascia plate with his left hand; they swerved toward but not quite into a heavy truck speeding along the other lane of Dock Street with a load of frozen sheep carcasses. “We’re testing her for the repair depot, and it’s all open and aboveboard.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, Hogg,” Daniel said, smiling but definitely sounding as though he meant the words. “And I’m also glad not to have to walk back from headquarters.”

  We were apparently all thinking the same thing, Adele realized. Well, by now we know one another well enough to be able to predict certain responses.

  “Ah,” said Hogg, this time without turning his head toward his master in the backseat. “Your liquor cabinet’s short of a couple bottles of that apple brandy you picked up on Armagnac. There wasn’t time enough to get into a poker game, but I can find something to replace the booze by tomorrow morning, I figure.”

  Adele’s personal data unit balanced on her lap while she sorted the information which she had trolled in squadron headquarters. She shifted to a cultural database with her control wands, then said, “The local liquor is plum brandy. There appear to be better brands and
worse ones, but from commentaries I’ve found, I think absolute alcohol from the Power Room would be a better choice than the low end of the spectrum.”

  She scrolled farther down and added, “In fact, I think paint stripper would be a better choice than the low end.”

  “Perhaps Hogg and I could arrange a taste test,” said Tovera, the first words she had spoken since she arrived beside Hogg. “I’m sure there’s paint stripper we could requisition from squadron stores. Or — ”

  She paused. Tovera was short, slim, and colorless, a less memorable person to look at than even her mistress.

  “ — perhaps I could get it by killing the supply clerk and everyone else in the warehouse.”

  Hogg guffawed. “Spoiled for choice, aren’t we?” he said.

  Daniel grinned also, but Adele noticed that the humor had taken a moment to replace a perfectly blank expression. Tovera was an intelligent sociopath. She had neither conscience nor emotions, but a strong sense of self-preservation made up for those absences.

  Tovera had learned to make jokes by studying how normal human beings created humor. Similarly, she functioned in society generally by copying the behavior of those whose judgment she trusted.

  Tovera trusted Adele. If Adele told her to slaughter everyone in a warehouse — or anywhere else — the only question Tovera might ask was whether her mistress had any preference for the method she used.

  “I’m sure,” Adele said in the present silence, “that if I do ask Tovera to wipe out a nursery school, I’ll have a very good reason for it.”

  The men laughed, and Tovera smiled with appreciation.

  Hogg thrust the steering yoke hard to the left, sliding neatly between the tail and nose of a pair of heavy trucks in the oncoming lane. Adele blinked. A stranger might have thought that it was a skilled though dangerous maneuver; she had enough experience of Hogg’s driving to know that he’d simply ignored other traffic.

  They had pulled onto the quay separating the last two slips — 31 and 32 — in the Kronstadt Naval Basin. They sped past a squadron repair ship — which was undergoing repair herself; all twelve of her High Drive motors were lined up beside her on the concrete — and pulled to a halt beside the corvette — and sometimes private yacht — Princess Cecile.

  “Welcome home, boys and girls!” Hogg said. He gestured toward the ship with the air of a conjurer.

  The Sissie lay on her side like a fat, twelve-hundred-tonne cigar. Within, the corvette had five decks parallel to her axis; the bridge was on A — the topmost — Level in the bow, and the Battle Direction Center with its parallel controls and personnel was at the stern end of the corridor.

  At present the dorsal turret, near the bow with two 4-inch plasma cannon, was raised to provide more internal volume. The ventral turret, offset toward the stern, was underwater and therefore out of sight.

  Adele put her personal data unit away and got out. Instead of going to the catwalk immediately, she stood for a moment looking toward the Princess Cecile over the car’s roof.

  Adele had first seen the corvette cruising slowly above Kostroma City, launching skyrockets and Roman candles from her open hatches as part of the Founder’s Day festivities. Then the vessel was merely an object: large, noisy, and unpleasantly bright to look at. Adele now knew that to save spectators’ eyesight, the Sissie’s thruster nozzles had been flared to reduce the intensity of her plasma exhaust, but at the time the light had seemed to stab through her slitted eyelids.

  Since then, Adele had spent almost as much time on or about the corvette as she had away from it. With Daniel as captain, they had fought battleships, entered enemy bases, and travelled to the edges of the human universe.

  At various times the ship’s rigging had been burned off, it had lost the outriggers on which it floated following a water landing, and portions of its hull had been melted, dented, or holed. After each battle the rebuilt Princess Cecile had arisen as solid as before, ready to take her captain and crew to the next crisis.

  Hogg was joking, but the Princess Cecile really was more of a home than Adele had ever had on land.

  “Hey, Six?” called a Power Room tech, one of the four spacers in the guard detail at the head of the boarding bridge. “They’ve got a real flap on here. Every bloody ship in the harbor’s working up her thrusters and taking stores aboard.”

  Adele instinctively reached for her data unit to check the name of the speaker, a squat, androgynous woman who was cradling a submachine gun. Her face was familiar, but Adele didn’t connect names and faces very well.

  Daniel grinned and said, “As well they should be, Damion. Thanks to the fast run that you on the ship side and the riggers both made possible, the Macotta Squadron is able to lift in time to prevent another war.”

  Adele’s lips twisted wryly. Though she wasn’t good with flesh-and-blood people, she’d never had a problem keeping authors and their respective documents straight.

  The boarding bridge was a twenty-foot aluminum catwalk extending from the concrete quay to the Princess Cecile’s starboard outrigger. There it met the ship’s boarding ramp — the main entry hatch in its fully lowered position.

  Three pontoons supported the catwalk. It was wide enough for two people to walk abreast, but Adele knew that Daniel in the lead and Tovera following closely behind were both ready to grab her if she started to topple into the water.

  Hogg, at the rear of the short procession, swam like a fish. He would drag Adele up from the bottom of the slip if that were required . . . and would dive down again after her data unit if it somehow had slipped out of its pocket. Every member of the Sissie’s crew knew that Adele would rather be stripped naked than to lose her data unit.

  “I was thinking, master,” Hogg called. “If you weren’t going to need the car right away, this might be a good time for me to top off the liquor cabinet.”

  Daniel turned and stepped aside for Adele as he reached the ramp. “Officer Mundy?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. She hadn’t spoken of the course of action she had planned while sorting data from the headquarters’ computers.

  Adele stepped onto the ramp. It was thick steel and seemed as solid as the continent itself after the queasy flexing of the catwalk.

  “I’m sorry, Hogg,” she said over her shoulder. She spoke loud enough for Daniel to hear, but the question was really the servant’s. “Captain Leary and I will be going into town as soon as he’s changed out of his Whites and I’ve briefed Cory and Cazelet. We’re going to visit Bernhard Sattler, the merchant who acts as honorary consul for the Alliance on Kronstadt. I hope that Sattler will give us information that will help with the mission we’ve been assigned.”

  And whether or not Sattler is consciously helpful, I expect that the data I draw from his files will prove useful.

  * * * *

  Daniel had changed into a second-class uniform — gray with black piping — because that was the proper garb for visiting a civilian of no particular importance, but it was also a great deal more comfortable than his Dress Whites. At this point Adele was in charge because she had a plan; he was following her orders. He was pleased that she had ordered him to wear his Grays, though.

  He wasn’t sure why Tovera was driving while Hogg sat beside her in the front seat; presumably it was something the two of them had worked out. Hogg liked to drive, but nobody — his master included — wanted to ride with him a second time. Driving gave Hogg great pleasure, though, and Daniel loved as well as valued the man. Hogg was his servant, certainly; but he was also Daniel’s father in the non-biological sense.

  “Kronstadt doesn’t have formal diplomatic representation with the Alliance,” Adele said, her eyes on the display she was manipulating. Daniel didn’t imagine that what she was looking at had anything to do with what she was saying: the ride to Sattler’s warehouse was simply an opportunity to give him background while she delved much deeper herself. “An honorary consul is a private citizen with an Alliance connection of some sort. He helps Alliance citizens who
are having problems. Our External Bureau calls the equivalent official a consular agent.”

  “He helps spacers who’ve been rolled and missed their ships?” Daniel said. “That sort of thing?”

  Adele shrugged without, Daniel noticed, affecting the way her control wands moved. She claimed the angle and position of the wands provided her with quicker, subtler control of her holographic display than any other form of input device.

  Daniel believed her, but the only other people he had seen using wands were Adele’s protégés Cazelet and Cory. From their expressions as they struggled, they didn’t get the results Adele did.

  “Yes, usually spacers,” she said toward the blur of light that coalesced at the point where her own eyes focused, “but it can be any Alliance citizen who’s been robbed or has some other kind of legal problem. From information in the regional computers, I believe I can find a great deal more in Master Sattler’s own files.”

  Tovera swung the car so wide around dining tables outside a restaurant that Daniel was afraid that they would scrape the front of the shop on the opposite side of the street of segmented paving blocks. Buildings in this older section of Holm — along the river, the original starship harbor — were faced with pastel stucco. Enough of the covering had flaked off to show that the walls beneath were brick or stone, definitely not things to drive into with a plastic-bodied vehicle.

  About the best thing one could say about Tovera’s driving was that her collisions were likely to be at much slower speeds than those of Hogg. She was mechanically overcautious instead displaying Hogg’s incompetent verve.

  Daniel coughed to clear his throat. Something must have showed in his expression, because Adele glanced toward him and said, “I expected to face danger in the RCN. I hadn’t appreciated how much of it would involve riding in vehicles which my shipmates were driving.”