The Road of Danger

by David Drake

  “So this trip didn’t help us after all?” Daniel said when he was sure that Adele had said all she intended to for the moment. Her data unit was live again.

  “No, I wouldn’t say that,” she said toward her display. “I think the details of Master Sattler’s smuggling enterprises are very useful indeed.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Holm on Kronstadt

  Since Adele wanted Cory and Cazelet present for the discussion because they helped her with intelligence gathering, Daniel had included Vesey, his first lieutenant, and Woetjans, the bosun, as well. Adding them was mostly a political decision.

  Woetjans wouldn’t care one way or the other: she was by no means stupid, but she regarded planning as something her betters — better born, better educated — did. Unless the plans involved clearing top-hamper after something disastrous happened to the rig, of course, or hand-to-hand fighting. You couldn’t find a better choice for clearing a path through a mob than Woetjans with a length of high-pressure tubing.

  Lieutenant Vesey, a slim, blond woman, was a more complex subject. She had come to the Princess Cecile as a midshipman on Daniel’s first voyage after the Navy Board confirmed his lieutenancy. From the beginning she had been an excellent by-the-book astrogator, and she had absorbed Daniel’s training — passed on from Uncle Stacy — in the art of the Matrix as no one he had met before or since.

  In all technical respects, Vesey was as fine an officer as one could ask for, and of course she didn’t lack courage. Daniel didn’t recall ever meeting an RCN officer whom he thought was a coward, though there had been no few whom he doubted could consistently put their shoes on the correct feet.

  Vesey’s problem was that she lacked the particular kind of ruthlessness which Daniel referred to — not in Vesey’s hearing — as killer instinct, the reflex to go for your opponent’s throat. She could set up a step-by-step attack, but she wouldn’t reflexively see and exploit an enemy’s weak point.

  That lack was a serious handicap for an RCN officer, and it made Vesey — who was more self-aware than was useful — unsure of herself. That was probably why she continued as the Sissie’s first officer when her skills fitted her for a command of her own even after the cutbacks which resulted from the Treaty of Amiens.

  Daniel was sorry that Vesey’s career had stumbled in such a fashion, but the Sissie had gained by her misfortune. He could have left astrogation to her if he hadn’t loved the process himself, and Vesey’s ship-handling in normal space, now that she’d become comfortable with it, was better than his.

  “I told you about our new mission when I returned from meeting the regional commander,” Daniel said, passing his wry smile across the command group as he spoke.

  “Yes, and we don’t deserve it,” said Cory angrily from the astrogation console. “I think it’s a bloody shame!”

  Daniel had decided to hold the briefing on the Princess Cecile’s bridge. A corvette had very little internal space in civilian terms, but he and his officers had been together on the Sissie for years. She was home to them.

  He looked at his second lieutenant. Cory had been Vesey’s classmate, but initially he had been so cack-handed at everything he tried that Daniel had wondered how he had graduated from the Academy. The boy had demonstrated a flair for communications, however, which had blossomed under Adele’s direction.

  To Daniel’s amazement and probably Cory’s own, the midshipman had then developed into a serviceable astrogator and a useful all-round officer. The Navy Board had confirmed the promotion to lieutenant which Daniel granted Cory after the bloody victory off Cacique.

  “Mister Cory,” Daniel said. He wasn’t angry, but complaints about the decisions of superior officers weren’t a good use of time. “If we had what we by rights deserve, we would all be dead and the Sissie would be a ball of gas in any one of a dozen star systems. If we may return to business?”

  “Sorry, sir!” Cory muttered toward his clasped hands.

  “Officer Mundy informed me that she sees a way to attack the problem,” Daniel said, nodding toward Adele. “Since I certainly don’t, I’ll ask her to proceed now.”

  There were two consoles each on the port and starboard sides of the compartment, with the command console in the far bow. The gunnery console was forward of Adele at the communications console to starboard, and Vesey, whose normal station was in the Battle Direction Center in the stern, sat there now. The missile station where Midshipman Cazelet was sitting was astern of the astrogation console to port.

  The gunner and the chief missileer had been ousted from the bridge for the time being, because this discussion didn’t involve their skills. Chief Engineer Pasternak was in the Power Room, for the same reason and for an even better one: had he been present, he would have remained in seemingly comatose silence, as bored as a frog listening to a sermon.

  “Captain Leary interviewed Bernhard Sattler, the Alliance representative here,” Adele said without preamble. “He’s involved in trade with the Sunbright rebels, though this is simply a commercial matter. He appears to have no political interests.”

  The console seats could be rotated toward the interior of the compartment. The officers — and Woetjans, who stood with her back to the closed hatch — were facing the others present; except for Adele, whose eyes were on her display. Small images of her companions’ faces were inset into the top of her screen.

  She coughed to clear her throat, then added, “I found on reviewing the record of Sattler’s conversation that he admits these activities.”

  Daniel blinked. Adele had been present at the conversation. What did she mean by “on reviewing the record”?

  “It appears that other Kronstadt merchants are similarly involved,” Adele continued, “though probably none to the extent that Master Sattler is.”

  Adele’s body was in Sattler’s office, Daniel realized with a grin that he tried to hide. But her mind had been dancing down a score of information pathways, unconcerned about the sounds coming through her ears. She knew that if anything important was being discussed, it would be available on the recording her data unit was making. As indeed it had been. . . .

  Everyone in this group respected Adele too much to doubt that she had a reason for the current lecture, but Daniel suspected he wasn’t the only one to wonder where she was going with what seemed a pointless sidetrack. Sattler had told them all he knew, and that had brought them no closer to the Sunbright rebels.

  Vesey said, “Isn’t there still a problem with shipping goods to the rebels from Cinnabar territory? If the Funnel authorities capture some of the ships, that is, and they’re bound to capture some.”

  Hogg sat quietly on the jump seat across from Daniel at the command console; Tovera faced Adele at Signals. The servants had no business at this meeting of the ship’s command group, but there was no reason to exclude them, either. Nobody worried about either of them speaking out of turn.

  “Sattler owns a one-third interest in Calpurnius Trading on Madison,” Adele said. She didn’t react sharply to the interruption, as Daniel had seen her do in the past. He had the feeling that this was what she had planned for the next point in her presentation anyway.

  “All goods for the rebels are purchased and shipped by Calpurnius,” she went on, flicking a wand to cascade files to the officers listening to her. None of them bothered to examine the data now; or ever would, Daniel surmised. “I doubt that Sattler’s financial involvement would appear to anything less than a full investigation, and that by unusually competent investigators. He hasn’t put Alliance-Cinnabar relations at risk.”

  Daniel didn’t try to hide his smile this time. Adele had found the link in a matter of minutes. Granted that she had been in Sattler’s office, but it was pretty certain that she would have done the same thing just as quickly if she had been given access to the Calpurnius Trading offices.

  “But Madison is an Alliance world,” Vesey said, frowning in puzzlement. She didn’t doubt what Adele was saying, but she didn’t unde
rstand it. “It’s a sector capital, in fact?”

  “This far out from Pleasaunce . . . ,” said Midshipman Cazelet. His family had owned a shipping line operating from the Alliance capital, Pleasaunce, before they had incurred the displeasure of Guarantor Porra and disappeared into his dungeons. “It’s just a matter of knowing who to slip the bribe to. And the bribe won’t have to be very large, I’d expect.”

  “There’s a political aspect as well,” Daniel said, speaking to end the discussion before Adele did so. She had a tendency to jerk the leash harder than necessary to bring her wandering listeners back to the path she had chosen. “Madison is a sector capital, but Sunbright and its problems are in a different sector.”

  He coughed and added, “Go on, Officer Mundy.”

  Adele smiled minusculely, not at him but very possibly toward his image on her display. “Master Sattler has no immediate plans to send someone inspect his investment on Madison,” she said in her usual dry tone, “but based on similar situations on other planets, it wouldn’t surprise the staff of Calpurnius Trading if he chose to do so. I propose that I go to Madison as a passenger on the Princess Cecile disguised as a private ship, and that I present my credentials as Sattler’s agent to his partners there.”

  “By the gods, yes!” said Cory in beaming excitement. “The ship is private, after all, except we’re under RCN charter right now.”

  Daniel didn’t interject, but the circumstances were more complex than Cory implied or perhaps even knew. Daniel personally owned the Princess Cecile; he had bought the former Kostroman corvette out of RCN service several years earlier with some of the prize money which he had gained in the course of a short but very fortunate career.

  However, the Sissie’s present charter was not with the RCN but rather with the External Bureau so that she could carry an official to an Alliance protectorate without Cinnabar naval involvement. There hadn’t been time to change the paperwork in the rush after they had arrived on Cinnabar, then lifted at once with the dispatches to Admiral Cox.

  While his officers chattered and his conscious mind focused on a legal technicality of the sort his sister Deirdre, a banker, spent her life with, Daniel’s subconscious fitted the varied pieces into a decision. He said, “Fellow spacers?”

  The two lieutenants and Cazelet continued arguing about whether to arrive on Madison as the Princess Cecile, whether to pretend to be a Trinidad-registered schooner, or whether to land on Trento and send the “inspector” to Madison on a short-hop freighter. They also disagreed about who should pretend to be Sattler’s representative, though all agreed that it shouldn’t be Adele.

  “Pipe down and listen to Six!” Woetjans said; even Daniel jumped. The bridge was armored, but he was willing to bet that everybody in the rotunda beyond the closed hatch had heard the bosun’s shout.

  The three officers sat upright at their consoles, their eyes straight ahead and their lips tightly together. No one spoke. Adele’s smile was too slight for anyone but a close associate to have recognized the expression, but it was enough to make Daniel grin broadly in return.

  “Thank you, fellow spacers,” he said politely. “I will visit Calpurnius Trading myself. If this excellent plan works out, the representative will continue from Madison to Cremona and then on to Sunbright. Officer Mundy’s virtues are too well known for me to bother listing them in this group, but I do not believe she could pass as a working spacer on a blockade runner.”

  Vesey’s face went blank; Cory and Cazelet stared at one another in surprise. It took Woetjans a moment to put Daniel’s deadpan words together with their meaning; then she laughed as loudly as her shouted command of a moment before.

  “Sir?” said Cory. “You can’t take a risk like that yourself — it wouldn’t be proper. I can — ”

  Cazelet and Vesey had their mouths open to object and doubtless to offer their own proposals. Daniel stopped all three of them with a cold smile and a raised finger. He said, “I’d hate to think that my bosun had more authority aboard the Princess Cecile than I do. But I’m sure Woetjans would be willing to restore order, eh?”

  “Sorry, Six,” Vesey muttered to her hands, though she hadn’t actually spoken. Cory and Cazelet just nodded.

  “You’re good officers,” Daniel said, looking again around his command group. “You wouldn’t be aboard the Sissie if I didn’t trust you, you know that.”

  He paused and felt his grin harden before he went on, “But I’m Six, and you know that too. I’m going to do this because I think I’m the right choice for the job, and the Princess Cecile isn’t going to become a democracy on my watch.”

  Adele rotated her seat so that she faced the other officers. For her to do that could only be a piece of theater, as everybody on the bridge knew. She said, “I would appreciate it if you explained your logic, Captain Leary.”

  Nobody else would have asked, Daniel realized, so Adele had asked. You never had to wonder if Adele Mundy would do whatever she thought was necessary.

  But not in this case necessary for her. She understood already, which is why she had made such a circus turn out of her question.

  “Of course, Adele,” Daniel said. He never treated Adele casually when they were on duty in public. His choice of address created a deliberate balance to her overformality.

  “First,” he said to the group, “I personally, and the Princess Cecile through me, have been tasked to remove from Sunbright a presumed Cinnabar citizen going by the name of Freedom. This is our sole duty at the moment; we have no greater purpose. Not so?”

  Cory was blushing in embarrassment; Vesey looked pale and miserable; and Cazelet had a withdrawn expression as though he had just been told the date of his execution. None of them spoke, but Woetjans nodded vigorously.

  “I can easily play an RCN lieutenant beached on half pay by the Treaty of Amiens,” Daniel continued. “That’s what I’d be now if I hadn’t been extremely lucky.”

  For an instant he thought that both Vesey and Cory were going to protest, but neither of them did. Adele’s sniff had a suggestion of humor in it, though, if you knew her well.

  “Any of the three of you — ”

  Daniel gestured to the commissioned officers. Even Cazelet had passed the tests for lieutenant, though he hadn’t been — and, if the present peace continued, might not be for a decade — granted the rank.

  “ — can command the Sissie in my absence. A yacht owner would be lucky to hire a captain as skilled.”

  “And the mistress can be the owner, right?” Woetjans said, excited as the concept came into focus in her mind. “She can carry it off because she is a fine lady, even though she’s, you know, the mistress too!”

  That was exactly the conclusion that Daniel had come to also. As he opened his mouth to say so, however, Vesey objected, “But why would a yacht be carrying a passenger? Perhaps you — ”

  She turned to Daniel.

  “ — should be the hired captain, but when you get to Madison you quit for some reason?”

  “Oh, that’s no problem,” Woetjans said with a toss of her big hands. “Six can play at being the lady’s fancy man. And, you know, looking for an easier berth.”

  Vesey, Cory, and Cazelet went perfectly blank. From the stiffness of Daniel’s own face, he supposed he did also. Hogg guffawed, and Tovera tittered like a crazed weasel.

  “Based on my past experience,” Adele said calmly, “it should be quite easy to get people to believe that.”

  “I dare say it would,” said Daniel, pleased that he sounded relaxed. “But I think we’ll explain that Bernhard Sattler and Company handled the yacht’s refit on Kronstadt in return for her ladyship — ”

  He dipped in his seat as though bowing.

  “ — delivering me to Madison to make an inspection.”

  He cleared his throat and went on. “Now, we have to assume that a trading firm will be knowledgeable about ships, and the Sissie is obviously Kostroman-built. How do we explain a Cinnabar noble owning a yacht bui
lt on Kostroma?”

  “I’ve looked into that,” said Adele before anyone else spoke. Her control wands dipped and crossed; the hologram of a ship formed in the center of the compartment. “To begin with, I won’t be a Cinnabar noble — ”

  * * * *

  “ — because for our purposes it makes much better sense that I be a Kostroman,” Adele said. “As some of you will remember, I was for a time in Kostroma City as Electoral Librarian.”

  She smiled. Daniel smiled back more broadly, and Woetjans — who then had been building bookshelves for the Electoral Librarian on Lieutenant Leary’s orders — nodded with enthusiasm. Adele had met Hogg and Tovera on Kostroma also, but the servants held their silence; they had no part of this discussion.

  The post on Kostroma had provided Adele with shelter of a sort, food of a similar sort, and even her pay occasionally. In those categories she was better off than she had frequently been since the Proscriptions which followed the Three Circles Conspiracy had left her a penniless orphan.

  Otherwise the post had very little to recommend it, even before the bloody coup which made Adele — because she had survived — a member of the RCN. Depending on how you judged time, that had happened either several years or a lifetime in the past.

  “I don’t think I’ll have difficulty in convincing those we meet on Madison,” she said, “that I’m the deposed Principal Hrynko, travelling for my health. That is, the former chief of the Clan Hrynko, who retained enough power to negotiate the transfer of power to her stepson rather than to have him replace her in a less expensive manner.”

  “That’s not the Sissie,” said Woetjans. She had focused on the holographic ship in the middle of the compartment instead of listening to what Adele was saying. “This one’s got the E and F rings staggered instead of straight.”

  The bosun frowned, then added, “I’ve seen Kostroman ships rigged that way, but never the Sissie. Even if she’d been changed to the standard rig before we grabbed her, her hull’d be dimpled where the mast steps used to be.”