The Road of Danger

by David Drake

  The main house was a rambling structure of glass on stone foundations. Sun hit not the house but a shed adjacent to it. The plastic roof exploded, making the aircar underneath flip like a tiddlywink and shattering glass on that side of the house. The vehicle was still in the air when the second round hit it. Cory and Sun had planned this affair very ably.

  The Sissies were cheering their lungs out. Some of the uninvolved crew could watch events on flat-plate displays in their compartments, but the rest were caught up in the moment and imagining what the cannon’s regular pounding meant to the folks downrange.

  Even before the Sissie shifted to Mangravite’s estate, it had carried out the most lengthy and thorough attack on ground targets of Adele’s memory. Sun and Rocker didn’t aim at individuals running in terror, but they ignited every vehicle and outlying building before they destroyed the main house with half a dozen bolts.

  Sun was seated beside Adele, but she expanded his face on her display instead of turning her head. The gunner moved his pipper and thumbed the trigger with a look of concentration and glee.

  All the targets were gone, ablaze, or glass-edged scars raked into the soil.

  The turrets fired simultaneously, devouring a small outcrop just beyond the fence line with four bolts. The rock shattered and fused simultaneously.

  Sun shifted from a targeting grid to a terrain display. He leaned back against his cushions, his face glowing with perspiration and exhausted delight. He closed his eyes.

  “Sun,” said Adele on a two-way link. The gunner, at least, thought his job was over for the time being. “What was that last target, if you please?”

  Sun turned and gave Adele’s profile a beatific smile. “Mistress,” he said, using the intercom perforce to be heard over the rumble of the ship under way, “it was Cap’n Vesey’s idea. You see, she figured as soon as the shooting started, Mangravite would hie himself off to the bunker Master Cazelet found. So we gave him plenty of time to do that.”

  “I see,” said Adele, nodding. She waited for the rest.

  “Last thing we did was seal the other way out,” said Sun, “which Cazelet found too, using the commo routing. Since the bunker was a big secret, there may not be anybody even trying to find the fat bastard, right?”

  “I see,” Adele said, marveling at the watchwork complexity of the revenge which her RCN family had planned and executed on her behalf. She smiled. Mother wouldn’t have understood. But I understand. “Thank you, Sun.”

  “Ship, this is Five,” said Vesey over the general push. “Master Cazelet, you have the conn. Carry on according to plan. Over.”

  “Acknowledged,” said Cazelet. Adele, watching over his electronic shoulder, saw the midshipman fill his display with the ship-status readouts. “Ship, prepare for acceleration to orbit, out.”

  The corvette steadied. Vesey had been using three-quarter flow, with the thruster petals in their middle position. Cazelet now sphinctered the throats to maximum compression. As the Princess Cecile started to rise, he steadily increased the flow of reaction mass to the thrusters; acceleration built with the gradual majesty which the inertia of thirteen hundred tonnes demanded.

  “Officer Mundy,” Vesey said over a two-way link. “I regret there wasn’t time to discuss plans with you, so I hope you’ll approve. Ah, the blockade runner Ella 919 just returned from Sunbright, and I made the acquaintance of her commander, Captain Tommines.”

  “Go ahead, Vesey,” Adele said, since the acting captain seemed to have lost her tongue. Vesey viewed Daniel with religious awe. Though her professional qualifications were of the highest order, she struck Adele as emotionally younger than midshipmen several years her junior.

  Vesey’s relationship with Adele was more complex and not a little disquieting. Their RCN status was clear — and perfectly acceptable to Adele, who in her heart felt that the only really useful power would be the power to force people to leave her alone.

  Vesey, though, appeared to regard Adele as a mixture of mother and of high priestess of the Cult of Daniel Leary. The first role disgusted Adele; the second was so ludicrous that Adele would have broken out laughing if she had been the sort of person who did that.

  Daniel was a brilliant officer and a friend better than Adele had thought existed outside of Pre-Hiatus romances. He wasn’t a god, however.

  Her lips twitched in a hard grin. Well, perhaps one of the lustier gods of ancient myth. Adele was fairly certain that Vesey saw Daniel in a more reverent — and very false — light.

  “Ah, yes, mistress,” Vesey said. The dorsal turret rang against its barbette just astern of the bridge bulkhead; dogs clamped it in place. Lesser shudders were probably the ventral turret doing the same. “Tommines was singing the praises of Kiki Lindstrom, owner of the Savoy, because she had drawn Alliance cruisers away from his ship and saved him from certain capture. She’d then escaped by an amazing transit into the upper reaches of Sunbright’s atmosphere.”

  She coughed. “Tommines thought the Savoy’s captain was a Novy Sverdlovsk officer named Petrov. I’m fairly confident Tommines was wrong on that point, so I set a course for Sunbright. With your permission.”

  “I agree with your conclusions and with your plan, Captain,” Adele said in an expressionless voice. She thought for a moment and said, “I watched the way you dealt with Master Mangravite, Vesey. Do you recall my suggesting once in the past that you might lack the ruthlessness which an RCN officer requires?”

  “Ah,” said Vesey. Adele didn’t turn to look at her, but she could easily imagine how stiffly the younger woman sat at the command console. “I remember a discussion, mistress, but I believe that suggestion was made by your servant.”

  “If you believe Tovera made an unchallenged statement of that sort without my acquiescence,” Adele said, her enunciation as sharp as a microtome, “you are mistaken. In fact I did have that concern. I was wrong to do so.”

  She made a chirp which was as close as she generally came to laughter. “I don’t think even Tovera could have bettered the way you dealt with Mangravite, Captain.”

  “Ship, we have reached Cremona orbit,” Cazelet announced as the High Drive kicked in. “Next stop, Sunbright!”

  CHAPTER 22

  Sunbright

  “The ladder’s on an orange support right up ahead,” said Tomas Grant, taking his hand off the yoke to wave. “We’ll see it in a minute or two.”

  Daniel was in the aircar’s luggage compartment on this leg of the ride. He was younger than Hogg and a trifle slimmer, but he looked forward to getting out of the car. He leaned sideways to peer past the heads of his more comfortable companions.

  The ninety-centimeter waterline roughly paralleled the Grain Web for nearly a hundred kilometers, but at this point in its course concrete and steel trusses held the pipe thirty feet off the ground. Freight trains could contend with gentle grades; water flow, barring the complexities of pumps and siphons, was a matter of gravity alone.

  “I don’t see why somebody don’t just blow the sucker up,” said Hogg, also eyeing the pipeline. The ride’s discomfort had left him in a sour mood, though it was a natural question. “Hell knows you lot seem ready enough to smash anything else.”

  “Not infrequently someone shoots at the line,” Grant said. Only the twitch of a muscle at the base of his jaw indicated that Hogg’s gibe had gotten home. “People with guns, many of them drunk. The pipe’s pretty durable and it’s a tube, so usually there’s just a dent or a even a splash of osmium on the iron. There are penetrations, of course, and that’s why I make these regular trips out of Saal.”

  Daniel saw the marked truss at last. He wouldn’t have known the paint was orange if Grant hadn’t said so; years of sun and rain had faded it to a pale streak on bleached concrete. Rust from the pipe and cradle was more visible.

  “But as a matter of policy, nobody, no rebel group, is going to deliberately destroy the pipeline,” Grant continued. “On the one hand, that would mean discomfort or worse for rebels’
friends and relatives who are living in Saal. That includes some who aren’t native to Sunbright, by the way. A number of the rebels have deserted from the Saal garrison. The profit in illicit trading can be considerable, and of course the relaxed discipline is an inducement to many as well.”

  He turned his head and spat over the side of the car. He was obviously uncomfortable.

  “Colonel Kinsmill was a lieutenant in the Army of the Free Stars and a member of the Saal garrison, for example,” Grant said. “Until he deserted to the forces of liberation. My lot, as your servant put it.”

  He threaded the car through a band of coarse marsh vegetation and among a series of shallow ponds to pull up at the base of the truss. When he shut off the car’s fans, he reached under his seat for something stored there.

  Daniel levered himself out of the luggage compartment with his arms — he didn’t trust his legs not to cramp — and half-stepped, half-slid onto the ground. He sank in over his boot tops, but he barely noticed the cold seepage past his ankles in his pleasure at being out of the vehicle.

  “There’s a platform on top,” said Grant, holding the thirty-inch steel rod he had been fishing for, “but it’ll be tight for three of us. If you’d like to wait here till I’ve turned the valve . . . ?”

  “I’ll go up first and stand on the pipe,” said Daniel, starting up the ladder. He didn’t bother to note that the conduit was greater in diameter than a battleship’s yards, let alone the lesser tubes of a corvette. “I can use the exercise.”

  “And I’ll go up too,” said Hogg, following immediately. “I’ve crossed my share of creeks on the trunks of fallen trees, and pissing down rain, often enough.”

  He chuckled as he climbed after Daniel. “You know, young master,” he said. “We’re going to look like right patsies if somebody’s waiting in the bushes down there to use us for target practice.”

  Daniel laughed. “Are you complaining, Hogg?” he said. “You’ve told me often enough that everybody on Bantry expected you to be hanged before you were twenty-one. You’re on borrowed time, my man.”

  The section of pipe here at the truss included a horizontal T; a full-diameter valve faced outward toward the semicircular platform at the top of the ladder. Daniel jumped onto the pipe with the help of his right hand. It occurred to him that the yards of a corvette in the Matrix weren’t subject to breezes, and also that the long buzzing ride in the aircar hadn’t been the best conditioning for his leg muscles.

  Hogg climbed up to face him with his usual clumsy grace. Hogg always looked awkward, but he always turned out to have completed his physical tasks with the least possible effort as well.

  We’d both rather die than lose our nerve in front of this city fellow, Daniel thought. He grinned broadly and crossed his arms over his chest.

  Grant thrust the bar through the crossways hole in the end of a rod projecting upstream of the valve. He began to crank it widdershins, using both hands and his whole upper body.

  “My mother was a patriot who really cared for the common people,” he said as he closed the conduit stroke by stroke. “She learned that most members of the Popular Party mouthed slogans, but they were really only concerned with power. Father was that way, she said, though in the end it didn’t matter: he was caught in the Proscriptions and executed. Mother had already left Cinnabar with me because she was disgusted by the hypocrisy of her fellow Populars.”

  The clink Daniel felt through his boot soles was the butterfly valve closing inside the pipe. Grant paused, breathing hard, and looked up.

  “Mother told me that she expected no better of Speaker Leary and his thugs,” he said, “but she couldn’t stomach the so-called progressive politicians behaving the same way. She would have nothing more to do with the corrupt system, so she left.”

  Daniel gave a noncommittal nod. His father would have regarded Mistress Grant with contempt, if he was even aware of her. It wasn’t that they had different principles; rather, their principles were of such different sorts that neither one could recognize that the other even had principles.

  It was unfortunate for Cinnabar and for humanity more generally that Daniel’s father couldn’t respect Mistress Grant’s viewpoint. On the other hand, it wouldn’t take Speaker Leary long to handle the outlaws and murderers now overrunning Sunbright.

  Grant gripped the circular wheel on the access port and leaned his weight into it; it didn’t move. Daniel opened his mouth to offer to help, then thought better of it. Grant was being usefully confiding; it would break the mood to imply that he wasn’t physically up to doing his job.

  And of course he was capable. Grant removed the bar from the butterfly control and threaded it between the rim and spokes of the wheel. With that as a come-along, he broke the seal and began opening the valve with smooth, confident strokes. In the pauses he said, “Mother moved to Madison to save her soul, she thought. Instead she saved her life and mine.”

  He cranked the wheel to its stop, then paused. He looked up at Daniel again with a wistful smile on his face.

  “I thought I could put Mother’s principles in place here on Sunbright,” Grant said. “The population was small enough and homogenous enough that true democracy was possible, I thought.”

  He tugged the wheel. It swung outward, releasing a continuing trickle of water. Given the size of the pipe, the leak past the butterfly valve wasn’t significant.

  “Maybe I was right, Captain Leary,” he said. He didn’t seem to have made a connection between the young RCN captain and the ruthless Speaker Leary of his childhood. “Maybe democracy was possible. But it’s not what I brought to Sunbright.”

  “One step at a time, Master Grant,” Daniel said mildly as he dropped onto the platform. It was constructed of strap iron standing on edge and welded into a series of narrow rectangles; he had supported enough of his weight with his hand on the conduit that his boots thumped but didn’t cause a ringing clang.

  He squatted and leaned forward to look down the pipe. Leaning back, he said, “So. We’re to crawl into Saal through this?”

  Grant snorted. “Saal is five kilometers west of this inspection port,” he said, obviously pleased to show his superiority to the man whom he had to trust as a savior. Nobody likes to be a suppliant. “All you have to do is crawl one klick to the next port and get out; that’s on the inside of the defense lines. I’ll give you half an hour, then open the butterfly.”

  He patted the valve stem and started to fit the handle into it.

  “Then I’ll drive through the gate as normal, swing north to pick you up, and carry you into the city.”

  Daniel examined the smaller wheel on the interior of the port. It would be a job to open the one down-flow, but the plan was reasonable and more practical than anything he had come up with. Of course Grant knew the ground and he did not.

  “All right,” said Daniel, squirming into the conduit. “Hogg, I’ll lead.”

  “I’m sorry I don’t have a light to give you,” Grant said, his voice attenuated. Daniel didn’t bother to answer. Sound would change as they neared another T-section, and his shoulder or knee would feel the difference as well.

  “We’ll manage,” said Hogg. “Just hope we don’t have to back bloody out, but I guess we’ll manage that too if we got to.”

  He was allowing Daniel to get well ahead; Daniel nodded in approval. This was a sufficiently claustrophobic situation without the two of them crowding one another.

  Behind him, the words weakened by distance and blocked by his body, Hogg said, “Just like we’d manage if the next stop was three miles away or thirty. We’re the ones who’re going to pull your bacon out of the fire, sonny.”

  The haze of light faded; Hogg must finally have entered the pipe. Daniel was grinning as he crawled along on palms, knees, and sometimes the toes of his boots.

  He had left his RCN utilities in Riely’s post and changed into what a farm laborer on Sunbright wore: a loose shirt with three-quarter-length sleeves, and trousers with tabs
on the cuffs that allowed the legs to be rolled up and tied to the crotch for working in muck. They had looked as comfortable as a tent, but they turned out to be made from a local variety of sisal; steel wool could scarcely have been harsher on the skin.

  My knees will be rubbed raw by the time I’ve crawled a klick, Daniel thought. But at least I won’t wear holes in the trousers.

  He grinned at himself. He knew that he was focusing on a trivial, controllable concern to avoid thinking about vaster questions that were out of his hands. The technique worked well, even though he was consciously aware of it. Human beings were remarkably good at fooling themselves — thank goodness.

  Daniel found himself counting to twenty as he shuffled along — and then starting over at one. He wasn’t measuring the distance, just giving his conscious mind something to concentrate on other than — for example — wondering what would happen if Grant opened the butterfly valve before he and Hogg opened the next access port.

  They probably wouldn’t be crushed against an obstruction in the course of the three miles of pipe; the water should have unimpeded flow on the way, after all. When the pipe reached the settling tank, however, there might well be a coarse screen to catch branches and other floating debris.

  Well, that wouldn’t matter: they would surely have been drowned before water pressure forced their pureed bodies through the filter.

  “It ought to be about now-w-w . . . ,” Hogg called, his muffled voice made fuzzy by reverberation. Blood was pounding in Daniel’s ears, and that made it harder for him to hear also.

  What is he talking — Daniel thought, but instinctively he reached out with his left hand and touched the locking wheel of the access port. Hogg had come within feet of judging the distance they’d travelled, despite having to crawl and being in total darkness.

  “Right!” Daniel replied. “I’m at the port, and I’ll get it open.”

  The wheel in the inner face was small, as Daniel had known, and slimy — which was a surprise, because he hadn’t touched the wheel of the port they’d entered by. It was probably a gel of manganese deposited from the water, though he supposed it could have been algae.