The Road of Danger

by David Drake

  “Wonder if he’d stop if I put one through his windshield?” Hogg said thoughtfully. “Well, I probably couldn’t hit it at this range. With a pistol, I mean.”

  “They won’t lift ship without us, Hogg,” Daniel said. Secretly, though, he wondered if Blaskett, at the heart of his electronic spider’s web, had disconnected the call plate at this stop as a provocation.

  Though the truth was that the base was operating at less than ten percent of its designed capacity, so large portions of its infrastructure had been shut down. Indeed, there was another tram approaching the circuit now, this one apparently empty.

  Daniel considered again the practicality of carrying ground transport on the Sissie the way the Milton had done under his command. The Milton had been a heavy cruiser, however. Even taken down to its components for stowing, a four-place vehicle was simply too bulky for the interior of a corvette.

  “Daniel,” said Adele. “Did you know that Governor Blaskett would search the Sissie before he allowed us to lift off? I had wondered why you didn’t bring Grant along with you when you and Hogg boarded, though I see now that it would have been a disaster if you had.”

  Daniel laughed. “You give me far too much credit,” he said. “I didn’t expect anything of the sort. Searching us is an act of war, you realize. Though I’m sure that everyone in the External Bureau on Xenos — and most of the Senate — would be at pains to hush things up, even if Blaskett really did put a missile into us.”

  He sobered, trying to put in order the series of choices which he had made without slowing for conscious consideration. He had done what he thought was right; pretty much as he always did.

  “I hadn’t heard a great deal to the governor’s credit, even before we met him,” Daniel said, choosing his words. “Nevertheless, our nations are friendly now, even if not allies. I decided to assume that the governor would see our common interest in resolving the matter efficiently. I felt that was the right way to behave, as a gentleman and an officer of the RCN.”

  The tram was turning into the short loop that served the fortress. There wasn’t as much traffic as Daniel would have expected to a headquarters, but he supposed the personnel were billeted on lower levels of the structure, so the process of going on and off duty didn’t require leaving the building.

  He shrugged. “I was wrong in my assumption, unfortunately,” he said.

  “You were correct in the course of action you took,” said Adele. “I don’t know that you would have gained points if you had done so out of a Machiavellian distrust of humanity instead of what would appear to an outsider to have been the bluff honesty and good nature of a country squire.”

  Her lips pursed. “It might appear in that light to someone who knew you rather well, in fact,” she said. “Which is to the credit of your upbringing and of your service.”

  Hogg watched the tram slowing toward the stop, his hand in his pocket. He was ready to react in case someone concealed in the cab leaped up with a leveled gun.

  Tovera faced back toward the steel gates of the fortress, equally prepared for an attack from that direction. Without turning, she said, “Though I wouldn’t recommend a career in politics, Captain.”

  Her delivery was so dry that it took Daniel a moment to process what she had said. Then he boomed a laugh which wonderfully released his tension.

  “Thank you, Tovera,” he said. “I’ll take your opinion under advisement. For now, though — ”

  He swung onto the flatbed portion of the tram. Hogg was already in the cab, setting the touchplate controls for Pool 28, where the Princess Cecile floated in lonely splendor.

  “ — I’ll be busy committing piracy and subverting the laws of a friendly power. But doing so with as much bluff honesty and good nature as possible, I hope.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Saal on Sunbright

  The van’s front seat was a bench, but it would have been more comfortable for two than with Hogg wedged between Daniel and Tomas Grant, who was driving. He took them at a good pace — not so fast that they aroused suspicion — down the straight North Meridian between Pools 8 and 16, then exited onto the frontage road encircling Pool 18, where six modest vessels were docked.

  Steam with the occasional fairydust sprinkle of ions half hid the Commune. Her thrusters were being warmed up in response to the alert sent from Base Command. Ordinarily the noise would have drawn at least casual interest, but the recent flurry of the Princess Cecile’s liftoff, followed ten minutes later by the Flink’s landing, made the former blockade runner’s four thrusters insignificant.

  The other patrolling gunboat, the Tapfer, had already started her descent, but it would be at least fifteen minutes before she could be heard at Base Saal. The gunboat’s thrusters might be visible a little sooner than that, but it was broad daylight and only someone who happened to be looking toward the west would notice.

  Even then no one would wonder; or at any rate, no one would wonder except the movement control officer in the tower. That official would be puzzled at why Funnel Squadron Command had brought all its ships to the ground, leaving no one on patrol for blockade runners.

  If movement control passed the question upstairs instead of merely logging the situation, then the questions were likely to be repeated in loud, angry voices. The answer was simple: Funnel Squadron Command had sent recall signals, in the proper code and with all the right indicators attached, to the ships in orbit.

  Possibly some day, if the intelligence services involved in the investigation brought in sufficiently skilled computer experts, they would learn that the base communications system had been penetrated from the inside. By that time the Sissie would be long gone from the region.

  Daniel grinned at a thought. He and Signals Officer Adele Mundy, the person who could have done the most to help them with their inquiries, might well have died of old age before the authorities reached that solution.

  The sections of roadway had been laid separately, and the circular portion had settled less. The van jounced onto it at an angle, rocking badly. The empty racks rattled like an ill-tuned bell chorus.

  Grant muttered a curse — he took his driving very seriously — and called, “You in the back? Are you all right?”

  There was general laughter. “Hell yes, sonny,” said Dasi. “Even a good landing on dry land rattles your back teeth worse than that did, and they aren’t all good.”

  “Amen to that!” said Hofnagel, the tech who would run the Commune’s fusion bottle while Barnes, Dasi, and Larkins handled rigging duties, if any. All four were better than useful in a scrap, though Daniel hadn’t permitted them to carry weapons on this occasion. “I’m not complaining, you understand, Six.”

  “Understood, Hofnagel,” Daniel said. “I’m sure if the Great Gods became ships’ captains, they too would have better landings and worse ones.”

  Grant slowed the van to a stop at the gangplank to the Commune. She was a 700-tonne vessel, basically of a type with the Savoy — and, for that matter, with the other ships in Pool 18, all of which had been captured empty or nearly empty. Blockade runners with valuable cargoes were condemned on Bailey’s Horn, where there was a thriving market. Only ships which would bring no more than the value of their hulls were brought before the prize court here in Saal and bought by the Fleet itself for the Funnel Squadron’s knockabout work: couriers, stores runs, and the dangerous job of inserting Special Service commandos into Sunbright’s hinterlands.

  There was no guard at the gangplank. Daniel hadn’t expected one, since the Commune’s crew was too small for pointless niceties.

  According to Adele, Captain Kropatchek was a Fleet petty officer, but the four crewmen were foreign spacers captured while running the blockade. They had enlisted, probably to avoid the threat of being put out into vacuum. Depending on the captain of the gunboat which captured them, that might have been more than an empty threat.

  While such spacers would obey orders and do their jobs as ably for an Alliance captain as they
would for anyone else, Daniel didn’t expect patriotic heroism from them unless they were pushed to it. He was as confident that the Sissies he’d brought with him would obey his orders not to start a brawl as he was of their ability to finish any trouble that somebody else started.

  Daniel got out as Barnes opened the back of the van. The four Sissies were standing in the aisle between racks intended for the pipes, fittings, and tools which Grant had removed from the van before he drove off in it. If others in the Water Department had wondered about his actions, their doubts hadn’t risen to an official level.

  The back of the van was neither roomy nor comfortable, but the vertical stanchions supporting the racks were as solid as the vehicle’s frame. With them to hang on to, veteran spacers — as Dasi had said — weren’t going to mind a rough ride.

  Hogg slid past Daniel on the way to the gangplank. “Hogg!” Daniel said, not shouting but in a tone of command which even his old servant knew to obey. “I’ll be leading, if you will. Barnes, bring up the rear.”

  Daniel stepped onto the gangplank. He would rather have put Hogg at the back of the column, since the Commune’s present crew was expecting a squad of troops. It was hard to imagine anyone looking less military than Hogg did, even if he had been carrying a stocked impeller. Now he had a pistol, a knife, and goodness knew what other weapons, but they were concealed in his baggy poaching garments.

  Whoever was at the controls blipped the Commune’s thrusters again; not enough to be dangerous to the people crossing the gangplank, but enough to splash them with water boiling up from the pool. Daniel sneezed violently, and the ozone with traces of other ions stung his eyes.

  Grant shouted in surprise. The gangplank flexed hard, but Daniel wasn’t worried about the civilian falling off. Dasi was directly behind him. The big bosun’s mate would carry Grant aboard by belt and collar if he thought that was necessary.

  Daniel strode the rest of the way up the gangplank and into the hold. Three spacers were huddled together in a corner, glancing sidelong at Daniel and muttering greetings. They had probably known what the man at the controls was going to do, but they hadn’t had any say in the matter.

  Daniel ducked through the hatch and entered the crew capsule. Ordinarily six to ten heavily armed infantry would ride in the hold. The Commune would lift, then drop after a single orbit — a bit more or a bit less — into a blocking position against which a powerful armored column from Saal would try to trap a rebel band. Without an anvil, patrols from Saal would meet nothing but mud, mines, and the occasional sniper.

  Petty Officer Kropatchek stood and stepped away from the console when Daniel appeared. Another common spacer sat against the port bulkhead at the fusion-bottle controls, but she carefully didn’t raise her head or otherwise show she wanted to become involved.

  Kropatchek was six and a half feet tall. He was bald, but his flowing moustaches were silky black.

  “Sorry about that little mistake with the thrusters,” he rumbled. His expression would have been a smirk if his features hadn’t been so brutal. “Hope none of you pissed your trousers.”

  “Just a little good clean fun, Captain Kropatchek,” Daniel said, smiling pleasantly as he stepped close. “Giving the pongoes a bit of a shaking up, were you?”

  He should have said “the grunts,” since “pongo” was the RCN term for soldiers. Well, Daniel was wearing water department coveralls anyway, so Kropatchek was going to figure out shortly that it wasn’t an insertion squad which had come aboard.

  “Hey!” said Kropatchek. “What are you — ”

  Daniel gripped the petty officer’s right wrist and elbow and started bending them back. Kropatchek lurched forward. Daniel shifted his balance and used the big man’s rush to slam his face into the starboard bulkhead.

  The technician shouted and leaped from her seat. Kropatchek turned toward Daniel, spraying blood from his broken nose. Daniel kicked him in the crotch and, as he doubled over, banged him into the bulkhead again.

  This time Kropatchek hit on the point of his skull. There was a loud clang; then he slumped to the deck. There were two smears of blood on the bulkhead above him.

  Daniel was breathing hard; he felt dizzy enough that he gripped the seat of the console for a moment. In a regretful voice, Hogg said, “I don’t guess you’ll let me finish him.”

  Not for a stupid joke on members of a rival service, Daniel thought. He didn’t have the breath right now to get the words out. I’m sweating like a pig.

  Hogg grabbed a handful of Kropatchek’s coveralls with his left hand, perfectly judging the point of balance, and dragged him into the hold. The big man’s lower legs and face dragged on the deck, which disturbed Daniel slightly but Hogg not at all.

  Hogg held his folding knife in his right hand. It was a clumsy-looking weapon with a knuckle-duster hilt. Daniel had been amazed when, in his childhood, he first saw Hogg throw the weapon accurately. That no longer surprised him.

  With his breathing back to normal, Daniel straightened and looked at the technician. She was flattened against the bulkhead, her eyes and mouth both wide open.

  Daniel gave her a smile and said, “Go on into the hold. We’ll tie up you and the rest — ”

  Actually, secure them with cargo tape.

  “ — and free you as soon as we’re in orbit.”

  The technician didn’t speak. Daniel suddenly realized that she was staring at the blood on the bulkhead. He laughed and took her by the elbow, turning her toward the hatchway and giving her a gentle push.

  “I suspect your captain will have come around by then,” he said. “If not, well, the console will land you without difficulties. Or you can hand control over to Base Saal, if you like.”

  Dasi and Hofnagel entered the crew capsule, followed by Grant and, finally, Hogg. They all carried suits.

  “No trouble with the crew,” Dasi said. “Matter of fact, Kepsie’s an ex-RCN rigger. I’d like to sign him on if that’s all right with you, Six.”

  “Yes, all right,” said Daniel. Hogg handed him the bottom portion of a rigging suit, which he started to put on without argument. He would need it before long. “What’s the suit situation?”

  “Two rigging suits and four air suits,” Dasi said. “Kepsie says it’s really only three airsuits, the other one leaks out a bottle of air in fifteen minutes, but — ”

  He grinned at Grant, who looked away. Hofnagel was fitting him into an airsuit.

  “ — I guess that’ll do for the little guy here. We’ll need to make two trips, regardless.”

  “I’ll have Woetjans bring extras when she comes over with the line,” Daniel said, settling into the console and checking its readings. He set the main hatch to close; it began to whine and shudder.

  Hofnagel was at the fusion controls; Hogg and Grant — the latter looking rather green — sat on the bottom bunk of the tier on the starboard bulkhead. Daniel grinned and checked flow, then lit the thrusters again.

  “So far, so good,” he said. “And if things go to plan in orbit, the Princess Cecile will have accomplished another mission!”

  * * * *

  Neither Signals Officer Mundy nor Lady Mundy had any proper involvement with the process of bringing the freighter Commune and the corvette Princess Cecile into close enough alignment that personnel could cross between them by cable. The vessels were commanded by Captain Leary and Lieutenant Vesey, two of the best ship handlers in the RCN. Even a veteran officer would have nothing useful to add, and a mere layman like Adele couldn’t even understand what she was seeing.

  Nonetheless, she devoted the upper left quadrant of her display to real-time imagery of the two ships. She supposed that showed lack of discipline on her part.

  The Sissie was in free fall, an uncomfortable business when Adele thought about it, which she almost never did. There were always plenty of things for her to do: when there was nothing more pressing, she would sift and organize the data she had mined from Macotta Squadron computers.

 
She had plenty to do now. She was listening to — or trying to listen to — all the message traffic emanating from Base Saal, from the Funnel Squadron, and from individual missile batteries.

  Published information assured her that ground-based anti-ship missiles were not a threat to the ships at their current height above Sunbright. Skilled people could make equipment do things that experts said were impossible. Adele wasn’t willing to bet the lives of her shipmates that there was no Alliance battery commander here who was as skilled at his job as, for example, Tovera was with a pistol.

  Tovera, or Tovera’s mistress.

  There was a jolt as a thruster fired a minuscule pulse. The Sissie had been rotating almost imperceptibly around its long axis; the motion stopped. The Commune, visible in the same true-scale image as the larger corvette, pulsed also.

  “They’ve got it!” Sun cried from the gunnery console beside Adele’s. “I thought they were going to slip the cable or have it snap, but Six — and Five too, she’s doing great — brought us back together. Did you ever see anything so sweet?”

  Unaided voice wouldn’t ordinarily be audible on a starship’s bridge, but in free fall, with all unnecessary equipment shut down to keep from affecting the linkup, Adele heard her neighbor quite clearly. She had no business bothering with extraneous conversation: Cazelet was shadowing Vesey from the BDC, and Cory was in the entry hold, prepared to act as required if something went wrong with the Sissie’s end of the cable. No one but Officer Mundy was surveying Alliance communications for threats.

  Four figures had already reached the corvette, moving hand over hand on the line; another was starting across now, with others behind him. Adele grimaced.

  “Explain what happened, if you would, Sun,” she said. She continued to scan the columns of oral information converted to text.

  “They’d spliced five hundred-foot lines, mistress,” the gunner said, obviously glad for an audience. He was chattering to control his nervousness as Adele — she smiled grimly — was listening to control her own. “But it was paying out because the ships were both moving a bit and there wasn’t time to splice in another. It wasn’t hawsers that could maybe take the strain, it was just shrouds, so it’d snap if they didn’t cast off in time. Well, that — ”