The Road of Danger

by David Drake

  “Then let me rephrase that,” Adele said. She thought of adding, “because you appear to be as thick as two short planks.” She did not, because that was what Hogg would have said. Hogg was an estimable servant, but for Daniel rather than for her; and anyway, he was not a suitable role model for Lady Mundy.

  “You have read my credentials from Admiral Hartsfeld, authorizing me to issue orders to naval personnel in the name of the Navy Board and to supersede any officer in the Macotta Region without recourse. Do you understand that?”

  “But how?” Cox said. He sounded hurt rather than angry. “You came from nowhere and now you’re giving me orders!”

  Adele’s tongue touched her lips in exasperation. After a moment’s pause while she determined how to handle this, she said, “I’m sure that Admiral Hartsfeld hoped his own personnel would be able to handle the situation without need for the representative of the Senate to step in. I hoped that myself, to be honest. Unfortunately, Admiral, you and your staff have shown yourselves to be too parochial to be trusted with the safety of the Republic in a situation so delicate.”

  Cox flushed, then swallowed. He did not speak.

  “Now,” said Adele. “Will you accept my orders quickly and without cavil? Or shall I replace you with Captain Leary, here?”

  She tilted her head slightly toward Daniel. She didn’t gesture with her hands because she was holding the wands.

  “I’m sure the captain could handle the job, but he would be bored sitting at a desk. I would prefer to spare him that.”

  She smiled, very slightly.

  Cox flushed again. He glanced up at Daniel; recognition dawned. In the confusion, he had not appreciated who Adele’s utility-clad escort really was. He probably hasn’t recognized me even now. And he won’t.

  “What are your orders, Lady Mundy?” Cox growled, looking at the tabletop between them.

  Adele stared at Cox for a moment before she decided to accept the surrender without forcing him to make it explicit. She would do whatever was necessary to gain her ends, but the admiral was now broken. Insulting him further would be cruel, not ruthless.

  “All right,” she said. “A party of Alliance officials has arrived to arrest some of their own citizens. I’m sure that the necessary paperwork will eventually arrive, but I’ve already informed the head of the mission that the RCN will accept it as complete as of now. I also said we’ll offer assistance as required, though I doubt that will be necessary.”

  Cox touched his keyboard, then remembered that the console was dead. Adele thought of turning it back on, but she decided the dynamics were working in her favor at present.

  Cox looked up and said, “Officials. You mean Alliance police?”

  “Not exactly,” Adele said without inflection.

  Cox made a sour face. “All right,” he said, “since it doesn’t matter what I think anyway. What else do you want of me?”

  “I have no other special instructions at present,” Adele said. She switched on the console and got to her feet, then paused. “On second thought, I have one request.”

  She could have used a stronger term than “request,” but she didn’t think it would be necessary.

  “When you open the conference this afternoon, I want you to have Captain Leary beside you. Tell people that he’s your aide for the duration of the proceedings. Leary, you’ll change back into your Whites.”

  “Yes, Your Ladyship,” Daniel said. He dipped his head in further acknowledgment.

  “Then I’ll leave you to your business, Admiral,” Adele said. “Captain Leary, I’ll brief you more fully on our return to the Princess Cecile.”

  She strode out of the office with Daniel following. Tovera was in the lead, implying that she thought that was the direction danger was most likely to come from.

  Tovera was probably right, but Adele doubted there was much to fear in any direction. Not for anyone whom she regarded as being on her side, that is.

  * * * *

  The driver who had delivered the staff car to the Princess Cecile was now carrying Admiral Cox and his aides to the conference in the same vehicle. Daniel and Cox sat on the leather cushions in back; Ruffin and Captain Butler faced them on the molded fiberglass seats across the enclosed passenger compartment.

  Hogg was beside the driver in the open cab, which had only a canvas roof without even side-curtains. The men chatted in friendly fashion despite the rain pelting down. A countryman and hunter — well, poacher — like Hogg had plenty of experience being rained on, and it seemed likely that the admiral’s driver did also.

  “I’m hanged if I know why the Alliance wanted this bloody place,” Cox said as they splashed toward the conference site: West House, though it must be south of Leelburg proper. “I certainly could have done without ever visiting Tattersall in my life.”

  Shrugging, he added, “We couldn’t let the Alliance take it, of course. But that’s the only reason I can think of for the Republic to care — and it’s one more than I can find for Guarantor Porra giving a toss.”

  “I don’t believe Porra actually cares, sir,” Daniel said. He’d read Adele’s briefing, which as usual was thorough. “I believe this has all been arranged by the head of Fleet Intelligence on Madison, a fellow named Doerries. He was clever; but a bit too clever, it seems. He was posted to the Forty Stars because of some problems at his previous posting.”

  “Ah!” said the admiral, nodding wisely. “The secret accounts, I suppose?”

  Cox was being much more human — friendly, even — since he picked up Daniel at the Sissie on the way to West House. The change was pleasant, but it was also unexplained. A spacer learned quickly that inexplicable good fortune is likely to turn sour once you learn what’s really going on. Pigs being fattened aren’t really in luck.

  “Surprisingly, no,” said Daniel. “It appeared that the squadron commander had a serious gambling problem which Doerries knew about. He was blackmailing the admiral to get glowing efficiency reports — which came out in the investigation after the admiral shot himself, you see. Not because of anything Doerries did, but the admiral’s journal described the whole business.”

  “How would arranging a coup on Tattersall have helped him, Leary?” said Butler, leaning forward in his seat. Adele had spoken well of the intelligence officer. “Surely he didn’t hope to be made Resident? And even if it did, governor of Tattersall is scarcely a career for an — ”

  He gestured toward the side window without looking away from Daniel. They were passing a rambling processing plant. Narrow channels crossing the road surface carried effluent toward the harbor. The stench of vegetable decay lay heavy on the wet atmosphere.

  “ — ambitious officer.”

  Daniel cleared his throat, wondering how much to explain. His normal reaction was to be completely open. That was probably the correct response here, at least if he limited his comments to what he had deduced on his own.

  “Ah, sir?” Daniel said, speaking to the admiral although the aide had asked the question. The choice was as much for Butler’s sake as for his own. “You were aware that the Macotta Squadron had been on high alert for several weeks now?”

  “Right,” said Cox, nodding toward his intelligence chief. “Rab there told me all about it. Said they’d been alerted because of that trouble I sent you to Sunbright about, though. Not so?”

  “Yes and no,” said Daniel, aware that Butler was watching with tension under his pleasant smile. “Pleasaunce had delivered a regional alert in case the Funnel Squadron requested help on Sunbright, but Doerries was responsible for the revolt on Sunbright also. Not the initial trouble, but the fact that it built to the level it did. He did that to have an excuse for keeping the Forty Stars Squadron at high readiness. That way they could react immediately when Rides and Cobbet landed on Tattersall and their puppet government called for Alliance help.”

  The road curved slightly. Daniel hadn’t been able to see anything forward, but the side window was clear. He glimpsed an orna
te, turreted house at least three stories high, painted pink with green trim, in the direction they were going.

  “The Forty Stars Squadron?” Cox said in an amazement that was building toward anger. “Look, Leary, you may not think much of us here in the Macotta Region, but I’ll bloody well tell you that we could see off four cruisers not much younger than the Warhol. And any support the Funnel Squadron sent besides. They’re all anti-pirate gunboats anyway.”

  “They couldn’t hold Tattersall a day after we arrived!” Ruffin said forcefully. Either she felt even more insulted than Cox had, or she was trying to convince her superior that she was.

  “I agree,” Daniel said. “There would be a short battle. The Forty Stars Squadron would retreat, probably with damage or even after ships had been destroyed. What would happen then?”

  “What?” said the admiral. “We’d land, clear out the foreigners, and arrest the locals who were in league with them. Much as we’ve done now, in fact, when we arrived ahead of them.”

  “By the great gods,” said Captain Butler. “Doerries was trying to start a war! That’s it, isn’t it, Leary? He thought he was too able to waste in a crisis. He believed that he’d be moved out of this backwater if the war resumed full-force.”

  “I believe so, yes,” Daniel said. “And there’s the further possibility that because of how he was treated, Doerries is as angry with his own people as he is with Cinnabar. Perhaps more so, in fact.”

  Cox scowled fiercely — in the direction of his two aides, but probably at something unseen outside his own mind. “Well,” he growled, “I suppose that’s for others than ourselves to worry about. So long as it’s handled, the likes of you and me don’t need to know the details, eh, Leary?”

  Daniel thought about Tovera, who had no human feelings, and about his friend Adele, who did have feelings but who acted as though she did not. Adele regularly awoke in the dark hours of the morning with an expression like that of a prisoner about to be hanged.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “We space officers have our duties, and those are certainly enough for me.”

  The car paused on the driveway to the grounds of the garish house Daniel had noticed. The estate was surrounded by recently erected chain-link fencing. Though Admiral Cox was the highest authority in the Macotta Region to the Marines guarding the entrance, the vehicles ahead of his staff car physically blocked the entrance until they could be moved; either inside the fencing after they had been checked and approved, or out of the way.

  Unlike the Marines, vehicles ahead were not occupied by people junior to the admiral in a chain of command. The all-terrain command car directly in front bore Fleet markings. It seemed that Admiral Jeletsky had found a way to stow it aboard a heavy cruiser, though Daniel would have liked to know how. Perhaps the vehicle had taken the place of several missiles from a magazine.

  The line of vehicles whined or blatted — the command car’s twin diesels were unmuffled — forward a car’s length. Cox grimaced and turned to Daniel.

  “I’ve heard you’ve worked with this Lady Mundy before, Leary,” he said. “Is she always the ballbuster she was today?”

  That’s why he’s turned friendly toward me! We’re two honest spacers who’re being ordered around by a civilian from some dirty nook of the spy services!

  Daniel cleared his throat. “Well, sir,” he said carefully, “she has days and, well, other days. I swore to do my duty when I received my commission, and I accept the orders which my superiors give me.”

  “Good man,” Cox growled. Perhaps if there had been more room, he would have clapped Daniel on the shoulder.

  Across from them, Ruffin appeared to be taking Daniel’s statement at face value. Captain Butler’s expression was the careful neutral of someone who has no intention of speaking his mind but who certainly has an opinion. Given that Butler had presumably been the source of everything the admiral knew about Adele, the intelligence officer wasn’t likely to correct his superior’s misunderstanding.

  The line moved forward again and stopped. The Fleet command car was being examined now.

  The roar of a ship descending smothered other sounds even this far from the harbor. Daniel didn’t have goggles to filter the UV of the plasma exhaust, but because they were in an RCN staff car, the windows would automatically block actinics.

  The harbor was behind them, but the rain had stopped. Daniel swung open the rear-hinged door, stepped out, and hunched so that he could look through the glass. To his surprise — though perhaps it shouldn’t have been — Cox slid out to join him.

  There was no question but that the descending vessel was naval rather than civilian: the heavy sparring which required a crew too large to be commercially viable proved that. But though the ship’s hull had the lines of a light cruiser, her overall length had been reduced by removing several frames and resetting the antennas to fit the full sail-plan onto the shortened hull. With a trained crew, she would be very fast indeed.

  “That isn’t a cruiser,” Daniel said in surprise. “That’s an RCN courier!”

  His first cruise following graduation from the Academy had been as a supernumerary about the RCS Aglaia, also a courier vessel. Couriers were hard postings because they carried high officials to whom the ship’s officers, especially the junior officers, were peons. But the Aggie had been Lieutenant Daniel Leary’s first ship, and she would always have a place in his heart.

  “She’s the Themis, straight from Harbor Three,” said Commander Ruffin from inside the car.

  “I suppose she’s bringing another high muckymuck to deal with whatever in blazes is going on,” said Cox, squatting at Daniel’s side. “Nobody’s told me, of course. Just requested landing permission in the tone of voice you’d use when you told your servant how you wanted your eggs this morning.”

  “I don’t see how she” — Daniel thumbed toward the Themis — “could have anything to do with our mission,” he said. “The voyage can’t have taken her less than fifteen days, so she had to have lifted before you called the conference. But I don’t believe it’s a coincidence, either. I suppose we’ll learn what it’s all about eventually.”

  He stood. The courier was below the horizon now, so the glare of its exhaust was concealed. “Or not,” he concluded with a lopsided grin toward the admiral.

  Cox doesn’t know what’s going on, Daniel realized. He’s treating me as a friend not for what I know, but because I’m puzzled also. Two spacers, left in the dark by faceless bureaucrats.

  The Alliance vehicle grunted loudly, then started forward. The staff car’s driver was looking back at his passengers, and the Marines at the entrance had braced to attention.

  “Duty calls,” the admiral said without enthusiasm as he got back into the car. They started forward as soon as Daniel had closed the door. The major commanding the guard detachment saluted, but nobody wasted time trying to check the squadron commander’s credentials.

  “You know,” Cox said as the car swung toward the front of the commandeered house, “I thought we had things sorted out pretty well here, pretty bloody well. We’ve rounded up the chancers on Tattersall — that’s right, isn’t it, Butler?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the intelligence officer. “I’m satisfied that we have.”

  He looked at Daniel and added apologetically, “They weren’t very sophisticated. It doesn’t appear to have crossed their minds that their plans would fail.”

  “I don’t see what call there was to bring in this Mundy spook,” Cox said in an aggrieved tone. “We’d taken care of it. And now the Themis, carrying somebody from Navy House or External Affairs or for all I know the Senate itself! Because they don’t trust us to handle a little piss-pot revolution on a little piss-pot world. It’s not right!”

  He looked at Daniel and added, “I’m not blaming you, Leary. You’re following orders just the same as I am or Captain Gillian on the Themis. I just wish our lords and masters trusted us, you see?”

  The staff car stopped again. The All
iance vehicle was being shunted into the parking area without being permitted to drop off its passengers first. Marines in second-class uniforms — the same gray as those of RCN spacers, but with red instead of black piping — backed up the woman giving directions, but she wore utilities and carried her pistol in a shoulder holster. She had no rank or unit insignia.

  Lieutenant Commander Vondrian, a friend whom Daniel planned to get together with if he had a moment before the Princess Cecile lifted from Tattersall, stood to the side. He too was in utilities and was watching the discussion — argument — between the woman giving directions and the driver. Better, the driver’s protest and the woman’s implacably calm disinterest.

  Vondrian was well-born and wealthy. He was normally a pleasant, sophisticated fellow, but at the moment he looked as grim as if he were commanding a firing squad.

  “I think,” said Daniel, “that the Alliance involvement was the problem. Even though Pleasaunce isn’t involved, the central government could be if things went wrong. It’s a complicated mess all going back to Doerries and Forty Stars headquarters, not only the Sunbright rebellion but also much of the blockade running and even the private-venture cruiser that was catching blockade runners, the Estremadura. Though he had partners on Cremona for the cruiser.”

  “Was this Doerries out of his mind?” said Ruffin. “Why was he working against himself? And against his government, if it comes to that?”

  “The blockade running and the Estremadura were both to make money to keep the Sunbright rebellion going,” Daniel said. “He was letting cargoes he’d backed go through and capturing ships sent by rival syndicates. And as for the Sunbright business itself, well, that’s complicated. Too complicated for — ”

  He looked from Ruffin to the admiral.

  “ — a spacer like me.”

  “What’s going on up there?” said Cox, cocking his head to see past his aides on the facing seats. That didn’t show him as much as he wanted to see, so he started to get out of the vehicle on his side.