Though Hell Should Bar the Way - eARC

by David Drake

I coughed, wondering if I ought to say the next because it was embarrassing. If I wonder, then I should. “We weren’t intimate,” I said. “We didn’t have sex.”

  “Why not?” said the Captain.

  One guy to another, I realized. “She wanted me to do things that I wasn’t going to do,” I said aloud. “I wasn’t going to take the price and then stiff her on my part of the bargain. And I guess I was offended that she didn’t want to sleep with me, she wanted me to do things for her.”

  “Tell us exactly what Mistress Grimaud said,” Lady Mundy said. Her attention was on the display of the data unit which she controlled with a pair of wands.

  I took a deep breath which also gave me a moment to frame the words. “She said you and Captain Leary were dangerous rogues, working for an organization outside the Republic’s proper government,” I said. I looked at the Mundy’s data unit because my eyes had to be somewhere. “She said you were on Saguntum to foment a war between Karst and the Republic. She said this would bring on full-out war between Cinnabar and the Alliance, and that this would ruin us.”

  Lady Mundy raised her eyes to me. I met them and said, “Maeve said she was the agent of the Foreign Ministry, trying to prevent the disaster.”

  “What did you think, Olfetrie?” the captain said. It was a calm question, the way he might have asked a local for directions in a strange city.

  “I thought it was above my pay grade, sir!” I said, louder than I should have spoken. I was shocked at my own anger. Part of me was screaming This isn’t fair! As though the universe or the people with me in the cabin cared about that. “I thought I’d get even more drunk and forget all about it! But there were two guys in the bar and they doped me and put me on the Martinique. Which pirates captured and took to Salaam on ben Yusuf.”

  “From where you escaped,” said Lady Mundy to her data unit. She looked up at me and raised an eyebrow. “In a ship which seems to be owned by the Hegemony of Karst.”

  “It belonged to the Karst consul at Salaam,” I said. “He wasn’t, well, he was hand in glove with the Admiral, Monica should’ve been freed. We took the ship, but if Karst wants it back, they’re welcome.”

  “What will the consul say if we ask him?” the captain said.

  I met his eyes and said very deliberately, “Sir, you’d better ask him yourself. If you can find him.”

  Tovera gave a little snicker.

  Lady Mundy looked at the captain. She said, “I’m satisfied.”

  “Then I am too, and I’ll go put Woetjans’ mind at rest,” Captain Leary said. He got up and added, “Olfetrie, you can report aboard the Sunray any time you like, but you won’t have any duties for twenty-four hours. I suppose you have things you want to settle here.”

  I started to say that I didn’t, but then I thought of something. “Sir?” I said. “Could I have Chief Pasternak take a look at the fusion bottle here? I don’t know who owns the Alfraz, but the bottle needs to be fixed or replaced before she lifts again.”

  And the pump control needed to be repaired, but that’s a little thing. For the cost of replacing a fusion bottle, it’d be better business to sell the ship for parts.

  Leary smiled. “I think the Chief’s been bored with the time we’ve been sitting in harbor here,” he said. “He’ll jump at the chance.”

  “Thank you, sir!” I said. “I think I’ll check in at the Sunray and figure out the next move then.”

  “If you’re planning to discuss matters with Maeve Grimaud, Olfetrie,” Lady Mundy said, “I’d rather that you didn’t. Besides which, the Foreign Ministry delegation has moved into the Councillor’s Residence to be closer to the seat of government.”

  “Ma’am,” I said, “I really don’t want to see the lady again. I suppose she was doing her job and like I said, that’s above my pay grade. But now that I’m back, I just want to be back to normal where I was before I got shanghaied.”

  Lady Mundy gave me a kind of smile that froze me to the bones. “You’re right that the matter isn’t your business,” she said. “But it’s ours and we’ll deal with it. And lest you be concerned that by speaking you’ve harmed a woman for whom you clearly feel a gallant concern, don’t worry. We were aware of the Foreign Ministry activities before we lifted from Cinnabar. It’s good that you told us yourself, though.”

  “This is grown-up rules, kid,” Tovera said. There was a metallic softness in her voice. “You get your choice of sides, but you don’t get to sit in the middle.”

  I swallowed and nodded to her. “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’m on Captain Leary’s side. But I wish it wasn’t like this.”

  “Yeah,” said the captain. He suddenly sounded old. “I wish it wasn’t too…but then I think, if it was the kind of world I wish it was, there wouldn’t be any place for me.”

  He looked down at Lady Mundy and added, “Nor for Adele either.”

  She sniffed without looking up. “The universe consists of patterns of information,” she said. “A good librarian can always find a place to be useful.”

  Lady Mundy lifted her face. It had a terrible stillness, and her eyes were focused on some distant time or thing.

  “Sir,” I said, nodding to Captain Leary. “I’ll be off then.”

  Nobody followed me out of the cabin, at least before I’d gotten to the bottom of the ramp. I guess they wanted to discuss things among themselves.

  I’d wanted more than anything in life for things to go back to normal, but they hadn’t and I knew they never would for me again.

  CHAPTER 32

  The crew of the Sunray was happy to see me—remarkably happy. I wasn’t sure that anybody would’ve noticed that I was gone, let alone be pleased that I was back.

  The thing is, everybody wanted to know what’d happened to me. I told them all the same thing: “Got drunk, got shanghaied, got captured by pirates, got back.”

  It was all true. My worst enemy couldn’t accuse me of drawing the long bow to make myself look good. And if the answer made no bloody sense to the folks asking the question, well, it hadn’t made any sense to me when I was doing it.

  Pasternak was pleased as could be when I asked him about looking over the Alfraz. The whole crew, techs as well as riggers, was getting antsy. Gamba summed it up with, “Well, I figure Six and the Mistress are doing some kinda magic like they always do, but it’s pretty bloody boring for the rest of us, I can tell you.”

  Pasternak took me from the Sunray to the Alfraz in a battery-powered cart that came from the customs service. The transfer—borrowed or bought—must have been aboveboard: The vehicle still had the yellow body color and red-stencilled fender and door legends instead of having been repainted.

  I’d told Pasternak what the ship was doing, but when we got to the Alfraz I kept out of the way except to lend a hand when requested—lifting clear the cover plate to open up the machinery and similar occasional jobs. He muttered as he looked at things and took readings with a tester from a worn leather sheath.

  “Oh, you’re a lucky lad, you are,” Pasternak said. I figured he meant me, but he had his nose in his work and may very well have been talking to one of the components he was dealing with.

  It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer it. And anyway, I didn’t disagree.

  After the better part of an hour, Pasternak rose and faced me. “I need to go back to the Sunray, now,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. I knew he had duties, after all. “Ah, sir? Do you think the bottle can be repaired or should the ship be sold to a wrecker?”

  “A wrecker?” the chief said in horror. “A wrecker! Of course she can be repaired! The circulating passages have to be cleaned and we’ll replace all of the electrical circuitry while we’re inside anyway. I’ll be back with a crew and the parts within the hour.”

  He turned and gestured to the pump switch. The bulkhead above it was blackened around the point where Lal’s wrench had completed the circuit. There the metal was blue in the center, hazing to yellow in a ring beyond.<
br />
  “We’ll fix that, too, but that’ll take longer,” he added. “Three days, maybe.”

  “Chief?” I said. “Are you sure about that? Because the electrician in Plaquemines did the job in only about four hours with a boy to help him.”

  “We’re not going to bodge the job like that,” Pasternak said in disgust. “We’ll be opening the deck to run the cabling through safely.”

  An aircar landed on the quay; the howl sank to a hum as the fans cycled down. I looked out the hatch and saw it looked like the same one Colonel Foliot had arrived in just after we’d landed. That was the only aircar I’d seen on Saguntum since the Sunray arrived, so I wasn’t surprised when Foliot got out of the passenger compartment.

  “Now who’s that?” Pasternak said, narrowing his eyes. “Friend of yours, lad?”

  “That’s the Director of Public Safety,” I said. The chief hadn’t been in the party of Sunrays who’d greeted our arrival. “And as for friend, I don’t know. I hope at least he isn’t my enemy.”

  I remembered my concern about how Monica’s parents would feel about their daughter dating a spacer with nothing but his pay to live on—and that was before I knew just who her father was. I also wondered how Monica had described our association.

  “Well, I’ll run back to the Sunray and get things together,” Pasternak said.

  I started to ask him to stay a moment, then decided I wasn’t afraid of a man as old as my father. Colonel Foliot could certainly beat the crap out of me if he wanted to—he had fifty pounds on me and despite his age was clearly a hard man in all ways; but if that was going to happen it might as well be now.

  The chief must’ve seen something in my face, though, because he said, “Come to think, I’ll stay for a little bit.”

  Foliot came to the foot of the ramp. He was wearing a business suit, dark gray with stripes that were white or maybe light blue to match the tunic under the open jacket.

  “I’ve come to see Roylan Olfetrie,” he called from the quay. “My name’s Foliot.”

  “I’m Olfetrie,” I said. I decided to wait at the top of the ramp, treating this as a visit to the Alfraz rather than to me specifically “Welcome aboard, sir.”

  Pasternak looked at me, probably wondering what this was about. I wished I could tell him.

  “Good to meet you, Olfetrie,” Foliot said when he reached me. He’d looked fifty at a distance from the way he moved, but close up I was sure he was older. As we shook hands firmly, he said, “I want to buy your ship.”

  I don’t know what I’d expected, but it wasn’t that.

  “Sir,” I said, “the Alfraz isn’t mine.”

  “It bloody well is!” Foliot said. “You captured her from pirates and slavers, didn’t you? That gives you title on any civilized planet in the universe!”

  “I think the actual owner was the Karst consul to Salaam…” I said. I planned to say something more, but I wasn’t sure what.

  “Monica’s told me about the bloody Karst consul to Salaam,” Foliot said. “I swear the worst regret I’ve got in this whole business is that Platt isn’t still alive for me to shoot. But with the help of this ship”—he nodded generally toward the cargo hold—“which Monica says you fixed so the Salaam defenses won’t shoot at, I’m going to take care of a few more of the bastards.”

  A thought struck him. “Say, the ship will work, won’t it?” he added. “Monica said there was something wrong with the engines?”

  “The fusion bottle,” Pasternak said, startling Foliot and me both. “She’ll be up and running by midnight, I figure. The pump switch”—he gestured—“that’ll take longer to do right.”

  Foliot flicked his hands impatiently. “Just jumper it or some bloody thing,” he said. “Done pretty doesn’t matter.”

  “Done right matters,” the chief said, lifting his chin. “It’ll be done right, and I’ll tell you when it has been.”

  For a moment I thought Foliot was going to press the matter, but he suddenly relaxed with a grin. “I guess you will at that,” he said. “Well, it’ll take a couple days to get things together at this end, if I’m honest.”

  “And,” I said, “I need to discuss the matter with Captain Leary before I agree to do anything. I guess he’s back at the Sunray.”

  “This is nothing to do with Leary or Cinnabar,” Foliot said, frowning slightly. “But I can take you over to the Sunray right now if you like.”

  “If it involves me, it involves Cinnabar,” I said. “And I’ll discuss it with Captain Leary.”

  Also with Lady Mundy, but I didn’t say that.

  “Colonel?” Pasternak said. “If you’ll run me back too, I can get started quicker. We’ll need the truck to haul the crew and the tools we need.”

  Foliot gave him a little bow. “It will be a pleasure, Chief,” he said. He led us at a quick pace back to the quay and the aircar.

  * * *

  Captain Leary was on the Sunray—at the command console, like enough, Wedell said. She was one of the pair of spacers on duty in the boarding hold, their submachine guns hung from a rack discreetly out of sight behind the bulkhead. A watch of some sort on even a tramp at anchor was normal, but heavily armed guards would arouse attention.

  The bridge hatch was open; Captain Leary was indeed at the console. I paused in the hatchway, braced to attention, and said, “Sir! Officer Olfetrie reporting to Captain Leary with a visitor!”

  Captain Leary turned and smiled at me. “We’re civilians, Olfetrie,” he said. “I don’t think quite so much formality is required. And”—he was looking past me—“Colonel Foliot, it’s a pleasure to see you again. We haven’t really had a chance to talk since the Alfraz arrived.”

  “I’ll go back to the supplementary station, sir,” Lieutenant Enery said, rising from one of the flat-plate displays that had been added to the bridge when the Republic rented the Sunray. At any rate, I’d never seen anything like this array on a civilian ship, let alone the supplementary station in the stern—in place of a warship’s Battle Direction Center.

  “Guess I’ll hoof it too,” volunteered Sun, who’d apparently been doing gunnery practice on another display. That left me and Foliot with Captain Leary and, at another display, Lady Mundy. I’d have asked for her presence if she hadn’t been here.

  Tovera sat on a jump seat, watching impassively. There was a rustle from the corridor and Hogg entered, squirming between Foliot and the jamb.

  “Pull the hatch closed, Colonel,” Leary said. “Then take a seat and tell us what your proposition is.”

  “Look, Leary,” Foliot said, “I’m not trying to get Cinnabar into this. Some ben Yusuf pirates captured my daughter. They’d still be holding her now except your Olfetrie here got her loose. I want to go back and teach the bastards a quick lesson, and to do that I want to buy Olfetrie’s ship. That’s all.”

  “Larger powers than Saguntum have taught the ben Yusuf pirates a lesson,” Mundy said, focused on data scrolling through her little personal unit. “The pirates are still there.”

  “Look, I don’t think I’m the Almighty,” Foliot said. He seated himself, facing outward from the station Sun had vacated. “I’m not planning to wipe out piracy. But I can put paid to the Admiral of Salaam and any pirate ships that happen to be in harbor when we stop by. This boy”—he nodded to me—“buggered the control circuits of the antiship missiles in the harbor when he got out with Monica. I want to use his ship to get back in, land troops, and blow the batteries up for real. Then my sloops can land and do something more, especially at the palace.”

  “Sir,” I said to the captain, “the lockout was general, not just for the Alfraz. Somebody could turn it on as quick as that if they noticed. I think if I brought the Alfraz down myself, they wouldn’t shoot, though.”

  I cleared my throat and went on, “And sir? I request permission to accompany the expedition.”

  “Do you indeed,” Captain Leary said. “Do you consider this the business of a Cinnabar citizen, Olfetrie?�
�

  “Sir, I do,” I said. “I believe it’s the business of any Cinnabar citizen to redress the insult done to a trainee officer of the RCN. Sir.”

  Hogg laughed. “I’ll bet you can sell that to Navy House, don’t you think, Master?” he said.

  “I probably could, if I thought it necessary to inform anybody at Navy House,” the captain said with a smile. “At present I report to Director Jimenez, however; and he has no direct command responsibility over RCN personnel, of course. Any spacers under my command, let’s say.”

  “Then you’ll let Olfetrie sell me his ship?” Colonel Foliot pressed. I was satisfied myself, but I didn’t blame Foliot for wanting it nailed down beyond question. He had to think like the ruler of a planet, which from what Lady Mundy had said he pretty much was.

  “I think we can do better than that, Colonel,” Leary said. “The Alfraz should have a proper RCN crew since she’s owned and captained by a Cinnabar citizen. Also, I’ve spent some time with your naval protection force. You’ve got good personnel, but sinking ships in harbor will be easier for experienced people, some of which I’d be happy to provide—if that meets your approval?”

  “Yes,” Foliot said. “Yes, it certainly does!”

  “Then I think we should get to the serious planning,” said Captain Leary. “Adele, will you please project the maps you’ve prepared?”

  At the Academy, they talked about Captain Leary as though he were a magician. It wasn’t magic but from what I saw in the next three hours he and Lady Mundy thought way ahead of anybody else I’d ever met.

  CHAPTER 33

  “Freighter Alfraz out of Hegemony on Karst,” I said, transmitting on what I knew to be the frequency of the Harbormaster’s Office in Salaam. “We request permission to land in Salaam Harbor, over.”

  “That’s three times,” Gamba shouted from the striker’s seat. Even with the thrusters and High Drive shut down, a starship’s cabin is a noisy environment. “How often are you going to call?”

  “I guess that’ll do,” I shouted back. Keying the transmitter again, I said, “Freighter Alfraz landing at Salaam Harbor, out.”