Some Golden Harbor

by David Drake

  He smiled broadly, taking away the sting he knew was in his tone.

  "Ah!" said Corius. He forced a smile which quickly softened into reality. "Yes, I see that. I perhaps hadn't considered all the risks when I agreed to the plan. If you think it's too dangerous . . .?"

  "It's not," said Daniel. "It's perfectly workable. I just want everyone to realize that I'll do whatever is necessary to make it work, even if other parties haven't fully executed their own duties. Right, Colonel?"

  "My men'll be aboard," Quinn said stiffly. "Never fear that. Look, they're loaded already."

  That wasn't quite true—the last thirty or forty troops were still on the entry ramp, waiting for those ahead of them to move. On the day of the real operation, the First Battalion still would be waiting to load behind the other three so that they'd be first off the transport when it landed on Mandelfarne Island. The First Battalion might not deserve to be called shock troops, but they were at any rate the best men in the Volunteers.

  Daniel wasn't really concerned about the time it took to load in Ollarville. The real worry was how quickly the troops would disembark under hostile fire. There was no way to practice that.

  "Not bad!" Quinn said with the artificial verve he'd shown before. "And a first drill! Now we'll see if the Third and Fourth Battalions can better their time."

  The troops had finally vanished into the ship, though Daniel was sure they'd still be packing the entry hold for another several minutes. Nonetheless, quickly enough.

  "Well, I'm glad to hear you say you're still in favor of the plan, Commander," Corius said, patronizingly expansive again. "Because I don't mind telling you that I'd hate to cancel the operation and come up with another method of defeating Arruns. That wouldn't be an easy job, I'm afraid."

  "I don't think you need worry about that, Councilor," Daniel said diplomatically. "So long as we continue to work on execution, we'll be fine when the time comes to do the job for real."

  Colonel Quinn was talking to his battalion commander again. Daniel heard a tone of qualified approval in his voice, which the event scarcely justified.

  We can't cancel the operation, Councilor, Daniel thought grimly, because we can't get word to Adele and her detachment. I'm going to be taking a ship into the Pellegrinian base one way or another, even if it's the Princess Cecile with a skeleton crew.

  Central Haven on Pellegrino

  "Striker to Football," crackled the voice of the signals officer of the Duilio, already in orbit. "Report your status, over."

  "Striker, this is Football," Adele said. She'd listened repeatedly to the exchanges the Rainha's signals officer, Clerk 7 Lena Hilbert of the Alliance Fleet, had with ground control on Mandelfarne Island, Central Haven, and with the cruiser. "Captain Cootzee says we're ready to lift. Over."

  They'd been lucky that though none of the societies in and around Ganpat's Reach allowed women in their governments, militaries, or the crews of their ships, the signals units servicing the invasion of Dunbar's World were provided by the Alliance. Hilbert was fat and unkempt, but she was female and thereby made Adele's life easier. Adele was distorting her voice electronically, but making the transmissions completely sexless would raise questions.

  "Hilbert, is that you?" said the Duilio's officer—Clerk 7 Wang. "What the hell's wrong with you, over?"

  Vesey was going over her checklist, exchanging comments with Boise in the Power Room. She had Adele's conversation running as a text feed at the bottom of her display, but she knew that if there were anything she as captain needed to know, Adele would bring it to her attention.

  "Look, Wang," Adele said, the exasperation in her voice real. "I've already got a hangover. I don't need a ration of shit from you too. Cootzee says, 'Are we cleared to lift?' over."

  Adele's lip curled, but she knew what Hilbert would say and how she'd say it. If the woman had been a person of greater intelligence and breeding, she wouldn't have been a low-ranking clerk in a hardship posting . . . but it still distressed Adele to ape her manners. Lack of manners.

  She smiled sadly. Most things distressed her if she let herself dwell on them. That was a good reason, if she'd needed one, to focus her intention on information and avoid considering the realities beyond the information. She'd ably mimicked Clerk 7 Hilbert's tone; that was all that mattered.

  "Football, this is Striker Command," said a different, heavier voice from the cruiser. It wasn't Captain ap Glynn but rather his executive officer, Commander Diehl. "You may lift off, over."

  "Roger," Adele said. "Captain Cootzee, Striker has cleared us to lift off. Over."

  She pointed her finger at Sun, sitting tensely at the second bridge terminal. His voice naturally sounded quite a lot like that of the Rainha's captain, and Vesey'd written him a script. Sun, who'd enthusiastically led armed assaults in the past, was white-faced with fear of acting; even very modest acting, as this was.

  Adele shut off her terminal's audio. "Sun," she said, "don't fail Commander Leary!"

  "Roger," Sun squeaked. "Out."

  Vesey lit all twelve thrusters together, following Captain Cootzee's practice as shown in the ship's electronic log. Adele smiled again. It wasn't the way Daniel or anybody Daniel had trained did things. This was probably as hard for Vesey as Hilbert's vulgarity was for Mundy of Chatsworth.

  "Signals, this is Command," Vesey said over a two-way link. "Is the intercom, ah, secure, over?"

  Adele checked her terminal before she spoke. "Captain," she said, "no one will know what happens or is said aboard this ship unless I determine that they should. Over."

  "Ship, this is Command," Vesey resumed over the general push. "We've carried out the first portion of our mission. Now comes the hard part: managing to look as sloppy on the way to Dunbar's World as the wogs we're pretending to be. We're all Sissies so I know it'll be a strain, but remember that it's worth it. If we pull this off, we'll get a chance to show ten thousand monkeys from the back of beyond what RCN spacers are like. Are you with me?"

  By heaven! thought Adele as the crew cheered. By heaven, Vesey's voice wobbles a little but she's as much like Daniel as anyone could be! Out of sheer effort, she's mimicking what Daniel does by instinct.

  "Ship, prepare to lift," said Vesey as the enthusiasm faded to a happy expectancy. She slid her joined throttles forward; the ship began to shudder upward in a pillar of steam and fire.

  Adele's hand fell unconsciously to the butt of her pistol. She'd have very little to do over the five-day voyage to Dunbar's World. When they reached orbit, she'd have to exchange communications with ground control and Wang aboard the Duilio, but Vesey could handle that by herself now that Adele'd cleared the Alliance encryption gear.

  The real work would come when the Rainha landed and her hatches opened. At that point the Sissies' task would be to kill people; and with the possible exception of Tovera, nobody aboard was as skilled at that as Adele Mundy.

  CHAPTER 21

  Mandelfarne Island on Dunbar's World

  The landing jounced Adele so hard against her terminal's simple lap belt that it broke her concentration on the message traffic swirling around the Pellegrinian base. She turned her head with a frown. Vesey was sitting rigidly at her console, hands poised over the controls.

  Of course. Vesey had to follow Captain Cootzee's standard operating procedure, so she was letting the Rainha's computer land them instead of easing the ship in manually the way Daniel'd taught her to do. With an ordinary water landing it didn't make a great deal of difference, but the reflected thrust made a ship coming in over land quiver like a ball on a vibrating table. A skilled pilot could land much more smoothly by matching thruster output to the terrain.

  Of course an unskilled pilot could drop his ship sideways or even flip it onto its back. Cootzee preferred discomfort to a chance of disaster, and Vesey perforce had to use the techniques of the man she'd supplanted.

  Was the capture of the Rainha piracy or an act of war? Probably piracy, because we weren't in uniform . .
. and for that matter, Pellegrino isn't at war with Cinnabar. Though that might change if Chancellor Arruns loses his temper as badly as he may when he learns whats happened on Dunbar's World.

  The Rainha touched hard, her stern slightly below her bow; Adele's torso swung to the right. The bow dipped and the stern rose with a second paired Clang-g! from the outriggers. Adele swung left, wondering if this was the way the ship always landed. Probably, probably; but how did they stand it?

  Vesey—slight, pale, self-effacing Lieutenant Vesey—shouted, "Fuck this fucking piece of shit!"

  The thrusters shut off while the Rainha was in the air. The ship fell—only a few inches, but three thousand tons hits bone-jarringly hard even in a short distance—with a ringing crash. Adele had enough experience with machinery to understand what'd happened: Vesey, conditioned to the razor-sharp controls of the Princess Cecile, had switched off the thrusters when the Rainha was down. The lag in the freighter's mushy circuits and feed pipes meant the vessel'd lifted again before the command took effect.

  As the freighter hissed and pinged, cooling till it'd be safe to open the hatches, Adele unbuckled her lap belt. The strap appeared to have left bruises over her hip bones.

  That didn't matter. As well as the little weapon in her tunic pocket, Adele was carrying a service pistol. She secured its holster flap in the open position, leaving the butt clear to be gripped. She found the big weapon heavy and awkward, but the tiny pellets from the pocket pistol weren't effective beyond fifty yards. She was likely to need greater range tonight.

  Most of the crew was already in the entry hold, but Wheelus and Heska were poised at the dorsal airlock with stocked impellers. Under normal circumstances that hatch was used only by riggers coming and going from the hull. At present the two spacers were waiting to be told to take firing positions on the upper hull.

  Sun rose from his console, looking in silent expectancy from Vesey to Adele. He slanted his sub-machine gun across his chest; he'd removed the sling. Adele got up also, feeling—

  Not feeling much of anything, she supposed. She wondered with detachment whether she'd be killed in the next few minutes.

  Tovera carried a full-sized sub-machine gun but wore the miniature weapon from her attaché case in a belt holster. She'd strapped a pack in front of her where she could reach the contents easily.

  Tovera was smiling. Adele didn't know what that meant. It irritated her to think that despite her skill as an information specialist, she couldn't answer questions about those so close to her.

  "Fellow Sissies!" Vesey said, using the public address system. Her voice buzzed out of the tinny speakers in each compartment. "You all have your instructions. The most important one is that you don't shoot, none of us shoot, until Officer Mundy orders or the wogs start shooting at us. We're going to go out there as quiet as mice. With luck we'll take the missile battery without a shot being fired."

  Adele had to force herself not to fidget. Intellectually she knew that it would cause questions if they lowered the ramps too early. Plasma exhaust baked the ground as hot as fired porcelain. Even experienced spacers couldn't leave the ship for several minutes after landing unless they were wearing rigging suits.

  Adele knew that, but she was keyed up and desperate to get on with what she knew was coming. It was half-possible that they'd capture the battery without shooting, but even if they did the night wouldn't be over.

  "Remember, Sissies," Vesey went on. "No one on Cinnabar may know where we are or care, but Mister Leary's counting on us. Let's not fail him. Out!"

  Vesey'd been rising as she finished her speech. She took the sub-machine gun hanging from the back of the console and turned toward the hatch. Sun, cued by the movement, started for the companionway. Tovera nodded the lieutenant ahead of her and Adele; Vesey hesitated an instant—but only an instant—and obeyed.

  As the group from the bridge passed, Wheelus and Heska climbed into the airlock and cycled it shut. The inner and outer hatches were interlocked so they couldn't both be open at once.

  Adele kept her right hand over the companionway railing as she followed, knowing how easily she could lose her footing on the wear-polished steel treads. She wasn't afraid of dying, but if she lived to be a hundred she'd never learn to shrug off embarrassment.

  She grinned coldly. It didn't seem likely that she'd live to a hundred. Well, it'd never been a priority.

  The Rainha's entry compartment was smaller than the Princess Cecile's, in keeping with the freighter's civilian crewing standard. Twelve spacers would've been comfortable in it; thirty carrying weapons and bandoliers of reloads were squeezed together like canned fish.

  "Ten of you up the up companionway now!" Sun bellowed. The force included two bosun's mates, Schmidt and Quinsett, but they hadn't taken charge in this situation. Sun, the armorer and gunner's mate, was in his element

  .

  There was an immediate undulation in the crowd, enough that Adele could worm her way to the front with only a modicum of pushing. Her skin felt hot and prickly as though she were about to faint. She'd be all right when she started down the ramp, but the packed hold was working on her agoraphobia. It crushed her with the weight of so many people who weren't moving and couldn't move.

  "Remember, we wait for Officer Mundy!" Vesey said. She had to raise her voice, because shuffling and the sound of excited breathing created a susurrus like the incoming tide.

  At Vesey's nod, Quinsett gave a 90 degree turn to the wheel controlling the hatch mechanism. The machinery groaned for a moment; then the heated seam broke free. The ramp dropped slowly with a peevish hydraulic whine. Hot, dry air swirled in, sharp with ozone and hints of cremated organic materials.

  The ramp creaked to horizontal, paused minusculely, and continued winding down. Adele stood frozen in a cocoon of her own thoughts. Ordinary spacers would start across the ramp long before it was fully down; often they'd jump the last of the distance to the ground and saunter off, gay in their liberty rigs and their hope of a good time.

  Adele wasn't a spacer; she was a librarian who lived and worked in space. But she was RCN and she was a Sissie, and those were all that mattered.

  The words know thyself had supposedly been written above an ancient oracle. Adele had that lesson down as well as anyone she knew. So long as she didn't have to like the person she knew she was, she was fine.

  The ramp banged to the ground with a shudder that would've knocked her off her feet if she'd been on it at the time. She started down now, smiling to herself and at herself. Tovera was to her right side, half a step back.

  They were dressed for the occasion in loose, dark blue clothing. The garments weren't a uniform, but in the darkness they looked a great deal like Alliance Fleet fatigues. Her RCN commo helmet was white, not dark gray like the Fleet equivalent, but that couldn't be helped. The Alliance communications unit with Arruns didn't use helmets anyway.

  Tracked vehicles were rolling toward the Rainha, their rectangular headlights knifing through swirls of dust and fumes. Adele turned toward the battery's control unit, a hardened trailer a hundred yards from the supply ship's landing place near the eastern end of the island. Because of the danger of exhaust and missile backblast, the positions nearby had to have heavy overhead cover. There were bunkers on the shoreline, but the troops in them were concerned with an attack from across the channel rather than one that'd dropped straight down on the island.

  Two men buzzed up on a wheeled scooter. If they wore insignia, Adele couldn't see it even with her visor's light enhancement. The man on the back called without dismounting, "Do you have the manifest?"

  Adele thumbed toward the open hatch. "You'll have to talk to the captain about that," she said, trudging on nonchalantly. She didn't look back.

  Powerful engines honked and hooted, moving equipment toward the Rainha. Adele walked faster. She'd seen during Daniel's reconnaissance that the Pellegrinians brought banks of floodlights on wheeled carriages up to the ship to illuminate it so that unloadin
g could go on night and day.

  To capture Port Dunbar would require great expenditures either of men or of shells, and the Chancellor couldn't provide more men. There were no permanent port facilities on Mandelfarne Island, so Arruns had to speed delivery of the necessary munitions in some other way.

  The control trailer was the center of a web of leads to the array of vertical spike antennas thirty meters out from it. The edges of the narrow path to the door were taped so that those entering and leaving didn't trip over the lines. Adele thought of spiders. The corners of her mouth curled up: she and Tovera were the predators, not the technicians on watch inside.

  A light stuck out above the lintel like a tiny shelf fungus, casting a fuzzy glow over the door and the ground in front of it. An optical pickup with a wide-angle lens was tacked to the panel at eye height in place of a vision block; beside it was a small grating, also an add-on, connected to the inside of the trailer by a hair-fine fiber.