The Sea Without a Shore - eARC

by David Drake

  “Given the problems within your coalition…,” Adele said. It stretched a point to call the Independence Council a coalition, but this wasn’t a time to debate word choice. “I’m surprised that the rebellion has been as successful as it has.”

  The current status of the war had the Pantellarians besieged on the Delta, whose agricultural output was of no importance to Pantellaria or concern to the rebels in the south. Adele presumed that the miners were paying more for food, which now had to be smuggled from the Delta—not difficult, from what Daniel had said about the situation around Hablinger—or brought in from a greater distance. People in Brotherhood weren’t going hungry, however.

  “It wasn’t always like this,” Cleveland said, shaking his head. “It wasn’t like this even when I took ship for Cinnabar. And at the beginning, well—”

  He circled his right hand.

  “—it was a war, which is—”

  He waggled his hand again, looking for a word.

  “Anti-social,” Graves said, smiling. He returned to the couch from which he’d risen to alert the barge crew.

  “Right, anti-social by definition,” Cleveland said. He smiled too, but his eyes were focused on the base of the console. “But within the independence movement, the rebels if you wish, there was great enthusiasm and, well, brotherhood. Like nothing I’d seen anywhere beyond the Transformationist community.”

  “The sort of spirit that gets nations into wars…,” Adele said. “Rarely lasts long. Usually it doesn’t last beyond the first set of casualty returns. I’m sorry if that sounds cynical.”

  “As I said,” Graves replied, “I’m an engineer. Whether or not I like a situation has nothing to do with whether your description of it is accurate. In this case, however, there’s more to the matter than there would have been in similar cases.”

  Cleveland nodded. “The assault on Hablinger,” he said. To Adele he added, “Twelve of our community were killed, and the other organizations lost many more.”

  Graves nodded also, but he said, “It wasn’t just the losses. The Pantellarians underestimated us, the independence movement, but in turn we underestimated them. We’d driven them back into Hablinger by sheer numbers and enthusiasm.”

  He grimaced at the final word.

  “The Council believed that we should use our momentum and sweep the Pantellarians off the planet—or into the sea, if they didn’t board their ships quickly enough.”

  Graves spread his hands and looked at Adele. “There were probably ten thousand Corcyrans under arms at that time,” he said. “Most of them weren’t in any real organization, and they were armed with odds and ends or not even armed, but ten thousand. I’m a member of the Council. While I don’t know that anyone would have taken notice if I’d opposed the assault, I was strongly in favor also. The war itself was evil, and this was the quickest and therefore best means of ending it.”

  “I wasn’t there,” Cleveland said. “I was to be part of the third Transformationist contingent. The survivors were withdrawn at once and replaced early by the second contingent. The Pantellarians had used their ships.”

  This information was part of the files which Mistress Sand’s office had sent to Adele. She listened now without comment. The impression she got from those who had spoken to the victims at the time had a vividness which third-party reports could not provide.

  “We’d assumed the destroyers were merely escorts for the transports,” Graves said. “Instead it was a trap. They were hoping to wipe out resistance in one stroke, and they very nearly managed to do so. The ships came over at low level, using their plasma cannon. They slaughtered over a thousand of us—there was no cover, we were attacking over the rice paddies.”

  “I didn’t think you could fire ships’ guns in an atmosphere,” Cleveland said, shaking his head. “I thought the guns blew up if you tried.”

  “It erodes the bores of plasma cannon badly,” Adele said. “And the range is short. But they don’t blow up, no.”

  Daniel frequently used his plasma cannon against ground targets, and he’d taught his crews to do so as well. That meant the certain replacement of the thick, stubby iridium cannon barrels after every use, but in a battle everything—certainly including the cost of hardware—was second to winning.

  “For some reason, the Pantellarians didn’t counterattack then,” Graves said. “We were able to regroup.”

  “Independence troops couldn’t run away through the paddies any more easily than the Pantellarians could attack,” Cleveland said, smiling faintly. “Otherwise I’m sure no one would have stayed in the lines around Hablinger. Certainly I wouldn’t have stayed if I’d been there and had the choice.”

  “Yes,” Graves said. “The only proper highways in the Delta are the two on top of the levees to either side of the river. Near Hablinger, the bed of the Cephisis is nearly thirty feet above the paddies. Getting onto the roads quickly would be impossible, and it would have been suicide with the destroyers strafing. But I’m still surprised they didn’t counterattack.”

  “I doubt Governor Arnaud deliberately drew you into a trap,” Adele said. She was reporting Daniel’s analysis of the file data, but she could have come to the same conclusion herself. She had gained experience of wars and with irregular troops in the years since she had met Daniel. “I suspect the expeditionary force reacted in desperation. Using warships in that fashion is very dangerous, even if the captain is skilled in atmosphere maneuvers. Few of them are.”

  She smiled with the cold pride of a Sissie—a member of the crew of the Princess Cecile—whose captain was an exceptional ship-handler and whose example had drawn his officers to emulation. There might be Pantellarian officers whose skills rose to the level of an average RCN officer, but Adele would not believe without proof that any of them could equal what Daniel and Vesey had accomplished more than once in her experience.

  “The naval officers might have been willing to abandon the troops…,” Adele continued aloud. They certainly would have been willing to leave the infantry in the mud, in her opinion. “But the destroyers wouldn’t have been able to actually make space voyages without several days of preparation. Or more. They probably attacked you half-crewed as it was. Nothing less than a crisis would have forced the commanders to risk their ships as they did.”

  Graves looked as though she had just dumped ice water over him. “You mean that if we’d given them a chance to escape…,” he said, speaking with great care, “they wouldn’t have slaughtered us?”

  Adele grimaced. “I don’t know what would have happened,” she said. “There are too many variables. I’m reasonably sure that without the spur of necessity, Pantellarian naval officers wouldn’t have been willing to risk their ships in a low-level attack of that nature. A lucky impeller slug could have shattered several thruster nozzles. A clumsy ship-handler would have crashed when his thrust was suddenly unbalanced.”

  She was uncomfortable with the discussion. The past was information; that was her life, or would be her life in a perfect universe. The future was prediction; that was part of her present duty as an RCN officer, guiding the actions of her fellows, her family.

  Speculation on what would have happened if some factor had been different was a third thing, a pointless and foolish thing so far as Adele was concerned. Changing one aspect of a past complex situation could not change the present—nothing could change the present—and the side-effects of that single change were beyond what Adele’s intelligence could determine with any degree of certainty.

  She smiled coldly at Graves. There may be humans better able to calculate those side-effects than I am, but I haven’t met them yet.

  Aloud Adele said, consciously changing the subject, “Then the disaster at Hablinger caused the coalition to fracture?”

  Graves nodded, looking relieved to leave the subject. Adele wasn’t sure what happened to her face when she was angry. She had thought that her expression simply went blank, but the reactions of other people suggested that
there was more going on than that.

  “The casualties were stressful, certainly,” Graves said, “but all the parties had agreed on the attack and the casualties were fairly evenly spread also.”

  “Most of the dead were miners,” Cleveland said. “Men—mostly men—who weren’t members of any of the groups. They’d been treating the whole business as a big bar fight until the destroyers swept over. After that most of the survivors went home as quickly as they could, though we still outnumber the Pantellarians around Hablinger.”

  “It was clear that we couldn’t simply assault the Pantellarian lines again,” Graves said. “We couldn’t have gotten any of the troops to obey that order. Someone suggested in the Council meeting—I think it was Mistress Tibbs—that we buy anti-ship missiles and place them in the front lines. Both she and Captain Samona hoped to be able to acquire missiles from Alliance sources, but they weren’t able to do so.”

  Adele nodded crisply. If the Alliance, or even one well-placed Alliance bureaucrat, decided to risk breaking the Treaty of Amiens either out of pique at Pantellaria or simply to earn some under-the-table cash, there was a good chance of rekindling a war that would destroy civilization.

  “We found the Republic of Karst was willing to deal with us,” Graves said. “Karst isn’t allied with either Cinnabar or the Alliance, so its only concern is with the reaction of Pantellaria itself. It didn’t seem terribly worried about that, but it wanted considerable trade concessions from Corcyra for its help.”

  “I see,” said Adele. She concealed her frown behind a bland face.

  Adele and Daniel had personal experience of Karst, an independent regional power of considerable significance. When the old Headman—dictator—had died, his nephew and successor had taken Karst from being a strong Cinnabar ally into the Alliance camp…for a matter of weeks, until RCN forces under Captain Daniel Leary had destroyed the Alliance fleet in the region.

  The young Headman had been assassinated almost immediately, and Karst had retreated to neutrality under her new leaders. The Treaty of Amiens had followed quickly, leaving Karst a pariah—trusted by neither superpower, but too strong to be punished without more effort than either Cinnabar or the Alliance wanted to expend.

  Karst had lost much of its trade in the aftermath of the war. Gaining a monopoly on Corcyran copper would cause—not quite force—other powers to resume dealing with Karst and thus to pave a road out of the diplomatic wilderness for her.

  “The problem was deciding who would go to Karst to negotiate,” Graves said. “The three major independence factions all suspected the others would use the negotiations to gain supreme power for themselves after the Pantellarians were driven out.”

  He smiled faintly. “I suspected that too,” he said, “but I believed that the rival parties would keep one another honest without my personal involvement.”

  Adele nodded without looking up. Graves was showing himself intelligent and pragmatic.

  “In any case,” Graves said, “the Council sent a three-person delegation to Karst with full authority to negotiate the deal. The exile factions sent their seconds in command, but Colonel Bourbon of the Garrison went himself. Bourbon had been commanding all Council field forces at the Hablinger front while his deputy, Major Mursiello, forwarded supplies and dealt with Council matters.”

  Graves shrugged. “I didn’t have a high opinion of Mursiello,” he said, “but he had handled his duties well enough, as best as I could tell. The delegation hired a transport and lifted for Karst four months ago. Two months ago, a messenger from Colonel Bourbon said there was an agreement in principle and that the delegation would be returning shortly.”

  “That was just before I left for Cinnabar,” Cleveland said. “I thought—well, I hoped. That the fighting would be over before I returned.”

  “Many of us had our hopes up,” Graves said with a sigh. “A week after the messenger’s arrival, a ship from Ischia arrived with a message for the Council, signed by all three delegates, saying that they had been captured by Ischian pirates who were holding them for ransom. And that is where the business rests at present.”

  “How much is the ransom?” Adele said. None of this information had been in the files from Mistress Sand.

  Graves opened his hands. “It’s trade concessions,” he said. “Much like the demands by Karst. Though of course Ischia can’t offer missiles, and simply getting the delegates back wouldn’t end the war. I admit I agree with Colonel, as he now calls himself, Mursiello, who takes that position very strongly.”

  “Did Mursiello engineer the kidnapping?” Adele asked. She had her data unit on the desk. Her wands quivered as she made a further search of the main Garrison database, looking for hidden or closed files which might have escaped the initial cull that her equipment had made from orbit.

  “I don’t think that Mursiello has the intelligence or the imagination to plan such a coup,” Graves said. “The Ischians have had their own problems since the Treaty of Amiens, and this is very much the sort of thing they might have come up with themselves.”

  He frowned and pursed his lips before continuing, “I very much doubt that Mursiello wants his predecessor back, however, and I’m not sure that he wants the war to end until he’s consolidated power on Corcyra in his own hands. He’s moved his headquarters into the Gulkander Palace on the Plaza, and it’s rumored that he’s gathering troops in the neighborhood of Brotherhood, though he’s not moving additional forces into the city.”

  I can check on troop movements, Adele thought. In fact she probably had the information already. The locations hadn’t meant anything to her without context, however.

  “The palace?” Cleveland said in surprise. “What did they do with the collections?”

  Graves shook his head. “I hope they’re being stored,” he said, “but Mursiello has the culture and spiritual enlightenment of a barroom swamper. I suppose we have more immediate concerns than what happens to books and antiques.”

  “What collections are these?” Adele said. Worrying about objects in the midst of a war in which human beings were being killed in large numbers would seem perverse to most people. However, if one believed as Adele did that nothing whatever mattered in the long term—then all things mattered equally.

  She smiled in her mind, but her face remained still.

  “Arn Gulkander, a Pantellarian governor of the past century,” Graves said, “was a great collector of books, art, furniture. He built a real palace on the Plaza—perhaps you noticed it as you came here? It’s just a few doors down.”

  “Yes,” said Adele. She reminded herself to keep her eyes on Graves. She was being polite, because he was answering a question for her personally.

  “Gulkander loved Brotherhood and retired here with his family,” Graves said. “His descendants have lived here ever since, though they weren’t of any political significance. They fled to Pantellaria at the declaration of independence, because that’s where their investments are. Mursiello would have ousted them as quickly as he did their caretaker, I’m sure.”

  “I see,” said Adele, standing. “Thank you, Brother Graves. I have a much better understanding of the situation than documents alone had given me.”

  The two men rose also. “It’s been a pleasure, mistress,” Graves said, offering his hand.

  Cleveland said, “We’re trying to preserve our community in difficult circumstances. By helping us, I truly believe that you’re helping humanity in at least a small degree.”

  Clearing his throat he added, “I’ll remain with Brother Graves for a moment, if you don’t mind.”

  Adele turned; Tovera had already opened the door.

  “Tovera and I can find our way back to the ship,” Adele said.

  But before we do that, I’m going to visit the Gulkander Palace.

  ***

  A dozen men and two or three women relaxed in chairs on the Manor’s wide veranda as Daniel mounted the three broad steps up from the plaza. Several men and one of the
women wore uniforms, but the only person to acknowledge Daniel was an older man in a rumpled jacket and a saucer hat which had seen better days.

  He nodded, and Daniel nodded back: a merchant skipper greeting a fellow. Like was calling to like. Naval officers aren’t the only collegial group, although Daniel had come to feel that way during his years in the RCN.

  Daniel smiled. Groups were not only inclusive, they were exclusive if you let them be. I’ll make an effort not to let that happen to me in the future.

  The double doors were open, so he walked through into the lobby. There were chairs of several different styles: mostly wood, but a number of plastic extrusions and at least one steel unit that had come from a starship and was bolted to the floor as if it were still on a ship. There were spacers who weren’t comfortable sitting on something that wasn’t really solid.

  “Right,” called the man standing behind a long waist-high table. A computer sat on one end of the table, but he was sorting through a tray of hardcopy beside it. “Need a room?”

  “I’m looking for the harbormaster,” Daniel said. “I haven’t decided about a room yet.”

  “Suit yourself,” the clerk said equably. He pointed through the archway to his left and said, “Turn to starboard and go down to the end of the corridor. All the town offices are on that end of this floor.”

  He grinned and added, “Don’t be surprised if nobody’s in the office. Sometimes David’s chatting with Tommy in the Customs office, though.”

  The lobby ceiling was over twenty feet high. The round windows in the top range allowed enough light to read by at this time of day. The lobby was pleasantly cooler than the air outside had been, though the doors were open. Area lights hung in clusters from the ceiling, but the cans into which they’d been installed were brass and appeared to have been hand-pierced in the distant past.

  “It looks like a nice enough place,” Hogg said as they started down the hall beyond the archway. “To tell the truth, I’m feeling overdressed.”

  He patted the barrel of his sub-machine gun with the fingers of his left hand. He was the only openly armed person that they’d seen in the building.