The Sea Without a Shore - eARC

by David Drake

  “Go on,” Vesey said, managing to sound contemptuous. “Nobody will shoot you. I promise.”

  Adele knew the tone was acting. She had never heard Vesey express real contempt for anyone, despite ample justification.

  Adele smiled bitterly. Vesey was very different from Signals Officer Mundy, in that respect as in many.

  Schmidt snarled a curse. He drew a machete from its canvas sheath and stomped down the boarding ramp. From the corners of his eyes he was watching the marksmen on the slope. His head flinched slightly away as if to increase the distance between him and the gun muzzles.

  “When you’ve released Cleveland,” Vesey said, “we’ll carry you and your crew back to Brotherhood in safety. If you think your ship can be salvaged, you’re welcome to come back and try. Assuming Cleveland remains in good health, of course.”

  “I’m fine, Lieutenant Vesey,” Cleveland called. His voice was steady but perhaps a little higher pitched than it would have been if he hadn’t had a pistol socketed in each ear. “I’m very glad to see you.”

  Schmidt reached the outrigger and swung himself toward the water, holding onto a bitt with his left hand. For a moment his body was almost out of sight from the shore. Adele heard the skreel! of steel on steel, then a curse.

  Schmidt lurched back onto the top of the outrigger. He glared at Vesey, then turned toward the hatch and bellowed, “It’s like she bloody says! It’s like a coat of bloody green enamel!”

  Sorley stepped out of the companionway, holding a bullhorn. He dropped it as he half ran, half hopped to put himself behind the hostage.

  “Look, we deserve something!” he called. “We had a deal, me and Master Cleveland, and he tried to walk out on me. The law’s on my side.”

  “There was no deal!” Cleveland shouted. “I had talked to—”

  Sorley slapped the back of his head, knocking Cleveland forward. That left Sorley in plain view and the two gunmen pointing their pistols at one another.

  “See here!” said Vesey, starting up the ramp. Schmidt stepped in front of her and grabbed her arm. The machete still waggled in his right hand. Vesey kicked him in the crotch with no more hesitation than a spring releasing.

  Schmidt bent forward. Vesey gripped the back of his head with both hands and kneed him in the face. She wasn’t strong enough to make that as effective as she must have wished, and she almost fell over as the big man slid past her down the ramp.

  Adele’s hand was in her pocket but she did not draw her pistol. She didn’t look back to see what Tovera was doing, but there were no shots; that probably meant the little sub-machine gun was still concealed.

  Vesey was breathing hard and her face was white. She glanced down at Schmidt. Her right knee was bloody, so she had at least broken the fellow’s nose.

  Adele reminded herself to buy Vesey a set of Grays, then remembered that Vesey was no longer a midshipman without private means but rather the First Officer on ships commanded by Captain Daniel Leary—and therefore staggeringly wealthy in her own right from prize money. Much like Signals Officer Mundy, only more so.

  Vesey picked up the dropped machete. Schmidt lay doubled-up at the bottom of the ramp. Adele didn’t think he was badly hurt, but he seemed willing to remain out of the action.

  She decided to ignore him, since the alternative was to shoot him through an eyesocket. That seemed needlessly harsh to Adele, but it would certainly be Tovera’s response if Schmidt threatened to make a problem again.

  Adele walked along the floating extension to the outrigger. The Madisons were watching events with expressions ranging from blankness to terror. Occasionally one twitched his gun, but no one actually pointed a weapon at the negotiating team.

  Schmidt’s cap had fallen off. Vesey picked it up on the point of the machete.

  When Vesey bent, Adele had thought she was going to stab the mate through the kidneys. Adele wouldn’t have tried to interfere if Vesey had finished the fellow off, but she found it reassuring that the younger woman hadn’t changed quite that much from the person Adele had thought she knew.

  Vesey waved the cap carefully, so that she didn’t fling it off the blade. “Captain Sorley!” she said. “I just saved the life of this man here. He may have thought that I was too close to him for my friends on shore to shoot, but—”

  The cap billowed and spun as though a gust of wind had caught it. The impeller slug hit the ship’s hull with a painful whang-g-g-g. The impact was toward the bow, meaning the shot had been Hogg’s. There was a neon flash where the osmium projectile bounced from nickel-steel, gouging a divot from the plate.

  The cap hung on the machete an instant longer. The second slug hit the blade tip as well as the cloth, flicking the hilt out of Vesey’s hand. The machete spun away in a shower of white sparks, landing in the water. The sound of the carbine’s projectile hitting the hull sternward had an unexpected bell-like purity.

  Vesey lowered her hand, flexing her fingers. Adele hoped the lieutenant had been holding the machete loosely, but even so it would have stung like an electric shock when the slug hit the blade.

  “You’ve heard what the choice is!” Vesey said. “Lay your guns down and surrender; or die. Which will you have?”

  “Fagh!” Sorley said. “The thrusters are screwed, we have no choice. Throw your guns down, all of you!”

  He drew a pistol from a cargo pocket of his utilities and tossed it on the deck. “Let this one go,” he said, unclipping one of the safety lines attached to Cleveland’s harness; a guard loosed the other one.

  The visible crewmen—there were almost thirty others unseen within the ship—began laying down or throwing down their weapons. The jangle of metal on metal was discordant, even without Adele knowing that a gun might go off at any instant.

  Sorley walked to the front of the hold, gripping Cleveland’s shoulder firmly.

  A few of the crewmen raised their hands; the rest did the same, though Vesey hadn’t ordered them to do so. Additional crewmen came out of the companionways and entered from side corridors. The hold was filling up.

  Adele nodded to Cleveland. “Take your hand off this citizen, Captain Sorley,” she said. He jerked his hand away from Cleveland’s shoulder; which was good from Sorley’s viewpoint because Adele had not forgotten him slapping the boy on the back of the skull. If I shot him in the wrist, he wouldn’t do that again.

  “Thank you very much, Lady Mundy,” Cleveland said. Seen at close range, he looked worn and badly needed a bath. “I have my faith, but there were times I felt completely alone.”

  Adele felt a surge of sympathy. She said, “I know the feeling.”

  Cleveland’s harness wasn’t an impediment, but his wrists were bound with a locking tie. Adele was puzzling over how to release it when Hogg stepped past her with his knife open. He severed the tie with a quick pull.

  A dozen of the Kiesche’s crew and Daniel himself had reached the Madison Merchant. They began walking the personnel down to the shore. Adele had supposed the prisoners would be tied or hobbled before they were taken aboard the Kiesche, but the Sissies seemed ready to keep control with clubs. The Madisons weren’t going to make trouble.

  “I know it wouldn’t do me any good to sue in Xenos with all his noble friends…,” Sorley said. “But he owes me a share of the treasure anyhows!”

  “I do not owe you anything, Captain Sorley,” Cleveland said with a calm determination which reminded Adele that he was a Transformationist—and a civilian, because any of the Sissies present would have replied in a much shorter, harsher fashion. “I don’t even know that there is a treasure. In any case, we don’t need it now that the war is over.”

  “We don’t need it?” Sorley said. “You say that, do you? Well, I bloody need it. There’s no bloody justice!”

  “Some of us…,” said Tovera, stepping so close to the captain that they were almost chest to chest. “Should be glad that there isn’t justice. Think about it, Captain Sorley.”

  Sorley jerked his head back
by reflex. Hogg was behind him. His calloused fingers slapped Sorley’s skull forward. The blow sounded like a mallet driving a tent stake. Sorley’s nose banged against the muzzle of the sub-machine gun which Tovera had finally taken from her case.

  Sorley yelped and threw both hands over his face. Blood dripped down his cheeks.

  “Say it, Sorley,” Tovera said. “Say you don’t want justice. Otherwise I’ll give you justice.”

  “Don’t!” Captain Sorley said through his fingers. “Don’t! I don’t want justice!”

  “Let’s get back to the Kiesche, Master Cleveland,” Adele said. “We’re not needed here.”

  And I don’t want justice either, Captain Sorley. For I have much more on my conscience than you do on yours.

  CHAPTER 30

  Brotherhood on Corcyra

  Woetjans called, “Hup!” She and the four riggers carrying the extension started down the Kiesche’s boarding ramp before it had clanged home on the outrigger. Brother Graves and a squad of troops in naval utilities waited on the quay, but Sissies didn’t need an audience to show off their skills.

  Daniel stood at the edge of the hatchway with his hands crossed behind his back as though he were on a reviewing stand. He felt a quiet pride. To Adele he said, “The hatch doesn’t stick any more, did you notice? It just needed to be run-in properly. We’ll be returning the Kiesche in better condition than when I bought her.”

  “My other employer will probably leave the additional electronics in place,” Adele said, looking toward the quay. Daniel wasn’t sure that she was actually seeing anything in the present, however. “I’ll clear my personal software. Not that it seems likely that the normal crew of a ship like this would be able to use it.”

  “No, I don’t suppose they would,” Daniel said mildly. I doubt the signals section of a battleship would be able to do what you do with it, Adele, he thought, but he didn’t say that aloud.

  The riggers had clamped the boarding bridge to the end of the ramp and were unrolling it toward the quay. As soon as the far end made contact with the concrete, Hale and Connolly trotted down the bridge to lock it into place. Woetjans turned and bellowed, “All clear, Six!”

  “All right, Dasi,” Daniel said. “Release the passengers.”

  The bosun’s mate removed the padlock from the cargo cage which held the former crew of the Madison Merchant. Barnes, his partner, swung the chain-link partition wide open.

  “All right, you filthy scuts!” Dasi said. “Get out and get out fast. If you’re still inside when we turn on the steam hoses to clear the muck, that’s your lookout!”

  Evans, wearing thermal gloves, was indeed holding a charged steam hose. His size and strength made him obvious choice to handle the hose, but Daniel hoped that Evans knew wasn’t really supposed to open the nozzle until everybody was out of the hold. Worst case, well, there’d be too many burn cases for the Kiesche’s Medicomp to handle, but Brotherhood served a mining region and ought to have good medical facilities.

  Most of the Kiesche’s crew waited on the bridge or in the forward part of the hold. Except for the anchor watch, they would be going ashore shortly in a port with numerous amusements tailored to spacers and hard-rock miners. The groups had similar tastes.

  They were all Able Spacers, and their liberty suits ranged from colorful to works of art. The suits were ordinary RCN utilities, but decorated with ribbons along the seams and embroidered patches commemorating ships the spacers had served aboard and landfalls they had made.

  The Kiesches were a happy crew. They had money in their pockets and their captain’s blessing to spend it on anything that didn’t leave them dead or jugged for something he couldn’t bail them out of.

  “By heaven!” Daniel muttered. “I’m the luckiest captain in the RCN to have a crew like this!”

  “Yes,” said Adele. “Just as I’m lucky to hit what I shoot at ten times out of ten. Practice has nothing to do with it.”

  Daniel looked at her and grinned. “Well,” he said, “let’s just say that we make a good team, the crew and ourselves.”

  The Madisons shuffled out of the cage, giving Evans as wide a berth as the tight space permitted. Vapor leaked from his hose nozzle, just in case anybody thought the threat was a joke.

  The passengers—or prisoners, if you preferred to think of them in that fashion—carried the gear they had brought from the Madison Merchant: duffle bags and a variety of makeshift containers. Daniel had allowed anything—except weapons—which they could carry aboard in one trip. The hold had plenty of space. If it was short on other amenities, that was a problem which the Madisons could have avoided by not kidnapping Cleveland.

  “Master Cleveland?” Daniel called. Cleveland was in the hold but squeezed into a corner of the forward bulkhead. “Come and join Lady Mundy and myself, please.”

  The spacers standing in front of Cleveland pushed their neighbors aside to make room. Cleveland passed through with a muttered apology to the spacers and a grateful smile for Daniel.

  Spacers took for granted a degree of physical closeness which a well-born youth must find uncomfortable. As for the Transformationists—they might believe in the Community of Mankind, but from what Daniel had seen in Pearl Valley they also believed in a reasonable amount of personal space for each individual despite the barracks-style housing.

  “I see Brother Graves waiting for us on the quay,” Daniel said, nodding toward the hatchway. “As soon as Cory has released the liberty party, we’ll go meet him.”

  Cleveland nodded. “I’m amazed at all that’s happened,” he said. “I mean everything—yes, you releasing me so quickly, but being abducted itself. And everything—the war being over and Corcyra being at peace again.”

  The last Madisons leaving the cage. Sorley had hung back. When he followed Schmidt at the end of the line, he held a case on his right shoulder to conceal his face from Daniel and Adele. Daniel smiled but said nothing.

  “If I may ask, Captain?” Cleveland said diffidently. “What will happen to Captain Sorley and his crew?”

  “They’ll find berths on the ships that begin landing here as soon as word of the peace gets out,” Daniel said. “Somebody’s always going to need spacers, even spacers like Sorley’s lot.”

  “They will be drafted into the Pantellarian Navy,” Adele said crisply. She was still looking toward the quay, where the troops were collecting the Madisons as they stepped off the boarding bridge. “Commissioner Arnaud’s squadron of the Pantellarian Navy, at least.”

  “Drafted?” said Daniel in surprise. The Madisons weren’t from Pantellaria, and some of them—Sorley himself—were Cinnabar citizens.

  “Sold, if you prefer,” Adele said. “They committed the crime of kidnapping on Corcyra. They were tried in their absence by the Interim Council and sentenced to hard labor—which was commuted to banishment from Corcyra in the custody of a competent authority.”

  “Tried?” said Cleveland. He was clearly puzzled.

  “Justice is quick here,” Adele said with her usual composure. “I had a word with Colonel Bourbon and Commissioner Arnaud before we left, and I provided them with an update from orbit while we were waiting for landing permission.”

  “I see,” said Daniel. He did, and he began to smile broadly.

  Sorley reached the end of the boarding bridge and realized what was happening to his crew. He turned and shouted, “You dirty bastard, Leary! You’re going to have us shot, aren’t you!”

  Woetjans was standing on the quay; she had gone across to check the way Hale and Watkins had trussed the bridge to the bitts. She grabbed Sorley by the shoulder and turned him to face her, then punched him in the stomach.

  Sorley doubled up. Woetjans held Sorley’s head out over the edge of the bridge so that his mixture of bile and undigested food spewed into the harbor. When Woetjans decided there was no more to come, she tossed the captain to Schmidt’s feet and said, “Get him out of here.”

  As an afterthought, Woetjans kicked Sorley’
s case into the water also. Dusting her hands together with a grin, she walked back toward the Kiesche.

  “All Kiesche personnel on liberty are released,” Cory announced over the PA system. “Report back in twenty-four hours local time for further orders. Command out.”

  “Hallelujah!” Lorano called, but for the most part the crew filing off the ship was muted though cheerful. The hop to and from Cleveland’s World had been short, and it hadn’t involved the space battle that most had expected. Some had even been looking forward to a battle.

  “I bloody well wasn’t!” Daniel said. He added to his companions, “Wasn’t looking forward to fighting the Merchant in space, I mean. Say, Master Cleveland? You may not know that we named the planet after you. When we get back to Xenos I’ll register HH1509270 at Navy House as Cleveland’s World.”

  “Really?” said Cleveland. “You can do that?”

  “I don’t think there’ll be a protest,” Daniel said. He thought of adding, “It’s not really much of an honor.” He let the initial statement stand instead.

  “Really,” Cleveland repeated, this time without the rising inflection. “I…well, thank you. My mother will be pleased, I think. For a long time she didn’t get much news of me that pleased her.”

  The officials waiting on the dock had come up the boarding bridge when the liberty party was past. Brother Graves was following a man and a woman in gray uniforms of different cut.

  The man’s tunic had a plastic badge on the left breast reading Customs Service; it didn’t quite cover the unfaded strip of fabric where an embroidered patch had been recently removed. The band on the woman’s cap said Harbormaster.

  “We’re here to collect customs duties,” the man said.

  “And docking fees,” the woman added. “The procedures were instituted, ah, recently.”

  From the way you put it, they were instituted this morning, Daniel thought. At any rate, it couldn’t have been longer than four days ago, because they weren’t in place when we lifted off.