The Sea Without a Shore
Page 14
“Try it now!” Woetjans shouted through the open bridge hatch. The piston shuddered, then resumed pushing the hatch downward—but more smoothly than before it had jammed.
The bosun had clearly moved the rigger aside because she knew that Evans wouldn’t think to be sure no one was behind him when he brought the mallet around in a roundhouse swing. The squat technician was impressively strong, but Adele knew from previous voyages that he had the intellectual capacity of an eggplant.
Daniel, his lips close to Adele’s ear, said, “How do you think Hale is working out?”
Adele pursed her lips. She let her eyes shift beyond Daniel to where Vesey and Hale stood beside the cargo: stacks of crated carbines.
“She hasn’t called herself to my attention,” Adele said. “I suppose that’s a recommendation: she’s behaved as a member of the Sissie’s crew is expected to behave, doing her job well and not requiring unusual notice. Though it’s the Kiesche’s crew now, I suppose.”
Adele pursed her lips again. “I met Hale in the Navy House Archives before you and I discussed this mission,” she said. “I’m not sure she connects me with the scholar she chanced into in Xenos.”
“Umm,” said Daniel, nodding. His eyes were on the hatch as it tilted downward, pulled by the hydraulic piston.
Adele felt cold with embarrassment. A different person would have blushed.
“Daniel,” she said. “Hale implied that she and Blantyre had been rivals at the Academy. She was looking for the logs of the Princess Cecile as a private vessel for lessons as to how Blantyre’s career had progressed so much faster than her own. Through Cory I suggested that she might wish to apply for a crew position on the Kiesche. I apologize for interfering with the crewing of the ship. I should have told you.”
“It doesn’t appear to me that you interfered,” Daniel said. He grinned at her. “And Hale seems to be working out very well. She’s intelligent and not afraid to work.”
He coughed into his hand and added, “I’m not sure Hale did recognize you in different clothing and circumstances, but she certainly recognized Tovera, which was a sufficient clue. She’s quite intelligent, as I said.”
The hatch, now boarding ramp, clanged onto the outrigger. Some ports had extendable walkways which could be connected to the boarding bridge, but here at Brotherhood there was only the concrete levee surrounding the harbor. Iron ladders reached from the top of the wall down below the surface to accommodate changes in the water level.
“Let’s go!” Woetjans said. She and four riggers trotted down the ramp, carrying the freighter’s own extender. At the bottom they began expanding the first ten-foot section by attaching the air pump and turning a valve.
Steam, ozone, and stench entered the compartment. Ships in port ordinarily voided their wastes into the slip in which they floated. Their thrusters incinerated anything organic, including native algae or its equivalent.
Spacers got used to the smell. Human beings had an amazing ability to get used to things, as Adele had learned in slums even before she joined the RCN.
The swatch of Brotherhood which Adele could see through the hatchway was as familiar to her as the smell. They were on the city side, but warehouses and shops catering to spacers were built all around the pool.
A concrete roadway circled the top of the levee, though that was above eye level from the hold. What Adele could see was the heavy-duty crane trundling slowly around the pool on double overhead tracks, hauling behind it a flatcar with three heavy pieces of equipment; she thought they were generators.
The top and bottom plates of the extender had swelled open. The riggers didn’t wait for it to fill completely before shoving it into the water attached to the second section, which they began to inflate in turn. They had brought four sections, but two sufficed to reach the nearest ladder up the levee wall. The team locked the second firmly to the ramp while the pump charged it.
“I knew the town was on a hill,” Daniel said, nodding toward the view. “I didn’t expect the peak to be so high, though. The top must be a hundred feet above the river.”
“One hundred and twenty-one feet at average river stage,” Adele said. Her data unit was in her hand, but she didn’t need to check it. “Brotherhood is built on a volcanic intrusion, not a mud bank. The river changed course from the east side to the west side of the plug, but it remained in the same channel farther downstream.”
Woetjans strode across the extender, riding the springy surface with the ease of experience, and lashed the far end to the ladder. “We’re set, Six!” she called, waving the wrench in her right hand.
“The liberty party is released!” Daniel said. “Remember, spacers, it’s daylight only!”
The crew shouted a variety of things—including, Adele noted, “Up Cinnabar!” That wasn’t a problem since no one, official or otherwise, was waiting on the levee to greet the Kiesche’s arrival. Eight of the waiting spacers trotted down the ramp and extender.
“Half of each watch,” Daniel said to Adele. “It would look odd if a tramp captain didn’t give the crew liberty on landing. Of course, most tramps would have been much longer on the voyage than we were.”
“They’re not wearing liberty suits,” Adele noted. The spacers were wearing ordinary slops—though cleaner and newer than normal duty garb on board. She had expected them to be in RCN utilities decorated with patches and ribbons to make them stand out among those they met on the ground.
“While we’re not exactly trying to keep our identity secret here,” Daniel said dryly, “I didn’t think that RCN battle ribbons and patches for RCN warships were really required as a way to introduce ourselves.”
Woetjans and her team were walking up the ramp; Barnes looked back over his shoulder as if regretful that he was still on duty. Remaining in the hold with Adele were Rikard Cleveland and Tovera; Vesey and Hale, who were in charge of replenishing the Kiesche’s supplies; and Hogg and Daniel.
Hogg opened the arms locker welded to the bulkhead beside the bridge hatch. He took out a submachine gun and a pair of holstered service pistols, much heavier than the little weapon in Adele’s pocket.
“Master?” he said, looking at Daniel. “You want something?”
“Umm,” said Daniel. “The wrong image for talking to the port authorities, I think. I’ll trust to your protection, Hogg.”
“That’s what I figured,” Hogg said. “Vesey? And you, Hale. Take these. Unarmed women are chum in the water in a place like this. Right, Master Cleveland?”
“It should be all right in daylight,” Cleveland said. “Ah … I have my pin.”
He touched the pearly white trefoil he’d attached to his collar.
“Militia members don’t have trouble,” he added. “Lady Mundy and her servant will be with me.”
“I appreciate your concern, Master Cleveland,” Tovera said. Someone who didn’t know her might think she meant it. “I’ll feel safe knowing that you’ll protect me.”
“Well, it’s not me,” Cleveland said, taking the thanks at face value. “It’s the pin. We Transformationists aren’t the largest faction on Corcyra, but we’re respected.”
Vesey took a pistol and cinched the belt around her waist. As if feeling the question in Adele’s gaze, she looked up and said, “I’ve been practicing, ma’am. I’m not very good. I don’t think I’ll ever be good. But I know how to shoot it.”
“I doubt it will be necessary,” Adele said in a neutral tone.
In fact Adele suspected that Vesey’s intellectual coolness would make her extremely effective in a gunfight, where most participants closed their eyes and jerked off shots as quickly as they could. Her only doubt was whether Vesey could bring herself to pull the trigger, even if it were a choice between that and certain death.
“If you don’t mind,” Hale said, “I can’t hit anything with a handgun—”
“Take it anyway,” Hogg growled, bouncing the remaining pistol in his palm to call attention to it.
“—so I�
��ll carry one of the carbines from our cargo,” Hale continued as she walked over to the weapon cases. “I’ve cleaned the top case and checked them for functioning when I was off-watch.”
Hale must already have thrown the pair of levers locking the stack to the deck. She lifted down the top case—a hundred pounds or so between the weight of packaging and the ten carbines, Adele noted—and raised the lid.
Hogg frowned, but he looked more startled than angry. Hale rose with the carbine in her left hand. “Master Hogg,” she said. “I would appreciate it if you’d hand me a charger of ammunition for this. I put a carton in the arms locker.”
“Yeah, sure,” said Hogg in a mild voice. He put the extra pistol back in its drawer in the locker and, bending, fished two chargers from the box on the floor of the locker.
“The arms locker is normally locked, Hale,” Daniel said.
She stiffened to attention instead of taking the tubular magazines Hogg was holding out. “Sir!” she said, eyes front. “I was armory officer aboard the Kipling! Apparently I failed to turn over my key! I’ll give it to you at once!”
“Belay that, Hale,” Daniel said. He wasn’t laughing, but the crinkling at the corners of his eyes suggested that he wasn’t far from doing so. “I think the key is in good hands.”
“If you’re ready, Hale,” Vesey said, “We’ll be off to Beardsley and Owens.”
She glanced at Daniel and said, “I’m starting with them. If I’m not satisfied with the quality, I’ll work down my list of provisioning merchants.”
“Carry on, Vesey,” Daniel said. “Hogg, you and I will hike up to the Manor, which is what passes for Government House here, while Officer Mundy and our principal make contact with the Transformationist representative.”
Vesey and Hale, the latter with her carbine ported across her chest, had started across the floating extender. Daniel grinned to Adele and said, “Hale is working out quite well, I would say.”
He and Hogg set off. Adele looked at her companions. Her data unit had plotted a route to Master Graves’ office—Brother Graves, as he went by here—but there would be psychological advantages to putting Cleveland in charge here on familiar ground.
“Guide us, please, Master Cleveland,” Adele said, sliding her data unit away.
Tovera lifted the lid of her attaché case slightly, and the familiar weight rode in the left pocket of Adele’s tunic. Just in case the pin on Cleveland’s collar wasn’t enough.
* * *
Hogg waited for Daniel at the top of the levee, eyeing the town. The ground beneath the tramway pylons was generally clear. Beyond that, instead of a broad esplanade for pedestrians and vehicles, there was an alley into which displays and seated loungers edged. Now that the crane had passed, some people were spilling into the tramway also.
That was probably safe enough if you were sober—the crane couldn’t move faster than a walk, even without a load—but Daniel didn’t imagine the driver would bother to slow for someone sprawled between the pylons. The crane’s clearance had looked to be about a foot, but the car it pulled moved on full-width rollers to spread the load. Anyone under them would become a smear on the cracked concrete.
“We’ve been worse places,” said Hogg, looking to right and left. “They aren’t short of bars and knocking shops, anyway.”
“Rather than find our way between the buildings,” Daniel said, “we’ll walk to our right till we get to the avenue up to the government buildings.” He wore dark-blue utilities without markings, but his battered blue saucer hat had gold braid.
“Fine by me,” Hogg said, adjusting the sling of his submachine gun so that it hung across his chest with the muzzle to the left. The barrel was horizontal, and he kept his right hand on the grip.
Daniel smiled as they walked along the harborfront. He kept to the tramway, but Hogg walked on his left and shifted his weapon to point at anyone who might be blocking his way. Hogg had the countryman’s view of cities as dangerous places inhabited solely by crooks who would rob him or worse if they got a chance.
That was an overstatement everywhere Daniel had been, even here in Brotherhood—a port and a mining town; both places which collected people who did brutal work which not infrequently brutalized them. Hogg and his submachine gun weren’t so far out of the norm that they aroused comment, though.
The buildings were low—mostly two-story along the harbor and one or two as you moved back from the water. The roofs were universally of corrugated plastic: fire orange when installed but easing through beige to cream after a few years of exposure.
Most structures were walled with stabilized earth sandwiched between sheets of tough white plastic; where the sheathing had cracked, the black core showed like splotches of shadow. Frontages along the harbor had often been painted, but sunlight had faded primary colors into pastels and pastels into shimmers on the plastic.
A man shambled toward Daniel from the alley between two taverns. Hogg snarled a curse and angled the muzzle of his weapon.
“Please,” the beggar said. His hair was a knotted gray cascade, and his features looked as though they had been dipped in acid. He retained all four limbs, but the muscles were shrunken over the bones.
“Bugger off!” Hogg snarled.
The beggar dropped to his knees in the street, not quite in their path. Daniel stepped deeper into the tramway and drew Hogg with him by touching his shoulder.
“Please,” the beggar whispered as they passed. They didn’t look back.
“We didn’t make him that way!” Hogg said. Daniel did not reply.
At the base of the central avenue was a flagpole. The banner drooped in the still air; all Daniel could see was that it included blue and white stripes. Parked there was a wheeled armored car which looked like a civilian panel truck with a new body of steel-ceramic sandwich and an ungraded suspension. The automatic impeller on a ring mount accessed through the cab did not have a gunshield.
The vehicle had been painted dark gray, but the original legend on the sides was now covered with a white rectangle and the words ARMY OF CORCYRA. Whoever held the stencil had let it slip midway in the spraying process.
A platoon of troops in gray battledress lounged around the car and on the harborfront. Their original patches had been removed. Most but not all now bore in their place lengths of white ribbon embroidered with Army of Corcyra in black. They paid no more attention to Daniel and Hogg than the civilians had.
“That truck wouldn’t stop a slug,” Hogg muttered as they started up the slope. “Wouldn’t even slow it down. Well, maybe this popgun—”
He patted the submachine gun’s receiver.
“—but not a real impeller.”
“I’m surprised they bother with vehicles here,” Daniel said. “It’ll brush buildings even on the waterfront, and it certainly can’t maneuver in the city proper.”
The central avenue was thirty feet wide and paved with crushed rock in a plastic matrix. The result was ugly, but even worn it would provide secure footing in the rain.
Narrow streets led off to either side and meandered up the slope. They ranged from what Daniel would call alleys to mere walkways which separated the backs of houses. Most dwellings had gardens walled either with fieldstone or with panels of structural sandwich like the sides of the houses. The dark green foliage of bushes or small trees overhung the walls, and occasionally Daniel could glimpse bright flowers through the slats of latticed gates.
“They grow things here,” Hogg said. There was a hint of approval in his tone, though nothing a stranger would have heard. “You don’t often see that in a city.”
“There’s money in Brotherhood,” Daniel said. “For the people who supply the mines and the miners who’ve made their piles, at least. They ship a lot of copper.”
From orbit he had noted a dozen freighters of roughly the Kiesche’s size in harbor. The war might have reduced trade to Corcyra, but there was enough profit to be made to justify the risk in the mind of many captains.
At the east end of the harborfront was the Garrison’s antiship missile battery. The launcher was lowered beneath the revetment, but two gray-uniformed personnel sat on chairs in the offset opening.
Daniel looked left. He couldn’t see the Regiment’s battery past the building roofs, but the destroyer Freccia floated midway down. She looked slender to Daniel; Pantellarian ships had a reputation in the RCN for being flimsy, though nobody denied they were fast. She mounted seven ten-centimeter plasma cannon in three turrets. The two dorsal twin units were raised to provide more internal space in harbor, and the triple ventral turret would be underwater.
Daniel scowled. Mounting plasma cannon in threes was the sort of flashy nonsense you expected from Pantellarians. It slowed aiming, reduced reliability, and made it much more difficult to clear stoppages.
“Eh?” said Hogg, noting Daniel’s expression. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, Hogg,” Daniel said, grinning broadly. “But if I were in charge of the Pantellarian navy, heads would be rolling in the Design Bureau.”
They continued up the avenue. Hogg seemed to relax as they rose farther from the coarse congestion of the harborfront. The shops and restaurants facing the avenue or the streets immediately off it catered to a less brutal clientele.
Daniel continued to smile. Hogg fit in better with the dives near the water, but it would take him a few days to become acclimated to the Corcyran environment the way he had to the Strip outside Harbor Three on Cinnabar.
Daniel glanced back from a higher level. A pair of warehouses had been converted to barracks across the tramway from where the Freccia was docked. A watchtower had been erected at the back of one.
Daniel didn’t see heavy weapons there, but they could have been hidden by the roof. Two men in light blue Pantellarian naval utilities leaned against the railing, occasionally viewing the town and harbor through optical devices. On their showing, the navy was somewhat more alert than the platoon of the Garrison at the base of the avenue.