by David Drake
Tovera, ahead of her, had opened the door with no difficulty and peered in. “The only light is glowstrips in the ceiling,” she said when Adele joined her. “Not many, and they’re dusty.”
“It will serve,” Adele said. The basement appeared to be as deep as the ground-floor ceilings were high. She started down the metal stairs.
“I’ll wait here in the hall, mistress,” Tovera said, being more formal than usual because others might overhear the conversation. “I don’t think you’ll need my expertise in this venue.”
“I agree,” Adele said as the door closed above her. Tovera meant that her mistress wouldn’t need a bodyguard in this dim, barren expanse of concrete pillars and accumulated trash.
Unless a pack of dust mites attacked, perhaps. No doubt Tovera would rush down when she heard Adele begin shooting at mites. Otherwise, Tovera sitting in the hall outside the door was in a better position to defend her mistress than she would have been down here in the gloom.
The stacks of books were at some distance from the bottom of the staircase, and they were in much better order than Adele had expected to find them. Broken furniture and odds and ends of other trash—sports equipment, a perambulator with three wheels; similar items—had accumulated around the staircase over the years, but book movers had cleared a path through it so that they could place their loads near a wall and even cover them with plastic sheeting.
Adele wondered whether the job had been done by the Gulkander family’s librarian rather than the Garrison soldiers. She had braced herself to find ancient volumes tossed down the stairs to fall any which way on the clutter.
She squatted. This wasn’t ideal, either, but Adele had learned a long time ago that the only ideal she could expect to find was the silence of death.
She smiled wryly. And if the many religious believers were correct, she might not have even that to look forward to.
Adele removed a layer of sheeting from a stack at random and began a preliminary assessment of the books. Her personal data unit had an external light, but rather than use it, she let the unit scan and record the spines through various sensors and project the result on its holographic display.
Adele watched and was dumbfounded. “Antique books” could have meant anything. Brother Graves was an educated man, but he wasn’t a bibliophile, and he had probably not seen the collection personally. This could have been a gathering of genealogical records from Yerevan or wherever the Gulkander family came from originally.
These books were pre-Hiatus.
At least some of these books were printed on Earth before starflight.
These books were sitting in a dusty cellar among trash. The Gulkander descendants couldn’t have known what they were worth—let alone appreciate what they were—or they would have sold them generations ago, and certainly no other person on Corcyra understood now.
That was unfair: the librarian must have had an inkling to have taken as much care as he had, while doubtless under pressure from Philistines with guns to move faster. Perhaps Adele would be able to find the fellow after things had settled down here.
Adele wasn’t sure how long she had remained, lost in a wonderful garden, before Tovera had moved her hand through the holographic screen and said, “Mistress, we have to move. Mursiello’s bodyguard is going to capture the Kiesche. There’s been no electronic signals, so whoever’s on communications watch wasn’t able to warn Six.”
Adele came out of her brief visit to paradise. “Explain,” she said. She set down her data unit and carefully closed the book on top of the stack: a volume of Chaucer published by the Kelmscott Press.
She wondered if she would think first of the book if someone appeared in the doorway and began shooting down at them. I probably would. Tovera could deal with the attacker.
“Captain Hochner, commander of Mursiello’s bodyguard company, came in shouting,” Tovera said. “He’d tried to push Six around and hadn’t been pleased—”
Her tone was as dry as a salt desert, but nonetheless Adele could feel the amusement—and pride—underlying the words.
“—with the result. He told Mursiello they had to seize the cargo. He’d take his company and pick up the company already at the harbor before anybody had time to react. The adjutant started arguing with him, and Mursiello couldn’t understand what the fuss was.”
Adele put the volume back on top of the stack where she had found it, then dragged the plastic film back over the books. Perhaps she could come back and properly curate this splendid collection, but that would require that she survive the next few minutes.
“They were all shouting at the top of their lungs,” Tovera said, “so I could follow what was going on. I was afraid that I’d call attention to myself if I got up to warn you before Hochner and his troops went out. I want to say that the gunfire would’ve warned you, but as focused as you get, I’m not sure that would have worked.”
“Yes,” said Adele. “We won’t be able to reach the ship ahead of the troops ourselves, so I’ll send a warning and we’ll attempt to conceal ourselves until matters sort themselves out.”
“Hide here in the basement?” Tovera said. Her tone was neutral, but she was certainly intelligent enough to doubt that it was a good idea.
“No,” said Adele. “Find the alley door that we saw coming past and open it while I warn the others.”
“Opening the door” might be a matter of turning the latch, or alternatively it might mean blowing the panel off with beads of plastic explosive. Tovera would choose the method which seemed best to her, and Adele would live with that choice. She was quite sure the door would be opened.
“Signals to ship,” Adele said. Her data unit was coupled to one of the consoles in the orderly room above. From there the heavy flex she had seen running into a hole hacked in the molded ceiling would carry it to the transmitter and to the antenna on the roof. “Emergency. Garrison troops, two companies at the start, are about to seize the ship and her cargo. The other factions aren’t involved at this time.”
She took a deep breath. She must next explain her own plans, which meant she had to formulate them.
“Tovera and I will make our way to the harbor, but we won’t attempt to board the ship at this time,” she said. “We will proceed as circumstances dictate. Oh—and in two minutes, the Garrison transmitter will begin jamming all short- and medium-wave frequencies. Signals out.”
Adele gave the Garrison console a further set of instructions with quick movements of her wands. She stood, slipping the data unit into its pocket.
“The door’s open,” Tovera said. She gripped her small submachine gun openly in her right hand; the attaché case in which she normally concealed it was in her left, still holding equipment of occasional use.
The submachine gun was of frequent use.
Adele drew her own pistol. “We’ll head for the harbor, quietly,” she said.
“Not to Graves’ office?” Tovera said as she led Adele between concrete pillars to where she’d located the door.
“I don’t want to involve Brother Graves in this business,” Adele said.
And apart from that courtesy, she thought Graves would be a hindrance in the firefight which seemed likely to break out at any moment.
* * *
“I won’t say I feel safe now,” Daniel said to Hogg as they reached the base of the boulevard and the soldiers relaxing around the flagpole. Ignoring them, Daniel turned toward the Kiesche’s berth. “But at least we’re out of pistol range for Hochner and his crew.”
Hogg looked up the hill. Because the slope bulged midway, where the steps were, you couldn’t actually see the harbor road from the plaza, even the south edge of the plaza.
“Yeah, I guess,” Hogg said. “I’ll be glad when we get to a nice clean battlefield where I know who the sides are.”
“Captain Leary?” a voice called from behind them. They turned, both more quickly than a friendly greeting would have required in other circumstances. Rikard Cleveland jo
gged to catch up with them. He was alone.
“Where’s Officer Mundy?” Daniel said. He’d tried to keep concern—and anger—out of his tone. Judging from the civilian’s reaction, he hadn’t succeeded very well.
“Sir?” said Cleveland, his friendly grin going blank. “I think Lady Mundy and her secretary may have stopped at the Gulkander Library. I … the building is right on the plaza, and there didn’t seem to be any reason that they shouldn’t. I came straight back.”
“Sorry, Cleveland,” Daniel said. He turned, and they walked together down the cluttered roadway. “I had a, umm, difficult time clearing the harbormaster’s office, and I was just concerned that there’d been problems at your end, too.”
“Oh, no,” said Cleveland. They passed on opposite sides of a barrow loaded with fruit—Terran apples and other sorts which didn’t look like anything Daniel had seen before. “Brother Graves has arranged for a barge to load the cargo tomorrow at whatever time you choose. He and I talked about community business, and Lady Mundy went off on her own. The Gulkander is a library, as I say. It’s supposed to be a remarkable collection.”
“Her secretary,” Hogg repeated with emphasis. His chuckle meant that he had relaxed also.
The Kiesche was in sight, and a welcome sight she was. Daniel hadn’t carried a communicator, because that would be out of place for a merchant captain. He had started to second-guess himself even before he ran into Captain Hochner, but intellectually he knew he’d made the right decision.
Lieutenant Cory had taken charge in tight spots in the past and had shown himself clear-sighted and competent. Brave went almost without saying in an RCN officer (though bone stupid was not disabling or even uncommon). Cory on the ground would make better decisions than Daniel at a distance.
“I had expected to leave an anchor watch on the Kiesche and go upriver with the guns,” Daniel said. “I’m now thinking that I may want to stay aboard for a little while. I expect the parties to lose interest in the ship and crew as soon as the cargo’s been off-loaded, but Hochner’s the sort who might take it into his head to … well, I don’t trust what he might do the next time he gets drunk.”
“I wouldn’t mind sticking around for that to happen myself,” Hogg said in a deceptively mild tone.
The Kiesche’s slip was a hundred feet away. A load of copper ingots was crawling slowly down the tramline behind the gantry, but Daniel and his companions would be aboard five minutes before the crane passed in front of the ship.
Woetjans appeared in the entry hatch. She cupped her hands into a megaphone and bellowed, “Six! Here! Soonest!”
Daniel broke into a run. Hogg followed, cursing, but he quickly fell behind. Cleveland gave a yelp from farther back yet, since he hadn’t reacted instantly to the summons.
Daniel had never liked running. Though he was fit from regularly climbing the rigging on the voyage out, those muscles were quite different from the ones which took him lumbering across the floating extension—he timed the bridge’s rippling rise and fall reflexively—and up the freighter’s boarding ramp. He was panting, but that didn’t matter.
“The mistress called from town,” Woetjans said as Daniel panted past her on the way to the bridge. “The Garrison’s sending a couple companies to grab the ship. All’s aboard now but her and Tovera, and Vesey and Hale. The mistress says she can’t get back before the trouble gets here.”
“Right,” said Daniel as he threw himself onto the command console. Cory was on the facing seat. “Cory, light the thrusters and close the hatch. Do we have a link to Adele, over?”
Daniel was speaking as though he were on intercom, though he wasn’t until that instant. He knew by the way the Kiesche trembled that Pasternak was already cycling reaction mass through the thruster installations.
All four nozzles lit at Daniel’s command, though starboard was a half-step behind the others and caused the ship to lurch. The hatch began to rise, groaning unhappily. Daniel hoped it wouldn’t stick, but that wasn’t a critical problem.
We’ll have to leave the extender. Well, if we get out of this with nothing worse happening, it’ll be a win.
“Daniel,” said Adele’s voice, “tell Vesey to wait for me at Beardsley and Owens. I don’t have a link to her. There won’t be any radio communications in thirty seconds, over.”
The signal was strong despite the roar of the thrusters across the RF spectrum. She must be sending through the Garrison’s own communications system.
“Adele, stay low and take care of Vesey,” Daniel said. “I’m going to deliver the guns to the Transformationists and come back as quick as I can. I hope I’ll have company—”
From what Cleveland had said, there should be three or more hundreds of his fellow cultists back in Pearl Valley. They ought to be willing to help the people who had just dropped an arsenal in their laps.
“—but regardless, I’m coming back.”
A telltale on the display went from green with a touch of turquoise to a fierce, saturated red. The change caught Daniel’s eye, but he didn’t know for an instant what it meant—besides not being good.
“Six,” said Cory over the intercom, “that’s the mistress jamming Garrison commo—all radio-frequency commo, that means. I’d linked Vesey, so she’s got the word, over.”
Daniel had been right not to worry about Cory in a crisis. “Ship, prepare to lift. We’re going upriver so bloody low that we’re going to be a cloud of steam for at least the first ten miles, so be ready for a rough ride.”
Cory had run the thrusters up to full power with the nozzles open to dissipate the searing, sparkling exhaust. Even so the Kiesche bucked on thrust and on steam boiling from the slip in gulps and surges.
“Six, Dorsal A is up and Barnes is out there!” Cory said. “Do you want me to fold it down, over?”
“Negative!” said Daniel. “We may want the height, and we’ll deal with the antenna carrying away if we have to. Does Barnes have commo, over?”
“Master Cazelet give me his helmet, sir,” croaked the big rigger over the intercom. Unquenched ions must be flaying his bare skin, his throat included when he talked. “I can still shoot, and Master Hogg’s out here with me.”
“Roger that,” said Daniel. “Don’t shoot unless I give you the word, though. Break.”
He took a deep breath, then began to close the petals of the thruster nozzles. “Lifting! Six out!”
Daniel brought the Kiesche into a hover, perhaps the most difficult piece of shiphandling he’d ever been called on to manage. It would’ve been bad enough in a warship, even the Princess Cecile, which he knew so well. He had to balance the ship on a tight cluster of four poorly harmonized thrusters instead of the eight that were spread the greater length of the Sissie’s hull.
Further, he had to keep her within ten feet of the surface in the buffeting of steam and reflected thrust, because if she rose higher she became a potential target for the Garrison’s antiship missiles. As it was, the raised foremast was bobbing well above the horizon line of the missiles in full depression. Daniel doubted the Garrison crew would launch on the mast—or that they would hit it if they tried—but the shock of a hit would tip the Kiesche off her column of thrust and probably drop her into the harbor on her side.
“Ship, hang on!” Daniel repeated. He didn’t trust the thrusters’ gimballing mechanism, so he cut flow by a minuscule amount to the front unit. It was fed by a separate line, so the other three remained at their previous output.
The Kiesche began to tilt forward. Daniel brought up thrust by the same slight amount on all four nozzles. The freighter moved—fell—out of her slip in a nose-down attitude and skidded into the harbor at a pace increasing to a fast walk.
They curved around a barge load of ingots that might have sunk the Kiesche if they’d collided. Only then did Daniel see the water taxi which had been hidden by the bulk of the barge. He widened his curve by dialing down the starboard thruster, then brought up power again before the Kiesche wobbled in
to a crash.
Surge from the freighter’s thrust swamped the little flatboat, but the boatman and his two passengers would be all right if they clung to the hull. At least they hadn’t been seared to skeletons in the exhaust plume.
The gate between the flume and the main channel of the Cephisis was closed. There was a blockhouse as well as the wicketkeeper’s shelter, but the occupants of both had abandoned their posts and were legging it along Harborside. They were already at a safe distance.
The Kiesche mushed over the dyke, jolding slightly. Reflection from the steel girder was sharper than from the bodies of water it divided. Daniel could probably lift higher now because they had Brotherhood and the intrusion on which it sat between them and the Garrison battery, but for the moment he saw no reason not to continue as they were doing.
“Ship, this is Six,” Daniel said. “Next stop, Pearl Valley!”
And then back to pick up—to rescue, if necessary—Adele and the others. And to pay out Captain Hochner, if that seemed appropriate.
CHAPTER 14
Brotherhood on Corcyra
Adele and Tovera were walking briskly along Harborside when the roar of a ship running up its thrusters echoed about the pool. That was a common event in any harbor, but this time the sound wasn’t quite right, even to Adele’s ears. Spacers were turning or even coming out of shops to look, so Adele turned also.
The Kiesche was skidding across the pool, under full power but holding scarcely above the surface instead of rising at an accelerating pace. The ship seemed headed for the shore—
No. It bumped into the flume which fed water to the pool. Moments later it disappeared around the island.
Spectators babbled in amazement to one another. Most of the opinions appeared to include the words “drunk” or “bloody fool,” but a number of them were complimentary in tone. Adele walked on.
The only thing Adele had known about how Daniel would react to her warning was that he would react in the best available fashion. She didn’t need to concern herself with him or the Kiesche generally until she had more data.
