by David Drake
"Look, we're shippers, Beltras and Conning and me," said the man who'd opened the door. He was probably ruddy at most times, but now he was pale except for hectic patches on both cheeks. "We've nothing to do with politics, nothing! We just came to talk with the Governor, that's all. Let us go and you can do what you please with him!"
"For pity's sake!" said Corius. "What are you afraid of? I'm Councilor Corius of Bennaria, come here to aid you against the Pellegrinian invasion. I just want to arrange supplies and billeting for my men until they can be transferred to the seat of the war."
"The only way you'll get supplies here is from the EPL," said the man who'd opened the door. "And they won't be getting any more either because they pay with their own scrip. As isn't worth wiping your ass with!"
All Adele knew about the speaker was that he was a shipper and his name probably wasn't Beltras or Conning. She stepped into the office; there was an occasional table by the door. She put the file boxes stacked there on the floor and sat on the table, bringing out her personal data unit. It was a relief to have proper apparatus instead of directing a cursor with tongue motions.
Barnes and Dasi followed, forcing the merchants back by their presence; then the whole mixed entourage flowed into the room. Moorer surreptitiously scooped up the pistol and dropped it into a desk drawer.
"We've been trying to get the Governor to act," said Beltras, the man in the string tie. His tone started out resigned but quickly rose into anger. "Will he? No, not him!"
"The EPL commandeers our property and the Governor says, ''Too bad,' that's all!" said Conning. "Some governor. Some government!"
"Well, what do you expect me to do?" Zorhachy demanded. "Do I have an army? There's me and Moorer, that's all, and I don't know why he stays!"
"I won't leave you, sir!" Moorer said.
Perhaps brave but completely ineffectual, Adele thought. And young. Though in years, as old as Daniel.
She had her information—from the Federal data banks—in the form of a petition for redress by shippers named Worthouse, Beltras and Conning. It stated that their cargoes of agricultural produce had been taken without pay by members of the Eastern Provinces League claiming to be the government. The shippers demanded that the Federal authorities either recover their property or pay them compensation at market value.
Good luck, Adele thought. And the shippers probably felt the same way, but they were following up their petition sent to the Federal capital, moved from Port Dunbar to the inland city of Sinclos, with a visit to Governor Zorhachy himself.
"All I have is my office, this room!" said Zorhachy, rising to his feet. He was a tubby little man with a pencil moustache and a receding hairline. Withal, he managed to project a certain dignity. "I thought when the good Councilor appeared that it was Rasmussen and his animals come to take that too. Perhaps they would shoot me as they have shot so many."
He waved his arm. "Master Worthouse," he said. "If the sacrifice of my life will return your property, I will give it now! Only show me how this can help you?"
"You sir," said Corius, pointing to Worthouse. "Can you supply rations for two thousand men for a period of a week or so? Till I decide on my next step."
Worthouse shrugged. "The three of us can," he said. "We can bring in that much food over the next week or month or year. If we're paid—"
"You'll be paid," snapped Corius.
"And if the EPL doesn't hijack it, the way they did what we had in our warehouses," Worthouse concluded. "It was ready to be sent on to Port Dunbar like we were contracted to do."
"How many armed men does the EPL have, anyway?" Daniel asked. Adele noticed that although he didn't seem to raise his voice, his words rang clearly through a room which was by now full of people.
"A thousand," Moorer said. "Perhaps a few more, but they aren't well armed. If the Ministry of the Interior in Sinclos would just listen to us and send a battalion, we could return law and order to Ollarville. Instead they badger us to ship supplies we can't gather because of the EPL!"
"I think between me and the Councilor, we can open normal supply routes, Governor," Daniel said. He grinned. "I'd venture that my Sissies can do the job by ourselves, but in that case I'd have to use the ship's cannon. I'm afraid your city wouldn't be the better for it."
"That won't be necessary," Corius said. "Quinn, meet with these gentlemen—"
He nodded to the shippers.
"—and get a plan in place. I want to start receiving local supplies by tomorrow morning at the latest, to conserve our present stocks."
"It'll be a pleasure, sir," Quinn said. "It'll be good to blood the boys before we take them to Port Dunbar, besides. You lot—"
In a peremptory tone, his eyes flicking from Worthouse to Beltras and Conning.
"We'll find a room right now and sort this. Boys, let us by. Blaisdel, I'll need you for the commo back to the Greybudd."
"I'll leave you to handle matters," Corius said to the room at large. He nodded to the Governor, then turned to the door.
"Commander Leary?" he added as quietly as the bustle allowed. "Lady Mundy? Might I have a word with you in the hall?"
Adele put away her data unit. Dasi and Barnes made room for her to step down into the milling crowd by bracing their arms and pushing forward. Corius and Fallert left the office. Hogg followed closely while Daniel waited for Adele. Tovera brought up the rear with a tight grin.
"What I'm planning to do," said Corius in the entranceway in a cocoon of his men and the Sissies, "is to fly my aircar to Port Dunbar, just me and Colonel Quinn. I have people I can trust to do the ash and trash jobs here while we're gone, but it's clear that I'll need to see the military situation for myself to be able to make a useful decision."
Daniel nodded. "I'm inclined to agree," he said. "The Sissie doesn't have an aircar, but if I can buy or rent one here. . .?"
"No, of course that's not necessary," Corius said. "I would be very pleased for you and Lady Mundy to accompany me. Shall we say, we leave at dawn tomorrow?"
"Adele?" Daniel said with a cocked eyebrow.
The Princess Cecile contained useful tools that she wouldn't be able to carry in an aircar, but she didn't expect to need particularly exotic equipment to break local security systems. And the Sissie couldn't approach the battle site directly without risking attack by the Pellegrinian missiles.
"Yes, of course," Adele said. "There's nothing in Ollarville that I'm going to regret leaving behind."
Everyone who heard her chuckled—but it was the simple truth, as were most of the things she said. She wondered if some day she'd figure out why her telling the truth struck people as funny.
Perhaps it was just that they heard it so rarely.
CHAPTER 15: Dunbar's World
Daniel rotated the command console inward and smiled at his assembled officers. The Sissie's bridge was a tight fit even for the eleven of them, but Adele was projecting the address onto the display in each other compartment for the crew.
He remembered being surprised earlier in their relationship that she'd bent over her console while he was giving the ship's complement one of his pep talks. Of course she concentrated on her console: Adele preferred to get her information displaced by one or more filtering layers. It didn't mean she wasn't absorbing it.
"Well, Sissies," he said, keeping his tone light. The expressions on the faces watching him ranged from wary to angry. "In the morning Officer Mundy and I will go off with Councilor Corius to Port Dunbar, as I'm sure you've heard by now. This doesn't change anything since Captain Vesey's already in charge. Besides, we'll be in constant communication."
"Sir, what if the comsat net goes out?" Midshipman Blantyre said. The very effort she put into sounding coolly professional showed how worried she was. "The Pellegrinians might decide to take it down."
"We'll still be in communication, Blantyre," said Adele without looking up. She spoke calmly, but her wands were moving in jerks as quick and seemingly meaningless as the legs of a sleepi
ng dog. "There may be a delay of a few minutes, depending on what ships are in orbit. There've never been less than two in the whole time since the invasion, according to landing control database, and I assure you I can use their communications modules for relay."
Daniel nodded, knowing that Adele's unusually full answer was meant as a rebuke as well to provide information. She took her duties seriously, and the notion that she wouldn't have considered alternative ways of carrying them out obviously rankled. Blantyre hadn't intended the implied criticism, of course, but one of the things an RCN officer had to learn was that words could be just as precise as—and even more potentially dangerous than—pistol bullets.
"Sir, you ought to take a few of us along," Woetjans said, speaking in a forceful growl but looking at the deck instead of meeting his eyes. "Look, these wogs—half of 'em are against us and we can't trust the other half neither. You need somebody along to break heads when needs be!"
Everybody knew what she meant was, "Sir, take me!" and knew also that if Six had been willing to do that he'd already have said so. Woetjans spoke anyway, because she had to.
"Well, Woetjans, there's a risk," Daniel said, allowing the hint of a frown to furrow his forehead. He meant what he was saying, but the way he was saying it was as calculated as any lie his father had delivered in the Senate Chamber. Speaker Leary would understand and probably approve.
"I don't believe it's an unreasonable risk, though," he continued. "Besides, there's only the single eight-place aircar to carry the whole party, and the Councilor is granting me four seats. Perhaps you think that I should say to him, 'Well, this trip's all right for a wog politician, but it's too dangerous for an RCN officer.' Eh?"
Daniel heard hoots of laughter through the closed hatch. He paused, grinning at the bosun and seeing everybody else on the bridge do the same.
Everybody but Adele, of course, her attention on her display. She probably disapproved of him using the word "wog" though she'd see the need to make his point to the crew in the language spacers themselves used.
"Look, sir, you can laugh," Woetjans snarled to the deck. "I haven't got the words, I know that. But you know what I mean!"
She was genuinely angry, at the situation rather than at Daniel for having created it. She'd have had a right to be angry at him, though; he'd made her look foolish, which she didn't deserve and which her courage and loyalty certainly didn't deserve.
"Woetjans, look at me," Daniel said sharply. "You're right. I apologize. But as for what you're asking—Hogg and Tovera are going with us. I've cracked a few heads myself when it was called for. I don't expect that to be the case in Port Dunbar, but you're right, it could be. And I guess we all know that Officer Mundy can take care of herself, right?"
This time the laughter, on the bridge and beyond it, was entirely positive.
"Mundy and I don't need more bodyguards than we've got on this. . .," Daniel shrugged, searching for a word. "On this reconnaissance. But it may very well be that we'll need a rescue party, and because of who I'm leaving behind on the Sissie I know that there'll be one. I trust Captain Vesey—"
He looked at her and nodded, avoiding the smile he'd have offered in a different context.
"—to plan ably if I'm not in a position to give detailed instructions. And I trust you, Woetjans, to lead the party executing those plans with your usual skill and enthusiasm. But to do that—"
This time Daniel did smile.
"—you have to be back here waiting for the word which we all hope will never come. Right?"
"Do I gotta say I don't want a chance to mix it with these wogs, sir?" Woetjans said. "Because I'll say it if it's orders, but I'll be lying."
Daniel joined the laughter. "No, Woetjans, you don't have to say that," he said. "But I'd appreciate it if you'd hope Mundy and I get back before the fighting starts, all right?"
There was general laughter again. Woetjans' guffaws were the loudest, perhaps out of relief.
"Fellow Sissies. . .," Daniel continued. "I don't know any better than you do what the next few days will bring. I've given Captain Vesey instructions about cooperation with the Bennarian Volunteers, as Corius calls his troops. They'll be policing up local political gangs. Not a big problem, I suspect, but if they ask for help we'll of course provide it."
Once it'd bothered him to see how he was using words to make his spacers react in particular ways. It was the sort of thing his father would've done—the sort of thing Corder Leary had done repeatedly over the years and probably still did. Daniel let his expression grow grimmer.
"Now," he continued, "here's the hard part. I've requested Captain Vesey to stop leave until I tell her otherwise. That's partly because if I call for help, I don't want the watch officers to have to comb every dive in Ollarville before the Sissie lifts to save my butt."
When he mentioned stopping leave, the watching faces had grown guarded. Nobody was going to argue with Commander Leary, but it wasn't the sort of news spacers liked to get. On a voyage they were confined to the ship of necessity, but they reasonably felt that they were owed a chance to let off steam as soon as they made landfall.
The explanation—that they were on call for a rescue attempt—was one they could understand and accept, but it wasn't the whole truth. Since Daniel expected shortly to be leading his Sissies into hot places—and maybe hotter than that—he wasn't willing to leave them with what at core would be a lie.
"Now," he said, "I told you 'partly'. Here's the other part: I don't want you fighting with Corius' men."
"What!" Sun blurted. There'd be other, similar cries from the common spacers in the other compartments. "Hey, it doesn't matter how many there is! We can handle that, sir!"
"I know that I can expect my Sissies to conduct themselves as credits to the RCN," Daniel said, letting a deliberate harshness enter his voice. "I also know that if push comes to shove, somebody'll decide that a pair of plasma cannon make up nicely for the other side having twenty, thirty times the numbers. I know that because that's how I bloody think—and what I'd bloody do if I had to!"
He cleared his throat and made a slight grimace, as though he were ashamed of raising his voice that way. The emotion was completely real, but the fact he showed it—there was the art. As Corder Leary well knew.
"It's because of that," Daniel said, "that I'm stopping leave. Because if you go out and the odds are so much on the side of the pongoes, they're going to push. And you'll push back—sure as God you will, because you're my Sissies. And then it'll go all the way up the line because we're the RCN, we do what we need to to win. And so I'm going to make sure by the only means I've got that we don't have to fight it this time. Do you understand?"
The officers on the bridge made muted, positive sounds. Some of the spacers outside shouted or even cheered.
"I'll promise you two things, fellow Sissies," Daniel said. "When all this is over, I'll buy enough booze to float the Sissie and all you'll have to do is drink it. That's the one promise."
Woetjans, Sun, and Cory—the midshipman looking startled an instant later—shouted approval. Louder shouts trickled through the closed hatch.
"And the other is this," he concluded. "Before we leave Dunbar's World, you'll have had your belly full of fighting. We don't need to start with Corius' troops, that's all."
There were more cheers. They were a good crew, the best, and they trusted their commander.
They have a right to trust me, Daniel thought as the cheerful enthusiasm rolled over him. I haven't lied to them yet. But my God, the truths I've told them in a way to make them pleased to hear them!
* * *
Adele looked without enthusiasm at the landscape a thousand feet below. She didn't object to rolling plains and thickets of darker green shrubs at the bottom of the valleys, but neither did the scenery—any kind of scenery—particularly impress her.
She smiled ruefully at herself. She'd be more interested in this if it were imagery rather than what she was seeing through an aircar's wi
ndow. But to really engage her, the landscape would have to be something that somebody else had asked her to research. Perhaps she could trick herself by telling Daniel to demand she gather information on the terrain. . . .
"Ah. . .?" said Colonel Quinn, Adele's seatmate on the car's third crossbench. "You'd be from the Cinnabar family, Officer Mundy? I mean, I heard the Councilor call you Lady, so that's how I took the name."
The aircar was built slimly for speed, seating its occupants on four two-person benches in the enclosed cabin. Hogg rode in the front with the driver, a Volunteer with the rank of sergeant if Adele was reading his collar tabs correctly. Tovera and Fallert were on the rearmost bench, and since Corius had asked Daniel to sit with him, Adele was perforce left with Quinn.
