by David Drake
"There's twelve guns around the perimeter of the island," said Daniel, turning his head slightly. "But they're two-inch weapons, Councilor. Serious enough against boats and aircraft, but no danger to a starship. A ship's plating's thick enough to take half a dozen bolts on the same point—plasma doesn't have much penetration, you see. The missile battery's the problem."
There were only ten guns in working order, but Adele didn't correct Daniel on a point that didn't change the basic reality. And of course the most basic reality was that missile battery.
"They don't engage the Rainha, though," Daniel said, turning back toward Adele and resuming with his next topic for discussion. "Adele, can you forge her electronic signatures?"
"It doesn't matter if she can," Corius protested. "They'll see the difference between your corvette and a transport even if Lady Mundy mimics the Rainha's transmissions perfectly."
He didn't raise his voice unreasonably, but his whole manner emphasized that he was an intelligent, powerful man who was proud of his ability to grasp situations better than those around him. In that and in other ways, Corius reminded Adele of her own father.
"Yes, we'll have to use one of your ships, I'm afraid," Daniel said. "I'd bring it in normally and then your assault troops would rush the positions. The ship-owners wouldn't approve if you told them ahead of time, but I doubt there'd be damage that my Sissies couldn't patch in whatever shipyard Port Dunbar offers."
"Commander," Adele said, "I can't do that. The landing procedures involve Base Control making coded exchanges with both the Rainha and the cruiser in orbit. The encryption is single-pass, truly random, and I can't enter the nodes where they're stored. Arruns has an Alliance communications unit with personnel on both ships. They won't be fooled, not by me at least."
"Then not by God Himself, eh, Councilor?" Daniel said with a rueful smile. "We need a starship to assault the base, and the Pellegrinians themselves have the only ship that can do it."
"So we capture their ship," said Hogg. "The Rainha. We've done that before, young master—captured a ship, I mean."
"Yes, but not a ship with a cruiser for escort," said Daniel. "Except. . . ."
His smile grew wider. Adele saw the expression and smiled as well. "Yes, of course," she said. "The Rainha won't be under escort while she's being loaded in Central Haven."
She shifted her display, replacing Mandelfarne with an image of the transport built up from data recorded when it and the Princess Cecile crossed above Pellegrino. A moment ago Adele had thought it was a middle-sized vessel of no particular interest; now she highlighted the hatches through which the ship could be entered.
"I'll have to go myself, you realize," she said.
"Umm, no, I don't think that's a good idea," Daniel said. "I'll send—"
"Commander," said Adele sharply. "There's no one else available who can use the Rainha's identification transponder to respond correctly to the ground interrogations. You can't, Tovera can't. And that's why we're planning to capture the ship, you'll recall."
"Ah," said Daniel. "Yes, I do recall that."
He turned to Corius. Hogg was standing again. "Councilor," Daniel said, "I need to get back to Ollarville—to the Princess Cecile, that is—as soon as your car's accumulators can be recharged. Do you agree with this course?"
"I agree," said Corius, "but it'll take eight hours to get a full charge. And we'll need a full charge—it ran completely flat flying here in the other direction."
"The forklifts in this warehouse use the same accumulators," Hogg said. "Only one apiece instead of three; they're a standard size. There's four forklifts and they're charged, which I checked before we went out tonight."
"Come along, Hogg," said Daniel cheerfully. "Let's swap accumulators. It's a good thing Woodson has had a chance to sleep, because he's going to driving straight through to Ollarville. And then—"
He and Hogg were trotting toward the bank of forklifts against the sidewall, their boots scuffling against the timber flooring.
"—it'll be my turn to make the fastest run from Dunbar's World to Pellegrino that anybody's ever dreamed of!"
CHAPTER 18: Haven City on Pellegrino
"I don't bloody like the look of this," said Woetjans as a third police vehicle pulled in line with the others, completely blocking the end of the dock at which the Princess Cecile had tied up. "Sure you want to handle it this way, Six?"
"It's all going to plan, Woetjans," Daniel said. "I'd worry if they weren't waiting for me."
That was technically true, but he was injecting a little conscious cheeriness into his tone for the sake of the bosun and the nearest of the liberty party. Daniel could admit in the silence of his mind that the riot control vehicles were imposing even though he knew they mounted water cannon rather than plasma weapons,
Wearing his best 2nd class uniform without medal ribbons, Daniel walked beside Woetjans at the head of the spacers going on liberty. His tailored gray and black garments looked out of place in that company. All members of the Sissie's crew were veterans with many years of service to commemorate in their liberty rigs. Patches embroidered with scenes of exotic landfalls covered what had started out as utilities, and varicolored ribbons, some with legends, dangled from their seams.
The cops braced as the spacers bore down on them. Daniel had formed his Sissies into a column of twos so that they didn't fill the dock as they approached. The party looked formidable even when it wasn't deliberately threatening, however.
Daniel'd also ordered the spacers to leave behind the short truncheons and knuckledusters that were normally part of their liberty paraphernalia. That last had caused complaint, but the RCN encourages resource in its personnel. They could use bottles and barstools if the need arose.
They're spacers on liberty; when the need arises.
"Good—" Daniel called. Was it morning or afternoon? He'd forgotten to check local time! "Good day, gentlemen! I'm Commander Daniel Leary, RCN. I'm the owner and captain of the yacht Princess Cecile, and this is a liberty party from my crew. They're hoping to spend a month's pay in the entertainment establishments of Haven City."
"Yee-ha!" called a Sissie. As a breed, spacers were unlikely to be cowed by the presence of police, but Woetjans turned with a scowl to silence the enthusiasm. This wouldn't be a good time for things to get out of hand.
"Commander Leary?" said a pudgy civilian with receding hair and a brush moustache. "I'm Superintendent Otto. Some matters have come up since your previous visit to Central Haven. I'd like to discuss them with you in the Port Control Office, if you don't mind."
"Not at all," said Daniel. "To be honest, I rather expected that. Shall we walk—"
He nodded to the building kitty-corner across the broad street paralleling the harbor. It looked like a three-story pillbox covered with turquoise stucco.
Mostly covered. Patches had flaked off.
"—or would you prefer to drive me?"
"Look, sir," Woetjans said, trying to sound calm. "Why don't the two of you talk things over aboard the Sissie? That's where customs people ought to be, right, aboard the ship they're checking?"
"Go on about your liberty, Woetjans," Daniel said with a touch of sharpness. The bosun knew as well as he did that Otto had nothing to do with customs. "There's no problem with that, is there, Superintendent?"
Otto hesitated, then turned to a police officer with rings of silver braid around his billed cap. "Send your men back to their usual duties, Major."
"Shall I leave one truck—" the policeman began.
"You shall do what I told you, Major," Otto snapped. "Let the liberty party through and go on about your duties!"
The Major stiffened. "Right, let'em by!" he said.
As his men parted and two of the trucks pulled forward to open a passage, he turned to Woetjans. With something like professional unctuousness he added, "We don't mind you boys having a little fun, ah, madam, but keep it in bounds. Get out of line and you'll spend the rest of your leave in the poke
y, understood?"
"Six. . .?" said the bosun plaintively.
"We're visitors, Woetjans," Daniel said. "The Pellegrinian authorities have some reasonable concerns. I'm happy to allay them. Go on ahead, but I'm sure I'll be rejoining you shortly."
The two civilians flanking Otto were tall, broad men, bigger than any of the green-uniformed police. From a distance Otto would be a slightly rumpled joke. His cheeks were soft, his mouth weak, and his eyes as hard and piercing as a pair of ice picks.
"I'm glad to find you so reasonable, Commander," he said. "We perhaps need not go to my office after all. We will sit in my car."
"Wherever you please, Superintendent," said Daniel. He started toward the nearest of the riot control vehicles, but Otto gestured instead to an aircar parked just beyond them. It looked nondescript, but when Otto opened the door of the passenger compartment Daniel saw a luxury that hadn't been hinted by the polarized windows.
Otto closed the door behind them. His aides remained outside, one standing at either end of the vehicle.
"You described yourself as owner and captain of the Princess Cecile, Commander Leary," Otto said. "When you docked here a week ago, you stated—stated on oath, I might add—that the captain was one Elspeth Vesey. She signed the port records."
"I hired Vesey," said Daniel. "Quite a clever young lady. I honestly thought she was up to the job, but by the time we reached Bennaria it was obvious that I'd been wrong. I'd brought her along too quickly, I suppose, or. . . ."
He gave an expressive shrug. "To tell the truth, Superintendent. . . there's a lot written about a woman being every bit as good as a man and I dare say there's some cases where it's true. Though I gather you folks here around Ganpat's Reach have never bought into that as strongly as they do back on Xenos?"
"No," said Otto. "We are simple folk. We do not believe bullshit just because somebody who says he's a sophisticate from Cinnabar says it is true."
"Well, there's a lot to be said for that attitude," Daniel said, nodding firmly. "As one man to another, well—of course a woman isn't fit to captain a starship, not on a voyage like this one! I have no doubt that Vesey'll marry well on Bennaria, have a lot of children, and be a great deal happier than if she'd stayed on Xenos and tried to force herself to be something no woman is."
If Woetjans had heard the conversation, she'd have ignored it because it wouldn't have made sense to her. The bosun wasn't an intellectual and knew it. There was a lot in the world that she didn't understand, and that wasn't something that bothered her.
Adele, of course, would've understood that Daniel was telling Otto things that Otto already believed. That made him more likely to believe the other things Daniel would tell him.
Vesey would take the words as seriously meant for at least a few heartbeats, a betrayal of her trust and a damning indictment of her own competence. All that despite the fact that logic told her Commander Leary couldn't believe what he'd just said, that he was simply explaining to the Pellegrinian security police why the Sissie's former commanding officer was no longer aboard.
"Perhaps you've found wisdom in your visit to our region," Otto said. Daniel couldn't tell from his tone whether the words were meant as irony. "No doubt that by itself would justify the time and effort of your voyage."
He spread his fingertips against the burl inlays of the doorpanel beside him. His nails were painted with chevrons of dark blue against an azure background. "You returned from Bennaria to Pellegrino, then?" he asked, his cold eyes on Daniel.
"Not directly, no," said Daniel. "We went from Bennaria to Dunbar's World. Then from Dunbar's World to here, and back to Cinnabar as quickly as the sails can take us."
Vesey wasn't aboard because she was marching off toward the bars, brothels, and gambling hells of Center Street with forty-four other Sissies. She wore a liberty suit borrowed from Cui, an engine wiper who'd remained with the anchor watch. There'd be a lot of coming and going of the Princess Cecile's crew members over the next twelve hours. Unless the police were counting very carefully, the fact that thirty of those spacers were still on the ground when the ship lifted ought to go unremarked.
It wasn't a problem port policemen were used to dealing with. Though quite a lot of their duties involved searching for spacers who'd jumped ship, it was up to the ship's officers to report that there were missing personnel in the first place.
"Ah!" said Otto, his spread hand suddenly as motionless as a waiting spider. "You admit you were on Dunbar's World, then?"
"My mission was to aid Bennarian forces in repelling the recent invasion of Dunbar's World, Superintendent," Daniel said calmly. "This isn't a secret—it was debated and agreed in an open meeting of the Cinnabar Senate. And no, I didn't make a point of telling that to you or other officials when we landed at Central Haven on our way in—I'm not a complete idiot."
He shrugged and added, "But neither am I foolish enough to think you don't know all this by now from your own sources. I assure you that if my mission hadn't been a complete and total failure, I would've bypassed Pellegrino on my return."
Otto was obviously taken aback. He touched a set of controls on his armrest. A holographic display briefly brightened in front of him, then vanished. From Daniel's angle it'd been only a milky blur.
"You are forced to land on Pellegrino," Otto said with what was obviously feigned assurance. "Our location controls access to Ganpat's Reach!"
Daniel smiled. "Superintendent," he said, "I don't think there's a captain in the RCN who couldn't plot a course in and out of the Reach without touching down on Pellegrino. It's a convenience certainly—that's why I'm here. And besides—"
He let the smile turn rueful.
"—I figured you deserved a chance to crow at me on my way home with my tail between my legs. Because I was, I'll admit, less than candid with the authorities here when we landed the first time."
Otto blinked. He set his hand against the doorpanel, then brought up—and killed—the display again. Finally he said, "So, what is it that convinced you to return to Cinnabar, Commander?"
"Superintendent Otto," Daniel said, leaning slightly forward. "I'm an RCN officer, not a Pellegrinian spy. I have no intention of discussing the details of what I observed in Ganpat's Reach with you. I will tell you that while I don't expect people at Navy House to be pleased with the report I tender to them, neither do I expect the failure of my mission to seriously harm my career. Not on the facts I determined while I was in the Reach."
Otto chuckled like bubbles percolating through heavy oil. "Well, I'll withdraw my question then, Commander," he said. "To be frank, I doubt there's very much you could tell me about what you did and saw that we on Pellegrino don't already know."
He tapped the controls to the car's data unit but didn't switch it on.
"So," he continued. If his chuckle had implied good humor, it was certainly past now. "I will ask another question: what are your present intentions, Commander Leary?"
"I'm allowing the crew eighteen hours leave," Daniel said. He grinned and added, "I don't think I'm giving away military secrets if I tell you that neither Charlestown nor Ollarville right now are places I was willing to give unrestricted liberty."
He hadn't started with, "I've already told you," because that further waste of time would serve only to sour his relationship with the Superintendent. At the moment the relationship was merely doubtful. Daniel was under no illusions that his Cinnabar rank and citizenship would protect him from real trouble if he angered Otto sufficiently.
"We'll top off our reaction mass here and take on local produce," he continued. "The usual business, of course. And then we lift for Cinnabar, which I hope to manage in a single insertion. All the way in the Matrix, that is, without dropping back into sidereal space for star sightings."
"Is that possible?" said Otto, looking puzzled but no longer hostile. "It is the voyage of a month, is it not? I'm not a spaceman, of course, but I understood if one spent so long in the Matrix without a break, one went
mad."
Daniel shrugged again. "I judge thirteen days," he said. "I've gone longer in the past with this ship and mostly this crew."
He met Otto's eyes and grinned engagingly. "Not to put too fine a point on it," he said, "I intend to get back to Cinnabar before word of what happened does. I want to be the one who explains why my mission failed. If I come waltzing in after some merchant captain spreads the word—or the Manco agent through a courier, I shouldn't wonder—then they'll be on me with their knives out as I step down the boarding ramp. I won't have a chance to get the facts out."
"I see," said Otto, sounding as though he did. He let out another chuckle. Then, sober again, he went on, "You have permission to go about your business in Haven City then, Commander; but with a word of warning: if you have occasion to land on Pellegrino again, be sure you are fully forthcoming about your intentions. A failure to do so will be regarded as an insult to Pellegrino and to our benevolent Chancellor. No one, not even a son of the redoubtable Speaker Leary, would be immune to the righteous workings of justice in such a case."
