by David Drake
"I take your point," said Daniel. He'd guessed already that Otto had taken the time to learn his background. He unlatched the door but didn't push it open for a moment. "And you've reminded me to mention something else I need to do while I'm in Central Haven. One of my father's ships is disabled here, the Stoddard. Either I or my aide will check with the captain and see if there's anything they need from us."
He leaned his shoulder against the car door but paused again and allowed it to swing closed. "I don't know how much your files have on me, Superintendent," he went on, "but I'll tell you that my father and I haven't spoken since I joined the RCN."
That wasn't quite true, but it was beyond the ability of anybody save the Learys, father and son, to disprove.
"He's no longer Speaker, but he's a powerful man in the Senate," Daniel said. "And I'm going to need help in the Senate to explain how my mission worked out the way it did in Ganpat's Reach!"
Otto was laughing again as Daniel got out of the car. The door's solid closing thump put a merciful end to the oily gurgle.
* * *
Master Nordeen's conveyance was a low-slung runabout which'd surprised Adele when his chauffeur first brought it out of the garage behind the merchant's townhouse. The vehicle was nearly silent because it ran on four hub-center motors but they were extremely powerful. The open wheels tilted on the axles, allowing the car to hold the road like molasses running down the side of a bottle.
Adele turned to her host as the chauffeur pulled up beside the Stoddard in slip West 35. The traffic passing on Harbor Drive was heavy; a large freighter was discharging a cargo of bales onto a line of lowboys, each pulled by a snorting diesel tractor.
"I didn't expect so sporting a car, Master Nordeen," she said, speaking over the noise of the tractors.
"Because I am old and feeble, I must ride in something old and feeble, mistress?" the merchant said as he got out on his side. He patted the flank of the car. "This is a whim, I admit; quite unnecessary to my needs. But at my age, there are few things that give me pleasure. I can afford my whims."
The Stoddard was slightly bow-down, enough so that the boarding ramp touched the quay on one corner instead of along the whole edge. Nordeen walked up step for step with Adele, showing no signs of discomfort. Old certainly, but not feeble. . . .
Though the freighter's hatch was open, no one was on watch on the ramp or in the entry hold beyond. Adele frowned, wondering if she should've radioed ahead. She hadn't done so because of what was now looking like a misplaced concern over communications security.
While waiting for Master Nordeen to awake from his afternoon nap, Adele had reviewed the intercepts she'd made already. Chancellor Arruns' secret police did quite a lot of electronic eavesdropping themselves, but their own protective measures were conspicuous by their absence. If they'd shown any interest in the Stoddard, Adele would know it—so they didn't.
Tovera stepped past Adele and Nordeen, walking on the balls of her feet. Her head moved in quick jerks, searching for movement in her peripheral vision. She was looking for enemies rather than trying to rouse a friend. That was no more than to be expected from Tovera, of course, but it wasn't very helpful. . . .
"Captain Evans!" Adele said. She walked over to the Up companionway. "Anyone? Will someone come down, please? We're here to see the crew of the Stoddard!"
"What's that?" someone called from above. "Come up to bridge level, then. We're on the bridge."
Adele glanced at Nordeen, standing impassively at her side. Putting her head into the companionway again, she shouted, "Get down here, and get down here now! Unless you want to spend the rest of your lives on this miserable excuse for a planet!"
Adele backed away and turned, drawing in deep breaths in an attempt to calm herself. She took her left hand out of her pocket. It appeared that she was closer to her personal edge than she had any reason to be. The Stoddard's crew didn't know the situation, after all.
They still needed to do their jobs promptly and without argument. Their jobs now were whatever Mundy of Chatsworth told them to do.
Adele had time to look around the compartment. Pressed-metal benches were folded against the bulkheads. She twisted the dogs to drop one with a bang. The third dog was stiff; Tovera murmured a warning and slammed it with the heel of her shoe, then backed to face the companionway down which the sound of boots echoed.
Nordeen settled onto the bench with a grateful nod. Starships didn't use elevators because the stresses of entering and leaving the Matrix warped the shafts and caused the cages to stick. Ordinarily that was of no great matter as even the largest ships were rarely more than ten decks high, with the entryways at midpoint or close to it. Master Nordeen wasn't an ordinary visitor to a starship, however.
"All right, what is this?" boomed the first man out of the companionway, a burly fellow in his fifties. His flaring beard was pepper-and-salt, but the hair on his scalp was thick and as black as a crow's wing. Two men and a woman followed. One of the men was bare-chested, scarred, and carried a short pry-bar.
"I'm Signals Officer Mundy of the RCN," Adele said crisply. She cocked an eyebrow at the bearded man. "I assume you're Captain Evans?"
The Stoddard's officers brought themselves up short. Adele wore a civilian suit whose deep green cloth showed chartreuse undertones at certain angles. The tunic and trousers weren't flashy, but they were well-made and expensive, obviously so even to the eyes of spacers who'd never shopped on the Golden Plaza in Xenos.
"Aye," muttered the man she'd directed the question to. His bluster of a moment before had vanished. The bare-chested fellow lowered the pry-bar to beside his leg, then concealed it behind him. "What do you want here?"
"Which of you are Cinnabar citizens?" Adele demanded, only answering the question indirectly. The bosun's name was Hartopp according to the crew manifest. She hadn't found pictures of the personnel, but it seemed evident that Hartopp was the bare-chested man and that the slim youth in a blue jacket was Stonewell, the mate.
"I am and Stoney is," Evans said cautiously. "Hartopp, are you?"
"My brother is," said the bosun, looking at his toes. "We're from Caprice."
Caprice was a Cinnabar protectorate, but the only citizens on the planet were immigrant bureaucrats and locals who'd done one or another kind of favor for those bureaucrats. Adele didn't care about citizenship in itself; the question was an indirect way of seeing whether any of the officers had been born on an Alliance planet, as they might very well have been.
"I'm Kostroman but I've been with the Stoddard the past three years," said the woman—the purser, Linde. From her diction, she was better educated than the others. Quite well educated, in fact. "Why are you asking, please?"
"I'll get to that shortly," Adele said. She knew that Daniel'd do this differently; he'd probably have them cheering by this point. Nevertheless Adele was better off being herself than she'd be trying to ape Daniel's style. "Is there anybody aboard the ship besides yourselves? Anybody at all?"
The officers looked at one another again. "No," said Evans. "I paid off the crew when I saw how long repairs were going to take. I'll hire a new crew when we're ready to lift."
"Look, you can't just walk aboard and ask questions," said Hartopp. "What're you doing here?"
"You know theConsular Agent, Master Nordeen, I believe," Adele said, cocking her head toward the merchant without taking her eyes off the spacers. "I asked him to accompany me so you'd know that the orders I'm going to give you have the full weight of the Republic behind them."
"Me'n Boobs talked to Nordeen right after we landed," Evans growled. If Purser Linde had a problem with being called Boobs, she concealed it behind a mask of wary silence. "He did bugger-all for us, I don't mind telling you."
"I provided my good offices in putting you in touch with repair facilities," Nordeen said calmly, his eyes focused on the infinite distance. "Under normal circumstances it is not the place of the Republic of Cinnabar nor of Bright Dragon Trading Company to ple
dge its credit to effect repairs on a privately owned vessel."
"Which brings me to the purpose of my visit," said Adele. "Master Nordeen has arranged for eight antimatter converters to arrive by barge alongside the Stoddard this evening. A number of trained spacers will also arrive. They will begin the task of replacing your faulty units. They'll be staying on board the ship while they work."
"We need the motors too," Stonewell said quickly. "The converters were the problem, right, but we didn't catch them in time before they'd ate up the motors."
"New motors will be brought as soon as the work on the converters is complete," Nordeen said, still staring into nothingness with a beatific expression.
"Well, this is great," said Evans in surprise. "I'd like it happened a couple months ago, but I'll take it, sure. Ah—how's this being paid for? Because Nordeen, you said—"
"Master Nordeen is pledging his personal credit—"
"The credit of Bright Dragon Trading Company," Nordeen corrected mildly.
"The credit of his company, that is," continued Adele, angry with herself for the error, "to expedite the work. He in turn is protected by a guaranty by the Republic of Cinnabar, though that won't appear in any documents on Pellegrino. Ultimately Hinshaw Transit, the Stoddard's owners of record, will pay the costs. We're merely expediting the process."
The ship's officers looked at one another. The men seemed puzzled, but Linde's expression had become perfectly blank. She didn't know precisely what was coming next, but she'd clearly guessed that if the Republic was putting up such a considerable sum of money, the Republic expected value for its investment. If she'd known that the guaranty wasn't from RCN funds but rather from a secret account controlled by Mistress Sand, she'd have been even more concerned.
"From this moment until the workmen leave the Stoddard," Adele said, "the four of you must remain on board also. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but it's necessary to prevent any discussion of what's going on until the operation is over."
"Just who the bloody hell are you to be telling us we can't leave the ship?" said Hartopp with his voice getting louder with each word. "Now look! I don't care if you're RCN or one of God's angels, you don't give me orders here. This is Pellegrino! You're off your patch, girlie!"
"Can I give you orders?" asked Tovera, standing behind and to the side of the four officers. She'd set the attaché case down and was openly holding the sub-machine gun she kept in it. She giggled. "I'm not RCN. I'm not an angel either."
"Bloody hell," Stonewell said quietly. He stared at the gun as though it'd hypnotized him.
"I hope not," said Adele, "but it could certainly become a bloody hell if you attempt to violate my instructions. If you do as you're told, you'll be able to lift within ten days according to the estimate I was given by Commander Leary. Is the situation clear?"
"If you shoot us, it's piracy," Linde said. She'd been looking at Tovera's gun, but now she raised her eyes to meet Adele's. "It doesn't matter that you're RCN or that the honorary consul—"
She used the Kostroman term for the office both Cinnabar and the Alliance called a consular agent.
"—agrees with you. It'd be murder and piracy."
"Yes," said Adele, "you're quite right. More to the point, it'd bother me a good deal—"
She lifted the pistol in her pocket just enough to give them a glimpse of it. The barrel shroud had a faint rainbow pattern from one of the times she'd used it in rain heavy enough to quench the hot steel.
"—to shoot one or all of you. But I've killed people just as innocent as you are in the past, and I'm ready to do it again."
"It won't bother me, though," said Tovera, grinning. "In fact, I like shooting people."
That was quite true. Adele knew that Tovera was speaking for effect to help her mistress convince these strangers that cooperation was their only survivable option, but it was still bothersome to hear the quiet gusto in her voice.
Three Power Room techs in liberty rigs walked up the boarding ramp. "Ma'am?" called the leader, Tech 3 Samson. His companions were wipers. "Is this too soon to board?"
I'll need to get working outfits for the whole crew, Adele thought. She'd mention it to Nordeen before he left.
"This is fine," she said, raising her voice so that the Sissies could hear her. She returned her gaze to the Stoddard's officers.
"These are the first of your workmen," she said. "There'll be thirty all told. My servant—"
She nodded to Tovera.
"—and I will be staying aboard also."
"The barge with the converters will arrive within the hour," said Nordeen placidly. His eyes were still directed—inward? Into the infinite? Elsewhere, at any rate. He was clearly following events, however.
"Master Hartopp, please show these men to their accommodations," Adele said. "And Mistress Linde, I need to discuss the workmen's rations with you."
She looked out of the hatch; another party of Sissies, riggers this time, was heading down the street. Several of them held bottles, but they weren't drunk as a spacer understood the term.
Adele looked at the Stoddard's officers again; she found herself grinning slightly. "One further thing," she said. "The owner of the company you work for, Hinshaw Transit, is Corder Leary. The success of our mission here may well determine whether his son, Commander Daniel Leary, survives the next two weeks. Now—"
She paused, considering the way to phrase this. "You may think you can escape me and Tovera there," she said. "But I assure you, you will not survive if you cross Speaker Leary. And I'm as much an expert on that as anyone still alive!"
CHAPTER 19: En Route to Dunbar's World
Woetjans was already waiting for him in the airlock, but Daniel spent a further moment on the hull to watch the heavens. They flared in a splendor unglimpsed by those who never left the sidereal universe. Colors and hints of color—hues Daniel was sure formed in his mind rather than on his retinas—spread to infinity wherever he turned.
Every spark was a universe, every color was as meaningful as a woman's glance. At times like this, Daniel felt that the only reason for the sidereal universe was to permit a man to eat between visits to the Matrix.
Daniel grinned as he stepped into the lock, dogging the hatch behind him. There were important things besides eating that one couldn't do on the hull in the Matrix, but the social life of Ollarville didn't lend itself to them either. Unless one chose to pay, of course.
Light from the diodes in the ceiling softened as air filled the lock. Woetjans was glaring at Daniel. As they lifted off the helmets of their stiff rigging suits a moment before opening the inner hatch, she muttered, "You should've let me go, sir."
They exited onto the foyer just aft of the bridge. Off-duty Sissies stood in the corridor, waiting expectantly. The riggers were suited up, ready to furl the sails and lower the antennas in preparation for landing. Woetjans joined her people, still looking morose.
Riggers could remain outside while a ship transitioned from the Matrix to sidereal space, but the experience was disorienting—and therefore dangerous—even to veterans. Daniel would order it if the situation required, but otherwise he kept his crew within the hull during insertions and extractions. That was true even when the Princess Cecile had a full military crew, which she certainly didn't at present.
Cory had been in command of the Sissie from the navigation console while Daniel was on the hull. "Five minutes to Extraction, sir!" the midshipman said when he saw Daniel come through the hatch. "Shall I relinquish command now?"
Daniel didn't snap at him. The lad was keen, after all. Unfortunately he wasn't overly bright, and he was far more concerned to avoid doing the wrong thing than he was to do the right one. Regardless, not a bad sort and an astrogator who was showing an unexpectedly good feel for the Matrix once Daniel started pointing out the subtleties to him.
"No, Mister Cory," he said, clumping onto the bridge. He didn't remove his rigging suit, though he unlatched and pulled off the gauntlets. He doubte
d he'd be going out again before landing, and this was the first time since they'd lifted from Pellegrino that he'd had the entire crew inside. "You can deal with the Ollarville authorities and take her down—but on automatic, I believe. I'll address the crew from the command console right now, though."
"Aye-aye, sir!" chirped Cory. He'd really make a decent officer if he ever got his head around the fact that he was an officer, a person who might be expected to make life and death decisions on very little information. A good officer can get away with being wrong, but he can't be indecisive.
Daniel settled onto the console and gave it a moment to adjust to the added bulk of his suit. He manually set his output to General: the loudspeakers in every compartment as well as all commo helmets would project his words. It struck him as he made the adjustments that though this was a familiar task for most captains, he hadn't had to perform since Signals Officer Mundy had joined the strength of the Princess Cecile.
