by David Drake
"Cruiser launching," Blantyre announced. "One missile only. Out."
Though the Princess Cecile had reached the troposphere by now, occasional pings indicated damage from air molecules. They weren't frequent enough to make Daniel regret his judgment.
He echoed the gunnery screen. Sun had resumed control of both turrets, slewing them to follow the Pellegrinian cruiser. Missiles followed a ballistic course after they'd burned their reaction mass in achieving the fraction of light speed that made them so devastating on impact. Their tracks were as predictable as those of their targets.
A ship which found itself on an intersecting course with a missile could fight its own inertia by trying to accelerate or decelerate out of the target zone, and it could attempt to deflect the missile. Plasma bolts blasted away the missile's own structure as reaction mass and skewed its direction. At the present short range, Sun's little 4-inch weapons weren't going to do much good, but he intended to die trying.
Daniel grinned. That was a spacer's joke
The missile streaked downward rather than toward the Princess Cecile. Ap Glynn hadn't replied verbally, but he'd sent a missile into the center of Port Dunbar to show what he thought of Councilor Corius' statement.
The Princess Cecile was out of the gravity well and heading away. At no point would their course be precisely in line with that of the orbiting cruiser—there was no reason to tempt fate—but apart from that consideration, Daniel only wanted to put distance between them and Dunbar's World as quickly as he could.
"Captain," said Adele, "Field Marshal Arruns has ordered the Duilio to remain above Dunbar's World and carry out a complete blockade, as Captain ap Glynn proposed. They do not intend to pursue us." A pause. "Over."
"Adele, they'd left their antennas up and sails spread while they were in orbit," Daniel said, a friend speaking to a friend instead of captain to signals officer. "They can't match our acceleration—they'd tear their rigging off if they did. Once we got out of the atmosphere with the planet between us and them for the next ten minutes, we were free."
He stretched his arms, first overhead and then out to his sides. He chuckled.
"Ship, this is Six," he said, his voice echoing itself from the public address speakers in each compartment. "We can't fight a cruiser, even a sorry-ass Pellegrinian cruiser, without missiles, so we're returning to Bennaria to get some. And then, my fellow Sissies, we're coming back. Six out!"
En route to Bennaria
Adele opened her eyes. She'd returned to the Medicomp when the Princess Cecile entered the Matrix, but she had no idea how long ago that'd been.
"You've been out for seven hours," Daniel said as she looked around. "We're about to extract into sidereal space, and I thought I'd see how you're feeling."
As a general matter the Medicomp, the ship's medical facility—doctor and surgeon in one electronic package—was a B Level compartment the size of a narrow closet. It handled one patient at a time from anything from sunburn to stroke. Now it'd been rotated—as it was designed to be—to face onto the corridor. Arms extended from it to the four cots end to end along the bulkhead. Warships weren't built on a spacious scale, so there was barely enough room to get by.
Adele's cot was the farthest aft. Vesey, Cory, Pasternak, Woetjans and Daniel stood beside it. The bosun wore her rigging suit, obviously ready to return to the hull as soon as this command meeting concluded. They all looked worried to a greater or lesser degree; it took Adele a moment to realize they were worried about her.
"I feel detached," she said with a deadpan expression. "Completely normal, in other words."
She quirked what for her was a smile and—because they were friends as well as colleagues—added, "Possibly a little more detached than usual, but I'm functional."
Adele sat up and rotated her legs off the cot. The Medicomp retracted its arm, leaving a faint tingle where it'd rested on her throat.
She squeezed her left hand into a fist and opened it again. "I think for the next while I'll continue shooting with my right hand," she said. "That works well enough."
"So I heard," Daniel said. His tone and the glance he flashed toward Tovera, standing politely at the foot of the cot, made Adele wonder exactly what he had heard. She remembered only shards of the action: the way a slug sounded as it ricocheted from a rock. . . the flash of her pellet hitting an impeller's receiver when the soldier holding it spasmed from her previous shot. . . the swelling face of the missile tech. She'd see that last face every night till she died.
"Ah," Daniel continued. "I don't think there's any more chance the Council will give us missiles now than they would to begin with. I plan to, ah, remove the missiles we need from Bennarian control to accomplish the mission I've been assigned."
"Daniel, do you think that being shot has made me stupid?" Adele said, perhaps a little more sharply that she would've done if she hadn't so recently been on drips containing God-knew-what-all drugs. "We're going to steal missiles from the Bennarian navy. I'm going to assist you in whatever fashion is required."
She paused as she looked at him. "Do you want me to kill everyone in the Fleet Pool?" she added. "I'm getting quite good at that sort of thing."
As the words formed on Adele's lips, the analytical part of her mind knew that she was speaking out of disgust for what she'd done at the missile battery and out of anger at Daniel for being the cause of it. The anger was unjustified and perhaps the disgust was also, but she'd let them spill from her anyway. It must be the drugs. . . .
"Oh, I don't think that's the way we'll want to proceed, Mundy," Daniel said with an easy smile. "With the trouble in Charlestown, I suspect most of the squadron personnel have brought their familes into the base for safety. They'll be on high alert. What I'm hoping you can counterfeit some authority that directs them to help us."
Only the tightness around Daniel's eyes showed that he understood what'd been going on in Adele's mind—and was politely concealing it from the others, because they'd be shocked and dismayed to learn that Officer Mundy paid a cost for the people she killed. The rest thought, if they thought about it at all, that she must enjoy something she was so good at. . . .
"And it's not precisely a matter of stealing missiles," Daniel continued, his smile spreading and softening with real humor. "I don't think we dare land directly in the Squadron Pool, and we don't have time to off-load the Sibyl's missiles, lighter them down the river, and then take them aboard the Sissie in Charlestown Harbor."
Adele touched her thigh pocket. Her personal data unit was there. She brought it out, giving herself time to think as the familiar surfaces soothed her.
"Sir, I don't see what the alternative is," Vesey said. She'd waited for Adele to speak, but Adele was holding her tongue. "Are there missiles stored somewhere else on the planet than at their naval base?"
"I propose to borrow the Sibyl herself," Daniel said, grateful for the opportunity that Adele's silence had denied him. "Fly her to a quiet place—we might even use Corius' estate, don't you think? And transfer the missiles to the Princess Cecile there. I've been on the Sibyl's bridge and checked her readiness. I'm sure we can lift off within a few minutes of boarding her, so long as we're allowed to. What we can't do—"
He nodded to Adele.
"—is fight our way aboard and expect to be able to get clear. Squadron Pool has point defense batteries that could certainly bring us down."
Adele nodded as she brought up files on her personal unit. Her face was expressionless, but she was angry with herself for having refused to set up Daniel's chance to crow at his cleverness. He was very clever, and his wish to shine was understandable and proper in an enthusiastic young man.
"I'll bet none of 'em at the base have the balls to blast their own destroyer outa the sky, sir," Woetjans growled. "Even if we've taken it away from 'em."
"I rather suspect you're right, Woetjans," Daniel said coolly. "But I'm not going to take the chance with our lives and the operation."
"Sorry, sir," W
oetjans muttered. She ground her toe against the deck, staring at it.
"Daniel?" Adele said, lost in the universe of her holographic display. The others were presences hovering around her. "Why are you planning to transfer the missiles? Wouldn't it be easier to. . . that is, you're familiar with the Princess Cecile, we all are, but it would be much quicker to return to Dunbar's World with the Sibyl, wouldn't it?"
"Ah. . .," said Daniel. The words blurred in her head and his figure faded to gray monochrome through the quiver of her display. "We don't have the crew to handle a destroyer in combat, Adele. We can lift and land her, and we could sail her back to Cinnabar. But not fight."
Pasternak was muttering about the chance that the Sibyl's thrusters would be buggered, buggered for good'n all; Cory was asking Daniel. . . or Vesey? or perhaps just talking? about action stations on a destroyer.
Adele stared at crew lists, laying them out in her mind; matching, noting gaps and duplications. The complement of the Princess Cecile, the table of organization for an Alliance destroyer of the Moewe Class like the Sibyl, and the—
"Daniel?"
She shouldn't be addressing him as Daniel, but she couldn't remember his rank through the buzzing sharpness at the edges of her mind. She was concentrating on the one thought that mattered.
"Landholder Krychek has one hundred and eighty-one Infantans, his retainers," she said aloud. She wasn't sure if the others were speaking or not. She heard voices, but she thought they might be echoes of her own words. "And himself. They're soldiers and experienced spacers both. Couldn't they help you man the Sibyl?"
"Good God, Adele," Daniel said. "Would they?"
"Will you let me negotiate with the Landholder?" Adele said, gripping present reality with her whole consciousness. A layer of white fire was rising under her skin and the buzzing was closing in. "Will you back any deal that I make?"
"Yes," said Daniel. "On my honor as a Leary."
"Then arrange with Master Luff to transport the Infantans to where you want them," Adele said. "I'll get Landholder Krychek's agreement—on my honor as a Mundy."
She felt laughter rising to her lips and bubbling over them. She almost never laughed.
"Or die trying," Adele said, and felt Tovera's cool hand on hers, sliding the little data unit into its pocket as cot rose up and met her.
CHAPTER 23: Charlestown on Bennaria
Daniel, wearing utilities like the rest of the detachment and cradling a stocked impeller, stood on the tractor's right fender with his buttocks braced on the roll cage. Sun with a sub-machine gun was on the left side.
"'She was poor but she was honest!'" bellowed Hogg from the driver's seat. He had a good bass voice, though roughened by the carloads of doubtful liquor he'd put down over the years.
"'Victim of a rich man's whim!'" the Sissies on the flatbed sang, a few at first but all twenty by the end of the verse. On the way from the harbor on their commandeered vehicle, Hogg had started off The Bastard King of Georgia, Seven Old Maids and A Gentleman of Leisure. Woetjans had alternated with him to lead the detachment in a series of chanteys.
Locals stared in amazement from buildings, around corners, or out of door alcoves. Daniel hadn't noticed any group of more than three—a woman holding two young children by the hand as she sprinted down an alley—but evidence of large mobs was everywhere. Ground-floor windows were either shuttered or smashed, bullets had pocked building fronts, and on the two-mile route to Manco house the Sissies had passed at least a score of wrecked vehicles.
"'First he fucked her,'" the Sissies sang, "'then he left her!'"
Each verse ended in a full stop. This wasn't—Daniel smiled—a trained chorus, but the singers' enthusiasm drowned out the jangle of track pins and cleats on the pavement. They were chewing up the street, no mistake, by driving cargo-shifing apparatus at top speed through the middle of the city.
Two men, each carrying a length of pipe and a bottle, stood on the steps leading into an apartment block. Sissies waved and called cheerfully. They were in good humor, but everybody in the detachment had an impeller or a sub-machine gun. The locals backed up the stairs, not running exactly but not wanting to have that many gunmen watching them either.
Manco House came in sight to the left, a brown stone column. "Here," Daniel said, then realized Hogg might not be able to hear him. He banged on the woven wire side of the driver's cage, then pointed to the tall structure. Hogg nodded.
Manco House didn't have windows on the ground floor, only a steel door wide enough to pass a large truck; the second floor windows were narrow slots. One of the latter and two of the larger—barred—windows on the third floor had been broken out, but it didn't look like there'd been a serious attack. No reason there should've been, of course; but then, mobs don't need much reason.
"Shall I take us in, master?" Hogg shouted as they jangled toward the vehicular entrance.
"No, just turn around and I'll go in through the wicket," Daniel said. The pedestrian door, also steel, was in a separate alcove instead of being inset in the larger valves. "I don't expect to be long."
Hogg pulled the tractor and lowboy in a sweeping curve, then shut down the big ceramic diesel. As Daniel hopped down, Hogg slid out of the cage and faced the Sissies on the trailer.
"Me and the master's going in!" Hogg said. Daniel pressed the call plate, a flush crystal disk in the wall. "You can keep the wogs from stealing the truck while we're gone, I guess."
"I'm coming!" said Woetjans, and pretty much all the others shouted the same thing. It sounded rather like a frog pond after an evening rain.
"None of you are coming!" Daniel said. Holding his impeller at the balance, Daniel tossed it to Hogg with a straight-armed motion. "I don't need you tramping around while I talk to my colleague."
"You hope you don't, you mean," Hogg muttered, but he wasn't seriously objecting.
Daniel grinned as he turned again to the door, still shut. They may even have agreed with him, but they understood from his tone that there wasn't going to be more discussion.
"Yes?" said the plate in a clipped, sexless voice. "Who's there?"
"Open up, Luff," Daniel said, his anger suddenly rising. "You don't have to worry about a mob breaking in if you open the door while my crew's down here, but you bloody well do have to worry if you don't open it!"
It was probably only a few seconds before the latch clicked and the door swung inward, but it was a little longer than Daniel was happy with. He grinned and shook his head as he stepped through. He supposed he was feeling the strain himself; he ought to be used to this sort of thing.
Luff stood in the entrance corridor. He wore a long beige robe with soft slippers, and his hair was disordered.
"I don't have a soul left here!" he blurted as he turned to the lift shaft. "Not one! My employees all left me to whatever the mob decides to do. And none of the Councilors will talk to me either!"
"I don't think there's much danger at present," Daniel said as the lift rose. Luff seemed to be taking him up to his sixth-floor office, probably the best choice from Daniel's viewpoint. That's where the communications gear would be. "Though if you'd like, we can carry you back with us to the Princess Cecile."
Which'd be a great deal less safe than anything likely to happen in Charlestown, but it wasn't the time to say that.
"I can't do that!" the agent snapped. "There's critical trading information here, matters of the greatest import! If I should abandon my post, why, I'd be ruined!"
If you really think the locals are going to lynch you from a lamppost, thought Daniel, then I'd say there were other jobs than being a flunky in Ganpat's Reach.
The lift stopped. Luff bowed him forward, then pursed his lips in sudden irritation. He'd treated his guest with the courtesy due a superior, then remembered that Daniel was an officer in the RCN rather than a Bennarian Councilor.
Concealing his flash of anger, Daniel said, "As I say, things have quieted down a good deal." Shrugging he added, "And this is quite
a strong building, a fortress. If you've got a few gas bombs or—"
"Oh, nothing like that," Luff said, a sneer in his voice. They entered his office. He'd drawn the drapes, and the only light was from a small fixture on the desk. "I'm a gentleman, you know."
"Ah," said Daniel, nodding sagely. There were various ways to take the agent's comment, but he found viewing it as humor the best and most natural response for him. Daniel very much doubted that his father'd killed anyone personally, but he was quite sure that in similar circumstances Corder Leary would've been standing in the doorway with a gun and the complete determination to use it on the first prole who came at him.
The agent sat at his desk and hunched forward. "They'll be back as soon as it gets dark," he muttered into his hands. "They burned Layard House the first night, you know? He'd taken all his guards out of the city with him. They attacked Waddell House first, but Waddell left most of his guards here and they drove the mob off with gunfire."
