by David Drake
Waddell's left cheek was swollen to angry red except for the long white blister in the middle of it. "Well, without further harm," Adele corrected herself primly.
"I hope he refuses," Elemere whispered. "I really hope you refuse, Councilor."
He jabbed before Adele could stop him. Waddell screamed again, but the knife point merely slit the blister. It began to drain toward Waddell's ear.
"I'll do it!" Waddell wailed. His eyes were shut but tears squeezed from beneath the lids. "I'll do anything you say!"
Tovera giggled again. "Don't worry, Elemere," she said. "Perhaps we'll have better luck the next time we need something from him."
* * *
"Good evening, Commandant Brast!" Daniel called cheerfully as he approached the gate in the perimeter of the Squadron Pool. It stood out like a tunnel through the vines and small trees interweaving the remainder of the chain-link fence. "I'm glad you came to meet me yourself."
Two Sissies and a pair of Infantans were tying Manco A79 to trees on the shore just below the Pool. Yellow warning lights were spaced across the top of the dam; area lights on poles threw a white glare on the ground before the gate and the lock building. The Administration Building brightened the sky in the near distance, but intervening trees hid the structure itself.
Except for Daniel, the barge's two hundred passengers remained aboard. Even Hogg and Landholder Krychek stayed, though only after loud protest. Daniel couldn't take any chance of something going violently wrong, and ultimately both men were intelligent enough to accept a decision they knew was correct.
"Look, Commander," Brast said miserably through the gate. A junior officer'd been pointing a carbine at Daniel from the gatehouse; now he pulled the weapon back and concealed it behind him. "I've got the highest respect for you and the Cinnabar Navy, but I can't let you in. I've got orders, you know."
The lock on this side of the dam was big enough to pass the barge, but a dozen Bennarian spacers were hunched around the control building, pointing automatic weapons. A79 wasn't carrying any cargo except spacers, so it'd be faster to march them in by the wicket than to lock the barge into the Pool. Once the formalities had been taken care of, that is.
"Of course, Commandant," Daniel said, continuing to approach with a friendly smile. "It's about your orders that I came, as a matter of fact. I hope that you'll let me—alone and unarmed, I assure you—through the gate to discuss matters, but I can fully understand if you're afraid to."
He was wearing utilities and a commo helmet, but he'd left his equipment belt in the barge instead of simply detaching the holster from it. He wanted to look professional but not threatening.
The junior officer standing beside Brast whispered in his ear. The fellow's name is Tenris. . . . Brast gripped the gate with both hands and rested his forehead against the steel wire with his eyes closed. The pose emphasized his missing little finger.
Brast straightened. "All right," he said harshly, sliding the bar clear; it hadn't been locked. "Come in, then."
He glanced toward the bargeload of spacers. Daniel had told them to keep their weapons out of sight, but he wasn't sure any of the Infantans had obeyed. "Just you alone though!" Brast added.
"Of course," Daniel said. He carefully swung the gate shut after he entered. He gestured toward the gatehouse. "You have a commo terminal here, don't you? There should be a call from Councilor Waddell any time now—"
He prayed there'd be a call and bloody soon.
"—to explain the change in circumstances. I'd sooner stay near my crew, but if you like we can go back to your admin building."
"Why would Waddell be calling here?" Tenris said. The overhead light distorted his puzzled expression into a counterfeit of fury. "Especially the way things are now, I—"
"Commandant!" called the officer in the gatehouse. "They're relaying this from HQ. They say it's Councilor Waddell for you! What do you think it means?"
"Bloody hell," Brast whispered as he stepped into the gatehouse, a shack of 5-mm plastic sheeting on four vertical posts. If Tenris follows him, there won't be room for me. Daniel gripped the Bennarian by the shoulder and moved him back, then squeezed in behind the Commandant.
The terminal's flat-plate display was unexpectedly sharp, except for the three-inch band across the middle in which squares danced like the facets of a kaleidoscope. Despite the flaw, nobody who'd seen Councilor Waddell could doubt it was him on the other end of the connection. He was flushed and agitated, and he held his right hand to his cheek.
"Councilor?" Brast said. He tried to salute but his elbow bumped the junior officer beside him. Now flustered, he continued, "Sir, this is Commandant Brast. You wanted me?"
"There'll be a Cinnabar officer coming to see you, Leary his name is," Waddell said in a hoarse voice. "Give him whatever he wants."
"Sir, he's here now," said Brast. "Ah—"
"Then give him what he wants!" Waddell shouted. He glanced to his side as someone off-screen spoke; the voice was only a murmur on this end of the connection. When he lowered his hand, Daniel saw the angry welt on his face.
Waddell glared back at the display. "He'll want a destroyer," he said. "Give it to him. Give him whatever he wants!"
"A destroyer?" blurted Tenris, listening from outside the gatehouse.
"But sir!" said Brast, too startled to be deferential. "The only destroyer we could give him is the Sibyl, unless you mean—"
"Yes, the Sibyl!" said Waddell. "Damn your soul, man, why are you arguing? It's necessary that Leary get everything he wants. Now! Now!"
"Sir, I understand you," Brast said. Daniel doubted whether that was true or anything close to being true, but it was the right thing to say. "But as you know, Admiral Wrenn has directed that—"
Waddell shook his fist at the display. "Damn you, man!" he cried, spraying spittle with the words. Droplets clung to the pickup, blurring the image slightly. "I'll have Wrenn shot if you like! Will that satisfy you? Now get on with it, do you hear me?"
"Aye aye, sir!" Brast said, saluting again. This time his subordinate edged back enough to allow the gesture. "I'll see to it at once!"
Adele's arm reached across the display area and broke the connection.
Brast turned, wiping his face with a kerchief he'd taken out of his sleeve. Daniel backed out of the shack and said, "May I direct my personnel to enter the compound, Commandant? Time's very short, you see."
"I don't understand this at all," Brast said in wonder. "Yes, yes, bring your people in."
He looked at Daniel sharply and said, "It's about the riots in Charlestown, I suppose? That the Councilor is so. . . forceful?"
"I can't go into the details now, sir," Daniel said politely. He nodded to the armed Bennarians standing close by, then opened the gate. Raising his voice he called, "Landholder Krychek, you may bring the crew in. Smartly now, if you will!"
"I don't know what Wrenn's going to say," Brast muttered. He sounded more puzzled than concerned. "I suppose it doesn't matter. He's gone off to his estate."
The spacers from the barge trotted toward the gate. They were singing Rosy Dawn. Daniel heard Woetjans bellowing along with the Infantans, adding to the volume if not precisely to the music.
"Yeah, but he'll be back after things settle down," said Tenris, shaking his head in wonderment.
"One step at a time, gentlemen," Daniel said, beaming with pleasure. "We'll deal with that when we need to. After all—"
He smiled even more broadly at Brast and his subordinates.
"—we've dealt with everything that's come up thus far, haven't we?"
That wasn't really true for the Bennarian officers, but by God! it was for the Princess Cecile and her crew.
CHAPTER 25: Bennaria
"Six, this's Woetjans," the bosun said, using the command channel because Daniel hadn't figured out how to set two-way links on the Sibyl's Alliance-standard commo system. "We've got that day-room hatch fixed. I guess she'll hold as good as any other seal on this dozy cow, t
hough that's not much to say. Didn't the Bennarians do any maintenance after they took possession? Over."
Strictly speaking, Pasternak as Chief of Ship should've been in charge of repairing hatch seals, but the engineer had his hands full and more in the Power Room. Damage control parties were largely formed of riggers, since they were rarely on the hull while the ship fought in sidereal space. Woetjans and her personnel had plenty of experience in the basic hull repairs that Daniel'd set them to in the emergency.
He suspected the answer to the bosun's question was, "No, the Bennarians didn't do any maintenance," but that was a historical puzzle which didn't matter on the eve of combat. Aloud he said, "Check the rig, then, as much as you can before we lift. That'll be at least ten minutes; maybe more, I'm afraid. Six out."
He glanced at the Power Room schematics again. Pasternak was methodically examining the pumps, lines and the antimatter converters. Daniel'd have liked the job to go more quickly. Personally, he'd have cut more corners than the engineer, but Pasternak knew what he was doing: operating without part of the propulsion system merely degraded performance, but having part of the system fail under load was potentially catastrophic.
But bloody hell! the man was slow.
If Adele were aboard to configure the commo system, Daniel would've been able to ask Woetjans how the Infantans were working out. He couldn't do that—or anyway, he wasn't willing to—with Krychek on the same channel. He needed Adele.
The Landholder was at the gunnery console, putting the equipment through its paces in a thoroughly competent fashion. He'd rotated the two dorsal turrets, then elevated and depressed the paired 10-cm plasma cannon. The ventral positions would have to wait until the Sibyl lifted off—at present they were recessed into the hull and under water—but Krychek had done full software checks on them as well.
The Landholder had made his appointment as Gunnery Officer a condition of him signing on with Leary of Bantry. Neither he nor Daniel had used words quite that blunt, but they'd both understood the nub of the negotiation. Sun'd been furious—he'd stayed with Vesey on the Princess Cecile instead of transferring to the Sibyl as a result—and Daniel himself had been doubtful, but it turned out that Krychek had the necessary instinct and experience both.
Daniel sorted through the three course projections he'd set. That was excessive: he didn't imagine that there'd be ten minutes difference among the options over the short voyage back to Dunbar's World. It was the way Uncle Stacey had taught him, though. In a situation like the present one, Daniel acted by rote.
Returning to Dunbar's World would be quick and easy. What happened there, when they faced a cruiser in an unfamiliar destroyer, wouldn't be easy at all. Daniel gave the display a quick, hard grin: it certainly might be quick, though.
The top of his display was a real-time panorama. Daniel glanced at it, as much as anything to take his mind off his Pasternak's glacial caution, and saw hundreds of Bennarians watching from the administration building and the roughly-mown grounds. The naval personnel had their families with them, as he'd expected: a good third were women and children. But there was quite a number of spacers, too. . . .
Making up his mind abruptly, Daniel said to the midshipman beside him at the navigation console, "Officer Blantyre, take charge for a moment. I'm going to talk to the crowd."
"Sir?" said Blantyre in surprise, but Daniel was already on his feet and striding to the dorsal hatch. He could adjust the hull lights so that the spectators without night vision equipment could see him.
It wasn't till he was halfway up the ladder that Daniel remembered this wasn't the Sissie. He wasn't certain the Sibyl had public address speakers built into the outer hull, and he certainly didn't know how to activate them if they existed.
"Blantyre, this is Six," he said. "Can you tell if this ship has an external PA system? If it does, I want it slaved to my commo helmet. Over."
He supposed he could bellow through his cupped hands. And look like a fool, probably an inaudible fool. Damn, he should've thought it through before he started!
Daniel grinned. Maybe Pasternak was right.
"Six?" replied not Blantyre but Cory. He was in the Battle Direction Center with the dour, bearded Infantan second-in-command. "I've done what you want with the PA speakers, sir. I've watched Officer Mundy do it and I think I know how. Over."
Well, I'll be damned! thought Daniel as he stepped onto the hull. The antennas, telescoped and folded, were nearly waist high. Daniel jumped onto Dorsal 2 so that the motion itself would call the attention of those watching to him.
"Good work, Cory!" he said—and almost fell, startled by the boom of his own voice. Cory'd done good work, true, but he wasn't quite at Adele's level yet. She'd have made sure that intercom messages didn't key the external speakers. Of course since Daniel himself didn't know how to do that, he wasn't going to complain about the midshipman's performance.
Daniel ran through ways to start his speech. He stood higher than the Bennarians, even those on top of the admin building. All the more reason to address them as equals. . . .
"Fellow spacers!" Daniel thundered. It was a mixed crowd, but the men he cared about were all spacers. "For the first time in her career, the Sibyl's going off to battle the enemies of Bennaria. She'll be fighting for you, for your families, for your world against a powerful enemy."
He struck a pose, hands on hips and jaw jutting outward. "Now, you can let your ship lift without you," he continued, feeling the echoes roll back to him from the wall of the building. "You can let strangers, Cinnabars and Infantans and spacers from a dozen other planets fight for you and protect you from the Pellegrinian warlord who expects to enslave you. You could do that—but you won't, not if you're men! Not if you ever expect to look your wives in the face, not if you ever hope your children will look up to you!"
Daniel eyed the spectators. There was more a puddle of them than a sea, but even a handful of men with experience of the destroyer's systems could be the difference between life and death in the coming hours. Every ship had quirks, and the Sibyl's new crew wasn't going to have a shakedown cruise to determine hers.
"You have one chance, men!" Daniel said. "We'll be lifting shortly. Come join us to drive away the enemies of your planet and to save your women from the lust of a warlord's mercenaries! Join us and know that if we succeed, you'll come back rich as well as honored by all who know you. I'm Daniel Leary, the luckiest captain in the RCN, and I swear it to you!"
"Hip hip!" a chorus of spacers shouted, their powerful voices reverberating from the Sibyl's open entrance hold.
"Urra/Hooray!" they and at least a few of the Bennarians replied. Most of the leaders must be Infantans, but Woetjans was there also.
"Hip hip!"
"Hooray/Urra!" This time the Infantans were clearly in the minority. The locals had joined in with a will, and by God! a few of them were starting for the Sibyl's boarding ramp.
"Officer Blantyre," Daniel boomed, "get down the entry hatch at once and see to it that these brave men are assigned to their proper places aboard their ship! And now—"
Daniel thrust out his right arm, his hand clenched, in a Bennarian salute.
"Hip hip—"
"Hooray!"
* * *
"Will Miroslav be on the Princess Cecile when she picks us up, Lady Mundy?" Elemere asked.
Adele was cross-legged on the roof of the mansion with her data unit on her lap. She looked up from the display in which she'd immersed herself. She'd been reexamining electronic emissions from the Duilio with the aid of the Rainha's decryption algorithms, copied into her personal data unit during the voyage from Pellegrino to Dunbar's World.
For a moment Adele didn't speak. She was unreasonably—irrationally—angry at being drawn out of her task. When she had control of her temper she said equably, "I don't believe so. The Landholder told us both he expected to accompany Master Leary on the destroyer. Plans may have changed since we left Charlestown, of course."
Plans h
adn't changed—of course. Elemere knew that. He'd only spoken because he didn't want to sit in silence with his fears.
"Yes, I see," Elemere muttered. He looked at his hands; he'd washed them several times, going down into the building each time to do so. "I guess it really doesn't matter."
Adele smiled wryly, at human beings generally and particularly at herself. It wasn't surprising that Elemere didn't want to dwell on his present surroundings: the bodies of Waddell's guards lay all about them in pools of congealing blood. The night was cool enough that the corpses hadn't begun to rot, but there was the stench of feces some of the men had voided when they spasmed into death.
