In the Stormy Red Sky-ARC

by David Drake

  Lieutenant Alderman stared at Tovera with the fascination of a small animal facing a viper. Tovera usually—Adele couldn't see her face at the moment—smiled back in such situations, making the metaphor even stronger.

  "So they stayed aboard when the rest of you marched out?" Adele said, deciding to prod a little. She ordinarily let a subject tell the story his own way, then rearranged the bits later in a logical sequence; she'd learned that expecting logic from most people was as vain as expecting them to be skilled astrogators. Here, though, time might be getting short.

  "Courier Alfreda, that's the officer, she carried the chip to Base Headquarters," said Captain Friedman. "But Ken Wilson, he's Support Staff, he stayed with the database. One of them always does. I mean the Courier Service database, it isn't linked to the ship."

  Friedman swallowed. He turned his head from side to side, then stared at his boots. "Look," he said, "one of my engine wipers is a friend of Wilson's. She stayed aboard with him. I mean, what was I supposed to do? I got everybody else off, that's what's important, right?"

  The just-landed freighter shut down its thrusters. In the near silence Adele heard five quickly-spaced shots from across the harbor. The dull whoomp that followed was probably a vehicle's fuel tank bursting.

  The most recent freighter had landed at the far end of the Fleet docks, but the next one would probably be nearby. Well, there were even better reasons to handle this quickly.

  "Wilson and this woman are armed?" Adele said.

  "I guess," Friedman said miserably. Adele wanted to slap him, but it wasn't the Alliance captain's cowardice that was really making her angry.

  "All right," she said. "Barnes, Dasi—can we get into the ship from here or do I have to go back to the Milton to enter the command console electronically?"

  She would have done that before they left the cruiser if she'd known. She should have known, it was her job not to make mistakes!

  "We can blow it open, mistress," Alderman said with false brightness.

  Ignoring the soldier, Barnes shrugged. "Sure," he said. "There's a hand wheel on each hatch. There's gotta be for when she's sitting in the yard with her fusion bottle pulled."

  "And the bloody relays can fail," Dasi said to his partner. "Remember the old Calydon above Rubin?"

  Barnes nodded. Dasi shrugged and added, "It'll be a bit of work, but at least we don't have to worry about our air giving out."

  "All right," Adele repeated. With the two riggers in the lead, her party started down the quay toward the moored aviso.

  Lieutenant Alderman trotted out in front of them. "Mistress," he said. "There are armed m-men aboard that ship. It's my duty to remove them from the vessel."

  Adele looked at him. They were already half the hundred yards out from the esplanade. Odd; she wouldn't have thought they'd come so far.

  "Yes, lieutenant," she said. "It was your duty, and you failed to accomplish it. Please get out of the way. The RCN will take care of the problem now."

  Alderman froze, gray faced. None of his men had followed him.

  "Hey, pongo?" Barnes said. "There's something you can do after all. It'll make turning the wheel easier if we got a come-along, and your gun barrel's just the right diameter. Give me your gun."

  "We might need to use our own," said Dasi, patting the receiver of his stocked impeller. "We're RCN, you know."

  The riggers weren't ordinarily cruel men, but they were fighters. Alderman had insulted Mistress Mundy. Now that Adele had knocked him down, they were putting the boot in.

  Without speaking, Alderman lifted the muzzle of his sub-machine gun and held it out to Barnes, who gripped it at the balance in his free hand. The riggers sauntered around the lieutenant to either side; Adele and Tovera followed Dasi to the left.

  The riggers began whistling the chorus of a song which Adele had heard in the past: "Here we come, full of rum, looking for boys who peddle their bum. . . ."

  That was bravado, of course; they knew what they were getting into, or anyway they thought they did. But bravado had taken more than one RCN ship down the throat of a powerful enemy and out the other side.

  Adele glanced back over her shoulder. Alderman remained where they'd left him. He looked like a statue of despair.

  The Zieten had been down for more than an hour, so the steam of its landing had cooled to condensate soaking the quays. The riggers trotted on ahead, unconcerned about the slick metal surfaces of the dock extensions.

  By the time Adele and Tovera arrived at a more sedate pace, the cover plate on the hinge side of the airlock was unbolted. Barnes stuck the barrel of the borrowed sub-machine gun through the six-inch wheel there and began cranking it around.

  "Can we talk to the people inside?" Adele asked Dasi.

  "Sure," he said, "once we get the lock open. There'll be an intercom."

  Adele nodded. "I'll speak to them before we enter, then," she said.

  Dasi smiled without real interest. While his partner turned the wheel, he pointed his impeller toward the widening crack. Both riggers were big men. Barnes worked swiftly, but Adele realized that even with the gun for greater leverage it was a real job. What must it have been like while wearing rigging suits in orbit above Rubin?

  "That's good enough," Dasi said. "Gimme the pongo's gun and I'll take the inside one. Ah—unless you . . ."

  "Be my guest," Barnes said as he tossed Alderman's sub-machine gun to his partner. Dasi slipped into the empty airlock through what was, to Adele's surprise, a wide enough opening for him.

  "I want to speak with the people inside," Adele said sharply.

  "Don't worry, ma'am," Barnes said, stretching out the stiffness of his recent exertion. "It's not going to happen quick. It's as much work on the inside hatch and it's cramped besides."

  The lock would hold eight spacers in rigging suits. Some airlocks had clear panels in the inner door; this one didn't, but an intercom was in the chamber's wall as the riggers had said.

  Tovera stepped between Adele and Dasi. The sub-machine gun she'd taken from the cruiser's armory was pointed at what would become the opening when the hatch moved; she wore her own miniature weapon in a belt holster like a pistol. Dasi began to crank.

  The intercom switch was a slide. "Master Wilson," Adele said, "and all of you Fleet personnel aboard the Zieten, this is Officer Mundy of the RCN. Surrender immediately and don't put us to the trouble of killing you. You and all your fellows will be treated according to the normal usages of war. There's obviously no escape for you, so you may as well be reasonable and live."

  Another Hydriote ship was landing. Adele put her ear close to the speaker plate, but she didn't think there was a response.

  In Alliance service, dispatches were downloaded into a discrete database aboard the vessel carrying them. When the vessel reached its destination, the courier copied the dispatch onto a chip which was physically carried to the recipient; information was never transmitted electronically. The database was then wiped.

  Complete clearing of a database required specialized facilities, however. St James Base might have such equipment, but there hadn't been time to bring it to the aviso. If Adele could get to the database, she would have all the information that it had carried since its last thorough clearance.

  "Wilson, you don't want to die and we don't want to kill you!" Adele said. "And if you're not thinking of yourself, what of the friend you've got with you? Do you want her to die?"

  A heavy male voice, perhaps rougher for the intercom's bad transmission, said, "Put Officer Alfreda on. If I can talk to her, I'll give up."

  If you talk to her, she'll tell you to empty an impeller into the database, which would also be a thorough way of destroying its data, Adele thought. She said, "Alfreda was killed in the fighting. Unless you surrender immediately, you and your friend will join her for no reason at all. Don't be a fool, Wilson!"

  The hatch was open a hand's breadth and spreading further in the steady increments of sand dripping through an hourglass. A
dele didn't know whether or not Alfreda was alive. If she was, she'd almost certainly triggered the miniature charge in her pouch and reduced the data chip to powder. The Zieten's database was the only sure path to the dispatches.

  "I gotta speak to Alfreda!" Wilson said. "And stop opening the door, I'll shoot, I swear I'll shoot!"

  "Come on, Wilson," Adele said, trying to sound soothing. She doubted that she succeeded; it wasn't something she was good at. "There's no need for shooting. Just put down your gun and you can relax for the rest of the war."

  Dasi continued cranking. A shot from inside banged into the hatch and howled deeper into the vessel. The hatch was opening toward Wilson. He'd tried to shoot—probably with a service pistol—through the crack on the hinge side.

  "Don't shoot!" Adele snapped to her companions. A slug bouncing around the aviso might hit the database that Wilson apparently hadn't been smart enough destroy deliberately.

  "Barnes, take care of this," Tovera said. She drew the miniature weapon from its holster while her left hand stretched back with the armory sub-machine gun. Barnes reached past Adele and took it.

  Adele drew her pistol. The opening was almost wide enough for her to slip through. She said, "Tovera, I'll lead."

  "You've got to leave!" Wilson cried. "I'll kill you all! Send Officer Alfreda!"

  Tovera poised. "Hold onto her, Barnes," she said. The rigger reached around Adele's torso with his right arm and clamped her left shoulder like a seat restraint.

  "I'm warning—" Wilson said.

  Tovera was through the hatchway like a wisp of fog. Her sub-machine gun stuttered, echoes muddling the snapping discharges. Wilson fired an instant later. His heavy slug bounced twice, each time deforming further to sing in a different key.

  "I give up!" screamed a female voice. "I give—"

  Tovera's weapon crackled out another three-shot burst. A body thumped into a bulkhead, then the deck. Heels drummed briefly before there was silence.

  "All clear!" Tovera called. "All clear!"

  Barnes released Adele and stepped back. Dasi stood beside the hatch mechanism, swallowing with unaccustomed nervousness.

  "Do you know who you laid hands on?" Adele said. "I'm Mundy of Chatsworth! I can have you flayed, you little worm!"

  "Yes ma'am," Barnes said, staring at the bulkhead above her head. "We know that. Ma'am, you do what you want to do. But I'm not going to look at Six and tell him that you got killed because we let you be stupid."

  "Ma'am?" said Dasi. His hands were knotting together; Adele had a sudden vision of a little boy unable to save his drowning puppy. "I'd have done the same. Ma'am, Six wouldn't ream us out, he'd cry."

  Adele felt a cold knife sinking into her heart. Her lips pursed to speak, paused; pursed to say something else and paused again. At last—and it was only a few heartbeats delay—she said, "Captain Leary is well served by his crew."

  She shook herself, dropped the unused pistol back into her pocket, and said, "Tovera, we're coming through."

  Tovera stood in the hatch opening, watching the exchange. "Mistress," she said with a nod and stepped out of the way.

  Adele hadn't even been angry at her. Tovera wasn't fully human; she would do whatever she decided was right in a given situation, regardless of what any individual or society as a whole said. And in this case—

  Adele's thin smile was self-mocking.

  —Tovera had been right, by any standards one could reasonably apply. Lady Mundy had been about to act irresponsibly, so her colleagues had correctly restrained her.

  The airlock opened into a rotunda much like that of the Princess Cecile. Across it, a brawny man lay on his face, his legs back in the compartment adjacent to the bridge. There was no sign of blood, but his body must have frozen at the instant of death; the pistol gripped in his left hand was slightly raised from the deck.

  A woman sprawled against the wall of the compartment behind him. She'd been short and vaguely pear-shaped. Her face was flushed and bulging. Adele could have covered with two slim fingers the trio of holes above the bridge of the woman's nose.

  "The courier database is in the compartment with them," Tovera said, gesturing with her left hand. "It wasn't damaged."

  "I thought I heard her surrender," Adele said in an even tone.

  Tovera shrugged. "Mistress," she said, "it's hard to hear anything like that after the shooting starts."

  Adele stepped over Wilson's legs. "Barnes," she said. "Get these bodies out of the way. I'm going to be here till I've downloaded the dispatches, and I have no idea how long that will be."

  She swung the bunk out of the wall and seated herself on it, then took her personal data unit from its pocket. She threw a switch on the side of the dispatch computer. The action settled her mind almost magically.

  Adele began working. Now that she'd opened the data port, it really shouldn't take very long.

  Barnes lifted the woman by the throat of her tunic and carried her out of the compartment. That was just as well. Adele didn't notice her surroundings once she'd become lost in a project, but both corpses had voided their bowels when they died. The ship's atmosphere had been close after a long voyage besides.

  CHAPTER 20

  The Travanda Quarry, Bolton

  The aircar paused at the top of the ramp which zigzagged into the quarry some thirteen miles north of St James City. Daniel got out.

  "Good luck, your Excellency," he said, waving to Forbes. As the words came out, he wondered if he should have said, "Break a leg," instead. The car slid down the ramp in ground effect, followed by the APC whose external speakers would amplify the Senator's speech.

  Travanda marble was the color of whipped butter and remarkably free of inclusions. Before the Battle of New Harmony—the New Harmony Massacre—it had been Bolton's only export except for governmental directives. Now the quarry was full of RCN prisoners, the survivors of the ships trapped on New Harmony when Admiral Petersen arrived.

  Ranks of shelters as irregular as teeth in a human mouth striped the quarry with as much order as possible on a floor laid out by stonecutters rather than architects. Alliance administrators had provided sail fabric and pipes from which the prisoners could create their own living quarters in a man-made cavity. That wasn't harsh treatment but an acceptance of reality: the authorities on Bolton couldn't pull secure housing for five thousand out of the air.

  "You're Leary?" said the fiftyish man who led the contingent which had climbed to the top of the ramp to await their rescuers. He saluted. "I'm Haugen, Commander Kenneth Haugen, and I've been camp commandant till now. Ought to thank you, I suppose."

  Haugen had a full beard and moustache, but his hairline receded steeply. The Alliance authorities had allowed each prisoner a single set of utilities without rank markings, but Haugen had made replacement insignia from bits of ration cans. He'd been first officer on the battleship Heidegger, according to the information Cory had waiting when Daniel returned from accepting Commodore Harmston's surrender. Originally he'd been an Engineer, but he'd taken astrogation courses and successfully sat for his commission.

  "Yes, I'm Leary," Daniel said. He returned the commander's salute, hoping the effort didn't seem too perfunctory. "We'll begin transferring you to billets in St James City shortly, using the stone trucks."

  He grinned. "It won't be luxurious," he said, "but there'll be proper rooms and beds at the end of it. Right now, though, Senator Forbes wants to make what amounts to a stump speech, so I thought I'd keep out of the way till she's done. She's the planetary administrator, after all."

  "Yes, well, I suppose that's proper," Haugen said with a tinge of disappointment. He looked down on the rows of shelters and went on, "Rather good, isn't it? Did it ourselves, you know. Better quarters than the enlisted ranks had on shipboard, if you want to know the truth."

  "I'm sure they are, Commander," Daniel said. The man was twice his age and probably a very useful officer in his way, but the Gods forefend that Navy House ever appoint him to an in
dependent command! "But we're going to need the quarry here for Alliance prisoners, you realize."

  "Ah!" said Haugen, who obviously hadn't thought that far ahead. "So you're staying here, then? On Bolton, I mean?"

  "Yes, Commander," Daniel said dryly. "We've captured the planet, and we intend to hold it for as long as it takes Navy House to get reinforcements here."

  "My fellow citizens!" Senator Forbes said, insulting even those freed captives who happened to be from Cinnabar. A citizen was a landsman, while these folk were spacers—an altogether higher form of existence, so far as they were concerned.

  Not that anybody really cared. This was a happy occasion so far as the spacers were concerned: a high dignitary was addressing them, even if they couldn't hear her—the quarry's jagged angles made the acoustics abysmal.

  "Cinnabar grieved at your misfortune," Forbes said. "You must have known that your motherworld would waste no time in redressing the harm done you on her behalf!"

  She stood on the deck of the aircar, speaking through a lapel mike. The APC parked on the second dogleg above the car amplified the signal. Forbes' voice then boomed through the APC's cupola speakers and rattled down the quarry's twisting hollowness.

  "You really think you can do that, Leary?" said Haugen, tugging at the left brush of his moustache. His face was scrunched in honest puzzlement, like a dutiful child listening to a lecture on tensor calculus. "I mean to say, Admiral Petersen is a lot closer than Cinnabar; and as far as Cinnabar goes, Harbor Three was looking pretty picked over even when we lifted back at the beginning of the war."

  Forbes' secretary scrambled around the car, holding an imagery recorder and trying to get his mistress from every angle. This was the real purpose of the speech: it wasn't for the spacers but so that crowds back on Cinnabar could see Senator Forbes freeing thousands of stalwart RCN spacers.

  If Forbes had expected a photo opportunity like this, she'd have traveled with a proper public relations crew. As it was, even the bumbling Platt could gather enough raw material for professionals in Xenos to cut and polish into useful shape.