Lt. Leary, Commanding

by David Drake

  Hogg stopped smoothly beside the attendant despite his effort to get the regenerative brakes to jerk them to a halt. “Bloody foreign crap!” he muttered. The comment seemed intended to inform the car that no matter how well it had been designed, it was still crap because it hadn’t been made on Cinnabar.

  The attendant wore boots to mid calf, checked trousers, and a red frock coat with a gold dicky. He wasn’t dressed like a Sexburgan or like anybody else Daniel remembered seeing, though some clowns came close. Mind, the Dress Whites Daniel was wearing weren’t the most practical garments either.

  “State your business with the Captal da Lund so that I can admit you,” the fellow said. “Please.”

  Daniel frowned. There was no question of his having gotten the address wrong: this walled compound on a hill ten miles east of Spires was the only possible structure that matched Vaughn’s directions. Besides, from the dozen vehicles—two of them aircars—already in the courtyard, there was a party going on.

  “He’s Lieutenant Daniel Leary, commanding the Princess Cecile!” Hogg said, sounding more disgusted than angry. “Delos Vaughn invited him, if you know who that is.”

  “You’re expected, Lieutenant,” the attendant said, waving to the guard watching from the tower above the gate. The tower windows were beveled sharply so that the automatic impeller mounted there could fire down onto the access road. “Nothing personal. You see, the Captal’s got to be careful.”

  He waved to the courtyard. “Park where you please. Ferde will take you to the third floor where the party is.”

  Another attendant waved from the door of the narrow three-story building directly across the courtyard. He was dressed like the gate man, but his coat was azure blue instead of scarlet. Apparently it was a national style rather than livery.

  Hogg engaged the motors. Over their whine he muttered, “They look like bloody clowns!”

  “We’re guests in their master’s house, Hogg,” Daniel said. He cleared his throat. “And after all, their liquor should be perfectly good even if it comes in a funny-shaped bottle.”

  Weeks in the Matrix had roughened Hogg’s personality beyond its normal degree of abrasiveness. Daniel understood his servant’s xenophobia, but it couldn’t be allowed to get out of hand.

  Daniel didn’t share Hogg’s attitude. So far as he was concerned, foreigners were perfectly all right. Some of them were almost the equal of Cinnabar citizens.

  The building’s top story was completely glazed; from there figures with drinks in their hands looked down. Most of them wore flashy Strymon costumes, though one was in garb cut like that of the attendants. His coat was black over a white cummerbund rather than of bright colors.

  “Yeah, I’ll be better for a drink,” Hogg muttered as he pulled in at the end of a row of similar though more ornate vehicles. “And I guess you’ll be doing some drinking too, young master, because none of the women upstairs looked worth even my time.”

  Before Daniel had managed the car door—it hinged at the back edge, not the front as he was used to—Delos Vaughn himself brushed past the attendant and called, “Lieutenant! Very pleased to see you. Come up and meet my friends and our host.”

  Besides the residence, the compound held a power room—the blow-off roof on a squat, thick-walled structure pointed to a fusion bottle inside—and a utility building holding shops, a kitchen, and a laundry. The long, one-story building along the back wall was a barracks if Daniel had ever seen one. Fortress indeed!

  Daniel let Vaughn take his arm because the other choice was to slap the fellow’s hand away. No point in coming at all if he was going to do that.

  “I’d thought you were the host, actually, Vaughn,” he said as they entered the building. The walls were decorated with a mural of lush meadows, an incongruous contrast to Sexburga’s sere landscape. An open elevator waited across the tiled foyer.

  “Well, I don’t have a suitable place of my own on Sexburga,” Vaughn said with a chuckle. The elevator door closed behind them without any command that Daniel noticed. “The Captal is an old friend of my father, you see. He was Lord Protector of the Berengian Stars until he decided to retire a few years ago. Mistress Zane contacted him, and he was glad to lend his premises.”

  The Berengians were five—or occasionally seven—stars in loose confederation. The little Daniel knew of their political history reminded him of watching piglets squirming against a sow with two more offspring than teats.

  The elevator started with a gentle hum. There weren’t any controls inside the circular cage. The curved mirror of the walls gave Daniel a view of himself looking uncomfortable in the white-and-gold of his 1st Class uniform.

  “Retired?” Daniel said. “Not that I want to pry, but …”

  Of course he wanted to pry. This place was defended like an outpost on the edge of Alliance territory.

  “Well, yes, the Captal had some help deciding,” Vaughn said. “But his support on his home world, Lusoes, was still strong. The new government voted him a hefty pension on condition that he … stay retired. It was the most cost-effective alternative.”

  Daniel nodded. The pension was cost effective if it wasn’t practical to assassinate the pensioner. That explained the compound’s defenses.

  The elevator door rotated open, a section of the gleaming metal vanishing into itself like an oil film. The guests already within the large room stared at Daniel appraisingly; the servants paused.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Vaughn, “our guest of honor, Lieutenant Daniel Leary who brought me here from Cinnabar!”

  There was a dusting of applause. Those who held drinks tapped the fingertips of their free hand on the wrist of the other.

  Servants began to circulate again with trays of drinks and finger food. It was obvious that Daniel had been given an arrival time—which he’d met within thirty seconds—later than that of the other guests.

  He stepped out of the cage, his face stiff in his determination not to give anything away. He didn’t have enough information to know what was going on, but he was in no doubt that something was happening beyond Vaughn proving he could crack the whip over Daniel on land as surely as Daniel had done to him on Cinnabar. He’d learned that much about politics by being Speaker Leary’s son.

  “Though the lieutenant wears the uniform of the Cinnabar navy,” Vaughn continued as though he were reading Daniel’s mind, “he is of course the only son of Speaker Corder Leary.”

  “There’s no ‘though’ about my uniform, Mr. Vaughn,” Daniel said, controlling his irritation as well as he could. “I’m a serving officer in the RCN and much more proud of that fact than I am in being a Leary.”

  He heard what he’d said and frowned. At any rate, he hoped that was true. Pride was a funny thing, especially when you were in the middle of a lot of foreigners.

  “This is our host, the Captal da Lund,” Vaughn said, gesturing Daniel toward the tall man in the black coat. He was in his sixties, with short hair, gray eyes, and a face whose fleshy lips were the only hint of softness. “An old friend of my family.”

  The Captal and Daniel gripped elbows, forearm to forearm. Daniel was surprised to note that so ascetic-looking a man wore perfume.

  “Mistress Zane you already know,” Vaughn went on, nodding to the woman Daniel had met on Cinnabar. “This is Mr. Angele, who’s in transit trade out of Cove Harbor. He was one of my godfathers… .”

  Vaughn went around the gathering, introducing Daniel to one Strymon national after another. Some, like Angele—a heavy-bodied, hard-eyed fellow who spoke mainly in grunts—were expatriates with businesses on Sexburga, but Zane and most of the others present were normally resident on Strymon itself.

  This was obviously a gathering of conspirators. The Captal was involved either through family friendship as Vaughn claimed, or simply the desire of a born intriguer to keep his hand in, even if that meant meddling in others’ affairs for lack of his own.

  The question remaining as Daniel embraced his way arou
nd the room was why he was present.

  The last guest was equally anomalous, a man of thirty-odd in clothes of closely tailored Cinnabar cut. “And finally, Mr. Gerson,” Vaughn said, “who’s on the staff of the Cinnabar commissioner here, Admiral Torgis. Were you able to see the admiral, Lieutenant?”

  “He was occupied when I called,” Daniel said, clasping Gerson and stepping thankfully away. “He was kind enough to send a courier to the Princess Cecile before I left for this party, inviting the officers to a gathering at his residence tomorrow, however.”

  Gerson looked healthy enough, but his muscles felt doughy and his breathing was fast and shallow. Was Gerson a Cinnabar spy? Supposedly the Office of External Relations always had someone on a resident’s staff, and a strategic port like Sexburga might attract other organizations as well.

  That line of consideration brought Daniel’s mind uncomfortably back to Adele. He wished again she was here; or, even better, that he himself wasn’t.

  “I’m not surprised, Leary,” Gerson said. “You’re quite the celebrity since the Kostroma business. Certified heroes rarely appear on Sexburga during peacetime.”

  And just how peaceful is this gathering? Daniel thought, though all he said aloud was, “I was particularly pleased that the admiral is giving a separate party for the crew, using a depot ship docked in the slip beside ours so that even the anchor watch can get a taste of it.”

  “Oh, Admiral Torgis is an old space rover, all right,” Gerson said. “You two should get along swimmingly, Leary.”

  If Gerson was trying to hide his bitterness, he was doing a very poor job. Was the man drunk?

  “I certainly hope I will,” Daniel said, turning slightly as he spoke as though he was being drawn by the view out the windows. The Strymonian guests had formed a group beside a statue that looked like tall hands reaching up from the floor. They spoke in low voices, their eyes on Daniel instead of on one another.

  Gerson affected Daniel like a bad smell: bearable if necessary, but something to be avoided whenever possible. Daniel said, “I wonder if I could find a—yes, thank you!” to the servant who came by with a tray of drinks. He snatched one that turned out to be pink and frothy; sweet as well, but when it hit the back of his throat he had to admit it was sufficiently potent.

  Delos Vaughn had noticed the awkwardness. His brow furrowed, then cleared in an ingenuous smile as he said, “Captal, the lieutenant here is a naturalist of note. Why don’t you tell him of your explorations on South Land?”

  “Why yes, I’d heard that mentioned, Mr. Leary,” the Captal said as he turned toward Daniel. “A man could make himself famous by exploring the ruins of South Land properly. They are beyond question the remains of a prehuman civilization!”

  He picked up a slender, arm’s-length rod from a display of knickknacks and sliced it absently in a figure eight. It took Daniel a moment to realize that other items on the table included thumbscrews and manacles with spiked protrusions on the inside.

  “Really, sir?” Daniel said. “I hadn’t heard about that. Have they been studied?”

  The Captal tapped the table with his rod. Daniel had taken it for translucent plastic at first; now he realized it was the penis bone of a carnivorous mammal or mammaloid that must weigh tons. Or be hung like a horse, of course.

  “Not at all, sir!” the Captal said. “This is a crime, and I believe you are the man to right it. Would you care to see for yourself? I’ll provide you with an aircar and a guide.”

  Daniel sipped, careful not to drain the bit of his drink remaining. He held his liquor as befitted an officer of the RCN, but this pink fluff was deceptively strong. He didn’t know how long the party was going to go on, and he was quite sure that he didn’t want to blurt something in an uncontrolled moment.

  Blurt what, he had no idea. All he knew for certain was that these people had an agenda of their own, and that Lt. Daniel Leary was a pawn they were maneuvering for purposes that weren’t his own.

  “I appreciate the offer, sir,” Daniel said, “but I don’t believe that’ll be possible. I need to stay in Spires until the arrival of the squadron to which the Princess Cecile has been attached. After that time my whereabouts will be at the disposition of the squadron commander, Commodore Pettin. I very much doubt he’ll wish me to go—”

  He almost said, “haring off,” but caught himself in time.

  “—exploring on Sexburga, however much I might like to do so.”

  The Captal’s face became a mask of cold fury. He lashed the table with the penis bone, a snap! like nearby lightning.

  “I wholly agree with you that there should be proper examination, sir,” Daniel continued. “I’m sure you’ll be able to carry it out yourself more ably than a transient RCN officer could do.”

  If the exiled ruler cut at him with the penis bone, Daniel was going to take it away and worry about the consequences later. Cinnabar nobles had never lacked for arrogance, but theirs was the pride of oligarchs who knew that even the greatest of them was merely first among equals. Autocrats, even fallen autocrats like the Captal, were a wholly different breed.

  The Captal dropped the rod disdainfully. “A real leader knows how to delegate, Lieutenant,” he said. “Point to the task and reward the laborers suitably when they’ve executed his will. No doubt your father understands this principle, though you do not.”

  “Very possibly he does, sir,” Daniel said, trying to keep a straight face. Imagine this Berengian rube implying similarity between himself and Speaker Leary! “To be honest, I’m rather surprised that a planet that’s been continuously settled from before the Hiatus has any major unexplored regions.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise you if you’d spent any length of time on Sexburga, Lieutenant,” said Mistress Keeton, a Strymonian who’d been introduced as “a factor with interests in Spires and elsewhere.” Her clothes were of Sexburgan cut but colored in vivid vertical stripes like nothing Daniel had seen on local citizens. “They’re a very conservative people here, the families who trace their lineage back to the original settlement even more so than those from Captain Flood’s refoundation. South Land has a bad reputation, so why go there?”

  “It’s not as though there’s population pressure, after all,” a Mr. Cherry said. The gathering under the bronze hands had broken up, and the conspirators were drifting closer to Daniel. “There’s an astrogation beacon on the north cape of the continent. And foreigners visit it occasionally. I’ve been there myself.”

  He grinned at Daniel, then to the Captal. “None of my party saw ghosts, and I’ve never heard of anyone who has. But I had to hire spacers to do for us on the trip, because none of the locals would go to South Land.”

  A servant took Daniel’s glass and substituted a full one. He’d noticed many times in the past that the drinks he held seemed to vanish as if by osmosis through the sides of his glass. Still, a few drinks, however strong, weren’t going to be a problem.

  “I’m not an archaeologist, I’m afraid,” Daniel said with a lift of his hand. “I’m sure that, with the traffic coming through Sexburga, there’ll be a suitable person for the task if you keep your eyes open.”

  The Captal da Lund stood with his back to the window, his hands on his hips. Behind him russet fields stretched away to the horizon. He looked as though he ought to have been on a dais.

  “There are no men of vision any more,” the Captal announced in a sepulchral voice. “Mankind has devolved to a race of pigmies who cannot see and fear to act.”

  “Oh, I don’t know that I’d agree with you there, Captal,” Delos Vaughn said with an easy smile. “I think it’s still possible to find men of vision. Wouldn’t you say so, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, I would,” Daniel said, a little more forcefully than he might have done if he hadn’t first slugged down his fresh drink.

  Vaughn meant himself, of course, and he was probably correct in his self-assessment. But Lt. Daniel Leary could see and could act also … and his vision didn’t incl
ude a Leary of Bantry digging around on South Land at the whim of an exiled wog.

  Daniel took a full glass from the servant headed toward him and raised it. “A toast!” he said. “To the Republic of Cinnabar and all her loyal allies!”

  Everybody drank, but an appraising glint came into the eyes of Delos Vaughn. It remained there until the gathering broke up at the end of the hour.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Good afternoon, mistress,” said the man behind Adele in the buffet line. “Or ‘officer,’ I suppose I should say. You’re one of young Leary’s crew, I take it?”

  “He’s named Cherry,” said Tovera, speaking through the bead placed deep in Adele’s right ear canal. It dulled her normal hearing on that side of her head, but it was the only alternative to a surgical implant in her mastoid bone if she wanted commentary from her servant. “He was at the gathering for Captain Leary yesterday.”

  “I’m Signals Officer Mundy of the Princess Cecile, yes,” Adele said. She smiled, though she’d learned that didn’t help put others at their ease with her. Some called her smile wintry, while others were less charitable. “And you’re a Sexburgan, sir?”

  “Ardis Cherry,” the fellow said with a deprecating laugh. “And not a Sexburgan, no, just an expatriate like yourself. My business is here on Sexburga, but I’m a citizen of Strymon. Quite a little party here, wouldn’t you say?”

  Adele reached the head of the table. She took a plate and began plumping food onto it. Although normally abstemious, she’d been extremely poor for fifteen years. The habit of eating everything she could get at formal gatherings of this sort, common in Academe, was so deeply ingrained in her that it could be described as a conditioned response.

  “I’m certainly impressed,” Adele said truthfully. The next dish looked like candied beetles. She took one; poverty was even better than travel for making one open to new experiences. “There must be three hundred people here.” According to Tovera, there were three hundred and forty-seven guests in addition to fifty-odd staff members and the guests’ two hundred servants. “Most of Sexburgan society, I would guess.”