by David Drake
She paused to set the hook properly. Logic was a game; but then, so was a duel with pistols. She was rather good at both.
"—like Cory or Cazelet?"
"Oh," said Vesey, stiffening upright again. She blushed. "No, mistress," she said, "not the shiphandling, of course. But this will be an enemy base, like Mandelfarne Island."
"Yes," said Adele. "It'll be very dangerous, I'm sure. But I don't think we need worry about Mister Robinson's courage—"
"By the Gods!" Vesey said. "I didn't mean that! Of course his courage is above reproach!"
"And as for you having a chance to risk your life, Vesey," Adele continued dryly, "I'm sure Daniel will oblige you in some other fashion. Personally, I haven't found any lack of danger during my association with him."
Vesey smiled, her first sign of relaxation since Adele met her here in the umbilicus. "No, I haven't either," she said. "Mistress, I'm sorry, I just—reacted. I'm sorry."
And part of the problem is that Rene Cazelet will be aboard the transport, Adele thought. She didn't say that out loud, though, because it would lead to the next problem: that Vesey no doubt suspected that Daniel was trying to separate her from the midshipman with whom she'd been . . . socializing, call it.
Vesey was quite a clever young woman, but people constantly imagined that they and their actions were more important to those around them than common sense would've dictated. Why in heaven would Daniel care? He hadn't objected to Vesey's association with the late Midshipman Dorst, had he?
This wasn't the time to discuss an inflated sense of importance—because that's what it amounted to, despite Vesey's self-effacing personality; Adele doubted there would ever be a time for that. And there were more important things to cover now.
"Daniel sent you aboard the Wartburg," Adele said. "What did you do there?"
Adele knew perfectly well what Vesey had done. The lieutenant's helmet sensors had been transmitting the whole time, so Adele had dipped into the imagery—and that of the other members of the boarding party—as a matter of course while it was going on. She hadn't had a specific reason to do so other than the general one of liking to know things, but she'd never needed a better reason than that.
"Well, I checked the reaction mass and the consumables," Vesey said, frowning slightly. She didn't see the point of the question, but she knew that there had to be a point if Lady Mundy was asking it. "There was a risk that they'd be too low to reach Fonthill, so we'd have to top off here or on the way. The volumes were fine, a twenty percent margin on food and probably better than that on air and reaction mass."
Adele nodded. "But you didn't check by the gauges and inventory," she said. "You looked at the lockers and the tanks."
"Well, Rene, ah—"
"Rene is fine," Adele interrupted, smiling a trifle less harshly.
"Ah, yes, mistress," Vesey said, lowering her eyes. "Midshipman Cazelet and I did look at the gauges, of course, but we also made a hands-on inspection the way Six taught us. It's just a matter of opening hatches and thumping the side of a tank to see how it rings."
"Right, you did what Daniel knew you'd do, because as you say, he's trained you," Adele said. "He didn't train Lieutenant Commander Robinson, Vesey. So he made sure you'd board the ship. That way he avoided a potential problem without embarrassing a subordinate by appearing to be checking up on him."
Vesey swallowed. "I'm sure Mister Robinson would've made a physical inspection," she said. "In fact, he thanked me for saving him time when he saw what Rene and I were doing. But do you think . . . ?"
"Yes," said Adele. "I do. And there's the other matter: who's the Milton's First Lieutenant now?"
Vesey's face went flat. "Mistress," she said, "I'm not a better officer than Mister Robinson. Thank you for what you're trying to do—"
"Be quiet, Vesey," Adele said. Her voice snapped, which was useful for her purposes but quite natural under the circumstances. It was all right for people to leap ahead of her actual words, but they should not assume that Adele Mundy was about to say something patently stupid.
Vesey stiffened again. She didn't lose her hold on the umbilicus, so she remained in place. "Sir!" she said reflexively.
"I'm sure either of you has the skill set required for the First Lieutenant's duties," Adele resumed, back to her normal flat delivery now that the flash of anger was gone. Not that there was anything abnormal about her being angry. "What you personally will do is keep out of Daniel's way in a crisis. You'll anticipate and without direction solve all the problems that occur around the edges, but you won't try to fight the battle when that's in the hands of the best fighting captain in the RCN. Daniel trusts you."
Vesey's face remained blank for a moment. "Mistress," she said, her eyes shifting away. "I apologize."
For a moment Adele thought she was going to explain why she was apologizing, but Vesey really was sharper than that when she let intellect rather than her emotions direct her. Instead she said, "If Six were incapacitated in action, mistress, I would handle maneuvering and damage control myself. But I'd hand off battle direction to Lieutenant Blantyre, who has more of a talent for it."
"Thereby demonstrating why the best captain in the RCN wants you for his First Lieutenant, Vesey," Adele said; smiling also, but stating the flat truth. A compliment was always more effective when people knew that you said what you meant, no matter what that was. "Now, can we get back to our duties?"
Vesey looked at her with an odd expression. "Mistress," she said, "I don't think you've ever done anything but your duty. As you said about Captain Leary and fairness. But yes, our standing out here won't get these ships to Fonthill."
She exchanged a glance with Tovera, then led the way back toward the cruiser's airlock. Adele, sandwiched between her servant and the lieutenant, found herself smiling.
That was a very nice compliment indeed. For someone like me.
CHAPTER 15
Fonthill
Daniel breathed deeply as he looked up toward Base Alpha, the primary facility on Fonthill. The nearest structures were a few hundred yards from the harbor, as close as you could build something that wasn't raised on pilings. They were low, constructed of sheets of beige structural plastic with pillars of the same material. Someone familiar with colonial buildings would notice immediately that these didn't use the abundant local wood.
Daniel had learned it was good to get used to the local atmosphere quickly, because you couldn't avoid it except by wearing an airpack. Given that a voyage between stars could be thought of as weeks or months in a giant airpack, it was pleasant to get out into something different even when that involved decaying vegetation and smoldering mudbanks.
The usual rot and organic haze were profusely abundant on Fonthill, but there was also an undertone that set its claws in Daniel's throat when he sneezed. The sap of Fonthill shinewood was corrosively poisonous. Apparently the trait was evident even as far down the evolutionary ladder as the algae growing in the water of the harbor.
"Gods!" said Senator Forbes. "Great Gods, this is worse than I dreamed! What sort of stinking hellpit is this, Leary?"
"A pretty standard one for undeveloped worlds, Your Excellency," Daniel said, considering the network of interlinked ponds surrounded by lush vegetation. "The smoke from things our thrusters set alight during landing will clear. Though it's still going to be hot and humid, of course."
He wondered how many shades of green there were within immediate sight. To his left, the prickly seedhead on a waist-high stalk was a particularly striking chartreuse.
The only color that wasn't black or green came from the underside of a bird—well, a flying lizard—which shot out of a clump of bushes on the bank and began circling. Its wings appeared to have three folds, and their underside was pink.
From orbit, the temperate and equatorial expanses of Fonthill's sole continent had seemed to be a huge bog. Now that he was here at Base Alpha, Daniel saw no reason to change that assessment. Because the water table was so high, e
ven a landing on an area that wasn't covered in open water would've been cushioned by steam rising from the marshy soil.
A pair of men were coming from the group of buildings on a hill above the pond which the Milton now filled. Daniel had landed easily enough, but the berths here on Fonthill hadn't been intended for ships the cruiser's size. The locals each wore a white brassard on the right arm, presumably uniforms.
The lower end of boarding ramp was set on firm ground, rather remarkably. Ordinarily harbors were placed on large bodies of water, and for safety ships landed far enough out from the shore or quay that some sort of extension was necessary to reach land.
Major Mull and his detachment had double-timed down the ramp even before it quite touched the ground. Four Marines carried an automatic impeller and its tripod.
Heavy though the latter was, it wouldn't by itself anchor the weapon for bursts of more than two or three rounds. The Marines were furiously shoveling dirt into sandbags to weight the gun's legs as well as to shelter the crew. The soggy soil oozed back through the sides of the bags almost as soon as they'd been filled.
"They'd get a better field of fire from a hatch, like the spacers're doing," Hogg said in a derisive tone. "From down there they can't see aught but the bloody brush."
"I think Major Mull is concerned to control movement onto the ship, Hogg," Daniel said. He'd never had Marines under his command before, and he was learning that they weren't as much under his command as he might have wished. Mull had his own way of doing things. He seemed to regard suggestions from a spacer—even the ship's captain—as being either amusing or blasphemous, depending on how firmly the suggestions were put.
"Well, I'm more concerned with getting on with the job," said Senator Forbes. "That's the headquarters up there?"
She nodded toward the nearby buildings. In consideration of the terrain she wore a zebra-striped business suit with practical looking boots. She and her effeminate secretary weren't armed, but DeNardo and the two muscular servants carried sub-machine guns.
"Right," Daniel said. He paused a few heartbeats to decide how to phrase the next statement, then decided to simply go ahead with it. Forbes claimed she wanted the straight truth, and she seemed willing to make that more than lip service.
"Your Excellency," he said, "the quicker we get to the compound, the better. I'd like you there from the beginning so that we're agents of the Republic instead of rival gangsters, but that means walking. It'll take an hour at best to deploy the truck and longer than that to set up the aircar."
"Yes, all right," Forbes said with a moue and a toss of her head. "It's what I expected, after all."
Which was probably true, given the way she'd dressed. Daniel grinned and said, "All right, Woetjans. Lead on—and remember that we're the stern but just forces of law and order, not the Shore Patrol breaking up a drunken brawl."
The bosun, waiting farther back in the hold with a detachment of armed spacers, grinned and said, "What would I know about the Shore Patrol, Six? Except being on the other side, I mean."
Laughing, she slapped her left palm with the length of high-pressure tube she carried. She'd slung a stocked impeller over her right shoulder, but Daniel doubted she could hit anything useful in the unlikely event that she tried to shoot.
For this duty Daniel had directed Woetjans to dress her party in new utilities, issued from the ship's store and charged to the RCN's account rather than paid for by the spacers themselves as they normally would be. In its new uniforms the detachment looked less like a band of pirates than it would have in its usual shabby, grease-stained slops.
"Let's go, then," Daniel said. Though Woetjans was treating the warning as a joke, he knew she and her unit had understood him. Spacers didn't have the formal discipline of Marines, but neither were they out of control.
"Move it, spacers!" Woetjans said, her harsh voice echoing in the big compartment. "And remember we're going to a reception, not a bloody riot!"
Led by Woetjans herself, half the detachment double-timed around the senator and Daniel. Some were shouting, "Hup! Hup!" or similar things, and the clatter of their equipment added to the drumming of their boots on the steel ramp.
Each carried a sub-machine gun or stocked impeller, but almost all had a club, knife, knuckleduster, or similar personal weapon as well. Daniel didn't see any pistols, for which he was thankful. Despite training, most spacers were more enthusiastic than skilled with projectile weapons. Pistols greatly increased the risk of accident that was inevitable even with long-arms.
"Great Gods," Forbes muttered in amazed horror.
"They'd follow Captain Leary to Hell, Senator," said Adele primly. Daniel started; he'd expected her to be on the bridge. "In fact, they've done so a number of times in the past and come back from it."
"These have, at least," said Hogg, grinning broadly. "Good folks to have with you in a hard place, for all that they don't clean up as good as a lot of prissy house-servants."
"That will do, Hogg," Daniel said quietly, but he hadn't forgotten the senator's contemptuous dismissal of his servant on Karst either. "Though what he says is correct in my opinion, Your Excellency. Shall we go?"
The only weapon Hogg carried openly was a stocked impeller. If there was a better marksman with such a weapon aboard the Milton, it was Daniel himself. Hogg's pockets bulged and clinked, though.
They started down the ramp. Daniel let Forbes and her entourage get a little ahead because he wanted a chance to talk to Adele. He would've told Woetjans over the helmet intercom to slow down if he'd needed to, but the senator kept up a good pace and spacers—unlike soldiers who were used to marching—weren't likely to stride away from you anyway.
"Carry on, Major Mull," Daniel said as they passed the Marine outpost. The gunners were trying to spike their weapon's trail to the ground with entrenching tools, since the sandbags wouldn't hold a sufficient weight of the available soil.
Mull muttered, "Aye aye, sir," but he watched the spacers pass with open frustration. He'd announced that his troops would secure the head of the ramp after landing—and Daniel, instead of arguing that he thought his usual squad of spacers would be sufficient, had simply agreed.
Daniel preferred having an escort of spacers anyway, because he knew they'd obey without question no matter how stupid Six's order seemed. He didn't doubt the Marines' courage, but he knew they didn't trust him like the former Sissies whom Woetjans had picked for this duty.
That was an added incentive not to screw up, not that Daniel needed more reasons not to screw up. He grinned and whistled the chorus of "Down in the Valley": "A rolling stone gathers no moss, so they say, but a standing stone gets pissed on."
Judging Forbes was out of hearing, he turned to Adele and said quietly, "I thought you were going to stay aboard, Officer Mundy?"
Adele shrugged. "There's at least one database up there—"
She nodded toward the compound. The two men who'd started toward the cruiser were now going back up the hill at an accelerating pace.
"—which isn't linked to any kind of a network, so I have to be on site to examine it."
The Milton began to squeal and complain. Sun, predictably if against what had almost been a direct order, was rotating the dorsal turret to bear on the dull buildings. His excuse would probably be that he'd thought that the locals' flight from a band of armed men meant that they were hostile. In truth he just liked to play with his guns. The 8-inch turret set up stresses in the hull as its great mass shifted.
Daniel looked at his friend. "Well," he said, "I'd trust your judgment on any other opinion you offered. I'll therefore trust it on this."
But I'd much rather you'd stayed where it's safe, he thought. Which here on Fonthill, the bridge of a heavy cruiser really ought to be.
Very possibly Adele understood what he was thinking, because her lips seemed to twist on something sour and she said, "They're not going to fight us, Daniel; I was able to listen to the control-room conversation through their satellite
receiver. They're all atwitter, as you might imagine, but they were in the process of locking their weapons in the shipping container that serves as an armory. They didn't want any chance that they'd be mistaken for hostile."
"And if anybody does point a gun in our direction, young master . . . ," said Hogg with a self-satisfied smile. "Before he shoots, he'll have a hole in his forehead and a bloody sight bigger hole in the back of his skull, where the brains all splashed out. Not so?"
Tovera laughed. "Unless Sun gets ahead of himself," she said.
The trees started ten feet out from the pond and grew taller as the increasing slope reduced the likelihood of floods. Many species had strongly conical trunks, but a number of quite different varieties rose in corkscrews which their branches repeated. Daniel had noticed similar patterns in shinewood panels, but he'd assumed that the grain was artificial.
