- Chapter 11
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CHAPTER 11: Charlestown on Bennaria
Luff waited outside the entrance of the Council Chamber. Either he'd gone on to give Daniel and Waddell more privacy, or he was simply trying to keep out of the angry Councilor's sight. Regardless, Daniel nodded to the Manco agent and said, "Hogg and I are going to move toward the speaker's stand, Master Luff. Care to join us?"
Luff hunched himself together reflexively. He grimaced and said, "Yes, if you think it's safe. I suppose I should hear what he says."
"Oh, I think this assembly should be safe enough," Daniel said. He smiled, thinking, For me at least it's much safer than almost anywhere else on Bennaria. He doubted Waddell would attack the Princess Cecile directly, but other places were all a possibility.
With Luff in tow and Hogg at his side, Daniel began maneuvering forward. It was a hot day but the haze that seemed to be normal here in Charlestown kept the sun from being the hammer it might otherwise have been. Daniel was in his best set of Grays, not garments he wanted to wear in a brawl but less restrictive than his Whites. He was comfortable enough.
The plaza was full of civilians, but they grew thicker toward the center like that of stars in a cluster. To Daniel's surprise, Corius had disposed the bulk of his force to protect the crowd from a sudden onslaught by his rivals' massed retainers. He had only fifty or so men around him personally.
The cordon of guards eyed Daniel grimly as he approached. Corius'd had their two-foot truncheons decorated with tinsel streamers. That wasn't to hide the fact they were weapons, Daniel supposed, but to permit the other Councilors to pretend the troops weren't an armed threat.
A red-head in his mid-thirties appeared to be in command of the section Daniel approached. He was speaking into a microphone on his wrist; responses would come through his earclip, a larger version of the unit Adele was wearing. His frown cleared, becoming a smile of professional welcome.
"Sorry sir," he said. "I didn't recognize your uniform. You're very welcome here, but we're not letting in troublemakers wearing livery, you understand?"
"I do indeed," Daniel said, passing between two of the blue-sleeved guards, but he might as well have saved his breath; they couldn't possibly hear him. Councilor Corius was climbing the steps at the far end of the plaza, sending the crowd into shrieks of rapturous enthusiasm.
Corius raised both hands high, building the mob's excitement; the air of the plaza reeked of sweat laced with adrenalin. The speaker's stand was still a hundred and fifty yards from Daniel; he resumed working his way forward. There were too many people in the way for that to be easy, but a determined push generally made an opening. People prefer not to be in actual contact with one another; Daniel exploited that instinct to move through them.
"Fellow citizens of Bennaria!" Corius called. His bodyguards stood two steps below him, so that he could easily see and be seen by everyone in the plaza. "My brothers and sisters!"
"Bloody hell!" Hogg muttered angrily. "Does he think he's bulletproof? He's an easy shot from any roof around the square here. Any roof."
"We're not here to talk, Hogg," Daniel said, as quietly as he could and still be heard. With luck, none of the spectators had heard Hogg's comment. It would've sounded like a threat rather than the professional observation it was.
Hogg wasn't an assassin, but all his life he'd been a hunter. He was scarcely the only one on Bennaria today to view Councilor Corius as potential prey.
"It's been two generations since you, the people of Bennaria, met in solemn assembly," Corius said. "Now is the time to resume exercising your sacred rights of governance!"
The crowd had thickened further. Daniel thought he might be able to worm a little closer to the steps, but only a little.
Being close turned out not to be necessary for him to hear clearly. Not only was Corius using a concealed public address system, the plaza's acoustics were remarkably good. Behind the steps from which he spoke was the Port Administration Offices, the largest government building on the planet. The side facing the square sloped back at a 70o angle. Daniel wasn't sure that made it a better sounding board than a vertical wall would've been, but it was very effective.
"Our friends and neighbors on Dunbar's World have been attacked by a murderous warlord who plans to turn their planet into a base for pirates," Corius said. "If Nataniel Arruns is allowed to succeed, how long will it be before he or another like him grinds his iron heel on your neck and mine, fellow citizens?"
The crowd bellowed agreement, though many of its members must've known the claim was a farrago of nonsense. Pellegrino—unlike Bennaria—didn't trade with pirates. There was no likelihood that Nataniel Arruns planned to turn Dunbar's World into a pirate haven.
In the unlikely event an outside power conquered Bennaria, Corius and his fellow Councilors would come up short—probably a head short. The common people who made up the bulk of this mob would see little change in their status, though. Like the disenfranchised islanders on Dunbar's World, they had nothing to lose.
Still, whenever you tell a man that foreigners are dirty swine determined to cheat him, you're likely to get enthusiastic agreement. You're playing to his existing beliefs, after all. Speaker Leary's son had seen those tactics used more than once in the past.
Daniel smiled. That sort of realization made Adele angry to the point of despair. To him, it was like seeing a rambunctious puppy knock over a table. Puppies and people would be puppies and people, that's all there was to it.
"Your Council has failed you, fellow citizens!" Corius said. "Not only is the Council unwilling to act in the face of this immediate danger, the other Councilors are unwilling to permit me, acting as a private citizen, to work at my own expense to preserve the honor and safety of Bennaria. Therefore I've come to you. Will you, the people of Bennaria in sacred assembly, send me to Dunbar's World in your name?"
"Corius!" the blue-sleeved guards began to chant. "Corius! Corius!"
"Corius!" took up the crowd, twenty thousand strong if there was a man in it. "Corius! Corius!"
Daniel glanced over his shoulder. Hogg stood stolidly, his fists on his hips and his elbows flared outward to give him a little more room. He wore his usual vacant expression.
Luff's mouth was open also. His eyes were turned toward the speaker but they didn't seem focused. His right hand was cupped over his ear, shielding it from the noise around him so that he could hear what his in-canal earphone was telling him.
Corius raised his hands. For a moment the shouts grew even more fevered, but when he first crossed, then lowered them the crowd noise abated.
"My friends, my brothers!" Corius said. "Do you, the assembled people of Bennaria, authorize me, Yuli Corius, to act on your behalf but at my cost to drive the Pellegrinian invaders from Dunbar's World? If so, signify by—"
"Yes!" screamed the crowd. The citizens closest to Daniel were red-faced and sweating with excitement. Many pumped their fists in the air. "Yes! Yes! Yes!"
Daniel looked at Hogg, who nodded. They turned to ease their way back. There was nothing more to learn here, though the excitement would continue for as long as Corius chose to milk it.
Luff lowered his hand from his ear; he seemed transfixed. Daniel gestured him to turn, but it wasn't until Hogg put his hands on the Manco agent's shoulders and physically rotated him that he started to move.
Luff looked sour, angry, and very, very frightened.
* * *
"I had Hogg buy the boat for us," said Tovera at the tiller of the taxi. She wore a waterman's garments: baggy shorts, baggy shirt, and a vest with bright red embroidery. Her hat was a flat cone woven from split reeds and shaded her face completely. "He's better at that sort of thing than I am."
She tittered. "I suppose he bought the boat," she added. "Perhaps he cut the owner's throat instead. Though I could've handled that myself."
"I'm sure Hogg wouldn't kill anyone unless he thought they really needed it, Tovera," Adele said with a deadpan expression. "Unless we were shorter of money than I believe to be the case at present, of course."
Elemere wore one of Tovera's pale-gray suits; his blond hair was cropped short under Tovera's usual cap. He looked from Adele to her servant and back again with a horrified expression. His mouth trembled, but he didn't speak.
"It was a joke," Adele said. "Don't be upset."
Tovera had made a joke, the sort of thing normal human beings did. Adele felt it was her duty to encourage her sociopathic servant every time she attempted to act human. She didn't suppose Tovera would ever be good at it, but the effort deserved support.
It wasn't something Adele was very good at herself, after all, but she too kept trying. Being part of the RCN family helped a great deal. Spacers who daily risked death in exotic and horrible fashions were an eccentric lot. They had room for other eccentrics who were good at their jobs. Adele and Tovera qualified on that score.
The taxi was driven by a power unit clamped to the starboard side; the massive battery pack to port balanced the motor's weight. The vessel purred and slapped down the strait toward the Mazeppa; very slowly, but that was probably a good thing.
Krychek didn't know they were coming—Adele hadn't radioed ahead for fear of interception—and the last thing she wanted to do was to race toward the armed freighter. Krychek's crew must be as frustrated and depressed as their captain. There was no point in goading somebody who's got a gun with which to let out his anger.
"No one could possibly mistake me for that woman," Elemere said pettishly, glaring at Tovera on the seat ahead of them. "It's a waste of time to bother!"
"If they're looking for you, that's true," Adele said. The complaint—the stupid complaint—irritated her, but she understood how nervous the singer must be. Elemere was reacting to fear in an unhelpful fashion, but that's what people generally did. "We're doing this during the popular assembly because it's unlikely that you're at the top of anybody's mind at present, especially Councilor Waddell's."
The guard manning the impeller on the Mazeppa's boarding ramp watched them, but he hadn't actually trained his big weapon on the puttering taxi. Adele waved. She was wearing the suit in which she'd visited the night before, but she knew it wasn't very distinctive.
She thought of standing up to make her approach even more obvious and therefore peaceful, but she'd probably tip the boat over if she tried. That would make them look less threatening, but she trusted it wouldn't be necessary.
"Most likely those we need be concerned about," she continued, in part to keep the singer from flying into hysterics, "are either watching Corius or getting ready to defend themselves if the mob goes on a rampage. There may be observers keeping an eye on the harbor, but they'll be worried about another transport full of troops landing."
"I should never've come to Bennaria," Elemere muttered, looking at his hands clenched in his lap. Adele didn't see any reason to disagree with him.
Three more crewmen walked onto the ramp to watch the taxi approach. All three wore horizontally striped shirts and loose, grubby trousers, but the peaked hat of the man in the middle marked him as an officer.
"Good day, sir!" Adele called as Tovera curved them toward the hanging ladder where they'd landed the night before. Lubricating oil slicked the water iridescently and hung as a miasma in the thick air. "Please tell Landholder Krychek that Lady Mundy wishes an audience with him."
"The Man's coming down, your ladyship," said the officer. "C'mon aboard. He says you're a friend, and we've bloody few friends on this mudball."
Tovera in the guise of the boatman lashed the taxi's painter to a recessed eyebolt on the outrigger instead of simply gripping it while the passengers disembarked. The Infantan spacers didn't comment.
"Go up," Adele muttered to Elemere. Then, peevishly, "Take your case with you!"
Elemere climbed the swinging ladder gracefully despite the burden in his left hand. The attaché case resembled Tovera's, but of course it wasn't. The contents of hers—the little sub-machine gun and similar pieces of equipment—were concealed under her baggy clothing.
Adele followed Elemere, but much more awkwardly; he was a dancer as well as singer. As she stepped onto the outrigger with deliberate care, Krychek strode from the hatchway and boomed, "Lady Mundy! A pleasure indeed to see you, an unexpected—"
He stopped, staring at Elemere. He raised an eyebrow.
"Go on into the ship, Tovera!" Adele said, then prodded Elemere with an elbow to start him moving. He'd forgotten the name he was using this afternoon; he obviously wasn't a natural conspirator.
"Let's go into your library, Landholder," Adele said, following close behind the singer to shield him from lenses that might be watching from across the strait. She didn't think anyone on Harbor Island could see them here. "I want to discuss the situation on Bennaria further."
"But of course, dear lady," said Krychek. To the officer nearby he added in a clipped, harsher, tone, "Keep an eye out. It's possible that these mud-wallowing pigs will think to interrupt us."
"To the left," Adele said in an undertone when she and Elemere were well into the entrance compartment. "The companionway."
They entered the helical stairs with Tovera immediately behind them. Krychek banged closed the hatch below, then said, "And now, my dear Mundy—what is all this? I recognize Master Elemere. While he's very welcome, I don't understand him arriving in quite the present costume."
"When we're in the library, if you will," Adele said over the echoing shoof, shoof, of their soles on the metal stairs. "Where we can talk more easily."
She stepped ahead of the hesitant Elemere and led the rest of the way to the freighter's uppermost level. Tovera's feet didn't seem to make a sound, which was remarkable but not surprising.
A hatch facing the strait and Charlestown beyond was open in the foyer; another automatic impeller was mounted there. It hadn't been manned when the taxi approached, but two Infantans were unlocking the mount and switching on the gun's power. They gave Adele a look of appraisal as she entered the library, but they didn't speak to her or to Krychek himself.
Tovera remained outside with the gunners, exchanging nods with Adele. Krychek closed the door—the hatch—behind them and gestured graciously toward the chairs on the level below. "Please," he said, "sit and make yourselves comfortable. Mundy, will you have another glass of wine? And Master Elemere—"
"Elemere," the singer said sharply. "Just Elemere."
"As I am Krychek!" said the captain with boisterous good humor, linking arms with Elemere and leading him down the stairs. "I fear your tastes may be too sophisticated for my poor cellar, but please—will you do me the honor of drinking a tot of Landholder Reserve cognac with me? The run was bottled at my birth."
"Why, I. . .," Elemere said, allowing himself to be guided to a short loveseat. Krychek opened the cabinet beneath the tantalus and brought out a slender green bottle with fluted sides. "Yes, a brandy would be. . . I would like a brandy."
Krychek poured an ounce of pale yellow liquor into each of two snifters but left them on the cabinet until he'd served Adele another glass of white wine. He seated himself beside Elemere and only then offered him the snifter in his right hand.
After breathing deeply from his own glass, Krychek looked over the rim of it and said, "Now Mundy. I'm pleased by this visit, very pleased; I saw Elemere perform on Lompac only last year. But there is a story behind it, is there not?"
"Yes," said Adele austerely, still standing. She watched the interaction of the two men. It was what she'd hoped, of course, but still it—
Never mind. "Landholder, you and your crew aren't the only people on Bennaria who aren't afraid of Councilor Waddell, but you may well be the only people besides us aboard the Princess Cecile. We're about to lift for what I may well be combat. We can't take Elemere with us."
"So. . .," Krychek said, tilting the snifter till the brandy touched—but only touched—his lips. He turned from Adele to look at the man beside him; his expression of cool appraisal gave way to a broad smile. "So, Elemere. Tell me why it is important that I am not afraid of Councilor Fat Pig Waddell?"
"He wanted me to go with him," the singer said, meeting Krychek's eyes. "He killed my friend when I wouldn't."
The glass in Elemere's hand trembled. He took a convulsive drink, probably a terrible thing to do to a stellar brandy, but Krychek didn't protest. He patted Elemere's knee and looked at Adele again. His smile remained.
"So," he repeated. "I understand much, but one thing I do not understand. You Cinnabars are here to help the government of Bennaria, and Waddell—for all that he is fat, and a pig, and utterly disgusting—is the government of Bennaria himself. I have no love for him—he is why I cannot get credit of any sort on this mudball—but it would seem your duty is to hand Elemere over and go on about your business. Not so?"
"Certainly not," said Adele without emphasis. "Our chief of mission is a Leary of Bantry; he's made this a matter of honor. I won't say Commander Leary's personal honor would take precedence over his duties to the RCN. Nonetheless, turning the matter over to brave and honorable men like yourselves makes it unnecessary for him to make such a decision."
Krychek laughed harshly. He sipped his brandy again; Adele took a drink of her wine. Her lips and tongue were extremely dry.
"I should help the RCN, that is what you say?" Krychek said musingly. "An interesting thought. Because I am an exile, I must be a traitor, that is what you think, Mundy?"
Adele set her barely-tasted drink down on the display cabinet beside her. She realized she was standing very straight.
"Landholder Krychek," she said. I sound like my mother, she thought. When she was very, very angry. "You pointed out correctly that my actions here and those of Commander Leary verge on being in conflict with our RCN duties."
She made a peremptory gesture with her right index finger. "Master Elemere," she said, "get up. I can't leave you with a fool."
"You can't call me a fool!" Krychek shouted, lurching to his feet.
"I just did!" Adele said, her left hand in her pocket. "Elemere, get up now or on my oath as a Mundy I'll shoot you dead! That'll solve both Daniel's problem and the RCN's!"
The snifter shattered as Krychek's big hand clenched; blood and brandy sprayed. Elemere keened wordlessly and cupped Krychek's fist in both hands.
"Oh you've hurt yourself!" Elemere said. "Please, please, there's been enough pain! Let me bandage that, please!"
Adele took her hand from her pocket and held it away from her as if it were hot. She felt sick to her stomach from embarrassment; her skin burned as though she'd been buried in hot sand.
"I apologize," she said. She forced herself to meet Krychek's eyes. She was dizzy and afraid she might faint. "This is your ship, your house, and I insulted you in it. If you wish satisfaction, I will of course—"
"Stop that," said Elemere fiercely. He'd teased open Krychek's fist and was picking bits of broken glass from the blood. "Stop that! You'll not fight a duel, you'll not do any more stupid things, either one of you. There's been enough pain."
The singer jerked the lace doily out from under the tantalus with a sudden, sharp pull; the stand and decanters rattled against the wood. He wadded it in Krychek's palm, then poured the rest of his brandy into the lace.
"Now close your hand again," he said to Krychek. "This'll hold it till we get real medical help."
"There's a medicomp on C Deck," Krychek said. He sounded stunned. "But this is nothing, nothing."
"Elemere," Adele said, "we need to leave while the assembly's still going on. Landholder, I—"
"Wait," said Krychek. "Lady Mundy, the fault was mine. You came to me, a lady to a gentleman, and I acted a spoiled child."
He bowed at the waist to her, stepped back, and bowed even more deeply to Elemere. "Mistress," he said. "You are a great artist, a great artist. It would be an honor to me and my men to shelter you from your enemies. It would be an honor to die if we can shelter you with our very bodies. To die!"
"I don't think that will be necessary, gentlemen," Adele said dryly. She felt a smile twitch the corners of her mouth; in relief, largely, she supposed. "Waddell should believe that Elemere is aboard the Princess Cecile when we lift, and I trust that will be very soon. Tovera is arranging for one of your men to take us back in the boat, wearing the costume she came aboard with; she has her ordinary clothes on under it. Ah, with your permission, that is."
Neither of the men was listening to her. Elemere still held Krychek's fist.
"Would you help me?" the singer said. "I'm so alone. Lonnie was. . . Lonnie took care of everything."
"It is an honor," Krychek repeated. He put his free hand on the dancer's shoulder. "A very great honor."
Adele stepped briskly up the staircase. She didn't look around, but it wasn't until she'd banged the hatch closed behind her that she let out the breath she'd been holding.
* * *
"I suppose you're used to this sort of thing," Luff said bitterly as he started around the Council Hall with Daniel, toward the enclosed parking lot in back. There were clots of spectators at the rear of the plaza, watching but unwilling to be said to have joined the mob. Corius' voice through the PA system was audible though individual words weren't always clear. "Because your father's Speaker Leary, I mean."
I wonder who told him that? thought Daniel. He was pretty sure Luff hadn't known that Daniel was anything more than a young middle-ranking officer when the Princess Cecile landed on Bennaria.
"I've seen other mass gatherings, yes," Daniel said carefully. He had no reason to be abrupt with the question, but neither did he want to get in a discussion about Corder Leary. "This is quite a polite one, it seems to me. But that has nothing to do with who my father is. I grew up on our country estate, Bantry, not in Xenos. I saw bird migrations and file-fish runs, but not political demonstrations."
There'd been political meetings, though. Not this sort of thing, but the discussions which the public never learned about. One man, or three, or on a single occasion twelve, arrived at Bantry separately and separately slipped away again. On the night of the largest meeting began the Proscriptions that crushed the Three Circles Conspiracy.
They'd reached the steel-scrollwork gates of the parking compound. Luff's driver was inside talking with three attendants. Daniel pulled at the leaves, but they were locked.
Hogg'd been walking behind Daniel and Luff as they moved away from the crowd. He glanced back once more, then stepped to the gate and rattled it in irritation. "Hey!" he called. "You there! Look alive!"
The four men muttered uncertainly for a moment. Finally an attendant walked toward them while Luff's driver got into the black landau. It was the only vehicle still in the lot.
"They'd better get a move on," Hogg muttered, resuming his watch on the plaza. In a different voice he went on, "There were people waiting down some of the streets leading to the square, you know, master. They don't wear their colors, but they're somebody's bullies for sure."
"Master Luff?" Daniel said. "Do you think the other Councilors will attack Corius today?"
He wasn't sure how the Manco agent would respond. He'd remained in sullen silence while the three of them pushed back through the crowd, and the comment about Speaker Leary hadn't been made in a friendly tone.
Instead of growling some angry variant on, "How would I know?" though, Luff said, "No, no, they won't do that. The whole city would be burned down if they did that. Waddell may have observers, but attack? No."
He looked over his shoulder at the plaza. "The Councilors've all gone to their estates, I'm sure of that. Those who think they have enough retainers may leave a guard on their townhouses, but some won't even do that."
Luff shivered. "What if the city burns anyway?" he asked plaintively. "What will I do? This is a terrible thing, terrible."
The driver had turned the car and was moving toward them. The attendant unlocked the gate's crossbar and slid it sideways. Hogg shoved the leaves fiercely, deliberately making the attendant jump back. The fellow'd delayed them, but Hogg was capable of taking his anger out on anybody who happened to be close.
Any wog, that is; Daniel didn't catch his servant's anger unless he personally was the cause of it. Which was often enough, in all truth.
"Sir?" said the attendant unexpectedly as he pulled one leaf fully open; Hogg was pushing the other back. "I—"
The fellow looked back at his fellows, standing against the wall. Each had his hands locked together to keep them from twitching. "I mean we, we were wondering if, you know, we should leave the Council Hall?"
"Ah," said Daniel, the syllable replacing, "Why in the world are you asking me?" because as soon as he framed that question mentally, he knew the answer: the attendants were terrified. They feared not only what the mob might do but also equally irrational violence by the Councilors who were their masters.
"I think you should go home, now," Daniel said quietly. He was the closest thing to authority the poor fellow had; it was simple human kindness to give him the answer that might save his life. "You want to be with your families in case things get, well, confused later."
Luff had gotten into the car. "Come along, for God's sake," he said. "We can't be sure the streets are safe even now!"
Hogg moved deliberately to put his shapeless bulk between Daniel and the Manco agent. He was looking back at the crowd, whistling Waiting to Grow between his teeth. That'd been Elemere's signature tune. . . .
"Even though Councilor Waddell told us to lock the doors and watch the place tonight?" the attendant said. He sounded as desperate as a mother asking a doctor about her child.
"If the building's still here in the morning," Daniel said, "you can come back before Councilor Waddell's likely to. If it's not, well, you're still better off, right?"
He smiled and clapped the man on the shoulder. Hogg climbed into the open cab with the driver, and Daniel slid into the passenger compartment with Luff. The car was accelerating out of the lot before he got the door fully closed.
Daniel glanced through the opera window in the back panel. The attendant he'd spoken to was waving to his fellows to join him. Even before they did he'd trotted out into the street, leaving the gates open behind him.
"Well, you're off the hook now, at least," Luff said. He was tight-faced and glared straight ahead, though Daniel doubted that he was looking at anything beyond the sheet of one-way glass between them and the cab. "Are you going to go straight back to Cinnabar?"
Daniel pursed his lips, wondering how to respond. Before he decided, Luff added, "I wish I could go back with you. I wish I'd never taken this bloody job, but I had no choice!"
A gang of children, the oldest of them no more than twelve, stood in a side street. They shouted something unintelligible when they saw the car and several threw stones; the driver accelerated. Hogg rose to his feet so that he could shoot over the driver's head if he had to, but in the event he kept the squat pistol down by his side.
"I'm not sure what you mean by me being off the hook, Luff," Daniel said quietly. "My assignment is to help oust the invaders from Dunbar's World. It would've been simpler to do that if the Bennarian government were more forthcoming, but that wasn't part of the orders I was given at Navy House."
Luff stared at him in a mixture of anger and resentment. "Look," the agent said, "your orders have changed. You're here to help Bennaria, and the best thing that could happen to Bennaria now would be for Yuli Corius to be killed on Dunbar's World. If you don't believe me, just ask any of the Councilors."
"With all due respect, Master Luff. . .," Daniel said, giving the adjective a slight emphasis to make the insult unmistakable. "I cannot imagine circumstances in which an RCN officer would ask tin-pot foreign politicians to interpret orders given him by his superiors."
"You know what I mean!" Luff said angrily. His clenched fists quivered on his knees in an access of frustration. "You're not here because of the Cinnabar navy or the Cinnabar Senate or the Cinnabar bloody anything! You're here because the Mancos had you sent here to make their trading partners on Bennaria happy. That's the Councilors, and I'm telling you—the Councilors don't want Corius to succeed!"
Daniel looked out the front window as he considered what Luff had said. They were nearing the harbor; the only people he saw out were those nailing sheets of plywood or structural plastic over the windows of the larger houses of entertainment.
"Well, Luff. . .," he said, keeping his eyes on the buildings rather than facing the man with him. He and Hogg'd come from the Princess Cecile in an ordinary water taxi, but those might no longer be running. Of course the crewmen of the Manco barge were locals also, as apt to be part of Corius' assembly as the independent watermen were.
Daniel'd let his voice trail off. He grimaced and said, "Sorry. Yes, you may well be right about the motivation behind my orders, but—"
He turned and smiled directly at the Manco agent.
"—you see, the orders themselves don't say that."
The car slowed and turned left down Harbor Street. Hogg stood again, this time to see past the embankment to where boats might be riding on the ebb tide. The Princess Cecile was a low shape among the bulkier freighters in the mist across the strait.
"You don't have to be that literal!" Luff said. "You've got leeway, I know that. I've seen your record, Leary, so don't pretend you're some kind of by-the-book robot."
"No, I'm not," Daniel said. "I've used my judgment to interpret orders in the past, and I'm doing the same now."
He paused, considering how much more he really ought to say. Nothing more was probably the right answer, but he was Daniel Leary.
"You're wondering if this is happening because I dislike Councilor Waddell," Daniel said. "Again, no. I wouldn't compromise my duty, let alone risk the lives of the crewmen for whom I'm responsible, simply because I feel Councilor Waddell's best use would be as fish bait."
As he spoke, he thought of Waddell bouncing along on a cable behind the Bantry Belle, with Hogg at the controls and himself manning the harpoon gun. The trench eels off the east coast grew to over a hundred feet long.
The image made him grin broadly; Luff started back.
"As I say, my personal feelings don't matter here," Daniel continued, a lie but a small one. "The Pellegrinians have been developing increasingly close ties with the Alliance, however. I don't see any benefit to the Republic in letting an Alliance supporter expand its power into Ganpat's Reach, and I'm confident that my superiors will feel the same way."
The car stopped abruptly. Daniel leaned back, compensating with a spacer's reflex, but Luff rocked forward hard enough to thump the divider with his shoulder. Hogg jumped out and called to someone unseen beyond the seawall.
"They'll blame me, you know," Luff muttered, again to his clenched hands. "Not that you care."
"He'll take us, young master!" Hogg said, gesturing toward the presumed boat and boatman. The closed compartment muffled his voice. "And I won't mind having the Sissies and a couple plasma cannon around me, I'll tell you now."
Daniel got out of the car. Before he closed the door, though, he leaned back and said, "Master Luff? I've told you what I intend to do as an RCN officer, but I should add that if I were a civilian I'd do the same. I prefer to think that any Cinnabar gentleman would put his heritage ahead of the wishes of unpleasant foreigners."
As he swung the door to, he added, "It's something you might keep in mind yourself."
CHAPTER 12: Bennaria
The spacer from the Armed Squadron unlocked the riverside wicket in the fence surrounding the Pool; he gave it a tentative push. The vines growing through the wire meshes held it closed. "It's stuck," he said to Daniel in apparent surprise.
Woetjans stepped past Daniel and gripped the frame with both hands. Planting her left boot on the gatepost, she pulled hard. The gate opened; the thicker woody stems popped like burning brushwood.
"Bloody hell," the Bennarian said when he got a good look at the bosun. Unlike the Sissies he didn't have light-enhancing goggles and Bennaria's moon, though full, was too small to be more than a gleam in the haze. "You're a big one, ain't you!"
"Yes, she is," said Daniel. "Now—seeing how short we are on time, let's get to the missile warehouse at once, shall we?"
"You're not the only one on duty tonight, are you?" Woetjans said harshly. "Where's the rest of you?
The bosun had spent much of her working life on the hull of starships in the Matrix, an environment utterly hostile to any kind of life. Clearly she wasn't a coward, but she didn't like darkness. Daniel knew the long ride upriver in the water taxi must've been slow torture for her.
Hogg was a skilled boatman, but the river wasn't marked; they'd twice run onto mudflats that were indistinguishable from rafts of floating weed. Besides, the taxi was overloaded with five. Daniel'd brought two Power Room techs, Kaltenbrenner and Morgan, for their expertise in handling missiles. Woetjans was in a bad mood.
"Look, they're in the admin building," the Bennarian said. "We cut cards and I lost, so I'm the one letting you in. I'll show you the missiles and the lighter, then I leave too. What you do then's your business. We don't know a thing!"
"Let's go," Daniel said quietly. He'd made the deal with Commandant Brast over a channel that Adele swore couldn't be tapped by anybody on the planet except herself. The missiles were costing a fortune because every member of the detachment on duty at the Pool had to be paid off; but Daniel had money, now, and he couldn't think of a better use for it than to arm the Princess Cecile before she lifted tomorrow for Dunbar's World.
If it worked, of course. The trip upriver had already taken two hours longer than planned, and Daniel didn't kid himself that returning to the harbor in a heavily-laden barge was going to be any easier. They'd still be transferring the missiles to the Sissie when dawn broke.
Well, one problem at a time. If Daniel had to use his cannon to keep the Bennarian authorities away while he finished loading the missiles, that's what he'd do.
Their guide didn't have a vehicle. The path from the gate was covered with pierced steel planking, slick and likely to trip the unwary where the sections fitted together.
The local man had more trouble with the surface than Daniel and his crewmen did, only in part because they had night vision goggles. They also had much more experience moving in difficult conditions. As rarely as any Bennarian warship lifted, the Squadron's spacers must spend most of their time playing cards in the administration building.
Hogg didn't wear goggles: he'd been a poacher too long to allow machines to come between his senses and the night around him. He walked beside the track in soft, shapeless boots that wouldn't leave identifiable tracks. In his arms was cradled a stocked impeller. Just in case, he'd said, and Daniel hadn't been disposed to argue the point.
The Bennarian skidded; he'd have fallen over backwards if Daniel hadn't caught him by the shoulder and held him upright. He fumbled a light out of his belt pouch, muttering, "I never have no luck!" he muttered angrily. "Bloody never!"
He switched on a small light, but its razor-thin beam did more to conceal than illuminate the path. He resumed slipping and sloshing toward the row of barrel-vaulted warehouses backed against the Pool itself. Kaltenbrenner said something to Morgan; both men chuckled.
There were five warehouses, though Daniel wouldn't have been able to tell that in the darkness. The front lights of the U-shaped Administration Building were on, throwing a faint glow skyward, but the floods on the sides and rear had been switched off.
The warehouse aprons were concrete, a pleasant change after the PSP. The path to the water was for maintaining the downstream locks, but it must not get much use. Well, no part of the Armed Squadron seemed to get much use under the present Council.
The guide took them around to the back where loading docks jutted into the water. He stopped at the second warehouse and fumbled with a switch. The full-width door began to rumble upward; it didn't appear to have been locked.
"There!" the Bennarian said. "The missiles're against the north wall and the boat's tied to the dock. Now you're on your own, all right?"
He started off in the direction of the Admin Building. Daniel caught his arm again. "Where are the lights, please?" he said.
"Look, they'll show up for miles with the door open," the Bennarian said peevishly. "Can't you use your handlights, all right?"
"I'm afraid we can't, no," Daniel said. "The sooner we finish this job, the sooner—"
As he spoke, a red bead appeared in the field of his night vision goggles and pulsed to the right. Adele was obviously listening to what was going on and—as now—always offered help when she thought it was useful.
Daniel turned to center the bead, then put out his hand to a switchbox with a row of toggles. He threw them in pairs; fluorescent lights with a distinctly greenish cast flickered on in the ceiling.
"Do as you please, then," the spacer muttered. "Since you're going to anyway."
Woetjans and the two technicians strode into the warehouse and stopped. The bosun muttered, "Well, what'd I bloody expect?"
"There's an overhead crane," said Morgan. He started for the back, where a ladder led to the tracked crane above. "I'll get it going. If it will go, I mean."
The southern half of the building had racks, but crates and a jumble of loose gear were piled in the aisles. Daniel saw the noses of several missiles facing out from the other half of the building, but there were boxes in front of them and more on top. From what he could tell at a quick glance, much of what was stored here was junk.
The guide started off again; Hogg thrust the barrel of his impeller out like traffic barrier. "Come look over the boat with me, buddy," he said. "It won't take a minute if everything's the way it should be, and I guess you can straighten things out for us if it's not."
"It's all right," the Bennarian said sullenly. He turned without objection, though. "Anyway, what do I know about boats?"
As they walked toward the water, Hogg said, "You know, that's like me and missiles. I don't know squat. But with this little darling—"
He slapped his palm against the fore-end of his impeller.
"Why, one of these I can just about make sit up and beg," Hogg said, his voice brightly cheerful. "Even at night, like now."
They started down the short ladder to the barge moored to the end of the dock, the Bennarian leading. Ten missiles would be an overload for it.
Woetjans climbed onto the pile covering the missiles, then turned to look down at Daniel. "Sir?" she called, her hand on a swivel-chair with a broken seat. "We need to clear the eye-bolts so we can hook the crane to'em. D'ye care what happens to the stuff on top?"
"No," said Daniel without hesitation. Quite obviously the Bennarians didn't care about it either or the warehouse wouldn't have been treated like a rubbish dump. "Just don't throw it where we'll have to move it again."
Woetjans snorted. "Right," she said as she hurled the chair deeper into the warehouse. "That's the sorta thing a mere bosun like me wouldn't 've figured out, sir."
"Sorry, Woetjans," Daniel said contritely, making his own way up the heap of heaven-knew-what-all. The overburden covering the missiles was five feet deep and occasionally more. "I was thinking out loud. And not thinking as clearly as I should have."
He grabbed a crate that'd originally been for signal rockets, judging from the stenciled legend; it now held light fixtures and their cords in knotted confusion. Daniel shoved it away like a shot put instead of using an over-arm motion the way he'd started to. All he'd need was to throw his arm out by being hasty. . . .
The lights in the cab of the crane came on. The mechanism squealed, then began a rhythmic thumping. "Now if I can just—" Morgan called down. There was a loud clank and the crane began to crawl forward along its track down the middle of the vault.
"Sir?" said Kaltenbrenner. He held the rim of a transmission casing in both hands. Though light metal and empty, it was a full meter in diameter. "Give me a hand with this and I think we'll be able to hook the crane to the forward attachment point. We can shake her free if we do."
"Right," said Daniel, moving toward the tech. What he thought was something solid under his right boot started to tilt up as soon as he started to put his weight on it. He stepped over it, balanced a moment to make sure he had firm footing, and heaved himself up opposite Kaltenbrenner.
"I think we'll be all right if we just roll it toward the shelves behind me," he added, looking over his shoulder. With the power of the crane to lift, the casing wouldn't be a problem even if it were pressing against the flank of the missile. "On three."
Daniel braced himself. "One, two, three!" He lifted and at the same time pivoted at the waist.
The casing resisted, then came away with unexpected ease: it'd seemed much heavier than it really was because it'd been caught under other trash. Daniel followed it down with a crash, barking his knuckles but not doing himself serious damage. There wasn't any real distance to fall.
"Oh, bloody hell," Kaltenbrenner said. "Bloody fucking hell. Sir, we're screwed. On this one at least."
Daniel climbed back up the trash hillock, using his hands to help himself this time. He looked down into the opening they'd created by digging out the casing.
The hole was deeper than that. An access panel in the missile's hull had been removed. The missile's antimatter converter had been taken out through the opening.
"Hell, the bastards cannibalized this one, sir!" Morgan shouted from the cab. His vantage point didn't show him any more than Daniel could see from thirty feet below him, of course. "D'ye suppose they gutted the rest of this lot too?"
"Drop the hook!" Daniel called. "Jerk this one out of the way, just shift it against the back wall, and we'll be able to check the next one pretty easily. Maybe we'll be lucky."
It took an hour and a half to examine the ten missiles. All were missing the converter and High Drive motor: they were steel tubes, no more weapons than so many empty well casings.
Hogg entered the warehouse while the last missile hung tilted on the hook. Daniel and the spacers with him stared at it glumly.
"Young master, we're screwed," Hogg said. "The lighter they got moored here, the motor shorted out when I switched on the power. There's two barges up by the admin building, a little bigger even, but neither of them's got a bloody motor in it! We can't carry a missile in the boat we came in, no way."
"Well, that's not a problem, Hogg," Daniel said. He laughed at the absurd humor of it. "All the taxi has to do is get the five of us back to the Sissie. We'll be going to Dunbar's World without missiles."
"What about that Pellegrino cruiser, sir?" Woetjans asked.
"We'll try not to get in a fight with it," Daniel said, stretching some of the kinks out of his back. He'd managed to tear his left sleeve badly, he now noticed. "And if we have to engage, well, who knows? Maybe Pellegrinian supply and maintenance is no better than what we've found tonight on Bennaria."
He laughed so cheerfully that the other spacers joined him, though they seemed a little doubtful.
* * *
Adele wouldn't have said that she liked liftoffs, but so long as she was at her console aboard the Princess Cecile she liked them as much as she liked any other part of life. She was running a panorama of the harbor as a narrow band on her display, but her attention was on the communications traffic as usual.
She grinned slightly as her wands danced, sorting messages. The last of Councilor Corius' troops were boarding his four freighters. One of those, the Todarov, was sealed for liftoff. The IMG40 and Zephyr were fully loaded also, as best Adele could tell, but peevish intercom transmissions indicted their crews were still trying to settle their military passengers into the available space.
She checked on Daniel by echoing his display on hers, the way most natural to her. The upper half was a real-time view with the four freighters broken out as icons in a sidebar so that he could quickly expand them if he thought he needed to; the lower half was a schematic of the Sissie's plasma and High Drive systems, all comfortably in the green. None of that was critical, so—
"Daniel?" Adele said over their two-way link. Should she've said 'Commander'? But no, this was her personal curiosity. "Why is Corius taking four ships to Dunbar's World when he was able to get all the troops in one when he brought them from his estate here to Charlestown? Are the ships themselves important? Over."
"No, the ships are still just transports," Daniel said. His face smiled cheerfully, but there was a tight readiness in the muscles that they always got when he was preparing for action. "And it's not a long run to Dunbar's World, that's true—a day or two, even for freighters. But that's still far too long to keep two thousand soldiers aboard one or even two ships the size of those. When they lifted from Corius' estate, there must've been men packing every corridor and compartment."
His tiny image grinned at her from the top of her display. "You couldn't feed them like that," Daniel added, "Which is a good thing because they certainly wouldn't be able to cycle them through the heads. And then there's their equipment too. They aren't tourists, they're carrying all their weapons and munitions, remember. Over?"
"Ah," said Adele. "Yes, thank you."
She focused for a moment on her display. She'd started to say "Out"—she was getting much better about RCN communications protocol—but before the word reached her lips it became, "Daniel, Commander, the Todarov is starting liftoff."
Blast, I've done again! Switching to the command channel she repeated, "Captain Vesey, the transport Todarov is preparing to lift off. The IMG40 and Zephyr should be ready in a few minutes. The Greybudd hasn't sealed its hatches yet, but Corius is aboard that one himself and both the crew and his soldiers seem to be better organized than the remainder of the force. Out."
"Thank you, Mundy," Vesey said. "Break, Commander, all our systems are go. I propose to wait for the last of them to actually get floats up before I light our thrusters. Is that acceptable to you, over?"
"I'd do the same if I were captain, Vesey," Daniel said carefully. "Though of course I'm not."
To take the sting out of what Adele knew was a rebuke, he added, "Six out."
It was clearly an uncomfortable situation for Vesey, because Daniel was not only the former captain but also the ship's owner. Using Ship Six, his call sign from when he'd been captain, was a way of acknowledging her problem while the form of the statement itself made it clear that she was had command of the corvette and that he expected her to exercise it.
Adele smiled broadly enough that a stranger seeing her would've recognized the expression. The duties of both her present positions—signals officer and spy—required her to be skilled at breaking codes. Not all the codes she'd learned to deal with were formal ones, however.
The Todarov's image wrapped itself in fireshot steam, plasma mixing with the water vapor. The thump-p-p of the thrusters lighting in quick sequence was followed by a buzz as they settled into a low-output flow. Static from atoms changing phase washed across the RF spectrum.
Councilor Waddell had left a twenty-man section in Charlestown to observe events in general and particularly to see what Corius would do. Adele knew as much about the Councilors' secret deliberations as anyone on the planet; more than any single Councilor, even Waddell, because she had tapped the internal conversations of the various cliques as well as what they told each other.
Waddell and his fellows were nervous. They were willing to sacrifice the city to riots that'd leave the mob starving and homeless, but they feared Corius would try to conquer the whole planet with his two thousand troops. They were sure he'd fail, but he might try anyway—
And barely whispered among themselves was the thought that just possibly Corius could conquer Bennaria after all. They couldn't imagine how he'd do it, but if.
Waddell's observers were split into four posts and a command unit on the roof of Waddell House. The squads kept up a running dialogue, and the command unit sent a constant flow of information back to Waddell on his estate. Either the observers were too low-ranking to've been told that Corius might be planning a coup, or they were remarkably phlegmatic individuals. Their tone and words suggested nothing more than bored professionalism.
The curtain of steam shrouding the Todarov billowed into an anvil-topped cloud. Shockwaves transmitted by the water made the Princess Cecile shudder an instant before the roar reached them through the air. The transport lifted high enough for the savage rainbow beauty of her exhaust showing through the steam. The IMG40 and Zephyr lit their thrusters also, unnoticed in the thunder of their colleague's liftoff.
It was natural that the other Councilors wouldn't know what Corius had in mind. What bothered Adele—and what she absolutely refused to consider proper—was that she didn't know what Corius would do.
The ships' captains, all civilians, and the mercenary commander on each vessel had sealed orders to open after liftoff. Nobody knew what was in those orders except Corius himself. Adele's skills and equipment were both of a very high order, but they wouldn't take her inside the skull of a man wise enough to keep his own counsel.
The Todarov must by now be at mid-sky, out of range of the visuals Adele had chosen to import. She tracked the ship's transmissions—the normal clutter of a working vessel, nothing more—but she had no reason to adjust her imagery.
The thrusters of the IMG40 and Zephyr were building volume also. Adele expected the ships to stage their liftoffs at least a minute apart, but instead they broke from the harbor's surface within seconds of one another. The IMG40, starting marginally behind its fellow, climbed faster and soon was leading the track into the sky. Either her thrust to weight ratio was significantly higher than the Zephyr's or her captain was overstressing his thrusters. The latter behavior would be nonsensical, but it was well within what Adele had come to accept as normal for human beings.
She quirked a wry smile, directed at herself. She'd generally felt like an outsider, not really a member of the human species. In this particular case, she was capable of exactly the same sort of pointless rivalry. Perhaps she was more human than she thought.
"Adele?" said Daniel, using their paired connection rather than an official channel. "Can you get me access to what's going on aboard the Greybudd? I want in particular what's being said on the bridge and ideally an echo of the command console. Over."
"Yes," said Adele, her wands opening links to shunt to Daniel information that she was already gathering for herself. She'd almost said, "Of course I can!" but people—even people like Daniel who knew her very well—didn't understand quite how completely information was her life.
She'd entered the Greybudd through an automatic channel intended to exchange course and operational data with a similar unit at port control. In Charlestown—and generally on the fringes of civilization—port control was conspicuous by its absence, but the transponder was a standard fitment in every astrogational computer.
It was possible to isolate the telemetry channel from the rest of the computer, but almost no civilian vessel bothered to do so; and Mistress Sand's technicians had supplied Adele with tools to defeat most firewalls as well. There was no need for that here: Adele had better access to the captain's console than the Greybudd's other officers did: the output relay to the Power Room and Mate's consoles was sticking.
And because Daniel'd asked her, he now had that access.
She returned to her task for the Princess Cecile as opposed to the Princess Cecile's owner. "Captain," Adele said over the command channel, "the Greybudd is about to test her plasma thrusters. She'll be lifting in a few minutes, over."
"Roger, Mundy," Vesey said. "Break. Mister Pasternak, prepare to light your thrusters. Over."
"Been ready this hour past, Captain," the Chief Engineer said. "Just say the word, over."
"There!" Daniel said. "Adele, you're a treasure that a squadron of battleships couldn't match! Break, Captain, may I address the ship's company? Six out."
"Go ahead, Six," Vesey said. Adele frowned at the flat tone, professional and nothing more. Vesey had become a skilled machine with no emotions save anger which she primarily directed at herself. Adele had spent too many years in that gray world to wish it on anybody else.
Still, so long as skill remained, so did a reason for living. Perhaps something would eventually change for Elspeth Vesey, as it had for Adele Mundy.
The Greybudd lifted with the same shivering grace as the previous three ships of Corius' argosy. Its image immediately rose out of Adele's display, but sound diminished with a suddenness that was equally vivid to her now-experienced ear.
"Fellow Sissies," Daniel said, "this is Six. You may've wondered why we're sitting here in harbor, waiting for Councilor Corius to lift for Dunbar's World. Well, the answer is that I wasn't sure he was going to Dunbar's World. You and I have been places where politics get played with guns."
You and I come from a place where politics has been played with guns, Daniel, Adele thought. She blinked but then opened her eyes very quickly. If she kept them shut for as much as a second, she'd imagine something she hadn't really seen: her sister Agatha's head nailed to Speaker's Rock.
"The first of those transports has just switched to High Drive and set a course for Dunbar's World," Daniel said. "That means it isn't going to set down again on the plantation of some Councilor who doesn't approve of the way Yuli Corius does things. So we're going to Dunbar's World too, Sissies, with nothing to worry about except a few thousand Pellegrinians and probably half the wogs who're supposedly on our side. That's nothing to the RCN, right Sissies?"
From the volume of cheers echoing through the corvette's interior, you'd scarcely have known that she was short-crewed compared to what Adele was used to. And by now Adele was used to hearing the Sissie's crew cheering Daniel's Leary's words.
He plays them like a flute, Adele thought, and they love it. We love it.
"Six out," Daniel said.
He'd scarcely spoken the closing before Vesey said, "Power Room, light your thrusters. Break, Ship prepare to lift in sixty, six-zero, seconds. Captain out."
The high-pitched roar of plasma discharging into the water beneath the Princess Cecile blanketed ordinary sounds within, but noise cancellation by the commo helmets kept Daniel's voice clear as he said, "Adele, we won't be in company with the transports so I expect to reach Dunbar's World six or more likely twelve hours ahead of Corius. We'll have enough reaction mass left to hold a powered orbit for days, probably. Unless you see a reason to land immediately, I propose to spend that time in orbit to get a better look at what's going on than we would in Ollarville harbor. Over."
"I think that's an excellent idea, Daniel," Adele said. "You go ahead and look, and I'll be listening to their transmissions. Out."
She didn't add, "And I'll learn more than you will by an order of magnitude." That would've been discourteous.
And besides, Daniel already knew it.
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Framed
- Chapter 11
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Contents
CHAPTER 11: Charlestown on Bennaria
Luff waited outside the entrance of the Council Chamber. Either he'd gone on to give Daniel and Waddell more privacy, or he was simply trying to keep out of the angry Councilor's sight. Regardless, Daniel nodded to the Manco agent and said, "Hogg and I are going to move toward the speaker's stand, Master Luff. Care to join us?"
Luff hunched himself together reflexively. He grimaced and said, "Yes, if you think it's safe. I suppose I should hear what he says."
"Oh, I think this assembly should be safe enough," Daniel said. He smiled, thinking, For me at least it's much safer than almost anywhere else on Bennaria. He doubted Waddell would attack the Princess Cecile directly, but other places were all a possibility.
With Luff in tow and Hogg at his side, Daniel began maneuvering forward. It was a hot day but the haze that seemed to be normal here in Charlestown kept the sun from being the hammer it might otherwise have been. Daniel was in his best set of Grays, not garments he wanted to wear in a brawl but less restrictive than his Whites. He was comfortable enough.
The plaza was full of civilians, but they grew thicker toward the center like that of stars in a cluster. To Daniel's surprise, Corius had disposed the bulk of his force to protect the crowd from a sudden onslaught by his rivals' massed retainers. He had only fifty or so men around him personally.
The cordon of guards eyed Daniel grimly as he approached. Corius'd had their two-foot truncheons decorated with tinsel streamers. That wasn't to hide the fact they were weapons, Daniel supposed, but to permit the other Councilors to pretend the troops weren't an armed threat.
A red-head in his mid-thirties appeared to be in command of the section Daniel approached. He was speaking into a microphone on his wrist; responses would come through his earclip, a larger version of the unit Adele was wearing. His frown cleared, becoming a smile of professional welcome.
"Sorry sir," he said. "I didn't recognize your uniform. You're very welcome here, but we're not letting in troublemakers wearing livery, you understand?"
"I do indeed," Daniel said, passing between two of the blue-sleeved guards, but he might as well have saved his breath; they couldn't possibly hear him. Councilor Corius was climbing the steps at the far end of the plaza, sending the crowd into shrieks of rapturous enthusiasm.
Corius raised both hands high, building the mob's excitement; the air of the plaza reeked of sweat laced with adrenalin. The speaker's stand was still a hundred and fifty yards from Daniel; he resumed working his way forward. There were too many people in the way for that to be easy, but a determined push generally made an opening. People prefer not to be in actual contact with one another; Daniel exploited that instinct to move through them.
"Fellow citizens of Bennaria!" Corius called. His bodyguards stood two steps below him, so that he could easily see and be seen by everyone in the plaza. "My brothers and sisters!"
"Bloody hell!" Hogg muttered angrily. "Does he think he's bulletproof? He's an easy shot from any roof around the square here. Any roof."
"We're not here to talk, Hogg," Daniel said, as quietly as he could and still be heard. With luck, none of the spectators had heard Hogg's comment. It would've sounded like a threat rather than the professional observation it was.
Hogg wasn't an assassin, but all his life he'd been a hunter. He was scarcely the only one on Bennaria today to view Councilor Corius as potential prey.
"It's been two generations since you, the people of Bennaria, met in solemn assembly," Corius said. "Now is the time to resume exercising your sacred rights of governance!"
The crowd had thickened further. Daniel thought he might be able to worm a little closer to the steps, but only a little.
Being close turned out not to be necessary for him to hear clearly. Not only was Corius using a concealed public address system, the plaza's acoustics were remarkably good. Behind the steps from which he spoke was the Port Administration Offices, the largest government building on the planet. The side facing the square sloped back at a 70o angle. Daniel wasn't sure that made it a better sounding board than a vertical wall would've been, but it was very effective.
"Our friends and neighbors on Dunbar's World have been attacked by a murderous warlord who plans to turn their planet into a base for pirates," Corius said. "If Nataniel Arruns is allowed to succeed, how long will it be before he or another like him grinds his iron heel on your neck and mine, fellow citizens?"
The crowd bellowed agreement, though many of its members must've known the claim was a farrago of nonsense. Pellegrino—unlike Bennaria—didn't trade with pirates. There was no likelihood that Nataniel Arruns planned to turn Dunbar's World into a pirate haven.
In the unlikely event an outside power conquered Bennaria, Corius and his fellow Councilors would come up short—probably a head short. The common people who made up the bulk of this mob would see little change in their status, though. Like the disenfranchised islanders on Dunbar's World, they had nothing to lose.
Still, whenever you tell a man that foreigners are dirty swine determined to cheat him, you're likely to get enthusiastic agreement. You're playing to his existing beliefs, after all. Speaker Leary's son had seen those tactics used more than once in the past.
Daniel smiled. That sort of realization made Adele angry to the point of despair. To him, it was like seeing a rambunctious puppy knock over a table. Puppies and people would be puppies and people, that's all there was to it.
"Your Council has failed you, fellow citizens!" Corius said. "Not only is the Council unwilling to act in the face of this immediate danger, the other Councilors are unwilling to permit me, acting as a private citizen, to work at my own expense to preserve the honor and safety of Bennaria. Therefore I've come to you. Will you, the people of Bennaria in sacred assembly, send me to Dunbar's World in your name?"
"Corius!" the blue-sleeved guards began to chant. "Corius! Corius!"
"Corius!" took up the crowd, twenty thousand strong if there was a man in it. "Corius! Corius!"
Daniel glanced over his shoulder. Hogg stood stolidly, his fists on his hips and his elbows flared outward to give him a little more room. He wore his usual vacant expression.
Luff's mouth was open also. His eyes were turned toward the speaker but they didn't seem focused. His right hand was cupped over his ear, shielding it from the noise around him so that he could hear what his in-canal earphone was telling him.
Corius raised his hands. For a moment the shouts grew even more fevered, but when he first crossed, then lowered them the crowd noise abated.
"My friends, my brothers!" Corius said. "Do you, the assembled people of Bennaria, authorize me, Yuli Corius, to act on your behalf but at my cost to drive the Pellegrinian invaders from Dunbar's World? If so, signify by—"
"Yes!" screamed the crowd. The citizens closest to Daniel were red-faced and sweating with excitement. Many pumped their fists in the air. "Yes! Yes! Yes!"
Daniel looked at Hogg, who nodded. They turned to ease their way back. There was nothing more to learn here, though the excitement would continue for as long as Corius chose to milk it.
Luff lowered his hand from his ear; he seemed transfixed. Daniel gestured him to turn, but it wasn't until Hogg put his hands on the Manco agent's shoulders and physically rotated him that he started to move.
Luff looked sour, angry, and very, very frightened.
* * *
"I had Hogg buy the boat for us," said Tovera at the tiller of the taxi. She wore a waterman's garments: baggy shorts, baggy shirt, and a vest with bright red embroidery. Her hat was a flat cone woven from split reeds and shaded her face completely. "He's better at that sort of thing than I am."
She tittered. "I suppose he bought the boat," she added. "Perhaps he cut the owner's throat instead. Though I could've handled that myself."
"I'm sure Hogg wouldn't kill anyone unless he thought they really needed it, Tovera," Adele said with a deadpan expression. "Unless we were shorter of money than I believe to be the case at present, of course."
Elemere wore one of Tovera's pale-gray suits; his blond hair was cropped short under Tovera's usual cap. He looked from Adele to her servant and back again with a horrified expression. His mouth trembled, but he didn't speak.
"It was a joke," Adele said. "Don't be upset."
Tovera had made a joke, the sort of thing normal human beings did. Adele felt it was her duty to encourage her sociopathic servant every time she attempted to act human. She didn't suppose Tovera would ever be good at it, but the effort deserved support.
It wasn't something Adele was very good at herself, after all, but she too kept trying. Being part of the RCN family helped a great deal. Spacers who daily risked death in exotic and horrible fashions were an eccentric lot. They had room for other eccentrics who were good at their jobs. Adele and Tovera qualified on that score.
The taxi was driven by a power unit clamped to the starboard side; the massive battery pack to port balanced the motor's weight. The vessel purred and slapped down the strait toward the Mazeppa; very slowly, but that was probably a good thing.
Krychek didn't know they were coming—Adele hadn't radioed ahead for fear of interception—and the last thing she wanted to do was to race toward the armed freighter. Krychek's crew must be as frustrated and depressed as their captain. There was no point in goading somebody who's got a gun with which to let out his anger.
"No one could possibly mistake me for that woman," Elemere said pettishly, glaring at Tovera on the seat ahead of them. "It's a waste of time to bother!"
"If they're looking for you, that's true," Adele said. The complaint—the stupid complaint—irritated her, but she understood how nervous the singer must be. Elemere was reacting to fear in an unhelpful fashion, but that's what people generally did. "We're doing this during the popular assembly because it's unlikely that you're at the top of anybody's mind at present, especially Councilor Waddell's."
The guard manning the impeller on the Mazeppa's boarding ramp watched them, but he hadn't actually trained his big weapon on the puttering taxi. Adele waved. She was wearing the suit in which she'd visited the night before, but she knew it wasn't very distinctive.
She thought of standing up to make her approach even more obvious and therefore peaceful, but she'd probably tip the boat over if she tried. That would make them look less threatening, but she trusted it wouldn't be necessary.
"Most likely those we need be concerned about," she continued, in part to keep the singer from flying into hysterics, "are either watching Corius or getting ready to defend themselves if the mob goes on a rampage. There may be observers keeping an eye on the harbor, but they'll be worried about another transport full of troops landing."
"I should never've come to Bennaria," Elemere muttered, looking at his hands clenched in his lap. Adele didn't see any reason to disagree with him.
Three more crewmen walked onto the ramp to watch the taxi approach. All three wore horizontally striped shirts and loose, grubby trousers, but the peaked hat of the man in the middle marked him as an officer.
"Good day, sir!" Adele called as Tovera curved them toward the hanging ladder where they'd landed the night before. Lubricating oil slicked the water iridescently and hung as a miasma in the thick air. "Please tell Landholder Krychek that Lady Mundy wishes an audience with him."
"The Man's coming down, your ladyship," said the officer. "C'mon aboard. He says you're a friend, and we've bloody few friends on this mudball."
Tovera in the guise of the boatman lashed the taxi's painter to a recessed eyebolt on the outrigger instead of simply gripping it while the passengers disembarked. The Infantan spacers didn't comment.
"Go up," Adele muttered to Elemere. Then, peevishly, "Take your case with you!"
Elemere climbed the swinging ladder gracefully despite the burden in his left hand. The attaché case resembled Tovera's, but of course it wasn't. The contents of hers—the little sub-machine gun and similar pieces of equipment—were concealed under her baggy clothing.
Adele followed Elemere, but much more awkwardly; he was a dancer as well as singer. As she stepped onto the outrigger with deliberate care, Krychek strode from the hatchway and boomed, "Lady Mundy! A pleasure indeed to see you, an unexpected—"
He stopped, staring at Elemere. He raised an eyebrow.
"Go on into the ship, Tovera!" Adele said, then prodded Elemere with an elbow to start him moving. He'd forgotten the name he was using this afternoon; he obviously wasn't a natural conspirator.
"Let's go into your library, Landholder," Adele said, following close behind the singer to shield him from lenses that might be watching from across the strait. She didn't think anyone on Harbor Island could see them here. "I want to discuss the situation on Bennaria further."
"But of course, dear lady," said Krychek. To the officer nearby he added in a clipped, harsher, tone, "Keep an eye out. It's possible that these mud-wallowing pigs will think to interrupt us."
"To the left," Adele said in an undertone when she and Elemere were well into the entrance compartment. "The companionway."
They entered the helical stairs with Tovera immediately behind them. Krychek banged closed the hatch below, then said, "And now, my dear Mundy—what is all this? I recognize Master Elemere. While he's very welcome, I don't understand him arriving in quite the present costume."
"When we're in the library, if you will," Adele said over the echoing shoof, shoof, of their soles on the metal stairs. "Where we can talk more easily."
She stepped ahead of the hesitant Elemere and led the rest of the way to the freighter's uppermost level. Tovera's feet didn't seem to make a sound, which was remarkable but not surprising.
A hatch facing the strait and Charlestown beyond was open in the foyer; another automatic impeller was mounted there. It hadn't been manned when the taxi approached, but two Infantans were unlocking the mount and switching on the gun's power. They gave Adele a look of appraisal as she entered the library, but they didn't speak to her or to Krychek himself.
Tovera remained outside with the gunners, exchanging nods with Adele. Krychek closed the door—the hatch—behind them and gestured graciously toward the chairs on the level below. "Please," he said, "sit and make yourselves comfortable. Mundy, will you have another glass of wine? And Master Elemere—"
"Elemere," the singer said sharply. "Just Elemere."
"As I am Krychek!" said the captain with boisterous good humor, linking arms with Elemere and leading him down the stairs. "I fear your tastes may be too sophisticated for my poor cellar, but please—will you do me the honor of drinking a tot of Landholder Reserve cognac with me? The run was bottled at my birth."
"Why, I. . .," Elemere said, allowing himself to be guided to a short loveseat. Krychek opened the cabinet beneath the tantalus and brought out a slender green bottle with fluted sides. "Yes, a brandy would be. . . I would like a brandy."
Krychek poured an ounce of pale yellow liquor into each of two snifters but left them on the cabinet until he'd served Adele another glass of white wine. He seated himself beside Elemere and only then offered him the snifter in his right hand.
After breathing deeply from his own glass, Krychek looked over the rim of it and said, "Now Mundy. I'm pleased by this visit, very pleased; I saw Elemere perform on Lompac only last year. But there is a story behind it, is there not?"
"Yes," said Adele austerely, still standing. She watched the interaction of the two men. It was what she'd hoped, of course, but still it—
Never mind. "Landholder, you and your crew aren't the only people on Bennaria who aren't afraid of Councilor Waddell, but you may well be the only people besides us aboard the Princess Cecile. We're about to lift for what I may well be combat. We can't take Elemere with us."
"So. . .," Krychek said, tilting the snifter till the brandy touched—but only touched—his lips. He turned from Adele to look at the man beside him; his expression of cool appraisal gave way to a broad smile. "So, Elemere. Tell me why it is important that I am not afraid of Councilor Fat Pig Waddell?"
"He wanted me to go with him," the singer said, meeting Krychek's eyes. "He killed my friend when I wouldn't."
The glass in Elemere's hand trembled. He took a convulsive drink, probably a terrible thing to do to a stellar brandy, but Krychek didn't protest. He patted Elemere's knee and looked at Adele again. His smile remained.
"So," he repeated. "I understand much, but one thing I do not understand. You Cinnabars are here to help the government of Bennaria, and Waddell—for all that he is fat, and a pig, and utterly disgusting—is the government of Bennaria himself. I have no love for him—he is why I cannot get credit of any sort on this mudball—but it would seem your duty is to hand Elemere over and go on about your business. Not so?"
"Certainly not," said Adele without emphasis. "Our chief of mission is a Leary of Bantry; he's made this a matter of honor. I won't say Commander Leary's personal honor would take precedence over his duties to the RCN. Nonetheless, turning the matter over to brave and honorable men like yourselves makes it unnecessary for him to make such a decision."
Krychek laughed harshly. He sipped his brandy again; Adele took a drink of her wine. Her lips and tongue were extremely dry.
"I should help the RCN, that is what you say?" Krychek said musingly. "An interesting thought. Because I am an exile, I must be a traitor, that is what you think, Mundy?"
Adele set her barely-tasted drink down on the display cabinet beside her. She realized she was standing very straight.
"Landholder Krychek," she said. I sound like my mother, she thought. When she was very, very angry. "You pointed out correctly that my actions here and those of Commander Leary verge on being in conflict with our RCN duties."
She made a peremptory gesture with her right index finger. "Master Elemere," she said, "get up. I can't leave you with a fool."
"You can't call me a fool!" Krychek shouted, lurching to his feet.
"I just did!" Adele said, her left hand in her pocket. "Elemere, get up now or on my oath as a Mundy I'll shoot you dead! That'll solve both Daniel's problem and the RCN's!"
The snifter shattered as Krychek's big hand clenched; blood and brandy sprayed. Elemere keened wordlessly and cupped Krychek's fist in both hands.
"Oh you've hurt yourself!" Elemere said. "Please, please, there's been enough pain! Let me bandage that, please!"
Adele took her hand from her pocket and held it away from her as if it were hot. She felt sick to her stomach from embarrassment; her skin burned as though she'd been buried in hot sand.
"I apologize," she said. She forced herself to meet Krychek's eyes. She was dizzy and afraid she might faint. "This is your ship, your house, and I insulted you in it. If you wish satisfaction, I will of course—"
"Stop that," said Elemere fiercely. He'd teased open Krychek's fist and was picking bits of broken glass from the blood. "Stop that! You'll not fight a duel, you'll not do any more stupid things, either one of you. There's been enough pain."
The singer jerked the lace doily out from under the tantalus with a sudden, sharp pull; the stand and decanters rattled against the wood. He wadded it in Krychek's palm, then poured the rest of his brandy into the lace.
"Now close your hand again," he said to Krychek. "This'll hold it till we get real medical help."
"There's a medicomp on C Deck," Krychek said. He sounded stunned. "But this is nothing, nothing."
"Elemere," Adele said, "we need to leave while the assembly's still going on. Landholder, I—"
"Wait," said Krychek. "Lady Mundy, the fault was mine. You came to me, a lady to a gentleman, and I acted a spoiled child."
He bowed at the waist to her, stepped back, and bowed even more deeply to Elemere. "Mistress," he said. "You are a great artist, a great artist. It would be an honor to me and my men to shelter you from your enemies. It would be an honor to die if we can shelter you with our very bodies. To die!"
"I don't think that will be necessary, gentlemen," Adele said dryly. She felt a smile twitch the corners of her mouth; in relief, largely, she supposed. "Waddell should believe that Elemere is aboard the Princess Cecile when we lift, and I trust that will be very soon. Tovera is arranging for one of your men to take us back in the boat, wearing the costume she came aboard with; she has her ordinary clothes on under it. Ah, with your permission, that is."
Neither of the men was listening to her. Elemere still held Krychek's fist.
"Would you help me?" the singer said. "I'm so alone. Lonnie was. . . Lonnie took care of everything."
"It is an honor," Krychek repeated. He put his free hand on the dancer's shoulder. "A very great honor."
Adele stepped briskly up the staircase. She didn't look around, but it wasn't until she'd banged the hatch closed behind her that she let out the breath she'd been holding.
* * *
"I suppose you're used to this sort of thing," Luff said bitterly as he started around the Council Hall with Daniel, toward the enclosed parking lot in back. There were clots of spectators at the rear of the plaza, watching but unwilling to be said to have joined the mob. Corius' voice through the PA system was audible though individual words weren't always clear. "Because your father's Speaker Leary, I mean."
I wonder who told him that? thought Daniel. He was pretty sure Luff hadn't known that Daniel was anything more than a young middle-ranking officer when the Princess Cecile landed on Bennaria.
"I've seen other mass gatherings, yes," Daniel said carefully. He had no reason to be abrupt with the question, but neither did he want to get in a discussion about Corder Leary. "This is quite a polite one, it seems to me. But that has nothing to do with who my father is. I grew up on our country estate, Bantry, not in Xenos. I saw bird migrations and file-fish runs, but not political demonstrations."
There'd been political meetings, though. Not this sort of thing, but the discussions which the public never learned about. One man, or three, or on a single occasion twelve, arrived at Bantry separately and separately slipped away again. On the night of the largest meeting began the Proscriptions that crushed the Three Circles Conspiracy.
They'd reached the steel-scrollwork gates of the parking compound. Luff's driver was inside talking with three attendants. Daniel pulled at the leaves, but they were locked.
Hogg'd been walking behind Daniel and Luff as they moved away from the crowd. He glanced back once more, then stepped to the gate and rattled it in irritation. "Hey!" he called. "You there! Look alive!"
The four men muttered uncertainly for a moment. Finally an attendant walked toward them while Luff's driver got into the black landau. It was the only vehicle still in the lot.
"They'd better get a move on," Hogg muttered, resuming his watch on the plaza. In a different voice he went on, "There were people waiting down some of the streets leading to the square, you know, master. They don't wear their colors, but they're somebody's bullies for sure."
"Master Luff?" Daniel said. "Do you think the other Councilors will attack Corius today?"
He wasn't sure how the Manco agent would respond. He'd remained in sullen silence while the three of them pushed back through the crowd, and the comment about Speaker Leary hadn't been made in a friendly tone.
Instead of growling some angry variant on, "How would I know?" though, Luff said, "No, no, they won't do that. The whole city would be burned down if they did that. Waddell may have observers, but attack? No."
He looked over his shoulder at the plaza. "The Councilors've all gone to their estates, I'm sure of that. Those who think they have enough retainers may leave a guard on their townhouses, but some won't even do that."
Luff shivered. "What if the city burns anyway?" he asked plaintively. "What will I do? This is a terrible thing, terrible."
The driver had turned the car and was moving toward them. The attendant unlocked the gate's crossbar and slid it sideways. Hogg shoved the leaves fiercely, deliberately making the attendant jump back. The fellow'd delayed them, but Hogg was capable of taking his anger out on anybody who happened to be close.
Any wog, that is; Daniel didn't catch his servant's anger unless he personally was the cause of it. Which was often enough, in all truth.
"Sir?" said the attendant unexpectedly as he pulled one leaf fully open; Hogg was pushing the other back. "I—"
The fellow looked back at his fellows, standing against the wall. Each had his hands locked together to keep them from twitching. "I mean we, we were wondering if, you know, we should leave the Council Hall?"
"Ah," said Daniel, the syllable replacing, "Why in the world are you asking me?" because as soon as he framed that question mentally, he knew the answer: the attendants were terrified. They feared not only what the mob might do but also equally irrational violence by the Councilors who were their masters.
"I think you should go home, now," Daniel said quietly. He was the closest thing to authority the poor fellow had; it was simple human kindness to give him the answer that might save his life. "You want to be with your families in case things get, well, confused later."
Luff had gotten into the car. "Come along, for God's sake," he said. "We can't be sure the streets are safe even now!"
Hogg moved deliberately to put his shapeless bulk between Daniel and the Manco agent. He was looking back at the crowd, whistling Waiting to Grow between his teeth. That'd been Elemere's signature tune. . . .
"Even though Councilor Waddell told us to lock the doors and watch the place tonight?" the attendant said. He sounded as desperate as a mother asking a doctor about her child.
"If the building's still here in the morning," Daniel said, "you can come back before Councilor Waddell's likely to. If it's not, well, you're still better off, right?"
He smiled and clapped the man on the shoulder. Hogg climbed into the open cab with the driver, and Daniel slid into the passenger compartment with Luff. The car was accelerating out of the lot before he got the door fully closed.
Daniel glanced through the opera window in the back panel. The attendant he'd spoken to was waving to his fellows to join him. Even before they did he'd trotted out into the street, leaving the gates open behind him.
"Well, you're off the hook now, at least," Luff said. He was tight-faced and glared straight ahead, though Daniel doubted that he was looking at anything beyond the sheet of one-way glass between them and the cab. "Are you going to go straight back to Cinnabar?"
Daniel pursed his lips, wondering how to respond. Before he decided, Luff added, "I wish I could go back with you. I wish I'd never taken this bloody job, but I had no choice!"
A gang of children, the oldest of them no more than twelve, stood in a side street. They shouted something unintelligible when they saw the car and several threw stones; the driver accelerated. Hogg rose to his feet so that he could shoot over the driver's head if he had to, but in the event he kept the squat pistol down by his side.
"I'm not sure what you mean by me being off the hook, Luff," Daniel said quietly. "My assignment is to help oust the invaders from Dunbar's World. It would've been simpler to do that if the Bennarian government were more forthcoming, but that wasn't part of the orders I was given at Navy House."
Luff stared at him in a mixture of anger and resentment. "Look," the agent said, "your orders have changed. You're here to help Bennaria, and the best thing that could happen to Bennaria now would be for Yuli Corius to be killed on Dunbar's World. If you don't believe me, just ask any of the Councilors."
"With all due respect, Master Luff. . .," Daniel said, giving the adjective a slight emphasis to make the insult unmistakable. "I cannot imagine circumstances in which an RCN officer would ask tin-pot foreign politicians to interpret orders given him by his superiors."
"You know what I mean!" Luff said angrily. His clenched fists quivered on his knees in an access of frustration. "You're not here because of the Cinnabar navy or the Cinnabar Senate or the Cinnabar bloody anything! You're here because the Mancos had you sent here to make their trading partners on Bennaria happy. That's the Councilors, and I'm telling you—the Councilors don't want Corius to succeed!"
Daniel looked out the front window as he considered what Luff had said. They were nearing the harbor; the only people he saw out were those nailing sheets of plywood or structural plastic over the windows of the larger houses of entertainment.
"Well, Luff. . .," he said, keeping his eyes on the buildings rather than facing the man with him. He and Hogg'd come from the Princess Cecile in an ordinary water taxi, but those might no longer be running. Of course the crewmen of the Manco barge were locals also, as apt to be part of Corius' assembly as the independent watermen were.
Daniel'd let his voice trail off. He grimaced and said, "Sorry. Yes, you may well be right about the motivation behind my orders, but—"
He turned and smiled directly at the Manco agent.
"—you see, the orders themselves don't say that."
The car slowed and turned left down Harbor Street. Hogg stood again, this time to see past the embankment to where boats might be riding on the ebb tide. The Princess Cecile was a low shape among the bulkier freighters in the mist across the strait.
"You don't have to be that literal!" Luff said. "You've got leeway, I know that. I've seen your record, Leary, so don't pretend you're some kind of by-the-book robot."
"No, I'm not," Daniel said. "I've used my judgment to interpret orders in the past, and I'm doing the same now."
He paused, considering how much more he really ought to say. Nothing more was probably the right answer, but he was Daniel Leary.
"You're wondering if this is happening because I dislike Councilor Waddell," Daniel said. "Again, no. I wouldn't compromise my duty, let alone risk the lives of the crewmen for whom I'm responsible, simply because I feel Councilor Waddell's best use would be as fish bait."
As he spoke, he thought of Waddell bouncing along on a cable behind the Bantry Belle, with Hogg at the controls and himself manning the harpoon gun. The trench eels off the east coast grew to over a hundred feet long.
The image made him grin broadly; Luff started back.
"As I say, my personal feelings don't matter here," Daniel continued, a lie but a small one. "The Pellegrinians have been developing increasingly close ties with the Alliance, however. I don't see any benefit to the Republic in letting an Alliance supporter expand its power into Ganpat's Reach, and I'm confident that my superiors will feel the same way."
The car stopped abruptly. Daniel leaned back, compensating with a spacer's reflex, but Luff rocked forward hard enough to thump the divider with his shoulder. Hogg jumped out and called to someone unseen beyond the seawall.
"They'll blame me, you know," Luff muttered, again to his clenched hands. "Not that you care."
"He'll take us, young master!" Hogg said, gesturing toward the presumed boat and boatman. The closed compartment muffled his voice. "And I won't mind having the Sissies and a couple plasma cannon around me, I'll tell you now."
Daniel got out of the car. Before he closed the door, though, he leaned back and said, "Master Luff? I've told you what I intend to do as an RCN officer, but I should add that if I were a civilian I'd do the same. I prefer to think that any Cinnabar gentleman would put his heritage ahead of the wishes of unpleasant foreigners."
As he swung the door to, he added, "It's something you might keep in mind yourself."
CHAPTER 12: Bennaria
The spacer from the Armed Squadron unlocked the riverside wicket in the fence surrounding the Pool; he gave it a tentative push. The vines growing through the wire meshes held it closed. "It's stuck," he said to Daniel in apparent surprise.
Woetjans stepped past Daniel and gripped the frame with both hands. Planting her left boot on the gatepost, she pulled hard. The gate opened; the thicker woody stems popped like burning brushwood.
"Bloody hell," the Bennarian said when he got a good look at the bosun. Unlike the Sissies he didn't have light-enhancing goggles and Bennaria's moon, though full, was too small to be more than a gleam in the haze. "You're a big one, ain't you!"
"Yes, she is," said Daniel. "Now—seeing how short we are on time, let's get to the missile warehouse at once, shall we?"
"You're not the only one on duty tonight, are you?" Woetjans said harshly. "Where's the rest of you?
The bosun had spent much of her working life on the hull of starships in the Matrix, an environment utterly hostile to any kind of life. Clearly she wasn't a coward, but she didn't like darkness. Daniel knew the long ride upriver in the water taxi must've been slow torture for her.
Hogg was a skilled boatman, but the river wasn't marked; they'd twice run onto mudflats that were indistinguishable from rafts of floating weed. Besides, the taxi was overloaded with five. Daniel'd brought two Power Room techs, Kaltenbrenner and Morgan, for their expertise in handling missiles. Woetjans was in a bad mood.
"Look, they're in the admin building," the Bennarian said. "We cut cards and I lost, so I'm the one letting you in. I'll show you the missiles and the lighter, then I leave too. What you do then's your business. We don't know a thing!"
"Let's go," Daniel said quietly. He'd made the deal with Commandant Brast over a channel that Adele swore couldn't be tapped by anybody on the planet except herself. The missiles were costing a fortune because every member of the detachment on duty at the Pool had to be paid off; but Daniel had money, now, and he couldn't think of a better use for it than to arm the Princess Cecile before she lifted tomorrow for Dunbar's World.
If it worked, of course. The trip upriver had already taken two hours longer than planned, and Daniel didn't kid himself that returning to the harbor in a heavily-laden barge was going to be any easier. They'd still be transferring the missiles to the Sissie when dawn broke.
Well, one problem at a time. If Daniel had to use his cannon to keep the Bennarian authorities away while he finished loading the missiles, that's what he'd do.
Their guide didn't have a vehicle. The path from the gate was covered with pierced steel planking, slick and likely to trip the unwary where the sections fitted together.
The local man had more trouble with the surface than Daniel and his crewmen did, only in part because they had night vision goggles. They also had much more experience moving in difficult conditions. As rarely as any Bennarian warship lifted, the Squadron's spacers must spend most of their time playing cards in the administration building.
Hogg didn't wear goggles: he'd been a poacher too long to allow machines to come between his senses and the night around him. He walked beside the track in soft, shapeless boots that wouldn't leave identifiable tracks. In his arms was cradled a stocked impeller. Just in case, he'd said, and Daniel hadn't been disposed to argue the point.
The Bennarian skidded; he'd have fallen over backwards if Daniel hadn't caught him by the shoulder and held him upright. He fumbled a light out of his belt pouch, muttering, "I never have no luck!" he muttered angrily. "Bloody never!"
He switched on a small light, but its razor-thin beam did more to conceal than illuminate the path. He resumed slipping and sloshing toward the row of barrel-vaulted warehouses backed against the Pool itself. Kaltenbrenner said something to Morgan; both men chuckled.
There were five warehouses, though Daniel wouldn't have been able to tell that in the darkness. The front lights of the U-shaped Administration Building were on, throwing a faint glow skyward, but the floods on the sides and rear had been switched off.
The warehouse aprons were concrete, a pleasant change after the PSP. The path to the water was for maintaining the downstream locks, but it must not get much use. Well, no part of the Armed Squadron seemed to get much use under the present Council.
The guide took them around to the back where loading docks jutted into the water. He stopped at the second warehouse and fumbled with a switch. The full-width door began to rumble upward; it didn't appear to have been locked.
"There!" the Bennarian said. "The missiles're against the north wall and the boat's tied to the dock. Now you're on your own, all right?"
He started off in the direction of the Admin Building. Daniel caught his arm again. "Where are the lights, please?" he said.
"Look, they'll show up for miles with the door open," the Bennarian said peevishly. "Can't you use your handlights, all right?"
"I'm afraid we can't, no," Daniel said. "The sooner we finish this job, the sooner—"
As he spoke, a red bead appeared in the field of his night vision goggles and pulsed to the right. Adele was obviously listening to what was going on and—as now—always offered help when she thought it was useful.
Daniel turned to center the bead, then put out his hand to a switchbox with a row of toggles. He threw them in pairs; fluorescent lights with a distinctly greenish cast flickered on in the ceiling.
"Do as you please, then," the spacer muttered. "Since you're going to anyway."
Woetjans and the two technicians strode into the warehouse and stopped. The bosun muttered, "Well, what'd I bloody expect?"
"There's an overhead crane," said Morgan. He started for the back, where a ladder led to the tracked crane above. "I'll get it going. If it will go, I mean."
The southern half of the building had racks, but crates and a jumble of loose gear were piled in the aisles. Daniel saw the noses of several missiles facing out from the other half of the building, but there were boxes in front of them and more on top. From what he could tell at a quick glance, much of what was stored here was junk.
The guide started off again; Hogg thrust the barrel of his impeller out like traffic barrier. "Come look over the boat with me, buddy," he said. "It won't take a minute if everything's the way it should be, and I guess you can straighten things out for us if it's not."
"It's all right," the Bennarian said sullenly. He turned without objection, though. "Anyway, what do I know about boats?"
As they walked toward the water, Hogg said, "You know, that's like me and missiles. I don't know squat. But with this little darling—"
He slapped his palm against the fore-end of his impeller.
"Why, one of these I can just about make sit up and beg," Hogg said, his voice brightly cheerful. "Even at night, like now."
They started down the short ladder to the barge moored to the end of the dock, the Bennarian leading. Ten missiles would be an overload for it.
Woetjans climbed onto the pile covering the missiles, then turned to look down at Daniel. "Sir?" she called, her hand on a swivel-chair with a broken seat. "We need to clear the eye-bolts so we can hook the crane to'em. D'ye care what happens to the stuff on top?"
"No," said Daniel without hesitation. Quite obviously the Bennarians didn't care about it either or the warehouse wouldn't have been treated like a rubbish dump. "Just don't throw it where we'll have to move it again."
Woetjans snorted. "Right," she said as she hurled the chair deeper into the warehouse. "That's the sorta thing a mere bosun like me wouldn't 've figured out, sir."
"Sorry, Woetjans," Daniel said contritely, making his own way up the heap of heaven-knew-what-all. The overburden covering the missiles was five feet deep and occasionally more. "I was thinking out loud. And not thinking as clearly as I should have."
He grabbed a crate that'd originally been for signal rockets, judging from the stenciled legend; it now held light fixtures and their cords in knotted confusion. Daniel shoved it away like a shot put instead of using an over-arm motion the way he'd started to. All he'd need was to throw his arm out by being hasty. . . .
The lights in the cab of the crane came on. The mechanism squealed, then began a rhythmic thumping. "Now if I can just—" Morgan called down. There was a loud clank and the crane began to crawl forward along its track down the middle of the vault.
"Sir?" said Kaltenbrenner. He held the rim of a transmission casing in both hands. Though light metal and empty, it was a full meter in diameter. "Give me a hand with this and I think we'll be able to hook the crane to the forward attachment point. We can shake her free if we do."
"Right," said Daniel, moving toward the tech. What he thought was something solid under his right boot started to tilt up as soon as he started to put his weight on it. He stepped over it, balanced a moment to make sure he had firm footing, and heaved himself up opposite Kaltenbrenner.
"I think we'll be all right if we just roll it toward the shelves behind me," he added, looking over his shoulder. With the power of the crane to lift, the casing wouldn't be a problem even if it were pressing against the flank of the missile. "On three."
Daniel braced himself. "One, two, three!" He lifted and at the same time pivoted at the waist.
The casing resisted, then came away with unexpected ease: it'd seemed much heavier than it really was because it'd been caught under other trash. Daniel followed it down with a crash, barking his knuckles but not doing himself serious damage. There wasn't any real distance to fall.
"Oh, bloody hell," Kaltenbrenner said. "Bloody fucking hell. Sir, we're screwed. On this one at least."
Daniel climbed back up the trash hillock, using his hands to help himself this time. He looked down into the opening they'd created by digging out the casing.
The hole was deeper than that. An access panel in the missile's hull had been removed. The missile's antimatter converter had been taken out through the opening.
"Hell, the bastards cannibalized this one, sir!" Morgan shouted from the cab. His vantage point didn't show him any more than Daniel could see from thirty feet below him, of course. "D'ye suppose they gutted the rest of this lot too?"
"Drop the hook!" Daniel called. "Jerk this one out of the way, just shift it against the back wall, and we'll be able to check the next one pretty easily. Maybe we'll be lucky."
It took an hour and a half to examine the ten missiles. All were missing the converter and High Drive motor: they were steel tubes, no more weapons than so many empty well casings.
Hogg entered the warehouse while the last missile hung tilted on the hook. Daniel and the spacers with him stared at it glumly.
"Young master, we're screwed," Hogg said. "The lighter they got moored here, the motor shorted out when I switched on the power. There's two barges up by the admin building, a little bigger even, but neither of them's got a bloody motor in it! We can't carry a missile in the boat we came in, no way."
"Well, that's not a problem, Hogg," Daniel said. He laughed at the absurd humor of it. "All the taxi has to do is get the five of us back to the Sissie. We'll be going to Dunbar's World without missiles."
"What about that Pellegrino cruiser, sir?" Woetjans asked.
"We'll try not to get in a fight with it," Daniel said, stretching some of the kinks out of his back. He'd managed to tear his left sleeve badly, he now noticed. "And if we have to engage, well, who knows? Maybe Pellegrinian supply and maintenance is no better than what we've found tonight on Bennaria."
He laughed so cheerfully that the other spacers joined him, though they seemed a little doubtful.
* * *
Adele wouldn't have said that she liked liftoffs, but so long as she was at her console aboard the Princess Cecile she liked them as much as she liked any other part of life. She was running a panorama of the harbor as a narrow band on her display, but her attention was on the communications traffic as usual.
She grinned slightly as her wands danced, sorting messages. The last of Councilor Corius' troops were boarding his four freighters. One of those, the Todarov, was sealed for liftoff. The IMG40 and Zephyr were fully loaded also, as best Adele could tell, but peevish intercom transmissions indicted their crews were still trying to settle their military passengers into the available space.
She checked on Daniel by echoing his display on hers, the way most natural to her. The upper half was a real-time view with the four freighters broken out as icons in a sidebar so that he could quickly expand them if he thought he needed to; the lower half was a schematic of the Sissie's plasma and High Drive systems, all comfortably in the green. None of that was critical, so—
"Daniel?" Adele said over their two-way link. Should she've said 'Commander'? But no, this was her personal curiosity. "Why is Corius taking four ships to Dunbar's World when he was able to get all the troops in one when he brought them from his estate here to Charlestown? Are the ships themselves important? Over."
"No, the ships are still just transports," Daniel said. His face smiled cheerfully, but there was a tight readiness in the muscles that they always got when he was preparing for action. "And it's not a long run to Dunbar's World, that's true—a day or two, even for freighters. But that's still far too long to keep two thousand soldiers aboard one or even two ships the size of those. When they lifted from Corius' estate, there must've been men packing every corridor and compartment."
His tiny image grinned at her from the top of her display. "You couldn't feed them like that," Daniel added, "Which is a good thing because they certainly wouldn't be able to cycle them through the heads. And then there's their equipment too. They aren't tourists, they're carrying all their weapons and munitions, remember. Over?"
"Ah," said Adele. "Yes, thank you."
She focused for a moment on her display. She'd started to say "Out"—she was getting much better about RCN communications protocol—but before the word reached her lips it became, "Daniel, Commander, the Todarov is starting liftoff."
Blast, I've done again! Switching to the command channel she repeated, "Captain Vesey, the transport Todarov is preparing to lift off. The IMG40 and Zephyr should be ready in a few minutes. The Greybudd hasn't sealed its hatches yet, but Corius is aboard that one himself and both the crew and his soldiers seem to be better organized than the remainder of the force. Out."
"Thank you, Mundy," Vesey said. "Break, Commander, all our systems are go. I propose to wait for the last of them to actually get floats up before I light our thrusters. Is that acceptable to you, over?"
"I'd do the same if I were captain, Vesey," Daniel said carefully. "Though of course I'm not."
To take the sting out of what Adele knew was a rebuke, he added, "Six out."
It was clearly an uncomfortable situation for Vesey, because Daniel was not only the former captain but also the ship's owner. Using Ship Six, his call sign from when he'd been captain, was a way of acknowledging her problem while the form of the statement itself made it clear that she was had command of the corvette and that he expected her to exercise it.
Adele smiled broadly enough that a stranger seeing her would've recognized the expression. The duties of both her present positions—signals officer and spy—required her to be skilled at breaking codes. Not all the codes she'd learned to deal with were formal ones, however.
The Todarov's image wrapped itself in fireshot steam, plasma mixing with the water vapor. The thump-p-p of the thrusters lighting in quick sequence was followed by a buzz as they settled into a low-output flow. Static from atoms changing phase washed across the RF spectrum.
Councilor Waddell had left a twenty-man section in Charlestown to observe events in general and particularly to see what Corius would do. Adele knew as much about the Councilors' secret deliberations as anyone on the planet; more than any single Councilor, even Waddell, because she had tapped the internal conversations of the various cliques as well as what they told each other.
Waddell and his fellows were nervous. They were willing to sacrifice the city to riots that'd leave the mob starving and homeless, but they feared Corius would try to conquer the whole planet with his two thousand troops. They were sure he'd fail, but he might try anyway—
And barely whispered among themselves was the thought that just possibly Corius could conquer Bennaria after all. They couldn't imagine how he'd do it, but if.
Waddell's observers were split into four posts and a command unit on the roof of Waddell House. The squads kept up a running dialogue, and the command unit sent a constant flow of information back to Waddell on his estate. Either the observers were too low-ranking to've been told that Corius might be planning a coup, or they were remarkably phlegmatic individuals. Their tone and words suggested nothing more than bored professionalism.
The curtain of steam shrouding the Todarov billowed into an anvil-topped cloud. Shockwaves transmitted by the water made the Princess Cecile shudder an instant before the roar reached them through the air. The transport lifted high enough for the savage rainbow beauty of her exhaust showing through the steam. The IMG40 and Zephyr lit their thrusters also, unnoticed in the thunder of their colleague's liftoff.
It was natural that the other Councilors wouldn't know what Corius had in mind. What bothered Adele—and what she absolutely refused to consider proper—was that she didn't know what Corius would do.
The ships' captains, all civilians, and the mercenary commander on each vessel had sealed orders to open after liftoff. Nobody knew what was in those orders except Corius himself. Adele's skills and equipment were both of a very high order, but they wouldn't take her inside the skull of a man wise enough to keep his own counsel.
The Todarov must by now be at mid-sky, out of range of the visuals Adele had chosen to import. She tracked the ship's transmissions—the normal clutter of a working vessel, nothing more—but she had no reason to adjust her imagery.
The thrusters of the IMG40 and Zephyr were building volume also. Adele expected the ships to stage their liftoffs at least a minute apart, but instead they broke from the harbor's surface within seconds of one another. The IMG40, starting marginally behind its fellow, climbed faster and soon was leading the track into the sky. Either her thrust to weight ratio was significantly higher than the Zephyr's or her captain was overstressing his thrusters. The latter behavior would be nonsensical, but it was well within what Adele had come to accept as normal for human beings.
She quirked a wry smile, directed at herself. She'd generally felt like an outsider, not really a member of the human species. In this particular case, she was capable of exactly the same sort of pointless rivalry. Perhaps she was more human than she thought.
"Adele?" said Daniel, using their paired connection rather than an official channel. "Can you get me access to what's going on aboard the Greybudd? I want in particular what's being said on the bridge and ideally an echo of the command console. Over."
"Yes," said Adele, her wands opening links to shunt to Daniel information that she was already gathering for herself. She'd almost said, "Of course I can!" but people—even people like Daniel who knew her very well—didn't understand quite how completely information was her life.
She'd entered the Greybudd through an automatic channel intended to exchange course and operational data with a similar unit at port control. In Charlestown—and generally on the fringes of civilization—port control was conspicuous by its absence, but the transponder was a standard fitment in every astrogational computer.
It was possible to isolate the telemetry channel from the rest of the computer, but almost no civilian vessel bothered to do so; and Mistress Sand's technicians had supplied Adele with tools to defeat most firewalls as well. There was no need for that here: Adele had better access to the captain's console than the Greybudd's other officers did: the output relay to the Power Room and Mate's consoles was sticking.
And because Daniel'd asked her, he now had that access.
She returned to her task for the Princess Cecile as opposed to the Princess Cecile's owner. "Captain," Adele said over the command channel, "the Greybudd is about to test her plasma thrusters. She'll be lifting in a few minutes, over."
"Roger, Mundy," Vesey said. "Break. Mister Pasternak, prepare to light your thrusters. Over."
"Been ready this hour past, Captain," the Chief Engineer said. "Just say the word, over."
"There!" Daniel said. "Adele, you're a treasure that a squadron of battleships couldn't match! Break, Captain, may I address the ship's company? Six out."
"Go ahead, Six," Vesey said. Adele frowned at the flat tone, professional and nothing more. Vesey had become a skilled machine with no emotions save anger which she primarily directed at herself. Adele had spent too many years in that gray world to wish it on anybody else.
Still, so long as skill remained, so did a reason for living. Perhaps something would eventually change for Elspeth Vesey, as it had for Adele Mundy.
The Greybudd lifted with the same shivering grace as the previous three ships of Corius' argosy. Its image immediately rose out of Adele's display, but sound diminished with a suddenness that was equally vivid to her now-experienced ear.
"Fellow Sissies," Daniel said, "this is Six. You may've wondered why we're sitting here in harbor, waiting for Councilor Corius to lift for Dunbar's World. Well, the answer is that I wasn't sure he was going to Dunbar's World. You and I have been places where politics get played with guns."
You and I come from a place where politics has been played with guns, Daniel, Adele thought. She blinked but then opened her eyes very quickly. If she kept them shut for as much as a second, she'd imagine something she hadn't really seen: her sister Agatha's head nailed to Speaker's Rock.
"The first of those transports has just switched to High Drive and set a course for Dunbar's World," Daniel said. "That means it isn't going to set down again on the plantation of some Councilor who doesn't approve of the way Yuli Corius does things. So we're going to Dunbar's World too, Sissies, with nothing to worry about except a few thousand Pellegrinians and probably half the wogs who're supposedly on our side. That's nothing to the RCN, right Sissies?"
From the volume of cheers echoing through the corvette's interior, you'd scarcely have known that she was short-crewed compared to what Adele was used to. And by now Adele was used to hearing the Sissie's crew cheering Daniel's Leary's words.
He plays them like a flute, Adele thought, and they love it. We love it.
"Six out," Daniel said.
He'd scarcely spoken the closing before Vesey said, "Power Room, light your thrusters. Break, Ship prepare to lift in sixty, six-zero, seconds. Captain out."
The high-pitched roar of plasma discharging into the water beneath the Princess Cecile blanketed ordinary sounds within, but noise cancellation by the commo helmets kept Daniel's voice clear as he said, "Adele, we won't be in company with the transports so I expect to reach Dunbar's World six or more likely twelve hours ahead of Corius. We'll have enough reaction mass left to hold a powered orbit for days, probably. Unless you see a reason to land immediately, I propose to spend that time in orbit to get a better look at what's going on than we would in Ollarville harbor. Over."
"I think that's an excellent idea, Daniel," Adele said. "You go ahead and look, and I'll be listening to their transmissions. Out."
She didn't add, "And I'll learn more than you will by an order of magnitude." That would've been discourteous.
And besides, Daniel already knew it.
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