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CHAPTER 23: Charlestown on Bennaria

Daniel, wearing utilities like the rest of the detachment and cradling a stocked impeller, stood on the tractor's right fender with his buttocks braced on the roll cage. Sun with a sub-machine gun was on the left side.

"'She was poor but she was honest!'" bellowed Hogg from the driver's seat. He had a good bass voice, though roughened by the carloads of doubtful liquor he'd put down over the years.

"'Victim of a rich man's whim!'" the Sissies on the flatbed sang, a few at first but all twenty by the end of the verse. On the way from the harbor on their commandeered vehicle, Hogg had started off The Bastard King of Georgia, Seven Old Maids and A Gentleman of Leisure. Woetjans had alternated with him to lead the detachment in a series of chanteys.

Locals stared in amazement from buildings, around corners, or out of door alcoves. Daniel hadn't noticed any group of more than three—a woman holding two young children by the hand as she sprinted down an alley—but evidence of large mobs was everywhere. Ground-floor windows were either shuttered or smashed, bullets had pocked building fronts, and on the two-mile route to Manco house the Sissies had passed at least a score of wrecked vehicles.

"'First he fucked her,'" the Sissies sang, "'then he left her!'"

Each verse ended in a full stop. This wasn't—Daniel smiled—a trained chorus, but the singers' enthusiasm drowned out the jangle of track pins and cleats on the pavement. They were chewing up the street, no mistake, by driving cargo-shifing apparatus at top speed through the middle of the city.

Two men, each carrying a length of pipe and a bottle, stood on the steps leading into an apartment block. Sissies waved and called cheerfully. They were in good humor, but everybody in the detachment had an impeller or a sub-machine gun. The locals backed up the stairs, not running exactly but not wanting to have that many gunmen watching them either.

Manco House came in sight to the left, a brown stone column. "Here," Daniel said, then realized Hogg might not be able to hear him. He banged on the woven wire side of the driver's cage, then pointed to the tall structure. Hogg nodded.

Manco House didn't have windows on the ground floor, only a steel door wide enough to pass a large truck; the second floor windows were narrow slots. One of the latter and two of the larger—barred—windows on the third floor had been broken out, but it didn't look like there'd been a serious attack. No reason there should've been, of course; but then, mobs don't need much reason.

"Shall I take us in, master?" Hogg shouted as they jangled toward the vehicular entrance.

"No, just turn around and I'll go in through the wicket," Daniel said. The pedestrian door, also steel, was in a separate alcove instead of being inset in the larger valves. "I don't expect to be long."

Hogg pulled the tractor and lowboy in a sweeping curve, then shut down the big ceramic diesel. As Daniel hopped down, Hogg slid out of the cage and faced the Sissies on the trailer.

"Me and the master's going in!" Hogg said. Daniel pressed the call plate, a flush crystal disk in the wall. "You can keep the wogs from stealing the truck while we're gone, I guess."

"I'm coming!" said Woetjans, and pretty much all the others shouted the same thing. It sounded rather like a frog pond after an evening rain.

"None of you are coming!" Daniel said. Holding his impeller at the balance, Daniel tossed it to Hogg with a straight-armed motion. "I don't need you tramping around while I talk to my colleague."

"You hope you don't, you mean," Hogg muttered, but he wasn't seriously objecting.

Daniel grinned as he turned again to the door, still shut. They may even have agreed with him, but they understood from his tone that there wasn't going to be more discussion.

"Yes?" said the plate in a clipped, sexless voice. "Who's there?"

"Open up, Luff," Daniel said, his anger suddenly rising. "You don't have to worry about a mob breaking in if you open the door while my crew's down here, but you bloody well do have to worry if you don't open it!"

It was probably only a few seconds before the latch clicked and the door swung inward, but it was a little longer than Daniel was happy with. He grinned and shook his head as he stepped through. He supposed he was feeling the strain himself; he ought to be used to this sort of thing.

Luff stood in the entrance corridor. He wore a long beige robe with soft slippers, and his hair was disordered.

"I don't have a soul left here!" he blurted as he turned to the lift shaft. "Not one! My employees all left me to whatever the mob decides to do. And none of the Councilors will talk to me either!"

"I don't think there's much danger at present," Daniel said as the lift rose. Luff seemed to be taking him up to his sixth-floor office, probably the best choice from Daniel's viewpoint. That's where the communications gear would be. "Though if you'd like, we can carry you back with us to the Princess Cecile."

Which'd be a great deal less safe than anything likely to happen in Charlestown, but it wasn't the time to say that.

"I can't do that!" the agent snapped. "There's critical trading information here, matters of the greatest import! If I should abandon my post, why, I'd be ruined!"

If you really think the locals are going to lynch you from a lamppost, thought Daniel, then I'd say there were other jobs than being a flunky in Ganpat's Reach.

The lift stopped. Luff bowed him forward, then pursed his lips in sudden irritation. He'd treated his guest with the courtesy due a superior, then remembered that Daniel was an officer in the RCN rather than a Bennarian Councilor.

Concealing his flash of anger, Daniel said, "As I say, things have quieted down a good deal." Shrugging he added, "And this is quite a strong building, a fortress. If you've got a few gas bombs or—"

"Oh, nothing like that," Luff said, a sneer in his voice. They entered his office. He'd drawn the drapes, and the only light was from a small fixture on the desk. "I'm a gentleman, you know."

"Ah," said Daniel, nodding sagely. There were various ways to take the agent's comment, but he found viewing it as humor the best and most natural response for him. Daniel very much doubted that his father'd killed anyone personally, but he was quite sure that in similar circumstances Corder Leary would've been standing in the doorway with a gun and the complete determination to use it on the first prole who came at him.

The agent sat at his desk and hunched forward. "They'll be back as soon as it gets dark," he muttered into his hands. "They burned Layard House the first night, you know? He'd taken all his guards out of the city with him. They attacked Waddell House first, but Waddell left most of his guards here and they drove the mob off with gunfire."

Luff shivered. "I can't shoot. I'm alone and I can't do anything," he whispered.

"On the contrary, Master Luff," Daniel said heartily, "you're in a position to aid Cinnabar greatly. I need the use of one of the barges belonging to Manco Trading to transport cargo upriver."

"What?" said Luff, raising his head. "Give you a barge for personal use? And at a time like this! Why, I moved them north of the city for safety sake, you know."

Instead of responding immediately, Daniel stepped to the outside wall; Luff twisted to watch him. In place of curtains, a polarizing screen darkened the window. He threw the switch in the corner to turn the wall into a single clear panel looking out over Charlestown. A haze of smoke hung over a complex of buildings to the northwest, perhaps Layard House.

Daniel walked back to face the Manco agent across the desk; he remained standing. "Master Luff," he said, crossing his hands behind his back, "I'm not asking you to do anything for me personally. I need the use of the barge to carry out an RCN mission."

"To help Corius, you mean!" Luff said like a dog snapping in fear.

"To prevent Port Dunbar from becoming an Alliance base, sir!" said Daniel, not shouting but certainly intending to be heard. "Because the Alliance personnel attached to the Pellegrinian forces have already started preparations for that. The Manco family may not be enthusiastic about Councilor Corius gaining greater influence on Bennaria, but I'm quite sure that they'll be even less happy about an Alliance squadron across their trade routes."

"What?" Luff said. He jerked against the back of his chair, not straightening so much as putting another few inches between himself and Daniel. "That can't be true! The war's purely a matter between Pellegrino and Dunbar's World."

"It most certainly is true," said Daniel. "We've captured Alliance personnel and stored data which lays out the Alliance plan in great detail."

That was technically correct, but the information had to be pieced together from bits and pieces; even then it required a great deal of interpretation. The conclusion required absolute confidence in the analysis Adele had done while the Rainha was en route to Dunbar's World. Daniel—all the Sissies—had that confidence, and so presumably did Adele's other employer. People who didn't know her well might question it, however.

"Oh my God," Luff said. All the bluster'd gone out of him, but he continued to stare at Daniel instead of lowering his head again. His mouth dropped slightly open and his lower lip trembled. "Oh God."

"I'm not here to threaten that you'll be executed for treason, Luff," Daniel said, deliberately softening his tone. "You'll have no problem with your employers or with the Senate, so long as you act in line with your duties as a Cinnabar citizen."

This whole business was a calculated performance, the sort of thing he'd seen his father do many times. Daniel hadn't understood the nuances when he watched it, but the knowledge was there nonetheless for when Corder Leary's son needed to bully someone into action without raising a hand.

"I'm quite confident we can thwart the Alliance designs," Daniel continued. "So confident that I'm staking my life and my ship on it. But I need you to order a barge to the Princess Cecile in Charlestown Harbor ASAP."

"You realize I'm ruined, ruined or dead, if I do that, don't you?" Luff said bitterly. "Whatever you or Senator Manco do to me, Waddell will see to that!"

Daniel pursed his lips. "Come here, Luff," he said, walking around the desk again. He gestured. "Come here to the window, man."

He stretched out his hand, thinking for a moment that he'd have to grab the fellow by the shoulder and lift him. Luff rose of his own accord before they touched, though with a grudging expression.

"What is it then, Commander?" Luff said. He sounded tired and disgusted, nothing more. "Is my salvation, do you think?"

"No sir, the reverse," Daniel said. "Look out there. Do you see Councilor Waddell? Do you see any sign of the power you believe he has?"

"He'll be back!" Luff said.

"Will he?" Daniel demanded. "And even if he is, Luff, he's a fat foreigner and you're a Cinnabar gentleman! What do you care what Waddell thinks? He didn't have the balls to stay in his own city with a fortress to live in and three hundred men to defend him! He went scuttling off!"

"If Corius wins, that won't help either," Luff said. It was a statement, not a protest. "I've had it regardless."

"Buck up, man," Daniel said, hearty again. He put his arm around the Manco agent's shoulders. "The RCN is going to put a spoke in the Alliance's wheel, and when we've done that it won't matter who's in power in Charlestown. Whoever it is'll have a healthy respect for Cinnabar citizens, because they know the RCN'll hand 'em their heads if they don't."

He patted Luff on the back and stepped away. "I'd say it was your best choice, my good fellow," Daniel said with a broad grin. "But the truth is, it's the only choice you have that won't result in you being condemned as a traitor. What do you say?"

Luff shuddered. He closed his eyes, then turned away and wiped them fiercely with the back of his right hand.

"What do you want, then?" he whispered. He seated himself back at his desk, already reaching for the integral phone pad. "A barge? All right."

"Just that," Daniel agreed. His face remained impassive, but in fact what he'd just done made him queasy. It'd been necessary; but it made him aware that many of the things he despised his father for might've been necessary also.

"Dorlitus, I need you to bring A79 back to the harbor," Luff said, his face intent. Daniel had heard the voice on the other end of the line only as a narrow crackle; the agent was using an in-ear plug. "It'll take you less than an hour, won't it?"

The air crackled again.

"No, I don't think it is too dangerous," Luff said, sounding brusque and professional. "I think it will be tonight, though. That's why I want to get the contents of the strong room in Warehouse 12 aboard the freighter Pomponio immediately. There's three million florins in jewels and furs, all of it easily disposed of if the rioters get their hands on it. We can't take the chance."

Crackle.

"All right, I'll expect you inside the hour at the company pier," Luff said. "Till then."

He thumbed off the phone switch and glared at Daniel. "There," he said harshly. "Are you happy? Just take your gang to Manco Pier and wait for the barge to arrive."

"What did you mean about the strong room?" Daniel said in puzzlement. "We might be able to carry some cargo, but—"

"There's no cargo!" Luff said. "There's nothing, just you and your men waiting on the pier. Dorlitus wouldn't have returned to the harbor simply because I told him to; but he'll come to steal three million florins in goods. Which will be blamed on the mob, of course, And besides, what does he care?"

Luff shrugged. "You'll have to persuade him to do what you say when you get aboard," he added. "I assume you can manage that, can't you? You've assured me how resourceful the RCN is, after all."

"We can persuade him, yes," Daniel agreed quietly. "Thank you, Master Luff."

"Oh, don't thank me," Luff said. He gave a brittle laugh. "I have it on good authority that it's no more than my duty as a Cinnabar citizen. Now you'd better get out of here, Commander. You have work to do, I'm sure."

Daniel opened the office door but paused. "Luff," he said. "Come with us. I won't tell you it's going to be safe, but you'll be with friends."

"Thank you, Commander," Luff said with surprising dignity. "But I believe I'll stay here. It's my post of duty, after all. . . and I'm not a Bennarian to abandon it."

Daniel waited for a further moment, then threw the Manco agent a salute before striding for the lift. It wasn't according to protocol: the fellow was a civilian and therefore not authorized to receive the salute of an RCN officer.

But it felt right anyway.

* * *

Hogg's water taxi had remained at the Mazeppa. The Infantan who'd just ferried Adele and Tovera between ships knocked on the library door and said, "Lady Mundy to see you, lord."

"Send her in, Pyotr!" the Landholder called. "My dear Mundy, a great pleasure to see you again."

The servant opened the door and stepped back. Adele made a tiny gesture with her left index finger. Having her bodyguard present would set the wrong tone for the interview with the Landholder.

Even so slight a motion had sent a dull ache all the way up to Adele's left shoulder. The Medicomp had repaired the physical damage; even the bruising was nearly gone. Some nerve pathways had been rerouted, though, and for the moment they were registering neutral inputs as pain.

That would pass in time, the Medicomp had assured Adele. All it meant for now was that the pistol had moved from her left to her right tunic pocket.

Tovera shrugged; Adele started down into library. Before the door closed behind her, she heard Tovera say, "Is there a place a girl could get a drink around here, spacer?"

While still aboard the Princess Cecile Adele'd seen Tovera take a Drytab which would metabolize alcohol in her stomach. She didn't know whether her servant ever drank for pleasure, but she was very definitely at work now.

Landholder Krychek waited at the bottom of the stairs. To Adele's surprise, he had a striking blonde woman on his arm. Both beamed at her.

Adele almost missed the last step. "Master Elemere?" she said.

"Just Elemere, milady," the blonde said, dipping in a graceful curtsey. Her—well, his—dress was gold with shimmers of green and purple as the light changed. "You and Commander Leary gave me not only life but a reason to keep on living."

"Here, sit," said Krychek, ushering Adele to the chair where she'd sat before. "I set out the Vaclos. You liked the vintage, I believe?"

Adele remained standing. She nodded to Elemere to make it clear she wasn't snubbing him, but she returned her eyes to Krychek. "This isn't a social call, I'm afraid, Landholder," she said. "I'm here to negotiate with you. And with. . . Elemere, that is, as a matter of fact."

"So, we negotiate," Krychek said calmly, offering her the long-stemmed glass he'd just filled with wine. "But we negotiate as friends, do we not? And we can sit as we negotiate, surely?"

Adele seated herself, feeling uncomfortable. She smiled—mentally, at least, because she didn't feel the humor touch her lips—at herself. She knew that this business would involve some stressful passages. She'd have preferred that the Infantan treat her with professional courtesy rather than the kindness of a friend, given that they might not be friends at the end of it.

Krychek sat opposite her with a glass of brandy. He raised an eyebrow. Elemere remained standing, his fingertips resting on the Landholder's shoulder.

Setting her wine untasted on the adjacent table, Adele said, "Master Leary intends to steal a Bennarian destroyer and with it drive a Pellegrinian cruiser off Dunbar's World."

Krychek laughed, though the sound was initially muffled because he'd clamped his lips over a swallow of brandy. "Ho!" he said when he got the liquor down. "He doesn't half have dreams does he? I'd say you meant steal a cruiser to fight a destroyer, but the Bennarians don't have any cruisers."

"Is that possible?" said Elemere, frowning. "It doesn't sound possible."

"Well, dear one," the Landholder said as he patted the hand on his shoulder, "let's say that it's an ambitious aim, even for the redoubtable Commander Leary."

His face sobered as he returned his gaze to Adele. "I do not mean that in mockery, Lady Mundy," he said. "I have the highest regard for your captain's abilities. What you outline is, however, a daunting task indeed."

"Daniel is well aware of that," Adele said, using the given name deliberately. "Nevertheless, his mission requires it, so there's no choice."

She touched her thigh pocket but left the data unit where it was. She'd have liked to have the wands between her fingers, but that too would send the wrong signal.

"He wishes to hire you and your retainers, Landholder," she went on. "To have any chance at all. It will, of course, be very dangerous. Your reward, if we succeed, will be in keeping with the risk."

Krychek had been raising his glass for another drink. He paused and put it down very carefully on the table.

"Mundy. . .," he said, and paused to clear his throat. "Lady Mundy, I regret, I very much regret to refuse you. Yet I must."

"But Miroslav, it's the Commander who—" Elemere said.

"Not now, dear one!" said Krychek. "This is men's business!"

He stood up, desperate to move rather than gaining a height advantage over Adele. Understanding that, she remained seated. It struck her—without either amusement or anger—that the Landholder was implicitly classing her as a man and Elemere as a woman. Though if it was worth distinguishing by gender—this did almost cause her to smile—that was probably an accurate assessment.

"I suggested this course to Master Leary," she continued, "because I recalled you saying you wished to enter service with Headman Ferguson. It's my hope that you'll be willing to follow a better man in a better cause."

"Lady Mundy!" Krychek said, forcefully enough to sound threatening to someone easier to threaten than Adele. Besides, she didn't think that was his intent. "I owe you and I owe Commander Leary a debt of honor, a very great debt. But I am a man of honor, milady! I am Landholder of Infanta and cannot join the Cinnabar navy, whatever I think of the worm Porra who rules from Pleasaunce today. I am not a traitor!"

"If you were not a man of honor, milord," Adele said, "Master Leary wouldn't have made this offer. We depend on it, because only a man of honor can recognize honor in another."

For effect she took her glass from the table and sipped the wine. She found it easy to keep her voice calm and her words clipped; indeed, it was hard to do anything else.

"Of course you wouldn't serve the RCN, Landholder," Adele said. "But will you serve a Leary of Bantry?"

"What?" said Krychek, startled out of his anger. "What? But that's the same thing, surely? Leary of Bantry is Commander Leary."

"Not in this instance," Adele said firmly. "The Princess Cecile is a private yacht, her crew are spacers hired by Bergen and Associates—a firm owned by the Learys privately. And the Sibyl, when we've stolen her, will certainly not be an RCN ship."

Krychek's brow furrowed. From his expression he might be furious, but Adele suspected he was thinking about what she'd just said.

"You may be a pirate, of course," she added, "subject to hanging if captured by any civilized power. But you won't be an RCN officer."

Krychek guffawed and turned to the tantalus. He lifted the decanter and drank from it.

"The Pellegrinians call me a pirate already," he said, lowering the square crystal bottle, "and who knows? It may be that they are right. Faugh, I spit on them!"

He did spit, a long, accurate pitch into the presumably false fireplace across the compartment.

"But even if I were willing, how would this happen?" he said. He looked at the decanter, scowled, and set it back on the secretary. "My ship cannot lift, even to orbit, until the thrusters are replaced. That will take time, and there's no chance of the work being started until the riots subside."

"I'm afraid the Mazeppa will have to be abandoned," Adele said. "As you note, it can't be moved in its present condition. Perhaps it'll be possible to salvage it later, but that can't be expected."

She shrugged. "Of course if you die, as seems likely," she said, "that won't matter anyway."

The Landholder looked at her in delighted amazement, then burst out laughing again. "Oh!" he said. "So Leary thinks I'm one of those death or glory boys he can trick into following him by saying how dangerous it is, yes?"

"Yes, that's correct," Adele said, sipping more wine. She looked over the top of her glass. "You are, of course. And so is Master Leary, as I'm sure you realized since you've looked into his record."

Krychek began laughing so hard that he had to bend over. The decanter in his right hand tapped the floor twice; Elemere bent gracefully and swept it away from him before it shattered.

"Ho, you're clever devils, you Cinnabars!" the Landholder said when he'd gotten his breath. "Crooked as corkscrews, every one of you. So crooked you're straight! So!"

He hugged Elemere, then seated himself and eyed Adele. "The Mazeppa is a clapped-out old whore, no loss," he said, shrugging. "My collection of tobacco pipes, that I will regret. Still, I have lost much in the past and at my present age I must look to the future. Your Daniel Leary will make us whole, you say?"

"Daniel will do very much better than that," Adele said. "If he survives, of course."

"Of course," said Krychek. "Of course. . . "

Then in a thoughtful tone he repeated, "So. We accept. What are we new Leary retainers to do, milady?"

"A few of you will join the crew of the Princess Cecile," Adele said. She put down her glass empty. "Most of you'll be taken to the Squadron Pool, by barge I gather because there's no proper ground transportation system here."

"You have numbers?" Krychek said, becoming businesslike. "How many the corvette, how many to Squadron Pool, I mean?"

"I don't, no," Adele said. Elemere'd filled her glass. She'd almost waved him off, but her mouth was still dry and she found the wine pleasantly astringent. "You'll have to discuss that with Daniel when he returns from arranging the transportation."

"And the Bennarians will give us a destroyer?" Krychek said, raising an eyebrow. "Or we will have to fight our way in, which? Either is acceptable."

Adele's lips suddenly felt parched. Nonetheless she set down the glass and crossed her hands in her lap as she met the Landholder's eyes squarely.

"That brings me to my other request," she said. "Daniel has determined that it wouldn't be practical to fight our way into the base—not if we intend to fly out in a destroyer, that is. Entry will require very specific authorization by Councilor Waddell, and to gain that I need the help of Elemere."

She looked up at the entertainer. "I want you to visit Waddell's estate in company with me and my servant Tovera," she went on. "The business will be extremely dangerous, but while it entails risk I can assure you that there will be no dishonor."

She smiled coldly. Almost the only way I do smile, I suppose, she thought. Aloud she said, "On my honor as a Mundy."

Elemere stood transfixed. Krychek looked up at him and said, "I don't think—"

Elemere silenced the Landholder with a curt gesture; his eyes were locked with Adele's. "You say there will be no dishonor," Elemere said. "How will you ensure that?"

"If things go wrong," Adele said calmly, "Tovera or I will kill you. Even if that means we're captured ourselves."

"Lady Mundy, I can't allow—" Krychek began.

"Be quiet, Miroslav," Elemere said as a mother might speak to a child. He continued to look at Adele. "I didn't object to the danger. This is my business. Lonnie is my business."

A slow smile spread across Elemere's face. He was really quite attractive, though the matter was of no greater importance to Adele than the color of his dress. "What do you need from me?" he asked.

Adele shrugged. She'd finished the second glass of wine also, she found. "Only your presence," she said. "And—"

She transferred her eyes back to Krychek.

"—from you, Landholder, the aircar in Hold Three. It's the only way we'll be able to get to Waddell's estate in time to make this work."

"How do you know about the aircar?" Krychek said, his face again a glowering mass of furrows. "I've never let anyone on Bennaria see it!"

Probably because you were planning an illegal last-ditch measure which required an aircar, Adele thought. This man wasn't the sort who'd quietly starve with his retainers because the local power structure resented him.

Rather than describe the extent to which she'd penetrated the Infantans' systems, she said, "Well, it's time for them to see it now. We'll return with Elemere to the Princess Cecile. Just us—Tovera can drive the aircar."

She rose from her chair. "We won't actually leave the Sissie until it's fully dark, but I have a great deal to prepare."

Krychek got up. Elemere kissed him but slipped out of his grasp before his arms could close. To Adele, Elemere said, "Should I change clothes?"

"I'd rather have the extra time aboard the Sissie," Adele said. "We'll have clothing there for you."

Elemere offered Adele his hand. "All right," he said. "We can go now."

He looked over his shoulder. Krychek stood as though waiting to be shot. "Don't worry, dearest," he said to the Landholder.

As Elemere and Adele started up the stairs he said, "I thanked you for what you and the Commander did for me, Lady Mundy. Now I'd like to thank you on behalf of Lonnie also."

* * *

CHAPTER 24: Bennaria

"Unidentified vehicle," said the a guard in the gatehouse a quarter mile from Waddell's mansion, "halt in the air so we can examine you. Or else!"

"I'm halting as directed," Tovera replied with cool courtesy as she brought the aircar to a hover. They were speaking on a 2-meter hailing frequency, though the ground unit was transmitting with enough power to come in on light bulbs. "We're unarmed as we said we'd be, and we have the package with us. Over."

Adele, seated beside Tovera, was using her data unit to identify the sensors tracking them. The house proper was in the middle of a twenty-acre compound including a terraced formal garden. The stone perimeter wall had projecting towers at the northeast and southwest corners. Each mounted an automatic impeller which was now aimed at the aircar.

The slave lines were a half mile north of the compound. Rice paddies stretched into the night in three directions.

From the roof of the mansion the aircar was being followed by a basket of twelve six-inch rockets, free-flight weapons which pirates salvoed to strip the rigging of their prey. . Their high explosive warheads wouldn't penetrate a starship's hull or damage the cargo, but any one of the dozen could blast an aircar into bits too small to identify. That wouldn't have concerned Adele even if she'd been thinking of the matter in personal terms rather than as data on her display

"All right, you can come in slowly," the guard ordered. He was trying to be forceful but sounded nervous instead. Waddell had retained only a dozen or so troops here; the remainder were defending his townhouse from the mob. "Land on the roof where you see Hesketh with the light. Slowly, mind!"

"Mistress?" asked Tovera, speaking over the sound of the fans. The car's top was retracted to make it easier for Waddell's guards to examine them, and the intake rush was very loud even when the vehicle wasn't moving forward.

Adele rechecked her preparations; she had the necessary codes and two alternative means of access to Waddell's security system. "Yes," she said, setting the data unit on the floor without shutting it down. "You can go in, now."

Tovera nudged the yoke forward. The aircar staggered, then wobbled badly for the first twenty feet before she adjusted the fan tilt to smooth their descent.

Tovera treated driving as a technical problem to be solved by intellect rather than through any emotional understanding of the process. She wasn't a good driver, but she was good enough.

Adele smiled. Tovera'd learned to act as though she had a conscience in much the same way, come to think.

There was a grunt from the back seat; Adele looked over her shoulder. Elemere'd slid against the locked door. He met her eyes but didn't speak.

The entertainer wore the gold dress, but his makeup was smudged and he'd lost his wig. His wrists were tied in front of him. A cable anchored on the supports for the running boards ran between his elbows and back; the bights at either end were padlocked. Elemere could neither brace himself with his hands nor cushion the impact when the car threw him from side to side.

A man waving a glowing yellow wand stood on the roof of the mansion. The small lights on the coping showed he had a sub-machine gun in the other hand. A second guard waited with his back to the penthouse over the stairhead; he was covering the oncoming aircar with a carbine.

The tower-mounted impellers continued to follow the vehicle as it settled toward the roof. Electronic lockouts would prevent the guns from firing in this direction—otherwise they'd riddle the mansion they were supposed to protect—but the guards either didn't know that or were bluffing.

The car bobbed violently as it crossed the coping. Tovera's mouth was set in a hard line. When the vehicle was completely over the roof, reflected thrust bounced it higher. Instead of easing the throttles back, she cut them completely. The car dropped what was probably only a few inches but felt to Adele like a foot. Elemere jolted forward, crying out as the cable bit the inside of his elbows.

Adele rose carefully, keeping her face blank. She didn't want to show any expression that Tovera could take as disapproval. She stepped out of the car, raising her hands as she did.

"Hold it right there!" said the guard who'd dropped his yellow wand in order to grip the sub-machine gun with both hands. The other guard continued to point his carbine, though his aim wavered from Adele to Tovera and back again. "Sir! Sir! They're here!"

The penthouse door flew open; the landing beyond was brightly lighted. Four guards came out, three holding carbines and the fourth with a slung sub-machine gun and a resonance scanner.

The last was older than the others and had three vertical gold bars on his sleeves. He ran the scanner over Tovera—who watched with a bemused expression—and then Adele.

"Councilor?" he said, cocking his head—unnecessarily—toward the microphone on his epaulet. He'd closed the armored door behind him. "They're not armed."

"I told you we wouldn't be," Adele said, letting waspishness color her tone. "I'm here to make peace, I told you that too. And we brought him."

She nodded toward Elemere, bolt upright but silent. He followed the guards with his eyes, but his head barely moved.

"Put a light on him!" rasped a speaker over the door. Adele recognized Waddell's voice. She moved to the side while a guard obediently shifted his carbine to his left hand to shine a powerful belt light on the entertainer.

"That's him!" said Waddell. There was a video pickup in the frame of the speaker. "By God that's him."

"Of course it's. . .," Adele said, but she let her voice trail off when the door opened again. Waddell stepped out, followed by half a dozen guards including an officer with a sub-machine gun.

"So!" sneered the Councilor to Adele. "You brave Cinnabars have had to climb down a peg, have you not?"

"Look," she said quietly. "Commander Leary's neck is stiffer than mine. I just want to get home, and without repairs here in Charlestown we'll be six months doing that. If we even can."

She made a curt gesture toward the entertainer. "I don't doubt that Leary'll fume when he learns what I've done," she said, "but I'll bet he'll be just as glad it happened. He was drunk when he took the fellow in, and when he sobered up he was too much a Leary to get himself out of the mess. So I'm getting us all out."

Instead of responding, Waddell leaned into the car. He chucked Elemere under the chin with his index finger. Several of the guards stiffened and aimed at the entertainer's head. Elemere jerked away and screwed his eyes shut. He didn't speak.

Waddell straightened, laughing like oil gurgling from a punctured drum. "Bring him in," he said to the guard officer. "Into. . . we'll start in my bedroom, I think."

"You two," the officer said to a pair of guards. They handed their carbines to the men next to them and fumbled with the cable.

"Here, we have to unlock it," said Adele. Then, when the guards now standing between her and the car didn't move quickly enough, "Out of the way, you fools!"

She bent over and released one end of the cable; Tovera was on the other side of the car. The padlocks were programmed to open to either's right thumbprint. Straightening together, Adele and her servant slid their hands down the front of Elemere's low-cut dress and withdrew the pistols hidden in the false bosom.

Adele fired across the car, hitting the guard holding two carbines just below the left eyesocket. The officer dropped his scanner but he didn't have his hands on his sub-machine gun before she'd shot him in the middle of the forehead. He'd ducked. She'd aimed for the bridge of his nose, but it didn't matter because her pellet punched through the bone at this short range.

Tovera's shots were sharp as whiplashes. Something tugged Adele's right sleeve, the hand of a spasming guard or possibly the pellet itself. It didn't matter.

A guard clubbed his carbine at Tovera. Adele shot him through the neck, missing his spine. Blood sprayed from entrance and exit wounds, then from the victim's mouth. He lost his grip on the weapon but fell into Tovera before slumping to the ground. She continued to shoot with the regularity of a metronome.

Adele had three targets in a clump, trying to raise their weapons. Hesketh still held the light wand. She shot out his right eye, shot the man to his left through the chin and throat, then snapped a shot at the third as he tried to duck behind the car. She thought she broke his spine with a raking shot, but Tovera glanced down and fired twice more to be sure.

Everyone on Adele's side of the car was down; across from her, only Waddell and Tovera were standing. The Councilor's mouth was working but no sounds came out. Ozone, ionized aluminum from the driving bands—a thick, hot smell that both bit and coated Adele's throat—and the stench of blood filled the air.

The barrel of Tovera's pistol shimmered bright yellow. She jerked the sub-machine gun from the hands of a dead officer, then slapped Waddell with the pocket pistol. He screamed and staggered backward, pressing both hands to the welt on his cheek. Tovera giggled, then tossed the pistol onto the floor of the aircar.

"That's enough!" Adele said sharply. She reloaded her own weapon, ignoring the barrel's searing glow. The skin on the back of her wrist throbbed and the fine hairs had shrivelled, but she didn't think she'd have blisters.

Adele didn't know how many of the twenty rounds in the magazine she'd used, but experience had taught her it was probably more than she'd have guessed. She had a lot of experience at this. . . .

A carbine bullet whacked the coping and howled into the night. The automatic impellers in the towers wouldn't fire, but the guard to the southwest was using his personal weapon. Waddell wouldn't have thanked him, if Waddell's mind'd had room at the moment for anything but sheer terror.

Tovera dropped the knife from a guard's belt with which she'd just freed Elemere's wrists. She raised her sub-machine gun. The tower was out of effective range, and neither she nor Adele were particularly skilled with long arms. Besides, there was a better way. . . .

"No!" said Adele, dropping the pistol into her pocket. It'd probably char the lining but that was one more thing that couldn't be helped. She bent into the car and grabbed her personal data unit. "Get Waddell inside. And you too, Elemere, now!"

The tower guard emptied his carbine in full auto. At least one bullet hit the masonry—Adele heard the spang-ng-ng of the ricochet—but most of the burst punctured empty sky. Tovera waited beside the doorway while Elemere pulled Waddell inside, gripping him by the crotch of his loose, silken pantaloons. In the entertainer's free hand was the knife Tovera'd used to cut him free.

Bent over and clutching the data unit to her chest, Adele ducked into the penthouse. She sat cross-legged on the landing, ignoring the others for a moment except to snap, "Close and bolt the door. Now!"

A console in the mansion's basement controlled the basket of rockets. Rather than go to its physical location, Adele slaved it to her data unit. She'd prepared for the contingency, though if asked she'd have said it was unlikely she'd need it. Preparation was never wasted effort.

The guard had reloaded. This time he aimed. A shot rang from the armored door, and Adele thought she heard another slap the wall. The fellow was wasting his time at present, but he had to be silenced before it'd be safe to fly out again.

Waddell screamed from the room at the base of the stairs. "Don't harm him till I'm there!" Adele said, moving the orange dot across the targeting display in a series of jerks. Daniel would do a much better job. . . . She felt the building shiver as the basket gimbaled to follow the display.

The pipper lay in the middle of the gun tower. Adele sent a firing signal. Two rockets blasted out, jolting the landing enough to lift Adele. She hadn't expected two at the same time. Red flashes and balls of dirty black smoke concealed the target a heartbeat before the doubled explosions shook the mansion. Windows shattered, maybe all the windows on the mansion's facade.

The smoke and dust cleared. A ten-foot section of wall had collapsed—the rockets obviously weren't very accurate—but the other warhead had destroyed the impeller and the fool who'd been standing beside it to shoot.

Adele began swinging the basket toward the other tower. The panoramic view at the top of the targeting display showed the surviving guard leaping off the back of the wall and presumably running in the direction of the slave lines. Just in case he decided to come back, she loosed three pairs of the remaining rockets, shattering that corner of the compound into smoking rubble.

She rose and put away her data unit as the echoes rumbled to silence. Waddell was spread-eagled face up on the floor below. His wrists and ankles were tied to the legs of a couch and two heavy chairs; he could move his limbs, but not easily and not far.Elemere squatted near the Councilor's head; Tovera stood at his feet. All three watched in silence as Adele descended the stairs; Tovera was smiling.

"Councilor Waddell," Adele said with polite formality. The man had fouled himself; feces were oozing through his thin pantaloons. "I want you to call Commandant Brast at the Squadron Pool and order him to offer Commander Leary and his companions every facility. If you do that in a sufficiently convincing fashion, I will leave you unharmed when we go."

Waddell's left cheek was swollen to angry red except for the long white blister in the middle of it. "Well, without further harm," Adele corrected herself primly.

"I hope he refuses," Elemere whispered. "I really hope you refuse, Councilor."

He jabbed before Adele could stop him. Waddell screamed again, but the knife point merely slit the blister. It began to drain toward Waddell's ear.

"I'll do it!" Waddell wailed. His eyes were shut but tears squeezed from beneath the lids. "I'll do anything you say!"

Tovera giggled again. "Don't worry, Elemere," she said. "Perhaps we'll have better luck the next time we need something from him."

* * *

"Good evening, Commandant Brast!" Daniel called cheerfully as he approached the gate in the perimeter of the Squadron Pool. It stood out like a tunnel through the vines and small trees interweaving the remainder of the chain-link fence. "I'm glad you came to meet me yourself."

Two Sissies and a pair of Infantans were tying Manco A79 to trees on the shore just below the Pool. Yellow warning lights were spaced across the top of the dam; area lights on poles threw a white glare on the ground before the gate and the lock building. The Administration Building brightened the sky in the near distance, but intervening trees hid the structure itself.

Except for Daniel, the barge's two hundred passengers remained aboard. Even Hogg and Landholder Krychek stayed, though only after loud protest. Daniel couldn't take any chance of something going violently wrong, and ultimately both men were intelligent enough to accept a decision they knew was correct.

"Look, Commander," Brast said miserably through the gate. A junior officer'd been pointing a carbine at Daniel from the gatehouse; now he pulled the weapon back and concealed it behind him. "I've got the highest respect for you and the Cinnabar Navy, but I can't let you in. I've got orders, you know."

The lock on this side of the dam was big enough to pass the barge, but a dozen Bennarian spacers were hunched around the control building, pointing automatic weapons. A79 wasn't carrying any cargo except spacers, so it'd be faster to march them in by the wicket than to lock the barge into the Pool. Once the formalities had been taken care of, that is.

"Of course, Commandant," Daniel said, continuing to approach with a friendly smile. "It's about your orders that I came, as a matter of fact. I hope that you'll let me—alone and unarmed, I assure you—through the gate to discuss matters, but I can fully understand if you're afraid to."

He was wearing utilities and a commo helmet, but he'd left his equipment belt in the barge instead of simply detaching the holster from it. He wanted to look professional but not threatening.

The junior officer standing beside Brast whispered in his ear. The fellow's name is Tenris. . . . Brast gripped the gate with both hands and rested his forehead against the steel wire with his eyes closed. The pose emphasized his missing little finger.

Brast straightened. "All right," he said harshly, sliding the bar clear; it hadn't been locked. "Come in, then."

He glanced toward the bargeload of spacers. Daniel had told them to keep their weapons out of sight, but he wasn't sure any of the Infantans had obeyed. "Just you alone though!" Brast added.

"Of course," Daniel said. He carefully swung the gate shut after he entered. He gestured toward the gatehouse. "You have a commo terminal here, don't you? There should be a call from Councilor Waddell any time now—"

He prayed there'd be a call and bloody soon.

"—to explain the change in circumstances. I'd sooner stay near my crew, but if you like we can go back to your admin building."

"Why would Waddell be calling here?" Tenris said. The overhead light distorted his puzzled expression into a counterfeit of fury. "Especially the way things are now, I—"

"Commandant!" called the officer in the gatehouse. "They're relaying this from HQ. They say it's Councilor Waddell for you! What do you think it means?"

"Bloody hell," Brast whispered as he stepped into the gatehouse, a shack of 5-mm plastic sheeting on four vertical posts. If Tenris follows him, there won't be room for me. Daniel gripped the Bennarian by the shoulder and moved him back, then squeezed in behind the Commandant.

The terminal's flat-plate display was unexpectedly sharp, except for the three-inch band across the middle in which squares danced like the facets of a kaleidoscope. Despite the flaw, nobody who'd seen Councilor Waddell could doubt it was him on the other end of the connection. He was flushed and agitated, and he held his right hand to his cheek.

"Councilor?" Brast said. He tried to salute but his elbow bumped the junior officer beside him. Now flustered, he continued, "Sir, this is Commandant Brast. You wanted me?"

"There'll be a Cinnabar officer coming to see you, Leary his name is," Waddell said in a hoarse voice. "Give him whatever he wants."

"Sir, he's here now," said Brast. "Ah—"

"Then give him what he wants!" Waddell shouted. He glanced to his side as someone off-screen spoke; the voice was only a murmur on this end of the connection. When he lowered his hand, Daniel saw the angry welt on his face.

Waddell glared back at the display. "He'll want a destroyer," he said. "Give it to him. Give him whatever he wants!"

"A destroyer?" blurted Tenris, listening from outside the gatehouse.

"But sir!" said Brast, too startled to be deferential. "The only destroyer we could give him is the Sibyl, unless you mean—"

"Yes, the Sibyl!" said Waddell. "Damn your soul, man, why are you arguing? It's necessary that Leary get everything he wants. Now! Now!"

"Sir, I understand you," Brast said. Daniel doubted whether that was true or anything close to being true, but it was the right thing to say. "But as you know, Admiral Wrenn has directed that—"

Waddell shook his fist at the display. "Damn you, man!" he cried, spraying spittle with the words. Droplets clung to the pickup, blurring the image slightly. "I'll have Wrenn shot if you like! Will that satisfy you? Now get on with it, do you hear me?"

"Aye aye, sir!" Brast said, saluting again. This time his subordinate edged back enough to allow the gesture. "I'll see to it at once!"

Adele's arm reached across the display area and broke the connection.

Brast turned, wiping his face with a kerchief he'd taken out of his sleeve. Daniel backed out of the shack and said, "May I direct my personnel to enter the compound, Commandant? Time's very short, you see."

"I don't understand this at all," Brast said in wonder. "Yes, yes, bring your people in."

He looked at Daniel sharply and said, "It's about the riots in Charlestown, I suppose? That the Councilor is so. . . forceful?"

"I can't go into the details now, sir," Daniel said politely. He nodded to the armed Bennarians standing close by, then opened the gate. Raising his voice he called, "Landholder Krychek, you may bring the crew in. Smartly now, if you will!"

"I don't know what Wrenn's going to say," Brast muttered. He sounded more puzzled than concerned. "I suppose it doesn't matter. He's gone off to his estate."

The spacers from the barge trotted toward the gate. They were singing Rosy Dawn. Daniel heard Woetjans bellowing along with the Infantans, adding to the volume if not precisely to the music.

"Yeah, but he'll be back after things settle down," said Tenris, shaking his head in wonderment.

"One step at a time, gentlemen," Daniel said, beaming with pleasure. "We'll deal with that when we need to. After all—"

He smiled even more broadly at Brast and his subordinates.

"—we've dealt with everything that's come up thus far, haven't we?"

That wasn't really true for the Bennarian officers, but by God! it was for the Princess Cecile and her crew.

CHAPTER 25: Bennaria

"Six, this's Woetjans," the bosun said, using the command channel because Daniel hadn't figured out how to set two-way links on the Sibyl's Alliance-standard commo system. "We've got that day-room hatch fixed. I guess she'll hold as good as any other seal on this dozy cow, though that's not much to say. Didn't the Bennarians do any maintenance after they took possession? Over."

Strictly speaking, Pasternak as Chief of Ship should've been in charge of repairing hatch seals, but the engineer had his hands full and more in the Power Room. Damage control parties were largely formed of riggers, since they were rarely on the hull while the ship fought in sidereal space. Woetjans and her personnel had plenty of experience in the basic hull repairs that Daniel'd set them to in the emergency.

He suspected the answer to the bosun's question was, "No, the Bennarians didn't do any maintenance," but that was a historical puzzle which didn't matter on the eve of combat. Aloud he said, "Check the rig, then, as much as you can before we lift. That'll be at least ten minutes; maybe more, I'm afraid. Six out."

He glanced at the Power Room schematics again. Pasternak was methodically examining the pumps, lines and the antimatter converters. Daniel'd have liked the job to go more quickly. Personally, he'd have cut more corners than the engineer, but Pasternak knew what he was doing: operating without part of the propulsion system merely degraded performance, but having part of the system fail under load was potentially catastrophic.

But bloody hell! the man was slow.

If Adele were aboard to configure the commo system, Daniel would've been able to ask Woetjans how the Infantans were working out. He couldn't do that—or anyway, he wasn't willing to—with Krychek on the same channel. He needed Adele.

The Landholder was at the gunnery console, putting the equipment through its paces in a thoroughly competent fashion. He'd rotated the two dorsal turrets, then elevated and depressed the paired 10-cm plasma cannon. The ventral positions would have to wait until the Sibyl lifted off—at present they were recessed into the hull and under water—but Krychek had done full software checks on them as well.

The Landholder had made his appointment as Gunnery Officer a condition of him signing on with Leary of Bantry. Neither he nor Daniel had used words quite that blunt, but they'd both understood the nub of the negotiation. Sun'd been furious—he'd stayed with Vesey on the Princess Cecile instead of transferring to the Sibyl as a result—and Daniel himself had been doubtful, but it turned out that Krychek had the necessary instinct and experience both.

Daniel sorted through the three course projections he'd set. That was excessive: he didn't imagine that there'd be ten minutes difference among the options over the short voyage back to Dunbar's World. It was the way Uncle Stacey had taught him, though. In a situation like the present one, Daniel acted by rote.

Returning to Dunbar's World would be quick and easy. What happened there, when they faced a cruiser in an unfamiliar destroyer, wouldn't be easy at all. Daniel gave the display a quick, hard grin: it certainly might be quick, though.

The top of his display was a real-time panorama. Daniel glanced at it, as much as anything to take his mind off his Pasternak's glacial caution, and saw hundreds of Bennarians watching from the administration building and the roughly-mown grounds. The naval personnel had their families with them, as he'd expected: a good third were women and children. But there was quite a number of spacers, too. . . .

Making up his mind abruptly, Daniel said to the midshipman beside him at the navigation console, "Officer Blantyre, take charge for a moment. I'm going to talk to the crowd."

"Sir?" said Blantyre in surprise, but Daniel was already on his feet and striding to the dorsal hatch. He could adjust the hull lights so that the spectators without night vision equipment could see him.

It wasn't till he was halfway up the ladder that Daniel remembered this wasn't the Sissie. He wasn't certain the Sibyl had public address speakers built into the outer hull, and he certainly didn't know how to activate them if they existed.

"Blantyre, this is Six," he said. "Can you tell if this ship has an external PA system? If it does, I want it slaved to my commo helmet. Over."

He supposed he could bellow through his cupped hands. And look like a fool, probably an inaudible fool. Damn, he should've thought it through before he started!

Daniel grinned. Maybe Pasternak was right.

"Six?" replied not Blantyre but Cory. He was in the Battle Direction Center with the dour, bearded Infantan second-in-command. "I've done what you want with the PA speakers, sir. I've watched Officer Mundy do it and I think I know how. Over."

Well, I'll be damned! thought Daniel as he stepped onto the hull. The antennas, telescoped and folded, were nearly waist high. Daniel jumped onto Dorsal 2 so that the motion itself would call the attention of those watching to him.

"Good work, Cory!" he said—and almost fell, startled by the boom of his own voice. Cory'd done good work, true, but he wasn't quite at Adele's level yet. She'd have made sure that intercom messages didn't key the external speakers. Of course since Daniel himself didn't know how to do that, he wasn't going to complain about the midshipman's performance.

Daniel ran through ways to start his speech. He stood higher than the Bennarians, even those on top of the admin building. All the more reason to address them as equals. . . .

"Fellow spacers!" Daniel thundered. It was a mixed crowd, but the men he cared about were all spacers. "For the first time in her career, the Sibyl's going off to battle the enemies of Bennaria. She'll be fighting for you, for your families, for your world against a powerful enemy."

He struck a pose, hands on hips and jaw jutting outward. "Now, you can let your ship lift without you," he continued, feeling the echoes roll back to him from the wall of the building. "You can let strangers, Cinnabars and Infantans and spacers from a dozen other planets fight for you and protect you from the Pellegrinian warlord who expects to enslave you. You could do that—but you won't, not if you're men! Not if you ever expect to look your wives in the face, not if you ever hope your children will look up to you!"

Daniel eyed the spectators. There was more a puddle of them than a sea, but even a handful of men with experience of the destroyer's systems could be the difference between life and death in the coming hours. Every ship had quirks, and the Sibyl's new crew wasn't going to have a shakedown cruise to determine hers.

"You have one chance, men!" Daniel said. "We'll be lifting shortly. Come join us to drive away the enemies of your planet and to save your women from the lust of a warlord's mercenaries! Join us and know that if we succeed, you'll come back rich as well as honored by all who know you. I'm Daniel Leary, the luckiest captain in the RCN, and I swear it to you!"

"Hip hip!" a chorus of spacers shouted, their powerful voices reverberating from the Sibyl's open entrance hold.

"Urra/Hooray!" they and at least a few of the Bennarians replied. Most of the leaders must be Infantans, but Woetjans was there also.

"Hip hip!"

"Hooray/Urra!" This time the Infantans were clearly in the minority. The locals had joined in with a will, and by God! a few of them were starting for the Sibyl's boarding ramp.

"Officer Blantyre," Daniel boomed, "get down the entry hatch at once and see to it that these brave men are assigned to their proper places aboard their ship! And now—"

Daniel thrust out his right arm, his hand clenched, in a Bennarian salute.

"Hip hip—"

"Hooray!"

* * *

"Will Miroslav be on the Princess Cecile when she picks us up, Lady Mundy?" Elemere asked.

Adele was cross-legged on the roof of the mansion with her data unit on her lap. She looked up from the display in which she'd immersed herself. She'd been reexamining electronic emissions from the Duilio with the aid of the Rainha's decryption algorithms, copied into her personal data unit during the voyage from Pellegrino to Dunbar's World.

For a moment Adele didn't speak. She was unreasonably—irrationally—angry at being drawn out of her task. When she had control of her temper she said equably, "I don't believe so. The Landholder told us both he expected to accompany Master Leary on the destroyer. Plans may have changed since we left Charlestown, of course."

Plans hadn't changed—of course. Elemere knew that. He'd only spoken because he didn't want to sit in silence with his fears.

"Yes, I see," Elemere muttered. He looked at his hands; he'd washed them several times, going down into the building each time to do so. "I guess it really doesn't matter."

Adele smiled wryly, at human beings generally and particularly at herself. It wasn't surprising that Elemere didn't want to dwell on his present surroundings: the bodies of Waddell's guards lay all about them in pools of congealing blood. The night was cool enough that the corpses hadn't begun to rot, but there was the stench of feces some of the men had voided when they spasmed into death.

Adele Mundy too wanted to escape the present, though she'd chosen to leave through the display of her data unit. Elemere hadn't been responsible for creating the slaughterhouse, after all.

"When are you going to let me loose?" Councilor Waddell said. He'd tried to make the words commanding, but there was a quaver in his voice.

They glanced at him. They'd left the Councilor seated on the roof and tied to the hinge of the stairwell door.

Tovera giggled. Though she'd slung a captured sub-machine gun, she was holding a carbine as she prowled about the roof looking for signs of trouble.

There wasn't likely to be any, of course. The slaves might not've heard the shooting, since the small electromotive pistols which Tovera and Adele'd used didn't make much noise. Everyone for miles around must've noticed when multiple rockets blew down the gun towers and chunks of the nearby wall, but that wasn't the sort of thing that made sensible people want to come rushing closer in the night.

"You promised you'd let me go!" Waddell said, his voice rising. "Does your honor mean nothing?"

Elemere picked up the knife he'd dropped on the roof. He stepped toward Waddell. His face was stiff.

"No!" Adele said.

Elemere glanced over his shoulder at her; he didn't put the knife down. "No," Adele repeated, bringing the pistol out of her pocket. She had to jerk it free. The lining of her tunic was a synthetic of some sort; it'd melted to the barrel shroud.

Elemere turned and walked toward the edge of the roof. He stood facing in the direction of Charlestown, though that may've been coincidence. He didn't speak.

"Councilor," Adele said with the cold anger of a judge sentencing a particularly despicable criminal, "I told you that if you cooperated, we'd do you no further harm. If you misstate me again, I will consider you to have breached our agreement."

"I'm sorry," Waddell said, licking his lips. "Look, I'm sorry. But you can untie me now. I'm no danger to you, I just want to move my arms and legs."

Adele went back to her display. The commo module on the Rainha was Fleet standard. If the Duilio was using an identical model—and why shouldn't it be?—then if Adele gained access to the cruiser's systems she'd be able to read the scrambled operating data.

"Please!" Waddell said.

Adele looked at him again. Elemere turned to watch, though he remained silent.

"Councilor," Adele said very distinctly, "be silent. I can't risk you communicating with anyone until we've left Bennaria. You'll remain where you are until someone arrives to release you, which I suspect won't be too long after daybreak."

"If you leave me like this, they'll kill me!" Waddell said. His eyes were open but they'd gone blank. "You've killed all my guards. If the field hands find me like this they'll, they'll. . . . I don't know what they'll do! I have to get away from the house and hide!"

"Would you prefer that I kill you instead?" Elemere said. "I'd like that, you know."

"Mistress, there's a ship coming," Tovera said. "To the southeast, just above the horizon."

Adele looked in the direction indicated. She saw a hint of plasma like a glowing horsetail cloud. The trembling of the thrusters could be felt through the building though not as yet heard.

"Councilor," she said, rising carefully to her feet, "I'm not responsible for the way you've treated your slaves. I didn't have that in mind when I made my offer. But I won't pretend I'll regret it if your concerns prove well-founded."

She slipped the data unit into its pocket. Waddell began by shouting abuse, but his voice quickly choked into a terrified stammer. The Princess Cecile, dropping even closer to the ground as it approached the mansion, drowned him out.

"Victor One to Ship Six-three," Vesey called, giving Adele's formal call-sign. Daniel never used it, addressing Adele as "Signals" or "Officer Mundy" whenever he chose to be formal. "We'll land just outside the compound and I'll shut down the thrusters. I'd appreciate it if you boarded as soon as the ground has cooled enough for you to cross it, over."

Adele noted approvingly that Vesey'd used the laser communicator instead of one of the radio options. At low altitude in an atmosphere, the thrusters' exhaust billowed around the antennas. When the ions snatched electrons to change state, they created deafening static across the whole RF spectrum.

"Victor One, this is Signals," Adele said. "If you'll open the entry hatch as soon as it's convenient, we'll fly our aircar aboard immediately. Over."

Krychek wouldn't be getting his aircar back; they'd have to pitch it off the ramp rather than block the Sissie's entry hold. That was the sort of waste one got used to in war. Adele had melted a hole in her tunic pocket, and a dozen of Councilor Waddell's guards were cooling to air temperature. . . .

The corvette settled to the ground just outside the compound, spewing steam from the boggy soil and chunks of dirt baked to stone. Adele could see the Sissie's hull through the barred gate and the hole she'd blown in the masonry. A final bubble of plasma rose and dissipated into rainbow twinklings.

"Wonderful!" Vesey said, startled out of her careful formality. "Six's already lifted for Dunbar's World, and I want to get to the rendezvous point ASAP. Though without missiles, I don't suppose there's much we can do to help him. Victor One out."

I want to get there too, Lieutenant, Adele thought. Tovera was already at the controls of the aircar and Elemere was getting in. And I believe we just might be able to do more than you think.

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Contents

CHAPTER 23: Charlestown on Bennaria

Daniel, wearing utilities like the rest of the detachment and cradling a stocked impeller, stood on the tractor's right fender with his buttocks braced on the roll cage. Sun with a sub-machine gun was on the left side.

"'She was poor but she was honest!'" bellowed Hogg from the driver's seat. He had a good bass voice, though roughened by the carloads of doubtful liquor he'd put down over the years.

"'Victim of a rich man's whim!'" the Sissies on the flatbed sang, a few at first but all twenty by the end of the verse. On the way from the harbor on their commandeered vehicle, Hogg had started off The Bastard King of Georgia, Seven Old Maids and A Gentleman of Leisure. Woetjans had alternated with him to lead the detachment in a series of chanteys.

Locals stared in amazement from buildings, around corners, or out of door alcoves. Daniel hadn't noticed any group of more than three—a woman holding two young children by the hand as she sprinted down an alley—but evidence of large mobs was everywhere. Ground-floor windows were either shuttered or smashed, bullets had pocked building fronts, and on the two-mile route to Manco house the Sissies had passed at least a score of wrecked vehicles.

"'First he fucked her,'" the Sissies sang, "'then he left her!'"

Each verse ended in a full stop. This wasn't—Daniel smiled—a trained chorus, but the singers' enthusiasm drowned out the jangle of track pins and cleats on the pavement. They were chewing up the street, no mistake, by driving cargo-shifing apparatus at top speed through the middle of the city.

Two men, each carrying a length of pipe and a bottle, stood on the steps leading into an apartment block. Sissies waved and called cheerfully. They were in good humor, but everybody in the detachment had an impeller or a sub-machine gun. The locals backed up the stairs, not running exactly but not wanting to have that many gunmen watching them either.

Manco House came in sight to the left, a brown stone column. "Here," Daniel said, then realized Hogg might not be able to hear him. He banged on the woven wire side of the driver's cage, then pointed to the tall structure. Hogg nodded.

Manco House didn't have windows on the ground floor, only a steel door wide enough to pass a large truck; the second floor windows were narrow slots. One of the latter and two of the larger—barred—windows on the third floor had been broken out, but it didn't look like there'd been a serious attack. No reason there should've been, of course; but then, mobs don't need much reason.

"Shall I take us in, master?" Hogg shouted as they jangled toward the vehicular entrance.

"No, just turn around and I'll go in through the wicket," Daniel said. The pedestrian door, also steel, was in a separate alcove instead of being inset in the larger valves. "I don't expect to be long."

Hogg pulled the tractor and lowboy in a sweeping curve, then shut down the big ceramic diesel. As Daniel hopped down, Hogg slid out of the cage and faced the Sissies on the trailer.

"Me and the master's going in!" Hogg said. Daniel pressed the call plate, a flush crystal disk in the wall. "You can keep the wogs from stealing the truck while we're gone, I guess."

"I'm coming!" said Woetjans, and pretty much all the others shouted the same thing. It sounded rather like a frog pond after an evening rain.

"None of you are coming!" Daniel said. Holding his impeller at the balance, Daniel tossed it to Hogg with a straight-armed motion. "I don't need you tramping around while I talk to my colleague."

"You hope you don't, you mean," Hogg muttered, but he wasn't seriously objecting.

Daniel grinned as he turned again to the door, still shut. They may even have agreed with him, but they understood from his tone that there wasn't going to be more discussion.

"Yes?" said the plate in a clipped, sexless voice. "Who's there?"

"Open up, Luff," Daniel said, his anger suddenly rising. "You don't have to worry about a mob breaking in if you open the door while my crew's down here, but you bloody well do have to worry if you don't open it!"

It was probably only a few seconds before the latch clicked and the door swung inward, but it was a little longer than Daniel was happy with. He grinned and shook his head as he stepped through. He supposed he was feeling the strain himself; he ought to be used to this sort of thing.

Luff stood in the entrance corridor. He wore a long beige robe with soft slippers, and his hair was disordered.

"I don't have a soul left here!" he blurted as he turned to the lift shaft. "Not one! My employees all left me to whatever the mob decides to do. And none of the Councilors will talk to me either!"

"I don't think there's much danger at present," Daniel said as the lift rose. Luff seemed to be taking him up to his sixth-floor office, probably the best choice from Daniel's viewpoint. That's where the communications gear would be. "Though if you'd like, we can carry you back with us to the Princess Cecile."

Which'd be a great deal less safe than anything likely to happen in Charlestown, but it wasn't the time to say that.

"I can't do that!" the agent snapped. "There's critical trading information here, matters of the greatest import! If I should abandon my post, why, I'd be ruined!"

If you really think the locals are going to lynch you from a lamppost, thought Daniel, then I'd say there were other jobs than being a flunky in Ganpat's Reach.

The lift stopped. Luff bowed him forward, then pursed his lips in sudden irritation. He'd treated his guest with the courtesy due a superior, then remembered that Daniel was an officer in the RCN rather than a Bennarian Councilor.

Concealing his flash of anger, Daniel said, "As I say, things have quieted down a good deal." Shrugging he added, "And this is quite a strong building, a fortress. If you've got a few gas bombs or—"

"Oh, nothing like that," Luff said, a sneer in his voice. They entered his office. He'd drawn the drapes, and the only light was from a small fixture on the desk. "I'm a gentleman, you know."

"Ah," said Daniel, nodding sagely. There were various ways to take the agent's comment, but he found viewing it as humor the best and most natural response for him. Daniel very much doubted that his father'd killed anyone personally, but he was quite sure that in similar circumstances Corder Leary would've been standing in the doorway with a gun and the complete determination to use it on the first prole who came at him.

The agent sat at his desk and hunched forward. "They'll be back as soon as it gets dark," he muttered into his hands. "They burned Layard House the first night, you know? He'd taken all his guards out of the city with him. They attacked Waddell House first, but Waddell left most of his guards here and they drove the mob off with gunfire."

Luff shivered. "I can't shoot. I'm alone and I can't do anything," he whispered.

"On the contrary, Master Luff," Daniel said heartily, "you're in a position to aid Cinnabar greatly. I need the use of one of the barges belonging to Manco Trading to transport cargo upriver."

"What?" said Luff, raising his head. "Give you a barge for personal use? And at a time like this! Why, I moved them north of the city for safety sake, you know."

Instead of responding immediately, Daniel stepped to the outside wall; Luff twisted to watch him. In place of curtains, a polarizing screen darkened the window. He threw the switch in the corner to turn the wall into a single clear panel looking out over Charlestown. A haze of smoke hung over a complex of buildings to the northwest, perhaps Layard House.

Daniel walked back to face the Manco agent across the desk; he remained standing. "Master Luff," he said, crossing his hands behind his back, "I'm not asking you to do anything for me personally. I need the use of the barge to carry out an RCN mission."

"To help Corius, you mean!" Luff said like a dog snapping in fear.

"To prevent Port Dunbar from becoming an Alliance base, sir!" said Daniel, not shouting but certainly intending to be heard. "Because the Alliance personnel attached to the Pellegrinian forces have already started preparations for that. The Manco family may not be enthusiastic about Councilor Corius gaining greater influence on Bennaria, but I'm quite sure that they'll be even less happy about an Alliance squadron across their trade routes."

"What?" Luff said. He jerked against the back of his chair, not straightening so much as putting another few inches between himself and Daniel. "That can't be true! The war's purely a matter between Pellegrino and Dunbar's World."

"It most certainly is true," said Daniel. "We've captured Alliance personnel and stored data which lays out the Alliance plan in great detail."

That was technically correct, but the information had to be pieced together from bits and pieces; even then it required a great deal of interpretation. The conclusion required absolute confidence in the analysis Adele had done while the Rainha was en route to Dunbar's World. Daniel—all the Sissies—had that confidence, and so presumably did Adele's other employer. People who didn't know her well might question it, however.

"Oh my God," Luff said. All the bluster'd gone out of him, but he continued to stare at Daniel instead of lowering his head again. His mouth dropped slightly open and his lower lip trembled. "Oh God."

"I'm not here to threaten that you'll be executed for treason, Luff," Daniel said, deliberately softening his tone. "You'll have no problem with your employers or with the Senate, so long as you act in line with your duties as a Cinnabar citizen."

This whole business was a calculated performance, the sort of thing he'd seen his father do many times. Daniel hadn't understood the nuances when he watched it, but the knowledge was there nonetheless for when Corder Leary's son needed to bully someone into action without raising a hand.

"I'm quite confident we can thwart the Alliance designs," Daniel continued. "So confident that I'm staking my life and my ship on it. But I need you to order a barge to the Princess Cecile in Charlestown Harbor ASAP."

"You realize I'm ruined, ruined or dead, if I do that, don't you?" Luff said bitterly. "Whatever you or Senator Manco do to me, Waddell will see to that!"

Daniel pursed his lips. "Come here, Luff," he said, walking around the desk again. He gestured. "Come here to the window, man."

He stretched out his hand, thinking for a moment that he'd have to grab the fellow by the shoulder and lift him. Luff rose of his own accord before they touched, though with a grudging expression.

"What is it then, Commander?" Luff said. He sounded tired and disgusted, nothing more. "Is my salvation, do you think?"

"No sir, the reverse," Daniel said. "Look out there. Do you see Councilor Waddell? Do you see any sign of the power you believe he has?"

"He'll be back!" Luff said.

"Will he?" Daniel demanded. "And even if he is, Luff, he's a fat foreigner and you're a Cinnabar gentleman! What do you care what Waddell thinks? He didn't have the balls to stay in his own city with a fortress to live in and three hundred men to defend him! He went scuttling off!"

"If Corius wins, that won't help either," Luff said. It was a statement, not a protest. "I've had it regardless."

"Buck up, man," Daniel said, hearty again. He put his arm around the Manco agent's shoulders. "The RCN is going to put a spoke in the Alliance's wheel, and when we've done that it won't matter who's in power in Charlestown. Whoever it is'll have a healthy respect for Cinnabar citizens, because they know the RCN'll hand 'em their heads if they don't."

He patted Luff on the back and stepped away. "I'd say it was your best choice, my good fellow," Daniel said with a broad grin. "But the truth is, it's the only choice you have that won't result in you being condemned as a traitor. What do you say?"

Luff shuddered. He closed his eyes, then turned away and wiped them fiercely with the back of his right hand.

"What do you want, then?" he whispered. He seated himself back at his desk, already reaching for the integral phone pad. "A barge? All right."

"Just that," Daniel agreed. His face remained impassive, but in fact what he'd just done made him queasy. It'd been necessary; but it made him aware that many of the things he despised his father for might've been necessary also.

"Dorlitus, I need you to bring A79 back to the harbor," Luff said, his face intent. Daniel had heard the voice on the other end of the line only as a narrow crackle; the agent was using an in-ear plug. "It'll take you less than an hour, won't it?"

The air crackled again.

"No, I don't think it is too dangerous," Luff said, sounding brusque and professional. "I think it will be tonight, though. That's why I want to get the contents of the strong room in Warehouse 12 aboard the freighter Pomponio immediately. There's three million florins in jewels and furs, all of it easily disposed of if the rioters get their hands on it. We can't take the chance."

Crackle.

"All right, I'll expect you inside the hour at the company pier," Luff said. "Till then."

He thumbed off the phone switch and glared at Daniel. "There," he said harshly. "Are you happy? Just take your gang to Manco Pier and wait for the barge to arrive."

"What did you mean about the strong room?" Daniel said in puzzlement. "We might be able to carry some cargo, but—"

"There's no cargo!" Luff said. "There's nothing, just you and your men waiting on the pier. Dorlitus wouldn't have returned to the harbor simply because I told him to; but he'll come to steal three million florins in goods. Which will be blamed on the mob, of course, And besides, what does he care?"

Luff shrugged. "You'll have to persuade him to do what you say when you get aboard," he added. "I assume you can manage that, can't you? You've assured me how resourceful the RCN is, after all."

"We can persuade him, yes," Daniel agreed quietly. "Thank you, Master Luff."

"Oh, don't thank me," Luff said. He gave a brittle laugh. "I have it on good authority that it's no more than my duty as a Cinnabar citizen. Now you'd better get out of here, Commander. You have work to do, I'm sure."

Daniel opened the office door but paused. "Luff," he said. "Come with us. I won't tell you it's going to be safe, but you'll be with friends."

"Thank you, Commander," Luff said with surprising dignity. "But I believe I'll stay here. It's my post of duty, after all. . . and I'm not a Bennarian to abandon it."

Daniel waited for a further moment, then threw the Manco agent a salute before striding for the lift. It wasn't according to protocol: the fellow was a civilian and therefore not authorized to receive the salute of an RCN officer.

But it felt right anyway.

* * *

Hogg's water taxi had remained at the Mazeppa. The Infantan who'd just ferried Adele and Tovera between ships knocked on the library door and said, "Lady Mundy to see you, lord."

"Send her in, Pyotr!" the Landholder called. "My dear Mundy, a great pleasure to see you again."

The servant opened the door and stepped back. Adele made a tiny gesture with her left index finger. Having her bodyguard present would set the wrong tone for the interview with the Landholder.

Even so slight a motion had sent a dull ache all the way up to Adele's left shoulder. The Medicomp had repaired the physical damage; even the bruising was nearly gone. Some nerve pathways had been rerouted, though, and for the moment they were registering neutral inputs as pain.

That would pass in time, the Medicomp had assured Adele. All it meant for now was that the pistol had moved from her left to her right tunic pocket.

Tovera shrugged; Adele started down into library. Before the door closed behind her, she heard Tovera say, "Is there a place a girl could get a drink around here, spacer?"

While still aboard the Princess Cecile Adele'd seen Tovera take a Drytab which would metabolize alcohol in her stomach. She didn't know whether her servant ever drank for pleasure, but she was very definitely at work now.

Landholder Krychek waited at the bottom of the stairs. To Adele's surprise, he had a striking blonde woman on his arm. Both beamed at her.

Adele almost missed the last step. "Master Elemere?" she said.

"Just Elemere, milady," the blonde said, dipping in a graceful curtsey. Her—well, his—dress was gold with shimmers of green and purple as the light changed. "You and Commander Leary gave me not only life but a reason to keep on living."

"Here, sit," said Krychek, ushering Adele to the chair where she'd sat before. "I set out the Vaclos. You liked the vintage, I believe?"

Adele remained standing. She nodded to Elemere to make it clear she wasn't snubbing him, but she returned her eyes to Krychek. "This isn't a social call, I'm afraid, Landholder," she said. "I'm here to negotiate with you. And with. . . Elemere, that is, as a matter of fact."

"So, we negotiate," Krychek said calmly, offering her the long-stemmed glass he'd just filled with wine. "But we negotiate as friends, do we not? And we can sit as we negotiate, surely?"

Adele seated herself, feeling uncomfortable. She smiled—mentally, at least, because she didn't feel the humor touch her lips—at herself. She knew that this business would involve some stressful passages. She'd have preferred that the Infantan treat her with professional courtesy rather than the kindness of a friend, given that they might not be friends at the end of it.

Krychek sat opposite her with a glass of brandy. He raised an eyebrow. Elemere remained standing, his fingertips resting on the Landholder's shoulder.

Setting her wine untasted on the adjacent table, Adele said, "Master Leary intends to steal a Bennarian destroyer and with it drive a Pellegrinian cruiser off Dunbar's World."

Krychek laughed, though the sound was initially muffled because he'd clamped his lips over a swallow of brandy. "Ho!" he said when he got the liquor down. "He doesn't half have dreams does he? I'd say you meant steal a cruiser to fight a destroyer, but the Bennarians don't have any cruisers."

"Is that possible?" said Elemere, frowning. "It doesn't sound possible."

"Well, dear one," the Landholder said as he patted the hand on his shoulder, "let's say that it's an ambitious aim, even for the redoubtable Commander Leary."

His face sobered as he returned his gaze to Adele. "I do not mean that in mockery, Lady Mundy," he said. "I have the highest regard for your captain's abilities. What you outline is, however, a daunting task indeed."

"Daniel is well aware of that," Adele said, using the given name deliberately. "Nevertheless, his mission requires it, so there's no choice."

She touched her thigh pocket but left the data unit where it was. She'd have liked to have the wands between her fingers, but that too would send the wrong signal.

"He wishes to hire you and your retainers, Landholder," she went on. "To have any chance at all. It will, of course, be very dangerous. Your reward, if we succeed, will be in keeping with the risk."

Krychek had been raising his glass for another drink. He paused and put it down very carefully on the table.

"Mundy. . .," he said, and paused to clear his throat. "Lady Mundy, I regret, I very much regret to refuse you. Yet I must."

"But Miroslav, it's the Commander who—" Elemere said.

"Not now, dear one!" said Krychek. "This is men's business!"

He stood up, desperate to move rather than gaining a height advantage over Adele. Understanding that, she remained seated. It struck her—without either amusement or anger—that the Landholder was implicitly classing her as a man and Elemere as a woman. Though if it was worth distinguishing by gender—this did almost cause her to smile—that was probably an accurate assessment.

"I suggested this course to Master Leary," she continued, "because I recalled you saying you wished to enter service with Headman Ferguson. It's my hope that you'll be willing to follow a better man in a better cause."

"Lady Mundy!" Krychek said, forcefully enough to sound threatening to someone easier to threaten than Adele. Besides, she didn't think that was his intent. "I owe you and I owe Commander Leary a debt of honor, a very great debt. But I am a man of honor, milady! I am Landholder of Infanta and cannot join the Cinnabar navy, whatever I think of the worm Porra who rules from Pleasaunce today. I am not a traitor!"

"If you were not a man of honor, milord," Adele said, "Master Leary wouldn't have made this offer. We depend on it, because only a man of honor can recognize honor in another."

For effect she took her glass from the table and sipped the wine. She found it easy to keep her voice calm and her words clipped; indeed, it was hard to do anything else.

"Of course you wouldn't serve the RCN, Landholder," Adele said. "But will you serve a Leary of Bantry?"

"What?" said Krychek, startled out of his anger. "What? But that's the same thing, surely? Leary of Bantry is Commander Leary."

"Not in this instance," Adele said firmly. "The Princess Cecile is a private yacht, her crew are spacers hired by Bergen and Associates—a firm owned by the Learys privately. And the Sibyl, when we've stolen her, will certainly not be an RCN ship."

Krychek's brow furrowed. From his expression he might be furious, but Adele suspected he was thinking about what she'd just said.

"You may be a pirate, of course," she added, "subject to hanging if captured by any civilized power. But you won't be an RCN officer."

Krychek guffawed and turned to the tantalus. He lifted the decanter and drank from it.

"The Pellegrinians call me a pirate already," he said, lowering the square crystal bottle, "and who knows? It may be that they are right. Faugh, I spit on them!"

He did spit, a long, accurate pitch into the presumably false fireplace across the compartment.

"But even if I were willing, how would this happen?" he said. He looked at the decanter, scowled, and set it back on the secretary. "My ship cannot lift, even to orbit, until the thrusters are replaced. That will take time, and there's no chance of the work being started until the riots subside."

"I'm afraid the Mazeppa will have to be abandoned," Adele said. "As you note, it can't be moved in its present condition. Perhaps it'll be possible to salvage it later, but that can't be expected."

She shrugged. "Of course if you die, as seems likely," she said, "that won't matter anyway."

The Landholder looked at her in delighted amazement, then burst out laughing again. "Oh!" he said. "So Leary thinks I'm one of those death or glory boys he can trick into following him by saying how dangerous it is, yes?"

"Yes, that's correct," Adele said, sipping more wine. She looked over the top of her glass. "You are, of course. And so is Master Leary, as I'm sure you realized since you've looked into his record."

Krychek began laughing so hard that he had to bend over. The decanter in his right hand tapped the floor twice; Elemere bent gracefully and swept it away from him before it shattered.

"Ho, you're clever devils, you Cinnabars!" the Landholder said when he'd gotten his breath. "Crooked as corkscrews, every one of you. So crooked you're straight! So!"

He hugged Elemere, then seated himself and eyed Adele. "The Mazeppa is a clapped-out old whore, no loss," he said, shrugging. "My collection of tobacco pipes, that I will regret. Still, I have lost much in the past and at my present age I must look to the future. Your Daniel Leary will make us whole, you say?"

"Daniel will do very much better than that," Adele said. "If he survives, of course."

"Of course," said Krychek. "Of course. . . "

Then in a thoughtful tone he repeated, "So. We accept. What are we new Leary retainers to do, milady?"

"A few of you will join the crew of the Princess Cecile," Adele said. She put down her glass empty. "Most of you'll be taken to the Squadron Pool, by barge I gather because there's no proper ground transportation system here."

"You have numbers?" Krychek said, becoming businesslike. "How many the corvette, how many to Squadron Pool, I mean?"

"I don't, no," Adele said. Elemere'd filled her glass. She'd almost waved him off, but her mouth was still dry and she found the wine pleasantly astringent. "You'll have to discuss that with Daniel when he returns from arranging the transportation."

"And the Bennarians will give us a destroyer?" Krychek said, raising an eyebrow. "Or we will have to fight our way in, which? Either is acceptable."

Adele's lips suddenly felt parched. Nonetheless she set down the glass and crossed her hands in her lap as she met the Landholder's eyes squarely.

"That brings me to my other request," she said. "Daniel has determined that it wouldn't be practical to fight our way into the base—not if we intend to fly out in a destroyer, that is. Entry will require very specific authorization by Councilor Waddell, and to gain that I need the help of Elemere."

She looked up at the entertainer. "I want you to visit Waddell's estate in company with me and my servant Tovera," she went on. "The business will be extremely dangerous, but while it entails risk I can assure you that there will be no dishonor."

She smiled coldly. Almost the only way I do smile, I suppose, she thought. Aloud she said, "On my honor as a Mundy."

Elemere stood transfixed. Krychek looked up at him and said, "I don't think—"

Elemere silenced the Landholder with a curt gesture; his eyes were locked with Adele's. "You say there will be no dishonor," Elemere said. "How will you ensure that?"

"If things go wrong," Adele said calmly, "Tovera or I will kill you. Even if that means we're captured ourselves."

"Lady Mundy, I can't allow—" Krychek began.

"Be quiet, Miroslav," Elemere said as a mother might speak to a child. He continued to look at Adele. "I didn't object to the danger. This is my business. Lonnie is my business."

A slow smile spread across Elemere's face. He was really quite attractive, though the matter was of no greater importance to Adele than the color of his dress. "What do you need from me?" he asked.

Adele shrugged. She'd finished the second glass of wine also, she found. "Only your presence," she said. "And—"

She transferred her eyes back to Krychek.

"—from you, Landholder, the aircar in Hold Three. It's the only way we'll be able to get to Waddell's estate in time to make this work."

"How do you know about the aircar?" Krychek said, his face again a glowering mass of furrows. "I've never let anyone on Bennaria see it!"

Probably because you were planning an illegal last-ditch measure which required an aircar, Adele thought. This man wasn't the sort who'd quietly starve with his retainers because the local power structure resented him.

Rather than describe the extent to which she'd penetrated the Infantans' systems, she said, "Well, it's time for them to see it now. We'll return with Elemere to the Princess Cecile. Just us—Tovera can drive the aircar."

She rose from her chair. "We won't actually leave the Sissie until it's fully dark, but I have a great deal to prepare."

Krychek got up. Elemere kissed him but slipped out of his grasp before his arms could close. To Adele, Elemere said, "Should I change clothes?"

"I'd rather have the extra time aboard the Sissie," Adele said. "We'll have clothing there for you."

Elemere offered Adele his hand. "All right," he said. "We can go now."

He looked over his shoulder. Krychek stood as though waiting to be shot. "Don't worry, dearest," he said to the Landholder.

As Elemere and Adele started up the stairs he said, "I thanked you for what you and the Commander did for me, Lady Mundy. Now I'd like to thank you on behalf of Lonnie also."

* * *

CHAPTER 24: Bennaria

"Unidentified vehicle," said the a guard in the gatehouse a quarter mile from Waddell's mansion, "halt in the air so we can examine you. Or else!"

"I'm halting as directed," Tovera replied with cool courtesy as she brought the aircar to a hover. They were speaking on a 2-meter hailing frequency, though the ground unit was transmitting with enough power to come in on light bulbs. "We're unarmed as we said we'd be, and we have the package with us. Over."

Adele, seated beside Tovera, was using her data unit to identify the sensors tracking them. The house proper was in the middle of a twenty-acre compound including a terraced formal garden. The stone perimeter wall had projecting towers at the northeast and southwest corners. Each mounted an automatic impeller which was now aimed at the aircar.

The slave lines were a half mile north of the compound. Rice paddies stretched into the night in three directions.

From the roof of the mansion the aircar was being followed by a basket of twelve six-inch rockets, free-flight weapons which pirates salvoed to strip the rigging of their prey. . Their high explosive warheads wouldn't penetrate a starship's hull or damage the cargo, but any one of the dozen could blast an aircar into bits too small to identify. That wouldn't have concerned Adele even if she'd been thinking of the matter in personal terms rather than as data on her display

"All right, you can come in slowly," the guard ordered. He was trying to be forceful but sounded nervous instead. Waddell had retained only a dozen or so troops here; the remainder were defending his townhouse from the mob. "Land on the roof where you see Hesketh with the light. Slowly, mind!"

"Mistress?" asked Tovera, speaking over the sound of the fans. The car's top was retracted to make it easier for Waddell's guards to examine them, and the intake rush was very loud even when the vehicle wasn't moving forward.

Adele rechecked her preparations; she had the necessary codes and two alternative means of access to Waddell's security system. "Yes," she said, setting the data unit on the floor without shutting it down. "You can go in, now."

Tovera nudged the yoke forward. The aircar staggered, then wobbled badly for the first twenty feet before she adjusted the fan tilt to smooth their descent.

Tovera treated driving as a technical problem to be solved by intellect rather than through any emotional understanding of the process. She wasn't a good driver, but she was good enough.

Adele smiled. Tovera'd learned to act as though she had a conscience in much the same way, come to think.

There was a grunt from the back seat; Adele looked over her shoulder. Elemere'd slid against the locked door. He met her eyes but didn't speak.

The entertainer wore the gold dress, but his makeup was smudged and he'd lost his wig. His wrists were tied in front of him. A cable anchored on the supports for the running boards ran between his elbows and back; the bights at either end were padlocked. Elemere could neither brace himself with his hands nor cushion the impact when the car threw him from side to side.

A man waving a glowing yellow wand stood on the roof of the mansion. The small lights on the coping showed he had a sub-machine gun in the other hand. A second guard waited with his back to the penthouse over the stairhead; he was covering the oncoming aircar with a carbine.

The tower-mounted impellers continued to follow the vehicle as it settled toward the roof. Electronic lockouts would prevent the guns from firing in this direction—otherwise they'd riddle the mansion they were supposed to protect—but the guards either didn't know that or were bluffing.

The car bobbed violently as it crossed the coping. Tovera's mouth was set in a hard line. When the vehicle was completely over the roof, reflected thrust bounced it higher. Instead of easing the throttles back, she cut them completely. The car dropped what was probably only a few inches but felt to Adele like a foot. Elemere jolted forward, crying out as the cable bit the inside of his elbows.

Adele rose carefully, keeping her face blank. She didn't want to show any expression that Tovera could take as disapproval. She stepped out of the car, raising her hands as she did.

"Hold it right there!" said the guard who'd dropped his yellow wand in order to grip the sub-machine gun with both hands. The other guard continued to point his carbine, though his aim wavered from Adele to Tovera and back again. "Sir! Sir! They're here!"

The penthouse door flew open; the landing beyond was brightly lighted. Four guards came out, three holding carbines and the fourth with a slung sub-machine gun and a resonance scanner.

The last was older than the others and had three vertical gold bars on his sleeves. He ran the scanner over Tovera—who watched with a bemused expression—and then Adele.

"Councilor?" he said, cocking his head—unnecessarily—toward the microphone on his epaulet. He'd closed the armored door behind him. "They're not armed."

"I told you we wouldn't be," Adele said, letting waspishness color her tone. "I'm here to make peace, I told you that too. And we brought him."

She nodded toward Elemere, bolt upright but silent. He followed the guards with his eyes, but his head barely moved.

"Put a light on him!" rasped a speaker over the door. Adele recognized Waddell's voice. She moved to the side while a guard obediently shifted his carbine to his left hand to shine a powerful belt light on the entertainer.

"That's him!" said Waddell. There was a video pickup in the frame of the speaker. "By God that's him."

"Of course it's. . .," Adele said, but she let her voice trail off when the door opened again. Waddell stepped out, followed by half a dozen guards including an officer with a sub-machine gun.

"So!" sneered the Councilor to Adele. "You brave Cinnabars have had to climb down a peg, have you not?"

"Look," she said quietly. "Commander Leary's neck is stiffer than mine. I just want to get home, and without repairs here in Charlestown we'll be six months doing that. If we even can."

She made a curt gesture toward the entertainer. "I don't doubt that Leary'll fume when he learns what I've done," she said, "but I'll bet he'll be just as glad it happened. He was drunk when he took the fellow in, and when he sobered up he was too much a Leary to get himself out of the mess. So I'm getting us all out."

Instead of responding, Waddell leaned into the car. He chucked Elemere under the chin with his index finger. Several of the guards stiffened and aimed at the entertainer's head. Elemere jerked away and screwed his eyes shut. He didn't speak.

Waddell straightened, laughing like oil gurgling from a punctured drum. "Bring him in," he said to the guard officer. "Into. . . we'll start in my bedroom, I think."

"You two," the officer said to a pair of guards. They handed their carbines to the men next to them and fumbled with the cable.

"Here, we have to unlock it," said Adele. Then, when the guards now standing between her and the car didn't move quickly enough, "Out of the way, you fools!"

She bent over and released one end of the cable; Tovera was on the other side of the car. The padlocks were programmed to open to either's right thumbprint. Straightening together, Adele and her servant slid their hands down the front of Elemere's low-cut dress and withdrew the pistols hidden in the false bosom.

Adele fired across the car, hitting the guard holding two carbines just below the left eyesocket. The officer dropped his scanner but he didn't have his hands on his sub-machine gun before she'd shot him in the middle of the forehead. He'd ducked. She'd aimed for the bridge of his nose, but it didn't matter because her pellet punched through the bone at this short range.

Tovera's shots were sharp as whiplashes. Something tugged Adele's right sleeve, the hand of a spasming guard or possibly the pellet itself. It didn't matter.

A guard clubbed his carbine at Tovera. Adele shot him through the neck, missing his spine. Blood sprayed from entrance and exit wounds, then from the victim's mouth. He lost his grip on the weapon but fell into Tovera before slumping to the ground. She continued to shoot with the regularity of a metronome.

Adele had three targets in a clump, trying to raise their weapons. Hesketh still held the light wand. She shot out his right eye, shot the man to his left through the chin and throat, then snapped a shot at the third as he tried to duck behind the car. She thought she broke his spine with a raking shot, but Tovera glanced down and fired twice more to be sure.

Everyone on Adele's side of the car was down; across from her, only Waddell and Tovera were standing. The Councilor's mouth was working but no sounds came out. Ozone, ionized aluminum from the driving bands—a thick, hot smell that both bit and coated Adele's throat—and the stench of blood filled the air.

The barrel of Tovera's pistol shimmered bright yellow. She jerked the sub-machine gun from the hands of a dead officer, then slapped Waddell with the pocket pistol. He screamed and staggered backward, pressing both hands to the welt on his cheek. Tovera giggled, then tossed the pistol onto the floor of the aircar.

"That's enough!" Adele said sharply. She reloaded her own weapon, ignoring the barrel's searing glow. The skin on the back of her wrist throbbed and the fine hairs had shrivelled, but she didn't think she'd have blisters.

Adele didn't know how many of the twenty rounds in the magazine she'd used, but experience had taught her it was probably more than she'd have guessed. She had a lot of experience at this. . . .

A carbine bullet whacked the coping and howled into the night. The automatic impellers in the towers wouldn't fire, but the guard to the southwest was using his personal weapon. Waddell wouldn't have thanked him, if Waddell's mind'd had room at the moment for anything but sheer terror.

Tovera dropped the knife from a guard's belt with which she'd just freed Elemere's wrists. She raised her sub-machine gun. The tower was out of effective range, and neither she nor Adele were particularly skilled with long arms. Besides, there was a better way. . . .

"No!" said Adele, dropping the pistol into her pocket. It'd probably char the lining but that was one more thing that couldn't be helped. She bent into the car and grabbed her personal data unit. "Get Waddell inside. And you too, Elemere, now!"

The tower guard emptied his carbine in full auto. At least one bullet hit the masonry—Adele heard the spang-ng-ng of the ricochet—but most of the burst punctured empty sky. Tovera waited beside the doorway while Elemere pulled Waddell inside, gripping him by the crotch of his loose, silken pantaloons. In the entertainer's free hand was the knife Tovera'd used to cut him free.

Bent over and clutching the data unit to her chest, Adele ducked into the penthouse. She sat cross-legged on the landing, ignoring the others for a moment except to snap, "Close and bolt the door. Now!"

A console in the mansion's basement controlled the basket of rockets. Rather than go to its physical location, Adele slaved it to her data unit. She'd prepared for the contingency, though if asked she'd have said it was unlikely she'd need it. Preparation was never wasted effort.

The guard had reloaded. This time he aimed. A shot rang from the armored door, and Adele thought she heard another slap the wall. The fellow was wasting his time at present, but he had to be silenced before it'd be safe to fly out again.

Waddell screamed from the room at the base of the stairs. "Don't harm him till I'm there!" Adele said, moving the orange dot across the targeting display in a series of jerks. Daniel would do a much better job. . . . She felt the building shiver as the basket gimbaled to follow the display.

The pipper lay in the middle of the gun tower. Adele sent a firing signal. Two rockets blasted out, jolting the landing enough to lift Adele. She hadn't expected two at the same time. Red flashes and balls of dirty black smoke concealed the target a heartbeat before the doubled explosions shook the mansion. Windows shattered, maybe all the windows on the mansion's facade.

The smoke and dust cleared. A ten-foot section of wall had collapsed—the rockets obviously weren't very accurate—but the other warhead had destroyed the impeller and the fool who'd been standing beside it to shoot.

Adele began swinging the basket toward the other tower. The panoramic view at the top of the targeting display showed the surviving guard leaping off the back of the wall and presumably running in the direction of the slave lines. Just in case he decided to come back, she loosed three pairs of the remaining rockets, shattering that corner of the compound into smoking rubble.

She rose and put away her data unit as the echoes rumbled to silence. Waddell was spread-eagled face up on the floor below. His wrists and ankles were tied to the legs of a couch and two heavy chairs; he could move his limbs, but not easily and not far.Elemere squatted near the Councilor's head; Tovera stood at his feet. All three watched in silence as Adele descended the stairs; Tovera was smiling.

"Councilor Waddell," Adele said with polite formality. The man had fouled himself; feces were oozing through his thin pantaloons. "I want you to call Commandant Brast at the Squadron Pool and order him to offer Commander Leary and his companions every facility. If you do that in a sufficiently convincing fashion, I will leave you unharmed when we go."

Waddell's left cheek was swollen to angry red except for the long white blister in the middle of it. "Well, without further harm," Adele corrected herself primly.

"I hope he refuses," Elemere whispered. "I really hope you refuse, Councilor."

He jabbed before Adele could stop him. Waddell screamed again, but the knife point merely slit the blister. It began to drain toward Waddell's ear.

"I'll do it!" Waddell wailed. His eyes were shut but tears squeezed from beneath the lids. "I'll do anything you say!"

Tovera giggled again. "Don't worry, Elemere," she said. "Perhaps we'll have better luck the next time we need something from him."

* * *

"Good evening, Commandant Brast!" Daniel called cheerfully as he approached the gate in the perimeter of the Squadron Pool. It stood out like a tunnel through the vines and small trees interweaving the remainder of the chain-link fence. "I'm glad you came to meet me yourself."

Two Sissies and a pair of Infantans were tying Manco A79 to trees on the shore just below the Pool. Yellow warning lights were spaced across the top of the dam; area lights on poles threw a white glare on the ground before the gate and the lock building. The Administration Building brightened the sky in the near distance, but intervening trees hid the structure itself.

Except for Daniel, the barge's two hundred passengers remained aboard. Even Hogg and Landholder Krychek stayed, though only after loud protest. Daniel couldn't take any chance of something going violently wrong, and ultimately both men were intelligent enough to accept a decision they knew was correct.

"Look, Commander," Brast said miserably through the gate. A junior officer'd been pointing a carbine at Daniel from the gatehouse; now he pulled the weapon back and concealed it behind him. "I've got the highest respect for you and the Cinnabar Navy, but I can't let you in. I've got orders, you know."

The lock on this side of the dam was big enough to pass the barge, but a dozen Bennarian spacers were hunched around the control building, pointing automatic weapons. A79 wasn't carrying any cargo except spacers, so it'd be faster to march them in by the wicket than to lock the barge into the Pool. Once the formalities had been taken care of, that is.

"Of course, Commandant," Daniel said, continuing to approach with a friendly smile. "It's about your orders that I came, as a matter of fact. I hope that you'll let me—alone and unarmed, I assure you—through the gate to discuss matters, but I can fully understand if you're afraid to."

He was wearing utilities and a commo helmet, but he'd left his equipment belt in the barge instead of simply detaching the holster from it. He wanted to look professional but not threatening.

The junior officer standing beside Brast whispered in his ear. The fellow's name is Tenris. . . . Brast gripped the gate with both hands and rested his forehead against the steel wire with his eyes closed. The pose emphasized his missing little finger.

Brast straightened. "All right," he said harshly, sliding the bar clear; it hadn't been locked. "Come in, then."

He glanced toward the bargeload of spacers. Daniel had told them to keep their weapons out of sight, but he wasn't sure any of the Infantans had obeyed. "Just you alone though!" Brast added.

"Of course," Daniel said. He carefully swung the gate shut after he entered. He gestured toward the gatehouse. "You have a commo terminal here, don't you? There should be a call from Councilor Waddell any time now—"

He prayed there'd be a call and bloody soon.

"—to explain the change in circumstances. I'd sooner stay near my crew, but if you like we can go back to your admin building."

"Why would Waddell be calling here?" Tenris said. The overhead light distorted his puzzled expression into a counterfeit of fury. "Especially the way things are now, I—"

"Commandant!" called the officer in the gatehouse. "They're relaying this from HQ. They say it's Councilor Waddell for you! What do you think it means?"

"Bloody hell," Brast whispered as he stepped into the gatehouse, a shack of 5-mm plastic sheeting on four vertical posts. If Tenris follows him, there won't be room for me. Daniel gripped the Bennarian by the shoulder and moved him back, then squeezed in behind the Commandant.

The terminal's flat-plate display was unexpectedly sharp, except for the three-inch band across the middle in which squares danced like the facets of a kaleidoscope. Despite the flaw, nobody who'd seen Councilor Waddell could doubt it was him on the other end of the connection. He was flushed and agitated, and he held his right hand to his cheek.

"Councilor?" Brast said. He tried to salute but his elbow bumped the junior officer beside him. Now flustered, he continued, "Sir, this is Commandant Brast. You wanted me?"

"There'll be a Cinnabar officer coming to see you, Leary his name is," Waddell said in a hoarse voice. "Give him whatever he wants."

"Sir, he's here now," said Brast. "Ah—"

"Then give him what he wants!" Waddell shouted. He glanced to his side as someone off-screen spoke; the voice was only a murmur on this end of the connection. When he lowered his hand, Daniel saw the angry welt on his face.

Waddell glared back at the display. "He'll want a destroyer," he said. "Give it to him. Give him whatever he wants!"

"A destroyer?" blurted Tenris, listening from outside the gatehouse.

"But sir!" said Brast, too startled to be deferential. "The only destroyer we could give him is the Sibyl, unless you mean—"

"Yes, the Sibyl!" said Waddell. "Damn your soul, man, why are you arguing? It's necessary that Leary get everything he wants. Now! Now!"

"Sir, I understand you," Brast said. Daniel doubted whether that was true or anything close to being true, but it was the right thing to say. "But as you know, Admiral Wrenn has directed that—"

Waddell shook his fist at the display. "Damn you, man!" he cried, spraying spittle with the words. Droplets clung to the pickup, blurring the image slightly. "I'll have Wrenn shot if you like! Will that satisfy you? Now get on with it, do you hear me?"

"Aye aye, sir!" Brast said, saluting again. This time his subordinate edged back enough to allow the gesture. "I'll see to it at once!"

Adele's arm reached across the display area and broke the connection.

Brast turned, wiping his face with a kerchief he'd taken out of his sleeve. Daniel backed out of the shack and said, "May I direct my personnel to enter the compound, Commandant? Time's very short, you see."

"I don't understand this at all," Brast said in wonder. "Yes, yes, bring your people in."

He looked at Daniel sharply and said, "It's about the riots in Charlestown, I suppose? That the Councilor is so. . . forceful?"

"I can't go into the details now, sir," Daniel said politely. He nodded to the armed Bennarians standing close by, then opened the gate. Raising his voice he called, "Landholder Krychek, you may bring the crew in. Smartly now, if you will!"

"I don't know what Wrenn's going to say," Brast muttered. He sounded more puzzled than concerned. "I suppose it doesn't matter. He's gone off to his estate."

The spacers from the barge trotted toward the gate. They were singing Rosy Dawn. Daniel heard Woetjans bellowing along with the Infantans, adding to the volume if not precisely to the music.

"Yeah, but he'll be back after things settle down," said Tenris, shaking his head in wonderment.

"One step at a time, gentlemen," Daniel said, beaming with pleasure. "We'll deal with that when we need to. After all—"

He smiled even more broadly at Brast and his subordinates.

"—we've dealt with everything that's come up thus far, haven't we?"

That wasn't really true for the Bennarian officers, but by God! it was for the Princess Cecile and her crew.

CHAPTER 25: Bennaria

"Six, this's Woetjans," the bosun said, using the command channel because Daniel hadn't figured out how to set two-way links on the Sibyl's Alliance-standard commo system. "We've got that day-room hatch fixed. I guess she'll hold as good as any other seal on this dozy cow, though that's not much to say. Didn't the Bennarians do any maintenance after they took possession? Over."

Strictly speaking, Pasternak as Chief of Ship should've been in charge of repairing hatch seals, but the engineer had his hands full and more in the Power Room. Damage control parties were largely formed of riggers, since they were rarely on the hull while the ship fought in sidereal space. Woetjans and her personnel had plenty of experience in the basic hull repairs that Daniel'd set them to in the emergency.

He suspected the answer to the bosun's question was, "No, the Bennarians didn't do any maintenance," but that was a historical puzzle which didn't matter on the eve of combat. Aloud he said, "Check the rig, then, as much as you can before we lift. That'll be at least ten minutes; maybe more, I'm afraid. Six out."

He glanced at the Power Room schematics again. Pasternak was methodically examining the pumps, lines and the antimatter converters. Daniel'd have liked the job to go more quickly. Personally, he'd have cut more corners than the engineer, but Pasternak knew what he was doing: operating without part of the propulsion system merely degraded performance, but having part of the system fail under load was potentially catastrophic.

But bloody hell! the man was slow.

If Adele were aboard to configure the commo system, Daniel would've been able to ask Woetjans how the Infantans were working out. He couldn't do that—or anyway, he wasn't willing to—with Krychek on the same channel. He needed Adele.

The Landholder was at the gunnery console, putting the equipment through its paces in a thoroughly competent fashion. He'd rotated the two dorsal turrets, then elevated and depressed the paired 10-cm plasma cannon. The ventral positions would have to wait until the Sibyl lifted off—at present they were recessed into the hull and under water—but Krychek had done full software checks on them as well.

The Landholder had made his appointment as Gunnery Officer a condition of him signing on with Leary of Bantry. Neither he nor Daniel had used words quite that blunt, but they'd both understood the nub of the negotiation. Sun'd been furious—he'd stayed with Vesey on the Princess Cecile instead of transferring to the Sibyl as a result—and Daniel himself had been doubtful, but it turned out that Krychek had the necessary instinct and experience both.

Daniel sorted through the three course projections he'd set. That was excessive: he didn't imagine that there'd be ten minutes difference among the options over the short voyage back to Dunbar's World. It was the way Uncle Stacey had taught him, though. In a situation like the present one, Daniel acted by rote.

Returning to Dunbar's World would be quick and easy. What happened there, when they faced a cruiser in an unfamiliar destroyer, wouldn't be easy at all. Daniel gave the display a quick, hard grin: it certainly might be quick, though.

The top of his display was a real-time panorama. Daniel glanced at it, as much as anything to take his mind off his Pasternak's glacial caution, and saw hundreds of Bennarians watching from the administration building and the roughly-mown grounds. The naval personnel had their families with them, as he'd expected: a good third were women and children. But there was quite a number of spacers, too. . . .

Making up his mind abruptly, Daniel said to the midshipman beside him at the navigation console, "Officer Blantyre, take charge for a moment. I'm going to talk to the crowd."

"Sir?" said Blantyre in surprise, but Daniel was already on his feet and striding to the dorsal hatch. He could adjust the hull lights so that the spectators without night vision equipment could see him.

It wasn't till he was halfway up the ladder that Daniel remembered this wasn't the Sissie. He wasn't certain the Sibyl had public address speakers built into the outer hull, and he certainly didn't know how to activate them if they existed.

"Blantyre, this is Six," he said. "Can you tell if this ship has an external PA system? If it does, I want it slaved to my commo helmet. Over."

He supposed he could bellow through his cupped hands. And look like a fool, probably an inaudible fool. Damn, he should've thought it through before he started!

Daniel grinned. Maybe Pasternak was right.

"Six?" replied not Blantyre but Cory. He was in the Battle Direction Center with the dour, bearded Infantan second-in-command. "I've done what you want with the PA speakers, sir. I've watched Officer Mundy do it and I think I know how. Over."

Well, I'll be damned! thought Daniel as he stepped onto the hull. The antennas, telescoped and folded, were nearly waist high. Daniel jumped onto Dorsal 2 so that the motion itself would call the attention of those watching to him.

"Good work, Cory!" he said—and almost fell, startled by the boom of his own voice. Cory'd done good work, true, but he wasn't quite at Adele's level yet. She'd have made sure that intercom messages didn't key the external speakers. Of course since Daniel himself didn't know how to do that, he wasn't going to complain about the midshipman's performance.

Daniel ran through ways to start his speech. He stood higher than the Bennarians, even those on top of the admin building. All the more reason to address them as equals. . . .

"Fellow spacers!" Daniel thundered. It was a mixed crowd, but the men he cared about were all spacers. "For the first time in her career, the Sibyl's going off to battle the enemies of Bennaria. She'll be fighting for you, for your families, for your world against a powerful enemy."

He struck a pose, hands on hips and jaw jutting outward. "Now, you can let your ship lift without you," he continued, feeling the echoes roll back to him from the wall of the building. "You can let strangers, Cinnabars and Infantans and spacers from a dozen other planets fight for you and protect you from the Pellegrinian warlord who expects to enslave you. You could do that—but you won't, not if you're men! Not if you ever expect to look your wives in the face, not if you ever hope your children will look up to you!"

Daniel eyed the spectators. There was more a puddle of them than a sea, but even a handful of men with experience of the destroyer's systems could be the difference between life and death in the coming hours. Every ship had quirks, and the Sibyl's new crew wasn't going to have a shakedown cruise to determine hers.

"You have one chance, men!" Daniel said. "We'll be lifting shortly. Come join us to drive away the enemies of your planet and to save your women from the lust of a warlord's mercenaries! Join us and know that if we succeed, you'll come back rich as well as honored by all who know you. I'm Daniel Leary, the luckiest captain in the RCN, and I swear it to you!"

"Hip hip!" a chorus of spacers shouted, their powerful voices reverberating from the Sibyl's open entrance hold.

"Urra/Hooray!" they and at least a few of the Bennarians replied. Most of the leaders must be Infantans, but Woetjans was there also.

"Hip hip!"

"Hooray/Urra!" This time the Infantans were clearly in the minority. The locals had joined in with a will, and by God! a few of them were starting for the Sibyl's boarding ramp.

"Officer Blantyre," Daniel boomed, "get down the entry hatch at once and see to it that these brave men are assigned to their proper places aboard their ship! And now—"

Daniel thrust out his right arm, his hand clenched, in a Bennarian salute.

"Hip hip—"

"Hooray!"

* * *

"Will Miroslav be on the Princess Cecile when she picks us up, Lady Mundy?" Elemere asked.

Adele was cross-legged on the roof of the mansion with her data unit on her lap. She looked up from the display in which she'd immersed herself. She'd been reexamining electronic emissions from the Duilio with the aid of the Rainha's decryption algorithms, copied into her personal data unit during the voyage from Pellegrino to Dunbar's World.

For a moment Adele didn't speak. She was unreasonably—irrationally—angry at being drawn out of her task. When she had control of her temper she said equably, "I don't believe so. The Landholder told us both he expected to accompany Master Leary on the destroyer. Plans may have changed since we left Charlestown, of course."

Plans hadn't changed—of course. Elemere knew that. He'd only spoken because he didn't want to sit in silence with his fears.

"Yes, I see," Elemere muttered. He looked at his hands; he'd washed them several times, going down into the building each time to do so. "I guess it really doesn't matter."

Adele smiled wryly, at human beings generally and particularly at herself. It wasn't surprising that Elemere didn't want to dwell on his present surroundings: the bodies of Waddell's guards lay all about them in pools of congealing blood. The night was cool enough that the corpses hadn't begun to rot, but there was the stench of feces some of the men had voided when they spasmed into death.

Adele Mundy too wanted to escape the present, though she'd chosen to leave through the display of her data unit. Elemere hadn't been responsible for creating the slaughterhouse, after all.

"When are you going to let me loose?" Councilor Waddell said. He'd tried to make the words commanding, but there was a quaver in his voice.

They glanced at him. They'd left the Councilor seated on the roof and tied to the hinge of the stairwell door.

Tovera giggled. Though she'd slung a captured sub-machine gun, she was holding a carbine as she prowled about the roof looking for signs of trouble.

There wasn't likely to be any, of course. The slaves might not've heard the shooting, since the small electromotive pistols which Tovera and Adele'd used didn't make much noise. Everyone for miles around must've noticed when multiple rockets blew down the gun towers and chunks of the nearby wall, but that wasn't the sort of thing that made sensible people want to come rushing closer in the night.

"You promised you'd let me go!" Waddell said, his voice rising. "Does your honor mean nothing?"

Elemere picked up the knife he'd dropped on the roof. He stepped toward Waddell. His face was stiff.

"No!" Adele said.

Elemere glanced over his shoulder at her; he didn't put the knife down. "No," Adele repeated, bringing the pistol out of her pocket. She had to jerk it free. The lining of her tunic was a synthetic of some sort; it'd melted to the barrel shroud.

Elemere turned and walked toward the edge of the roof. He stood facing in the direction of Charlestown, though that may've been coincidence. He didn't speak.

"Councilor," Adele said with the cold anger of a judge sentencing a particularly despicable criminal, "I told you that if you cooperated, we'd do you no further harm. If you misstate me again, I will consider you to have breached our agreement."

"I'm sorry," Waddell said, licking his lips. "Look, I'm sorry. But you can untie me now. I'm no danger to you, I just want to move my arms and legs."

Adele went back to her display. The commo module on the Rainha was Fleet standard. If the Duilio was using an identical model—and why shouldn't it be?—then if Adele gained access to the cruiser's systems she'd be able to read the scrambled operating data.

"Please!" Waddell said.

Adele looked at him again. Elemere turned to watch, though he remained silent.

"Councilor," Adele said very distinctly, "be silent. I can't risk you communicating with anyone until we've left Bennaria. You'll remain where you are until someone arrives to release you, which I suspect won't be too long after daybreak."

"If you leave me like this, they'll kill me!" Waddell said. His eyes were open but they'd gone blank. "You've killed all my guards. If the field hands find me like this they'll, they'll. . . . I don't know what they'll do! I have to get away from the house and hide!"

"Would you prefer that I kill you instead?" Elemere said. "I'd like that, you know."

"Mistress, there's a ship coming," Tovera said. "To the southeast, just above the horizon."

Adele looked in the direction indicated. She saw a hint of plasma like a glowing horsetail cloud. The trembling of the thrusters could be felt through the building though not as yet heard.

"Councilor," she said, rising carefully to her feet, "I'm not responsible for the way you've treated your slaves. I didn't have that in mind when I made my offer. But I won't pretend I'll regret it if your concerns prove well-founded."

She slipped the data unit into its pocket. Waddell began by shouting abuse, but his voice quickly choked into a terrified stammer. The Princess Cecile, dropping even closer to the ground as it approached the mansion, drowned him out.

"Victor One to Ship Six-three," Vesey called, giving Adele's formal call-sign. Daniel never used it, addressing Adele as "Signals" or "Officer Mundy" whenever he chose to be formal. "We'll land just outside the compound and I'll shut down the thrusters. I'd appreciate it if you boarded as soon as the ground has cooled enough for you to cross it, over."

Adele noted approvingly that Vesey'd used the laser communicator instead of one of the radio options. At low altitude in an atmosphere, the thrusters' exhaust billowed around the antennas. When the ions snatched electrons to change state, they created deafening static across the whole RF spectrum.

"Victor One, this is Signals," Adele said. "If you'll open the entry hatch as soon as it's convenient, we'll fly our aircar aboard immediately. Over."

Krychek wouldn't be getting his aircar back; they'd have to pitch it off the ramp rather than block the Sissie's entry hold. That was the sort of waste one got used to in war. Adele had melted a hole in her tunic pocket, and a dozen of Councilor Waddell's guards were cooling to air temperature. . . .

The corvette settled to the ground just outside the compound, spewing steam from the boggy soil and chunks of dirt baked to stone. Adele could see the Sissie's hull through the barred gate and the hole she'd blown in the masonry. A final bubble of plasma rose and dissipated into rainbow twinklings.

"Wonderful!" Vesey said, startled out of her careful formality. "Six's already lifted for Dunbar's World, and I want to get to the rendezvous point ASAP. Though without missiles, I don't suppose there's much we can do to help him. Victor One out."

I want to get there too, Lieutenant, Adele thought. Tovera was already at the controls of the aircar and Elemere was getting in. And I believe we just might be able to do more than you think.

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