Lt. Leary, Commanding (47 page)

The charges had no fragmentation effect, of course: the explosive's violence would rupture any casing into its constituent atoms. The blast alone would puree everybody on the porch and deafen their neighbors half a mile away.

"Hey, make way, you ratfuckers!" called a front-rank pirate over his shoulder. "These guys juggle bombs!"

"Hold up!" Daniel called, though the veterans around him didn't need to be warned. They'd already paused on the second step for the message to spread over the noise of the crowd.

A corridor opened through the crowd, caused in part by Dalbriggans going into the Hall ahead of the strangers. The game was over. The locals had pushed, the Cinnabars had pushed back; there was no longer any point in standing out on the porch when the real business would take place inside.

Adele stepped close and said, "They aren't frightened."

Daniel nodded. "Well, no more than we are," he said with a grin. "I assure you, tossing around hydrogen charges scares all thought of sin right out of me. . . . "

He felt his grin broaden into a sunny smile. "Well, perhaps not
all
thought," he added. "Did you see the little blonde in leather dyed the color of her hair?"

"The one with the right side of her scalp shaved and the hair on the left side down to her waist?" Adele said. "Yes, as a matter of fact I did notice her. Though I obviously lack the eye of a connoisseur."

"Let's go!" Woetjans ordered, starting the party forward again. Hogg had stopped juggling. He slipped two of the bombs into his pockets and held the third in his left hand with his thumb though the safety ring. His grin showed he'd gotten over his ill-temper of a few minutes before.

The Hall had a cathedral ceiling forty feet high at the ridgepole. Clear panels set in the roof lighted the interior during daytime, but Daniel noted that a system of cold-discharge illumination ran along the roofbeams. Though the Hall appeared rustic, its fittings were as advanced as those of the Senate House in Xenos . . . which also held to the appearance of past times for tradition's sake.

The Hall's only furnishings were a curving, five-step dais at the end opposite the opening and a lectern at one side of it. A score of Dalbriggans stood at various levels of the dais, a hierarchy that both Daniel's interests in natural history and his experience in the RCN fitted him to understand. The man alone in the center of the top row was tall, thin, gray-haired, and as surely in charge as Speaker Leary at the height of his power a decade before.

"Astrogator Kelburney," Adele said, speaking into Daniel's ear. She avoided using the intercom except when there was no other choice.

With the spreading nonchalance of water poured from an overturned bucket, locals entered the Hall around and behind the Cinnabars. Occasionally a Dalbriggan would join the leaders on the dais, but for the most part they stood in self-defined groupings on the open floor. At a quick glance Daniel judged about a third of those present were women, though their numbers on the dais formed a lower percentage.

A middle-aged woman in severe black, the only person Daniel saw who wasn't armed, stood at the lectern. She spoke, her voice filling the vast room from scores of speakers hidden in the roofbeams. "Captains and officers to the front, common crew in the body of the Hall! No exceptions!"

Daniel turned his head with a smile. "Boarders," he said. The Hall was alive with sound. "Officer Mundy goes with me, the rest of you take your places in the front of the crowd. Over."

"Sir, I'm an officer!" Woetjans said, her face screwed tight with concern. She held the length of alloy tubing that was her weapon of choice in any circumstances that permitted it.

"Yes," Daniel said. "And I'm your captain. Carry out your orders, Officer Woetjans."

Those closest could hear them, but this discussion wasn't over the intercom. Woetjans wasn't concerned about status. She simply wanted to be beside Daniel if trouble started.

Halfway up the pillar which supported the roof at the open end was a platform holding a life-sized statue of the man at the top of the dais. It was of gold; not a significant cost increment to a spacefaring nation which could gather metals in any volume in asteroid belts, but nonetheless an untarnishable assertion. Its blue-glinting eyes were faceted sapphires.

Daniel smiled. His father hadn't gone to quite that length, but he would certainly have appreciated Astrogator Kelburney's gesture.

Hogg nudged Woetjans in the ribs. "Hey," he said. "Stick by me, cutie, and I'll let you hold one of my bombs."

The bosun looked down at him, then barked a laugh. "Right!" she said, smacking the tubing into her left palm with a sound like a whiplash. "Boarders with me. We're going to get a good spot to see Cinnabar's best make monkeys out of a bunch of wogs!"

"Come on, Adele," Daniel said. Loud enough to be sure that everyone in his party could hear, he added, "We'll get a good view of the room from the top step, don't you think?"

Most of the smells peculiar to this part of Dalbriggan were unfamiliar to Adele, but they were pleasant enough. She particularly liked the spicy sweetness that seemed to come from the wood of the Hall itself.

The hog-scavenged dump was downwind, a considerable improvement on her apartment in Xenos where the street was cleaned primarily by the heavy spring rainfalls. It wasn't a matter of great concern to Adele, but she noticed it as she noticed many things.

She walked forward with Daniel. Their escort had stopped a pace back, but there was no longer a crush that Woetjans and her henchmen had to muscle through. The Dalbriggans had left room for the escort at the front of the gathering; the space was tight, but the Cinnabars were no worse crowded than the locals themselves.

"As the local representatives of the Republic of Cinnabar," Daniel declared at the foot of the dais, "my companion and I will take our places beside the Astrogator!"

He'd started out speaking at maximum volume. A hidden directional microphone picked up his words and amplified them around the Hall without need for human effort. Daniel let his voice drop and found that the public address system compensated with no more than a stutter.

He glanced at Adele and winked; she kept a straight face, concerned about what she was to do. This was worse than a formal dinner in the
Princess Cecile
's wardroom. There at least it was unlikely that she could make a mistake which would lead to the massacre of all her companions.

She smiled, a reflection of the amusement she knew Daniel would express if she'd been able to speak the last chain of thoughts aloud. That wasn't practical, so she had to laugh on her friend's behalf.

"Captain Leary stands by me," said the Astrogator. His voice had a resonance that could have filled the vast building unaided. "His officer stands on the bottom row where she belongs."

Daniel took the first step and the second at a measured pace, gesturing Adele along with a minuscule crook of his index finger. "When you come to Cinnabar," he said ringingly, "you follow Cinnabar custom. When Cinnabar comes to you, Astrogator Kelburney, you still follow Cinnabar custom. We represent the Republic!"

Daniel took the third step, then the fourth; none of the captains already on the dais moved to bar his way. Adele followed, watching her feet. The treads were deeper than she was used to, and it wouldn't help the mission if she were to fall on her face.

Kelburney laughed; it was impossible to tell how much of the humor was real. "Come up, then, Captain," he said. "And bring your bitch as well if you're so devoted to her."

They took their places on the top level, Daniel to the Astrogator's right and Adele beside Daniel. She turned and looked back the way she'd come. The Hall had very nearly filled during the time it took the Cinnabar contingent to walk its length. There were several thousand people present, more than Adele would've imagined possible from the Hall's forested environs.

"Silence for the cup!" said the woman at the lectern. So many people in a single room couldn't be really silent—their breathing alone was a deep susurrus like that of a sleeping dragon—but the voices stilled. A pair of servants came forward.

They were old, and both were crippled: the man stomped along on one leg and a peg, while the blast that scarred the left side of the woman's face had also burned off her arm. She carried a wineskin on a strap over her good shoulder. The man had a gold-mounted cup in his hands.

Adele's face hardened. The cup was made from the brainbox of a human skull. For a moment Adele had permitted herself to imagine that the able use of technology made Dalbriggan a sophisticated planet.

The woman filled the cup, lifting the strap with her shoulder and squeezing the wineskin between her elbow and torso. The man handed the cup to the Dalbriggan on the end of the bottom row. He drank, an honest swallow, and passed the cup to the officer beside him. She drank as well and passed the cup in turn.

Four more had drunk before the last handed the cup to the servants to be refilled. The ceremony continued.

Adele didn't let her mind wander; rather she slipped into a world where no one could touch her. It was a cold place and utterly colorless, but it was familiar to her. She'd spent a great deal of time in grayness since the day she learned that her family had been massacred, leaving Adele Mundy a destitute orphan.

She could function in this place but she couldn't feel a thing; which was generally for the best.

There was a sound in front of Adele. Her eyes locked into focus with those of the cripple offering her the refilled cup. "No, thank you," Adele said in a clear voice.

Daniel reached past her and took the cup. The bone was old; yellow on the outside, dark as the wine itself on the inside from generations of use.

"No!" said Kelburney. He stepped in front of Daniel on the broad tread and put his hand over the cup before Daniel could lift it. The Astrogator was taller than he'd seemed when the Cinnabars first entered the Hall, and his powerful wrists belied his slender appearance.

Kelburney wore a cloth-of-gold tunic over pantaloons of the same material. His wide belt and crossed bandoliers were scaly leather, sagging with the weight of ammunition, knives, and pistols in open-topped holsters. The weapons showed signs of hard use.

"She'll drink from the cup,
Captain
Leary," the Astrogator said, "or she leaves the Hall. That I swear, though a Cinnabar fleet orbits above us!"

Adele stared calmly at the tall Dalbriggan; her mind analyzed the situation as coldly as it would if she were not directly involved. Kelburney's boast that he'd defy a Cinnabar fleet was just that, a boast. The
Princess Cecile
was the only RCN vessel present, however—and it was quite clear from Kelburney's expression that his anger and determination were real. Tendons stood out on his neck.

Adele smiled. It appeared that the ceremony of the cup was a major aspect of Dalbriggan faith. Well, faith or not, it was equally important to Adele that she not sup with utensils made from human bodies.

"You misunderstand me, sir," she said. The hidden director controlling the parabolic microphone picked up her voice and amplified it so the whole room could hear. "My religion forbids me to drink—"

As Adele spoke, her eyes holding the Astrogator's, her left hand reached out and slid the pistol from the cross-draw holster at his left hip. She didn't know the weapon, but the range was too great for the light projectiles of the pistol in her own pocket.

"—and requires that if I do—"

Kelburney felt the weight of the pistol withdrawing. He tried to grab Adele's hand. Daniel caught his wrist. The two men remained locked together motionless. Kelburney's expression changed to amazement; Daniel only appeared soft.

"—I must kill the person who compelled me," Adele said.

She turned side-on to the far end of the Hall, the pistol extended in line with her left arm. She'd been trained as a duelist, not a pistolero.

The audience was shouting, but Adele doubted anyone was going to shoot at her so long as she was standing close to the Astrogator. The captains nearby on the dais were more of a threat, but they seemed willing to let matters take their course. Anyway, Adele couldn't control what other people did.

She could only control the pistol in her hand.

The weapon was stone-axe simple, with only a post and ring for sighting. At this range, a little over a hundred yards, Adele wouldn't have minded holographic magnification; but she'd make do.

The power was already switched to the coils. Kelburney wasn't the sort to let his last act in life be fumbling to take his pistol off safe.

Adele squeezed the trigger as she exhaled, both eyes open. The sound of the room departed like water vanishing down a drain. The front post was sharply focused; her target was a blue glint in a gray-gold blur.

WHACK!
 

The snapping discharge through the impeller rings was a surprise as usual, accelerating the heavy slug to several times the speed of sound. The pistol recoiled in Adele's hand, the muzzle lifting. It was well balanced, settling back on target as naturally as Adele's own familiar weapon would have done.

The head of Kelburney's statue twisted awry. Whether she'd hit the right eye or not, she'd certainly torn the casting enough that the sapphire flew out of its socket.

WHACK/WHANG!
 

In her concentration Adele hadn't heard the sound of the first slug's hammerblow on the metal, but she did the second as gold ripped apart. Long splinters, reddish against the age-blackened surface wood, stood out from the post like a halo where the shots had penetrated after striking the metal.

The top of the statue's head tumbled ringingly to the floor. Dalbriggans in the back of the Hall scrambled to get out of the way.

"I believe you have a second cup now, Astrogator Kelburney," Daniel said, releasing the older man and stepping back. "If you'll have somebody bring it up to us, perhaps you and I can use it to drink to a new understanding between your people and mine."

He smiled toward Adele. "At any rate," he added, "I believe you understand Officer Mundy better now."