Lt. Leary, Commanding (48 page)

Adele took the pistol by the receiver with her right fingertips and offered the butt to Kelburney. The flux had heated the barrel to yellow heat in only two shots. It was a powerful weapon, meant to punch through body armor.

"Thank you for the loan, sir," Adele said.

The only noise in the Hall was the continuing echo from the commotion moments before. The Dalbriggan officers on the dais drew back with sharp expressions, more tense than they'd been while Adele was aiming the weapon.

Kelburney took the pistol expressionlessly. He looked at the truncated statue, obviously judging the likelihood that he could duplicate Adele's feat—and correctly deciding that there wasn't a snowball's chance in Hell of it.

"Here, woman," he said, handing the pistol back to Adele. "Anybody who can shoot the way you can ought to have a gun of her own."

And what in heaven's name am I supposed to do with a cannon like this?
Adele thought; but she took the weapon with a tight smile. That was the politic thing to do, after all, and it was a
very
nice piece of workmanship.

Kelburney turned to face the assembly and placed his hands on his hips. "Siblings of the stars!" he said. "Free citizens of Dalbriggan and the universe! Is it your will that I and your council examine these strangers and make policy based on what we learn?"

The shout built from a dozen throats to a hundred; finally the whole assembly shook the walls with its bellowed response. At first there were a few cries of, "No!" among the general assent, but as the volume built so did the agreement.

Kelburney raised his arms skyward. The shouting stopped, though the Hall still rumbled with shuffling feet and indrawn breaths.

"Siblings!" Kelburney said. "Will you be bound by our decision?"

This time there was no opposition. The assembly's decision was implicit in its first response; and this would not, Adele suspected, be a good environment for people who recalcitrantly espoused a minority view.

Kelburney gestured Adele and Daniel both close. He shouted into their ears, "The Council Chamber's through the door behind us. I'm glad to learn the RCN has a proposition for me, because as it chances I have a proposition for the RCN."

He gestured them ahead. Others from the dais were already going into the room beyond, though the Hall proper still reverberated with the enthusiasm of the full assembly.

I wonder,
Adele thought,
if I should ask for a holster and belt while I'm at it?
 

_T
he
Sailing Directions
said the Selma pirates took slaves along
with their other loot, so Daniel was surprised to see that the only servants in the semicircular council chamber were a half-dozen adolescents and the two aged cripples who'd brought the cup around at the assembly. From the freedom with which they bantered with the officers, all were freeborn Dalbriggans.

Adele walked beside him, holding the heavy service pistol as gingerly as a spinster with a baby. She could put it in a cargo pocket since the barrel had cooled by now, or she could lay it on the scarred table. Daniel didn't say either of those things because Adele was as able to see the possibilities as he was; and as with the spinster, there was more than a little pride in her expression.

She leaned close and said, "Interesting. They don't allow slaves to be present during governmental deliberations. That shows better judgment than most slaveholders display."

The Astrogator pointed to a seat in the middle of the table and said, "I'd like you there, Leary, facing me. Unless you're scared to have your back to the door?"

Daniel chuckled. He gestured Adele to the chair beside the one indicated and said, "I doubt I have as many enemies on Dalbriggan as you do, Kelburney. Now that you've raised the question, though, I'll try to control my fear that somebody'll shoot through me to get you."

The Astrogator snorted. He lowered himself into the chair across from Daniel—handsawn wood of simple design like the others, but the only one in the room with arms—and said without preamble over the sound of the others scraping into their seats, "I saw your ship when you landed. Looks to me like you didn't show the best judgment in who you mixed it with."

"The fight wasn't our choice," Daniel said calmly, "and it's not over yet. On my honor! it's not. But yes, the
Sissie
needs some work. My crew will handle the labor, but I'll be purchasing supplies from your stores."

"We run to small craft here," Kelburney said. "There's no masts on Dalbriggan to fit a corvette like yours."

He turned his right palm out to forestall anything Daniel might try to interject. For the moment at least it appeared the form "I and your council" meant "I, the Astrogator." The ships' officers ranged up and down the long table watched carefully as they drank from the mugs servants were handing out, but they held their peace.

"We can help you get what you need, though," Kelburney said. He smiled like a hungry cat. "If you've got the balls."

Daniel spread his fingers on the tabletop as he considered the Astrogator. A boy put a goblet carved from rock crystal on the wood beside him; the mahogany-colored fluid foamed slightly.

Taley and the
Princess Cecile
's riggers could fish and weld spars meant for Dalbriggan cutters into a working set of masts for the corvette; everybody in the room—with the possible exception of Adele—knew that. Kelburney was offering a plausible excuse as a bargaining ploy.

That was fine: Daniel was here to bargain. He smiled back and said, "I think you'll find the RCN always has the courage to do its duty, Astrogator Kelburney; whatever the circumstances. Why don't you describe your plan so that I can decide where my duty lies?"

"Bring in the prisoners," Kelburney called. A door hidden behind hangings at the side of the room opened. Six concerned-looking spacers entered behind the black-clad woman who'd presided at the lectern during the assembly.

Daniel watched the newcomers with no expression. There were things he couldn't permit. If this pirate chief so overstepped himself as to offer Cinnabar slaves in return for RCN help—

"Not our prisoners, Captain," Kelburney said. The wariness in his voice showed that he'd picked up on Daniel's change of expression. "Distressed spacers, put off in a lifeboat in the Dalbriggan system by pirates from Falassa."

He gestured to the cripples filling mugs from a tapped keg on the serving table behind him. "Kephis, Bradley—give our guests some beer while they explain to Captain Leary how well we've cared for them after their misfortune."

The young servants offered the next batch of refilled tumblers to the newcomers. Daniel sipped from his own goblet. The beer was dark and more bitter than he was used to, but an RCN officer didn't look alcoholic gift horses in the mouth.

Falassa was the habitable planet of star S2. The Selma pirates had generally operated as a loose sodality which chose its leader in common, with the Council Hall here on Dalbriggan as the seat of government. As the
Sailing Directions
made clear, there was nothing new about a ship, a squadron, or one of the three planets going its own way for a time, however.

Massacre rather than reconciliation was the preferred method of repairing divisions. Daniel smiled faintly. The
Princess Cecile
had other important business before it, but he'd hoped when he received his orders that his mission might involve fighting pirates. He could scarcely complain about having his wishes granted, could he?

"My name's Slayter," said the balding forty-year-old leader of the spacers brought in for display. "I'm captain and owner of the
Pretty Mary
out of Rohaska."

Several of the
Sissie
's crew had been born on Rohaska. It was a Cinnabar protectorate with a long spacefaring tradition.

Slayter took a deep draft of his beer. He and his fellows were starting to relax at the sight of Daniel in his RCN dress uniform. Though the spacers seemed to have been fed well enough, Daniel could imagine that the chance of being shot on a pirate's whim must have been a matter of realistic concern to them.

"
Was
captain and owner," Slayter said. "We were on route to Strymon with a cargo of fuel cells when three cutters hit us when we came out of the Matrix."

He tried to drink again, but his hands had started trembling. "They shot my mate," he said into the trembling cup. "He was trying to hide his private cargo in a mast, not that it would've mattered. They took the
Mary
."

Slayter pressed his arms to his chest and seemed to get control of himself again. "I thought they were going to kill us all, shoot us or just space us, but they put us on our lighter and dumped us here. They said to tell all the siblings on Dalbriggan that unless they want to starve on the scraps Kelburney lets them have, it's time for a new Astrogator."

Kelburney waved Slayter to silence. He said to Daniel, "Captain Aretine doesn't think our treaty with Cinnabar was a good idea, Leary. She calls herself Overlord of Falassa and she's got most of the captains based there agreeing with her. They were always a flighty, foolish lot."

An officer midway down the table spat ringingly into a spittoon against the back wall. He appeared to be underscoring his Astrogator's judgment of the Falassans.

"Now, I don't know what there may be available in ship chandleries on Falassa," Kelburney continued, "but I figure a twenty-three hundred ton freighter like the
Mary
—"

He cocked an eyebrow toward Slayter. The Rohaska captain jumped as though he'd been jabbed with a cattle prod. "Yes, yes," he said. "Twenty-three hundred tons and as clean—"

Kelburney waved his hand; Slayter fell instantly silent. Daniel kept his face still, but he didn't like to see a man being trained like a dog.

"The masts from a freighter of that size ought to be just the ticket to put your corvette in apple pie order," Kelburney said. "And Slayter here would be more than happy to offer them to his savior."

"Oh, yes," said Slayter. "Oh, if you'll just get my ship back, sir,
anything
."

"You know where the
Pretty Mary
is held, then?" Daniel asked. He lifted his goblet and swirled it, watching patterns in the remaining bubbles while his mind spun skeins of action.

"Aye," said Kelburney, "she'd be at Homeland on Falassa along with Aretine and the crews who back her. Aretine's gathering ships from Horn—"

Horn was the planet orbiting S3. The three stars of the Selma Cluster were within four light-years of one another and followed a common trajectory.

"—besides those from Falassa, and I shouldn't wonder if she had some Dalbriggan captains wondering if she didn't have the right idea."

The officer who'd spat before did so again. This time, as the bucket quivered with the hollow peevishness of titanium, the fellow said, "Bugger 'em!"

Others nodded. Not all did.

"There'll be vessels on guard above Falassa as there were here, I presume?" Daniel said. Beside him, Adele had her personal data unit on the table beside her new pistol. The display was a pastel blur above the little box.

"Cutters on picket," the Astrogator said. "That's no problem—we'll take care of them for you. It's the
Hammer
that you'll have to handle yourself. She's a hulked cruiser, no masts but she has her High Drive and a full weapons suite.
And
her crew'll be awake. With the noises Aretine's making, they'll figure that unless somebody here blows
my
head off, something's going to happen on Falassa."

He looked around the room, smiling grimly. "Nobody's tried it here," he said. "Yet."

Daniel nodded twice while his mind finished its series of considerations. He exchanged glances with Adele; she nodded crisply. He didn't know precisely what she meant by the gesture, but it was clearly positive.

"Very well," Daniel said. "Astrogator Kelburney, as an officer of the RCN it's my duty to eliminate a band of pirates operating against citizens of the Republic. I direct you under the terms of your treaty to aid me in this endeavor."

"I said we'll take out the pickets," Kelburney said. "And you won't have to worry about a thing on the ground. We'll take care of that too."

The spittoon rang again.

"That's well and good," Daniel said, sounding—deliberately sounding—like his father addressing clients who'd gotten in over their heads and begged his help. "There'll be a few other items as well. First, you'll have to embargo movement from Dalbriggan until it's time to launch the operation. That may be several days."

Kelburney's brow furrowed momentarily at Daniel's tone; then it cleared and he slapped the table. "Of course!" he said. "Do you think we're children? We'll party till it's time to leave. Anybody who tries to get off-planet before then winds up in space without a suit. Is that all?"

"Not quite," said Daniel, letting his own smile widen. He'd been concerned by the Dalbriggans'—by the pirates'—loose discipline, but that clearly didn't extend to operational matters. "Officer Mundy here must have full access to any logs or other records that have information regarding the movements of the
Hammer
over the period she's been in orbit. That would be several years?"

"Ten," said Kelburney. "The Falassans bought her off of Umbro at scrap prices."

"That should be a satisfactory sample," Daniel said brightly. "We'll get to work immediately, then."

"She
is
a bloody cruiser," said the officer who'd been spitting.

"Yes, and we
are
a corvette of the RCN," said Daniel, rising to his feet. "I consider that a fair match."

He beamed at the gathered pirates. He was boasting, of course; but if he hadn't meant the words, he wouldn't have spoken them.

The armored hatch of the Battle Direction Center squealed as it opened outward into Corridor C. Without taking her eyes from her console Adele said, "Are you blind or are you simply too stupid to read the sign on the door? Keep out!"

The hatch started to cycle closed again. Midshipman Vesey looked up big-eyed from the console to Adele's left and said, "But mistress, that was the captain!"