Lt. Leary, Commanding (55 page)

Daniel waved back. That was only true, he suspected, if he lifted with crewmen on the hull reeving the last of the cables and mounting the sails. But if he gave those orders, neither Woetjans nor any of her riggers would complain about the danger.

Slayter had used the distraction to head for his freighter in the berth across the canal to the east. When Daniel moved the
Princess Cecile
from her blocking position by the river, he'd landed next to the
Pretty Mary
so that his crew wouldn't have far to transport the masts and spars they were commandeering.

Daniel preened himself mentally. He was learning how to set down on dry land without bobbling dangerously on reflected thrust. It wasn't a skill an RCN commander often needed, but someday it might be the difference between life and death.

Tovera stepped out of the main hatch. She looked oddly nondescript, even when carrying a submachine gun slung so that the butt was in her hand beside her right hip.

Tovera saw Daniel and nodded minutely. Two spacers coming back from town carrying a rolled carpet between them stepped sharply to the opposite side of the ramp, careful never to make contact with the servant.

Daniel's face became still. The nod meant that Tovera was bringing him a message that Adele didn't choose to send over the air.

He'd have walked toward the ramp to meet the servant halfway except that the howl of a two-stroke engine racing from the town drew his attention. Hogg had liberated an air-cushion scooter for the duration of his stay on Falassa. It bounced across a canal. Hogg was driving in a beeline toward the
Princess Cecile
with the little engine punched out. Daniel suspected he'd make better time if he crossed at the culverts instead of driving over the canals simply because he could, but Hogg had a fondness for the direct approach.

A fondness that had rubbed off on his charge, Young Master Daniel. Subtlety had its place, but there were worse tendencies in an RCN officer than the willingness to go straight for the throat of a problem.

Daniel stood where he was, flipping a coin mentally as to which messenger would reach him first. Tovera did, a few seconds before Hogg tried to stop the way he would in a truck and learned that redirected fans don't give nearly the braking effort that tires against a solid surface do. The scooter slid twenty feet past Daniel on a chorus of curses from its driver.

"Mistress Mundy wishes to tell you that the Astrogator has called an assembly of all siblings in half an hour," Tovera said with her usual look of cool amusement. "Twenty-seven minutes, now. He's told everyone to gather in front of the Cinnabar corvette."

"Ah," said Daniel. He touched the switch on his helmet, cuing it manually rather than using an oral command to engage the intercom. "Lieutenant Mon, please recall all personnel to the ship without delay. Captain out."

"Master, the whole load of pirates's coming here for a meeting!" Hogg cried as he leaped off his vehicle. "That's the Falassans, the ones still alive, besides all the lot we come with and any odds and sods from the third bloody planet besides, whatever the bloody name is! It don't sound like anybody's pissed off, but there's going to be a shitload of 'em swarming out here!"

"The third planet of the cluster is Horn," said Tovera without expression.

Daniel looked up at the riggers. "Woetjans?" he called, using his lungs instead of technology. "Don't be concerned about the visitors who'll be arriving shortly. Just keep working till you're done, because I very much want to be able to lift from here on a moment's notice."

Adele felt Daniel's presence behind her and turned. To her surprise, he'd changed into his Dress Whites since she last noticed him. She'd been busy, of course.

"Adele?" Daniel said. "I don't like to bother you, but could you make sure the external speakers are cued to my helmet? The simple way to learn would be to test the link, but I don't want to look uncertain in front of our visitors."

"Yes, I've connected you," Adele said. She got to her feet, feeling a trifle wobbly. She hadn't actually been at her console so very long, but she'd been
very
focused for the last half hour. "Would you like me to run the Astrogator's words through our system also?"

The ship was restive though quiet save for the sounds of machinery. The crew was at action stations. Along with all the normal assignments, Dorst had a squad of marksmen in the wardroom ready to join their fire to that of the automatic impeller at the open hatch. If things went wrong.

"Kelburney has speakers on his armored car," Daniel said. "I assume he intends to use them . . . but if you can disconnect those and switch his voice through ours, yes, please do it. The symbolism would be useful."

Adele turned and entered a preset command, using the console's virtual keyboard instead of taking her personal data unit out of its pocket. If
she could do it, indeed!
 

"Two minutes to go," Daniel said. "I believe I should be punctual even though the Astrogator hasn't directly informed me of the assembly. Although—"

He smiled broadly as Adele fell in beside him on their way from the bridge. Tovera waited at the hatch with Adele's gunbelt; Hogg had gone to join the squad of marksmen.

"—I don't imagine that he believes that I won't hear whatever he says that pertains to the RCN."

"There's been nothing to suggest an attack," Adele said. "But there's been no reason at all given for the assembly, just the order decreeing it. I'm truly sorry, Daniel. I've listened to conversations between Kelburney and his closest associates, and there was no hint of this till it happened. The only person whose opinion matters in an autocracy is the autocrat."

"Speaking as the captain of a warship, I wouldn't have it any other way," Daniel said, stretching with the care that his uniform's strait limits required. He grinned.

Adele walked down the companionway behind Daniel and with Tovera following her. He glanced back and said, "Adele, if you would, please arrange that the Astrogator doesn't speak until I have."

"Yes, I took care of that," Adele said in the dry tone she used when someone told her to do something obvious.
When a Cinnabar aristocrat attends a gathering of barbarians, of course he takes precedence.
 

She shook her head in self-amusement. She'd thought of herself as an egalitarian when she worked in the Academic Collections on Blythe. There, of course, she'd been surrounded by other well-born intellectuals.

A boarding party with submachine guns and grenades filled Corridor B in both directions from the entryway. Woetjans and Barnes headed the sections.

"You show 'em, sir!" a spacer called.

Woetjans snarled vainly for silence, but the whole party was cheering as Daniel and his companions walked into the sunlight. And perhaps that wasn't such a bad accompaniment after all.

The corvette and the captured freighter were at a corner of the port distant from other vessels. The plain before the
Princess Cecile
's main hatch had filled with pirates and the vehicles that had brought them to the assembly. There were several thousand of them, a staggering number in comparison to the empty purple wasteland Adele had seen a few hours before.

She sat on the deck, her back against the jamb of the main hatch, and brought her data unit live. At the top of the display Adele put a panorama of the crowd, but her own concerns were with matters that might not take place openly.

Tovera was across the hatchway, scanning the thousands of faces on the ground below. She too had specialized concerns.

Kelburney had parked his armored car at the bottom of the ramp. He stood with his back to the vehicle, behind a line of his bodyguards. On seeing Daniel appear, he started his oration.

The noise of the crowd, most of it drunk or still drinking, completely covered Kelburney's unaided voice. A technician with a desperate expression stuck his head out the rear hatch of the vehicle.

Daniel raised his hands in greeting. "Siblings of the Selma Cluster," his voice boomed. "I greet you in the name of Cinnabar and the RCN. Astrogator Kelburney, I'm particularly glad to see you."

He beckoned Kelburney forward with his left hand. "Come, join me and address your people from the deck of a Cinnabar warship."

It struck Adele that if the Astrogator hadn't been so determined to avoid informing Daniel of his plans, Daniel wouldn't have chosen to embarrass him in this fashion. The fact that only Kelburney and a few of his closest aides knew what was happening now made the insult bearable but all the deeper.

Kelburney's face went white, then red. Finally he rocked forward in a gust of laughter. Pushing through the line of his startled bodyguards, he strode up the ramp and took his place beside Daniel.

"I wished for a while that you were one of my captains, Leary," he said in a low voice. "Now I'm glad you're not, because I see I'd have to shoot you and your tech officer there—"

He nodded toward Adele.

"—before the month was out."

Adele looked at him. Kelburney wasn't a stupid man, but living in this milieu of drunken pirates had led him to the habit of making stupid boasts.

"And I'm not sure I could," Kelburney added, in the same whimsical tone.

Daniel clasped him, forearm to forearm. "Astrogator Kelburney," his amplified voice said. "Together we've put down a rebellion against your authority and an affront to the Republic of Cinnabar. I now request that you and your siblings join the RCN in teaching a lesson to those on Strymon who think to revolt against Cinnabar sovereignty!"

Where Adele sat, shielded by the curve of the corvette's hull, Daniel's voice through the speakers on the dorsal ridge was merely loud. In the front rank of the assembly it would be painful, though of course most of those listening had numbed themselves with ethanol.

"God's
blood
you're a clever bastard," Kelburney whispered. He faced the assembly, raising his hands as Daniel had done a moment before. Adele nodded to him.

"Siblings of the stars!" Kelburney thundered. "We've lived with the libels of the sanctimonious merchants of Strymon for as many generations as we've gone into space. Their lies, their treachery, these are well known to you."

He held out his left arm toward Daniel as though demonstrating a prized possession. "I've discussed these matters with Admiral Leary here, the son of Speaker Leary, the Emperor of Cinnabar. He has agreed to put the resources of the RCN at our disposal, to chastise the hypocrites of Strymon once and for all. Are you with me, siblings?"

Daniel glanced aside toward Adele and mouthed, "Does shit stink?"

He could have shouted his joke through the corvette's speakers and still not been heard. The assembly's cheers of agreement had a savage undertone, like the growls of great carnivores expecting to be fed momentarily.

The Astrogator faced Daniel. "Admiral Leary," he said, "how long will it take you to prepare for this great joint enterprise?"

"Astrogator Kelburney," Daniel said. "My ship and crew are ready to lift immediately, but I'll need twenty minutes to transmit the course and attack instructions to your vessels. I await your readiness."

He and Kelburney were playacting for a group of adults with the simplicity and cruelty of children, but there was nothing in it to raise a smile. Except perhaps a rictus like that which lifted Aretine's lips the last time Adele had seen her. . . .

"To your ships, siblings!" Kelburney said, shaking his right fist. "We lift in half an hour!"

The cheers of the dispersing pirates were lost in the snarl and whine of their vehicles' engines. They were in motion, swarming toward their cutters, before the last echoes of the Astrogator's voice had died away.

Kelburney looked at Daniel with an expression compounded of admiration and pique. "You've really got a battle plan?" he asked.

"I had to do something while you were planning your charade, Astrogator," Daniel said. "I think you'll find it satisfactory, but frankly I'd have preferred to have gotten your input before I imposed it on you. Another time, perhaps you won't choose to keep yourself incommunicado when there's work to be done."

"Another time!" Kelburney said. Then he grinned at first Daniel, then Adele, and added, "But you do make life interesting, RCN."

_T
he sixty-seven Selma cutters plotted on Daniel's display
vanished and reappeared, moving toward Strymon in short hops through the Matrix. It was like watching a swarm of locusts leapfrogging one another as they advanced. Though there seemed no organization, the motion was as inexorable as the rising tide.

The four Strymonian frigates orbiting the planet shook out their sails, then slipped into the Matrix themselves rather than contest with a force ten times superior to them. The
Princess Cecile
was already above the planet, broadcasting her warning to Commodore Pettin's ships below.

"
A very pretty play
," said Lt. Mon, who was viewing the same simulation from the Battle Direction Center. "
Now, if we can only get the other actors to follow the script.
And
if the next scene isn't the Alliance squadron thundering down on us because our new allies didn't destroy the relay satellites before the guardships got a message off to Tanais.
That's going to take some tricky astrogation.
"

Daniel scratched the hair over his left temple where the rim of his cap rode when he was wearing one. For no obvious reason, he tended to itch there when he was in the Matrix.

"The satellites are on a schedule," Daniel said, "and the Selmans
are
excellent astrogators. Woetjans believes they're capable of the necessary precision, at any rate."

"
Screw that!
" Mon said. "
I believe they can do it too; but I'll be a damned sight happier when I can say they
did
do it.
"

"Yes, I wouldn't look forward to facing an Alliance battleship either," Daniel said. "Still, even if a warning makes it through we can hope an RCN squadron can get under weigh faster than anything wearing Alliance colors. Commodore Pettin and I may not be soulmates, but my experience of him bears out his reputation as an able man."