The Road of Danger-ARC

The Road of Danger—ARC

David Drake

Advance Reader Copy

Unproofed

BAEN BOOKS by DAVID DRAKE

THE RCN SERIES

With the Lightnings

Lt. Leary, Commanding

The Far Side of the Stars

The Way to Glory

Some Golden Harbor

When the Tide Rises

In the Stormy Red Sky

What Distant Deeps

HAMMER'S SLAMMERS

The Tank Lords

Caught in the Crossfire

The Butcher's Bill

The Sharp End

Paying the Piper

The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 1
(omnibus)

The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2
(omnibus)

The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3
(omnibus)

Voyage Across the Stars
(omnibus)

INDEPENDENT NOVELS AND COLLECTIONS

Into the Hinterlands
with John Lambshead

Loose Cannon: The Tom Kelly Novels
(omnibus)

The Reaches Trilogy

Seas of Venus

Foreign Legions
, edited by David Drake

Ranks of Bronze

The Dragon Lord

Birds of Prey

Northworld Trilogy

Redliners

Starliner

All the Way to the Gallows

Grimmer Than Hell

Other Times Than Peace

Patriots

THE GENERAL SERIES

Warlord
with S.M. Stirling (omnibus)

Conqueror
with S.M. Stirling (omnibus)

The Chosen
with S.M. Stirling

THE BELISARIUS SERIES with Eric Flint

An Oblique Approach

In the Heart of Darkness

Belisarius I: Thunder at Dawn
(omnibus)

Destiny's Shield

Fortune's Stroke

Belisarius II: Storm at Noontide
(omnibus)

The Tide of Victory

The Dance of Time

Belisarius III: Flames at Sunset
(omnibus)

The Road of Danger

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by David Drake

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 978-1-4516-3815-8

Cover art by Stephen Hickman

First printing, April 2012

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

To Scott Van Name

Who was much younger than I was when he learned to appreciate Gaudi.

Acknowledgments

Dan Breen continues as my first reader. Thank goodness.

Dan, Dorothy Day, and my webmaster Karen Zimmerman archive my texts. I copy them to three machines of my own, but given my track record with computers I feel a lot happier having the texts spread around.

Though for a wonder, I didn’t kill (or even badly bruise) any computers on this book. The last time that happened, I lost two computers and a separate keyboard in the course of writing the next one. I am prepared!

Dorothy, Karen, and Evan Ladouceur help with research and continuity problems. Basically, I say, “What was the name of…?” or “Where the dickens did X take place?” and an answer appears in my in-box. My focus is on story, not continuity, and I’m sure it shows; but the situation would be much worse without the help of my friends.

Indeed, life would be much worse without the help of my friends. That’s another matter, but it seems proper to make public acknowledgment of that too.

The reason the RCN series has great covers is that Toni Weisskopf, the publisher, hires Steve Hickman to do the art. Steve consistently paints a lovely and evocative image; whereupon Jennie Faries, Baen’s designer, does all the considerable range of things that turn the raw materials into a cover.

Sure, they’re all doing their jobs, but heaven knows that there are a lot of people doing those jobs professionally who aren’t any good. There are very few who are better than those working on my books, and I appreciate them.

My wife Jo continues to run the house and coddle me while I’m writing. Which I do most of my waking life, so it isn’t a small or an easy task.

I could not write as I do without the help of those named and of many others. Thank you all. I know how lucky I am.

Dave Drake

Author’s Note

I use both English and Metric weights and measures in the RCN series to suggest the range of diversity which I believe would exist in a galaxy-spanning civilization. I do not, however, expect either actual system to be in use in three thousand years. Kilogram and inch (
et cetera
) should be taken as translations of future measurement systems, just as I’ve translated the spoken language.

Occasionally I think that I don’t really have to say that in every RCN book. It’s obvious, after all, isn’t it? But there’s a certain number of people to whom it isn’t obvious. They’ll write to “correct” me, and that gets on my nerves.

The plots of my RCN novels often come from classical history. Ordinarily that means something I’ve found in a Greek historian whom I’ve been reading in translation. In the present case, however, I resumed reading the Roman historian Livy in the original. I found my situation in the disruption which followed the Battle of Zama and the surrender of Carthage to end the 2nd Punic War.

One of the advantages in going back to primary—or at least ancient—sources is that the ancient historians mention things which modern histories ignore as trivial. They weren’t trivial to the people living them, and to me they often do more to illuminate the life of the times than do ambassadors’ speeches and the movements of armies.

Northern Italy at the end of the 3d century ad was a patchwork of Roman colonies and allies; Celtic tribes recently conquered by Rome; and independent tribes, mostly Celtic. A man calling himself Hamilcar and claiming to be a Carthaginian raised a rebellion against Rome. In the course of it he sacked cities and destroyed a Roman army sent against him.

Nobody was really sure where Hamilcar came from. Supposedly he was a straggler from one of the Carthaginian armies which passed through the region, but there was no agreement as to which army.

There are two perfectly believable accounts of his defeat and death. They can’t both be true, which leads to the possibility that neither is true. All we know for certain is that Hamilcar disappears from the record and from history more generally.

The point that particularly interested me was that the Roman Senate reacted by sending an embassy to Carthage, demanding that the Carthaginians withdraw their citizen under terms of the peace treaty. This makes perfect legal sense, though appears absurd in any practical fashion.

Livy’s account got me thinking about the problems that the envoys would have had. The Romans were going to Carthage with demands which weren’t going to be greeted by their listeners with any enthusiasm.

They had it easier, however, than the Carthaginians who were presumably tasked to proceed to the chaos in Northern Italy and corral Hamilcar. Whatever the Carthaginian people thought of the situation, they were in no position in 200 bc to blow off a Roman ultimatum. There’s no record of the Carthaginian response, but I believe they made at least some attempt to comply. Otherwise there
would
be more in the record.

I decided that I could find a story in that. This is the story I found.

Dave Drake

david-drake.com

But if you come to a road where danger

Or guilt or anguish or shame’s to share,

Be good to the lad that loves you true

And the soul that was born to die for you,

And whistle and I’ll be there.

A E Housman

More Poems, XXX

CHAPTER 1: Holm on Kronstadt

Captain Daniel Leary whistled cheerfully as he and Adele Mundy turned from Dock Street onto Harbor Esplanade, walking from the
Princess Cecile
’s berth toward the three-story pile of Macotta Regional Headquarters. Daniel had every right to be cheerful: he and his crew had brought the
Sissie
from Zenobia to Cinnabar in seventeen Standard days, a run which would have stretched a dedicated courier vessel. They had then—with the necessary orders and authorizations—made the run from Cinnabar to Kronstadt in eleven days more.

The
Sissie
’s fast sailing meant that Admiral Cox could get his battleships to Tattersall in plenty of time to prevent the invasion which would otherwise lead to renewed war between Cinnabar and the Alliance. Neither superpower could resume the conflict without collapse: forty years of nearly constant warfare had strained both societies to the breaking point. In a very real sense, preventing war over Tattersall meant preventing the end of galactic civilization.

Not a bad job for a fighting corvette. Pretty bloody good, in fact
.

“That’s ‘The Handsome Cabin Boy,’ isn’t it?” asked Officer Adele Mundy. “The tune, I mean.”

“Ah!” said Daniel with a touch of embarrassment; he hadn’t been paying attention to what he was whistling. “Not really the thing to bring into an admiral’s office, you mean? And quite right, too.”

“If I had meant that…” Adele said. She didn’t sound angry, but she was perhaps a trifle more tart than she would have been with a friend if they hasn’t just completed a brutally hard run through the Matrix. “I would have said that. I was simply checking my recollection.”

She pursed her lips as she considered, then added, “I don’t think anyone who could identify the music would be seriously offended by the lyrics. Although the record suggests that Admiral Cox doesn’t need much reason to lose his temper. No reason at all, in fact.”

Daniel laughed, but he waited to respond until a pair of heavy trucks had passed, their ducted fans howling. The vehicles carried small arms which had been stored in the base armory while the ships of the Macotta Squadron were in harbor.

As soon as the
Sissie
reached Kronstadt orbit, Daniel—through the agency of Signals Officer Mundy—had transmitted the orders he carried to the regional headquarters. Admiral Cox wasn’t waiting for the chip copy to arrive before he began preparing to lift his squadron off.

“Cox does have a reputation for being, ah, testy,” Daniel said. “That probably has something to do with why he’s here in the Macotta Region when his record would justify a much more central command.”

Navy House politics weren’t the sort of things a captain would normally discuss with a junior warrant officer, but Adele’s rank and position were more or less accidental. She was a trained librarian with—in Daniel’s opinion—an unequalled ability to sort and correlate information. If necessary, Daniel would have classed her as a supernumerary clerk, but because Adele could handle ordinary communications duties, she was Signals Officer of the
Princess Cecile
according to the records of the Republic of Cinnabar Navy.

Three blue-and-white vans stencilled SHORE PATROL over broad vertical stripes tore past; the middle vehicle was even ringing its alarm bell. Adele followed them with her eyes, frowning slightly. “What are they doing?” she asked.

“Carrying spacers picked up on the Strip to their vessels,” Daniel said. “I’m sure that the wording of the recall order justifies it, but there’s no operational reason for that—”

He nodded after the speeding vans.

“—since it’s going to be 48 hours minimum before the majority of the squadron can lift off.”

Coughing slightly, Daniel added, “I’ve found that people who enlist in the Shore Patrol like to drive fast. And also to club real spacers who may have had a little to drink.”

He kept his voice neutral, but the situation irritated him. The Shore Patrol performed a necessary function, but fighting spacers—which Daniel Leary was by any standard—tended to hold the members of the base permanent parties in contempt. That contempt was doubled for members of the Shore Patrol, the portion of the permanent party whom spacers on liberty were most likely to meet.

“I see,” said Adele. From her tone, she probably did.

Daniel shivered in a gust of wind. In part to change the subject, he said, “If I’d appreciated just how strong a breeze came off the water at this time of day, I’d have worn something over my Whites. I don’t have anything aboard the
Sissie
that’s suitable for greeting admirals, but I guess I could’ve dumped my watch coat onto his secretary’s desk before I went through to his office.”

He’d noticed the local temperature from the bridge when the
Sissie
landed, but it hadn’t struck him as a matter of concern. While he was growing up on the Bantry estate, he’d thought nothing of standing on the sea wall during a winter storm.
I’d have been wearing a lizardskin jacket, though, or at least a poncho over my shirt
.