The Road of Danger-ARC (17 page)

I already understand your position
, Adele thought.
You, however, don’t appear to have heard a word that I’ve said
.

The Cremonan attaché shied again at her expression, which this time pleased her sourly. Aloud but calmly she said, “I now will go about my business. I do not require your presence, Master Osorio. If I wish to see you again, after I have considered your proposals, I will inform you.”

“Can I carry you somewhere?” Osorio said, waving vaguely toward his car.

Not a single word
, Adele thought.

“All I
want
of you,” she said, “is your absence. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Osorio said with a false smile. “Yes, of course, Your Ladyship. We will speak soon!”

He sauntered toward the causeway and his vehicle. Adele watched him for a moment—Osorio was the sort who might suddenly turn around to offer some further absurd argument—before she took out her data unit. The Principal of Hrynko didn’t have to be a technological illiterate, but Adele hadn’t chosen to emphasize her abilities in front of the Cremonan.

Cory had just sent her a file slugged Doerries. She smiled faintly as she opened it: Cory and Cazelet kept one another very much on their toes when she set them similar tasks. Though either would have been a good assistant regardless.

The smile faded as she viewed the materiel. Cory had searched the database of the Ashetown police, looking for files which were closed with the slug which they had linked to Doerries.

In addition to mentions of the black utility van and the converted warehouse, there were nine files concerning the death and mutilation of street children. Some included images of the bodies, which had mostly been found in the harbor. To Adele’s untrained eye, they were not even identifiable as to gender.

Adele sent a terse message to Tovera, then slipped the data unit into its pocket and turned. Osorio was just past the midway point of the causeway.

Adele began running, a thing she never did; and shouted, another thing she never did, “Master Osorio! I’ll take a ride after all! Master Osorio!”

Tovera would need some time, but Adele wanted to be ready to leave the
Princess Cecile
as soon as her servant arrived with a suitable van. They had work to do.

“Master Osorio!”

Ashe Haven on Madison

A taxi which had driven up the quay now stopped beside the
Savoy
. Daniel was surprised when Kiki Lindstrom got out. The Criterion Hotel was only one further block from the water, on the street which paralleled the Harborfront. That distance scarcely required a—

Lindstrom staggered. The tall crewman who had gone to fetch her squeezed out of the taxi behind her and gripped her arm for support. The ship-owner might not be falling-down drunk, but she was well on the way there.

The driver snarled a demand for money. The spacer flung her a bill. Her complaints continued till she looked at it; then she drove off. Daniel wondered how much the crewman had paid in his haste, but that was a problem for a later time.

Lindstrom had the necessary spacer’s ability to walk a gangplank even when she was too drunk to see straight. She marched onto the boarding ramp where Daniel waited for her. Hogg and the other three crewmen stood behind him in the cabin.

“All right, Pensett!” she said in a slurred growl. “What the bloody hell is this? Hargate wouldn’t tell me a bloody thing, just that I had to come. I own this bitch! You don’t give me orders!”

She squinted to take in the group facing her. “And where the bloody hell is Petrov, since everybody else is here?”

“Captain Petrov has resigned, mistress,” Daniel said. He stood at Parade Rest, with his heels six inches apart and his hands clasped behind his back. He met her eyes without flinching. “I will take over his duties. I’m glad to say that the crew—”

He nodded over his shoulder. Hogg grinned like a drunken cherub; the other three men stood as closely to attention as fear and their lack of training allowed them to.

“—have announced their willingness to sail with me as their captain. Under your ultimate command, of course.”

It occurred to Daniel that the crewmen had expected the laser to incinerate him. They were probably more frightened by what they took as an act of insane courage as they were by the beating he and Hogg had given the former captain.

“Resigned?” Lindstrom said, puzzlement replacing anger. She reached the compartment and stood without swaying; the situation seemed to have sobered her.

“He had health problems,” Daniel said, as though he were explaining.

“He’ll stop having any kind of problem if he shows himself around here again,” Hogg said.

“Ah,” said Daniel with a nod. “And I should mention that you’ll find your cargo is short by one laser; which I’m afraid is not repairable, since Captain Petrov brought it to the discussion he forced with me.”

Lindstrom stared as though the words had been in an unfamiliar language; then she began to laugh so violently that she lost her balance again. She would have fallen if Daniel had not held her by the shoulders.

“Is that so, Pensett?” she said between renewed guffaws. “Is that bloody so?”

She hugged Daniel, then stepped away to survey him and the others. “Well,” she said, “maybe that isn’t such a bad thing after all. You’re a pretty sturdy lad to’ve seen off Peter if he came looking for you.”

She pinched him affectionately at the base of the ribs. He grinned but said nothing. Lindstrom was buying only his professional services, and he wasn’t a professional in
that
field. Still, he saw no need to disabuse the lady until they had lifted from Madison.

“Before we all leave,” said Hogg, “there’s another piece of business. Which is that now that there’s a berth empty, I’ll be coming along.”

He had been looking at Mistress Lindstrom, but now he glared straight at Daniel himself. “This ain’t a question, young master,” he said. He didn’t raise his voice, but nobody could have doubted that he meant it. “It got decided when that jumped-up wog pointed a gun at you. Understood?”

Daniel stood silent for a moment, considering choices. Suddenly he grinned. “Yes,” he said. “Under the circumstances, I think that’s a reasonable decision. As you can see, I’m sure, Mistress Lindstrom.”

Even half drunk, the ship-owner pursed her lips at the statement; again, it wasn’t a question. Then she guffawed.

“Call me Kiki and it’s a deal,” she said. “I’ll even feed him.”

She chucked Daniel under the ribs again.

CHAPTER 11: Ashetown on Madison

“I look forward to hearing from you soon, Your Ladyship!” said Osorio as they settled to the quay beside the
Princess Cecile
. The aircar’s running lights gleamed from the water of the slip and the wet aluminum surface of the catwalk.

“Thank you,” Adele said, opening the door and getting out. Because the passenger compartment was enclosed, the Cremonan could no longer see her face. She preferred the anonymity, because her mind was far away from Osorio and his problems. “I will inform you of my decision.”

She started across the floating catwalk to the corvette’s boarding ramp. She sniffed. Indeed, her duties to the ship and to the Republic itself were far from her mind. Well, there would be time for them later, if there was a “later.”

“Hail to Lady Principal Henkow!” shouted Gildas, a Technician and one of the spacers on guard in the entrance hold. He was willing and good-hearted, but she had met spaniels whom she thought were of greater intellectual capacity.

This was a typical example of Gildas overdoing a task out of enthusiasm and stupidity. Dasi, the chief of the watch, had been talking on the internal communicator mounted beside the hatch. He turned and snarled Gildas into silence.

The business helped Adele back into what passed for normalcy with her. There was no harm done: the real Principal Hrynko would have stupid, ignorant spacers in a crew she hired also. The aircar purred away behind her.

“Ma’am?” Dasi said. “Six is on his way down here. Ah, Lieutenant Pensett is, you know?”

At least he didn’t shout loudly enough to be heard three slips over
, Adele thought grimly. Well, she and Daniel had known all along that most spacers weren’t skilled at deceit; and besides, it was unlikely that anyone was looking for evidence that the
Sissie
and her crew were not what they pretended to be.

“Why—” she began aloud.

Her question was interrupted—and answered—by the speaker above the main hatch. In Vesey’s voice, it announced, “Ship, this is the captain. In a moment our passenger, Kirby Pensett, will address us from the entry hold. Those of you who do not have access to a good display may either go to the bridge or to the BDC, or join Pensett in person in the hold. Captain out.”

Daniel strode out of the companionway, talking over his shoulder to Hogg. He was wearing mottled RCN utilities without insignia, typical garb for an officer on half-pay who didn’t have family money to fall back on. He caught Adele from the corner of his eye and brightened beyond his normal infectious enthusiasm.

He makes even me happier. Well, less grim
.

Daniel bent close to her ear and murmured, “Adele, I’ll be travelling to Cremona and I hope Sunbright as captain of the
Savoy
. I worked out the details with the owner this evening.”

Hogg, standing close, grunted. Though he wasn’t looking at them, he was certainly listening.

“That is,
Hogg
and I are going,” he said with an affectionate grin toward his servant.

Spacers were coming down the companion way with bangs and chatter; others pushed in from the axial corridor to the stern. The hold was filling up.

“Excellent,” Adele said. “A Cremonan backer of the rebels wants me to carry him home to meet his consortium. They hope to hire the
House of Hrynko
to attack an Alliance privateer that is capturing blockade runners leaving Madison.”

Twenty-odd spacers were within the compartment, so she and Daniel were scarcely talking in private. Boots on the steel deck and echoing conversations in a score of hoarse whispers were too loud a backdrop for any crewman to overhear them. It was equally unlikely that it would matter if one of them did.

Daniel pursed his lips. He said, “Do you expect to accept the offer?”

“I wanted to hear your opinion,” Adele said austerely.

No additional crewmen were joining those already in the compartment, though the audience had spilled onto the upper edge of the boarding ramp. It must be about time for Daniel to make his address.

“Yes,” he said, a placeholder as he considered the situation. “I recommend that you take this agent to Cremona and listen to the proposition. It’s likely to give us—”

He grinned broadly.

“—to give you, that is, an opportunity to get information that we couldn’t get any other way. Beyond that—”

He shrugged.

“—we don’t have enough data to make a decision. Decide as seems best to you at the time; with, one hopes, more information.”

“I agree,” Adele said. She tried to clear her throat of the lump there. “I hope we’ll meet on Cremona, then.”

She nodded toward the loudspeaker. There was an audio/video pickup in it, though they had to be switched on from the bridge.

“Yes,” Daniel repeated, facing the speaker and letting his face settle into his usual cheerful grin. “Fellow spacers!” he said. He waited for the cheers of his immediate audience to die down.

She and Daniel had come to the same conclusion after viewing the data. That was scarcely surprising: it was the correct conclusion, and Daniel rarely made mistakes in the professional arena.

Her lips quirked slightly in the direction of a smile. Since he had met Miranda Dorst, he had been less often involved with mindless young women in his private capacity, too; though Adele wasn’t sure that he had yet come to view those bimbos as mistakes.

“I’ll be leaving the
Sissie
this evening,” Daniel said. He had obviously decided to drop the pretence of “
The House of Hrynko
” for the time being. Though the hatch was open, sound propagation out of a crowded compartment would be extremely poor. “I hope to rejoin her and you after we’ve reached our destination separately. Now—”

He had been speaking toward the pickup. He lowered his eyes to sweep them over the audience with him in the hold.

“—I need not tell you that I expect you to do your duty by Captain Vesey and by the RCN. You’re my Sissies; of
course
you’re going to do your duty!”

There was another babble of cheers and laughter. Daniel smiled until it cleared, then said, “Until we meet again, fellow spacers!”

As the crew cheered, Adele leaned closer to Daniel and lifted onto her toes to speak into his ear. “May I address them?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said with a raised eyebrow. He turned toward the pickup again and raised his hands. “Fellow spacers!” he cried.

The audience quieted; at first slowly, but then with a rush to near silence.

“Her Ladyship wishes to address you,” Daniel said, sweeping his right hand toward Adele. He was grinning, probably at his pun on her civilian rank and the persona she had adopted for this mission.

Adele fixed her eyes on the pickup. She was used to communicating through electronics; used to the process and comfortable with it.

“Fellow spacers,” she said. She would never be an orator. Her father had been a brilliant speaker, a man whose verbal skills had carried him high in the Republic…though ultimately to the top of Speaker’s Rock.

“Captain—Six, that is, Six—is depending on us,” she continued, picking the words carefully. She could not afford to be mistaken. She knew that people often heard tone, not words; but they had to hear, to
believe
, her words; for Daniel’s sake and for their own. “He has put Captain Vesey in command of the ship, because he has implicit confidence that she is the best suited to support him.”

Adele coughed into her hand. She knew that Vesey wouldn’t like what she was about to hear, but Adele was going to say it anyway.

“Now,” she said aloud, “I know that everyone in a crisis would do anything Six ordered without hesitating. But some of you might think, ‘That can’t be right,’ when Captain Vesey tells you to jump. Don’t let that happen, on your lives.”