The Road of Danger-ARC (39 page)

“All right,” said Adele. That seemed to her to be an absurd overreaction to the arrival of a corvette of a friendly power, but she found on reviewing Cory’s précis a copy of Governor Blaskett’s screamed order to Pyne, the squadron commander.

The planetary governor had no direct authority over a Fleet officer; but if Pyne had ignored the demand and something had gone wrong, the aftermath for him would have been grim and probably unsurvivable. There was nothing unusual about an autocrat choosing to rule by fear, but Guarantor Porra was better at it—and more single-minded—than most.

Adele had set Cazelet at the astrogation console to scanning the security force files for references to Daniel or someone who might have been Daniel. He would report when he had something to report. Beyond taking a quick overview of his progress, she left him alone.

Adele found what she was looking for. She respected the skills of Cory and Cazelet or she would not have trusted them with the important tasks she had delegated. Indeed, Daniel’s location and safety were the most personally important questions on Sunbright to Adele Mundy.

She was here as Officer Mundy of the RCN, however. Her duty came first, an attitude which Daniel would not only understand but approve; but she doubted that anybody else aboard the
Princess Cecile
would understand her ability to put human feelings behind duty.

Well, Tovera would understand. She, of course, was a sociopath to whom feelings and duty were both abstract concepts and who operated on a strict basis of self-preservation.

Tovera had decided that doing whatever Adele directed was her safest route through the thickets of human emotions. Adele understood the way normal people thought well enough to function among them, and Tovera understood very well how Adele thought.

An icon winked in the upper left corner of Adele’s display. “Mistress,” said Tovera on a two-way link. “You’ll want to look at this.”

Adele opened the icon without comment or expression. Tovera was seated in her usual location on the bridge: the training station at the back of the signals console. It was intended for a striker who could observe what the trainer was doing; if the trainer chose, the striker could carry out exercises under the trainer’s direction.

Adele had simply turned the station into an independent unit. She could echo—or control—what was going on, of course, but she could do that with every station on the
Princess Cecile
, including the command console. That knowledge would have shocked and infuriated the Navy House bureaucracy and most senior RCN officers, but it simply amused Daniel.

It was not common for Tovera—or anyone else—to break Adele’s concentration. She assumed her servant would have had a good reason.

Tovera had been observing their surroundings, splitting her flat-plate display between a satellite view of the spaceport and a visual panorama through the corvette’s own sensors. Saal Harbor was a huge installation. Channels connected forty-eight separate pools, each big enough to hold a battleship or several lesser vessels. Less than half the pools were filled at present, and all but a skeleton staff had been withdrawn from the base after the signing of the Treaty of Amiens. Even so, from above it was more impressive than Harbor Three on Cinnabar.

Tovera shrank the satellite image to expand the real-time view from the
Sissie
alone in her pool. Because of the size of the base, a network of trams were laid on top of the dikes so as to serve each pool. A company of Alliance troops in battledress had arrived in four armored personnel carriers and had set up checkpoints on the routes leading to the corvette.

The steam of the
Princess Cecile
’s landing had dissipated. The surface of the pool still bubbled around the hull; the thick steel took some time to cool below boiling, even when immersed in a bath of water.

A tram—a long flatbed with a cabin for six in front and space for cargo and supplies of virtually any dimensions in back—had arrived. Besides the driver it carried only a pair of port officials in brown uniforms. As Adele already knew from the message traffic, Governor Blaskett had decided not to extend diplomatic courtesies to the Cinnabar vessel, so she was being met by the same customs and medical team as any tramp freighter which happened to set down.

There was also a dusty, dark blue panel van with the legend Water Department stencilled on the side. The troops had passed it through the cordon so it must have the correct papers, but what in heaven’s name was it doing here?

The driver and the two men with him on the bench seat wore coveralls, stained and faded but roughly the same blue as that of the van. The passengers got out carrying tool boxes and trudged toward the platform at the edge of the pool where the port officials already waited for the
Sissie
to open up.

Tovera increased the magnification on the passengers’ faces by ten, then by a hundred times. She must have done that earlier for herself as the van proceeded through the checkpoint.

“Right,” said Adele, rising and shutting down her console. She had been using her data unit to control the console her usual fashion; as she strode for the companionway, she slipped it into her pocket.

The personnel on duty on the bridge didn’t appear to notice that Adele was leaving. Tovera swung in behind her mistress, holding her attaché case and smiling like a satisfied viper.

“Opening ship!” the PA system announced before Adele reached the companionway’s Level D hatch. Vesey’s words were blurred by echoes.

Pasternak, the Chief Engineer, waited in the entry hold with the four spacers who would be the guard detachment. Pasternak was Chief of Ship by virtue of his position as the bosun was Chief of Rig. Vesey had delegated the duties of meeting the local officials to him, while she as captain remained on the bridge.

Adele hoped that Vesey would have made a different choice—put Woetjans on the bridge and gone to the hold herself—if the governor or other senior official had arrived to greet the
Princess Cecile
. Vesey hadn’t asked if she could take Cory or Cazelet off the duties Adele had set them to, which showed clearly what her priorities were.

“Ma’am?” said Pasternak in surprise when he saw Adele. “Are you taking over here?”

The Chief Engineer was sixty standard years old, greatly overqualified to serve on a mere corvette and, as Adele knew, extremely wealthy. Unlike most non-commissioned spacers—and no few officers—he didn’t drink and whore away his earnings; and, as senior warrant officer under the most successful captain since Anston, his shares of prize money had been enormous.

“Carry on, Chief,” Adele said. The guards had riot sticks, not sub-machine guns as they would have on a friendly
or
a hostile planet. That was another sign of Vesey’s good judgment. “I’m just here to meet the men from the water department.”

“Very good, ma’am,” Pasternak said, making a half-bow and straightening just as the main hatch clanged into its cradle on the starboard outrigger. Technicians back in the harbor offices had already extended the gangplank from its housing on the quay to mate with the outrigger from the other side.

Adele had never asked why Pasternak continued to sail with Daniel; he certainly wasn’t a man who craved excitement. The
Princess Cecile
and all those aboard her were fortunate to have so skilled and solid an officer, though.

The guards trotted down the ramp four abreast and onto the gangplank in pairs, determined to be as threatening a barrier as they could to the minions of Guarantor Porra. Adele didn’t smile as she, Pasternak and Tovera followed at a more sedate pace. These guards and the whole RCN had been just that for decades: a barrier between Cinnabar and her great enemy.

Adele wasn’t naive enough to believe that planets controlled by the Republic of Cinnabar existed in a Golden Age. She had seen enough of life in the so-called Alliance of Free Stars, however, to know that for ordinary people it was much better to be ruled from Xenos.

The pair of Alliance officials waited with increasing concern as the Sissies trotted toward them, clubs swinging in their belt sheaths. Adele suspected the locals were more concerned by the cordon of their own troops than they were by the spacers. If shooting started, they were clearly in the middle of it, and neither—from their badges, an elderly doctor and a very young customs inspector—appeared to be the hero type.

“Chief,” said Adele. “Lead that pair to the side until I get the men from the water department on board.”

“Ma’am?” Pasternak said, blinking as he tried to make sense of the order. Then his face cleared—it wasn’t his job to understand—and he said, “Yes, mistress.” He strode toward the waiting officials, gesturing them imperiously to the side.

Adele indicated the guards with the splayed fingers of her left hand. She said, “No one react as I come through with those workmen.
No
reaction.”

The detachment was under Barnes, one of the few spacers who was actually a good shot with a stocked impeller. He had proven himself quite useful with a cudgel or a length of pipe also, and he was just as mindlessly loyal to Daniel—and by extension, to Adele—as any other member of the corvette’s crew.

“Roger,” said Barnes. He looked at his three fellows and said conversationally, “If any of you don’t understand the mistress, I’ll knock what she said right through your thick skulls. Okay?”

The guards laughed. “Hey,” said Rossi, a short technician with the shoulders of an ox and a face which must have been ugly even before the bottle scarred it. “At least you won’t shoot us, will you, Barnes?”

Adele and Tovera walked toward the workmen. Tovera was smiling.

The Water Department van drove off. Adele fitted the final piece of the puzzle into place in her mind.

“Hello, Adele,” Daniel said. “Can you get me aboard the
Sissie
without a lot of fuss? I need to change into my Whites so that we can call on Governor Blaskett.”

“Hello, Daniel,” she replied quietly. “Yes, come this way. I’ve warned the guards.”

Walking nonchalantly toward the gangplank she added, “I was going to tell you that the head of the rebellion here is one Tomas Grant, the field supervisor of the Saal water department, but I see from your transportation that you must have learned that on your own.”

Kelsey, a gangling rigger, gaped to see that Daniel and Hogg were following Adele. He didn’t speak, so there wasn’t a problem. Blank amazement was a normal expression for Kelsey anyway; he wasn’t one of the crew’s intellectual lights.

“Yes, I did learn that,” Daniel said. “But how in heaven’s name did
you
learn?”

The gangplank flexed with both of them on it, and a moment later Hogg as well. Tovera waited at the edge of the pool, facing away from the corvette. She was probably smiling. Adele wondered if she tried to lure people into pushing past her.

“Since Freedom was reported as having a Cinnabar accent, I checked Cinnabar emigrants to Madison,” Adele said. She didn’t mind the gangplank, but the steel solidity of the boarding ramp was preferable. “I found that Mistress Serafina Grant, whom I remembered as an associate of my father, had arrived with her son three months before your father broke the Three Circles Conspiracy. She was one of the Intransigents, you see; the Populars who wouldn’t compromise their principles.”

“Bloody hell!” shouted a tech who was inspecting the hatch hydraulics. “It’s Six! Six is back!”

“Carry on, Evans,” Daniel said as he followed Adele to the companionway.

Adele grimaced, but the excitement didn’t matter now. The port officials were too far away to understand what was happening.

“I found that Serafina had died of cancer, but that her son, Tomas Grant, had worked in the Ashetown water department,” Adele said, speaking over the companionway’s echoing bustle. “He was drafted to Sunbright when the base at Saal was built. When we landed here, I found that Tomas was in a perfect location to lead the revolt. I couldn’t be sure till you arrived in the water department van, but the rest was simple enough.”

They stepped into the A Level corridor. Sissies stood cheering at the hatches of every compartment, including Vesey and Cazelet from the bridge.

Daniel raised his hands in acknowledgement. “I’m glad to be home, fellow Sissies!” he said. “But right now I’ve got to put on a monkey suit to arrange the successful completion of our mission with the local authorities!”

In a lower voice as he turned toward his cabin, he added, “Adele, I’m very glad that your deductions aren’t made on behalf of the Fifth Bureau!”

CHAPTER 23: Saal on Sunbright

Adele wore her 2nd Class uniform, her Grays, in her guise as Captain Leary’s aide. Whites, like Daniel’s own, would have been better, but she didn’t own a pair. In most circumstances in which an RCN officer would wear a 1st Class uniform, Adele appeared in tailored civilian garments as Lady Mundy of Chatsworth.

This wasn’t such a circumstance, so her Grays had to do. It wouldn’t be surprising that the aide to the captain of a mere corvette couldn’t afford Whites, but Adele would have been more proper, and therefore less conspicuous, in the more formal uniform.

The descending elevator slowed with gluey smoothness and a groan from somewhere in the shaft above. Adele didn’t have any idea how far they had dropped from the ground-level entrance of Base Saal, though she suspected Daniel did.

Hogg and Tovera remained in the bare concrete foyer above. That didn’t concern Adele or she was sure Daniel. Both servants, bodyguards in their own minds if not the minds of their principals, were frustrated and upset.

How in heaven’s name did my parents manage to function as the personal focus for thousands and tens of thousands of supporters?

Adele smiled faintly. The literal answer was that her parents had been killed and beheaded while they were still, in biological terms, in the prime of life.

“This cage is armored,” Daniel said, wearing his usual friendly smile. “That’s why it accelerates and slows in such a leisurely fashion. I wonder what use an armored elevator is?”

The door of the cylindrical cage rotated sideways at the measured, massive rate with which all the equipment in Base Saal operated. The glass projectiles of Tovera’s miniature sub-machine gun would barely scratch the finish of the doors here.