The Road of Danger-ARC (48 page)

He trotted up the gangplank and through the entry hold to the up companionway. He didn’t know what had gone wrong, but nobody was going to say that Daniel Leary took his time when duty called. The fact that it called in Adele’s voice was an added inducement.

The off-duty spacers in the hold nodded, but nobody spoke to Daniel as he passed. Either they knew what was up—or at least that something was—or they had made the same assessment of Officer Mundy’s summons as he had himself.

Daniel climbed the companionway at a swift, steady pace; drunk or sober, it was always the same. Trying to sprint the whole way didn’t work, would never have worked, but neither did he waste time.

He crossed the rotunda to the bridge where Adele waited. She was wearing a civilian suit of cream on off-white. Instead of being alone—well, alone except forTovera, her poisonous reptile—as Daniel had expected, Vesey was at the command console. Each other station—save for the signals console—was occupied by the proper officer.

Witnesses. For my sake, Adele has arranged witnesses
.

“Captain Leary,” Adele said. She sounded as she normally did: coldly formal. “You are now under my command, by the authority of the Speaker of the Republic as delegated to the Permanent Secretary of the Senate. Would you care to see my authorization?”

Daniel frowned. “Would you lie to me, your Ladyship?” he asked.

Adele considered for a moment. “No,” she said. “I don’t think I would.”

Hogg entered the bridge. Daniel caught the movement from the corner of his eye, but Hogg was moving as silently as only an old poacher could. He too understood the situation.

Daniel smiled faintly. “Then I’m ready to go,” he said, patting the blouse of his Whites. He wasn’t feeling the brandy, for a blessing.

“No,” said Adele unexpectedly. “While you’re under my command, Captain, I want you in utilities and wearing a commo helmet. This is dismounted operation. Oh, and wear a sidearm.”

“Ah—” said Daniel, nonplussed. “Ah, Officer,
Lady
Mundy, that is, I’m not a good pistol shot. I could draw a sub-machine gun if you think…?”

He stopped, embarrassed to be so completely at sea. Adele smiled—broadly, for Adele—and said, “Thank you, Captain. The pistol will send a signal to Admiral Cox. A sub-machine gun would send a different signal, which I hope won’t be required.”

“I trust her Ladyship will delegate any shooting to her household servant,” said Tovera. She smiled also. “Since I enjoy it.”

“Yes,” said Adele, the humor gone from her face. “Tovera will accompany us and will drive the staff car which Squadron Headquarters is sending here. Hogg—”

She glanced at him, but she continued to address Daniel.

“—will
not
accompany us.”

Hogg touched his forelock and bowed. “Yes, mum,” he said. “I will go look for a sheep to dip or some other employment proper to a simple countryman.”

“I’ll get changed,” Daniel said, turning to go to his quarters just forward of the Battle Direction Center. He was smiling.

But he was
very
glad that Hogg had understood that this wasn’t a time to argue with Lady Mundy.

CHAPTER 28: Leelburg on Tattersall

Adele strode toward the entrance of the school with Daniel behind and to the left like a mottled gray shadow; Tovera balanced him to the right. The car sported the metal pennon of Squadron Headquarters. It remained in front. It had been dispatched in response to a signal coded to Admiral Cox. It was unlikely that anyone—else—on Tattersall would be able to trace to call’s origination back to the
Princess Cecile
’s bridge.

Adele had reviewed the imagery of Daniel reporting to the temporary headquarters a few hours earlier. The sergeant commanding the Marine detachment on guard had saluted not Daniel, whom he hadn’t known from Adam, but the RCN captain in Whites. Lady Mundy would have to work harder to breeze through.

She had never minded hard work.

The sergeant cupped his hand over his right ear as an order came through the bud. He shouted, “Atten-
shun!
”

As his squad stiffened and threw their weapons to their shoulders, the sergeant snapped out a sharp salute, then pulled the door open. “Ma’am!” he said.

Adele nodded regally as she passed him. Inside the building, and muffled by the echoes of chattering and feet on concrete, Daniel said, “How did you do that, if I may ask?”

“Cory directed the guards to admit the Navy Board plenipotentiary and her aides,” Adele said. “He’s watching through your helmet.”

Then—it might be considered bragging, but it was important to her to be accurate—she added, “I could have done it by keying a preset message as we approached, but I thought having a human in the loop was preferable in case anything went wrong.”

They crossed the central rotunda. The enlisted clerks watched but didn’t speak. The supervising lieutenant, who hadn’t been present when Daniel arrived on his own, said, “Mistress? Mistress! You can’t go through there!”

He lifted the gate in the circular counter. Daniel shifted to block him. He didn’t

raise his hands, but Adele had seen how quickly Daniel could move when he wanted to.

“Lieutenant!” said the senior clerk. From the urgency in her voice, she had predicted correctly what was going to happen if her superior tried to push Daniel out of the way. “They’re authorized! The message just came through! They’re from Xenos!”

That was true only in the most general sense, but Adele didn’t feel obliged to correct the clerk on her way to the door marked Headmaster. Cox had taken that office and the associated meeting room for his temporary headquarters.

The lieutenant said, “What?” but he allowed the clerk to tug him back within the counter. Plaintively he added to no one in particular, “The admiral’s in conference with Captain Butler, though.”

Butler was regional head of Naval Intelligence. Well, that wasn’t a problem.

Adele touched the door. It was locked. She felt a flash of cold fury and turned to Daniel.

“Ma’am?” the senior clerk said. “Please, I’ll call through and—”

The latch plate clicked; the door not only unlocked, it slumped open a finger’s breadth. Cory must have figured out how to shut down the lock system completely. Perhaps because it was a school, the doors had to open if the facility lost power in an emergency.

Her good humor restored, Adele strode into the suite. She must have been more on edge than she had realized to have turned immediately to the alternative of having Daniel kick the door down.

The office proper was empty but the door to the adjoining conference room was open. Admiral Cox sat at a console which was part of the school’s furnishings; Commander Ruffin and a portly captain who must be Butler sat to either side of him with their personal data units on the long table.

“What’s this?” Cox said. “Who
are
you?”

Ruffin got to her feet with an angry expression. Captain Butler by contrast stared at his holographic display, scrolled down it, and looked at Adele in amazement. He said, “You’re
Lady
Mundy, that’s right?”

“Yes,” said Adele. “Now get out.”

She gestured to Commander Ruffin and added, “You too. My business is with Admiral Cox.”

She smiled, more or less. “My aides will stay.”

Butler rose, scooping up his data unit and dropping it into the briefcase beside him on the table. He closed but didn’t bother to latch the case. Carrying it in both hands, he moved quickly around the table.

“Whoever you are,” said Cox, “get out and get out now! We’re discussing security matters!”

“Admiral?” Butler called over his shoulder. Daniel stepped to the side to leave a path to the door. “Check your console, sir. It’s on your console too, I’m sure.”

Which of course it was, thanks to Cory. Butler was proving quicker off the mark than Adele would have expected to find filling a Naval Intelligence slot in the Macotta Region, but not infrequently a person who was smart but lacked influence ran into someone influential who wasn’t smart. In Adele’s experience, influence generally won.

Cox was staring at his display; Ruffin was staring at Cox.
Do they think they’re posing for a wax tableau?

Adele sat in the chair across from Cox—he and his aides had been in line on one side of the table—and took out her data unit. She said, “Captain Leary, put Ruffin out of the room, since she doesn’t appear to understand words of one syllable.”

She twitched her wands and cut the power to the console Cox was using. His eyes didn’t focus on her at first.

“This way, Commander,” Daniel said, reaching for Ruffin’s elbow.

Tovera patted the aide’s cheek and said, “It’s better if he does it, sweetie. But my way will be quicker if you decide to make a problem.”

“Get out of here, Ruffin!” Cox said hoarsely. He appeared to have realized that his aide was the only person present against whom it was safe to release his frightened anger. “Just get out!”

“Aye-aye, sir,” muttered Ruffin. She stepped back as if unaware of Daniel’s hand and followed Butler out of the office. When she closed the outer door behind her, it latched and probably locked.

Cory continues to be a credit to his training
.

“Admiral Cox,” Adele said, raising her eyes to meet the Admiral’s. Daniel and Tovera remained standing to either side of her chair. “You chose not to deal with Captain Leary; therefore you’re dealing with Mundy of Chatsworth. Do you have any questions about your present situation?”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Cox said. With a little more vigor he added, “I don’t have
any
bloody idea!”

“Then let me rephrase that,” Adele said. She thought of adding, “because you appear to be as thick as two short planks.” She did not, because that was what Hogg would have said. Hogg was an estimable servant, but for Daniel rather than for her; and anyway, he was not a suitable role model for Lady Mundy.

“You have read my credentials from Admiral Hartsfeld, authorizing me to issue orders to naval personnel in the name of the Navy Board and to supersede any officer in the Macotta Region without recourse. Do you understand
that
?”

“But how?” Cox said. He sounded hurt rather than angry. “You came from nowhere and now you’re giving me orders!”

Adele’s tongue touched her lips in exasperation. After a moment’s pause while she determined how to handle this, she said, “I’m sure that Admiral Hartsfeld hoped his own personnel would be able to handle the situation without need for the representative of the Senate to step in. I hoped that myself, to be honest. Unfortunately, Admiral, you and your staff have shown yourselves to be too parochial to be trusted with the safety of the Republic in a situation so delicate.”

Cox flushed, then swallowed. He did not speak.

“Now,” said Adele. “
Will
you accept my orders quickly and without cavil? Or shall I replace you with Captain Leary, here?”

She tilted her head slightly toward Daniel. She didn’t gesture with her hands because she was holding the wands.

“I’m sure the captain could handle the job, but he would be bored sitting at a desk. I would prefer to spare him that.”

She smiled, very slightly.

Cox flushed again. He glanced up at Daniel; recognition dawned. In the confusion, he had not appreciated who Adele’s utility-clad escort really was.
He probably hasn’t recognized me even now. And he won’t
.

“What are your orders, Lady Mundy?” Cox growled, looking at the tabletop between them.

Adele stared at Cos for a moment before she decided to accept the surrender without forcing him to make it explicit. She would do whatever was necessary to gain her ends, but the admiral was now broken. Insulting him further would be cruel, not ruthless.

“All right,” she said. “A party of Alliance officials has arrived to arrest some of their own citizens. I’m sure that the necessary paperwork will eventually arrive, but I’ve already informed the head of the mission that the RCN will accept it as complete as of now. I also said we’ll offer assistance as required, though I doubt that will be necessary.”

Cox touched his keyboard, then remembered that the console was dead. Adele thought of turning it back on, but she decided the dynamics were working in her favor at present.

Cox looked up and said, “Officials. You mean Alliance police?”

“Not exactly,” Adele said without inflection.

Cox made a sour face. “All right,” he said, “since it doesn’t matter what I think anyway. What else do you want of me?”

“I have no other special instructions at present,” Adele said. She switched on the console and got to her feet, then paused. “On second thought, I have one request.”

She could have used a stronger term than “request,” but she didn’t think it would be necessary.

“When you open the conference this afternoon, I want you to have Captain Leary beside you. Tell people that he’s your aide for the duration of the proceedings. Leary, you’ll change back into your Whites.”

“Yes, your Ladyship,” Daniel said. He dipped his head in further acknowledgment.

“Then I’ll leave you to your business, Admiral,” Adele said. “Captain Leary, I’ll brief you more fully on our return to the
Princess Cecile
.”

She strode out of the office with Daniel following. Tovera was in the lead, implying that she thought that was the direction danger was most likely to come from.

Tovera was probably right, but Adele doubted there was much to fear in any direction. Not for anyone whom she regarded as being on her side, that is.

***

The driver who had delivered the staff car to the
Princess Cecile
was now carrying Admiral Cox and his aides to the conference in the same vehicle. Daniel and Cox sat on the leather cushions in back; Ruffin and Captain Butler faced them on the molded fiberglass seats across the enclosed passenger compartment.

Hogg was beside the driver in the open cab, which had only a canvas roof without even side-curtains. The men chatted in friendly fashion despite the rain pelting down. A countryman and hunter—well, poacher—like Hogg had plenty of experience being rained on, and it seemed likely that the admiral’s driver did also.