The Road of Danger-ARC (6 page)

“You say ‘small traders,’” Daniel said. “Do you mean from Cremona, or…?”

He was afraid the answer was going to be, “From Kronstadt and other Cinnabar worlds.” Which would sooner or later mean war.

“Cremona, sure,” Sattler said, “but it’s more than that. They stage through Cremona mostly because it’s a short jump to Sunbright. But it can be anybody who’s got a ship of five hundred or a thousand tonnes and is looking for quick cash.”

“Which is
every
body who’s got a small tramp freighter,” Daniel said with a laugh. He let his expression return to neutrally pleasant. He said, “So you think that Freedom really is somebody—or somebodies?”

Sattler nodded. He touched the bottle but didn’t lift it again. He cocked his head to the side and said, “Look, Captain, you don’t need to lecture me about what my place is with you in the room, but—look, you talked about you being ‘on duty.’ If you told me just what that duty was, I might be able to help more.”

Daniel pursed his lips. He didn’t look toward Adele, but he could see out of the corner of his eye that she was still focused on her display. Sattler was paying no more attention to her than he was to the saucer hat which Dan had tossed on the desk when he sat down.

“The Alliance requests that we remove Freedom from Sunbright because he’s a Cinnabar citizen,” Daniel said. “Admiral Cox has delegated that duty to me. Frankly, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that it was a complete fool’s errand. As I said, the Admiral and I didn’t get off on the right foot.”

Sattler tapped the desk three times while staring into the middle distance. He straightened in his chair and picked up the bottle.

“Give me your bloody glass,” he said. Daniel handed it over for another four ounces.

Sattler drank from the bottle, then lowered it and said in a harsh voice, “I’m a trader, you know that. I’ve got ships as well as well as this—”

He waved generally with his left hand.

“—and other stuff. Before the last war I had six ships.”

Daniel sipped and nodded. He didn’t interrupt.

“Other shippers in the region laid up their hulls right away,” Sattler said. “There’s more pirates than patrols in the Macotta even when things are peaceful, and in a war the pirates all claim to be privateers. I left my ships out because I’m from Bryce. I had to prove that I’m a good Cinnabar citizen. When the third ship got taken, I grounded the three I still had. It was worth that to me not to have questions asked.”

Daniel nodded again as Sattler drank.

“We’ve got peace again,” the merchant said, his voice roughened further by the liquor. “My ships are out, I’m making money.”

He leaned forward and said, “I’m making money out of the revolt on Sunbright. I guess you figured that?”

“Yes,” Daniel said; he sipped. Sattler was a successful businessman, and the biggest business in this region must be the rebellion on Sunbright.

“But I don’t want war again,” Sattler said. “The business might survive but it might not, and if things got bad enough—well, I’ve seen mobs and I don’t want to be facing one. The security police are bad enough. If I could help you find Freedom, I would; but I can’t.”

Adele shut down her data unit and straightened. Daniel emptied his glass, set it on the desk, and got up. Grinning at the merchant, he said, “Well, Master Sattler, I believe you. Which is a pity, because I’d certainly welcome a shortcut to the goal I’ve been set. Good day to you and—”

He nodded to the woman and children on the left wall.

“—your family. I’m going to ponder what seems at present to be an intractable problem.”

Adele fell in behind him as he walked into the outer office. Neither niece noticed the visitors were leaving until Daniel had lifted the gate in the counter himself. The girls stared in frozen horror despite Daniel’s pleasant smile to each of them.

“Where to, young master?” asked Hogg, standing at the back of the car; Tovera was at the front.

Daniel smiled faintly. The words were a challenge of sorts—to Adele, who had slapped both servants down without hesitation when they wanted to enter the building.

“To the
Sissie
, I believe,” he said. He glanced at Adele, but she was already getting into the vehicle. He went around to the other passenger door.

“I entered all of Sattler’s files,” Adele said as Hogg—who was apparently driving back—started the engine. “Though his security was surprisingly good. He’s making quite a lot of money from smuggling rice out of Sunbright—and arms in, of course. But he’s not an Alliance agent, and he’s not involved with the rebellion itself, which is rather a pity.”

The car lifted on its suspension and made a needlessly hard U-turn to head back to the harbor. Traffic was light, but Hogg still came close to broadsiding a truck as he pulled out.

“So this trip didn’t help us after all?” Daniel said, when he was sure that Adele had said all she intended to for the moment. Her data unit was live again.

“No, I wouldn’t say that,” she said toward her display. “I think the details of Master Sattler’s smuggling enterprises are very useful indeed.”

CHAPTER 4: Holm on Kronstadt

Since Adele wanted Cory and Cazelet present for the discussion because they helped her with intelligence gathering, Daniel had included Vesey, his first lieutenant, and Woetjans, the bosun, as well. Adding them was mostly a political decision.

Woetjans wouldn’t care one way or the other: she was by no means stupid, but she regarded planning as something her betters—better born, better educated—did. Unless the plans involved clearing top-hamper after something disastrous happened to the rig, of course; or hand-to-hand fighting. You couldn’t find a better choice for clearing a path through a mob than Woetjans with a length of high-pressure tubing.

Lieutenant Vesey, a slim, blond woman, was a more complex subject. She had come to the
Princess Cecile
as a midshipman on Daniel’s first voyage after the Navy Board confirmed his lieutenancy. From the beginning she had been an excellent by-the-book astrogator, and she had absorbed Daniel’s training—passed on from Uncle Stacy—in the
art
of the Matrix as no one he had met before or since.

In all technical respects, Vesey was as fine an officer as one could ask for, and of course she didn’t lack courage. Daniel didn’t recall ever meeting an RCN officer whom he thought was a coward, though there had been no few whom he doubted could consistently put their shoes on the correct feet.

Vesey’s problem was that she lacked the particular kind of ruthlessness which Daniel referred to—not in Vesey’s hearing—as killer instinct, the reflex to go for your opponent’s throat. She could set up a step by step attack, but she wouldn’t reflexively see and exploit an enemy’s weak point.

That lack was a serious handicap for an RCN officer, and it made Vesey—who was more self-aware than was useful—unsure of herself. That was probably why she continued as the
Sissie
’s first officer when her skills fitted her for a command of her own even after the cutbacks which resulted from the Treaty of Amiens.

Daniel was sorry that Vesey’s career had stumbled in such a fashion, but the
Sissie
had gained by her misfortune. He could have left astrogation to her if he hadn’t loved the process himself, and Vesey’s ship-handling in normal space, now that she’d become comfortable with it, was better than his.

“I told you about our new mission when I returned from meeting the regional commander…” Daniel said, passing his wry smile across the command group as he spoke.

“Yes, and we don’t deserve it,” said Cory angrily from the astrogation console. “I think it’s a bloody shame!”

Daniel had decided to hold the briefing on the
Princess Cecile
’s bridge. A corvette had very little internal space in civilian terms, but he and his officers had been together on the
Sissie
for years. She was home to them.

He looked at his Second Lieutenant. Cory had been Vesey’s classmate, but initially he had been so cack-handed at everything he tried that Daniel had wondered how he had graduated from the Academy. The boy had demonstrated a flair for communications, however, which had blossomed under Adele’s direction.

To Daniel’s amazement and probably Cory’s own, the midshipman had then developed into a serviceable astrogator and a useful all-round officer. The Navy Board had confirmed the promotion to lieutenant which Daniel granted Cory after the bloody victory off Cacique.

“Mister Cory…” Daniel said. He wasn’t angry, but complaints about the decisions of superior officers weren’t a good use of time. “If we had what we by rights deserve, we would all be dead and the
Sissie
would be a ball of gas in any one of a dozen star systems. If we may return to business?”

“Sorry, sir!” Cory muttered toward his clasped hands.

“Officer Mundy informed me that she sees a way to attack the problem,” Daniel said, nodding toward Adele. “Since I certainly don’t, I’ll ask her to proceed now.”

There were two consoles each on the port and starboard sides of the compartment, with the command console in the far bow. The gunnery console was forward of Adele at the communications console to starboard and Vesey, whose normal station was in the Battle Direction Center in the stern, sat there now. The missile station where Midshipman Cazelet was sitting was astern of the astrogation console to port.

The Gunner and the Chief Missileer had been ousted from the bridge for the time being, because this discussion didn’t involve their skills. Chief Engineer Pasternak was in the Power Room, for the same reason and for an even better one: had he been present, he would have remained in seemingly comatose silence, as bored as a frog listening to a sermon.

“Captain Leary interviewed Bernhard Sattler, the Alliance representative here,” Adele said without preamble. “He’s involved in trade with the Sunbright rebels, though this is simply a commercial matter. He appears to have no political interests.”

The console seats could be rotated toward the interior of the compartment. The officers—and Woetjans, who stood with her back to the closed hatch—were facing the others present; except for Adele, whose eyes were on her display. Small images of her companions’ faces were inset into the top of her screen.

She coughed to clear her throat, then added, “I found on reviewing the record of Sattler’s conversation that he admits these activities.”

Daniel blinked. Adele had been
present
at the conversation. What did she mean by “on reviewing the record?”

“It appears that other Kronstadt merchants are similarly involved,” Adele continued, “though probably none to the extent that Master Sattler is.”

Adele’s body was in Sattler’s office
, Daniel realized with a grin that he tried to hide. But her mind had been dancing down a score of information pathways, unconcerned about the sounds coming through her ears. She knew that if anything important was being discussed, it would be available on the recording her data unit was making. As indeed it had been.…

Everyone in this group respected Adele too much to doubt that she had a reason for the current lecture, but Daniel suspected he wasn’t the only one to wonder where she was going with what seemed a pointless side-track. Sattler had told them all he knew, and that had brought them no closer to the Sunbright rebel.

Vesey said, “Isn’t there still a problem with shipping goods to the rebels from Cinnabar territory? If the Funnel authorities capture some of the ships, that is, and they’re bound to capture
some
.”

Hogg sat quietly on the jump seat across from Daniel at the command console; Tovera faced Adele at Signals. The servants had no business at this meeting of the ship’s command group, but there was no reason to exclude them either. Nobody worried about either of them speaking out of turn.

“Sattler owns a one-third interest in Calpurnius Trading on Madison,” Adele said. She didn’t react sharply to the interruption, as Daniel had seen her do in the past. He had the feeling that this was what she had planned for the next point in her presentation anyway.

“All goods for the rebels are purchased and shipped by Calpurnius,” she went on, flicking a wand to cascade files to the officers listening to her. None of them bothered to examine the data now; or ever would, Daniel surmised. “I doubt that Sattler’s financial involvement would appear to anything less than a full investigation, and that by unusually competent investigators. He hasn’t put Alliance-Cinnabar relations at risk.”

Daniel didn’t try to hide his smile this time. Adele had found the link in a matter of minutes. Granted that she had been in Sattler’s office, but it was pretty certain that she would have done the same thing just as quickly if she had been given access to the Calpurnius Trading offices.

“But Madison is an Alliance world,” Vesey said, frowning in puzzlement. She didn’t doubt what Adele was saying, but she didn’t understand it. “It’s a sector capital, in fact?”

“This far out from Pleasaunce…” said Midshipman Cazelet. His family had owned a shipping line operating from the Alliance capital, Pleasaunce, before they had incurred the displeasure of Guarantor Porra and disappeared into his dungeons. “It’s just a matter of knowing who to slip the bribe to. And the bribe won’t have to be very large, I’d expect.”

“There’s a political aspect as well,” Daniel said, speaking to end the discussion before Adele did so. She had a tendency to jerk the leash harder than necessary to bring her wandering listeners back to the path she had chosen. “Madison
is
a sector capital, but Sunbright and its problems are in a different sector.”

He coughed and added, “Go on, Officer Mundy.”

Adele smiled minusculely, not at him but very possibly toward his image on her display. “Master Sattler has no immediate plans to send someone inspect his investment on Madison,” she said in her usual dry tone, “but based on similar situations on other planets, it wouldn’t surprise the staff of Calpurnius Trading if he chose to do so. I propose that I go to Madison as a passenger on the
Princess Cecile
disguised as a private ship, and that I present my credentials as Sattler’s agent to his partners there.”