What Distant Deeps (16 page)

“Except for the three hundred personnel of the Founder’s Regiment,” Adele said, her lip curling in contempt at Runkle’s imprecision.
 

“Besides that,” she went on, viewing her display as she spoke, “Calvary Harbor has anti-starship missiles. It would be necessary to capture or disable those, or else to land at a distance—at least a hundred and eighty miles from the batteries. Even then there would be a risk if a battery commander were alert. A landing starship can’t maneuver; it’s already operating at maximum stress.”

“Have you technical specialists ever been on an assault landing?” Tovera said, her voice a buzz as quiet as a wasp’s wings. “Mistress Mundy and I have, several times. Even when Captain Leary was in charge, they weren’t nearly as neat and simple as they may seem on a computer display.”

“Yes,” said Adele, “there’s that.”

She shut down her data unit and rose. The visit hadn’t been a waste of time, since she would have found it very difficult to enter the Section’s locked files from outside the building. This way she could check whatever information the Section gave her without them knowing she was doing so.

“I will relay your concerns to such persons as might have an interest in them, Lieutenant Leonard,” Adele said; she turned her head slightly to include Runkle in her statement. She thrust the data unit away in the thigh pocket she’d had added to her Grays. “For the moment, however, I must repeat that to the best of my knowledge, the fears you express are not shared on Xenos.”

“But there has to be a reason you were sent to the Qaboosh!” Runkle said, frustration getting the better of her tone. “It doesn’t take an agent of your stature to nursemaid some commissioner!”

“I am here, Technician
 
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,” Adele said, suddenly coldly angry, “as signals officer to the best fighting captain in the RCN. And now that you’ve reminded me, I’ll get back to my duties. Good day to you both!”

She stalked into the hall, past Runkle who was trying to burble an apology. Tovera followed, walking backward with her hand inside her attaché case. A needless precaution, but she would ignore Adele’s objection; and anyway, Adele didn’t feel like objecting.

The trouble was that Adele suspected there really was fire somewhere in the smokescreen of sloppy thinking which the Intelligence Section had raised. The best hope was that Autocrator Irene planned to attack a Cinnabar ally or even Stahl’s World itself; such a business could be put down at modest cost in lives and property.

If the attack was on an Alliance world, however, the danger wasn’t just commerce raiding in reprisal. It would light a fuse which, when it burned back to Pleasaunce, would engulf the Peace of Rheims and with it, very possibly, both exhausted empires.

“This bay houses the Power Room watches,” Commander Bailey said as he entered the B Level compartment with Daniel at his side; von Gleuck and Lady Belisande followed closely. Most of the bunk towers had been lifted against the ceiling to clear the huge compartment.

Three spacers squatted near the hatch to play cards on the floor. They hopped to their feet and one—presumably the senior man, but they wore only breechclouts—shouted, “Attention!”

A dozen other personnel leaped up in various stages of undress. “Stand easy,” Bailey said with a nonchalant wave. The Palmyrene spacers may have relaxed slightly, but they didn’t go back to their previous occupations while the visitors strode down the center aisle.

“The room is very clean,” Lady Belisande said as the party approached the rear bulkhead. “But perhaps that is because it’s so much bigger than your destroyer, Otto?”

Von Gleuck snorted. Daniel said, “Your Ladyship, I’ve never seen a ship of any size this neat before. I’ve seen battleships straight from the builders’ yard that had more trash and litter about them, not to mention grease.”

“What Captain Leary says is my experience also,” von Gleuck said. “Commander, has the ship been cleaned specially for the gathering? Even so it is remarkable—and we are not in the public parts of the vessel where strangers are to be expected.”

Bailey led them out into the corridor through the sternward hatch. None of the off-duty spacers had spoken while visitors were present, save for the man who had called the compartment to attention.

“No,” Bailey said. “That’s how it is in the Horde. It’s a good thing, you know, but to tell the truth it gives me the creeps sometimes.”

“You’re from Cinnabar yourself, are you not, Commander?” Daniel said with a friendly smile.

Bailey had been reaching for the control of the hatch marked Missile Magazine #2. He started and gave Daniel a look of nervous surmise. “I’m from Kostroma, born right in Kostroma City,” he said. “But, ah, I lived a while in Xenos. And had twelve years as Chief Missileer in the RCN if you want to know the truth. But I didn’t desert, I mustered out proper, and anyway I’m an officer in the Horde now and the Autocrator won’t let you haul me back!”

“Nothing like that, my good man,” said Daniel. “Quite a number of RCN personnel will be entering foreign service or trying to live on half pay very shortly if the peace holds.”

He’d slipped into the tone of a superior to a servant rather than speaking as peer to peer. Bailey had merely confirmed Daniel’s existing assumption: the fellow was a warrant officer with a commission from barbarians rather than an officer by birth and education.

“Are there many foreign officers in the Horde?” von Gleuck said. “I met a number of cutter captains below at the gala, and they were all Palmyrenes.”

“Specialist officers is all,” admitted Bailey. He’d apparently decided just to answer what he was asked rather than worry about what he should say. “Which means some of us aboard the Piri Reis and also the Turgut. And nobody from Cinnabar or Pleasaunce, either: I’m Kostroman, remember. The destroyer’s got a Palmyrene chief engineer, but Antoniani here on the Piri Reis is from Pantellaria.”

Daniel looked into the missile magazine without entering. All the cradles were filled, and everything was as precisely arranged as the interior of a mechanical timepiece.

The missiles were single-converter units, however. They had the same terminal velocity as the weapons in front-line service with Cinnabar and the Alliance, but they took twice as long to accelerate.

The units that turned reaction mass into the antimatter which was annihilated with ordinary matter in the High Drive were expensive. Otherwise a missile was a water tank which relied on kinetic energy to destroy its target. Navies which expected to use their missiles—and who could afford them—equipped their ships with dual-converter models, thereby gaining an advantage in combat.

“Is the Piri Reis having trouble with her own converters, Bailey?” Daniel asked as he turned away from the magazine.

That got through the commander’s cloak of resignation. He blurted defensively, “Why do you ask that?”

“Probably because every Pantellarian ship in the RCN has converter problems,” von Gleuck said. “Certainly that’s true in the Fleet, as I know to my cost. I was a midshipman on the Turbine. We counted ourselves lucky when we had seventy-five percent of our High Drive motors on line.”

Daniel laughed. “Yes, but they have such pretty lines, do they not?” he said, exchanging grins with von Gleuck.

He bowed to Lady Belisande and added, “Though not nearly so pretty as those of her ladyship here.”

“Captain,” she said with an arch lift of her slim nose, “I will slap you if you do not immediately begin referring to me as Posy. Lady Belisande died at my birth, as you might guess from my given name of Posthuma. I am alive.”

“And quite lively, in a ladylike fashion,” said von Gleuck with an affectionate grin.

“Sometimes ladylike,” Posy said. She covered her giggle behind her hand. They were obviously an affectionate couple, comfortable in one another’s presence.

The commo unit on Bailey’s shoulder gave three shrill beeps. That must have been more than merely an attention signal, for he cracked his heels together and stiffened before replying, “Bailey here, Excellency!”

“Bring Captain Leary to my suite, Bailey,” a woman’s voice directed. The Palmyrenes used external speakers rather than earbuds. While the tiny speaker might account for some of the harsh tone, Daniel suspected that it gave a fairly accurate impression of the Autocrator’s manner. “At once.”

“This way,” said Bailey, gesturing with his hands as though he were shooing his guests toward the companionways in the stern rotunda which widened the central corridor just beyond the missile magazine. “And don’t dawdle! The Admiral’s Suite, that’s where Her Excellency is, is just forward of the BDC.”

Daniel took the lead, which would allow von Gleuck to shepherd his lady at the speed they chose. He and the Alliance officer exchanged glances, but they both understood the situation without needing to speak. This way there wasn’t a risk that a spacer—well, a rated landsman; no spacer would behave that way—would barrel down the up companionway, nor that someone in a hurry would try to push by from below.

Posy couldn’t have a great deal of experience on helical metal staircases, but her steps pattered up quickly enough that Daniel didn’t feel a need to slow down for her sake. He grinned, remembering how easily Miranda Dorst took to companionways. In Miranda’s case, poverty after her father’s early death had meant the elevators of the apartment block where she and her mother lived were frequently out of order.

Pantellarians wearing body armor and carrying mob guns—impellers whose short barrel fired clusters of aerofoils which spread widely when they left the muzzle—stood outside the open hatch just up the corridor. Two guards turned to cover Daniel and his companions, while the third kept his weapon aimed toward the bow.

If the Autocrator is really concerned for her safety
 
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, Daniel thought, she had better consider how aerofoils would ricochet from steel bulkheads. He gave the guards an engaging smile.

A man in black Cinnabar formalwear with a white ruff stepped out of the compartment, followed by a young woman with a briefcase; she wore a beige suit with maroon piping, the dress uniform of members of External Affairs. She and her superior strode silently past Daniel and disappeared into a down companionway. The man—Governor Wenzel, by deduction—nodded warily to Daniel’s uniform.

The woman who followed the Cinnabar officials into the corridor wore a tiara. Golden robes concealed her body, but there was no fat in her cheeks or hands.

“You’re Captain Leary?” she said. “Come into my suite. I want to talk to you.”

The commo unit hadn’t misled Daniel about her voice, though in person the Autocrator had a resonance that commanded respect. He said, “Yes, I’m Daniel Leary, Your Excellency. May I introduce my friends, Lady Posthuma Belisande of Zenobia and Fregattenkapitan Otto von Gleuck of the Alliance Fleet?”

“A Zenobian?” Irene said on a rising note. “And you—”

Her eyes searched for Commander Bailey. He had stepped behind the visitors as soon as Daniel made his announcement.

“—have brought a Fleet officer here?”

“Your pardon, Leary,” von Gleuck said politely. He fluffed the sleeve of his “Zenobian” blouse and added, “Aboard this vessel, Your Excellency, I am the Honorable Otto von Gleuck, second son of Count Johann. We on Adlersbild continue the custom of hereditary nobility, foolish though it may seem to you sturdy republicans of Cinnabar.”

“I recall my father, Speaker Leary, commenting on that very thing,” said Daniel, grinning at von Gleuck.

They were baiting the Autocrator. That certainly hadn’t been Daniel’s intention when he jumped to obey Admiral Mainwaring’s summons, but he knew instinctively that it was the correct response—at least when he had a partner like von Gleuck to support him.

If he didn’t make clear the position of Cinnabar relative to that of Palmyra, the Autocrator would begin ordering him around like a puppy. That would force him, as an RCN officer in the middle of an RCN base, to react. She might become angry at being treated with gentle amusement, but that was less dangerous in the long run to the relations among the powers of the Qaboosh Region.

The Autocrator’s chiseled features went pale. It occurred to Daniel that it would not be beyond possibility that the ruler of a world so far out on the fringes might order her guards to shoot them all dead. After long moments of silence she smiled coldly and said, “Come into my suite, then, all of you. It is well that you should have seen the Piri Reis for yourselves.”

She swept back through the hatchway. Daniel exchanged glances with von Gleuck, then led the way. The Alliance officer followed Posy.

Bailey seemed to have disappeared. Goodness knew what this would mean for the gunnery officer, but Daniel couldn’t find much sympathy for someone who knew what civilization was but preferred to sell himself to barbarians.

The interior of the large compartment surprised Daniel, though he supposed it shouldn’t have. Rugs covered the deck. Over them were piled cushions which must be fixed in place or acceleration and weightlessness would fling them about. The curved tables at two corners were low, and the very capable-looking console against the forward bulkhead was intended to be used by someone sitting cross-legged.

There were four male servants in uniforms like the Palmyrene spacers’ but with cloth-of-gold bands at wrists and ankles. The fifth man present was a burly fifty-year-old with a full beard. He wore robes similar to those of the Autocrator but in black silk; only the sash at his waist was gold.

“So, Polowitz,” she said. “The tall one is an Alliance officer come to spy on us.”

Von Gleuck stood very straight. “I assure you, Admiral Polowitz,” he said, “that I am not a spy but rather a naval officer like yourself. And—”

He turned and nodded toward Daniel.

“—like Captain Leary here. Your Excellency—”

Looking back toward the Autocrator.

“—if my presence disturbs you, I will of course take my leave.”

“Nothing the Alliance does disturbs me,” she said, “except its pretensions and its very existence. Isn’t that so, Captain Leary?”