What Distant Deeps (52 page)

“It was critical,” said von Gleuck firmly. “We couldn’t have defeated the invaders without the aid of Captain Leary.”

“Yes, I have accepted that,” Hergo said to his soon-to-be brother-in-law with a hint of a frown. “I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but I remain puzzled. Captain Leary, why did you risk your life to become involved in a business which you might have honorably walked away from?”

“Yes, Leary,” said Admiral Mainwaring, turning to stare at Daniel beside him. “I was going to ask you that when we had a chance to talk, but I’m willing to have an audience. What in bloody hell were you thinking of when you got mixed up in this?”

He frowned toward Hergo, then added, “Though I’m not saying you were wrong, not after the way things worked out.”

“Ah,” said Daniel, tugging down the right sleeve of his tunic. His eyes met Adele’s and he smiled.
 

Returning his attention to the head of the table, he said, “Yes, I’ve been wondering how to answer that question ever since we turned out to have survived. You see, it’s this way
 
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.”

Daniel had been dodging Admiral Mainwaring ever since the Dotterel landed six hours ago. Though the Princess Cecile and her captain were not part of the regional chain of command, the reality was that Mainwaring and everybody in the Navy House bureaucracy would expect Daniel to provide a full explanation to the commander of the Qaboosh Squadron—which he had just embroiled in a war with a Cinnabar ally.

Daniel was willing to do that, but he’d hoped and prayed he could do so publically rather than in a private conference with the Admiral. Mainwaring’s reaction would be muted in front of a foreign head of state, albeit a barbarian, and—more important—officers of the Fleet. If the Admiral were alone with a junior captain during the discussion, it might be kitty bar the door.

But the explanation was still a minefield.

“Your Excellency,” Daniel said, realizing that he didn’t know what honorific was proper for a Founder of Zenobia. He dipped his head toward Hergo in something just short of a bow, hoping that the gesture would make up for it if he’d gotten the rank wrong. “My Republic has no desire for additional possessions in the Qaboosh Region. But
 
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.”

He swept the table with what he hoped was an apologetic grin.

“Inevitably there are rumors and suspicions. Cinnabar and the Alliance, though at peace now, have been at war for most of the past decade. My former Fleet counterpart across this table—”

He nodded again, this time to von Gleuck.

“—and I have spent almost all our service careers in trying to kill one another and one another’s colleagues. Peace has come and I personally welcome it, but I’m afraid that trust won’t arrive for some considerable time.”

Admiral Mainwaring looked restive and was verging on angry at what he saw as a lecture; Founder Hergo was intent but obviously puzzled; and the other Zenobians present looked as though Daniel had lapsed into unintelligible singsong.

Von Gleuck, however, wore a hard smile. He—alone at the upper table—understood what Daniel was saying.

“Commissioner Brown found certain anomalies when he inventoried the records of his new posting,” Daniel said, gesturing toward the man as he spoke. Brown straightened when he heard his name, but he still looked like someone who was desperately trying to hang on to life after a fatal wound. “He brought them to me as a fellow Cinnabar official.”

He grinned. The thought amused him, but he reacted openly because it struck him as politic to do so.

“We were rather thin on the ground here before the Dotterel landed, you’ll recall,” he said. “At any rate, I put my staff to work on the question—”

Daniel very deliberately didn’t glance toward Adele as he spoke. Half the other RCN officers present did, however, but then jerked their eyes in any other direction. Admiral Mainwaring was one of those who did the double-take.

Which means I’ve won, Daniel thought with a rush of triumph. He hadn’t realized until that instant how nervous he had been about the Admiral’s reaction.

“—and learned that Autocrator Irene’s agents had laid a false trail that would have made it seem that the Republic’s government was involved in the Palmyrene invasion. This forced me to act. Because there was very little time, it forced me to act without consulting either my superiors—”

Daniel nodded to Mainwaring
 
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who technically wasn’t his superior, but who would appreciate the reference.

“—or to the Zenobian authorities. I sincerely apologize to those whom I slighted in my haste.”

He had brought Adele into the discussion deliberately, though not by name, because of the effect the reference would have on Mainwaring. The Admiral obviously suspected that Mistress Sand had, on the basis of secret intelligence, ordered the bluff, honest RCN officer to act in the fashion he had. Mainwaring wouldn’t push for an answer that might uncover matters that he didn’t want to know about.
 

Daniel had never met a real space officer who was comfortable with spies. Certainly Captain Daniel Leary was not; though he thought of Adele Mundy as a friend with a different background who helped him solve problems.

“I don’t know what you’re apologizing for,” the Founder said gruffly. “If it wasn’t for you, we in Calvary would’ve been screwed with a barge pole no matter what happened in space. Those names and places you had your signals officer send us, they saved our asses. Didn’t they, Flecker?”

The major looked sour, but he said, “The information we got from the yacht in orbit saved us a certain amount of time. Though I assure you, sir, you’d have found my troops equal to the problem.”

“The Militia alone would have crushed the uprising, Hergo!” said the man seated just below Otto on the Founder’s right. He wore a uniform of forest green with blue lapels, heavily encrusted with gold braid and buttons. “Let’s not make a bigger thing out of this than it was. The foreign help was welcome—”

From the way he glared first at Major Flecker to his right, then at Daniel across the table, he certainly hadn’t welcomed it.

“—but Zenobia easily would have maintained her own independence against the Palmyrene dogs.”

Hergo looked at the fellow—his cousin, if Daniel remembered correctly what Adele had mentioned in passing about the militia commander. He said, “Jan, your boys did bloody well and I’m thankful for them. Now, drop the subject, all right?”

Jan reddened, but he didn’t speak again.

The Founder turned back to Daniel. “Leary,” he said, “this is all well and good—there was a plot and you uncovered it. But why did you act? I may be a rube from the Qaboosh to you lot—”

His eyes swept the table. Daniel, along with all the Cinnabar and Alliance officers present, put on a blank expression.

“—but I’m not stupid enough to think that the Cinnabar navy goes around doing good for the sake of its soul. What does Cinnabar get out of this? What do you get out of this?”

The Founder is rather sharper than I’ve given him credit for being, Daniel thought. Aloud he said, “No, Your Excellency, neither the Senate nor the RCN is a priestly order. If I’d learned that your—”

He gestured across the table. Daniel wouldn’t have gone out of his way to repay Jan for sneering at the Cinnabar contribution to his head remaining on his shoulders, but since an example was needed anyway
 
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“—your militia commander was plotting a coup against you, I’d have passed the information on to my superiors at the next opportunity. And I’d have slept perfectly well knowing that nothing—I suspect—would be done about it.”

“You’re bloody well told that nothing would be done about it!” Admiral Mainwaring said. “The RCN doesn’t meddle in politics, and certainly not politics in a—”

He caught himself and closed his mouth. After a swallow, he resumed, “Politics on a world well outside the Republic’s sphere of influence.”

Lieutenant Ames, standing on the other side of the plush ropes, grinned from ear to ear. Daniel suspected that after the story had been retold a few times, Mainwaring would be reported as saying, “The RCN doesn’t meddle in the politics of a satellite of Bumfuck Major,” or words to that effect. Which in fact would more accurately describe the Admiral’s thought than the phrase he had used.

“But it wasn’t an internal problem, it was the action of a so-called Cinnabar ally,” Daniel said. “Furthermore, the Autocrator had falsified evidence to make it appear that the RCN was behind her grab. Since she chose to bring us into the business, then she could take the consequences of her decision.”

Daniel realized that by the end of that sentence his tone had become harsher than he’d intended. He was looking at Hergo, but that meant Mainwaring was in the corner of his eye. He breathed another sigh of relief when the Admiral slapped the table with his palm and said, “Hear, hear!”

Posy Belisande laughed musically, drawing all eyes to her. “Thank you, Captain Leary,” she said, “for reassuring me that Cinnabar policy is not determined by altruism. I would have felt spiritually inferior to you. Pride, on the other hand, is an emotion which we in the Qaboosh understand quite well.”

There was a moment’s frozen silence before Daniel, Mainwaring, von Gleuck, and the Founder all laughed—together, but in a striking variety of styles. If that girl was sitting beside me, I’d have clapped her on the back, Daniel thought. Well, if she’d been a man, I would.

Admiral Mainwaring leaned back in his chair. He lifted his saucer hat—like Daniel and Milch, he was wearing Whites—and rubbed his brow with the back of his hand.

“All right,” he said. “I understand. I’d have approved your actions, Leary, if you’d had time to warn me. Hell, I might have done the same bloody thing myself when I was a young fire-eater. I only hope I’d have been as lucky as you were. But—”

Mainwaring gave the table a challenging look. Daniel laced his fingers on the tabletop before him and looked at the Admiral with bright interest.

“But this has been a quiet region, ladies and gentlemen,” Mainwaring said. “I liked it that way. That’s good for trade and it’s good for people. The only thing it’s not good for is promotion, and if you want to think I’ve gotten soft because I don’t like the thought of a lot of people being killed to put another stripe on my sleeve—”

He tapped the single ring around his right cuff. It was the silver of a rear admiral, not the gold that served for lesser ranks.

“—then you go ahead and think that.”

“No one at this table,” said von Gleuck, “is such a fool, Admiral. A soft man does not attack a cruiser with a sloop.”

Mainwaring looked at him. “Thank you for that, Resident,” he said.

Sweeping the assembly again but settling his eyes on Founder Hergo, Mainwaring continued, “The thing that’s done the most to keep the Qaboosh quiet is Palmyra. With the Autocrator dead and probably half her nobles besides, political stability there has gone to hell in a handbasket.”

He spread his hands, then clenched them and scowled. “That means piracy,” he said, “and the gods alone know what else. I don’t look forward to it, and I suspect neither does whoever takes charge of the Zenobia detachment now that Fregattenkapitan von Gleuck has stepped upstairs. Not so?”

“Quite true,” said von Gleuck, nodding. “But wearing my current hat as Interim Resident, I have a more pressing problem involving Palmyra: the troops on Diamond Cay. I believe there are two thousand of them?”

The Fleet aide standing behind von Gleuck started to call up a field from the data unit hanging from his belt. “Roughly,” said Adele. “More accurately, nineteen hundred and twenty-three. As of this morning.”

Von Gleuck looked startled. When he saw Daniel grinning at him, he relaxed and smiled back.

“Thank you, Officer Mundy,” he said. “They can’t stay on Diamond Cay, of course, or on Zenobia—”

“They must be shot!” said the militia commander. “Or—they’re all in one place, after all. We can bomb them. Or shoot them with cannon. Resident, I guess your ships were pretty badly damaged, but the Cinnabar navy will help you, won’t they? After all, they’re enemies of all of us!”

He looked from Mainwaring to Daniel. His tone, Daniel would have said, had been more imperious than imploring.

Von Gleuck’s expression as he stared at the fellow was a mixture of disgust and amazement. He didn’t reply, but his mouth worked.

Before the Interim Resident could come out with something that he would later regret saying to a member of the planetary nobility, Daniel said, “That would be quite impossible, Marshal Belisande. It would leave the galaxy with the impression that Zenobia was no better than a rookery of vicious animals.”

The marshal opened his mouth but shut it again. By now he had realized that the temper of the conference—the civilized members of the conference—was not with him.

“That’s all well and good,” said Hergo, “and we’ve got a little time to think about it now that Irene’s dead. But we don’t have forever—they’ll get off the island if we don’t do something about them fast. When it comes down to cases, I’m more worried about my life than my reputation back in Xenos.”

He looked at von Gleuck; he wasn’t quite glaring. “Or on Pleasaunce. I want to hear a solution.”

“There is a solution,” said von Gleuck, smiling; again the affable gentleman. “The troops aren’t a threat if they’re a thousand light-years away. I’ll arrange on behalf of the Alliance of Free Stars that they be transported to Caftan—”

The nearest Alliance Central Base. It had facilities for a battle fleet and was garrisoned by at least a division of troops.

“—where they’ll be enlisted as auxiliaries in the Grand Army of the Stars. I think the Palmyrenes will be agreeable to that outcome, as an alternative to the sort of treatment which they, as barbarians, expect from the victors.”

“Now, wait a minute, Commander,” said Milch. “We captured those troops, not you, so the Land Forces of the Republic should get them. Besides which they’re on Cinnabar-registry ships. You can’t—”