What Distant Deeps (53 page)

“If I could have a moment, Commander Milch?” Daniel said.

“Leary,” said Admiral Mainwaring loudly. “This is a regional matter now, and I’d like you to leave it to the regional authorities, all right?”

Daniel’s face froze. Mainwaring was correct: it was a regional matter. But if it were left to regional interests making their parochial arguments, the best result would be the decades of piracy and fear that the Admiral himself had prophesied.

“Unless Cinnabar is asserting a claim to Zenobia
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
,” von Gleuck said. He didn’t raise his voice, but you could have used it to crack walnuts. “Then the only authority to be considered is mine. I have—”

“Brother!” said Posy Belisande.

Daniel sat up as stiffly as if he were a cadet who’d been caught napping; even Admiral Mainwaring jumped. Von Gleuck and the Founder straightened with similar expressions of startled concern.

“Am I correct in recalling
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
,” Posy said. Her voice was still cutting, though she had reduced the volume now that the initial whipcrack had brought silence. “That this is the conference which you called as leader of the independent world of Zenobia?”

Von Gleuck looked at though he wanted to speak. His eyes met Posy’s; his tongue touched his lips. He closed his mouth again.

“Yes, sister,” said Hergo in a conciliatory voice, “but without the support of—”

“Then may I suggest that you call on my friend Lady Mundy,” Posy said as though Hergo had stopped after the second word. “She has a proposal which will not only solve our problem but—”

She gave Mainwaring a look you could have speared an olive with. Daniel kept a straight face.

“—will address a situation which the so-called regional authorities have described but which they don’t have the wit to solve.”

Daniel was glad that he wasn’t expected to respond to Lady Belisande. Posy had spent years at the highest level of Pleasaunce society—the standard by which even Cinnabar measured sophistication—but it appeared that she remained a woman of Zenobia at heart. Daniel doubted whether anyone at the conference table would have guessed that until the present outburst.

“Ah
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
,” said Hergo with a hunted expression. “Lady Mundy?”

He hasn’t connected “Lady Mundy” with the RCN junior officer at the end of the table.

“Officer Mundy,” Daniel said. “Will you please give your recommendations to the company?”

“Yes,” said Adele. She held her control wands, and her personal data unit’s display was a blur before her, but she remembered to raise her eyes and turn toward Founder Hergo.

“The best choice
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
,” she said. “Clearly the best choice, I believe, is to repatriate the troops to Palmyra. If there were a practical way to send the heavy weapons captured at the Farm along with them, that would be even better, but I think in this region it would take too long to arrange shipping on vessels of sufficient displacement.”
 

Daniel concealed his smile: Mainwaring, and possibly von Gleuck as well, would have suspected that the smile was mocking instead of simply showing amusement at what Adele’s words had done. She couldn’t have gotten a greater effect by rolling a live grenade down the table. Everyone was chattering, and at least one Zenobian Councillor shouted.

“If you will all be silent!” Posy said. “Lady Mundy will explain her reasoning!”

Adele rarely—or never, in Daniel’s experience—raised her voice; Posy didn’t feel that constraint. Here, sharp words were more acceptable and very possibly more effective than the alternative Daniel had seen his friend use to get attention: drawing her pistol.

The babble died down, though it didn’t completely disappear. Adele said, “There’s a political vacuum on Palmyra, as the Squadron Commander pointed out.”

She nodded to Admiral Mainwaring. Because she was speaking at an ordinary level, the whispers and muttering ceased. Those present were more interested in what Lady Mundy was saying than in the sound of their own voices.

“If we do not take a hand, one or another of the surviving space captains will eventually gain the throne,” Adele said. “He and his peers will have turned to piracy to recruit a maximum number of followers against his rivals. Piracy is the only way for a cutter captain to make money quickly.”

Von Gleuck suddenly smiled. Admiral Mainwaring must have seen where the explanation was going at the same moment, because he clapped Daniel on the shoulder with a delighted guffaw.

“General Osman, who was to command the invasion of Zenobia,” Adele said, “seems to be an intelligent man. Further, he’s able enough to have kept his troops in check after Captain Leary landed them on a large mudbank. The Cinnabar transports they arrived in are unharmed, as are the crews. And those troops are far and away Palmyra’s best.”

Von Gleuck’s Fleet aide, and the junior officers standing behind Mainwaring and Milch, suddenly buried themselves in their data units. The Zenobian Councillors looked puzzled, but Founder Hergo had relaxed. He might not understand the details of what was being said, but he was satisfied because his sister was nodding with approval.

“If Osman returns home with two thousand troops who owe their lives to him,” Adele said, “he will take the throne. Perhaps even without fighting, since not only Autocrator Irene but also Osman’s most active potential rivals have been killed in the recent battles.”

“He’s a soldier, not a spacer,” said Mainwaring. “That by itself is likely to make him less interested in building the Horde back up to strength. Though—”

He pursed his lips.

“—will he be able to keep his captains in harness?”

“He will if their families remain on Palmyra,” said Adele with the chilling dispassion she always displayed in discussions of this sort. “I suppose we—”

She glanced at von Gleuck.

“—or the Fifth Bureau can provide Osman with advisors if he is more tenderhearted than I’ve found to be the norm among barbarians. Or soldiers, either one.”

She’s thinking about her little sister, Daniel realized. And probably about Speaker Leary, who ordered the Proscriptions.
 

Daniel Leary, RCN officer, wasn’t sure that the Proscriptions had been necessary, and he was sure that he wouldn’t have ordered them. Lady Adele Mundy, however, saw things in a very different fashion.

“I suspect that Autocrator Osman will have his hands too full at home,” von Gleuck said, “to be planning foreign adventures. Certainly I believe that my host, Founder Hergo—”

He nodded to Hergo in pleasant deference. He’ll make a very good Resident.

“—and I will be fully occupied for quite a long time in returning Zenobia to calm after the attempted coup and invasion.”

“Milch,” said Admiral Mainwaring, “put together a team to survey the transports and determine what they’ll need to become spaceworthy. I don’t imagine that parking in a swamp has had good effects on their seals and environmental systems. Besides which—”

He looked across the table to von Gleuck.

“—they’ll need rations, and that the RCN cannot help with.”

“We lifted in a bloody hurry when the Philante raised the alarm,” said Milch, speaking while he keyed notes into his data unit. “Well, we thought it was an alarm, Leary.”

He looked at Daniel with a wry smile. “One of our own ships turning pirate was what it looked like to me. Anyway, we’re transferring cereals from the Espeigle to the Dotterel right now or we wouldn’t have bread.”

“There must be troop rations stockpiled at the Farm,” said von Gleuck. “We can transport them to Diamond Cay.”

It wasn’t clear to Daniel whether Otto was speaking as a Fleet officer or as Resident when he said “we,” but it didn’t matter until Marshal Belisande said, “Everything captured on Zenobia is our property. We’ll sell the rations to any friendly power which wants to purchase them, of course, but—”

“The Government of Zenobia hereby makes a free gift to the Alliance of all loot captured from the Palmyrene invaders,” said Hergo gruffly. “Jan, make sure the Resident gets whatever he wants. No, come to think.”

He switched his glance from his cousin to the mercenary seated beside him.

“Major, you take charge of the Farm with your troops. And make bloody sure that there’s no delay in getting food or whatever else the Resident asks to Diamond Cay. I want those Palmyrenes to go back home as fast as they can get there, and I’d say travel rations were a bloody cheap price for that.”

“Speaking of necessary supplies,” said von Gleuck, smiling—but not in an entirely friendly fashion—at Daniel. “My destroyers are the major defense of Zenobia against attack by Palmyrene survivors who haven’t gotten the message, but their rigging is badly cut up. When we landed, we found that virtually all the sail fabric in Calvary Harbor has been commandeered by our friends and allies in the Princess Cecile. Including the sails of civilian vessels. I think a redistribution is called for, do you not, Captain Leary?”

“Ah,” said Daniel brightly. Apparently Vesey and the Sissies under her direction had applied in a very literal fashion his direction to make the ship right ASAP
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
which he approved. But he could see Otto’s point.

Daniel paused to frame an answer. He suspected that the patrol sloops, which hadn’t been engaged, could spare some sails, but he wasn’t going to suggest that until he’d had a moment to beg the Admiral’s indulgence.

Posy and Adele rose from the table; Adele was putting away her data unit. They walked toward the grotto with Posy in the lead.

What in heaven’s name are they doing? Daniel wondered. But right now he had more pressing questions to answer.

CHAPTER 30

Calvary on Zenobia

“My dear,” Posy murmured in Adele’s ear. “Would you care to visit the grotto? Since I doubt you’re any more interested in discussions of sails and ration packs than I am.”

“The information may be significant,” Adele said, shutting off her data unit. “But I don’t see that I would gain anything by listening to the decision being arrived at.”

Arrived at by thoroughly childish argument, she thought but did not say. The relative allocations were being treated as matters of honor, not pragmatic questions of need and availability.

She got up and put the data unit away. “This grotto?” she said, nodding minusculely toward the gate in the wall behind them. Because the conference table was in the left corner of the garden, the central entrance was less than twenty feet from their end of the table.

“Yes,” said Posy, leading by a half step. Wood flanked them. Her face had no expression, but Adele read concern in it. Perhaps she was projecting her own puzzlement.

The warrant officer commanding the Alliance guard contingent leaned forward in his folding chair to look down at them. Woetjans had risen to her feet and braced her right hand on the monumental head which would otherwise have blocked her view of what was going on. Adele looked up at the bosun and nodded—reassuringly, she hoped.

Posy touched the gate with an electronic key. The bars were woven from beryllium monocrystal: it would be easier to blast through the stone wall itself than to cut them. Wood started in ahead of her mistress.

“Wood,” said Posy. She didn’t shout, but there was no give in her voice. “Wait outside, if you will, and prevent anyone from disturbing Lady Mundy and myself.”

Wood glanced from Posy to Tovera, then back. She didn’t move from the gateway.

“Wood,” Posy repeated.

“Tovera,” said Adele with a faint smile. “Please keep your colleague company. Perhaps you can talk about old school days with her.”

“Yes, mistress,” said Tovera. “Pillow fights in the dormitory and cheering the field hockey team. Rah rah, eh, Wood?”

Posy lost her composure enough to frown in surprise. Wood, however, broke into a glacial smile and stepped aside. She said, “As Your Ladyship wishes.”

Dim lights built to a glow as Adele walked forward. The path bent sharply to the right and descended, curving around so that in twenty feet they would be below the garden. She heard Posy cling the gate closed, then lock it before walking briskly to join her.

“If we go to the end,” Posy said, nodding the way forward, “I don’t believe any device outside the grating can overhear us. And I had Wood check this morning to be sure that nothing had been concealed within.”

Which is only proof if I trust you, Adele said; but in fact she did trust the younger woman. Besides, Adele had no intention of saying anything that she would mind everyone on Zenobia overhearing.

“All right,” she said. No doubt Posy would explain what this was about in good time; and as an alternative to listening to a wrangle over ship fittings, she would prefer to watch concrete set.

The passageway ended in a circular room which must be directly under the garden’s central fountain. It was amusingly similar to the rotundas onto which starship airlocks opened, including the relatively low ceiling. Faint green glow strips marked the floor and outlined twelve small alcoves—peepholes, really—set into the walls at eye level.

Posy gestured to an alcove. “When this was built in the last century,” she said, “those showed exotic scenes. I don’t suppose they work now.”

Adele walked to the nearest; she couldn’t see anything within. She moved to the next. “The gates looked more recent than that,” she said.

“My uncle, who preceded Hergo as Founder, added the gates,” Posy said. “He used the grotto for private parties. He wasn’t a nice man.”

The second alcove lighted when Adele stepped close. A giant arachnid chased a nude woman with flowing blond hair through a forest glade. Its clawed forelegs gripped her and threw her down.

Adele’s lip curled. The creature’s intention wasn’t to devour the girl after all.

“The person who built this place,” Adele said, facing Posy in the center of the room, “wasn’t a very nice man either. What did you wish to ask me, Lady Belisande?”