Death's Bright Day: Chapter Thirteen

Above Peltry

    “Braking in five seconds,” Daniel announced over the ship channel, piping his voice through every commo helmet and every PA speaker on the Katchaturian. He watched the countdown clock and said, “Braking — now.”

    He pressed the Execute button, which on this Sverdlovsk-built destroyer was a real button instead of being virtual like that of the Sissie. The twelve plasma thrusters roared in unison.

    The ship shuddered — of course — but with a little more violence than Daniel thought was proper. He eyed the readouts, then used the vernier scale to adjust the attitude of both bow nozzles on the port outrigger. The vibration smoothed noticeably.

    He grinned. Noticeably to him, at least.

    “Power,” Daniel said, keying a two-way link to Chief Engineer Pasternak. The 2 g braking thrust would be uncomfortable to walk in, but it didn’t seriously affect anyone’s ability to speak. “Chief, I think you solved the problems when you blew out Tank Three. “Good call, over.”

    When Daniel moved to the Katchaturian, he had brought the Sissie’s chief engineer with him. The corvette’s propulsion systems were in blue-print condition, but he hadn’t been confident that the same would be true for the destroyer.

    In fact neither the thruster nozzles nor the High Drive motors of the Katchaturian had excessive hours on them. On the voyage out to 5L13TTF — the uninhabited world Daniel had chosen for training — there had been niggling stumbles in both systems, however.

    Pasternak had finally decided that the problem wasn’t in the power units themselves but rather was debris in one of the destroyer’s reaction mass tanks. The Power Room crew had blown out the tank and the lines it fed while Daniel and his officers conducted training either on the ground or on the Princess Cecile.

    “Six, I don’t think that tank had been drained in years,” Pasternak replied. “That bloody Riddle –” the Katchaturian’s chief engineer when Daniel took over the Nabis Contingent; Pasternak had cashiered him on his first inspection of the destroyer’s Power Room “– was a lazy scut besides being a drunk, which was why I fired him. The ship made only short hops, and Riddle didn’t rotate the draw so that they all got used. Over.”

    “Six out,” Daniel said, smiling faintly.

    The stutter in the thrusters as he brought the Katchaturian down on a rocky shoreline on 5L13TTF for the first time had been unnerving. The problem could have been in the ship’s electronics — or worse, the wiring harness. The notion that trash in the reaction mass lines was randomly starving the thrusters of fuel hadn’t occurred to him, because it was so easy to prevent.

    Atmospheric buffeting began when the destroyer braked into Peltry’s stratosphere. It grew worse as she dropped lower.

    A starship couldn’t be streamlined. Even with the antennas and yards telescoped and lashed firmly to the hull, a ship was a mass of irregular protrusions. At the speeds a starship entered the atmosphere, you could only hang on and hope that nothing — well, as little as possible — carried away.

    The Sissie and Katchaturian had proceeded to their destination in a series of hops through the Matrix rather than the single insertion which was all that so short a distance really required. Daniel was not only giving the new personnel as much experience as possible, he wanted his Sissies to get a feel for people who would revert to being officers if they worked out.

    Most of the Nabis officers had done pretty well, or anyway well enough. An infantry captain — formally, the ground troops had been the Capital Regiment on Nabis — was probably a decent officer in his original slot, but he had proven unwilling to take orders from warrant officers or from women. Minister Robin might well have a use for him; Daniel Leary did not.

    The Katchaturian handled well on reentry; better than the Princess Cecile if the truth were told, though Daniel didn’t think he would ever say that aloud. They were actually slanting in short of his intended path to Newtown Harbor, so he angled the thrusters to emphasize lift over braking. The buffeting increased, but not seriously.

    5L13TTF had a breathable atmosphere and a temperate climate at the equator. It had never been settled because there was no soil and plenty of more suitable worlds in this region, but it was a perfect place for firearms training.

    “Marksmanship training” would have been overstating the process, because at the end of it most of the spacers — Sissies as well as the Nabis recruits — still couldn’t be expected to hit a man-sized target much farther than they could have thrown the weapon.

    They were less likely to be afraid of an impeller, however, and they were probably less likely to shoot things by accident. A technician had blown off his own big toe, but spacers regularly lost digits and even limbs. Daniel thought the fellow would be all right in the Katchaturian’s Power Room once he’d healed.

    He halted the destroyer in a hover, then slid her sideways into position a hundred feet above her slip in the naval harbor. Flaring the thruster nozzles manually, Daniel set her down. Just above the surface their descent slowed. The ship wallowed for a moment, cushioned by steam licked upward by plasma exhaust. When the outriggers touched the water, Daniel chopped the throttles.

    It had been a good landing, though a slight drift to port suggested that either thruster alignment or the sphincter balance wasn’t as good as it could be. He and Pasternak with all the original Nabis officers would go over the propulsion systems in the next day or two.

    It was also true that the Katchaturian’s greater length to breadth ratio than a corvette emphasized Daniel’s sloppiness. Schnitker — the Nabis and later Tarbell captain, now Daniel’s striker — would have said that the landing had been perfect.

    Daniel grinned. When I start judging my performance by the standards of an officer from Novy Sverdlovsk, now working in the back of beyond, it will be time to retire. Though in fairness, Schnitker was a decent astrogator and a better shiphandler than most recent Academy graduates.

    The Katchaturian pinged and crackled as she cooled. The pumps in her stern throbbed, sucking harbor water to replenish the ship’s reaction mass through fat hoses. For human use the water would be distilled, but inlet filtering was sufficient for the thrusters and High Drives. Any working fluid was adequate for the propulsion systems, but using water had benefits for the crews.

    Daniel checked his read-outs and found no red lights. Barnes, the bosun, and his crew wouldn’t be able to check the rigging until the ship had cooled considerably, but at least they hadn’t lost a whole antenna. The hull’s integrity was as good as you could expect of a ship which had seen more than twenty years service, and only one of the High Drive motors was showing excessive wear. In all, a very satisfactory —

    Cazelet was the Katchaturian’s acting signals officer. The slot was ordinarily that of a junior warrant officer, but Daniel had become used to having a signals officer who did more than pass messages.

    Neither Cory nor Cazelet were the equal of Adele, but she had trained them to do many of the things she did — and more important, to think the way she did. When Cazelet sent an alert message to the command console, Daniel opened it immediately and scanned the contents.

    “Cazelet,” he said, opening a link. “What has the government reaction been, over?”

    “Sir, there hasn’t been one,” Cazelet said. “Not to mention, I mean. Port Control alerted the Alfonso, the destroyer on standby, but the captain queried the Ministry of War and the Ministry hasn’t responded. That was five hours ago, over.”

    “Do we know who the pirates were?” Daniel said. He called up the recordings of Katchaturian’s Plot Position Indicator when they extracted above Peltry an hour ago. The hulk which held reaction mass for the pirates remained where it had been, a million miles above the surface, but the three smaller vessels had vanished.

    There were several alerts on the command display — Barnes was ready to open the main hatch, Vesey was bringing the Princess Cecile down, and Pasternak had a detailed report on the propulsion systems. They could all wait until Daniel had sorted out Cazelet’s report.

    “Sir, Harbor Control reported that it was the pirates from Benjamin that we saw before,” Cazelet said. “They’re probably right, but I won’t be able to confirm that until I’ve checked their records. Ah, sir? Do you suppose Officer Mundy might know, Over?”

    “I’ll never bet against what Officer Mundy knows,” Daniel said with a broad grin. “But I think we can go with common sense for now. Break. Lieutenant Cory, do we have two weeks’ stores aboard, over?”

    “Six, we’ve got thirty days of everything but dairy and fresh fruit,” Cory replied. “Is there anything in particular you’re worried about, over?”

    “Negative,” said Daniel. “Break. Ship, this is Six. I expected to give you all a day’s liberty. That’s not going to happen after all.”

    He was using the general channel, so everyone aboard the Katchaturian heard him. Though the Nabis personnel would be upset, Daniel suspected that the announcement made the Sissies within the crew hopeful, because they had a notion of what would come next.

    “Instead, all the Nabis personnel are released for six hours,” Daniel said. “Former Sissies get three hours, port watch first. Starboard acts as anchor watch, then switch. When the crew has reported back aboard, we’re going to see some action. Probably not a lot of action, but we’ll be earning our pay.”

    The general push was locked in send-only mode so nobody could interrupt Daniel over the intercom, but cheers echoed from the destroyer’s compartments. He continued to smile.

    “Now, some of you may wonder what happens if some of you don’t show up after liberty,” Daniel said. “That’s easy: you’re off the ship. I don’t come looking for you. I don’t need spacers who don’t have the balls for a fight, because if you serve with me there’s going to be fighting. Ask the nearest Sissie if you don’t believe me. Six out.”

    Daniel took a deep breath, then said, “Ship, I’m opening the main hatch. Barnes, get the gangplank out.”

    He pressed Execute. The dogs withdrew from their sockets and the hatch began to pivot down.

    There were now a dozen desperate messages on Daniel’s display, but there was another call he needed to make before he talked to any of his officers. “Cazelet,” he said. “I want to talk to Officer Mundy. Can you –”

    “Six,” Cazelet interrupted, “you’re connected. Signals out.”

    “Adele?” Daniel said. Cazelet was showing off.

    “Yes,” Adele said. “I’m looking at the report of the attack which Rene sent me. Can you track the pirates?”

    Cazelet has a right to show off.

    “No,” said Daniel, “not through the Matrix with that much of a head start. But we’re pretty sure they’re heading for Benjamin with their loot. I think with your help we’ll be able to locate them on the planet.”

    Or even without. Adele’s identifications through electronic signatures were valuable, but Daniel’s own Mark 1 Eyeball ought to be good enough to spot the captured freighter among the ships the locals used in their asteroid belt — and for piracy.

    “Are you up to join a live-fire exercise against pirates?” he said.

    The destroyer rocked as the Sissie landed in the next slip, her thrusters thrashing the surface like eight miniature volcanoes. Daniel would make sure that Cazelet had sent the full report to Vesey, but he didn’t interrupt his discussion with Adele to make the order explicit.

    “Yes,” said Adele. “Tovera and I will be with you in half an hour. Sooner, I suppose, if you need us.”

    “I’ve given the crew six hours liberty,” Daniel said. “And I want to check the rig, though I don’t expect any real deficiencies. You’ve got plenty of time.”

    “Daniel, my specialist equipment is aboard the Princess Cecile,” Adele said. “I can work from the Katchaturian, but it will be more efficient if I’m aboard the Sissie.”

    “That’s fine,” Daniel said. “The ships will be operating together. Ah — will this be a problem for your other duties?”

    “I’ll lock the doors of the Residency when we leave,” Adele said. “The flowers may suffer, but other than that the operation here will be as productive as it was when Mistress Mignouri was in charge. Doing a favor for the 5th Bureau doesn’t take precedence over my duties to the RCN. And to you.”

    “I look forward to seeing you shortly,” Daniel said. He broke the connection, smiling even more broadly.

    One light minute above Benjamin

    “Benjamin is a mining world,” Adele said, speaking to both the Princess Cecile and by laser link to the Katchaturian, which hung in space next to the corvette. She wasn’t sure how good the destroyer’s commo suite was, but Cazelet and Cory were both aboard her. They would make something work so that the whole crew got the briefing.

    “I suppose I should say that Benjamin is a metal processing world,” Adele said. “The residents haul metallic asteroids to the planet’s surface and process them with fusion plants. The work is easier for low-skill personnel to do in normal gravity and atmosphere, and they aren’t concerned about waste products because Benjamin is largely a desert with oases in which most residents live.”

    “The residents live like rats in brush hovels,” said Daniel, the only person whom Adele had permitted to comment; all other helmets and consoles were locked out. “That’s another reason they don’t worry about wastes, over.”

    “Yes, that’s correct,” Adele said. She knew that she worried more about precise details than most listeners did; certainly she worried more than an audience of common spacers on a warship. In her heart though, Adele knew she was right and they were wrong, which made it very difficult for her to restrain the tendency.

    She displayed a real-time image of the surface of Benjamin. Normally the necessary level of enhancement at this distance would have washed out details, despite the Sissie’s excellent optics. That wasn’t a problem with Benjamin, because there were no details.

    The surface of the planet was of a generally tawny color flecked with gray wedges downwind of smelter flues. No standing water was visible, though Adele knew that greater magnification would have picked up ponds at low points. The watercourses were underground, and only a light dusting of ice glittered at the poles.

    “You’ll notice the bright smears at various locations,” Adele said, focusing down on one which was catching sunlight at an angle to display its metallic sheen. “The sharp end of each is a smelter. Ordinarily the settlement will be upwind of the smelter, though I have found exceptions.”

    Daniel’s comments about rats living in hovels was unjust to rats. All rats would have moved out of the path of sulfurous fumes.

    “That isn’t a concern with the two villages we’re interested in,” Adele said, shifting the display to place the adjacent sites — they were fifteen miles apart — in the same frame. Huts were merely irregularities at this magnification, but the ships were brightly visible: one large and two small ones at the village on the left and a medium-sized ship on the right.

    “The nickel-iron which the smelters produce must be transported to other systems for use,” Adele continued. “It pays for basic food stuffs, generally processed algae. Higher value trace minerals are exchanged for luxuries from the small trading vessels which make periodic visits to Benjamin. All in all, it’s a pretty miserable existence, so it’s not really surprising that some miners have turned to piracy in neighboring systems.”

    Under other circumstances, Adele might have hesitated before she used a laser communicator to link the two ships, since it was important that they avoid notice from the planet below. Passive observation of ships a light minute out would have been difficult from the surface even of a developed world, but when they were using active emitters detection became an order of magnitude easier.

    That said, on Benjamin an order of magnitude didn’t raise the risk to the level of real danger. The only laser receptor on the planet was the one on the freighter whose capture had brought the Nabis Contingent here.

    “This ship…” Adele said, highlighting the largest vessel, “is the Mezentian Gate, a three-thousand ton freighter out of Rosecrans, carrying a rolling mill to Peltry where she was captured in orbit. She is owned by her captain and in the past has carried a total of fifteen crew.”

    She moved the highlight to the pair of small ships near the captive. “Neither of these ships has a name,” she said, “but one has the legend 16 painted on both sides of its bow. They are two of the ships which were loitering above Peltry. Captain Vesey — ” as she was while in command of the Princess Cecile ” — informs me that they are 600 ton general purpose craft configured to tow cargoes in the Matrix. Normally that means asteroids, but they towed a freighter full of water to the Peltry system. And this –”

    Adele shifted the imagery to the other village and the vessel there. “This is the Roebuck, an eighteen-hundred ton freighter,” she said. “The third pirate vessel. The Roebuck mounts a basket of eight bombardment rockets and is the only armed pirate.”

    “The Mezentian Gate was waiting for landing clearance and was taken unawares,” Daniel said, answering a question that Adele hadn’t thought to ask. “A rocket hit near the bow, starting seams. Captain Chidsey had the choice of landing a damaged ship without ground control, or surrendering to the pirates. The pirates put a crew aboard and brought the prize to Benjamin, over.”

    “I have no evidence of where the crew of the captive is being kept,” Adele said. “I would be able to pick up radio signals at this distance, but I don’t find any evidence of such signals. Though both villages have smelters, neither seems to be using its fusion bottle to power electric lights. The residents are subsisting at a very low cultural level.”

    She cleared her throat. “I believe that’s all I have to say,” Adele said. “Captain Leary, I’m turning the briefing over to you.”

    “Spacers of the Nabis Contingent,” Daniel said. Adele noticed again his way of sounding both friendly and in charge. “I’m going to keep this short, because we’ll sort out the attack details on the ground. We’ll be setting down initially a hundred miles west of our targets. If we’re noticed there by locals, it won’t matter since planetary communication on Benjamin is at the smoke-signal level.”

    He paused, his image on Adele’s display looking to right and left. Daniel had miniatures of the assembled crews on his screen, almost 400 faces. That was too many people to see as individuals, but the same would have been true if they were on a parade ground in front of him.

    “When we go in, it’ll be hard and fast,” Daniel said. “In the best traditions of the Nabis Contingent. For now, dismissed!”

    On the Sissie’s command channel, Vesey said, “Ship, prepare for insertion. We’ll extract in Benjamin orbit. Out.”

Benjamin

    The Captain’s Great Cabin on the Katchaturian embarrassed Daniel because it was, well, great. It wasn’t just that the destroyer was almost twice the size of a corvette like the Princess Cecile. The Katchaturian had been built on Novy Sverdlovsk, where the distinctions between commissioned officers and everybody else were extreme. A Cinnabar-built destroyer would have applied half this cabin’s volume to crew accommodations.

    Daniel looked around the table at his officers and smiled. Reforming the social structure of Novy Sverdlovsk was no part of his duties to either Cinnabar or the Tarbell Stars, and the cabin was extremely useful for Daniel to address all his officers in privacy and comfort.

    “Fellow Sissies,” Daniel said, and his grin softened: everyone in the cabin now was former RCN. “We’ll be attacking the two villages simultaneously. The ships will lift from here, take curving courses and keep low, then land a mile from their targets. The Katchaturian will take the village we’re calling Alpha where the captured ship is, the Sissie’s party will take Beta. The locals themselves don’t have names for the villages, as best Officer Mundy can tell.”

    “Which means the locals don’t have names for them,” Cory said. Daniel joined in the chorus of chuckles around the table.

    Adele was the only RCN officer not present in the flesh. She had said she could join in if needed through the cabin’s display and that she didn’t want to leave her console on the Sissie’s bridge. Daniel had deferred to her opinion, though it would have led to a short discussion if anybody else had said that to him. Nabis officers provided the anchor watches and were assembling the combined crews on the ground between the two ships.

    “Six?” said Woetjans, her forehead wrinkled with the effort of getting her mind around a concept. “Why so far out? I mean, I don’t mind a hike, but you and Vesey could drop right in the middle of the places, right? Or a hundred feet out so we don’t burn ’em up, anyway.”

    “We don’t want to burn the huts up, that’s true,” Daniel said, “because we don’t know where the prisoners are being kept. We’re all spacers, and the worst these poor bastards from Rosecrans did was sign on with a captain who was more concerned with making port than he was of being ambushed by pirates.”

    Nods and grunts of agreement greeted the partial explanation, but Cory and Hale remained still-faced. They clearly realized there was more to come.

    “The mile is a compromise,” Daniel continued. “It’s far enough out, especially if we stay low, that it probably won’t alarm the locals, but it’s close enough for the assault parties to hoof it without being too winded by the time they get into position. Remember, we’re landing on sand over rock, not water. Our exhaust will heat the ground molten. It’ll be a good half hour before we can disembark.”

    Everybody nodded this time. Cory and Hale wore broad grins besides.

    “The assault parties will include all our Nabis personnel and all the Sissies except an anchor watch,” Daniel said. “I’ll be leading Alpha Party, Cory will lead Beta. We’ll –”

    “Sir, why you?” said Cory. “I mean, we all know you’re not afraid, but I think I speak for everybody –”

    “You bloody well do!” from Dasi; nods and murmurs of agreement around the table.

    “– when I say that if some drunken wog gets lucky and blows your brains out, this whole cluster wouldn’t be a fair exchange.”

    “Thank you, Master Cory,” Daniel said, “but you’re missing the point. Our current task is to train the Nabis Contingent, particularly the officers. That means demonstrating what leadership means. I’m confident that there are already sufficient officers in the Tarbell Stars who can demonstrate sitting on their butts and sending other people out to die.”

    “Sorry, sir,” Cory muttered, jerking bolt-upright and meeting Daniel’s eyes. “Very sorry, sir.”

    As well you should be, Daniel thought, but he forced his lips into a smile and as usual his mind followed after a moment. He wanted his people to be cocky and sure that they were the best in the world, but bragging couldn’t get in the way of doing the job. When you parsed out what Cory had said, he was bragging.

    “Six,” said Vesey. “I should lead Beta Party.”

    Bloody hell, she’s right.

    Vesey was seated to Daniel’s immediate right; he stared at her without expression. She didn’t flinch, which showed — Daniel’s smile was internal — that she had guts. That hadn’t been in doubt.

    “Yes, you’re right,” Daniel said. “Cory –”

    Across the table from Vesey.

    “– you’ll still transfer to the Sissie, but you’ll remain in command of her. I want somebody experienced there, because Officer Mundy is our communications and intelligence base.”

    “Sir, may I request to accompany Beta Party?” Cazelet said. “I know I’ve had problems pulling the trigger in the past, but I’ll be carrying a length of pipe this time instead of a gun.”

    Somebody chuckled. Woetjans glowered and said, “Bloody useful piece of kit, a pipe.”

    In the bosun’s hands, that was certainly true. For the slightly built Cazelet — probably less so, but that wasn’t the point. Cazelet didn’t have the military indoctrination which trains its subjects out of the normal human hesitation to kill another human. He’d failed to shoot an enemy during a deadly struggle on Corcyra and he might fail again, but he could lead an attack just as well with a club as with an impeller.

    Likewise Vesey. Daniel had been thinking of Vesey as the person whom he could best trust to take care of Adele and the Princess Cecile. He’d ignored the fact that she was an RCN officer — and a human being, who had the right to resent Captain Leary’s unintentional insult on her ability to lead.

    Daniel smiled, relaxing his audience. “Yes, all right, Cazelet,” he said. “That means I’m going to put the Katchaturian under –”

    His pause may not have been noticeable to his officers, but it was very real in Daniel’s mind. Cazelet’s request had surprised him, though it shouldn’t have: Rene wouldn’t have been much of a man if he hadn’t asked to accompany into danger the woman whom he was seeing when they were both off duty. He and Vesey had been together for nearly two years now.

    “– Captain Schnitker, who commanded her in Nabis service. He’s got a good deal of dry landing experience and has shown himself generally competent. What I don’t know about him yet is how he behaves when bullets are flying. For that reason –”

    Daniel grinned at Hale, seated beside Cory.

    “– Acting Lieutenant Hale will be on the Katchaturian’s bridge during action at the navigator’s console. Hale, if you believe at any point that the mission or the personnel on the ground are being endangered by Captain Schnitker’s behavior, you are to shoot him and take over. Can you handle that?”

    “Sir!” said Hale. “Yes sir!”

    “Draw a sidearm, then,” Daniel said. Normally personnel turned in their weapons when they returned from detached duty. Not only were guns unnecessary, the steel bulkheads made ricochets from an accidental discharge a particular nightmare.

    “If that’s all our business here…” Daniel said. He waited a few beats to make sure that it was all the business. “Then we’ll go outside and inform the crews of the plan.”

    He rose, bringing his officers up with him. Daniel gestured them out of the cabin so that they could join the ordinary spacers before Captain Leary addressed them from the main hatch of the Katchaturian.

    “How much trouble do you think the wogs are going to give us?” Hogg asked over his shoulder as he led his master down the companionway. He carried his own stocked impeller and had slung a sub-machine gun for Daniel.

    “I doubt there’s half a dozen guns in either village,” Daniel said, speaking over the echoes of boots on steel treads in a steel tube. “At Beta there might be a problem if somebody’s awake enough to use the rockets on the Roebuck.”

    “Hey Hogg?” Tovera called from behind Daniel. “You want to switch duty? A slug from that cannon of yours would take out the rockets. Maybe set ’em off, even.”

    “Naw, I’ll stick with the master,” Hogg said. “If the wogs get their fingers out in time, which I don’t figure’ll happen, then it’ll show this Nabis lot that life has risks, right?”

    True enough on all counts, Daniel thought. But he really hoped that it wouldn’t happen. He’d be able to hear eight-inch bombardment rockets detonating even from fifteen miles away.

    Reed and Nagata, both techs, were on watch in the boarding hold, standard operating procedure when the hatch was open. They muttered greetings as Daniel and the servants stepped to the top edge of the hatch. Gusts from outside whipped their clothes.

    “Fellow spacers of the Nabis Contingent!” Daniel said. The loudspeakers on the Katchaturian’s spine were being fed from a parabolic microphone on the Princess Cecile, lying parallel to the destroyer and a hundred feet away.

    The crews, assembled into squads, stared up at him. The spacers’ expressions varied from anticipation through discomfort to outright concern. The Sissies who would be acting as squad leaders had done the sorting while Daniel addressed the officers who would command larger groupings. The attack parties weren’t armies, but at least they were organized.

    Daniel was uncomfortable too, if it came to that. Benjamin’s air was thin and dry and cold. He knew he wouldn’t notice it once they moved out to attack, but he didn’t want to shiver and have the Nabis personnel think that he was trembling in fear.

    “We’re going to attack two peasant villages, capture the ships there, and free any prisoners we find,” Daniel said. “Our job is not to kill peasants, though anyone who resists will be dealt with in the quickest way possible. People who surrender are not to be harmed.”

    He wondered if the spacers below could see his stern expression as he said that. Probably not, most of them; the wind flicked dust from the ground and made them squint. Benjamin was really a miserable place.

    “Now that it’s really coming to the point, some of you may be thinking that maybe you’d be happier in a job where nobody’s going to be shooting at you,” Daniel said. “You’ve got that option: anybody who decides he doesn’t have the balls for this work can chicken out now. You’ll stay on shipboard till we can carry you back to Peltry and land you on the beach. The Nabis Contingent has no room for cowards!”

    Daniel gave his words a few moments to sink in. He didn’t expect many Nabies to take up the offer, since crewing a starship was a dangerous job itself — more dangerous than rushing a couple villages full of startled peasants. Besides, even real cowards hated to admit they were cowards, especially in front of their comrades and a corvette-crew of foreigners, many of whom were women.

    When nobody stepped forward, Daniel nodded and said, “I’m done here, then, but before we board the ships for deployment, my servant Hogg has a few words to say to you.”

    Daniel stepped back, taking the sub-machine gun which Hogg handed him. Hogg and Tovera moved to the edge of the ramp. Tovera carried a full-sized sub-machine gun from the Sissie’s arms locker.

    “I’ve been looking after the young master for nigh-on thirty years,” Hogg said. His gravelly voice boomed out from the speakers above him. “I’m still doing that. Now, the master knows that if we go in fast and everybody keeps moving, this is going to be a piece of cake. The only way it gets dangerous is if we funk it after we start; and by ‘we’ I mean ‘you.’ I’ll be following the batch with the master, and Tovera here –”

    Tovera raised her sub-machine gun overhead by the balance.

    “– will be in back of those of you landing on the Sissie. What we’ll do is kill anybody who runs away or tries to go to ground. If you think we won’t do it or can’t do it, you talk to your shipmates who served with us before. Believe me, we’re a lot more dangerous than the barefoot wogs you’re going up against.”

    Hogg and Tovera backed away; Daniel took center again and said, “Fellow spacers, if everybody does his job we’ll be back on Peltry in three days, with liberty for all and a bonus –”

    Paid out of Daniel’s own pocket if the Ministry of War balked.

    “– to spend. Dismissed to your ships!”

    Sissies led the cheer, but Daniel saw that a gratifying number of Nabies were joining in. Tovera walked down the ramp to get to her action station on the Princess Cecile. Daniel moved to the side to let the Katchaturian’s crew reboard.

    “I think they’ll do fine,” Hogg said, eyeing the squads of spacers.

    “We’ll know in a couple hours,” Daniel said, wishing that he were as confident as Hogg sounded.