The Road of Danger: Chapter Fourteen

Ashetown on Madison

    Adele entered the Battle Direction Center and sat at the empty console beside Cory’s. She had left the borrowed over-garments in the three-wheeler when she and Tovera abandoned it in an alley behind a row of brothels.

    Someone would probably steal the vehicle before morning, but that didn’t matter. There was no harm done if the car remained where it was for however many days it was before the authorities discovered the owner’s body was one of many at a massacre site.

    “Mistress!” Lieutenant Cory said. “I didn’t expect you back here. Ah–that is, I’m glad to see you. It feels, well, I’m used to being on the bridge, so this station isn’t… I mean, even though it’s a promotion to First Lieutenant.”

    Adele looked at him. The others present in the BDC were Fiducia, the missileer’s mate, and Knibbs, a technician whom Cory had been instructing in astrogation simply because he was willing to learn.

    And Tovera, of course. It was easy to overlook Tovera, while things were quiet.

    Captain Vesey, as she had become, was at the command console on the bridge. Although she would not have questioned anything Adele did, Adele would feel constrained in Vesey’s presence. Vesey felt that she ought to understand what Lady Mundy was doing.

    Cory didn’t feel anything of the sort. If Adele had begun tap dancing on the seat of her console, the most Cory might have done was ask if he could help. She’d chosen the BDC for no better reason than that.

    “I suppose it’s the opposite with me,” Adele said. “I thought this would be a more comfortable setting for a task I have to do. Though I hadn’t connected the cause and effect until you spoke, Cory.”

    In fact, she realized, she wasn’t making many connections at all since the shootings. She had subconsciously divorced herself from everything that was going on around her.

    She felt a touch of wry humor, though nobody looking at her face would have recognized it. The disconnected way she had felt since leaving Platt’s sanctum wasn’t very different from her normal state of existence.

    Cory’s enthusiasm cooled as Adele looked at him without emotion. “Ah…,” he said. “I’m watch officer, but since it’s quiet I thought I’d go over procedures with Knibbs here. If you’d like us to leave…?”

    “Not at all, Cory,” Adele said as she synched her personal data unit with the console. She preferred to use her little unit as an interface. She found the wands with which she controlled it to be her fastest and most efficient input method. “Strictly speaking, this isn’t really RCN business.”

    “I better get back to the Power Room,” muttered Knibbs. He got up without looking at Cory or Adele. Fiducia had already slipped out of the BDC.

    I didn’t care, Adele thought wearily. But I couldn’t have cleared the compartment more quickly if I’d waved my pistol.

    “I could–” Cory said.

    “Sit down,” Adele said, much more sharply than she had intended. She grimaced. She was on edge, but that was no excuse for snarling at a–well, at a friend–who was simply trying to be polite in a confusing situation.

    She met Cory’s eyes and tried to smile. “I uncovered a sexual predator here in Ashetown,” she said. She was explaining as a more tangible form of apology to him. “I’m transmitting the information to the authorities. As I say, it isn’t strictly RCN business, though it seems to involve Fleet officials in some fashion or other.”

    “Sexual predator…,” Cory repeated. Something had changed in his face, though Adele couldn’t have said exactly what the difference was. He cleared his throat and said, “Mistress, if you thought it might be better for a couple of us to talk to the fellow informally…?”

    And what is there in your background that causes you to react that way, Lieutenant? Adele thought; her face remained expressionless. Aloud she said, “Thank you, Master Cory, but I’m sure no further action will be necessary.”

    “Yes, mistress,” Cory said. He relaxed and his smile spread. Perhaps he understood more than had been in Adele’s words. He’d been in close contact with her for long enough to know what she was besides a scholar and a signals officer.

    She checked her display; the file transfer was complete. She hadn’t dumped the whole assemblage which she had netted from Platt’s consoles, just enough from a quick sort to give the proper authorities a handle on the rest.

    “Ah,” Cory said. “If Fleet officers are involved, could I help? Even if they weren’t, you know, it would be an honor to help. And Rene too, of course, though I think he’s in town now looking for clothes.”

    Cazelet looking for clothes? But of course: lingerie or the like for Elspeth Vesey; to be given her after she stepped down as captain of The House of Hrynko.

    Adele thought of the mass of data. Her two unofficial aides could be useful, during the initial sort and probably later on as well.

    “Yes,” she said, transferring a file to Cory’s console. “This man claimed to have been Chief of Systems at Fleet Prime and in line for the post of Technical Director. I don’t know what period this would have been going on, but today he appeared to be in his sixties.”

    “Yes, mistress,” Cory said; he was already at work. “Is there anything in particular I should be looking for?”

 

---

 

    Adele pursed her lips. “Platt implied he working for Commander Doerries, head of the Fleet Intelligence office for the Forty Stars Sector,” she said. “Platt’s skills were of a high enough order that his claims about his rank on Pleasaunce may well be true. If so, how did he come to be transferred to this backwater?”

    “Guarantor Porra,” Tovera said, “is something of a prude.”

    Adele didn’t twitch in surprise, but Cory did. It was as though one of the jump-seats folded against the bulkhead had joined the discussion.

    “Porra is?” Cory said in amazement. “Why, he’s… he’s done….”

    He let his voice trail off. Perhaps he was remembering that Tovera had been a member of the 5^th Bureau, the intelligence agency which reported directly to the Guarantor–that is, Dictator–of the Alliance, and which was the tool he used for his most brutal acts of repression.

    “Guarantor Porra has done many reprehensible things,” Tovera agreed with a terrible smile, “but personally he is prudish. He might well order children to be tortured as a matter of policy, but it would disgust him to learn that one of his officials was torturing children for sexual gratification. I suspect you’ll find that Platt wasn’t transferred: he was running ahead of 5^th Bureau executioners.”

    She giggled. “He didn’t go far enough, as it turns out,” she said.

    If Platt was a fugitive, Adele thought, then whatever Commander Doerries is doing isn’t a sanctioned operation. With luck the data grab from Platt’s consoles would eventually give them full particulars on that operation, though it still might not have any bearing on RCN business or even on Mistress Sand’s broader objectives.

    Adele’s smile was barely a quiver at the corners of her lips. There was no useless information; there was only information for which she hadn’t yet found a use.

    “Master Cazelet?” Tovera said. She spoke loudly enough for Cazelet to hear as he entered the compartment, but the real purpose was probably to call Adele’s attention the new arrival.

    “I, ah…,” Cazelet said. “The captain told me that you were, both of you were in the BDC. I thought I’d… well, I’d see if there was something I could do?”

    Adele smiled faintly. She shouldn’t be surprised to be surrounded by people who looked for work rather than for ways to avoid work. That was her own attitude, after all; and more important, that was Daniel’s attitude.

    “Find a console,” she said without looking over her shoulder toward Cazelet. “I’ll send tasks to you when that’s appropriate.”

    The console Adele was using threw a pulsing amber attention signal onto the upper right corner of its display. It took her a moment to cycle back to the present and determine which of her various automated operations had born fruit.

    She expanded the icon. As soon as Daniel informed her of his plans, Adele had cued her intercepts of Squadron internal message traffic to alert her if the word Savoy–among many others–appeared. It just had.

    She scanned it, then copied the link to Cory, Cazelet, and–after a heartbeat’s hesitation–to Vesey on the bridge. This might well become a task for the corvette Princess Cecile, not just a matter of intelligence gathering and dissemination.

    A man named Petrov–the name wasn’t familiar; she would track him down later–had reported to Squadron Headquarters that the yawl Savoy was carrying weapons stolen from Fleet stores and intended for the rebels on Sunbright. Though the Squadron was on four-hour alert, the Operations staff had authorized Captain von Trona of the cruiser Marie to sequester the yawl pending survey and possible condemnation of her cargo.

    The Marie carried a company of fifty-six Naval Infantry. They had no duties during lift-off preparations. There wouldn’t be a problem if they were absent and the Squadron received emergency orders to lift for Sunbright–or for Tattersall, as the case might be. Von Trona had told the company commander, a Naval Major, to take a platoon to the Savoy that night.

    “I thought the blockade runners bribed the Fleet authorities here to look the other way?” Cazelet said. “We know the authorities have been bribed, I’ve tabulated the payments over the past three and a half years. What caused the change?”

    Adele didn’t consider the question, because for the moment it wasn’t important. The only important task was to reach Daniel before the Alliance troops arrived. Since the Savoy was tied up at a quay, it was possible that the ship had landline communication through the Ashetown network.

    “It isn’t a change,” said Cory. “Lindstrom and her backers are bribing the Squadron Base establishment. This Petrov obviously knew that, so he sent his information to the Squadron itself. If the Fleet is anything like the RCN, the real spacers hate the base wankers worse than they do, well–”

    His small image on Adele’s display grinned.

    “–worse than they hate us. The RCN may kick their asses in battle, but we’re not going to rob them blind on the ground. I suspect somebody on Jeletsky’s staff–and von Trona for sure–is doing this to stick it in the base establishment’s eye.”

    The Savoy‘s berth did have a landline connection. Adele called it while she prepared to send a microwave signal to the blockade runner also. The Sissie‘s stern sending head had a direct line to the yawl, but success presupposed that the Savoy‘s receiver was switched on.

 

---

 

    It would be bad if an RCN officer were arrested aboard a blockade runner carrying arms to the Sunbright rebels. If by some chance the RCN officer were identified as Captain Daniel Leary–that would be very bad indeed.

    Answer me, Daniel!

 

---

 

    “Mistress Lindstrom?” Daniel said, nodding to the ship-owner as she backed out of the hatchway to allow him and Hogg aboard. “I thought I’d familiarize myself with the electronics tonight. Tomorrow morning I’ll go over the rigging, but that’s a job for daylight, right?”

    “The rigging’s all right,” Lindstrom said. “It got us here, didn’t it? Why wouldn’t it get us back to Cremona?”

    Daniel waited till she met his eyes. If she hadn’t been his superior officer–at least until they lifted off–he might have taken her chin between thumb and forefinger to turn her face toward him.

    “Since you’re not a moron, mistress,” he said, “you don’t really mean that. Please tell me what the problem is, so that I can at least try to fix it.”

    Lindstrom glared at him. Daniel tried to keep his face quietly neutral, but he was tense inside as he waited for one from a familiar catalogue of shouted or snarled responses:

    Nothing’s wrong!

    You’re the one with the problem, so you tell me!

    Why should I bother! It’s no use talking to you!

    The fact that Daniel didn’t have the faintest notion what he’d done wrong wouldn’t help. At least it had never helped in the past.

    Lindstrom’s face softened from anger into the nervous misery she had been trying to conceal. “Oh, bloody Hell,” she said, not shouting. “I don’t know what the trouble is, I’m just feeling jumpy. I felt the same way when we extracted over Sunbright on our second run and we were bloody near on top of a patrol ship.”

    “And you got out of that fine,” Daniel said. “Let’s go over the console together. And I packed light, but not so light that I didn’t find room for a bottle.”

    He was feeling such relief that his knees trembled. What with one thing and another, he’d had a lot of women screaming abuse at him over the years. While he wouldn’t say that he’d come to long for a quiet life, he did increasingly appreciate Miranda Dorst’s calm intelligence.

    “I’ve got one open,” Lindstrom said, turning with him toward the crew capsule. “Maybe we’ll move on to yours later.”

    After a step she added, “And call me Kiki, will you?”

    The hatch was only wide enough for one at a time. “Ma’am?” said Hogg as the owner led the way through.

    Daniel backed out of the way; Lindstrom paused and turned her head. Without warmth she said, “Right?”

    “D’ye have any guns aboard?” Hogg said. “I mean, for using. I don’t care what’s in the cargo.”

    “There’s a pair of carbines in the locker here,” she said, tapping the vertical chest starboard of the hatchway. “For when we’re on the ground on Sunbright, just in case. But I’m the only one with the key.”

    “Well, ma’am,” Hogg said, his eyes turned toward the deck. He was so perfectly the bashful rustic that Daniel wanted to burst out laughing. “I don’t know squat about consoles and electronics, but guns is different. I figure I could sit out here in the hold and go over the carbines so that I’m sure they work if we need them. Though you could do worse for a club, I suppose.”

    Lindstrom was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Right,” and fished out a key fob attached by a length of monocrystal line to a loop her equipment belt. She touched it to the lock plate, then stepped into the crew capsule. Daniel followed her.

    The owner’s bunk had a railing so that it could be curtained off from the remainder of the tiny cabin, but the curtain itself was missing. A stack of four more bunks folded against the opposite bulkhead, battered outward because of the hull’s curve. The vertical space between bunks would be tight, but no worse than would have been the case in the midshipmen’s berth of a battleship.

    With Hogg aboard, there couldn’t be assigned bunks. That didn’t matter. The large crews of warships always shared bunks, and that was normally the case on smaller merchant vessels as well.

    Lindstrom sat on the edge of her bunk and reached under it, coming out with a bottle. She looked at Daniel and patted the bedding beside her.

    With careful nonchalance, Daniel walked past her and sat at the console as though he hadn’t noticed the invitation. Only after he had touched a few keys to bring up the system diagnostics did he turn beaming and say, “Kiki, this is a first class piece of hardware! It’s not new, but I trained on older systems at the Academy. This is much better than I expected!”

    Daniel’s enthusiasm–perhaps a little exaggerated for effect, but the astrogation computer really was a solid unit–smoothed Lindstrom’s brief scowl away. She unstoppered the bottle, took a slug of its faintly violet contents, and offered it to Daniel. Because the compartment was so small, he didn’t have to rise from the console to take it.

    “We gutted the Savoy and replaced all the controls,” Lindstrom said, warming. “The hull was fine and the rigging was too except for the cordage, we replaced that. The only problem’s been the bloody fusion bottle.”

 

---

 

    Daniel sipped the liquor and sluiced it around the inside of his mouth to get the flavor. It was smooth, though from the tingle he suspected that it was roughly the same proof as industrial alcohol from the Power Room. It had the floral taste which its color suggested.

    He swallowed. The aftertaste reminded him of a wreath left over from a funeral held some weeks past. He took two proper swallows and handed the bottle back.

    “I don’t think we’ll have serious problems,” Daniel said honestly. “Your spacers are experienced, and I’ll have a chance to get to know them on the leg to Cremona. Getting through the patrols above Sunbright will be a little trickier, sure, but I know how difficult it is to intercept a little yawl like this in anything but a dedicated pirate-cruiser with a crew which knows its business. I won’t promise, exactly, but, well–”

    He grinned, but what he was about to say was the truth if ever he’d spoken it.

    “–I’d be pretty disappointed if somebody trained on Novy Sverdlovsk could do a better job of ship handling than a Cinnabar Academy graduate.”

    An amber light pulsed from behind, flooding the compartment and startling Daniel. He jumped to his feet and turned; his left arm was out with the fingers spread, prepared to block whatever had started to happen.

    The console display had been pearly and neutral; now it sequenced from bright amber to black. Daniel lowered his arm sheepishly and said, “What is that, mistress?”

    “That’s an incoming call,” said Lindstrom, rising to her feet also. “But it’s the landline, so it must be a wrong number. I haven’t given the number to anybody; I just use it to call out.”

    There’s one person who could find an address that everybody else thinks is secret, Daniel thought. He sat at the console, his back to the owner, and brought up a menu.

    “What are you doing?” Lindstrom

    The incoming call was an icon to the right. Daniel opened it. Without hesitation, Adele’s voice said, “I need to speak to Lieutenant Pensett immediately. This is Principal Hrynko, and I need him at once.”

    “Speaking, Lady Hrynko,” Daniel said, as smoothly as if they had rehearsed the routine. “Go ahead.”

    “On the basis of information given by a man named Petrov,” Adele said, “a platoon of Marines is coming to search the Savoy and arrest you. If they find contraband, that is, and I gather that they will. They’re not treating this as an emergency, though, so you have at least an hour to return here. Ah, where you’ll be welcome, of course.”

    Daniel felt his lips purse as he considered. Changing from his initial wording–of course Adele was sure he would have at least an hour, because she wouldn’t have said so otherwise–he said, “Warn me if there’s a change in the troops’ schedule, if you please. I’ll be here, and I’ve–”

    He brought the whole communication’s suite live.

    “–switched on the microwave in case something happens to the landline. I believe we can lift off comfortably ahead of their arrival. S–”

    He caught himself.

    “Pensett, that is, out.”

    “If you say so, Master Pensett,” Adele said. Her voice was as cold and dry as a desert night. She broke the connection.

    “What’s going on?” Lindstrom said. She had heard the whole conversation, but she obviously hadn’t been able to take it in. “They won’t arrest us. Do you know how much money I’ve put in the hands of the Port Commissioner?”

    “Hogg!” Daniel called, but his servant already stood in the interior hatchway. He held one carbine muzzle-upward by the grip like a large pistol, and the other by the fore-end, butt forward toward Daniel.

    “We won’t need those, Hogg,” Daniel said tartly. “I don’t propose that you and I fight the Fleet by ourselves. Or even one cruiser squadron.”

    He turned to the owner, who was now gaping at Hogg instead of at Hogg’s master. He said, “Kiki, do you know where your men will be now?”

    “Pretty much,” she said. “I’ve been doling out their pay from the last run at a bit each night so they don’t wind up broke or dead right away. There’s maybe a half dozen bars along the water that they might be at, starting with El Greco’s.”

    “Find them,” Daniel said. “Get them aboard fast. Hogg, escort her in case somebody needs convincing or is just too drunk to walk.”

    “As the master says,” Hogg murmured. He disappeared into the entry hold. The arms locker banged closed a moment later.

    “What are you doing, Pensett?” Lindstrom said. “They can’t be going to arrest us, I tell you!”

    If Adele says that’s what’s happening, Daniel thought, it’s happening. I’d believe her over a choir of angels singing otherwise.

    Aloud he said, “I’ll running through liftoff checks and making sure the tanks are topped off. Now, move it! You have forty-five minutes. I don’t care if the men come aboard drunk, but I’ll lift short-handed if I have to.”

    Lindstrom opened her mouth, perhaps to object that she owned the Savoy. She deflated and turned silently toward the hatch. Hogg said, “Shake a leg, sister! You heard the young master!” but the prodding was unnecessary.

    Daniel started the pumps that circulated reaction mass to the plasma thrusters and studied the flow. There was corrosion or a pinch in the line to #1 thruster, but it wasn’t serious enough to change his plans. He began to whistle.

    Father and I went down to camp, along with Captain Bony….

    He felt very much alive.