Death's Bright Day: Chapter Four

Bergen and Associates Yard, outside Xenos

    Daniel eyed the Princess Cecile in her slip and felt the usual rush of…well, love was the best word he could come up with. He smiled at Lieutenant Vesey and said, “The first time I saw her, she was passing overhead and shooting off fireworks in a parade on Kostroma. That was probably the only sort of action she’d have seen if she’d stayed in Kostroman hands.”

    “I came out of the Academy…” Vesey said. She was also looking at the corvette. Her eye might have been more critical, but it was affectionate also. “Thinking that unit-body construction was so much stronger than modular that no one in her right mind would use modular construction for a warship.”

    She grinned at Daniel. “A voyage on the Sissie convinced me that I’d been wrong,” she said.

    Because the Princess Cecile was a private yacht in this commission, she was being fitted out and stocked by civilians. Vesey, Daniel’s long-time First Lieutenant, was waiting for dry stores to arrive from the suppliers she had chosen with only cursory oversight by the owner and captain.

    Foodstuffs would have to wait for Chazanoff and his crew of missileers to finish striking down the main armament. The Sissie carried two missiles in her launch tubes and twenty reloads when her magazines were full. A corvette couldn’t put out the volume of metal that a larger warship could, but a direct hit from a five-ton projectile at terminal velocity would wreck even a battleship.

    The chance of a corvette’s missile getting through a battleship’s defensive armament was very slim: a bolt from an 8″ plasma cannon vaporized enough of a projectile to shove the rest of it off in a harmless direction. Even so, a skilled missileer — or a lucky one — even in a corvette was a threat. Daniel was both skilled and lucky.

    “How’s the crew coming along?” Vesey asked.

    The question — from Vesey — meant more than the words themselves; but it was a polite way to ask, and there was no reason not to give her the full background. Daniel smiled until the lengthy crash crash crash of missiles rolling from a lowboy into the Princess Cecile’s magazine hatch had died away.

    “I’ve got Rene in the office to take the names of any latecomers,” Daniel said, “but we’re already staffed at war complement and maybe a little beyond.”

    He said “Rene” instead of “Midshipman, Passed Lieutenant, Cazelet” because on the ground Vesey and Cazelet lived together. Cazelet had come to the Sissie as Adele’s protégé, but he had from the first been an asset to the ship and to the RCN generally. With the present peacetime reduction in the RCN establishment he might have a very long wait before he got the lieutenant’s commission which his abilities amply justified, but the prize money which had come the way of Daniel’s crews meant that Cazelet was better off than many senior officers who didn’t have family money.

    “Rene said that you’d accepted some applicants who hadn’t been on the Princess Cecile herself,” Vesey said. “The Milton had the complement of a heavy cruiser.”

    Daniel’s grin went hard. Not all of the Milton’s crew had survived the battle above Cacique, of course, but far more had than a corvette could carry.

    “Of course, you can afford the paybill, sir,” Vesey said, embarrassed to have pushed for what had not been volunteered. “I’m not prying.”

    “I’m at fault for not being more honest with my officers,” Daniel said, a polite way to say that he expected her to talk with Cazelet. “I’m signing extra personnel now in case some want to leave when we make landfall on Jardin. I’ll arrange passage back to Cinnabar for them, of course.”

    Vesey frowned, but she didn’t ask why he thought they might lose more than the usual few spacers who might overstay liberty because they were jail, in hospital, or dead.

    “As soon as we’re in orbit,” Daniel said, “I’m going to explain that I expect the Princess Cecile to take a contract as a mercenary warship in the navy of the Tarbell Stars. I won’t expect personnel who signed on for a honeymoon voyage to accept a posting to a civil war.”

    Vesey’s frown didn’t change. “You’re concerned,” she said in a deliberate voice, “that spacers who’ve served with you are going to balk when you tell them that you may be taking them into battle?”

    “Put that way it does sound pretty silly,” Daniel admitted. “Still, I think they ought to have the choice.”

    A gondola marked McKimmon Cereals had arrived at the entrance to the yard. The driver of the tractor pulling it had gotten out of his cab to continue his discussion with Midshipman Hale from the ground.

    He might as well have stayed where he was. Shouting in Hale’s face wasn’t going to make her change her mind, and the train of lowboys hauling missiles was in the way regardless.

    People like to think that their convenience is important. Daniel had found that as a general rule the universe didn’t agree, and that other human beings tended to be a subset of ‘the universe’ in this regard.

    “I think the crew expected that they were signing on for more than a honeymoon cruise,” Vesey said, looking toward the cereals vehicle and then away: it would come when it came, and she would check the supplies in when they arrived. “With the exception of Pasternak I think they’re all hoping for action again. And Pasternak was probably the first to sign on.”

    Vesey had mousy hair, an excellent mind, and an earnest personality. Her features were unremarkable, but they were sharpening as she aged. Surprisingly that added character and made her more attractive.

    “Pretty close,” Daniel agreed. “I’m lucky to have him. We’re all lucky.”

    Chief Engineer Pasternak was a quiet man with the skill and seniority to run the Power Room of a battleship at a much higher base pay. He would have been subordinate to a commissioned officer on a large warship, however, whereas Daniel left him to his job.

    The fact that he had earned a fortune in prize money as a senior warrant officer under Daniel Leary seemed to bemuse Pasternak From what he had said, though, it was very important to his wife that he was the richest and most important man in Wassail County. The risk that came with being Chief Engineer to a fighting captain was for Pasternak far outweighed by his freedom from the social demands of staying home.

    “I saw Lady Leary come on board yesterday,” Vesey said. “Is that really all her luggage?”

    “Mistress Leary,” Daniel corrected mildly. “I’m not the heir, thank heavens, and I’m sure my father feels the same way. And yes, Miranda insisted on packing like a midshipman. I told her she had all the volume she wanted — I’d land a missile if I needed to and pick one up for ready money on route to Peltry, that’s the Tarbell capital.”

    “A strong willed woman,” Vesey said, looking toward the gate and speaking without emphasis. “I suppose she’d need to be.”

    “I suppose she would,” Daniel agreed.

    He wasn’t sure how he felt about that — how he felt about Miranda or even about marriage. He’d always taken his duties seriously, but he’d lived his personal life at his own convenience. Over the years since Daniel met Miranda when he delivered the news of her brother’s death, he’d found that he was happier with her presence in his life. Keeping her there imposed reciprocal obligations, not because Miranda demanded them but because he was a Leary of Bantry and honor demanded them.

 

---

 

    Needing something means that I might lose it. Daniel cleared his throat because he didn’t like the direction his thoughts had been going.

    He said aloud, “I’m glad to have so many qualified officers, because I’m not sure what we’ll find in the Tarbell Stars. You may find yourself in command, Vesey, as you’re more than capable of being.”

    Vesey turned to face him. “Sir,” she said. “I studied every battle in the Academy syllabus, and I’ve watched you a dozen times ripping the heart out of enemies that should have flicked you away, flicked us away. But I’ll never be as good as you are. I’ll never be as good as Tim was when he was a midshipman, because he had the instinct and I don’t!”

    Daniel met her eyes. His first thought was to say something reassuring, but that would be an insult to someone as smart as Vesey was.

    “Vesey,” he said. “If you have to command in battle, you’ll do everything that study and experience can provide. That puts you ahead of nine out of ten captains in the RCN.”

    He swallowed. “Killer instinct is an important thing to have in a fight, sure,” he said, “and Tim Dorst –”

    Who had been Vesey’s lover until an 8″ plasma bolt stuck his cutter.

    “– had that in spades. But luck is even more important than instinct for a successful commander, and Midshipman Dorst was terminally unlucky. I’d rather have you as captain of the Sissie in my absence than Dorst, because I trust you to bring her safely home if anybody can do that.”

    The final two missiles rumbled into the corvette’s magazines. The last lowboy began to crawl away, and Hale stepped out of the way of the delivery gondola.

    Daniel squeezed Lieutenant Vesey’s shoulder and let her get on with her job.

 

---

 

    Adele was in her library, not so much cleaning up details before she left as making sure that every scrap of information which might bear on the Tarbell Stars was coming along with her. She could study files during the voyage, but a log book or a personal reminiscence which was still in Xenos would do her no good on Peltry.

    She could never be sure she had everything possible. She could never be sure she had done her job: even if the Princess Cecile and her complement returned successful, that didn’t mean that Adele Mundy hadn’t missed some datum which would have made it easier or cheaper.

    The library door was ajar so Adele probably could have heard the whispering outside in the hallway, but as usual she was lost in her task. A fingertip tapped on the panel; then Tovera pushed it open enough to look in.

    “Mistress,” Tovera said. “Miriam Dorst is here to see you, if that’s possible.”

    Adele looked at the remaining pile of chips which she was copying to her base unit. They were the office copies of logs from a shipping consortium based on Twig in the Alliance. None of the ships she had viewed thus far had traded into the Tarbell Stars, and she saw no likelihood that any of the others would have done so either.

    “Yes, all right,” Adele said, rubbing her eyes. “Tovera, have them get us something to drink, will you?”

    The door closed, then reopened for Miranda’s mother. Adele nodded, wondering if she ought to get up. She decided not to. Miriam had arrived without invitation, so merely agreeing to see her was being sufficiently courteous.

    Besides, I’ve been sitting in so cramped a posture that I might fall back if I tried to get up abruptly.

    “I’m sorry to disturb you when you’re so busy…” the older woman said, holding her hands lightly together. She was more heavy-set than her daughter, making Adele wonder if Miranda would fill out similarly as she aged.

    “I said I would see you,” Adele said, hoping she didn’t sound as peevish as she felt. “I’ll never be able to finish what I’m doing here –” she gestured “– so the interruption doesn’t really matter.”

    No matter how long Adele worked, there would be information she hadn’t copied into files where she could access it off Cinnabar. She was probably foolish in considering that a goal, but she didn’t see any reasonable point short of that to draw a line on her efforts.

    Unexpectedly, Miriam smiled. “Miranda told me that you didn’t do small talk,” she said. “Well, I was going to explain that I was here to apologize again for the way I accused you when we were going to the reception, but that would be silly on my part.”

    “Yes,” said Adele. “I heard you the first time.”

    She realized that Miriam was still standing and said, “Sit down, please, I think there’s a chair –”

    There wasn’t.

    “– well, move the pile on the one beside you to the floor and sit down. Please.”

    When the other woman hesitated, Adele stood; she’d been working her legs beneath the table since she realized how stiff she was. Before she could act, however, Miriam had set the pile neatly out of the way and seated herself.

    “What I really wanted to do,” Miriam said, “was to ask you to help my daughter if she needs it. She will be –”

    Her voice caught. She swallowed and resumed, “Miranda will be the only civilian on a shipload of RCN personnel. I realize that you’re RCN yourself –”

    Adele gave an almost-smile. “Not really,” she said when Miriam paused. “I’m not a spacer, and I certainly haven’t internalized the forms of military discipline. Or the need for it, to be honest. But continue?”

    “Yes, I think that’s what I was trying to say,” said Miriam. “Miranda won’t really fit in, so I hope that you’ll be able to appreciate that and, well, look out for her.”

    “From all I’ve found,” Adele said, reflexively bringing up the file into which she had transferred all the data she had on their destination, “Jardin is a pleasant world with very little crime. The government is an oligarchy and autocratic. Potential troublemakers are denied entry or are shipped off immediately, and if they do manage to break the law they’re put to forced labor.”

    She tried to execute a smile. She was probably no more successful than she usually was, but she hoped Miranda’s mother would give her credit for the attempt.

    “It appears to me,” Adele said, “that Miranda will be safer on Jardin than she would be in Xenos. I’ll further add that she is an extremely capable young woman and in as little need of watching over as anyone I know of her age.”

    The girl’s mother sighed and seemed to hug herself more tightly. Looking toward a stack of file boxes on the floor to Adele’s right, she said, “Timothy, my husband, used to talk about Jardin as though it were paradise. He was only there once, when he was a midshipman on a replenishment ship. I thought we might visit — before Miranda was born, or even later as a family. We never did.”

 

---

 

    “It’s an expensive landfall, I suppose,” Adele said when she realized she ought to say something to show that she was listening.

    “We could have managed something while he was alive,” Miriam said, meeting Adele’s eyes. “After he died, things became — well, you know how things became. But until then we could have gone. I always suspected that he was afraid of ruining his memories of Jardin by facing the reality. The reality–”

    Her voice became forceful, almost harsh, and the muscles in her cheeks drew tighter.

    “– was that Timothy wouldn’t have been twenty-two with a career ahead of him if he had gone back to Jardin. But he always kept a hologram of the port on our wall. I’ve kept it in the living room after his death.”

    Adele had the data unit out anyway. She picked up the wands and brought an image live in the room between them, using the larger display of her base unit. They were looking out to sea from a moderate vantage. A city — probably Cuvier, the capital — of red roofs and white walls was scattered up the slope toward them from the shore below. The broad natural roadstead had been improved with stone moles which narrowed the entrance considerably.

    The harbor accommodated forty-odd starships as well as a number of good-sized surface vessels. One of the starships was noticeably plainer and larger than most of the others.

    Daniel would be able to identify it by eye, Adele thought, whereas she had spent her time learning other skills than memorizing ship profiles. Her wands isolated the ship, then ran it through a sorting protocol. She remembered that Miriam had referred to ‘a replenishment ship,’ so that saved a fraction of a second — Adele smiled mentally — from the search.

    “A Leaf Class vessel, probably the Orangeleaf,” Adele said aloud. That was bragging, but she was proud of her skills.

    “Yes,” Miriam said. “Your ladyship? How did you do that? How did you bring the picture on my wall to here?”

    For a moment the tension in the older woman’s voice surprised Adele. She said, “The base image is resident on your apartment’s control system. I simply — oh.”

    It hadn’t occurred to Adele that there might be reason to conceal what she had done. She wouldn’t have concealed it anyway, of course, but she might have explained in a more —

    No, she wouldn’t have tried to sound more apologetic either. She was who she was.

    “Mistress Dorst,” Adele said. “Your daughter is important to Captain Leary, and he — Daniel — is important to me. And to the RCN, I suppose. As a matter of course I set up links with Miranda’s residence in case someone attempted to put pressure on Daniel by threatening his fiancée.”

    She coughed. “Now that Miranda has moved out, I can remove the links,” she said. “I should say that Daniel had nothing — knew nothing — about my precautions. I didn’t bother to waste words on something in which I trusted my own judgment.”

    “Yes, of course you trust your judgment,” Miriam said as she relaxed. “As I do, Adele. It startled me, but it shouldn’t have.”

    She gestured to the hologram. The projection was omnidirectional, clear to her as well as to Adele. She went on, “Yes, that’s the Orangeleaf. It was Timothy’s first cruise. We were married the day after he graduated from the Academy.”

    Miriam was smiling, but her eyes weren’t focused on Adele or even on the image of Jardin. “He was so full of dreams,” she said. “We both were. And we had two wonderful children. Promotion wasn’t quick, even in wartime. Timothy wasn’t a lucky officer like…”

    “Like Daniel,” Adele said to close the embarrassed silence. “He’s been very fortunate.”

    That was true, of course, but it was also true that Daniel made a great deal of his own luck. Very few junior lieutenants would have turned a disaster like the Kostroma Revolt into a triumph and a springboard to greater triumphs.

    Miriam nodded apologetically to Adele. “And that’s very fortunate for Miranda,” the older woman said. “For me as well, of course. But I recognize that my daughter is always going to be…well, Daniel Leary is a very dominant person.”

    “I’ve found that to be the case with most RCN officers,” Adele said. “Haven’t you? The successful ones in particular.”

    She shrugged. “If you mean that Daniel will continue to make decisions for himself,” she said, “yes, I think and hope that will be true. He’ll often ask advice, but I’ve never known him to take orders except from someone who has the right under RCN regulations to give him those orders.”

    And even then we’ve been known to cut corners, Adele recalled. She didn’t suppress her smile as she normally would have, since she thought it would have a good effect on the tone of the discussion.

    “Yes, of course that’s right,” Miriam said, stiffly again; perhaps the smile hadn’t been a good idea. “Life isn’t fair, after all.”

    “I don’t know how to define ‘fair,'” Adele said, feeling sudden anger at the situation, at life. “I’ve killed many people, I don’t know how many. And some of them were doubtless as innocent as my little sister Agatha.”

    For a moment she saw again the crowd blocking their way as they broke out of the cells beneath the Elector’s Palace in Kostroma City. They were civilians who happened to be in the way of Adele Mundy and her new friends, so she shot as many of them as she could to panic the rest. There was no time to do clear the way in any other fashion.

    “At the time I did it, at all those times…” Adele said, hearing the harshness in her voice. “I thought it was the best available option. Given the same situations, I would again shoot men, women and children. I’m sure there were children in the crowd in Kostroma, and even if I didn’t shoot them some must have been trampled in the panic that I caused. So that we could escape. It wasn’t a bit fair, it was necessary.”

    She was on her feet, though she didn’t remember standing; Miriam had risen also. Adele hoped she hadn’t raised her voice, but the courtesy Esme Rolfe Mundy had instilled in her children should have prevented that.

    Miriam stepped forward and hugged her. Adele tried to step back by reflex, but the desk caught her at the upper thighs.

    “Lady Mundy, Adele,” Miriam said. She was apparently crying, though Adele couldn’t be sure. “Thank you. My little girl couldn’t have a better protector in the life she’s chosen. Thank you for being her friend.”

    Miriam moved away, snuffled, and wiped her nose and cheeks with a handkerchief. “I’d better go now. Thank you so much.”

    Miriam closed the door quietly behind her. A moment later Tovera looked in but didn’t speak.

    I didn’t say I was Miranda’s friend, Adele thought. But I suppose I am, everyone aboard the Sissie is.

    She looked at Tovera and said, “I believe Miranda is fortunate. In her friends.”