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CHAPTER 19

 

St. James Harbor, Bolton

"Captain," said Vesey over the command channel, "this is Three. The transports will be landing at two minute intervals starting in seventeen minutes. I've assigned the ships berths in both the civilian and the naval portions of the harbor, but I can't determine billets for the personnel until we have an inventory of how many barracks remain undamaged, over."

The Milton clanked and sizzled in her slip. Most of the A Level hatches remained open though Daniel had ordered the marksmen away from them, so steam continued to boil in. The mugginess carried the usual stench of burned muck.

"Roger, Three," Daniel said, suppressing his smile in case Vesey was watching an image of his face and thought he was mocking her. For an extremely able officer, Lieutenant Vesey seemed often to be on the verge of tears. "Well done. I think the Fonthill Militia—"

That was the name he'd come up with to regularize Master Beckford's former slaves.

"—can sleep for another night aboard their transports if necessary. Six out."

"Six, this is Five," reported Pasternak from the Power Room. "The ship is secure. All thrusters are shut down but operable. There's no problems there, though one of the High Drive motors apparently took a slug during the fighting. I'll have her changed out in an hour after things have cooled down, though being one motor short won't affect our performance if we have to lift, over."

Daniel started to reply but had to cough instead to clear the sharp dryness at the back of his throat. It felt for a moment as though he'd tried to swallow a mouthful of burrs. There was smoke in the air as well as steam.

The Gods alone knew what all was burning. Anything that could combine with oxygen would do so when hit by a plasma bolt, including all metals and some rocks.

Daniel swallowed his phlegm, then resumed, "Roger, Five. One of the Alliance soldiers was bound and determined to die for the Guarantor, and it seems that she did some damage before Sun obliged her. Get us shipshape as soon as you safely can, but I'm not expecting to lift for several days."

He coughed, this time as a pause in which he could word his thought correctly. "Chief Pasternak?" he said. "The Power Train operated without a hiccup during our low-level approach and the firing passes. The thrusters gimballed smoothly, and the flow to each nozzle remained precisely where I set it. My regards to your personnel, and please inform them that they can all expect a drink on their captain when next we have a chance at liberty. Which I'm afraid won't be any time soon, however. Six out."

The topgallant section of the Dorsal A Ring antenna locked in place with a cling which vibrated through the ship. It was a familiar sound in the ordinary course of things—but not in an atmosphere. Here it had a deeper, richer tone than when the ship was preparing to insert into the Matrix.

"What's that?" demanded Senator Forbes as she entered the bridge. DeNardo, showing his usual bovine calm, and Platt, who seemed on the verge of frightened tears, were with her, but the pair of servants/bodyguards were not. She was in a cream business suit with shoulder flounces rather than senatorial robes, the sort of thing she might wear during office hours while the Senate was in session.

"I've raised an antenna because the sensors at the masthead will give us a twenty-mile panorama," Daniel said, looking up with a smile. Things had gone very well thus far, but from the senator's sour expression she wasn't sure of that. "If we have to lift off too suddenly to bring it down properly, it'll go by the boards. But that's unlikely, and in that event I'm sure we'll have worse problems."

Fires were burning all over St. James City. Most were in the military reservation—Vesey had been right to wonder if there'd be barracks for the laborers-become-garrison—but six or eight spots on the north side of the harbor licked flame into the smoky haze. Unless some were coincidental with the attack, the heavy plasma charges had flung blazing debris up to a quarter mile from the impact sites.

"I've been watching through the display in my suite," Forbes said, seeming to warm slightly. She'd had sense enough to keep out of the way during the fighting, but it would have rankled her nonetheless to be on the sidelines. "I won't pretend I understood much of what was going on, though, except that apparently we weren't all about to die the way the noises made me expect. That is correct, isn't it?"

"The worst noises were us shooting at Alliance positions," Daniel said, encouraging his smile to widen. "I've arranged a meeting with Commodore Harmston to formally accept his surrender of the planet. I hope you'll accompany me?"

The senator really was doing very well for someone who was used to thinking of herself as one of the dozen most important people in the Republic of Cinnabar. If she got peevish, she was nonetheless behaving better by an order of magnitude than Corder Leary would've done in similar circumstances.

Daniel didn't care if Forbes preferred to sit in her cabin and twiddle her thumbs—or DeNardo, for that matter. What he really hoped was that she'd be pleased at the invitation. Since the meeting was between military commanders, she couldn't demand to be present by right.

The senator's eyes narrowed, but after a moment she smiled wryly. "In fact I was hoping, shall we say," she said, "to be present. Which is why I'm in this—"

She pinched the ruff over her right shoulder.

"—instead of something less ornate."

Major Mull, wearing battledress and holding his sub-machine gun at the balance instead of slinging it, stamped into the compartment. He'd lifted the face-shield of his helmet.

"Sir!" he said, quite clearly ignoring the civilians. "Request permission to put a squad of marksmen on the hull for security before we lower the boarding ramp!"

Daniel's eyes narrowed. "Major Mull," he said. He didn't raise his voice unduly—the Marine was just short of shouting—but it snapped nonetheless. "I will remind you that the bridge is the captain's territory, and that at present the captain is in conference with Her Excellency, Ambassador Forbes. Is that understood?"

Mull slammed to attention. "Sir!" he said, focusing his eyes on a spot on the bulkhead. "Understood sir!"

He's older than I am, and this—Daniel had checked the major's record—is his first shipboard command, though he's served as a junior officer on two battleships before his promotion. Mull didn't have a chip on his shoulder, but he was an unimaginative man who had never before taken orders from someone outside the Marine hierarchy.

"At ease, Major," Daniel said aloud. "And yes, that's a good idea, but I'll want twenty of your people to accompany the senator and me when we take the surrender of the—"

"Daniel, mine tender R16 in Fleet Berth Four is preparing to lift off!" said Adele, speaking through his commo helmet.

"Belay that, Mull!" Daniel said as he dropped onto his console again. He hoped Senator Forbes wouldn't feel offended, but that wasn't his first priority anymore.

"Six, I'm on it!" cried Sun on the command push. The bone-deep rumble of the dorsal turret—the ventral turret had been withdrawn for landing and was now below the harbor's surface—would have made that obvious anyway.

"All personnel get off the hull!" boomed Vesey's voice from the PA system and the ship's outside speakers. "Prepare for gunnery exercise! All Milton personnel get inside now or you'll be fried. Move it, Millies!"

Vesey was on the ball too, as expected, though Daniel wouldn't have been surprised to learn that it had been Cory who cut in the external speakers. He wasn't sure he'd have been able to manage that unusual task so quickly himself, though of course he'd never have to with Adele as his signals officer.

Just as he didn't have to worry about directing his next transmission. "R16, this is RCS Milton. Shut down or you will be destroyed. Shut down and acknowledge, over!"

There were scores of ships on the civilian side of St. James Harbor, several of them freighters bigger than the Wartburg. The naval base to the south was almost empty by contrast, though the extensive docks were built to handle a fleet including battleships. The Milton was by far the largest ship present, but the harbor facilities dwarfed her.

A pall of steam rose from a slip near the eastern end of the naval harbor. From ground level the vessel floating there wouldn't have been visible over the quay at this stage of the tide, but Daniel's masthead sensors let him peer down on it. Another hundred-foot mine tender like the one the Milton had destroyed in orbit was trying desperately to escape and warn Admiral Petersen of the disaster.

"R16, this is Captain Daniel Leary!" Daniel said. "Shut down immediately! You will not escape, you cannot escape. Shut down now and avoid dying for no purpose, over!"

Text crawled across the bottom of Daniel's display: voltaire 6, this is tiger. get your personnel beneath overhead cover immediately, repeat, seek overhead cover, out.

Voltaire 6 was Colonel Stockheim's call sign, while Tiger was the Milton. Adele was keeping Daniel informed of her transmission without interfering with what he was doing.

"R16, this is suicide!" Daniel said. "You must shut—"

The gush of steam from Berth 4 redoubled, concealing the mine tender for a moment. Then the hull with its minimum rig rose slowly from the cloud. They probably don't even have stores aboard for an interstellar voyage!

"Six, I've got her, over!" Sun cried. He was hunched over his console, his right hand poised over the execute button.

"Gunner, you may fire one round only," Daniel said, his face hard. Taking risks and ordering others to take risks were major parts of a naval officer's duties. This sort of pointless bravado disgusted him.

WHANG!

The shot came quicker than Daniel had expected. Because of the Milton's greater height, Sun had managed to get an angle while the tender was still largely within her slip. From the masthead sensors, Daniel saw a wedge of the top of the quay blaze white as the lower margin of the bolt touched it, reducing the concrete to quicklime and shattered gravel.

Most of the plasma struck the R16, however, and ripped her in two. In a breathable atmosphere, steel heated to the temperature of a star became fuel. The central portion of the little vessel didn't just vaporize as it would have done in space, it burned.

An iridescent fireball filled the slip, then paled as it lurched upward. When it burst high in the air, diamond-bright droplets rained down.

R16's bow dived into the slip, driven by two working thrusters. A double blast followed when water bathed the hot Stellite nozzles. It would have been impressive if it hadn't been upstaged by the plasma bolt itself.

The last ten feet of the tender's stern accelerated skyward in a steep curve while Daniel watched in amazement. The fragment hurtled several hundred feet up before the thruster driving it ran out of reaction mass. It spun, flinging out lesser debris which seemed to include a pair of human bodies, and plunged into a subdivision. There was no explosion, but more houses began to burn.

"The bloody fool," Daniel said. That was as much of an epitaph as R16's commander would get or deserved.

He took a deep breath, furious at the waste. "Ship, this is Six," he said. "All clear, all clear. And Gunner, that was a fine piece of work. Six out."

Calm again, Daniel turned back to Senator Forbes. "Sun, that's our gunner—"

He gestured left-handed toward the gunnery console.

"—caught the mine tender while it was still in its berth. If it had had time to get up to a thousand feet or so it would have been an easy target because of the reduced deflection, but the falling debris would've done all manner of damage. That was very good work."

Daniel didn't know what if anything Forbes made of what he was saying, but the fact that Sun heard his captain praise him to the senator was important. Sun had done a very good piece of work. Most of the lives he'd saved were those of local civilians, but there would've been losses among the Brotherhood infantry too.

"Yes, I see," said Forbes in the tone of somebody who would have preferred not to have been interrupted. "When were you planning to meet the Alliance commodore?"

There was a dull bong and the cruiser rocked slightly. Forbes and her aides might not even have noticed it after the violence of the plasma cannon, but it announced to Daniel that the boarding ramp had lowered until it butted firmly. The naval berths in St. James Harbor were as well appointed as those of Harbor Three on Cinnabar; instead of floating catwalks, metal extensions unfolded from the dock on cantilevered supports.

"Yes," he said. "If you're ready, Your Excellency, we'll be heading for the command bunker in about five minutes when the utility vehicles come up from the hold. I'd have used the aircars—"

"Except that the turbulence which the ship creates makes them too dangerous a risk to my life?" the senator said. Her tone was so dry that Daniel wasn't sure whether she was joking or still angry over his previous manipulation.

"No, Your Excellency," he said. Forbes had a right to be angry, and this would be as good a time—in the middle of a major victory—as he could imagine for her to let it out. "Because it's too dangerous to put anybody up in the air when hundreds of Alliance personnel are loose and haven't been disarmed. I'll take my chances—our chances, if I may say so—with the odd slug flying around, but it's easier than you might think to shoot an aircar right out of the sky. And it's very hard to dodge gravity if that happens."

Forbes sniffed and looked down at the cream sleeve of her jacket. "I should have worn gray," she said, as much to herself as to anybody. "This will be all soot by the time we get to this bunker."

"Well, think of it this way, Senator," said Hogg in a raspy voice. "So long as you haven't shat your trousers, you'll be better dressed than the local brass you'll be meeting."

Forbes stared at him, then turned to Daniel. He let the smile ease from his lips and waited with a neutral expression.

"Your man has a smart mouth, Leary," she said. "Does he know how to handle those guns he's carrying?"

"Hogg is a very good shot, Your Excellency," Daniel said.

"I thought he might be," Forbes said. Her face crinkled into a slight smile. "And I dare say he's right about how our opposite numbers reacted to being on the other end of those bloody great cannon. Well, whenever you're ready. Do you have to change clothes?"

Daniel glanced down at his utilities. "No, Your Excellency," he said. He took the sub-machine gun which Hogg offered. "This is a useful reminder to Commodore Harmston that we're a fighting force."

The first of the Hydriote transports was rumbling down from the stratosphere with a load of the Fonthill Militia. Blantyre was in charge of them. Before they'd even lifted from Fonthill, she'd used maps of St. James City to set up patrol areas. Each unit would be commanded by a petty officer from the cruiser. There'd have to be adjustments—there would have been adjustments even if a tenth of the city hadn't been destroyed in the assault—but Blantyre would take care of the problems without bothering her captain about them.

"As soon as we're sure the Alliance forces understand that they've surrendered," Daniel said, "I will change—at least into my Grays. The prisoners from Admiral Ozawa's squadron are in a quarry north of the city. Freeing them is my next priority, and they deserve the respect of a dress uniform."

Forbes nodded crisply. "I'll join you," she said. There was no question at all in her done.

"I hoped you would," Daniel said truthfully. "Now, let's deal with Harmston."

He glanced back at the panorama as he started out of the compartment with Hogg, Major Mull, and Senator Forbes. Armed spacers were trotting down the Milton's boarding ramp. That would be the cadres for the Militia as well as the cruiser's own security party, as expected. But among them—

Daniel looked at the signals console; it was empty, though Cory was doubtless handling communications from his station. He'd been right to think that the two slim figures leaving the ship were Adele and Tovera. They'd left the bridge while his attention was on Senator Forbes.

What in heaven is Adele doing now?

Though being Adele in the present chaos, the question might better be phrased, What in Hell?

 

While Adele, Tovera, and Dasi clung to the pivot where a lowboy would normally be attached, Barnes drove the tractor along the esplanade toward Fleet Berth 74 where the Zieten was moored. There was plenty of room on the deck of the bright orange vehicle, but passenger amenities were conspicuous by their absence.

Something fell on the back of Adele's neck. Rain? she thought, but when she patted it absently with her right hand the fingers came down black. It had been a blob of ash—oily ash.

She grimaced and wiped her fingertips on the back of her trouser leg. Quite a lot of the things burning around St. James Harbor this afternoon were human bodies. The smell was unmistakable if you'd been exposed to it before.

The tractor jounced over a length of pipe—plastic and therefore not a mast section, but it didn't deform under the small, solid wheels. Dasi's left arm was around Adele's waist; she was as safe as she'd have been if she were attached to the pivot by a safety line. That didn't make it a comfortable ride, though, even at a modest eight miles per hour which was as much as the low-geared electric motor could manage even without a loaded trailer.

"We could've gotten something with springs," Dasi said glumly. His partner seemed to be having a good time at the control yoke, but Barnes also had the tractor's only seat. "There was a couple little trucks in the shed two berths over. All we'd have had to do was lift the roof off them and I'd bet we could've got one of them to run."

Something exploded to the right. Adele jerked her head around, but she couldn't tell where the blast had come from; it might not even be within the military reservation. There'd been several random shots since she and her ad hoc escort set off from the Milton, but nothing that sounded like real fighting.

"The Brotherhood of Amorgos has the reputation of shooting first and not bothering to ask questions at all," Tovera said with a touch of gentle mockery, about as close as she usually came to displaying humor. "Armed people driving toward them in a truck with Alliance markings are likely to be stopped by the quickest means available. In this case that would probably be an automatic impeller, though they could doubtless take care of us with personal weapons."

"Lieutenant Alderman expects us," Adele said. "But I too thought that the tractor was the best means of transportation at present."

Three transports had landed, all of them in the military reservation, and a fourth was now thundering down from the heavens. The former slaves had to be armed from the Alliance arsenal here—Daniel didn't have sufficient RCN weapons.

"Ma'am?" Dasi said. "Is something wrong?"

I must have smiled, Adele thought. At least I would have meant it for a smile.

Aloud she said, "I wonder if we'll be equipping the new militia with Cinnabar weapons? Admiral Petersen would have captured quite a quantity of small arms on New Harmony, and it's likely enough that they would have been shipped here to the main base in the cluster, just as the prisoners were."

Dasi laughed gaily over the jingle of the wheels grinding debris into the concrete pavement. "Say, you're right, ma'am!" he said. "That'll teach 'em, won't it?"

Adele didn't respond save for a another neutral smile. Dasi took the reversal as an Aunt Sallie, a toy which inevitably bobbed upright on its weighted base after it had been slapped down. Adele's own image was that of a wheel: the Alliance had rolled to the top at New Harmony, but the wheel had turned again here at Bolton. The wheel was still turning, and it would turn until the end of time.

The tractor rolled and rattled into the warm cloud surrounding a recently landed freighter. Adele couldn't see farther than the control yoke. She expected Barnes to switch to infrared viewing, then realized that he wasn't wearing a helmet or goggles that would allow him to.

They trundled into the sunlight on the same line that they'd entered a hundred feet earlier. She supposed spacers got used to working in blurred light and darkness.

Adele tapped her personal data unit, though she didn't take it out of its pocket on so jolting a ride. The gray haze was too much like the hours before dawn when faces returned to her in an almost-dream. She knew that was only a trick of her mind, for their features were clear. For the most part they'd only been pale blobs above her gunsights during the fractions of seconds she'd seen them in life.

"They're waiting for us up there," said Barnes. His hand rose from the control yoke to point.

Tovera reached around from behind him and pulled his arm down. She said, "Let's not do anything our friends in the infantry might misunderstand."

Barnes grunted. "Got it," he said.

"You should've let me drive," Dasi said peevishly to his partner. As best Adele could tell, Dasi didn't really mean he wouldn't have pointed while approaching keyed-up men with guns; he was simply seizing the opportunity to complain again about something that had rankled throughout the ride.

A hundred yards ahead, sixty-odd spacers lay like rolls of carpeting on their backs along the edge of the esplanade. A dozen or so at the far end wore field-gray Fleet utilities.

A Brotherhood APC was parked its own length from the prisoners with its nose toward them. That was too far for anybody to decide to be a hero by rushing the vehicle. The impeller in the cupola and the troopers' personal weapons were stained gray at the muzzle by vaporized aluminum from firing.

Several Brotherhood soldiers crouched behind cover, following the tractor with their guns. Adele didn't know where the rest of the squad was—probably controlling the other approaches. It wouldn't be a good time to bring out her data unit and get a precise answer from satellite imagery.

"Halt where you are!" boomed a loudspeaker on the APC. "No vehicles are allowed closer than you are right now!"

Barnes obediently pushed the control yoke forward, bringing the tractor to a jingling halt. Adele hopped down, as glad as not to leave the hard orange deck.

"I'm Officer Mundy!" she said, wondering if anybody in the vehicle could hear her. She walked forward, taking her usual quick, short steps. "I need to speak to Lieutenant Alderman!"

"I'll talk to them, ma'am," Dasi said apologetically, striding in front of her.

They'd reached the nearest Alliance prisoners; some twisted their heads to follow the newcomers with their eyes, but many remained as stiff as logs or as corpses. A Brotherhood soldier with a sub-machine gun knelt at the base of the gantry Adele had just passed, watching events silently.

"Now look, you pongoes!" Dasi bawled. "We're from the Millie, so put them bloody guns up now or Cap'n Leary'll show you what real guns is!"

Adele grinned despite herself. She'd expected Dasi to politely request to meet the Brotherhood lieutenant, albeit more loudly than a librarian's lungs were capable of. After the fact, the notion seemed absurd. She knew riggers, and in particular she knew Barnes and Dasi—which was much of the reason she'd asked them to escort her to the Zieten.

That didn't mean it was the right way to approach the Brethren, who were reputed to have their own outlook on honor and propriety. Once you'd devoted your life to the State through its Gods, you were likely to disregard merely human regulations.

Adele stepped forward, her hands raised at her sides. "Lieutenant Alderman, I'm Officer Mundy," she called. At least between them, she and Dasi had confused the troops enough to get within speaking distance. "I'm the one who requested your unit to take charge of the ship and its crew. I gather you've done so?"

Two soldiers stepped out from between a pair of room-sized shipping containers. Both carried sub-machine guns, but the older man behind wore a commo pack which would boost the signals of the small helmet transceivers which all the infantry wore.

"You're female!" said the younger man. Combat troops didn't wear insignia, but he was obviously Michael Alderman.

"Yes," said Adele, lowering her hands. If you must state the pointlessly obvious. "I spoke with Colonel Stockheim, who gave you your orders. Have you carried them out?"

"Mistress, please remain where you are!" Alderman said forcefully. He was either angry or nervous because he was faced with an unexpected situation. "I need to check with the colonel."

An older soldier rose from the APC's hatch. He said, "Sir, that's the RCN officer who got the astrogation gear working on Paton."

Ignoring his noncom, Lieutenant Alderman began speaking into his helmet microphone. His sound-cancellation field was up. You little puppy, Adele thought; but after her mental rebuke of the rigger, she didn't say that aloud.

The noncom met Dasi's eyes and shook his head, one enlisted veteran to another. He didn't look at Adele, though.

Alderman stiffened abruptly, his eyes focused straight ahead as they would if he were being dressed down face-to-face instead of just over the radio. Adele hadn't warmed to Colonel Stockheim, but he seemed to be better at ordering priorities than this junior lieutenant was.

Swallowing, Alderman turned to face Adele squarely and saluted. "Your pardon, Officer Mundy," he said. "The crew of the ship Zieten is here as you wished—"

He gestured with the muzzle of his sub-machine gun. He carried the weapon with the ease of long practice. However poor Alderman's judgment might be, Adele had the impression that he would give a good account of himself in a gunfight.

"—but the ship is closed up. Ah—should we blow it open? The colonel was clear that we were to extend you every facility."

"I'll take it from here, Lieutenant," Adele said. She was furious, but the first order of business was to correct the problem.

She turned to the Alliance officers, the prisoners wearing uniforms instead of ordinary spacers' slops. She said, "Corvette-Captain Friedman—"

She had the Zieten's roster from her databanks.

"—stand up if you please!"

The pudgy man on the end lifted his head but didn't otherwise move. Goodness only knew what sort of threats the Brethren had offered anyone who didn't lie flat.

"Now!" Adele said.

The pudgy man rose to his elbows, watching Alderman, then carefully got to his feet. "I'm Peter Friedman," he said. "Look, we're prisoners of war. You can't just shoot us."

He didn't sound very sure about that. Adele grimaced. "Of course not," she said. She nodded to the supine row. "Is your whole crew here?"

"Mistress, we're a courier ship," Friedman said. Adele didn't bother to say that she knew that; he was nervous enough already. "All my crew is here, yes. We obeyed the, ah, Captain Leary's orders. It'd be crazy to think we could fight a heavy cruiser!"

"That's very much what Captain Leary said after he destroyed the R16," Adele said, emphasizing the point which obviously the Alliance officer was already aware of. Tovera and Barnes moved up to join her and Dasi. "But why is the Zieten still sealed?"

"Look, mistress, this isn't our doing, I don't want you to think that," said Friedman, speaking in a breathless monotone. His eyes kept dancing around as though everything they lit on seared them. "But like I say, we're a courier ship and there were a couple Courier Service people aboard with the pouch."

Lieutenant Alderman stared at Tovera with the fascination of a small animal facing a viper. Tovera usually—Adele couldn't see her face at the moment—smiled back in such situations, making the metaphor even stronger.

"So they stayed aboard when the rest of you marched out?" Adele said, deciding to prod a little. She ordinarily let a subject tell the story his own way, then rearranged the bits later in a logical sequence; she'd learned that expecting logic from most people was as vain as expecting them to be skilled astrogators. Here, though, time might be getting short.

"Courier Alfreda, that's the officer, she carried the chip to Base Headquarters," said Captain Friedman. "But Ken Wilson, he's Support Staff, he stayed with the database. One of them always does. I mean the Courier Service database, it isn't linked to the ship."

Friedman swallowed. He turned his head from side to side, then stared at his boots. "Look," he said, "one of my engine wipers is a friend of Wilson's. She stayed aboard with him. I mean, what was I supposed to do? I got everybody else off, that's what's important, right?"

The just-landed freighter shut down its thrusters. In the near silence Adele heard five quickly spaced shots from across the harbor. The dull whoomp that followed was probably a vehicle's fuel tank bursting.

The most recent freighter had landed at the far end of the Fleet docks, but the next one would probably be nearby. Well, there were even better reasons to handle this quickly.

"Wilson and this woman are armed?" Adele said.

"I guess," Friedman said miserably. Adele wanted to slap him, but it wasn't the Alliance captain's cowardice that was really making her angry.

"All right," she said. "Barnes, Dasi—can we get into the ship from here or do I have to go back to the Milton to enter the command console electronically?"

She would have done that before they left the cruiser if she'd known. She should have known, it was her job not to make mistakes!

"We can blow it open, mistress," Alderman said with false brightness.

Ignoring the soldier, Barnes shrugged. "Sure," he said. "There's a hand wheel on each hatch. There's gotta be for when she's sitting in the yard with her fusion bottle pulled."

"And the bloody relays can fail," Dasi said to his partner. "Remember the old Calydon above Rubin?"

Barnes nodded. Dasi shrugged and added, "It'll be a bit of work, but at least we don't have to worry about our air giving out."

"All right," Adele repeated. With the two riggers in the lead, her party started down the quay toward the moored aviso.

Lieutenant Alderman trotted out in front of them. "Mistress," he said. "There are armed m-men aboard that ship. It's my duty to remove them from the vessel."

Adele looked at him. They were already half the hundred yards out from the esplanade. Odd; she wouldn't have thought they'd come so far.

"Yes, Lieutenant," she said. "It was your duty, and you failed to accomplish it. Please get out of the way. The RCN will take care of the problem now."

Alderman froze, gray-faced. None of his men had followed him.

"Hey, pongo?" Barnes said. "There's something you can do after all. It'll make turning the wheel easier if we got a come-along, and your gun barrel's just the right diameter. Give me your gun."

"We might need to use our own," said Dasi, patting the receiver of his stocked impeller. "We're RCN, you know."

The riggers weren't ordinarily cruel men, but they were fighters. Alderman had insulted Mistress Mundy. Now that Adele had knocked him down, they were putting the boot in.

Without speaking, Alderman lifted the muzzle of his sub-machine gun and held it out to Barnes, who gripped it at the balance in his free hand. The riggers sauntered around the lieutenant to either side; Adele and Tovera followed Dasi to the left.

The riggers began whistling the chorus of a song which Adele had heard in the past: "Here we come, full of rum, looking for boys who peddle their bum. . . ."

That was bravado, of course; they knew what they were getting into, or anyway they thought they did. But bravado had taken more than one RCN ship down the throat of a powerful enemy and out the other side.

Adele glanced back over her shoulder. Alderman remained where they'd left him. He looked like a statue of despair.

The Zieten had been down for more than an hour, so the steam of its landing had cooled to condensate soaking the quays. The riggers trotted on ahead, unconcerned about the slick metal surfaces of the dock extensions.

By the time Adele and Tovera arrived at a more sedate pace, the cover plate on the hinge side of the airlock was unbolted. Barnes stuck the barrel of the borrowed sub-machine gun through the six-inch wheel there and began cranking it around.

"Can we talk to the people inside?" Adele asked Dasi.

"Sure," he said, "once we get the lock open. There'll be an intercom."

Adele nodded. "I'll speak to them before we enter, then," she said.

Dasi smiled without real interest. While his partner turned the wheel, he pointed his impeller toward the widening crack. Both riggers were big men. Barnes worked swiftly, but Adele realized that even with the gun for greater leverage it was a real job. What must it have been like while wearing rigging suits in orbit above Rubin?

"That's good enough," Dasi said. "Gimme the pongo's gun and I'll take the inside one. Ah—unless you . . ."

"Be my guest," Barnes said as he tossed Alderman's sub-machine gun to his partner. Dasi slipped into the empty airlock through what was, to Adele's surprise, a wide enough opening for him.

"I want to speak with the people inside," Adele said sharply.

"Don't worry, ma'am," Barnes said, stretching out the stiffness of his recent exertion. "It's not going to happen quick. It's as much work on the inside hatch and it's cramped besides."

The lock would hold eight spacers in rigging suits. Some airlocks had clear panels in the inner door; this one didn't, but an intercom was in the chamber's wall as the riggers had said.

Tovera stepped between Adele and Dasi. The sub-machine gun she'd taken from the cruiser's armory was pointed at what would become the opening when the hatch moved; she wore her own miniature weapon in a belt holster like a pistol. Dasi began to crank.

The intercom switch was a slide. "Master Wilson," Adele said, "and all of you Fleet personnel aboard the Zieten, this is Officer Mundy of the RCN. Surrender immediately and don't put us to the trouble of killing you. You and all your fellows will be treated according to the normal usages of war. There's obviously no escape for you, so you may as well be reasonable and live."

Another Hydriote ship was landing. Adele put her ear close to the speaker plate, but she didn't think there was a response.

In Alliance service, dispatches were downloaded into a discrete database aboard the vessel carrying them. When the vessel reached its destination, the courier copied the dispatch onto a chip which was physically carried to the recipient; information was never transmitted electronically. The database was then wiped.

Complete clearing of a database required specialized facilities, however. St. James Base might have such equipment, but there hadn't been time to bring it to the aviso. If Adele could get to the database, she would have all the information that it had carried since its last thorough clearance.

"Wilson, you don't want to die and we don't want to kill you!" Adele said. "And if you're not thinking of yourself, what of the friend you've got with you? Do you want her to die?"

A heavy male voice, perhaps rougher for the intercom's bad transmission, said, "Put Officer Alfreda on. If I can talk to her, I'll give up."

If you talk to her, she'll tell you to empty an impeller into the database, which would also be a thorough way of destroying its data, Adele thought. She said, "Alfreda was killed in the fighting. Unless you surrender immediately, you and your friend will join her for no reason at all. Don't be a fool, Wilson!"

The hatch was open a hand's breadth and spreading further in the steady increments of sand dripping through an hourglass. Adele didn't know whether or not Alfreda was alive. If she was, she'd almost certainly triggered the miniature charge in her pouch and reduced the data chip to powder. The Zieten's database was the only sure path to the dispatches.

"I gotta speak to Alfreda!" Wilson said. "And stop opening the door, I'll shoot, I swear I'll shoot!"

"Come on, Wilson," Adele said, trying to sound soothing. She doubted that she succeeded; it wasn't something she was good at. "There's no need for shooting. Just put down your gun and you can relax for the rest of the war."

Dasi continued cranking. A shot from inside banged into the hatch and howled deeper into the vessel. The hatch was opening toward Wilson. He'd tried to shoot—probably with a service pistol—through the crack on the hinge side.

"Don't shoot!" Adele snapped to her companions. A slug bouncing around the aviso might hit the database that Wilson apparently hadn't been smart enough destroy deliberately.

"Barnes, take care of this," Tovera said. She drew the miniature weapon from its holster while her left hand stretched back with the armory sub-machine gun. Barnes reached past Adele and took it.

Adele drew her pistol. The opening was almost wide enough for her to slip through. She said, "Tovera, I'll lead."

"You've got to leave!" Wilson cried. "I'll kill you all! Send Officer Alfreda!"

Tovera poised. "Hold on to her, Barnes," she said. The rigger reached around Adele's torso with his right arm and clamped her left shoulder like a seat restraint.

"I'm warning—" Wilson said.

Tovera was through the hatchway like a wisp of fog. Her sub-machine gun stuttered, echoes muddling the snapping discharges. Wilson fired an instant later. His heavy slug bounced twice, each time deforming further to sing in a different key.

"I give up!" screamed a female voice. "I give—"

Tovera's weapon crackled out another three-shot burst. A body thumped into a bulkhead, then the deck. Heels drummed briefly before there was silence.

"All clear!" Tovera called. "All clear!"

Barnes released Adele and stepped back. Dasi stood beside the hatch mechanism, swallowing with unaccustomed nervousness.

"Do you know who you laid hands on?" Adele said. "I'm Mundy of Chatsworth! I can have you flayed, you little worm!"

"Yes ma'am," Barnes said, staring at the bulkhead above her head. "We know that. Ma'am, you do what you want to do. But I'm not going to look at Six and tell him that you got killed because we let you be stupid."

"Ma'am?" said Dasi. His hands were knotting together; Adele had a sudden vision of a little boy unable to save his drowning puppy. "I'd have done the same. Ma'am, Six wouldn't ream us out, he'd cry."

Adele felt a cold knife sinking into her heart. Her lips pursed to speak, paused; pursed to say something else and paused again. At last—and it was only a few heartbeats delay—she said, "Captain Leary is well served by his crew."

She shook herself, dropped the unused pistol back into her pocket, and said, "Tovera, we're coming through."

Tovera stood in the hatch opening, watching the exchange. "Mistress," she said with a nod and stepped out of the way.

Adele hadn't even been angry at her. Tovera wasn't fully human; she would do whatever she decided was right in a given situation, regardless of what any individual or society as a whole said. And in this case—

Adele's thin smile was self-mocking.

—Tovera had been right, by any standards one could reasonably apply. Lady Mundy had been about to act irresponsibly, so her colleagues had correctly restrained her.

The airlock opened into a rotunda much like that of the Princess Cecile. Across it, a brawny man lay on his face, his legs back in the compartment adjacent to the bridge. There was no sign of blood, but his body must have frozen at the instant of death; the pistol gripped in his left hand was slightly raised from the deck.

A woman sprawled against the wall of the compartment behind him. She'd been short and vaguely pear-shaped. Her face was flushed and bulging. Adele could have covered with two slim fingers the trio of holes above the bridge of the woman's nose.

"The courier database is in the compartment with them," Tovera said, gesturing with her left hand. "It wasn't damaged."

"I thought I heard her surrender," Adele said in an even tone.

Tovera shrugged. "Mistress," she said, "it's hard to hear anything like that after the shooting starts."

Adele stepped over Wilson's legs. "Barnes," she said. "Get these bodies out of the way. I'm going to be here till I've downloaded the dispatches, and I have no idea how long that will be."

She swung the bunk out of the wall and seated herself on it, then took her personal data unit from its pocket. She threw a switch on the side of the dispatch computer. The action settled her mind almost magically.

Adele began working. Now that she'd opened the data port, it really shouldn't take very long.

Barnes lifted the woman by the throat of her tunic and carried her out of the compartment. That was just as well. Adele didn't notice her surroundings once she'd become lost in a project, but both corpses had voided their bowels when they died. The ship's atmosphere had been close after a long voyage besides.

 

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