The Sea Without a Shore (28 page)
Read The Sea Without a Shore Online
Authors: David Drake
If the diversion doesn’t work, I can still try to bluff,
Adele thought expressionlessly. Aloud she said, “All right, Hogg. What do you want me to do?”
“Just go on like you’re planning to do,” he said, straightening and wiping the knife before he put it away. He grinned. “I don’t figure anybody’ll notice us while we walk through the camp. You go up to the squad on guard and start talking to them like it’s where you’re supposed to be. When something pops, just wait and duck in the door of the trailer.”
Adele smiled faintly.
It’s none of my business what he plans to do, so I won’t waste time by asking him
.
“All right,” she repeated. “That’s the park in the block ahead, I believe.”
The park was covered with tents in good order. The side-ropes interlocked, but there were proper aisles at the front and back of each row. Adele saw a few stumps; the trees had probably been cut down for firewood.
At least a score of men sat outside their tents, talking and smoking a drug of some sort. When they noticed that Adele wore an officer’s uniform they generally made a vague effort to cup their short pipes in the hollow of their hands, thus concealing them. Adele ignored the soldiers, as they clearly expected her to do.
The squad on guard in front of Arnaud’s small trailer was commanded by a noncom. An air conditioner whirred from the back of the trailer; curtains were drawn over the pair of windows flanking the door.
The guards didn’t notice Adele until she was well into the three-meter space left clear around the trailer. Even then their only concern appeared to be that the strange officer would start shouting orders.
“Commissioner Arnaud ordered me to report immediately about the attack on Point Three,” Adele said briskly. “He’s expecting—”
There was a hollow
boom!
Adele jerked her head around. A roof of structural plastic flapped into the air. Several of the guards threw themselves on the ground, and there was confused babble from them and the camp generally.
The effluvium of half-rotted human excrement reached the trailer, making Adele’s eyes water. No one was watching her. She turned the latch and stepped into Arnaud’s trailer, closing the door after her. She switched on the lights.
The pajama-clad man stepping out of the bedroom matched the images of Arnaud in general outline, but he had aged a decade since the most recent. That one had been captured within the year. He blinked at her.
“Good evening, Commissioner Arnaud,” Adele said. “Are we alone?”
She gestured toward the door through which he’d come. She’d had no way to check as to whether he was sharing his bed with a companion—or a harem, for that matter. It didn’t matter in the longer term, since any negative consequences of their conversation getting out would be his problem.
“What? Yes, we’re alone,” Arnaud said, his voice strengthening. “Who are you and what in
hell
is going on?”
This half of the trailer was an office with a fully capable console and a lesser machine in what appeared to be a secretary’s alcove. The larger console wasn’t netted into the camp’s system, but Adele hoped that the data unit in her pocket was linking with it now that they were in close proximity.
“My guess as to your second question,” Adele said, “is that my colleague dropped a grenade into the camp latrine. As to your first—I’m the representative of Bantry Holdings. You sent for me.”
The chairs were of the standard office variety, as straight and stiff as those of a warship. Adele turned one to face Arnaud and sat in it, then took out her data unit and its control wands.
“I didn’t expect …” Arnaud said. He sat in the other chair near the console, then wriggled to face her. “How did you get into the camp? I was expecting a radio message!”
Adele sniffed, her eyes on the data unit’s display. “Then you’re a fool,” she said. “Senator Leary isn’t a man who would entrust treasonous communications to a commercial code which any child with basic math could break if he spent the time.”
Arnaud frowned. With an edge in his voice he said, “Bantry Holdings used the code in the past.”
“The people who used the code no longer work for Bantry Holdings,” Adele said, still without looking up. Her wands danced. “Now, stop wasting time and state your proposal.”
“All right, that’s simple enough,” Arnaud said. He was rattled by the situation, and Adele’s deliberate contempt kept him from taking charge of his emotions. “Daniel Leary is on Corcyra, Senator Leary’s son and quite a figure in his own right. I want him to announce that he’s arrived as representative of the Senate and that Cinnabar is supporting our claim, Pantellaria’s claim, to control of Corcyra under the Treaty of Amiens. He can say that a Cinnabar task force is on the way.”
“Indeed?” Adele said, meeting Arnaud’s angry glare. “Bantry Holdings rejects your proposal.”
“Do you now?” Arnaud said, leaning forward. “Well, you can just expect full particulars of Leary’s dealings with me during the war to be published—on Cinnabar as well as Pantellaria, and on Pleasaunce, too, just to be on the safe side!”
“Yes, that would be one way of proceeding,” Adele said. “If you’ll bring up your computer, however—”
She nodded toward the console beside her rather than gesturing, because she had a wand in either hand.
“—you’ll find my counterproposal. Apart from possible benefits to Bantry Holdings and its shareholders—”
Her smile was as cold and hard as a crack in ice.
“—you’ll find it makes you a military hero as well as returning Corcyra to Pantellarian control.”
“I don’t …” Arnaud said, but he let his voice trail off as he walked around the console and sat on its couch. The unit came up, finally giving Adele the access she needed. The series of files which she had prepared and queued now transferred automatically.
“This will allow you to capture Brotherhood, the only starport in Corcyran hands,” Adele said. “That cuts the independence movement off from their source of weapons and money.”
She felt enormous relief. No matter what happened next, she had carried out her mission for Deirdre Leary. That removed any possibility that this business would lead to a resumption of war between Cinnabar and the Alliance. There was still Mistress Sand’s concern about her son, but—
Adele’s smile was again a tiny glint in ice.
—properly that was Daniel’s mission, not her own. And in any case, one thing at a time.
“Ships don’t need a port to land at,” Arnaud said slowly. His primary attention was on the console’s display. “They don’t even need water.”
“Some ships don’t,” Adele said. “The sort of ships and crews which are willing to make smuggling runs into Corcyra need something better than dry gullies, though. When you take Brotherhood, the rebels are isolated. Furthermore, if you follow up the capture by attacking the siege lines both with your ships and on the ground, you’ll end the whole revolt.”
Arnaud shrank the holographic display so that he could look directly at Adele. She turned her head to meet his gaze.
“Brotherhood has missile batteries,” Arnaud said. Though he was trying to sound dismissive, a note of hope had crept into his voice. “This plan says I’m to hop troops from here to Brotherhood using my ships. They’ll be massacred by missiles.”
“Captain Leary’s vessel is in Brotherhood Harbor,” Adele said. “When your ships lift, the two missile batteries will become nonfunctional. Captain Leary won’t act until you’re actually on the way so that the Corcyrans won’t have time to recapture the batteries.”
“By heaven,” Arnaud said. “By
heaven
.”
“Colonel Bourbon is in command of the independence forces again,” Adele said. She spoke without emotion; but then, she almost always spoke without emotion. “He plans to capture Hablinger by a nighttime assault before the missiles from Karst arrive. You know about the antiship missiles, I presume?”
“Yes,” Arnaud said bitterly. “But from my own sources on Pantellaria. The Council didn’t see fit to inform me of the approaches they’d received from Ischia.”
Adele nodded. “Bourbon believes that he can save the considerable cost of the missiles by taking you unaware,” she said. “He’ll shortly bring all the troops from Brotherhood here to the siege lines, which will make it easy for you to capture the harbor. Bourbon’s first action will be to withdraw the units at present around Hablinger to refit them, though.”
“If what you tell me is true,” Arnaud said, “then we’ve won.
I’ve
won.”
“In about two weeks,” Adele said, getting to her feet and putting the data unit away. “Perhaps less. I’m told that it will take you that long to get prepared, so you can’t even consider it a delay.”
She turned toward the door. “Mistress?” Arnaud said. Adele looked back over her shoulder.
“Mistress,” Arnaud said, “who told you how long it would take us to prepare our attack? This is not your plan?”
“No,” said Adele. “It’s the plan of Captain Daniel Leary. Corder Leary’s son, you’ll remember. When you threatened the Leary family, you brought a very good tactician into a provincial game.”
She touched the latch, then looked at Arnaud again. “I’ll contact you within forty-eight hours with more details,” she said. “I’m leaving an icon on your display. When the message arrives, open the icon and transfer the file I’ve sent to the file which you’ve opened. It will be decoded there.”
Adele closed the door behind her and started back through the camp. No one in the squad on guard spoke to her, but she felt their eyes follow her into the tents.
Hogg joined Adele when she was out of sight of the trailer and its guards. He didn’t speak.
“We’ll return by way of Point Three,” she said. “They have orders to pass us through without asking any questions.”
“Arnaud gave us a pass?” Hogg said. “I guess things worked out okay, then.”
He’d been concerned,
Adele realized. Though he’d given no sign of that while the situation was in doubt.
Of course he’d given no sign of being worried
.
He’s Daniel’s man
.
“Commissioner Arnaud’s console gave us a pass, Hogg,” Adele said. “I didn’t want to bother him with something so minor.”
Her mind was working on other things, now. There was a great deal yet to do before she and Daniel ended the war.
CHAPTER 25
Outside Hablinger on Corcyra
Daniel wished he could have found a quieter alternative for the temporary headquarters than the back of an air-cushioned truck, but there wasn’t one if the command group remained near the siege lines. There were arguments for moving the command group much farther back, but there were no arguments that Daniel himself would have accepted even if the other members were willing.
“Look, what are we waiting for?” said Administrator Tibbs, who
certainly
would have been willing to evacuate the command group. She wasn’t exactly wringing her hands, but seemed to be trying to strangle her attaché case’s handle.
Daniel smiled, though he looked up into the night sky rather than directing his amusement toward Tibbs, the real cause of his amusement.
She can’t have understood how dangerous this really is or she’d still be back in Brotherhood
.
“We’re waiting for an hour before dawn,” Colonel Bourbon said. “The time we set for the operation.”
“That’s only five minutes!” said Tibbs. “What difference would five minutes make?”
“Quite a lot of difference for the troops out there, since we told them 4:43!” snapped Lieutenant Angelotti. Colonel Bourbon had done a good job of hiding his frustration with the Regiment’s civilian head, but the naval lieutenant was younger and probably less politic by nature. “Jumping the gun puts their lives at risk. A lot of them are probably still in their dugouts!”
Tibbs grimaced, but she held her tongue instead of saying “Who cares about those scum?” or words to that effect. Angelotti might have slapped Tibbs if she had.
Daniel’s smile hardened.
Indeed,
I
might have slapped her; but probably not
.
“I don’t guess it’d make much difference,” said one of the miners morosely. He took a long pull from the liter bottle which he and his companions had been passing among themselves since they arrived. “Us folk don’t pay a lot of attention to what townies say, and we
bloody
sure don’t take orders from townies.”
The miners’ representatives this morning weren’t the trio which Daniel had met when he arrived at the siege lines five days earlier. These were all males and much of a type: thin-faced, wiry, and shorter than Daniel’s own five feet nine inches. They looked similar enough that they might have been grandfather, son, and grandson—they ranged from an apparent twenty to sixty—but from conversation, Daniel doubted they were related.
“They’ll be buried if they
don’t
listen,” said Angelotti. “And anyway, nobody gave them orders. It was just a warning.”
Angelotti was keyed up, though it wasn’t clear whether she was goaded by fear—she
did
understand the danger—or by hopeful anticipation. She was able to do her duty either way, Daniel supposed; and besides, she had nothing to do except be present. None of them really had anything to do.
The youngest miner turned and spat over the side of the truck. Spitting outward may have been an afterthought, which Daniel appreciated. Eight people standing in the back of a one-tonne vehicle didn’t leave a great deal of open floor.
“This soft dirt?” the miner said. “Why, that’s nothing! You ought to see a cave-in back where we come from.”
“Anyhow,” said the oldest miner, “I guess it’s their business.”
You couldn’t dig any depth into the Delta’s rich black soil without having the excavation collapse. The miners had simply adapted the system they used in their own tunnels to the situation: they used screw clamps to roll sheets of structural plastic into tubes—the diameter differed depending on the size of the sheet, but usually two meters—and welded the join. As they advanced the tunnel, they shoved the tube deeper and added segments at the surface end in the fashion of a well casing.
If a rock layer shifted it could flatten the tube, but the plastic was sturdy enough to withstand the more common problem of a flake—which might weigh tons—spalling off the tunnel roof. The sheets and forming equipment were available in quantity because they were in general use throughout the pro-independence territories.
Under most conditions the plastic liners kept the besiegers’ dugouts here safe and even dry. Conditions were about to change; but as the miner had said, that was the business of the people who were at risk if they ignored the warning.
Bourbon hugged himself and grimaced. “If the Pantellarians knew that we’ve moved three quarters of our strength back,” he said, “they’d attack.”
“They won’t attack,” Daniel said. He cleared his throat while he decided how to phrase the next comment. “Officer Mundy would have given us plenty of warning—days of warning—if there were any chance of them attacking. We’re talking about the Pantellarians here, you’ll recall.”
“I don’t see how she can be sure of that,” said Tibbs, “but there’s only minutes to go. If the mine goes off, at least. What happens—”
She looked up at the others in the truck bed. Her expression had gone from peevishly nervous to sudden concern.
“—if something goes wrong with that? What do we do then?”
“There shouldn’t be any problem with the mine, mistress,” Brother Graves said. He sounded so calmly certain that his tone alone banished doubt. “It’s quite a straightforward operation, something I’ve done hundreds of times. Many of the others involved have laid thousands of charges.”
“You got that bloody right!” said the young miner. “Look, honey, if I thought you knew your job half as good as we know ours, I wouldn’t be near so worried about all this circus.”
“I think everybody here is competent,” Graves said, again damping a nervous exchange with his powerful calm. “And most important, I think Captain Leary and his staff are competent. You—”
He nodded to the miners.
“—and I had nothing to do but execute the captain’s orders. I’m confident that we’ve done so ably.”
Daniel had brought Graves here not as the Transformationist representative—Heimholz remained in charge of the sect’s field force—but because he was an engineer. Corcyra’s miners worked in hard rock, and few if any had any better notion of how to tunnel in the Delta environment than a boy at the beach would.
Graves had used one of the drainage pumps as an excavator, carving the silt away with high-pressure water. By sloping the entrance tunnel at a slight downward angle, the tailings flowed back and cleaned the work face without additional effort.
The only trick had been reducing the nozzle from fifteen centimeters to two centimeters to keep the stream sufficiently precise. Controlling the hose required six husky miners, and the teams had to be replaced every few minutes. There were plenty of men and several women available.
Besides, it made the miners feel good about their place in the independence movement. Miners had from the first provided most of manpower, but because of their individualism and lack of structure they hadn’t been involved in planning.
Couldn’t
be involved in planning, but miners tended to think that outsiders from off-planet were keeping them in the dark out of contempt.
Daniel’s smile became wry. There was a degree of truth to the miners’ belief, of course. People were complicated and generally further from perfect than one sometimes wished.
“Something’s funny, Leary?” Colonel Bourbon said.
“I was thinking that I wouldn’t have much place in a perfect universe,” Daniel said truthfully. “And that if all women were perfect ladies, I would have had a great deal less fun. But now to work, I think.”
Smiling broadly, Daniel keyed the portable communications unit clamped to the back of the truck’s cab. In speaker mode, he said, “
Kiesche
, this is Six. Report your status, please, over.”
The others in the back of the vehicle were staring at him. Lieutenant Angelotti pursed her lips and murmured, “Can the Pantellarians listen to that?”
“No,” said Graves without taking his eyes off Daniel.
Adele set this up so that we’re actually using the satellite link through Pantellarian headquarters,
Daniel thought. The Pantellarians were intercepting and perhaps decoding ordinary independence communications, but they weren’t checking their own.
He didn’t say that aloud, because the others wouldn’t have found it reassuring. Besides, this wasn’t the time to discuss communications security with laymen.
Daniel rapped his knuckles on the roof of the cab to get the attention of the driver, a sergeant from the Regiment. It was their truck. Hogg sat beside him.
“Ammings,” he said, bending close to the open window into the cab. “Bring us up to full power. Hover if you can. And get ready for one hell of a ride.”
The intake flow built to a roar, and a bearing began to sing.
The motor doesn’t have to survive long,
Daniel thought at the back of his mind,
but I sure hope it’s got another few minutes
. Aloud he said, “Colonel Bourbon, would you push the button, please?”
“Not me, Leary,” Bourbon said. “This was your plan. You do the honors.”
Daniel thought, then smiled again. The obvious person to set off the charge was Brother Graves, but though the Transformationist was too nice a person to react to an insult, it certainly would be an insult to a man who strove for peace.
Instead, Daniel gestured to the eldest of the miners and said, “Sir, I think that the people who did the work should have any honor there is going. Will you press the button, please?”
I wish I’d heard his name
.
The miner handed the bottle to one of his colleagues and took the necessary step forward to the communications unit. He looked suddenly diffident. He reached out, then looked questioningly at Daniel.
“
Kiesche
,” Daniel said. “This is Six. Wait one, over.”
He pointed to the miner and dipped his finger. The older man thrust down forcefully on the EXECUTE button.
Daniel couldn’t see what happened to the course of the river a mile closer to the Pantellarian positions because the truck was behind an angle of the levee, but he did see the enormous gout of mud and muddy water lift into the sky. An instant later the shockwave arrived through the ground, bouncing the truck like a tennis ball.
Five seconds later the deafening roar swept over them, but by then that was old news.
Brotherhood on Corcyra
Adele had realtime imagery of Hablinger in the center, but most of her display was given over to the commo threads she was following. Events in Hablinger would affect her, but she couldn’t affect
them
. She preferred to give her attention to things she could do something about.
“
Kiesche
, this is Six,”
said the console. It was the signal they were waiting for.
“Report your status please, over.”
“Six, this is Five,”
said Vesey.
“All is according to plan, over.”
Adele was at the back of the
Kiesche
’s console; Vesey was on the command seat. Adele was aware that Pasternak had lighted the thrusters, but only because the plasma exhaust put a buzz across the radio-frequency spectrum. Her equipment filtered it out, but the buzz was a factor in her conscious universe which the ship’s physical vibration was not. Adele’s body might have been aware of being shaken, but her mind was where she lived.
“Lady Mundy,”
said Vesey, using a two-way link.
“Is it all right if I talk to you, over?”
The first response that went through Adele’s mind was, “I’m busy, you idiot! I’m busy trying to keep Daniel from being killed!”
Adele heard the words mentally before they reached her tongue, fortunately, and the shock of embarrassment brought her to her senses. It was as unlikely that anything she was doing at the moment would matter to the Hablinger operation as it was that a meteorite would plunge from the sky and destroy the console at which she was working. To imagine otherwise was staggering arrogance,
disgusting
arrogance.
“Yes, of course, Captain,” Adele said. “Is there something in particular that I should be looking for? Over.”
“No,”
said Vesey.
“Lady Mundy—”
“Officer
Mundy,” Adele said, correcting the ship’s captain in a fashion that she wouldn’t have dared to do if she hadn’t been “Lady Mundy” in her mind as well as in Vesey’s. She smiled like a sphinx. But whenever possible Adele followed RCN protocol.
Whenever I think of it, I follow protocol
. Which wasn’t as often as one might wish, but there wasn’t a problem so long as she served under Daniel, and Adele could not imagine serving in the RCN under anyone except Daniel.
“Officer, Adele,”
Vesey said.
“Please, I need to talk to you. To someone who understands and who’ll be honest, which is you alone on this planet. I need advice, over.”
“Go ahead,” Adele said.
Perhaps I
am
Lady Mundy today, after all.
“Should I turn over command to Cory?”
Vesey said baldly.
“He’s a fighting officer—you know what I mean. Tell me!”
“No, you should not,” Adele said. “Captain Leary put you in command in his absence. I trust his judgment on such matters, and so should you.”
Because of the circumstances, Adele’s eyes were on the Hablinger siege lines. A tiny ripple crossed the image every few minutes, rather like an extremely slow raster scan. The signals were being sent from tramp freighters whose optics were mediocre by naval standards, even when the signals were sharpened by the
Kiesche
’s top-of-the-line console.
The Independence Council had sequestered three blockade runners and sent them into orbit under Spacer Hale and two lieutenants from the Corcyran navy—officers superfluous to the
Freccia
’s present needs. It wasn’t a surprise that the Pantellarian exiles ran heavily to officers rather than common spacers, nor that those officers had been unwilling to give up their ranks the way Cazelet had done.
Corcyra no longer had any imaging satellites. Both sides had made them targets as soon as the Pantellarian expeditionary force arrived, apparently for no better reason than that it was fun to destroy things. This wasn’t a war of movement in which orbital reconnaissance might be crucial.
