The Sea Without a Shore (19 page)
Read The Sea Without a Shore Online
Authors: David Drake
The tall windows between the wall buttresses were of colored glass. Most of them gave the interior a feeling of the blue depths of the sea, though there were swirls and blotches from the whole spectrum visible when Daniel looked directly at the panels. The wall opposite the entrance was red in emphasis, but the light through it was nonetheless peaceful.
“This is the most lovely building I’ve ever been in,” Daniel said to Brother Altgeld.
Altgeld smiled. “It was a very peaceful spot from the beginning,” the coordinator said. “Our records say that was the reason the Chapel was built here.”
The table at the base of the central aisle was rectangular. Mursiello was presumably the man in an Alliance dress uniform with the hollow stars of a colonel on his shoulder-boards. He had appropriated one end of the table, and Captain Hochner sat to his right on the long side nearer the entrance.
Samona and Tibbs, each with an aide—the Regimental aide wore a Pantellarian major’s service uniform—were both on the opposite long side. Adele was seated on the right end of the near side, and Sister Rennie was beside Hochner.
Daniel started toward the seat between Rennie and Adele. “Please take the end spot, Captain Leary,” Altgeld said in a clear voice. “We’re gathered to hear your proposals. That place will allow you to address all the principals without turning your head.”
“
I’m
not here to listen to somebody telling us to make nice-nice with the Pantellarian oppressors because they’re friends of Cinnabar,” Mursiello said. He glared in challenge at Daniel. The room’s acoustics were excellent.
Daniel chuckled as he took the place offered to him, but he put his hands on the back of the chair instead of sitting down. “As best I know,” he said cheerfully, “my government doesn’t have a position on whoever’s in charge on Pantellaria—or Corcyra, more to the point. Certainly
I
don’t. I’m here as an entrepreneur, I suppose you’d say.”
Nobody at the table spoke. Beyond them, the ranks of curving benches would seat about six hundred people; most of the spaces were filled. Apart from the normal creaks and shuffling of a large gathering, the spectators might have been miles away.
“Now, I’ve got a military background, as I’m sure you know,” Daniel said, “but it doesn’t take an expert to see that the present stalemate is ruining Corcyra. You’re shipping about half the copper that you were before the Pantellarians landed, and your prices are lower as well because of the perceived risk in case Pantellaria tries to enforce a real blockade.”
“They won’t,” said Captain Samona.
“
Perceived
risk, Captain,” Daniel said. “The reduced prices are a matter of record, as you can check as easily as I—”
As Adele.
“—did.”
Mursiello muttered something under his breath, but no one interrupted again.
“The quickest way to break the stalemate in a good way—good for independent Corcyra, that is—is to get antiship missiles from Karst,” Daniel said. “And the best way to do
that
is to get your envoys back from the jackleg pirates holding them and execute the deal which those envoys have already negotiated.”
He grinned at his listeners. “You won’t do better the next time,” he said, “and the folks ruling Karst may well be having second thoughts already. I’ve dealt with them, remember.”
“We
can’t
get the envoys back,” Mursiello said. “Those idiots on Ischia want us to gut the country, give away the next twenty years—”
“It’s not that bad!” said Tibbs, glaring at Mursiello like a bright-eyed bird. “They want the carrying trade, but their prices—”
“They want the trade, Karst wants the trade, everybody wants a piece of us!” Mursiello said. He slammed his fist on the table. “Well, they’re not going to get it!”
“Colleagues,” Daniel said. “I think—”
“Mursiello, you were a police sergeant on Pantellaria before you decided to take Alliance money to beat up miners here,” said Captain Samona. “Prospering as a thug doesn’t make you a statesman!”
“You can shut your gob now, you stuck-up prick!” Mursiello said, lurching to his feet.
Hochner was standing also. He’d found a replacement for the pistol Hogg had taken away. Now he unbuckled his holster flap with his left hand and put his right on the butt.
A Transformationist from the nearest benches gripped the back of Hochner’s neck with one hand. He twisted his wrist up with the other.
The pistol clanked to the floor. Hochner tried to turn but couldn’t. His face was turning purple, a combination of strain and fury. The man holding him was easily in his fifties and didn’t look particularly strong, but Hochner wasn’t going anywhere.
The Transformationist’s face was calm and expressionless.
I wonder what
he
did before he found god?
Daniel thought.
Altgeld touched the point of Hochner’s hip. “Please sit down, Captain,” he said. “We take seriously our promise to keep all our guests safe.”
You certainly saved
Hochner
’s life,
Daniel thought. If Hogg—or Tovera!—had stopped the Garrison officer, it would have been messier and quite permanent.
“Siddown, Hochner,” Mursiello said, dropping back into his chair. He was angry, but he kept his eyes on the table in front of him. He must have realized that there were hundreds of people in the room with him, and scarcely a soul would mind if he were strapped to the conference table and flayed alive.
Hochner sat down beside Brother Altgeld. The man holding him moved back to the bench; he was so nondescript that Daniel wasn’t sure he could tell the fellow from those seated to either side of him.
Tovera is pretty colorless also, come to think
.
“I understand your qualms about paying extortion to Ischia,” Daniel said. “Apart from anything else, you
can’t
give both Ischia and Karst the same thing, and getting your envoys back won’t help unless you have the missiles also.”
Everyone was looking at him. They looked like fish coming to the surface of a pond when they expect to be fed.
“Therefore,” Daniel said, “I propose to gain the release of the envoys by my own efforts. I don’t require any financial contribution from Corcyra, before or after the fact, but I want your agreement to ratify my actions if that becomes necessary. I want it clear that
I’m
not a pirate.”
He wasn’t lying, but he was allowing his listeners to believe things that he hadn’t said. For most of the parties it didn’t matter—though as a matter of course, Daniel didn’t like to discuss his plans with people who had no reason to know except their curiosity.
Mursiello and Hochner were another matter. It was important that
they
believe Daniel was going to attempt the impossible.
“Just how do you plan to do this?” Mursiello said. “I don’t think you can!”
“You may be correct, of course, Colonel,” Daniel said, “but in that case you haven’t lost anything. I mean you personally and the independence movement also. As for my plans—”
He looked around the table again, still smiling.
“—I’ll say just that I hope to release the hostages without violence, but I will use any means which the usage of the civilized galaxy deems to be proper for dealing with pirates. As the Ischians have shown themselves to be.”
There was silence. Mursiello still glowered, but there was a cunning look beneath his hostility.
“It appears to me that an attempt to free the prisoners by violence,” said Altgeld, “may cause the Ischians to execute them. Or indeed, that the prisoners may be killed in the attempt?”
Daniel nodded. “Yes,” he said, “those are certainly possibilities. War has risks, life has risks. But I point out—”
He deliberately shaped his expression and tone on the stern models his father had used when urging the Senate to take a difficult course because the alternatives were worse.
“—that if you don’t achieve the return of the prisoners, the Ischians will offer them to Pantellaria. In fact, I’m surprised that this hasn’t happened already. And the Pantellarians will certainly execute them as traitors.”
“Leary’s right,” said Administrator Tibbs. “We have nothing to lose.”
Captain Samona nodded and said, “Yes, Leary’s offering the best chance we’ve had to get our people back and maybe to win this war. Go ahead,
I
say.”
Altgeld looked at the Garrison commander. “Colonel Mursiello?” he said. “Are you willing for Captain Leary to make the attempt under the auspices of the Independence Council?”
Mursiello’s face worked with suppressed anger. “All right, waste your time, Leary,” he said. “But it
is
a waste of time, you know!”
“Then I believe we’re done here,” Altgeld said. He and Rennie got to their feet. “All of you are welcome to stay with us as long as you like. No one will try to convert you, though I’ll warn you that our community here is a very pleasant place to remain.”
Adele was putting away her data unit. “Thank you,” said Daniel. “I need to prepare the ship for liftoff. The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll be able to return.”
Assuming we’re not all dead
. But Daniel always assumed that he would succeed, and that had generally turned out to be true.
CHAPTER 16
Platt’s Compound on Dace
The six submachine guns fired more or less together, though the first burst came before Hogg shouted “Fire!” and the two last followed him shouting “Cease fire!” There might have been yet another burst at the end if Hale hadn’t grabbed Furstein by the right wrist and twisted his hand and weapon skyward.
Daniel was philosophical about the shooting. He hadn’t been under any illusions about how his spacers measured up as marksmen. That was one of the reasons he’d set the crew to weapons practice here on the shore of the island.
“I’ve got them aiming at holographic projections right now, Master Platt,” Daniel said to the soft-looking bald man facing him beside the wall of Barracks #1. The shooters were a hundred yards away, so the gunfire was only an unpleasant crackling against the strong breeze. “Not a one of ’em would have a problem if I told them to blast you to cats’ meat instead. So tell me about the Corcyran envoys again, only this time make it the truth.”
Platt closed his eyes, but he couldn’t keep tears from leaking out under them. “Don’t,” he blubbered. “Don’t don’t don’t …”
“Bloody hell, Evans!” Hale said. “You’ve got to take out the empty magazine before you can put in a fresh tube!”
Hogg and Hale were doing the training, but Daniel suspected that Hale was learning as much as the spacers under her charge. Her experience on a marksmanship team at the Academy would have given her a very false impression of what “shooting” meant to the average spacer. She had to understand the reality before she found herself commanding spacers in a firefight.
“Just tell me how the envoys were captured,” Daniel said soothingly. “Or arrested, if you want put it that way. You’re not in any trouble if you just tell me the truth.”
He’d figured the gunfire would make Platt uneasy, but he hadn’t expected the fellow to be such an abject coward that the implied threat made him incoherent. Daniel tried to hide his disgust when he realized that Platt had soiled himself in fear. Well, they wouldn’t be staying on Dace for long.
Platt’s Compound was one of eight settlements on the planet, all more or less the same. Dace was a low-lying world. Shallow seas covered ninety percent of the surface, and when a storm really got going, it could circle the planet several times before subsiding.
Large-scale colonization and normal agriculture were impossible, but it was a good place to take on reaction mass, and it provided seafood protein in simple factories which sucked in water and compressed the creatures which they filtered out. There was nothing in the seas more complex than a rotifer.
Platt’s had two barracks, a processing plant, and a residence which was only half the size of normal barracks. All the buildings were formed from slabs of edge-welded structural plastic. In good condition they were watertight. They would have floated off in storms if they hadn’t been anchored deep into the rock.
The permanent staff was four women and eight men, all members of one family. The women doubled as prostitutes; probably the men did also. Daniel hadn’t always been fastidious, but he found it hard to imagine that even the randiest spacer, no matter how much he had drunk, would have found the Platts enticing. No doubt he was wrong.
“It was nothing to do with us,” Platt said. He didn’t open his eyes. “We just made the call, you see. This ship from Ischia landed at Riddle’s Place—”
Near the south pole.
“—and said there was five hundred thalers for anybody who told them that a ship bound for Corcyra had landed at their compound. Just told them, you see? And five hundred thalers, that’s real money!”
Gunfire ripped along the shoreline. Platt whimpered and hunched forward, screwing his eyes closed again. Hale shouted at Evans; she was getting hoarse.
“You’re fine, Platt,” Daniel said, patting the fellow’s shoulder. “Just tell us the whole truth and we’ll be gone like we were never here.”
Butler, the engineer of the
Cordelia
, the ship which had been returning the envoys from Karst, was still on Corcyra when Daniel was looking for information on the capture. Butler said that they’d landed at Platt’s on Dace, the usual layover between Karst and Corcyra. They normally spent three days on the ground, mostly to rest the crew: the
Cordelia
’s fore-rigging was in bad condition, and the splices required clearing constantly.
A ship from Ischia had landed after the
Cordelia
did, but that wasn’t a matter for comment or concern. That night the crew of the Ischian ship had abducted the envoys from Barracks #1 at gunpoint, leaving a ransom demand for the
Cordelia
’s captain to deliver to the Independence Council on Brotherhood. Butler had been in Barracks #1 at the time, but he’d been drunk and knew nothing about the business until well after the Ischians had lifted. From what the captain said, there hadn’t been much to know.
“We called Riddle when the Corcyrans arrived, that’s all we did,” said Platt when he regained enough composure to speak. “The Ischians landed that night and paid us, just like they said. And then they took off again, and it wasn’t till next morning I knew that the Corcyrans had gone off with them. That’s
all
.”
“The envoys were taken prisoner at gunpoint,” Daniel said. “Which you
knew
.”
“Not so,” Platt whimpered to his hands, knotted together before him. “There wasn’t a shot, not one shot. My daughter Hyacinth, she was entertaining some of the Corcyrans, and she maybe said something about a gun the next morning, but I didn’t think nothing about it.”
Daniel considered the situation. Platt hadn’t told him much that he and Adele hadn’t deduced before they lifted from Corcyra, but hearing it firsthand was good practice whenever possible.
The kidnapping had been well planned and executed, not a spur-of-the-moment thing by individuals who might now feel they were in over their heads. Daniel had been ready to deal with matters either way, so the datum wasn’t simply good or bad. It was crucial that he—and Adele—knew which it was, however.
“All right,” Daniel said. “We’ll be lifting before nightfall, but I’ll pay you the normal landing fee. You can be gone, now.”
“Ah, captain-sir?” Platt said. “Will you be, well … the shooting, I mean. It gets on the nerves of me wife and daughters, you see?”
Daniel gave Platt a hard smile. “I think the weapons training will end after the next sequence,” he said, trying to suppress his contempt for the man. “We’ll use your shore for a briefing to the crew since there isn’t a building here large enough to hold us.”
He made a quick chopping motion with his hand when Platt seemed to be about to speak further. “And before you ask,” Daniel said, “we won’t be paying anything additional for the opportunity to raise a marquee on the shore for the purpose.”
Daniel turned on his heel and walked back toward the
Kiesche
and Adele. The reason besides information that he’d chosen to land on Dace was that it was a good place to inform his crew about his plans.
The Kiesches were brave and loyal beyond question, but they were spacers. A captain who expected his crew to remain sober and discreet on the ground was either very inexperienced or out of his mind.
Daniel was neither of those things. Waiting till they landed on Dace to explain the situation meant that nobody on Corcyra would learn about his plans until the
Kiesche
returned—or some other ship arrived with news of the disaster on Ischia. Daniel hoped and expected the first option, but he wouldn’t survive to care if matters worked out the other way.
* * *
Adele looked at the assembled faces, feeling uncomfortable. Normally her briefings would be aboard ship. Even if the whole crew of the
Princess Cecile
was listening, most of the personnel would be in separate compartments.
The
Kiesche
’s only quality imaging equipment was on the bridge, which wouldn’t hold the whole crew. Though the freighter carried only a fraction of the
Sissie
’s complement of over a hundred, the twenty staring faces kept Adele from pretending that she was alone with data on a display.
“Ischia has been settled in over a hundred valleys,” she said, displaying the planet with its populated continent toward her audience. “There is a federal government, but for the most part the valley clans are independent. We have to do with the Monfiore clan.”
She highlighted a section in the southeastern quadrant. Pasternak had rigged a speaker from the ship’s PA system to amplify the signal from Adele’s personal data system, but she had to use the system’s own projector for imagery. A sailcloth marquee was necessary so that the greenish sunlight wouldn’t overwhelm the little unit’s holographic capability.
“The valleys provide enough food for the inhabitants,” Adele said, “but there’s nothing agricultural of such quantity or quality that it’s worth exporting. Ischia builds sturdy ships of moderate size, and much of the population is working or has worked as spacers. Ships and ships’ crews, along with small quantities of forest products, bring in all the foreign exchange.”
The breeze off the water was freshening, making the marquee rattle. Woetjans had decided it would be safe, so Adele knew her concern about it blowing away was unjustified. Still, the quicker this was over and she was back on the bridge, the better.
“Ischia is an Associated World of the Alliance,” Adele said. “Her spacers served on Alliance warships, but much of the Fleet has gone into ordinary since the Treaty of Amiens, just as the RCN has.”
Her audience murmured agreement. These spacers were the cream of the cream; all of them could have found berths in the merchant service and probably in the RCN even in its current reduced state. Spacers they knew, spacers whose families lived in the same apartment blocks as their families did, were out of work, though. It would be a while before the merchant service expanded to prewar levels.
Adele showed imagery of several Ischian-built starships. Daniel and Cazelet—whose family had owned a shipping firm before they fell afoul of Guarantor Porra and were executed—had assured her that the vessels were typical Ischian construction.
There was no need for the images, but they provided something for spacers to focus on during the lecture. Adele had learned in childhood that most people didn’t have the passion for data which so consumed her.
“Ischia has a particular problem,” she said. “During the eighteen years while Pantellaria was annexed to the Alliance, Ischian ships were given a monopoly on the carrying trade between Pantellaria and the five core worlds of the Alliance. Guarantor Porra was rewarding a court favorite whose brother was the Alliance Advisor on Ischia. Despite the large fee the advisor was taking, Ischia did very well out of the trade.”
Vesey and Cazelet were listening to the briefing on the console on the
Kiesche
’s bridge, ready to start liftoff procedure instantly. Pasternak was in the Power Room, cycling reaction mass. The chief engineer wouldn’t light the thrusters until the crew was aboard, but it wouldn’t take this group long to board in a crisis.
“Since Pantellaria regained its independence,” Adele said, “the new government—the Council of Twenty—has refused landing rights to any ship with Alliance registration, including ships from worlds which are Associates of the Alliance. This is being described to the Pantellarian people as a rebuke to their former Alliance overlords.”
Adele paused, forcing herself to look around the semicircle of her audience: her shipmates, her family members. Daniel was grinning; others smiled to meet her eyes or frowned in their determination to understand, somehow, what the Mistress was telling them.
I have to remember that it isn’t just me against the universe anymore
.
Adele was still alone in the dark hours of the morning, when she was visited by the faces of those she had killed, of the many she had killed.
But I’m not alone now!
“Some of you may be thinking that the Council is taking reasonable retribution on Pantellaria’s oppressors,” Adele said. As she spoke the words, she realized that the only people in
this
audience likely to think in those terms were the commissioned officers. Ordinary spacers were only concerned with political decisions as they were affected by them, and
nothing
that happened on Pantellaria affected the
Kiesche
’s crew.
“The Pantellarian councillors are oligarchs,” she said, grimacing at having used a word that would mean nothing,
nothing
, to the spacers. “Rich folk, rich folk from rich families, running things for themselves and not for the people.”
She spoke harshly because she was angry with her own inability to communicate. Her audience read her tone as righteous indignation and responded with nods and grunts of approval. Evans even slapped one big fist into the other palm and muttered, “That’s how it always bloody is, ain’t it?”
Adele paused. Yes, it generally was; on Cinnabar as surely as on Pantellaria and on the worlds of the Alliance. The spacers were unsophisticated, but they weren’t all stupid; and even a stupid man—which Evans was by any reasonable standard—could see straight through to a point which a highly educated noblewoman was ignoring because it wasn’t in the compartment she was examining at present.
“Quite right, Evans,” Adele said aloud. “Three of the twenty members of the Council have shipping interests and expect to make a great deal of money out of the embargo on Alliance hulls.”
She cleared her throat. “One Ischian clan, the Monfiores, decided to reverse the disastrous loss of trade by kidnapping the envoys of the Corcyran independence movement. They’ve demanded a ransom of three million Alliance thalers or the carrying trade from Corcyra on the same terms as under the Alliance. The Monfiores specialized in the Corcyran copper trade, and that’s probably how they got good enough information on the envoys’ route to carry out the very sophisticated operation which took place here on Dace.”
Forgetting her audience, Adele added, “I hope to get more details when we reach Ischia.”
That was true, but it had nothing whatever to do with what Adele was supposed to be explaining to the crew. Before she could get angry with herself again, she noticed that the spacers were nodding in approval again.
The Mistress is on the job. She’ll know where the Ischian buggers bought their socks before she’s done
.
