Though the staff at Chatsworth Minor wore Mundy livery, they were actually employed by The Shippers' and Merchants' Treasury. The bank rented the townhouse for clients and clandestine meetings during the long periods in which the owner and her other tenant, Commander Leary, were off Cinnabar. Daniel hadn't been told of the connection, because the bank's major partner was his estranged father, Corder Leary.
Adele did know. Given her family's history with Speaker Leary, the situation made her uncomfortable and therefore distant toward the servants; though she was unlikely to've become close to them anyway. In the present instance she'd told the major domo to get her two tickets at the nearest playhouse showing The Conquest of Dunbar's World.
The Palace Theatre was located on the Pentacrest, in the center of Xenos. It was fashionable and therefore ornate, but since it was close to Chatsworth Minor—Adele would've walked instead of taking a tram if time hadn't been short—the choice hadn't surprised her.
She'd been surprised to learn that the Palace had a Speaker's Box, however, and even more surprised that she and her guest had the use of it tonight. Her first reaction had been that this was probably costing a week's income for an RCN signals officer. Her second, noticing how obsequious the manager was as he led them to the box in the center of the third tier, was that more than money had to be involved. What in heaven's name did the major domo say?
As the manager latched the door to the box behind them, Adele settled into one of the plush chairs. The lights went down and martial music began to rumble. She frowned. She'd intended to time their arrival to miss the opening nonsense attached to the features, but Cazelet's arrival should have made her late.
Cazelet reached into his pocket and squeezed his watch. It was a hunter; instead of displaying numerals, chimes bonged softly; they were followed by a snatch of an air which gave the minutes in increments of five.
"They held the show for us, mistress," he said. Adele had taken a center seat; he took one beside her. He was smiling faintly.
"I had nothing to do with that!" Adele said, angry at Cazelet's assumption and even more angry to realize that he might be correct. Had Daniel's sister Deirdre, the managing partner of the Treasury, given the servants at Chatsworth instructions that'd been kept secret from Adele?
As the music throbbed, holographic lightning spelled the names of players above the virtual stage. Adele knew displays: they were the means by which she absorbed most of the information that was her life. The Palace's projection apparatus was aligned to provide 97% comprehension throughout the 180-degree arc of spectators, but the optimum viewing location was the center of the Speaker's Box.
A voice—normally documentaries were narrated by newsreaders, but here Adele recognized the tones of Michael Beasley, a leading player—said, "Though we who play the roles in this drama are civilians, the incidents which we portray are entirely true and are based on imagery collected by the heroic men and women of the Cinnabar Navy. It is with profound humility and respect that we offer to the citizens of this great Republic a lifelike account of—"
The music and Beasley's voice swelled together.
"—the conquest of Dunbar's World!"
Adele set her data unit on her knees. She didn't need it at present, but she'd found that gripping the control wands settled her mind. Cazelet divided his attention between her and the documentary.
"Port Dunbar!" boomed Beasley. "A city being crushed by the relentless brutality of Guarantor Porra's goons."
The image panned across a ruined urban landscape. It was early dusk, though the sky was bright enough to show buildings already shattered by explosives. The tracking flares of bombardment rockets gleamed all the way to the orange blasts at the end of their quick arcs.
"Now how did they . . .?" Adele whispered; her wands flickered, calling up data.
"Is that wrong, mistress?" Cazelet said, giving her a start. She'd forgotten that she wasn't alone.
"On the contrary," she said, adjusting her data unit so that he could view it's holographic display also. "It's right. They're using real images, images my helmet gathered when we flew into Port Dunbar."
"In orbit above the planet," Beasley's voice continued, "hangs a powerful Alliance squadron manned by picked crews, the finest spacers to be found among those willing to serve the megalomaniac tyrant Porra!"
Images of warships cascaded across the display: a cruiser/minelayer and another light cruiser, two heavy cruisers, and a modern battleship. The mix was seasoned with at least a dozen destroyers. Adele couldn't identify the vessels because she didn't have the background to sort one ship from another by the length of the antennas or the shape of the outrigger pontoons.
Daniel would've recognized them, however, and Adele remembered the names which her data unit supplied: the Bremse, the Caio Duilio, the Bluecher, the Scheer, and the battleship Der Grosser Karl. Oh, yes, she remembered them.
"And the only hope for the cowering residents of Dunbar's World . . . ," continued the voice, this time rolling with oily smoothness over an image of Beasley himself. "Is the corvette Princess Cecile and her captain, Daniel Leary—as bold a spacer as ever wore the uniform of the Cinnabar Navy!"
The image of Beasley was wearing a heavily embellished version of an RCN 1st Class uniform. As factual errors went in this presentation, that was a fairly mild one. In any case, it was what the producers had gotten right that concerned Adele, not their mistakes.
"Is that really Commander Leary, mistress?" Cazelet asked quietly.
"Good heavens, no!" Adele blurted. "Daniel, the commander, that is, is six inches shorter than that player and younger by fifteen years. Why, he's—"
She turned to Cazelet, shocked to realize what she was about to say. "Commander Leary is your age, sir. I tend to forget that sometimes. He has a youthful enthusiasm for all manner of things—"
Certainly including young, pretty, bubble-heads. He'd been seeing the sister of the late Midshipman Dorst on this return to Xenos, however, and that young lady appeared to have not only her own share of intelligence but also the share which her brother Timothy, brave and steadfast though he was, had undoubtedly lacked.
"—but his presence in a crisis has an impressive maturity."
Beasley/Daniel was addressing what were apparently his officers on the bridge of what might've been a battleship. Certainly it was too spacious for a 1300-ton corvette like the Princess Cecile.
"Fellow citizens of the great Republic of Cinnabar!" he said. "You've joined me to lift the iron heel of tyranny from the necks of the innocent people of Dunbar's World. I swear to you that we will succeed, even if it means our deaths. As you know, a Cinnabar spacer never backs down!"
"Is the speech from the records also, mistress?" Cazelet asked. He was keeping his voice carefully neutral, but the doubt behind the question was obvious.
Well, it would've been obvious to a pet monkey!
"It is not," Adele said dryly. "To begin with, Cinnabar citizens are a minority in most RCN crews. They were a small minority on the vessels which we operated in Ganpat's Reach. More important—"
She paused, watching as a delegation from the government of Dunbar's World begged Commander Leary for his support in their struggle against tyranny. Makeup and artfully torn garments emphasized their wretchedness, and the holographic imagery had apparently been manipulated to reduce the height of the civilian players in comparison with the stalwart spacers of the RCN.
Adele snorted. "Good heavens!" she muttered. "They're in uniform."
"The uniforms are wrong, you mean?" Cazelet asked.
"What?" said Adele. She'd forgotten him again. "No—well, yes, that too. But it's the fact the spacers are wearing any uniform. They'd be in slops of some color that wouldn't show grease too badly. Unless they were going on liberty, of course, and then they'd be covered in so many ribbons and bangles that you'd be hard put to tell what the fabric was underneath."
"I wondered about that," Cazelet said. "Crews in the Fleet dressed the same as those who signed with us in Phoenix Starfreight. I thought it might be different in the RCN, though."
Adele looked at the boy—he wasn't a boy—sharply. Simply by listening to her, Cazelet had picked up on something that civilians almost never got: it wasn't "our navy" or even "the Cinnabar navy," it was the RCN to those who lifted on the Republic's paybill. And that brought her to another point.
"The other and better reason that Daniel wouldn't call his crew 'citizens . . . ,' " Adele said. She didn't ordinarily refer to her friend as Daniel rather than Commander Leary in public or among strangers. She was doing so consistently tonight, and she decided to stop fighting the tendency. "Is that they'd take it as an insult. Citizens are civilians. RCN crews are spacers and proud of it."
Signals Officer Mundy couldn't properly claim to be a spacer, despite what by now was very considerable experience aboard RCN vessels on active service. When she was on the hull of a ship under way, she was always clipped to a safety line. Nevertheless everyone in sight watched her nervously.
Despite Adele's awkwardness, she'd been adopted by the crew of the Princess Cecile and by every crew since which the Sissie's veterans leavened. She'd been a studious child and never really one of the politically focused Mundies, but she was truly part of the RCN family.
Mistress Mundy had various skills which even the toughest spacer could appreciate. She'd demonstrated them again on Dunbar's World . . . .
On the stage, the Princess Cecile—a computer image too sparklingly perfect for even an admiral's yacht—battled a cruiser/minelayer with plasma cannon. The guns were primarily defensive armament intended to divert incoming missiles, but they could damage rigging or even worse if the range was really short.
The Sissie's 4-inch weapons weren't sufficient to harm a cruiser's hull, of course. When her opponent exploded in a fireball swelling to fill the stage, Cazelet snorted in derision.
"I realize it's fiction," he said, "but couldn't they try to make it at least vaguely believable?"
"That's real imagery," Adele said. "Oh, it didn't happen off Dunbar's World, and of course it wasn't the Sissie's guns that were responsible. The Bremse detonated one of her own mines."
"By the Gods," Cazelet said softly. He turned to meet her eyes. "There are safety devices, are there not?"
The false Commander Leary was making another speech. In fact Daniel was a very effective orator, but Adele was sure that hadn't affected the 'documentary' in the least.
"The lockouts were disconnected," Adele said. I disconnected them, thereby killing several hundred Alliance spacers. Though I'm not sure it counts unless you watch them over your gunsight as they die.
Riggers danced up and down the Sissie's antennas in light air suits, probably because the rigging suits they really wore were too stiff and depersonalizing for properly dramatic effects. Commander Leary—who wore Dress Whites under his translucent air suit—leaped into the void to save two spacers who'd slipped from the yard.
The computer-generated Princess Cecile was back in action, this time against a heavy cruiser. The enemy vessel crumbled under the lash of incoming missiles.
"That's true too?" Cazelet said. "I'll admit it looks like real imagery, but I don't see how it could be."
Adele smiled faintly. "It can be real if you realize that there's an allied battleship launching from out of the image area," she said. "That was two years ago and nowhere near Dunbar's World. But it was real."
The battles—and the heroic speeches, none of which mentioned loot or sexual partners like the speeches Daniel was in the habit of making to his crews—continued. Adele clipped scenes and made notes, feeling a grim fascination.
Almost no part of the documentary was 'right' except for the historical images, but they could only have come from the RCN archives. There was nothing unusual about Navy House surreptitiously releasing documents and imagery to enhance the RCN's reputation or to do a favor to a powerful politician. There was vanishingly little chance of Admiral Vocaine providing information to make Daniel Leary a national hero, however.
On stage Der Grosser Karl limped into the Matrix, badly injured by the Sissie's missiles. That was true too, in part. Adele had been present, but she couldn't say that she really remembered the battleship's 8-inch cannon raking them at point-blank range. At the time her duties had kept her too busy to worry about whether or not she was about to be killed. Besides, the chance of death wasn't something that'd have greatly exercised her even if she weren't occupied.
Assuming that the play had climaxed when the Princess Cecile chased away a battleship, Adele straightened. She looked forward to returning to Chatsworth Minor where she'd have privacy to explore the questions which the performance raised.
Rene Cazelet had lapsed into silence. He was watched the stage intently, though occasionally he glanced sidelong at Adele. Her control wands flickered, gathering images and comparing them with stored data.
"There was still one hurdle for Commander Leary and his heroic crew," boomed Michael Beasley in a voice over.
On stage the Princess Cecile swept low across the single continent of Dunbar's World, then braked hard. They won't show that, surely they won't!
"They had to capture the Alliance base and disable the missile battery there!"
They were going to show it.
The corvette landed on a muddy island, crushing barracks and military equipment beneath its outriggers. The main hatch crashed down immediately—Adele wondered whether that was dramatic license or if the producers simply didn't understand how slowly a multi-ton section of hull plating had to move if it weren't to be battered to scrap metal. The supposed crew of the Sissie rushed down the ramp without waiting for the ground baked by the plasma jets to cool. Commander Daniel Leary was in the lead.
Please. Please. Please.
Adele didn't know who she was speaking to. Praying to, she supposed, though she didn't believe in gods or Gods or anything at all except the working of blind chance.
Commander Leary held a sub-machine gun in one hand and a stocked impeller in the other. He raced toward the berm protecting the pit where ship-killing missiles were emplaced, using both weapons as he ran. For some reason the Alliance troops jumped out of their bunkers before they shot at him; they spun artistically and fell.
The gate into the emplacement was of razor ribbon stretched on a frame. Just like the real gate.
Commander Leary sawed through the obstruction with a burst from his sub-machine gun. Alliance projectiles hitting wires, hitting tubing; howling, ricocheting in neon colors. Occasionally a wire parting with a sickening jangle.
"Follow me, my heroes!" Commander Leary shouted as he ran through the gap in the gate. The corvette's whole crew was with him. Bunched like that, a single automatic impeller would slaughter the lot of them. They'd be dead!
"Mistress, are you all right?" Cazelet said. His left arm was around her back; his hands were gripping her shoulders firmly. "Would you like to leave?"
There were bunkers inside the emplacement. Troops in Alliance uniforms—which was wrong, they'd been Pellegrinians, all but the communications detachment—threw down their weapons and stood, waving white flags.
"Victory!" boomed the voice over. "And permanent safety for Dunbar's World under the protection of the Republic of Cinnabar!"
"I'm sorry," Adele whispered. "I'm all right."
Light flickering from the firing slits of the bunkers, the traces of driving bands ionized by the charges that accelerate them up the gun barrels. Her holographic sights twitching as she fires two rounds and moves to the next target. The faces of the Pellegrinian soldiers are shadowed, but she sees every one of them clearly as they bulge under the impact of her projectiles.
The martial music resumed as the house lights came up. Adele closed her personal data unit and slid it back into its pocket. Cazelet had taken his hands away from her but he continued to watch with a concerned expression.
"We'll return to Chatsworth Minor," Adele said as she stood. She didn't meet his eyes. "You'll have a room in the servants' quarters while I look into matters."
"Mistress, I have a room already," Cazelet said.
"It's best that you stay at Chatsworth," she said sharply. "That'll prevent accidents. Some of them, at least."
"Yes, ma'am," Cazelet said. Did he realize that she was worried about Mistress Sand, or rather what someone in Mistress Sand's organization might do to prevent the compromise of an asset as valuable as Adele Mundy?
He touched the door latch, but he paused and looked at Adele until she met his eyes. "Mistress," he said, "that last scene? Did Commander Leary really assault a strong point that way?"
"No," said Adele, stepping past the boy to open the door herself. "I did."
It occurred to Daniel, walking back to find a seat with the numbered chit in his hand, that the waiting room of the Navy Office was very like a cathedral. He grinned, a familiar expression on his broad features. There were probably more prayers—and certainly more sincere ones—offered here than in any religious edifice on Cinnabar.
Even the hall's front five benches weren't crowded, and the twenty or so beyond held only a scattering of suppliants. Most of those waiting were lieutenants, but there were some passed midshipmen hoping their first assignment. On the other end of the continuum, several superannuated captains sat in stiff dignity with all the decorations they could claim, hoping the Republic's need would bring them out of forced retirement.
All were well dressed. This morning Daniel had donned his best 2nd Class uniform, his Grays, but a good number of senior officers and those with private incomes were in Dress Whites.
As Daniel prepared to sit some ten rows back, he noticed a familiar face across the aisle. "Why, hello, Christopher," he said in a low voice, stepping toward the thin lieutenant seated there. "Haven't seen you since the Academy."
Christopher Cha continued to sit stiffly, gripping his chit between the thumbs and forefingers of both hands. Instead of looking up when Daniel spoke his name, he turned his face the other way as if he were searching for something further down the empty row.
I didn't go home with his girlfriend after a party, did I? Daniel wondered. He certainly didn't remember doing so, but there were some nights during graduation week that were at best hazy.
"Leary!" said a lieutenant commander in the fourth row. He was making an effort to mute his voice, but the resulting husky whisper could be heard for a dozen places in every direction. "Come tell me about the hero's life, bold fellow!"
Daniel went back and slid past the slanted knees of four strangers, all lieutenants, to get to Scott Morgan. They'd been classmates at the Academy. Morgan had run with a faster crowd than Daniel, estranged from his father, could afford to follow, but they'd gotten on well enough during such contact as they'd had.
"Pretty, eh?" said Morgan, tapping the pip-in-a-circle on the epaulette of his Dress Whites. As Daniel slid onto the backless bench beside him, Morgan touched the solid rectangle of a full commander on the collar tab of his Grays and went on, "Of course, they're not nearly as pretty as these, Danny-my-boy. Congratulations, and further congratulations for still being alive. I'd say the rank is pretty much a given if you do the sorts of things you've done and manage to survive."
"I think you're overstating things, Scott," Daniel said, "but I appreciate your congratulations."
Without being really conscious of what he was doing, he glanced back at Lieutenant Cha. Morgan caught his expression and laughed. "Little Chrissie is afraid that if the Chief learns that he knows you, it'll hurt his chances of an appointment. As if Admiral Vocaine cares two pins about him! If we'd given a class award to the Least Likely to be Promoted, it'd've been engraved Christopher Cha!"
"You think that's it, Morgan?" Daniel said. He smiled, but it was a little lopsided. He'd always gotten on well with others, and it disturbed him to think that people he'd known for the best part of a decade would shun him because of his difficulties wiht the Chief of the Navy Board.
"Of course that's it!" Morgan said. "But I have to correct you on one point, laddy: I'm not Morgan, I'm Fanshawe—as in the son and heir of Senator Fanshawe. My uncle, that's the one with the money in the family, adopted me last month."
He grinned widely and added, "I'd still sit with you, Danny; you're good company and no bloody admiral is going to tell me who my friends are. But under the circumstances, I don't care whether the Republic chooses to keep me on half pay."
"Ah!" said Daniel. "Then hearty congratulations to you too, Fanshawe!"
He'd always believed that Morgan' birth parents had quite enough money as it was, but no doubt there were as many gradations at the higher levels of these things as there were with poverty. Corder Leary would probably understand better than his son did.
A green light blinked on the desk of the functionary who guarded the gate between the benches and the clerks beyond the railing. He glared at the screen before him, then called, "Number twenty-two!" in a stentorian voice.
A lieutenant of forty rose so abruptly that she almost overbalanced and fell backward over the bench. Her 2nd Class uniform was clean but nearly threadbare. She bustled to the gate, her face in a rictus of mingled hope and terror.
It would've been possible—and a great deal more practical—to've left the whole process to technology. Officers between assignments could've been paged electronically to report to a given office at a given time. For that matter, their orders could've been delivered without human involvement. Not only would the process be more efficient, it would avoid awkwardness and embarrassment for those waiting day after day in the echoing hall.
Daniel doubted there was an officer in the RCN who would've preferred that cold, impersonal world. Certainly he wouldn't have.
He looked again at his chit: the numerals 414 were inlaid in black on the ivroid. Or was it . . .?
"Why, look at this, Morgan!" Daniel said, too excited to remember his friend's current name. "This is one of the originals, I'm sure of it! It's not a synthetic at all, it's cut from a moonfish eye."
"Sorry, I don't follow you, laddy," Fanshawe said. "Is it valuable, do you mean? There's a plum assignment waiting for you if you draw this chip?"
"Well, not that," Daniel said. It'd be easy to mistake Morgan, now Fanshawe, for a buffoon. He'd never been that: his scores at the Academy ranged from good to remarkably good, and he'd come as close as anyone in their class to matching Daniel Leary in astrogation. "Though it's a prize in its own right. Only the original run of chits were cut from the natural substance. They date from when Navy House was opened a century and a half ago! And the moonfish has been extinct for, well, for very nearly that long."
He pursed his lips. "I wonder how many of the originals remain in use?"
"For now, my lad," said Fanshawe, "I suggest you forget about natural history and hand the thing back to Cerberus at the bar, there. He's just called your number."
"Thanks, Fanshawe," Daniel said as he rose and slid past the lieutenants again. "Thank you indeed."
The thanks were for much more than telling Daniel that he'd been paged. Wealthy connections had doubtless created an interest furthering Fanshawe's promotion, but the RCN would be fortunate if all its lieutenant commanders were his equal.
The attendant at the gate examined Daniel's chit with sour thoroughness, as if he thought it might be a counterfeit. The clerical staff of Navy House were not members of the RCN and tended to view themselves as superior to the serving officers who came to them as suppliants. Daniel understood the mechanism—his study of lower animals as a hobby had given him more than a few insights into human society as well—but it didn't make him like it any better.
The attendant replaced the chit in the hopper from which it would be dispensed to future generations of waiting officers, perhaps over another hundred and fifty years. "Office 12B," he said, swinging the gate open with his right hand.
"Pardon?" said Daniel. He'd been expecting to be sent to the desk of one of the clerks on the other side of the bar, but "office" meant—
"Through the door and ask the guard for directions," said the attendant peevishly. For the first time in the process, he looked up at Daniel's face. "Or have him guide you, if you don't think you can find your way to the second floor!"
"Ah," said Daniel. He reached into his pocket—an advantage of Grays over Dress Whites was that they had pockets—and dropped a florin on the attendant's desk. The coin rang clearly. "Thank you, my good man."
The attendant was still spluttering in amazed fury when Daniel reached the door at the back of the hall. He heard snorts of laughter from officers in the waiting area, and he himself was smiling.
There were two guards, RCN warrant officers whose lack of collar insignia meant they were from the provost marshal's division. They could probably handle themselves if push came to shove, but neither they nor anybody else expected trouble. When they retired in a few years, the white enamel on their sheathed batons would still be unmarked.
"I've been directed to 12B, Sauter," Daniel said, taking the name from the tag over the taller guard's breast pocket. He gestured toward the steps at the end of the corridor. The runner of blue carpeting was worn to the weft in the center of each tread, but the brass rods holding it in place were brightly polished. "Upstairs, I believe?"
"And to the right, Commander," Sauter agreed, "about midway down. That'll be the Liaison Office with Captain Britten."
Daniel pursed his lips as he dredged out a memory. "Britten," he repeated. "Was he perhaps in the Ten Star Cluster a few years ago?"
Sauter frowned. "The very man," said Leckie, his partner. "But promoted since then, I believe."
Daniel climbed the stairs two at a time. He wasn't in a particular hurry, but he was used to going up that way. Taking the treads normally would feel as awkward as mincing down the hallway instead of taking full strides.
The doors along the right-hand corridor were closed, though a clerk—an RCN rating, not a civilian—carried a file folder out of one as Daniel reached 12B. She seemed to look through him as she strode past in the direction he'd come from.
He knocked on the frame beside the panel of frosted glass. "Come in, dammit!" boomed a voice. Daniel swallowed his smile as he obeyed. Yes, this was the same officer whom he'd met on Todos Santos, all right.
Daniel closed the door behind him. The room was long and narrow. There were cabinets for paper files along one sidewall, and a desk—unoccupied at present—beside the door for a clerk. At the far end was another desk, so wide that it only fit the long way.
Captain Britten, built like a fireplug with cropped gray hair, sat at the big desk and typed on a virtual keyboard. He slammed the holographic keys as though he thought he could hammer out the answers he wanted. Daniel smiled; Adele had accused him of doing the same thing.
"Sit down, Leary," Britten said as he glared at his display. "I gather you've been making trouble again."
"Ah . . . ," said Daniel. "Well, only for the enemies of the Republic, I believe, sir."
He ought to salute and report formally, but he was quite certain that Britten'd tear a strip off him if he did. Given that Daniel's salutes rarely rose to a level of minimal competence, he decided just to sit down as he'd been ordered to.
Britten snorted, then collapsed his display into a quiver of electrons and met Daniel's eyes. "Well, you stick to your story, Leary," he said. "Maybe one day you'll find somebody to believe it. For now, though—"
He stretched his arms sideways, then lifted them over his head. Britten's scowl of frustration was probably his normal expression, but he looked tired and a decade older than he had two years before on Todos Santos.
"—the problem is the Bagarian Cluster. My problem, and about to become your problem. What do you know about the place, eh?"
"Well, very little, sir," Daniel said, "though I can rectify that quickly, if you like."
The Sailing Directions which Navy House provided for all regions of the galaxy, both in and out of the Cinnabar Confederation, would give him everything an RCN officer was likely to need. Adele and her sources could provide much greater detail if for some reason that were necessary.
"The cluster's been part of the Alliance for over three hundred years," Daniel said. "Some heavy metals, a fair amount of agricultural produce; nothing of real importance. Frankly, the Bagarian Cluster's what you'd point to if you wanted to give an example of the boondocks. Ah, and there's a revolt going on there at the moment, I've been told."
"Right, I've been told that too, Leary," said Britten. "In fact the Independent Republic of Bagaria has requested the help of the RCN to organize its navy and put it in a state to defeat Alliance attempts to retake the cluster. It's my job, so now it's your job, to provide that help."
"Ah," said Daniel. "Ah, sir . . . . If I may ask, sir, is this a decision that's been made in Navy House, or has it been imposed by, ah, political elements?"
"Like the business in Ganpat's Reach that you just got back from, you mean?" Britten said. "No, this was our idea. My idea, Leary, not to put too fine a point on it. You know what's happening in the Jewel System?"
"Well sir," Daniel said, very carefully. "I know Admiral James only by reputation, but a very good reputation it is, sir."
"A bloody good reputation, couldn't agree more," said Britten. He brought up, then collapsed his holographic display again; a nervous tic that made him frown like a thundercloud when he realized what he was doing. "But he's got two battleships and the Lao-tze is eighty years old. Eighty, Leary, and don't tell me that she's still well found. For an eighty-year-old ship she is well found, but eighty bloody years take a toll. The Alliance squadron has two modern battleships and a pair of battlecruisers that can outsail anything in the RCN. Plus supporting forces in proportion."
Daniel tried not to frown, but given the direction his thoughts were headed, that was a losing proposition. "Ah, sir," he said. "Are you hoping that the Bagarian Republic will be able to reinforce Admiral James?"
Britten stared at him in disbelief. "May the Gods bugger me with a flagpole!" he said. "Have you lost your mind, Leary?"
"Ah, sorry sir," Daniel said in relief. He thought for a moment, then decided that with Britten he'd be better off to voice the rest of his thought. "No sir, I haven't; and I'm glad to see that you haven't either."
Britten laughed. He opened a drawer of his desk and brought out a quart of rye whiskey. The brand was a good one—Breen's Reserve—but not so exceptional that people would remark to see it on their host's sideboard.
An upended water glass covered the open bottle. "I've got another . . . ," Britten muttered. He rummaged further, then chortled as he plunked a second glass onto the desktop.
"There's water down the hall," Britten said doubtfully as he slid a generous two fingers of liquor toward Daniel. "No? Well, I can't say I think it needs it either."
He set down his glass and resumed, "All I want you to do, Leary, is to give Fleet Command on Pleasaunce something to worry about besides reinforcing Admiral Guphill in the Jewel System. I want—we want, the Republic wants—somebody to make enough scary headlines about the Bagarian Cluster that Guarantor Porra scrapes up all the ships he can spare and sends them to recapture Pelosi, that's where the government is. Instead of worrying mines out of the Diamondia defenses even quicker."
Daniel sipped, focused for the moment on the situation in the Jewel System. Diamondia was defended by a Planetary Defense Array, a constellation of nuclear mines. Each when triggered used magnetic lenses to focus ions through the target; a single mine could destroy even a battleship.
The array could be swept by projectiles launched from beyond the range of the ion jets, but individual mines had a degree of mobility which made the process time consuming as well as dangerous. Further, warships from the defended world could attack the sweepers while remaining within the minefield themselves. Knowing Admiral James, the defense of Diamondia was an active one.
"What sort of time scale are you considering, if I may ask, sir?" Daniel said. The factor controlling how quickly a planetary defense array could be cleared was the number of assets the enemy put to the task.
"At the present rate . . . ," said Britten. He raised his glass, noticed it was empty, and banged it back on the desk. His eyes flicked to the bottle, but he didn't pour himself another.
"At the present rate, three months more or less," he went on. "We're slipping additional mines through the blockade on light craft, two or three at a time. That doesn't replace wastage, but it slows the rate somewhat. The Alliance could reduce the time to thirty days with the forces they could muster, according to my guestimate."
He chuckled grimly. "And if you're wondering what's going to happen in that extra sixty days, Leary," he said, "I don't have a bloody clue. Maybe Porra'll keel over dead. Or maybe I will, which'll at least solve my problem."
Britten picked up the whiskey after all. "You?" he said, tilting the bottle toward Daniel.
Daniel swirled the last ounce of his present drink. He could hold his liquor—that was taken as a given for an RCN officer, much like courage—but there was no percentage in tripping in front of somebody who'd run to Admiral Vocaine with a story about Leary being drunk and incapable here in Navy House.
"Thank you, no, sir," Daniel said. "What assets can you give me for this mission, please?"
Britten chuckled again and splashed no more than an ounce in his glass. " 'Bugger all,' you expect me to say, don't you?" he said. "Well, you're bloody near right. But you can have your corvette. She's free to contract to Navy House, isn't she?"
"Yes, sir!" Daniel said. Learning that he'd be commanding the Princess Cecile again cheered him to an unreasonable degree.
"And you can have the crew you came back with," Britten continued. "The ones who're pretending to be Kostroman laborers working in your father's dockyard. Admiral Vocaine may not want to pick a fight with Speaker Leary, but he's not such a bloody fool that he doesn't know what's going on, Commander."
Daniel cleared his throat. "Ah, yes, sir," he said.
Because there weren't enough spacers to supply both the merchant service and the RCN on a war footing, Admiral Vocaine had begun sequestering—imprisoning, for all intents and purposes—the crews of vessels arriving on Cinnabar until they could be transferred aboard another RCN warship. Daniel had asked his sister to save his crew from that if she could.
Deirdre being Deirdre—and Corder Leary being Speaker Leary—there'd been a way. Daniel didn't trade on his family connections—he'd broken with his father forever when he joined the RCN—but he was a Leary of Bantry. He'd take care of his retainers—which the Sissies were, in his mind—even if that meant bending his principles.
Britten stared at his empty whiskey glass. "Bloody thing," he muttered. He clinked it upside down over the mouth of the bottle.
"Do you wonder where Admiral Vocaine stands on this, Leary?" he demanded. "Of course you bloody well do. Well, he's approved it. I wouldn't be giving you the assignment if I hadn't gotten the go-ahead from him."
"I'll try to justify the admiral's confidence, sir," Daniel said cautiously. He didn't see any benefit in discussing the Chief of the Navy Board, particularly in Navy House. "And yours."
"Oh, I don't mean Vocaine'll shed tears if you get yourself blown to ions, boy," Britten said. "He bloody well won't. But it's a job that's going to take flair to carry out, and your worst enemy—which Vocaine may very well be, Leary—will grant you flair."
He opened the drawer and slid the bottle away. "The clerk at Desk Five will have your orders," he said. "But I wanted to tell you the part that won't be written down."
"Thank you, sir," Daniel said, rising to his feet. He set the glass, now empty, on Britten's desk. "The Sissie, that's my corvette, will have a full missile magazine?"
"There'll be missiles," Britten grunted. "Regular naval units'll have priority . . . but I shouldn't wonder if you found a way around that."
I shouldn't wonder either, Captain, Daniel thought behind his smile. A few florins to a leading ordnanceman and new-manufacture dual-converter missiles could wind up marked as the sort of off-planet odds and ends that'd ordinarily be issued to a private yacht bought into service as an auxiliary.
"One thing, Leary, just to be clear," Britten said. "And maybe so that you understand Admiral Vocaine a little better. This is an open-ended appointment. You're to remain in the Bagarian Cluster until you're recalled, and that won't be before the end of the war."
"I understand, sir," said Daniel.
"But that's not all bad," Britten continued. "There's going to be a lot of things up in the air in the Bagarian Cluster. Money, for one, but more than that. A clever young fellow could just find himself life ruler of a rich planet. That's not a bad alternative to being an RCN officer, is it?"
"There are many who'd agree with you, sir," said Daniel. He did salute this time, then took himself quickly through the door.
I might consider that option myself, at some time after Hell freezes over.