Lt. Leary, Commanding (34 page)

Hogg sauntered over, smiling with satisfaction at a job well done—and also, if Daniel knew his servant, at his superiority to a bunch of city folk. "Want to take a little walk with me, master?" Hogg asked. "There's something you might want to look at."

"Certainly, Hogg," Daniel said, feeling a touch of excitement that took him back to his boyhood. That was the way Hogg always prefaced a chance to view a part of nature that almost no one ever saw. There'd been the day the crystal moths issued from every pore of a tree their grub forms had eaten hollow, mating in the sunlight they saw only once in thirty years; the cave under the sea cliff, always in the past empty, from which the scaly head of leviathan rose one evening to follow the line of Hogg's low-skimming aircar; the roc lifting as the sun woke updrafts from the hinterlands of Bantry . . .

Hogg picked up a shovel and handed the impeller to Barnes. "She's switched off right now," he said. "Which would be a pretty good way to leave her unless you want to blow somebody's ass off for fun."

"I'll be careful, mother," Barnes said with a grin. Hogg sniffed and gestured with his free hand for Daniel to follow him into the brush.

Hogg and the Sissies respected one another and had been through some tense times together. Both sides had a genial contempt for the group the other represented, however. Daniel had a foot in either camp. He found the mutual chauvinism amusing, since they'd shown that in a crisis they'd join ranks against a common enemy.

Hogg held the sharpened blade of the shovel out in front of him like a horseman's lance and duckwalked down a tunnel of branches growing from pedestals of dirt laced high by roots. The soil was so light and dry that even here in the riverbed the breezes carved it away except where something bound it.

Daniel's hands were empty, so he scrambled along on all fours. The knife on his equipment belt would make a satisfactory weapon at close quarters, but he saw no need to draw it now.

"There you go, master," Hogg said, making room for Daniel by squeezing against a bush whose tiny white berries grew from the underside of its leaves. He pointed with the shovel; its broad tip had a wicked sheen where he'd stroked the metal to an edge.

He indicated a bush whose stems swelled at intervals into fist-sized nodules. They weren't the result of disease as Daniel had thought when he first viewed them, but rather reservoirs in which the plant stored a white, starchy substance. Daniel had tasted a pinch and found it flavorless but not apparently harmful. He'd thought of using it to supplement their diet if necessary.

Half this bush had been stripped: the stems cut a foot or two above the ground, then cut again to excise the nodules. The undamaged stems looked forlorn, springing from a base meant for twice their number.

"It's not sawed," Hogg said, "and it's not hacked with a machete either. I'd say either teeth or a sharp little knife."

Daniel flicked on his handlight. The sky was still bright enough for normal vision, but he needed more intensity to judge how fresh the cuts were. Bark curled resiliently under the pressure of his fingertip. He said, "It didn't happen more than a day ago."

"Not even that, dry as this place is," Hogg said. "Less than an hour, I'd say. I'll bet he scampered when the thundering herd come down the bank."

"It could be a castaway," Daniel said. He didn't know what he believed, so he stated what seemed the most reasonable possibility. "Out of rations and living off the land."

"Could be," Hogg said. From his tone,
he
didn't know what he believed either. "That don't explain why he ran, though.
I
sure hell wouldn't want to be alone in this place if there was a choice."

He resumed waddling forward, along the trail rubbed in the friable soil. The markings were faint, but even Daniel could have followed them; Hogg had another generation's worth of experience in woodcraft.

Fifteen feet ahead, he gestured to one of the chopped-out nodules, dropped beside the track. Daniel nodded.

"
Captain, is things all right?
" Dasi asked through the helmet. The fact that it was a spacer checking rather than Sun, the petty officer in charge, was a bad sign. "
Over
."

"Unit," Daniel said, "Hogg and I are scouting the perimeter. There's no problems, we're just making sure. Captain out."

The trail had led them back to the wall of the dry channel. A block of sandstone the diameter of a dinnerplate projected from the bank. It didn't look as though it belonged there. Hogg tested it with the heel of his left hand, leaning some, then all of his weight against it. "Stuck in from the other side and wedged,
I
say," he commented.

Daniel grimaced. "We need to keep moving," he said. "Much as I'd like to go after it, we can't take the time to do that now."

Hogg eyed the neighboring brush. He chose a plant, then notched its stem with his shovel and stripped a line of bark up from the cut. It was as tough and flexible as rawhide. "I'll tell you what, young master," he said. "You leave me here for an hour or so to set a snare. And then we'll see if something doesn't come to us."

Daniel chuckled. "Yes, all right, Hogg," he said. "Commodore Pettin ordered me to make a survey of constructions on South Land. This hole appears to be one of the more recent constructions . . . and I wouldn't want the commodore to think I'd disobeyed his orders."

Adele worked at the seven separate screens on her display while Tovera stood behind her chair, facing toward the bridge proper. The servant wore, unusually for her, an RCN commo helmet. She was echoing Adele's display on the visor.

"By God!" Lt. Mon said. He slammed his fist on the command console and stood. "By God, I won't have them play games with the RCN! Officer Mundy, a word with you!"

Adele locked her display and set her wands on the flat surface. She rotated her seat to face Mon, but she was rubbing her eyes instead of meeting his furious gaze.

"Koop and Lamsoe just called in from South Land," Mon said. "They've reached the site and done everything but plow the ground up. Captain Leary isn't there, there's no sign that he ever was,
and
I can't get through to the Captal da Lund for an explanation! A message says he's not taking calls!"

A part of Adele wondered idly whether that was the sort of information that all RCN commanders thought they had to tell their signals officers. Whose console did Mon think the calls were routed through?

Aloud she said, "Yes, I'm sorry, Mon, I should've kept you better informed. I've been busy."

She gestured toward the command console. "Sit down again and I'll explain what's been going on."

Mon's face darkened for a moment; Adele realized that her brusqueness had tripped Mon's little-man belligerence. He nodded, remembering her civilian background, and sat down obediently.

"Sorry," Adele muttered, irritated with herself. If she'd been a man instead of a slender woman whose physical presence threatened no one, her error might have precipitated a scene in the current charged atmosphere.

She faced around and unlocked the display, saying, "No one's come out of the Captal's compound since his driver and aircar returned late yesterday evening."

Her wand highlighted a movement log, culled from the compound's own sensors.

"The car came back?" Mon said. "By—" He caught himself. "Go ahead, Officer Mundy," he said with the controlled tension of a gymnast balancing.

"Yes," said Adele, throwing up time-slugged imagery of the car landing in the courtyard. "And if you'll look here—"

She split the display to show two versions of the vehicle's left quarter panel recorded when it left the compound and on its return. The quality wasn't good enough to show detail, but the fist-sized dents in the latter image were sufficiently clear.

"It appears that shots hit the car between the time it left and when it came back," Adele said. "That implies that at least one member of the expedition was alive after Dorotige left them."

"Can you get me through to the Captal da Lund?" Mon said in a cold voice. "I'd like to discuss the matter with him."

For all the lieutenant's bubbling temper, he didn't bluster when there was a serious task in front of him. That was probably why Daniel liked having Mon as a subordinate.

"I can get you through his blocking program," Adele said. "I don't recommend that, however, since it would alert him to how open his systems are to intrusion. I have full access to his security system, for example. That's where this imagery is coming from."

Mon's mouth opened, then closed. "Christ," he said in a wondering voice, "you
are
a wizard, just like they told me after I got out of a cell on Kostroma. Do you have a plan?"

"I'm working toward one," Adele said carefully. Put as baldly as Mon had, she realized that she should've been discussing matters with the acting captain at every step of the way. "I have some ideas."

Mon touched the intercom key. When the attention call sounded, he said, "Officers to the bridge ASAP. Out."

Mon's words reached Adele through the helmet, through the air directly from his lips, and in a whispering echo from the ceiling speakers down the corridor. He gave her a smile as tight and sharp as the knots spun into a length of barbed wire.

"I'm supposed to handle your communications," Adele said apologetically. "I haven't been communicating very well."

"I'm more interested in people doing their jobs," Mon said, "than in them telling me about it. And right now I'm
damned
sure that Captain Leary feels the same way."

Woetjans and Taley dropped through the dorsal hatch, reaching the bridge a half step before Betts arrived from his sleeping compartment in the warrant officers' quarters. Pasternak had been in the Battle Direction Center for some reason. He came running down the corridor, the crash of his boots warning curious crewmen out of his path.

"Go ahead, Officer Mundy," Mon said. Betts sat at his console where he could import imagery from Adele's display, but the other officers would have to make do with their helmet visors.

"The Captal's dwelling is under Berengian exterritorial jurisdiction," Adele said, "just as the Cinnabar Commission is legally Cinnabar territory. That means neither the Sexburgan local government nor Admiral Torgis can legally demand access to the Captal's compound. Furthermore, the Captal is far too important a person on Sexburga for the authorities to be willing to ignore the legalities."

Tovera had gathered much of the background on her own, even before Daniel's disappearance created a need for it. She apparently liked to know the power structures wherever she was.

"I'm willing to ignore legalities," Mon said without raising his voice. He was tapping the index and middle fingers of his right hand into the opposite palm with the steady deliberation of a bell-ringer. "I'm willing to hover the
Princess Cecile
on top of the damned compound and let the exhaust burn it out if that's the best way to get the captain back."

"Damn right," Woetjans said.

An instant later all the other officers nodded. They
must
know as surely as Adele did that the Navy Office would have to treat any such overt violation as piracy, to be punished by the consequent hanging of the officers and crew of the offending vessel.

"That would not be helpful," Adele said in a tone of cold disgust. It wouldn't necessarily be possible, either: the Captal had prepared defenses to meet just such an attack. Saying as much would only inflame the officers around her into an attitude of heroic self-sacrifice. "We need information which we won't be able to get from a pile of slag and ashes. I—"

The code A501 flashed in red at the upper margin of Adele's display. It wouldn't echo on the other displays and she'd toggled off the audio cue; no one knew about it but the Signals Officer. A502 would have meant the call was from squadron command; A501 meant—

Adele locked her display and pointed a wand toward Lt. Mon. "There's a call to the
Princess Cecile
from Commodore Pettin's own console," she said. She'd lost track of who was on watch; perhaps she herself was. "Shall I take it, or . . . ?"

Mon shook his head curtly and keyed his audio. "Acting captain," he said without inflection. "Go ahead."

"
This is Commodore Pettin,
" the speaker said. Adele might be reading irritation into Pettin's tone, but the man was certainly not above thundering angrily at any delay in getting the acting captain. Nor was he above regretting a chance to display that righteous indignation. "
I haven't been able to raise your Mr. Leary. Can you tell me what he thinks he's playing at?
"

"No sir," Lt. Mon said. His face, always angular, changed shape as the muscles tightened over his jaw and cheekbones. "Captain Leary proceeded to South Land via the civilian transportation which you had arranged for him, sir."

RCN communications were normally voice-only to minimize bandwidth. That was fortunate in this case, because Mon wasn't a good actor. His voice stayed almost flat, but the fury toward the commodore in his expression could scarcely have been more obvious.

"
I shouldn't be surprised to find insolence in Mr. Leary's subordinates, should I, Mon?
" Pettin said. "
Well, for now you may tell your captain that the squadron has been fully refitted and will lift in twelve hours, not the thirty-six I previously estimated. If Mr. Leary has not returned by then, the
Princess Cecile
will lift without him, under your temporary command. Is that understood?
"

"Yessir," Mon said through clenched teeth. "I understand you very well, Commodore Pettin."

"
By God,
"
Pettin snarled
,
"
for half a piastre I'd slap you in custody and put my third lieutenant aboard that grubby little corvette.
Half a piastre!
"

The transmission ended in an electronic click rather than the crash that Pettin obviously would have preferred if the technology permitted it. Adele smiled at the thought, then wiped her face blank lest Mon misunderstand her humor.