What Distant Deeps (48 page)

Though the chances were that Cinnabar historians describing the action would shade reality and say otherwise. That’ll leave Adele turning in her grave. Well, cause her vaporized atoms to spin more quickly on their axes.

Adele walked briskly into Daniel’s field of view. She adjusted his couch to the left, making room for her to sit cross-legged on the floor in front of his display, then took out her personal data unit and slaved the console to it.

Daniel suspected that the command console couldn’t be taken over that way, at least if you listened to the manufacturers and RCN security personnel. Well, they would never learn otherwise, given the sleet of projectiles approaching the Princess Cecile.

Adele was
 
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great gods and little fishes! She’d called up a Help menu and was asking what commands to give to maneuver a starship in sidereal space! What did she think she was going to find: Shiphandling for Toddlers? Every Boy’s Book of Space Combat?

Daniel began to laugh. He was really laughing: gusts of laughter were racking his body.

Adele looked up at him. “Well, can you do better?” she snapped.

Daniel pressed the Execute button, toggling the corvette back into the Matrix. It would be close, but there was just enough time before the missiles arrived.

“No, my dear friend,” he said. “Without you, I couldn’t have done nearly as well.”

Transition felt like a bath in ice water this time, causing Daniel to shudder. It was good to feel his muscles moving again, after the bodiless horror of the recent past.

At the moment of transition, Adele felt as though her skull was being split with the back of an axe. That or equally unpleasant sensations were among her mind’s usual responses to entering and leaving the Matrix, so she supposed she ought to be pleased that things were returning to normal. She got to her feet.

The crew of the Princess Cecile was coming around—the members Adele could see, at any rate. She had been willing to accept them as a representative sample when they were unconscious or psychotic, so it was only proper to assume that the recovery was general also.

Fiducia sat at his console again. He looked up, then away with a shamefaced expression when he noticed Adele standing beside the command console.

She frowned. He had nothing to be embarrassed about. An event had occurred which had damaged most of those involved with it. One might as well apologize because one’s bullet wound is dripping onto the carpet.

Hogg squatted on the deck; he’d laid the impeller across his knees so that he could rub both cheeks with his fists. He looked angry and unhappy, but he didn’t seem to have suffered the physical injury that Adele had feared when she saw his stiff body.

As for Cory, he had rotated his seat back toward the display and was reviewing the record of the minutes before the Princess Cecile retreated into the Matrix. That was a very sensible, very professional, thing to do. Adele felt a surge of pride which intellectually she didn’t believe was justified.

She smiled; a tiny expression, but more than she would have managed a few years ago. She had a great deal of experience in controlling her emotions, but that didn’t prevent emotions from stirring her. It still surprised her to feel anything besides the red fury which had been so long and so close a companion.

“Barnes,” Daniel said. Adele wasn’t wearing a commo helmet, but since she was standing beside the command console she didn’t need amplification. “Take out the starboard rigging watch. I don’t have a course yet, but I expect to determine one after I’ve had a chance to consult with Vesey, over.”

He looked up at Adele and grinned. “I was afraid that insertion was going to drop me back into whatever state it was that you laughed me out of,” he said. “Instead it seems to have brought all the rest of us back to proper form. Rather like pulling the power and then rebooting to reset a computer, isn’t it?”

Adele thought about the analogy. Computers weren’t nearly as similar to human minds as people seemed to think they were
 
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but it wasn’t a matter to argue about, at least not now.

“Yes,” she said, keeping her qualifications to herself. “And as for courses, Daniel, I believe we need to return to Calvary as quickly as possible. Though—will we be able to land in the harbor with the damage?”

Daniel frowned. “A few sheets of structural plastic around the starboard outrigger and it’ll hold air well enough to allow a real fix,” he said. “But I’m sure Admiral Mainwaring will want to be brought up to speed immediately. Certainly before any RCN vessel lands on Zenobia, at any rate.”

Adele made a dismissive gesture with her left hand. “The Admiral can wait,” she said. “Commander Gibbs escaped from Zenobian custody during the confusion. He’s in Cinnabar House and has taken Commissioner Brown and his family hostage. They’d gone back after the end of the emergency.”

Daniel’s eyes narrowed. “What are the local authorities doing, Adele?”

“Founder Hergo has ordered his own forces to seal off the area but to take no action,” Adele said. “He’s waiting for someone from either Cinnabar or the Alliance to take charge of the business so that the Zenobian government won’t be blamed for the outcome.”

“Ah!” said Daniel, nodding his understanding. “Yes, we should be able to put down within three hours. If there’s more of a problem with the starboard outrigger than I foresee, we can use the plaza fronting the Palace. Presumably Hergo can have that cleared. And then we’ll decide how to proceed.”

Adele felt her lips smile. “I felt that Tovera and I should be put in charge of the negotiations,” she said.

“And me,” said Hogg, suddenly cheery again. “Neither of you are worth squat beyond pistol range, and I—”

He hefted the powerful impeller at the balance.

“—bloody well am.”

Yes, it might be very bloody indeed. Adele’s lips twitched again at her unspoken joke.

CHAPTER 28

Calvary Harbor, Zenobia

Adele had decided to wear utilities on the ground: they were loose, practical, and had pockets for even more equipment than she expected to carry. She glanced toward Daniel, waiting beside her in the Sissie’s boarding hold while the ship’s exterior cooled enough to allow them to disembark.

Daniel met her eyes. Though she hadn’t spoken, he grinned and said, “No, these aren’t—”

He fluffed the breast of his second-class uniform. He wasn’t wearing either medal ribbons or a pistol belt; both were permissible by regulation but not required.

“—because I’m worried about being called up on charges of being out of uniform. What we’re doing qualifies as dismounted duty as sure as riot suppression would. Though I sincerely hope that it won’t involve shooting.”

Tovera snickered; Adele’s face blanked.

Daniel gave them a wry smile and said, “I’m well aware that my hopes aren’t controlling in this situation and may not even be realistic. But I’m hoping to convince Gibbs that I’m a fellow officer with whom he can have a calm, peaceful discussion about the best way to proceed from here.”

“I know the best way to proceed,” said Hogg. Occasionally Adele noticed twinges when the servant moved his right hand, but he seemed to have adequate flexibility in it. Certainly enough to squeeze the trigger of his impeller. “And no, don’t you worry, young master, I won’t shoot till you say to. But I said back when we got him the first time that the best place for Gibbs was him and a boat anchor wrapped in a fishnet and dropped in the harbor, didn’t I?”

“Yes, Hogg, you did,” Daniel said. “But since that would always be your opinion, I think I can be forgiven for leaving Gibbs under guard instead.”

He smiled, but there was a little more edge to his banter than Adele was used to hearing. He thinks Hogg may have been right this time. Well, it’s an easy mistake to rectify.

The pumps were running with an unfamiliar note. They normally refilled the tanks of reaction mass whenever a ship touched down on water. Adele hadn’t been paying much attention to the discussion of repair priorities on the command channel, but she now recalled that one of the feed hoses was to be run into an access port in the starboard outrigger instead of being dropped straight into the harbor in normal fashion. That would more than keep up with the leakage.

The twenty spacers waiting in the hold were quiet. They were ready for anything that might happen, but they had been in similar situations too often by now to show nervousness.

The section was armed with a variety of bludgeons and knives, but no guns. Very few spacers were good shots to begin with. Since a child was being held hostage, Daniel didn’t want projectiles flying about unless he was very sure of the person aiming them.

Adele had her pocket pistol; Tovera’s miniature sub-machine gun fired the same light ceramic pellets as the pistol. The stocked impeller would punch its osmium slugs through a brick wall, but in Hogg’s hands the weapon would do so only if he wanted to shoot whatever was behind the brick wall.

Adele glanced at imagery of the main hall of Cinnabar House. Since the console—the only one on Commission premises—was there, Adele had a view of about three-quarters of the hall. Gibbs was pacing around his tied-up hostages.

The former assistant commissioner carried an electromotive carbine, taken—probably bought—from one of the militiamen who were supposed to have been guarding him, and a Cinnabar service pistol which had probably come from a drawer somewhere in the building.

He looked desperate and as vicious as a weasel. What in the name of heaven does he expect to gain by all this?

But that wasn’t a fair question. The game would end for Gibbs in precisely the same place that it would end for Adele and for every other human being. Considered against the Heat Death of the Universe, Gibbs’ hostage-taking made as much sense as Adele’s determination to free a decent couple and their child from a nasty little traitor.

The notion amused Adele. It was good that she wouldn’t have to justify her decision to anybody else, because in her own mind she was behaving quite irrationally.

Thinking of that, she looked toward Daniel and said, “By the way, you needn’t worry about how Admiral Mainwaring is going to react.”

Daniel looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “To be honest, Officer Mundy,” he said mildly, “I stopped giving Admiral Mainwaring’s curiosity any consideration when you told me that a child’s life was at stake. I’m sure the admiral will display the same sense of priorities; and if he doesn’t
 
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.”

Daniel gave a shrug of disdain that a perfumed courtier couldn’t have equaled. Daniel is a genuinely good-natured man, Adele thought, but I wouldn’t want him to catch me mistreating a child.

Her mind flashed to an image of soldiers nailing the head of her little sister to Speaker’s Rock. A shiver danced through her. Until that moment there had been a possibility that Commander Gibbs would survive the coming interview.

“Of course, Daniel,” Adele said, deliberately informal despite there being other people around. “I misphrased my statement. I meant to say that I explained to the admiral that I had conveyed orders from a higher authority to you. He stumbled over his tongue in assuring me that he would wait to debrief you until it was convenient. He emphasized that he had no wish to learn anything about your actions which could not be discussed with propriety between two RCN officers.”

Daniel blinked. “You told him that I was under orders from
 
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?” Even under these circumstances, he couldn’t bring himself to articulate Mistress Sand’s name.

“You are being guided by the principles of justice and of protection of the weak,” Adele said primly. “Which surely take precedence over an admiral’s whim, do they not?”

Daniel guffawed. “Not necessarily in the opinion of the admiral,” he said, “but I don’t think we need to press that question to a no-doubt busy Admiral Mainwaring.”

He coughed against the back of his hand. “Ah—thank you,” he said. “Adele.”

The dogs withdrew like anvils falling on steel all around the perimeter of the boarding hatch. It began to squeal downward to become a ramp.

“Bloody well about time,” growled a technician with a long-handled wrench in his right hand. He rubbed the head with his left palm. The wrench jaws were powered, but the man’s shoulders and biceps didn’t look like they’d need assistance if he had to use the tool today.

The air which puffed through the widening gap was warm and wet; it made Adele sneeze. The flames of the plasma thrusters incinerated any organic garbage floating in the slip, leaving a residue to mix with leftover ozone ions. The result bit and cloyed on the nasal passages in equal measure.
 

“All right, Sissies!” Daniel boomed. Everyone in the hold could hear him despite the screech of the lowering hatch and the more general chorus of cooling metal. “Officer Mundy and I lead and the rest of you follow as polite as if you were going to divine services. We’ll talk to the locals first, and you will not under any circumstances make a peep until I give you orders to. Do you understand that?”

“Aye aye, sir/Six/Cap’n!” echoed thunderous agreement.

Daniel let the response settle, then added, “Right you are, fellow spacers. There’s a little girl’s life on this, so keep it calm and don’t let anything get out of hand.”

The ramp rang into position, resting on the starboard outrigger. Adele shut down her data unit and tucked it away. Her pistol was in its usual place, but she didn’t feel a need to touch it at present.

“Sir, they’ll make you proud,” said Woetjans, standing at the control switch. She looked as though she’d been dragged from her grave. Her weakness was so obvious that she hadn’t objected to Barnes and Dasi leading the section. “You know they will.”

Daniel gave her a gentle smile. “Of course they will, Chief,” he said. “You trained them, after all.”