What Distant Deeps (50 page)

“You don’t need to worry, Commander,” Daniel said calmly. “There won’t be any violence at all; that’s why I’m here. Set your guns down and come out—or I’ll come in, if you’re worried. Me and my crew will get you off-planet before the locals have any idea what’s going on.”

“You’ll save me?” Gibbs said. “Sure, save me to hang! That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“You’re not guilty of a capital offense that any civilized court would recognize, Gibbs,” Daniel said. “Or to put it another way, no one but me has evidence of a capital crime against you. I give you my word as a Leary and as an officer of the RCN that if you’ll lay down your guns, I won’t appear against you.”

He was still speaking louder than he would have liked to, but he tried to keep his tone warm and reasonable. He smiled engagingly toward the door. Daniel knew that Gibbs couldn’t see him, but it was useful to keep his performance as the brotherly fellow officer on course.

The commander’s image drew at the bottle again. It must have been empty, because he flung it across the room in a fury. He didn’t speak.

Grimacing momentarily—he wanted this to be a dialogue, not a harangue—Daniel said, “That’s why I rushed here, you see: I wasn’t going to leave a brother officer in the hands of wogs. The gods only know what Zenobians do to traitors! But you see, if you don’t come out, I’ll have to lift ship. Then you’d be on your own, you see. So please—”

Gibbs’ image pointed the carbine toward the door. Daniel stepped to his right, his face blank.

Gibbs fired, punching a hole near the top of the thick panel. A flying splinter stuck in Daniel’s left sleeve; the slug slapped the bricks above his head. Dust drifted down.

“Don’t play games, Leary!” the commander said. “Listen to me! This is how we’ll do it. I’ll come out with the Browns, but I won’t give up my guns. The parents’ll walk on either side of me, and I’ll have a gun to the kid’s head! You got that?”

“Commander, this isn’t necessary,” Daniel said. He smiled ingratiatingly; he was ice cold inside. “All you need to do is—”

“Listen to me!” Gibbs said. “Shut up! Just shut up or I’ll shoot the brat now, do you hear? You’re going to take me to your ship, me and the hostages, you got that?”

“Of course I’ll take you to the Princess Cecile, Commander,” Daniel said in a reasonable tone. “But you—”

“Shut up and listen!” Gibbs shouted at the door. His carbine was pointed toward the Browns; it shook with emotion. “Just shut up!”

“I’m listening, Gibbs,” said Daniel. His mind was as clear as Haileywood Creek where a pipe took out the water supply for Bantry.

“I’m taking off in your ship, Leary,” Gibbs said. “Me and these.”

He kicked Commissioner Brown’s thigh. It must have been an instinctive act, because Gibbs didn’t seem to know that Daniel was watching him.

“I’ll take twenty of your crew, that’ll be enough,” Gibbs said. “Common spacers, that’s all; I’ll be the only one aboard who can astrogate. I’ll let them loose in Palmyra. The Autocrator will be glad to see me, especially since I’m bringing the yacht she wanted. I’ll sell it to her, Leary, since you wouldn’t!”

Daniel paused, smothering his first impulse to tell the traitor what had happened to Autocrator Irene. That wouldn’t help. Indeed, it might push Gibbs into homicidal fury.

He glanced over his shoulder. With his right index finger he pointed to Hofnagel, a Technician 3 holding a five-foot pinch bar. Daniel crooked his finger to bring Hofnagel—he was built like a troll—forward, and then toward the latch of the door opposite. It opened outward.

“Gibbs
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
,” Daniel said. The big technician slipped past, his bar raised. Daniel touched his shoulder and whispered, “Get set quietly but wait.”

“I can’t hear you!” Gibbs said. “Speak up, you bastard, or I’ll end this right now!”

“I’m very sorry!” Daniel said in a voice they could hear at the harbor. “Gibbs, what you’re discussing is suicide. You’re a fellow officer and I can’t let you do that. Release the Browns and I’ll take their place. You can tie me up but we can talk like men ought—”

“I’m through talking!” Gibbs said. He aimed at the center of the door. Daniel was already out of the line of fire, so he didn’t move. “I’ll start killing them, Leary! I’ll start with—”

The carbine muzzle twitched down toward the hostages.

“I surrender!” Daniel shouted. “We’ll do it your way, Gibbs! Just tell me what you want me to do.”

The carbine wavered. Daniel couldn’t see Gibbs’ face from either camera angle, but the man had paused. Hofnagel slid the thin end of his bar into the crack between the door and the jamb. The bolt was sturdy, but it didn’t have a separate plate to cover it from outside.

“All right, Leary,” Gibbs said after a long moment. “I guess you’ve learned that being lucky doesn’t mean that everybody has to bow down and do it your way, right?”

Daniel continued to smile vaguely; he didn’t reply. He was perfectly willing to abase himself further if it had seemed to him that would help, but he didn’t want to set Gibbs off because he thought he was being patronized.

There were various ways to deal with someone who was both irrational and abusive. Under the present circumstances, minimal response seemed the best of the various poor choices.

On the imagery, Gibbs was using a folding utility knife to free the feet of his hostages. He seemed to have tied them with electrical cord. Daniel frowned, but he supposed it was adequate for the purpose.

From the way the Browns moved, they were tied together at the wrist so that each parent was held within about thirty inches of the little girl in the middle. Had Gibbs planned from the beginning to walk out with the hostages around him?

Gibbs snarled something to them, gesturing with the carbine. Daniel couldn’t hear the words through the door panel, but it was obviously a demand for them to get to their feet.

Awkwardly, unable to use their hands, the Browns obeyed. Hester was crying and trying to wipe her tears on her shoulder. They’d all fouled themselves; Gibbs must not have allowed them to move even to use the latrine after he took them hostage.

Daniel poised, though nobody looking at his calm expression would realize that he was running increasingly violent options through his mind. Even if the situation on Palmyra had been what the commander thought it was, the stated plan was impossible. Daniel wasn’t going to get the Brown family out of Cinnabar House simply to send them to death in space—or worse, in the Matrix.

Gibbs positioned the Browns in the vestibule. The commissioner was on his left, Clothilde on his right, and Gibbs’ left hand gripped Hester by the top of her tunic. The carbine’s barrel was short enough that by cocking his right elbow back he could hold the muzzle to the little girl’s head.

“All right!” Gibbs said, speaking for the benefit of both Daniel and the hostages. “We’re going out now. At the least hint that something isn’t right, I’m going to blow the brat’s head off. Do you all understand? I’m going to kill—”

Commissioner Brown hurled his weight against the carbine, thrusting it away from Hester’s head. All four of the group went down in flailing confusion.

“Go!” Daniel bellowed, pointing to Hofnagel. The big technician hurled his full weight into the bar to seat it as deeply as possible, then wrenched outward. The lock burst through the wood as the door swung out. Daniel swept the panel fully open.

The Browns lay in a tangle on the floor; Hester and Clothilde were screaming. The commissioner sat up, trying to kick Gibbs’ legs out from under him.

Gibbs had lost the carbine, but he drew the pistol from his belt and pointed it at Commissioner Brown’s chest. As Daniel started to dive forward, Gibbs snarled a curse and pulled the trigger.

Gibbs’ chest expanded, causing his tunic to bloom outward. Brick dust exploded inside the room. Outside, a spray of chips blasted from the sudden hole, scarring the sod. Even at a slant angle, Hogg’s powerful impeller had penetrated the brick wall.

Gibbs’ skull deformed. Adele had put two holes in his left temple—if he’d been facing her, she would have shot for his eyes. Tovera stood in the hall doorway behind a glowing haze, the vaporized driving bands of her sub-machine gun pellets.

Daniel hit the commander hard enough to carry them to the floor of the main office, where they skidded. Gibbs was thrashing. His mouth opened and closed, but the impeller slug had blown his lungs through the side of his chest. There were three holes in his right temple also, courtesy of Tovera.

Sissies poured through the doorways and climbed in by the windows. A panel dislodged from a torn sash fell, adding further confusion to the shouts. Daniel got to his feet.

Hofnagel stood over the commander’s corpse and raised his pinch bar. Daniel grabbed his wrist and said, “Belay that, Sissie!”

Then, on an impulse, he threw his arms around the big technician. “And a bloody good job you did with it already. Bloody good.”

Daniel stepped back. The stink was familiar but no less unpleasant for that. That was a bloody near thing.

Adele had put away her data unit, but the pistol was still cooling in her left hand. “Thank you,” Daniel said. “For both before and after the wheels came off.”

Adele shrugged. “I’m glad it worked out,” she said.

Barnes had cut the hostages loose, using Gibbs’ utility knife. The commissioner looked dazed.

Tovera ejected the loading tube from the pistol Gibbs had tried to use. “The contacts are corroded,” she said, sounding amused. “Lucky for you, eh, Commissioner?”

Daniel picked Hester up and cradled her to his chest. This uniform was ruined anyway, not least because of what had splattered from Commander Gibbs’ chest when the slug went through it. Hogg would normally have complained about the clothing; but not, Daniel thought, this time.

“Hester, dearest,” Daniel said. “Your daddy is a very brave man. He just saved your life.”

There were other, less positive ways to view what the Commissioner had done, but Daniel didn’t second-guess the man on the ground. Esecially when things worked out well.

He smiled. Life was beginning to return to commissioner Brown’s face. Daniel kissed the little girl’s cheek and handed her to her father.

CHAPTER 29

Calvary on Zenobia

Adele didn’t have a great deal of interest in landscapes or architecture, either one, but she thought she would have approved of the walled garden of the Founder’s Palace if she’d seen it a week earlier. Its proportions had been regular, at least. She disliked the raggedness of natural woodlands.

The militia company which had camped here during the recent crisis had reduced the plantings to a state of general raggedness, unfortunately. The low hedges enclosing the four parterres had been crushed down, and the tiled fountain in the center was broken. It appeared that a heavy vehicle had driven through it.

Though there’d been an effort to move the fruit trees in terra cotta planters against the back wall, most of the pots had been cracked in the process. That probably didn’t matter to the trees, because their branches had been broken off for firewood. Well, worse things had happened to human beings during the past few days.

Commander Milch came out of the Palace and strode briskly toward the back of the garden where the tables had been set under a marquee. The meeting hadn’t officially started yet, but it appeared that major items of business were being worked out already. Admiral Mainwaring stood in a close discussion with Founder Hergo and with Otto von Gleuck—who to Adele’s surprise wore Zenobian national dress in its natural bright colors rather than his Fleet uniform.

Marines and spacers with stocked impellers stood on the palace roof and the walls surrounding the other three sides of the garden. Fleet and RCN personnel were present in equal numbers. They seemed to be getting along well, or at any rate as well as the crews of different ships in the same squadron would get along.

At the foot of the garden, behind the conference table, was a grotto. Over the entrance was a monumental woman’s head; on chairs to either side of it sat Woetjans and the Fleet warrant officer who had delivered the aircar to Daniel. Woetjans looked gray; her counterpart’s right arm and leg were in casts.

Adele nodded a greeting to Woetjans. Armed guards weren’t completely unnecessary—there was certainly a chance of a surviving Palmyrene sympathizer deciding to take some of his enemies with him in a final blaze of glory—but the main reason that the two warrant officers commanded those guards was that it kept them out of the way while their ships were being repaired.

Woetjans wouldn’t have been able to simply watch and give orders if she’d been on the Princess Cecile now. From the look of her Fleet counterpart—and the fact that he was here—Adele presumed that he was from the same mold. The kind of exertion that both took for granted would be crippling or fatal in their present physical condition.

Daniel was chatting with other space officers. Vesey and Cory and personnel from the Qaboosh Squadron were around him, but there were several Fleet uniforms also.

Fregattenkapitan Henri Lavoissier of the Z 42 stood apart with two young officers, probably his own juniors. Either he was unwilling to pollute himself by contact with RCN personnel, or else he had decided he would be unwelcome in a group of celebrating victors. If Adele were to guess, it was probably the latter reason—though Lavoissier would claim it was by his own choice.

Adele suppressed a smile at a thought. The RCN had its share of stiff-necked fools. They didn’t like Captain Leary any better than Lavoissier did.

Accompanied only by the silent presence of Wood, Posy Belisande was standing at a slight distance from Hergo, von Gleuck, and Mainwaring. She turned to Adele, seated at the far—low-ranking—end of the tables, then walked toward her.

Commissioner Brown sat across from Adele. He wore a suit which was suitably formal for this gathering; he’d probably bought it when he learned he had been appointed commissioner to Zenobia.
 

The table was wide enough that a low-voiced conversation probably couldn’t be heard across the scarred wood, but Brown’s eyes had a thousand-yard stare anyway. His mind was in a different place and time.