Though Hell Should Bar the Way - eARC Read online

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Though Hell Should Bar the Way – eARC

  David Drake

  Look for the final version on April 3, 2018

  Advance Reader Copy

  Unproofed

  Baen

  Though Hell Should Bar the Way

  David Drake

  FROM WEALTH AND POWER, TO POVERTY AND INSULTS!

  Roy Olfetrie planned to be an officer in the Republic of Cinnabar Navy, but when his father was unmasked as a white-collar criminal he had to take whatever he was offered.

  What is offered turns out to be a chance to accompany Captain Daniel Leary and Lady Adele Mundy as they go off to start a war that will put Roy at the sharp end.

  Duty snatches Roy from the harem of a pirate chief to a world of monsters, from interstellar reaches in a half-wrecked starship to assassination attempts at posh houses. Roy has the choice of making friends or dying friendless; of meeting betrayal and responding to it; of breaking his faith or keeping it at the risk of his life.

  Pirates, politics, and spies--and waiting for Roy if he survives all the rest, a powerful warship.

  The action doesn't slow--nor can Roy, for if he does the only question is which of the many threats will be the one to catch and kill him. But Captain Leary himself has given Roy a chance, and Roy is determined make the most of it—THOUGH HELL SHOULD BAR THE WAY.

  BAEN BOOKS by DAVID DRAKE

  The RCN Series

  With the Lightnings • Lt. Leary, Commanding • The Far Side of the Stars • The Way to Glory • Some Golden Harbor • When the Tide Rises • In the Stormy Red Sky • What Distant Deeps • The Road of Danger • The Sea Without a Shore • Death’s Bright Day • Though Hell Should Bar the Way

  Hammer’s Slammers

  The Tank Lords • Caught in the Crossfire • The Sharp End • The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, Vols 1–3

  Independent Novels and Collections

  All the Way to the Gallows • Cross the Stars • Foreign Legions, edited by David Drake • Grimmer Than Hell • Loose Cannon • Night & Demons • Northworld Trilogy • Patriots • The Reaches Trilogy • Redliners • Seas of Venus • Starliner • The Spark

  Into the Hinterlands with John Lambshead • Into the Maelstrom with John Lambshead

  The General Series

  Hope Reborn with S.M. Stirling (omnibus) • Hope Rearmed with S.M. Stirling (omnibus) • The Tyrant with Eric Flint • The Heretic with Tony Daniel • The Savior with Tony Daniel

  The Belisarius Series with Eric Flint

  An Oblique Approach • In the Heart of Darkness • Belisarius I: Thunder Before Dawn (omnibus) • Destiny’s Shield • Fortune’s Stroke • Belisarius II: Storm at Noontide (omnibus) • The Tide of Victory • The Dance of Time • Belisarius III: The Flames of Sunset (omnibus)

  Edited by David Drake

  The World Turned Upside Down with Jim Baen & Eric Flint

  To purchase these titles in e-book format, please go to www.baen.com

  THOUGH HELL SHOULD BAR THE WAY

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by David Drake

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4814-8313-1

  Cover art by Stephen Hickman

  First printing, April 2018

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  t/k

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Evan Ladouceur, who already has had not only repeated acknowledgements in this series, but also had a superannuated light cruiser named after him.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Dan Breen continues my first reader, thank goodness, and archives my texts; as does my webmaster, Karen Zimmerman. Dorothy Day, who was the West-Coast member of my distributed archive, died while I was writing this one.

  I regret this a lot. Dorothy was a good person.

  My printer and computers behaved well during the writing until Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, forced a software update, at the end of which my three computers didn't talk to one another and only one of them recognized my printer. Fortunately, my son Jonathan was able to fix things.

  What do people do if their kids aren't geeks? But perhaps there aren't such people nowadays.

  I eat well and the house stays clean and neat, which is wholly due to my wife Jo.

  I thank all of you for making it possible for me to write.

  Dave Drake

  Chatham County, NC

  "…Then look for me by moonlight,

  Watch for me by moonlight,

  I'll come to thee by moonlight,

  though hell should bar the way."

  CHAPTER 1

  “Now watch that you don’t take this corner too short again!” Cady snarled as we approached the entrance of Bergen and Associates. “If you knock the gate post down, the repairs come straight out of your pay!”

  “Yes,” I said, not shouting, not mumbling, just speaking in an ordinary voice. If I didn’t say anything, he’d keep shouting at me, and I was already nervous about turning into the shipyard.

  I had clipped the corner of the Petersburg warehouse yesterday, the first time I drove the chandlery flatbed. There was no real harm done: paint smeared on the side of the truck, and wood splinters bristling on the edge of the building.

  I’d sanded the corner off and repainted it on my own time; not even Cady could claim that the battered old truck was damaged so that it mattered. You could’ve used it for a gunnery target and it wouldn’t look any worse than it did already.

  Still, it saved Cady from finding something else to ride me about. Though he’d have managed regardless, of that I had no doubt. Cady didn’t have any real rank at the Petersburg Chandlery, but he’d married old Fritzi’s daughter. Any time Fritzi wasn’t watching, Cady acted like he was the boss.

  I downshifted into the creeper gear and started hauling on the big horizontal steering wheel. I was trying to watch in both side mirrors while Cady
kept yammering at me. I got the nose through and stuck my head out of the cab to shout at the watchman: “Petersburg to pick up three High Drives for reconditioning?”

  The watchman was missing his left ear and the sleeve on that side was pinned up. He squinted at his display and called back, “That’s Bay One, to the left. Back right up to the dock. I’ll let ’em know you’re here.”

  Bergen and Associates was big for a private yard. A trio of four- to six-thousand-ton freighters were being serviced now, and the docks could hold vessels much bigger than them. I was facing Bay 2 in big red letters across a trackway two hundred feet wide. I turned left, keeping close to the administrative buildings along the back fence, and pulled up when I thought I’d gone far enough.

  “If you’ll get out and guide me,” I said to Cady, “I’ll back up to the loading dock.”

  “Who do you figure you are to give me orders, Academy boy?” Cady said, leaning against the cab door to face me. He was a big fellow and not as fat as he was going to be in a few more years of beer and fried food.

  “I’m not ordering you, Cady,” I said. I wished I’d come alone, but this really was a two-man job. I unlatched my door. “Look, you back her up and I’ll guide you, I don’t care.”

  “Well, I bloody care!” Cady said. “You don’t need a guide. Just do your bloody job!”

  I hopped out of the cab and walked toward the admin building. An old spacer came out the door, calling something behind him. “Hey, buddy?” I said. “I need a ground guide over to Bay One. You got a minute?”

  I wasn’t going to back through the shipyard without a guide. There wasn’t a lot of traffic, but a lowboy was trundling past behind a tractor right now.

  Besides, it’d just be stupid. I couldn’t help that Cady was being a jerk, but he wasn’t going to make me stupid.

  “Yeah, sure,” the spacer said. “You’re here for those High Drives I want rebuilt?”

  I opened my mouth to agree when the door opened again, and I recognized the girl who’d come out behind him.

  “Roy!” she said. “Roy Olfetrie! It is you, isn’t it?”

  “Hi, Miranda,” I said. “Gosh, I hadn’t thought to run into you. What’re you doing at Bergen’s? Working in the office?”

  Miranda was dressed pretty well for a clerk, but she and her mother could sew like nobody’s business. She’d never looked out of place when our families got together after her father died as an RCN captain, leaving his widow and two children on a survivors’ pension.

  The woman in RCN utilities who followed Miranda out of the office was six and a half feet tall. Her open left palm looked like she could drive spikes with it, and the expression she gave me made me think that I’d do for a spike if I got out of line.

  “Not exactly,” Miranda said with the laugh I remembered from the old days. “My husband owns the yard. I’ve come up in the world, Roy.”

  I smiled, but I guess there was something in my face because Miranda suddenly looked like I’d started sobbing. Which I hadn’t done, even when it first happened.

  “Ma’am?” the spacer I’d first spoken to said to Miranda. “I need to get back to the Pocahontas. And kid?” This to me. “I figure Chief Woetjans can guide you as well as I could.”

  “Look, kid!” Cady shouted from the truck. “We got work to do. Get your ass back in here!”

  “In a bit!” I called over my shoulder. I felt hot because of what I’d done to Miranda, or anyway how I’d made her feel even though I hadn’t meant to. “Look, Miranda, the problem was nothing to do with anybody but Dad himself. I couldn’t be happier that you’ve been doing well. I don’t know anybody who deserves it more.”

  “I heard about the trouble,” she said, turning her eyes a little away. “I was very sorry.”

  Everybody on Cinnabar had heard about “the trouble,” I guess, at least if they paid any attention to the news. That was just the way it was, same as if I’d been caught in the rain. Only a lot worse.

  “Well, it’s not so bad,” I lied. “I dropped out of the Academy and got a job with a ship chandler for now. After things settle down I’ll look for something—”

  “Watch out!” Miranda shouted, looking past me.

  I hunched over. Cady’s big fist grazed my scalp, but he didn’t catch me square in the temple like he’d planned to do.

  I punched him twice in the gut, left and right. I’d boxed at the Academy. I didn’t have the footwork to be welterweight champion, but the instructors said I had a good punch. A bloody good punch, and I was mad enough to give Cady all I had.

  I stepped back as Cady dived forward on his nose. He’d been trying to grab me with his left hand and just overbalanced when I doubled him up. He wasn’t hurt bad, but he’d remember me every time he sat up for the next few days.

  Cady got his feet under him but didn’t stand. “Cady!” I said. “Let’s quit now and it won’t go any further!”

  I wasn’t sure what to do next. Hitting Cady on the head wasn’t going to do anything but break my knuckles, and there was no way I could keep punching him in the gut without him getting a hand on me. Then it’d be all she wrote: It’s not like there was a referee to call him for fouling me, after all.

  Somebody’d been opening crates at the edge of the loading dock. When Cady finally stood up, he had a crowbar in his right fist.

  “Hey, kid!” called the big woman with Miranda. I let my eyes flick toward her. She tossed me the length of high-pressure tubing that she must’ve been holding along her right leg. I hadn’t seen it behind Miranda.

  “Hey!” said Cady as I caught it. I cut at his head. He got his left arm up in time to block me, but I heard a bone break when I caught him just above the wrist.

  Cady swung the crowbar in a broad haymaker that would’ve cut me in half if it’d landed, blunt as the bar was. I stepped back and smashed his right elbow so his weapon went sailing into the trackway, sparking and bouncing on the packed gravel.

  I guess I could’ve stopped then—yard personnel were swarming around, most of them carrying a tool or a length of pipe. I had my blood up, though. Cady’d given me a chance to get back not just at him but at the way the world had gone in the past three months.

  I cracked him on the forehead with all the strength of my arm. He went down on his face, bleeding badly from the pressure cut.

  I moved back and hunched to suck in all the air I could through my mouth. People were talking—shouting, some of them. I could hear them, right enough, but it was like hearing the surf: There was a lot of noise, but my brain wasn’t up to making sense of it. I started to wonder if Cady had connected better with my head than I’d thought he had.

  The big woman walked up beside me and shouted, “All right, spacers! Two of you get this garbage out the gate and into the gutter, all right?”

  I straightened; I was all right now. “Wait!” I said. “He’s been injured.”

  “You got that right,” chuckled a man holding a ten-pound hammer. “Nice job, kid.”

  “Look,” I said, not sure how to say what I meant. For that matter, my brain wasn’t as clear as I’d like it to be. “He needs medical attention. This yard’s got a Medicomp, doesn’t it?”

  It must. Bergen and Associates were too big and successful not to.

  “Yes, bring him in,” Miranda said. “That’s all right, isn’t it, Master Mon?”

  “If you say so, Mistress,” said the man in a suit who’d come out after the fight started. “Tapley and Gerstall, get him into the unit.”

  He looked at me, friendly enough but sizing me up just the same. He added, “It looked to me like he was getting about what he deserved, though.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but I don’t want to kill him. I didn’t even want to fight him.”

  I’m out of a job. The sudden realization almost made me vomit. Knocking Cady out wouldn’t hurt me for getting another job particularly, but I’d had trouble enough getting in with Petersburg. Maybe being out of the news for three more months woul
d help this time.

  Men were hauling Cady inside to where the Medicomp was. I started to give the length of tubing back to the woman who’d loaned it to me, then realized the tip was bloody. I wiped it on the leg of my trousers—I’d have used Cady’s shirt if I’d thought about it soon enough—and handed it to her. “Thank you, ma’am,” I said.

  She chuckled. “I guess I’d have done more if it seemed like I needed to,” she said. “Which I sure didn’t.”

  “What’s all this about?” said the fellow Miranda had called Mon. He must be the boss, because most of the folks who’d come over to watch were going back to their work.

  “Sir, nothing, really,” I said. “We’re just here to pick up three High Drives for Petersburg Chandlery and, well, Cady took a swing at me because I was chatting with Mistress Dorst.” Which she wasn’t, but it was too late to change even if I’d known Miranda’s married name.

  “That’s right, Mon,” Miranda said. “Roy and I are old friends. Our mothers are cousins, you see.”

  Mon shrugged. “No business of mine, then.” He looked at the workmen still present and added, “Raskin, get this truck to Bay One and load it up. Weiler, Jackson, you give him a hand.”

  Then to me again, “You just sit for a bit, Master. Come into the office and we’ll find you some cacao—or a shot of something if you’d rather. I don’t want you driving until you’re doing better than you are right now.”