The Road of Danger Read online

  THE ROAD OF DANGER

  DAVID DRAKE

  Contents

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  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

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I use both English and metric weights and measures in the RCN series to suggest the range of diversity which I believe would exist in a galaxy-spanning civilization. I do not, however, expect either actual system to be in use in three thousand years. Kilogram and inch (et cetera) should be taken as translations of future measurement systems, just as I’ve translated the spoken language.

  Occasionally I think that I don’t really have to say that in every RCN book. It’s obvious, after all, isn’t it? But there’s a certain number of people to whom it isn’t obvious. They’ll write to “correct” me, and that gets on my nerves.

  The plots of my RCN novels often come from classical history. Ordinarily that means something I’ve found in a Greek historian whom I’ve been reading in translation. In the present case, however, I resumed reading the Roman historian Livy in the original. I found my situation in the disruption which followed the Battle of Zama and the surrender of Carthage to end the Second Punic War.

  One of the advantages in going back to primary — or at least ancient — sources is that the ancient historians mention things which modern histories ignore as trivial. They weren’t trivial to the people living them, and to me they often do more to illuminate the life of the times than do ambassadors’ speeches and the movements of armies.

  Northern Italy at the end of the third century BC was a patchwork of Roman colonies and allies, Celtic tribes recently conquered by Rome, and independent tribes, mostly Celtic. A man calling himself Hamilcar and claiming to be a Carthaginian raised a rebellion against Rome. In the course of it he sacked cities and destroyed a Roman army sent against him.

  Nobody was really sure where Hamilcar came from. Supposedly he was a straggler from one of the Carthaginian armies which passed through the region, but there was no agreement as to which army.

  There are two perfectly believable accounts of his defeat and death. They can’t both be true, which leads to the possibility that neither is true. All we know for certain is that Hamilcar disappears from the record and from history more generally.

  The point that particularly interested me was that the Roman Senate reacted by sending an embassy to Carthage, demanding that the Carthaginians withdraw their citizen under terms of the peace treaty. This makes perfect legal sense, though appears absurd in any practical fashion.

  Livy’s account got me thinking about the problems that the envoys would have had. The Romans were going to Carthage with demands which weren’t going to be greeted by their listeners with any enthusiasm.

  They had it easier, however, than the Carthaginians who were presumably tasked to proceed to the chaos in Northern Italy and corral Hamilcar. Whatever the Carthaginian people thought of the situation, they were in no position in 200 BC to blow off a Roman ultimatum. There’s no record of the Carthaginian response, but I believe they made at least some attempt to comply. Otherwise there would be more in the record.

  I decided that I could find a story in that. This is the story I found.

  — Dave Drake david-drake.com

  But if you come to a road where danger

  Or guilt or anguish or shame’s to share,

  Be good to the lad that loves you true

  And the soul that was born to die for you,

  And whistle and I’ll be there.

  — A. E. Housman

  More Poems, XXX

  CHAPTER 1

  Holm on Kronstadt

  Captain Daniel Leary whistled cheerfully as he and Adele Mundy turned from Dock Street onto Harbor Esplanade, walking from the Princess Cecile’s berth toward the three-story pile of Macotta Regional Headquarters. Daniel had every right to be cheerful: he and his crew had brought the Sissie from Zenobia to Cinnabar in seventeen standard days, a run which would have stretched a dedicated courier vessel. They had then — with the necessary orders and authorizations — made the run from Cinnabar to Kronstadt in eleven days more.

  The Sissie’s fast sailing meant that Admiral Cox could get his battleships to Tattersall in plenty of time to prevent the invasion which would otherwise lead to renewed war between Cinnabar and the Alliance. Neither superpower could resume the conflict without collapse: forty years of nearly constant warfare had strained both societies to the breaking point. In a very real sense, preventing war over Tattersall meant preventing the end of galactic civilization.

  Not a bad job for a fighting corvette. Pretty bloody good, in fact.

  “That’s “The Handsome Cabin Boy,” isn’t it?” asked Officer Adele Mundy. “The tune, I mean.”

  “Ah!” said Daniel with a touch of embarrassment; he hadn’t been paying attention to what he was whistling. “Not really the thing to bring into an admiral’s office, you mean? And quite right, too.”

  “If I had meant that . . . ,” Adele said. She didn’t sound angry, but she was perhaps a trifle more tart than she would have been with a friend if they hadn’t just completed a brutally hard run through the Matrix. “I would have said that. I was simply checking my recollection.”

  She pursed her lips as she considered, then added, “I don’t think anyone who could identify the music would be seriously offended by the lyrics. Although the record suggests that Admiral Cox doesn’t need much reason to lose his temper. No reason at all, in fact.”

  Daniel laughed, but he waited to respond until a pair of heavy trucks had passed, their ducted fans howling. The vehicles carried small arms which had been stored in the base armory while the ships of the Macotta Squadron were in harbor.

  As soon as the Sissie reached Kronstadt orbit, Daniel — through the agency of Signals Officer Mundy — had transmitted the orders he carried to the regional headquarters. Admiral Cox wasn’t waiting for the chip copy to arrive before he began preparing to lift his squadron off.

  “Cox does have a reputation for being, ah, testy,” Daniel said. “That probably has something to do with why he’s here in the Macotta Region when his record would justify a much more central command.”

  Navy House politics weren’t the sort of things a captain would normally discuss with a junior warrant officer, but Adele’s rank and position were more or less accidental. She was a trained librarian with — in Daniel’s opinion — an unequalled ability to sort and correlate information. If necessary, Daniel would have classed her as a supernumerary clerk, but because Adele could handle ordinary communications duties, she was signals officer of the Princess Cecile according to the records of the Republic of Cinnabar Navy.

  Three blue-and-white vans stencilled SHORE PATROL over broad vertical stripes tore past; the middle vehicle was even ringing its alarm bell. Adele followed them with her eyes, frowning slightly. “What are they doing?” she asked.

  “Carrying spacers picked up on the Strip to their vessels,” Daniel said. “I’m sure that the wording of the recall order justifies it, but there’s
no operational reason for that — ”

  He nodded after the speeding vans.

  “ — since it’s going to be forty-eight hours minimum before the majority of the squadron can lift off.”

  Coughing slightly, Daniel added, “I’ve found that people who enlist in the Shore Patrol like to drive fast. And also to club real spacers who may have had a little to drink.”

  He kept his voice neutral, but the situation irritated him. The Shore Patrol performed a necessary function, but fighting spacers — which Daniel Leary was by any standard — tended to hold the members of the base permanent parties in contempt. That contempt was doubled for members of the Shore Patrol, the portion of the permanent party whom spacers on liberty were most likely to meet.

  “I see,” said Adele. From her tone, she probably did.

  Daniel shivered in a gust of wind. In part to change the subject, he said, “If I’d appreciated just how strong a breeze came off the water at this time of day, I’d have worn something over my Whites. I don’t have anything aboard the Sissie that’s suitable for greeting admirals, but I guess I could’ve dumped my watch coat onto his secretary’s desk before I went through to his office.”

  He’d noticed the local temperature from the bridge when the Sissie landed, but it hadn’t struck him as a matter of concern. While he was growing up on the Bantry estate, he’d thought nothing of standing on the seawall during a winter storm. I’d have been wearing a lizardskin jacket, though, or at least a poncho over my shirt.

  Today Daniel wore his first-class dress uniform, since he was reporting to the Macotta Regional Commandant. Anything less would be viewed as an insult, even though technically his second-class uniform — his Grays — would be proper. As he had said, Admiral Cox had the reputation of not needing an excuse to tear a strip off a subordinate.

  “We’ve been aboard the Sissie so long,” Adele said, “that I’d forgotten how the wind cuts too. At least it’s not sleeting, and we don’t have to sleep in it.”

  She glanced toward him with a raised eyebrow. “At least I hope we won’t have to sleep in it,” she said. “Poverty provided me with many experiences which I would prefer not to revisit.”

  Daniel hoped Adele was being ironic, but it was just as easy to treat the comment as serious — as it might be. He said, “I don’t think we’ll be sleeping in a doorway tonight, but I may have Hogg bring us heavy coats before we walk back to the Sissie.”

  They’d reached the line of bollards that protected the front of the regional headquarters. The two guards at the main entrance wore battledress, and today their submachine guns weren’t for show. Unsmilingly, they watched Daniel and Adele approach; the alert must have made everyone on the base a little more jumpy than normal.

  Adele shrugged. “I did think that Admiral Cox might have sent a vehicle for us,” she said. “Or his Operations Section, at any rate, but perhaps they’re too busy dealing with their new orders to worry about courtesy toward the officer who brought those orders.”

  Adele did wear her Grays. They weren’t tailored as closely to her trim body as they might have been, so that the personal data unit along her right thigh and the pistol in the left pocket of her tunic were less obtrusive. There wouldn’t be a problem about that: formally, Signals Officer Mundy was a junior warrant officer on the corvette Princess Cecile, accompanying her commanding officer. As such she was beneath the notice of an admiral in the Republic of Cinnabar Navy. Informally . . .

  Daniel wasn’t sure that his friend even owned a set of Whites. When Adele deemed that a situation required formality, she wore civilian garments of the highest quality. By birth Adele was Lady Mundy of Chatsworth, head of one of the oldest and once most powerful families in the Republic. When she chose to make a point of it, no one doubted that the Mundys retained a great deal of power.

  The headquarters building was of yellow stone, not brick as Daniel had thought when he started down the esplanade. The corners, and the cornices above the windows on each of the three floors, were of a slightly darker stone than the walls. In all, very skilled workmanship had gone into a building which nonetheless had no more grace than a prison.

  Three officers wearing utilities but saucer hats with gold braid came out of the door in a hurry; one clutched a briefcase to her chest. A light truck with six seats in back pulled up beyond the bollards. They got into the vehicle and rode off. The tires of spun beryllium netting sang on the pavement.

  “Captain Daniel Leary, just landed in the Princess Cecile,” Daniel said to the Marine sergeant who seemed the senior man; both guards had relaxed when the strangers sauntered close enough to be seen as harmless by even the most paranoid observer. “Here to report to the regional commander.”

  “It’s to the right just inside the door,” the sergeant said, gesturing. “But we got a flap on here, so don’t be surprised if some clerk checks you in.”

  Daniel nodded pleasantly. It wasn’t the proper way to address a senior officer, but Marines weren’t in the same chain of command as spacers until you got up to the Navy Board — which was a very long distance from Kronstadt. The other guard pulled open the door for them, though the gesture was marred when two more officers came out, talking in excitement and taking only as much notice of Daniel and Adele as they did the line of bollards.

  The lobby must have been larger originally. A splendid crystal chandelier hung in line with the door, but a waist-high counter now stood a full ten feet out from where the right-hand wall must have been.

  A clerk under the eye of a senior warrant officer acted as gatekeeper to the several officers who wanted to get through. Beyond the counter were six consoles occupied by clerks.

  Across the bullpen was a closed door marked ADMIRAL AARON J COX in raised gold letters. The door of the office beside it was open; the commander seated at the desk there wore utilities. It was unlikely that a regional headquarters operated on a combat footing normally, so she must have changed out of her dress uniform as a result of the signal from the Princess Cecile.

  The commander got up when she saw Daniel enter and approach the counter. Instead of greeting him, she tapped on the admiral’s door and stuck her head in. After what must have been a few words, she turned and called across the room, “You’re Captain Leary?”

  Yes, which makes me your superior officer, Daniel thought. Aloud he said pleasantly, “Yes, Commander. My aide and I are bringing orders from Navy House.”

  Adele held the thin document case in her right hand; she didn’t gesture to call attention to it. Her face was absolutely expressionless, but Daniel could feel anger beat off her like heat from an oven.

  With luck, Admiral Cox would ignore Adele during the coming interview. With even greater luck, neither Cox nor his aide would manage to push her further. Daniel had the greatest respect for his friend’s self-control, but he knew very well what she was controlling.

  “Come on through, then,” the commander said. “The admiral has decided he can give you a minute. Casseli, let them both in.”

  The warrant officer lifted the flap. The three officers on this side of the counter watched the visitors with greater or lesser irritation.

  Adele smiled slightly to Daniel as she stepped through. “I’m reminding myself that there are fewer than twenty present,” she said in her quiet, cultured voice. “So there’s really no problem I can’t surmount, is there?”

  Daniel guffawed. The commander — the name on her tunic was Ruffin — glared at him.

  I wonder what she’d say, Daniel thought, if she knew that Adele meant she had only twenty rounds in her pistol’s magazine? Of course, she normally double-taps each target. . . .

  Admiral Cox’s office had high windows with mythological figures — Daniel wasn’t sure what mythology — molded onto the columns separating them; the pattern continued, though at reduced scale, along the frieze just below the coffered ceiling. The furniture was equally sumptuous, which made the admiral’s mottled gray-on-gray utilities seem even more out of plac
e. The regional command seemed to be at pains to demonstrate how fully alert they were, but changing uniforms wouldn’t have been one of Daniel’s operational priorities.

  Daniel took two paces into the room and saluted — badly. He was stiff with chill, and he’d never been any good at ceremony. “Captain Leary reporting with dispatches from Navy House, sir!” he said.

  The admiral’s return salute was perfunctory to the point of being insulting. He said, “They’re the same as what you signalled down, I take it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Daniel said. Adele was offering the case — to him, not to Admiral Cox. “I had been warned that time was of the essence, so we took that shortcut to save the hour or so before we could get the Sissie — the ship, that is — down and open her up.”

  “Navy House was quite right,” Cox said, as though the decision had been made on Cinnabar instead of on the Sissie’s bridge. He was a squat man whose hair was cut so short that it was almost shaved; he looked pointedly fit. “Hand them to Ruffin, then, and I’ll give you your orders.”

  “Sir!” Daniel said. He took the chip carrier from Adele, who hadn’t moved, and gave it to the smirking Commander Ruffin.