Lt. Leary, Commanding Read online

  The exception, Tovera, stood in the bow. Her left arm was locked at an angle before her; across the crooked elbow rested her right hand holding a pistol.

  The ship slid onto the islet, pushing over the amber trees and shattering the hardened sap. The louder crash was the vessel’s lower hull breaking on the concrete retaining wall. Three men wearing camouflage capes were running across ground covered with flowers like a carpet of tiny flags. The assassins’ primary weapon, a bipod-mounted plasma cannon, rested on the ground behind them. They couldn’t fire it again till the white-hot barrel had cooled from the previous discharge, and they showed no signs of planning to use the pistols each waved in his hand.

  Tovera shot—with a very compact submachine gun, not a pistol, and how had she gotten it through the detection screen at the entrance? Despite the light-scattering garments and the fact that the boat was breaking up beneath her, Tovera’s first burst sent the most distant assassin onto his face with his arms flapping.

  Tovera stepped to the islet just before the impact. The posts supporting the vessel’s canopy flexed till they cracked, slamming her in the middle of the back with the whole structure, frame and fabric together. She fell under a pile of debris.

  The remaining assassins reached a skiff nestled onto the shore across the islet; on that side, the branches of the amber trees hadn’t been pleached together to form a continuous wall. One of the men settled behind the controls while the other turned, aiming toward the pursuit just as Daniel and Adele squelched onto the islet.

  Tovera’s weapon crackled from the tangled wreckage. Its electromotive coils accelerated pellets up the short barrel at several times the speed of sound. The gunman fell backward, dropping his pistol. The driver slumped on his face, half out of the skiff as it rose on the balanced static charges induced in the ground and its own hull. The pilot’s weight dragged the little craft into a slow circle like a horse guided by a lunge line.

  Daniel ran toward the fallen assassins. Adele instead waded back into the water. The rest of the flotilla clogged the channel, some vessels halting on reversed thrust while others chose to ground on the fern-covered islet to the right.

  Delos Vaughn hunched below the retaining wall where undamaged sap still provided a curtain from sight. Tredegar stood in the middle of the canal, his eyes wild and his mouth open though speechless.

  There’s my purse. Despite the violence, the water remained clear except for swirls of weed and air bubbles. The channel was concrete colored to give it the appearance of mud.

  Adele raised the purse and took the data unit from it. Pray to whatever Gods there were that its seals are as good as they’re supposed to be.

  Tredegar came to his senses from watching Adele’s organized action. He sloshed toward the nearest of the undamaged boats, the ten-seater which had brought Daniel and Adele into the Gardens. Shawna and Elinor stood in the bow, watching events with perfect aplomb while everyone else on the craft lay flat on the deck.

  “Hogg, don’t let Tredegar get away!” Adele cried. It wasn’t an order. She didn’t have authority to order Daniel’s servant to do anything, as Hogg would be the first to tell her if provoked.

  He wasn’t the man to ignore a warning, though. Hogg turned in the cockpit and judged his distance as the aide splashed past him. Ten feet of weighted line shimmered from Hogg’s hand and wrapped around Tredegar’s arm and throat. The aide fell backward into the water.

  Adele stamped ashore again, clumsy from the weight of water trapped in her pant legs. The suit Tovera picked for her had gathered cuffs, a matter that Adele hadn’t paused to consider when she put the garment on. Clothes were something she wore as a social or environmental necessity, not out of any intrinsic interest they had for her.

  If she had to do it again, she’d specify drain holes at wrist and ankles. Though how the damned fabric could let water in so easily and then hold it there like a set of fluid leg irons was beyond her.

  An alarm had been given—many alarms, judging from the number of sirens she could hear at varying distances. Ignoring them, ignoring also the shouts and bustle of people around her, Adele walked over to the nearest of the dead men.

  There were three holes in the back of his neck, so close together that she could have covered them with her thumb. Tovera was already there, going through the man’s pockets. Daniel had switched off the skiff’s power, bringing it down to the ground again. He was searching the other two assassins.

  Adele took the pistol from the dead man’s hand and thrust it through her waist sash. Tovera looked at her. “He doesn’t have any identification, but he’s carrying a thousand florins.”

  “They’re probably just local thugs,” Adele said. She took one of the peacock-hued hundred-florin coins Tovera had fanned on the ground beside the man’s purse. “Anyway, I don’t need identification if the money’s there.”

  Adele had brought up her personal data unit as she spoke. Her wands flickered, entering the coin’s serial number into the records of the Central Bank of the Republic.

  The database was supposed to be restricted, of course. Because Adele was using the Ministry of Defense computer for access, she was probably getting the information faster than one of the bank directors could have done after entering a series of codes and passwords. Even so, a search so enormous took some time.

  She looked at the submachine gun in Tovera’s hand. The barrel was only four inches long and the few pounds the weapon weighed weren’t enough to stabilize it when fired full automatic—Adele would have thought, barring the evidence of the corpse before her.

  “How did you get that through the screening at the gate?” she demanded.

  Tovera’s expression became guarded. “My case projects the image of a data unit and other ordinary office equipment,” she said. “There are ways to defeat it, but none that these civilians would have available.”

  Carefully, her eyes never leaving Adele’s, she added, “I’m sorry, mistress. I should have carried your weapon through the screen with me.”

  Adele thought about the mindset that was always prepared in case of an assassination attempt at an innocent party. She could learn to live that way, she supposed, but it seemed to her that the alternative to life was preferable if such paranoia were necessary.

  She smiled. “Not at all, Tovera,” she said. “I think I’m better off delegating those concerns to you.”

  A number of the party guests were standing around the plasma cannon, discussing it in amazed tones. The bolt had shrivelled a broadening wedge of vegetation from beneath the muzzle to the edge of the islet. The iridium barrel was no longer glowing, but any of the spectators who decided to touch the metal were going to cook their flesh to the bones.

  Adele smiled grimly. Not so very long ago she wouldn’t have had any more experience of a plasma cannon than did any other Academic Collections staff member. Being caught in the Kostroma rebellion had certainly broadened her horizons.

  Adele’s display shifted into the answer she’d expected. She looked up, hoping to catch Daniel’s eye. He held two pistols by the barrel in his left hand and was talking to a young man in the beige uniform of the Militia, the national police. Despite the flashing lights and the downdraft, Adele hadn’t noticed the Militia aircar landing beside the assassins’ skiff.

  Delos Vaughn walked up on shore, surrounded by servants and several aides. One of the latter had taken off her taffeta cape and was toweling Vaughn’s legs with it. Adele watched her for a moment, blinked, and went back to the display feeling queasy. The Mundys hadn’t encouraged that sort of abasement from their retainers; though when she let herself remember, there had been times …

  She shook herself. She didn’t want to think about the night her father won the race for Treasurer of the Republic and a dozen women, wives and daughters of his retainers, had buffed the gilded body of his aircar with their long hair. That was what they did for him in public. For herself, she didn’t want anybody to offer her honors that she would never grant to
another living person.

  “You there!” Vaughn said. “What in heaven are you doing with Cornelius? Let him go at once!”

  Everybody turned at the shout. Hogg was holding Tredegar upright, trussed by the neck and—behind his back—his wrists. An aide stepped forward.

  “No, Tovera!” Adele shouted.

  Hogg’s hands were occupied with a prisoner who was conscious but noosed too tightly to be able to stand without help. He kicked the aide squarely in the crotch, doubling her up with a scream that a man in a similar situation couldn’t have bettered.

  It could have been worse. Tovera had turned also. Adele wasn’t absolutely sure that her shout would’ve been enough to keep the pale woman from killing Vaughn’s aide with the same wasplike skill that had eliminated the three assassins.

  “But this is Cornelius Tredegar,” Vaughn said, no longer speaking with an implicit threat in his voice. “He’s one of my oldest associates. He came into exile with me, for God’s sake!”

  “He knew about the ambush,” Daniel said, walking over and drawing the policeman with him. The fellow’s partner was still in the aircar, calling for additional help. Another Militia aircar had landed, but its personnel were fending off the crush of velvet-clad Gardens employees gabbling about the damage to the settings. “If he didn’t plan it, then he was helping whoever did.”

  “Tredegar was the paymaster,” Adele said, drawing everyone’s eyes from Daniel to her. They were quite a pair, dripping wet and muddy besides. “He withdrew six thousand florins from his account at the Divan branch of Stevenage Trust ten days ago. He must have paid the assassins the second half of the money just this morning, because they’re still carrying it.”

  “Mistress?” the policeman said, glancing at the coins beside the dead man’s purse. “How do you know that?”

  An enclosed twelve-place aircar with Militia markings wallowed to a landing at the edge of the islet, smashing another section of the amber wall. Daniel winced though he didn’t say anything. Almost half the carefully formed circuit of trees had been snapped off or uprooted.

  Adele visualized a similar battle—quite small, as battles go—taking place within the precincts of the Academic Collections on Blythe. Her lips tightened. She knew how Daniel felt.

  “Large coins are all registered with the central bank,” Adele said. “Every time they pass through a bank, the transaction is recorded. The most recent movement of these—”

  Well, at least the one she’d checked; this wasn’t the time to be overprecise.

  “—was to Tredegar here in a withdrawal he made personally.”

  Policemen wearing body armor and carrying carbines spilled out of the van in a hectoring wave, pushing through the guests in evident disregard for military uniforms and indicia of wealth. “What’s going on here?” said the officer in charge, bellowing at the patrolman standing between Adele and Daniel.

  The officer noticed Tredegar. Though his face was hidden behind the visor, there was no doubt of the angry exasperation in his voice as he snapped, “What’s this? What the hell is this?”

  “Sir, he’s a prisoner,” the regular patrolman said, standing up to a faceless bully who was doubtless also his superior in rank. “He appears to be behind the attack that—”

  “Cut him loose!” the officer said. “Secure him with legal restraints.” One of his subordinates drew a knife whose blade extended as the hilt came free of the clip.

  There was a flicker in the air. The knife hand jerked upward, bound to the policeman’s shoulder by a loop of the same weighted cord as had caught and held Tredegar. The line had two ends, after all.

  Hogg grinned with absolutely no humor at all. “What the—” the officer repeated, his tone an amalgam of anger and amazement.

  Daniel stepped close to Hogg, his back to the Militia officer. “Hogg,” he said, “release the prisoner immediately into the custody of the civil authorities! You know how Speaker Leary will complain if he has to use his influence again to get his son’s servant out of jail!”

  Daniel would never have used his father’s name that way for anything less serious than this incident was rapidly becoming. If the officer had acted as he might have tried in the full arrogance of his power—

  Adele was again struck by the way Tovera vanished into the background under any circumstances. You would have thought that at least one member of the riot squad would have noticed the pale blonde holding a submachine gun down beside her thigh.

  —then anything might have happened.

  “Sure, Master Leary,” Hogg said, releasing Tredegar and giving him a gentle push in the direction of the policeman who’d planned to cut him loose. “What’s twenty piastres worth of fishing line and a couple pebbles?”

  “I don’t mind you cutting the cord,” Daniel said to the officer in an innocently helpful tone, “but do be aware that it’s sea fishing line which we use in the ocean off Bantry. It’s boron monocrystal, and the tug of your man’s knife blade on a thin strand would very likely have strangled the prisoner if Hogg hadn’t stopped him.”

  Daniel’s instinct made him step between Hogg and the chance of lethal danger. That’s not how Tovera would have saved her colleague. And it’s not what Adele would have done either, if she’d still had her pistol.

  Three riot policemen began unwrapping Tredegar and their fellow. After a moment, they all flipped up their visors.

  “I still can’t believe …” Vaughn said, though the way his voice trailed off indicated that actually he was indeed beginning to believe. “Cornelius, you wouldn’t betray me?”

  “He wasn’t planning to have you killed, Delos,” Mistress Zane said scornfully. “You’re his golden goose—so long as you ignore your heritage and stay here on Cinnabar! The little wretch planned to kill me and blame it on your niece and Nunes.”

  Almost everybody was looking at Zane. Adele saw Hogg grin broadly as he glanced at the prisoner he’d just surrendered. Tredegar’s right wrist was now attached to a policeman’s harness by a flexible restraint. He took a handkerchief from his breast pocket with his left hand and put it to his mouth.

  It’s probably the best result.

  “Casdessus, get this one into the van,” said the officer, raising his own shield. His face was surprisingly delicate; much of his apparent bulk must have been the armor. “We’ll hold here till the investigative squad arrives, then—”

  Tredegar’s cheeks flushed bright red. Blood spurted from his nose and ears; his limbs went slack and he fell, all but the arm still tethered to the policeman’s harness. The Militia officer jumped back, but blood still splashed his trouser legs and his right boot.

  “I figured he’d do that, so I kept him tied up,” Hogg said to the officer in a conversational voice. “It’s a real education to watch a city professional like you work, Captain.”

  More sirens were approaching. Adele sat on the ground and brought up her data unit again. She didn’t want to waste more time here, and Daniel almost certainly had things he should be doing instead of discussing with a series of officious bureaucrats a matter that was already closed. The message she was sending to Admiral Anston’s office might bring a quick end to the irritation.

  And if it didn’t, the copy to a site Mistress Sand used for confidential dispatches certainly would.

  Chapter Eight

  Lt. Daniel Leary sat at the command console in the middle of the Princess Cecile’s bridge. In Kostroman service the console had been fixed facing the bow; now it would rotate 360 degrees in accordance with the most modern RCN practice, so that the captain could watch what was happening down the axis of C Level by dimming his holographic display to a fifty-percent mask.

  Pasternak, the chief engineer—new to the corvette, but a man with an excellent record both on paper and in the opinion of Sissies who’d served under him on other hulls—came up from A Level. The smile he wore on the companionway faded as he turned toward the bridge, facing Daniel at last with an expression of gray concern.

/>   “Captain,” he called across the bustle of the bridge, “I’ve a full crew and the stores are catalogued, but I don’t vouch for the quality of either till we’ve had time to work up properly.”

  “Very good, Mr. Pasternak,” Daniel said. “As it chances, all but three of your crew have served with me before so I think I with honesty can vouch for them to you. As for the sealed stores, we’ll trust the warehouse inspection system till we have reason to doubt it—and we’ll raise holy Hell if there is reason, right?”

  Pasternak grinned. “They’re a prime lot, sir,” he said. “I’m honored you wanted me aboard to run things hullside. But I didn’t want to sound, you know, too confident before you’d seen me in action.”

  “Understood, Pasternak,” Daniel said. “I expect we’ll both be pleased with the relationship when the Sissie pays off the next time.”

  Daniel’s display was running a crew list, an equipment status report, and a schematic of the Princess Cecile which highlighted mechanical changes in a red that faded through shades of orange with time. This last showed that a dorsal airlock had just cycled. Through the hologram Daniel could see Ellie Woetjans, timing the return from topside of a section of the port watch wearing rigger’s suits.

  “Lamsoe!” the bosun bellowed. “Lock that Goddamned helmet down or you can see how you like being derated for the tour!”

  “I’m going to check the alignment of Number Three thruster, sir,” Pasternak said, already backing toward the companionway. “We may have to readjust it after the shakedown run, though.”

  Betts, the chief missileer, was new to the Princess Cecile also. He turned from the attack console and said, “As ordered, sir, we’re carrying the tubes loaded and a full twenty reloads. There’s no guarantees short of launching them, of course, but I’d bet my life that all twenty-two’ll function clean as a simulation.”