Some Golden Harbor Read online

  Councilor Knox's black aircar was certainly older than Daniel and not a great deal younger than Hogg, but the fifteen-mile flight from Charlestown had been as smooth as the Sissie in free-fall orbit. The driver was middle-aged and handled his vehicle sedately. Knox obviously didn't set much store by flashiness.

  Though Hogg insisted he could drive an aircar, the few times he'd gotten one into the air had ended in controlled crashes; more often he hadn't managed to lift off. He made up for his failure by complaining about anybody who actually could do the job.

  "Well, we're here now," Daniel said as they dropped from the thousand-foot height at which they'd been cruising. They spiraled down toward the landing ground in the hollow of the U-shaped building on the edge of the water. "And anyway, it gave us a chance to see how the land lies."

  Hogg sniffed. "It lies pretty bloody flat," he said, "and wet. The only thing I've seen yet that isn't marsh is rice paddies, and then the only difference's the green being brighter than what just grew. Though if we're going to be here awhile—"

  As the car descended, a flock of birds lifted from the reeds fringing both banks of the river. Their bodies were blackish green, lost in the vegetation, but each had two pairs of wings whose flight feathers were brilliantly white. Their sudden appearance was like watching glass shatter.

  "—I wouldn't mind snaring a few of that lot." He slid the forward window open. "Hey buddy? You in the funny hat. How do those birds taste, huh?"

  The driver wore a pink-and-black skullcap that hooked under his ears. The colors were those of the Knox family, Daniel supposed, though that was just a guess.

  "I have no idea, sir," he replied. "I suggest you ask some field hands, as low fellows of that sort are the ones who'd consider doing such a thing."

  Hogg guffawed. "Got me that time," he admitted. "Hey, you don't happen to play poker, do you?"

  "Your cards or mine?" said the driver. His tone was just as flat and respectful as it'd been when he first threw Hogg's insult back at him. Hogg guffawed again.

  The LeBlanc River meandered so broadly that Daniel hadn't always been able to see both ends of the loops during the aircar's straight flight from Charlestown. The Squadron Pool was formed by a low concrete dam across the channel proper and by its extension into a quay around the eastern edge of the impoundment. An overgrown chain-link fence closed the perimeter.

  There were destroyers in four of the five slips while the last held a large river barge and several smaller watercraft; two more destroyers were moored against the mud banks. One had been hauled partway into the reeds, presumably to keep it from sinking.

  The car flared to a hover, then settled onto the landing plaza. Puddles flashed briefly into spray before the driver shut his motors down. Faces appeared at several windows of the surrounding building; a moment later the door in the middle of the central section opened and three men came out. They wore blue jackets and white vests, though one man was still buttoning his. Daniel didn't know anything about Bennarian uniforms, but presumably these were something fancier than utilities.

  "Sirs?" said the last man through the door. He was in late middle age and missing the little finger of his left hand.

  "I'm Commander Daniel Leary of the RCN," Daniel said as he and Hogg got out, leaving the driver in the vehicle. "I have authorization from Councilor Waddell to examine your squadron here."

  Hogg stepped forward and gave the handwritten note to the man whose name was either Brast or Grast, depending on how the light struck the pin on his left breast pocket. One of the disadvantages of first class uniforms—one of many disadvantages—was that they didn't have pockets; when Daniel was wearing Whites, Hogg carried anything too big to slip into a cummerbund.

  "The RCN?" Grast/Brast said. "Cinnabar? Oh, sir, we're honored to meet you! I'm Basil Brast, the port commandant. Oh! Though—"

  His face fell. The two younger men were whispering together behind him; one scurried back into the building.

  "—I'm afraid you won't be very impressed by what we have to show you," Brast went on. "To tell the truth, things have been so quiet hereabouts the past ten years and more that Bennaria might as well not have ships."

  "From the way the appropriation's been going down," said the junior officer who'd remained with Brast, "the Council pretty much thinks that too."

  "That's not our place to say, Tenris!" Brast said sharply.

  "If I can just see the ships, I'd be much obliged," Daniel said. "Starting with the Sibyl, which I understand is operational?"

  "Well, yes-s-s . . .," Brast said. "But yes, come along, Commander. This is a great pleasure, meeting a Cinnabar officer like yourself!"

  He took Daniel into the administration building and down the central hallway. Men wearing baggy gray uniforms stood in doorways to watch.

  A grizzled old fellow saluted Alliance fashion, fingertips to brow and palm outward. Daniel returned it by reflex, then smiled mentally. At least there's one spacer in the Bennarian navy who can be expected to know what he's doing.

  "As for being operational," Brast said, "the Sibyl hasn't lifted in the past year. That's longer in Standard, fourteen months I think. We check her regular, I don't mean that, but—

  He pushed open the back door and nodded Daniel through; beyond were the concrete quay and the silent destroyers. Hogg followed them at a respectful two paces. He'd been looking in doorways as he went by with a blank smile.

  Brast gestured to the left, though Daniel already knew from Adele's data that the Sibyl was in the second slip. The Tenerife, the other potentially operational ship, was in the first.

  "But you know . . .," Brast resumed. "Things go wrong that don't show up till the thrusters fire."

  "Indeed I do," Daniel said, stepping from the concrete to the destroyer's boarding ramp. The familiar springiness beneath his boot brought a happy grin to his face. "To be honest, I'm surprised that the Council isn't more concerned to have the fleet in readiness. The Sailing Directions for Ganpat's Reach mention piracy as a problem."

  The Sibyl had been built on Pleasaunce only a decade before. The Fleet Dockyard had been accepting foreign commissions to keep its labor force together during an interval of peace between Cinnabar and the Alliance. Indeed, they'd probably been bidding against the construction yard at Harbor Three on Xenos.

  "I can't say to that, sir," said Brast, activating the vessel's main hatch from a faired-over switch plate. "There's some who claim that the Council, some of the Councilors anyhow, have come to other ways of dealing with pirates. But I wouldn't know."

  Tribute to the pirates, in other words, or simply the slave trade which the pirates found too profitable to harm by preying on Bennarian cargoes. As a naval officer Daniel thought that was a bad long-term strategy and as a man he found it a despicable one, but—

  "Well, that's not for me to judge either, Brast," he said aloud, showing to the commandant that they were both judging the matter and agreeing in their distaste for it.

  Ten years could be a long time in the life of a destroyer since they tended to be over-sparred. A hard-charging captain could strain not only the masts but the hull as well. That hadn't—that certainly hadn't—been the case with the Sibyl, but one bad landing could do as much damage as a year of throwing a ship through the Matrix without concern for the gradients between universes.

  The hatch rose without sticking, a quick and nearly certain way to prove the vessel was sound. Destroyers were long in relation to their beam, so any sort of twisting would make the main hatch bind and leak.

  The interior lights were on and the climate control system was running at low cycle. "I'm glad to see you keep her powered up," Daniel said, walking toward a companionway. There were two of the armored stairways here in the main entrance hold, Up and Down, and according to the Sibyl's plans there was another pair astern. Those would primarily serve the Power Room crew.

  All communication between decks was by steps. The stresses when a starship entered or left the Matrix were likely to
trap an elevator cage in its shaft, and the shock of a hard landing could do the same. What was true even for a merchant vessel was doubly so for a warship faced with higher acceleration, the recoil of its own weapons, and the impact of hostile ordnance.

  "Well, to tell the truth," Brast said, "we're running the ground facilities from the Sibyl's fusion bottle. The dirtside power plant went out last year. The lines won't carry enough to run the heavy equipment in the shops, but we haven't had any call for that. We were thinking about taking the bottle out of one of the old ships, maybe the Admiral Kalinin, for a replacement, but we haven't gotten around to it."

  Despite her greater tonnage, the Sibyl was a five-deck ship like the Princess Cecile; the destroyer's additional mass came from having half again the length with a slight increase in beam. She'd be quick as moonlight on the right heading, but a cack-handed captain could tear her in two. Daniel'd never served on a destroyer. . . .

  "Shifting a fusion bottle is a job and no mistake," Daniel said agreeably as he climbed through B Level to A.

  What he really thought was that a maintenance yard like this was equipped and intended to do just that sort of work. As a boy he'd helped Uncle Stacey change a fusion bottle by manpower, pulleys, and a jury-rigged shear legs because another ship was already in the small dry dock where all Bergen and Associates' power equipment was built.

  He grinned, sobered, and then smiled again as he thought of the gentle old man. He missed him, but so long as Uncle Stacey remained in Daniel's memory a part of him was still alive. Stacey lived in memory and in the skills he'd taught his nephew.

  The light at the top of the companionway was out, as were alternating banks of lights in the ALevel corridor. "Oh, dear," Brast murmured when he saw it.

  Daniel strode down the corridor toward the bridge. "It's probably just a dirty contact," he said. "An easy fix, I'm sure."

  It was the first maintenance failure he'd seen on the Sibyl; she was in much better shape than he'd counted on. It really was a trivial matter. He could probably troubleshoot it himself in half an hour with a borrowed electrical kit.

  He grinned broadly. And ideally with borrowed coveralls over my Whites.

  The bridge was similar to that of the Princess Cecile, though it followed the present Alliance fashion of placing the striker's jumpseat and screen to the right of the main display instead of on the same axis. Daniel brought the navigator's console live. The port commandant watched nervously; concerned that it might malfunction, Daniel supposed.

  The console responded quickly and as crisply as you could wish. Instead of pearly radiance the initial display was a bar spectrum, red at the base and shading upward to violet. Seating himself, Daniel rotated through the standard displays—navigation, maintenance, Power Room, Plot-Position Indicator, and finally to an attack board. Everything came up without hesitation.

  Someone was shouting below, the voice drifted unintelligibly up the companionway. Brast trotted to the hatch in the corridor and called back a reply as Daniel continued to examine the Sibyl's electronic heart.

  There were more red pips on the maintenance display than Daniel liked, but a quick, frowning assessment didn't find anything more serious than a leaking hatch seal in the Warrant Officers Day Room. Worst case, they could dog the internal hatch and leave the compartment open to vacuum.

  Now, if the Tenerife were only as in as good shape . . . or almost as good . . . or even just good enough to lift off and look threatening. With two destroyers whose crews were leavened by the Sissie's veterans, Daniel would be willing to fight a partly functional light cruiser manned by Pellegrinians. A bluff would probably be enough, after all.

  In all truth, he'd try it with one destroyer, though he wouldn't do that with any enthusiasm.

  Daniel glanced down the corridor. Brast stood stiffly in the corridor facing the companionway; whatever was happening wasn't good news so far as he was concerned.

  Daniel would deal with that situation when and if he had to. For now he brought up the stores status. Somewhat to his surprise, the food compartments were full or at least listed as full. Cutting corners on the quantity and quality of comestibles was a common fiddle for dishonest pursers and administrators, so it'd take a physical inventory to be sure. Still, there was at least a chance that the vessel had thirty days' rations aboard.

  Munitions, though. . . . Not so good.

  The magazine holding ammunition for the forward 10-cm turrets was full; the aft magazine was empty. The actual quantity was greater than a maximum load for the Princess Cecile, but it'd take work to shift enough of the charges sternward to enable the Sibyl's full eight-gun battery to fire. There wasn't a conveyor as there might've been on a vessel of greater beam, so it'd mean lines of spacers staggering between magazines with yokes or hand-trucks.

  "Brast, what in Hell's name do you think you're playing at!" bellowed the man who stepped out of the companionway. "And you there! Get off the bridge now or I'll have you arrested as a spy!"

  "Admiral, Councilor Waddell gave him permission," the port commandant said. He'd been standing at attention but stepped back when the newcomer shouted in his face.

  Daniel got up from the console, taking only enough time to switch the display back to the initial spectrum. So long as the unit wasn't shut down completely, Adele could enter the system and access all data. Though he'd already seen all he probably needed.

  "Do you think Waddell's the Admiral Commanding the armed squadron, Brast?" the newcomer said. "By Hell, do you think you are? I'm in charge and I decide who's allowed aboard my ships!"

  Daniel walked to join the other men. Half a dozen more, junior officers by the look of them, had followed the admiral from the companionway. Daniel stood politely erect in his Whites, but he very deliberately didn't come to attention.

  The plasma cannon were the Sibyl's defensive armament. For attack she had only sixteen missiles in her magazines. They were of the expensive dual-converter style that accelerated twice as fast as what he'd expected to find here in the boondocks, but that still wasn't much to fight a cruiser with.

  "Sir?" said Brast desperately. "He's from Cinnabar."

  "I know he is!" said the admiral turning to stare at Daniel. He was no more than five and a half feet tall, probably trim-looking on normal occasions but now disarrayed from running up three decks. His face was red with exertion and anger. "And Hell take Cinnabar too!"

  "I'm Commander Leary, RCN, sir," Daniel said calmly. "I'm here at the request of the Bennarian Council to advise—"

  "I don't care who you are!" the admiral said. His name tag read Wrenn, the name which Councilor Knox had mentioned during the meeting at Manco House. "Nobody has permission to board my ships unless I give it, and Hell take me if I'll give it to some weasel who thinks he can do as he pleases because he's R-bloody-CN!"

  "I assure you, sir—" Daniel said.

  "Don't assure me!" said Wrenn. "Get off my ship! Now!"

  Daniel nodded politely to the Bennarian officers. Wrenn's aides were huddled as closely together as sheep in a storm. Whatever they thought of the RCN, Daniel was pretty sure that they had doubts about denying Councilor Waddell's authority.

  "Good day, gentlemen," Daniel said. The aides jumped to either

  side to let him through the companionway hatch.

  Daniel had considered thanking Brast, but that would just get the fellow into worse trouble. He'd also considered asking about getting missiles from Bennarian stores for the Princess Cecile, but he'd rejected that even more quickly.

  Hogg followed Daniel down the companionway. He was singing "Never Wed an Old Man" in a low voice, but instead of "old man" it was coming out "'admiral."

  CHAPTER 8

  Charlestown Harbor on Bennaria

  The water taxi that brought Daniel and Hogg from Waddell House to the Sissie was a flat-bottomed skimmer driven by an air-screw astern. It was only marginally stable, extremely wet, and more than a little dangerous because the power plant was a nacelle cannibalized
from an air-cushion vehicle.

  The high-speed intake stream would've sucked off Daniel's saucer hat if he hadn't kept it on his lap. He could imagine a drunk who'd stood too close when the nacelle pivoted for a turn having worse problems than a lost hat.

  Half a dozen other watercraft, bumboats rather than taxis, were tied up to the starboard outrigger. As a safety precaution, locals weren't allowed aboard the corvette in harbor and the lower decks remained sealed in accordance with Daniel's orders. He'd given half the crew liberty, though, and the other half—save a minimal anchor watch—was free to trade with local entrepreneurs so long as they didn't leave the ship.

  The floating crib, an open-topped canvas shelter on a boat small enough to be rowed with a single set of oars, was stretching the point a trifle, but only one man left the Sissie at a time and that only by the length of the bow rope. Vesey'd been right to interpret the orders loosely. Spacers waiting in line greeted Daniel cheerfully as the taxi glided to a halt, and Plastin, a tech on guard duty in the entrance hatch, bent to give him a hand up.