In the Stormy Red Sky Read online

  Hogg was rustic, all right, but a variety of concealed pockets were sewn into his baggy garments. On Bantry the pockets were for poached game; now they hid a variety of weapons, in case somebody on a distant world thought he'd make trouble for the young master. The man who'd regularly snapped the necks of cute furry animals for his dinner had even less compunction about dealing with wogs who got in the way of a Leary.

  And though Hogg was likely to be direct, there was nothing simple about his mind. Sharpers who thought they'd clean the rube out in a poker game learned that very quickly.

  Mistress Heather Kolb, the wife of Bantry's overseer, marshalled her paired choruses so that they faced the dais rather than the crowd. She'd told Daniel that the estate's youths and maidens—if they were maidens, then things had changed since Daniel was a youth at Bantry—had begged to appear at the young master's promotion ceremony.

  Daniel had been disinherited when he broke with his father. He wasn't any kind of master now, but he was still a Leary, and he knew the tenants of Bantry would've been crushed had he snubbed them. He'd granted their wish, but from the terrified faces they raised to him, they'd have been much happier cleaning offal from the estate's fish-processing plant.

  Admiral Anston, who'd been Chief of the Navy Board until his heart attack, shuffled toward Daniel from the group of retired officers at the end of the dais. Daniel felt a twinge to see with what difficulty the old man moved.

  Everyone in the RCN respected Anston, perhaps the finest chief who'd ever blessed the service. Daniel had met him a few times one-on-one. He didn't claim to know the admiral well, but he'd known him well enough to feel personal as well as professional regret at Anston's ill health.

  "Any notion of what's holding up the show, Leary?" Anston said. "I told them I didn't want a bloody chair here on the stage, but I'm half regretting that now."

  "Sir, I'll get you a chair at once!" said Daniel in horror.

  "You bloody won't," said Anston forcefully. "But I'll put a hand on your shoulder if I may. Old shipmates together, you know."

  "Sir, I'm honored," Daniel said. He didn't add flourishes to the words; the truth didn't need embellishment.

  The older man let himself sag against Daniel's arm; he was as light as a bird. Illness had melted away his flesh and turned his ruddy complexion sallow. Daniel thought of repeating his offer of a chair, then swallowed the unintended insult and said, "I believe they're waiting for two more senators to arrive, sir. Ah, I believe this was some of my sister's doing."

  Anston laughed with unexpected good humor. "Bloody politicians, eh, lad?" he said. "But maybe it'll do us some good in the Navy Appropriation. I know the Learys too well to ignore their judgment when it comes to politics."

  He coughed. "No offense meant."

  "None taken, sir," said Daniel. "But that isn't me, you know."

  "Pull the other one, Leary!" Anston said, glaring at Daniel like a sickly hawk. "Yes, you're a fighting spacer, but you're a bloody politician too or you wouldn't be here. And don't you think I'm the one to know a man can be both?"

  Daniel found himself grinning. "Well," he said. "Thank you, sir."

  Mistress Kolb slashed her baton down and up three times with as much determination as if she were beating a rat to death in her pantry. The last stroke was toward the male chorus, which dutifully responded, "Mighty Cosmos, all enclosing, filled with worlds and peoples bold. . . ."

  Anston bent close to Daniel's ear. "Who're the liberty suits on the gantry? They're not your crew, are they?"

  "As You wax and wane eternal, one stands out of all You hold—"

  "No sir," said Daniel. "They're the shipyard staff. My uncle Stacey believed in hiring old spacers where he could, saying that they knew their way around a ship better than any landsman and knew the cost of bad workmanship to the folks who'd have to repair it in the Matrix. We've just followed his lead."

  "Cinnabar, the crown of all worlds," sang the youths. "Cinnabar, Your chosen world."

  "And it's not charity!" Daniel said, with perhaps a touch more vehemence than was helpful to being believed. "An experienced spacer is often more use in a shipyard than a landsman who has all his limbs still."

  "I never heard complaints about the work we contracted out to the Bergen yard, boy," said Anston softly.

  Liberty suits were RCN utilities decorated with embroidered patches and, along the seams, colored ribbons bearing the names of the various ports the spacer had called on. A senior warrant officer like Woetjans went on liberty in gorgeous motley, an object of admiration to all who saw her.

  The Milton's crew were in unadorned utilities for this ceremony, but the yard personnel could wear what they pleased. If that was liberty suits, then they'd earned the right. The peg legs, pinned-up sleeves, and eye patches were proof of that.

  And they were bloody good workmen!

  Mistress Kolb poised her baton. It was a sturdy thing, suitable for battering an opponent into the floor; Daniel wondered fleetingly just how she'd rehearsed her choristers. She cut it down, toward the girls. They caroled, "Fate, Thou Who worlds rules, never bending . . ."

  Admiral Anston swayed. Daniel put his hand on the older man's waist, taking more of his weight. Anston muttered a curse, but he got his strength back and straightened.

  "I never let the bloody politicians stop me before," he said. "That isn't going to change now."

  "Fixed Your course, to triumph tending . . . ," sang the girls. The brunette on the left end had a remarkable pair of lungs in a remarkable chest; Daniel remembered her elder sister well.

  Daniel smiled. He supposed he and Anston looked odd, gripping one another in the middle of a crowd waiting for something to happen, but the two of them were the only folk here who could do as they pleased without people looking askance. Daniel wore only his Cinnabar decorations, not the gaudy trinkets he'd been given by foreign governments. Even so, Anston alone of the officers present had a more impressive chestful of medals.

  "Cinnabar, the crown of all worlds," sang the girls. "Cinnabar, Your chosen world."

  Anston turned slightly to look at the spacers lining the Milton's hull and yards. "You've got a full crew, or the next thing to it," he said approvingly. "Volunteers, I shouldn't wonder."

  The joined choruses were praying that Fate and the Cosmos would continue to bless the youth of Cinnabar with purity and their elders with wisdom and peace. It was all silly if you thought about it. Daniel had been a youth recently and a senator's son all his life; he had no high expectations of purity, of wisdom, or certainly—he was also an RCN officer, after all—of peace.

  But the "Festival Hymn" struck him much the way each fresh sight of the Matrix did: it rang a chord echoing deep in his heart. Call it childish superstition or patriotism or just the urgent wonder of the not-yet-known—it was there, and Daniel was glad for its presence.

  "Yes sir, volunteers," Daniel said, grinning with rightful pride. Spacers wanted to serve with Captain Leary. "The change in regulations permitting spacers to follow the officer of their choice had a good effect on the Milton's recruitment."

  Anston shuddered in what after a bad moment Daniel realized was laughter, not a coughing fit. "Vocaine didn't have much choice," Anston said, swallowing the last of a chuckle. "Every successful officer in the RCN was on him to stop locking their crews up between commissions and parceling them out to whichever ship was short; which all ships are, we don't have enough spacers. He may dislike you, Leary, but not even the Chief of the Navy Board can ignore what school chums like James of Kithran are telling him."

  "It worked out well for me," Daniel said mildly. He wouldn't brag to Anston, and anyway he didn't have to.

  He cleared his throat and added, "I was a little surprised, because, well, we both know that the Milton's an oddball ship. We know it and every spacer on Cinnabar knows it. And I couldn't promise them loot, not on this commission. But they still came in to volunteer."

  The male chorus boomed out the names of the many worlds f
rightened by Cinnabar's armed might. The women answered with a similar catalogue of worlds which had embraced Cinnabar's mercy and protection and thus were being guided to peace and prosperity.

  Daniel had seen a good deal of how Residents from the central bureaucracy in Xenos governed planets which had fallen under Cinnabar's control; the reality was less idyllic than the "Hymn" would have it. Nonetheless, Cinnabar's rule was greatly preferable to the system of organized rapine by which Guarantor Porra's minions administered members of the Alliance of Free Stars. Politics and life are the art of the possible.

  "Oddball?" repeated Anston. "A bloody stupid design, I'd call it. Four eight-inch guns instead of eight six-inch on the same hull means you don't have either the coverage or the rate of fire to deal with incoming missiles. Sure, an eight-inch packs a wallop when it hits, but three or four six-inch bolts do more good anywhere but at long range. And you shouldn't be burning out your tubes at long range anyway."

  "Yes sir, as far as defensive use goes," said Daniel, being very careful not to let his tongue get away with him. The Milton's my ship, or next thing to it! He coughed. "But eight-inch bolts are very effective against other ships. As I know well, having been on the receiving end of them."

  The admiral laughed again. "Sorry, Leary," he said, "sorry. I guess you'd make a garbage scow look like a useful warship if you took her up against the Alliance. And we have our share of peacetime designs, too. But as for spacers joining you—"

  He glanced up at the cruiser's yards, then met Daniel's eyes again.

  "I know you didn't promise them loot, but they're certain that Captain Leary knows what he's doing and knows how to take care of his crews. And besides, boy, they know how lucky you are and probably figure you'll find them loot besides. Which is what I think too, by the Gods!"

  "Sir . . . ," said Daniel. He paused to organize his thoughts. "Sir, I appreciate your confidence, but we'll be shepherding a senator to the Veil as an ambassador. As I'm sure you know. We won't see action, let alone gather up prizes, if we do our job correctly. Which I certainly intend to do."

  There was a bustle beyond the raised windows of the shipyard office. Looking into the shadowed darkness from this low angle, Daniel could only guess that the missing senators might at last have arrived.

  The workmen on the gantry had a better view of the interior, however. In the center of the trestle stood the man who'd been Lieutenant Mon when he served under Daniel on the Princess Cecile. Mon was a skilled and methodical officer, but a run of bad luck had gained him the reputation of being a jinx. That doomed his chance of success as a ship's captain, whether in the RCN or the merchant service, but he'd proven an ideal manager for Bergen and Associates while Daniel pursued his naval career.

  Mon's reserve commission gave him the right to the Dress Whites he wore today, though they bulged at every seam; nobody had let out his set with the skill Miranda had lavished on Daniel's. He'd chosen to wear his uniform for the same reason his workmen were in liberty suits: this was the RCN's day.

  Three serving officers came down the outside stairs from the yard offices. The last was Captain Britten, the deputy head of the RCN's Personnel Bureau; Daniel assumed the male lieutenant commander and the female lieutenant preceding him were aides from the bureau. They made their way toward the dais as briskly as the crowd could part before the aides' crisp orders.

  Mon raised his arms and snapped, "Ready!" in a carrying tone. Then he dropped his arms and shouted, "Hurrah for Mister Leary!"

  "Hurrah for Mister Leary!" the yard staff bellowed in answer. Obviously they'd rehearsed this.

  The cheer silenced the crowd like a trumpet call. For a moment the chorus of girls sang piercingly of fruitful lands and fecund seas; then Mistress Kolb chopped her baton down. The assembled flower of Bantry bowed low to Daniel, their faces flushed and beaming. Turning, they bounded off the quay with a cheerful enthusiasm that made a striking contrast with their stiff, terrified approach.

  The delegation from Navy House passed between the two choruses. The lieutenant commander handed a ribbon-tied scroll to Britten; then both aides halted, leaving the captain to take the single step onto the dais alone.

  Britten transferred the scroll to his left hand, then came to attention facing Admiral Anston. He threw a much sharper salute than Daniel would ever have been able to do. It was unexpected and completely appropriate.

  Anston no longer had an active commission, but he was largely responsible for the RCN's present strength. Britten, who'd spent much of his career as a Navy House bureaucrat, was well aware of his former chief's importance.

  "A pleasure to see you again, Admiral," Britten said. "Ah . . . would you care to say a few words? There's a directional microphone upstairs—"

  He gestured with his chin toward the yard office.

  "—feeding the loudspeakers. I'll just signal them to aim it at you."

  "Well, to tell the truth, Darwin," Anston said, "I talked to my friend Vocaine last night and he's authorized me to deputize for him. I hope you don't feel that I'm stepping on your toes."

  "By the Gods, sir!" Britten said, holding out the scroll. "You certainly are not."

  Anston untied the document. He was standing unsupported, which made Daniel's eyes narrow with concern. For the moment at least he seemed as solid as a bollard. Taking a broad-nibbed stylus from his sleeve—Dress Whites didn't have pockets—he said, "Give me your back as a table, Darwin."

  Britten obediently turned and hunched slightly to provide a slanted writing surface. Anston crossed out the signature of Klemsch, Secretary to the Navy Board, and wrote his own above it.

  "All right," he muttered, putting the stylus away as Britten scuttled to the side.

  Anston looked at the yards of the Milton, solid with spacers, then faced the crowd. Britten pointed toward the office and swung his finger toward Anston before dropping his hand to the side.

  "Fellow spacers!" Anston said. The new speakers on both sides of the office boomed back his words, but his unaided voice was stronger and steadier than it'd been when he was talking to Daniel. "Fellow spacers, senators, and citizens of Cinnabar!"

  Daniel grinned without intending to. It was typical of Anston that he'd give spacers pride of place over members of the Senate. He probably would've been more politic if he were still in office, but as a private citizen he could make his personal preferences known.

  Anston waved the crackling document to the crowd. It was real parchment, impressed with two red wax seals from which fluttered a blue ribbon and a white ribbon.

  "This is no longer my duty," Anston said, "but I'm glad to say that I find it a great pleasure."

  Spreading the document with both hands and moving it slightly outward to where his eyes could focus comfortably, he read, "By the powers vested in me by the Senate, I hereby appoint Daniel Oliver Leary to the rank and authority of Captain in the Navy of the Republic of Cinnabar—"

  Hogg cheered like a boar challenging the world. The Bantry contingent joined with enthusiasm, followed by almost all the other civilians at ground level. Madame Dorst started to cheer also, but Miranda laid her fingertips over her mother's mouth to shush her.

  Daniel held himself at attention, blushing with embarrassment for what his friends had done. Anston looked nonplussed for a moment; he'd probably never attended a promotion ceremony at which many of the spectators were civilians who didn't know the drill.

  When the noise died down, he resumed, "The rank of captain, as I say, his duties to commence with the reading of this order. This is signed by Darwin Britten, Captain, Deputy Chief of the Bureau of Personnel, and countersigned by Admiral Eldridge Vocaine, President of the Navy Board, by George Anston, his deputy for this purpose."

  Anston let the parchment roll itself up and handed the scroll to Daniel. "Captain," he said, "allow me to be the first to give you the salute in your new rank."

  He shot his right hand to his brow, wincing as his arm rose above shoulder level. Nonetheless, he completed the
salute.

  Daniel returned it, his eyes blurring with tears. This was all quite improper: admirals don't initiate an exchange of salutes with junior officers. It was the greatest honor anyone had ever paid him.

  People were babbling and cheering. Captain Britten helped to support Anston, moving him back from the crush of folk mounting the dais to congratulate Daniel.

  Hogg bumped Daniel from the side. "Hold your bloody arms still, young master!" he said. "Else I'm likely to put one of these pins through your wrist while I give you your new stripes. And won't you look silly then, all blood over your white uniform?"

  "What?" said Daniel. "Oh, sorry, Hogg."

  He held both forearms out from his body while his servant pinned a narrow gold stripe around the right sleeve above the two broad stripes of a commander. The Milton's crew cheered from the yards like a choir of hoarse, profane angels.