The Road of Danger-ARC Read online

  He wasn’t sure why Tovera was driving while Hogg sat beside her in the front seat; presumably it was something the two of them had worked out. Hogg liked to drive, but nobody—his master included—wanted to ride with him a second time. Driving gave Hogg great pleasure, though, and Daniel loved as well as valued the man. Hogg was his servant, certainly; but he was also Daniel’s father in the non-biological sense.

  “Kronstadt doesn’t have formal diplomatic representation with the Alliance,” Adele said, her eyes on the display she was manipulating. Daniel didn’t imagine that what she was looking at had anything to do with what she was saying: the ride to Sattler’s warehouse was simply an opportunity to give him background while she delved much deeper herself. “An honorary consul is a private citizen with an Alliance connection of some sort. He helps Alliance citizens who are having problems. Our External Bureau calls the equivalent official a consular agent.”

  “He helps spacers who’ve been rolled and missed their ships?” Daniel said. “That sort of thing?”

  Adele shrugged without, Daniel noticed, affecting the way her control wands moved. She claimed the angle and position of the wands provided her with quicker, subtler control of her holographic display than any other form of input device.

  Daniel believed her, but the only other people he had seen using wands were Adele’s protégés Cazelet and Cory. From their expressions as they struggled, they didn’t get the results Adele did.

  “Yes, usually spacers,” she said toward the blur of light that coalesced at the point where her own eyes focused, “but it can be any Alliance citizen who’s been robbed or has some other kind of legal problem. From information in the regional computers, I believe I can find a great deal more in Master Sattler’s own files.”

  Tovera swung the car so wide around dining tables outside a restaurant that Daniel was afraid that they would scrape the front of the shop on the opposite side of the street of segmented paving blocks. Buildings in this older section of Holm—along the river, the original starship harbor—were faced with pastel stucco. Enough of the covering had flaked off to show that the walls beneath were brick or stone, definitely not things to drive into with a plastic-bodied vehicle.

  About the best thing one could say about Tovera’s driving was that her collisions were likely to be at much slower speeds than those of Hogg. She was mechanically overcautious instead displaying Hogg’s incompetent verve.

  Daniel coughed to clear his throat. Something must have showed in his expression, because Adele glanced toward him and said, “I expected to face danger in the RCN. I hadn’t appreciated how much of it would involve riding in vehicles which my shipmates were driving.”

  They had reached a warehouse building with double doors along the front. Tovera pulled the car to a halt abruptly enough to tilt the bow forward. The air-cushion suspension damped the jolt better than Daniel had expected when he braced his hands against the seat ahead of him.

  Before he could speak, however, the car hopped forward another twenty feet, putting them about as far beyond the pedestrian door in the center of the facade as they had been short of it on the first try. It looked as though Tovera was trying to shift into reverse.

  “Stop!” Daniel said. “That is, thank you, Tovera, but this is quite good enough.”

  He slid his door back—it telescoped into the rear body-shell—and got out of the car before Tovera could back up anyway. He was fairly certain that she wouldn’t take direct orders from anyone but Adele, and he wouldn’t have wanted to bet that even Adele could be sure her order would be obeyed.

  Tovera was a pale monster. She was a frequently useful monster, but a monster nonetheless.

  The legend painted in bright orange letters above the doors of the building was Bernard Sattler and Company. Tovera had disadvantages as a driver, but her navigation was consistently flawless.

  Adele walked around the car to join Daniel. She carried her data unit in her right hand instead of putting it away in its pocket. Tovera followed; Hogg already stood beside the office door.

  “Both of you wait in the street,” Adele said crisply to the servants. “You’ll attract too much attention.”

  “I—” Tovera said. She held her attaché case before her, closed but unlatched; inside was a small sub-machine gun.

  “I won’t have you jeopardizing the task by turning this into a procession,” Adele said. She didn’t raise her voice, but the words snapped out. “Anything beyond Captain Leary and his aide will make them wonder.”

  She glanced at Daniel, who had been waiting for direction. He noticed to his own amusement that his hands were crossed behind his back as though he were At Ease before a superior officer.

  “Captain,” Adele said. She nodded to the door.

  Daniel, smiling faintly, entered the offices of Bernard Sattler and Company. Rank didn’t have to be formal to be real, and he had no doubt as to who was in charge here. It wasn’t him.

  A clerk looked up from her console on the other side of a wide wooden counter. Another female clerk was talking with animation to a pair of warehousemen wearing leather bandoliers from which tools hung. From the door to the left came the sound of a heavy load clattering along an overhead track.

  “I’m Captain Leary,” Daniel said, pitching his voice to be brusque but short of threatening. “I’m here to speak with the honorary consul on RCN business, and I’m in a hurry.”

  All four employees were now looking at him—and not at Adele, as he had intended. The clerk at the console flicked a glance at the frosted glass panel in the wall but returned to Daniel and said, “Ah—may I tell him your business? He’s pretty busy and I—”

  “I am an RCN officer on a Cinnabar possession,” Daniel said, speaking a hair louder but not shouting yet. “I have RCN business with a resident alien here, and I’m about to stop asking politely.”

  The clerk’s jaw dropped, giving her the expression of a gaffed fish. The workmen turned and strode into the warehouse area without looking back. The clerk at the counter started toward the glass door, but it opened before she’d taken a full stride.

  The burly man who strode out was beardless and nearly bald, but his full moustache met fluffy sideburns. He made a quick bow toward Daniel and said, “Sir, will you come through please? I am Bernard Sattler, and I am at your service.”

  The clerks got in each others way as they hopped to lift the gate in the counter. Daniel nodded to them as he stepped through; Adele followed, as silent as a shadow.

  Sattler waited to close the office door behind them, then seated himself behind a desk of gray metal with an engine-turned surface. He smiled wryly at Daniel and said, “They’re really good girls, you know; my nieces, both of them. But they were born on Kronstadt, and they don’t appreciate the subtleties of my being a naturalized citizen who was born on Bryce.”

  “No harm done,” said Daniel. He appreciated the delicacy with which the merchant had claimed to be a Cinnabar citizen, not a resident alien. They both knew that it was a distinction without a difference when dealing with an RCN officer on a Cinnabar regional capital.

  The office was windowless, but large holographic cityscapes gave depth to three walls. The shelves on all sides contained a mixture of hardware and paper—loose, in binders, and as books. Some of the hardware could be samples of warehouse stock, but the lengths of worn chain and greasy pulleys might better be on a scrap pile.

  Daniel grinned. The room reminded him of the days he had spent as a child in his Uncle Stacy’s office at Bergen and Associates’ Shipyard. Commander Stacy Bergen had been the finest astrogator in the RCN, then or now. Daniel’s high reputation for slipping through the Matrix in the swiftest and most efficient fashion rested on the training he had received from his uncle before he even dreamed of joining the RCN.

  Sattler opened a drawer. Without looking down, he said to Daniel, “If I didn’t think it would insult you, Captain, I would offer you a drink.”

  Daniel didn’t move, didn’t even b
reathe out for a moment. Then he let a slow smile expand across his face.

  “I’ve drunk some of the worst rotgut ever brewed in a barracks,” he said. “I don’t guess anything you’ve got in that drawer has the chops to insult me.”

  Sattler laughed from deep in his chest and up out a fat, double-tapered bottle covered by an upturned glass. He set the glass on the desktop, then paused with the bottle lifted. Nodding toward Adele, he said, “Will your aide…?”

  Daniel followed his eyes. Adele sat on one of three straight wooden chairs, engrossed in her display. The edge of her seat had been whittled into a procession of cherubs buggering one another, apparently the whimsy of someone with a jackknife and a great deal of raw talent.

  “She will not,” Daniel said dismissively. He took the glass and the chair on the other end from Adele’s; it hadn’t been embellished, but one leg was enough shorter than the other three to click on the floor when he moved.

  Sattler drank directly from the bottle, watching Daniel as he did so. He lowered the bottle and said, “Angels’ Tears, Captain. A Bryce specialty, as you may know.”

  Daniel took a reasonable sip but held it in his mouth for a moment before he swallowed. The straw-colored liquor tasted like wood smoke, but it was as smooth as anything he’d drunk of such high alcohol content; it must run at least 150 proof.

  “Very good,” Daniel said. He took three more swallows to lower the contents of the glass by half, then leaned back in his chair. He said, “Tell me about the Sunbright Rebellion, Master Sattler. Who’s backing it?”

  Sattler set the bottle on his desk. “Officially,” he said, “interloping traders who bring in weapons and take out loads of rice. You know Sunbright rice?”

  Daniel shrugged. “I know of it,” he said. “It’s valuable, I gather.”

  “Yes,” the merchant agreed, “but it is delicious beyond even its present high price. As it’s exported farther and farther from Sunbright, the demand will continue to rise and so will the price.”

  Daniel shrugged again. “You said, ‘officially,’” he said. “And the truth?”

  “Clan chiefs on Cremona,” Sattler said, “maybe half a dozen out of thirty-odd all told. Cremona’s in the Funnel, but it’s independent. As a matter of fact, it’s so independent that it hasn’t been worth the Alliance’s time to take the place over, tempting though I’m sure the idea has looked even before now. The only way to get all the clans to cooperate is to bring in off-planet troops for everybody on Cremona to shoot at.”

  “There’s no government?” Daniel said, crossing his ankle over his knee as he sipped his liquor. He wondered what it had been distilled from.

  Sattler drank also, then said, “Not one that anybody pays any attention to unless they feel like it. There’s even an army, but it’s barefoot boys and riffraff who’d sell their equipment for a drink—if they had any equipment. The larger clans have private armies that aren’t as much of a joke, though.”

  Daniel nodded. “And no joke at all if you’re trying to move through a city,” he said. “I can see why the Alliance wouldn’t make the investment, though I suspect the regional government has been pushing for it. And has been overruled from Pleasaunce.”

  It was a real pleasure to deal with a man like Sattler, who was willing to be honest when he was sure that he was talking to wanted the truth—and that his listener wasn’t going to be easily fooled.

  “I shouldn’t wonder,” Sattler said. “Nobody in the Funnel government has taken me into their confidence, but that’s what I’d be saying in their place. There’s pirates operating out of Cremona too, though they mostly don’t pick on Alliance or Cinnabar-flagged ships.”

  He held the bottle out and raised an eyebrow. Daniel looked at his glass—an ounce remaining—and shook his head. “I didn’t get off on the best foot with Admiral Cox this morning,” he said, telling the truth but lying by implication. “The last I need is him claiming that I was drunk while on duty.”

  Daniel had needed to drink with the merchant to set the right tone for interview, but he’d done that. Four ounces, even of strong liquor, wasn’t going to put him under the table or even give him a real buzz, but more wouldn’t improve his job performance.

  Sattler thumped the bottle down and said, “It’s not just Cremona, though. Now, before I explain this, you have to understand something. To Cinnabar, the Forty Stars and the Funnel are both ruled—administered, if you’re delicate about words—”

  “I’m not,” said Daniel as he emptied his glass.

  “Right,” said Sattler. “They’re ruled from here and called the Macotta Region. To the Alliance they’ve got separate governments until you get up to the Seventeenth Diocese on Port Sanlouis. Admiral Jeletsky has the Forty Stars Squadron on Madison. He doesn’t care what happens in the Funnel, and neither does Governor Braun. In fact if their administrative rivals are having trouble on Sunbright, they both figure that they’re twice to the good. And that’s why—”

  He slapped his desktop with the fingers of his left hand. The bottle jumped.

  “—quite a lot of the weapons going to the rebels come from Madison. Most of the smuggled rice is sold there too, with no questions asked. You see?”

  Daniel grimaced. “All right,” he said. “I’ve seen things not a lot different on Cinnabar protectorates; I can believe it, well enough. But what about this ‘Freedom’ I hear about, the dashing rebel leader?”

  “Now there you got me,” Sattler said, glowering. He looked at the wall, then grunted and rapped a control with an index finger like a mallet.

  Flickers at the corners of Daniel’s eyes drew his attention: the three holographic wall displays had switched from cityscapes to images of a woman half Sattler’s age with a pair of six-year-old boys.

  The previous scenes had meant nothing to Daniel, but the fact that Sattler had changed them certainly did. With only minimal information to go on, Daniel would have made an even money bet that the images were from the merchant’s home world, Bryce, and that he had realized they weren’t the most politic decorations to be flaunting to an RCN officer.

  Sattler would have known better than to call attention to the images, however, if he hadn’t punished the bottle pretty heavily. Though he seemed calm enough, Daniel’s sudden arrival must have been a shock to his system.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Daniel said, staring down into his tented fingers. “Unless you’re lying to me, in which case you have worse problems than what you put on your walls.”

  The merchant sat still-faced for a moment, then barked a laugh. “You’ve given me no reason to lie,” he said. “But sorry for acting like a prat.”

  Sattler cleared his throat, then switched two of the displays back to streetscapes; the woman and children continued to beam from behind his chair. “I don’t know who Freedom is or if he’s one person,” he said. “There’s some who say he must be several people, a junta speaking through one throat. Anyway, he knows things—knows things and knew things. The first attacks, the start of the rebellion, hit every government arms stockpile on Sunbright before they had anything like real security.”

  “The rebels would have to be very organized to carry off the timing for that,” Daniel said, frowning. He looked at the glass in his hand. “People on Cremona wouldn’t be able to do it. Nobody off-planet could have.”

  Sattler nodded. “And this Freedom was putting out feelers for exchanging rice for equipment at least three months before the shooting started,” he said. “Placing orders on condition of rice being delivered at the time agreed. There’s enough small traders that some of them were willing to chance that the deal would come through. With guns from security force warehouses in rebel hands, the customs and excise inspectors out in the farms had to run for the cities or have their brains blown out; so there was plenty of rice to trade for more guns and equipment”

  “You say ‘small traders,’” Daniel said. “Do you mean from Cremona, or…?”

  He was afraid the answer wa
s going to be, “From Kronstadt and other Cinnabar worlds.” Which would sooner or later mean war.

  “Cremona, sure,” Sattler said, “but it’s more than that. They stage through Cremona mostly because it’s a short jump to Sunbright. But it can be anybody who’s got a ship of five hundred or a thousand tonnes and is looking for quick cash.”

  “Which is everybody who’s got a small tramp freighter,” Daniel said with a laugh. He let his expression return to neutrally pleasant. He said, “So you think that Freedom really is somebody—or somebodies?”

  Sattler nodded. He touched the bottle but didn’t lift it again. He cocked his head to the side and said, “Look, Captain, you don’t need to lecture me about what my place is with you in the room, but—look, you talked about you being ‘on duty.’ If you told me just what that duty was, I might be able to help more.”

  Daniel pursed his lips. He didn’t look toward Adele, but he could see out of the corner of his eye that she was still focused on her display. Sattler was paying no more attention to her than he was to the saucer hat which Dan had tossed on the desk when he sat down.

  “The Alliance requests that we remove Freedom from Sunbright because he’s a Cinnabar citizen,” Daniel said. “Admiral Cox has delegated that duty to me. Frankly, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that it was a complete fool’s errand. As I said, the Admiral and I didn’t get off on the right foot.”

  Sattler tapped the desk three times while staring into the middle distance. He straightened in his chair and picked up the bottle.

  “Give me your bloody glass,” he said. Daniel handed it over for another four ounces.

  Sattler drank from the bottle, then lowered it and said in a harsh voice, “I’m a trader, you know that. I’ve got ships as well as well as this—”

  He waved generally with his left hand.

  “—and other stuff. Before the last war I had six ships.”

  Daniel sipped and nodded. He didn’t interrupt.