The Way to Glory Read online

  Anston emptied his glass. Because there was a pause and a harmless response available, Daniel said, "Thank you, sir. Uncle Stacey was a good man and a great astrogator. Uniquely skilled."

  The admiral still glowered, but he seemed to have relaxed somewhat. He set his glass down and didn't seem interested in refilling it.

  "'Needs of the service' generally means some clerk isn't willing to do his job properly," Anston said. "That or somebody above you has the knife in for whatever reason. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. Only sometimes it means what it says: the needs of the service come before what any individual is owed."

  "Yes sir," Daniel said. He cleared his throat and added, "Sir, I'm a Leary of Bantry and an officer of the RCN. I know that the RCN doesn't exist for my personal benefit."

  "Aye," said Anston, "nor for mine either. But I've made a good thing out of it, I'll tell the world! And you will too, boy—if you keep the course you've charted this morning: doing your duty and keeping your head down."

  He rose to his feet again, grinning. "And if you survive."

  "Yessir," Daniel said, rising also. He drank, a mouthful and another mouthful and a third, emptying the glass. The interview was obviously over. It'd have been discourteous to leave a full glass on the table; and besides, it was very good whisky. "Rye" could mean a lot of things, particularly in a spaceport bar; but this was probably older than Daniel himself was.

  "Pardon all this rigmarole, Leary," the admiral said with a scowl. "I'm not one to complain about politics—where would the RCN be without politics, I ask you? Sucking hind tit behind the generals and every other damned bureaucrat in Xenos, that's where! But sometimes there's hard choices. I wanted you to hear this from me personally."

  He tapped the papers on the table and went on, "I'll tell you truthfully, it'll be my job if the wrong parties learn I've been talking out of school. Even me, boy."

  "I appreciate your trust, sir," Daniel said as he set down the glass. He threw Anston a sharper salute than he—or any of his drill and ceremony instructors at the Academy—would've thought he had in him, then turned and walked back to the door at a measured pace.

  Admiral Anston had just informed him that Lieutenant Leary wasn't going to be promoted as he perhaps deserved for his exploits in the Princess Cecile. Indeed, Daniel knew the betting gave him an outside chance of being jumped to full commander instead of lieutenant commander, the next step.

  But he was smiling nonetheless. That meant he'd remain in command of the Sissie; and he was young enough that command of his handy, lucky corvette was still worth more than the increased pay and rank of a promotion that took him away from her.

  * * *

  "The Princess Cecile, the corvette you've been assigned to in the past . . ." said Mistress Sand, sitting across from Adele in the back room of O'Brian's Books and Manuscripts. She didn't look at the pre-Hiatus manuscript on the table between them; unlike Adele, Sand was neither a collector nor a compulsive cataloguer. "Is to be taken out of service as beyond economical repair. Your friend Leary will be assigned to a larger vessel to serve under the command of a senior officer."

  Adele took the personal data unit out of her pocket and switched it on, silently considering what she'd just heard. Sand hadn't raised her voice or given the words any rhetorical flourishes, but the fact the spymaster'd opened the meeting with that bald statement proved she'd known exactly what she was saying.

  The data unit's holographic display was its usual welcome pearliness, waiting for Adele to tell it where to start. She had no idea where to start; no idea at all. She shrank the starting display and met Sand's eyes directly.

  "Why in the name of heaven are they doing that?" Adele said as calmly as if she were facing her opponent on a dueling ground . . . as she had done, and had killed him there. The first of uncountably many times she had killed. . . .

  Sand must've understood where her words would send her agent's mind; it was Sand's job to understand, and she did her job very well. She didn't flinch.

  She continued, "The court-martial upheld Commander Slidell's actions because the sitting officers—and those above them—felt that any other decision would seriously corrupt discipline in the middle of a war."

  She shrugged and took out a polished black snuffbox different from the one she'd carried but hadn't used the night before. She must've noticed Adele's flicker of interest, because a wry grin flickered across Sand's stern face.

  "Cannel coal," she explained, placing a pinch of snuff in the hollow between the back of her left hand and thumb. "And as for the court-martial's decision, perhaps it was correct. I don't choose to second-guess naval officers in their own bailiwick. The plan, as I understand it, was to send Commander Slidell on a deployment that would keep him away from Cinnabar for long enough that public feeling would die down."

  Sand shrugged. "After last night," she said, "they've decided that simply hiding Slidell from sight isn't going to be enough to end the immediate problem. Eight square blocks were burned out, and there's reason to expect matters to get worse tonight."

  "Are they planning to bring in the army?" Adele asked. Her tone was much the same as she'd have used if Sand were briefing her about the situation on a distant world. Dispassionate information-gathering followed by dispassionate analysis was the best choice for a person like Adele Mundy.

  Not the only choice, though. A pair of sergeants in the Land Forces of the Republic had used their knives to cut off Agatha's head. If she ever met those men . . .

  "No, not unless it's absolutely necessary," Sand said. "There's concern at the highest levels of government that this might lead to open warfare between soldiers and spacers from the warships in Harbor Three. They're believed to sympathize with the rioters, you see."

  "Ah," said Adele as she brought up the display of her data unit again. "Yes, I do see."

  Sand stopped her left nostril and snorted the snuff into her right. Her face screwed up as she fished a handkerchief from her breast pocket, then sneezed violently into it.

  As she waited for the spymaster to continue, Adele viewed RCN personnel assignments. Slidell was listed as Pending, scarcely a surprise. The next stage was to call up open slots for a commander in the RCN, then refining the sort further for off-Cinnabar deployments. . . .

  "Your friend Leary's a hero," Sand resumed. "To the citizens of Cinnabar, and particularly to the enlisted ranks of the Navy."

  "A captain who goes where it's hottest," Adele said with a mocking lilt in her voice to keep from choking on emotion—on pride and on love. Her mind had already arrived at where the spymaster's words were heading. "A captain who brings his spacers back with money in their pockets and with honor from every soul they meet, just for having served under Mister Leary."

  "Yes," Sand said. She wasn't pleading—Adele didn't imagine that Sand would plead under any circumstances—but for all the spymaster's neutral words and flat delivery, she was asking for Adele's help. "If the Navy can show that Daniel Leary is willing to serve under Commander Slidell, then perhaps Slidell isn't such a villain after all. Then we don't have civil war between the army and navy, or alternatively have to stand by while Xenos burns down around our ears."

  "The ship is to be the Hermes, an anti-pirate tender classed as a light cruiser?" Adele said, her eyes on her display. She held a wand not unlike a single chopstick in either hand. Their angles, both absolute and relative to one another, provided instantaneous control of the data unit without the space requirements of a keyboard, even a virtual one.

  Mistress Sand said nothing for a moment. Her face remained expressionless, but now it had the stiffness of granite rather than flesh. "Yes, mistress," she said, "the Hermes."

  Sand cleared her throat and continued, "Mistress, I wouldn't normally pry into your sources of information, but I had reason to believe that only two people in the human universe had that information until now. If my communications with Admiral Anston aren't secure, then I really must know that."

  Adele d
idn't know what an anti-pirate tender was, so she cascaded into another data field. The Hermes was dumbbell-shaped, which didn't make sense till she brought up the image of a ship of the class in service. Smaller vessels, cutters, were docked against the central bar in two groups of three, slightly offset from one another.

  Aloud Adele said, "I was simply searching data, mistress. You gave me the parameters when you told me the commanding officer's rank and stated that the purpose was to get him a distance from Cinnabar immediately. When I found that the prospective officers of a new-built ship meeting those parameters had been removed unexpectedly a few hours ago, I formed a hypothesis—"

  Another person might have said, "took a guess." That person would never have gathered the necessary background information.

  "—which I tested by asking you a direct question. It's what you pay me to do."

  "I see," said Sand. For the first time in Adele's association with her, the spymaster looked distinctly uncomfortable.

  Adele set her wands down. "I'm not sure you do, mistress," she said. "I'm extremely angry at what's happening to a friend of mine, probably the only friend I've ever had or ever will have. I embarrassed you deliberately because though it's not your fault, you're party to what's happening."

  She grimaced. "And for that I apologize," she added. "If you want my resignation, you have it. Of course."

  Mistress Sand's cheeks bulged and her sides began to shake. She didn't speak. Adele watched in cold horror, wondering if their exchange had provoked a fit.

  "For God's sake, Mundy!" Sand blurted at last. She staggered to her feet. "For God's sake!"

  She's laughing. Adele's face became very still. She stood up also.

  "Please, please, I wasn't laughing at you," Sand said, sobering instantly. "I was laughing at myself."

  She got her breath, then continued, "Mundy, I've said a number of times that I'd league with demons if they'd aid the Republic against Guarantor Porra and the beasts who work for him. I just realized that I've apparently done that, leagued with a demon. But you're the Republic's demon, and I'm bloody well not going to let you go now that I've found you!"

  That's flattering, in a way, Adele thought. A smile touched her lips. Not least because it's more or less the way I view myself.

  The smile grew broader. And how, I wonder, do Alliance spacers view Lieutenant Daniel Leary?

  Adele sat down again to make it easier to use her data unit. Whatever you learned brought up additional questions. To the extent there was a reason to continue living, that was the reason.

  "What about a crew for the Hermes?" she asked, her eyes on the holographic display. "Will Daniel bring the Sissies with him?"

  "Yes," Sand said, sitting down as well. Adele was barely aware of the movement. "The new crew combines spacers from the Princess Cecile with those from the Bainbridge."

  "Saving the three whom Commander Slidell executed, one hopes," Adele said as her wands flickered. Sand didn't respond, but a smile touched Adele's lips. It was the sort of joke that only Tovera was likely to think funny . . . but nonetheless it proved Adele Mundy wasn't the humorless machine she'd been called any number of times during her life.

  And come to think, most RCN spacers would chuckle at the thought as well. Adele had been raised to judge "most people" by civilian standards. Spacers knew death too well to let it frighten them unduly.

  "Mistress," Sand said, speaking very carefully again. "I don't ask you to spy on your friends, but I ask you for your opinion as an agent of the Republic: will Lieutenant Leary accept the new appointment, do you think? Because everything is predicated on that."

  "Daniel will do his duty, yes," Adele said, keeping her tone perfectly flat. "Being his father's son, he'll understand the political imperatives behind the assignment."

  She shrank her display to meet Sand's eyes again. "Now," she continued. "I have a request."

  "Make it," Sand said. She didn't add, "Anything you ask will be granted," or the similar nonsense other people might've expected to hear. There were requests Sand wouldn't grant. They both knew that, and to suggest otherwise would mean one or the other party was a fool.

  "Ganse, the First Lieutenant of the Bainbridge, is quite senior," Adele said. "Daniel won't ask this but I will: remove Ganse from the proposed crew for the Hermes and replace him with a lieutenant who's junior to Lieutenant Leary. The purposes of the Republic don't require that Daniel serve as Second Lieutenant under an officer of lesser distinction."

  Sand smiled faintly. "I'll see what can be done," she said simply. She pursed her lips and slid the snuffbox along the edge of the table with her forefinger. Raising her eyes to Adele's she continued, "I operate on the assumption that you wish to accompany Lieutenant Leary wherever he may be assigned, Mundy. If that isn't correct, please inform me."

  "It's quite correct," Adele said. "That's one of the few things that I don't expect to change."

  In part that was true because she could no longer imagine living without the odd dynamic stability that Daniel Leary provided within the greater cocoon of the RCN. It was strange that you could live your life without something but then find it absolutely necessary from the moment of its arrival.

  Sand nodded. "That's useful," she said, "because the Hermes will be posted to the Gold Dust Squadron based on Nikitin. There's information leaking from Nikitin. I'd very much like that leak to be plugged. I know that in the past you haven't been involved in counterintelligence work, but I don't believe there's anyone better suited to the task."

  Adele shrugged; her wands moved with quick precision, as though each had a separate will. Nikitin . . . Gold Dust Cluster, over three hundred stars many with inhabited planets; main export, naturally occurring anti-aging compounds . . . Piracy; volume, cost, suppression, Gold Dust Squadron . . .

  "It's all information," Adele said as she skimmed her data, mentally ear-marking sections for review at leisure. A quick side-trip brought her to Anti-Pirate Tenders, Under Construction, Hermes . . . She smiled to have doubled back to familiar territory. "It doesn't really matter whether I'm looking for information about Alliance forces or information passing to the Alliance about our forces. It's all the same."

  "You're the expert," Sand said with a smile of satisfaction. "Do you have anything further, mistress?"

  "Perhaps," said Adele, hoping to keep the tremble out of her voice. She was about to meddle in matters which by no stretch of the imagination were the business of a private citizen. She shut down her data unit. "You said the Princess Cecile is being taken out of service. What will happen to her?"

  "I can ask," Sand said. "What do you think should happen to her, mistress?"

  Adele cleared her throat. "Let me preface this by saying that I'm not a naval architect," she said. "I've listened to Daniel and others discuss the construction of the Princess Cecile, but I may have badly misconstrued the actual situation."

  "I accept you're not an expert on naval construction," Mistress Sand said, still smiling. "I'll further postulate that you've assessed other unfamiliar specialties accurately enough to turn the course of battles in favor of the Republic."

  "Yes," said Adele. She allowed herself a smile. "Cinnabar builders favor one-piece construction for starships, creating very stiff, sturdy vessels. Many officers believe this to be the only proper way of building a ship."

  "Go on, mistress," Sand said. She held the snuffbox between the tips of her index fingers, shifting it slightly so that the polished black casing glinted in the indirect light of the viewing room.

  "The Sissie is Kostroman built and therefore has a modular hull," Adele said. She deliberately used the corvette's nickname to emphasize to the spymaster that Adele Mundy was a part of a unique world: the community of those who sailed between the stars in flimsy metal boxes and who fought other, similar communities. "Long voyages loosen the structure in a fashion that wouldn't occur with a unit hull, but they don't actually affect the ship's basic integrity. She just needs to be tightened up."

&nb
sp; "If it were that simple," Sand said, speaking with the care of someone who doesn't intend that a disagreement become a fight, "wouldn't the docks at Harbor Three have done the work instead of recommending the corvette be discarded?"

  "So far as RCN personnel are concerned," Adele said, "a modular ship is by definition uneconomic to repair. They don't have the specialist expertise to do the work properly, and in their hearts they don't believe it ought to be done anyway. A small private dockyard, however, might be able to put the Sissie back in shape very easily."

  "Simply thinking out loud . . ." Sand said. "If the Princess Cecile were sold as scrap to a private dockyard like Bergen and Associates, she might become an asset to the Republic in the form of a privateer or fast transport."

  "Yes," said Adele. Bergen and Associates was a partnership between Daniel Leary, a legacy from his uncle Stacey Bergen, and Corder Leary. "I think she might. And it'd be a better end than rust for a ship which has rendered valuable services to the Republic in the past."

  Sand laughed, but there was more wistfulness than humor in the sound. "Do you think ships have souls, Mundy?" she asked.

  "I don't think human beings have souls, Mistress Sand," Adele said harshly. "But if a ship could have a soul, the Sissie would."

  "I take your point," Sand said. She slipped away her snuffbox and braced her hands on the table, preparatory to rising. "I appreciate your diligence toward the long-term best interests of the Republic, Mundy."

  Adele also stood and put her personal data unit back in its pocket. Another person using the same words would've meant them ironically. Bernis Sand, though, could follow a chain of events through more layers of cause and effect than anyone else Adele had met.

  "I'll drop a word in the right ear," Sand said. She gestured Adele to the door; they would leave the building by different exits and some minutes apart. "It seems to me that the Republic owes a proper reward to a ship which has always given more than duty required."

  CHAPTER 5

  Xenos on Cinnabar