The Sea Without a Shore (ARC)

CHAPTER 12


Brotherhood on Corcyra

When Cleveland reached the top of the ladder, Adele gave him the jute rag on which she and Tovera had already wiped their hands. The harbor level had dropped several feet in the recent past, and the bottom four rungs were slimy with a mixture of lubricant, algae, and the organic waste which nourished the algae.

“Ah, thank you, your ladyship,” Cleveland said. He turned his head, obviously looking for a place to deposit the rag.

Adele took it between her right thumb and forefinger. “I prefer to be called Mundy, Cleveland,” she said. “In Xenos, and certainly here.”

She dropped the rag into the slip. “Returning like to like,” she explained with a cold smile. “I can no more clean up this harbor than I could remove all negative and discourteous people from the human race.”

“I…,” Cleveland said. He suddenly smiled. “I understand, Mundy. I’m trying to do the latter, starting with myself; but until I have become perfect, I won’t bother the rest of humanity.”

He cocked his head slightly. “From what I’ve seen,” he said, “you have less need of correction than anyone I’ve previously met.”

“It depends on what you mean by ‘negative,’” Tovera said. Her grin reminded Adele of a skull’s. Perhaps skulls also had a sense of humor.

“Rather than go up Central Street,” Cleveland said, gesturing to the sloping boulevard leading straight up toward the Manor, “I suggest we go through the town. It may be a little longer, but this end of the Plaza is an obstacle course that I’d prefer to avoid.”

Adele shrugged. “You know the town,” she said.

Cleveland led them briskly across Water Street—or whatever it was called here. Adele reached for her data unit, then caught herself with a grim smile.

“Cleveland?” she said. If Tovera can learn to mimic a sense of humor, I can give the impression of being a socialized human being. “What is the name of the street that circles the harbor? I’m just curious.”

“That’s just Harborside, your…that is, Mundy,” he said. He gestured ahead of them, moving his left hand from side to side. “Now we’re on Sweeney’s Alley at this end, but it’ll be Crescent Alley at the top when we reach Ridge Road.”


The passage they’d turned up seemed to meander between the structures rather than them being built to either side. It was generally about ten feet wide, though occasionally the corner of a building narrowed by it.

“Are all the streets here this way?” Adele asked. The alley had no sharp angles, but she couldn’t see more than thirty feet ahead or behind because of twists in the course.

“This is the widest street after Central,” Cleveland said. “Generally, at least. People built where the slope allowed them to. Every ten years or so the harbor district gets flooded from what I’ve been told.”

Adele followed him under a balcony enclosed in carved wood screens. The lower half of the screen on the downhill side had cracked away and was replaced by a sheet of plastic.

Tovera waited two steps back until they were clear. Her right hand was fully inside the case which held her sub-machine gun.

Cleveland didn’t appear to notice; Adele suppressed a frown. She could not object to Tovera’s extreme professional care, and in theory it shouldn’t have affected Adele. Tovera wasn’t directing her to scan roof tops or to be ready if a gunman leaned over the gate across the way. Irrationally it did induce paranoia in Adele, though her intellectual control prevented that from being visible to anyone outside her mind.

The gate Adele had been considering darkened as a middle-aged woman stepped to it. The vertical stripes of her loose dress did little to reduce her bulk; she held a trowel in her right hand.

“Madame,” Cleveland said, smiling as he passed. To Adele’s surprise, the woman’s stony expression dissolved into a smile which took ten years off her apparent age.

Adele nodded to the woman but didn’t attempt a smile. She had found in the past that her smiles rarely struck strangers as friendly. Which was fair, as Adele rarely felt friendly toward strangers.

The flower beds she glimpsed past the gardener were gorgeously colorful. They looked unplanned, but Adele understood patterns well enough to realize that what she saw was as carefully structured as one of her own databases.

“Brotherhood appears to be…,” Adele said, then paused to word the rest of the statement correctly. “A more ordinary community that I was expecting in the midst of war.”

Cleveland turned his head and smiled. “Some members of my faith believe that the presence of our fellowship only fifty miles south in Pearl Valley helps make Brotherhood such a pleasant community,” he said. “Despite the port and the miners which are the basis of the economy. I prefer to think that people are generally decent when given an opportunity to be.”

Adele felt a wry smile tug at the corners of her lips. Whereas I myself consider it a good day when I don’t feel a desire to shoot one of the people with whom I have to deal. She supposed that both reactions were within the acceptable norms of civilized society.

“This is Ridge Road,” Cleveland said as they rounded a curving house wall. “We’ll turn to the right here.”

On the ten-foot wide street was the first motorized traffic Adele had seen since they started up the hillside. Two men were guiding a cart with hub-center motors from left to right; on the bed rode what looked like a refrigeration unit.

Coming the other way was a chain-driven vehicle on four high, flimsy looking wheels. It looked like something built locally from spare parts; on the front axle was a triangular metal pennon stencilled with a light-blue trefoil.

The woman driving from a saddle was beautiful and well dressed. She was alone on the vehicle, but it ambled at the pace of the squad of soldiers on foot escorting her. The troops’ battledress was striped black on dark green; they carried stocked impellers comparable to the carbines in the Kiesche’s hold.

“Ah, that’s Caleira driving the buggy,” Cleveland said. “She was working as an entertainer—she may be local, but I wouldn’t know. She’s now the companion of Mistress Tibbs, the Chief Administrator of the Self-Defense Regiment. Their headquarters is on the other side of the Square, so I guess that’s where she’s going. And the Navy headquarters is in the building alongside theirs, but they’ve both got their barracks by the harbor.”

“I see,” said Adele, noting the information mentally. She would transfer it to digital form as soon as she got an opportunity. The troops were well-turned-out, and they hadn’t given her the impression of being bravos looking for a fight, the way many uniformed gangs did here on the fringes. “And Brother Graves?”

“Across the street and two doors up,” Cleveland said and started across. Another vehicle of some sort was visible to the right, but it seemed to be parked. Men were carrying pipes from it; the only moving traffic was pedestrian.

Adele could see the plaza to the left; the paving blocks nearer the slope rippled like the sea, just as Cleveland had warned. The building which faced the plaza was a palace built of either stone or stone-clad concrete. Further from the Plaza were two-story shops and offices, some with apartments above, on both sides of the street.

Between a clothier’s shop and a tavern—not a dive—was a door painted a pearl white. Cleveland swung it open to a flight of steps upward. The panel moved with the weight of steel, but it hadn’t been locked.

Tovera touched the edge of the door. “I’ll close it,” she said courteously to Cleveland. “So that you can lead.”

“Right!” said Cleveland, skipping up the stairs two at a time. The door thumped shut. If he realized that Tovera didn’t trust him behind them, his pleasant smile gave no sign of it.

Adele followed. She found these wooden treads relaxing. She was more used to metal stairs.

Adele heard minute hesitations in Tovera’s steps as the servant glanced over her shoulder. She wondered if Tovera’s need for constant vigilance made her unhappy. Perhaps she no more regarded it than she did breathing.

Cleveland opened the door at the head of the stairs. “Brother Graves?” he called. “I’m here with, ah, Mistress Mundy. Captain Leary is dealing with the port authorities, but Mundy is a partner in the expedition.”

“Please come in, mistress,” said a small, middle-aged man wearing a tan business suit with a thin brown stripe. He was balding from forehead to mid-scalp, but his voice was lively and the hand with which he shook Adele’s was firm. “I’m Graves—and don’t worry about ‘brother,’ since you have no reason to regard me or Cleveland as your brothers. We appreciate your help all the more for that reason.”

The office was a single room, though there was a door in the back wall which probably led to living quarters. There were couches along two walls and a pair of chairs flanked the entrance.

The other item of furnishing was a commercial console which Adele realized was as powerful as a starship unit. She smiled at the thought. It’s probably configured differently.

“I don’t know how much help we can be,” she said aloud, suppressing the reflex to explain that she wasn’t Daniel’s partner. In fact she was his partner, in every respect except the legal ones which didn’t matter to either Daniel or herself. “It seems to me that digging up the treasure is more a matter for a mining engineer than—” How to describe the Kiesche’s crew? “—generalists like ourselves.”

“Mining engineers are twenty a dandiprat on Corcyra,” Graves said. He gestured to the couch, then seated himself on one end of it. “I’m one myself, as a matter of fact. The political situation on Corcyra, however—”

His wry smile seemed warm, but there was sadness behind it.

“—is such that bringing mining equipment openly to Pearl Valley would arouse suspicion. And almost certainly violence by one of the competing parties, if any inkling of the purpose got out.”

Adele made another mental note, this time to check the meaning of “dandiprat.” From context, it could be anything from a coin to a vegetable…but that wasn’t the matter at hand.

“The cargo we brought is weapons,” Adele said, sitting on the other end of the couch. Cleveland took a chair, while Tovera continued to stand near the hinge side of the door. “We thought we would blend in that way and explain our presence in an acceptable fashion. When we’ve examined the situation, we’ll acquire such machinery as we need here.”

Graves grimaced. “Yes,” he said, “yes, you’re right, of course. But that brings its own problems. I cringed when I saw the manifest you transmitted from orbit, because I’m sure it will cause others, the Garrison at least, to attempt to get the arms for themselves.”

“Do you mean, to hijack our cargo?” Adele said, trying to keep her tone neutral. Tovera smiled slightly.

“Oh, they wouldn’t do anything that raw!” Cleveland said, looking from Adele to Graves. “Why, neither the Regiment nor the Navy would allow that to happen even if Mursiello were willing.”

Graves spread his hands palms up and looked down at them. “I’m an engineer, Brother Cleveland,” he said. “I think such an action would show very bad judgment on Colonel Mursiello’s part, but—”

He raised his eyes. His expression was the same sad smile as before.


“—I don’t have a high opinion of the Colonel’s judgment even now. Still, what I’m expecting is pressure to sell the cargo to another of the parties instead of delivering it to the consignees.”

Graves clenched his fists again. “I ought to be at the port office too,” he said, “but I told myself I wouldn’t be much support in that sort of unpleasant hectoring. I still should have gone.”

He looked up. Adele shrugged. “I don’t think Captain Leary will be unduly swayed by someone shouting at him,” she said. “How will you get the cargo to Pearl Valley? Doing that will reduce the risk of trouble, I presume.”

“Yes, of course,” Graves agreed. He rose and went to the console. “That much I can take care of. There’s a barge under contract to us. I’m alerting the crew so that they’ll be ready to perform at any schedule that you, that Captain Leary, sets.”

He used a virtual keyboard to make entries. The holographic display was unreadable from this side, but Adele’s personal data unit was absorbing that input and all others within the office.

Graves looked toward Adele through the holographic blurring. He said, “I’m not a very good representative under these conditions, I’m afraid. I’ll only say in my defense that none of our community has the right personality for cutthroat beggar-your-neighbor dealings such as have become the only way business is transacted in Brotherhood. Some of us did have that personality. I did myself, I’m sorry to admit.”

He gave Adele a smile of warm fellowship.

“But that was before I felt the kinship in Pearl Valley and became a Transformationist myself. There doesn’t seem to be any way to go back, thank goodness. Though sometimes I feel that the old me would be useful to the faith.”

“Will the weapons be of any use to you?” Adele said. She was mostly successful in hiding her frown.

“We’ll fight to save ourselves and our faith,” Cleveland said. “Brother Graves shouldn’t denigrate himself. He’s been a very effective advocate for our community in the Independence Council. I know, having just come back from a separation of many light-years—”

Cleveland forced a smile. His expression was that of someone just released from torture, trying to put a brave face on what he had undergone.

“—what it means for him to remain here and deal with people who are boiling with hatred and hostility every hour of every day.”

“Given the problems within your coalition…,” Adele said. It stretched a point to call the Independence Council a coalition, but this wasn’t a time to debate word choice. “I’m surprised that the rebellion has been as successful as it has.”

The current status of the war had the Pantellarians besieged on the Delta, whose agricultural output was of no importance to Pantellaria or concern to the rebels in the south. Adele presumed that the miners were paying more for food, which now had to be smuggled from the Delta—not difficult, from what Daniel had said about the situation around Hablinger—or brought in from a greater distance. People in Brotherhood weren’t going hungry, however.

“It wasn’t always like this,” Cleveland said, shaking his head. “It wasn’t like this even when I took ship for Cinnabar. And at the beginning, well—”

He circled his right hand.

“—it was a war, which is—”

He waggled his hand again, looking for a word.

“Anti-social,” Graves said, smiling. He returned to the couch from which he’d risen to alert the barge crew.

“Right, anti-social by definition,” Cleveland said. He smiled too, but his eyes were focused on the base of the console. “But within the independence movement, the rebels if you wish, there was great enthusiasm and, well, brotherhood. Like nothing I’d seen anywhere beyond the Transformationist community.”

“The sort of spirit that gets nations into wars…,” Adele said. “Rarely lasts long. Usually it doesn’t last beyond the first set of casualty returns. I’m sorry if that sounds cynical.”

“As I said,” Graves replied, “I’m an engineer. Whether or not I like a situation has nothing to do with whether your description of it is accurate. In this case, however, there’s more to the matter than there would have been in similar cases.”

Cleveland nodded. “The assault on Hablinger,” he said. To Adele he added, “Twelve of our community were killed, and the other organizations lost many more.”

Graves nodded also, but he said, “It wasn’t just the losses. The Pantellarians underestimated us, the independence movement, but in turn we underestimated them. We’d driven them back into Hablinger by sheer numbers and enthusiasm.”

He grimaced at the final word.

“The Council believed that we should use our momentum and sweep the Pantellarians off the planet—or into the sea, if they didn’t board their ships quickly enough.”

Graves spread his hands and looked at Adele. “There were probably ten thousand Corcyrans under arms at that time,” he said. “Most of them weren’t in any real organization, and they were armed with odds and ends or not even armed, but ten thousand. I’m a member of the Council. While I don’t know that anyone would have taken notice if I’d opposed the assault, I was strongly in favor also. The war itself was evil, and this was the quickest and therefore best means of ending it.”

“I wasn’t there,” Cleveland said. “I was to be part of the third Transformationist contingent. The survivors were withdrawn at once and replaced early by the second contingent. The Pantellarians had used their ships.”

This information was part of the files which Mistress Sand’s office had sent to Adele. She listened now without comment. The impression she got from those who had spoken to the victims at the time had a vividness which third-party reports could not provide.

“We’d assumed the destroyers were merely escorts for the transports,” Graves said. “Instead it was a trap. They were hoping to wipe out resistance in one stroke, and they very nearly managed to do so. The ships came over at low level, using their plasma cannon. They slaughtered over a thousand of us—there was no cover, we were attacking over the rice paddies.”

“I didn’t think you could fire ships’ guns in an atmosphere,” Cleveland said, shaking his head. “I thought the guns blew up if you tried.”

“It erodes the bores of plasma cannon badly,” Adele said. “And the range is short. But they don’t blow up, no.”

Daniel frequently used his plasma cannon against ground targets, and he’d taught his crews to do so as well. That meant the certain replacement of the thick, stubby iridium cannon barrels after every use, but in a battle everything—certainly including the cost of hardware—was second to winning.

“For some reason, the Pantellarians didn’t counterattack then,” Graves said. “We were able to regroup.”

“Independence troops couldn’t run away through the paddies any more easily than the Pantellarians could attack,” Cleveland said, smiling faintly. “Otherwise I’m sure no one would have stayed in the lines around Hablinger. Certainly I wouldn’t have stayed if I’d been there and had the choice.”

“Yes,” Graves said. “The only proper highways in the Delta are the two on top of the levees to either side of the river. Near Hablinger, the bed of the Cephisis is nearly thirty feet above the paddies. Getting onto the roads quickly would be impossible, and it would have been suicide with the destroyers strafing. But I’m still surprised they didn’t counterattack.”

“I doubt Governor Arnaud deliberately drew you into a trap,” Adele said. She was reporting Daniel’s analysis of the file data, but she could have come to the same conclusion herself. She had gained experience of wars and with irregular troops in the years since she had met Daniel. “I suspect the expeditionary force reacted in desperation. Using warships in that fashion is very dangerous, even if the captain is skilled in atmosphere maneuvers. Few of them are.”

She smiled with the cold pride of a Sissie—a member of the crew of the Princess Cecile—whose captain was an exceptional ship-handler and whose example had drawn his officers to emulation. There might be Pantellarian officers whose skills rose to the level of an average RCN officer, but Adele would not believe without proof that any of them could equal what Daniel and Vesey had accomplished more than once in her experience.

“The naval officers might have been willing to abandon the troops…,” Adele continued aloud. They certainly would have been willing to leave the infantry in the mud, in her opinion. “But the destroyers wouldn’t have been able to actually make space voyages without several days of preparation. Or more. They probably attacked you half-crewed as it was. Nothing less than a crisis would have forced the commanders to risk their ships as they did.”

Graves looked as though she had just dumped ice water over him. “You mean that if we’d given them a chance to escape…,” he said, speaking with great care, “they wouldn’t have slaughtered us?”


Adele grimaced. “I don’t know what would have happened,” she said. “There are too many variables. I’m reasonably sure that without the spur of necessity, Pantellarian naval officers wouldn’t have been willing to risk their ships in a low-level attack of that nature. A lucky impeller slug could have shattered several thruster nozzles. A clumsy ship-handler would have crashed when his thrust was suddenly unbalanced.”

She was uncomfortable with the discussion. The past was information; that was her life, or would be her life in a perfect universe. The future was prediction; that was part of her present duty as an RCN officer, guiding the actions of her fellows, her family.

Speculation on what would have happened if some factor had been different was a third thing, a pointless and foolish thing so far as Adele was concerned. Changing one aspect of a past complex situation could not change the present—nothing could change the present—and the side-effects of that single change were beyond what Adele’s intelligence could determine with any degree of certainty.

She smiled coldly at Graves. There may be humans better able to calculate those side-effects than I am, but I haven’t met them yet.

Aloud Adele said, consciously changing the subject, “Then the disaster at Hablinger caused the coalition to fracture?”

Graves nodded, looking relieved to leave the subject. Adele wasn’t sure what happened to her face when she was angry. She had thought that her expression simply went blank, but the reactions of other people suggested that there was more going on than that.

“The casualties were stressful, certainly,” Graves said, “but all the parties had agreed on the attack and the casualties were fairly evenly spread also.”

“Most of the dead were miners,” Cleveland said. “Men—mostly men—who weren’t members of any of the groups. They’d been treating the whole business as a big bar fight until the destroyers swept over. After that most of the survivors went home as quickly as they could, though we still outnumber the Pantellarians around Hablinger.”

“It was clear that we couldn’t simply assault the Pantellarian lines again,” Graves said. “We couldn’t have gotten any of the troops to obey that order. Someone suggested in the Council meeting—I think it was Mistress Tibbs—that we buy anti-ship missiles and place them in the front lines. Both she and Captain Samona hoped to be able to acquire missiles from Alliance sources, but they weren’t able to do so.”

Adele nodded crisply. If the Alliance, or even one well-placed Alliance bureaucrat, decided to risk breaking the Treaty of Amiens either out of pique at Pantellaria or simply to earn some under-the-table cash, there was a good chance of rekindling a war that would destroy civilization.

“We found the Republic of Karst was willing to deal with us,” Graves said. “Karst isn’t allied with either Cinnabar or the Alliance, so its only concern is with the reaction of Pantellaria itself. It didn’t seem terribly worried about that, but it wanted considerable trade concessions from Corcyra for its help.”

“I see,” said Adele. She concealed her frown behind a bland face.

Adele and Daniel had personal experience of Karst, an independent regional power of considerable significance. When the old Headman—dictator—had died, his nephew and successor had taken Karst from being a strong Cinnabar ally into the Alliance camp…for a matter of weeks, until RCN forces under Captain Daniel Leary had destroyed the Alliance fleet in the region.

The young Headman had been assassinated almost immediately, and Karst had retreated to neutrality under her new leaders. The Treaty of Amiens had followed quickly, leaving Karst a pariah—trusted by neither superpower, but too strong to be punished without more effort than either Cinnabar or the Alliance wanted to expend.

Karst had lost much of its trade in the aftermath of the war. Gaining a monopoly on Corcyran copper would cause—not quite force—other powers to resume dealing with Karst and thus to pave a road out of the diplomatic wilderness for her.

“The problem was deciding who would go to Karst to negotiate,” Graves said. “The three major independence factions all suspected the others would use the negotiations to gain supreme power for themselves after the Pantellarians were driven out.”

He smiled faintly. “I suspected that too,” he said, “but I believed that the rival parties would keep one another honest without my personal involvement.”

Adele nodded without looking up. Graves was showing himself intelligent and pragmatic.

“In any case,” Graves said, “the Council sent a three-person delegation to Karst with full authority to negotiate the deal. The exile factions sent their seconds in command, but Colonel Bourbon of the Garrison went himself. Bourbon had been commanding all Council field forces at the Hablinger front while his deputy, Major Mursiello, forwarded supplies and dealt with Council matters.”

Graves shrugged. “I didn’t have a high opinion of Mursiello,” he said, “but he had handled his duties well enough, as best as I could tell. The delegation hired a transport and lifted for Karst four months ago. Two months ago, a messenger from Colonel Bourbon said there was an agreement in principle and that the delegation would be returning shortly.”

“That was just before I left for Cinnabar,” Cleveland said. “I thought—well, I hoped. That the fighting would be over before I returned.”

“Many of us had our hopes up,” Graves said with a sigh. “A week after the messenger’s arrival, a ship from Ischia arrived with a message for the Council, signed by all three delegates, saying that they had been captured by Ischian pirates who were holding them for ransom. And that is where the business rests at present.”

“How much is the ransom?” Adele said. None of this information had been in the files from Mistress Sand.

Graves opened his hands. “It’s trade concessions,” he said. “Much like the demands by Karst. Though of course Ischia can’t offer missiles, and simply getting the delegates back wouldn’t end the war. I admit I agree with Colonel, as he now calls himself, Mursiello, who takes that position very strongly.”

“Did Mursiello engineer the kidnapping?” Adele asked. She had her data unit on the desk. Her wands quivered as she made a further search of the main Garrison database, looking for hidden or closed files which might have escaped the initial cull that her equipment had made from orbit.

“I don’t think that Mursiello has the intelligence or the imagination to plan such a coup,” Graves said. “The Ischians have had their own problems since the Treaty of Amiens, and this is very much the sort of thing they might have come up with themselves.”

He frowned and pursed his lips before continuing, “I very much doubt that Mursiello wants his predecessor back, however, and I’m not sure that he wants the war to end until he’s consolidated power on Corcyra in his own hands. He’s moved his headquarters into the Gulkander Palace on the Plaza, and it’s rumored that he’s gathering troops in the neighborhood of Brotherhood, though he’s not moving additional forces into the city.”

I can check on troop movements, Adele thought. In fact she probably had the information already. The locations hadn’t meant anything to her without context, however.

“The palace?” Cleveland said in surprise. “What did they do with the collections?”

Graves shook his head. “I hope they’re being stored,” he said, “but Mursiello has the culture and spiritual enlightenment of a barroom swamper. I suppose we have more immediate concerns than what happens to books and antiques.”

“What collections are these?” Adele said. Worrying about objects in the midst of a war in which human beings were being killed in large numbers would seem perverse to most people. However, if one believed as Adele did that nothing whatever mattered in the long term—then all things mattered equally.

She smiled in her mind, but her face remained still.

“Arn Gulkander, a Pantellarian governor of the past century,” Graves said, “was a great collector of books, art, furniture. He built a real palace on the Plaza—perhaps you noticed it as you came here? It’s just a few doors down.”

“Yes,” said Adele. She reminded herself to keep her eyes on Graves. She was being polite, because he was answering a question for her personally.

“Gulkander loved Brotherhood and retired here with his family,” Graves said. “His descendants have lived here ever since, though they weren’t of any political significance. They fled to Pantellaria at the declaration of independence, because that’s where their investments are. Mursiello would have ousted them as quickly as he did their caretaker, I’m sure.”

“I see,” said Adele, standing. “Thank you, Brother Graves. I have a much better understanding of the situation than documents alone had given me.”

The two men rose also. “It’s been a pleasure, mistress,” Graves said, offering his hand.

Cleveland said, “We’re trying to preserve our community in difficult circumstances. By helping us, I truly believe that you’re helping humanity in at least a small degree.”


Clearing his throat he added, “I’ll remain with Brother Graves for a moment, if you don’t mind.”

Adele turned; Tovera had already opened the door.

“Tovera and I can find our way back to the ship,” Adele said.

But before we do that, I’m going to visit the Gulkander Palace.

***

A dozen men and two or three women relaxed in chairs on the Manor’s wide veranda as Daniel mounted the three broad steps up from the plaza. Several men and one of the women wore uniforms, but the only person to acknowledge Daniel was an older man in a rumpled jacket and a saucer hat which had seen better days.

He nodded, and Daniel nodded back: a merchant skipper greeting a fellow. Like was calling to like. Naval officers aren’t the only collegial group, although Daniel had come to feel that way during his years in the RCN.

Daniel smiled. Groups were not only inclusive, they were exclusive if you let them be. I’ll make an effort not to let that happen to me in the future.

The double doors were open, so he walked through into the lobby. There were chairs of several different styles: mostly wood, but a number of plastic extrusions and at least one steel unit that had come from a starship and was bolted to the floor as if it were still on a ship. There were spacers who weren’t comfortable sitting on something that wasn’t really solid.

“Right,” called the man standing behind a long waist-high table. A computer sat on one end of the table, but he was sorting through a tray of hardcopy beside it. “Need a room?”

“I’m looking for the harbormaster,” Daniel said. “I haven’t decided about a room yet.”

“Suit yourself,” the clerk said equably. He pointed through the archway to his left and said, “Turn to starboard and go down to the end of the corridor. All the town offices are on that end of this floor.”

He grinned and added, “Don’t be surprised if nobody’s in the office. Sometimes David’s chatting with Tommy in the Customs office, though.”

The lobby ceiling was over twenty feet high. The round windows in the top range allowed enough light to read by at this time of day. The lobby was pleasantly cooler than the air outside had been, though the doors were open. Area lights hung in clusters from the ceiling, but the cans into which they’d been installed were brass and appeared to have been hand-pierced in the distant past.

“It looks like a nice enough place,” Hogg said as they started down the hall beyond the archway. “To tell the truth, I’m feeling overdressed.”

He patted the barrel of his sub-machine gun with the fingers of his left hand. He was the only openly armed person that they’d seen in the building.

“Nobody’s complaining, Hogg,” Daniel said. “And I’m certainly not.”

The last door on the right-hand side was open, but the office was empty. Daniel turned, wondering which office was customs and whether it was even on this corridor. A man was hurrying toward from one of the rooms they had passed, making an effort to button his blue jacket.

“You’re the guys with the arms shipment?” the fellow said. “I’m Kalet, the harbormaster. Go on into the office, will you? And tell me—”

He followed Daniel and Hogg into the office and slipped between them to the workstation on the desk.

“—who’s your sponsor? I didn’t get that from your transmission.”

“Sponsor?” Daniel said. Polarizing blinds turned the room’s two windows a startling red, but the light passing through them was neutral. “I’m the Kiesche’s owner, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, no,” Kalet said. He typed with his index fingers alone, scowling in determination. “I mean, which party are you delivering to?”

“Oh,” said Daniel. He hadn’t sat on either of the rickety chairs facing the desk; he wasn’t sure they would hold him. “The Transformationists.”

Kalet stopped typing and stared at Daniel. “Them?” he said. “Why, you got enough guns for a division aboard! What’re those dreamers going to do with a load like that?”

Daniel shrugged. “That’s not my problem,” he said. “They were loaded Free On Board on Cinnabar, and I’m delivering them to the consignee here. My purser’s talking with the local agent now.”

The Kiesche carried a thousand carbines and ten automatic impellers: enough small arms to equip an understrength regiment, perhaps, but not a division on any civilized planet. Daniel smiled at the thought.

“Look, I’m not sure I can clear this,” Kalet said. He grubbed a bandanna from the side-pocket of his jacket and wiped the sudden sweat from his forehead. “There’s going to be trouble, I know it—”

Daniel rested his knuckles on the desk and leaned onto them. “There won’t be trouble with me if you do your job,” he said, hearing his voice roughen.

“I—” Kalet said.

“Master!” Hogg said, moving slightly to put his back against the sidewall. A group of people crowdd into the doorway, blocking one another’s passage and snarling.

First to enter was the woman wearing a gray business suit that wasn’t quite a uniform. The two men—who did wear uniforms—had shoved one another apart and she slipped through. The men followed instantly. More armed men crowded the hall, but they halted at the doorway.

“Hochner!” the woman said. She was tall and wore her hair as a tight sheath for her skull. She’d been a brunette but had let her hair go mostly gray instead of dyeing it. “You know the rules: no thugs in the Manor. Do you want to be the moron who made the Garrison outlaws to everybody on the planet? Do you want to explain to Mursiello what you’ve done?”

The bulky man with red hair and a shaggy beard wore what seemed to be Garrison utilities with a great deal of gold braid added. Though he clenched a fist at his side, he turned to the doorway and said, “Bili! Take the company outside. I don’t need you here.”

“I’m Eugenia Tibbs, Administrator of the Self Defense Regiment,” the woman said briskly to Daniel. “I’m here to purchase your cargo.”

“The Corcyran Navy will better any other offer you get here,” said the other man: tall and very dapper, with thin, curling moustaches and a pointed goatee. “I’m Captain Samona, and I can transfer the credits to you before we leave this room.”

“I have precedence, Samona!” Tibbs said. Turning quickly back to Daniel she said in an attempt to be jolly, “I assure you that the Regiment is by far the best-funded and most trustworthy organization on Corcyra.”

“Now look here—” Samona said.

“Now both of you pissants shut up!” Hochner said. His shoulder boards bore the two solid squares of a captain in the Alliance Army; the Garrison had been enrolled in Alliance service and probably used the same insignia.

“In fact…,” Hochner said, backing to put himself between Daniel and the faction leaders whom he was facing. “Why don’t you both get your asses out of here? The Garrison’s the only real power here on Corcyra, however much you lots swank around with your Pantellarian accents!”

“Excuse me, sir,” Daniel said. He tapped Hochner’s right shoulder. “You’re crowding me.”

Hochner slapped at Daniel’s hand without turning around. “Then move back!” he said while both exile leaders gabbled at him in rising voices.

The harbormaster, Kalet, had moved into the corner behind his desk. He watched the verbal brawl with a miserable expression.

Daniel grabbed Hochner’s right wrist with his left hand and bent it up behind his back. Hochner roared and spun to his right. Daniel punched the bigger man in the pit of the stomach.

Hochner gasped. Because he was already off-balance, he fell forward onto his knees. With difficulty he managed to stretch out his right hand so that he didn’t sprawl on his face.

“Want me to put the boot in, master?” Hogg said hopefully.

“I don’t think that will be necessary, Hogg,” said Daniel. He stepped forward and put his back to the harbormaster’s desk so that all three faction representatives were in his range of vision. Kalet was certainly not a threat.

“I appreciate that you all find this matter to be important,” Daniel said calmly, “but you’re dealing with the wrong party. My cargo belongs the consignee, the Transformationist Community. You need to deal with them.”

“What’s he doing?” said Mistress Tibbs, glancing to Daniel’s side. His eyes followed hers.

Hogg snicked open the blade of his knife and bent over Hochner. Daniel frowned though he didn’t object aloud. He didn’t remember Hogg exceeding what he thought his master would consider reasonable…or at least would consider on the edge of reasonable.

Hogg used his right little finger to jerk slack in Hochner’s gunbelt, then sliced through the leather. He pulled up the portion containing the holstered pistol, then straightened, closed the knife, and dropped it into a baggy pocket.

“I’m just looking ahead, lady,” Hogg said. “Like a peasant learns to do, you know? And—”

His tone hadn’t been friendly before. Now it rasped like a cross-cut saw.


“—I’m a freeborn citizen of Cinnabar, not a thug, and I’m good enough for this Manor or any bloody place on Corcyra. Got it?”

“Forgive my question, citizen,” Tibbs said. There was laughter in her eyes if not quite in her words. “I assure you, I didn’t believe that your master needed thugs to protect him from such as Captain Hochner.”

“We’ll go now, I think,” Daniel said. He turned his head toward the harbormaster. “Master Kalet, I will take it that I’ve fulfilled my obligations to the port authorities. If there’s some additional form to sign or the like, please bring it to the Kiesche and I’ll see that it’s taken care of.”

He nodded to Tibbs, then Samona. “Mistress,” he said. “Captain. I don’t believe we have any business to transact, but you can find me on my ship if there is.”

Hogg dropped the holster on the floor and thrust the pistol under his belt. It was a standard Alliance service weapon, much like the RCN equivalent which Daniel wore when formality required him to. Daniel was quite a good shot with longarms, but he didn’t like handguns.

“I’ll call on you shortly, Captain,” Samona said brightly as Daniel walked past.

“And I,” said Administrator Tibbs.

Daniel and Hogg walked through the lobby at the same businesslike pace as when they had entered. The desk clerk called, “Decided on a room?”

“I’m going to look up an old girlfriend first,” Daniel said. “I may be back.”

He’d thought of taking a room to camouflage his intentions—he certainly wasn’t going to sleep away from his command after that meeting—but he’d decided he wanted to get back to the ship as quickly as possible. Under other circumstances, the Manor might have been a pleasant change from the cramped quarters of a tramp freighter, but the center of Brotherhood was a bomb ready for a spark. The civilians had no choice but to stay; but Daniel did, and he was exercising it.

Thirty or forty Garrison soldiers stood or sat on the veranda; they looked ill at ease but not hostile, rather like a pack of dogs milling in an unfamiliar environment. Daniel nodded bare acknowledgment to the squat fellow with sergeant-major bars, but he stepped past briskly to avoid a chance of conversation. The civilians had moved on.

Hogg had kept his face front to avoid eye contact, which in his case might have meant a challenge. Hogg could look like a simple rustic, but he didn’t have Daniel’s skill at projecting friendly confidence when he was expecting everything to blow up in an instant.

“Think we’re going to have to shoot our way out of this?” Hogg said as they crossed the plaza at a quicker pace than they’d kept when they approached.

“I don’t think so, no,” Daniel said. “But I’ll admit that I’ve been wishing I’d spent more time on pistol practice when I had the leisure.”

“I’ll give you this,” Hogg said, patting the sub-machine gun’s barrel with his left hand—the hand that wasn’t on the grip. “Hochner’s piece ought to do all right for me.”

They started down the slope toward the harbor. The Kiesche’s plasma cannon seemed to be locked—it probably wasn’t—straight ahead, because anything else would arouse comment.

In the crosstrees of the raised mast was a crewman with a long canvas-wrapped bundle, almost certainly a stocked impeller. Without using his goggles’ magnification, Daniel couldn’t identify the spacer, but from his size he was probably Barnes—which meant Sun was at the controls of the plasma cannon.

“I hope we’re being unreasonably concerned,” Daniel said. “If we’re not, though, I couldn’t ask for better people around us than we’ve got.”

Hogg grunted. After a moment he said, “I hope the mistress is aboard when we get there. I figure we’re going to need some magic on this one, and I don’t know a better magician than her!”