CHAPTER 34

Ground Detachment Headquarters was a palace like that of her cousin Adrian, and it certainly hadn't been abandoned before the Cinnabar squadron arrived a few days ago. Somebody'd been touching up the frescoes on the ceiling of the entrance hall. The scaffolding remained, but work had stopped.

Adele wondered who the owners had been and what they'd done to lose their home abruptly. They'd very likely lost their heads as well, which made her think of the Three Circles Conspiracy.

"Adele?" Daniel said. She came alert, feeling a hot itch shudder momentarily just under her skin. A clerk of some kind was waiting expectantly for Daniel to go off with him, but Daniel was watching her with concern. "I'm to meet with a board, they say."

"Sorry," Adele said. The smile on her lips didn't belong to her; nothing belonged to her, she'd died half a lifetime ago when she heard of her family's massacre. "I was daydreaming."

"If you'll come with me, mistress," Lieutenant Wilsing said, "Captain Carnolets is waiting."

He sounded concerned but no longer slickly supercilious. Adele's smile became real. Wilsing had learned something during the ride here. And she wasn't dead. She belonged to the RCN and to the Princess Cecile; and she belonged to herself again, because she had the respect of men and women whom she herself respected.

"Good luck with your board, Captain," she said, nodding to Daniel. She had no idea what he was getting into; she simply hadn't had time to search records here. "I can provide any documentation you need, of course."

"Thank you, Mundy," Daniel said. "And the best of luck to you as well. RCN forever, eh?"

The clerk led him and Hogg past the guard of a ground floor room. Wilsing, seeing that she was ready to follow him, took Adele in the other direction and up three flights of stairs. Tovera followed silently.

Adele heard voices and the sound of office machines in the rooms they passed, but the suite at the top of a corner tower was silent. A male secretary met Adele at the door. He bowed her in and remained outside with Wilsing and Tovera as he closed the door.

The room was covered in overlaid rugs, a meter wide and three meters long, which must have come with the palace. The desk was crackle-finished metal with a smooth enameled top—straight RCN issue. It was large, but only because three identical modules had been dovetailed together.

The man behind the desk was typing into a keypad while watching a holographic display. Simultaneously he spoke into a pickup with active sound cancelling: Adele saw his lips move, but she couldn't hear anything but the hum of the display as she walked toward the desk. The man nodded her to a puffy cushioned chair, part of the original furnishings, while continuing to speak silently.

Adele brought out her handheld and searched the map database to learn who'd owned the property before the RCN moved in. In part she was interested in the answer, not that it was likely to mean anything to her; but it was also true that she didn't care to twiddle her thumbs while somebody else carried on with his own business. Carnolets was the military governor here, that was obvious; but she was Mundy of Chatsworth.

Captain Carnolets was a tall, broad-shouldered man who'd stayed in shape despite being in his late sixties or older. He wore a 1^st Class dress uniform with a considerable number of medal ribbons on both breasts. Adele wasn't expert in such things, but the varying size of the ribbons suggested to her that many of them were from foreign governments rather than the Republic itself.

This palace was still listed as the property of Duchess Ayesha Ramos, a member of the Governor's Inner Council. Presumably the Duchess had given the wrong advice recently, or perhaps Governor Sakama had simply needed a scapegoat to take the blame for something when an RCN squadron arrived.

Adele glanced hard-faced about the room, taking in the statues in alcoves and the geometrical parquet of the ceiling. While it lasted, life had been pleasant for Duchess Ramos. Lucius Mundy might well have said the same thing.

"All right, Mundy," Carnolets said, switching off his display to look across the desk at her unveiled. His expression probably seemed intimidating to many of those he interviewed. "Your report made interesting reading."

Adele shrugged. After you've faced 15-cm plasma cannon, a scowling human holds few terrors. "Gathering the information was interesting also," she said. "Now that I've had time to digest the experience, that is. While it was going on I didn't feel much of anything."

Carnolets frowned, then broke into a smile and slapped the desk ringingly. "Bernis Sand said you don't look like much but not to be fooled," he said. "That's right, isn't it?"

"I don't know Mistress Sand as well as you appear to, Captain," Adele said, "but I'd be willing to take her word on most things."

Carnolets nodded. "Aye," he said, "and so would anybody who matters in the Senate. That's why the Republic's as healthy as it is, a lot of folks say. I say it."

Adele nodded without speaking, waiting for the captain to come to the point. There was a point, she felt certain, or he wouldn't be representing Mistress Sand.

Carnolets drummed on his desk with the index and middle fingers of his right hand. "All right, Mundy, I've got your report, but it's not the same as being there. Give me—give us—your assessment of the Alliance threat remaining on Gehenna. Nobody's looking to take your job if you're wrong."

Adele gave Carnolets a smile similar to that she'd bestowed on Lieutenant Wilsing in the car. "With respect, Captain," she said, "my job is signals officer of the Princess Cecile. If Mistress Sand chooses to relieve me of any tasks I perform for her as a citizen of the Republic, she's welcome to do so."

She coughed into her hand. She understood why Sand used uniformed personnel for liaison duties, but it was awkward. Most naval officers weren't fools, not really, but they were narrow and they thought in narrow tracks. Even as a child Adele Mundy hadn't run on a track that a man like Carnolets could recognize, though she was simple enough in all truth.

"As for Lorenz Base," she continued, "the two battleships are probably reparable but not quickly. Perhaps as many as four destroyers survived, possibly undamaged. Though it's equally likely that all were destroyed."

She smiled at a memory. "The heavy cruiser was destroyed," she said. "Of that I'm sure."

"What're the chances of Alliance reinforcements, then?" Carnolets asked.

Adele shrugged. "The base wasn't expecting any," she said. "I've made a sufficient study of the material I abstracted from their files to determine that, and we interviewed officers from the Bluecher before we set them on a habitable world."

Carnolets brought up his display again and resumed typing. "Good," he said. "Excellent. I'll recommend Keith follow up his advantage even though things here in the Cluster aren't completely settled yet. You did a fine job, Mundy, a fine job."

"I'm fortunate to be part of the crew of the most efficient vessel in the RCN, Captain," Adele said. Suddenly, shockingly, she felt tears start into her eyes. Trying to control her stammer she went on. "Even when she's not technically in the RCN any more. God damn it!"

The last was to herself in a savage whisper, furious at her weakness. The tone if not the words penetrated Carnolets' abstraction. He looked at Adele in puzzlement and said, "Is there anything else you need to mention, Mundy? If not . . . ?"

"There's another matter, yes," Adele said. The emotion remaining was a much harder thing than the love and pride that had briefly overwhelmed her. She grinned in her heart: love and pride had briefly unmanned her. "There's the matter of the crew of the Aristoxenos. They were in great measure responsible for the success of the operation. It's time that they're restored to Cinnabar citizenship."

"You have a cousin in that lot, I believe?" Carnolets said, glaring at her through his holographic display.

"My cousin Adrian Purvis was killed aboard the Aristoxenos when a missile exploded in its tube during the recent action, if that's what you mean," Adele said. Her voice was controlled, but her expression made the man across the desk shut down his display again. "If you mean anything else, say it."

"I beg your pardon, Mistress Mundy," Carnolets said. "I misspoke. No one viewing your record could imagine that you'd put family purposes ahead of the needs of the Republic."

He stood and bowed to her, then sat down and continued, "As for the mutineers—the RCN doesn't play politics. I won't pretend to have sympathy for officers who forget that rule. On the other hand, it's been a long time; and besides, Bernis asked me—"

He stopped and corrected himself with embarrassment that showed his contrition better than the prevous words had, "Mistress Sand ordered me, I should rather say, to show you every consideration should we meet. I suppose this request falls into that category."

Carnolets raised a finger of apology and brought up his display again. He made a short series of keystrokes, then shut down.

"There," he said, beaming at her. "I've enlisted the surviving officers and crew of the Aristoxenos as the Ground Detachment Naval Militia, with pay of one florin a year and full Cinnabar citizenship. That'll protect them from the locals if they stay here, and it'll let them go home if they prefer. Satisfactory?"

Adele rose. "That's quite satisfactory, Captain," she said. "Thank you. I'll leave you to your important work, but of course I'll be available if you have further need of me before the Princess Cecile lifts."

She walked to the door over the thick, yielding rugs. And when will we lift, and where to? But one thing at a time, and this had been a very great thing.

This had been the end of the Three Circles Conspiracy.

The rating led Daniel and Hogg to a door just around the corner from the entrance hall. He tapped twice on the panel, then lowered the tilting-bar latch and called through the crack, "Mr. Leary's here, Commander."

"Then send him bloody in!" a voice growled from inside. The rating swung the door open and nodded to Daniel.

In the center of the room was a long table topped with colored marble. The frames of the chairs along either side were carved and gilded with green satin upholstery. The high ceiling had gilt decorations, and the walls were papered in a scintillant peacock-tail pattern up to a frieze of mythological scenes.

Oddly enough, the RCN-standard filing cabinets and the four data consoles under the mirror the far side of the room made the original furnishings look out of place, not the other way around. Ratings were working at the consoles.

Across the table from Daniel sat three RCN officers—a commander in the center, a female lieutenant to his right, both in 2^nd Class uniforms; and a grizzled man to his left in utilities so worn and stained that his rank wasn't visible. He was probably a lieutenant also, commissioned from warrant rank for his technical abilities. The lieutenants had hand-held units on the speckled marble before them, and the engineer was sunk in his display.

"Sit down, Leary," the Commander said, gesturing at the chairs on Daniel's side of the table. "We just got the data twenty minutes ago. Not the way things ought to be run, of course, but needs must when the Devil drives, eh?"

Daniel seated himself gingerly. Hogg stood against the wall behind him, looking grimly expectant. The chairs were just as uncomfortable as Daniel'd expected. The seat tried to throw him into a back so deep it'd be extremely difficult for him to leap up suddenly.

He wouldn't really have to, but his body had been trained by tens of millions of years of pre-human existence to categorize all threats in terms of physical responses: fight or flight. The chair wasn't suited to either, and the situation was threatening.

"Ah, Commander . . . ?" Daniel said. The president of the board wasn't anybody he recognized, and his name-tape was half-hidden. It was Brit-something, Britton or Britling, but it wouldn't do to guess wrong. "Should I have defense counsel present?"

"Don't be an idiot, Leary," the president said, spreading three sheets of hardcopy before him. When he moved, Daniel saw that his name was actually Britten. "We're the survey board, sitting on the Princess Cecile. The Senate authorized Admiral Keith to buy vessels to supplement his squadron. As you can imagine, we left in a hell of a hurry, a hell of a hurry."

"Your corvette's a godsend," said the female lieutenant, Feininger unless a trick of the light made Daniel misread her name. "Worked up and with a trained crew."

"We'll need to draft some of that crew, of course," Britten said, shuffling more hardcopy onto the table with a disgusted look on his face. "Sorry, Leary, but that's how it is. Needs of the service, you know."

"Ah," said Daniel, organizing his thoughts to deal with a situation very different from the one he'd expected. "Sir, I suppose we could lose twenty personnel without struggling too badly, but you must recall that we had casualties in action with Alliance vessels."

And so they had, seven riggers dead when the Bluecher's missile cleared a section of the hull with a bubble of white-hot gas. The Sissie and Goldenfels together had shipped forty extra personnel, Alliance deserters and Morzangan natives who hadn't fully understood what they were getting into, though.

"Twenty?" said Lieutenant Feininger. "Don't be daft. You'll send thirty trained spacers to the Kapila and thank God we need a corvette for long-range scouting even more than we need the other eighty souls in your crew!"

"Sirs?" Daniel said. They didn't seem terribly interested in him, but there were things he needed to get out. "I should mention that nothing that happened at Lorenz Base, that is in the Radiance system, involved a Cinnabar ship—no ship that had ever been in RCN service, that is. And the action off Salmson 115 began with an unprovoked attack by an Alliance cruiser, so Princess Cecile had every legal right to reply. Technically."

Commander Britten looked up in exasperation. "Technicalities be damned, Leary!" he said. "Are you an officer or a bloody lawyer? This is war or the next thing to it! I don't want to hear you blathering about bloody legal bullshit. D'ye understand me?"

"Yessir," said Daniel, sitting very stiff on the edge of this damned soft chair.

"They were on the verge of declaring war when we lifted from Harbor Three, Leary," Lieutenant Feininger said. "Speaker Leary was blaggarding Legislator Jarre up one side and down the other in front of the whole Senate. We signed the armistice on the basis of status quo ante, and here the Alliance was shifting a squadron to Radiance where they bloody well hadn't been at the beginning of the last war."

"Speaker Leary . . . ," Britten said as a new thought crossed his mind. He frowned. "Related to you, Leary?"

"I suppose so," Daniel said. "We're not social acquaintances, if that's what you mean."

That was literally true: he and Corder Leary hadn't spoken in seven years, and their last interview had been of the sort that would've ended with pistols at dawn if they hadn't been father and son.

Daniel preferred that the relationship not come up when he was talking to fellow officers. In order to prevent misapprehensions, he'd have to say a great deal more about his personal life than he or any other gentleman wanted to do.

Feininger leaned toward Britten and whispered into his ear, her eyes on Daniel. Britten grunted and said, "Right, I'd forget my head if it weren't screwed on. There's too bloody much work to do in a year, and they're giving us two weeks!"

He lifted the attaché case on the floor behind him and slammed it down on the sheets already on the table. He lifted the lid, rooted through the contents, and came out with a document on parchment with ribbons and red wax seal.

"There you go, Leary," he said, handing the document across the table. "We've got a bale of blank commissions as you might imagine, but Admiral Anston himself signed one for you. You reverted to active duty. . . ."

Britten turned the document around to read the date.

"Seventeen days ago, I make it. When you get back to your command, be sure to swear your crew in, will you?"

"I, ah . . . ," Daniel said. His mouth was dry. "Yes sir."

"What condition's the spars and rigging, eh, Leary?" asked the engineering officer. His nametape was illegible, bleached by the chemicals which had failed to clean some of the stains out of the fabric. "Your log says you lost three antennas in action."

"Ah, yessir," Daniel said. "And we expended a quantity of cables in circumstances that prevented their recovery. But we were able to replace all missing spars, sails, and rigging from the Bluecher before we dropped the wreck onto Gehenna."

The engineer nodded, then turned to Britten and said, "Beggars can't be choosers, Commander, but it seems to me she'd be a good choice regardless. She was surveyed at a million four-seven-five as a prize two years ago, and I see no reason to court a writ when we get back home by offering less now."

"Lieutenant Feininger?" Britten said, looking to his right. She nodded.

He pulled a form out of his briefcase, scribbled down figures, and signed it before handing it to the engineering officer to sign. "Done!"

"Now understand, Mr. Leary . . . ," Feininger said as she signed in turn. "We don't carry specie. This is a draft on the Treasury, but that doesn't mean money in your pocket until God knows how many faceless clerks on Xenos countersign the proper documents. You'll be waiting years to see money, likely, unless you go to a discounter."

"I've had experience with prize money, Lieutenant," Daniel said, piqued at the lecture but aware that it was well-meant. Most officers didn't have experience with prize money. "That raises a question, if you don't mind. Is it permissible for me to divide this money among my crew in shares as if it were prize money?"

"She's not a prize," said the engineering officer. "You didn't capture the Princess Cecile, you bought her. That's what the bill of sale says, anyway. Doesn't it?"

"Yes, but . . . ," Daniel said; and stopped, because he wasn't sure how to go on.

Commander Britten snorted. "You can do any bloody fool thing you want with your money, Leary—that's what spacers do, generally, piss their money away like bloody fools. But you don't need to give away three-quarters of what's all yours."

He waved his hand. "Go on, get out of here," he said. "God knows you're not the only thing we have to deal with this afternoon."

"With respect, Commander . . . ," Daniel said, rising to his feet. The document giving him close to a million and a half florins shivered in his hands. There'd be electronic equivalents, but the document had a physical reality that took his breath away. "I believe I do need to divide the money. The Learys of Bantry have done hard things over the years, but nobody ever accused us of cheating our retainers."

Hogg, standing unnaturally stiff in a failed attempt to give himself dignity, threw the door open. Daniel stepped out. Adele was coming toward them down the hall.

Daniel drew in a deep breath and looked again at the draft to make sure it really said what he believed it did. He opened his mouth to say, "Adele, the most amazing thing has happened!"

But Adele, smiling like a happy child, was already saying, "Daniel, I have wonderful news!"