The Sea Without a Shore (ARC)

CHAPTER 19


Above Corcyra

Though Daniel remained at the command console, he had handed the conn to Vesey on a flat-plate display to make the short hop to Corcyra from their observation point one light minute out. She would land them in Brotherhood also. Using the relatively poor equipment was good practice.

Vesey had extracted the Kiesche 37,000 miles above Corcyra, a lovely piece of work even in so short a hop. She would do equally well bringing the Kiesche into harbor…and another time, when Vesey was on her own and perhaps being shot at, she would make a similar landing a trifle more smoothly than she would have done without this practice.

“Kiesche to Brotherhood Control,” Cory said. “Come in, Brotherhood Control, over.”

His eyes were closed and he was knuckling his forehead fiercely with his left hand. The length of a passage through the Matrix didn’t affect the amount of discomfort an individual felt on extraction, and Cory was obviously feeling a great deal.

Daniel rotated the couch of his console to check the Corcyran envoys. He had decided to bunk the three of them in the main cabin, moving crewmen—including Woetjans at her own request—to the overflow bunks in the hold.

Lieutenant Angelotti looked cheery, Colonel Bourbon was sitting on his bunk with the expression of a man trying to hold up a wall which was collapsing on him, and Almer lay flat with his right forearm thrown across his eyes. The gesture looked theatrical, as everything Almer did was theatrical, but it was certainly possible that the fellow was prostrated by the pain of extraction.

Daniel smiled, remembering the time that had happened to him while he was still a cadet on a training cruise. Oddly enough, it made him feel closer to Tibbs’ aide; an irritating fellow to be sure, but surprisingly sharp once you learned his manner.

Hogg unstrapped from the bulkhead jump-seat and propelled himself to the command console. His woodcraft served him well in freefall, as it did Daniel. Hogg always knew where his body was and how much weight he was putting on any surface he was in contact with.

Misplacing your weight in the field meant that a snapped twig alerted your prey or even that you slid down a hillside on top of the loose stone you had disturbed. In freefall you caromed wildly around the compartment, which could be even more unpleasant.

“I figure there’s plenty of time to get into your Whites, master,” Hogg said. “Instead of waiting while the ship cools off and we can open her up.”

“Hogg,” Daniel said, “I told you that the Kiesche wasn’t a naval vessel and I’m not here as an RCN officer. The last thing I want to do is convince people that I represent the Republic on Corcyra. I will wear these—”

He tugged the leg of his dark blue utilities.

“—just as I told you in Xenos that I would!”

“Kiesche, this is Brotherhood Control,” the console announced. “You are cleared to land in the same berth as you had previously. I say again, the previous berth. That’s the only place you’re cleared to land, over.”

“Six?” Cory asked on the command channel.

At this moment, Daniel and the Kiesche had effectively unlimited options. When they began their landing approach, their options shrank sharply.

On the other hand, options for completing the mission successfully were much higher if they landed in Brotherhood Harbor as directed. We didn’t come from Cinnabar in order to fail and go home again.

“Roger, Cory,” Daniel said. “Lieutenant Vesey, bring us in. Over.”

“Roger, Brotherhood Control,” Cory said. “Kiesche out.”

“Ship,” said Vesey, “prepare for descent. And stay alert, fellow Sissies, because it may be rough after we’ve landed. Five out.”

Daniel smiled as braking thrust pushed him back into his couch. He had thought of taking the conn himself, but he would probably have other claims on his attention shortly. Vesey had again proven herself precisely the sort of alert, intelligent officer whom he would want in charge of the ship when he himself was in the middle of something else.

Probably in the middle of something lethal.

Brotherhood on Corcyra

The Kiesche was wrapped in a blanket of plasma as it braked toward the surface of Corcyra. Ionized oxygen and hydrogen atoms radiated across the electro-optical spectrum, smothering all but the most fragmentary bits of communication and data gathering.

If I believed in Hell, Adele thought, I would say that I am in it.

The humor of the thought brought a hint of a smile as she tried to strain information from the static. No matter how hard the software attempted to sharpen the hash, it remained hash. Their lives and mission might depend on what Adele heard in the next few minutes, or what she failed to hear.

The Kiesche bellied into Brotherhood Harbor in a pillow of steam which turned the last few feet of her descent into a greasy stagger. Adele didn’t notice that, nor that her apparent weight returned to normal when the thrusters shut off.

What she did notice was that the roar of static sank to a mere nasty crackle. Data streamed in and she was back in her element.

Adele set her side of the console to convert her words into a text crawl at the bottom of Daniel’s display and said, “Garrison headquarters has just directed the Regiment’s missile battery to destroy the Kiesche if we should lift from our berth again.”

“Command, this is Six,” Daniel said orally to the ship’s officers. “Signals, can you lock it out, and why didn’t the Garrison alert their own missiles, over?”

“Lieutenant Cory has locked both batteries,” Adele said, switching to voice communication. “The Garrison battery has land-line communication to its headquarters, which I cannot intercept as yet. I would guess that Mursiello alerted his own troops as soon as we contacted Brotherhood Control, whereas radioing the Regiment battery was more a matter of hope than expectation. Ah, over.”

“The Regiment crew wouldn’t have taken Garrison orders without agreement from Mistress Tibbs,” Daniel said. “Which they wouldn’t have gotten, though she might not have known what was going on, over.”

Spacers opened hatches in all occupied compartments, including two on the bridge. The main hatch would remain closed until the hull and the ship’s immediate surroundings had cooled, but there wasn’t the risk of binding and warping smaller hatches. Air puffed in, drawing with it steam and the sharp bite of ozone.

“Six, there’s rockets aimed at us from the seawall!” Sun said at the work station on which he’d brought up a gunnery array. “A whole rocket launcher under a tarp so we didn’t see it coming down! Sir, I can’t bear on them by twenty-two degrees! Can you swing us around so I can bear, just a little bit?”

“Negative!” Daniel said. “Mundy, can you—”

“No,” said Adele, anticipating the rest of the question. “It has manual controls and the sights are optical. I can jam radio signals to the crew, but I would expect them to launch even without orders if we open fire. And they’re only fifty yards away. Over.”

The launcher was a three-tier—three/two/three—rack of eight-inch rockets. They were short-range and unguided; the sort of weapon that might be used to bombard a city or to serve a freighter as defensive armament against pirates. The bursting charges might not penetrate the Kiesche’s hull, but they would stun and possibly kill everyone aboard.

“I got it,” Hogg said, standing at the hatch between the bridge and hold. He wasn’t netted in, but shut down as now in harbor, the background noise was the relatively slight chorus of squeaks, clinks and hisses of the freighter cooling.

Hogg reached into the arms locker beside the hatch and came out with a stocked impeller. “I’ll open the airlock and wait on the spine till it’s time. Right?”

“Yes,” said Daniel, rising from the console. He tugged at his utilities, pulling down the trousers which must have ridden up.

“And master?” Hogg said. “Nobody else goes outside with a gun, got it? I don’t want somebody starting the party before I’m ready.”

“Yes,” Daniel said again.

“Master Hogg?” said Hale, standing in the hold with a carbine. “You get the mechanism—”

She nodded to the stocked impeller. Adele had seen similar weapons smash through brick walls.

“—and I’ll take care of the personnel. On your call.”

Hale hefted her carbine. She was probably able to handle a full-sized weapon like Hogg’s, but she obviously preferred the virtues of accuracy and rapid recovery from recoil.


“Yeah, all right,” Hogg said. “On my call.”

Adele nodded approvingly. She touched her own pistol, a light weapon that would have been no more than a dangerous toy in most hands.

The inner airlock door on the bridge was already open. Hogg disappeared into it; a moment later Hale followed him up the ladder.

“Brotherhood Control to Kiesche,” the radio boomed. “Kiesche, keep your personnel on board until the envoys have been carried to the Manor. A vehicle is on its way. I repeat, nobody else sets foot outside the vessel! Control out!”

Cory looked at Daniel again.

Adele got up from the console. “Agree,” she said to Daniel. “There’s no choice.”

Then, “Lieutenant Angelotti, give me your tunic and cap.”

As Adele spoke, she opened the press-seal closure of her own beige tunic. Her trousers were beige also instead of the bleached white—rather grubby now—of Angelotti’s uniform trousers. Angelotti’s bright-red tunic was enough.

“Acknowledge them, Cory,” said Daniel, standing up also. His face suddenly became stricken. “They’ll recognize Bourbon and they’d recognize me.”

Bourbon, who seemed to have understood the situation as quickly as Adele and Daniel had, stood up. He no longer looked as though he were at death’s door. Though in fact now he is facing probable death.

Adele’s tiny grin would have puzzled anyone—anyone but Tovera—who knew the thought behind it.

“I’ve been shot at before,” Bourbon said. “Can somebody find a gun for me?”

“No,” said Adele. “You didn’t carry a gun when you left for Karst, so you shouldn’t have one now.”

Adele took the pistol from her pocket, then tossed her tunic onto the bunk. Angelotti held out the red garment. Adele put it on and transferred the pistol. Since she had kept her own trousers, she still had the personal data unit.

The lieutenant was slightly plumper than Adele and had larger breasts, but the exchange—in this direction—would go unremarked. It would probably go unremarked aboard the Kiesche also, at least until the present business was over.

“Wait, what is happening?” Almer said. He was standing and had lost his appearance of fashionable delicacy. “I’m not a soldier! Problems inside the Garrison are nothing to me!”

“Be quiet,” Adele said. “We need all three hostages or they’ll wonder.”

“Four,” said Tovera. “Lieutenant Angelotti’s secretary is coming.”

Adele looked at her. Tovera hadn’t asked a question, but Adele was in charge of the operation and would make the important decisions.

“Yes, she should go,” Daniel said. He met Adele’s eyes. “Nobody looks twice at her.”

“Yes, all right,” Adele said. She put on the billed cap prescribed for Dress/Casual uniforms in the Pantellarian—and now Corcyran—navy. The original badge, a silver double-headed wolf, had been replaced by crossed pickaxes, rather crudely embroidered.

She, Daniel and Tovera had just carried out a complex negotiation in fewer words than many people required to decide what to have for lunch. Dealing with people wasn’t difficult, so long as all parties were smart and decisive.

“Look, you have three now with her!” Almer said, reaching toward Tovera. Possibly he intended to grab her sleeve.

Cazelet, who had entered the bridge from the hold, stepped between them and shoved Almer back. “Give me your hat and tunic, Almer,” he said. “Adele, I’m taller but I’ll pass.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Adele said. She wasn’t angry about Almer’s behavior—that was a problem for Mistress Tibbs to deal with—but someone on or beyond the verge of panic was dangerous to have with you in a situation like the one shaping up.

Daniel had set the main display to a real-time view of the land side of the harbor. An armored personnel carrier lifted from the Plaza and skimmed down Central Street toward the water. It was the less spavined one of the pair which had flown the Garrison delegation to Pearl Valley.

Despite being in better condition than its consort, the APC stayed low enough to be in ground effect most of the way. Pedestrians jumped or, less wisely, flattened themselves on the pavement. Adele didn’t see anyone actually crushed, but that obviously hadn’t been a matter of concern to the Garrison driver.

“Sir, we can open the main hatch whenever you’re ready,” Vesey said. She had seated herself at the back of the console, the place Adele had given up. Daniel’s couch was empty.

“Right,” said Daniel. “Give me a moment to sort things with the crew. We don’t want anybody shooting from here.”

“They’d probably miss us,” said Tovera.

Adele smiled; Daniel laughed and clapped Tovera lightly on the shoulder as he strode past. It was the first time Adele remembered Daniel treating her servant as anything but a dangerous pet.

“All right, listen!” Daniel said as the keyed-up spacers backed to make room for him. Adele and Tovera followed with Cazelet and Bourbon behind them. “Any of you have guns, put’em down right now! When the time comes, we’ll go out and sort things with the wogs. We don’t need bloody guns to do that, do we?”

No/Hell no/We sure bloody don’t!

“So we’re all going to move back in the hold, out of sight,” Daniel said. “I’ll tell you when we go for ’em. And can somebody find me a nice length of pipe?”

“Want an open-end wrench, sir?” Beezely said. “Or, hell, you can have the box wrench I was going to use myself.”

“Kiesche, send out the envoys,” said the console, clearly audible in the hold. “Send out the envoys immediately! Brotherhood over.”

“Open up, Cory!” Daniel said. He shouted toward the bridge instead of using his commo helmet, so that he informed the spacers also. They were already moving aft toward where the extra bunks had been fitted. The hold had been nearly empty even before the Kiesche unloaded its cargo of weapons.

Adele and Cazelet placed themselves in front of the hatchway, to either side of Colonel Bourbon. Tovera was to Adele’s left and a subservient pace behind. The greeting committee from the Garrison might wonder at Tovera’s presence; but as Daniel had said, they wouldn’t worry. In all likelihood no one would be looking at anything but Bourbon.

The releases clanged and the hatch began to descend. More steam and ozone curled in. Bourbon began to sneeze violently. Adele’s nose wrinkled reflexively, but every landing was the same and she had experienced unguessibly many landings by now.

Unguessibly, but…I could sort the logs of my voyages for landings, reduce the number by airless worlds and those with unbreathable atmospheres, and add those from before I joined the RCN and began formally logging them.…

The hatch thunked into its cradle on the starboard outrigger. The port crew had already extended the wooden coupler from the quay to the float’s outer edge.

“We’ll go, now,” said Adele. She settled the cap firmly and stepped onto the ramp. Her companions moved with her.

Captain Hochner and five other soldiers dismounted from the vehicle. Hochner now carried a sub-machine gun as well as the pistol in his cross-draw holster. The other men had Pantellarian-issue carbines.

A soldier stood behind the automatic impeller on a ring mount on the roof of the cab. The weapon was still locked in its travelling position, forward and horizontal. Either Hochner hadn’t wanted to be too obviously threatening at this point, or the Garrison troops were so badly trained that it hadn’t occurred to the gunner that he might actually need his weapon.

“I’ll lead!” Cazelet said as they approached the wooden extension. “Colonel, you wait till last. With us in the way, they won’t be sure of hitting you.”

“I don’t like—” Bourbon said. He paused and muttered, “Sorry.”

That saved Adele the effort of telling him to be quiet. She wouldn’t have minded the effort.

“Well considered, Cazelet,” she said as she followed him closely across the walkway. They stepped onto the quay.

The APC waited thirty feet away with its fans shut down. Adele put her left hand in her pocket as she moved up parallel to Cazelet. Bourbon took his place between them. Tovera was to the left as before.

Cazelet looked nothing like Almer, but the hat brim waggled in front of his face and the flowing tunic looked as well on the slender, taller lieutenant as on the chubby aide. Hochner and his nervous gang had eyes only for Bourbon, though. They were within ten feet now, poised to—

The loud squeal from the harbor was the Kiesche’s bow gun traversing. Adele knew that the plasma cannon couldn’t bear on the vehicle, but Hochner’s gang didn’t.

“What’s that?” a soldier cried. He brought his carbine to his shoulder, pointing toward the Kiesche. He wasn’t looking through the sights.

“How would we know?” Adele said shrilly. When the soldier glanced toward her, she shot him twice in the face. Convulsing from the brain shot, he slammed back into the side of the APC, then bounced forward again. Cazelet grabbed the carbine but the hands of the corpse had locked on it.

Adele was aware only subconsciously of the rattle of Tovera’s little sub-machine gun. Hochner’s arms flailed as he pitched backward; the man next to him was going down also.


Adele looked up at the gunner just as his helmet spun high in the air. Ticked by a bullet, she thought. Then she saw the splash of blood and realized that Hale had shot the man through the bridge of the nose. The carbine bullet had hit the inside of the helmet after pureeing his brains.

Colonel Bourbon was wrestling with one of the soldiers. Adele couldn’t safely shoot, but Cazelet had finally pulled the carbine away from the corpse. He put the muzzle into the soldier’s ear—

And must have realized that he wasn’t mentally able to pull the trigger. He punched the weapon stunningly into the soldier’s head, knocking him against the APC.

A Garrison soldier tried to escape through the hatch in the side of the vehicle. Adele shot him through the back of the neck. The second round of her double tap disintegrated on the fellow’s helmet—her light pellets were glass propelled by an aluminum skirt which vaporized in the flux of the driving coil—but one was enough.

Another of Hochner’s gang must have already gotten back into the APC. Bourbon had the carbine he’d been struggling for. He fired one round through the hatchway.

“I give up!” the man inside shrieked. “I give—”

Bourbon threw the carbine’s selector to Full Auto. He fired a ten-round burst into the compartment. A slug ricocheted into the cab windshield, starring the bulletproof panel mounted inside the glass.

The bombardment rockets nearby on the quay blew up. The orange fireball was speckled with bits of the launcher and sheets of rocket casing. Hogg must have kept shooting into the rockets until the fuel of one had ignited and set off the other seven in a very fierce blaze. Technically it had been a deflagration rather than an explosion, but the pressure wave knocked Adele down.

The shock had thrown Colonel Bourbon against the APC. He straightened and aimed the carbine at the hatchway again.

Adele lifted the weapon’s muzzle. “Come out with your hands up!” she shouted through the hatch. The burst’s high-intensity snaps beside her had made her voice sound thin and flat in her own ears.

They could use another prisoner, and there didn’t seem much risk that the fellow whimpering and blubbering in the vehicle was going to come out shooting. If he attempted that, Tovera would kill him before he finished squeezing the trigger.

Another roar slapped the harbor. This was more distant than that of the rocket launcher destroying itself, but it was sharper as well. Adele glanced to her left. The Garrison’s three anti-ship missiles rippled in quick succession from their concrete emplacement. They were aimed back toward Brotherhood.

The first missile was already hypersonic when it struck the edge of the Plaza and exploded in a bubble of orange—from expended fuel—and black—the powdered basalt. The missiles depended on kinetic energy rather than warheads, but at such short range a layman would not have been able to tell the difference.

The second and third missiles punched through the flame. One struck the ground floor of the Gulkander Palace; the other scattered the upper portions of the building, which were already billowing outward as the sidewall collapsed.

Daniel, Woetjans, and most of the Kiesche’s crew sprinted up to the vehicle, wheezing and puffing. Spacers didn’t spend a great deal of time running, and the would-be rescue party had winded themselves with a short gallop. Adele didn’t doubt that they could have fought if there had been anyone left to fight.

Adele released Bourbon’s carbine and shook her right hand. She would have blisters from vents in the barrel shroud. The Medicomp would take care of it; and anyway, it wasn’t her usual shooting hand.

The Garrison soldiers—two of them; Adele had forgotten the driver—crawled out of the compartment on hands and knees. The driver was gray-faced and his right trouser leg was bloody; apparently a ricochet had touched him. The other soldier was untouched despite the number of slugs bouncing around the vehicle’s interior, but he couldn’t have been more abjectly helpless if he’d been shot in the head.

As so many of his fellows had been.

Colonel Bourbon cradled the carbine in his left elbow. “Thank you, Lady Mundy,” he said, though she wasn’t sure precisely what he was referring to. “And thank you also, Cazelet. I try to stay fit, but between the voyages and captivity I wasn’t as ready for a tussle as I should have been.”

“Adele?” Daniel said. “Can you set up a general broadcast to Brotherhood? To all receivers, I mean.”

“Yes, easily enough,” she said. “We can do it from here if—”

She started to enter the vehicle, then paused to tug at the man she had killed in the hatchway. Barnes grabbed a handful of the soldier’s tunic and tossed him over the seawall.

The APC’s communicator was in the console between the seats in the cab; personnel in the rear compartment could use it also. The late gunner’s boots dangled over it, but they weren’t in the way.

Adele switched the unit to the Kiesche’s external frequency and said, “Cory, this is Mundy. Six wants to broadcast to everyone in Brotherhood. Patch us into the town’s emergency alert system. I set up the link when we first arrived.”

She realized she was still holding her pistol. She set it on the console and flexed the fingers of her left hand.

“Done,” said Cory. “Ma’am? I apologize for the delay in getting the missiles away. They had a directional lock-out that I didn’t notice until they didn’t launch the first time.”

As Adele opened her mouth to speak, Cory added, “Ma’am? I angled them so that the basement level was clear. So long as the ceiling held in the collapse, the library ought to be fine. When they dig the rubble off the floor above, I mean.”

“Understood, Cory,” Adele said; and she did understand. It was war. Worse things had happened in wars than the destruction of an ancient library—but that hadn’t happened this time. Cory was a civilized man, and he had been well trained. “Hold for Six.”

Daniel and Bourbon had entered the compartment behind her. “Colonel,” Daniel said, “I want you to take the handset—”

Adele offered it.

“—and tell everybody that Pantellarian saboteurs have killed Major Mursiello and attempted to destroy the harbor defenses, but that you’ve taken charge and defeated the threat. You can end with, ‘Long live Corcyra!’ or whatever seems appropriate.”

Bourbon squatted before the console. Adele backed away and said to Daniel, “We don’t know that Mursiello was killed in the building collapse.”

“We know that he’ll be found dead,” said Tovera from the hatchway. She smiled, in her way. “Trust me.”

“And when Bourbon has finished his broadcast,” Daniel said, seemingly oblivious of Tovera’s words, “he and I will have a discussion. About ending this war.”