The Sea Without a Shore (ARC)

CHAPTER 29


Cleveland’s World

A quarter mile from the slope where Daniel stood, steam wreathed the Madison Merchant an instant before the sound arrived. It was a snarling roar instead of the usual pillowy thump of a ship lighting her thrusters. The freighter’s bow lifted, then slapped back onto the water as the man at the controls closed his throttles in panic.

“They didn’t flare their nozzles!” Cazelet said. “They’re lucky that they didn’t break her back when they came down like that.”

“Didn’t or couldn’t,” Daniel said with satisfaction. “They left the thrusters sphinctered after they landed. When the algae coated the petals, they wouldn’t open properly.”

Daniel had landed on a knoll which was at ninety degrees to his quarry’s long axis. For the Madison Merchant’s gun to bear, she had to rotate at least forty-five degrees; sixty would be better. After Sorley’s abortive attempt to lift his ship and turn, the Merchant floated in exactly the same relation to the Kiesche as she had to begin with.

“Why won’t they be able to lift now, though?” Cazelet said. “They’ll have burned off the algae. Or do you think they won’t dare try because they don’t know what the problem is?”

Daniel grinned, though his eyes were following his negotiating team. The thoughts behind his expression weren’t quite a cheerful as he tried to project. Adele had paused for a moment when the thrusters lit, but she and her companions resumed their trudge downward when the Merchant settled back. Adele held a white flag in her right hand, but nobody imagined that Sorley or his crew would take any notice of it.

“The algae fixes calcium,” Daniel said. “Not huge amounts, of course, but too much for the tolerances between the petals of a thruster nozzle. Calcium vaporizes at well over twenty-two hundred degrees. Yes, it will burn off—but not cleanly enough to allow the petals to slide properly, not from a short pulse like that.”

The Merchant’s attempt to rise had shaken the outcrop on which the Kiesche rested. Steam puffed out of a recent crack in the rock, sending a scatter of pebbles down the slope toward where Daniel and Cazelet stood. This side was too gentle to manage a real avalanche; the rattle of stone on stone petered out before anything reached the men.

“I hadn’t thought about our thrusters cracking the rock,” Daniel said. “It would’ve been embarrassing if we’d gone sliding down into the lake beside the Merchant, wouldn’t it? Not the sort of impression I was trying to give Captain Sorley.”

“I don’t think it happens very often, sir,” said Cazelet. “I don’t know of another captain who would have willingly landed on a point of rock.”

The Madison Merchant floated in what was either a lake, a lagoon or a meandering river, depending on how it was fed. A campsite with sailcloth shelters and a remarkable amount of trash for no more than two days of occupancy stood on the beach at the end of the catwalk from the main hatch. The men whom Daniel had seen on-shore while the Kiesche was in orbit had vanished back into the ship, and the freighter’s hatch was closed.

“I didn’t really need to land so high up, I think,” Daniel said. “The algae doesn’t seem to advance more than twenty feet from the lakeshore even in the wet season. It must be drawn to metal—or maybe electrical charges.”

He gestured. Cleveland’s World was placid atmospherically and geologically. The lake’s barren margin resulted from regular flooding.

The Madison Merchant lighted its thrusters again, but only three of them and all toward the stern. They were properly flared, so though the ship rocked as the water around it boiled, there was no risk of it trying to lift off again.

“She’s got eight thrusters,” Cazelet said, “but only six were functioning when she lifted from Brotherhood Harbor—I checked imagery from the harbormaster’s office. And three won’t lift her, even if they weren’t asymmetric.”

“Well observed,” Daniel said. The praise was real, though the warmth he put into his voice was a little exaggerated. “They seem to have checked their instruments this time and only lighted the units which opened properly instead of just assuming they were working.”

Cazelet was an excellent officer, a man Daniel would be pleased to have serving under him even if Cazelet were not Adele’s protégé. He came from a commercial rather than naval background, which was useful for many reasons. For example, Cazelet was more likely than Cory—or Daniel—to check the harbormaster’s records to see how well a freighter’s plasma thrusters were functioning. RCN officers—or their Fleet equivalents—came to assume that a starship’s basic systems were operating properly unless there had been an emergency.

Cazelet was personable, cultured, and intelligent. He was a stabilizing influence in Lieutenant Vesey’s life, with none of the exuberant manliness of Midshipman Dorst, her previous lover. Dorst had never been consciously cruel, but he was a young man to whom a few too many drinks or an attractive stranger were not so much a temptation as a way of life.

Daniel smiled. Much as I myself was. And still am, to a degree.

Dorst had been thick as two short planks; his sister Miranda appeared to have gotten a double set of the brains of their generation. Cazelet by contrast was extremely clever, though he didn’t rub other people’s noses in it.

Despite all the reasons to feel otherwise, however, Daniel had liked Midshipman Dorst more than he expected ever to like Cazelet. Though he knew that wasn’t fair.

The note of the Merchant’s thrusters sharpened, then shut off again. Water slopped back and forth against the outriggers, subsiding slowly.

Sorley or whoever was in charge of the present operations had apparently tried to swing the ship with the three functioning thrusters. It would be possible to do that; but it wouldn’t be possible for that clumsy hand on the throttles to do it, at least not without a serious risk of flipping the ship on her side.

Adele and her two companions hadn’t stopped at this bloom of plasma, though they weren’t moving very quickly across the rough landscape. The most common species of local plant sprang in knee-high starbursts from a common base. Daniel had examined a clump that grew from a niche in the outcrop near where he stood. The leaves oozed sticky sap if the ends were brushed. The sap wasn’t dangerous—there were no browsing animals here for the vegetation to protect itself against—but, like deep mud, it was unpleasant and a thing to avoid.

Besides, the negotiators weren’t in a hurry. Letting Sorley stew for a while longer might be useful.

Most of Daniel’s crew was still aboard the Kiesche, in part to keep them out of the way if something started to happen. Hogg was moving down the slope well to Daniel’s left. The stocked impeller he held at the balance didn’t look particularly threatening unless you knew Hogg.

Hale was working toward the Madison Merchant on Daniel’s right with a slung carbine. Woetjans accompanied her. The bosun’s baton of high-pressure tube was thrust through her belt, but she didn’t carry a projectile weapon.

Woetjans couldn’t hit a target with an impeller from much farther away than she could with the tubing, so that was good judgment on her part. Besides, Woetjans had taken three slugs in the chest a few years ago. Though she had survived, she was even less inclined to pick up an impeller than she had been before.

The Madison Merchant remained buttoned up. “Sorley’s watching them, though,” Cazelet said in a harsh tone. “Their optics are pretty decent. Better than any of that can’s other equipment, anyway.”

He was watching the negotiators—he watched Vesey, at least—with an angry expression. Turning to Daniel, he said, “I ought to be down there with them!”

Daniel didn’t smile, though that was his first impulse. Well, his first impulse was to sneer, which wasn’t like him and wasn’t fair. I wonder if I’m jealous because he’s close to Adele?

Daniel blinked in horror at the thought. Adele had taken in the orphaned grandson of the woman who had supported Adele when she lost her family in the Three Circles Conspiracy. Resenting the boy was…well, it ought to have been unthinkable!

Aloud he said, “This business will work best if Sorley and his crew don’t feel threatened. I suspect that men of their ilk don’t even notice people like Tovera.”

To the extent there were other people like Tovera. And to the extent that Tovera was a person.

“I suppose,” Cazelet muttered. He squeezed the grip of the sub-machine gun slung across his chest.

The gun was for show, and only because he’d asked for it. Cazelet had proved himself brave and capable in the tussle with the squad waiting to kill Colonel Bourbon in Brotherhood, but he had used his carbine as a pole rather than a gun. That was more than satisfactory, but Daniel suspected that in the crisis Cazelet hadn’t been able to pull the trigger.


He wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger this time either; but there wouldn’t be any cause to. Hogg would’t have to shoot either; nor Hale, who was working closer than Hogg to get within comfortable range for her less powerful carbine.

The impeller slung over Daniel’s shoulder wouldn’t be used either, but…

“Sir?” said Cazelet.

Daniel realized he had been grinning, after a fashion. “If I had to…,” he said. “I’d aim at the traversing gear of their plasma cannon. The plating there is just for streamlining, and the hydraulic hoses inside won’t deflect an osmium slug.”

“They can’t bring the gun to bear anyway, can they, sir?” Cazelet said. “We’ve seen that when they tried their thrusters.”

“I wouldn’t be doing much good, no,” Daniel agreed, “but it would be something to do.”

He shrugged fiercely, trying to shake his mind out of the direction it had been drifting. “There won’t be any trouble. If there were, Adele and Tovera would settle it without any need for the rest of us.”

That was all true. Daniel spoke forcefully to make the words sound more convincing to Cazelet—and perhaps to the speaker himself.

He kept remembering that Midshipman Dorst had been a crack shot. Not that it would be any more useful to have two impellers rather than one turning the Merchant’s gun housing into a colander, but there would have been a degree of companionship that he didn’t seem to have with Cazelet.

Which is my fault.

Daniel chuckled as the situation reformed in his head. He unslung his impeller and laid it on the slanting rock behind him. Straightening he said, “I’ve been thinking about this whole business in the wrong way. Let’s watch and be entertained by how Adele and Lieutenant Vesey deal with Sorley and his boneheaded crew.”

Daniel heard the squeal of metal rubbing metal before he saw that the freighter’s hatch had begun to open.

Worst case, Daniel and Cazelet could watch how Tovera dealt with the kidnappers; but there wasn’t any mystery about that.

***

Adele waved the flag from left to right in front of her, then back again. It was a linen napkin attached by grommets to a length of half-inch plastic pipe. Reed and Walkins, both riggers, had made it for her with as much care as if they had been scrimshawing gifts for people back on Cinnabar.

Possibly they were even more careful than that: they were doing this for the Mistress, for Lady Mundy.

The flag flicked back and forth. Adele felt extremely foolish, but the uniformed Vesey was in titular charge of their detachment and Tovera was staying properly in the background. It was Adele’s job to display the truce flag, so she would do so properly.

Besides, Reed and Walkins had been so proud of their handiwork that it would have been churlish not to brandish it proudly. She was Mundy of Chatsworth: noblesse oblige.

When they closed the boarding hatch, the Madisons had left their floating extension attached to the shore and to the starboard outrigger. It was a jury-rigged construction, made by bolting boards onto empty lubricant drums. It was over six feet wide, however, which Adele found comforting in comparison with the more technically impressive boarding bridges she was used to from RCN service.

The tight rolls of beryllium alloy with inflatable floatation chambers which Woetjans and her crew extended from the Sissie’s ramp—Mon had equipped the Kiesche with a similar unit—were compact and impressive. They were only 30 inches wide, however, and Adele found that a little tight when bobbing on the surface of the water.

She was in the lead. When she was thirty feet or so from the shore, the freighter’s main hatch shrieked, beginning to open. “Hold up, please,” Vesey said in a low voice.

Adele paused. She had been skirting a plant that looked as though it had been made by gluing brown drinking straws together. I wonder if I can find information for Daniel on these plants?

But of course she couldn’t; not here. She had searched every database on board for information about what was now Cleveland’s World, and the scant references had been only to the algae.

“Stop where you are!” called a distorted voice from inside the Madison Merchant. The speaker seemed to be using a bullhorn to shout through the opening at the top of the hatchway. “Don’t get onto the boarding bridge!”

Adele stopped at the base of the bridge. Vesey came up on her right side; Tovera remained a pace behind on the left. The hatch began to jerk downward with occasional squeals. Adele waved the flag back and forth, just to be doing something.

Mon had fitted external speakers to the Kiesche at Daniel’s direction, but they weren’t normal equipment for a tramp freighter. This alternative made the whole business seem foolish, though, which was a good attitude to have toward it. Captain Sorley was silly, not threatening.

When the hatch had pivoted down enough to expose the main hatch, Adele saw Rikard Cleveland standing in the middle of the hold. On either side stood a crewman wearing a hardsuit. Cleveland was wearing some sort of harness. Safety lines were clipped to it and to the belts of his attendants.

Tovera giggled. Vesey noticed the sound. Rather than speak to Tovera, she turned to Adele and said, “Why is she laughing?”

Adele had to speak louder than she normally would to be heard over the sound of the hatch lowering, but it was unlikely that anyone on the ship was listening through a parabolic microphone. For that matter, it wouldn’t really matter if Sorley overheard her.

“They must think the rigging suits provide protection,” she said. “A suit might stop a round from a pocket pistol at this range or from a small sub-machine gun, but both Tovera and I aim for the head. And those glass-reinforced plastic panels won’t even slow slugs from the long-arms which Hogg and Hale are carrying.”

Both Madisons held pistols which they aimed in a theatrical fashion at Cleveland’s head. It was an absurd show, though if the weapons were loaded there was a real risk that one of them might go off and blow the hostage’s brains out accidentally.

The main hatch banged down onto the starboard outrigger. Six more Madisons entered the hold. One was Schmidt, the first officer, whom Adele recognized as the large man who had been guarding Cleveland upstairs in The Dancing Girl. They were armed with a mixture of pistols and long-arms, often supplemented by knives of various sorts.

The only ones who would survive the first two seconds, Adele thought with clinical detachment, are those who throw themselves flat on the deck where Tovera and I can’t see them from where we stand. We’ll have to run up the ramp to finish them.

Not that it was going to come to that. Adele waved her flag again, figuratively brushing away that sequence of thoughts.

“Captain Sorley!” Vesey called. The visible Madisons were thirty feet away, across the extension and the boarding ramp both, and Sorley must be farther yet. “I’m Lieutenant Vesey of the RCN. We’ve been sent to procure the release of Rickard Cleveland, a Cinnabar citizen, whom you’re holding against his will. Obviously.”

“Well, you can just go away again!” came Sorley’s magnified voice from the down companionway. The hatch was open, but the captain was standing far enough up the helical staircase that he couldn’t be seen. “Master Cleveland made a deal with us back on Xenos, and we’re not going to let him welsh on it.”

“This planet is listed in the Sailing Directions as being suitable only for emergency refuelings,” Vesey said. “You’ve already learned that you can’t take off again because of damage to your thrusters. You’d learn if you got to orbit that your High Drives won’t work at all. There’s a calcium-depositing algae on this planet which is drawn to charged metal, which means any ship which has picked up static while landing through the atmosphere or which has grounded electrical equipment running.”

Adele wondered if Sorley had a copy of the Sailing Directions. He might have picked the location from a simple chart which didn’t have even the Directions’ brief warning.

“You can test it yourselves,” Vesey said. “Look at your outriggers where they’re in the water. Scrape the deposit with a knife and see how thick it is.”

One of the crewmen turned to Schmidt and said something in a querulous whine. Adele wouldn’t have sworn to the words, but it appeared to be something along the lines of, “Is that why the bloody thrusters near flipped us over?”

“Go on,” Vesey said, managing to sound contemptuous. “Nobody will shoot you. I promise.”

Adele knew the tone was acting. She had never heard Vesey express real contempt for anyone, despite ample justification.

Adele smiled bitterly. Vesey was very different from Signals Officer Mundy, in that respect as in many.

Schmidt snarled a curse. He drew a machete from its canvas sheath and stomped down the boarding ramp. From the corners of his eyes he was watching the marksmen on the slope. His head flinched slightly away as if to increase the distance between him and the gun muzzles.

“When you’ve released Cleveland,” Vesey said, “we’ll carry you and your crew back to Brotherhood in safety. If you think your ship can be salvaged, you’re welcome to come back and try. Assuming Cleveland remains in good health, of course.”


“I’m fine, Lieutenant Vesey,” Cleveland called. His voice was steady but perhaps a little higher pitched than it would have been if he hadn’t had a pistol socketed in each ear. “I’m very glad to see you.”

Schmidt reached the outrigger and swung himself toward the water, holding onto a bitt with his left hand. For a moment his body was almost out of sight from the shore. Adele heard the skreel! of steel on steel, then a curse.

Schmidt lurched back onto the top of the outrigger. He glared at Vesey, then turned toward the hatch and bellowed, “It’s like she bloody says! It’s like a coat of bloody green enamel!”

Sorley stepped out of the companionway, holding a bullhorn. He dropped it as he half ran, half hopped to put himself behind the hostage.

“Look, we deserve something!” he called. “We had a deal, me and Master Cleveland, and he tried to walk out on me. The law’s on my side.”

“There was no deal!” Cleveland shouted. “I had talked to—”

Sorley slapped the back of his head, knocking Cleveland forward. That left Sorley in plain view and the two gunmen pointing their pistols at one another.

“See here!” said Vesey, starting up the ramp. Schmidt stepped in front of her and grabbed her arm. The machete still waggled in his right hand. Vesey kicked him in the crotch with no more hesitation than a spring releasing.

Schmidt bent forward. Vesey gripped the back of his head with both hands and kneed him in the face. She wasn’t strong enough to make that as effective as she must have wished, and she almost fell over as the big man slid past her down the ramp.

Adele’s hand was in her pocket but she did not draw her pistol. She didn’t look back to see what Tovera was doing, but there were no shots; that probably meant the little sub-machine gun was still concealed.

Vesey was breathing hard and her face was white. She glanced down at Schmidt. Her right knee was bloody, so she had at least broken the fellow’s nose.

Adele reminded herself to buy Vesey a set of Grays, then remembered that Vesey was no longer a midshipman without private means but rather the First Officer on ships commanded by Captain Daniel Leary—and therefore staggeringly wealthy in her own right from prize money. Much like Signals Officer Mundy, only more so.

Vesey picked up the dropped machete. Schmidt lay doubled-up at the bottom of the ramp. Adele didn’t think he was badly hurt, but he seemed willing to remain out of the action.

She decided to ignore him, since the alternative was to shoot him through an eyesocket. That seemed needlessly harsh to Adele, but it would certainly be Tovera’s response if Schmidt threatened to make a problem again.

Adele walked along the floating extension to the outrigger. The Madisons were watching events with expressions ranging from blankness to terror. Occasionally one twitched his gun, but no one actually pointed a weapon at the negotiating team.

Schmidt’s cap had fallen off. Vesey picked it up on the point of the machete.

When Vesey bent, Adele had thought she was going to stab the mate through the kidneys. Adele wouldn’t have tried to interfere if Vesey had finished the fellow off, but she found it reassuring that the younger woman hadn’t changed quite that much from the person Adele had thought she knew.

Vesey waved the cap carefully, so that she didn’t fling it off the blade. “Captain Sorley!” she said. “I just saved the life of this man here. He may have thought that I was too close to him for my friends on shore to shoot, but—”

The cap billowed and spun as though a gust of wind had caught it. The impeller slug hit the ship’s hull with a painful whang-g-g-g. The impact was toward the bow, meaning the shot had been Hogg’s. There was a neon flash where the osmium projectile bounced from nickel-steel, gouging a divot from the plate.

The cap hung on the machete an instant longer. The second slug hit the blade tip as well as the cloth, flicking the hilt out of Vesey’s hand. The machete spun away in a shower of white sparks, landing in the water. The sound of the carbine’s projectile hitting the hull sternward had an unexpected bell-like purity.

Vesey lowered her hand, flexing her fingers. Adele hoped the lieutenant had been holding the machete loosely, but even so it would have stung like an electric shock when the slug hit the blade.

“You’ve heard what the choice is!” Vesey said. “Lay your guns down and surrender; or die. Which will you have?”

“Fagh!” Sorley said. “The thrusters are screwed, we have no choice. Throw your guns down, all of you!”

He drew a pistol from a cargo pocket of his utilities and tossed it on the deck. “Let this one go,” he said, unclipping one of the safety lines attached to Cleveland’s harness; a guard loosed the other one.

The visible crewmen—there were almost thirty others unseen within the ship—began laying down or throwing down their weapons. The jangle of metal on metal was discordant, even without Adele knowing that a gun might go off at any instant.

Sorley walked to the front of the hold, gripping Cleveland’s shoulder firmly.

A few of the crewmen raised their hands; the rest did the same, though Vesey hadn’t ordered them to do so. Additional crewmen came out of the companionways and entered from side corridors. The hold was filling up.

Adele nodded to Cleveland. “Take your hand off this citizen, Captain Sorley,” she said. He jerked his hand away from Cleveland’s shoulder; which was good from Sorley’s viewpoint because Adele had not forgotten him slapping the boy on the back of the skull. If I shot him in the wrist, he wouldn’t do that again.

“Thank you very much, Lady Mundy,” Cleveland said. Seen at close range, he looked worn and badly needed a bath. “I have my faith, but there were times I felt completely alone.”

Adele felt a surge of sympathy. She said, “I know the feeling.”

Cleveland’s harness wasn’t an impediment, but his wrists were bound with a locking tie. Adele was puzzling over how to release it when Hogg stepped past her with his knife open. He severed the tie with a quick pull.

A dozen of the Kiesche’s crew and Daniel himself had reached the Madison Merchant. They began walking the personnel down to the shore. Adele had supposed the prisoners would be tied or hobbled before they were taken aboard the Kiesche, but the Sissies seemed ready to keep control with clubs. The Madisons weren’t going to make trouble.

“I know it wouldn’t do me any good to sue in Xenos with all his noble friends…,” Sorley said. “But he owes me a share of the treasure anyhows!”

“I do not owe you anything, Captain Sorley,” Cleveland said with a calm determination which reminded Adele that he was a Transformationist—and a civilian, because any of the Sissies present would have replied in a much shorter, harsher fashion. “I don’t even know that there is a treasure. In any case, we don’t need it now that the war is over.”

“We don’t need it?” Sorley said. “You say that, do you? Well, I bloody need it. There’s no bloody justice!”

“Some of us…,” said Tovera, stepping so close to the captain that they were almost chest to chest. “Should be glad that there isn’t justice. Think about it, Captain Sorley.”

Sorley jerked his head back by reflex. Hogg was behind him. His calloused fingers slapped Sorley’s skull forward. The blow sounded like a mallet driving a tent stake. Sorley’s nose banged against the muzzle of the sub-machine gun which Tovera had finally taken from her case.

Sorley yelped and threw both hands over his face. Blood dripped down his cheeks.

“Say it, Sorley,” Tovera said. “Say you don’t want justice. Otherwise I’ll give you justice.”

“Don’t!” Captain Sorley said through his fingers. “Don’t! I don’t want justice!”

“Let’s get back to the Kiesche, Master Cleveland,” Adele said. “We’re not needed here.”

And I don’t want justice either, Captain Sorley. For I have much more on my conscience than you do on yours.