David Drake - When the Tide Rises

Adele thought for a moment that Daniel had failed to close his transmission properly. Then he went on, "All right, hail the guard ship and ask for landing permission. I'm afraid that they're suddenly going to wake up to the fact that we're here and attack in a panic. Six out."

Adele nodded understanding as she engaged both the microwave and the 20-meter transmitters. "Sacred Independence," she said, echoing her transmission on theSissie 's command channel, "this is RCSPrincess Cecile under Commander Leary, requesting clearance to land in Morning Harbor. Over."

There was a flurry of activity on the bridge of theIndependence. Adele monitored it through the Bagarians' intercom. She'd entered the system through the navigation sensors which updated the vessel's location by constant star sightings.

"Commander Leary?" the Independence replied by microwave. "Commander Daniel Leary? This is Captain Andreas Hoppler, and I'm very glad to make your acquaintance, over."

"Daniel, do you want to take over?" Adele said on a two-way link.

"Roger," he said. "Break. Captain Hoppler, this is Captain Daniel Leary of thePrincess Cecile. Are we cleared to land? To be honest, I was expecting you to challenge us when we extracted. What are the procedures here, over?"

The Bagarian captain had a rolling laugh which he exercised before answering, "The procedures are that you call Morning Control and land, Captain," he said. "This is Pelosi, not a civilized place; I myself am from Newbern, you must know. We're in orbit in case the Alliance tries to attack, but they are cowards; a small ship like yours is no security threat, over."

"Roger, Captain Hoppler," Daniel said. Even on the compressed transmission, Adele could hear the edge in his voice. "Princess Cecileout, break. Signals, connect me with Morning Control, over."

Then, in a tone of marvel he added, "Adele, they may be right that a corvette with the sort of sweepings that Cluster Commands get for crews isn't a threat, but they'd better hope that the Alliance doesn't send real Fleet elements here. And they'dreallybetter hope that they never get on the wrong side of me in theSissie!"

Morning City on Pelosi

"Don't look so glum, Woetjans," said Daniel as the crowd in holiday clothing cheered the procession. "We certainly can't complain that they're not friendly, can we?"

Daniel, Blantyre, and Cory waved from the front of a red-draped flatbed trailer pulled by an eight-wheeled farm tractor from which bunting fluttered. Twenty armed spacers under the bosun stood around the edges of the trailer. They were in liberty suits, utilities decorated with multi-colored ribbons and patches, but it was hard to retain a festive expression when a mob kept pushing itself at you.

The male citizens lining the parade route were in business suits. Most wore black stovepipe hats with feathers stuck in the band. The women's dresses were in primary colors; frequently several children clung to the full skirts of mothers who threw handfuls of filmy, metallic-looking strips. When breezes flicked them over the procession, Daniel saw that they were leaves; their silvery veins stood out on a shimmering bronze background.

Adele and Tovera stood to the rear of the commissioned officers. Adele wore a set of Grays, while her servant was in a plain suit-beige rather than the off-white she usually affected.

Adele watched him with a faint smile. He supposed she was amused that he was looking at the local vegetation while everybody in Morning City was cheering Daniel Leary like the arrival of a god.

Daniel grinned, then resumed waving to the crowd. Odd about Tovera being so drab; poisonous insects usually wore bright colors.

"They're friendly," Woetjans muttered in frustration. "Too bloody friendly. The next time one a' these women tries to climb past me to kiss the great hero-begging your pardon, sir-I'm going to pop her in the mouth instead've pushing 'er back to 'er husband. Even if she's got a little sprat in her arms like the last one."

"I have every confidence you'll continue to be a disciplined spacer whom I can trust as my bosun, Woetjans," Daniel said in carefully molded reproof. "In any case, we've reached the House of Assembly and won't have to worry about the crowd any more."

When Pelosi was part of the Alliance, it'd had a local Assembly to advise the Legate, who in turn reported to the Cluster Governor. The legates generally ignored the Assemblymen, but the hall provided a suitable venue for the new Congress of the Republic.

Though the square in front of the building was packed, lines of men wearing scraps of uniform held open a corridor down which the tractor and trailer drove toward the temporary stand in front of the main entrance. Many of the soldiers were barefoot and carried short pikes instead of guns, but almost all of them wore a beret with a black, red, or white plume.

Dignitaries in gorgeous uniforms stood on the platform. Spectators of intermediate rank, perhaps the Members of Congress, looked down from the second and third story windows of the building.

Daniel glanced back at Adele. Her right hand touched her data unit, but it was still in its sheath; bringing it out would be an insult to the waiting officials and more generally to the new republic. Adele wasn't one to bow to authority-and certainly not to the authority of jumped-up farmers from the fringe worlds-but the RCN was on Pelosi to support the rebellion. Offending the locals would interfere with that goal, and Adele would rather die than fail in her duty.

Daniel grinned; so would he, of course. In fact he guessed that was by and large true of thePrincess Cecile 's crew. In reality, though, his Sissies would rather die than have a bunch of wogswatch them fail, a truth that made their attitude rather less noble.

The tractor pulled hard left at the base of the platform and stopped. From this close Daniel could see that under the black, red, and white bunting, the stand had been knocked together from rough timber. It swayed noticeably when the dignitaries on it moved.

"Excellency Lord Leary, will you come with me, please?" said an officer of twenty or so. He wore scarlet trousers and a sky-blue tailcoat picked out with more medals than Daniel himself could claim. "And your officers, they may come also, if you will."

He bowed and swept an arm toward the flight of steps at one end. They didn't look any sturdier than the rest of the structure. Daniel half smiled, half grimaced, and said, "All right, Blantyre and Cory, follow me. You knew when you joined the RCN that the job was dangerous."

The midshipmen wore 1^st Class uniforms, a tailored one in the case of Cory. Daniel was bringing them along simply to add to the display.

He exchanged glances with Adele as he started up the steps. The trailer was too close to the platform to be seen by those on top of it, and the spacers of their escort formed a wall, shoulder to shoulder, against the eyes of the crowd. Adele sank gratefully onto the bed of the trailer, opening the data unit on her crossed legs.

Though the platform was eight feet high, the heads of the seven people standing on it didn't quite rise to the course of stone separating the brick facades of the building's first and second stories. Six were men, making the squat, gray-haired woman in the center the head of state, Generalissima DeMarce. Bagarian uniforms emphasized padded shoulders and trousers bloused into riding boots, but DeMarce wore in addition a pelisse of lustrous golden fur.

Until he reached the top of the platform, Daniel hadn't appreciated that DeMarce and all her ministers would be in uniform. There was no help for it, then. He halted, clicked his heels to attention, and threw the Generalissima as sharp a salute as he could manage. It wouldn't have earned him a place on a drill team, but it was better than most of his attempts.