David Drake - When the Tide Rises

He thought for a moment, then added as the first figure started shuffling up the stairs, "All of you come out. Why in heaven did you think you were going to be shot?"

The captain wore a blue uniform jacket which, like theBabanguida, was cheaply made and rather the worse for wear. The pin clipped over his right breast pocket read Robinson or Robertson; the gilt had rubbed off the right side.

"I'm Ian Robertson," he muttered without meeting the eyes of anyone in Daniel's party. Then, "If you're RCN, why're you with pirates?"

"Buck up, Robertson," Daniel said, trying to sound jolly. The merchant captain had the right of his claim, but with luck he could be cajoled to forget the past. "I know how it seems, but a little indiscipline is easily put right. You're a legitimate prize of war. Now, we'll repatriate your crew at the earliest opportunity, but I'm sure that some of your people would rather sign on with me rather than spend weeks or even years in a prison compound."

He looked down at the figures gathered at the base of the stairs. He could see only a dozen, which meant some were still in hiding.

"How does it strike you?" he called to the spectators. "Who of you'd like liberal pay and the best spacers in the human galaxy for your fellows?"

"What d'ye mean about pay?" called one of the figures below. The voice was cautious, but the concern this time was over money instead of drunken Bagarian pirates planning to cut the throats of their captives.

This was the result Daniel'd hoped for: even the Alliance citizens in the crew were likely to be from conquered planets with no affection for Guarantor Porra. Treated well, they'd be as happy to join theLadouceur 's complement as they would to continue aboard an Alliance-registered tub like theBabanguida.

He leaned over the railing. "Come on up and we'll discuss it like spacers," he said cheerfully. "Regular pay is eighteen ostrads a month, but you'll also take a share in the prize money. You can talk to any of the Sissies who came with me from Cinnabar about what prize money's meant in the past, and you can look at today for proof that it'll keep on in the future. While you've been slaving on this ship, my crews are going to be splitting her value in prize cash!"

He was shading the truth and he knew it, but until these folk signed on, their welfare didn't touch the honor of a Leary of Bantry. It wasn't such a bad offer regardless. Daniel was sure-well, he was hopeful-that he could convince the Navy Minister to raise pay when the squadron returned after this triumph; if he couldn't, he'd enlist the new personnel into the RCN under his authority as commander of thePrincess Cecile.

Spacers began to shuffle up the stairs; additional figures drifted out from behind the dense lumps of fusion bottles. He'd move them all to theLadouceur, adding those who enlisted to the cruiser's crew and confining the remainder away from temptation to take back control of their own ship. Prize crews for the two Alliance freighters required a tricky balance between Sissies and Bagarians or he'd simply be transferring the looting from Dodd's Throne to the Matrix, but with Woetjans' help it could be worked out.

The smile Daniel gave the Alliance captain was harder than his usual expression. "Now, sir, if you and your officers will come up to the bridge with me, we'll settle details while I get back in communication with my squadron."

"I don't understand this," Captain Robertson muttered. Now that he wasn't terrified, he was willing to complain. "We're just trading with you. If you capture us like this, there won't be any trade!"

"Exactly, my good man," Daniel said. "People in the Bagarian Cluster don't seem to have quite grasped what war means. They're about to learn."

Adele hadn't imagined there'd be a parade when the squadron and the two Alliance prizes returned to Pelosi. She hadn'tdreamed there'd be a parade.

"Mistress?" said Rene Cazelet. He was trying to keep his voice down, which meant he had to lean very close to her ear to have a chance of being heard over the cheering crowd. "How did they learn about the victory in time to do this? It must've taken days to prepare, surely?"

"I was wondering the same thing," said Adele. That was of course true. Because she was Adele Mundy she was already in the process of getting an answer by entering a local database.

Her personal data unit didn't have enough power to transmit more than a quarter mile or so, and Pelosi didn't have a public communications system that was worthy of the name. There were-there had to be-private commercial systems, however. Adele'd tied her data unit and the RCN commo helmets worn by at least one spacer on every parade float into the microwave communications system belonging to Fidelity Mercantile Corporation, Minister Lampert behind a corporate veil.

The ten floats which carried naval officers, whether or not they'd been on Dodd's Throne, were (as before) flatbed trailers covered with bunting and pulled by eight-wheeled tractors. There was nothing complicated in that, though Adele strongly doubted the Bagarian government could've put even so simple a business together in the hour and a half since the squadron reached Pelosi.

Canvas murals hung across the fronts of buildings all the way from the docks to the House of Assembly. They couldn't possibly have been created since the squadron arrived, even if the paint were still wet.

As best Adele could tell, the painthad cured properly. Even if it hadn't, the images depicted-though they weren't in any sense realistic-didmake direct reference to the events on Dodd's Throne.

"Hurrah for Lady Leary!" somebody shouted. The crowd took up the theme raggedly, mixing, "Lady Leary!" and "The Admiral's Lady!" with similar but unintelligible cheers. The result was a sort of muddy good-humor.

Tovera laughed. Rene said in scandalized horror, "Mistress! They mean you!"

"Then they're idiots," Adele said, concentrating on her search. Well, trying to concentrate on her search. Most people were idiots, not just this mob of goggle-eyed, garishly dressed, wogs shouting in the She caught herself and sat bolt-upright in a flush of embarrassment. She'd allowed her anger to control her; which she never did, which she couldn't afford to do. She was holding both wands in her right hand so that her left could reach into her tunic pocket, just because civilians were happy and foolish.

And what would her mother Evadne have said about Adele referring to foreigners as wogs, even in the quiet of her own mind? Adele winced. Her mother would've been horrified at the disrespect for foreign cultures which sheknew were just as valid as that of a Cinnabar noble.

Adele had seen a great deal more of foreign cultures than her mother, a very parochial woman despite her principles, had done. Some of those cultures were entirely worthy of disrespect.

But Evadne would also have considered the term "wog" to be common, the sort of word used by untutored spacers and rural louts like Daniel's servant Hogg. In that she would've been quite correct. By thinking the word, Adele had disgraced her station as Mundy of Chatsworth.

She, Tovera, and Rene were on the tenth and last float. Daniel was at the front, bowing to the crowd, with Minister Lampert on one side of him and Generalissima DeMarce on the other. Hogg stood behind them, looking rumpled and thick with his hands in his pockets.

Hoggwas rumpled. He wasn't thick, though, and Adele had a very good notion of what he was holding in those pockets, ready to use on anybody he thought was a danger to the young master.

The trailers in between-the quality of bunting decreased from the front to the back of the procession; that draping Adele's was canvas decorated with what seemed to be house paint-carried Hoppler and Seward, then apparently everyone on Pelosi who could claim to wear a naval officer's uniform.