David Drake - When the Tide Rises

TheSailing Directionsissued by Navy House didn't have the information, but Commander Daniel Leary did. And not even Adele had known there was animal life on Dansant; that was Daniel's own discovery.

He grinned as he seated himself to Adele's left. The little branch hopper wouldn't be what history remembered him for, but perhaps in a better universe it would be.

"I considered making a landing on Churchyard with your troops," Daniel said as Adele threw up an omnidirectional image of Hafn Teobald from an apparent vantage point of a thousand feet in the air. "If we'd disabled theRossarol or destroyed the missile launcher either one, I think that would've been a very workable plan. As it is, with a destroyer able to use its plasma cannon against us on the ground and ourselves unable to reply in kind, it doesn't appear practical."

"You're not planning to return to Pelosi, are you?" said Chatterjee with a deep frown. "I won't lecture you on Bagarian politics, Admiral, but the enemies you made when you raided Dodd's Throne will crucify you if you do. It's no good saying that a missile boat for a missile boat is a fair exchange; they'll call it a disaster."

"You're right, Colonel," Daniel said, feeling the curves of his smile become minusculely harder. "You shouldn't lecture Speaker Leary's son on politics. And no, I don't propose to return to Pelosi until we've achieved what the meanest intelligence will regard as a major stroke against the enemy. If we act quickly and don't slow down once we've committed, I believe we can capture the Cluster Headquarters on Conyers."

Adele switched to imagery of the Conyers complex, a pentagonal enclosure with a surface area of twenty-three acres. Sloped concrete ramparts fronted by a broad ditch formed the boundaries. An expanded cross-section showed shuttered firing slits and a double monorail system inside for shifting the garrison quickly.

The angles of the pentagon were self-contained strongpoints. Two held antiship missile launchers, two had turrets equipped with twin 13-cm plasma cannon, and the turret on the fifth point sheltered a pair of 20-cm howitzers whose explosive shells could blast targets concealed from direct fire weapons.

"That's the Cluster HQ?" Chatterjee said, leaning closer to the display. "There's a thousand troops in the garrison. Aren't there?"

"More than twelve hundred according to the pay records," Adele said coolly as her wands rotated the image. "I've learned not to trust those, however, especially the farther one gets from the center, and this cluster is very far from Pleasaunce."

She sniffed with displeasure. "It's not a great deal better in Cinnabar service, I'm afraid," she added.

The rectangular headquarters building was constructed of precast concrete slabs. Each of the three levels was stepped back from the one below it, making the structure look like a crude pyramid from the side. On top was a landing stage for aircars; armored cupolas holding automatic impellers were placed at the corners of the next level down.

There was room for small starships to land between the HQ Building and the northwest facet of the pentagon. A missile boat-perhaps theS81 that they'd destroyed on Churchyard-had been on the ground when the image was captured. Larger vessels, the freighters that supplied the garrison and the occasional warship visiting the planet, used a river-fed artificial lagoon half a mile to the west of the complex. A fence with guard towers surrounded that harbor, but it had no defenses capable of withstanding determined attack.

"It appears to me," Chatterjee said, "that the base is stronger than that on Churchyard. A great deal stronger, as a matter of fact."

He looked at Daniel and raised an eyebrow.

Daniel laughed. "Yes, I quite agree," he said. He was pleased that Chatterjee'd noted the problems instead of spluttering that the odds were impossible. "The great difference is that Churchyard is expecting us, and Conyers is not. I assume that Governor Platt knows most of what's happening on Pelosi?"

Chatterjee snorted. "You're certainly right about that," he said. "Governor Radetsky and I sometimes speculate on which members of the Council of Ministers are selling intelligence to Platt. Personally, I'd give even money that all of them are."

"So Platt knew that we were going to Churchyard," Daniel said. "The corollary is that weweren't going to attack Conyers. Furthermore, he's expecting reinforcements to his garrison from Maintenon."

"He is?" said Chatterjee, frowning. "How do you know that?"

"From the data banks on theS81," said Adele. Her wands threw up a sidebar, though Daniel couldn't have read it without squinting. The little data unit's display was clear enough, but there were tricks to reading air-formed holograms against a natural background. Adele'd had occasion to learn those tricks; he hadn't.

"I wouldn't have been able to decrypt it if the ship'd been a real courier vessel with isolated storage for the messages being carried," she went on, "but in this case they were simply held within theS81 's main computer. Which wasn't shielded at all, at least from someone who knows what she's doing."

Daniel said, "I believe Officer Mundy can make theSkye Defender appear to be the ship from Maintenon-"

He nodded to Adele beside him.

"-can you not, Mundy?"

"Yes," she said, bringing up three-dimensional images of four ships. At this scale they appeared to be identical even to Daniel's eyes. "TheZwiedam and her sister were regarded as a successful design, so theZaandam andWesterdam were built on slightly enlarged lines. The Alliance's using theWesterdam as a transport at the moment. Though in the Ribbon Stars, nowhere near here."

"I don't think the Conyers' garrison will be able to tell that a ship they've never seen before is three hundred tonnes smaller than the records say she should be," said Daniel, letting his smile spread. "Not if the markings and especially the electronic signature is correct. The tricky part is that there's a picket boat, and you'll be boarded in orbit before you're allowed to land. Colonel, can you convince the inspectors that you're a militia battalion from Maintenon?"

Chatterjee frowned. He took out his own personal data unit but simply glowered at it instead of turning it on.

A burst of gunfire ripped the morning, thin and echoless in the dry air. Daniel jumped to his feet. Instead of reaching for her pocket pistol, Adele's wands moved rapidly. That startled Daniel until he realized that she'd switched her display to the targeting screen of theLadouceur 's dorsal turret. It gave her a much better vantage point than he had standing.

"Please, it's all right," said Colonel Chatterjee in obvious concern. "Please, I'm very sorry, Admiral. I told my officers to arrange a marksmanship demonstration while we were on the ground here. I felt that your spacers would be more comfortable if they could trust the infantry that was supporting them. But I should've spoken to you about my plans."

Daniel forced a smile and settled onto his chair again. "That would've been helpful, yes," he said mildly, "but I'm sure it's good for me to get my heart rate up. Now, as for the inspection party, Chatterjee?"

"I'm sure we can do that," Chatterjee said. "Yes, I'm sure. I used to be an Alliance officer, you see?"

He paused on a rising note, lifting an eyebrow in synchrony. He obviously thought the information would be a surprise-and feared it'd be an unwelcome one.

"Yes, we were aware of that," Daniel said, smiling internally. "We," meaning Adele had learned that and had immediately passed it on because it was potentially important. "But you're a native of Skye. If Governor Radetsky trusts you, that's good enough for me."

"Ah!" said Chatterjee. "Well, there isn't much uniformity among the planetary militias in Alliance service. If wewere Alliance militia, we'd look about the same. It'll just be a matter of making sure the troops the inspectors are allowed to see all have patches saying Maintenon."