David Drake - When the Tide Rises

"Squadron, this is Squadron Six," said Daniel. "Fellow spacers, don't get cocky quite yet, but I believe we've completed the conquest of Conyers. Ashburn, I won't need your escort after all. And Chief Missileer Borries-"

He paused, then resumed, "Mister Borries, I have some quibbles about your judgment, but your professional skill is on a par with that of the best people I've ever seen in action-myself very definitely among them. Congratulations, my fellow spacers, I'm proud to serve with you. Hip hip-"

"Hooray!" shouted Rene Cazelet. And Adele found herself shouting also.

When theSkye Defender had lifted thirty feet or so above the courtyard, the echoes hammering from the fort's inner walls no longer multiplied the thruster roar. Though the noise was onlyjust short of deafening, Hogg put his mouth close to Daniel's ear and said, "I'm surprised you let the wog take it up himself, master. I thought you'd want to do that."

"Oh, Captain Salmon's quite competent," Daniel said, turning his head sideways to follow the freighter through the bay window of the penthouse office. "Anyway, there's no great trick to liftoff, even from hard ground. So long as you're continually adding power instead of reducing it, a few coughs and stumbles from the thrusters aren't going to do real harm."

Salmon'd been trying to rise vertically, but there was enough wind to drift the transport west as soon as she'd risen out of the shelter of Fort Douaumont. That was all right: she was high enough that her plasma exhaust wasn't a danger to those on the ground.

"Besides, I have other business to tend to," Daniel muttered, embarrassed at his sudden desire to snatch the controls out of Salmon's hands. He wanted to be in control of everything himself, which wasn't proper. Most people did a perfectly adequate job of whatever they were doing, and a few-Borries for example-were exceptionally good.

TheSkye Defender began to settle into Grand Harbor where she belonged. Troops came out of Douaumont's bunkers where they'd sheltered during liftoff and crossed the courtyard, going about their business. Daniel turned away from the window just as Ashburn rapped on the jamb of the open door.

"We got everybody down in the second floor conference room, sir," Ashburn said. She'd been acting as chief of the ground detachment in place of Woetjans. "You want me to bring'em up here? It's gonna be tight, but I guess that's their lookout."

"No, I'll come down," Daniel said. He looked around the room to see if he was leaving anything behind.

And who'd replace Woetjans as theLadouceur 's bosun? Riley, he supposed, though he suspected Woetjans herself would say Harrison. Daniel was almost of a mind to give the job against his better judgment to Harrison-who'd twice been broken back to ordinary spacer for being drunk on duty-in deference to the opinion of a comrade who was comatose and might not recover.

Hogg offered the sub-machine gun, keeping the heavy impeller for himself; Daniel brushed the suggestion aside more harshly than it deserved. Hogg functioned quite well in civilized society by acting like a dimwitted rube, but he wasn't really a part of that milieu. Daniel could get along in a state of nature better than most could, but he wasn't comfortable in it. He treated even battle as a civilized contest.

He preceded Hogg down the stairs; Ashburn had gone on ahead. Governor Platt had an elevator behind a curving door in a corner of his bedroom. It was keyed by his retinal pattern, but that would've been child's play for Adele to modify. Daniel hadn't asked her to do so; stairs weren't a hardship for him, and the less he had to do with a pig like Platt, the more comfortable he was.

His boots whisked on the treads. Ashburn opened the door and a babble of voices echoed in the polished stone corridor beyond. "Clear the bloody way, will you?" Ashburn snarled. "Make way for Six!"

Hogg belonged in the natural world, his master belonged in a civilized one. And Lady Adele Mundy? Adele was Adele, no more part of any world than a pearl was part of the oyster which formed it. She was a pearl beyond price, no doubt about that… but it must be a very lonely place to be. As her friend, Daniel wished he had a better existence to offer her.

The conference room had seats for 25 but at least a dozen additional people were standing. Colonel Chatterjee sat at the foot of the long table opposite the empty chair left for Daniel. He started to rise at Ashburn' announcement, but Daniel waved him down and strode quickly through the milling standees.

Adele and Cazelet were on chairs in the corner nearest the door; her servant stood in front of them with her miniature sub-machine gun in her hand instead of being discreetly concealed in her attache case. When a stranger-one of Chatterjee's aides-backed too close, Tovera pinched his earlobe between her thumb and forefinger and pulled his head around so that the muzzle of the little gun was within an inch of the fellow's right eye.

He squealed; Tovera let him jerk away. Daniel didn't exactly approve, but the Bagarianhad been discourteous to a lightly built woman. And he had to smile at the sheer professionalism of Tovera's response: an amateur would've prodded with the gun and might've lost it if the fellow were well trained and very fast.

Though it was unlikely that anybody in this room was fast enough to disarm Tovera.

"Ladies…," Daniel said, nodding to the heavy-set woman seated to his right. She was Lee Brandt-Ma Brandt. Her past year of imprisonment in a bunker under Sector Four had left her hard as the stone walls of her cell.

"And gentlemen," nodding this time to Colonel Chatterjee. "As the highest ranking official of the Independent Republic of Bagaria who's now present on Conyers, I've gathered you to discuss the settlement I propose."

"Who are you to be discussing anything?" Brandt said. "And what's the Independent Republic of Bagaria when it's at home?"

"I'm Admiral Daniel Leary, mistress," Daniel said mildly. "And since we're doing introductions-Colonel Chatterjee, Mistress Brandt was Chairman of the United Grange of Conyers until her arrest for sedition. She led the opposition to Governor Platt's autocracy. Mistress, Colonel Chatterjee commands the troops which captured the fort here to free you and your fellow prisoners. He's an officer of the worlds which've rebelled successfully against Alliance misrule in the Bagarian Cluster."

"I'm an officer of Skye," Chatterjee said. His words were a trifle too forceful for the pleasant tone. "Which is a member of the Bagarian Republic, yes."

"There are delegations from all over the planet on the way here, Mistress Brandt," Daniel said, settling back in his seat to look less threatening than he would if he weren't careful. "Some of them are here now-"

He gestured to a pair of men whose clothing had been cut out of canvas. They leaned forward to look past the people between them and Brandt.

"Hi, Ma," one of them said, waving his hand side to side. "This is Bob Casey. I think he's after your time-"

"Ma'am, I'm honored," the second man said. They were both in their mid thirties, as much alike as one sand perch to another.

"-but he's got a battalion of two hundred militia in the Northanger District."

"Right, only no guns," Casey said. "Until just now, right, Leary?"

Daniel nodded pleasantly. He was structuring this discussion carefully, the way he'd conduct a battle. He'd get to the guns in good time.

"Fort Douaumont is the key to Conyers," Daniel said. "If the Alliance recaptures it, your Grangers won't be able to take it back, mistress. And-"

"We won't let them recapture it!" Brandt said. "No fear on that score. Now that we've got it, we'll keep it!"

"With respect, mistress," Chatterjee said. "Mytroops have the fort, not yours."