David Drake - When the Tide Rises

The main victory celebration was in front of the Council Hall three blocks away, but a clot of happy drunks were staggering back in the middle of the street shouting, "Bagaria forever!" and "Drown the oppressors in blood!"

Daniel heard shots, but they were the random pop-pop-pop of revelers shooting in the air instead of the rolling volleys of riot suppression. Though the government was pointedly separating itself from the victory, the general populace of Morning City was deliriously triumphant.

"I ought to be getting back to theLadouceur," Daniel said. It wasn't like him not to talk with a woman, but the interview with Minister Lampert had left him with a distaste for civilian companionship just at the moment. "Look, I don't mean to be unsociable, but-"

"Nor shall you be," said Hogg, gesturing toward the swinging double doors of a tavern. It reallywas adjacent to the three-story office building which'd become the Bagarian Ministry of the Navy. "Come in or I'll grab you by the ear and tow you, like I done when you were a snotty five-year-old."

Hogg grinned. "Besides, you could use a drink," he said. "And me, I couldalways use a drink."

A bar of polished wood on a leather-padded pedestal ran the length of the narrow room. A spray of cut flowers stood on the return; the clear vase displayed colored gravel into which the stems were thrust. The bartender, a middle-aged fellow who affected a white shirt and a narrow black ascot, raised his sad eyes.

Down an aisle past the ten stools was a back room; its door had been stopped open with a crate of empty bottles. Daniel looked through the doorway and saw Vesey seated with Blantyre at a table, both dressed in civilian clothes.

"Thank you, Benno," said Hogg, passing what was clearly scrip rather than a coin across the bar in the hollow of his palm. "Here's the other half. And a pair of rums for me and my friend, all right?"

He glanced toward Daniel, who was already striding toward the back past the three men on barstools. "I think the rum's better'n the whiskey on Pelosi, but if you want the other…?"

"I'll trust your palate, Hogg," Daniel said. The women were getting up. He waved them back into their chairs and kicked the crate out of the way as he entered.

He didn't ask what he owed his servant for arranging the use of the back room. Hogg would make himself whole one way or another-and Daniel wouldn't ask about that either.

The back room held two tables of laminated wood, each with four leather-upholstered chairs. The women had tumblers of clear liquor which they didn't seem to have touched. Their faces were taut.

"Sir, we didn't want to hang around Navy House-well, you know, the Ministry," Blantyre said. "More than we had to, till you got back."

"What's happened?" Daniel said, keeping his voice calm. He sat, but Hogg, who came in a moment later, remained standing by the closed door after setting a squat glass on the table. The rum was the color of kerosene.

"It's more 'in case,' sir," Vesey said, looking down at her glass. She grimaced and blurted, "I couldn't stop them from running, sir. I-"

She looked up with an anguished expression. "Sir, I know you'd have done something, but I didn't… I couldn't. I protested when Captain Hoppler gave the orders to shape course back to Pelosi, but he ordered a couple spacers to tie me to my bunk if I opened my mouth again."

"Me too, sir," said Blantyre. "I told Seward that when there were two sides, only a fool would line up against Mister Leary, but I didn't fight. And he ignored me."

Daniel sipped his rum. It was smooth going down despite having a proof close to that of industrial alcohol.

"I don't know what you expect I'd have done, Vesey," he said. "Shot it out with a crew of two hundred, perhaps? Though of course that'd require that I be wearing a sidearm, which neither I nor you normally do. And I rather think-"

Daniel paused, realizing that this wasn't as much of a joke as he'd intended. Still, he'd started to say it.

"I rather think that even Officer Mundy would find that long odds, don't you?" he concluded. He shook his head, smiling.

The rum had an oily aftertaste initially, but it'd gone away. Maybe his mouth'd been numbed.

"No blame attaches to either of you," he added. "Though I don't mind saying that I wished I'd had you with me on Conyers. Things worked out there too, in the end."

"When we landed in Morning Harbor…," said Vesey. She seemed to have loosened up a trifle once she'd apologized. "There wasn't anything said. But then some of the crew told us there was going to be a pay parade the next morning."

"But nobody'd told us," Blantyre said. She paused to take a healthy swig. From the way the liquor shifted in the glass, she was probably drinking gin. "Well, that didn't mean anything for certain, but we went back aboard thePrincess Cecile. And we took the Sissies who'd been aboard theIndependence andDeMarce too. If they wanted to come, I mean, and they all did."

"We weren't running away, sir," Vesey said earnestly. "But-well, I'm sorry, but I don't really trust the people we're dealing with in the dockyard and the supply branch. I know, there's always a difference in attitude between the ground establishment and the space establishment, but…"

Daniel laughed, which he shouldn't have done, because he sucked rum down his windpipe. He hacked violently against the back of his hand.

"My goodness," he whispered in apology. "Next time I'll just breathe lava so it won't hurt as much. Goodness."

He coughed again, clearing his throat, and said, "Vesey, if youdid trust the ministry, I'd worry about your sanity. You did well to stay out of sight until theLadouceur landed."

He meant "until I landed," but the cruiser's heavy guns were a factor also.

"We watched the pay parade," Blantyre said.

"We had a good angle," said Vesey, "and theSissie 's optics put us right at the table."

"And Lampert really paid the crews?" Daniel said, deliberately lowering his glass this time before he spoke. "What percentage of the arrears?"

"Sir, I believe all of it," Vesey said. "And they were using Alliance notes, not the Cluster currency the Chancellery's been printing."

"Only it wasn't Lampert," Blantyre said, "or Hewett either, though they were both watching. It was one of the ministers and a local merchant, the fellow who built those plasma missiles that didn't work-"

"That would be the Cluster Affairs Minister, Master Bedi," Daniel said, "and Master Power?"

"Yes sir," said Vesey. "Those two sat at the pay table, each with clerks and guards. But they paid out the money themselves, one paying and the other making a note, then they traded off. While the Navy minister and Chancellor Hewett watched."

"I see," said Daniel without inflexion. That was showing a better long-term strategy than he'd have given the government credit for. The ministers had robbed him and his crew of the prize money owed them, but they'd spent a portion of what they'd stolen in attaching common spacers to their party.

Whereas the crew of theLadouceur would not be paid. The original Sissies wouldn't desert, but spacers who were simply serving for money-which is why most people, not merely spacers, didany kind of work, of course-would leave a ship where they weren't being paid, in order to serve on one where they were.

"I can enlist theLadouceur 's crew in the RCN…," Daniel said, thinking out loud. He took a large drink of rum and swirled the liquor in his mouth while he mused. "But that doesn't give me money to pay them with. If there were Cinnabar merchants here I could get loans, but this was Alliance territory before the revolution…"

"Ah, sir?" said Vesey. "I was wondering where Master Cazelet might be?"

Daniel frowned despite himself: the question had broken him out of a productive reverie, and as far as he could see there was no reason whatever for it. Aloud, though, he said, "The civilian? I suppose he's with Officer Mundy aboard theLadouceur."