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David Drake: When the Tide Rises

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David Drake When the Tide Rises

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Please. Please. Please.

Adele didn't know who she was speaking to. Praying to, she supposed, though she didn't believe in gods or Gods or anything at all except the working of blind chance.

Commander Leary held a sub-machine gun in one hand and a stocked impeller in the other. He raced toward the berm protecting the pit where ship-killing missiles were emplaced, using both weapons as he ran. For some reason the Alliance troops jumped out of their bunkers before they shot at him; they spun artistically and fell.

The gate into the emplacement was of razor ribbon stretched on a frame. Just like the real gate.

Commander Leary sawed through the obstruction with a burst from his sub-machine gun. Alliance projectiles hitting wires, hitting tubing; howling, ricocheting in neon colors. Occasionally a wire parting with a sickening jangle.

"Follow me, my heroes!" Commander Leary shouted as he ran through the gap in the gate. The corvette's whole crew was with him. Bunched like that, a single automatic impeller would slaughter the lot of them. They'd be dead!

"Mistress, are you all right?" Cazelet said. His left arm was around her back; his hands were gripping her shoulders firmly. "Would you like to leave?"

There were bunkers inside the emplacement. Troops in Alliance uniforms-which was wrong, they'd been Pellegrinians, all but the communications detachment-threw down their weapons and stood, waving white flags.

"Victory!" boomed the voice over. "And permanent safety for Dunbar's World under the protection of the Republic of Cinnabar!"

"I'm sorry," Adele whispered. "I'm all right."

Light flickering from the firing slits of the bunkers, the traces of driving bands ionized by the charges that accelerate them up the gun barrels. Her holographic sights twitching as she fires two rounds and moves to the next target. The faces of the Pellegrinian soldiers are shadowed, but she sees every one of them clearly as they bulge under the impact of her projectiles.

The martial music resumed as the house lights came up. Adele closed her personal data unit and slid it back into its pocket. Cazelet had taken his hands away from her but he continued to watch with a concerned expression.

"We'll return to Chatsworth Minor," Adele said as she stood. She didn't meet his eyes. "You'll have a room in the servants' quarters while I look into matters."

"Mistress, I have a room already," Cazelet said.

"It's best that you stay at Chatsworth," she said sharply. "That'll prevent accidents. Some of them, at least."

"Yes, ma'am," Cazelet said. Did he realize that she was worried about Mistress Sand, or rather what someone in Mistress Sand's organization might do to prevent the compromise of an asset as valuable as Adele Mundy?

He touched the door latch, but he paused and looked at Adele until she met his eyes. "Mistress," he said, "that last scene? Did Commander Leary really assault a strong point that way?"

"No," said Adele, stepping past the boy to open the door herself. "I did."


***

It occurred to Daniel, walking back to find a seat with the numbered chit in his hand, that the waiting room of the Navy Office was very like a cathedral. He grinned, a familiar expression on his broad features. There were probably more prayers-and certainly more sincere ones-offered here than in any religious edifice on Cinnabar.

Even the hall's front five benches weren't crowded, and the twenty or so beyond held only a scattering of suppliants. Most of those waiting were lieutenants, but there were some passed midshipmen hoping their first assignment. On the other end of the continuum, several superannuated captains sat in stiff dignity with all the decorations they could claim, hoping the Republic's need would bring them out of forced retirement.

All were well dressed. This morning Daniel had donned his best 2^nd Class uniform, his Grays, but a good number of senior officers and those with private incomes were in Dress Whites.

As Daniel prepared to sit some ten rows back, he noticed a familiar face across the aisle. "Why, hello, Christopher," he said in a low voice, stepping toward the thin lieutenant seated there. "Haven't seen you since the Academy."

Christopher Cha continued to sit stiffly, gripping his chit between the thumbs and forefingers of both hands. Instead of looking up when Daniel spoke his name, he turned his face the other way as if he were searching for something further down the empty row.

I didn't go home with his girlfriend after a party, did I? Daniel wondered. He certainly didn't remember doing so, but there were some nights during graduation week that were at best hazy.

"Leary!" said a lieutenant commander in the fourth row. He was making an effort to mute his voice, but the resulting husky whisper could be heard for a dozen places in every direction. "Come tell me about the hero's life, bold fellow!"

Daniel went back and slid past the slanted knees of four strangers, all lieutenants, to get to Scott Morgan. They'd been classmates at the Academy. Morgan had run with a faster crowd than Daniel, estranged from his father, could afford to follow, but they'd gotten on well enough during such contact as they'd had.

"Pretty, eh?" said Morgan, tapping the pip-in-a-circle on the epaulette of his Dress Whites. As Daniel slid onto the backless bench beside him, Morgan touched the solid rectangle of a full commander on the collar tab of his Grays and went on, "Of course, they're not nearly as pretty as these, Danny-my-boy. Congratulations, and further congratulations for still being alive. I'd say the rank is pretty much a given if you do the sorts of things you've done and manage to survive."

"I think you're overstating things, Scott," Daniel said, "but I appreciate your congratulations."

Without being really conscious of what he was doing, he glanced back at Lieutenant Cha. Morgan caught his expression and laughed. "Little Chrissie is afraid that if the Chief learns that he knows you, it'll hurt his chances of an appointment. As if Admiral Vocaine cares two pins about him! If we'd given a class award to the Least Likely to be Promoted, it'd've been engraved Christopher Cha!"

"You think that's it, Morgan?" Daniel said. He smiled, but it was a little lopsided. He'd always gotten on well with others, and it disturbed him to think that people he'd known for the best part of a decade would shun him because of his difficulties wiht the Chief of the Navy Board.

"Of course that's it!" Morgan said. "But I have to correct you on one point, laddy: I'm not Morgan, I'm Fanshawe-as in the son and heir of Senator Fanshawe. My uncle, that's the one with the money in the family, adopted me last month."

He grinned widely and added, "I'd still sit with you, Danny; you're good company and no bloody admiral is going to tell me who my friends are. But under the circumstances, I don't care whether the Republic chooses to keep me on half pay."

"Ah!" said Daniel. "Then hearty congratulations to you too, Fanshawe!"

He'd always believed that Morgan' birth parents had quite enough money as it was, but no doubt there were as many gradations at the higher levels of these things as there were with poverty. Corder Leary would probably understand better than his son did.

A green light blinked on the desk of the functionary who guarded the gate between the benches and the clerks beyond the railing. He glared at the screen before him, then called, "Number twenty-two!" in a stentorian voice.

A lieutenant of forty rose so abruptly that she almost overbalanced and fell backward over the bench. Her 2^nd Class uniform was clean but nearly threadbare. She bustled to the gate, her face in a rictus of mingled hope and terror.

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