Poul Anderson - The Rebel Worlds

Flandry sat down on the floor, which carried no chairs, and lit a cigaret more against the stench than because he wanted one. “How goes the ship?” he asked in the principal Merseian tongue.

“Satisfactorily,” Rovian answered likewise. “Some were curious at the exec absenting himself before the captain returned. But I passed it off as needful to our supplying and left Valencia in charge. Nothing can really happen while we idle in orbit, so no great comment followed.”

Flandry met the slit-pupilled eyes. You seem to know more about what your human shipmates think than a xeno should, he did not say. I don’t pretend to understand what goes on in your brain. But … I have to rely on somebody. Sounding you out while we traveled, as well as might be, I decided you’re least improbably the one.

“I didn’t ask you to locate a den, and tell me where, and wait, for sport,” he declared with the explicitness required by Eriau grammar. “My idea was that we’d need privacy for laying plans. That’s been confirmed.”

Rovian cocked his ears.

Flandry described his session with the governor. He finished: “No reasonable doubt remains that Snelund is lying about Lady McCormac’s condition. Gossip leaks through guards and servants, out of the private apartments and into the rest of the palace. Nobody cares, aside from malicious amusement. He’s packed the court, like the housecarls and the residencies, with his own creatures. Snooping around, getting sociable with people off duty, I led them to talk. Two or three of them got intoxicated till they said more than they would have normally.” He didn’t mention the additives he had slipped into their drinks.

“Why don’t the regular Intelligence officers suspect?” Rovian inquired.

“Oh, I imagine they do. But they have so much else to deal with, so obviously vital. And they don’t think she can tell anything useful. And why collide with the governor, risking your career, for the sake of the arch-rebel’s wife?”

“You wish to,” Rovian pounced.

“Kraich.” Flandry squinted into the smoke he was blowing. It curled blue-gray across what sunlight straggled through a window whose grime seemed of geologic age. The rotten-egg gas was giving him a headache, unless that was due to the general odor of decay. Faintly from outside came traffic rumble and an occasional raucous cry.

“You see,” he explained, “I’m on detached service. My nose isn’t committed to any of the numberless grindstones which must be turned before a Naval expedition can get under way. And I have more background on Aaron Snelund than provincial officers do, even in my own corps and in his own preserve. I’ve been free and able to sit and wonder. And I decided it wasn’t logical he should keep Kathryn McCormac locked away simply for the purpose the court is sniggering about. The admiral’s staff may think so, and not care. But I doubt if he’s capable of feeling more than a passing attraction for any fellow creature. Why not turn her over for interrogation? She might know a little something after all. Or she might be handy in dealing with her husband.”

“Scarcely that,” Rovian said. “His life is already forfeit.”

“Uh-huh. Which is why my harried colleagues didn’t check further. But — oh, I can’t predict — her, in exchange for various limited concessions on his part — her, persuading him to give up — Well, I suppose it takes a coldblooded bastard like me to consider such possibilities. The point is, we can’t lose by trying her out, and might gain a trifle. Therefore we ought to. But Snelund is holding her back with a yarn about her illness. Why? What’s in it for him, besides herself? His sector’s being torn apart. Why isn’t he more cooperative in this tiny matter?”

“I couldn’t say.” Rovian implied indifference.

“I wonder if she may not know something he would prefer didn’t get out,” Flandry said. “The assumption has been that Snelund may be a bad governor, but he is loyal and McCormac’s the enemy. It’s only an assumption.”

“Should you not then invoke the authority in your second set of orders, and demand her person?”

Flandry made a face. “Huh! Give them five minutes of stalling at the gate, and I’ll be presented with a corpse. Or ten minutes under a misused hypnoprobe could produce a memoryless idiot. Wherefore I walked very softly indeed. I don’t expect to be summoned before the fleet leaves, either.”

“And on our return—”

“She can easily have ‘passed away’ during the campaign.”

Rovian tautened. The bunk where he crouched made a groaning noise. “You tell me this for a purpose, captain,” he said.

Flandry nodded. “How did you guess?” Again Rovian waited, until the man sighed and proceeded: “I think we can spring her loose, if we time it exactly right. You’ll be here in town, with some crewmen you’ve picked and an aircar handy. An hour or so before the armada accelerates, I’ll present my sealed orders to the admiral and formally remove us from his command. It’s a safe bet Snelund’s attention will be on the fleet, not on the palace. You’ll take your squad there, serve a warrant I’ll have given you, and collect Kathryn McCormac before anybody can raise the governor and ask what to do. If need be, you can shoot; whoever tries to stop you will be in defiance of the Imperium. But I doubt the necessity will arise if you work fast. I’ll have the gig waiting not too far off. You and your lads fit Lady McCormac there, haul gravs for space, rendezvous with Asieneuve, and we’ll depart this system in a hurry.”

“The scheme appears hazardous,” Rovian said, “and for slight probable gain.”

“It’s all I can think of,” Flandry answered. “I know you’ll be getting the operative end of the reamer. Refuse if you think I’m a fool.”

Rovian licked his saber teeth and switched his tail. “I do not refuse my captain,” he said, “I, a Brother of the Oath. It does seem to me that we might discuss the problem further. I believe your tactics could be made somewhat more elegant.”

Ship by ship, Pickens’ forces departed orbit and moved outward. When the sun of Llynathawr had shrunk to a bright point, the vessels assumed formation and went into hyperdrive. Space swirled with impalpable energies. As one, the warcraft and their ministrants aimed themselves at the star called Virgil, to find the man who would be Emperor.

They were not many. Reassignments, to help confront Merseia, had depleted the sector fleet. A shocking number of units had subsequently joined McCormac. Of those which stayed true, enough must remain behind to screen — if not solidly guard — the key planets. It was estimated that the rebels had about three-fourths the strength that Pickens would be able to bring to bear on them. Given nuclear-headed missiles and firebeams powered by hydrogen fusion, such numerical comparisons are less meaningful than the layman thinks. A single penetration of defenses can put a ship out of action, often out of existence.

On that account, Pickens traveled cautiously, inside a wide-flung net of scoutboats. His fastest vessels could have covered the distance in a day and a half, his slowest in twice that time; but he planned on a whole five days. He had not forgotten the trap his former commander sprang on the Valdotharian corsairs.

And on the bridge of Asieneuve, Dominic Flandry leaned forward in his control chair and said: “Twenty degrees north, four degrees clockwise, 3000 kilometers negative, then match quasi-velocities and steady as she goes.”

“Aye, sir.” The pilot repeated the instructions and programmed the computer that operated the hyperdrive.

Flandry kept his attention on the console before him, whose meters and readouts summarized the far more complex data with which the pilot dealt, until he dared say, “Can you hold this course, Citizen Rovian?”