The Road of Danger-ARC by David Drake Read Free Book Online

Cremona, though. Now, before I explain this, you have to understand something. To Cinnabar, the Forty Stars and the Funnel are both ruled—administered, if you’re delicate about words—”
    “I’m not,” said Daniel as he emptied his glass.
    “Right,” said Sattler. “They’re ruled from here and called the Macotta Region. To the Alliance they’ve got separate governments until you get up to the Seventeenth Diocese on Port Sanlouis. Admiral Jeletsky has the Forty Stars Squadron on Madison. He doesn’t care what happens in the Funnel, and neither does Governor Braun. In fact if their administrative rivals are having trouble on Sunbright, they both figure that they’re twice to the good. And that’s why—”
    He slapped his desktop with the fingers of his left hand. The bottle jumped.
    “—quite a lot of the weapons going to the rebels come from Madison. Most of the smuggled rice is sold there too, with no questions asked. You see?”
    Daniel grimaced. “All right,” he said. “I’ve seen things not a lot different on Cinnabar protectorates; I can believe it, well enough. But what about this ‘Freedom’ I hear about, the dashing rebel leader?”
    “Now there you got me,” Sattler said, glowering. He looked at the wall, then grunted and rapped a control with an index finger like a mallet.
    Flickers at the corners of Daniel’s eyes drew his attention: the three holographic wall displays had switched from cityscapes to images of a woman half Sattler’s age with a pair of six-year-old boys.
    The previous scenes had meant nothing to Daniel, but the fact that Sattler had changed them certainly did. With only minimal information to go on, Daniel would have made an even money bet that the images were from the merchant’s home world, Bryce, and that he had realized they weren’t the most politic decorations to be flaunting to an RCN officer.
    Sattler would have known better than to call attention to the images, however, if he hadn’t punished the bottle pretty heavily. Though he seemed calm enough, Daniel’s sudden arrival must have been a shock to his system.
    “Don’t worry about it,” Daniel said, staring down into his tented fingers. “Unless you’re lying to me, in which case you have worse problems than what you put on your walls.”
    The merchant sat still-faced for a moment, then barked a laugh. “You’ve given me no reason to lie,” he said. “But sorry for acting like a prat.”
    Sattler cleared his throat, then switched two of the displays back to streetscapes; the woman and children continued to beam from behind his chair. “I don’t know who Freedom is or if he’s one person,” he said. “There’s some who say he must be several people, a junta speaking through one throat. Anyway, he knows things—knows things and knew things. The first attacks, the start of the rebellion, hit every government arms stockpile on Sunbright before they had anything like real security.”
    “The rebels would have to be very organized to carry off the timing for that,” Daniel said, frowning. He looked at the glass in his hand. “People on Cremona wouldn’t be able to do it. Nobody off-planet could have.”
    Sattler nodded. “And this Freedom was putting out feelers for exchanging rice for equipment at least three months before the shooting started,” he said. “Placing orders on condition of rice being delivered at the time agreed. There’s enough small traders that some of them were willing to chance that the deal would come through. With guns from security force warehouses in rebel hands, the customs and excise inspectors out in the farms had to run for the cities or have their brains blown out; so there was plenty of rice to trade for more guns and equipment”
    “You say ‘small traders,’” Daniel said. “Do you mean from Cremona, or…?”
    He was afraid the answer was going to be, “From Kronstadt and other Cinnabar worlds.” Which would sooner or later mean war.
    “Cremona,