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

hesitation when they wanted to enter the building.
    “To the Sissie , I believe,” he said. He glanced at Adele, but she was already getting into the vehicle. He went around to the other passenger door.
    “I entered all of Sattler’s files,” Adele said as Hogg—who was apparently driving back—started the engine. “Though his security was surprisingly good. He’s making quite a lot of money from smuggling rice out of Sunbright—and arms in, of course. But he’s not an Alliance agent, and he’s not involved with the rebellion itself, which is rather a pity.”
    The car lifted on its suspension and made a needlessly hard U-turn to head back to the harbor. Traffic was light, but Hogg still came close to broadsiding a truck as he pulled out.
    “So this trip didn’t help us after all?” Daniel said, when he was sure that Adele had said all she intended to for the moment. Her data unit was live again.
    “No, I wouldn’t say that,” she said toward her display. “I think the details of Master Sattler’s smuggling enterprises are very useful indeed.”

CHAPTER 4: Holm on Kronstadt
    Since Adele wanted Cory and Cazelet present for the discussion because they helped her with intelligence gathering, Daniel had included Vesey, his first lieutenant, and Woetjans, the bosun, as well. Adding them was mostly a political decision.
    Woetjans wouldn’t care one way or the other: she was by no means stupid, but she regarded planning as something her betters—better born, better educated—did. Unless the plans involved clearing top-hamper after something disastrous happened to the rig, of course; or hand-to-hand fighting. You couldn’t find a better choice for clearing a path through a mob than Woetjans with a length of high-pressure tubing.
    Lieutenant Vesey, a slim, blond woman, was a more complex subject. She had come to the Princess Cecile as a midshipman on Daniel’s first voyage after the Navy Board confirmed his lieutenancy. From the beginning she had been an excellent by-the-book astrogator, and she had absorbed Daniel’s training—passed on from Uncle Stacy—in the art of the Matrix as no one he had met before or since.
    In all technical respects, Vesey was as fine an officer as one could ask for, and of course she didn’t lack courage. Daniel didn’t recall ever meeting an RCN officer whom he thought was a coward, though there had been no few whom he doubted could consistently put their shoes on the correct feet.
    Vesey’s problem was that she lacked the particular kind of ruthlessness which Daniel referred to—not in Vesey’s hearing—as killer instinct, the reflex to go for your opponent’s throat. She could set up a step by step attack, but she wouldn’t reflexively see and exploit an enemy’s weak point.
    That lack was a serious handicap for an RCN officer, and it made Vesey—who was more self-aware than was useful—unsure of herself. That was probably why she continued as the Sissie ’s first officer when her skills fitted her for a command of her own even after the cutbacks which resulted from the Treaty of Amiens.
    Daniel was sorry that Vesey’s career had stumbled in such a fashion, but the Sissie had gained by her misfortune. He could have left astrogation to her if he hadn’t loved the process himself, and Vesey’s ship-handling in normal space, now that she’d become comfortable with it, was better than his.
    “I told you about our new mission when I returned from meeting the regional commander…” Daniel said, passing his wry smile across the command group as he spoke.
    “Yes, and we don’t deserve it,” said Cory angrily from the astrogation console. “I think it’s a bloody shame!”
    Daniel had decided to hold the briefing on the Princess Cecile ’s bridge. A corvette had very little internal space in civilian terms, but he and his officers had been together on the Sissie for years. She was home to them.
    He looked at his Second Lieutenant. Cory had been Vesey’s