Lt. Leary, Commanding by David Drake

“—nobody who shouldn’t gets to see our cargo here.” He looked down at the prisoners with an expression of contempt. “Lieutenant Mon’ll be waiting for you, ma’am.”

More to the point, Woetjans was already outside the compartment with her arm crooked to keep Adele from tripping as she got out. Adele put her data unit away and grabbed the bosun’s arm; she wasn’t one to injure herself when she might be needed through a foolish overestimate of her abilities.

Adele started for the gangplank. Woetjans held her. “Mr. Mon’s on his way, mistress,” the bosun said; which was perfectly obvious, once Adele looked at her surroundings instead of focusing on her plans for the immediate future.

Tovera and Woetjans’ team stood beside the aircar, their weapons less incongruous now than they would have seemed the day they landed. The Princess Cecile’s dorsal turret was not only raised but live: the plasma cannon slowly traversed the corniche above the harbor. Only two ventilation hatches were open. From them projected automatic impellers on mounts which Taley and her mate had welded from tube stock. The four guards at the entrance hatch were alert and completely sober.

Mon crossed the gangplank with the swift grace of a rigger. He wore his utilities and an equipment belt including a holstered pistol, something Adele had never seen an officer on shipboard do.

“Yes?” he said. Drunk, Mon became angrily morose, but he was always intense when sober. At the moment he looked as though you could etch glass with the angles of his face.

“Daniel and the others were marooned on South Land,” Adele said, detailing the information in as bald and precise a manner as she could. “They’re supposed to be unharmed. We have a pair of prisoners in the vehicle who don’t seem unduly concerned about what’ll happen to them when we locate our friends, so we can probably accept that as true.”

She cleared her throat. “I’ll be taking the Captal’s aircar to pick up the expedition,” she said, “but even if everything works out we can’t possibly get back to Spires before the squadron’s scheduled departure.”

“The Princess Cecile will be here when the captain arrives to resume command,” Mon said. Though his voice was emotionless, his scowl could have meant anything. “Choose what personnel you need. Oh—and will you want the Sissie’s jeep as well? Dorst and Tavastierna returned a few minutes be—”

The late-afternoon sky above the line of cliffs flashed amber, then faded to the pale grayish white of moments before. Adele felt the shockwave through her bootsoles. The water in the harbor rose in tight conical waves. All around the harbor, spacers looked up.

The airborne blast was measurable seconds later. It sounded more like a huge steam leak than an explosion.

“Right on time!” said Palaccios, the engineer’s mate who’d wedged open the compound’s power room before running to the aircar. He and Jiangsi clasped arms and pounded one another on the back.

“I don’t think we’ll need the jeep,” Adele said.

“Anything I should know about?” Mon said, pointing a finger skyward. He sounded straightforward rather than sardonic. The flare had dissipated, but the western sky continued to sparkle as ions snatched free electrons and reverted to their normal state.

“Old gray-hair’s fusion bottle blew,” Jiangsi said, jerking his thumb toward the servants’ compartment where the Captal lay bound. “If the safety doors’d all been shut, the building’s roof’d have blowed off and that’d be the end of it. Since the doors wasn’t shut, all that plasma vented out the front at the fancy house across the courtyard.”

“Was anybody inside the compound?” Mon asked, interested but not concerned.

“Not unless somebody decided to be a hero after we shooed ’em all outa the front gate,” Woetjans said. “There might’ve been some bodies from before then that nobody’s going to be finding now. They won’t find fuck-all since the plasma scoured out the inside of the compound.”

Mon grinned broadly, the first time Adele had seen him wear a positive expression. “Good work, Officer Mundy,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to have you under my temporary command. Now, get off to South Land and return Captain Leary to where he belongs.”

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