Lt. Leary, Commanding by David Drake

All were volunteers, but virtually every spacer on the Princess Cecile would have joined the party if Daniel had been willing to strip the ship. Those Woetjans had chosen were those she wanted to have at her back in a brawl: mostly big, invariably aggressive, and for this mission armed to the teeth.

The ground reradiated the heat of its recent bath in plasma. The local time was just after dawn, and the blue-white intensity of S1 cast sharp shadows across the Council Field.

“They’ve got some defenses here and no mistake,” Woetjans muttered, nodding in the direction of a circular wall like a well coping, one of six such ranged in a diagonal line across the field. Each was a cluster of hypervelocity rockets which could skewer a starship in orbit.

“I’ve taken over the central controller,” Adele said primly, “but each installation has an optical sight and manual controls that I can’t touch. Well, from outside the installation itself, I mean.”

“I don’t believe we’ll need to assault the harbor defenses,” Daniel said, wondering if Adele had been seriously considering that. Council Field was nearly a mile square, though the ships were mostly at this end, near the Hall. Houses were scattered throughout in the neighboring forest. Running over bare baked earth to attack the most distant rocket pit didn’t strike him as a practical proposition.

He smiled. Woetjans saw the expression and said, “Sir?”

“I was just thinking,” Daniel explained. “Needs must when the Devil drives. But I really doubt he’s going to drive us hard today.”

The sky rumbled with the arrival of another starship. The flickering plasma threw faint highlights into the long morning shadows.

“Ship to boarders,” explained the intercom in a female voice—Vesey, for a fact. “One of the pickets is coming down. Seven cutters have lifted from outlying locations and are proceeding toward the Council Field within the atmosphere. Ship out.”

Aircars were approaching the Hall also. As Woetjans led the dismounted party into the opening through the berm—built out in an elbow to block blasts from landings and liftoffs—a big vehicle overflew them at low level. It had started life as a truck, but the addition of armor and pintle-mounted weapons turned it into an assault vehicle of sorts. The Selma pirates attacked settlements on the ground as well as preying on merchant vessels.

The powerful fans buffeted the spacers beneath, knocking some to their knees. It was like being caught in a millrace. Daniel glanced back. Hogg, his feet braced wide apart, held Adele like scaffolding about a slender pole. Grit and larger pebbles bit as they spun about the narrow passage.

“Boarders, don’t shoot!” Daniel said, using the intercom to make sure of being heard over the aircar’s roar. “We knew they’d be playing games, so just keep your tempers! Over.”

“It scarce can keep in the air!” shouted Barnes, who’d driven aircars both as a civilian and under Daniel’s command. “They’re a load of bloody fools to load the bitch that way!”

The aircar dropped below the berm and landed noisily just out of sight. Other vehicles, similar but not quite so extensively modified, came from all directions to join the assembly. Daniel wondered if the car that had hammered them did so not as hazing but because the entranceway was the only place the driver felt confident of getting his overweight vehicle over the berm.

“Boarders, they’re for scaring civilians, not for real fighting,” Daniel said. He used the intercom again so that all his crew could hear the calm in his voice. “They know we’re here to bargain and they’re just starting the haggling early. Over.”

“They come down on Bantry in them clown cars and they’ll learn what real fighting is,” Hogg said. He was genuinely angry, a very different thing from the loud bluster he used to cow people who were frightened by open emotion. “Me and half a dozen of the boys’d take care of the business without having to reload.”

Hogg had a cut on his cheek from some jagged bit of debris, though he seemed to be more concerned about Adele . . . who was fine, as her quick nod assured Daniel.