Adele looked at him. Kelburney wasn’t a stupid man, but living in this milieu of drunken pirates had led him to the habit of making stupid boasts.
“And I’m not sure I could,” Kelburney added, in the same whimsical tone.
Daniel clasped him, forearm to forearm. “Astrogator Kelburney,” his amplified voice said. “Together we’ve put down a rebellion against your authority and an affront to the Republic of Cinnabar. I now request that you and your siblings join the RCN in teaching a lesson to those on Strymon who think to revolt against Cinnabar sovereignty!”
Where Adele sat, shielded by the curve of the corvette’s hull, Daniel’s voice through the speakers on the dorsal ridge was merely loud. In the front rank of the assembly it would be painful, though of course most of those listening had numbed themselves with ethanol.
“God’s blood you’re a clever bastard,” Kelburney whispered. He faced the assembly, raising his hands as Daniel had done a moment before. Adele nodded to him.
“Siblings of the stars!” Kelburney thundered. “We’ve lived with the libels of the sanctimonious merchants of Strymon for as many generations as we’ve gone into space. Their lies, their treachery, these are well known to you.”
He held out his left arm toward Daniel as though demonstrating a prized possession. “I’ve discussed these matters with Admiral Leary here, the son of Speaker Leary, the Emperor of Cinnabar. He has agreed to put the resources of the RCN at our disposal, to chastise the hypocrites of Strymon once and for all. Are you with me, siblings?”
Daniel glanced aside toward Adele and mouthed, “Does shit stink?”
He could have shouted his joke through the corvette’s speakers and still not been heard. The assembly’s cheers of agreement had a savage undertone, like the growls of great carnivores expecting to be fed momentarily.
The Astrogator faced Daniel. “Admiral Leary,” he said, “how long will it take you to prepare for this great joint enterprise?”
“Astrogator Kelburney,” Daniel said. “My ship and crew are ready to lift immediately, but I’ll need twenty minutes to transmit the course and attack instructions to your vessels. I await your readiness.”
He and Kelburney were playacting for a group of adults with the simplicity and cruelty of children, but there was nothing in it to raise a smile. Except perhaps a rictus like that which lifted Aretine’s lips the last time Adele had seen her. . . .
“To your ships, siblings!” Kelburney said, shaking his right fist. “We lift in half an hour!”
The cheers of the dispersing pirates were lost in the snarl and whine of their vehicles’ engines. They were in motion, swarming toward their cutters, before the last echoes of the Astrogator’s voice had died away.
Kelburney looked at Daniel with an expression compounded of admiration and pique. “You’ve really got a battle plan?” he asked.
“I had to do something while you were planning your charade, Astrogator,” Daniel said. “I think you’ll find it satisfactory, but frankly I’d have preferred to have gotten your input before I imposed it on you. Another time, perhaps you won’t choose to keep yourself incommunicado when there’s work to be done.”
“Another time!” Kelburney said. Then he grinned at first Daniel, then Adele, and added, “But you do make life interesting, RCN.”
Chapter Thirty
The sixty-seven Selma cutters plotted on Daniel’s display vanished and reappeared, moving toward Strymon in short hops through the Matrix. It was like watching a swarm of locusts leapfrogging one another as they advanced. Though there seemed no organization, the motion was as inexorable as the rising tide.
The four Strymonian frigates orbiting the planet shook out their sails, then slipped into the Matrix themselves rather than contest with a force ten times superior to them. The Princess Cecile was already above the planet, broadcasting her warning to Commodore Pettin’s ships below.
“A very pretty play,” said Lt. Mon, who was viewing the same simulation from the Battle Direction Center. “Now, if we can only get the other actors to follow the script. And if the next scene isn’t the Alliance squadron thundering down on us because our new allies didn’t destroy the relay satellites before the guardships got a message off to Tanais. That’s going to take some tricky astrogation.”