Wilsing spread his hands with a supercilious smile. “Admiral Anston took the report seriously enough to scrape together a squadron to set up a base on Todos Santos,” he said. “And a civilian advisor—”
Mistress Sand, obviously.
“—convinced some important Senators that there should be an advisory mission to help Governor Sakama through the present difficult situation. He retains control of the Ten Star Cluster, of course, but well, we couldn’t have the Alliance setting up a base here as well as on Radiance, could we?”
“The Alliance squadron’s been pretty well scotched,” Daniel said. He cleared his throat. “The base on Gehenna’s still usable, though, most of it. It’s something Admiral Keith will need to deal with. Ah, that is, I assume the Admiral will want to prevent the Alliance from reoccupying the base.”
“Scotched?” Wilsing repeated in a rising tone that filled Adele with a mixture of embarrassment and fury. “Well, my goodness. If that’s true, it’s very fortunate. There was a good deal of concern as to how the Kapila was going to perform against two modern Alliance battleships. She’d been relegated to guardship duties, you know.”
“The lieutenant’s statement is quite true,” Adele said. “As one would expect of anything said by a Leary of Bantry, of course.”
Wilsing’s tongue touched the corner of his mouth. “Of course,” he said. “I—”
“And as for concern, Wilsing,” Daniel said, smiling but with a muscle at the back of his jaw jumping, “I doubt it was shared by any real RCN officer. The day an RCN battleship can’t see off a couple wogs, I’ll join the priesthood. Eh, Mundy?”
“You’d look remarkably silly in robes, Captain,” Adele said with a hard smile for Wilsing’s benefit. “But I doubt either of us will live to see that happen.”
The vehicle slowed to a halt, its tires singing on a descending note. A section of street was closed off with razor ribbon and concrete barriers, guarded at each end by an armored vehicle mounting a plasma cannon and a squad of the Land Forces of the Republic.
Wilsing nodded with a fixed smile. “The Ground Detachment has been granted these buildings by Governor Sakama,” he said. “We’ll walk from here, if you don’t mind.”
Daniel laughed and got out the door Hogg opened for him. “Well, Mundy,” he said. “It looks better than some of the places we’ve been together, doesn’t it?”
Arm in arm, and with their servants, they followed the discomfited Lieutenant Wilsing through the narrow entrance to the headquarters of the new government of the Ten Star Cluster.
CHAPTER 34
Ground Detachment Headquarters was a palace like that of her cousin Adrian, and it certainly hadn’t been abandoned before the Cinnabar squadron arrived a few days ago. Somebody’d been touching up the frescoes on the ceiling of the entrance hall. The scaffolding remained, but work had stopped.
Adele wondered who the owners had been and what they’d done to lose their home abruptly. They’d very likely lost their heads as well, which made her think of the Three Circles Conspiracy.
“Adele?” Daniel said. She came alert, feeling a hot itch shudder momentarily just under her skin. A clerk of some kind was waiting expectantly for Daniel to go off with him, but Daniel was watching her with concern. “I’m to meet with a board, they say.”
“Sorry,” Adele said. The smile on her lips didn’t belong to her; nothing belonged to her, she’d died half a lifetime ago when she heard of her family’s massacre. “I was daydreaming.”
“If you’ll come with me, mistress,” Lieutenant Wilsing said, “Captain Carnolets is waiting.”
He sounded concerned but no longer slickly supercilious. Adele’s smile became real. Wilsing had learned something during the ride here. And she wasn’t dead. She belonged to the RCN and to the Princess Cecile; and she belonged to herself again, because she had the respect of men and women whom she herself respected.
“Good luck with your board, Captain,” she said, nodding to Daniel. She had no idea what he was getting into; she simply hadn’t had time to search records here. “I can provide any documentation you need, of course.”
“Thank you, Mundy,” Daniel said. “And the best of luck to you as well. RCN forever, eh?”