“The Klimovs needed the space for their stateroom,” Adele explained. “A warship doesn’t ordinarily have room for an extra pair of socks, in my experience.”
Sun laughed. “Well, mistress,” he said. “I never heard about anybody trying to smuggle a pair of socks. But most everything else at one time or another’s found its way into frame spaces or spar cavities.”
He looked at Adele and grinned. “And into the bores of plasma cannons, some folk say. Though I wouldn’t know anything about that myself.”
Adele chuckled because it was expected of her. Looking past Sun’s shoulder toward the compound’s gate she saw one of the half-ton powered carts the Logistics Service used for light deliveries. Tovera was driving and the man beside her was Hogg.
“Pardon me, Sun,” Adele said, shutting down her data unit and stowing it with the same easy reflex as she breathed. “My servant’s arrived, and I need to check some matters with her.”
“God speed you, mistress!” Sun called back over his shoulder as he started for the gate. He was carrying a well-stuffed ditty bag. As he passed the cart going the other way he began to sing, “I don’t want your millions, mister, I don’t want your diamond ring. . . .”
Adele wondered what you’d want to smuggle from Strymon to Cinnabar that fit within the 4-inch bore of a plasma cannon. She didn’t know, but she was pretty sure that the gunner’s mate did.
The cart stopped directly in front of Adele. Hogg hopped out, stepped around the blunt prow of the vehicle, and helped Tovera down from the driver’s seat. Both of them stank of smoke, and Tovera in particular looked as though she’d had to crawl through a sewer pipe.
“We figured you’d want to hear it from us,” Hogg said belligerently. His voice rasped, his eyes were bloodshot, and the hair on the backs of his hands had been singed. At that, he looked much better than Tovera did. “There was a fire in a townhouse in West Valley where the new money lives. Folks named Rolfe had been in the house this past six months or so.”
“I see,” said Adele. “And yourselves? You look as though you should have medical attention.”
“Tovera’s going to take a session with the Sissie’s Medicomp,” Hogg said. “Rather’n, you know, do anything official. All right?”
“Yes, of course!” Adele said. “Tovera, do you need help to—”
“No, mistress,” Tovera said. She held her attaché case in both hands as though it were a lifebuoy as she floated on a shoreless sea. “No one died in the fire. No one at all.”
“Good,” said Adele. “Now get into the Medicomp.”
Hogg watched the slight figure walk up the boarding bridge without wobbling. From the back she looked even worse. Her hair was crinkled, and sparks had burned holes in her tunic.
“Get some of the soot sluiced out of her lungs and some burn cream, she’ll be right as rain,” Hogg said. That was a reasonable assessment—the corvette’s automated medical system was capable of tackling much more serious injuries than Tovera’s appeared to be—but Adele thought she heard an element of prayer in Hogg’s voice as well.
“I’m a little surprised,” she said, trying to keep her tone non-judgmental, “that the flames spread so quickly that you were caught in them.”
“Mistress, I swear to God!” Hogg snarled in frustration. “Look, I’m not trying to cover my screwup, not to you and the master, but there wouldn’t have been any problem at all if that woman had the sense God gave a goose!”
The lowboy was pulling away from the quay with the deliberation imposed by its load of multi-ton missiles. A similar vehicle waited to take the single extra round remaining in the Princess Cecile’s magazines. Up the roadway from the tram stop walked the Klimovs and a Navy Office functionary whose gray uniform made him look like a tree-branch fallen between his florally-arrayed companions.
“An electrical fire broke out in the walls, you see,” Hogg said, pursing his lips with the memory. “Anyhow, that’s what it looks like. All the walls at once, though. There was plenty of warning, alarms going off all over the house, and the stupid bitch stays to get her jewelry before she runs!”