“Great God, our help!” shouted Portus. “That’s the Cinnabar sandal! They’re not the cops, they’re Cinnabars come to save us!”
A pair of large aircars, laboring to stay airborne, roared around the side of the tall building behind the Anyo Nuevo. They flared to land, their skids sparkling on the roof’s covering of asphaltic concrete. One had a cloth-of-gold canopy, the other red silk which had torn to tatters on the flight just ended.
Most of those aboard the two vehicles were heavily-armed locals, but the men in the middle, the seat of honor, were Cinnabar natives dressed in local pomp. Daniel recognized both of them.
He stepped to the gold-covered car and saluted. His right arm caught him in mid-motion—he’d strained his triceps somehow—but he carried through anyway.
“Sir!” he said to Admiral O’Quinn. “Lieutenant Daniel Leary, RCN, reporting!”
He coughed. “Ah,” he added. “That is, RCN Reserve, sir. And we’re very glad to see you!”
O’Quinn got out of his vehicle with the hesitation of a man more hindered by ill health than old age, but who was old as well. “If you’re on half pay, Leary,” he said, “then you’re more RCN than I am by a long ways.”
He peered over the front of the building. “I think the boys are sorting out the Alliance well enough,” he went on. “It’s our household guards mostly doing the heavy work, but I see some of the old crew are showing they’re not too old to swing a wrench.”
“Sir,” said Daniel, nodding to Commander Purvis as he joined them from the other aircar. The mob flying the Cinnabar flag was weighing into the Goldenfels’ crew all right. There were hundreds of the newcomers, and more were arriving from several directions in addition to the initial batch from the harbor. “Ah, I’m very grateful, as I said; but how is it that you came here like this?”
O’Quinn looked at him in surprise. “Came here?” he repeated. “Why, Mistress Mundy sent a warning through the alert network we Cinnabars set up in case, well, things changed in our relationship with the Governor. Our private network.”
“I don’t see how she got the codes to do that,” Commander Purvis said with a sudden frown. “I certainly didn’t give them to her. I don’t know how she even realized the network existed!”
“We’d have done the same if it was your father, Leary,” said Admiral O’Quinn. “Of course I might’ve hanged him afterwards, but I wouldn’t have left him to the Alliance.”
Daniel nodded crisply. “Yes sir,” he said. “I appreciate the distinction. So would he.”
Count Klimov, looking very little the worse for wear, strolled over to them. “So, Captain Leary,” he said. “These men are friends of yours?”
Daniel quirked a smile at his employer. “Yes, your excellency,” he said, “they’re my colleagues and most certainly my friends.”
He took a deep breath and went on, “And if you don’t mind my appearing to give an order, your excellency, I strongly recommend that the Princess Cecile lift from here as soon as we and the rest of the crew are back aboard!”
CHAPTER 14
It’d been a wryly pleasant surprise to Adele when she learned that most spacers didn’t like weightlessness any better than she did. A properly-functioning starship was almost always accelerating at 1 g, providing the illusion of weight.
The exception was during the time a ship was in orbit, preparing to land. Tegeli now rotated below the Princess Cecile, a haze of greenish seas and the varicolored smears of low-lying islands and the life-encrusted shallows around them. It wasn’t particularly inviting, but at least when the officials from the picket boat cleared the Sissie to land, there’d be gravity again.
Adele smiled at her display. The secret to contentment appeared to involve finding pleasure in small things. Though gravity didn’t seem a small thing when you were without it.
“We’re carrying no cargo whatever, Commander Mendez,” Daniel said to the pasty-looking official who’d come aboard on a line from the picket boat. For all the fellow’s impressive rank, his vessel was a bucket with neither antennas nor High Drive; the crew establishment was five, but according to her log she’d been operating with four these past two months. “Only stores for our own use, and those are rather sparse at the moment. Because of riots in San Juan, we left Todos Santos before we’d completed loading.”