Free Seas of Venus by David Drake Page B

scene so idyllic.
    "Sure, that's fine, Barton," Dan said easily. "We'll wait in the hall and keep out of your hair."
    There were bulletin boards in the hall. One of them listed a handful of apartments in Wenceslas Dome. Dan nodded to it and said, "Leases that got opened up three months ago. They've been pretty well picked over by now."
    "Is it going to be all right?" the younger man asked tightly. "With Haynes already there?"
    "We'll make it all right, won't we?" Dan said. "Just follow my lead, is all."
    He grinned in what seemed good humor and added, "You can think of it as your baptism of fire, John. Only, no matter how bad you screw up, nobody's going to die."
    The expression changed minusculy. "For a while, that is."
    "You know," Johnnie said, "in all the years I've known you, Uncle Dan, there's only once I've seen you really angry."
    Dan chuckled. "You've seen me angry, lad? When was that?"
    "Yesterday. In the Senator's office, when you told him he was a—that he didn't have any balls."
    "Oh, that," the older man said. He chuckled again. "And that's why you decided your father was a coward, is it? Well, you mustn't mistake tones for emotions. The Senator reacts very emotionally to anything involving you—that's just biology, after all. So I—"
    He spread his right hand and looked critically at the nails. "—had to get his attention on the level at which he was operating."
    Johnnie blinked and turned away. "Then it wasn't true?" he said, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice.
    "Look at me," his uncle said. " Look at me."
    "Yessir."
    "What's true is that Mankind has a chance to survive and spread to the stars," the mercenary officer said without raising his voice. "What's true is that I'll do whatever I need to do in order to protect that chance."
    Johnnie was standing rigid. Dan relaxed with a visible shudder and attempted a grin.
    "One more thing and we'll drop this, John," he said. "I want you to remember. I've killed people because it was my job. I've killed people because I was scared. But I've never killed anybody because I was angry."
    Johnnie nodded. "Sure," he said. He would have made the same reply if his uncle had told him it was noon, and the information would have made as much difference to him.
    "Commander?" called Lieutenant Barton from the office doorway. "The Admiral will see you now."
    Dan put his arm around Johnnie's shoulders. "Buck up," he said as they strode forward. " 'Forward into ba-at-tle, see our banners go!' "
    "I'll be fine, Uncle Dan." He really believed it now.
    "Sure you will, John," Dan replied. He settled himself and his sweat-marked uniform into the semblance of the third-ranking officer in the premier mercenary fleet on Venus. "You wouldn't be here if I weren't sure of that."
    Dan motioned Johnnie through the inner doorway first. Captain Haynes, seated in one of the two chairs in front of the Admiral's desk, snapped, "Not him."
    Johnnie paused. Dan's touch moved him into the office.
    "Yes, him, Captain," Dan said as he closed the door and stepped past his nephew. "Recruit Gordon's presence is necessary for this discussion."
    He nodded toward Admiral Bergstrom. "But the explanation won't take very long."
    Admiral Bergstrom's office was large without being spacious. It was filled with enough scrap and rusted metal to suggest a salvage yard.
    One wall held a stenciled swatch of a gunboat's bow panelling. The last digit of the number, Z841–, had vanished into the hole blown by an explosive shell.
    Above the panel was a hand-held rocket launcher of a pattern at least thirty years old. Beside them both was the sun-bleached, shrapnel-torn pennant of a flotilla commander; and, to the right of that in the corner beside the door, was the empty circular frame which had once held the condensing lens of a high-resolution display.
    All four walls were similarly adorned, and larger pieces of junk took up floor-space besides.
    Souvenirs of a life spent in the service of war.
    Admiral Bergstrom