by David Drake
Without interrupting verbally, Adele transmitted the sort she’d just completed to the command console. The two battle cruisers, one of the three light cruisers which had lifted from Z3, the four destroyers—all members of that class in the squadron save the pair on picket around Diamondia—and six sloops had shaken out most of their sails. The two battleships, the four heavy cruisers, and the two remaining light cruisers were only partially rigged.
Daniel chuckled, then continued, “As I say, half the total is planning to insert into the Matrix, then extract almost immediately. They’re going out purely to provide cover for the force being sent to gut the Bagarian Cluster like a fish. Guphill’s counting on the fact that Admiral James can’t be certain what may have happened behind the screen of Zmargadine.”
He paused. “But Guphill’s wrong,” he said, “because of our outpost in the rings. I assure you that I’ll jump Matthews a rate for this, and if Master Cazelet would care to become a midshipman backdated to the day he boarded the Sissie, it’s a done deal. I don’t have the clout to arrange that, but Navy House’ll grant Admiral James any favor he asks if he breaks the siege of Diamondia.”
“I see,” said Adele. But because she didn’t trust any news until she’d confirmed it and didn’t trust good news even then, she said nothing more for a moment while she manipulated a different two columns of data.
“Daniel,” she said. After hesitating a moment, she echoed her present display onto the command console. She resumed, “Daniel, you’re very confident in victory, so I realize there’s something that I’m missing. It appears to me, however, that even with half his strength sent to the Cluster, Admiral Guphill has a far stronger fleet than Admiral James does. Where’s my mistake, over?”
“I’m afraid that this tabular comparison is quite correct,” Daniel said. He snorted. “Of course it’s correct, it came from Signals Officer Mundy. In terms of tonnage, throw weight, crew size—any quantifiable measure of value—the remaining Alliance squadron is greatly superior to ours. Each of their four heavy cruisers is individually stronger than the Alcubiere, and the Lao-tze’s older than my father. She’s scarcely comparable to brand new battleships like the Pleasaunce and Formentera which she’ll be facing. But.”
Daniel adjusted the display. Adele wasn’t sure he was acting consciously rather than letting his fingers act by rote while he gathered his thought, but the tabular arrays sorted themselves into opposing fleets formed in three dimensions within the holographic volume.
“First,” Daniel said, “the Alliance squadron will return from its feint without any expectation of fighting, while our ships are at action stations even now as they lift from Diamondia. That’s a very considerable benefit to the RCN. And second—”
He looked at Adele and grinned.
“The second advantage is even less tangible, Adele,” he said, “but it’s more important. It’s the fact we are the RCN. We know it and they know it. Every Alliance spacer from Guphill to the Landsmen in Training knows that no matter how many ships they have, they’ve always got to expect us to go for their throats. Deep in their hearts, they’re afraid and they know we aren’t. We’re the RCN.”
“I see your point,” said Adele. She wiped the lopsided tables of ships and missiles, of matériel. “More to the point, Daniel, I feel it. Signals out.”
“Six, this is Five!” Vesey announced over the command push. Her voice was rarely excited, but this time was an exception. “Nine ships are lifting together from Port Delacroix. The squadron’s coming up, over!”
“Ship, this is Six,” said Daniel. “Action stations, Sissies. We’re very shortly going to get stuck into an Alliance squadron again. Up Cinnabar!”
“Up Cinnabar!” Adele shouted with the rest of the crew. She felt a little silly shouting patriotic nonsense, but she’d have felt even sillier not shouting at a time like this. Her adoptive family, the RCN, was very patriotic.
Chapter Twenty-six
ABOVE DIAMONDIA
The Alliance destroyers on station above Diamondia were the T65 and T72. Adele was waiting for their panicked interchanges when one or the other watch officer realized that their entire squadron had sallied from Z3 and they were for the moment alone in the Jewel System.
That didn’t happen. Though the two ships exchanged desultory signals, neither was paying the least attention to their base. A pair of lieutenants who’d been in the same class at the Fleet Gymnasium were discussing their chances of returning to Pleasaunce in time to attend the wedding of a third classmate.
The Alliance destroyers had been holding the usual 1 g acceleration to mimic gravity while they patrolled safely outside the planetary defense array. They’d normally be replaced on station by another pair of destroyers after thirty hours or so, more because of the tedium of the job than because they needed to replace reaction mass. Even though destroyers had relatively small tanks, Adele knew from her database that T-class vessels could easily have held station for eight or nine days at that level of consumption.
The sight of the Diamondia Squadron lifting in unison from Port Delacroix got their attention, though. Though the alarm bells on the destroyers wasn’t audible through vacuum—of course—the rhythmic sound made the hulls themselves vibrate, and that in turn registered on the Sissie’s rangefinding lasers.
“Captain, the Alliance pickets have spotted Admiral James,” Adele reported calmly. “They’re not aware as yet of Admiral Guphill’s movements, however. Over.”
“Roger, Signals,” Daniel said. “Keep me informed, out.”
Adele peeped at his display: he was working on attack plans involving the Princess Cecile alone engaging the Alliance destroyers and also the Princess Cecile engaging them in company with the Eclipse and Echo. RCN picket destroyers might well have launched long-distance missile attacks on an enemy squadron rising into orbit. There wasn’t much chance of a hit under the circumstances, but it could disrupt what was presumably a careful enemy plan.
Adele smiled coldly. She’d learned a great deal while she served with Daniel Leary; one of the things she’d learned was what it meant to be RCN. There was very little chance of the Alliance destroyers reacting as their RCN counterparts would, but if they did, the Princess Cecile and her fellows were ready to give them something more immediate to think about than Admiral James’ squadron.
Both pickets began to accelerate. Adele couldn’t overhear their internal communications at this range and she didn’t have the expertise to judge the details of what was happening. Even she could tell from the iridescent plume streaming from the T65 that it was using not only High Drive but its less efficient plasma thrusters as well to get up to speed as quickly as possible. The combined thrust not only would make movement and even breathing uncomfortable for the destroyer’s crew, it created greater strains than the vessel’s rigging was braced to withstand.
It didn’t take an expert to realize that, either. One of T65’s starboard antennas carried away, followed moments later by the ventral antenna of the same ring. Adele guessed that the second’d been fouled by lines from the first to go, but the details didn’t really matter.
The Alliance destroyers began to chatter to one another, using microwave links. These were directional, but at this distance the Sissie’s sensors picked up reflections from the vessels’ hulls. The T72 was using the squadron’s current code, but Adele’s equipment converted the signals as quickly as they could be read on the T65; and as for the T65, she was transmitting in clear.
The Princess Cecile’s bridge personnel were furiously busy; indeed, the whole crew probably was, though the bridge hatch was closed and dogged to limit damage if the corvette was hit. Daniel was projecting courses both through the Matrix and in sidereal space.
Adele had started to pipe the Alliance communications directly to the command console—that’s the way she’d have wanted the information—but she realized in time that the captain of a warship in action had more on his mind than his signals officer did. She instead sent h
er own summaries as a voice message transfigured into a text crawl across the top of his screen:
THE CAPTAIN OF T72 IS SENIOR. SHE HAS ORDERED T65 TO HOLD STATION NEAR DIAMONDIA WHILE T72 RETURNS TO Z3 TO REPORT. T65 PROTESTS.
Moments later the image of the T72 began to blur and fade into the Matrix. The process took nearly forty-five seconds, a matter of perfectly neutralizing the ship’s electrical charge. It had to cease to be a part of the sidereal universe so that it could shift into the Matrix, becoming a miniature universe of its own.
To Adele’s brief amazement, the T65 started to shift also, even before its consort was gone. The junior captain had been more than intemperate in his discussions with his senior officer; in the RCN, at least, there’d have to be a duel after the battle if both captains survived.
She hadn’t expected the junior officer to simply ignore a direct order, however. He might believe that it was properly the job of the T72 to remain behind rather than running to safety with a message, but surely he could see that one of them should stay, couldn’t he?
Adele’s lips bent in a hard smile. There was a great deal of contempt among Cinnabar civilians for the quality of the Alliance Fleet’s personnel. RCN officers were much more reserved in what they said about their enemies: no, the Fleet wasn’t the RCN, but neither was it a collection of farmers and cowards who lacked both skill and courage.
Sometimes, however, you ran into examples that went a distance toward justifying civilian prejudices. This was a good time for that to happen. It would be nice if the rot had penetrated to the officers of Admiral Guphill’s battleships as well.
Red light flushed Adele’s display momentarily; she opened the incoming message, a resumption of the data stream from Zmargadine orbit. Rene had ceased transmitting when the last of the Alliance squadron inserted into the Matrix. . . .
Adele’s wands flashed. She didn’t take control of the command console, just inset a pulsing red icon as before, but this time she added verbally, “Captain, this is Signals. Alliance warships are extracting in the vicinity of Z3 base. I repeat, Alliance warships are extracting.”
Then she drew in a deep breath and added, “Daniel, Admiral Guphill is back.”
* * *
Daniel’s PPI quivered as the Diamondia Squadron sorted itself in orbit. The Lao-tze was still climbing out of the gravity well. Her class had been marginal for thruster power when they were built, and rebuilds since that distant date had inevitably increased her mass without adding power. In sidereal space she was no more sluggish than a later battleship, though, and she had the reputation of being notably handy in the Matrix.
He moved the icon from Adele to the lower right quadrant of his screen and opened it. High resolution images of the Alliance squadron began to cycle in his display. They were marvelously sharp: that was the Pleasaunce, because her outriggers were shorter by three frames than those of her near sister the Formentera; the Formentera extracted only thirty seconds later.
“Command,” Daniel said, verbally keying the channel which linked the officers. His orders were to Adele, but the information would please everybody aboard. “Signals, copy the raw data to all the Sissie’s consoles and also transmit them to the flagship, attention CinC. When you’ve done that—”
At the bottom of the quadrant where Cazelet’s imagery cascaded appeared the legend DATA TRANSMITTED. The letters were in glowing puce, a disgusting color which he suspected Adele had chosen deliberately.
Daniel choked to keep from laughing. A good thing I wasn’t taking a sip of water, as I was about to. He continued, “Yes, and please restructure the data into a PPI layout centered on Z3 Base if you will. Distribute that in the same way, over.”
“Yes,” said Adele. He glanced to his side to see her wands dancing; it was like watching a machine, a very intelligent machine. “Shall I transmit the data to the other ships of the squadron also?”
After a minuscule pause she added, “Over.”
Daniel winced. He was afraid one of the junior officers would blurt something, but nobody did. He suspected that it wasn’t just that they made allowances for Adele’s lack of familiarity with naval protocol: they respected her so greatly that there lurked at the backs of their minds the possibility that Lady Mundy was right again.
She wasn’t right. Admiral James would react as though Commander Leary had walked into the Admiral’s Bridge and taken a dump on his console.
“Negative, Signals,” Daniel said mildly. “The Commander in Chief would regard that as an attempt to usurp his authority, particularly since the Princess Cecile is technically not a member of the Diamondia Squadron. Six out.”
The destroyers had their antennas raised and were shaking their sails out. Most of the heavy cruiser Alcubiere’s antennas were up, and the flagship Zeno had begun the process. The light cruiser Antigone was almost as old as the Lao-tze and like her was underpowered for operations in an atmosphere, but she’d be joining momentarily.
“Squadron,” said a voice slugged as coming in through the laser communicator. Admiral James himself was speaking, not his signals lieutenant. “We will operate in two elements, Foxhunt and Barnyard. Orders will follow presently—”
An icon winked at the bottom of the command display; the orders had already arrived. Daniel restrained his urge to open them until the admiral had finished speaking.
“We’ll be taking the fight to the enemy, fellow officers,” the admiral continued, “of course. Because the enemy is superior in force, I expect rigid discipline and prompt obedience to my orders. I do not say that I expect courage and professional shiphandling, because you wouldn’t be in the RCN at all if you didn’t display those qualities. Squadron Command out.”
Daniel nodded approvingly. The admiral’s words were perfectly appropriate, though none of the captains had needed to hear them to understand the situation inside and out. He opened the Orders icon, but before he could begin going over the contents his console flashed an incoming message warning.
“Rascal,” said Admiral James again in a harsher voice than before, “this is Squadron Command. You’re Foxhunt Ten for the duration of this operation. You’ll obey the orders of Foxhunt Command, that’s Captain Bussom, without hesitation. Do you understand that Leary, over?”
Daniel stiffened at the console as though he’d been slapped. Does the admiral think I’m going to hare off on my own in the middle of a fleet action?
“Squadron Command, this is Foxhunt Ten-six,” he said as formally as he could manage. “Aye aye, sir. Ten-six over.”
Obviously James did think that, and it was most unfair. Daniel’d always obeyed orders in the past.
Well, almost always. And anyway, he respected both James and Bussom.
“Sorry, Leary,” James said in a much softer tone. “I thought I needed to say that. We’ve got bloody little margin on this one, and if anybody gets creative it’ll confuse everybody else. No matter how clever a notion it might’ve been on its own, over.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Daniel repeated. His mouth was open to close the transmission—he needed to look at the orders and he was sure the admiral had something better to do than chat with the captain of the least powerful ship in his squadron.
Before he could do so, James said, “Bloody hell, Leary! Where did you get this imagery? It’s not real, is it? It’s a computer simulation, right, over?”
“Squadron,” said Daniel, opening the file which Adele must’ve forwarded to him and the admiral simultaneously, “the imagery and the derived PPI are real-time, transmitted from Zmargadine orbit some seventy-one minutes ago. You can take it to the bank, sir, over.”
Admiral Guphill’s reduced force had extracted in the vicinity of Zmargadine; now they’d begun striking their sails to set down on Z3. If they were keeping anything approaching a proper watch, they’d become aware when light from Diamondia reached the gas giant within the next few minutes that the RCN squadron had sallied.
“By the Gods, Leary,” James said in a reverential
whisper, “they’ve laid their balls on an anvil and we’re holding the hammer. Judging by their sail plans, a visit from Guarantor Porra wouldn’t surprise them as much as we’re about to.”
The admiral paused, then went on, “Foxhunt Ten-six, head this material ‘On behalf of Squadron Command’ and distribute it yourself. I want everybody to know it came from you, just in case I’m not around to tell them myself after things settle out. Squadron out.”
“Aye aye, sir!” Daniel said. “Foxhunt Ten-six out!”
He didn’t need the bright pink TRANSMITTED legend to tell him Adele would’ve sent it even before Admiral James finished speaking. The legend nonetheless flashed.
He looked for the first time at the orders which the Squadron staff had sent at the same time Admiral James himself was reading Commander Leary the riot act. They were headed CAPTAIN’S EYES ONLY.
Daniel realized his lips had squeezed together into what he’d have called a pout if he’d seen the expression on someone else’s face. Chuckling, he forwarded the orders to the BDC before he started going over them in detail.
“Captain’s eyes only” was the sort of nonsense which staff officers came up with. Did they think a Sissie was going to send the plans on to Admiral Guphill? And didn’t it occur to them that the whole purpose of the separated Battle Direction Center was to provide a backup command structure in case a missile sliced off the corvette’s bridge?
The two battleships formed Barnyard, under Captain Clinton of the Zeno. Admiral James was aboard the Zeno, but he commanded the whole squadron rather than just the Barnyard element. The remaining vessels—Alcubiere, Antigone, seven E-class destroyers, and the Princess Cecile—were Foxhunt.
Breaking the squadron into a heavy element and a screening element gave James a degree of flexibility, but the orders directed they stay together at least through the initial maneuvering. When all the ships were ready, they were to insert into the Matrix and extract in line ahead, heavy vessels leading, thirty light-minutes in-system of Zmargadine.
