RCN 11: Death's Bright Day (eARC)

by David Drake

  The Almirante didn’t fire in her own defense. Instead, the battleship faded into the Matrix, barely before the first of the cruiser’s missiles could have reached her.

  We’ve won!

  “Ship, this is Six,” Daniel announced. “The Karst battleship has withdrawn, leaving us in control of the Danziger System and therefore of the Tarbell Stars. We have achieved our objective. Six out.”

  There was cheering on the bridge and the command channel. A heartbeat later Daniel realized the mistake he had made—and worse, that Captain Joycelyn had made the same mistake.

  “Squadron, engage the Ithaca,” Daniel said. “Break, Chazonoff, I’m taking over Missiles, Six out.”

  He’d given Joycelyn as much warning as he could, but the cruiser was thirty seconds away. Cory had understood immediately, however, and the Mindello’s 4-inch plasma cannon were already lashing at the rebel destroyer.

  Joycelyn had focused wholly on the battleship. He had aligned the Triomphante to respond to the missiles which the Almirante was sure to launch. The rebel destroyer had extracted while the cruiser was still in the Matrix, however, and her presence had gone unnoticed in the majesty of the battleship’s 75,000 tonnes.

  The Ithaca had launched four missiles at the Triomphante. One had malfunctioned, ripping itself apart as its High Drive lighted. The other three were well-aimed. Though there was more than enough time to engage them or even to maneuver the cruiser out of their predicted tracks, Joycelyn and his gunners thought only of the Almirante’s salvo until it was too late.

  For most naval captains plasma cannon were purely defensive, used the way the Triomphante was using hers now. Daniel had from his first command seen how effective plasma bolts could be offensively. His officers had absorbed his philosophy, and Cory was putting it in practice now.

  The Ithaca was too distant for the Mindello’s bolts to seriously damage her. Even riggers in hard suits on the hull would probably be safe, because over nearly a light minute the slug of ions had expanded into a diffuse spray.

  Daniel finished his calculations and pressed Execute; the first and then the second missile clanged out of their tubes. He had decided it was quicker to program the launch himself instead of explaining the change of target to Chazanoff…and besides, Daniel wanted to do something to make up for having failed to warn Joycelyn about the new danger.

  It was too late, though. The rebel destroyer had already begun to fade from his display.

  The icon for the Ithaca suddenly sharpened to full brilliance again. The Mindello’s well-aimed plasma bolts had disrupted the rebel destroyer’s electrical balance enough to interfere with Captain von der Main’s attempt to escape into the Matrix.

  Daniel launched another pair; the Sissie had only six missiles remaining on board and four of those were on the rollerways now. It was a long carry, but if the Mindello could keep the target pinned there was at least a chance!

  Four of the Triomphante’s cannon had slewed quickly enough to fire on their new targets. Daniel didn’t set his own display to calculate the incoming missiles, but the 15-centimeter rounds had eight times the energy of the 4-inch guns of the Sissie and of most destroyers. There was a good chance—

  The bow of the cruiser bloomed into a distorted white bubble. The missile’s impact had heated the steel of her hull heated into lambent flame.

  Almost in the same instant, the icon for the Ithaca swelled and faded from Daniel’s display. Did she insert after all?

  But a real-time image showed an expanding bubble of gas. A fragment that might have been a mast was the only solid object visible even at the console’s greatest magnification. A missile had hit the destroyer squarely.

  “The target is destroyed,” a voice declared in a broken transmission. “I repeat, the target is destroyed. Schnitker out.”

  A missile from the Katchaturian had made a direct hit on the Ithaca.

  If the priests were right, perhaps that pleased the late bridge crew of the Triomphante.

  CHAPTER 27

  Elazig on Danziger

  Adele had gathered a great deal of data from the Almirante during the battle, but there hadn’t been time to process it. Here in Elazig Harbor, she began to go through it as a break from the information which Cazelet had forwarded from the Residency.

  Cazelet had gone back there as soon as the Tarbell Squadron had landed. None of the office personnel had commented on either his presence or his previous absence.

  That might have been the case in even a normal 5th Bureau Residency. The staff here in Elazig remembered the way Cazelet’s predecessors had been removed, however. Indeed, there were probably spatters on the walls if you knew where to look.

  Traffic through Port Control ran as a column of text along the right margin Adele’s display. Over twenty ships had lifted or landed during the three days since the battle. That was at the normal rate for the past year and a half, higher than that for traffic before the outbreak of the Upholder Rebellion. War had been good for neutral Danziger.

  The movements were being recorded also. Adele didn’t imagine—she couldn’t imagine—that she would ever have use for Elazig’s traffic logs, but it was unlikely that she would ever have another chance to collect them.

  Elazig control, this is AFS King William. On behalf of Admiral Paul of Brunswick we request docking facilities for the Alliance Friendship Squadron in Elazig Harbor. Over.

  Adele immediately pinged Daniel, who was busy on the Triomphante. He had boarded the crippled cruiser and brought it down in Elazig Harbor after transferring most of the crew to the transports. He had downplayed the risk, but Cory had told Adele that one or more trucks of thrusters might have separated during descent because of unnoticed fractures when the hull flexed.

  Adele hadn’t tried to convince Daniel not to take the risk. It was his business. She would not long survive him, though: that was her business.

  “Elazig Control acknowledges transmission from King William,” the ground controller replied. Adele had switched to audio. She routed the transmission to Vesey’s console in the BDC; Daniel had not responded. “What number of berths are you requesting, over?”

  Adele tried to enter the King William’s systems through Elazig Control, but without success. The warship’s communications console was properly isolated from the rest of its systems, and Control’s hardware couldn’t handle Adele’s more subtle tools.

  Danziger had a rudimentary satellite communications system but no orbital information gathering systems for Adele to use. The Sissie was in harbor and there were no Tarbell warships in orbit—which was probably a good thing, given the chance that a flustered and inexperienced Tarbell officer would try to interfere with the Alliance squadron. It wouldn’t be worth using the sensors of the two tramp freighters in orbit.

  “Control, we have two battleships, two light cruisers, and a flotilla of eleven destroyers,” the King William responded. “We can stage them in if necessary. We want to take on reaction mass and replenish our supplies of fresh fruits and vegetables, and we hope to purchase some stores. Over.”

  Adele had data on the King William open in a sidebar. She and her sister ship, the Crown Prince, were modern vessels; they had been assigned to the Pleasance Squadron after the Treaty of Amiens, where they remained in service instead of being put in ordinary.

  “Acknowledged, King William,” said Control. “We can accommodate all your ships in the Outer Harbor, or the destroyers and cruisers in the Inner Harbor and the battleships in the Outer Harbor, over.”

  Harbor Control was desperately trying to rouse someone in the civil government but thus far without success. From the excited chatter among the controllers—Adele was listening in through the control room’s security system—they had decided on their own to bring the ships down, mainly because they had no way to stop so massive a force.

  Adele approved silently. The controllers were using good judgment in a crisis. That didn’t affect her or anyone for whom she felt responsible, but it always p
leased her to see people behaving well.

  Daniel would answer when he could; Adele refused to become concerned about it…which was a lie, basically, but she hadn’t said it to anyone else and she didn’t believe it herself.

  She called Cazelet’s direct line. “Stanfleet Organization,” he responded promptly.

  “Clear everything connected with Cinnabar or our sponsors and get out immediately,” Adele said. “There’s an Alliance squadron landing and I expect there’ll be a 5th Bureau presence with it. Ah—will you need additional manpower? They haven’t started landing yet.”

  “I’ve kept things pretty sterile,” Cazelet said. “I even removed the storage element on the security video that showed the leadership change, though the staff might be able to identify you.”

  “I’ll take that risk,” Adele said. “Report to the Sissie when you’re done.”

  Tovera would be happy to execute all the potential witnesses. Tovera had attached herself to Lady Mundy, however. She knew that Adele would make choices that were more survivable in the long run than her own—sociopathic—choices would be.

  Daniel called just as Cazelet rang off. There was a query from Vesey on Adele’s display also, but she let it continue to pulse. She had nothing to tell Vesey beyond what the forwarded Alliance landing request already contained.

  “Daniel,” Adele said, “an Alliance squadron of two battleships and supporting vessels is in the process of landing. They’re calling themselves the Alliance Friendship Squadron under Paul of Brunswick.”

  She hadn’t bothered with preamble. This was a crisis, and she hadn’t been good at small talk even when she was quite small herself.

  “Do we know which faction they’re supporting?” Daniel said. He sounded calm; but then, so did Adele. She knew that she wasn’t.

  “I can’t get any information from them in orbit except for the names of the ships,” Adele said. She had forwarded that data in a packet, though she wasn’t sure whether Daniel would be able to view it yet. If he was using a handheld communicator rather than a commo helmet, perhaps not.

  “But Daniel,” she continued, “this is a detachment of the Fleet. Its cruise must have been authorized at a level higher than a 5th Bureau diocese. Guarantor Porra is at least complicit in what is happening.”

  “Ah,” said Daniel. “I believe…that I’ll stay here on the Triomphante, just as I would do if I were making a port call and a warship of a friendly power arrived. I’ll tell Vesey not to let any more of the crew go off on liberty but not to try to recall those who are off the ship already.”

  The hesitation was so slight that Adele might have believed Daniel had been planning his response for days.

  “I’m sorry not to have gotten back to you sooner,” Daniel added. “Pasternak and I were down in the bilges, deciding whether any of the converters had shifted during whipping when the ship was hit.”

  “All right,” said Adele. A sound of approaching thunder meant that the Alliance ships were descending to land. The first must be one of the cruisers; as loud as it was, it wasn’t the earthshaking commotion of a battleship.

  “Daniel?” she said. “When Cazelet arrives, I’m going to put him on communications. I’ll come and join you.”

  “I’m always glad of your company, Adele,” he replied.

  Neither of them said that it might be the last opportunity they had to see one another. It all depended on what orders Admiral Paul and the squadron’s 5th Bureau contingent had received.

  Adele went back to trying to get through the squadron’s shielding. When the Alliance ships were nearby in harbor she would have more options, but that wasn’t a reason for her not to try before then.

  * * *

  “Pasternak!” Daniel called as he followed his chief engineer down from the forward strut of the Triomphante’s starboard outrigger. “Use the bloody ladder! I’d rather scrap this bloody cruiser right now than have you drown on me!”

  Pasternak was over sixty, an old man by spacefaring standards. Though a jury-rigged ladder had been welded to the other side of the strut, he wore gauntlets and used the teeth of the extension gear to clamber down hand over hand.

  If he falls into the slip, I’ll have to see how well I swim in boots and gauntlets, Daniel thought.

  The Triomphante should probably be scrapped anyway, but Daniel didn’t feel it was his job to make that decision. He smiled wryly. He supposed it was in the hands of whoever was in charge in the Ministry of War, though the news that there was an opening at minister level might not have reached Peltry yet.

  Or we could leave it for Admiral Paul to decide. The cruiser properly belongs to the Fleet, despite having been mislabeled as scrap when she was transferred to the Upholders.

  Daniel laughed aloud.

  Pasternak dropped to the dock and looked back. “What’s so bloody funny?” he called, misunderstanding Daniel’s laughter. “When I can’t do a spacer’s job I’ll stop shipping as one, but you’ve got no call to put me out to pasture yet!”

  “Chief,” said Daniel stepping down beside him, “there’s an Alliance squadron landing out there.”

  He gestured generally in the direction of the battleship which had landed some ten minutes earlier. “I was wondering if they were going to charge me with damaging their cruiser here, since I think it properly belongs to them.”

  “Damage, hell,” said Pasternak. “She’s right and truly wrecked, Six. But if you give me the dockyard hours, I can put her back in shape in three months.”

  Not in the docks here on Danziger, Daniel thought. Back home at Bergen and Associates, just maybe…but it still wouldn’t be economically viable.

  “The strut torqued so bad when the missile hit…” mused Pasternak, looking at the great outrigger. “That we had to blast the extension loose in its channel to extend it. And I wouldn’t trust a weld to hold for landing, so we drilled and pinned the sections.”

  “You did a great job, Chief,” Daniel said. “I knew that when you said it would take the strain that I didn’t need to worry about it.”

  “None of the ship’s own crew believed we could use high explosive to clear the strut,” Pasternak said, turning to Daniel again. “But you’d put me in charge of getting her in shape so they did it anyway. Worked out pretty good.”

  Then he said, “It’d be a pity to scrap her, wouldn’t it, sir? She took a hell of a whack and she was still ready to fight if there’d been anybody left to fight, right?”

  “Right as rain, Chief,” Daniel said. “But it’s not our decision.”

  An ex-Fleet lieutenant in the Battle Direction Center had become the ranking officer aboard the Triomphante when the bridge had vanished in a fireball. Daniel wondered how she would have performed if the Almirante had returned. Probably as well as anybody could have, though that wasn’t saying much.

  “I have to say I’m glad the fighting was over, though,” he added, and that was the truth if he’d ever spoken it.

  A van drove down the quay toward them. Something in the mechanism squealed until the vehicle stopped at a line of bollards. Tovera and a moment later Adele got out.

  “It’s a belt, not a bearing,” Hogg said. He sounded apologetic. “I tightened it before I handed the bitch over to Tovera, but I need to get on it again.”

  “I’ll talk with Officer Mundy now, Pasternak,” Daniel said. “I think I’m clear on the Triomphante’s status.”

  “Whatever you want, Six,” the chief engineer called cheerfully to his back. “We can handle it!”

  “Pasternak seems more optimistic than I would expect from seeing the ship,” Adele said, looking at the cruiser. Hogg had joined Tovera beside the van.

  The first twenty frames of the bow were gone, down to A and B levels: the impact had been quartering from slightly above. Icicles of congealed plating hung from the edges of the cavity, pointing down and back in the direction of the Triomphante’s thrust when she was hit. Several cracks starred the hull aft.

  “Pasternak rega
rds the Triomphante as a technical problem, which he’s confident he can solve,” Daniel said. “He’s shading the job on the hopeful side as people do, of course, but I’d be willing to back him—as a technical matter. Economically—”

  He shrugged. Like Pasternak, the spacer in him would like to try.

  “—fixing her is nonsense. You can’t see it from this angle but both forward turrets are off their races. Forward Dorsal’s barbette has been crushed as well.”

  Daniel cleared his throat and asked the question whose answer he was afraid to hear: “Adele, are the Sissies going to be all right? In your judgment? Because I can tell them to scatter now and get off Danziger the best way they can. They’re all trained spacers that any captain would be glad of in his crew. That means civilian officers’ll hide them from the rebels—or whoever, the Alliance—for their own sakes.”

  “General Storn was Paul of Brunswick’s political officer for ten years and two promotions for both men,” Adele said. “Our crew knew nothing about the background of why we’re in the Tarbell Stars, so I don’t imagine that Paul will attempt to kill them.”

  She pursed her lips and added, “I could be wrong, of course.”

  “But if Paul and Storn are allies…” Daniel said as he absorbed what he had just heard. “Then we’ve won, haven’t we? That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

  There was a glint of light above the western horizon: another ship approaching to land. The exhaust roar hadn’t reached Elazig yet, but the ultraviolet glitter promised that it was coming.

  “No,” said Adele with a cold edge in her voice. “It probably means that General Storn has the advantage over his rival General Krychek and may even have destroyed him. General Storn’s goals are not identical to our goals, however—yours and mine. If it became public knowledge that Storn had conspired with enemies of the Alliance—”