In the Stormy Red Sky-ARC

by David Drake

  Daniel therefore made the tender's repair his first priority, but that had meant pulling the High Drive motors from a freighter captured in harbor. The motors themselves were fine according to David Reuben, the engineer's mate running the Power Room, but cavitation in the feed lines was causing the front pair to stutter.

  The problem probably couldn't be repaired in orbit. According to internal exchanges which Adele monitored as a matter of course, Reuben and his crew were nonetheless trying to do so while the motors were shut down. Daniel had given the mine tender a crack crew for this mission, starting with Vesey as captain.

  An incoming data icon flashed on Adele's screen. As she twitched a wand to open it, the ships of the Alliance squadron began to vanish from the display. They were withdrawing into the Matrix. They would hop close enough to Bolton that they could maneuver the last of the way to orbit in sidereal space.

  Adele opened the Alliance course data and plotted it on a large-scale image of Bolton and the space well beyond. Varnell was bringing his ships in as though the defense array didn't exist.

  That wasn't unreasonable; the tender controlling the array had said it was shut down, after all. She had the suspicion that Daniel would've been a little more careful, however. He knew—and Adele certainly knew—that hardware, software, and bored junior officers all could make mistakes. Daniel wouldn't want to be remembered as the captain who led twenty-one ships to destruction in a friendly minefield.

  As a reflex, Adele also copied the data to Vesey: that was what she would have done if Daniel were commanding. Vesey opened the file and set it to plot, then gave Adele a look of suppressed concern.

  "Mistress?" she said. "What would you like me to do with this?"

  "What?" said Adele, surprised into allowing herself to sound irritated. "Oh—it's just informational, Vesey. There's nothing either of us—any of us—can do with it."

  She cleared her throat, embarrassed because she had been a little sharp. "If they can extract where they're supposed to, then we'll be able to relax in less than the ten minutes I'd estimated. But in a good way."

  "Yes, mistress," said Vesey, obviously relieved not to have made a mistake. "Still on plan."

  Adele turned toward the display again. She kept her face blank, but she was frowning internally as she thought about Vesey.

  An officer who thought she was incapable of making a mistake was a bone-headed fool—and the RCN had its share of the type. But officers had to act as though they were incapable of error; otherwise they frightened everyone around them. If Vesey couldn't learn that sort of theater, she wouldn't be fit for command of a warship.

  Ships began to extract above Bolton. Most of them were well within the minefield. It's working. . . .

  Adele manually keyed the microwave link to Daniel's console rather than use a verbal cue. She didn't want to leave anything to the whim of an unfamiliar—and third-quality—computer.

  "Bolton Command, this is R12," she said. "I estimate that Squadron Varnell will request landing instructions in three minutes, thirty seconds. All vessels noted in the dispatches are present. Over."

  She was being extremely formal. Though intercepting the coded signal was within the capacity of any warship's sensor suite, isolating it from the clutter would be beyond most, maybe all, of the signals personnel in the Alliance squadron. Nonetheless this wasn't a time to cut corners.

  The form of a message could tell a great deal to someone knowledgeable and careful, even if the contents couldn't be deciphered in the available time. Officer Adele Mundy was knowledgeable, careful—and competent. She wasn't willing to assume that her opponents weren't all those things as well.

  "Roger, R12," replied Daniel. "I'm transmitting instructions on the order in which the squadron is to land. Command out."

  The Alliance ships continued to extract close to the planet, tripping the sidebar that now recorded vessels which had reached the immediate neighborhood of Bolton. None of them had too badly handled the final short jump. Naval officers tended to sneer at the astrogation ability of civilian skippers, but these freighters were under contract to the Fleet; their officers were obviously competent, and the ships themselves were well found and reasonably up to date for equipment.

  Even the Arcona, the cruiser with computer problems, extracted within three thousand miles of the Director Friedrich. That may have been luck, of course, but it was good luck for Adele. A powerful cruiser had to be within the trap before it was sprung, but too long a delay for landing instructions would have provoked a confrontation.

  Though in theory planetary control officials had complete authority over landing operations, Captain Varnell had the same rank as Commodore Harmston and carried the far greater prestige of a space appointment over a ground-based one. The length of time Varnell would twiddle his thumbs on Harmston's say-so was indefinite but not great.

  Adele let out her breath with a gush of satisfaction. She hadn't realized that she'd been holding it. "Bolton Command," she said, "this is R12. Squadron Varnell is in position. I'm ready to relay your directions to Captain Varnell, over."

  "Officer Mundy," said Daniel, "this is Bolton Command. There'll be a lag and the possibility of interference if you relay my transmissions. Handle the matter yourself in my name, copying me as you go. Six out."

  Adele weighed the plan. She supposed this way was as satisfactory as the other, though she certainly wouldn't have suggested it herself.

  "All right, Daniel," she said. She smiled. That wasn't the correct form, but the time for trickery was over. "Break. Squadron Three, this is R12. Emergency, emergency. Order all ships to hold their current heading and acceleration. There's a problem with the planetary defense array. Confirm immediately, over."

  "PDA Control, this is Friedrich Signals," said the first voice. "Repeat your most recent transmission, over."

  "Squadron Varnell, this is an emergency," Adele said. She knew she didn't sound as though it were an emergency; she never did. When things were at their worst, she spoke even more slowly and distinctly than usual; and things were potentially very bad now. "Captain Daniel Leary of the RCN has captured this minefield."

  She didn't know whether Daniel's name would mean anything to the Alliance officers listening to her. Even if it didn't, the very specificity of her statement was its own confirmation.

  "You are in great danger," Adele said. Perhaps she could shout and pretend to be angry? But she just wasn't an actor. "The mines around you are in suspense for only as long as they receive a signal modulated by an encryption program on the R12. If the R12's transmitter should fail, the minefield would destroy your entire squadron."

  She took a deep breath, then concluded, "Hold your course and acceleration, over."

  Signals passed in growing alarm among the ships of the squadron, but for nearly a minute nobody on the flagship replied to Adele's transmission. When someone finally did come on, it was a third male voice saying, "R12, this is Varnell. Who's your captain, over?"

  "Captain Varnell, I'm Officer Mundy of the RCN," Adele said. "Mundy of Chatsworth. Please observe the Oswestry in your squadron, over."

  "Mundy or whatever your name is," said Captain Varnell, "I can only assume you've gone mad. Hand your command over to the next senior officer before I'm compelled to end this farce myself."

  Adele expanded her minefield control screen. It was entirely text and numbers, the ship names and codes in place on a white background. She highlighted the Oswestry, then keyed the delete icon.

  "We're going to begin landing in St James Harbor," Varnell said, "where I'll sort this out with Commodore—

  confirm command the screen said. Adele touched delete again. Oswestry Osw791 disappeared; the seven names and codes farther down the alphabetical list hopped up one place each.

  "—Harmston, and we'll—bloody hell, they what? What?"

  The transmission broke off. Presumably the last of it had been Varnell's response to the underling babbling about what had just happened 14,000 miles from
the flagship.

  Adele called up the imagery. She knew what she would see; she'd seen it before, after all. But she felt that she should always look at the consequences of her actions, lest she begin to find it easy to do the sort of things which her various duties required.

  Besides, there was time. Varnell was going to have to discuss what had just happened before he accepted her offer. Or called her 'bluff,' of course. If he did that by blasting the R12 the way the Milton had destroyed the tender in orbit when they arrived, then Adele wouldn't be around to watch the Alliance squadron vanish a few heartbeats later.

  The Oswestry was a largish freighter whose chunky design increased the internal volume on a given tonnage. It had been a Cinnabar vessel initially, but an Alliance privateer had captured it some years before the recent interval of peace. Not that it mattered.

  The mines of a Planetary Defense Array were thermonuclear weapons with sensor and communications suites. Its magnetic lens squeezed the discharge into a line, much the way a warship's plasma cannon did. The differences were that the mine destroyed itself completely in the first usage . . . and that the mine's jet of ions was orders of magnitude greater than that from a cannon.

  In normal time the propagation wave was so fast that the Oswestry simply disappeared, replaced by a swelling gas ball. Slowed down by a thousand, the freighter bulged noticeably. Seams ruptured to gush fire, but only for an instant even at the greatly magnified interval. The fusion bottle had burst on the spike of ions, turning everything into an iridescent bubble.

  It was more beautiful than any pearl, if you viewed the thing itself as separate from the cause.

  "Mistress," said Vesey. "Mistress. That was the ship with the hostages!"

  "Yes," said Adele. She turned to meet Vesey's eyes. "I chose it for the earnest of intent because according to the manifest, there were eighty Fifth Bureau personnel aboard. Mostly low-level, of course."

  "Mistress," Vesey said. "I . . . you can't . . ."

  Adele shrugged. "Varnell has to understand that we, that I, can and will destroy his squadron unless he surrenders unconditionally," she said. "If I hadn't proved that in a fashion he couldn't doubt, he or someone in the squadron would've tried to get out of the situation by destroying us. Then they would all have died."

  She smiled coldly. "And us as well. But we might not have known that, depending on what they hit this tender with."

  Vesey simply stared. Adele shut down the insert in which the Oswestry exploded in a continuously looping image; she studied the PPI again. It would be at least five minutes before the ships which were headed away from Bolton reached the fringes of the minefield. One had been going in that direction when she sprang the trap, but the other two had changed course in defiance of her orders. She readied the field.

  "What the mistress isn't telling you, girl," said Tovera, "is that before the Oswestry surrendered, they'd have put the hostages out an airlock. That's Fifth Bureau SOP, you see—you never permit hostages to be taken alive. When word gets around that trying to rescue hostages means that they're all killed, there aren't so many rescue attempts. Besides—"

  Adele looked at Tovera, who was grinning.

  "—it's fun. Speaking as a former Fifth Bureau agent."

  "I didn't know that," said Vesey. She swallowed. "Mistress? Lady Mundy? Why didn't you say that instead of . . . ?"

  "I gave you my reasoning, Vesey," Adele said sharply.

  "Perhaps she thinks that you're too soft for this—" Tovera said.

  "Tovera, that's enough," said Adele.

  "No, mistress, it's not," said Tovera. The pupils of her eyes were trained on the lieutenant like pistol muzzles. "Too soft for this job, because sometimes it means killing. If you can't kill, you can't be a good RCN officer. You can't even—"

  "Tovera!"

  "—be a piss poor RCN officer. What do you really want to be, little girlie?"

  "R12, this is Captain Kendall Varnell," said the voice from the Alliance flagship. "You said you were Mundy of Chatsworth. That is, Lady Adele Mundy, over?"

  Adele frowned. "That's correct," she said. "At present, I'm Signals Officer Adele Mundy, acting for Captain Daniel Leary. Do you unconditionally surrender to the RCN, Captain Varnell, over?"

  "I know who you are," said Varnell. "I don't know how you did this unless you really are in league with the devil, but I won't throw away the lives of my crews."

  There was a pause, followed by what seemed to be a deep intake of breath. Then Varnell said, "I tender the surrender of the ships under my command, on the condition that the crews will be treated as honorable prisoners according to the law of nations, to be exchanged if agreed by the parties and to be released upon termination of the present hostilities, over."

  "Your surrender is accepted on the terms stated," Adele said formally. "I'm transmitting now—"

  Her wands twitched, forwarding Daniel's landing instructions to the Alliance commander. The freighters would go down first, one at a time; then the destroyers, followed by the cruisers. The Director Friedrich would remain within the minefield's kill zone until the remainder of the squadron had been boarded and disarmed by Daniel's forces in St James Harbor.

  "—directions on how you are to proceed. If I may add my personal caveat to the general orders? If the Eckernferde, Z40, and Insidioso don't begin braking into landing orbits around Bolton within the next ninety seconds, their crews will shortly have a chance to exchange greetings with the crew of the Oswestry. R12 out."

  "Received and understood, R12," said Varnell. "Squadron out."

  The cruiser and two destroyers which were headed outbound immediately reversed their thrust. Adele watched to make sure that they weren't simply feigning obedience. When they continued to brake hard, she gave a sigh of relief and rubbed her forehead hard with her fingertips.

  After a moment, she cued the two-way link again. "Daniel," she said, "they're coming down. It seems to have gone all right."

  "Of course it did, Adele," said Daniel. His voice sounded thick, but that might have been the form of transmission. "I had my best officer in charge of the operation. Bolton out."

  Adele stared at the display, exhausted and empty. A captured freighter, the Conestoga, would lift shortly under Midshipman Cory to take over control of the minefield. The R12 could land then, having completed its mission.

  A ball of plasma, rippling with all the colors of the rainbow. Perfectly beautiful, in an inhuman way. . . .

  "Mistress," said Lieutenant Vesey. "I'm an RCN officer. I won't disappoint you."

  Adele looked at her. Disappoint me by acting human? she thought.

  But aloud she said, "Very good, Vesey. Captain Leary will be as pleased to hear that as I am."

  CHAPTER 22

  St James Harbor, Bolton

  "Fellow spacers!" Daniel said, standing arms akimbo on the reviewing stand. He paused to let his voice roll back to him from the additional speakers Woetjans and Cazelet had rigged at the rear of the drill field. "I'm Captain Daniel Leary of the RCN. For those of you with guts and a real desire to get rich, I'm the best thing that's ever happened!"

  The crowd murmured, spacers talking to one another or muttering to themselves. Many were probably afraid.

  Daniel grinned. They were all probably afraid. Spacers liked to know what they were getting into, and this lot didn't have a clue. It wasn't every day that a twenty-ship squadron was captured and the crews were mustered under enemy guns.

  "Do you see the warrant officer down there at the front?" he continued, pointing toward the panel truck from which the PA system was being controlled. Cazelet was inside and Hogg was driving, not because he was particularly good at it, but because he liked to drive and Daniel didn't see any reason not to let him. "That's my bosun, Chief Woetjans."

  Woetjans stood on top of the truck in a rack knocked together from tubing. That would let her climb to any of the pole-mounted speakers which malfunctioned during the speech. She wore her liberty suit for the event. The flut
tering ribbons made a colorful display when she waved.

  "When we get back to Cinnabar, she'll be able to buy a mansion and staff it with a hundred of the prettiest boys in the Republic!" Daniel said. "She's bosun on a cruiser, and she'll have a bosun's share of the prize money of a captured battleship! Think of it, spacers, a share of a battleship! Do you know how much liquor that'll buy on the Strip?"

  There were various ways to get a spacer's attention. Offering money was a good one, but money was an abstract to many of the men and a number of the women who crewed starships. For that segment of his audience, Daniel had gone straight to the heart of the matter: sex and booze.

  Pointing out that Woetjans—with a body like a tree trunk and the face of a camel—could have her choice of bedmates underscored the sex option perfectly. She waved again, this time with both hands.

  There were, of course, spacers who wanted nothing more than to retire to a farm or small shop, or perhaps to own a ship instead of working for wages. They tended to be those with warrants or at least ratings, solid folk whom you wanted in your crew.

  The speech worked for them as well. They saw money as an object in itself.

  "Now you ask . . ." Daniel boomed through the PA system. " 'Can Captain Leary promise me that kind of prize money too?' And the answer is, I can't!"

  The ideal place for this assembly would have been the great domed hall at the south end of the military reservation. Would have been, until Adele highlighted it during the Milton's attack and Sun converted it into startlingly impressive rubble.

  Daniel wasn't about to complain about that decision, because he wouldn't have been addressing anybody if the Alliance garrison hadn't been stunned into almost immediate surrender. Blasting the largest structure on the planet to instant ruin had been an important part of that process.

  "But I didn't promise it to Woetjans, either, spacers," Daniel said, "and look at what she's got! Look at what every single spacer on the Millie's got, right down to the wipers and landsmen. They're rich because they sailed with Captain Daniel Leary; and I'm giving you the chance to do the same!"