by David Drake
The hull rang to a heavy blow, then a spiteful tinkle like that of glass breaking on a tile floor. It sounded like a gong, not an explosion, because the warhead had detonated in vacuum.
"Inserting!" Vesey said.
Adele felt a familiar prickly queasiness. She thought, I never imagined I'd be pleased to be entering the Matrix.
There was another deafening clang. Adele's console became a pearly glow as the Princess Cecile left behind all external inputs. They were in the Matrix, safe from all the troubles of the sidereal universe.
Adele smiled wryly. Unfortunately they had to return to normal space at some point. She very much doubted that trouble would have vanished while she was absent, but she supposed it wouldn't do any harm to hope otherwise.
CHAPTER 23: Zenobia System
"Everybody got out of the way when we saw them launching," Woetjans said, gripping her end of the communications rod so fiercely that Daniel wondered if she subconsciously believed she was squeezing the words through the brass tube. "As much as we could, you know. We had a good twenty seconds—not enough to get all the way to the other side, but there could've been wogs shooting there too. But to get behind a mast, you know, or Griswold behind the fairing for the belly airlock."
Daniel and his bosun stood toward the stern of the Sissie's underside, between the E and F mast rings. He'd left one rigging watch on the hull when he extracted to plead with Autocrator Irene. He'd been concerned about the cruiser's 15-cm plasma cannon, but he'd considered the risk marginal at a light-second's range.
If the negotiation went badly—as he had expected—he wanted to be able to maneuver in the Matrix with precision. He'd seen enough of Palmyrene skill to know that any obvious attempt at escape risked having the Piri Reis extract alongside later.
It hadn't occurred to Daniel that cutters would close with the corvette the way they might have done with a merchant vessel. Attempting that with a crack ship like the Sissie, whose RCN gunners were using a warship's equipment, would be obvious suicide.
But it hadn't been obvious to the Palmyrene captains, because they hadn't faced a warship from a major power before. With all respect to Admiral Mainwaring's command, the patrol sloops of the Qaboosh Region weren't in the same league as ships of the RCN's main force squadrons.
The Alliance destroyers were first rate combatants, especially with an officer like von Gleuck leading them, but the Horde hadn't seen them in action. Daniel suspected that the Autocrator had a nasty surprise coming there, too.
But the fact remained that the cutters of the Horde, supported by the heavy Palmyrene vessels, would be able to crush Zenobia's defenders unless Admiral Polowitz was completely incompetent. From what Daniel had seen of the admiral, that wasn't the case. Regardless of his strategic ability, the way he'd extracted the cruiser alongside a comet after a considerable voyage proved that he was no more a slouch at ship handling than his cutter captains were.
The immediate result of the way the Palmyrenes underestimated the Princess Cecile was that warhead fragments had done moderate damage to the sails and rigging of the ventral antennas, and there was a serious dent in the starboard outrigger. Also, Rigger Griswold, a phlegmatic man of fifty—not quick in any sense, but steady—was now dead.
"The rocket hit the other side," Woetjans said, pointing to the dimple in the three-inch hull plating.
Fragments of the warhead casing had scribed an asterisk around the point of impact, skewed slightly toward the half dome of the fairing. That too was scarred.
If Griswold was squatting, as he probably was, he would have been completely out of sight of the cutter. He should have been safe.
Both rigging watches were now repairing damage: reeving cables to replace those which had been severed and swapping fresh sails for those tattered by the blasts. A squad of technicians under Pasternak was adjustng a sheet of bright pink structural plastic broad enough to cover the seams started on the outrigger. When they had it in place, they would glue it down.
The bosun's mates were in charge of the riggers, though the Sissie's veterans didn't need direction for work so cut and dried. Daniel wanted to know what had happened to Griswold; Woetjans was the best witness as well as the victim's line supervisor.
"I hunched down behind E Ventral myself," Woetjans said, ringing the knuckles of her glove against the antenna she referred to. "I heard the rocket hit—bloody hell, they could've heard it in Harbor Three it was so loud. The hull leaped up and swatted my ass, and I mean to say! hard suit or not, it whapped me good. A chunk of shrapnel banged the antenna, and I thought, 'Bloody good thing I was on the other side of this tube.' That's what I thought."
Daniel turned to look sideways, keeping his end of the rod against his helmet. The dent was small but deep, visible as a bright gouge against the patina of corrosion. The fragment had hit where a band had been shrunk onto the tubing to support the deadeyes to which the lower stays were attached.
"And I didn't give a thought to Griswold," Woetjans said, "because he had the whole fairing between him and the bang. Good thing it didn't hit the E tube instead, because it'd have cut him up for doll-rags."
She struck the antenna again, this time a slap that would have spun a man's head around like a top. Her reinforced gauntlet rang against the steel tubing.
"So we finally insert," Woetjans said, "and I take a deep breath because whatever you say about a miss being good as a mile, that hadn't been any bloody mile and I was glad there wasn't more wog rockets coming in. I steps around the antenna to see how much damage it'd done, and there's Griswold looking surprised and floating away. And there's a hole in his helmet where that little chunk of rocket casing bounced back and carved off the top of his skull."
"I'm surprised you were able to catch him," Daniel said in a neutral voice. He'd told Vesey to set a circuitous course back to Zenobia orbit, but even so they should be on the verge of extracting. He needed to be on commo when that happened.
He grinned. Adele would be able to handle it, even though he'd only given her a few cursory words as briefing before he rushed onto the hull. Even so, it was his job and he didn't mean to leave it to others.
Woetjans lowered the communications rod for a moment to look straight at Daniel. Then she turned sideways again brought it back to her helmet.
"Look, Six, I knew I could grab the F Ventral forestay after I got Griswold," the bosun said defensively. "Bloody hell, I been hopping around in the rigging twenty-five years close enough, right? It wasn't risky."
Like hell it wasn't risky. Woetjans had jumped from the Sissie's hull, wrapped one arm around the rigger's body—which had probably floated ten feet at least—and trusted that she would be able to seize the slanting cable which supported the sternmost antenna against strains from ahead rather than the usual sideways or rear.
Because of her experience, Woetjans automatically noted the position of all the rigging whenever she stood on a starship's hull; she had leaped after Griswold in full awareness of the forestay. But that same experience would have warned her, as it did Daniel, that the stay might have been all but severed by the blast of moments before.
Then it would have parted, the ragged end dragging through Woetjans' desperate grip. Bosun and corpse would have sailed out into a universe that had no place for humans; becomito ng two corpses whenever Woetjans choked out the last of her oxygen.
And because she was speaking to an experienced spacer rather than a civilian who wouldn't know the truth, Woetjans blurted, "Six, he was my responsibility. I'm the Sissie's bosun. We can send him off the hull as soon as we're back in normal space if you want. Griswold never much liked the ground, so there's no big deal like we ought to bury him in dirt. But I didn't want him, you know—there. Nowhere. Hell, if there's a Hell."
"I understand," said Daniel. Then—because he suddenly realized it was true—he said, "I'd have done the same thing, Woetjans. Carry on."
He clasped her shoulder with his left hand, then returned the brass rod away in its she
ath on his equipment belt. He started around the corvette's hull in a diagonal, moving toward the dorsal airlock in the bow rather than using the lock within arm's length. It was actually easier to get to the bridge this way than it would have been going up six levels of companionways and then striding down a corridor that might be blocked by men or equipment.
Besides, it kept Daniel longer in the light of the Matrix, which he loved. Though like Woetjans—and probably like Griswold, as with every other rigger Daniel had known—he wouldn't want to float for eternity in a place so inhuman.
* * *
"Extracting in thirty, that is three-zero, seconds," announced Cory from the console kitty-corner across the bridge.
Adele suspected the Vesey had handed the task off to Cory because the First Lieutenant was involved in complex course computations. Under other circumstances, Adele might have echoed Vesey's console in the BDC to check her guess, but at the moment she was otherwise busy.
The inner airlock sighed. Daniel strode into the rotunda while the valve was barely open enough to pass his—slightly chubby—form wearing a rigging suit. He had already stripped off his helmet and gauntlets; the magnetic stickiness of his boot soles on the decking didn't slow his movements discernibly. He threw himself onto his console, beaming in sudden surprise to find that Adele had already adjusted the seat to fit a user wearing a rigging suit.
He looked at her. She nodded crisply toward Daniel's image, but her smile was satisfied and perhaps a trifle wider than usual. Her job was information, and using information to prepare at least one step into the future.
"Extracting!" Cory said.
Adele blanked her display to make room for the new inputs the Princess Cecile would receive in sidereal space. She had been viewing the personnel file of the late Leading Rigger Joshua Griswold.
She recognized Griswold's image, but she hadn't been able to attach it to his name without prompting from her databank. He had twenty years service in the RCN before he joined the crew of the Communications Vessel RCS Aglaia. Three years later, that ship landed on Kostroma and came to the attention of a librarian named Adele Mundy.
Griswold had been captured during the initial disaster on Kostroma, then freed through the actions of some of his shipmates commanded by young Lieutenant Daniel Leary . . . with the help of that same librarian. Griswold had joined the crew of the Princess Cecile on Kostroma and had followed Daniel from that point onward.
Until now, when he died.
Adele could no more bring Griswold back to life than she could revive her little sister, but she had felt that he at least deserved to have his face connected with the name in her memory. There was no logical reason to do that, but humans were frequently illogical. Perhaps she was trying to convince herself that she was human.
The Princess Cecile shuddered into normal space. The return reminded Adele that during transition she had felt as though she were an empty skin, collapsing in on itself. The illusion hadn't been disturbing because she was completely given over to musing on Rigger Griswold, and on life, and on the pointlessness of life.
Her smile was wry, but real. That train of thought wasn't disturbing; rather, it was the black pool into which her intellect often dived in the waking reverie during the small hours of the morning. Familiarity gave it a bleak hominess, like the bare stone cell of a prisoner who would never be released.
Adele's console went from a pearly void to a Plot-Position Indicator—she was echoing the command console in the center of her display—with communications inputs as flanking sidebars. The Sissie was in the same orbit as Z 46, leading von Gleuck's flagship around Zenobia by twenty-one thousand miles. Z 42 was still in—optimistically—concealment behind the third moon, and the Palmyrene fleet—most of it, at least—appeared to be where it had been when Daniel approached it. Presumably that would change, probably very soon.
"Posy Cinc . . . ," said Daniel in the usual friendly, authoritative tone of his official conversations. "This is Sissie Six. Over."
"Posy to RCN," von Gleuck snapped back almost instantly. Both ships were using laser communicators, so there was no need for significant compression. The Alliance officer's tone was sharp and, if not hostile, and least not obviously friendly. "Go ahead, over."
"Posy Cinc," Daniel said, as warmly as if he'd just been greeted as a long-lost brother. "I wish to place the Princess Cecile under your command for the duration of this action. I believe we'll do better if our efforts are coordinated, over."
There was no response for ten long beats. Adele was transmitting both sides of the conversation to the Z 42. Goodness only knew what the captain of the second destroyer thought of it—Z 42 continued to maintain communications silence—but Adele believed it was a better plan than trusting to a stranger's good sense not to treat the Sissie as an enemy when the shooting started. If von Gleuck had a problem with Officer Mundy's meddling, then he could call on her to discuss honor after this business was concluded.
Adele smiled, in a manner of speaking. She was joking with herself, mostly. But not entirely.
"Captain Leary," said von Gleuck in a very different tone. "You are senior to me in rank, are you not, over?"
Yes, of course Daniel is of superior rank—but he's not an idiot. Only an idiot would assume that the Honorable Otto von Gleuck would turn over defense of his mistress to a foreigner.
"Posy Cinc," Daniel said easily, "we are in Alliance space. Do you accept the offer of our help, over?"
It was theoretically possible for an observer at the distance of the Palmyrene fleet to follow the track of the modulated laser beam which the Princess Cecile was sending to the Z 46. Adele wasn't sure that she would have been able to manage that task herself, though, and she was quite sure that the Palmyrenes wouldn't. The region above Zenobia was generally clear of light-scattering debris.
After another pause, von Gleuck said, "Leary, you've got enough experience to know that this isn't likely have a good result. Grateful as I would be of your help and advice, a Cinnabar warship has no duty to become involved in what is, as you point out, an Alliance matter, over."
There's more reason than you'll know, Adele thought, until the inevitable Alliance investigators uncover Assistant Commissioner Gibbs' role in the business.
But she knew that didn't really make a difference. Daniel would almost certainly have made the same decision if the Republic's hands had been completely clean.
"Otto," said Daniel, "I believe that all civilized persons have a duty to stand against barbarians. Do you accept our offer, over?"
The Z 46 sent a packet of course information. Adele routed it to both the command console and the BDC.
"Roger, Posy Three," von Gleuck said. "This section of space is about to become infested by monkeys, I'm afraid, so we'll vacate it for the time being. We'll rendezvous ASAP a light-minute from here and discuss the next move. Posy Cinc out."
"Posy Three out," said Daniel with a broad smile of satisfaction.
"Six!" said Vesey. "This is Three. We are ready to execute the new course, over."
Daniel, who had just opened the course packet, raised an eyebrow. Aloud he said, "Roger, Vesey. Make it so, out."
"Inserting in ten, one-zero, seconds!" said Cazelet. The team in the BDC must have started the process even before Daniel had authorized them.
Adele wore a slight smile also. Von Gleuck commanded a pair of crack ships. Vesey was obviously at pains to prove that the Princess Cecile's spacers were better still.
"Inserting!"
As we most certainly are.
* * *
Adele's console received no external inputs while they were in the Matrix, but imagery of the Palmyrene fleet taken at thirty-second intervals, with the changes highlighted, demonstrated that the Autocrator had made up her mind. Over the last minute and a half before the Princess Cecile inserted, two—then four—then twelve—Palmyrene cutters left sidereal space also.
It irritated Adele that she couldn't be certain how ships of the Horde
communicated among themselves. She supposed they were passing the signals from ship to ship with handheld lasers which were too low-powered for her to read them by hull reflection, even with sensors of RCN standard. That should cause a great deal of confusion and garbling, but in fact the Horde appeared to operate with admirable coordination.
She considered the way collectives of hundreds and even thousands of individual birds and fish appeared to move as one. Perhaps she had been wrong about the Palmyrenes being barbarians: they might instead be animals.
Mother would not approve of the joke, Adele thought. But surely the fact she could joke under these circumstances was worthy of praise.
"Ship, this is Six," Daniel said. "I know you're all wondering about the ability of our new squadron commander—you'd be fools if you didn't. Posy Cinc apparently noticed that our Palmyrene friends like to form on intrasystem debris when they extract from the Matrix. He's set our rendezvous for a section of space which is completely empty. Thus far he has my fullest approval! Six out."
Adele looked at her friend's image. He glanced toward her and grinned.
How much of what Daniel just said was true, and how much was cheering up his subordinates by putting a good face on matters? Perhaps it was completely true; it certainly seemed to be. But he'd retailed it to his crew for morale reasons.
"Adele?" said Daniel on a two-way link. "I suspect that Otto won't have any idea of the situation on the ground. I'd like you to brief him when we extract, all right?"
"Yes," said Adele. "As the situation permits."
She hadn't explained to Daniel what she was doing when they first arrived above Zenobia. There hadn't been a great deal of time . . . but she supposed that at the back of her mind was the knowledge that it wasn't the sort of thing that Daniel would want to hear about. Odd to think that a man who had so often struck at the throat of an enemy would be squeamish about political necessities.
On the other hand, Daniel had obviously known what she was doing, and he hadn't objected. And he was Speaker Leary's son.
