by David Drake
The latter was a 300-tonne vessel built to do the job for which Daniel had jury-rigged the lighter vessels in his squadron. It could carry two High Drive missiles on external mountings, and unlike the Bagarian country craft, it had full targeting equipment.
Adele’d seen enough space battles by now to know that a pair of missiles wasn’t a threat to a ship which could maneuver normally; doctrine recommended use of missile boats in squadrons of six or twelve, making possible a volley which could in theory overwhelm the defenses even of a battleship. In the present case, S81’s missiles weren’t mounted. A quick dip into her electronic log suggested that General Auguste, the Commander of Cluster Forces, had been using the ship as a courier to and from Conyers.
The remainder of the Bagarian squadron appeared in bits and pieces—the Independence and a moment later the DeMarce, then three light craft, followed by two more light craft. Adele focused on entering Hafn Teobald’s main database now that she was sure there were no orbiting Alliance warships, but she was glad to note on an inset that Cazelet, using the otherwise-empty console across the compartment, was keeping track of friendly vessels.
Surely the final two ships couldn’t have gotten lost in the course of an intrasystem transit, could they?
Of course they could. Some of the Bagarian captains had as little astrogation experience as Signals Officer Mundy did, and they were using hardware which hadn’t been checked ahead of time by Commander Leary. But with luck the ships weren’t permanently lost; and anyway, Daniel’d make do. Daniel always made do.
Adele found the information she needed and forwarded it to the command console. Over a two-way link she said, “Captain, the base has a triple launcher for anti-starship missiles. There’re three more missiles to reload in a bunker attached to the launching pit. The launcher’s active, and it’s isolated from the headquarters communications system that I can enter. I’m afraid that I’m not able to attack the launcher. Ah, electronically.”
She stumbled over the thought, remembering the pit on Dunbar’s World that she’d shot her way into. That wouldn’t be possible here either, because the Ladouceur couldn’t land close enough to permit a ground assault.
Razor ribbon singing as bullets cut the tensioned strands.
Osmium pellets ricocheting from posts like streaks of neon light.
Faces framed in her sight picture.
“Signals, are you all right?” Daniel’s voice was saying. “I repeat, what’s the status of the two warships, over?”
“S-sorry,” Adele said. “Sorry, Daniel, I . . . It doesn’t matter, sorry. The S81 is fully crewed and was scheduled to lift for Conyers within the hour with dispatches. The Rossarol has only a skeleton crew though it seems to be fit for operations as soon as it’s manned. Over.”
She’d remembered to close her speech according to RCN protocol. Good, good . . . but that didn’t make up for the way she’d drifted into nightmare when people were depending on her.
Though Adele’s left side occasionally knotted where the bullet’d hit her during the assault on Dunbar’s World, the physical twinge wasn’t the worst damage she’d received that night. Everything has costs, and the benefits of being part of the RCN family were worth everything she’d paid thus far—and everything she’d continue paying to the day she died.
She smiled faintly. She’d heard Sissies bragging about how Mistress Mundy’d cleared the missile pit, putting two rounds through the same eye of every member of the launch crew who’d dared to show himself. That was pretty much true, as a matter of fact.
And no one except possibly Daniel suspected what it cost her in the hours before dawn to have done that. To have done so many things of that nature, because they were part of the job.
Not complaining was part of the job too, at least as she saw it. She was Mundy of Chatsworth.
“Roger, Signals,” Daniel said calmly. “Link me to all ships in the squadron soonest and inform me when you’re ready, over.”
Adele frowned. Does he think I’m too worn out to do my job? Aloud she said, “You’re connected to the whole squadron as soon as you speak the keyword, Captain Leary. Would you prefer that I manually connect you? Out.”
She meant, “Over.” It was all childish nonsense anyway, boys playing games.
“Squadron, this is Squadron Six,” Daniel said instead of—pointlessly—answering her. “I’m sending the approach information and order of attack to the bombardment force.”
Adele transmitted his words on 15.5 KHz, the frequency to which the whole squadron was supposed to be tuned, as well as via individual laser heads aimed at each of the other vessels. She could guarantee that a modulated laser painted each Bagarian ship, but in her wildest dreams she didn’t imagine that all of them had working receivers or that they’d bothered to turn them on if they did.
“The initial order of attack,” Daniel continued, “is Columbine, Forsyte 14, and Stager Brothers. These leading vessels will rendezvous with the Ladouceur, Independence, and DeMarce respectively after they’ve launched their initial loads. Clinton and Burke Trading, wait for further orders. Are there any questions, over?”
“Who the hell do you think you are to be giving me orders, boy?” said a voice. Adele identified it as Captain Michael Stout of the Stager Brothers, a 600-ton tramp whose plating rattled at anchor. She slugged the information to the command console in text. “I’ll go in when I decide I’ll go in. Out!”
“Stager Six, this is Squadron Six,” Daniel replied mildly. “I sincerely hope you’ll attack when your orders from the commanding admiral direct you to attack, Captain Stout. Your vessel is within 18,000 miles of the flagship, and our guns are trained on you. Do you understand, over?”
There was a hiss of static across the shortwave spectrum: the 800-ton Columbine was braking hard with her High Drive to drop her into Churchyard’s gravity well. Almost simultaneously the squadron’s two missing ships reentered the sidereal universe.
Adele fed the information to the command console and went back to eavesdropping on the increasingly panicked Alliance HQ. The personnel on duty were beginning to realize what was happening. It wasn’t her place to judge, but Adele allowed herself a tiny smile.
Things seemed to be going according to plan.
Chapter Fourteen
ABOVE CHURCHYARD
Adele watched the Stager Brothers begin its attack run. Despite Captain Stout’s prickliness, his approach through the top levels of the atmosphere was as smooth as that of any starship could be.
She smiled. Perhaps being prickly was a necessary part of being good. There were certainly people who’d found Adele Mundy difficult over the years, and even Daniel ruffled feathers with his focus on accomplishing the mission regardless of proprieties.
Ever since the Columbine came alongside, the Ladouceur had been ringing like the interior of a steel drum. A warship in action was always noisy, but this time the missiles bumping down the rollerway were being transferred to the smaller ship rather than sliding into the cruiser’s own launching tubes. Woetjans had all her riggers on the hull, manhandling the projectiles across the gap separating the ships and clamping them into the Columbine’s hull mounts.
Adele didn’t imagine the effort was going to be of any use, though. Certainly none of the previous attacks had been.
“Adele?” said Daniel unexpectedly. She’d carefully avoided interrupting him at a time when he had his hands full. Out of squeamishness she hadn’t even echoed the command display as she sometimes did from curiosity. Since things were going so badly, it would’ve felt to her like staring at a friend who’d just upset the table at a formal dinner.
“Yes, Daniel?” she said, replying on the same two-way link and pleased to ignore protocol.
The Stager Brothers had made two circuits of Churchyard, cutting progressively deeper as if shaving thin slices from the atmosphere. As Stout started his third orbit, he launched his four plasma missiles. This was no part of Adele’s job, but simply as a matter of interes
t she’d expanded an image of the vessel coming around the curve of the planet.
The only communications that she had to monitor right now were the excited chatter of both the Alliance and Bagarian forces. The Alliance voices were predictably in a better humor, but nothing important was being said by either side.
“I’m going to be taking charge of the Columbine for the next attack,” Daniel said. “Can you keep me in direct touch with the entire squadron?”
One of the Stager Brothers’ missiles didn’t appear to separate until the ship drove up through the atmosphere again on gimbaled thrusters. The missile continued for a few moments on a ballistic course, then began to tumble; it quickly broke up.
“One moment,” said Adele, because she didn’t give Daniel a certain answer without knowing everything about the Columbine’s commo suite. She’d never had occasion to learn that information before now—
But she’d gathered it, because it was information and that was what she did, gather information against need. In the particular instance she’d thought knowing the particulars of the Bagarian ships might help her communicate with them, though in the event she’d decided that the 20-meter band was all she could count on.
The thrusters of the Stager Brothers’ remaining three missiles lighted. One blew up three seconds later, rocking the ship that launched it. The blast didn’t appear to do serious damage, but Captain Stout’s torrent of profanity was justifiable if pointless.
Adele brought up the data on the Columbine and considered it coldly. She smiled: she did everything coldly. Even when others might think that she’d lost her temper, she was really quite cold inside.
In the particular instance, the data was better than she’d feared it might be. She said, “Daniel, the Columbine has a working laser communicator. It’s a single-head device, but the Ladouceur can retransmit to the rest of the squadron without a noticeable lag. Oh!”
“Is there a problem, Signals?” Daniel said. He remained on the private channel, but he’d slipped into formality to jog her out of her silence.
The problem is that I have to be at both ends of the transmission in order to make the relay work.
The thruster of the Stager Brothers’ third missile cut off abruptly. Without power for its gyroscope, the missile wobbled, swapped ends, and tore itself into a shower of fragments. They blazed white with the friction of their passage through the atmosphere.
Instead of replying to Daniel directly, Adele switched manually to the command channel and said, “Cory, I’ll be away from my console for a considerable length of time. Until I return, can you relay laser transmissions from the Columbine to the rest of the squadron if I set the system up for you? Over.”
“Ah,” said Cory. “I’m sure I can, sir, over.”
“Negative, Officer Mundy,” Daniel said. He didn’t exactly shout, but he meant to be heard and obeyed. “Your presence with the Ladouceur’s sensor and commo suites will be absolutely necessary if something unpredictable occurs. You will not be leaving the bridge. If that means a gap in my control of the rest of the squadron, then that’s still the better choice, over.”
The Stager Brothers’ last missile began to describe a slow spiral. Adele was too busy to magnify her image of it, but she’d seen several rounds from the Columbine and Forsyte 14 fail in the same fashion. Exhaust had eaten a hole in the thruster nozzle so that plasma was pushing sideways as well as straight back. As Adele’d learned to expect, the missile carved increasingly wider circles until a gush of flame blew the whole back end away.
All sixteen missiles from the three Bagarian ships had failed before they got within ten miles of the surface of Churchyard. Adele didn’t know what Daniel thought he could accomplish since the problem wasn’t in the way the rounds had been aimed, but that wasn’t her job to determine.
“Captain, I don’t think Cory can keep the Columbine’s sender focused on us, on the Ladouceur, if both ships are maneuvering,” she said. “He can handle the relay, that’s automated. I—”
“Captain Leary?” Rene Cazelet interrupted. Adele knew Rene’d added himself to the command channel that linked all the commissioned and warrant officers aboard, but she hadn’t given the matter any thought when she moved the discussion there to include Cory. “I can direct the head manually. I don’t mean to imply criticism of Mister Cory; your Cinnabar naval equipment is automated, but I trained in the merchant service with apparatus very like what the Columbine has. Over.”
“Adele?” Daniel said, back on the two-way link.
Adele looked at the image of Rene Cazelet on her display. She knew that she could meet his eyes directly by just looking up and glancing across the bridge, but she preferred the electronic semblance. His expression was clear and open; and underneath that, afraid. He was afraid that she wouldn’t think he was competent.
Which meant that he really thought that he could do the job. Well, he had more data on the subject that she did, so she might as well accept his judgment.
“All right,” Adele said. “Cazelet, accompany Captain Leary to the Columbine. Keep a real-time connection with me, and do everything else he tells you to. Over.”
Or did she mean, “Out”?
“Yes, mistress!” the boy said as he leaped from his console. He was beaming as he strode to the suit locker in the rotunda beyond the bridge hatch.
“Lieutenant Liu, you have the conn,” Daniel said as he rose. Hogg got up also. Daniel added, “Hogg, you can stay aboard the Ladouceur. Space may be tight on the Columbine’s bridge, and there’s nothing for you to do, over.”
“Sure there is, young master,” Hogg said, speaking loudly over the sound of the air handler. “That wog captain may not want to give you his seat, admiral’s pips or no.”
As he spoke, Hogg pulled his big folding knife from a pocket. It had a handguard in the form of a knuckleduster.
“I’ll come along to reason with him,” Hogg concluded, tossing the knife—still closed—in the air and catching it again.
* * *
“Captain Julian, gentlemen,” said Daniel as he and Hogg stepped out of the airlock. They’d taken their helmets off before the hatch undogged, so he didn’t have to struggle with that task while the three men in Columbine’s forward compartment stared at him in surprise. He hadn’t warned Julian by radio because he shared Hogg’s opinion that the Bagarian captain wouldn’t be in agreement with his plan.
“What’re you doing here?” David Julian demanded. He struggled awkwardly to rise from his console. It was placed in the far bow facing inward, so that the captain seated there could see everybody in the forward compartment.
“I’m going to take the Columbine in on this run, Captain Julian,” Daniel said cheerily. “I regret the suddenness of this.”
In fact Daniel regretted a lot of things, certainly including the fact that he was cutting corners in a fashion that could only be described as discourteous to a fellow spacer. Admiral James and the Bagarian Republic both depended on clearing the cluster of Alliance bases, though, and this seemed to be the only way to do that in a reasonable length of time.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort!” Julian said in a scandalized tone. “This is my ship. I own her!”
Daniel stepped around the console, noting with relief that the seat was so oversized that he could use it without stripping off his hard suit. That was a common feature on tramp freighters, since the crew could rarely depend on the climate control system or the vessel remaining airtight either one. If the controls couldn’t be operated by people wearing suits, they couldn’t be operated at all.
Captain Julian wasn’t suited up, but he filled and overflowed the console; Daniel instinctively sucked in his gut. Mentally, he murmured a promise to really cut back on his meals. Mind, he’d made the same promise every time he’d put on his Dress Whites during the past six months.
“He most certainly is not the owner of the Columbine!” Adele’s voice rattled from the implant in Daniel’s left ear. “He sold the ship to
the government for one point five million ostrads, on the basis of a valuation by Petrus Lascaux. Who appears to be Julian’s brother-in-law!”
“I’m very sorry, Captain,” Daniel said. He didn’t suppose he sounded any sorrier than he felt. “Nonetheless you knew this might happen when you sold the Columbine to the government for one and a half million ostrads.”
Because Julian had risen to confront Daniel, the console’s empty seat was between them. Daniel set his armored right foot on it, knowing the hard suit trumped the Bagarian’s greater bulk.
The information from Adele didn’t change anything but the words, though. Daniel would’ve commandeered a private vessel if he’d had to, counting on his admiral’s rank to justify the action; or if not that, then success wiping the slate clean. If he didn’t succeed, he’d probably be dead and the question of whether he’d committed piracy wouldn’t matter.
The airlock cycled again. It only held two suited figures at a time, so Adele’s friend Cazelet had to come through after Daniel and Hogg had.
Julian clenched his fist and said, “You can get your Cinnabar ass off this ship, buddy, or—”
“Or what, lard-butt?” Woetjans said. “You’re talking to Commander Leary. That means you keep a civil tongue in your head or somebody’s likely to pull it out!”
“Who’re you?” Julian said in a tone of wonderment. He lowered his arm, all bluster vanished.
Daniel half-rotated his body; the rigid suit kept him from glancing over his shoulder as he’d have done in street clothes. Cazelet was there, all right, but the bosun had entered ahead of him. She held the short come-along she’d been using to lever the plasma missiles into their cradles on the hull.
“Six, the kid here—”
She pointed a thumb over her shoulder; Cazelet hopped back. Behind them both, the airlock was cycling again.
“—told us what you were pulling. We sent his riggers onto the Laddie, but me’n four a my crew are gonna handle the rig while you’re aboard. Or handle any bloody thing at all, right?”