by David Drake
“Right!” said Daniel briskly. “Captain Julian, if you’ll make yourself as comfortable as you can on one of the benches, we’ll take care of business so that you can have your ship back.”
Dasi and Barnes were the next pair of Sissies out of the airlock. Like the bosun, they carried the tools they’d been using out on the hull.
“We cast this tub loose from the Laddie, Six,” Barnes said cheerfully. “Say, we going to put it to the wogs again?”
Dasi glanced at the two spacers who’d been in the compartment when Daniel arrived. “My buddy means Alliance wogs, not you lot,” he said. He pursed his full lips in consideration. “That’s right, ain’t it, Six?”
“Perfectly correct, Dasi,” Daniel said, checking the little freighter’s systems. Cazelet settled himself on the console’s jump seat; the controls on that side were already live, probably by accident.
The Power Room with the fusion bottle and a crew of three was the Columbine’s only other pressurized compartment. The engineer hadn’t opened the hatch to see what was going on in the fore cabin and Daniel didn’t see any reason to disturb him.
The aft two-thirds of the hull was partitioned into three separate holds, empty now except for crew stores. The total volume was slight. Bulk cargo would be slung externally, much as the missiles were being carried now.
The nozzle of Thruster Three was paper thin; the Columbine could make this attack using only the fore and aft pairs, but to lift with a full cargo requiring all six thrusters seemed a recipe for disaster. According to their internal diagnostics the four High Drive motors were fine, but a scan of the log indicated that Starboard Aft didn’t develop better than seventy percent of its rated impulse. That could mean the pump was failing, the feed line had a blockage, or for that matter that there was an instrumentation flaw. Again, it didn’t matter for now.
Sayer and Braun shambled out of the airlock. Anja Braun, a stocky woman who could kick her heel through a brick wall, looked at Woetjans and asked, “What you want us t’do, Chief?”
“Sit your butts down till I tell you,” Woetjans growled. She slapped the come-along into the palm of her left glove. It was an idle gesture, but the two Bagarian spacers winced.
“Look,” muttered Captain Julian, staring at his fingers interlaced over his heavy belly. “You can make me the goat if you like, I can’t fight you. But it wasn’t my approach that screwed the pooch on the first attack. The missiles’re bloody useless, it’s that simple.”
“I agree that you’re not to blame, Julian,” Daniel said. He spread his hands over the console’s virtual keyboard, making sure that he was aware of its subtle differences both from the Sissie and from the cruiser he’d been commanding these past few weeks. “It’s simply a case of, well—”
He shrunk the display and looked at Julian until the fellow turned and their eyes met.
“—if this attack fails, there’ll be a move to crucify the foreigner who planned it, not so? And if I’m going to be hung for failing, then it’s bloody well going to be me who fails.”
In the air before him COMMUNICATION ESTABLISHED pulsed in green letters. Daniel brought up his display and said, “Ladouceur, this is Columbine Six. Can you hear me, over?”
“Of course I can hear you, Columbine Six,” Adele’s voice rasped from the console’s speakers. “If you want to address the squadron, just verbally key them and the relay will work automatically. Otherwise, you’ll be speaking through me. As usual. Over.”
“Roger, Signals,” Daniel said, grinning as he so often did when dealing with Adele. “Ship, prepare to attack.”
He cleared his throat, then said, “Squadron, this is Squadron Six. Columbine is taking the place of Heartsease in the attack rota. Heartsease, set up your attack to follow that of Columbine. Six out.”
Daniel pressed the EXECUTE button; the High Drive motors fired on preset angles, dropping the Columbine toward the surface of Churchyard. Let’s see how long the Alliance garrison continues to laugh . . .
Freighters didn’t have true attack boards; Daniel’d adapted the pilotry display as if he were setting up a landing. That was basically what he was doing, except that if things worked out it’d be six plasma missiles landing in Hafn Teobald instead of the Columbine herself.
The vessel began to slide into the atmosphere. The air wasn’t thick enough to buffet the hull yet, but Daniel heard the pings of antimatter in the exhaust disintegrating gas molecules in the throats of the motors. He didn’t switch out of High Drive yet because he didn’t trust the plasma thrusters.
Daniel expected Captain Julian to complain, but the Bagarian simply sat with a glum expression. He might also stay long in High Drive on his approaches, for the same reason.
When the pinging increased in frequency to that of water coming to a boil, Daniel shut down the High Drive, waited three seconds on a ballistic course, and finally lit the thrusters. They came on line raggedly, as he’d more or less expected.
He’d been afraid of a late power blip from one of the motors. If by bad luck only one thruster was making power at the moment when a High Drive motor fired late, the combined impulse could rotate a small vessel like the Columbine on her axis. Better a long freefall than to take that needless risk.
“Columbine Six, the antiship battery at Hafn Teobald is tracking you,” Adele said in a cool tone. “This was the battery’s practice with earlier runs as well. None of the Alliance communications indicate an intention to launch this time either.” A pause. “Ah, Ladouceur out.”
Daniel smiled. It no longer struck him as odd that in the middle of an attack he was getting reports on the enemy’s internal communications.
The Columbine was well into the first circuit of her attack and was rocking noticeably. The choppiness wasn’t as bad as he’d have expected on the Princess Cecile, though the corvette was a somewhat heavier vessel; the outboard-mounted missiles acted as roll dampers.
What would Admiral Vocaine say if I recommended that he recruit librarians for signals duty in all RCN vessels?
Daniel began to laugh. Julian spluttered something which Daniel couldn’t make out over the snarl of air jumbling about the rigging. The sound may not have been words at all, of course, just generalized amazement. Woetjans clapped the Bagarian on the shoulder and looked smug.
They’d completed their second circuit and started into a third, going deeper than the previous runs. The Columbine was slowing, so the roughness wasn’t noticeably worse despite the thicker atmosphere.
“Columbine Six, Command Headquarters has put the missile battery on launch warning but haven’t directed them to launch.” Adele’s voice trembled. “Under current protocols they won’t launch unless the target drops beneath three thousand meters. Over.”
“Roger, Signals,” Daniel said as his fingers adjusted flow to Thrusters One and Two, raising the bow slightly. “We’re not going to come close to that, over.”
The warble in Adele’s voice was an artifact of atmospheric distortion on the laser signal. An RCN warship’s software would’ve reshaped the signal into its original form, but the Columbine had nothing so sophisticated. Well, she didn’t need it; at least with Cazelet handling commo duties, the freighter’s rig was more than adequate.
“Ship,” Daniel said, “prepare to launch. Launching one—” The ship bucked into a roll to port as the lower starboard missile separated.
“Launching two—”
Two was the upper port missile, thrown clear by the ship’s rotation.
“Three—
“Four—
“Five—
“Six—
“Ship, we’re pulling up!” Daniel cried as he slammed keys to activate the preset course. “RCN forever!”
His Sissies cheered over the roaring thrusters. Maybe some of the Bagarians did too, though it wasn’t the most politic thing to have shouted now that Daniel had time to think about it.
Bloody hell, they were in the middle of a battle. The six missiles they’d just laun
ched were running straight and true as the Columbine lifted back out of Churchyard’s atmosphere.
“RCN forever!” Daniel repeated. This time he was sure the Bagarian spacers were cheering along with his own.
* * *
Adele noticed the next of the Bagarian ships dropping into the atmosphere while the Columbine was only beginning her ascent. She didn’t know whether or not that was a problem, so she said, “Columbine Six, the Heartsease is attacking already. Over.”
“Thank you, Ladouceur,” Daniel said, his voice a little strained. He was accelerating hard, of course. “I’ve got them on my display. I didn’t intend such close separations, but I guess it’s all right so long as one of us knows what he’s doing. Six out.”
The jabbering on the ground wasn’t quite as boastfully contented as it’d been an hour earlier, but the Alliance garrison wasn’t really worried. The Columbine had driven deeper into the atmosphere than the five runs that’d preceded this one, and now the Heartsease was coming in immediately on the Columbine’s heels.
Neither was a threat on the face of it, given the complete failure of the attack to this point. They were changes, though, and nobody likes to see a change when everything’s been going well. Especially when the situation involves other people shooting at you.
Since the Columbine was out of the battle until it reloaded, the antiship battery shifted its tracking to the Heartsease. The latter was one of the smaller Bagarian vessels and carried only three missiles. It’d been a late arrival, and though it appeared to receive signals, it hadn’t emitted any since the seventh-planet rendezvous.
In past years Adele would’ve assumed the ship’s transmitter had gone out, but she’d seen enough of fringe-world navies to realize that the captain might be in a snit and refusing to respond verbally. That would be insane, of course, but it was by no means impossible.
The Columbine’s six rounds had been tracking smoothly, but the second one launched slowly diverged from the path of the others. There wasn’t anything obviously wrong with it; perhaps its gyrocompass had gone awry. Still, if the others—
The fifth missile dived straight downward, splashing into the ocean half the planetary circumference short of Hafn Teobald. Adele felt a wash of disappointment.
Daniel had done all he could. Nobody was successful all the time, not even the most brilliant officer in the RCN. There’d be another way to overcome the Alliance forces, there was always another way. Daniel wouldn’t stop—they’d none of them stop—until they’d found a way to—
The Columbine’s first missile plunged into the Alliance base, striking the S81 amidships. There was a huge white flash, the friction of steel hitting steel at high velocity. The boat’s hull sank, dragging the outriggers with it. An underwater blast emptied the slip momentarily of water and demolished one of the concrete piers.
The sea gushed back; an outrigger bobbed to the surface. Steam drifted across the harbor on the light breeze, the cloud expanding slowly.
Adele smiled in self-mockery. She should’ve given Daniel more credit. Though assuming failure as she’d just done wasn’t a problem so long as she went ahead with her tasks regardless. As, of course, she always did.
High Drive missiles were expected to be on a ballistic course at impact, so they didn’t have guidance systems. Despite their relative simplicity, the Bagarian plasma missiles did have sensor-activated controls. They homed on modulated laser signals reflecting from the target. In this case the laser designators were on the Ladouceur, not on the ships launching the missiles.
Given how crude the missiles were, Adele had wondered if the guidance system could possibly work well enough to matter. Apparently it would.
The third missile—the second was off-course, thirty miles to the west of Hafn Teobald—had been aimed at the antiship battery. Instead it slammed into the center of the tidal pond behind the site. Reflection from the water must’ve confused the homing system.
Adele’s smile twitched. The shrieking terror of the battery captain talking to Alliance HQ was worth something, though.
The fourth missile hit Alliance Headquarters; the center of the sprawling, U-shaped building, unfortunately, since Adele by now knew that the real command center was in a bunker under the north wing. Nonetheless, it was very satisfying to watch the magnified image of the walls shattering in a pall of pulverized concrete. The roof of plastic sheeting fell in and began to burn.
The final missile was aimed at the Cesare Rossarol; likely one or both of those which failed had targeted the vessel also. The cloud from the S81’s ruptured fusion bottle drifted over the destroyer, not concealing it but providing a medium to reflect the laser illuminator. The incoming missile spiked the center of the false bull’s-eye and plunged into the far wall of the slip beyond the Rossarol’s.
Chunks of concrete flew in all directions. The destroyer pitched and bucked, but apart from the shaking it must be unharmed.
The Heartsease was starting her second circuit. Adele’s interest in the attack had always been secondary to her duty of listening to intercepted Alliance communications. Now she manually keyed the 20-meter transmitter and shouted, “Heartsease, change direction! They’re about to launch at you. Stop your attack now, stop!”
A plasma missile separated from the Heartsease. The ship rocked and threw off a second missile.
“Heartsease, pull up or do something! They’re going to—”
The blast of an antiship missile ripped a huge divot from the ground behind the rotating launcher. The projectile itself was a needle glinting in the sunlight; shock diamonds formed in back of its triple nozzles, and far behind swelled a white blanket as the borate exhaust plume absorbed moisture from the air.
“Pull up, you fools!” Adele screamed. “Dodge, do something!”
She wasn’t sure that the Heartsease would be able to do anything that’d help it survive. Inertia and air resistance might be binding it into a practically fixed course. But the crew ought to try instead of going on with what was effectively a march to the scaffold.
The third plasma missile dropped away from the Bagarian ship which shuddered as its captain started to pull up at the end of his attack run. The Alliance missile spitted it like an ice pick through an egg. The round depended on velocity, not an explosive warhead; it continued to scream upward into the stratosphere as a thin silver streak.
The Heartsease flew apart, wrecked by its own speed once it’d been gutted. Chunks of hull and rigging battered each other to fragments that rained toward the surface. The initial impact had probably killed the whole crew; regardless, nothing human—even wearing a hard suit—could survive the hundred-thousand-foot fall.
Adele’s face was grim. She’d tried to warn them, but they hadn’t listened. It wasn’t her fault, not as anybody else would judge blame.
Besides, people die in wars. She’d killed a lot of them herself. . . .
One of the missiles from the Heartsease dropped; its thruster hadn’t lighted. The second blew up after thirty seconds of operation. The third curved into a helical course that’d probably be twenty miles in diameter by the time it landed somewhere in the ocean west of Hafn Teobald.
“Squadron, this is Squadron Six,” Daniel said crisply. “Well done, spacers, we’ve got their measure now. One more attack will do the job, but this time the entire bombardment flotilla will go in together and swamp the defenses. At the same time, the Ladouceur, Independence and DeMarce will approach at low level. The garrison’ll panic, I expect, and if they don’t we’ll burn them out with plasma cannon regardless of what the bombardment missiles—”
“Like hell we will, you bloody Cinnabar madman!” Captain Seward shouted in fury. “You’re just trying to get us all killed so that we can’t tell the government that your notion of shooting down at Churchyard was a waste of time. I’m going back to Pelosi, and when I get there I’ll call for you to be removed for unfitness. Out!”
The Stager Brothers had reloaded with plasma missiles from the Sacred
Independence while Daniel was attacking with the Columbine. Now it began to accelerate, its High Drive motors stabbing blue-white sparks into vacuum.
“Stager Six, this is Squadron Six,” Daniel said sharply. The Columbine was on what the Plot Position Indicator predicted to be an approach course with the Ladouceur. “Shut down your motors soonest, Captain Stout. We’ll be attacking all together after I work out courses, over.”
Stout didn’t answer; instead the bead marking Stager Brothers faded off the PPI. Stout had fled from the sidereal universe.
The other small ships were vanishing also. Adele had seen how long it took their captains to plot a course; it seemed likely that all they were doing was getting out of the immediate vicinity of the Ladouceur’s heavy cannon. None of them directly addressed Daniel or the cruiser; they were simply leaving.
“Admiral Leary,” said Hoppler of the Independence. It and the DeMarce were accelerating to gain useful velocity that they could multiply in the Matrix. “Because of a serious leak in my reaction mass tanks, I’m forced to return to Pelosi for repairs. I hope to greet you there soon on your arrival so that we can plan further operations against the common enemy. Hoppler out.”
Sun turned from his console with a look of anguish on his face. “Mistress!” he said to Adele. “They’re rats, they’re running out on us! Can I ring their bell while they’re still this side of the Matrix?”
“You may not,” Adele said sharply. She didn’t bother to say that the question was beyond her authority: it wasn’t beyond her authority, her real authority at least. There wasn’t a Sissie who wouldn’t do as Mistress Mundy ordered, Daniel included. “We’ll serve them out later, Sun, but not in that fashion.”
She wasn’t sure precisely how they’d even the score. Daniel wasn’t the sort to send Hogg and Tovera to assassinate the captains who’d ignored his orders and fled. He wouldn’t ask Lady Mundy to challenge the cowards to duels, either; but if he did ask that, she’d shoot Hoppler, Seward, and the rest of them down with as little compunction as she’d killed a hundred other men and women in the course of her duty.