by David Drake
“Ship, prepare for landing!” Daniel ordered.
It was war, and it was necessary.
But it was also regrettable.
Chapter Twenty-three
MINEHEAD NORTH ON CASTLE FOUR
“IBS Ladouceur to Die Ehre Muenchens,” Adele said. Normally she ignored the external world while she was heavily involved in message traffic, but of present necessity one quadrant of her console showed a real-time view of a new-looking Alliance freighter. Plasma and Four’s friable soil rose in a shroud as the vessel ran up its thrusters preparatory to lifting. “Shut down immediately. If you attempt to lift off, we will destroy you. Over.”
Her voice was as dry as the plain outside. She felt a degree of exasperation at the Ehre’s captain for being a pigheaded fool, but she’d learned not to let that concern her. So many people were pigheaded fools.
Rene was at the console beside hers. It was intended for the sailing master, but the closest any crew of Daniel’s had ever had to that senior warrant officer was a common spacer being trained to handle the ship’s boats.
He’d been echoing Adele’s display while she kept track of the boarding parties and channeled relevant information to Blantyre in the Battle Direction Center. He was handling those duties alone, now, while she dealt with the freighter which was trying to escape.
The Ehre started to lift. Her shining hull rose, free for the moment of the plume of dust. The captain herself must own the vessel; surely no hireling would risk her life to avoid a mere monetary loss for an absentee owner?
“Ehre, this is your last chance,” Adele said. Would she be more effective if she sounded excited? Surely the words were clear enough in themselves. “Shut down or we will destroy—”
The freighter was half a mile away, and there was a score of other grounded vessels between it and the Ladouceur. It’d now risen twenty feet in the air, however, which meant Sun had a direct line of sight to it from the cruiser’s dorsal turret.
“—you certainly.”
The freighter continued to rise. Sun stabbed his gun switch. The 6-inch guns fired, right tube and then left. The miniature thermonuclear explosions seemed to echo; weight anchored the Ladouceur firmly to the ground through the outriggers, so the hull didn’t flex as it would while under way.
The streaks of plasma lifted vortices of dust through the thin air; if boarding parties were outside in the vicinity of the track, they’d be cursing the gunner. The Bagarians were wearing suits, however, so they shouldn’t be in real danger.
The first bolt stuck the Ehre on A Deck, a little forward of the midpoint. Telescoped masts flew up in a geyser of steel. The vessel started to roll away from the thrust of her own vaporized fabric, so the second round struck a little farther down.
The Ehre’s bow tilted; Adele couldn’t tell whether that was a direct result of damage or if the captain had simply jerked her controls in shock. The stern slammed into the ground. When the thrusters shut off or failed a moment later, the bow dropped with a terrible crash. The freighter bounced upward, rolled onto its port side when one outrigger collapsed, and hit the ground again.
“Six, I shoulda let her get a little higher and used the lateral turrets on her,” Sun crowed happily. “I mean, we don’t know that the four-inchers even work, right? But praise the Gods, didn’t the big boys do a job on that dumb sucker, over?”
Adele blocked the transmission; the gunner was just chattering in his joy at the destruction he’d achieved. Daniel was busy programming courses for the merchant vessels which boarding parties from the Ladouceur were capturing all across Four’s northern port area.
Adele had been amazed at how quickly the Bagarians spread out on their mission, given that on the voyage from Pelosi they hadn’t shown anything like the spirit she’d been accustomed to in crews under Daniel’s command. After a moment’s reflection, though, she saw that these spacers understood they were in the home system of the Alliance. They were simply trying to get away.
They might think that if they were captured, Guarantor Porra would have them all shot out of hand in retaliation for the raid. Adele smiled faintly. She suspected that their concern was well founded.
“Mission Control,” said a breathless voice on 3625kHz. “This is Blackwell! We’ve got the Jabez Croft and we’re buttoning up for liftoff! Over!”
Adele’s wands danced. David Blackwell, an engineer’s mate from Thuer; had experience as watch officer on tramps in the Viscount Region though no formal astrogation training. In charge of six spacers, Unit 17 in Blantyre’s terminology, directed to the 2,300-tonne freighter Jabez Croft out of Wakeland, over a half mile to the west of where Daniel’d brought the Ladouceur down.
“I’m transferring your data to Control Six, Blackwell,” Adele said. She sent it to Daniel with a dip of her left wand and copied Blantyre as well, since the midshipman was coordinating the boarding parties. “Prepare for liftoff, but don’t leave the ground until Control Six has given you clearance.”
One of the prizes lifted in the next row over from the Ladouceur. Half a dozen other ships—
She checked herself out of habit: nine ships had already lifted, and this one made ten. The number didn’t matter, but the fact that she’d been so far out in her mental tally was disquieting.
Ten prizes were already away, and two more were running up their thrusters. The operation was on schedule, though of course nobody knew how much time they really had before Alliance forces on Pleasaunce reacted. In an ideal universe it might even be days.
The universe had rarely shown itself to be ideal in Adele’s experience, but the present raid was so audaciously unlikely that there wouldn’t be mechanisms in place to counter it. A smile lifted the left corner of her mouth again. Daniel made rather a habit of that sort of stroke.
A plasma cannon fired in the mid distance. Adele had closed the electronic window in which she’d viewed the Die Ehre Muenchens; now she opened it again and began to hopscotch through real-time imagery from captured ships, searching for one which would show her where the shooting had occurred. It seemed to be to the northwest of the Ladouceur.
The ground thumped to an explosion; a piece of something banged against the cruiser’s hull. It could’ve simply been an impeller slug, but it sounded heavier than that. Adele’d heard a lot of impeller slugs and sub-machine gun slugs and pistol slugs in the two years since she met Daniel Leary. . . .
“Signals, it’s all right,” said Rene over the intercom. “It’s Rasmussen and Harned, using the gun on the Scarlett to make the MP5052 open up. They called while you were talking to the Ehre, over.”
An icon pulsed in the window Adele’d opened; she expanded it with a click. Most ships trading on the fringes of the settled universe carried light armament to discourage pirates. The Scarlett, a three-thousand-tonne Kostroman vessel, had an old 10-cm plasma cannon in a nose blister.
“Signals, the Scarlett’s deadlined because her climate control’s shot,” Rene explained. “Her other systems still work, though, so when the MP5052 wouldn’t open up to the boarders, I told Blantyre. She sent Rasmussen and Harned to her. They got the gun working, over.”
“I see,” said Adele. Beth Rasmussen and Richard Harned were a Power Room tech cross trained as a gunner and a very tough rigger. Perhaps the Bagarian boarding party could’ve handled the job, but at best they hadn’t come up with the plan themselves.
Adele didn’t see the expected cratering of a plasma bolt on the MP5052’s hull, but a chemical explosion had blown antennas Dorsal Two and Dorsal Three off the hull. She selected memory and ran the imagery back to before the gun’d fired.
As expected, she found that the MP5052 had mounted a basket of free-flight rockets on her spine for defensive armament instead of a gun. They’d exploded when Rasmussen put a bolt into them. Though the blast hadn’t seriously damaged the hull, the ears of everybody on the freighter’s A Deck would ring for a month.
Adele checked her apparatus, then made a pair of adjustments. The MP50
52’s commo system was wide open, so it was no great trick to take control of it.
“Freighter MP5052, this is the IBS Ladouceur,” Adele said. Her voice would be thundering through the PA system as well as on the main console. “You saw what happened to the Ehre when they refused to surrender. You’ve had your only warning. Open your main hatch to a boarding party from the Bagarian Republic in thirty seconds, or we’ll melt you to slag, over.”
Could they melt a freighter to slag? Not with a low-powered 4-inch gun, certainly, but she supposed Sun would find a way if she gave him his head on the subject. Regardless, it was a permissible part of her job to exaggerate for effect while speaking to an enemy.
“Mistress, they’re opening up,” said Rene. “Break.”
He shifted circuits for the next portion of the call, informing Blantyre that the operation had been successful so she could recall Rasmussen and her bodyguard. They discussed whether the freighter was too badly damaged to lift—decided it wasn’t—and shifted their attention to the Antipodes out of Carnera; the prize crew said that vessel was missing two thruster nozzles.
Adele listened to the conversation long enough to determine it was none of her concern, then returned to panicked messages from the boarding parties. She was acting as Port Control, a task well beyond her rank and rating, but Daniel was busy writing astrogation programs for the prizes.
Two more ships lifted from opposite sides of the large harbor. According to Daniel, Castle Four’s loess soil didn’t reflect thrust the way most dry land did. Each liftoff and landing was in a curtain of dust, but that was no worse a problem than the steam that blasted up from normal water operations.
Though it didn’t impede operations, the dust coated everything instead of draining off the way condensate would. That was simply unpleasant, though, and there was very little about star travel which wasn’t unpleasant in Adele’s estimation. It didn’t matter, because she wasn’t going to be on Four long.
Only a handful of the Bagarians would bother to use Daniel’s complex programs. For the most part they’d let the computer take them toward Pelosi by the simplest route, pleased not to have officers aboard to roust them onto the hull to make manual adjustments. But Daniel would’ve tried to keep them clear of Alliance pursuers, would’ve done his duty and gone well beyond it. That shared attitude was why Adele found him such a congenial friend.
“Ladouceur, this is Sissie Five,” said Vesey’s clipped voice. “We’re on station. There’s no sign of unusual activity in the vicinity of Pleasaunce, over.”
Adele ran the message as text at the bottom of Daniel’s display. While it didn’t interfere with his computations, he’d notice it there.
How very typical of Vesey that she’d give two critical pieces of information and not ask any questions. Most people, even most RCN officers, acted as though their excitement and nervousness were more important than whatever the party they were jabbering at was doing.
Another prize lifted. The initial vibration was as violent as that on water, but the sound through Four’s thin atmosphere was only a shrill whisper. The plasma flare was so bright, however, that the display dimmed it with a ten percent mask.
“Acknowledged, Sissie Five,” Adele said. “The operation appears to be proceeding well. Over.”
The Antipodes lifted while the immediately previous prize was still in mid-sky. Clearly Blantyre and Rene had made the right decision. The cargo—Adele’s wands flicked—was Carnera brocades; they’d be quite valuable if they reached Pelosi.
Daniel transmitted the latest course data—to the MP5052, Adele noticed—and switched to the still-open channel with the Princess Cecile. He winked at Adele.
“Sissie Five, this is Six,” Daniel said, stretching his arms to the sides. He arched his shoulders backward to loosen those big muscles too. “We’ll be lifting in the Agave as soon as the last of the prizes has lifted, which I judge to be within the next half hour. We’ll get a light hour distant before we exchange personnel, though, over.”
Daniel was grinning with satisfaction; Adele found herself smiling back at his image. He had reason to look satisfied. Even if things went badly from here on out, Commander Daniel Leary, RCN, had singed the beard of Guarantor Porra. Nothing would take that away.
“Roger, Six,” Vesey said. Despite the compression, there was more animation in the lieutenant’s voice than Adele’d heard since the day Midshipman Dorst had died in battle. “I’m looking forward to relinquishing command. Five out.”
“Six out,” Daniel replied. He rose from his console. Adele turned when his image blurred from her display.
There were only five of them on the bridge. Daniel grinned and said, “I’m going to offer my resignation to Minister Lampert in the BDC now, I believe. Would any of you like to come along? We’ll leave for the Agave in ten minutes.”
“I’ll wait,” said Sun, intent on his display. “Somebody might try t’lift, you know?”
He really loves those heavy guns, Adele thought. Well, he was a gunner; he should. Sun didn’t think of the result as ruin and charred corpses. Rather, it was the meaning in his life.
“Adele?” Daniel said.
She shook her head. “I’ll stay at the equipment here until we leave the ship,” she said. “Just in case.”
Sun would understand. And of course Daniel understood also.
“Here you go, master,” said Hogg, handing a sub-machine gun to Daniel. He took the weapon but frowned in surprise.
Hogg hefted his impeller. “Most of who’s aboard isn’t Sissies,” he said, “and they been issued guns for the business out there. Just in case, you keep that with you.”
He nodded at Adele and added with a touch of challenge, “Tovera’s in the BDC. I told her I’d take care of things on the bridge so she could watch the wogs there. Understood?”
“I do indeed,” said Daniel with a spreading smile. “And I assure you, Tovera isn’t any more concerned about Officer Mundy’s safety than I am.”
Adele grimaced, but she didn’t speak. Daniel strode off the bridge, cradling the sub-machine gun. He was whistling.
***
Whistling “The Handsome Cabin Boy,” Daniel sauntered toward the Battle Direction Center at the end of the A Deck corridor. Tovera stood in the hatchway; she gave him a glance and a cold smile, then returned her attention to the interior of the compartment.
Her cheeks appeared like roses . . . Daniel whistled as he stepped past her. Tovera lifted the muzzle of her sub-machine gun politely so that it didn’t point at the middle of his back, but she didn’t bother to greet him.
Daniel grinned. He preferred Tovera’s silence to her speech. When she spoke, he felt as though he were talking with a viper sunning itself on a rock; albeit a very useful viper.
“Well, I’ll tell you, Duncan!” said Blantyre, sitting at one of the star of five consoles in the center of the BDC. “If you don’t think you can handle a ship that big with six men, then you’ve got a choice. You can get some of the Alliance crew to sign on with you, or you can bloody walk back to Pelosi! Now, make up your mind in the next three minutes or stay here and rot. Control Two out!”
James Shearman, a Power Room tech who’d been learning the rudiments of astrogation, sat at another of the consoles. He nodded awareness to Daniel but didn’t speak. Seward was at the console nearest the hatch, but Lampert sat hunched on a bench folded down from the starboard bulkhead. When he looked up at Daniel’s entry, his eyes were dull as mud.
Blantyre caught the motion in the corner of her eye and turned also. “Sorry, sir,” she said. “I had to redirect Team Twelve to the Cimmerian Queen because the Swordsmith’s High Drive motors had all been taken off. Not a bloody thing on record about it, but they were!”
“I’ll send a strongly worded protest to the Harbormaster’s Office, Blantyre,” Daniel said dryly.
“What?” said Blantyre, blinking. She was a stocky woman, perhaps a hair too forceful but shaping into a very good officer. “Oh, sorry si
r. Sorry. Anyway, the Cimmerian’s nine thousand tonnes where the Swordsmith was twenty-three hundred, so Matt Duncan wants somebody to hold his hand. There’s no time for that now, I figure.”
“As do I,” Daniel agreed. Changing tone slightly, he went on, “You and Shearman are ready to transfer to the Agave in a few minutes?”
“Yes sir,” said Blantyre. “The forward party shifted our gear with their own.”
“Roger that, Six!” said Shearman. He had straight black hair and was cultivating a thin moustache to make himself look older than his twenty standard years. It actually made him look more like a rat, but a very keen rat. “Ready and willing!”
Minister Lampert stared at Daniel, wringing his hands but saying nothing. Seward turned but didn’t get up from his console. He said, “Are you going to let us go, Leary?”
When Seward moved, Daniel noticed that he was watching looped imagery of the attack on the Siegfried. Daniel found it odd to view a record of what he’d given only passing attention to after the first missile hit. At that point the guard ship was out of the war; the additional destruction was more a matter of embarrassment than pride. He couldn’t have afforded to take a chance, though.
Daniel turned toward Lampert and made a slight bow. “I’m here to resign my commission,” he said, “if that’s what you mean. And—”
He returned to Seward.
“—surrender command of the Ladouceur to you, Captain,” he said with a smile. “I’m leaving you with a crew of two hundred and fourteen. That should be more than sufficient for your return to Pelosi, though I’ll admit the prize crews have left you short of leading spacers and riggers more generally.”
“That’s not a proper crew for a light cruiser!” Seward said. “That’s not half a proper crew.”
“It’s more than sufficient to work ship,” said Daniel. “You’ll want to avoid combat, of course, but—not to be pointed, Captain, but I’d have expected you to avoid combat regardless.”