by David Drake
“Very thoughtful, Bosun,” Adele said. She knew there were RCN bosuns with a reputation for knocking a spacer down to make sure he listened to the order that followed, but Woetjans clearly cared about her personnel. Not that she was slow to knock somebody down if she thought the circumstances called for it.
“Extracting . . .” Blantyre said. “Now!”
Adele’s body vanished and her eyeballs turned inside out to engulf a whole universe of frozen crystal. Why did Blantyre think she had to inform anybody of the hell of extraction?
“Stand by to launch,” Daniel said. “Launching.”
With the word, the bay rang loudly. Adele had never been standing near a launch tube when a jet of live steam shoved an object out of the ship. From that standpoint, an escape capsule was no different from a missile.
“Preparing to insert into the Matrix,” Daniel announced. “We will insert in three minutes thirty seconds. Repeat, we will insert in three minutes thirty seconds, out.”
“We’ll return to the bridge, Tovera,” Adele said. She really had no idea of where the capsule had been placed, nor what was around it. Her instrumentation would have stored that information for her.
Vesey was staring at the launch tube. She didn’t move. Adele couldn’t see the lieutenant’s face, but her hunched posture made her look anguished. Adele frowned, but it was none of her business unless Vesey brought a problem to her.
“Ah, mistress?” Woetjans said. “I know what you’re maybe thinking with your friend and Matthews cooped up for so long, but you don’t have to worry. Bird ain’t going to get ideas, and if your friend maybe does—I’m not saying anything, but you know what men are like—Bird’ll convince him otherwise. And likely without breaking anything major.”
“I don’t—” Adele said, the creases of her frown tightening. Then suddenly she did understand. “By the Gods, Woetjans, you don’t think . . . ?”
She couldn’t go on. She stared in openmouthed horror at the bosun.
Tovera giggled and touched Adele’s sleeve. “Come along, mistress,” she said. “You’ve business on the bridge.”
Tovera was still giggling when they reached the companionway.
Chapter Twenty-five
PORT DELACROIX ON DIAMONDIA
“Here, Leary,” said Admiral James, preceding Daniel into the captain’s cabin of the heavy cruiser Alcubiere. “I told Bussom to unlock his console before he vacated, so we’ve got it if you need file access.”
The admiral was wearing utilities; he’d been making a Power Room inspection when Daniel signaled from the just-landed Princess Cecile that he needed to report as soon as possible. The greasy-looking blur on James’ left shoulder blade was finely divided heavy metal sublimed from the thruster nozzles. Instead of being expelled, it’d been trapped on the surface of the petals until the admiral touched them.
To get that smudge, James had to’ve been sticking his head up the throat of a nozzle. His inspection hadn’t been a cursory one focusing on how well the brightwork on the control panel was polished.
“Sir, I didn’t intend to disturb Captain Bussom,” Daniel said. He’d changed into Whites during the minutes before the slip had cooled enough to open the Sissie’s hatches. Now that he’d seen James, the difference in their uniforms was one more thing to make him uncomfortable.
Because he certainly didn’t want to offend Richard Bussom. The Alcubiere’s captain was skilled, senior—senior enough to have commanded a battleship if he hadn’t preferred the relative freedom of a cruiser—and notably irascible even in a service which put more of a premium on aggressiveness than on genteel manners.
“You’re not, Commander,” James grunted as he settled onto one of the chairs around the small table in the center of the compartment instead of behind the desk. “I am, and borrowing his cabin won’t disturb him nearly as much as the rocket I was going to give him about the condition of Thruster Port Three. Which—”
He scowled at Daniel and gestured to the chair across from him. “Sit, man!” he snapped. “Do you think I want a crick in my neck from looking at you?”
Daniel seated himself carefully. The chairs and table were made from the red heartwood of Vickery firetops. Vickery had been settled early from Pleasaunce and was a core planet of the Alliance.
“Which, just between us,” James resumed, “wasn’t really that bad. A flaw in the casting that’d ruptured, I shouldn’t wonder, and Bussom’s bad luck that I checked when I did. But when we’re trapped in port like this, I can’t afford to let the crews get slack.”
“Yes sir,” said Daniel. “Perhaps you won’t be trapped for very much longer. Ships of the Independent Republic of Bagaria raided Castle Four a week ago. Besides taking prizes, the raiders destroyed the old battleship on guard duty above the planet. There’s no end of evidence remaining on Four to prove that it was a Bagarian raid, quite apart from the fact that Alliance forces have probably recaptured half the prizes by now. I expect Guarantor Porra to be very angry.”
James slammed the heel his hand on the table. “By my hope of salvation!” he said. “Angry, you say? I’d judge he was! You may well have given him a stroke and ended the bloody war, Leary!”
He cocked his head and looked straight at Daniel. “It was you, wasn’t it?” he said. “That business about the Bagarians is just window dressing, isn’t it?”
Daniel glanced aside. Captain Bussom’d had the bulkheads painted a smooth cream color with gilt moldings. On them hung sporting prints in gilt frames, and there was even an imitation fireplace. The decor was closer to that of the office in Speaker Leary’s townhouse than to a warship.
“Sir,” said Daniel, “I’ve transmitted an Eyes Only report to your headquarters with full details, but the short version is . . . the major element involved was a Bagarian cruiser with a mostly Bagarian crew, and the Bagarian minister of the navy was aboard throughout the raid. But yes, I was present also.”
“By the Gods, Leary,” James said, his face hard and his eyes focused on something at a distance in time. “Guphill’s squadron’s the only Alliance force within three weeks’ transit of the Bagarian Cluster. If Porra orders them off to swat the rebels back into the stone age, we can destroy the base on Z3 before he gets back. By the Gods, we can!”
“Yes sir,” Daniel said. “Unless they strip the Castle System of warships and send them to the cluster instead, of course.”
James snorted. “Which is about the last thing they’re likely to do after you’ve shot up Four the way you say you have,” he said. “Why, they’d be afraid you’d do the same thing to the Guarantor’s Pool on Pleasaunce!”
He looked at Daniel and added sharply, “You were thinking of doing that, weren’t you, Leary? Tell me the truth!”
“Well, sir,” Daniel said. “The possibility had crossed my mind, yes.”
“Well, it’s not going to happen,” James said, returning Daniel’s smile with a harder one of his own. “Not least because I don’t think destroying half a dozen Alliance merchant ships would be worth losing you to Cinnabar.”
He sobered and added, “Admiral Anston spoke very highly of you, you know.”
Daniel touched his lips with his tongue. “Sir,” he said, “I’m very glad to have the respect of Admiral Anston. He’s a great man. A very great man.”
He felt a pang as he spoke. Anston’s heart attack and retirement had caused career difficulties for Commander Daniel Leary, but he could honestly say that he didn’t regret that at all compared with how he felt about the RCN’s loss.
“We’ll keep our fingers crossed,” James said. He waved a hand at Daniel. “Don’t think I’m devaluing what you’ve accomplished, Leary, I’m not doing that at all. But Guphill’s an able man, as I know to my cost. I couldn’t have handled the blockade of Diamondia any better myself.”
He smiled ruefully.
“Unless Porra gives absurdly detailed orders,” he continued,
“I don’t see Guphill sending off more than a couple cruis
ers and their accompanying destroyers. That won’t crush the rebellion, but it’ll give him a month or so before Porra notices. And that’s long enough for him to finish reducing our defenses here, I’m afraid.”
“Ah, sir?” Daniel said very carefully. “My signals officer has a great deal of skill in deception. She—”
“That’s Lady Mundy, you mean?” James said, his eyes narrowing.
“Yes sir, Signals Officer Mundy,” Daniel said. “She suggested that there are ways to make Alliance observers believe that your major units aren’t operational. If that were the case, it’d be much more likely that Guphill would take away his whole squadron or at least detach a major portion of it. Rather than appear to disregard the Guarantor’s order, that is. The Guarantor is known to behave very intemperately when he’s angry.”
James burst out with a laugh. “He shot his Ambassador to Kostroma dead after the debacle there, didn’t he?” he said. “And I take your point, because I don’t in the least doubt that he’s livid about this raid of yours. All right, shall I summon Lady Mundy or can you give me the gist of the plan yourself?”
Daniel rose. “I think you and I are the people to go over the details,” he said, “and here in the harbor is the best place to do it. But I’d appreciate it if any report on the operation would give full credit to Officer Mundy.”
James rose also. “If this works, Leary,” he said, “there’ll be plenty of credit to go around, I assure you. And by the Gods, I hope it works!”
* * *
ABOVE DIAMONDIA
Adele pored over the images the Princess Cecile was capturing during its powered orbits. The Alliance destroyers had equally good optics and perhaps comparable anti-distortion software as well, but they were 200,000 miles out from the planetary surface to avoid the mines. Adele could be confident that they wouldn’t be seeing anything which she didn’t.
“Good day, Commander Leary,” said Tovera from the jumpseat at the back of the signals console. Adele glanced at the miniature image of Daniel at his console inset onto the top of her display; it was empty. When she turned her head, she found him beginning to squat beside her.
“Good day, Tovera,” Daniel said mildly. “And good day, Officer Mundy. I decided to walk over for a visit. Call it the whim of an eccentric captain.”
Adele looked at him. The command console was eight feet away from her at signals. If Daniel wanted privacy, an intercom link from his console with active sound canceling engaged would’ve been completely inaudible to anyone but the two parties involved. His behavior was eccentric, and besides that Adele herself preferred to communicate through an electronic separation.
But he was also captain.
She gave Daniel a wry smile. “Yes, Captain Leary,” she said. “Welcome to my—”
What to call it?
“—work space.”
Sun pointedly got up from the gunnery console and announced, “I’m going to the head.”
“Want me to shake it for you, buddy?” called Borries from the Attack console on the port side of the bridge. The new Chief Missileer was fitting in well with the original Sissies.
Because the High Drive buzzed as it provided the illusion of gravity, no one was likely to overhear them. Well, Tovera would, but that was like saying a passing meteorite might listen in. Not, of course, that it mattered aboard the Sissie to begin with.
“I won’t take you away from your work,” Daniel said, nodding toward the display. The hologram was focused for her eyes, so from his angle it would be a jumble of light as meaningless as the clouds at sunrise.
“There’s no rush,” Adele said, adjusting the display to make it omnidirectional. “Or more accurately, what I saw at a quick glance is the important thing—and it passes.”
Daniel gave the image his attention while Adele watched him. He wasn’t an imagery specialist, but he was a very observant officer who knew warships as well as anyone on the RCN list.
“There’s no question she’s the Zeno,” he said judiciously. “She’s fifty feet longer than the Lao-tze and even in her own class she’s the only one with the docking bridge between frames 65 and 68 instead of 32 and 35. And she’s got a serious refit under way. Three sections of Power Room plating have been removed. The only reason you’d do that would be to replace the fusion bottle. Besides which I think—”
He gestured. Adele used his index finger as a pointer and increased magnification by one step, then another, on the barge moored to the battleship’s starboard side.
“That’s enough,” said Daniel. “Can you increase the shadow detail, over?”
“Yes,” said Adele, making the adjustment. She smiled faintly. Daniel was so used to getting this sort of information over the intercom that he’d lapsed into single-channel communications protocol.
“No question, they’re thruster nozzles in the barge’s hold,” he said approvingly. He looked up at Adele and grinned. “Two and a half visible, and probably twelve aboard if there’s as many as could be under the tarps where they can’t be seen. And they’re real?”
“Yes,” said Adele, “but there are only three of them, and they came from the freighter Hollandia in the Outer Harbor.”
“Switch back to the missing plates,” Daniel said with a wave, “but keep the magnification. If you please.”
Adele made the adjustment without comment. Daniel squinted, which of course didn’t help, then looked at her again. “I swear I can see the rails that they slid the bottle out on. How in heaven did they do that?”
Adele ran the image back so that the display area contained the whole battleship. “I’m told they underpainted the details in dark blue on the canvas,” she said. “Then they covered the whole surface with dark gray to simulate the shadowed interior seen through the missing plates.”
She pursed her lips, afraid that she’d just taken credit which belonged to someone else. “One of the Zeno’s officers, Lieutenant Bainbridge, turns out to be an amateur artist of some note. The underpainting was her idea. Also mixing purple with the dark gray; I simply said black.”
Daniel shook his head in delighted amazement. “I certainly wouldn’t doubt that the plating was off,” he said. “That’s quite remarkable. Remarkable.”
Adele liked to think—she wouldn’t say it aloud, of course—that other people’s opinions didn’t matter: she’d either done a good job or she hadn’t. Realistically that wasn’t true: she was human, and however well she concealed her feelings from others, she couldn’t deny that she did feel.
Now she smiled a little wider than usual and said, “They glued the underside of the canvas to the hull so that it wouldn’t ripple in the wind. I think movement would be assumed to be an artifact of atmospheric disturbance, but I was pleased at the care with which the work was executed.”
She cleared her throat. “Daniel,” she said. “I’m pleased to be a member of the RCN.”
He looked at her. “Speaking as the ranking member of the organization present,” he said, “the RCN is very pleased to have you, Officer Mundy.”
For an instant Adele thought he was going to say something else; then he gestured toward the imagery and said, “The question I’d have if I were Admiral Guphill is, ‘How did they manage to do all that work overnight?’ Because I don’t care how many personnel you have available, there’s limited space to work in.”
“I considered that,” Adele said. Was this bragging? But she had considered it, and the fact was germane to the discussion. “My expectation, my hope, is that the analysts on Guphill’s staff will first suspect that the destroyers on station haven’t been keeping as close a watch on Port Delacroix as they should be. In other words, that the work was done over the course of two days or even longer. That’s the first point.”
She looked at the image, wishing that they were having this conversation electronically. There were far too many variables for certainty, and it would be easier to keep her tone of dry detachment if she weren’t side by side with one of the many people wh
o would die if her assumptions had been faulty.
“Competent people are very conscious of their own failures, their own mistakes,” Adele said. “What they—”
She turned and met Daniel’s eyes directly.
“What tends to escape us is the fact that our opponents have human limitations also. Daniel, what would you think if I told you that the crew of the Alliance flagship, the Pleasaunce, had removed twelve thrusters and all the starboard plating from the Power Room overnight?”
Daniel grimaced, then smiled broadly. “I’d think that Admiral Guphill had a crack crew,” he said. “Yes, I take your point.”
Daniel was bracing himself with his right hand on Adele’s console. He drummed his index and middle fingers momentarily, then said, “It recently occurred to me that I regretted Admiral Anston’s illness for the RCN’s sake, not my own. You can understand that, I’m sure.”
She frowned. “Of course I can,” she said. “Daniel, your worst enemy wouldn’t suggest that you’d put personal gain ahead of your duty.”
“Yes,” Daniel said. “But now, sitting here—”
He grinned.
“—squatting here, better, I realized that I most of all wish Admiral Anston were healthy for his own sake.”
His smile faded. “I didn’t know Anston well, but I knew him well enough to like him a great deal. The RCN will manage, just as I’m managing. I wish the same were true for him. Which brings me to another point.”
Adele waited without comment, without expression. She didn’t need to prod Daniel to speak, so she didn’t prod.
“I said the RCN was pleased to have you, Adele,” Daniel said. He rose to his feet. “But not nearly as pleased as I am personally.”
Daniel strode back to his console. Adele resumed her examination of the seemingly out-of-service Zeno. A very neat piece of work by the RCN, if she did say so herself.
ABOVE DIAMONDIA
Daniel had split his main display between the Plot-Position Indicator centered around the Princess Cecile in Diamondia orbit and a large-scale equivalent which covered the region surrounding the Alliance base on Z3. The latter was as much conjecture as fact: distance and the enormous bulk of Zmargadine denied certainty, despite the specious confidence that the image instilled. A hologram looked the same whether or not it represented more than a computer’s imagination.