by David Drake
Though imperfect, the display gave Daniel some information on what was happening near the Alliance base. A bright orange caret winked, highlighting the ship that’d just extracted from the Matrix almost 600,000 miles in-system from Zmargadine. It was too far for the corvette’s sensors to have registered the precursors of an extraction, the distortions to the fabric of sidereal space-time caused when a portion of another bubble universe intrudes. It was too far as well for Daniel to identify the incoming vessel even by class.
He had a pretty good idea, though. He felt his palms start to sweat with anticipation.
“Signals, this is Six,” Daniel said. He started to say, “A ship has extracted near Zmargadine.” That’d be comparable to Adele telling him that the Sissie’s thrusters had lighted. While she probably wouldn’t say that in so many words, he’d heard the dry sneer in her voice often enough that he didn’t have any difficulty imagining it again.
Instead he continued, “Will our outpost send us details of the visitor in the neighborhood of Zmargadine? I can’t come closer than a rough idea of the tonnage, and even that’s going to be a guess, over.”
“I don’t expect a report, no,” Adele said. Her wands twinkled as she spoke; she was carrying on the conversation with a very small portion of her attention, which explained and even justified the way she ignored protocol. “I told Rene not to risk revealing himself unless there was something we needed him to tell us. Which the arrival of a courier at the Z3 base is not, to my mind. Here, this is a sixty-three percent probability.”
A pulsing red icon appeared on Daniel’s display where the two screens met. Adele’s skill would’ve permitted her to squelch the existing content in favor of the information she was forwarding, but though she was brusque, Daniel’d never found her discourteous by accident.
He opened the icon to an image of an Alliance aviso of the Hela class. Adele’s processing algorithms were obviously more subtle than those the RCN provided to the captains of its warships.
“The supply ships Balrum and Hiddensee keep a three-week rotation from the Fleet base on Eisernberg,” Adele said, anticipating Daniel’s next question. “Presumably they carry normal communications as well as replacement personnel and food. This is the first time a courier ship has been sent to Admiral Guphill.”
The caret marking the aviso faded from Daniel’s display as the vessel itself reentered the Matrix. Now that her captain had oriented himself in the sidereal universe, he’d bring his vessel as close as possible to Z3 before making his final approach on High Drive and finally thrusters. If he judged his distance properly, he’d extract the next time with Zmargadine between him and RCN observers on Diamondia.
Daniel checked his PPI. The destroyers Echo and Eclipse were in orbit with the Princess Cecile.
“Signals,” he said, “have our fellow friendlies noticed the courier’s arrival? They don’t show any sign of it, but then I suppose we don’t either, over.”
“The destroyers have only basic reconnaissance software,” Adele said. “Even if they had something more advanced, they don’t have specialists to use it properly. They’ll have gathered the data, but it won’t be processed till they’re replaced on station in nine hours and download their logs to the Staff computer at Port Delacroix. I very much doubt their officers are concerned with anything beyond the space immediately neighboring Diamondia. Over.”
Daniel considered the situation for a moment. Strictly speaking, the Princess Cecile wasn’t part of the Diamondia Squadron. She was operating under the orders of Navy House, which took precedence to those of the theater commander.
In more specific terms, the captains of the two destroyers were lieutenant commanders, junior in rank if not length of service to Commander Daniel Leary. Nevertheless, it was politic as well as courteous to tell them what he intended to do. So—
“Signals, please make immediate landing arrangements with Diamondia Control,” Daniel said. “Break. Poultice Two, Poultice Three—”
The Eclipse and Echo respectively.
“—this is Rascal.”
The Princess Cecile’s designator while operating with the Diamondia Squadron.
“We are setting down to refill with reaction mass. Good hunting, spacers. Rascal out.”
The Echo simply acknowledged. From the Eclipse came, “Roger, Rascal. If you can scare up something to hunt, we could use the exercise, out.”
Daniel believed it was the voice of Captain Gibbs, who’d been a Senior when Daniel entered the Academy. They’d chatted in friendly fashion earlier when they met in Squadron HQ. Jennifer Gibbs hadn’t been unduly harsh to Entrant Leary at the Academy, and she seemed to regard their present reversal of status philosophically.
So did Daniel: the fortunes of war. But he couldn’t help smiling.
“Captain, you’re cleared to Berth Twelve in the Main Harbor,” Adele announced crisply. An icon clicked alive at the bottom of Daniel’s display; he expanded it into a half-screen schematic of both harbors, with Berth 12 highlighted.
“Ship,” Daniel said, “this is Six. We’ll commence our landing approach in three minutes.”
He could probably have sent the message down safely with a coded microwave signal, but he was pretty sure that an Alliance signals officer of Adele’s quality would be able to read that message in real-time. The Alliance probably didn’t have an officer of Adele’s quality—and the RCN probably didn’t have another—but this wasn’t the time to take chances.
Besides, there was no rush. The courier was arriving nine days after the Bagarian raid on Castle Four, exactly when Daniel had calculated it would. Even if it brought the expected orders, though, it’d take Admiral Guphill a minimum of twelve hours to put ships in condition for a voyage to Pelosi. Landing with the message rather than signaling from orbit would add no more than half an hour to the time the word got to Admiral James.
Daniel hadn’t closed the transmission to the crew. He grinned broadly: they were his Sissies. They’d been the point of the RCN’s spear often enough that they deserved to get the news now rather than when the rest of the squadron did.
“We’ll be filling our reaction mass tanks, Sissies,” he continued, “but we’ll be returning to orbit as soon as I get back from a visit to Admiral James, because I don’t trust any other ship to keep as close a watch on the Alliance squadron as we will. And I strongly suspect that before the day’s out we’ll be giving the signal for the fleet action that kicks the Alliance out of the Jewel System with their tails between their legs! Six out.”
The cheers were spontaneous. Daniel’s grin spread wider yet.
* * *
ABOVE DIAMONDIA
The signal from Rene threw a red wash over Adele’s display. She shut down what she was doing and began processing the imagery seeping back to the Princess Cecile from Zmargadine orbit.
She’d been compiling crew lists for the entire Diamondia Squadron. It had no obvious value, but no information was completely valueless.
“Captain to the bridge!” she announced over the PA system. “Daniel, we have a signal. Get here at once.”
Daniel’d gone to his space cabin adjacent to the bridge for a couple hours sleep. In the event he was getting less than a full hour: Admiral Guphill was lifting with his squadron barely ten hours after the courier vessel arrived, not the twelve Daniel’d considered a minimum.
Adele smiled coldly. Guarantor Porra must’ve been very angry.
If Adele hadn’t been at her console, her personal data unit would’ve pinged sharply at her. She disliked audible signals, but there’d been slight risk of her not being at the console under these circumstances. Daniel reasonably thought he should get some sleep, but Adele had decided that she’d relax better if she was working.
Sleep had never been a priority with her. It was even less attractive now that so many faces were likely to visit her in the night.
Often she hadn’t really seen them when she was squeezing the trigger; they’d merely been pale blurs aga
inst which her sights were silhouetted. There was plenty of time in the night for her to stare at the details, though: the pores, the broken veins, and the gasps of surprise. Flesh deformed around the bullet like a pond hit by the first drop of a rainstorm.
Daniel strode onto the bridge. He was fully clothed, but his boots weren’t sealed. He’d kept his clothes on while he napped, but he’d loosened his boots; otherwise blood would’ve pooled in his feet.
Rene’s transmission was encrypted with a pattern generated by cosmic ray impacts. It was common only to the transceiver in the escape capsule and to the signals console of the Princess Cecile. If something had happened to either Adele or the corvette, no one in the greater universe could read the information Rene was sending.
That wasn’t arrogant confidence on Adele’s part. It’d be better that Admiral James not get the information than that he get it and the Alliance forces know what he had. In the latter instance, James would sortie against the Alliance base, and Guphill would be in a position to ambush him by shifting his forces in the Matrix and returning in full strength after the RCN squadron was committed.
That said, whatever decision Adele made was a gamble whose probabilities she couldn’t really assess. This way if she guessed wrong, no one would be complaining to her personally.
Daniel settled onto his console and brought up the imagery Rene was transmitting. Because of the low-power sending head and interference from debris over the long distance, there was a noticeable delay for even an astrogation computer to process the data into meaningful results.
There was no voice with the transmission, though speech would’ve absorbed infinitesimal bandwidth compared to the imagery. The images meant more to an expert than they would to Rene Cazelet; Commander Leary was an expert, arguably the expert, so Rene simply kept his mouth shut. He consistently demonstrated good judgment for a young man.
Adele frowned at herself. Rene showed good judgment, period; regardless of age or gender.
“Ship, this is Six,” Daniel announced. “Condition Two, I repeat, Condition Two. Section chiefs, issue energy rations. Get your area squared away, spacers, but we won’t be going to Action Stations for another half hour or more. Six out.”
Despite the excited bustle all over the ship, there was no sign of haste or concern. Sun had been at the gunnery console. To Adele’s surprise, he got up and left the bridge. Moments later he reappeared, lugging a rigging suit.
There was an air suit in the cushion of each console, but Sun preferred a hard suit despite its bulk and awkwardness. The equipment wasn’t authorized for his specialty, but Adele had learned during her first days with the RCN that old spacers could not only find anything, they could find a place to stash it despite the limited room on a corvette.
Data continued to stream from the distant escape capsule as more ships rose from Z3. They tried to use Zmargadine to shield them from RCN observation, but a number came into view as they accelerated and spread their sails. Even so only a third of the vessels were directly visible, though that would’ve been enough to indicate a large-scale operation was under way.
“Signals, we’ve got them!” Daniel said. He glanced toward her, putting his broad smile in profile on her display. “Transmit to Admiral James, Most Urgent: Anston. That’s the code word we chose for the operation. And let me know when he acknowledges in person, out.”
Adele nodded and waited ten seconds for the Princess Cecile to come far enough over the horizon to have a line of sight to Port Delacroix. She could’ve relayed through the Eclipse—and done so without the destroyer’s crew knowing about it, very probably—but ten seconds wasn’t long to wait.
“Diamondia Control,” she said. She transmitted a text message simultaneously, but the verbal would reach Admiral James more quickly if his staff was properly trained. “This is Rascal for Pitcher Six, Most Urgent, Anston. I repeat, for Pitcher Six, Most Urgent, Anston. Pitcher Six will acknowledge receipt, over.”
“Roger, Rascal,” the controller said. Hers was the same crisp female voice which’d cleared the Sissie into Port Delacroix on their first arrival. “The message is on the way, Most Urgent. Diamondia out.”
Daniel wore a look of glee as he manipulated images. Figures scrolled and transmuted in a box on the lower left quadrant, but the bulk of his display rotated images of the Alliance squadron one ship at a time. When the figures reached a solution and froze, pulsing, he shifted to a different vessel and began again.
At last he stopped and leaned back in the console. Rene continued to send imagery, but no additional ships were lifting from Z3.
The Alliance squadron was forming down-system from Zmargadine. Save for a single light cruiser, all the ships the size of a sloop or larger had lifted. It was reasonable that at least one ship out of twenty-odd would be unable to lift with so little time to prepare.
Adele wondered if the Alliance destroyers observing Diamondia knew what their main force was doing. She suspected they did not. There’d been no signal from Zmargadine orbit that she’d noticed—which realistically meant no signal. Nor had Admiral Guphill sent a vessel in-system to alert his pickets. The latter would’ve been quicker than relying on light-speed communication over such a distance, but the Alliance admiral might’ve feared that a de facto courier would also alert the RCN.
Adele smiled again. His concerns would’ve been valid, had the RCN not gotten much better information by other means.
“Captain,” she said. “I’ve transmitted your message. I’ll inform you when we have a response from Pitcher Six. Over.”
She was a little embarrassed at the informal way she’d summoned Daniel from his sleep, though she knew that nobody—least of all Daniel—would complain or even refer to it. Still, in RCN terms she’d behaved unprofessionally. She’d do better now that time wasn’t pressing.
“Thank you, Adele,” Daniel said, using her first name in subtly crafted absolution. “Master Cazelet has earned himself a medal. Unfortunately, he’s not a member of the RCN so I can’t recommend him for one. Ah—”
He gestured to his display. Information still fed in from the escape capsule. It refined the holographic ships, providing details which fleshed out what’d been conjecture.
“I have all the data I need, I believe. I’m concerned that if he continues to transmit to us, an Alliance ship will spot him. And there’s no longer any need, over.”
“Unfortunately,” Adele said, pleased but a little surprised to find that her voice remained dispassionate, “I’m afraid that if I contact Master Cazelet from here, I’ll make his detection almost certain. A signal from Diamondia, even a laser beam, will be scattered significantly by the time it reaches Zmargadine orbit seventy-one light-minutes away. It’ll paint Alliance ships at the same amplitude as it does the capsule, and I don’t believe that all Guphill’s signals officers will be asleep. Over.”
“Ah,” said Daniel. “Yes.”
Adele thought that he might say they were all sharing the danger or something else pointless, but in her concern . . . in her anger, anger at the situation and at herself for allowing Rene to put himself into the situation; and anger at Daniel, because he’d quite correctly said that it should be done. In her concern and anger, she’d done a disservice to Daniel’s intelligence.
“We’re going to crush Guphill, you know, Adele,” he said instead. His voice was calm, but she heard the excitement underlying it; he was already trembling with the urge to drive in, to strike, and to keep on striking so long as there was an enemy standing.
As she’d watched Daniel do, and helped Daniel do, many times in the past.
The Alliance squadron was beginning to vanish from the imagery Rene sent back. The ships, singly and in pairs, were inserting into the Matrix. It appeared that they were too intent on their own activities to notice that they were under observation by an RCN outpost. Rene might come through this safely after all.
Coughing as much to clear her mind as her throat, Adele said, “Do you mean that because he
’s taking his entire force to the Bagarian Cluster—presumably, that is—that we can destroy the base on Z3 and effectively end the blockade? Over.”
“Ah, but that’s not what’s happening,” Daniel said with the enthusiasm of a man who was enthusiastic about just about everything: an insect, a planet, or a thought. And very often enthusiastic about a bimbo, of course, though there seemed to have been a change since he met Miranda Dorst. “Look here, Adele. Look at the sail plans of the Pleasaunce and the Eitel Friedrich. Notice the differences, over.”
Adele was ready to say that she was no more competent to discuss sail plans than she was to plot a course through the Matrix. That was true, of course, but because she didn’t dismiss things without examining them, she looked at the images Daniel had forwarded to her: a battleship and a battle cruiser respectively at the moment they inserted into the Matrix.
And she did see the difference; it required no more specialized expertise than telling a bull from a cow. “Captain,” Adele said, “the battle cruiser has almost all its sails set. The battleship has only eight—”
Of forty-eight.
“—antennas raised, and only a portion of their sails have been unfurled.”
She cleared her throat again and added, “I don’t know what that means, however. Over.”
As Adele spoke, her wands sorted the imagery according to the pattern Daniel had just pointed out. She was embarrassed not to have seen it for herself. Intellectually she knew that no one, no matter how careful, could notice everything; emotionally she felt that she herself should be the exception.
“A portion of the squadron headed by the battle cruisers is rigged for a long voyage,” Daniel said. “These are generally the faster, more maneuverable vessels. The remaining ships, roughly half the total—”