by David Drake
They were to be offset ten degrees system west of the line connecting the gas giant with Diamondia. Daniel nodded approvingly. If Admiral Guphill made his initial jump in a direct line toward Diamondia, the RCN squadron would be positioned to rake the Alliance ships with all missile tubes.
It’d take the Lao-tze about ten more minutes to complete her rigging. The squadron was to spend seventeen sidereal minutes in the Matrix. Daniel was sure the Sissie could make the run in less; the Alcubiere, a heavily sparred vessel under Captain Bussom, who—like Daniel—had been trained in shiphandling by Commander Stacy Bergen, might be able to do it in twelve minutes or less. They’d both extract in seventeen, because synchrony was important and absolute speed was not.
VICEROY ADELBERT HAS REPORTED RCN MOVEMENTS, announced a text at the bottom of the quadrant in which the Alliance ships maneuvered for landing. Daniel’s screen indicated that Vesey and Blantyre were both trying to call him—with the same news, he had no doubt, and Adele must not doubt it either because she was blocking their interruptions until Six decided he had time to talk to his subordinates.
Daniel checked the full message, then manually cut in the PA system. “Squadron,” he said, his voice booming through the speakers in every compartment. “Foxhunt Ten-six. Cruiser Viceroy Adelbert has observed RCN movements and reported us to Alliance Command. Ten-six out.”
Blantyre immediately withdrew her summons. Vesey did not, so Daniel touched that icon with his cursor and said, “Six, go ahead. Over.”
“Sir, I have a series of solutions for the Alliance squadron,” Vesey said. “Over.”
“Do you bloody indeed!” said Daniel. By the Gods, I did train this lady well! “Forward them, if you will, Vesey, over.”
He’d expected her to say that she’d done a course plot which would bring the Princess Cecile into her place at the tail end of the RCN line after their jump. Of course she did; so did Blantyre and Cory, and Shearman, the spacer who was striking for a master’s rating.
But Daniel’d assumed he was the only person aboard the Sissie who was calculating what the enemy would or might do. Two of James’ lieutenants on the Zeno would be doing that, cursing it as an empty exercise because there were too many variables for prediction. That was true, of course: you couldn’t really predict an enemy’s movements unless you had his sail plan at the moment he entered the Matrix, and even then you had to be both good and lucky.
But the exercise forced you to think like the enemy, and that wasn’t empty at all. Getting into the enemy’s head was more important than predicting his next move in detail.
Vesey’d never be a real fighting officer; frankly, she didn’t have the instinct to go for the throat. Vesey had to think through her attacks, and though her solutions would always be proper ones, she’d never have the flair of her late fiancé, Midshipman Dorst. Everything that effort and study could do, however, she would do.
Daniel opened her three solutions. The first showed the Alliance squadron reforming forty light-minutes out from Z3 but offset at fifteen degrees to the Zmargadine/Diamondia axis, putting them equidistant from the two bases. The second showed Guphill’s squadron in a line anchored at one end by Z3 and at the other by the two battleships. At the scale of the holographic display the ships looked close to their present locations, but they’d still have to maneuver through the Matrix to achieve the formation in less than a week.
The final solution was the most interesting of all: Admiral Guphill’s ten ships formed a loose globe just outside Diamondia’s planetary defense array. Daniel highlighted this one and said, “Vesey, explain the purpose behind this plan, over.”
“Sir!” replied Vesey, her voice suddenly without character but half an octave higher than it normally was. “The enemy will believe he’s cut us off from our base by encircling Diamondia. He’ll realize that we can extract within our own array, but when we brake to land we’ll become predictable targets for missiles even though they’re launched from the minimum safe distance. Over.”
“All right, Vesey,” Daniel said. “But why will the enemy assume we’re going to run for our base, over?”
“Sir,” she said, “they’ll project their own motivations onto us, sir! Over.”
She’s so very clever, Daniel thought. But she has no instinct for this at all. Well, neither did Uncle Stacy, and there was never born a better astrogator.
Midshipman Dorst would’ve said, “Sir, they’ll be afraid to go far from their own base. Likely they’ll ball up around it. Let’s us come at them from one side and grind them all to hell, eh?”
He’d have been wrong too, but he’d have understood what was possible. Vesey was so good an astrogator herself that the idea of ten ships englobing a planet in perfect formation didn’t strike her as absurd. Dorst, who couldn’t have managed even that modest intra-system distance in less than three sequences of insertion and extraction, had a better grasp of normal human capacity.
“I think he’ll do this, Vesey, over,” Daniel said, forwarding his solution to her console in the BDC. He didn’t need the image inset on his display to imagine her frowning in frustration.
“But sir, why would he divide his squadron?” Vesey said. “That allows us to concentrate superior force on either one, doesn’t it, over?”
Daniel showed the Alliance squadron forming initially ten light-minutes in-system from Z3 because Guphill knew his ships would scatter widely if their initial jump was of any length. They were split into two wings of equal strength, each led by one of the battleships.
“Vesey, Guphill’ll do this because he’s commanded in four engagements and he’s split his force every time,” Daniel said. “I think if asked to justify the formation, he’d say that it permits him to catch his enemy between two fires. In reality I don’t think he’s comfortable with a single large force, but it worked out well for him when he fought a fleet from Novy Sverdlovsk while commodore of a squadron in the Sponsor Stars, over.”
“But sir!” Vesey said despairingly. “That was Novy Sverdlovsk. Surely he doesn’t think he can do that with the RCN, over?”
“We’ve caught him off balance,” Daniel said. “I don’t believe he is thinking; he’s reacting because he doesn’t have time to think. And Vesey?”
He paused, flashing through several ways to phrase what she needed to understand.
“If a missile’s well-aimed, the target’s planet of origin doesn’t matter. Admiral Guphill started as a missile officer and a very good one; his ships got seventeen direct hits during that fight in the Sponsor Stars. We don’t have seventeen ships today. Out.”
“Squadron, this is Command,” said Admiral James. “Prepare to insert in five seconds.”
Daniel’s finger poised over the Execute button.
“Insert!”
He pressed the button. The Princess Cecile began to shudder out of sidereal space, heading again for the enemy.
Chapter Twenty-seven
JEWEL SYSTEM
Some people saw things in the Matrix; ghosts, if you will, and not always human ghosts. Adele merely felt queasy when she wasn’t concentrating on something; therefore she concentrated on things, which was what she ought to be doing anyway.
At present she was using her time to review communications among the ships of the Alliance squadron, which Rene had intercepted and transmitted to her. She’d been busy with the imagery while the Princess Cecile was in sidereal space, and cursory dips into the commo chatter had convinced her that it wouldn’t be of importance.
She’d been correct about the lack of importance, but it was interesting to see that the Alliance’s initial reaction had been something close to panic. Adele got the impression of people who’d started to enter their house and found a ravening monster striding down the hall toward them.
She was also distressed by their lack of communications security, though none of the heavy ships were so distraught that they broadcast in clear the way the T65 had done. The Alliance officers were the enemy, so she knew she
ought to be pleased when they seemed incompetent. The truth appeared to be that she felt much more angry about bad craftsmanship than she did about people trying to kill her.
Adele smiled faintly. Daniel would probably understand that, though it was unlikely that he felt that way himself.
Antennas and the bitts to which the rigging was fastened creaked, transmitting strains through the double hulls. Sounds and light were different, flatter, in the Matrix. Some scientists claimed that was an illusion: instrument readings demonstrated that frequency rates and amplitude across the electro-optical spectrum remained the same whether the ship was in sidereal space or in a discrete bubble of the Matrix.
Adele sniffed; it was amazing how foolish highly educated people could be. Sight and sound were artifacts of the brain which processed neural signals. Though the signals might be identical, the processing wasn’t—as anybody who’d been in the Matrix could have told them.
She closed the file of Alliance intership communication; there was nothing she needed to pass on to Daniel. That negative knowledge was useful, though.
They had the information because of Rene Cazelet’s skill. And courage, of course, but—
Adele grinned in self-mockery . . . though it was true.
—in the RCN one took courage as a given. Guarantor Porra had hurt himself worse than he could possibly have imagined when he drove that young man into the service of the Alliance’s enemies.
Adele hoped it’d be possible to retrieve the escape capsule after the battle. Frowning, she realized that only the Sissies knew of the capsule’s existence, so a single Alliance missile could doom Rene and his boat handler to a lingering death. Adele quickly composed a message stating the capsule’s purpose and location. She set her equipment to transmit the data to all ships of the squadron as soon as they returned to sidereal space.
It’d be extremely bad luck if the corvette was destroyed in the instant of extraction. Regardless, Rene and Matthews were subject to the same fortunes of war as the other members of the crew.
The rig groaned again; an icy knife slid between the hemispheres of Adele’s brain and then down the length of her spine. Presumably the Princess Cecile had passed from one bubble universe to another.
Vesey had gone out onto the hull where she could make minute changes to the sail plan based on her reading of the Matrix. Daniel said she had a real talent for it, judging energy gradients with a delicacy and precision that the Sailing Directions—compiled from averages—and an astrogation computer could never equal.
Thought of Vesey caused Adele to play back the lieutenant’s discussion with Daniel regarding attack plans. Again, Adele’d listened to snatches of the conversation at the time, but she’d decided that other matters were more pressing. It still wasn’t important, but now that she had leisure she found a great deal of interest—not so much in the words as in the insights to be gleaned from the interchange.
Adele looked at the image of Daniel, now poring over further course projections. She’d sent him a full dossier on Admiral Guphill and on all the captains in the Alliance squadron. Indeed, she’d provided the same information on all the RCN captains as well; she didn’t believe in the concept of too much information.
She hadn’t sent Vesey that data—but she’d have been glad to do so if Vesey’d asked. And Daniel would have asked if his signals officer hadn’t volunteered it. For that matter, the Princess Cecile’s regular database had information on all Alliance admirals which Vesey could easily’ve retrieved on her own.
That didn’t mean Vesey was stupid. Rather, it meant that Vesey viewed human beings as interchangeable data points. She had an instinct for the nuances of the Matrix, but she was trying to predict people in large classes.
There was no humor in Adele’s smile. Vesey was a smart, decent, normal human being. She couldn’t look on people with the dispassionate precision which Adele directed toward them.
Elspeth Vesey wouldn’t kill unless she were in a rage, and even then she’d probably twitch the muzzle to the side in the instant before the trigger released. She’d loved and been loved by a fine young man, just as young women were supposed to do. She had not only a good mind but all the human attributes that Adele Mundy so signally lacked—
But she didn’t seem happy or anything remotely approaching happy. Of course Vesey probably didn’t have as many dead people visiting her in the early hours of the morning as Adele did; but perhaps she saw Timothy Dorst, and that might be as bad.
Adele minimized her screen and looked across the console at Tovera. Tovera raised an eyebrow in query, but Adele brought the holographic display back up without speaking.
Tovera had no conscience, so she slept soundly every night. Though . . . Adele had seen hints that by closely observing her mistress, Tovera was starting to internalize the concept of friendship. From there it was only a series of short steps to regret, remorse, and misery. As best Adele could tell, that was what it meant to be fully human.
She was audibly chuckling when Daniel announced, “Extracting from the Matrix in thirty, I say again three-zero, seconds!”
* * *
There was so much adrenaline coursing through Daniel’s system that he didn’t feel the shimmering discomfort of extraction. We ought to go into battle more often, he thought; and he was laughing as the corvette slipped back into the sidereal universe.
The Alcubiere had extracted within a fraction of a second of the Princess Cecile; it was easy to tell by the energetic debris streaming from each High Drive motor. There was none in the case of the heavy cruiser, whereas the destroyers Escapade and Express must’ve arrived thirty seconds ahead of schedule to have left the trail they did.
The two battleships arrived to head the line less than fifteen seconds later, with the remaining five destroyers appearing in the next fifteen seconds and the Antigone staggering in a few heartbeats after that. Admiral James wouldn’t be thrilled about the sloppy timing on a short intra-system hop, but the eleven vessels of his squadron were in notably good line.
Which put them strikingly at variance with the Alliance ships. If Daniel didn’t know they had to be in formation, he wouldn’t have been able to guess what that formation was: two reverse echelons spreading like the strokes of a ninety-degree V with its implied base at Z3. There was a battleship in either line, but the four heavy cruisers were in the right wing and the two light cruisers in the left; Guphill had apparently decided to keep the cruisers’ divisional structures intact instead of splitting them to balance his wings as Daniel had theorized.
Other than that, Guphill’s formation—raggedness aside, though there was quite a lot of raggedness to put aside—was exactly as Daniel had theorized it’d be, save that it was only five light-minutes out from Z3 and the huge green ball of Zmargadine itself. Full marks to the late Midshipman Dorst, who’d have expected that. The boy couldn’t navigate his way to the latrine, but he’d had an instinct for an enemy’s weaknesses.
The T65 and T72 were the only destroyers remaining to Guphill since he’d sent the others with his sloops off to the Bagarian Cluster. They were wallowing between the squadron’s wings while signals flashed in both directions.
The destroyer captains knew less about the Alliance situation than the RCN officers did. Guphill hadn’t informed the Diamondia pickets that he intended to send half his force out of the Jewel System, so they were probably expecting the battle cruisers and the remainder of the screening forces either to extract or to lift from Z3 momentarily.
Daniel studied the sail plan of the Alliance vessels. If you knew the present conditions in the Matrix—as he did—and you had experience as a hands-on astrogator—which again he did; a bloody good astrogator, not to be modest—you could get a fair notion of the enemy’s intentions by seeing how his sails were arrayed.
Oh, certainly, there were as many different ways to accomplish a trip from point to point in the Matrix as there were to go from the bridge to the BDC; but you didn’t make the latter journey by steppin
g out onto the hull and back in through the after airlock unless there was a very good reason. Likewise the Sissie’s astrogation computer could reverse analyze the Pleasaunce’s sail plan to determine the course they’d been adjusted to solve.
Though close by astronomical standards, the opposing squadrons remained over three hundred million miles apart—well beyond the range of missiles, let alone plasma cannon. That also meant that the schematic of the enemy array on Daniel’s command console, though perfectly accurate, showed the situation twenty-five minutes in the past. A great deal can happen in twenty-five minutes. . . .
The wings of the Alliance formation were separated by one and a half light-seconds at the wide end and about half that as they tapered toward Z3. The ships were accelerating at nearly 2 gs, but that seemed to be to straighten out the lines in the sidereal universe instead of dipping back into the Matrix to do the job more efficiently. Perhaps Guphill trusted his officers’ pilotage farther than he did their astrogation.
The only vessels which began adjusting their sails for reinsertion were the two startled destroyers. Daniel didn’t need the summary of communications intercepts from Adele to know that they were being directed to take their place in the left wing ahead of the light cruisers Bat Durston and Rip Waechter. Unlike Admiral James’ dispositions, the Alliance dreadnoughts were farthest from the enemy.
Laser backed with microwave flashed orders from the Zeno. Daniel opened the kernel instantly, then forwarded the data to the other bridge consoles and the BDC. He wondered if Admiral Guphill had anyone on his staff who could decode RCN signals as quickly as Adele did those of the Alliance. Perhaps, but it didn’t really matter; at this stage of the engagement, Guphill was going to learn about the RCN’s plans more quickly than signals would propagate over the intervening distance.
The Sissie vibrated in a familiar fashion; Sun was rotating his turrets and running the paired 4-inch plasma cannon from minimum to maximum elevation to be sure that they moved freely. They did, of course, just as they had when the corvette reached orbit initially.