by David Drake
The entire squadron was to insert into the Matrix in seven minutes from arrival of the order. The Foxhunt element would extract between the arms of the Alliance formation, launch a single salvo of missiles at the ships of the right wing, and reenter the Matrix. Because there wouldn’t be time to adjust their sails before this second insertion, they’d carry on to the orbit of Samphire—though that barren rock would itself be on the other side of Jewel for the next seventeen months—and re-form.
A lot of assumptions would have to work out for there to be anything left of Foxhunt to re-form. Well, nobody’d told them that enlisting in the RCN would guarantee that they’d die in bed.
Daniel plotted the course that would put the Princess Cecile in the middle of the enemy squadron. Borries was laying out missile attacks, Sun was determining the best angles at which to deflect incoming missiles with his cannon—which was a grim joke to anybody who’d calculated the flux density required to affect a five-tonne missile over such a short range—and the midshipmen were figuring the escape sequence following the attack.
Somewhere out on the hull, Vesey was looking at the orders relayed to her by hydromechanical semaphore and frowning; at any rate, Daniel would be frowning if it were him, as he much wished it were. But Vesey could read the Matrix almost as well as he could, and nobody could lay out a detailed attack as well as Commander Daniel Leary.
“Ship,” Daniel said, “prepare for insertion in thirty, I say again three-zero, seconds.”
And may the Gods have mercy on our souls.
* * *
The Princess Cecile shuddered into the Matrix again. Adele leaned back against the cushions and lifted her commo helmet with her fingertips so that she could massage her temples. Quick in-and-out transitions were uncomfortable, though long periods in the Matrix were uncomfortable also and led to hallucinations. Or hauntings, Adele supposed; it didn’t matter, since in her judgment one irrational experience was as bad as the next.
She noticed that Daniel had called the riggers in from the hull. Only the genesis of the signal was electronic: the crew received it by hydromechanical semaphores placed at bow and stern, dorsal and ventral. On Adele’s display the recall was a boxed translation; on the hull, the six semaphore arms rose vertically, then swung equidistant around the circle.
The riggers used hand signals to communicate among themselves. When the corvette was under way, the hull was a jungle of antennas, cables, and the shimmer of Casimir radiation impinging on the sails spread above. Inevitably not all the crew would see a semaphore, but those who did passed the signal to their fellows. The bosun’s mates were responsible for bringing in all members of the sections they took out.
Everybody on the bridge with Adele was busy with preparations for the attack. Well, Tovera and Hogg weren’t; they sat on the jumpseats behind the signals and command consoles, blank-eyed and as tense as trigger springs. Neither was a person with whom Adele could imagine having a restful conversation.
Grinning minusculely, Adele returned to the most recent Alliance intercepts to have something to occupy her mind. As she did so, a green telltale winked on her display. Cory’s voice from the BDC said, “Sissie Five-two to Signals, over.”
Frowning because she couldn’t imagine what the midshipman wanted, Adele said, “Go ahead, Cory.”
It was a two-way link so she didn’t bother with protocol. They could talk over one another’s words just as easily as they could if they were face to face, since their voices were on separate channels.
The midshipmen were under Vesey, Sissie Five, the First Lieutenant, in the table of organization. Cory was junior—by accident of name—to Blantyre, so he became Five-two while she was Five-one. It all seemed ludicrously complicated to Adele, though she could see it’d be necessary on a battleship with a crew of a thousand. Since the RCN arranged everything on the basis of the lowest common denominator, the same rules applied to an undercrewed corvette.
Well, they didn’t apply to Adele Mundy unless she chose that they should. She’d been concentrating on the minute details of decoding; now she ached and had nothing to do, putting her in even less than usual of a mood to mouth nonsense when plain words would do.
“Ah, yes, mistress,” said Cory. “I’ve copied the internal ship traffic for you so you can review my decisions now that we’re in the Matrix, ov—that is, ma’am.”
Adele’s face softened slightly. While she’d been busy with external signals—those from other RCN vessels as well as Alliance intercepts—she’d made Cory the human filter between Daniel and the yammering that always filled the Sissie’s intercom circuits when they were on the verge of action.
She’d tested Cory on recordings of earlier actions where she herself had made the decisions. He’d done quite well—surprisingly well, she’d have said a year earlier; since then she’d realized that though the midshipman was lucky to have graduated from the Academy, he had a real flair for communications. He hadn’t blocked any signals that Adele had let through, and even initially he’d filtered about eighty percent of what she’d deemed to be pointless chatter. Further, he’d gotten better.
“Thank you, Cory,” she said. “I’ll go over the material, but I have every confidence in your ability.”
From somebody else, those would be mere words. Adele spoke them because they were an accurate statement of her belief. She’d never fathomed why people generally danced around the truth instead of saving time and effort by stating it bluntly.
“Mistress?” said Cory. “There’s another thing I wanted to say, while, you know, there’s time.”
“Then you’d better say it or there won’t be time,” Adele said. She hoped she’d kept her tone polite, but this was more nonsense in place of plain speaking. The part of her that would always be Mundy of Chatsworth twitched toward a riding crop to bring Cory to what would obviously turn out to be the only real point of his call.
A whipping wouldn’t really have gotten the information out sooner, of course, but it’d have given her pleasure to administer it. Though—since Adele had just been wishing she had a useful way in which to spend the next few minutes—she was being foolish as well as uncharitable.
“Yes, mistress,” contritely muttered Cory, who must’ve heard the lash in her voice. “I, well, I want to thank you for the guidance you’ve given me since you came to the Hermes. I know I’d never have gotten to be as good as you are, but, well, I don’t think many signals lieutenants in the RCN know their jobs better than you’ve taught me. I think bloody few do!”
Adele frowned. “You’re welcome, Cory,” she said. “You were willing to learn, and you’ve learned very well. Very few midshipmen would’ve recognized that there was anything to the job besides watching the software route signals.”
And from what she’d seen over the past several years, very few signals officers had any greater interest, despite having the rating.
She cleared her throat. “If I may ask, Cory,” she went on, “why did you bring this up now?”
The Sissie shook as the inner airlock door opened in the forward rotunda. Though the bridge hatch was closed, stiction made the airlock’s mating surfaces release with a high cling! recognizable to anybody who’d heard it once.
The riggers were coming in. Both watches had been on the hull, so it required a double cycle of the airlocks to complete the business.
“Well, mistress,” Cory said in embarrassment. “I thought you’d seen the battle plan. Ah, I don’t . . .
I mean, I’m not afraid, and I know Six’ll bring us through as well as anybody could. But you know, the formation . . .”
Adele imported the battle plan from the command console. Daniel was busy with the third in a series of projected attack boards, but the initial layout from Squadron Six was there, wedged into a sidebar on the screen.
She stared at it. “All right, Cory,” she said. “I see the battle plan but I don’t see the problem with it. We’ll be placed between the two enemy formations. They won’t be able to
launch missiles for fear of hitting their own ships. We will launch missiles and then reinsert before they can maneuver out of their own way. It seems a simple and effective plan. Not that I could’ve created it, but on looking at it now. What am I missing?”
“Mistress, they’ll be using their plasma cannon, we’re so close,” Cory said. “The big ships, maybe even the destroyers, chances are they’ll make out all right. But the Sissie—we don’t have the hull to take the hammering they’ll give us. It’s nobody’s fault, I don’t blame the admiral or anything. But it’s . . . well, I’ve been honored to serve with you and with Mister Leary, mistress.”
“Ah,” said Adele. Beads on a holographic display looked the same no matter what the scale was; she hadn’t considered that this time the actual range was short enough to make plasma bolts a real danger. “I take your point, Cory.”
The outer airlock rang; the second rigging watch was coming in. Adele understood why Daniel wouldn’t want personnel on the hull during the coming sleet of ions, though as Cory said—it probably didn’t make any difference.
“And as for them not being able to use missiles themselves, mistress?” Cory went on. “That’s saying they shouldn’t use missiles, but I’d be surprised if one of them didn’t. There’ll be some missileer who’s eager or scared or who just doesn’t think about there being friendlies on the other side of us. They’ll launch, I’d bet you.”
“Thank you, Cory,” Adele said. “I agree that one can usually predict that people won’t think through the results of their actions. Or anything else.”
She was more than usually disgusted with herself to be educated by Cory on two separate points in a short conversation. The second matter involved the behavior of normal human beings, though, and that was a subject about which Adele had never imagined herself to be a competent judge.
Hatches clinged again; the aft airlock provided a faint distant echo to the one just outside the bridge. The riggers didn’t have electronic links in their suits, so Woetjans keyed the flat-plate communicator beside the lock to report, “Six, this is Rig. Both watches are shipside, sir.”
“Roger, Bosun,” Daniel said. “Break. Vesey, are you forward or aft, over?”
There was no response. Adele folded two of the corvette’s three microwave horns into their traveling position against the hull. From what Cory suggested, they wouldn’t survive in the extended position. If the hull was breached—again as Cory suggested—it didn’t matter a great deal whether or not the transceivers were functional, but it was a matter of pride to Adele that she took care of her equipment.
“Sissie Five, report at once!” Daniel barked. The demand echoed itself through the PA system.
“Ship, extracting in thirty-five seconds,” called Blantyre from the BDC. After a pause, “Extracting in thirty seconds.”
There was no response from Vesey. Woetjans called, “Six, this is Rig. Polatti was last through the aft hatch. He says the lieutenant told him she was going forward. Sir, I swear I didn’t see any sign of her when I closed the lock and brought in the port watch. I’m going out to get her. Rig out.”
“Negative, Woetjans!” Daniel said. “Do not—”
“Extracting!” called Blantyre.
“—exit the ship! Do not leave the ship!”
The inner airlock clinged open. Then Adele saw flashes of heat and her nose smelled purple as the Princess Cecile returned to normal space, in the jaws of an Alliance squadron.
Chapter Twenty-eight
JEWEL SYSTEM
Daniel framed his display with the six attack boards and gave pride of place in the center to the Plot-Position Indicator, even though at the present instant it was a pearly blankness. The universe now bathing the Princess Cecile’s sensors had different physical constants from those of the universe of men. The very concepts of matter and energy as the PPI understood them would be meaningless until extraction was complete.
Extraction. . . .
For an instant, Daniel felt that his hair had turned inward to grow through his body, licking every nerve with a tongue of fire. Then the Sissie was back in sidereal space and rushing straight down the throat of a dragon.
The Express and Escapade had extracted early again. Both wings of the Alliance squadron were swinging their plasma cannon onto those first targets blurring out of the Matrix. If the destroyers’ captains survived, they’d have to expect Admiral James calling them on the carpet.
The precursor effects to an extraction didn’t hint at the size of the vessel which was disturbing space-time; the Alliance ships were reacting as though the new arrivals were RCN dreadnoughts. It didn’t surprise Daniel as he refined the Sissie’s attack on the Pleasaunce to see that the Rip Waechter was launching a spread of eight missiles. The captain of the Alliance light cruiser must’ve ordered the attack the instant he saw that the enemy was appearing so close by; he’d lacked the time or inclination to countermand those orders when instead a pair of destroyers materialized.
“Six, I have a solution!” Borries said. “I have a solution, over!”
Daniel had a solution also, but as his finger reached for the EXECUTE button his eye followed the projected tracks of the Waechter’s missiles overlaid on his attack board. The heavy cruiser Vineta and the flagship Pleasaunce herself were already engaging the destroyers with their cannon. Quite apart from the damage plasma bolts would do, the bath of ions would prevent the targets from inserting before the missiles crossed their tracks.
“Negative!” Daniel cried as his fingers relegated the preset Pleasaunce attack in favor of another of those waiting at the sides of his display. “Negative! Hold for new solution, over!”
A 20-cm plasma bolt from the Formentera hit the Sissie’s starboard B-ring antenna, vaporizing it and the yards, rigging, top and topgallant sails. The corvette both jumped and slewed, slammed by the expanding fireball as well as twisting in the side-thrust transmitted through the antenna in the instant before it vanished.
Seams started, but the plasma had vented its energy in the rigging. Daniel knew from experience that by dressing the Sissie in a full suit of sails, he could prevent the first bolt, even from a battleship’s 8-inch weapon, from reaching the hull.
That was the first bolt only.
The Princess Cecile wasn’t a proper target for the battleships’ guns, but she was the nearest target. Daniel supposed that as a Cinnabar patriot he should be pleased that the enemy was wasting shots which should’ve been fired at the Alcubiere. However—he grinned—he wasn’t that good a patriot.
“Six, we’ve got to launch!” Borries said, but Daniel’d locked the Sissie’s missile tubes to the command console. He’d launch when he was certain of his target. The Waechter’s Chief Missileer hadn’t taken time to properly plan his solution, which was going to be a costly mistake.
Admiral James had ordered the Foxhunt element to launch at the Pleasaunce before fleeing back into the Matrix, but Daniel had also set up attacks on the four heavy cruisers in the right wing and on the Formentera, the left-wing battleship. He dumped the Pleasaunce attack and brought up the solution for the cruiser directly ahead of her in line, the Direktor Heinrich. He modified the preset slightly, then reached for EXECUTE again.
The Express launched two missiles. Daniel wasn’t sure how her crew managed to do it, because the destroyer had been hammered by plasma bolts from the moment the Princess Cecile extracted. Even if her hull hadn’t been penetrated, it’d be remarkable if any sensors had survived to provide targeting information.
“Launching two!” Daniel said.
“Six, dear Gods no, you’ll miss ahead!” Borries said.
The corvette clanged as steam blasted a missile clear of its tube, clanged again as the second missile banged out ten seconds after the first, and then rang with three blows in quick succession. The heavy cruisers Hertha and Direktor Heinrich had caught her with 15-cm plasma bolts which stripped away most of the rigging on the port side. Under normal circumstances being hit by a 15-cm plas
ma bolt would’ve seemed like walking into the mouth of Hell, but to those aboard a ship that’d just taken a 20-cm round, the cruiser weapons seemed anemic.
“Prepare for insertion!” Daniel said, his hair standing on end. The lights had flickered off and on again, but during the interim the interior metal surfaces had trembled with pale green corposants. He didn’t know how long it’d be before he could cancel the hull charges; perhaps there wasn’t enough time in the world. . . .
The jolt of induced current had shifted Daniel’s display from the attack board back to the PPI which’d been up previously. On it one of the Waechter’s missiles intersected the bead slugged esc for Escapade. The cruiser’s missiles’d been aimed as much by luck as skill, but any spacer could tell you there was nothing better than luck—or worse.
Under ideal conditions the Sissie would by now have gotten the greasy feel that indicated her substance was severing its material connection with the sidereal universe. She wasn’t there yet: too much energy from the ion bolts popped and sizzled in hotspots throughout her hull and rigging.
There was nothing to do but wait. Though—reloads were rumbling toward the missile tubes. Even though launching a second salvo might draw further Alliance attention, the Princess Cecile had come here to fight.
The steep acceleration curve indicated the Alliance weapons were dual-converter units, as was to be expected from Fleet warships. The range from the Waechter to the Escapade was just long enough that the missile would’ve expended the water it carried for fuel, but the projectile would barely have begun to separate into three pieces. Such a hit would’ve wrecked a battleship. It turned the Escapade into two relatively large assemblies, the far bow and the right outrigger, and sent them spinning away in a fan of scrap and gas. Eighty percent of the destroyer’s mass was in that expanding spray.