RCN 11: Death's Bright Day (eARC)

by David Drake

  The universe blurred into a greenish haze as the Princess Cecile began to insert into the Matrix in accordance with the course Daniel himself had programmed into the command console. The Montcalm faded from a cold, reflective behemoth filling the heavens above him into a disruption. Daniel gripped the joystick, but he didn’t take control yet.

  Daniel always felt a thrill when he first stepped out into the light of the Matrix. The first time had been when he was seven, too small to fit into even the smallest air suit.

  Uncle Stacy had wangled a child’s escape capsule from a yacht and modified it with a clear panel at eye level. In it he and a trusted workman had carried Daniel when they brought him onto the hull during an insertion on a test lift. Daniel wasn’t a religious man, but his feelings on looking out at the Cosmos arrayed as a shimmering light show—every bright point a bubble universe—couldn’t really be described except in religious terms.

  Hogg had been with the boy during that first view of the Matrix, but he hadn’t helped carry the capsule. It was Hogg’s first experience in the Matrix also, and he didn’t trust himself not to make a fatal mistake.

  When they were back within the hull and Daniel had been released from the capsule, Hogg had pinched the boy’s lips closed to still his excited burbling. Then, with the same grim sincerity he had used when instructing Daniel in firearms safety, he had explained why Daniel never ever must let his mother know what had just happened. If gentle, loving Maude Bergen Leary learned, she would never again let Daniel visit her brother.

  Later Daniel realized that Hogg would also have been expelled from the Bantry estate which was the only home his family had known for at least 300 years, but that was at most Hogg’s secondary concern. Lady Maude had made Hogg responsible for Daniel’s well-being, and in Hogg’s opinion the boy’s obvious love for spacefaring should be indulged—even though Hogg’s own opinion of the business was very close to that of Daniel’s mother.

  The Sissie was fully within the Matrix, a bubble universe among the infinite thousands of bubble universes which made up the cosmos. Daniel looked about him in delight.

  Humans could not see the Matrix with their eyes, but their brains translated the perceptions into visual images. The Montcalm did not exist in the universe which had formed about the Princess Cecile, but the Matrix itself was blemished if you understood its infinitely changing structure. Daniel Leary had as much of that understanding as the next person.

  He grinned tightly as he eased the joystick forward. Unless the next person was a Qaboosh pirate. And maybe even then.…

  The discontinuity had been fading; now it began to grow again, disturbing a wider apparent arc of the Matrix. Though the internal clocks of the Montcalm and Sissie were identical to the level of molecular movement, the constants of universes which the starships had formed about themselves as they inserted differed. Daniel was bringing them into closer synchrony by his vastly geared-down effort on the joystick.

  The yards of the antenna immediately behind him were rotating, adjusting the angle at which Casimir Radiation impinged on the sails. Daniel didn’t have to turn to know what was happening: the vibration though the soles of his boots told him.

  He had set the course: not the sail plan, that was determined by the console, but the point at which the Princess Cecile was to extract into sidereal space. Because of Daniel’s long experience on the hull, he knew roughly how long it would take for the ship to transit that distance. The sail adjustment was the final route point.

  Instead of shrinking, the ghost of the Montcalm began to fade. Daniel drew his joystick back to its stop at the six o’clock position.

  The Princess Cecile jerked and shuddered into normal space. At each instant another—horrible—feeling wracked Daniel’s mind. Normally he would undergo extraction while he was seated at the command console or at worst would be gripping an antenna or some fixed portion of the ship’s rigging. This time he was plodding toward the airlock, not so much ignoring the pain as pressing on regardless.

  He had to be back on the Sissie’s bridge as soon as possible.

  He had to be back on the Sissie’s bridge in order to conn her into battle with a hostile battleship.

  * * *

  As the Princess Cecile extracted from the Matrix, Adele felt spiders walking on the surface of her brain. It was very unpleasant. Very unpleasant.

  Why do I think they’re spiders?

  The surface of the brain has no sensory input nerves. Why do I think I’m feeling something on the surface of my brain? That’s as foolish as it would be to think that a rock hates me!

  Adele’s silent reflection had the useful effect of bringing her fully alert. Usually extractions bothered her less than seemed to be the case for others, though since the whole business was subjective she might simply be patting herself on the back for being exceptionally tough. That thought was worse than the spiders, even though she hadn’t spoken out loud.

  Tovera was slumped over her side of the console. Perhaps the fact that the Sissie and the transport were linked had made the effect worse than it usually was. That would be very unfortunate, because the crew of the Almirante weren’t sharing the discomfort.

  “Karst battleship, this is the Cinnabar Peacekeeping Force, Admiral Beukes commanding,” Adele said. At this range it was to be expected that an RCN warship would have identified the origin as well as type of a major warship. “Lay to and prepare to be boarded by RCN officers. RCS Powerful over.”

  She had no idea of what the rebel vessels—she included the Almirante among them—might have been transmitting during the period that the Princess Cecile had been in the Matrix. If there had been time she would have entered the logs of the hostile ships and extracted the records, but there most certainly was not time now.

  Tovera had sat up again. Adele hoped that the rest of the bridge crew were recovering also, but there was nothing she could do if they weren’t.

  The PPI on the bottom of Adele’s display—commo had the top half—showed that the Ithaca was clawing back up from the gravity well it had started to enter. Its captain must have heard “Admiral Beukes”’ challenge and decided to face the issue directly.

  The other two rebel destroyers were accelerating hard; the Truth was even using its plasma thrusters to boost the output of its far more efficient High Drive. As Adele’s eye fell on the display, the icon for the Truth blurred as the ship inserted. A moment later the Justice followed its companion into the Matrix.

  They might be on their way to join the Almirante, but Adele very strongly doubted it. They would wait at what their captains considered a safe distance—a light hour or more—while the heavy ships decided the issue. If the Almirante drove off or destroyed the three cruisers, the destroyers would reappear to support the victor. If the cruisers took control of the Danziger system, the destroyers would run for Peltry. The deception—her deception—had at least worked that well.

  The Montclare with the Mindello clinging tightly to its skirt appeared three thousand miles away only a few seconds after the Sissie and Montcalm extracted. The Triomphante was thirty seconds later but within a thousand miles of the Sissie, extremely good astrogation.

  Normally Adele would have guessed that any deviation from the plotted rendezvous point was the fault of the other vessel, not the Princess Cecile. Under the present circumstances the transport, maneuvering with only her topgallants, was the limiting factor on accuracy. The Sissie went where the Montcalm led; if the Triomphante extracted in close proximity, Captain Joycelyn had every right to be proud of himself.

  Daniel shambled past in his rigging suit. He had looked ill after they transited into the Danziger system; now the normally ruddy skin of his face was drawn so tightly over his skull that he looked as though he were a pallid caricature of himself.

  “Cinnabar vessels, this is CKS Almirante,” a male voice replied on the 20-meter band which Adele had used in hailing. “Karst is an independent principality at peace with your republic. You have no author
ity to halt or search our vessel. We will not comply with your demand, over.”

  The speaker’s tone wobbled between haughty and frightened, with haughty seeming to gain strength as the transmission went on. Adele had found Karst to have the typical arrogance of a minor power whose leaders don’t understand how trivial they are in the greater scheme of things.

  Because of the near parity between Cinnabar and the Alliance, the superpowers had for decades been more than polite to the Headman of Karst and his henchmen. That had fueled Karst’s feeling of self-importance.

  Besides, the Almirante was a battleship. Three aggressively-handled heavy cruisers could put up a fight, but the weight of metal was still comfortably on the battleship’s side.

  Daniel pulsed a red icon on Adele’s display, meaning he wanted to take over. Adele immediately ceded the transmitter to him.

  “Karst vessel,” Daniel said, “this is Admiral Beukes of the RCN.”

  The real Beukes commanded a cruiser squadron of the Home Fleet, based at Harbor Three on Xenos. He had a good war record and was a likely candidate to head such a peacekeeping squadron if the Republic lost its collective mind and became openly involved in the Tarbell Stars.

  “In the name of the Republic of Cinnabar, I am ordering you to either lie to and be boarded by my officers,” Daniel continued, “or to immediately remove yourself from the Danziger System. If you do not obey my orders, I will use all force necessary to bring you into a condition of obedience. Beukes over.”

  Adele’s software translated a wiggle in the electronic noise emanating from the Almirante. She said, “Daniel, the battleship has opened the shutters of its missile tubes.” Someone who knew her as well as Daniel did would be able to read the urgency which didn’t actually reach her voice.

  The Almirante began to launch missiles.

  * * *

  “Cinnabar Force, engage the enemy!” Daniel ordered. He noticed that his order was not only being microwaved to the ships of the Tarbell squadron but was also being broadcast in clear on short wave so that Captain Staples of the Almirante would receive it.

  Daniel had forgotten to tell Adele to do that. Fortunately the choice was as obvious to her as it was to him.

  “Missiles, launch two,” ordered Lieutenant Farber, the captain of the Princess Cecile properly executing the orders of the squadron commander. The ship rang as Chazanoff pressed his launch button.

  About a cup of water in the breach cavity was flash-heated to steam. That shoved the multi-ton missile out of its tube into hard vacuum where its twin High Drive motors lighted. The missile accelerated on a preprogrammed course toward the Karst battleship. By the time it had exhausted its reaction mass and split into three parts, the missile would have reached a significant fraction of light speed.

  Each separate projectile weighed more than a ton. They didn’t have warheads. Explosives—even nuclear weapons—were vulnerable to countermeasures and at missile velocities would add little to the kinetic energy of the impact.

  A second Clang! Chazanoff had launched the Sissie’s other loaded missile. A corvette carried the same missiles as a battleship, but not nearly as many of them and with only two tubes for a salvo. The Almirante could launch ninety-six at a time, enough to overwhelm the defenses of even another battleship—if they were well aimed.

  The Princess Cecile shuddered as reload missiles moved from the magazine to the launch tubes. From the harmonics, Chazanoff had more than two missiles moving on each rollerway. That made reloading faster, but it would take serious effort to move five-ton missiles back up the rollers into the magazines again if they were not launched.

  That was a problem for after the fighting had stopped. Launching at maximum rate increased the chances that the fighting would stop at a point favorable to the Sissie and her crew.

  The Mindello, huddled against the Montclare to mimic the RCS Terrible, launched two missiles—one from each pair of tubes—and two more in five seconds. That was enough of a delay that the leader’s High Drives wouldn’t damage the following missile.

  The Triomphante herself—the only major warship involved in Daniel’s deception—also launched two missiles. That was a good choice, again one that Daniel hadn’t thought to order. The Princess Cecile and Mindello were limited to two or four missiles in a salvo. The heavy cruiser could have salvoed twelve, but by limiting his own launch Joycelyn was suggesting that the small salvoes were a matter of “Admiral Beukes”’ choice rather than necessity.

  The Almirante in her initial probe had launched six missiles toward the Triomphante. Now she rippled out twenty-two, probably intended to be twenty-four; again she was aiming only at the Triomphante. Presumably Captain Staples still hoped not to involve his nation in a war with Cinnabar, even though he believed that two RCN cruisers were launching at him.

  The Katchaturian under her Nabis captain was keeping decent station three thousand miles outboard of the “Terrible.” She had launched two missiles at the Almirante and now launched three more.

  “Squadron, launch at maximum,” Daniel ordered. The Princess Cecile carried only twenty-two missiles with her magazine full—as it had been at the start of this action. There was no reason to conserve them at this point. The Mindello had sixty, though most were single-converter models.

  The Alfonso had advanced toward the Almirante as Daniel ordered, but either her captain’s astrogation was very bad or he had chosen to extract two light minutes from the Karst battleship rather than the plotted one minute. The destroyer was not launching, though in fairness she was so far away from the Sissie that her officers might not have had time to understand and obey.

  The Albuquerque, the third Tarbell destroyer, had entered the Matrix when the heavy ships did but hadn’t extracted—or at any rate, hadn’t extracted close enough to the region of battle to show up on Daniel’s Plot-Position Indicator. That didn’t actually prove that Captain Tremaine was more interested in saving his skin than in fighting, but Daniel would discuss the situation with him when matters quieted down.

  If any of us survive, but you can die stepping out of the shower.

  Instead of engaging the incoming missiles with her plasma cannon as Daniel expected, the Triomphante inserted into the Matrix before the first of the Karst rounds reached her. Daniel frowned.

  Joycelyn had plenty of time to evade the salvo in this fashion: the Karst missiles were single-converter units which accelerated at half the rate of the double-converter missiles used by both Cinnabar and the Alliance. The Almirante’s salvo hadn’t been well-aimed.

  If Daniel had been the Triomphante’s captain, he would have batted away the few missiles whose trajectories might have posed a danger. Plasma cannon left a miasma of charged particles clinging to the vessel firing which had to dissipate before the ship could enter the Matrix.

  If the Triomphante had stayed in normal space and launched a full salvo of twelve rounds, there was at least a chance that the additional threat would have been enough to frighten the battleship off the field. Had Hale been too hesitant to take over when Joycelyn had lost his bottle? Or had Minister Robin intervened?

  “Karst warship!” Adele broadcast. She didn’t raise her voice, but she had the tone of command which her family had honed during twenty centuries in the forefront of Cinnabar politics. “Cease firing at the Cinnabar Peacekeeping Squadron. You are committing piracy and will assuredly be hanged by your own government if you survive this action!”

  The Tarbell vessels had been able to rough out their attacks before they transited: their target was a fixed point and their computers knew the location at which they intended to extract. The results were quite good. Nothing else appearing, one of the missiles from the Princess Cecile and one from the Mindello might strike the Almirante, and even one from the Triomphante had a chance.

  Not even a battleship could shrug off a missile at terminal velocity, but there was no realistic chance of a hit from the projectiles launched thus far. The Almirante had time to maneuver out of the
path of most, and her eight 20-centimeter plasma cannon directed enough energy that a single bolt could easily defeat a ton and a half of steel. The blast of ions didn’t make the projectile vanish, but it vaporized enough of the mass to shove the remainder away at a sharp angle.

  “Cinnabar forces, cease your attack!” the battleship broadcast. “We are the CKS Almirante, a vessel of a friendly power! Cease your attack.”

  A destroyer—the Ithaca—extracted some thirty thousand miles from the Almirante. The Sissie launched two more missiles—one and one. Their sharp blows punctuated the hull’s rhythmic flexing as additional missiles came down the rollerways.

  In a normal battle the Princess Cecile would be maneuvering and probably making quick insertions into the Matrix. Daniel couldn’t do that while they were linked to the Montcalm.

  He wasn’t sure that their deception was still working, but it certainly seemed to be. Deception was their only real hope against a battleship, and he wasn’t going to give it up.

  The Triomphante extracted thirty light-seconds from the Almirante but at 90 degrees to the plane of the previous action. Joycelyn hadn’t inserted to dodge missiles, he was maneuvering for a closer shot and a different angle on the battleship. The cruiser was barely in sidereal space again when it began to launch missiles.

  Daniel had an enlargement of the Almirante on a corner of his display.

  It was a further minute before the battleship began to react to the Triomphante’s attack. Her massive plasma cannon were carried in pairs in four turrets. They all rotated to meet the incoming missiles.

  The battleship launched a missile salvo—thirty-seven, according to the read-out on Daniel’s display. They weren’t especially well aimed: the Almirante’s missileer was reacting to a target at an unexpected angle. Indeed, it seemed obvious that the battleship’s captain and crew hadn’t been prepared for a battle, period.

  The weight of metal accelerating toward the Triomphante was nonetheless enormous. The cruiser opened fire with her 15-centimeter guns. She had maneuvered in the Matrix with topgallant sails alone, and Joycelyn had placed her at an angle which permitted all four turrets to bear without being blocked by the rigging.